Category: writing

Countdown to November

This weekend shall be the calm before the storm… mostly spent doing laundry and vacuuming about the house.

November 1:  there’s a NNWM write-in at my local library.  I’m hoping to stop by after work, from 1745 to 1900.  They say “Bring your writing materials, inspiration, and an open mind.”  So I’m bring Nichole (the laptop I’m using now) and coffee & bourbon.  And I’ve always an open mind; just don’t talk your PoMoTranzi crap around me.

November 2:  Parent-Teacher Conference for Daughter #2.  I wonder if her homework about the election where she wrote “Hillary is pro-death,” and “Her closest advisor is Huma Abedin, who is also her lesbian lover” will come up in conversation?

November 3rd:  Some meeting from 1800-1900 about the church’s Xmas Bazaar.  I’ll sit in the back and try to write.

November 4th:  MILO in Columbus! W00t!  If there’s a meet-and-greet I’ll present him with copies of my books!

Let’s have a nice, death-and-tumor-free month.  For all of us.

RIP, Steven Den Beste

One of the greats has passed.

I’d read all of his posts on his political-military blog, USS Clueless, for years.  When he started posting review of Japanese animations, I thought he was losing his mind.  Turned out, he was showing me a world I’d not imagined.

As a family, we started watching dubbed anime.  Then subbed.  We went to anime conventions (usually the whole family cosplaying).  We started reading manga.  I started playing visual novels; then I made one; then two more.  I began to write traditional novels – much of who’s source material came from the years of anime stories in  my head.  I wrote more novels.

Would I have wandered into anime were it not for Steven?  Possibly.  But not with his intellectual rigor.  To this day, his analysis of Haibane Renmei -still my favorite anime – is breathtaking in its complexity.  The few times I posted comments to his website, or communicated with him directly, he was courteous and polite.  A gentleman.

The impact of his life upon mine is incalculable.  I was not close enough to call him a friend, but certainly a mentor.  My world, and the whole world, shall  be a darker place at his passing.

Aside:  Steven was an atheist, but not militantly so; not like a vegan.  I do have to smile, just a little, thinking about how his Exit Interview – with Someone he didn’t believe in – is going right now.  I shall have a Mass said for him.

How to raise a Death Flag

“Barring any unforeseen RealLife consequences – as such happened last November– I’m feeling very good about this project.”  He said in hubris, in the post just below this one.

Our oldest dog had a nasty nosebleed last Tuesday.  Our local vet said to give him some diphenhydramine.  That worked for a week.  It was back on Monday; bad enough I’d to take him into Columbus to MedVet.  They did a CT and rhinoscopy; he has a tumor in his right nasal cavity.  We’ll find out by Monday if it’s malignant or not.*

Note to all writers out there:  never, EVER, say nor write what I did in that sentence on top of this post.  Don’t.

*It would almost be better if malignant, as it would be easier to treat with radiation than with surgery.

Updates

Only fourteen days left until NaNoWriMo begins.  About a week ago I finally dug out the script I’d written for what would have  been the webcomic, Poisoned Hearts, thinking I recalled it well enough to serve as a first chapter.

Oops.

While I did recall most of it, the characters were already reforming in my mind for the new story; so, personalities are different, huge timing changes . . . at least the locations….    Nope:  I’d reimagined what the lab at Neuroi looks like, based upon my horror short.

So as it is, what was a first chapter of material is now a stack of notes for Cursed Hearts.  That still puts me miles ahead of where I started two years ago with The Fourth Law:  one mental image and a 20-second sound bite.  Barring any unforeseen RealLife consequences – as such happened last November – I’m feeling very good about this project.  Of course it’s tempting to actively make notes now, but I think that violates the spirit of the month-long challenge.  Dreaming, okay; notes, not so much.

My other October project:  converting my father-in-law’s oral history into written history, has also not gone as well as I’d hoped.  Once I sat down to write all that I recalled as a framework for him to add onto, I realized just how much I’ve forgotten over the past ten years.  Sure, I can ‘see’ the images:  him and his cavalry detachment caught in the second floor of a Polish cheese factory when a Red Army platoon motors up.  Him in a AVO prison, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs to his right and a 2-star general to his left.  I think I shall reallocate this to January, when it’s dark and cold and we’re all inside (December will be given over to editing then publishing Cursed Hearts by Christmas).

Not much meat in this post, but that’s what happens when a writer is between project.  Expect things to get very interesting quite soon.  Cheers!

 

First Pass

Got the interior completed and uploaded last night.  More clumps of hair out this morning trying to get the front/back covers done.  At only 24 pages, there’s no ‘spine’ per se, so had to work around that.  Then, the primitive graphics program I was using decided it was done for the day.

The nice thing about flat-panel screens is they go much further once they’ve cleared the glass of the window.

*ahem*  After applying the typical IT solution (“Did you restart your computer?”), things were less bad.  Images formatted, converted, uploaded.  I’ve gone ahead and submitted them for review by CreateSpace, even though I’ve no blurb on the back cover, yet.  I want one of their proof copies in my hand:  until you’re holding a physical copy, you’ve no idea what stupid things you’ve screwed up (such as leaving page numbers out of my first novel; my then 11 year-old caught that one).

As always, I cannot thank Claudia Gadotti enough for her amazing illustrations.  Please go to her place and lavish her with commissions!

“HBD!” Adding text

Last night was crashing and burning:  came home hopped up on coffee (recall:  I’ve high blood pressure) to get things done on HBD!, only to be confronted with hysterical wife:  “my J-drama torrents won’t work!!”  An hour lost there, then another making dinner, I finally sit down to format some jpg’s to pdf’s . . . forgetting that twice 2700 pixels is not 1350, but, in fact, 5400.  Re-re-formatting everything, I do a trial upload at 2215.  All clear.  Time for bed.

Tonight, adding text.  As this is a book aimed at 2nd graders, I think there’s about 120 words, total.  This issue – ONCE AGAIN – is formatting:  my pages are set to ‘bleed-out’ on the edges, so when making text boxes, I have to guess where my perimeter is.  That’s been three tries so far.  I’d also some issues about ISBN’s, but would rather toss my desktop out my window than even think about discussing it.

Below the fold, a snapshot of page 17.  God bless Claudia Gadotti, my illustrator.  How she could reach into my mind from my poor, bare-bones description of my characters to make what she did . . . well, just wait until I’ve wrapped this all up in a couple of weeks.

Continue reading ““HBD!” Adding text” →

HBD! Update

With only seventeen days left to go in my self-imposed deadline, I just now figured out how to format the pages from jpeg to pdf and upload them properly to CreateSpace.  I’ve been spoiled:  for my traditional novels, I’ve used “Bookwrite” by Blurbb; a fantastic program, so long as you stay within its boundaries.  As this is an illustrated children’s book, I needed those boundaries to be elastic, so after a few days, out that went.

Then it was a matter of re-scaling Claudia’s wonderful drawings.  That took a couple of days to figure out… glad my wife told me to drink less:  I was about ready to throw my computer out the window.  I finally got a test of the cropped, resized, and split, pages successfully uploaded to CreateSpace.  I’ll – hopefully – reformat the remaining images tomorrow, then add the little bit of text (this is a kids book, after all) the day after.  Looks like the wife and daughters will be foraging for dinner the rest of this week!

Provisional cover is below the fold.

In other news, I’ve seen some huge character changes for my NaNoWriMo project this year; I’m quite pleased!  Set in a part of MachCiv I’ve not really been to, yet, and something of a horror novel, this should be fun!

Continue reading “HBD! Update” →

A Look Back

For the first time in just over two years, I’m on vacation.  Even that’s qualified, as we’re in Houston/Galveston, but the reason we’re here is my wife’s 6 month post cancer-treatment checkup.  Still, better than central Ohio.

Had I been home, I’d be working on “Henge’s Big Day;” I’m not, so I’m not.  I did, however, see a vignette that I alluded to while writing “Defiant.”  Some skinny-dipping at the PSU pool with my main characters.  Was finally able to type it out, today.

This takes place halfway between Act II and Act III.

Continue reading “A Look Back” →

‘Defiant’ – End; One.

An experiment, just to keep me writing.  People I’ve never met, places I’ve not seen – and that I don’t recall – for over thirty years.  And here I am, about 60k words later.

Creativity is occasionally creepy:  where does all this come from?

Anyhoo.  There are still flaws in what’s below.  Someday, after I’ve written Part 2, I’ll get this all cleaned up and ‘novel-ized.’

Played with different ‘voices’ in this one; too much gin to get it all right.  Actually excised a couple of paragraphs:  I was lecturing again.  Thanks, Will!

Let’s do this again.  Soon!

Continue reading “‘Defiant’ – End; One.” →