I find myself in an odd spot. I’ve got in my possession a story. It’s not generally my kind of story. A short story that was written by my uncle. My uncle passed away back in 2014 (side note – I didn’t realize it had been that long. It certainly doesn’t seem to be that far back). I’d like to do something with the story but I don’t know if I can.
I have no honest idea if the story was published when he wrote it or not. It’s all on typewritten pages dated from back in 1981. I think he might have used the old school copyright trick of making 2 copies and mailing them to himself. Way back before e-mail and internet I seem to recall this was a method of proving copyright by way of having an official government date and time stamp (from the post office cancelling the mail) on your sealed envelope. This was a way of not going through the cost of doing the paperwork to get your work through the actual copyright office.
At the time of the initial clean up of what remained of my uncle’s worldly possessions a number of things were boxed and put in the car with a “sort this out later” label. My mom found this in a box of things that she found in the basement. It was likely missed during the ‘sort this out’ phase and this is clearly “later”. She opened the envelope and found two copies of the story. I got one today.
I read the story. It’s clear and well written. It clocks in around 3,000 words. I think I understand where my uncle was going with it, but I am not 100% certain. I think with some rework it would be a story that could be sold today, or perhaps even the start of a series of short stories. There is potential.
Thing is – it’s not mine. I have no idea what the legality of any of this is. I don’t know if the story was submitted before. I don’t know if he published it himself (he did run a small press at one point). I don’t think I could successfully search up this story if it ever was published.
My thought is to present the story here, perhaps in serialized form a few hundred words at a time. Maybe I’ll then write some other stuff based on this short story… I’m not sure. I’m going to run the idea past a few people before I really do anything with it.
Hopefully that will mean some new fiction here soon?
For a while I was writing reviews for a number of different places. I would also post up my reviews over on Goodreads. I haven’t been asked to do any book reviews for any of my sources for quite some time. I am also woefully behind on posting reviews for the works that I have read.
I’m trying to catch up with these ‘missed’ reviews on Goodreads. Normally I’d cross publish all of those reviews here but I suspect I’m going to just hit the highlights.
Reviewing all the books I missed from the end of last year’s reading during January of this year feels a little like cheating on this year’s list. Like bumping or padding my stats in an unfair way. I mean, nobody is looking or checking. I haven’t actually set any goals personally or using whatever tools the web site offers – so I’m not sure who I think I’m cheating on, but the feeling persists.
I feel as though I do actually need to add this review here.
Disclaimer – I know the author, but I did not get this book as any kind of freebie or promotion or anything. I went and bought it. Yes, she signed it for me, but that’s just because she’s cool.
Having said all that – this was an awesome book. Go, buy it and read it. Then go and get the next one too.
Lyra is a teenage girl. She lives with her parents in another part of the galaxy searching for resources. The story centers around Lyra and the mystery surrounding the life sized terracotta warriors that humans have found on 21 different planets.
The voice of the main character in this book is very strong. Lyra is a real person – it’s that good. The science of the time dilation just adds to the mix and makes a really suspenseful story. I don’t want to give anything away. I will simply repeat – go get this book.
Make no mistake, writing is work. I know there are people out there who throw down thousands upon thousands of words and they just seem to flow out of them, but even for those people this is work.
I’m beginning to get myself back to a creative place and be able to do this work more regularly. This is a boon for actually putting words up here. Sometimes there are extra words that don’t actually fit in the stories I’m working on and they slop over the side of the cup. On good days I can mop up those words and squeeze them out into something vaguely coherent here.
Sometimes those words just leave a ring shaped stain on my desk.
The most difficult times are when I really want to lay down a screed about something that has caught my attention in the news and I just don’t have the ability to get here and do it. It’s a spoon thing for folks that subscribe to that analogy. I just run out of spoons.
A good example of this is the latest Star Wars film. I went to see it on opening day. I was at the theater for the earliest show. I went early and had my favorite seat, right in the middle in the middle. Popcorn in hand I was on board to see more Star Wars!
I watched it. I was confused by so many parts of it. It was big, it was splashy and decidedly a “need to see it on the big screen” kind of film. That was the best thing I could say for it. There were a ton of clearly fan service moments in there. There were a ton of really questionable story telling choices. I would honestly need to see it again just to parse out all the weird combinations of stuff that either did or didn’t work. What I really needed to do at the time was jump on here and write all those things down while they were fresh in my mind…
And here I am a month later mentioning that I wanted to talk about it.
Would the words still be relevant? The moment is past. There are a half dozen other things that have come up and made waves since then. There are tons and tons of reviews in either direction (love it or hate it ~ take your pick) and my take would be a rehash of various parts of a lot of them. I didn’t get to the work in time.
That actually brings up another point. Work. I like putting my thoughts up here and having a place where I can land all this stuff that is my own. It’s my web site ~ I own it. I will put what I want up here, when I want to put it here and not worry if some massive company is going to accidentally “ban” me for a month or whatever. It’s my own and I will do as I please. It is my own, and this doesn’t pay. All these words are free and sometimes I need to focus on the words that pay. I will be the first to tell you that they don’t pay well, but they do pay (from time to time).
So I’m going to continue to work. If you’ve meandered with my train of thought all the way to the bottom of this ~ thank you. I appreciate that you’re reading. I’m off now to hammer out some more of those words that are supposed to pay.
If you’d like to see a really amusing take on all sorts of aspects of the most recent Star Wars film that didn’t really work head on over to YouTube and check out Pitch Meeting. I thought it was more than funny, it was pretty right on.
I was having a conversation with a friend about digital ownership. That wasn’t all the conversation was about, but it was a significant part of what we covered. He was telling me about a group of people that had put a lot of money into this digital venture and then it was suddenly gone.
By pure coincidence I got this notice today:
That’s it. A program I’ve been using for a while is going to just stop. The notice popped up right after an “upgrade”. No recourse, no options ~ they’re done. If you’ve put any amount of money into this program… sorry. You’re done. Use it up before April.
This is a game, and I’ve never actually spent any money on it. It was running on the ad revenue from me and clearly that’s not enough for them to keep going with this program. The money amounts for “in app purchases” never really looked like anything more than ten or twelve bucks. I still wouldn’t spend my money on it…
And that’s part of what’s making me think. My friend was explaining this other group of folks had dropped tens or hundreds of dollars on “digital real estate” and would often spend significant amounts of time in these digital locations. I have to admit that I don’t get it. I’m trying to draw parallels to spending money on going to the movies or some other form of entertainment, but the amount of money seems terribly disproportionate to me. I’m not sure where the block is for me… but it definitely doesn’t seem to make sense to me.
I suppose the value of entertainment is in what you get out of it. While hundreds of dollars seems desperately irresponsible to me for purchasing video game… anything frankly, if I didn’t have the ability to get up and out of the house on my own I’d likely see that differently. That digital real estate would be my way to vacation. I wouldn’t get photos at the airport, I’d get screen shots of that one time when this really cool thing happened ~ right?
I will probably have this added to the tally of “Luddite credentials” that I have, but I just don’t ever foresee myself being willing to put so much money into an item of entertainment, and particularly never a digital thing. I’m already very nervous about the number of “books” that I don’t own via Kindle. I do my best to download copies to an off line location, but I can’t say that I’ve gotten them all. Even if I did get them all, what if the reader equipment I have fails to function? I get the queasy feeling that I’ll eventually be dealing with some other kind of entertainment / digital upgrade nonsense about something that will cause me to add to my pile of vinyl records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, VCR tapes…
I suppose I have to chalk this up to the price of entertainment and the illusion of ownership. People will pay what they want to have fun and be part of something entertaining. I won’t be paying to join an online WoW server any time soon, but I hope the folks that do have a great time while it lasts.
I’ve been a fantasy fan for a long
time, but I haven’t played video games since the days of Atari. When
the Netflix series “The Witcher” was announced I had no
idea what was headed to the screen. While a long time fan of fantasy
I’ve drifted away recently and read in many other genres. I still
love it, but missed anything related to this series. I started
watching the show with a blank slate, just really hoping for some
excellent, accessible fantasy.
Before I get to the spoilers I will say that I did in fact like the series. I can’t say that I loved it, but it is swords and sorcery and that usually works out well for me. If you’re a fan of swords and sorcery it’s worth watching. There is a book series. I thought I would go and grab up the books, then I read this review. Perhaps I’ll hold off. Maybe it’s better to let the show stand on its own.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
Why didn’t we get more of *this* Witcher?
Yes, it’s swords and sorcery. It’s got
a ton of standard fantasy tropes in there. Eleves, dwarves, wizards,
and even dragons. There are castles and wizard battles and swamp
monsters and ghouls and…
and all those things are rammed in and
around the plot in just 8 episodes.
The problem with epic fantasy is rarely
the fantasy part. The problem is the epic part. There
is SO much world building and background that it’s almost impossible
to cram it all in to anything less than a massive series. The writers
tend to do exactly what I said ~ they cram. The push and mash and
squeeze as many of the eye catching ‘cool’ fantasy things into as
short a span as they can in a desperate grab for eyeball time. The
Witcher suffers from this. There is so much there and very, very
little of it is actually the main character doing his job. Geralt is
a magically created warrior designed to hunt and destroy monsters.
The series opens with him battling a swamp dwelling giant spider with
human features, then shows his fighting powers against people, then
that fades away in order to start stacking in story.
As I wrote that I had to stop and
really think about it. How could I complain about building in story?
It’s exactly what I always say that I want. That is the part about
cramming in the ‘epic’ part. The story is named for Geralt’s job, but
then we spend huge amounts of time on Ciri, Yennifer, Jasker the
bard, The Brotherhood (that is mostly women?) and a jumble of other
bits. We see Geralt’s part in things, but only just.
Witchers are supposed to be constructed
to have no human emotions. I suspect this is not the truth and much
like the manner in which Spock is portrayed in the modern updates of
the Star Trek series the character is deeply emotional, simply
repressed to the point of psychological damage. I believe the
emotions will burst forth in the form of rage at some point. A truly
emotionless character would be far less interesting. What this
emotionless warrior does is drift through the story. I want to like
Geralt, but he’s flat. On purpose? Maybe.
So a flat character and a jumble of
story. At least the whole thing will make sense when it’s fully
rendered on screen, right? Wrong.
The time line jumps all over the place.
I could never tell when in the story we were supposed to be. Were we
in the past, the distant past, the present? It was almost impossible
to tell for sure. Flashbacks to dead characters that have been
replaced by magic shape shifters only made this worse. Apparently
both the sorceress Yennifer and Geralt are supposed to be
significantly older? Sorcerers are supposed to have greatly expanded
life spans, but we’re only getting vague references to that? It was
very frustrating.
The other part I found frustrating was
the indecision of what the nature of the show wanted to be. Getting
past organizational aspects of how the story was made, what were they
trying to portray? There were tons of gratuitous nudity scenes.
Generally speaking I am in favor of that sort of thing – if it
advances the story in some way. These scenes all gave me the feeling
that what they were aiming for was trying to take over the space
vacated by Game of Thrones. The show wanted to be dark, and
mysterious, violent and sexy… and then they added in Jasker the
bard. Jasker should have been Joxer from Xena: Warrior Princess.
They could have gone for a much lighter, entertaining version of the
entire series. There were still monsters and fighting and love
stories just with added camp.
I don’t know if I would stay on board
for campy epic fantasy and that’s the show’s biggest issue. It can’t
decide what it wants to be or where it wants to go. It’s a retro feel
stuffed in a modern package that doesn’t quite fit.
There are other issues associated with
the show as well. Yennifer as hunchback and deformed never sat quite
right with me. Something was off about that portrayal. When she was
transformed it confirmed my fear. This was actually a gorgeous
Hollyweird actress that they’d made up to look that particular way,
then magically transformed. I do not fall into any category other
than ‘able’ so it’s not for me to discuss the depth of this, but
despite truly excellent make-up and special effects it just didn’t
sit right.
For more depth on this you should check out this article.
I’ve spent quite a few words picking
this show apart. These issues are what distract me from flat out
loving a successful fantasy series. There are really excellent parts
to this show and good stories within the larger story. The series has
been announced as having a second season already. My hope is that the
story lines get sorted in better order, the actual power of Geralt
comes forward (there was a lot of hype around the black eyes in the
promo stuff and we almost never see that in the series) and the
writers decide to make this story it’s own, not just a GOT
replacement.
I do recommend watching the series. As
always, supporting something new is vital to showing that we, the
consumer, are actually interested in new and exciting shows and that
we want something more than another remake.
I am not a Luddite, but I am often
accused of being one because I tend to express very negative opinions
about tech and the issues that result from it not working correctly.
I spend an exceptional amount of time
working with technology, specifically digital tools, at my day job. I
am part designer, part modeler, and part film maker when I’m working
on a project. I absolutely depend on having up to date hardware and
software. I am connected all the time while I am working having three
screens and up to a dozen windows open at any given time on my
computer. I live in the future when I’m working. When I am not at
work, totally different take on things.
I have a deep seeded need for
technology to simply work when and where I want it to. This is
where the problem starts. There are a multitude of technology based
things for any and all parts of the home these days. I find that most
of them amount to solutions gone looking for a problem. Could I have
voice commands turn all the lights on and off in my house? Yes, yes I
could. Will I ever do that? Not a chance. I can walk over and flip a
switch to complete a circuit. The only times I’ve ever had a problem
with that is when the light itself failed to work. How many people
can say they never have a problem getting their automated things to
work properly every single time without more effort that
flipping a switch? I’ve witnessed it at the office I work in. One
office’s lights are connected to a digital assistant. Guess what set
of lights constantly has issues? Good guess.
So, why am I on about digital tools and
connectivity? I am also one of the people that still has the Netflix
DVD by mail service. Yes, actual discs in the good old postal
delivery service. I can’t say I’m a constant on the mailing list,
sometimes not getting to my new disc for a couple of weeks, but
generally I get to at least three or four per month. I also still buy
actual discs of the movies that I know I really enjoy and want to go
back to.
When I really want to watch an older
movie that I love I follow a procedure that’s remarkably similar to
the light switch… I get off my ass, walk to the shelf where the
movie sits, then take the disc back to the DVD player and watch my
movie. Relatively little failure there.
What if you wanted to watch Dogma
tonight? Could you? Even with Kevin Smith out there all over the
place promoting stuff you still can’t just get it if you don’t own
the disc. Sure, there may be some digitally savvy folks out there
that could come up with it, but at what cost? What system? Do you
have the right service?
This article in GQ has some really excellent points on this.
My bottom line is this – If I own the
disc, there’s not a service out there that can stop me from watching
it when and where I want to. I don’t have to depend on Netflix having
it in their rotation. I don’t have to worry that there’s some kind of
transmission problem that’s bogging down Hulu. No buffering on my
computer. I just watch it. Pause it, come back to it… basically all
the things associated with streaming, without the need to worry about
what service has the movie or IF my digital library copy is still
available or not… or worse, if it’s been altered for some kind of
directorial re-write (thanks for that Lucas).
IF that makes me a Luddite, so be it.
I’ll still watch my movies whenever I want and not depend on some
service to do it.
A date slipped past in the midst of all the holiday goings on. Back on December 27th The Pretend Blog became a teenager. Yes, this blog has been around for 13 years now.
It has not always been on my own web site. I started this whole thing back in the days of LiveJournal if you can believe it. Thirteen years of putting stuff I want to get out of my head up here.
I am forced to admit that I haven’t built the sort of readership that people who pay for their own web sites normally want. I have NO intention of stopping this however. I will continue to keep my own content, thank you very much.
So – all these thousands of words later – teenager. Let’s hope the site gives me less attitude than most teens give their parents!
For any fans of nostalgia, the LiveJournal posts are still live. I don’t remember how to get into that site, but all that stuff can still be found here.
I’m also consistent about a lot of things. I still laugh every time I watch The Ultimate Showdown (from the second ever blog post by me!).
I’m cross posting this one over from Failbook. I am very excited to have found out about this.
While I was busy partying the new year in, others have been working. Hat tip to Jeff Young for pointing this one out to me.
“Sympathetic” from “In Harm’s Way” was one of the noted stories (no stars, but my name was on the list!) in Tangent Online’s 2019 Recommended Reading List!
2019 really does seem like a bit of a blur to me. I’m more shocked than any other reaction that it’s actually 2020 now.
I looked back at my new year post from this past January. I can’t say that I’ve truly shaken the slump, but I’m slowly getting better / back to where I once was. I read more (though I am still failing at the reviews thing), I caught up on more media that I had been missing out on and I’ve written a few thousand words. They weren’t spectacular words, but they were progress (and they are part of why there hasn’t been more being posted here).
Given my recent post on habits, one might think that I’d be putting something up here about resolutions and how big changes are coming, etc., etc…
Well, no. That’s not how I operate. Many years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to NEVER make a New Year’s resolution again. Guess what? Total success. Still going strong on that one. IF you want or need change in your life, the calendar is convenient, but not required. Make the change to grow or get better when you make that choice. Do what you need in order to adjust your habits.
I get the feeling that I should try to have some kind of review of the past decade, but again – not really my style. I don’t like list posts – they seem kind of cheap to me. This time of year is busy for sure, but readers that have time on their hands around travel time or in an attempt to get away from relatives want something new to read, not just another review / list.
As we all go crashing into 2020 (may you be able to live with all the vision jokes) let’s hope that the most amazing positive thing that happened last year for us is just a springboard to even more amazing in the coming year.
Habits are difficult things to break.
There are a lot of things I do that happen simply because they’re
what I have always done. I have a listing in my internet bookmarks
called ‘daily review’. Every time I am on the computer for any length
of time I open that list of bookmarks and roll through each of the
sites there. I don’t need to see any of those sites. They’re a mix of
news, entertainment and web comics that I follow. It’s important to
keep up on the news of the day, but there really isn’t a single one
of those web sites that I couldn’t catch up with at some other point
in the day OR just skip. Seeing the latest “Off The Mark” comic
strip is not something that’s going to deeply change my day. I could
skip all of them and not really miss anything at all. It’s a hard
habit to break.
As it turns out, it’s also challenging
to create new habits. Doing good things, making long term positive
changes is not easy either. This applies to anything, but it is
particularly difficult for me to do this with writing. My writing
tends to take a back seat. There are a lot of reasons for this. The
main reasons aren’t easy to pin down, but I think the biggest are
lack of inspiration and fear of judgment
Writing at the level I really want is
work. I tend to write when I am inspired. When I have that spark the
words come pouring out. I have pages and pages of hand written notes
with almost no scratch outs or edits. I become the Zeus of the story
and chunks just pop from my head fully formed. The problem with that
is combining inspiration and the actual time needed to sit and get
all the words recorded. There’s at least a novel worth of words that
have faded away because I couldn’t manage to get them to the page
when the dream was fresh or the mood was in full swing. I can’t
afford to wait on these pages. I need to sit and write and keep it
all in some kind of recorded form, whatever that form may be. Typed,
handwritten, voice recording – doesn’t matter. Get the words out
there and do it all the time.
It’s easy to hear others talk about these things. I know that Ray Bradbury used to write ten thousand words a day. Sounds like the perfect recipe for writing books. I’ve often snatched a line from one of my other favorite authors. When I heard Jim Butcher talk about writing he said, “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage…” I knew there was truth there. Writing is work. Work needs to be done on a regular basis. I do not do enough of that kind of work.
Judgment
The other part of my inability to start
good habits is this fear of judgment. If I put myself out there and
claim to be a writer I will be judged by my ability to string
together coherent statements with the proper use of grammar AND it
will all need to be spelled right. Then, after all the basics, I need
to actually have something to say.
Two main parts to that. First the
spelling and grammar portion is not easy. I am terrible at spelling.
I can look at this page alone and see at least 3 words with squiggly
red lines under them. They are words that I absolutely should know
how to spell and I just can’t seem to get them right. I don’t know
why, but they don’t stick. It’s physically difficult for me to keep
typing and not go back to edit while I’m letting the words continue
to come out. Going back to edit can and should be something that is
done after all the words are out. Too often I stop what I am thinking
to go back and craft the perfect phrase or clean up all the spelling
that is glaring at me in red. Breaking the flow stops the words and
just as often as not they don’t start again. Grammar is worse.
Grammar is one of those things that I know I should know, but I feel
a bit like Gandalf in the LOTR movies, “I have no memory of this
place…”. I am faking my way through it all and anyone that has
half a clue about how grammar works probably cringes at the word
salad I toss out.
Impostor
The second part is the judgment All
this writing is out there for people to read, and very few people
actually read it. The fact that I can name the people who interact
with me when it comes to my writing says a lot about my success.
That’s the true judgment part. It’s not having some troll throw angry
words down about what I have said, it’s that all of this amounts to
nothing. Getting somebody to react, somebody to actually read what I
have labored to create would allow them to look at my terrible
spelling and grammar and think, “this guy is a writer? I could do
better…”. One of the harshest critiques I’ve ever had was at a
book signing. The book signing had a line of authors from the
anthology. As people shuffled along the line of authors this guy
asked me, “and what story was yours?”. When I told him his face
froze in place and then he said, “Oh. That one was… nice.”. I
thanked him again and he stepped down the line to the next author.
That really sucked. He’d read it and it did nothing for him. That was
a tough one to overcome, but I’ve kept going in the hopes that I’ll
sneak in with the cool kids again one of these days. It’s not easy. I
am slowly slipping into the land of old men standing in the yard and
yelling at the sky.
After all that
This is the sort of rambling, writerly
life-style post that would normally end with some promise not to blog
fade or to use the coming new year as an excuse to claim great
changes are on the way. I’ve done all that before. I’m sure I’ll
re-post one of my successful habits in the coming days about that.
What I am going to say is that this is all a work in progress. I have
seen some short videos lately that have resonated with me about
habits, work ethic and the tool box fallacy. I’ll keep going. In the
future somebody will dig these words up and bring them back for
judgment – at least I will have made them react.
Post Script:
This is one of
those “fully formed” examples. More than a thousand words that
poured out all at once. Now to edit…
