More Music!

For my old job I used to travel to Europe. Sitting in a bar in Amsterdam, I often heard a style of electronica that really spoke to me. It was a popular house music there that everyone seemed to know, but no one would explain to a silly American. It was unlike anything I heard back in the states. Well, years later with the rise to popularity of such performers as Skrillex, I finally know A) what it's called; and B) how to find it.

So what I was hearing way back when was Dubstep. Now that it's popular, people love to make fun of it because that's what people on the internet do. Let this be a lesson for when you put anything you create out there. Some jackass will make fun of you because that's what jackasses do. Regardless, now that I've found the name of the genre, YouTube has granted me plenty of opportunities to listen.

I bring this up because I don't listen to music while I write. BUT some music gets me so pumped up that I want to write. Such a song is Nefarioiusa by Skream. Check it out:



I've listened to that one three times in a row now. Work? Who wants to work. That can wait until tomorrow. Now it is time I create!!!

Slingshots

As weapons go, I did not have many growing up. I wasn't allowed toy guns or squirt guns because my mom was certain I was going to go around squirting my neighbors or pretending to shoot my neighbors. All that meant was I borrowed my neighbors squirt guns and squirted my neighbors that way. It's okay, my neighbors were squirting me back.

A weapon I was allowed to have (because some strange association to Huckleberry Finn, I guess) was a slingshot and let me tell you, I have always excelled with slingshots. Probably because I always had an affinity at math, and slingshots are all about physics. The problem is that a slingshot isn't really something that strikes fear in the hearts of villains, so giving it to your hero as a weapon isn't that cool. Unless he has explosive ammunition or something and then it becomes more about the ammunition than it does the slingshot.

OR SO I THOUGHT!

I am going to show this to you, but I'm calling dibs right now. None of you are allowed to use this. It's just too cool for me to keep secret. Check out the slingshot this guy created to fight zombies. I never thought about the importance of counter-balance. The things you could do with a stone at a high enough velocity. Holy crap.



And what's even more awesome? This isn't an isolated video. That guy has a whole channel of slingshot videos. Woo hoo!

Which Airbender Character are You?

Here's today's exercise:

If you have not yet watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, go to Netflix and watch it right now. We'll wait. Actually, if you have watched it, take this time to watch it again. It's definitely worth a repeat viewing.

Okay, now we're all refreshed on the awesomeness that is Aang and the Gang. And thus I pose to you these three questions:

Which character from the series (it does not have to be a bender) do you think most closely resembles you?

Which character do you wish you were like? (It can be the same as the above or it can be different.)

Which character do you think other people would associate with you?

Originally this was two questions, but I broke apart my first question into the first two above, which means I don't even have answers to all three questions yet. I will have to ponder this.

For question 2, my answer is Iroh, no question. The man isn't perfect, he makes mistakes, but he's incredibly noble and has learned from his mistakes.

Question 3 I know is Zuko, at least for those people I consider friends who have already seen the show and made it a point to tell me that they think I'm Zuko. Given how his character arc ends, I can live with that.

Transcending Genre

I'm not a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I do not dislike him, but in the scale of fandom that belongs to him, most everyone I know falls into the "I would give him a kidney if he asked for it" category, and I'm not there. Not all his stories resonate with me. And while my wife owns all his books, and I am thus at my liberty to try them all, I tend not to finish most I start.

The exception to this is Neverwhere. I love me some Neverwhere. I love it so much because if I was going to write that story, I would write it pretty much just the same. (That's big praise from me because I write the stories I want to read, thus he's doing all the work for me and I can sit back and relax as a reader unconcerned with being the writer.) I used a rarely used word today to fit into Twitter's 140-character limit, elseways. It reminded me of Neverwas (a good movie, check it out) which sent me on to Neverwhere.

I would love to write a book named Elseways, but I think if I did, it would end up being a lot like Neverwhere. That got me thinking on what kind of story I would write for Elseways. I bounce around within fantasy a lot: traditional, pre-steampunk, post-apocalyptic pulp, sword and sorcery, epic, contemporary. The one I never write on is urban. Urban is not my cup of tea. And too often, people use urban when they really mean contemporary. Urban fantasy deals with worlds within worlds, most often fairies, vampires, and/or werewolves, but regardless, it includes a Venn diagram of a world laying on top of our own that of which the average citizen is unaware.

Neverwhere is Urban Fantasy. But because Urban Fantasy is not my cup of tea, I balked at it and thought to myself, really, isn't it more contemporary? That was an unfounded claim because clearly there is a Venn diagram of worlds going on, which is the requirement I just put forth. So what's the problem? Well, so much urban fantasy is about fairies, vampires, and/or werewolves that something like Neverwhere just seems like a high-quality contemporary fantasy. And I'm really loving contemporary fantasy right now. Thus, I want this book I like to fall into a genre I like. Logic be damned!

I think if I were to ever write an urban fantasy, it would be Elseways. That's a title that could get me over that hump. The real goal wouldn't be to write in a subgenre that isn't tea, but to write a book that isn't Neverwhere. I already associate them and I just came up with the damn title. That's not a very good sign.

That and I don't actually have a story. But I have a title now, so dibs. I call dibs. Go find your own title.

(And happy new year.)

Shaking It Up

So my wife and I used the last of our groupons for the year. We're fortunate that she acquired so many earlier this year because with our current financial hardships, none of this would have been possible.

A year ago for my birthday, I drove up to the North Country. I had the day off and I wanted to go up to the mountains so that's what I did. I stopped at Canterbury, New Hampshire. There's a shaker village there. Don't know what the shakers are? They're like quakers but awesomer.

I didn't know they were awesomer at the time, but as our groupon (actually I think it was NH Daily Deals), we got a reduced admission and got to take the tour (which normally costs $17 per person). So that's what we did over the weekend. We headed up to Canterbury and took the guided tour, which is one of the better guided tours I've ever been on. And it was there that we learned about the shakers.

Dude! Dood! I've never experienced Christians like these. Truly, I was moved, and I'm not even Christian! Civil equality, feminism, hard work, scientific advancement, all in the 18th century! Don't think about all that being part of a religious sect back then, do you? They invented the clothes pin, the washing machine, the circular saw, the dorothy cloak, the rotating oven, and the flat broom. And most of those were invented by women! They boiled the sheets of the sick every day, changed clothes every day, and considered all labor equal and important in the eyes of god. So while they fell into typical gender roles in terms of work, that was more a matter of upper body strength and there was no difference between working in the laundry and plowing the fields. They were all fine work to be cherished.

The method invented for drying clothes in the winter was AWESOME! And really, the method for tracking everything in a proto-socialist society (you only owned your toothbrush and your comb) was super awesome. Everything (from a spoon to your short) had a demarcation. Each building had a letter and each room/drawer/cupboard had a number. So if someone found your missing shirt under a bench, you would return to your room and find your shirt laundered and pressed and in your shirt drawer because it had D.14.7 embroidered in it which means that shirt is stored in the 7th drawer of the 14th room in the Dwelling house.

DOOD!

It's actually pretty sad that there are only three shakers left in America (in Maine). The New Hampshire village has been turned into a museum, and I'm glad it was. I would have hated to miss out on learning about these people. I will absolutely use some of this stuff somewhere in a story.

(Also, Ken Burns did a documentary on them, if you want to learn more and can't make it out to one of the villages-turned-museum.)

Music to My Eyes

So one of the exhibits at Old Sturbridge Village is a building full of firearms and textiles. It is interesting to see the evolution of muskets and eventually rifles over the course of two centuries, but what I really found interesting was a few items in the textiles section of the building. There used to be a frugal wife's guide published by a woman that taught women how to do things on the cheap, like dying fabric. Seems bread was wrapped in purple paper and you could leech the color out of it and use it to dye paper. That sort of thing.

One of the last things you see on your way out are a selection of patterns and some yellowed paper. Now, the first time I went there it was the end of the day and we were in a bit of a rush. I thought it was music. Going through it again, I saw that it wasn't music, it was notation on how to make the pattern. Some looked like music. Some looked like an accountant's ledger. None of them looked like instructions on how to make fabric patterns, but people understood them! The gears started turning.

What if a people's sewing patterns were a means of communicating, but not just a single intent like "we are at war" but an entire song and that song had meaning. You could tell the tales of your great deeds or the deeds of your ancestors, singing a song that all your people would understand.

I really thrilled to that idea. It really gets my brain to swimming in a new and exciting culture.

A New Adventure!

Groupon Queen discovered that we lived near the nation's third largest living history museum, Old Sturbridge Village. This is a village as you would have found it in 1835 New England, and many of the buildings are actually from that period transplanted from one of the various states. Actors/educators are in period dress and conduct themselves in particular professions, so there's a printer, a tinsmith, a potter, etc. This was REALLY cool and I learned a ton! (My understanding of how a grist mill works was informed by Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and 19th-century mills did not use a rotating millstone of that fashion, if that fashion ever existed. Also, I learned how a sawmill works and a schoolhouse and...and...who the hell can fit 12 people in a house that small?!)

There was also Fife and Drum corps there today playing a variety of music. And some of the early 18th-century muskets are as tall as I am. How the hell could anyone aim with something that large? You'd need a stand to rest the barrel on! (They also had a seven-barrel musket that you might recognize if you've watched the Richard Sharpe miniseries. I don't know if it appears in the novels.)

Inevitably in these places, I end up taking pictures of the placards instead of the actual structures because I want to be able to go back and reference their information later. (I did this for a map at a Greek Fest for the Middle East c. 2nd millenium BC and it was pretty awesome.)

The one I was most enthused about today was the information on the mill. Aside from showing the proper way to turn the millstone (they laid on top of one another like two donuts whereas I had thought one vertical rolling around the other), they also explained how millers kept their business. People brought their grains that needed milling and would pay the "Miller's Toll," 1/16th of the milled grain that the miller could then sell to those people who did not raise their own crops.

I love the phrase "Miller's Toll" and am devoting considerable effort to finding a story that will fit with it. I'll let you know if I come up with anything.

Collaboration!

I will admit that I'm not a fan of collaboration. But I realized today that it's not a matter of not being a fan of collaboration, it's just that collaboration has never been presented to me in a fashion that I particularly cared for. But then I got linked to a video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Nirvana's Lithium at a show in Seattle. And from there I got linked to hitRECord. Holy balls! This is genius!

Now I will say that I have not yet registered for this site (but I will) or participated (but I will). I will also admit to having a huge man-crush on JGL. He's one of my favorite actors. I will go see a movie if he's in it because I trust the quality of his work (he owes me big for GI Joe). But take a look at this video and tell me that doesn't make your creativity bone tingle. It tingles right down in the coccyx.

Things I Like Other than Writing

I finished my rewrite, began PRINCE OF CATS (which is going awesomely--beyond awesomely really, I'm flying), and the summer crush is over. Obviously you can tell that because I'm blogging, thus my hours are not filled with making content to educate the next generation of politicians who will hopefully ben an improvement over our current crop.

ANYWAY

As this is the end of he busy season for a few months, I have time to not only write, but to do other fun things as well. I can take days off and stuff. I'm told the funs happen on days off.

So what do we do? Well, New Hampshire keeps a lot of its funs outside, so I'll go there to find them. My buddy Britt taught me how to play disc golf and I've been practicing. I could do more of that. Especially since the local putting green was rebuilt after a really bad storm tore up the baskets.

I could...go sailing! My wife spoiled our anniversary surprise and mentioned we're going sailing. I learned how to sail through Naval ROTC my freshman year in college and absolutely loved it. It was my favorite thing about the entire experience. She's the queen of the groupon and got a good deal that we can go sailing down on the Charles River (I believe that's where it is).

Another groupon she got me for Christmas is horseback riding. I learned to ride when I was four. My family used insurance money from my father's death to go to dude ranch and mourn/cope/stop trying to kill each other. I have loved riding ever since. I do it every year and if I had enough money, I would love to have a horse of my own. Well, she got me a groupon for a two-hour trail ride and I'll be cashing in that puppy this week. I'm so excited! Woooooo!

But there is more! I need to shed about 20 pounds, but Alpine Adventures, the zip lining place up in Lincoln, NH, has a new course. What's zip lining, you ask? Watch this video of my wife zip lining from a couple years ago. She got me a gift certificate a couple Christmases back and I need to use that puppy. Once I'm less fat.

Kimball Farm in Westford, MA

We have a tradition here in the Selby household. My wife's birthday is a month and a half before mine and our anniversary is in between. We make a birthaversary event out of it. For each of our birthdays, we choose a place we want to eat and an adventure we want to go on. This year, Jen wanted to go to an awesome Greek restaurant named Amphora in Derry, NH. For her adventure, she wanted to go to Kimball Farm in Westford, MA. She's wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride for awhile, but they're incredibly expensive out here (maybe everywhere). Kimball turns out to have an "aeroballoon" ride. It's a big helium balloon tied to a passenger ring that holds twelve people. They raise it on a winch and you fly 300 feet in the air.

They also have two mini-golf courses (that were a lot of fun), batting cages, an arcade, animals, and bumper boats. You get the right idea when you hear bumper boats, bumper cars but on water. But it is SO much more fun! Take an outboard motor, put it in the center of an intertube, drop a seat over it, and go to town!



I could do this for hours! If you're ever in the area, you should definitely give it a try. It was an awesome adventure.

I'm Famous!

I don't read erotic romance, but that doesn't make Roni Loren any less cool. We have a great rhythm on twitter where she posts a blog entry, people comment, she says "Go check out the controversy!, and I go see one person disagreeing with her. I then wag my finger at her for hyberbolizing controversy (she should be a Washington reporter) and we both smile and keep doing what we're doing.

Well today, she has a guest blogger...ME! So go check out the controversy!

Also, her first book CRASH INTO ME is coming out soon, so buy it if you like erotic romance. I'm told its both super nifty and keen.

Why are you still reading here? Go! Now!

F*cking Ponies!

I'm almost over the summer hump and will return to a normal blogging schedule after. Until then, behold this little piece of awesome:

The Good, the Bad, and the Stuffing

So I have decided that rejections that offer praise first actually sting more than just flat rejection. "This is a great story with strong writing, but I didn't fall in love with it" says to me "Damn you were close, but it just didn't click with me" which stings SO MUCH MORE than just a straight "This isn't for me." (Granted, by the time an agent has requested pages, a "this isn't for me" response doesn't work because you'd have to wonder how they couldn't figure that out by the query.)

I am not one of those people that take solace in coming in second. That just means you won at losing. (Extreme, and probably hyperbolic, but you get my point, yeah? I want to win.) Knowing I was SO CLOSE bums me out more than if I hadn't come close at all. I think this may come from a childhood of choking at sports when it really mattered. Or not. I don't know.

But this is not all self-created doom and gloom. Two agents I greatly respect have used pretty much those exact words. Strong writing. Great story. One loved the world building more than the other, but they also read different stories so I'm not sweating that. This is wicked awesome confidence inspiring bolstering supder-dupertude. I've got the tools. I've got the talent. I just need some ghosts to bust...er, an agent that clicks with the stories I tell.

SO CLOSE! It's time to finish in first place. Let's get on that.

...after lunch. Chicken and stuffing. Nom nom nom nom!!!