Month: July 2021

I’ll be back to the bloganovella tomorrow. I’m back to the revving up phase, as I described it yesterday, and getting back into gear in terms of being a productive writer again. I hit these bumps in the road every so often. Some have to do with the lazy and some have to do with the schedule and still others have to do with a sense of being overwhelmed by my functional reality. However, if one thing is abundantly clear through all of this it is that I do in fact have a writing goal. Several, actually.

I want to write a hit series of books for audible.

I’ve grown so accustomed to listening to audiobooks from authors who are primarily audible/amazon stars that I feel like this is a really great path. I want to add my voice to that eclectic canon and I do believe I have the sort of writing voice that works for it. What will the aforementioned series be? Not sure at this point. I know that I want to be able to write a fantasy series and maybe this is the venue for it.

I have my major market contribution to sci fi.

It is possible that once I complete it this December I will find that I have a lot more to say, but this first go at a major market pure sci fi is a good one. I’m greatly enjoying the writing of it though it is very difficult at times and marries two parts of my life that have forever been separate—law and science.

I want to write a comic book series.

Perhaps the more appropriate term is guest write. I’d love to give it a go. I don’t have a specific comic in mind. I have perhaps a dozen I am intimate with and would live to build upon. Honestly, I would kill an Iron Man-esque Wakanda story that talks about a kid growing up in that environment with the tech skills to challenge Ironheart but ends up in a situation where they are on the wrong side of the law and the policies of Wakanda puts them in a terrible position. In this idea Stark and the Panther are forced to track this teen down and try to put him down… or turn him back towards the light.

After several days of just not being on my grind and not being my best and most productive writer self, I am trying to get back into gear. I know that I have to do just that, because I set deadlines and above all that I have a full time job (just one now) calling me back to the fold shortly.

Here is what I learned about me from Covid-19’s hibernation of sorts: I have an enormous capacity to do things and get stuff done, but that capacity shrinks very quickly when not utilized. If left to my own devices I will sit in a corner and waste most of the day wrapped up in some pointless and inane endeavor designed to give me a quick and easy victory. I’m a win addict. I play games like Apex and Clash Royale (and most recently Catan on the phone) for the quick W, but that quick and repetitive high becomes all-consuming and in a matter of hours I’ve eaten most of my will to work hard and get that greater success.  It is so much harder to sit down and work at constructing a novel that may or may not get published and, in the interim, is extremely mentally taxing than it is to peck away at my phone. In truth, I spent the first 30 minutes of today’s writing session playing Catan. I lost, btw, and then I sat down to write this blog about it.

Facts being what they are, I’m a lazy person. When in motion I can be a tremendously productive and good person. When not, I kind of suck as a human. What middle ground exists between the two is largely speculative.

So, it really comes down to who we allow ourselves to be in any given moment and how we train ourselves to stay the course—especially when it is hard and especially when there are really compelling distractions. I am fortunate to have a partner who helps when I am able to get past my own stubbornness enough to let her. That leaves me in the best life position to get things done, once I really get in motion.

As you’ve seen so many times on this space, dear reader, I’ve fallen off the productivity horse and I am trying to get back up and get back on. When I do, big things…

Took a break from the ‘hard go’ of my vacation to catch up on a few needed hours of rest and to publish all of these blogs I’ve been writing and collecting in wi-fi free space. In fact, I took a day to simply recharge physically and mentally as I move forward into the new week. I think this ought to be the way. I firmly feel that Sundays are for rest and relaxation and just the straight kick back–be it watching football or what have you. So long as you are with who you love the day holds so much promise. All days do.

I had a pretty solid Sunday. We took the bus down to a breakfast spot that turned out to be utter trash, but we walked home and that was more than enough to make up for it. Afterwards it was chillax central for the rest of the good time I had with my partner for the day. Makes me happy to know that I have a person in my life who, merely being with them, makes the day worth being a part of.

Some Thoughts:

1. Over the last two years my family fantasy league did not pay out. This year I’m having the kids each put in $20, which should cover part of the winnings. I used a payout calculator to determine the payouts for the league this year and they are as follows: $100 for the ‘ship, $50 for second place, $5/week for top score of the week, $20 for highest scoring team overall (considering raising it to $30 or splitting the difference @$25) . This puts the overall purse at up to $200 in prizes. That means my personal contribution to the league would be $60, with the remaining seven people providing the rest. It also means multiple people could earn back buy in. That’s a good look for a family league. Oh, and there is the matter of trophies for first and last place.

I don’t often discuss being on the road until I’m back and no longer worried about people robbing my empty how, but the home is filled with family while I’m away, so yeah.
I’m writing from the Amazon Spheres today and absolutely redefining my understanding of workspace. The Spheres are a crazy indoor rainforest (Amazon) concept where the entire space is clear domed and filled with plant life. It smells like heaven. It also changes my mindset dramatically. Between the running water and the green I feel safe, calm, alive, free, and especially creative. This is the kind of place that grows ideas and the kind of workspace that allows for a freedom of thought that often seems to be lacking in the cold grey of academia and business.

I want to find a way to live in these sort of environs. I want to be able to smell the flowers and think of worlds beyond these as I look at what is possible in our own reality.

this is going to be a fundamental part of how I conceive of climate fiction moving forward, because what they captured here argues what can be done and also argues if it should.

that being said, I am grateful for the introduction to the possible because it reframed the impossible immediately. Beyond the beauty it also made me think of the societal construction whereas office and work is normally meant to be about hierarchy, a workspace that lacks that formal hierarchy suggests how people may be able to function in another way professionally and may find the space to grow creativity within themselves within these Spheres.

I couldn’t find a way to sleep last night. I was up at 1:20 in the AM and stayed awake through four with intermittent periods of wakefulness through 9:30 AM, which is when I finally gave up trying. My mind is tired. My mind is so tired that I didn’t make the effort to put the 3+ hours in today. If I’m being totally honest, the 3+ haven’t gone well for weeks now. I haven’t done better than 1.5. As a result my progress in all things writing has slowed to a crawl. On the bright side, the schedule I designed allows for this week to be a sell without the situation getting too out of hand.

The key is to stay on track. The key is to keep going and try as hard as possible to produce what can be produced everyday—even if it is just ten minutes of somewhat mindful excuse making about why you didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t do more.

So, lets take these next five to get to the mindful part of things:

I know that part of the problem is that my current set of activities is means far more to me than sitting around and writing alone. I need to reconcile that quickly, because the way things are is exactly what I mean the rest of my existence to look like.

Some Thoughts:

1. Been trying to rationally think through my wants and needs in a way that prioritzes some things over others yet either allows me to give up some dreams or fulfill them in a meaningful way. I have this house, which is a hot mess. Seriously, it’s a dump and I don’t think anyone in my family cares about putting it together as much as I do or at all beyond a paint job. The interior was a problem situation that brought out the worst of my tendencies and alienated all of the females. So, now I’m stuck deciding where to go from here. I want to put together a nice backyard. And a nice front yard.

It didn’t take long for me to decide I’d screwed up the job something extra awful. The guards were tearing out of the building in search of the man I was sent to protect and he was wearing nothing but a medical smock and a bad attitude. He’d probably get picked up by NYPD INC. and placed into the system as a crazy or a homeless person unless he came to his senses long enough to explain the situation. I’d be better off not being here when that happened. I had a few close friends in the NYPD but a lot more enemies who had the power and the resolve to put me behind bars so thick I couldn’t fit my hands around them.

It didn’t take me much longer to recognize that a near-naked Choi meant that his clothes along with any possible clues were still here. I stood up, ignoring the looks of confusion and derision from the handful of nurses stationed all around me, and moved quickly to the room where I first heard Choi screaming. Sure enough his stuff was there. I gathered everything I could, not stopping to look through any of it. Then I dashed back to my room where my clothes and confused Doctor were waiting.

“Sorry, Doc. I’m going to postpone. Things have gotten a bit complicated on my end.”

The doctor was standing with commlink in hand, likely sending a message to NYPD. That made it all the more important that I left immediately. I rushed to put on my clothes as he stood there staring but not saying anything. Then I ran as fast as I could towards the back of the building, hoping they were up to code and there was indeed a back way out of there.

Indeed there was. I cracked open the door with a quick peek for flashing lights. Finding none I pushed through and ran down the alley towards the one part of the city I knew would be a safe place to hide, if only for a little while.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m having fun with the story. It doesn’t make a ton of sense, but arguably most on the fly drafts don’t—especially if written chapter by chapter within a ten minute window. It is a dream to continue this and make this a fundamental part of the blog. I’m about stories and storytelling and this is a fun way to get my wiggles out while working on larger things.
2. I’m hoping to do more and more of those larger things as I recognize how to best manage the hours of the day I devote to my craft as I move through life. Writing is a priority. While not the only one it is a major one and above almost everything else.
3. As I am scheduling the words I am realizing how much I can really get done when I put my butt in the chair.

I write a lot of Shadowrun material. The game, originated in the late 80’s/early 90’s takes on the idea of cyberpunk and asks, ‘what happens if I throw in some Tolkien-esque races and a whole lot of magic?’ The result is a super-interesting blend of ideas that all operate under the umbrella of corporate overreach. In my writings I generally focus on one location or another. Over the years I’ve written about Bellevue, WA quite a few times without having any real understanding of the Belle from the standpoint of what it is like in real life or how to extrapolate a possible corporate-driven future from that location.

So, I came to see what was up.

I missed a lot. I got a lot more wrong. The stuff I got right feels coincidental at this point; a merger of sociological background information with assumptions based on living in New York and Long Island and merging those competing philosophies into a ‘what-if?’ scenario.

Real-life Bellevue feels like what Scottsdale AZ would be if it got it’s act together, recruited smart rich people instead of athletes, smarmy first gen trust fund babies, and new money and existed in a space where the land allowed for prodigious corporate growth. Eddie Baur has an office building here. As does Microsoft and a number of other organizations. More to the point the city works. It has a functional transit system that joins a number of small neighborhoods into a patois that feels like a series of interconnected places you are welcome to visit. It is diverse. It is actually a nice place to be… If you can afford it.

Which I cannot, by the way.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am starting to appreciate the nature of first drafts and writing through an outline even though you know what you are creating is not exactly what you want it to be. You have to get that bad writing and bad plotting out of your system to create room for what is to come. Moreover, happy accidents occur throughout that portion of the process and perhaps those accidents are what make for fantastic story.

Nobody spoke.

I sat on the ground dazed and listening to the thump, thump, thump of retreating footsteps. The guard hovering over me muttered, “Drek.” Then kicked at his partner who was sitting on the ground next to me. Then he said, “He’s running!”

It was a reference to the footsteps, which my groggy self came around to realizing belonged to the unusual looking Peter Choi who’d just made it out of the back area and was likely sprinting towards the exit. The guard still standing said, “Drek!” again, but louder this time. Then he turned and ran after Choi. I started to get up, but the other guard was coming around and he was far from happy. He got to his feet before I did, and then he did the same magic trick with his gun. Wired Reflexes. His body was trained in a fashion that specific movement patterns could be performed a hundred times faster than the average person, as though drawing a gun were a button on a shortcut menu. Now that gun was pointed at me. At least my hands were still up.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding here.” I said.

He tensed, his eyes narrowing in a brief flash of anger.

“No seriously,” I said, “I am an officer of the law. I thought you were harming that man.”

“Show me your badge.”

I raised my eyebrows. I was wearing a surgical gown from the weigh in–the same pre-surgery outfit Choi had on when he ran. I said, “Obviously, I don’t have it on me. I’m not here for, well, on the books work” It sounded reasonable to me at least. Cops went under the knife all the time, and they did it with tier own money to give them a competitive advantage on the streets. All the same, the work was frowned upon by NYPD INC. Because they didn’t have polcies in place to regulate officer modifications.

It was enough to at least make him reconsider shooting me. He took two steps backwards before lowering his gun, and then he turned and ran after his partner.

Some Thoughts:

1. Went back and tried to fix whatever damage happened to the formatting in Chapter 21.

I stumbled across Dungeonfog’s Project Deios recently and… Yo. They’ve created a deep mapping engine that works on all levels of the world building cycle. This is the technology I’ve been waiting for the past forty years and at a price point I likely can afford. We’ll see about that come pay day, but I really think I can make it work. I’ve been looking for that visual jumpstart to get me back into the fantasy push. I love the idea of building a fantasy world, but it always feels just out of reach. I cannot do the art or mapping. I don’t really feel I have a grip on a world until I see it. So, you put those things together and you get a drought of fantasy energy. But soon I shall return. I might make the next bloganovella a fantasy one. That is if this one ever ends….

Some Thoughts:

1. Been off the xbox for a long time now. Miss it, will enjoy getting back to it at some point, but likely not playing as much. It’s about that time of year that I don’t have as much time.
2. Drained of thoughts this evening. It happens.

I’ve been thinking about JJ Abrams quite a bit lately. Watching Fringe again (and for the first time when it comes to the last two seasons) feels like walking through his mind in a way that makes me feel that I’ve always been walking alongside him. He has a number of shows and movies that pepper our publicized reality in a way that make him our pop culture default. He is, however, an 80s guy whose television history matches my own in some ways and I can see the echoes reverberating through the multitude of Disney Universes.

When I think about Abrams I think about my own fictional worlds and where they come from and what inspired them and what they represent. I also feel, to a certain extent, unmoored. I consumed far more fiction when I was school-aged than I do now that I have school-aged children. There are many reasons why it is true and less why it continues to be true. One thing that remains ever present is the desire to explore worlds that are not my own and shape worlds that are. That is, in part, why I write science fiction and (allegedly) fantasy.

Some Thoughts:

1. Men make women uncomfortable. It happens in a number of ways that are tied to perception. When a man looks up and sees someone walking by, does that woman pull her coat tighter around herself? Does she smile? Does she shoot back a stare or look of anger? What determines that response. I believe that response is partly based on how the man looks and how the man looks at the woman and the history of that woman’s reality leading up to that moment. I think it is a thing that is worth exploring in story. Somehow.