Author: Clayton Barnett

Former engineer, current husband and father, layabout Pharmacy Technician, aspiring writer.

Coffee and alcohol

Back when we used to give presentations about how to make visual novels, a question that often came up was “what motivates you to write?”  My glib, but honest, answer, was the title of this post.

Since being diagnosed with hypertension and placed onto Metoprolol, coffee has been rare in my life.  But, at a mild impasse in “Defiant,” it was time to reach for the big guns:  a cup of Café Busto with a shot of rye whiskey.  About five minutes later, I ‘saw’ the answer I needed.  I quick glance and Bing Images to make sure I got the description correct, and I typed what I saw, below the fold.  I’ve seen Ep 18, too, but those steaks aren’t going to cook themselves.  Perhaps tomorrow!

[EDIT:  for some reason, WordPress ate several of my sentences.  I think it has to do with my use of these:  <>.  They’re back in now, in red.

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“All of Gaul is divided into three parts…”

Is the impression I’m getting when I let stories sit too long and I have to break them up.  I’ve seen part three:  the dinner and flashback, but thought why not go ahead and post this, part 2.  Might die in my sleep, after all.

I’m already thinking about the possibility of a spinoff, where Teresa has her own story.  It’s just a question of time.  (And money; give me a few grand, and trust me, she gets her own story!)

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Catching up.

Sorry for the delay.  Wife and family in Houston for her 3-mo post cancer checkup.  Bloodwork:  clear!  CT scan:  clear!  PET scan:  er, let’s talk.  No, not bad, per se, just radioisotope uptake around her left eye.  Back in November, that tiny little mass that turned out to be lymphoma was taken off her nose.  The upper, left side of her nose.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Machine Civilization, there’s no such thing as coincidences.

Well, they want her back in a another three months to repeat the test.  Worrying is pointless, so I hope they’ve a safe drive back, so we can all have a good summer filled with drinking, writing, and lots of sex.  In the meantime, speaking of getting backed up, Episode 17 is going to have be broken into at least two parts.  There are a slew of new people to be introduced and I think at least one flashback.

One good thing about the delay is that I was able to do some picture and video research of the Kongo/Arleigh Burke destroyer class.  I’m a bit more comfortable writing the meet-and-greet for the Portland civilians in the installment after this one.  It will be too late before I have the ship sail away, but I even ordered a model kit of DDG-173 off EBay.  Research!

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By that much!

Looks like I’m getting rid of Kongo after the episode after this.  Even if they leave at night, there’s no way to hide the fact once they’re gone.  And I’m sure that trans-Columbia cannibal army has sympathizers in Portland; cannibalism – like vampirism – is socially akin to Progressivism:  they all end in mass death.

It’s rather fun to write about characters in a bar while I’m sitting here drinking.  ‘Brings it home,’ as it were.  Teresa was a surprise!  Looks like there’s a lot going on with that young woman!  A little ominous about her father, though.  Wonder where that world’s going?

Please pour yourselves a drink and read on!

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Turning it up…

…to 11.  I ran across the NSFW drawing below the fold.  For some reason, I knew there was a story there, but I couldn’t see any of.  A couple of nights ago, I texted a friend about it.  He suggest ‘android vampire.’

Hmmm.

I already have those, in story form, if our webcomic of “Poisoned Hearts” ever comes out.  So . . . what else?  Hmmm.  Of course!  Make it even more horrible!

This was an interesting exercise for me:  I really don’t do horror (well, I guess I do now) so even these 1400 words took a couple of days to get right.  In fact, I sat on it for an extra 12 hours, unsure about a few things.  Just a few minutes ago, I added two, short, lines.  Better.

I’ve the start of the next Ep of “Defiant,” and hope to have that out late tomorrow.  Cheerio!

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“Dear Diary… die in a fire”

By the grace of God, I noticed the trap that I was slipping into:  by having no fixed plot, only characters, I was very close into having this become little more than a daily diary of Nichole’s life.

A diary is not a story.

The diary elements wrap up today.  I’m not saying there won’t be more:  this is an ongoing, free webnovel, so there will be more diary-like elements.  But now, I think, after this installment, it’s time to play.  Yeah! Continue reading ““Dear Diary… die in a fire”” →

“Kah, kah!”

The title quotes my character Fausta quoting Shinobu Oshino.  It’s just an odd laugh.  It’s the odd laugh I just had as I was making myself older about quantum computing, a subject I understand as well as I do women.  The laugh came when I got to the end of the wiki and hit this line:

“It has been speculated that theories of quantum gravity, such as M-theory or loop quantum gravity, may allow even faster computers to be built. Currently, defining computation in such theories is an open problem due to the problem of time, i.e., there currently exists no obvious way to describe what it means for an observer to submit input to a computer and later receive output.[89]”

So, to my feeble mind, the “problem of time” is that between observer-computer-observer.  How to get all those Schrodinger’s cat scratches off of your face, essentially.  I laughed when I realized I’d solved the problem – from a story standpoint – prior to even knowing a problem was there.  And if that’s not quantum computing, I don’t know what is.

Oh, the solution?  Make the observer and the computer the same.

Episode 13 seen; will post tomorrow!  Cheerio!