I'm a Cheater!

Yes, it's true, I've been cheating on my blog with another, sexier blog. I've recently joined a co-op of Indie authors on a shared blog for the purposes of... dammit... I'm not good at this. I guess we just saw that there weren't enough blogs? No, that isn't right. Anyway, I'm not sure what it's about, but I like to think of myself as the kid that stands in the corner in gym class and then hears his name called when they're picking teams.

I'm just stunned I was invited. I don't even know what game we're playing.

Look, whatever. I wrote a post there where I briefly discuss the things I'm most looking forward to in SF&F in 2014.

Please, CHECK IT OUT.

Mid-Year Update - And I Suck at Blogging!

My first week back from vacation was a trying time. I think most of my problem is that I suffer from the same issue that Neo did in the first Matrix movie. Namely, the world I live in when I’m at work doesn’t seem real to me. The real world is the one in which I lie on the beach and drink fruity alcohol most of the time between trips to the men’s room, seafood buffets, and naps.

So, until Laurence Fishburne shows up with a handful of pills and says I can return to the ‘real world’, I think I’m going to just have to get used to the feeling like things are amiss.  

As it stands though, I have been trying to get back into the grove, not only for work and home life, but for online things and writing. I figured I should take a few moments and share some minutia that I’m sure no one is interested in… I'm sure everyone's thrilled.

First, I’ve come to realize over the course of the past year or so that I’ve been blogging at the expense of writing. I’m sure anyone who was keeping track of my online activities has noticed that since the end of the A-Z challenge I’ve been spotty at best, and non-existent at my worst. It’s just been me trying to find a balance that allows me to actually write, do artsy things, and not to mention hang out with the family, in the short time I have daily to do such things.

So, blogging has been on the outs, I’ve been posting some, but visiting infrequently. I’m going to try to be post consistently – twice per week – and then devote 30 minutes or so daily to visiting others. I know from experience that that might not get me around to too many places, but committing to 30 minutes is better than crossing my fingers and wishing for the best.

BUT – I HAVE BEEN WRITING, so all that extra time I’ve been freeing up hasn’t been a waste. And if anyone recalls, I had a lot of goals I posted at the beginning of the year regarding my writing. So, here’s my mid-year update: I’ve been doing a lot of short stories, and I’ve been submitting them to markets as I deem them to be appropriate… so far I’ve gotten only a ton of rejections, but at the same time, I’ve been submitting exclusively to the largest and most prestigious markets first, and working my way down from there. My goal was to write and submit at least a story a month. So far in 2012 I’ve written 10 short stories.

I have also been working on a novella with the intent to self-publish. Yay for me. I wrote it last year and thought it was pretty good then, but I was having this one little problem, I put it away for a few months and picked it back up a month or so ago. It was much rougher than I thought it was, but because I loved the story so much I decided that instead of chucking it, I’d do a complete rewrite. I’m in the middle of that now. It’s going much better…

I hope.

And finally, I’ve also been working on my Epic Fantasy novel – which I’m thinking might end up taking a year or so or working on it before I can even think of asking someone to consider critiquing it (and I don’t want to even think about how to go about that, it’d be a huge commitment to ask of anyone). That thing is more complex story wise than anything I’ve ever tried to write before - half a dozen viewpoint characters, each with his or her own arc, and a whole world history and magic system to develop. If the way the first draft is unfolding holds true, then this will easily be the two and a half times longer than any other piece of fiction I’ve ever written.

That’s a lot of words to put towards something you’re not entirely sure you can pull off. But whatever, I’ve always been a weak plotter and I think this is forcing me to make sure I am careful and meticulous with it. No better way to learn than to do.

And also, I think it’s something I would do even if I knew now that no one would ever be interested in it. It’s a story I feel like I need to get out.

Friday... Things

Hey all, just a note that I'm sorry that I've not been around very much lately. I figure a short explanation is due. Recently, we've had some houseguests, er, that isn't quite true, we've had some tenants. Yep, real live people, come to live with us.

Now, my house isn't huge, and three new people, including a toddler and a kindergartner, kind of crowds things up. A lot. Sigh. I find that my evenings that used to be quiet and uneventful, are not full of screaming kids, breaking glass, and discovering anything smaller than a grape is fair game for being swallowed.

Deep breath.

When I have time, I write posts for here. Which means I'll do a week or so in advance and schedule them
(except this one, which I'm doing Thursday night). Something I never did before, mostly because I couldn't get it to work, but I'm not actually spending very much time actually online. I'm grabbing moments here and there and doing the best I can. But I've not been responding to comments to my posts very well, or at all, and have been late, or spotty about visiting others.

It'll take me a bit to find a new equilibrium. I wasn't the best at doing those things anyway, and this has only magnified my problem. So, there are things you can do to help.

1) If you can make your blogs cell phone friendly that would really help. When I pull up my blog on my phone it looks like the picture here. It's easy to navigate and eliminates all that stuff on the sidebars that is fine when I'm on a computer, but pure torture when I'm out and trying to look at stuff from my phone. It's really easy, in blogger all you have to do is enable mobile viewing from your settings... it's like a single button.

I thank you in advance.

2) Only post when I'm ready for you to.

3) Since I do get email notifications to comments from others, I think I'll try responding that way for a while. I receive them from others like that and I really dig it. I'm curious if anyone has opinions on that they care to share?

4) Don't think I'm being snooty, I realize everyone who stops by is doing so to support me as a fellow writer, or at least as a fellow blogger. I doubt any of my words are so golden that any feels they are incomplete for not reading them. I understand that, and I thank everyone for being  so generous with their time by stopping by as often as they do. I super promise that I... wait, I better rephrase that... I really hope to find a way to make sure everyone understands how much I appreciate it.

Since I suck at expressing myself in any way that resembles sincerity, I'll try not to screw it up.

Unrelated Question

Anyone besides me think this FTL neutrino thing (I found the actual paper... here) will prove to be a big bunch of BS? I've got a bet with Danette riding on the outcome.

What I Learned From the Bloggeroplyse

When I first started this blog, over two years ago, while I was still thrashing about, figuring out what it was I wanted to talk about (turns out, it's whatever I want... but I didn't know that then), I wrote a bit about my fear that computers were going to take over, terminator/matrix style.

Now, I was pretty tongue in cheek about most everything I wrote, but in case folks didn't know already, Blogger  went down for 18 hours or so, and as of this writing, several comments that were made on my last post remain missing. This event of course started me thinking about my fears again.

In the past few years, an increasing number of things that I used to have firmly planted in my possession are now housed in some server out there in cyberland. My books are increasingly read on an e-reader, I haven't bought music in a physical format in years, I've slowed my dvd/blue ray purchases as I've got more and more enamored with streaming services like Netflix. Those physical photos I used to treasure so much  are now in places like facebook.

My fear? That one day I'll wake up and it's all gone. Poof. Photos, music, movies, books, hell, even money... all gone, like they never existed. I don't mean my accounts are wiped out, although that thought worries me too. But I mean all of it.

Things like bit rot are a real problem. Data storage isn't permanent, software isn't perfect. In a thousand years, archaeologists won't dig up our discarded hard drives and find all our family photos and emails perfectly stored and waiting for someone to boot it up. That stuff will gone like in never existed. Entropy always wins in the end.

So, the ease of living in the cloud is nice, and I'll forget about my panic the longer that things continue without a further issues. But it's something that will happen at some point. Count on it.

4 Things Every Blogger Should Know

I'm all about self-improvement - but only if it's easy. If I can improve without trying then I'm on board. Well, I happen to be a pretty observant person, I don't work at it, that's just how I am.

When I decided to turn my prodigious observational skills towards the world of blogging, what did I learn?

1) If you use blogger, you'll have 'page unavailable' errors a lot. I mean, a whole lot. Like, several times a day. They generally don't last long, but it can be infuriating if you're trying to check in on your fellow bloggers and can only visit those that are using other services.

2) Those stats tools are pretty neat, but it's only fun if your page views are going up. Right now mine look more like a water park slide. It can be disheartening.

3) If you notice you get 10 times your normal hits, and they are all coming from an eastern European country, then you're probably about to get hacked. I know that one from experience.

4) And finally, if you say something you kind of wish you didn't, even if you delete it, it was cached somewhere. Just keep that in mind.

And that's it, take that wisdom and bury it somewhere close to your heart.

I've Got Nothing People

It's true, I'm running on empty. No ideas. None. Ironically, I don't have writer's block. I've got more ideas than I can shake a stick at. I've got blogger's block. That dreaded disease that has me staring blankly at my screen and wondering what in the world I'm supposed to write about. I briefly considered a post about how I bravely knocked down all these walls in my house over the weekend. But I'm no Bob Vila, I'll be lucky if the roof doesn't cave in in the next few days. So here is a short list of things I considered writing about during the past week.

1. As mentioned before, knocking down the walls in my house. I considered writing about all the nails that I found. And the penny that was buried between the layers of Sheetrock. It was like the house was paying me to give it a facelift. In the end I may still post a picture or two, but a picture of missing walls seems kind of lame.
2. I considered writing about the harrowing tale of the whaleship Essex, sunk in the middle of Pacific ocean by a pissed off Sperm Whale nearly 200 years ago. It turned into Gilligan's Island - if they all resorted to cannibalism. But I've already tweeted about everything I know on the subject already. Still may cover this in the future though. You never know.
3. Also thought long and hard about my ongoing battle with my foot pain. I'm currently taking drugs for it, wearing a sleeping boot, a foot strap, icing it, and my latest gadget... a Tens 7000 device which runs electricity through the injured region. Of course, I immediately hooked said machine up to my biceps and figured I would sit tight and watch the muscles grow. Instead it just made me twitch. Between all that and my physical therapy I barely have time to work during the week. 
4. Almost wrote about how much I love eating again. I mean, a whole post about food. I eat out way more than I should, more than anyone should. But this weekend I splurged a bit and had a seriously expensive steak. It was like eating butter. Yum. 
5. I also thought deeply about whether or not manufactured meat will ever be as awesome as that steak. Almost wrote about that too. I feel sorry for cows. They are going along through life thinking about how awesome it is to be alive when they get kaplowed out of nowhere so some lameo like me can eat it. I make me sick.

Those are five of the lamest things in the world. I knew that they were lame when I was thinking about them, I just couldn't come up with anything better. I still can't. The best I could do was roll them all up into one crappy post and put that out there.

There it is people. Enjoy.

Award Winning at Last!

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally picked up my first ever Blogger Award. I didn't have time to read the fine print, but I'm pretty sure it's well deserved. I'd like thank everyone who nominated me.

Seriously, I guess it's may way of letting everyone who may have just started noticing my blog that I truly do suck. I have been picking up a lot more followers lately than I can easily handle. I'm so far behind in going back through to see who everyone is that I don't know if I'll ever catch up.

So, if you are a recent follower and  I've not acknowledged you, please be forgiving. I'm struggling managing my time and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'll catch up.

In the meantime, my short story, er, novelette, is done. I've stamped it with my done stamp and it is over. I read it out loud in it's entirety and think I've knocked out all the little things, like typos and dropped words, that have plagued it.

Of course that hasn't addressed the major problems, like characters behaving like drunken ducks in a cyclone - doing things that no one could ever make sense of. But those sorts of problems mean very little to me at this point. This one is in the bag.

So, I celebrate for a few minutes, then go back to editing my crappy novel.

Why Blog?

Why would anyone in the world decide to start blogging now? it's so 2005.

Excellent question. I am tempted to say that my encyclopedic knowledge of wigormoofs or plantongas is a niche that needs to be exploited, but the truth is that I just have this overpowering need to express myself. Who cares if I have nothing to add?

But nonetheless, I anticipate that I'll be posting every so often about things that interest me: writing, entertainment, books.

It'll be a blast.