Saturday, February 5, 2011

Rattle Off A Title


This story is a monster and refuses to end, which is fine I suppose. I do know what I want to happen, at least.  Anyways, in my exciting plan to get to 100 stories as quickly as possible, I have compiled a LIST. Wow!

The next sixteen stories, probably. Alphabetical order:

All The Squirrels Have Gone
An Aesop Amidst The Fairy Dust
Bad Things Happen To Good People
Bilateral Stymietry
Estevanico
In Which There Is A Sussurus
Job Interview
Monsier Dantes Inferno
Revolt In Youth
Splat!
The Canadian Witch Doctor
The Littlest Barnacle
The Ten Thousand Dollar Whore
Treachery Afoot
Twenty Seconds Century
What Fools We Anti-Social Monkeys Are!

Yeah! I've got a million of them! Now to just finish this one, jeez.

Also, today I had a really good #SteamPunkChat on Twitter. I just wandered into it, but it was fun! My two steampunk stories are Timpani the Ostrich Rancher and The Ambassador's Lady. I'm rather enjoying the world that's evolving out of my exploration of the genre.

----
Story?
Long Story "Players of the Nuclear Theremin"
Short Story "An Aesop Amidst The Fairy Dust"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*183

Friday, February 4, 2011

Gerontology

I feel terrible, but I don't care. That's the important bit. I'm sitting alone on my bed thinking about old flames and old failures, ignoring the successes. The beer tastes bad in my mouth, but I keep drinking.

There're ants in my beer. No matter, no matter. That's just more protein.

I'm watching the sad part of Casablanca.

I'm writing. I don't look back. It's my duty to write, because the more I write now, the more I'll write later. The more I write now, the more and more and more and more. There's no point in looking back, because what I wrote then isn't what I'm writing now.

You may know that I'm bipolar, and you might be able to guess which side of the pole I'm on right now. There are benefits, and it's not serious.

Anyways, my big damn plan for the next six months is to get one hundred short stories done, then compile ten short story collections of ten stories each with professional cover art and formatting. After that? Heck if I know, but probably more of the same. As I understand it, the only real objective I have is Write More. Everything else is secondary in this small business I've established.

#

Absinthe. I have no access to it, but it sounds complicated. I prefer my drinks to be only as complicated as "add soda, serve".

They certainly shouldn't have a special glass. That's just silly. I'm sure there used to be a better way to drink absinthe before the foodies got their hands on it.

----
Story? On Its Way
Long Story "Players of the Nuclear Theremin"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*182

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Players of the Nuclear Theremin

This was ill-advised, but fun
#

The Classic SF "Players of the Nuclear Theremin" turns out to be a significantly longer story than I thought it would be, but I can see how that happened. What that means is that, in the interests of being able to Write The Next Thing, I am going to finish this damn thing by the tried-and-true method of ingesting lots of coffee and sitting in a dark room and typing with my eyes closed. The Internet will, of course, be off.

Oh, and Byrrh is apparently a mixture of red wine and tonic water. That sounds terrifying. Take note, upcoming steampunk horror.

If I do in fact succeed in finishing this monster project, I'll have to time to format up a different steampunk story for ePub tomorrow.

----
Story? Sure
Short Story "Players of the Nuclear Theremin"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*181

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Lesson Learned

David's Official "Lesson Learned" from The Great Recession: The only business of any value is Small Business, i.e. you. Everything else is just as unstable, you probably don't get benefits and you certainly don't get a cut for all your hard work and ulcers. Everybody's first priority should be disentangling themselves from Other People's Profit.

David's Official Political "Lesson Learned" from The Great Recession: Don't bother with politics until you're rich. Everything else is just noise. Noise has no power, and rich folk are too focused on running things to hear noise. Once you are rich, though, feel free to listen to the losers, if only to get them on your side. Even better: Don't be a jerk. But I can't endorse that until I test my ability to withstand riches by having them.

David's Official Life "Lesson Learned" from the Great Recession: When they play me singing "Thanks For The Memories" at my own funeral, I want to actually have had some worth listening to. And I want all of my memories to remember me as Somebody, not some bit player who whined all day about wanting to do something with my life.

And yes, I don't care if my funeral is 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 or 5000 years from now, that is the song I want played.

This still counts as a Writing blog post, under the "Mindset" topic. I'm a small business, and I'm going to bootstrap myself to riches.

#

New goal: one short story per day. I'm going to ramp up to this, but no excuses. I will be a Pro if it kills me. It won't. If you want to see some short fiction, may I suggest my newest Buck eShort "Sharia & The Gays"?

Today, I learned Scribus and did the layout of a magazine. Pretty cool? Not much to say about it, though.

This is pretty much how I want all my cover art to look. Also, I suddenly want to weaponize food. Man, those olden days folk were hard-core.

----
Story? Yes
Short Story "Players of the Nuclear Theremin
- - - -
Reading - ?

*180

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Writing While Sick

I get sick a lot, so I'll have to find a way to write through the malaise. I'm not interested in excuses, I have a career to drag out of the darkness and into the light of fame, fortune, and fun. The anti-excuses:

Prevention
I should exercise more and drink slightly less.
Ignoring The Problem
Work it off!
Writing With My Eyes Closed
I'll just write by tapping away at the keyboard without looking at the screen, that way the damn sun won't get in the way of my masterpiece.
Having a Live-In Nurse
Oh, that won't help.
Trying SCIENCE!
Vitamin C, take my troubles away!
Thinking About the Good Times
It was fun, those days of yore when I was not sick. I'd try to remember them, but I'm too sick.
Writing Horror 
Where...where a lot of people are sick?
Trying Too Hard
Nobody never died of no overwork.
Not Answering The Phone
Just a good idea in general, really.

Oog.

I guess I'll go ask the Checker King what to do. Again.

#

In other news, I've been throwing myself into Scribus (page layout) in conjunction with Inkscape (vector graphics). I'm trying to format up a magazine for printing. Or anything really, I just want to be competent.

Is this a harbinger of things to come?

No.

----
Words? Yes
Short Story "An Aesop Amidst the Fairy Dust", in which pizza is made for fairies.
Short Story "Players of the Nuclear Theremin", in which thereminers are put to useful purposes.
Short Story "All the Squirrels Have Gone", in which squirrels make no appearance.
Short Story "Monsieur Dantès' Inferno", in which a steampunk helicopter causes a stir.
Short Story "Estevanico", in which freedom comes at a price.
- - - -
Reading - "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Alexander Dumas)

*179

Monday, January 31, 2011

Left v. Right

Alternate title: "Politics and the Art of Fiction", as inspired, most recently, by Brad R. Torgersen's Conservative SF discussed at Pajamas Media. My comment there:

Conservative? Liberal? All I know is I’m not seeing nearly as many Space Orgies in modern SF as were in classic SF.

It is my solemn duty to rectify this imbalance.

More seriously, when it comes to politics in SF, political science is science, and I want to speculate just as much on it as any other science. As a writer, I want to take that speculation wherever it leads scientifically, not wherever the politics of the day insist that it leads. I’ll take a run at a political concept from all sides that prove viable, whether in the same story or in two or more separate ones, as my interest and inspiration holds out.

If I want to write about the politics of the day, I’ll write a thriller (or a satire). But I won’t call it SF.

Taking off on that:

I am a political scientist and a writer, as such I am apolitical. My political preferences have no bearing on fact or fiction. When it comes to political "fact", I have a strong preference toward results vs. day to day statements, and when it comes to political fiction I have a strong preference toward, well, good fiction. It is highly unlikely that you'll ever find my political beliefs expressed in fiction. On the other hand, I am a futurist insofar as I intend to live there, and as such I reserve the right to describe the most awesome future possible and leave it to the politicians to let the scientists make it happen.

Here's the deal: in the last year of a political science education, there is a truth that is imparted to you, and you are not allowed to tell anybody. It's a truth that reveals anything and everything about your fellow human beings, and it opens your eyes to how all these human and inhuman connections affect everybody else. You understand the world for one second, and then you spend years understanding individuals. In this frame of mind, it is impossible to be political.

No, the secret is not "Pretend to know something they don't." That's the year before, and there's no confidentiality agreement because everybody already knows it, but chooses not to consider the possibility.

#

Anyways, if you want to see the benefits of a political scientist applying himself to fiction, I propose that you pick up my latest ePub short "Kritarchy".
For much of an Earth without nations, the roaming Judge-Ships of the Kritarchy are the only law, and Judge Lightner is one of the best. But when a vicious marauding fleet sweeps through the Kritarchy, the Judge finds out just how much the law is worth as he is forced to make one of his own.

If not, await my next story. Which may or may not include a zeppelin. One can never tell with airships.

----
Words? Yes
Short Story "An Aesop Amidst The Fairy Dust"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*178

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Stats @ Pals

I get lots of hits originating from:

The active commentariat @DeanWesleySmith 's always illuminating site.

Links @ the sites of:
Ben Godby
Alex J. Kane
Jeff Ambrose

But, oddly, not so many from the link @
Annie Bellet
...the Internet is a mystery

I wonder if Jonathan Swift saw any money out of this advertisement? →

More recently, from comments @ Chuck Wendig's site.

The recent comments bar @ D.M. Bonnano's site. Probably from fellow Write1Sub1 folk

Being @ Eileen Rhoadarmer's blog roll.

And, for some reason, a lot of Google searches for one "Rahul Kanakia"

Now, let's just check that I've spelled everybody's names correctly...

Success!

----
Words? Yes
Short Story "Players of the Nuclear Theremin" - Science Fiction career study
Short Story "An Aesop Amidst The Fairy Dust" - Urban Fantasy with Fairy Pizza (as opposed to fairy cake?)
Short Story "All The Squirrels Are Gone" - Horror ... something or another.
- - - -
Reading - December 2010 Recommended Reading List
(Kristin Kathryn Rusch)

*177
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