Why What I Think is Bad Might Not Jive With What You Think is Bad

LAST WEEK I GAVE MY ALL in an effort to win a much coveted award for worst novel opening. A quick tally of votes  looked something like this:

It’s Awesome:                       10

It Sucks:                                 2

No comment on quality:           1

I couldn’t get that sort of agreement on anything, ever. I would be thrilled except it was supposed to suck. What happened?

Well, first off, I did round, so if someone said it wasn’t too bad, I counted that as awesome. If someone said it wasn’t their favorite, then I put that down as a suck. It might sound like a stupid scoring system, but it helps me clarify things. I’m all about making nuanced opinions seem like a black or white issue.

Regardless, I got some quizzical sort of responses in the comments, people asking if I even understood the challenge. I figured I’d take a whole post to explain myself, since I clearly failed in what I was trying to convey.

Anyone see that episode of the Simpsons when the director of a soap opera wanted an ugly actor? When they brought in local bartender, Mo, for the part, the director screamed, “I wanted Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island ugly, not ugly ugly.”

That was my Mary Ann ugly, not my ugly ugly. Ugly ugly have been like:

There was this guy that was going to the bathroom except that he forgot his keys and then remembered that he didn’t need them and so he went and he felt better. Also, he was rich and could dunk a basketball. He was awesome. And Cats! Ninjas were there because the only time he can’t protect himself from assassination is when he was using the bathroom, because that’s his only weakness – bathroom breaks. One time, there was a bug that got stuck in the sink at my house, I ended up killing it though. Bugs are gross!!! Go Vols! Lol!!! J

Granted, there might be some poor soul out there in the interwebs that thinks that the above is quality writing, but I doubt they would be the majority. At the same time, there is very little challenge in that, I think. The challenge is in making something that a person can recognize as bad, but still enjoy.

That was my thought process at least. And in my defense, it was much worse when it was 450 words long. I kept cutting and cutting until I could get it down to 300. Every word had to be carefully debated. I cut out tons of adverbs, extra-lame description, I regretted that I shorted the first paragraph down like I did… originally it had the phrase “Sahara summer reverse-oven-broil cold”.

But I cut it out in favor of a more concise sentence. Had to get it down to 300. What was left probably worked a bit better than I meant for it to. In fact, I went back and reread it preparing for this post and thought, I would totally read that.

But readable or not, that was what I was thinking.

Cute Doggies!

I have been meaning to have a post ready to go on Mondays for a while now... until this week I couldn't seem to get one ready before Wednesday. I'm all over it now though.

A little while back we got a puppy. That means we have three dogs now. THREE DOGS!

Count them... it's THREE!

So, the young one (in the middle) is pretty smart. He's doing things at 9 weeks that the oldest dog (on top) took 6 months to figure out and that the little one (on bottom) still hasn't figure out.

However, it is still a puppy, and as such, has to be put in its place, like when the eldest decides that the puppy has no right to mess with me. I managed to video just such an encounter below. Tell me that isn't awesome and I'll call you a liar.

Thank you Lucy, way to keep me safe from a little puppy... wish I had her around when I was in middle school.

How Not to Write a Novel

MISHA GERICKE IS HOLDING her first 'Word Master Challenge’ blogfest and I am all over this one. I totally know how not to start a novel, any of my half-dozen or so actual attempts could be held up as an example. But instead of using one of them I decided for some original prose instead.

Without further adieu:

To say the winters in Minnesota are cold is to say that the summers in the Sahara are hot. Hot like the heat from a oven turned to broil – except the cold version of that. That’s what winters in Minnesota are like: Sahara summer cold.

Of course, Beatrice Jenkins doesn’t live in Minnesota, or the Sahara. She just wished she did, then disposing of the body jammed into her trunk would be easier.

Not that she knew how snow would make it easier to get rid of a body, but it felt like it would help. And in the desert, well, it’s a desert, nobody even goes there. Except for people who live there already, and those people are pretty weird.

Wait, where is the Sahara? Beatrice thought for a few moments. Is that the one in California? If the one in California isn’t the Sahara then nevermind. Because she meant one in America. She doubted she could get her unemployment checks if she lived in a foreign desert.

Thinking of all that cold in Minnesota made her want some coffee, which made her want some smokes. Definitely not moving to Minnesota, she’d be back to three packs a day within month.

There was a light touch on her arm. Lenny, the man that got her into this mess, was staring at her.

“Don’t do that,” he said, tapping the side of his nose with his finger. “I don’t like the smell of mentholated cigarettes.”

She looked down, sure enough, she held a lit cigarette. Didn’t recall lighting one up. “I’m not overly fond of the smell of rotting corpses either,” she said, “but I’ve learned to live with it.”

He looked out the window and let out a deep breath. “It might be you in the trunk next time.”

I worked hard on that one. The rules said it had to be 300 words or less… that’s 300 words ON THE NOSE! I should get bonus points for that. If words are missing then that’s on purpose, it’s supposed to be bad.

Actually, I started out trying to make it as corny as I could and in the end I kinda liked it. I’m not sure what that says about my taste in prose.

AND DON'T FORGET Andrew Leon’s short story competition where the prize for winning is the greatest chocolate on the planet earth. The talent that is lining up for this one is pretty daunting, but hey, you can always accuse the judges of unethical behavior if you lose… that’s my plan anyway.

A Funny Thing Happened

I WROTE A Blog post recently, and then I lost it. Seriously, I wrote this whole thing, then I don't know where it is. It was pretty long, and I tried really hard to not have typos and stuff, and I don't know what happened. I'm really upset about it, it was a lot of work.

The thing is, I was going to post it today. Now, not so much. Oh well, I now work on about three computers on a daily basis and I might have just written it on another one and I don't feel like going and looking for it now. Rest assured, it was awesome.

Shoot, now that I said that I can never post it. Once people read it they'll think, this is what he said is awesome? So forget I said anything about that. Let's start over.

I won't miss you. But I'll miss enjoying you.

I'VE FINALLY COME to the point where I no longer want fish tacos. I had some today and really didn't enjoy it. I'm afraid that part of my life has come to a close.

There was a time that I hated them, then later, when I loved them. Now, they're just part of my past.

AND I COMPLAIN SOMETIMES about my tbr pile. I figured I might as well just show you.

I'm not reading the folders on the bottom right.

Yes, except for to of those books, which I've already read but want to keep nearby for quick access, they are all things I am planning on reading in the next year or two. Some of them have been there since before Border's went under. Obviously, this doesn't include my ebooks that I intend to read in the months ahead, nor does it include items that get bumped to the head of the line when released (Like new installments of The Dresden Files books, or anything by Alastair Reynolds).

I plan on culling this pile some in the coming months though, some books seemed awesome to me at one time, but when I look at them now I think I might have picked up some marginal items. I read 60 books or so in 2012, and the thought has occurred to me that if I read at a similar pace for the next 50 years then I might have 3000 books left in me to read.

That seems like a lot at first mention, but I think the number is pretty small really. I have to start being more choosy about what I read - quit something when I know it isn't working for me or quit putting off things I really want to read.

No Post For Me Today

I HAVE BEEN INTENDING to post twice a week for the most part. But I was still enjoying the afterglow of my post from Wednesday when I realized that I have nothing else planned for the week.

So, anyone see that io9 post the other day about those short films being turned into Hollywood flicks?

Check it out by clicking this.

ALSO, ANDREW LEON is running a short story contest with a real prize... read all about it ---> HERE.

I WON a gift card at PT Dilloway's weekly trivia challenge... wait, maybe it's a monthly challenge. Regardless, I won! I'm pretty excited about spending my money. It's burning a hole in my (virtual) pocket.

GEEZ, what else? Oh, I did start writing again, it was my first time back writing in a few months. Honestly, it was awkward and not very compelling prose, and it took me a long time to write a few hundred words, but I think of it like going to the gym after a long layoff - it takes a few sessions to get back into the swing of things.

How a dialog between two people discussing a criminal can turn into a conversation about how much rotting fish stink so quickly is beyond me. That I wrote that scene is even more bizarre... that one is going into the trash bin.

AND FINALLY, for the love of all that is good in the world, if you haven't been hearing about the plight of Notre Dame linebacker, all-american, and Heisman runner-up and his totally made up dead girlfriend that was used to inspire his team all the way to the national championship game, then please take a moment and read all about it. Because, damn.

AND THERE IT IS, a post that's just like an episode of Seinfeld, except not funny, it's about nothing.

I F#€&'n Forgot to Title my Space Post!

Yesterday, the great Andrew Leon wrote a blog post about why we have to move out into the solar system. It’s a post about dreaming big, and about cats - but lately most of his posts involve cats in some way. Of course that reminds me of the story of John Scalzi and his experiment of combining the two largest internet memes for a post by strapping a bunch of bacon to his cat and taking pictures.

The result of his experiment was one of the most popular posts in the history of the internet.

So, I think Andrew is trying to get the cat people engaged in space exploration – well played, Andrew, well played.

Now, as I’ve lamented in the past, I don’t really have the time to blog properly, well, I do have time I suppose, but that is time that I tend to spend doing other things, reading, writing, artsy stuff, whatever. I think I’m proving with each and every post that I could never be a journalist, or columnist, or reviewer.

But I can be a rambler. No links, not citations, just me saying stuff. Yes, that is my call in this world.

So, where what I? Oh yes, our call to action. To dream of the stars.

I’ve spent a lot of my time in the past decade or three thinking on this topic. Of reading on this topic, and here are my thoughts:

We will never get off our planet in a meaningful way. Ever.*

Why? The bottom line is that it’s all about money. Even with a fortune in minerals out there  locked up in Near Earth Asteroids (should be enough iron, gold, nickel, etc., to wreck virtually every market we have here on earth) there is the startup costs of getting out there. Right now it’s in the neighborhood of  $2,000 or $3,000 per pound for SpaceX (about $10k per pound in the space shuttle days) just to get something into low earth orbit. Doing some quick math means that getting mining equipment (and workers) to something that might be millions of miles away (instead of 220) is going to cost well into the billions, and possibly into the trillions, of dollars. Since the first moon landing the U.S. has stopped throwing unlimited resources at space exploration. That well has all but dried up.

Cost to get here? Many Millions of Dollars

And what company is going to put up tens of billions or more in startup costs for something like this? Not any publicly held companies, that’s for sure. No private companies have the capital even if they wanted to. We may get orbiting hotels made meteor resistance balloons, and other one-off events from corporate endeavors, but real cutting edge exploration… I doubt that we’ll ever see it done without governments subsidizing the thing.

That leaves governments. The U.S. spends almost nothing on space exploration,** when compared to social services or defense, you can’t even see the NASA budget on a graph. Yet they are on the chopping block every year as ‘pork’ that needs to be cut out of the budget.

Cost of Getting Here? GAJILLIONS of Dollars!

That means they spend year after year making ludicrous promises as to what they can deliver and giving projections for spending that is a fraction of what they actually need. The space shuttle was a total disaster from the beginning if you look at what they promised, a launch per month at a cost per pound that was unheard of, you’d see why folks in congress don’t like NASA accountants very much. Something similar happened with the ISS (International Space Station), the U.S. committed to it internationally, then got stuck funding it later when other nations *coughrussiacough* decided not to. Add to that the cost overruns that were billions and billions of dollars, and we have this huge floating money pit in space.

And NASA has done this with almost every project it’s been a part of since Apollo. They seem to be hoping that congress will engage in that gambler’s mentality of being so financially committed that they don’t stop the funding for fear of losing everything.

And the budget gets cut almost every year, it’s not like they’re fooling anyone.

So I don’t think the governments of the world will enable us to be living in L5 habitats, or domed cities on Mars, or floating cities over Venus. If there is a hope, it’s that within the next 50 years that we can build a space elevator. We don’t have the materials science down to actually build the darned thing, but we’re close. If the world could have a joint location that they agreed upon and all the powers that be contribute to defray costs, then we might have a way to reach orbit cheaply. From there, the rest is easy.

Then, the dreamers that Andrew talked about can have their chance. Then we get the old west type of land grants and such that makes exploration and migration really possible. Much has been made of how China once had a naval fleet that was the envy of the world, then within a generation they dismantled it and spent the next few centuries looking inward and dealing with problems at home. When the europeans rolled in much later they found folks that were a mere shadow of their ancestors. I think I’ve made the comparison here on this blog myself and won't belabor the point. Instead, I'd like to put a positive spin on it - I’d like to think that we went to the moon before just to see if we could, but the next time we go, we’re not pulling a stunt, but will be going to live.

*I didn’t mean that.

** Alastair Reynolds, my favorite sci-fi author, states that we spend more on chocolate than we do space exploration. We get an astounding bang for our buck with NASA, the ESA, etc., I don’t mean to give these guys too hard a time, I’m generally shocked at the awesome missions that are completed by them – mostly robotic – but that is beside the point here, which is HUMAN exploration.

It's Friday! And Here's a Manifesto

And this is my third post of the week. What's the world coming to? I'm thinking twice a week is a more reasonable posting schedule for me right now, but this makes three nonetheless.

Since I've been so embarrassingly introspective of late, I figured I'd take a moment and give an update on how my indie publishing life has been going.

It's funny really, as I have thought of A Dead God's Wrath and it's companion (unreleased) stories as something I hope to always release as something self published. I still have dreams of having novels and stories that are released the the old-time, traditional publishers, but I figure that can (and it has) take years, if ever.

So, I throw up A Dead God's Wrath well over a year ago. I don't go crazy with self promotion, I kind of throw it up and forget about it. After a few months of okay sales numbers it more or less disappears from the world's radar. It sells a copy or so every month, and that's about it.

A year passes and I realized that my long planned follow up isn't ready. In fact, it's taking way too long. I realize I have a story from an old anthology that I contributed to that I have all the rights to and I decide to put it up as, I don't know, a thing for people to read to remember that I'm still alive.

I re-read it as I'm putting it up and I don't like it nearly as well as I should have. I remember thinking it was great when I wrote it, now it seems very rushed, like I'm jamming too many things into too short a space. Things that I should have really expanded on are mentioned in a few lines and then the story moves on.

It really feels like a mess.

And yet, I do still kinda like it. Even with those things. So I put it up anyway - I try to the Amazon exclusive thing and make it free.... give away a few hundred typo ridden copies before I realize what I've put up, and then make the necessary changes just in time for it to revert to the lowest possible sale price on Amazon. At which time I forget about it and start thinking of other things.

60 days later Amazon sends me a letter telling me they are sending me money. Not a lot of money, but enough to go to the movies with - and buy some popcorn. Then I take a peek and see that I've sold many more copies of War Angel since they sent me my last wad of cash. It's earned enough to go to the movies again, and take my wife out with me.

It's small, a pittance really, but with no marketing, no push, aside from that initial surge that some blogger friends provided (a bigger deal than I'm making that out to be, thank you all), and I get a small feeling of gratitude that it's not getting returned en masse ether. People aren't reviewing in droves, but they're at least checking it out.

Thank you nameless internet people, thank you. Thank you blogger friends who read it, especially those of you that read it not because it sounded interesting, but because you knew me and wanted to support me. I'm really appreciative.

I toast you all,