Mesh Update #10 – 50K and rising!

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Happy to say that I cracked 50,000 words on this draft of Mesh. I’m closing out Act three, where the Mesh comes to life. After that, we move onto Acts 4 and 5, where the Mesh and the kids of Miramar will come together to save the world. I’m so excited by how the story and characters are coming together.

I can’t wait to show you the weird, crazy world of Roman, Zeke and their friends, the Snow Foxes. I just got a Wacom tablet, so I’m going to start making use of it to draw a few concept pictures to give you a sense of what the Mesh, their virtual reality system, Miramar, and everything else looks like.

I’m also going to start posting some fun scifi stuff every Friday, so look for a few category called ‘Sci-Friday.’ It’s an experiment, so we’ll see how it goes.

Onward!

New Writer? Start Here

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Just ran across this awesome list of advice for new writers from other authors. If you’re a new writer, this is a good ‘Start Here’ for your journey.

11 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers With Incredible Advice

After years of sifting through blogs about how to get started or how to succeed, I love the idea that the process is really simple when you get down to it. We are telling lies for a living. Don’t get crazy. Don’t get intimidated. Nobody’s going to die. It’s supposed to be fun, so enjoy it.

In the end, I think my favorite advice came from JK Rowling:

Starting is easy. Continuing is hard. Finishing is the reward. Go.

Next Gen is Anti-Hollywood Scifi

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Next Gen is Anti-Hollywood Scifi

Hollywood should be scared of Next Gen, a throwaway animated project released by Netflix that looks like a rip-off of Big Hero 6. Before you can say ‘Are you satisfied with your care?’, Next Gen blows the doors off of every kid-movie trope over the past ten years. Strap in, sit back, and hold on. Slide to a stop two hours later, gasping to catch your breath with one unmistakeable conclusion: Next Gen is Anti-Hollywood scifi.

And oh man, does that feel good.

Why do we need anti-Hollywood scifi? Why is this movie important? The answers to those questions go to the heart of the conflict playing out in science fiction at this time. Where casual readers decry the lack of variety in mainstream sci-fi, where Hollywood bemoans a lack of interest in non-Superhero scifi, Next Gen plants a flag in the ground and says: “Here you go.” It’s important, then, that we talk about a movie that would otherwise slip through the cracks. There’s a lesson here that spreads out to the rest of the genre. Continue reading

New Microfiction – Nanobreak

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Thanks for waiting for my next post – I think you’ll be pleased. I picked up a writing prompt on Monday: “You research pathogens for the CDC. You’ve been given a blood sample from a frozen corpse that is over 70,000 years old. As you start to resolve the image, you realize the sample is filled with nanomachines and they are coming to life.” I broke the story up into two sections and I’m calling it ‘Nanobreak.’

We always imagine outbreaks taking place in third world locations, but what if they begin as a pathogen our systems can’t protect because they don’t understand?

Click Here to Read Nanobreak

 

New Microfiction: Lone Survivor

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Started some new microfiction over at Reddit that seems to be winding down now. ‘Lone Survivor’ is based on the writing prompt: “it’s been 14 months since the bombs fell. For 14 months you have had no one to talk to, no variety to your diet and nothing interesting to do. But today the air scrubbers in your bunker have stopped working. You now have to leave in search of repair parts or die.”

Inspiration for the story comes from several places: Cloverfield 10, Firefly, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and the artist pictured to the right: Simon Stålenhag. I wanted to paint a portrait of a simple guy, with a painful past, facing an uncertain future. I even named him ‘Chad,’ because I hate the name Chad and thought it would be fun to create a hero I immediately disliked. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

Read Lone Survivor Here

Real Writers Have Day Jobs

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After the Geoffrey Owens thing last week, I thought it might be interesting to talk about how creative people support themselves. Creators don’t exist in a vacuum, after all. We have bills, mortgages, relationships, and checking accounts. What am I trying to say? I’m saying real writers have day jobs, just like you.

I got curious earlier this week and decided to ask other writers about this. I started with a very simple question – “How Do You Support Yourself While Writing?” What I got back were a number of interesting insights.

Yes, real writers have day jobs. But what kind of jobs? It turns out, authors more often than not work a corporate gig somewhere. Keep that mind the next time you talk to your favorite IT guy, cybersecurity expert, developer, corporate trainer, or hotel A/V guy. They might be using your conversation as material, or turning you into a character they can murder.

I met one writer who is also an EMT, and one who works in probate registry. One way or another, many authors support themselves by helping others. Some writers teach English, like Stephen King, did. Other writers are in communications, are ghost-writers and marketers, or even chainsaw artists.

All that sounds cool on the surface but real talk: does working in writing hamper your creativity? Asking for a friend.

Many authors work in ways that are less white collar or career-focused. Some work at Trader Joes, like Geoffrey Owens did. Others are baristas or cafe managers. Sometimes this can suck, but if you have ‘easy hours and a great boss,’ you’ll get ‘lots of time/mental space to pursue your artistic endeavors.’ Still other authors are retired and living lean.

Finally, the last category – there are many writers like me, living with a disability. ” Before I got too sick to work I was finishing my masters in neurological psych and forensic psych, already had degrees in Criminal investigations and forensics. I was fast tracking for the FBI ViCAP,” says TwistedMune. “A lot of my ghostwriting jobs are psychological analysis and true crime books.” Reading that made me feel a lot better. There are a tribe of writers out there who know the struggle.

So if you’re considering a career as an author or writer, you may want to remember that writing is often what you do after you get done with work every day. It’s not all book-signings and late nights with William Strunk. However, if you’re up for the life, it can be quite rewarding.

It’s the ‘sex and cash’ theory of creative professionals. Find joy in the art, do the gig so you can do the art. I live pretty lean on my disability check, but that’s ok. I’m in love with making a chapter or a scene come together (Like the chapter of Mesh I’m working on right now, for example). The fact that I’m cruising EatCheapandHealthy for recipies is just part of the trip.

So I hope you found this interesting and insightful. Addtionally, if you’re looking for a job to support your writing, you might check out the suggestions mentioned here and here.

Write on!

Mesh Update #9 – Stars Can Collapse

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This is a tough one. I talked about David Hahn before, but  it wasn’t until today that I knew how the story ended. Hahn died in 2016 of alcohol poisoning. They found David’s body in a Wal-Mart bathroom, 18 years after building a nuclear reactor in his back yard. This tragic conclusion illustrates what I said earlier. We need schools to nurture budding stars like Hahn or Taylor Wilson. Stars will collapse, if they don’t have the right conditions to shine.

There is no question, for example, that David Hahn had a tremendous amount of potential. After all, you can’t be both a sniper and a master helmsman unless you’re both bright, and talented. But what went wrong? Continue reading

Still Cranking …

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Just a quick note to say ‘Yes, I’m still breathing.’ Personal medical stuff has gotten me down, but I’m still kicking. I submitted two short stories to new publishers (see the Short Story production page for details) and now it’s back to work on Mesh. I have health problems, but my health problems don’t have me.

Do All of the Things Now

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Excellent career advice when considering a creative job. Watch out for the f-bombs, though.

“So that’s your to-do list: Upgrade the day job and upgrade the dream and speed up the publication schedule. Do all of the things. Don’t just write a book right now. DO ALL OF THE THINGS RIGHT NOW. Enjoy them and celebrate them. Today is all you have. You don’t need a future. You don’t need a finish line. When you realize that, time slows down. You just need this day.”

All that in more in this amazing write-up on the creative career path:

‘Should I Quit My Day Job to Write a Book?’

Ahead of the Curve: Scifi and the Effortless White Woman

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‘Effortless white women. Where have I been? This has been a thing for over ten years now. I was late to the party, but the resentment against that zeitgeist bubbles forth like a Hawiian volcano, and so it came to my attention. The happy news about this stale trope in our boring dystopia is that scifi has been ahead of the curve when it comes to this self-destructive mindset.

Who or what is an ‘effortless white girl?’ The Medium article explains: “a feminine ideal that has been part of women’s media ever since second-wave feminism made it taboo to publish articles about decorating to please your husband: The Effortless White Woman.”

Ellen Ripley, after someone asked her to make a sammich

As bad as that is, it gets worse: “This seemingly leaves women stuck in the familiar, dreary bind always created by internalized misogyny: hating ourselves, and hating other women because they remind us of how mu ch we hate ourselves, with only a few callous opportunists getting out ahead. But the anger under the Effortless White Woman has, of late, been transforming into something potentially illuminating—not deferred self-loathing, but an actual recognition of injustice.”

All that bad mojo aside, the good news is that scifi was, is, and will always be on the right side of history when it comes to the Effortless White Woman. We’ve never had much use for anyone, regardless of their gender, who does not understand the value of struggle.

Think of our favorite female heroes: Wonder Woman, Princess Leia, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, River Tam, Trinity. Do we admire them for their effortlessness, or do we admire them because of their strength and their resilience?

I Am Woman: Hear Me Blast a Stormtrooper

Oddly enough, Gwenth Paltrow is at the center of this Effortless White Woman discussion and yet I only know her because I love her as Pepper Potts in Iron Man. Her Pepper Potts is hardly effortless. On the contrary, she’s a strong, determined person, capable of reigning in the mad genius of Tony Stark.

If I were to think of an EWW in the Scifi or Fantasy world, it would be the Childlike Empress in Neverending Story. Sure enough, she was the Ivory Tower girl come to life, waiting to be rescued by Atreyu. Do you even remember her? I had to google her name (Tami Stronach). That’s how little the character mattered to me.

So to wrap up – perhaps the answer to this social issue is not so much extrinsic (“Everyone should stop idolizing the Effortless White Woman”) as much as it is intrinsic (“My value comes from inside, not from a product I buy, and if you can’t understand that then maybe you need a time-out.”).

Just a thought. Just me. Please don’t be angry if I’m missing an important issue. Reach out to me on Twitter or Reddit – I’d like to learn.