Mesh Update #11: New Free Wallpaper

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Just in time for the end of the year, a new free wallpaper for Mesh.  I do concept art digital paintings of my stories – helps me inform my writing. For this piece, I wanted to try something different and focus on the characters of Mesh themselves.

Mesh Update #11: New Free WallpaperSo let’s do that. Tina is one of the ‘Snow Foxes,’ an elite group of techno-geeks that dominate the school and virtual reality. Let’s be clear: She isn’t a ‘damsel in distress,’ or ‘born sexy yesterday.’ I hate tropes that perpetuate mean-spirited stereotypes, so Mesh leaves them by the side of the road where they belong.

Tina isn’t perfect. She on the austistic spectrum. She’s also brilliant, athletic, witty, and brave. She’s a teenage girl who codes, plays basketball and practices jujitsu. She isn’t there to talk about the boys, or be talked about them. She’s there to be herself, like every person should be free to be.

Inside the Station, the massive VR system that contains our fearless geeky kids, you’re allowed to create your own sprites. Tina decided to transform herself into an anime princess as you’ll learn in Mesh:


“She looked up at two sprites that had just come through abusy communicating arch. “Watch it. Incoming nerds.”
“Huh?”
“Kids from the other team,” Tina said, morphing into a taller version of herself, now with red hair instead of blonde, and green eyes instead of blue. Her t-shirt melted into modular white plates, forming armor that belonged in some anime show. In the blink of an eye, she transformed herself into a warrior princess, ready for battle. “For these kids, you want to have your war face on.”

“I think I just fell in love with you,” Zeke mumbled.

“You’re cool, my sweet summer child.” Tina’s smile was somewhere between amused and flattered. Then she turned back to the approaching sprites. “Just remember that we’re friends. That’s all we’re ever going to be.”

Zeke nodded, swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple bobbed like a yo-yo.

Mesh – Chapter 2.6

With that scene in mind, I started working with Photoshop. I started with a free open-source picture from Unsplash and with the help of some visual references and my trusty digital tablet, put the wallpaper above together to give away for free.

Love it, hate it, it’s still worth it to me. Making one thing in one way helps me make something else in another way. I hope you enjoy ‘Armorgirl,’ and the other free wallpapers I have to share.

Here’s Something Fun … Yelp the Mars Curiosity Rover!

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Have you enjoyed watching the exploration of Mars via the Internet? Have you wished to share your opinion about the Mars missions with others? Well, now you can because for a limited time you can post a review of your Mars Curiosity rover experience … on Yelp!

Post Your Curiosity Rover Review on Yelp

Give the rover five stars … it makes NASA happy. Act fast, before Yelp takes this down.

On Originality in Science Fiction

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The following words are criticism of the blockbuster scifi franchise ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins: derivative, borrowed, derived, imitative unoriginal, and copied. Yes, there is very little about The Hunger Games that can be considered new, authentic or original.

But guess what? Nobody cares.

In the world of creative expression, there’s a constant fear that someone will scream ‘plagarism!’ I know I worry about that. Thing is, originality is very subjective. Also, there’s a fine line between ‘original’ and ‘unreadable.’ For example, here’s a completely original story that I just wrote:

Radisarylldon boilty eminfat quitough reever. Donnine, salanded slentereposs chinve papereing and prodlationer admitervel santendaisms agilism overgospecest. Unificanothed fortan crosphing peculatory launhis within his frowskatined auguession aggently abated impredsgusions.

“Chellightly pograpprecling,” she said. “Amsoloblook cropenom dickaggisly uistnin recomms ceptordeemly crystaing whimburg.”

“But idensiter yamantag,” he asked. “Compliceitants dobeakens adulentiones ablemeaggrify sympucky!”

“Nicampting midive elynorms. Robloardintes mooducetter mizincied barban untefuringer.”

There you go, an original story. What’s the matter, didn’t you like it? Well, why not?? It’s original, after all! 🙂

Of course, I’m kidding. I just wanted to illustrate the same point that Ogden Nash made many years ago:

Here is a good rule of thumb; Too clever is dumb – Ogden Nash

And so it goes with all discussions about originality. The Hunger Games, for example, is a clear rip-off of older books and movies … some people want to say that it wasn’t but … whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Suzanne Collins can tell a story that people can connect with. That’s what I want to do, that’s what every author wants to do. More power to her, to them, and to us.

Be original, be bold, be authentic. Be you.

 

Unbelievable Free Author Tools

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A common myth among non-writers is that authors’ words just flow from some magical brain faucet with no assistance from anyone, anywhere. I wish! No, the truth is a lot more boring. Authors rely on tools and many of them are free. It’s unbelievable how many of them are out there just lying around. It’s like stumbling on a garage filled with parts, just waiting for a mechanic to go to work.

Well today, that’s you and me. Here are six resources I found and I’ll add more as I go along. Feel free to make use of them yourself as you work to improve your writing:

Wordhippo 

Wordhippo is a thesaurus on steroids. Works great when you’re tired and you can’t think of another way to say “sarcastic.”

List of Adjectives to Describe Tone, Feelings and Emotions
Other Ways to Say “Roll the Eyes”: A Word List for Writers
100 Words for Facial Expressions
Cheat Sheets For Writing Body Language
37 Ways To Write About Anger

Got any others? Send me yours and I’ll add them to my list!

Mesh Update #11: Full Spectrum

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Today’s Mesh update comes from an email I received this week. My six year-old nephew has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. He’s a cute kid, looks like the boy on the right. It’s important to me and my stories that characters navigate the full spectrum of modern kids. To honor my nephew, and the 62.2 million other people with ASD, one of Mesh’s main characters will have autism. Let’s talk about what that means.

My personal journey makes me painfully aware of how people treat disability. They usually fall into three buckets: the people who ignore you, the people who make fun of you, and my personal favorite – the Harry Stones. You know what I mean: Harry Stone on Night Court always had to make a big speech where he gives you the moral of the story. Harry Stones have to make a big deal about how your disability isn’t a big deal. It may sound like they’re good people but it’s really them making your circumstances about them. Irritating.

It’s important to remember that differently-abled kids are all around us. There’s no reason to ignore them, or act like their disability is the only thing worth knowing about them. Let’s create a fourth category: the people who go “Yeah, you have autism. So?” I’m doing that with Roman, Mesh’s protag, and his wheelchair. Why not do the same thing with autism?

One thing I realized after getting my sister’s email is this – my nephew is still a great kid. We hang together, as much as I can handle other people, and he’s never acted weird about Uncle Jackson needing to be alone or getting off the phone after a three minute phone call. He’s smart, he’s kind, and he’s generous. He’s still the same person he was yesterday, the only difference is that someone put a label on him? He didn’t change, I did. That realization forced me to go back to the beginning and mentally put myself in the fourth bucket. It’s taking work, but I’m glad I’m doing it.

In a world where the future just is, we can use Mesh to reinforce that fourth bucket. So, no big deals. No ‘very special episodes.’ Just like we can say “Oh yeah, wheelchair,” with Roman, we’re going to say “Autism. Right.” and move on with our day. Just like Roman, that character’s different abilities will impact how they see life but it’s not and never will be the center of the story.

More “How to Not Suck” Writing Advice

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Just finished reading this Twitter thread about ‘raising stakes’ and story development, from the perspective of a freelance author. I’m passing it along because it’s one more piece of ‘How to Not Suck’ writing advice. You might find it useful, as I did:

Click the box to keep reading – Naomi has some great advice!

Train Hack – New Free Wallpaper

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Because I love you, here’s a new free wallpaper. ‘Train Hack’ is a piece of concept art I’ve been working on, based on my upcoming novel Mesh.

 

In Chapter 1.5, our hero Roman uses his newfound hacking skills to stop a high speed train. As cool as that sounds, Roman knows that the people after him are smarter, much smarter, than he is. He’s got to use everything he’s learned at Miramar, along with his cybernetic legs and his neuro-connected computer, if he wants to survive the next twenty-four hours.

The more pictures I create, the better it informs my writing. Catching myself going back to add more detail to the story, now that it’s out of my head and on the screen. I hope you enjoy the wallpaper as much as I enjoyed making it. Keep making, keep creating, keep dreaming!

Your Writing Sucks – Here’s How to Fix It

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“Your writing sucks.” I had to say this to myself today and to be honest, it kind of hurt. Sometimes I have to yell at myself before I’ll get better, and today was one of those days. Happily, that’s not the end of the story. Bad writing is a challenge we all have to overcome, so here’s how to fix it.

Like anything else you make, subjecting it to some simple quality control will shine a flashlight on what is not working. Just like a diamond must be polished, your writing must be stripped of everything that won’t make it sparkle. Where most people would hire an expensive editor, you can do the following four-step process for free. You don’t even need to work that hard, grab a cup of coffee, put on your favorite tunes and get cracking:

  1. Spell-check – Just a simple spell check in MSFT Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, Open Office … whatever tool you’re using. Don’t let a ‘teh’ get all the way to the book store. Fix the stupid little problems here.
  2. Grammarly.com – You can pay for a subscription, or Grammarly lets you copy and paste everything into a free online tool, even if it takes longer. Grammarly will examine your work for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and other sins of the scribe.
  3. Hemingwayapp.com – Also another free tool that a best-selling author sent my way. Hemingway may not teach you to write like Hemingway, but dadgum if it doesn’t cut through lazy writing than Dawn cuts through grease.
  4. Finally, search your writing for words or phrases you use too often. In my case, my characters kept ‘shrugging’ and ‘rolling their eyes.’ I did a search within Windows and my characters were rolling their eyes every chapter. I fixed that. I have other writing hacks to share here, but that’s for another post.

So there you have it. Yes, your writing sucks. Acknowledging the problem is the first step. Bad writing will suck the energy out of your story, and it even makes it harder for you to write because in the back of your head, you know you’ve got this stinky diaper pile of words to clean up. De-clutter, clean up! It’ll actually give you the energy needed to tackle the next draft.