Arcadia

When I was a young lad, only twelve, and had decided in earnest that I was going to be a novelist, I began tap tap tapping away on my Apple IIGS (Appleworks, baby!). There were a number of ideas bumping around in my head. I wrote stuff for Jim Henson's Storyteller (which in no way fit the program but what the hell did I know). I got into a lot of trouble when my mother (who spied on me to make sure I wasn't being amoral--that clearly didn't work) saw me title a story "Lucifer Jr." The work I put the most effort into was Arcadia--I don't remember the actual title.

Arcadia was a post-apocalyptic story. Between pollution and natural evaporation, there was so much moisture in the air that clouds could actually sustain weight. Humanity fired took what could survive and sent them up in rockets. Over times, they evolved so their bones were lighter and they had wings. They kept their prisoners down below but one of them escapes to the clouds above.

I'd print pages off on my dot matrix printer and send them to my sister to read. She thought they were interesting. She was upset when I stopped writing it. I thought it was crap. This says something about her taste. I never forgot that story, though. It was my first genuine attempt. It was my first real failure. And it was so BAD!

My sister still asks about it from time to time, when we talk (which granted is not often). A small part of me tries to write the absolute best story I can so I can send her the book and say, "See, this is why I quit writing that novel when I was 12. This is good. That was crap."

It's kind of odd how much influence a 21-year-old failure has over my effort today. (My writing is totally better though.)

When all is said and done and I'm bereft of new story ideas, I'll totally resurrect this thing and shell it out there. :D

Knowledge = (the battle)/2

I was watching a movie the other day and character A says of character B that he is a marksman. He can strike a man square in the chest at 50 meters. This was a modern piece with modern weaponry. There are different levels of writing what you know. The soul of some things can only be realized through experience. Others simply need research. In either case, you need to address a first-hand account of the subject and not just lend your interpretation to someone else's interpretation. That just becomes the operator/telephone game.

In this case, I immediately knew the writer had no idea what (s)he was talking about. 50 meters? Good god, not fifty meters! That's so hard!

...no, wait, no it's not. On a standard marksmanship target range, the SHORTEST target is placed at 50 meters. The longest is set at 300 meters.

Rather than paying attention to the movie, I began to wonder if the writer had even fired a gun before or just thought a dramatically delivered line would go unquestioned.

Now I'm not a hunter. I've never killed anything larger than an insect. ...except for a bird that done under my tire when I was a teenager. I was, at one time, a certified marksman (my preferred range being between 175 and 250--though I ALWAYS missed 300. I never got the arc right). If you're going to write a book that includes modern weaponry, I recommend finding a local sportsman's club and renting a pistol, a shotgun, a rifle, and if they have one, an M-16. Each of them has different uses, different feels, and different results. A little research will dramatically improve your weapon choice and description. You'll also avoid throwing your reader out of your story when they realize you have no idea what you're talking about.

Germ Warfare

So here's my suggestion: Write a guest post on a popular blog and then get sick when it runs, causing you to miss the brief exposure it provides you.

Yay my immune system!

I hate being sick. Mostly, I hate it because I'm sick. I doubt anyone sits at their computer writing a blog post about how they love being sick.

I also hate being sick because when I take off from work, I have so much free time for writing! But all I do is sit around feeling miserable.


Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooan

I haven't been this sick in over a year. I don't like it. If someone would like to take over being sick for me, that would be much appreciated.

...yeah, that's all I got. This seemed funny when I thought it in my head. Now that I've written it, I'm not so sure. Then again, I've been breathing through my mouth for two days and everything tastes like mucus. So...

Hope you're all doing well. Hello to the new readers. Aren't you glad you stopped by? It's not always this lame, I promise.

...well, at least I hope not.

A Good and Happy Life

Occasionally I'll rant in my head1. Something touched me off yesterday. I think it was a webcomic or a response to a webcomic. I don't know. The jist of it was that an author uses his medium as a pulpit for his own opinions.

At face value, this can be true. The context of the statement was saying that an author always uses his medium as a pulpit for his own opinions and this is just crap. It's an opinion that comes up more frequently than I think it should. In short, it says an author is incapable of envisioning or writing a world or action that deviates from his own perceptions of said world. What? If that's the case, Jennifer Hiller is a serial killer2. Of course authors can create characters that have opinions, desires, and motives different from their own.

That was a short rant because I've had it before and with real people. I then began to examine my own work and realized I've never actually written a work (to date) where the characters or events are representative of my opinions or beliefs. Some might fall in line, but none of them are a megaphone. None of them are a purposeful allegory.

So I pondered about writing a story that represents my biases and opinions and frustrations and proclivities. And as I pondered the happenings of this treatise, A Prairie Home Companion uttered the phrase "A Good and Happy Life" and I found my title.

SPOILER

Summation: The disparity in wealth widens and leads to its inevitable conclusion. The have nots rise up, the economy collapses, and in the anarchy before a new regime brings order, we set our stage. A wealthy teen away from home returns to find her parents murdered, her sister taken, and her house being ransacked. She pairs up with a street urchin who was looting the house at the time. After yelling and haggling and an offer of payment, the urchin says she knows where the sister is being held and will take the girl there. They brave the mean streets of [New York/Boston/St. Louis/not sure] in an effort to get the girl back. They voice their opinions on what's happening, extol the virtues of the young girl taken to be sold into who knows what kind of depraved service, and what they dislike about the other group.

In the end, the older sister makes a mistake, continuing to act from her station. With her life threatened, she begs the urchin to save her. To which she does not, as the mistake was a sign of her selfishness and disregard for others. If she truly had loved her sister, she would have endured. The girl is killed. The urchin then goes and rescues the little girl [maybe] as she was worth saving.

Not sure when I'll write it, but I like it enough that I've added the title to my queue.


1 This is not surprising.

2 She's made a similar such comment on her blog or on Killer Chicks. I can't remember which.

Beginning Anew

I revised the wind sprint I wrote a few weeks ago into a MUCH better first chapter. There's a little too much there, but I'll pare that down during revision. The tone and the action are so much better. Less description of action and more action. I am incredibly pleased.

The thing is, today is the first day I've written in a week. Granted, it has been an incredibly stressful week at work, but not writing has exacerbated it. Once upon a time, I was able to go a few weeks without writing. Now it seems I can't go more than a day or two.

This is awesome in that I feel I've moved up a level in my abilities as a writer. But it's terrifying because it is having a genuine impact on my daily life. I wrote today over lunch and when I went back to the office, I was whistling a jaunty tune. I was in SUCH a great mood. A better mood than what was appropriate for having such a difficult work and eating lunch alone.

Writing is my heroine. And like a junkie, I think that's awesome.

Keeping Up Appearances

Having moved around a lot, I have a lot of friends online. And really, I was a quick adopter of the internet back in the '90s and have a tendency to express myself online much the same as I do in real life. Especially when it comes to blowing off steam. Since I work with computers all day, a quick tweet or status update resolves the need to rant without requiring that I leave my desk to go find someone to talk to (especially since the people that know me best live half-way across the country).

This has led to a number of awkward situations in the past, as you can imagine.

It's even more difficult now while I pursue publication. The people I have to blow off steam about the most are at work and I work in publishing! I can rant about how dumb editors are, and those who aren't paying attention might think I'm speaking as an author rather than a production worker at a publishing company. In order, the three most frustrating people to deal with are editors, marketers, and salespeople. Each comes chock full of excuses to get their way instead, all of which I have become quite versed in over the years. Knowing they're using a drab and overdone excuse not because it has any bearing on the product your making but only because they don't know what they're doing and they need things to go their way to maintain an appearance of competence can be--as you would imagine--extremely frustrating.

Now all these people actually do know things. ...well, most of them do. But publishing doesn't offer a lot of interdepartmental training and the production-side of publishing is generally ignored both internally and externally by any that don't have to deal with it directly. You'll never see an author acknowledge the hard work of his book's project manager even though it was that person who had the thing typeset and sent to press in 1/4 the time (s)he should have received after everyone else missed their deadlines.

You know how they say shit rolls downhill? Yeah, our cubes are at the bottom of the hill.

This time of year is busiest for the department I'm in right now and tensions are running high. While it might be best if I said nothing at all, if I did that, I'd hurt myself from hitting my head against my desk so hard. So, anything you see me saying, please keep in mind it's not reflective of any editors I might be working with as an author--and in fact, has nothing to do with trade publishing at all since I work on the education side.

Just tooting my whistle before the built up steam causes it to burst.

We have the tools! We have the talent!

My wife got me what could be the greatest stocking stuffer of all time.



Yes, that is the greatest utensil ever made, the spork. But it's not just any spork. It's a titanium spork.

That's right. Titanium.

Now you may ask yourself, why would anyone need a titanium spork? And I would say to you, don't be so short sighted! What happens if a madman initiates an armageddon clock right in the middle of a meal time. You need something to jam into the gears to stop them from turning. Will your pathetic stainless steel spoon/fork combination work? No. Plasticwear? Not at all! You need something strong enough to cause those gears to stop turning and collapse the entire diabolical machine.

And what would that be?

Titanium baby. Titanium1. My spork will save the world someday.


1 While I was not always on the titanium bandwagon, when I had trouble finding a wedding band, the jeweler suggested I try a titanium ring and it was perfect. I have since seen the majesty2 of titanium. I am prepared for our clockwork doom and will rise to the occasion when it occurs!

2 By majesty, I mean that should the ring ever be crushed in a horrible traffic accident, the EMTs will have to cut off my finger because they do not have the tools to cut through a titanium ring. If that isn't awesome, I don't know what is.

Plontsing the Sac

I've been on holiday! It is becoming a tradition that each Christmas my wife and I go up into the White Mountains for a few days. Though New Hampshire is a small state, the North country and the South Country are pretty different (as we're often reminded by those that live in the North). You can cut the state in half and vary the temperature by 10 degrees. Life is different there, including living in the lower elevations of the northern Appalachian Mountains. It's a great time, though this year absent snow. We are expecting a blizzard to hit tonight, so that should make up for it. Of course, it was supposed to start snowing 2 1/2 hours ago, so who knows if that will actually materialize.

If you're ever in North Conway, consider staying at the Wyatt House Bed & Breakfast. They were great to us. The food was delicious. And it's ideally situated.

While I was there, Jen too copious amounts of naps, more than usual, which gave me the writing time I needed to wrap up JH and send it off to beta readers. That number is down to two, now, which is disappointing. But people have lives and it's the holidays, so I understand.

I had thought to maybe spend a few weeks reading. I'm going to put attention to finishing Tad Williams' SHADOWHEART. I finished MOCKINGJAY yesterday. It was good, but I don't think it was worth the hype that it got. The ending averted being a disaster and ended up being just okay. The whole trilogy almost seems like it was written just to show which boy the character will choose, which is interesting for all of five pages, not three books.

As for me, spending time reading is turning into prep work for writing THE 7TH SACRIFICE (I've officially changed its name to be 7TH instead of SEVENTH).

For starters, I'm no longer calling the counties the counties. I originally conceived this story between writing WANTED: CHOSEN ONE and THE TRIAD SOCIETY. The former puts a lot of focus on duchies and a king. The latter puts more focus on counties. For 7Sac, I had wanted to use counties as a regional boundary because so often people focus on duchies or kingdoms and I like that county is still a word we use today. When I abandoned my first attempt at 7Sac, that bled over to TTS. The problem is, now TTS is a finished novel and the possible first in a trilogy, so using counties again seems like beating a dead horse.

I went horseback riding on my vacation. The farm was 77 acres of an original 1000 acreage granted to the owner's family in 1771 by King George III. Yup, I went horseback riding on a 239-year-old farm. New England is awesome. This made me tweak things a bit.

Basic breakdown. "The Kingdom" is where this takes place. The Kingdom is broken into four areas, originally called counties. Each of these counts claimed the thrown after the king died under mysterious circumstances. That's getting modified. The counties are acreages. Acreage is a little cumbersome to say. I was watching "Valhalla Rising" yesterday (disembowelment on Christmas!) and they calls Mads a terror from the southerlands. Well isn't that nifty. You always hear highlands or lowlands or East and West or what have you. Hell, I even used Southerland in TTS as Soderland (German), but this feels different. The acreages are delineated by compass.

Cumberland Acreage, the Westerlands
Arostook Acreage, the Northerlands
Somerset Acreage, the Easterlands
Kennebec Acreage, the Southerlands

Now, instead of counts, each of the Acreages is rules by a prince or princess, with Cumberland being home to the Crown Prince and rightful heir. The rest claim he assassinated their father and thus forfeited the throne. Each of them now call himself/herself King/Queen, but most just refer to them as the Pretenders (a term I made the first time around that was used much less).

I also used Tinkers in JEHOVAH'S HITLIST, so it wouldn't do to include them again in 7Sac. But I love the tinkers I've created, so really I'm just changing the name since the two types of tinkers were completely different. Now they'll be called Peddlers.

One thing that's getting dropped all together is the varying naming structures. Each county represented a different European culture in terms of naming. I think I'll just stick with Brittany this time as I so often move into other areas of Europe for inspiration. Main character's name is Cheshire, after all, and don't want to change that. So it wouldn't make sense if everyone else had a Russian name.

The visuals in "Valhalla Rising" were pretty amazing, enough to make up for the fact the story (there was a story?) made no sense whatsoever. Quite inspirational. Gave me a lot of ideas on description for the Four Corners, where the four acreages meet and where the abandoned royal palace still stands. I had thought to write the description here, but I'm not in the mood any more, so I'll save that for next time.

Hope you all had an enjoyable week while I was away. Time to get back to work. :)

(Oooo, and I got a Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock t-shirt in my stocking! Woo hoo!)

(And a titanium spork!!!!)

Silver Lining

I usually don't speak on my relationship with my mother except in the context of my upbringing and its impact on greater topics like racism or religion. This is for a few reasons: it implies I dwell on the matter, which I don't. When hearing we haven't seen each other in 7 years, someone inevitably makes the stupid comment that she's my mother and deserves another chance. And really, it's just a downer. It's one of those awkward moments where no one (other than the asshole above) knows what to say.

I am struck this morning, reading Jennifer Hillier's blog, doing a Nelson laugh (from the Simpsons if you don't get that reference). My father is dead and my mother could be for all the contact we have with one another. So when I write, when I kill, pillage, rape, murder, suck, fuck, and fondle characters of every age, gender, and religion, I never have to worry about explaining why I write what I write to my mother.

*points* Ha ha.

No Sympathy for Bookstores

The general premise is that if you want to be a writer, you should buy books whenever you can, whether they are for yourself or gifts for others (this sentiment most often comes up around Christmas). I don't have a problem with this, to be honest. Support the business you work in. Makes sense to me.

This then moves on to the "and buy at your local independent bookstores." There are a lot of assertions to be made about the benefits of independent bookstores versus national chains and online purchasing. These claims are almost always made by people who live in large cities (notably New York) where independent stores like the Tattered Cover have well established their awesomeness1.

For the rest of the country, the reality of the independent bookstore doesn't call for such unprecedented love. Of all the small towns I've lived in (five in three different states), the independent bookstore is much the same: used books, limited selection, disorganized or poorly defined space, a limited new release section that only includes names like Grisham or King, and prices set at full value or higher. In my current town, there are two independent bookstores, both conforming to this description. They open at 10 and close at 4, so even if I felt obligated to patronize them, I would have to take a day off of work to do so.

Not growing up in a place like New York where an independent bookstore might have a large enough market to survive the B&N onslaught, I am not enamored with the notion of the underdog2. Now don't get me wrong, I don't dislike them. There are stores like the Tattered Cover that have so well established themselves that people can mention them online and others know exactly what they're talking about. Two thumbs up for those places. It's the presumed obligation that rubs me wrong. A business needs to earn my business. If you cannot provide me the book I'm looking for at an hour in which I am able to patronize without requiring vacation spent, you won't get my dollars.

Not that the large chains are doing any better. My experiences with the last two paper books I've purchased have been miserable. I skipped my hometown Borders and B&N and went to the Borders on Boylston in Boston. This is one of the better Borders in the country, so I should be able to find Tad Williams' new release, SHADOWHEART, without much difficulty.

...or so I thought. The book wasn't on coop or on the shelf. There wasn't even space made for it on the shelf. The first three employees ignored me, talking to themselves. The fourth one had never heard of it but was able to confirm that they had six in stock. It ended up being on a cart because it hadn't been shelves yet. What kind of store doesn't have new releases shelved the day they're supposed to be released? When I worked at Blockbuster, Tuesday new releases were shelved Monday night after closing like any common sense business would.

If I had purchased the book online, it would have been delivered today and for $13 less than what I paid for it at Borders. This brings me to the fundamental aspect of book shopping in any store, whether you're a local indie or a national chain:

You have to earn my business.

Amazon is the big bad wolf because that's how we roll in America. If you're the biggest, you're evil. Support the little guy. Fist in the air. Do the right thing. Go to your local independent bookstore and give them your business.

I don't give any business charity. If a local bookstore earns my business, it's on them and good luck to them. That's the kind of place I'll support and speak well of (and often--have you seen how many times I reference Jackie's Diner on my website?). Spare me the guilt trip. I was raised Catholic. It doesn't work.

I really wish Nashua (or even downtown Boston) had a place like the Tattered Cover. There's an antique bookshop near where I work, but that doesn't do much for me. Otherwise, it's online purchasing or continued bad experiences with the national chains (I ranted on twitter what happened when I tried to buy Bujold's CRYOBURN, so I won't repeat that, but it was even more annoying than this time around).

More so than ever, I am pleased with my decision to go e-only in my book purchases3.


1 I lived near the Tattered Cover when I lived in Denver. It is indeed awesome.

2 Which is weird, because usually I'm a sucker for an underdog.

3 SHADOWHEART is the last in the Shadowmarch tetralogy, so this should be the last paper book I buy, depending on how much farther Bujold takes the Vorkosigan series.

The Roast Beef Sandwich...FROM HELL!

I held onto this comment because I wanted to maintain the positivity of Thanksgiving, my second-favorite holiday of the year. Five days later, it's still such a wild ride that I'd feel horrible not sharing it with you.

It is Wednesday evening, the night before Thanksgiving, and my wife has been preparing various foodstuffs for our forthcoming celebration. I've been cleaning and organizing and making pumpkin pie. As meal time gets closer, we decide that we do not want to cook. We've already been doing that. It's time for delivery! There is a nearby restaurant called Giovanni's Roast Beef and Pizza that I had been to a couple times before. While the service had been a bit scattershot, the food was absolutely delicious. I had spoken of it and Jen was in the mood for a sammich of some kind. We decided to order here and continue with our preparations rather than picking it up.

This was our first mistake Giovanni's is right down the street from us. I'm not exaggerating that. I can walk there. It's a three minute drive and half of that is spent at red lights. But delivery is convenient because the pie is in the oven and boxes are being brought out of the basement so we can be fully prepared for our Black Friday tree trimming. We'd pay the few dollars extra for delivery.

The order goes in! A Texas chicken melt sub (marinated chicken, cheese, pepper, mushroom, and barbecue sauce) and a gyro (not from a Greek place, and as such not as good as it could have been).

Ordering was a task. After being put on hold for a considerable length of time, the person had trouble taking down my address. Drury. This is a challenging word. On the phone it can sound like Drrrry. Of course, when you spell it. Three times. And the person says "D?" that's not a good sign. I might have complained to the manager if the person I was speaking to was not the manager.

I had hoped that being down the street might expedite the time we waited, but to no avail. 45 minutes later, the driver showed up. No problem. I'm sure other people had the same idea. I take the slip and sign my name, giving a fair tip. Ummm...excuse me miss, who's the pizza for? She hands me a pizza and a bag that in no way feels like it has two sandwiches in it. She realizes she has the wrong order and makes a big show of being upset and embarrassed. This is where I make another mistake. She seems so genuinely upset in delivering the wrong order, I give her the signed slip back when she says she'll run back and get the right food.

She doesn't do this. She instead calls and gets the address for the order she had and delivers that instead. Twenty-five minutes later, she returns to the store. I know this because I'm on the phone asking how it can possibly have taken this long to go down the street and back to get my food. She says that she delivered our food. Oh no you didn't!

This results in a fun back and forth with the manager (yes, the woman that couldn't spell Drury) and she says she's going to make our food again and send it back out. Thirty minutes later, we call again, at this point, if we hadn't paid for our food, we would have abandoned the attempt and made our own meal at home. I have also started and baked an entire pumpkin pie. We're on the phone, explaining once again that the first driver never delivered our food and that she's a horrible liar, especially since I gave her a flipping tip. The food comes. The manager stays on the phone to make sure it's the right food. It is the right food! And it's still warm! Finally. Let me off the phone so I can go eat. ...what? you hope I enjoy the complementary onion rings? (At this point, they had made no effort to make amends for the bad service.) We didn't get any onion rings. The driver was supposed to give us onion rings? Well, he didn't. He must have kept them for himself. Whatever, I don't care. I want to eat.

I drops the shades, lock the front door, and away to the basement to continue watching the second season of Lie to Me (an awesome show based on real science). I'm just about to eat when the phone rings again. This time it's the owner. He wants to know what's been happening. He says that the guy did try to deliver the onion rings and that I locked the door in his face. Well, given that he neither rang the doorbell nor knocked. I don't know why you would call back and accuse me of being rude. It certainly doesn't make me want to forgive you. And that, I assumed, was the last straw. I tell him I don't care whether the driver tried to deliver me onion rings or not. I cannot think to patronize their store again. Total time for delivery of the correct food was 2 hours and 25 minutes. This included no less than 6 phone calls to and from the store to which three of them accused me for being at fault.

The food, incidentally, was delicious. At least mine was. Jen realized you have to get Greek food from Greek restaurants, but it was at least passable, and Lie to Me continued to rock, so we could just let that all get behind us. Really, if they had just said sorry (or better yet, refunded my money), I'd continue to go there. The food really is that good (and you may say, just pick it up, but the first time I did that, they let me stand at the counter for ten minutes before anyone even spoke to me).

But yay, it's over! Or so we thought.

The next morning I open the door to go down to Boston to pick up my niece for Thanksgiving dinner. What do I find but a greasy bag of onion rings that was left on our doorstep overnight.

How this place remains in business, I cannot fathom. The events of the evening are not exaggerated for the retelling and even now, I cannot believe they happened. Or more precisely, continued to happen. I worked pizza. I delivered. I know the crazy shit that can happen. But 2 hours and 25 minutes later, they had only managed to make things worse, and I woke up in the morning with the food-equivalent of a flaming bag of dog shit at my front door.

The absurdity of it all makes me laugh. I will miss their food, though. Too bad I'll never go there again.

Stranger in a Strange Land

It's a fair bet most of your writer friends aren't your real-world friends. They're online. The internet has been a terrific tool for us to gather and discuss and be. You may have been trapped previously with those that said they wanted to write, but whose offerings amounted to nothing more than literary masturbation, taking their favorite D&D characters and expostulating their awesomeness in prose. (If you were lucky, it would at least be good prose. But how often are we that lucky?)

Now, we can find people with similar interests and similar talent to share our ideas and our fears. We can push one another to do better and help each other to succeed. This is all great. Thank you Internet for your participation in our growth as writers.

But at the end of the day, we're still writers in our own world. We do other things like read books and watch movies with friends who may have little to no writing talent or interest in exploring the craft. But they still have opinions. Everyone has opinions. And they share them. They share them with you.

I'll see a movie and someone will say how much they liked it and I pray that they don't ask me what I thought. Or, if they're going to ask me that question, they do so before they offer their own opinion so they can see quickly that I'm not just going to say I liked something because a bus blew up or some thing. I do not have a switch. I cannot turn off being a writer. I can dial it down. I can take it from an 11 to about an 8 or so, but in the end, the writing is important to me. Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen is utter rubbish. I don't care if the point of the movie was to have big robots fight and blow shit up. You can make a movie with big robots fighting blowing shit up and still write it in such a fashion that when you walk into a building in Washington, you don't exit into an African desert!

I'm told I'm too negative. I don't think I'm negative. I think I'm critical. I challenge the art I am interested in to be the best it can be. My measure for that quality is based on my own understanding of writing, which, compared to the rest of my friends, is much higher (immodest or not, it's the truth and most of them would admit to that).

I did a podcast interview with Scott Wegener, the artist for Atomic Robo. This best explained what it's like being a creative person. When he looks at something, the first thing he looks at is the visual aspect. He's a comic book artist. He draws for a living. The visuals are important. Likewise, the first thing I look at is the writing. I can give a pass to average visuals because that's now what I do.

It can feel very isolating in those discussions, especially in a larger group, when people are giving a thumbs up and thumbs down based solely on a visceral reaction to the spectacle of the movie, and all you want to do is grab a red pen and mark up all the holes that to you seemed so glaring.

Don't worry. You're not alone. Your people, they're here on the internets.