You Should Never Be Bored

Hey! Go read this over at H2NHePub.com!

Coming back to America kicked my ass.

That is, it lurked for a month while I got a lot of cool stuff done (cf: this blog), and then READJUSTMENT popped out from behind a corner and sucker-punched me into a decay spiral.

I haven't accomplished very much in the last couple of weeks—moreso even than my usual boom-bust cycle of manic-depression—and it is depressing. I need to get back in the saddle.

The trigger for this READJUSTMENT was, I suspect, my sitting down to write my Peace Corps memoir—working title: "Peace Corps Thailand: AFTER DARK"—and realizing just how hard I worked and lived while I was in-country compared to my pitiful existence now, waiting for my MBA to start*.

This has been a long, boring summer; front-loaded (and exacerbated) by the Greatest Day of My Life (...that'll be in the memoir).

Long, boring, nothing to do...wait just a moment, Dave:

You should never be bored.

I have a career! It's called "writing". Stop sitting around moping, you've got sh*t to do. I am in the perfect writing situation: Nothing in particular to do for days on end, except write, Nobody in particular to meet, either. I can be a recluse! I should...I guess I should probably take advantage of that.

Why haven't I been writing enough? I'm out of shape, so I wake up feeling bad. I'm in a completely different situation, so I don't have a Routine yet. My laziness results in porcine over-indulgence in all the stuff I haven't had for the last twenty-seven months. There are so many books to read. I'm just...scared of success? I hope not.

I'm not Motivated enough.

I spend too much time waiting. This is a transition, but not between "Peace Corps" and "graduate school"; but rather between semi-professional and professional. While I was traipsing around the jungle, I didn't have the resources I needed to go all-out on this ePub thing. But now? I've got them. I just need lots and lots of manuscripts to do filthy Internet things to, formatting them and editing them, and selling them to the highest bidder.

I've got SERIES to write.
This Tisroc series is awesome, it just needs to be done. I know what's going to happen, I just need to write it down. I have another series percolating, and another and another. A whole pile of short books that need to get written, and short books are FUN.

I've got BOOKS to write.
Leaving aside Lived Too Long To Die (which WILL get finished soon enough), I have herds of books to write. Post-apocalyptic novels, apocalyptic novels, a Fantasy with blood magic, an Horror novella. Romance, Pirates, Fishing! SPACE BATTLE ROYALE. Oh, shit. These need to get done.

There's all these SHORT STORIES, too.
I've run out appendages to count all the half-finished short stories I still have to finish. They are all so awesome, they want to be told. I just have to TELL THEM. I need 300 short stories. That's my goal.

Oh! And I need cover art and print books!
Yeah, and um...my covers suck. And there's no time like the present to fix that. They have to be 1600x2500 now anyways. Not to mention formatting: but I will anyways. Dean Wesley Smith makes an excellent case for "Nothing Below $2.99", and that's what I'm going to do. Once I get motivated.

Am I motivated? Looks like I am.

I can never be bored again.

Get back to work.

Thanks for reading!

feel free to comment

*My schedule for when my MBA starts is easier:
Monday
walk
book
6:00-7:15

Tuesday
12:15-1:30
gym
read
6:00-7:15
7:30-10:15

Wednesday
walk
book
6:00-7:15

Thursday
12:15-1:30
gym
read
6:00-7:15

Friday
short story
Saturday
short story
Sunday
publishing

Science Fantasy Romance 16 - DRAGON MARINES

DRAGON MARINES 

SF016

Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction

Collected in

A Future Darkly

Blurb

A boy writes his first science fiction story while he waits for his mother to come back from the war.

Memories

before reading

Yes, it’s supposed to be all-caps. It’s the title of the story-within-a-story the boy protagonist writers, while he misses his mother. This one actually started with me just babbling on Twitter about a silly story about ‘Dragon Marines...in SPACE’, then I abruptly thought of the hook and wrote this. Let’s read.

Review

after reading

This is a very emotional story, with a lot of subtle touches. The last line...wow.

Next Week

Jeremiad 

Thanks for reading!

feel free to comment

Science Fantasy Romance 15 - War of the Possible Future

War of the Possible Future 

SF015

Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction

Collected in

A Future Darkly

Blurb

A Middle Eastern nation erupts in protests against a well-armed government. As a reporter tweets from the front lines, one man struggles to keep a hospital from going dark, and a hacker plans to send the dark back where it belongs. A short story, cyberpunk ripped from the headlines.

Memories

before reading

Written in the middle of the “Arab Spring”, the story opens with a tweet from a reporter I was following at the time, and carries on through the misadventures of a man sucked into the action by the need to keep a hospital running in the midst of the chaos, and the shadowy figure who pushes him to take it further. I wrote it in a blur of excitement and anticipation, and it’s one of my most contemporary (political) works.

Review

after reading

This is a really sloppy story, but it was a really sloppy time, so it fits. I like how I deliberately messed up the flow of the plot with constant interruptions by @Reporter. I also have a soft spot for the drone operator, don’t ask me why. (Oh, and the links in the fake tweets are real, interesting.) This story has one of my favorite endings.

Next Week

DRAGON MARINES

Thanks for reading!

feel free to comment