Project TROIKA
It is a thrill reading the latest draft of the Project TROIKA novel (sorry, treasured readers, but the title is still a secret), albeit a strange thrill. Without demeaning K. Steeze's integral & invaluable contribution to Tier 1, I can say that these are my characters. The thrill is in seeing my characters on the written page, the strangeness in seeing them on the page written in another man's words, in this instance The Ace's writing edited & revised by K. Steeze. There are my characters, & yet they are in some ways subtly different from how they've been living in my head these last several years. (Some of the differences are much less subtle, like wholesale changes of age & nationality.) I suspect this strangeness is nothing more than the natural byproduct of the collaborative process. This is the first novel any of us has written, much less the first novel any of us has written in collaboration with two other fellows. I am committed to this collaboration; there is no Project TROIKA without the troika of K. Steeze, The Ace, & The Last Angry Man, your humble narrator. What I am reading is simply the latest draft, & the novel is still some ways away from being suitable for publication. I pray thee, let not this discussion's focus on the strangeness of the thrill blind you to the fact that it is a thrill, an absolute thrill, to see how far we've come from the initial idea to write a novel in triune partnership.

Grow or die.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day: SKApril
Madness, "Swan Lake" from One Step Beyond… (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Whoever said SKApril wasn't highbrow? It's "Swan Lake," for pity's sake! (Or, you know, it's "Swan Lake," after a fashion.) What more do you want?