I'm Still Me, But Then Again...

JUST A QUICK word of thanks to everyone that chimed in from my previous post regarding pen names. I made some edits to A Dead God's Wrath that I've been meaning get to for the last 11 months and finally took care of some typos and grammatical oopsies that have been nagging at me. While I was at it I went ahead and changed the name on the cover. I'm now Rusty Carl.

Of course, that meant I had to go to the other outlets, B&N and Smashwords specifically, and change those too. I have not been able to change my author page on Amazon though, not sure how to go about that. I'll figure it out at some point. Count me as an author is transition.

ALSO. CINDY AT Dreamer's Perch is having her great summer giveaway today. You can visit, comment, and possibly come away with a free book. Sounds like a no miss win for everyone.

WRITING UPDATE: After a year's worth of fits and starts. I counted my very long novella as finished... er, well, you might say I just gave up on trying to fix it. Either way, I sent it off for editorial feedback over the weekend. It's a good feeling to have that part done at least.

AND FINALLY, ANDREW Leon has e-released Shadow Spinner part 1 on the Kindle. He's serializing the story, much like he did on his blog, and releasing them as Kindle reads. It's listed as free today, but it won't be that way for long, so rush out and pick up your copy.

I also did the cover for it. Learn more about the release and his request from you, the reader, for some additional help on his post from today.

Otherwise, happy Monday.

I'm Not Going To Be Me Anymore

The dreaded pen name bug has bit me. I don't want to be Rusty Webb anymore. I think I'm going to start writing under a pen name, at least I think I am. I'm not sure. But something happened at work the other day and I realized that I wasn't so sure I want my professional life (ha!) and my online life colliding.

I'm not sure how much work that would be, I'd have to change the blog, my twitter, my publishing stuff. I don't know. Anyone have any opinions on the matter they'd like to share?

Also, this is my third post this week... that's not happened in a while.

BATMAN!!!

I saw the new Batman movie last weekend. It was good. I really annoyed my fellow moviegoers to no end because I drink like a fish and have the bladder the size of a walnut.

I drank so much because I don’t stay up very late, and I did the marathon, which started at 6:30 – which meant that when I got into the theater at around 5:30 – we had to split up our group to get seats.

So, I had a chicken sandwich before I got to the theater. But 10 minutes into Batman Begins I was getting hungry. I splurged on a giant soda – knowing that I couldn’t stay awake otherwise, and chugged that 64 ounces of tarlike goodness.

Look what I found. An old Batman pic I drew.

So yeah, I had to pee, and pee, and pee some more. I didn’t count the number of times I had to pee, but it was a lot. Of course, by the time the second movie started, I had gone far beyond hunger into some sort of desperation for food. I ordered the in house pizza, which is really just a frozen pizza, but at the theater – so it costs way more than a regular frozen pizza. But if I learned anything from the bible, it's that some people, if they're hungry enough, will give just about anything for some lame food. 

I'm one of those people.

Anyhow, I needed another 64 ouncer to wash down that very salty pizza. Which of course meant more trips to the men's room. Lot's more.

By the time the third movie started, my urine was looked like Kentucky bourbon, but I was awake. I got to watch the new Batman movie at midnight and wasn't even sleepy. One of the people beside me said they decided to use some 5 hour energy instead of a gallon of soda and I thought, yes, that would have been much smarter.

The movie, by the way, was good. I din not like it as much as the last one, but it was still good, and as far as trilogy goes it has to be one of the best ever made. 

Stopover at Backworlds' Edge

The beautiful book listed below is the latest from Mary Pax. If you haven't read the first installment in the series you really should. I read everything she has available and she has earned my trust as a reader. I never wait long before I jump in and start reading once she's released something. 

So please go read this, if you need to catch up first, the download her previous installment first (it may be available for free) and then pick this one up, no way you'll be disappointed.

See the promotional stuff below:

The Backworlds Book 2 is Out!

The sequel to The Backworlds is now available. Craze and his friends continue their adventures in Stopover at the Backworlds’ Edge. See what role chocolate plays in the galaxy this time.

The interstellar portal opens, bringing in a ship that should no longer exist. A battleship spoiling for a fight, yet the war with Earth ended two generations ago. The vessel drops off a Water-breather, a type of Backworlder thought to be extinct. She claims one of Craze’s friends is a traitor who summoned the enemy to Pardeep Station. A betrayal worse than his father’s, if Craze lives to worry about it.

Available for all ereaders from:

Amazon / Amazon UK / B&N / Smashwords

iTunes and Kobo will be available shortly.

If you haven’t read The Backworlds yet, it’s available as a free read from many outlets. See HERE for links. [http://mpaxauthor.com/the-backworlds-series/backworlds-the/]

Inspiring the words M. Pax writes, Mary spends her summers as a star guide at Pine Mountain Observatory in stunning Central Oregon where she lives with the husband unit and two loving cats. She write science fiction mostly and has a slight obsession with Jane Austen. Mary blogs at http://www.mpaxauthor.com/blog/

I Don't Have Time to Talk About Time

I’ve got this idea about how my perception of time changes. When I was a kid, around 5, and I had to wait 6 months until Christmas, it seemed like torture. 6 months is so far in the future that it might as well never come.

Considering that folks generally don’t start developing lasting memories until they are close to 4 years old*, that means that waiting 6 months is, more or less, the equivalent to waiting a quarter of my entire living memory for Santa to visit next.

So, in my scenario, a five year old waiting six months for next Christmas in equal to me, today, waiting 10 years for something.

That’s how I figure it anyway. Which is why if I don’t pay close attention, I’ll not notice entire seasons go by. That’s seasons like Spring or Summer, by the way, not seasons in a more generic sense of the term.

And that’s true, I’ve walked outside and wondered why it was so damned cold, only to realize after a few moment’s thought that it was December and I’d missed the Fall. Leaves still change color in the fall, right?

So, I find also, that projects that I’ll start have a tendency to drag out longer than I intended. I’ll often think that if I have a month to do something then that’s about as much time as I’ll ever need to do anything, I suppose that’s because my perception of how long a month is was set when I was 5 years old, and a month was a significant portion of my life up to that point.

I just finished a rewrite of a novella I started on more than a year ago… A YEAR AGO! For that to take longer than a month is ridiculous. The bad part is that I’ve not finished the project, just the draft. I don’t intend to radically change the story at this point, just add a thing here or there, take away something in a spot or two, that sort of thing.

My feeling after I finished this draft is that it’s an okay story. I like anyway, that’s all I can ask for, although, if the feedback I’ve been getting from the pro markets I've been submitting short stories to lately are an indicator, other folks aren’t quite as thrilled with my stories as I am.

I have taken a break from my Fantasy novel for a while so I can go back to my outline and rework it a bit. I’ll be working on that with some more focus in the coming months.

Just FYI.

*I made that up. But it could be true.

Look, I Have a Title! But This isn't a Post.

I realized way after the fact that the video I embedded yesterday was not the video I meant to embed... I don't think that vid deserves an award for much of anything. However, I saw the hand drawn cartoon and thought I'd found the right one. I should have known that there would be millions of similar videos out there.

So, below is the vid I meant to post yesterday... a much better look at the Higgs Boson.

It looks like I will be only putting up one post this week. Many things have been afoot at the homestead and I've just not been able to pay any attention to the internet. I'd probably just take the summer off if I were being smart about it, but I'm not, so here I am.


It’s been hot… We had an incident and I’ve been living without AC since Thursday of last week. It’s true, I’m now dealing with the heat just like 99.999% of all humans that have ever lived have done. I’m probably not going to get a lot of sympathy from many people about this. But 100 degree temps outside have meant 100 degree temps inside - well, it might be 105 inside, it's like a greenhouse in here.

If there is a plus to this, it’s that our ice cream didn’t have such a hard freeze when I pulled it out of the freezer, if was perfectly creamy, so that’s good. Also, the family huddled around the small portable AC unit we borrowed and placed downstairs (where part of the home is below grade and we hoped it would hold the cool air better) and played The Settlers of Catan. It’s kinda like monopoly, but with a set of rules that makes it much, much, more difficult to establish dominance. Anyway, it’s a cool game. We tried to play Xbox some - my wife has been enamored with the Assassins Creed games for a long time, but she’d only watched the commercials and never tried to play. So, we started to play but the Xbox kept crashing, it would work fine just long enough for us to get into the game before it would crash… Some investigative work by me determined that the crashing thing started about the same time the Air Conditioning unit went out. But again, creamy ice cream. It was magical.

 I was going to continue with the Higgs Boson stuff I brought up last week. Mostly because I was surprised at the number of people that commented and were unfamiliar with it, or why its discovery would be a big deal. As Andrew alluded to in his comment, scientists are sure they’ve found something (not just experimental error), and they have no idea what it is that they found, however, it just so happens to be right in the spot they were expecting to find the Higgs Boson. I did some looking and found another video – this one is an awesome cartoon that gives the best 2 minute lecture I’ve ever seen on Quantum phenomena. They deserve an award.

*Edit* This is the wrong video... I created a whole new post to share the correct one. Sorry about that.*



 I did see Spider-Man last weekend – holy wow! I did not have great expectations and so I wasn’t prepared, it blew my doors off. I’m going to watch the Rami versions again to see if I still hold my opinion afterwards, but I left the theater thinking this new one was way better than any of the other versions. I read the comics when I was a kid, and have them all as PDF’s now (ahem... totally legal) and while there were tons of changes to the origin story from what I remembered, if felt way more like Spider-Man than I thought a movie could. I tip my hat to this film. Well done. I can’t wait to see how Gwen Stacy’s story plays out, especially seeing as how she was kinda absorbed into the Mary Jane character in the Rami films, I wonder how confused fans would be if they saw certain elements of Gwen in future movies that they saw with Mary Jane in the Rami film, especially the first one.

They Found the Higgs!

They found the Higgs Boson! Probably. Whatever, I won't get into that. But if you're a bit confused about it, apparently you aren't the only one. Please watch the vid.

And happy Friday.

Insecure Writers... May Edition: Part III

It's that time again. The great Alex J Cavanaugh's brainchild, The Insecure Writer's Support Group. A time for all those authors with some sort of hang up can express themselves in a judgement-free environment in an effort to comfort one another.

I've been doing these posts for awhile now. I can't recall how long, but long enough in the past that I feel like I'm repeating myself each month. It's okay for me, because like all people who are somewhat self-absorbed, I don't really mind repeating myself.

But I've been thinking about this, and I'm going to try to make this my last complaint filled post on the subject. I hope future ones will be far more uplifting and not-so self deprecating. I might not succeed, but I feel like I've run the gambit on my insecurities over the past - well, however long it's been.

I've got this problem, the problem is in finishing things. I've got something in the order of half a dozen novels written that are in need of revisions and self-editing. HALF A DOZEN. For those of you keeping tabs, that's around six.

Yes, I had The Blutonian Death Egg out there being subbed at one point. But it's been taken off the market temporarily while I reconsider a few structural issues it may have.

So I'm always 'working' on something, but I'm rarely finishing things. At least novel length works. I'm afraid I'll go to my grave with 40 or 50 half-finished novels and nothing complete. I'm getting old, I need to churn some of these things out.

I have made a plan of action though, I know that free-wheeling it isn't producing much by way of manuscripts. I've got my plan and I'm going to stick to it.

I hope.

Happy IWSG everyone.