At this point Chloe has made three incursions into Sofa territory. We
have managed to turn her back each time, but our resolve is waning.
It's all in those big eyes of hers. This war is doooooomed.
I
am having so much freaking fun with this sci-fi story it is
unbelievable. Originally I intended to keep it as a once off, but there
are a lot of places I could take this. I kind of love this stuff, you
know. Yes, dear friends, I am totally obsessed. ETA is still set for the
first two weeks of September. Title and sample will be posted here and
on DA 9/1.
I spent most of the last two days doing
family stuff. I love my family, but sometimes the drama gets to be a
little much. Jamming writing time in between work and family the last
couple of weeks has felt a little bit like stuffing pages into a dam to
keep it from bursting. I guess it's like that for everybody. Except I've
noticed most of my friends and family tend to go dancing or party or
something, whereas I spend an evening working out imaginary political
problems and trying to balance a character's past with their current
(traumatizing) events. Which is fun, but it usually means my outward
life is boring. People ask "What did you do this weekend" and I can't
exactly say, "fight dragons with other dragons, a cannon and a
highschooler's understanding of physics" without looking like I've gone completely cracked.
So I say "write" and they invite me to go to a dive and get drunk on
whiskey sours that taste like pickle juice (Note to all bars everywhere:
DO NOT KEEP YOUR SWEET AND SOUR NEXT TO PICKLE JUICE. FOR THE LOVE OF
GOD, ANGELS AND BAR FLIES DO NOT DO THIS THING. THIS TASTES TERRIBLE.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA.) And I have to think up a way to bow out without
looking boring because Lowest Common Denominator DJs cannot compete with
dragons, and I have better sweet and sour at home.
Also: this is 2012. AC/DC is great and all, but if I hear "All my
exes live in Texas" one more time I will begin to scream and never
stop. My city needs a pool hall. Not a bar with a shitty coin fed pool
table that tilts due south.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
State of the CW+Book stuff and SAMPLE!!!
The war of attrition with Chloe continues. She has not made another foray into the house today, but I think she's decided that victory needs time to settle. She did, however, spend a great deal of time on my lap earlier. You know it's hard to make decisive choices when your opponent purrs.
Thomas has not gone toad licking lately. I think because the rats have reproduced, Chloe has eaten all his real food, and it hasn't rained in three weeks, so the frogs are not coming out to be eaten. And my own baby-doll, Abbot, is sleeping on my face every night. Cat politics are fun.
Also, my goal of late has been to update this thing every day. So far, it's worked pretty well. :D
Summer is winding down. The summer people are going home. It feels rather nice to start getting our town back. And I am about one third of the way through a second draft of the next short. Though it's a really long short. More novellette, really. I have several potential titles, finally, and I'll shoot for release in the first week in September, though if something comes up it may get pushed back to the second. I'll post the title when things are a little more firm. Until then, it is The Sci Fi Novelette of Mystery. SFNM.
Now, because these things require a little priming, I am going to give you all a little taste of the SFNM. Not properly edited, of course, but one of the better passages so far. Consider what's after the cut your mid-month bonus:
Thomas has not gone toad licking lately. I think because the rats have reproduced, Chloe has eaten all his real food, and it hasn't rained in three weeks, so the frogs are not coming out to be eaten. And my own baby-doll, Abbot, is sleeping on my face every night. Cat politics are fun.
Also, my goal of late has been to update this thing every day. So far, it's worked pretty well. :D
Summer is winding down. The summer people are going home. It feels rather nice to start getting our town back. And I am about one third of the way through a second draft of the next short. Though it's a really long short. More novellette, really. I have several potential titles, finally, and I'll shoot for release in the first week in September, though if something comes up it may get pushed back to the second. I'll post the title when things are a little more firm. Until then, it is The Sci Fi Novelette of Mystery. SFNM.
Now, because these things require a little priming, I am going to give you all a little taste of the SFNM. Not properly edited, of course, but one of the better passages so far. Consider what's after the cut your mid-month bonus:
I was wrong
So I woke up today, walk out of my bedroom and discover Chloe on the couch.
We are not adopting this cat. No. She is invading us. This is a cold war of attrition, fueled by soft purry goodness. Slowly this calico invader is worming her way into our hearts and lives and couches paw by fuzzy paw. Today she has claimed the living room. Soon we shall awaken to find a new feline overlord perched gently on our chests, looking down on us with expectation in those pretty green eyes. And her demand shall be FEED ME.
She has doomed us all.
We are not adopting this cat. No. She is invading us. This is a cold war of attrition, fueled by soft purry goodness. Slowly this calico invader is worming her way into our hearts and lives and couches paw by fuzzy paw. Today she has claimed the living room. Soon we shall awaken to find a new feline overlord perched gently on our chests, looking down on us with expectation in those pretty green eyes. And her demand shall be FEED ME.
She has doomed us all.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Movie Bitch: Chronicles of Riddick
I've been sitting on this one for a while...but...
Flashback. It’s 2000, the internet is
still shiny enough for AOL to be a ISP option and not an allergic reaction, MP3
is what you get when you throw phone keys and scrabble tiles together into the
same bag, and a movie called Pitch Black has just hit theaters. And it’s, you
know, a pretty okay movie. I didn’t see it in the theaters and I don’t know
anybody who did, but I did eventually see…half of it.
So “okay” I
mean not actively broken. When I
can’t sit through or read through all of whatever it is, that’s usually a bad
sign. By combining what I remember of it with what I read on IMDB and
Wikipedia, I know I probably would have been disappointed because I got
attached to the kick ass girl captain, and…well…she didn’t make it.
But one thing I remember was Vin Diesel. Not
because he did a good job in Pitch Black—though he did—but because after that
movie he was everywhere. The Fast and
the Furious came out the next year and you could not walk into anything
resembling a theater without seeing his face and hearing his deep, rich voice come
over the speakers. Then he did xXx, and while that’s the laziest title I’ve
seen in a while apparently it was a rousing box office success.
Anyway,
Hollywood never being one to miss a chance to ruin a pretty good thing, they
eventually decided to make The Chronicles
of Riddick. Which I had to watch recently.
This is my
therapy.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Ideas--dime a bushel basket
So this one day I was on the bus, because, you know, no car, and I was trying to write. This was a couple years ago, so I had my nightshift damn-I-want-to-sleep hangover on, and there wasn't much I could do about it. This woman notices me, and starts talking.
First off, guys and girls? I don't want to meet you on a bus. and if you see me in public with headphones in? It means i don't want to talk. I want to listen to music.
So anyway, I was dumber back then, and I mentioned that I was working on a book.
The floodgates. fucking. open.
See she had this idea involving bigfoot. An idea that I think I read in a Frank Peretti book (there are two kinds of people who read Frank Peretti. Christians, and Fundamentalist crazies) with a couple of extra twists. And it was BORING and I just wanted to go HOME, and the thing that struck me the most? Was how when we started she was like, "Well, I guess you can steal this idea because God knows, I'll never do anything with it."
My former--THANK GOD!--stepfather was the same way. He was all like, "you need to stop working on that silly fairy shit and start WRITING STORIES FOR JESUS" and then he would lay out his Da Vinci Code rip off that also involved the antichrist and human cloning. So specifically, he wanted me to stop working on MY story and start working on HIS. Because his is something he actually wants to read.
Kids, a story is not an idea. An idea is not a story. An idea is the sperm it takes to get a story started. When it does its job, it goes away, and there are a lot of other little wriggly ideas that don't ever go anywhere. And an idea is easy to get. How easy?
"Angel Tractor". Go write a story involving those two words. Now. If you stare at a screen long enough, eventually you'll get an idea. Are you stuck? Here's two more words. "Glorious Pumpkin". Go back to writing.
If I were to go through the list of idea kernals in Silver Bullet, it would be: watching a true crime show about a sniper, a word prompt I got off Janet Reid's blog, a HORRIBLE horror movie that may or may not have had Kevin "I drink my own piss" Cosner in it, a boat named "No Compromise" sitting behind the restaurant that owns my life, and a chunk of my dead-yet-soon-to-be-ressurected novel, so "Winterlord" doesn't really count yet. Of those five stories, one, Silver Bullet, was written specifically to go into the collection, and it was the only one where I spent time desperate for ideas. And by "time" I mean half an hour. And I'm not saying there is anything special about my brain. Because there isn't. I just didn't waste time over thinking things.
The best thing you can do for yourself as a writer is to write. Not gather ideas, but rather force yourself into a position where you have to write, a lot, every day, for hours. If you do this long enough, eventually you'll learn how to make the ends of your brain rub together to create sparks. The next best thing, of course, is to edit what you've written into some form of coherance, of course, but to do that you need to have stuff to work with.
Do you have an idea? A little kernal of an idea that may or may not become a story?
Stop talking about it.
Stop outlining.
Stop researching.
Stop designing your alien race's anatomy.
And Go.
Fucking.
Write.
That is all.
First off, guys and girls? I don't want to meet you on a bus. and if you see me in public with headphones in? It means i don't want to talk. I want to listen to music.
So anyway, I was dumber back then, and I mentioned that I was working on a book.
The floodgates. fucking. open.
See she had this idea involving bigfoot. An idea that I think I read in a Frank Peretti book (there are two kinds of people who read Frank Peretti. Christians, and Fundamentalist crazies) with a couple of extra twists. And it was BORING and I just wanted to go HOME, and the thing that struck me the most? Was how when we started she was like, "Well, I guess you can steal this idea because God knows, I'll never do anything with it."
My former--THANK GOD!--stepfather was the same way. He was all like, "you need to stop working on that silly fairy shit and start WRITING STORIES FOR JESUS" and then he would lay out his Da Vinci Code rip off that also involved the antichrist and human cloning. So specifically, he wanted me to stop working on MY story and start working on HIS. Because his is something he actually wants to read.
Kids, a story is not an idea. An idea is not a story. An idea is the sperm it takes to get a story started. When it does its job, it goes away, and there are a lot of other little wriggly ideas that don't ever go anywhere. And an idea is easy to get. How easy?
"Angel Tractor". Go write a story involving those two words. Now. If you stare at a screen long enough, eventually you'll get an idea. Are you stuck? Here's two more words. "Glorious Pumpkin". Go back to writing.
If I were to go through the list of idea kernals in Silver Bullet, it would be: watching a true crime show about a sniper, a word prompt I got off Janet Reid's blog, a HORRIBLE horror movie that may or may not have had Kevin "I drink my own piss" Cosner in it, a boat named "No Compromise" sitting behind the restaurant that owns my life, and a chunk of my dead-yet-soon-to-be-ressurected novel, so "Winterlord" doesn't really count yet. Of those five stories, one, Silver Bullet, was written specifically to go into the collection, and it was the only one where I spent time desperate for ideas. And by "time" I mean half an hour. And I'm not saying there is anything special about my brain. Because there isn't. I just didn't waste time over thinking things.
The best thing you can do for yourself as a writer is to write. Not gather ideas, but rather force yourself into a position where you have to write, a lot, every day, for hours. If you do this long enough, eventually you'll learn how to make the ends of your brain rub together to create sparks. The next best thing, of course, is to edit what you've written into some form of coherance, of course, but to do that you need to have stuff to work with.
Do you have an idea? A little kernal of an idea that may or may not become a story?
Stop talking about it.
Stop outlining.
Stop researching.
Stop designing your alien race's anatomy.
And Go.
Fucking.
Write.
That is all.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Restaurant 'fo
Work has been...interesting the last couple of weeks. And by interesting I mean chinese curse, stick-your-finger-in-a-light-socket level interesting.
First off, let me identify the day NO ONE EVER GOES TO A RESTAURANT: Monday. If you have ever had a Monday off (and I don't mean Memorial Day Monday. We're open then) and you've had to find someplace to eat, you've probably noticed that your options are McDonalds and That Cheesy Diner Nobody Eats At Because God, It Sucks. The nice places? Closed. Why are they closed? Well, in a lot of cases, those nice places are staffed by the owner, the owner's family, and the handful of good help they managed to scrape out of all the other Good Places. FYI, good waitressing is hard. And I am not a good waitress. I am an okay waitress. I manage to get drink refills, shrimp ends and sugar packets off the table, and plates cleared in a reasonable amount of time, but if you screw up my pattern you will probably have to ask me for a couple extra lemons.
And NO ONE EATS OUT ON A MONDAY. So if you don't have the staff (or income flow) to stay open seven days a week? You're closed Monday. I remember reading my favorite book, Sunshine, and wondering why a coffee shop/restaurant would be closed on a Monday. Now I know! NOBODY EATS OUT ON A MONDAY.
But lately we've had Random Mondays. As in Tuesday I get called in when we have two other people on the floor because we got slammed. Wednesday I am the only person on the floor and it is DEAD. Today probably went well. Friday and Saturday we will want to kill ourselves because shit, we DO make the best Margaurita in town AND THAT IS NOT BRAGGING ON OUR PART, it's just a shit town if you want something complicated. (Marguarita is not complicated. One part tequila, half part triple sec, one part sweet&sour, which is a fancy way to say Lemon/lime syrup. Why is this so hard? WHY CAN NO ONE ELSE MAKE A GOOD MARGURITA IN THIS TOWN?) so the tourists and such show up on our doorstep and wonder why we don't let them decide how they want the Salmon cooked. (Because we are not your personal chef. If you want a medium rare Salmon, please hire the chef for your own household.) (No, really. Get her out of our hair)
And then we have Those People. They are the ones that THINK they know the owner. They don't know the owner, but they THINK they do. So they THINK that on a busy night, telling me "Oh, (the boss) can pick something for me" is a good idea. THIS MEANS I HAVE TO GO ASK THE BOSS WHAT TO FEED HER CUSTOMERS. Just in case the all caps screaming isn't a hint, THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. Do you see the menu? Do you see the entry that is fish in blue cheese? Do you realize this is her default for when people come in and ask that? I have FIVE OTHER TABLES, dude. Pick out your food, pick out your wine, and stop being a patrionizing asshole because, for the love of GOD mister, you are not the center of the freaking universe. It's bad enough you want me to do a side substitution that is totally and utterly inapproprete for the food your wife is ordering. And by the way? let your wife order her own fucking food.
And don't ask me if the wine is good. I hate wine (Unless it is Italian Bubbles, or a really high end Malbec). I will lie to your face because it means I get you to order something faster. Don't ask me if the food is good, either. The answer is yes. I am paid to tell you yes. I will sell you on my least favorite dish because, if you look like you want it, it means i get to go do refills on all my other tables. And yes, the fucking cabernet is from fucking California and I know there are other countries on this fucking planet but DO! YOU! NOT! REALIZE! That I am POOR! And will never get to SEE those countries? And you are wasting my time telling me about things that I cannot change, BECAUSE I DIDN'T WRITE THE FUCKING WINE LIST?!?!
*sigh* Here's your lemon.
Guys and girls, the person deciding whether or not the salad dressing/cheese/puree for your drinks is spoiled is the same person you're lecturing on why Talapia Is A Bad Fish To Serve. Please adjust your behavior accordingly. The next person might not be nice.
Okay. BOOK STUFF:
I have finished the next Exiles story (Silver Bullet sequel. You know, the one with Casey Winter and Marco Creed. There's going to be a series of them and every series needs a name, right?) so I have begun editing the sci-fi story (tentative September release date...sometime) which puts the next Exiles story either LATE September or early October. Note that neither of these dates includes artwork and (cringe) ebook coding.
There will also be another story to pick up where Winterlord left off. So the plan for the next three months, or so, is as follows:
September: Untitled Sci-Fi story
October: Exiles story
November-December: Winterlord story.
Mark calendars and make plans accordingly.
First off, let me identify the day NO ONE EVER GOES TO A RESTAURANT: Monday. If you have ever had a Monday off (and I don't mean Memorial Day Monday. We're open then) and you've had to find someplace to eat, you've probably noticed that your options are McDonalds and That Cheesy Diner Nobody Eats At Because God, It Sucks. The nice places? Closed. Why are they closed? Well, in a lot of cases, those nice places are staffed by the owner, the owner's family, and the handful of good help they managed to scrape out of all the other Good Places. FYI, good waitressing is hard. And I am not a good waitress. I am an okay waitress. I manage to get drink refills, shrimp ends and sugar packets off the table, and plates cleared in a reasonable amount of time, but if you screw up my pattern you will probably have to ask me for a couple extra lemons.
And NO ONE EATS OUT ON A MONDAY. So if you don't have the staff (or income flow) to stay open seven days a week? You're closed Monday. I remember reading my favorite book, Sunshine, and wondering why a coffee shop/restaurant would be closed on a Monday. Now I know! NOBODY EATS OUT ON A MONDAY.
But lately we've had Random Mondays. As in Tuesday I get called in when we have two other people on the floor because we got slammed. Wednesday I am the only person on the floor and it is DEAD. Today probably went well. Friday and Saturday we will want to kill ourselves because shit, we DO make the best Margaurita in town AND THAT IS NOT BRAGGING ON OUR PART, it's just a shit town if you want something complicated. (Marguarita is not complicated. One part tequila, half part triple sec, one part sweet&sour, which is a fancy way to say Lemon/lime syrup. Why is this so hard? WHY CAN NO ONE ELSE MAKE A GOOD MARGURITA IN THIS TOWN?) so the tourists and such show up on our doorstep and wonder why we don't let them decide how they want the Salmon cooked. (Because we are not your personal chef. If you want a medium rare Salmon, please hire the chef for your own household.) (No, really. Get her out of our hair)
And then we have Those People. They are the ones that THINK they know the owner. They don't know the owner, but they THINK they do. So they THINK that on a busy night, telling me "Oh, (the boss) can pick something for me" is a good idea. THIS MEANS I HAVE TO GO ASK THE BOSS WHAT TO FEED HER CUSTOMERS. Just in case the all caps screaming isn't a hint, THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. Do you see the menu? Do you see the entry that is fish in blue cheese? Do you realize this is her default for when people come in and ask that? I have FIVE OTHER TABLES, dude. Pick out your food, pick out your wine, and stop being a patrionizing asshole because, for the love of GOD mister, you are not the center of the freaking universe. It's bad enough you want me to do a side substitution that is totally and utterly inapproprete for the food your wife is ordering. And by the way? let your wife order her own fucking food.
And don't ask me if the wine is good. I hate wine (Unless it is Italian Bubbles, or a really high end Malbec). I will lie to your face because it means I get you to order something faster. Don't ask me if the food is good, either. The answer is yes. I am paid to tell you yes. I will sell you on my least favorite dish because, if you look like you want it, it means i get to go do refills on all my other tables. And yes, the fucking cabernet is from fucking California and I know there are other countries on this fucking planet but DO! YOU! NOT! REALIZE! That I am POOR! And will never get to SEE those countries? And you are wasting my time telling me about things that I cannot change, BECAUSE I DIDN'T WRITE THE FUCKING WINE LIST?!?!
*sigh* Here's your lemon.
Guys and girls, the person deciding whether or not the salad dressing/cheese/puree for your drinks is spoiled is the same person you're lecturing on why Talapia Is A Bad Fish To Serve. Please adjust your behavior accordingly. The next person might not be nice.
Okay. BOOK STUFF:
I have finished the next Exiles story (Silver Bullet sequel. You know, the one with Casey Winter and Marco Creed. There's going to be a series of them and every series needs a name, right?) so I have begun editing the sci-fi story (tentative September release date...sometime) which puts the next Exiles story either LATE September or early October. Note that neither of these dates includes artwork and (cringe) ebook coding.
There will also be another story to pick up where Winterlord left off. So the plan for the next three months, or so, is as follows:
September: Untitled Sci-Fi story
October: Exiles story
November-December: Winterlord story.
Mark calendars and make plans accordingly.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
A further complication of the flora and fauna around here is the pond.
My former stepfather (THANK YOU GOD) (sorry. I have issues) put the thing in the front yard. It holds about two buckets worth of water and has a non-functioning fountain. It breeds mosquetoes and frogs.
You know, the kind that Thomas eats.
Now, the smart thing to do is either 1. rip the pond out or 2. get the fountain working so the fucking vampire bugs can't breed in the water anymore. Instead, we leave it there and hope that the frogs will breed tadpoles and create more frogs.
Problem with this plan? Thomas. I swear to God that cat sits out there and waits for the frogs to show up. And they will show up because this is the only body of water for a hundred fifty feet or so in any direction. I can always tell when he's done the deed, because I find him sitting on the porch staring up at me with this vague, "I'm flying" look on his face. If cats had a theme song, his would be that M83 song about the magic frog that makes you fly (yes. There is a classy techno eighties style song about toad licking. And I like it to death, only it's about toad licking and I don't want to sing along with that.)
One day that cat is going to grab something more dangerous than tree frogs and get into real trouble.
In other news--I'm about two thirds of the way through project two. It's going faster than I thought it would. It's going to have Faeries and ghosts in it, as well as a certain local landmark. Hey, you can't do a story in corpus without mentioning it at least once.
Sci-fi story does not have a title yet. It's got shades of Cain and Able to it, so I may wind up going in that direction. For the record? I hate naming these things. It always feels far too self-important and melodramatic.
Stay tuned for further updates guys and girls.
My former stepfather (THANK YOU GOD) (sorry. I have issues) put the thing in the front yard. It holds about two buckets worth of water and has a non-functioning fountain. It breeds mosquetoes and frogs.
You know, the kind that Thomas eats.
Now, the smart thing to do is either 1. rip the pond out or 2. get the fountain working so the fucking vampire bugs can't breed in the water anymore. Instead, we leave it there and hope that the frogs will breed tadpoles and create more frogs.
Problem with this plan? Thomas. I swear to God that cat sits out there and waits for the frogs to show up. And they will show up because this is the only body of water for a hundred fifty feet or so in any direction. I can always tell when he's done the deed, because I find him sitting on the porch staring up at me with this vague, "I'm flying" look on his face. If cats had a theme song, his would be that M83 song about the magic frog that makes you fly (yes. There is a classy techno eighties style song about toad licking. And I like it to death, only it's about toad licking and I don't want to sing along with that.)
One day that cat is going to grab something more dangerous than tree frogs and get into real trouble.
In other news--I'm about two thirds of the way through project two. It's going faster than I thought it would. It's going to have Faeries and ghosts in it, as well as a certain local landmark. Hey, you can't do a story in corpus without mentioning it at least once.
Sci-fi story does not have a title yet. It's got shades of Cain and Able to it, so I may wind up going in that direction. For the record? I hate naming these things. It always feels far too self-important and melodramatic.
Stay tuned for further updates guys and girls.
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