On Sol

We flicker like flames
Life and death and love and hate
On the skin of Sol

Bred is Available . . .

My new book, Bred, is now available at Barnes & Noble, and on iTunes.

Demel was bred for power, born into slavery, and lives in the city of sorcery. His talent for remaining unnoticed allows him to grow into, and master, his power. But when he frees himself from a powerful control curse, he releases a storm of events which threatens all of Lyn. Demel, and his sometimes reluctant allies, are the only ones who can stop a thousand years of violence and oppression.

Write for Yourself

In June of 2005 I started writing a science fiction blog as a simple exercise. It was, in part, inspired by the Cassini mission and the Huygens lander, but it grew into a years long project that surprised me in many wonderful ways. The story eventually out-grew the format, and so I stopped working on it. Until now, I've only told a handful of people about it because it was, all along, something I did to make myself happy.

Is it a complete novel? I'm not sure. It's just a series of blog posts by a fictional character, writing about his life aboard a space station which orbits Saturn. It is, possibly, a space opera. Each post is self-contained, or at least as self-contained as any random blog post, but there is a overarching exposure of the world, and the troubles faced by the people who live in it. There is no ending, as such. The main character simply signs off one day, making vague promises of future postings.

I hope to expand on the story of Fort Falling some day, but even so, I'm currently editing the story so I can publish it as a free ebook some time within the next couple of months. I intend to use it as a promotional tool. It's already free on the web, but a free ebook might gain me some name recognition.

Name recognition can be good, but it can also be bad. Self-promotion seems to be a fine line between obscurity and infamy.  If I constantly spam social media sites with ads trying to get people to buy my new fantasy novel, Bred, I'm more likely to turn them away than to make any sales. I know those constant spam posts irritate the crap out of me.

I'm even hesitant to publish this post, but I do want to sell books. I want to sell books so I can write more books faster--so I can do more of something which makes me happy.

Geneva and the Nature of Virtual Reality

The International Committee of the Red Cross is investigating video games. Specifically, they are concerned that gamers are violating humanitarian law by . . . gasp . . . playing war games wherein they might commit war crimes. Doesn't this organization have more important things to do?

There is no solid evidence which points to violence in video games making people more violent. Or, more accurately, there is just as much evidence supporting such play as a positive influence as there is evidence to support the opposite. And these guys want to talk about what they should do about it.

Here's an idea: Think of video games as fiction. They are not real. Real people do not suffer inside of a game. They are bits of code and imagination, not people. I can summon a demon and let it loose to kill a whole room full of people in one of my video games. I can't do that in real life, and even if I could, I would have to have a real good reason for doing so. Even then, I'd probably look for another way to handle it first. How can you apply humanitarian law to fictional people? How does that even make sense?

Can we argue, honestly, that these fictional acts have a negative impact on the real people playing the game? I don't think we can. Some people will be affected, but I suspect that most will not. Some people will act in reprehensible ways, and they will enjoy it. But I believe those people, if not for the game, would have found other ways to achieve those feelings, and maybe something bad would have happened in the real world. If that is true, then what's wrong with letting the evil bastards of the world work out their problems on virtual people?

We can point to a violent person, and we can say they played video games, and we can say they would not have done what they did if not for the game. I don't believe that, be we can say it. But, if we can say that, then why not point to the 600 million gamers who don't commit real war crimes after playing the same game, and then say, "They would have killed a lot of real people if it weren't for that game!"?

*This opinion was inspired by Claire Connelly's article, which can probably be found here.

NaNoWriMo Winner

I  won #NaNoWriMo with 50,032 words. I'm only about two-thirds of the way through the story, and I have only a vague idea of how to end it, but I made the total word count.

I learned a few things along the way:

    1. I find it a lot easier to write if I have a solid idea or scene already formed in my mind. If I have a good solid scene in my head, I can whip out 500 words in no time at all, but if I only know I need to write a scene or two to get to that solid idea, it takes me a lot longer.

    2. But if I don't have a good idea of what to write next, I'm often pleasantly surprised by my own creativity. It's not unusual for characters or tidbits of information to seemingly come out of nowhere, and these surprises are often the most interesting thing I wrote that day.

    3. Short term goals are easier to achieve than long term goals. I've been hearing variations on this for years, but I now have solid, personal experience which proves it, and which has led to a shift in my thinking. NaNo showed me how to write 50,000 in 30 days by breaking it down into a daily word count. I'll will probably continue to approach my writing in the same way.

    4. I don't need to turn off my editor. I've heard that a lot. It seems to be one of NaNo's common bits of advice--turn off your internal editor, and just pump out the words. I'm not sure that advice is completely valid. I think it should be something more along the lines of, "Learn to work with your internal editor." If you work with that editor, your writing will be better--unless you listen to everything he or she says, and then you'll just want to stop writing. Listen, but you decide if it can wait until you know how to fix it, or if you can fix it now without interrupting your flow.

    5. Support systems help. It doesn't have to be much. Just tell your friends and family, especially that nosy aunt who will ask you about it every day. Or join a group online, or in your local community, and offer support to others. You'll be surprised how much positive motivation can come from this.

    6. If you want to be a writer--just write. Don't worry about what. Buy a journal and a pen, and fill a page every morning. Start a blog, and spill random chatter all over it--frequently. Or annoy your friends on Facebook and Google+ with your lousy poetry. Maybe you'll loose some friends, or maybe random strangers will want to read it. What matters it that you wrote something.

    7. You can't write all of the time. You shouldn't try. It you are stuck, and sitting there wishing you knew what to write, play a video game or watch a movie. Take a break when you need to take a break. Or, if you want to write, but don't know why you can't, write something personal--something you would never admit to another person--and then destroy it if you need to.

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NaNoWriMo, Part Two

Well, I'm still on schedule to 'win' NaNoWriMo, and I have my writing done for today, so there's only five days of writing left. It's been an interesting experiment, and I wish I could say that I would keep writing every day, but I don't think I will. Motivation is increasingly becoming a problem, and I'll be lucky if I can squeeze five days of writing out of whatever is left of my tattered outlines.

I started the month with one main character, and full of intentions to carry on with her story all the way to the end, but I ran out of useful outline about half way through week two. I had more ideas, but they were wispy things, hardly complete, and only suggestive of outline material.

Fortunately, I had an outline for another main character in the same world, and their stories overlapped in the timeline, so I stirred in a second plot line, and that kept me going for another couple of weeks. That outline, plus integrating the two plots, offered more creative opportunities than either outline would have given me on their own, so I'm much happier about combining the two stories than I thought I would be when I made that decision.

Now I've got something with meat on it, but I only have a couple of solid scenes in mind right now, so I suspect that last few days are going to be a struggle. On the other hand, I've only got a few days left, and then I can put the story aside for a bit, and to let the ending coalesce in my subconscious--because I'm still not sure how it ends. It won't be a cliff hanger though. I hate to read books that don't end, and I never want to write one.

Awakened

Memories of dreams
are wandering through my mind
like broken whispers.