Category Archives: Uncategorized

It’s pretty, Bishop.

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Andrea is a baker (as well as a writer), and I like to eat. We’ve been talking about making gingerbread for Christmas. We made our first experimental batch last night. We made a dozen gingerbread men in various costumes. The best were the gingerbone (skeletons) and the ninjabread man. Next time we’re going to try making a ninja outfit out of fondant. I neglected to take pictures before they were consumed, but I promise to take some the next time.

We’ve taken to spending some quiet, romantic friday nights, watching tv and having some wine. We were sitting on the couch, waiting for the gingerbread to cooled when the power went out. It’s not unusual to loose power, even in clear weather. I flipped on the scanner and heard: “did anyone see the bright light to the west?”, “…transformer…”, “…looked like a spotlight…”. It didn’t take long for the power grid to switch to a new transformer, but somewhere in the process our internet died. Another router fried.

We made a trip to Frys to pick up a new one, but they didn’t have the one I wanted. We stopped for a bite of lunch at Hooters (when did they get boneless wings?). There’s a Tiger Direct store nearby, so we headed in that direction with the intent to stop by and check out a comic book store on the way. We wanted to pick up the second volumes of The Walking Dead and 100 Bullets, and I’m on the look out for Transmetropolitan.

Right next door to the comic book store was a pet store that I’ve bought from before. That was probably a bad thing. We forgot to go look for comics and the pet store not only had a mix of two of my favorite breeds, but she was on sale.

Behold the Puppy!

She’s a Neapolitan Mastiff/English Bulldog mix and should be between 75-100lb when full grown. It’s a good thing we have plenty of room now, and are planning to move to a place with a fenced in yard in the country next year sometime. Between our new puppy, the boxer and the blue heeler/border collie, we’re full up on dogs.

We haven’t decided on a name for her yet, but we’re leaning towards Ripley.

Link Salad for a Cold Friday

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A smattering of links I’ve been meaning to share.

Week in review

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Another busy week or two and I’m still failing to blog consistently. Mea culpa.

A week ago Thursday, Andrea and I went into Chicago to see The Most Interesting Show in the World, hosted by Jim Rose. It was a slimed down version of his famous circus, featuring The Amazing Kenichi, Melody Sweets, Leonid the Magnificent, Johnny Fayva, Lilian Stepanova, and Mark “The Knife” Faje. We had great time, apart from the show starting an hour later than we were expecting and the parking ticket. I’d love to catch Jim Rose again, but probably not inside such a small club. There were no more than 30 seats available, all of which were taken or reserved by the time we arrived.

We went to Windycon 35 on Saturday. I saw Trey and Tim from the writers group, met Tobias Buckell briefly, and got my copies of Mike Resnick’s “This Is My Funniest” 1 & 2 signed. Not a bad day. The theme of next years Windycon 36 is steampunk. I can’t wait.

I finished the story I’ve been writing for the Footprints anthology and submitted it on Friday. Today I finished a story for Byzarium’s Flash Fiction contest. The contest uses a piece of artwork as the prompt for a 500-word story. This was the second story I’ve written using the artwork of Kiriko Moth as inspiration. She’s an amazing artist and I hope to see more of her work in the future.

My two immediate writing deadlines are met. Next up I need to type up and start revising my Tesla story. I met my goal for the year of twelve new stories, but now I need to revise them and hit the slush piles hard. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I’ll be working on stories for the upcoming Federations and Shine anthologies. Lots of hard work ahead but I’m looking forward to it.
We picked up some new books this week. I’m slowly getting caught up on the reading I want to do, so expect more posts in the coming week, along with a book giveaway.

Return to Luna artwork

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The Return to Luna anthology, containing my story “Misdirected”, will be released in December 2008. I’ve done the usual things new authors do, squeeing over the proof and breaking out into giggles at random. I just received the cover (jacket?) artwork. This will be my second publication, but the first one to see print. I can’t wait to hold this in my grubby little hands.

Return to Luna
Cover art (c) Walter Myers

I don’t have the details on where and how to buy yet, but I’ll be sure to add them here when I have them.

Home Again

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Home from New York City. Short trips like this are always a little tiring. So much activity crammed into a short period of time. This was my second trip to Ad Tech. I’m a techie at heart and don’t consider myself much of a salesman. That puts me in the minority at a trade show like this.

I’ve always had an eye for business. When I wrote software for the tanning industry, I would often talk to salon owners about what they did and what they needed. I even spent several nights working behind the counter, so I understood how their business worked.

Over the years, I’ve become a little more comfortable stepping out of the technical role. It helps that I’m passionate about the work I do and firmly believe we have a technically superior system. I designed it from the ground up and for the last four and a half years it’s been my baby. As the company grows and I step into more of a management role, I delegate more and slowly put the tools into the capable hands of the team we have built and continue to build.

I met many of my clients/partners at Ad Tech or the after party. It’s always a pleasure to put a face to the name. In some cases, there were people I’ve been working with for nearly five years that I met for the first time yesterday.

A good trip, good food, and good people. I passed Diane Neal from Law & Order: SVU on 7th avenue (I’m such a L&O fanboy). I had my first New York style hot dog. I ate my first (and possibly last) oyster. I celebrated Obama’s win in Times Square.

Live from Times Square

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We walked through Times Square earlier this evening, hours before the first poll closed. The crowd was large and people were still filing in. Hours later, after the post-trade-show meetings and work were done, I sat down and watched the acceptance speech in awe. A block and 31 stories away, I could hear the people cheering.

Fear of crowds be damned. I left the hotel and let the noise be my drummer, I didn’t walk a lot as I had hired transport  the company  bostoncorporatecoach.com/ which is in so many countries and in all my work travels they have been the best to hire.

In Times Square, the people cheered and cried. Chants of “Oh-bah-ma” and “Yes-we-can” rang clear. Cars honking. Passengers waving. Signs waving. Camera’s flashing. Strangers embracing in celebration and saying, “we did it.”. We. A victory for us all. Ethnicity, sexual preference, gender, citizenship, it did not matter.

Empowerment.

I was overwhelmed by the surge of emotion, of hope and possibility. I teared up several times, looking up at the digital billboards proclaiming the historic news: Barack Obama, President-elect. Never in my thirty-three years have I seen or experienced anything like this. It looks like my generation has its Lincoln or Kennedy. A catalyst for change, a driving force for prosperity. It’s about damn time. Maybe the US can shed it’s reputation as the biggest dickhead and start working with the world instead of trying to cram our ideologies down its throat.

Celebrate and cheer now. We’ve a lot of work to do. We still have bigotry and intolerance to fight and a long road to walk before we can hold our head high and be proud of our record of human rights. At least now, we’re on the right road.

In the Big Apple

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I made it to New York City with minimal difficulty today. Court went smoothly and traffic was light, so I made it to O’Hare with enough time to catch an earlier flight. One shuttle and subway ride later, I found the Westin and checked-in.

I met my co-workers for dinner at Quality Meats, followed by 40/40, where we co-sponsored a VIP party for the trade show. A fun night, and I got to meet several people I’d only known via email or instant message.

Feeling a little dead tonight. My original flight was canceled and American Airlines decided they needed to call me at 4:15AM and 4:45AM to make sure I knew about it. Between that and the flight I managed about four hours sleep today and tomorrow’s going to be another busy day. Here’s to hoping the beds here are comfortable.

It also looks like I’ll be staying over an extra day, so home again on Wednesday. I’m already missing Andrea and our menagerie of pets. I hear the dogs have been camping out at the front door all day and night, waiting for my return.

I sent in my absentee ballot a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t already, please go vote and make your voice heard. I think we’re on the brink of seeing some real change happen and that makes me feel pretty damn good.

For Midgard! For Asgard! For Odin!

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Marvel comic has no shortage of upcoming movie adaptations. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, Ant-Man and sequels to Iron Man and Spider-Man. The one I’m most hopeful for, though, is Thor. For one, it marks a departure from the current trend in Marvel movies in that it touches on the supernatural rather than genetic mutations or lab accidents. Presumably Doctor Strange will continue that by branching into the realm of magic.

Rumors over who will play the lead in Thor have been swirling. Some have speculated that Kevin McKidd would play the lead, but his possible role has been downplayed. Personally, I’m hoping for Paul Levesque, aka WWE wrestler Triple H.

Triple H as Thor?
He’s got the look; the hair, the physique, even his voice fits the part. Plus, he comes with his own hammer. I can’t think of a better choice to play Thor. He’s already worked with Marvel, on Blade: Trinity. As a professional wrestler and occasional guest star, he has some acting experience. It’s probably just wishful thinking on my part, but come on: that’s a Thor to strike fear into the heart of his enemies.

While will is strong, habits are formed

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I’ve been working on developing better writing habits lately. I haven’t been the most organized or consistent of writers. I wrote in bursts and often complained about the lack of time available. No more.

Developing a habit takes roughly three weeks. A habit, like brushing your teeth or combing your hair, is something done in such repetition that to do otherwise feels unnatural. It’s not something we fret about not having the time for; we just do it.

I spent a few hours building a spreadsheet to track my writing statistics. It keeps me accountable, knowing that at the end of the day I need to enter my word count and it lets me see how my productivity changes over time. I’m not much of a math geek but I do love my statistics.

I set a weekly goal of 3,000 words. Over time I expect to raise this but I want to start out with reasonable goals and move up from there. This week (Monday-Sunday), I wrote 3,253 words. I averaged 465 words/day, and my most productive day was Saturday, with 1,046 words written. I’ve written all but two days this month, and those at the beginning. The going is strong.

During the CSSF Workshop in the summer of 2007 I outlined a SF alternate history story involving Nicola Tesla. I have a fascination with Tesla and wanted to do something challenging with that. I started writing the story around the beginning of October (pre-spreadsheet) and finished it on Saturday. The handwritten first draft ended up around 6,300 words, just 100 words shy of my original estimate. I’m pretty pleased by how it’s shaping up. I’m going to sit on it for a few weeks before typing it up and beginning the revision process.

I started work on my story for the Footprints anthology. Nothing like waiting until the end of the submission deadline to get a story ready. The guidelines are fairly narrow and it took a while for an idea to develop. I’ll be spending the next few weeks getting this story up to snuff before the deadline on November 15th.