Month: June 2024

My future father-in-law (yes, I am quite presumptuous indeed) spoke with the Lady Talis recently in regards to our pilgrimage. He said it may me best not to talk about it and instead let it sink in. When she told me this I grew very still and quiet and did not, in fact, speak of it again. In that moment I realized a chilling truth in my own life. Everything is connected. Be it by the gossamer threads of chance to which our flickering consciousness provides meaning, or more to a path that we as travelers of the timeline are beholden, there are connections. There are roads and there are markers along the way. What he said to her was said to me in exactly the same way and phrasing Thirty three years ago by a young high school friend who eventually became a Yogi. He walks the same path to which so many of the people in my life are at least adjacent to. When I looked back to that moment I saw all of those markers along the way.

I am a chronicler. I tell stories that come from elsewhere.

I tell stories that are reflections of what was, is, and could be. Those stories weaken in force and potential when I am at my loudest and most unwilling to listen and observe. I have done that more and more in my adult life, and the results are disheartening. One can be a very good writer and still not tell relevant stories. I fear this is the path I set myself upon by not doing what those most important and impactful in my life repeatedly say I must do. I must be still. I must absorb. I must listen.

Part of researching fantasy is researching the past and researching the systems in place that resonated in the time. I took a religious day today and walked the steps of Saint Peter in a one day pilgrimage through multiple religious sites in Rome. This is a yearly thing that happens here, though it is mostly reserved for locals and those of the Cross. However, the good lady Talis was able to discover that this year they opened it up to outsiders… of which I am one.

I must say, it was an amazing experience. We started with a sermon at a nearby local basilica, traversed the ancient streets near the colosseum to see the prison where Peter was held. From there it was Basilica after Basilica as we moved across the city towards the Basilica of St. Paul. I’ve been to the Vatican, but I somehow skipped this place last time. It is beyond breathtaking. The statues practically come to life with realism. As we began so did we end, with a 5 pm mass in the Basilica. It was beautiful in a different way. It was powerful and filled with music… it also was not the pope. No, I didn’t expect it, but the procession for the (Cardinal?) who hosted was incredible. There is so much grandeur that I think those who write of the past and of fantastical worlds should be required to observe these types of events–not only those of the Cross.

I had a lot of time to think about the Debate that took place recently. Having sat and, frankly, stewed about it for hours I am prepared to say a few things:

1. How the hell is this the USA in 2024? I spent my entire life waiting for things to get better. In my youth I got involved because of my mother. In college I started getting involved because I finally started to understand that ‘we the people’ means something. By the time Obama left office, I was feeling like change was going to be a lot harder than I thought. Obama had to strong arm people for anything he tried to make happen. There were constant jokes about how Obama’s chief of staff was like a character from the Godfather leaving a horses head in your bed if you didn’t get in line. He had to operate through fear and force because all anyone ever did was stall. That tactic has become the defacto approach for Republicans to outlast a democrat’s reign. Yet as soon as they get one of their own, all the red tape goes away. So, things started to get worse, and they are getting much worse. We as voters are faced with a ridiculous choice–one that in no way moves the country forward or helps America stay great.
2. People are sheep. What worries me the most is the Trump bible. People–believers are actually buying the blasphemous thing. I’m out of time but I will talk more about it in the future. In short: It has a lot of material in there that is not at all biblical…

I was wandering through the news this morning when this line caught my eye, “..personalized highlights packages generated by artificial intelligence with the voice of Al Michaels” The aforementioned line was part of an article about US media coverage changes to the olympics. One of those changes is daily highlight packages curated by an AI voice that sounds like the great announcer Al Micheals. Yeah, he’s on board with this and argues that the AI version is within 2% of sameness to his own sound. A Vanity Fair interview reported “Micheals suggesting the voice was “Michaels was left in awe of the nuance—the way it captured his intonations and verbal subtleties.”

So here we are.

As I race to create my novel about AI, the technology itself is marching ahead with blistering speed, making what I thought to be predictive sci-fi, a relic of what already happened. This story of mine comes with a question and a warning. This reality does not seem to offer either, instead it is being openly embraced by those who would (and are) being coopted by its services. I continue to speculate about AI replacements, but that speculation hits hardest in the arts, where performers are paid very well by executives who are often very very greedy and lack functional skills beyond the management of those with exploitable skills.

How soon before those executives remove the middle man and just move directly to the part where they pimp AI created material directly to a content hungry audience who, given the growing lack of human mobility outside of ones community in a non-virtual experience, readily accept that AI feed as their new reality.

Are we so far removed from the sugar-coated horrors of Wall-E?

Nothing to speak of in terms of Waiver Wednesday action, which gives me a chance to talk about House of the Dragon. This show, which I finally chose to sit down and watch through the first season, is not very good. Sure, there are incredible moments, but these moments are symptomatic of what the show has set out to be–a series of moments cast over the history of a family. I wish the darn thing had come with such a warning label, because I did not know I was getting into a bloody History Channel retrospective.

The first 9 episodes of House of the Dragon take place over a span of 20+ years. We start with two girls who are in their mid teens and by the end of the 9th episode the actresses have been recast and their children have been recast. It is a sweeping drama that doesn’t pause to fully express human stories, but lingers in moments of epic importance to the point where the only thing you know about characters (and thus how you define them) are by the epic moments. There are few to no small moments for characters. When those softer moments do happen, it is definitely a precursor for a death or major trauma. In truth, House of the Dragon is defined by major trauma–it is all we are allowed to see. Well, that and constant easter eggs to the coming story of GOT. What I find most unnerving about the latter is that the Game of Thrones story never finished. Even here in the prequels (whose material is derived from Martin’s historical text Fire and Blood) there is nothing but hints to how the war against the threat behind the wall may be won. But, we never saw that war be won. We saw that war begin.

I’ve been debating a lot about how to write this fantasy epic. What I am learning from this experience is more of what not to do and more of the threat of promising what cannot be done. Martin promised a story he could not finish… or at least will not. I won’t do the same.

I think I am starting to settle into this Rome thing.

It has taken several days to really feel at peace and at home here, but halfway through the journey I think the Lady Talis and I are starting to get it. I am starting to sink in and develop an understanding of place and people if not language. That part may come over time, but not in the next few weeks, I gather. What I find to be most telling is that we have not met people–other couples or otherwise–and settled in with them. This may not be a thing that comes as naturally to us anymore as I had previously hoped. However, we’ve learned the places to go, how to get around, how we enjoy spending our time, and how much money all of this takes to accomplish.

The money issue is a big one, because we did this on the relative cheap and I continue to effort to pay down debt. Still struggling through that one.

If you’ve written any kind of fantasy or watched or read, you know that quite a bit of it takes place in a relative version of the middle ages. We get these sweeping epics of swords and sorcery where people ride horses and or dragons and battle through cities snatched from history books. I had the fortune to walk through one of those cities today. Orvieto, Italy is an active medieval city. Everything is modern inside of the husks of these old buildings at the top of a hill, but the hill and everything on it looks to be in the condition it was as a castle keep.

Looking at the city offered me a quick understanding of everything writers get wrong, and I’ll need to go back there–spend more time writing there to get fantasy right. The main thing I think we sleep on as writers is the technology, and when they were still using swords, they had some amazing tricks we don’t even realize were happening. For example, the ballast system.

I need to dig deeper into the 800-1200 era and really explore what went down worldwide. This is the research fuel for the fire that will be a major fantasy series.

I’m calling this a rebound blog, because I am fully (mostly) awake in the morning observing a gray Roman sky and thinking: This is going to be a good day. That starts with writing, as you should well know by now–well by yesterday at the most. The idea of me having a good day without some small measure of the word is sad indeed. I do crave the things that I crave, and those are the things that present me with joy in life. So, I’m going to spend the remainder of my time dedicating little sections of this ten to those things.

On Games
As I patiently await the arrival of College Football 25 (packaged with Madden, because they gotta know sales will slump badly). I have been re-exploring Starfield. There is a great deal of joy left in that game for me. I am finally starting to tackle outposts. It took me several xp runs (killing randoms and doing missions) in order to get the basic skills, and I needed to build one massive ass freighter to haul supplies, but I am finally embracing my inner minecrafter through this game. It is slow going. Progress is… well, I don’t know what I want or truly what I am doing, but I am starting to figure it out. So, I’m having fun, learning, and getting sucked back in… for now. CFB is coming.

On Writing
The Justice Engine is not finished. I allowed myself to really swirl around the drain of execution on this one. I am trying to get back into the courtroom headspace, but not so much that it becomes a standard courtroom drama. This is supposed to be a human story centered around AI and real emotions and the relationships that develop when we dabble in stuff I still think we aren’t properly prepared to dabble into. I have another project and a handful of revisions to attend to before beginning the next school cycle, but I intend to carve out more and more time to finish this piece of work. Honestly, it is finding all the right personalities to make it happen that has been the tough part. So I’m doing what I always do–I’m piecing it together conversation by conversation looking for something that ultimately fits into the shape of a narrative.

And no, I do not know how it ends.

On Love
The most important part of me comes last, because I keep most of it off stage where it belongs. I will say that Rome is the city of love, and if not for the plans this Talislegger has spent quite some time developing, accelerando would indeed be on the table. But there is a time and a place and a path for all things. I intend life to include all things.

It is a well worn and honest truth that if I don’t attend to the blog in the morning, I hesitate until the very last possible moment of execution. This is true, it seems, of all things outside of love and video games. It can therefore be asserted that these two things come natural or at the very least, easy. I have again waited to the last chime of the bell to see this blog to its fruition. I have, in that, failed to conjure anything resembling a clear cut direction or thought. I do have ten minutes to fill nevertheless, so here I remain.

I find myself thinking about something Stephen King said about writing. He posited that one must pursue writing daily. It doesn’t matter if the page is filled with scribbles of the worst kind. That determinism; that habit or even tradition will lead writers to produce. Practice makes perfect, in simpler terms. I Have issues with that–not with the statement but with the execution of the directive. I have failed again and again to come to the words for longer than the perfunctory ten minutes I share here with you (dear reader). It does lead to the presumption that writing is not valued. The truth is a far simpler lady: Writing does not provide the lovely pulse of dopamine these other endeavors (love, games) bring to the forefront. It does provide a well deserved hit, but the earning of that moment takes time.

Alas, I do not write solely for dopamine. Games are the only mistress of that regard. Like love itself (by which I mean the love of the Lady Talis and, two a different extent the responsibility to the six we call our own). I write because it is who I am. It is a calling no lesser than that of the cloth in my eyes. Yet I find myself far far far less reverent. It is a calling I miss when not in practice, which begs the question of why I am not so reverent. Why do I not give the proper hours?

It will be a wonderful day when I uncover that answer.

Some Thoughts:

1. Some philosophers may have a scientific ally in their position that consciousness is an illusion.

That morning Tracy Adkins didn’t want to get out of bed. This sort of thing happened maybe three days out of the week. It never happened on Mondays, though he knew the deluge of cases and questions about cases hitting his inbox by 8AM would be enough to make him want to quit outright. It was Tuesdays, after he’d survived Mondays. It was Fridays, because he wanted that extra day of just not having to deal with so many humans. It was Thursdays, because sometimes a four day weekend was just called for. Of course he never did call out, no matter how much he wanted to. He still heard the whispers of DEI hire, and other nonsense that followed him from his John Jay undergrad all the way through his Dayton Law Degree and into the Pinal County courts. Nobody understood why he chose to do law here, so they assumed he’d been brought here to fill a niche. They couldn’t imagine that he wanted to be in Arizona, and he never explained why he did. He never made an effort to explain anything about himself, or work to develop friendships amongst his colleagues. He was just there to work, which is why Mondays weren’t so terrible. At least that was until he heard about the murder.

He knew he’d be assigned the moment it hit the news. He might not be a DEI hire, but optics were optics. A black kid–an actual African-American by the sound of it–was charged with murdering a pretty young white girl. This was Dateline NBC stuff; a career maker for the AG or whomever the lead prosecutor wound up being. It was also a case that needed a black face on the side of justice–just to hold up appearances.

Tracy Adkins sighed deeply into his pillow. Then he struggled creakily to his feet and headed for the shower.