Fate Accompli

Did quite a bit this month. Feeling kinda proud of myself. In november 2008, I wrote a 62,000 word novel and created a cd’s worth of material while simultaneously quitting smoking mid-month. That was pretty productive.

In January 2001, I wrote two short stories in an afternoon and saw them both get published. That was good too.

One day in the mid-70s, I sat down with a couple of pencils and a pile of notebook paper and wrote a novel. About the same wordage as the above. That was the single most productive day of my creative life.

I had a month kinda like that. I wrote a 46k novel (Betrothed to Yog-Sothoth), finished a thirteen-year-old manuscript (Fear and Loathing in Innsmouth) with 15k words, thereby qualifying for a Nanowrimo win, wrote another 10k’s worth of two short stories, and topped that off by composing, performing, and producing a baker’s dozen of new songs, which I’ve just now finished posting to Reverbnation.

I’ll post them onsite soon. The jukebox is taking shape too.

So…I’ll enjoy the feeling while it lasts, and try not to break my arm in the process.

“before Crazytown” has sold more copies than I expected, though not very many in real terms. Fear and Loathing in Innsmouth should surpass it. I’m probably going to offer that as a print book also, though maybe not right away. Crazytown is champing at the bit too.

Surf the wave, me.

 

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blogospherical

Or House of Blog or somesuch.
Here’s the list of creations:
Modblog, the domain version, which won’t be incorporating any of the content from this blog (officially the son of the son of modblog in my private nomenclature). That’ll have the basic daily rants and screeds and fluff, and update posts like this one. I’m committed to daily posting and may well crosspost between the three blogging platforms-blogger, wordpress, and my domain. It depends on how much I have to say each day.
I’m planning at the very least to do a lot more reviews-books and cds more so than movies, which I don’t watch much, and more sports content. Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks specifically. I get a lot of the Cub games on WGN, and the Bears have a few national games. The Hawks are rarely on tv, and the 160 bucks for a season’s worth of streaming is ridiculous. But I digress…next on the list is :

Fallen Earring, the eventual home for the edited first draft of the nanonovel. This version is radically different from the versions previously posted. The delivery system is all that I kept-otherwise it’s a complete rewrite and is causing retrocon ripples throughout my little pocket universe.
You’ll notice that the design is a little different…in that the background is the same gif that I made most of the old buttons from. I think it looks pretty good in that context, and I’ve chopped up the colored-pencil drawing some and used it for a header graphic as well as the “book cover”.

WordWorld, where I’m planning to post a good variety of my written work. That will include the revised versions as well as some first and second drafts as I wish to discuss the genesis of some of the pieces.
The content will change from time to time as I add and subtract pieces, depending on which segment of the overall continuity they’re slotted into at the moment.
The design has my usual starfield background and a bunch of desk tools, including the requisite cuppa joe.

Fear and Loathing In Innsmouth. This webcomic (including a portion that is envisioned as a graphic novel) will be starting around the New Year.
The greenish color scheme indicates the relation to the Letters from Outside anthology, due to start appearing around the same time.

There are also a couple of things I’m not prepared to unveil as yet. It seems that I found the key to my lethargy after all as my O2 converter experienced complete fail at @2 am, causing my dearest to be awakened and the on-call tech to be summoned. It had been sounding like a garbage truck in the driveway for most of the afternoon and night, and finally gave up the ghost.
Fortunately I had one last portable tank on hand and D put that together while I made the call. The whole process was handled very professionally, and Jose was here within the hour to change out the unit. I’d have to say that the old converter was probably failing for a while, and that’s why I was feeling so run-down that I was literally huffing and puffing just from getting up to go into the kitchen. Burning plastic fumes, air instead of straight oxygen, a combination of the two, those are likely culprits.
I’m feeling much better. My gigantic migraine has just about gone away. D has gone to work dspite having just a couple hours’ sleep, though she’s gonna go home early if allowed. Last Friday was pretty slow, or so I was led to understand. Let’s hope today is likewise. We could use the money but she has to be exhausted.

nanostatus and project updates

14,481 words now in the books, as of this morning. Changing the metafictional conceit and making the mc a blogger rather than a vidcaster, and changing the setting to more-or-less present day has made a huge difference in thrust and has gotten me through a long section of infopak and dialogue, simply by breaking it up into digestible chunks.
Making each chapter a blogpost has been a masterstroke as far as the writing. I’m surprised that it took me so long, considering how much I enjoy writing flash fiction. I’d always thought of the novel as a themed-short collection. Now it’s short-shorts, and I don’t plan to apply any Nair as yet.
Was going to do an edit of the first 10k and throw it on here over the weekend, but I don’t think so right now. I’m just going to keep chugging along. Tonight I should finally finish the musical portion of the backtrack to Dereliction of Duty, and it’s entirely possible that I might get the voiceover done as well and get the whole thing wrapped up. I’m pretty mad at myself for taking so long. I think Sam is too, but he’s nice enough not to say so. Will give the project extra attention as a result. Sounds pretty nice so far-Mozart-to-Metallica-in-a-minute.
I have a suspicion as to the cause of my recent lethargy, and we’ll see if that bears fruit (it has to do with my O2 system, which has been sounding funny the last day or so). My unfortunate bout with insomnia continues-I’m still keeping vampire hours and sleeping a couple of hours at a time.

Dipped into it and dipped IN IT

Yep, as remarked on in the previous jinxpost, I went wandering right into the Fallen Earring minefield and was promptly hit with a block. For a couple of hours I sat trying to squeeze one more peanut of a word through my eyedropperful of wanna and then gave up.
I got to work instead on the Letters from Outside archive. It’s a wp facility like many of my things, and I’m still monkeying around with the layout a bit. Looks pretty good, though. Dunno what problems I’ll have when I start copying and pasting the content but I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.
Still has James’ Russell’s excellent graphic for the logo, and I’ve tried to match the green as well as I can. The whole thing has a nice clean look to it, which I’m going for. Let the content speak for itself, just unclutter the place.
There’s all the time in the world to work on it, and I need a lot of things to keep me going. My convalescence is going decently, but I’m still incapable of all-out effort for extended periods.
I need naps.
Anyway, I’m just gonna add some social-media widgets and see what else recommends itself to my attention before I start filling the place in.
It’ll be much nicer digs than Fortune City, and I’m pleased to be able to bring it to people who haven’t seen it before.
Fallen Earring now sits at just over 8000 words. I’m gonna peck away at it a little more and then call it a night. Or a day. Whatever.

Fallen Earring

I’ve been busying myself during the midnight hours, fooling around with the templates and graphics for my Planet Moderan site, which has been moved to new servers. I’m not going to automatically transfer over the content, as I have some new things I want to try. There’s no real hurry, and I’d like to give those things the best showcase I can.
In the meantime, I’m moving along with my nanonovel Fallen Earring, hovering around 7,000 words for all of the trumpeted fail ( there has to be a certain percentage of anti-fail so that the fail is that much sweeter in this hostile (or merely indifferent universe)).
Yeah…but that fail, that’s a problem. The very concept of fail has so invaded things that it invaded my nanonovel last night and made me write this passage of questionable wisdom:

I’m up all night again. Can’t seem to shake this bout of insomnia, and am just going to have to run with the sleep/fail and hope it ends soon. So tired. Day upon day of two-three hours of sleep at a stretch followed by exhaustion and passing out at the wrong time of day to reset the Circadian rhythms has me disoriented, and it’s all I can do to distractedly type away…

Somehow I managed to record an episode of the show today. I was just watching myself on camera, and I looked like hell. Face all pouchy and dissipated.

The face of fail.

Because that’s what I do. That’s all we do.

Think about it.

Everything you do is ultimately bound to fail. Entropy always wins, in the end.

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t bother to do anything, because doing things helps us to pass the time. But the long view says that everything we accomplish is but the erection of an anthill.

Sometimes it’s comforting to take that objective view, see things from the mountaintop as it were, to take in the big picture.

Because you can get too close to real sometimes too.

Jeeping jeebus! What in the name of Graham Nash was I thinking? I can see it now, Fail and Loathing In Innsmouth is my new title. Hmm. Waitaminnit. Ok, I gotta do something with that.
Onward.
I’m working at Fallen Earring. There are a lot of stops and starts but the story is starting to emerge from the ashes of the previous ten or so outlines. It’s a lot more autobiographical than most of my things, even though the character isn’t modeled after me. But the genesis of a lot of the incidents and happenings in the character’s life occurred in my own. Not much Marty Sue, but the charge might have a smidgeon of barb.
Those sections are turning out to be the easiest to write, which leads me to a conundrum.
I’m what you call a linear writer. The flow of words is so important to me that I write things in consecutive order, the way they’re laid out. It’s only later that I tear that all up and rearrange it.
But I can see where I may be slogging soon. There’s a slower section coming up, and the contemplative bogs me down because, well, I’m me. Much more intuitive than contemplative. I don’t want to improv on it because it’s an important section, but I already know it’s gonna be slow and am tempted to ditch the next three thousand or so words and dig into the warping-reality stuff.
Cuz yeah, reality-warp beats fail. The premise is fruitful and I’m inventing spins already. The metafictional angle (my lead character is a blogger) works, fits my warped sensibilities, helps to subtly impress the storyline. I love researching/remembering/dreaming up the period detail. I just need to get through that passage. And I dipped into it tonight.
The Fallen Earring blog. Just in case you want to visit. You never know when I might pop up a segment.

the Post-Fail Fail

Yep, that’s when you really know things are going wrong, when you are so full of fail that it spills out and makes a mess.
I failed to write a word for nanowrimo. I was tired, etc. I slacked, and what’s worse, I’m not real sorry. I basically took a day off, failed to do much at all. I was far advanced in my slothness. I was able to stir myself and prepare simple burgers for dinner but that’s about it.
Being tired makes me less able to process the oxygen I need. The less able to process, the less energy I have. Vicious cycle. I need sleep, but I’m in sleep/fail mode again. I haven’t had this long of a stretch of it since I lived in Rochester and was still slinging burgers for a “living”.
The most effort I had in me was to configure some of the widgets for my brand-damn spanking new website, which I’m working on as much as possible between the myriad of other projects I have running. The security stuff and like that, those things can’t wait. I’ll throw the urls up here soon, but not just yet.
There’s cool stuff coming up. I’ll just say that. The old pro gloss.
I just wish I had the energy to get it done quicker. There’s so much I want to do, but I keep coming around to this lack of energy.
Some of you may not know that I was sick earlier this year. I came down with pneumonia, and it went bad. Bad enough that I’m on oxygen, nine months after I first went to the hospital.
Kind of an inhale fail.
Anyway, I’m still feeling the effects of that illness. I almost didn’t make it–I’m thankful that I did, of course, but things can get frustrating.
I do have just over 10k done of the nanonovel, so I’m not so far behind, and I’m still keeping up with nablopomo. Just about finished with the music piece and voiceover I was due to turn in last week (my most abject apologies, S/D). It took three days for it to be quiet enough in here to consider recording voice and for me to have enough wind to do a good job of it. Some days are bad air days.
More later. 

Vitriol Cocktail

Today is a wonderful newsday. Usually I don’t write anything having to do with politics but several things in the political arena are interesting me today. There are other things that are *cough* interesting me today also, and we may touch upon them, but let’s first go with the politspeak.
First-Herman Cain is a liar, and an amateur. He doesn’t seem to remember what he’s said from one interview to the next. At least that’s the opinion one forms when watching/reading coverage of his unfolding sex scandal. It seems that he has twice (maybe thrice according to some reports) been sued for some variety of sexual harassment, and has settled in both cases, entering into confidentiality agreements during the settlements.
Once the cases broke, he outed himself and has been uttering his variety of doublespeak since. I don’t think I have to find any links for this-they’re everywhere. His camp is blaming the equally stupefying Rick Perry campaign group for putting this information out there.
Gee. Cain has become the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and suddenly there’s some closet-raking going on. This is likely to be the least of the skeletons, the smallest hurdle he has to clear. The Dems haven’t even gotten into it yet.
It’s just laughable. The three top GOP candidates are engaging in nutcutting contests already, having reduced Michelle Bachman to the afterthought she should have always been and marginalizing the rest of the field. I find myself loving this circus just as much as I enjoyed the Dem circus five years ago. There’s just something about the Presidential race that exposes the essential charm in our national character.
Speaking of national characters, let’s talk about the Occupy people and their complete lack of any realistic political agenda. It’s fantastic that they want to get involved in the political process and vote with their asses. Sit-ins worked during the civil rights movement, and occupations did things during the Yippie times. Hard to remember anything lasting or really positive that came of it all, but I’d be happy to be reminded of such if indeed there was anything. The money people aren’t going anywhere, no matter how many places these people occupy and screech their objections in.
The other great stuff….well, I live in Arizona, which is presently under (and has been for quite a while) Republican rule. Here’s an example of how the legislature works-A bipartisan commission (2 Dems, 2 Pubs, an Indy) was appointed to redistrict the state so that no one party is able to zone things to their advantage.
Governor Jan Brewer liked the results so much that she engineered the dismissal of the chairwoman of the committee and did her level best to disqualify its results. This is SOP here in the land of McCain and Jon Kyl, who have bucked the system so much and so often that the state doesn’t receive most of the federal benefit money that it otherwise would be entitled to (as I’ve found out firsthand in the last couple of years).
I love the weather, but the political weatherman calls for persistent stupid occasionally punctuated by cynical manipulation.
I’m a voter. I feel powerless too. I think that most folks want the things I want, but they sure don’t vote for anyone who has the slightest idea of how to act for their constituency (in most cases). Reality never sets in.

Speaking of reality disconnects, I’ve joined this thing called NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)-the idea is to make a blogpost every day during the month of November. I did this for two reasons-one, to see if I could (in 2009, I successfully finished NaNoWriMo and NaSoAlMo but didn’t finish NaBloPoMo…which has been moved to some place called Blogher. A cursory scan of the blog titles says that I’m completely in the wrong place. I should have figured that out from the blogHER addy (I googled and find that blogher is some kinda secondrate iVillage imitation). I’m still gonna do the posting, and am not going to withdraw, but I’m a bit hacked off at the folks that run the thing-today, when I tried to access the portal, I was told that my username and password were not recognized, even though I signed in three days in a row previously and am on the blogroll (#617). I won’t be back to claim my merit badge. There’s enough stupid on the front page (which claims it is about Life Well-Said and then goes on to belie that statement in the very first article) to put me off, before I get to the article about Kim Kardashian.
Then, back to the political side of things…I’m on the federal tit. I was stricken with pneumonia that got complicated (as some of you know), almost died. There’s an agency that coordinates/determines benefits. Their representative is upset that social security benefits of a certain dollar amount were conferred upon me (22$ over what they call their limit) and wants to examine my bank statements. If I don’t comply, then my supply of oxygen tanks and other such necessary things will be cut off. I don’t think I want to comply-I don’t believe they have a right to that information, but I don’t see how I can avoid it. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and I really have a problem with the rep’s attitude (she craps gold pieces that smell rosy) which is demanding as he’ll-she says I NEED rather than I’d like, which betrays her perspective-it isn’t about me, and what I need to conduct any semblance of a normal existence, it’s about HER.
Forgive me if some of this doesn’t make complete sense. I am a chronic insomniac and have slept maybe seventeen hours since last Monday. On the plus side, I’ve written 5280 mostly-coherent words of my nanowrimo novel in two days, am just about to finish two new songs, and am halfway through the complete Cowboy Bebop.

Chicken and Waffle

Yep. So here it is again, nanotime, when incipient novelization is supposed to be translated into actuality at 1667 words per day. This will be my fourth attempt. I’ve successfully navigated the nanowaters before thrice, but have never had the particular set of challenges I face this time-namely, embarking on a novel without any preliminaries.
I was originally going to work on a delayed project, Vermilion Dawn, set many years after Martian colonization. That novel needs some seed from a previous novel to work properly, though, and much rumination led to deciding upon a “rewrite” of a novel I’ve started several times but haven’t finished, in an attempt to exorcise that ghost once and for all.
So, after much waffling, hemming, and hawing,  I withdrew Vermilion Dawn in favor of Fallen Earring, dragged out my ten thousand docs and links and books and whatnot about Hendrix, and furiously began scribbling, in longhand on notebook paper, my proposed outline. That was the day before Hallowe’en.
The floor in my office became decorated with paper balls not long after that. I spent part of a mostly sleepless night shooting them through a Nerfoop I have hanging next to the door and ruminating about how to make the thing work.
Fallen Earring is a genrehopper, a rule-breaker. An altworld themed-story collection that masquerades as a novel and takes place mostly via flashback. I’ve been working on it on and off for a few years now-the themes and settings of the thing are burned into my brain (like some of my other unwritten or unpublished “works”), and I cannot let them go. The problem is that I hadn’t arrived at the proper method of telling the story.
Still not sure that I have. I’ve gone from third person limited to third omniscient, from present tense to past, to first person, to having different characters tell the story. I’ve tried having Jimi as a character, which doesn’t work at all, having him as the narrator, which really doesn’t work on an extended basis, adding metafictional frameworks, turning the events of the narrative this way and that, trying semi-desperately to find a way, the right way, to GET THE DAMN STORY TOLD.

I think I have it. Now I just need to finish up several other projects so I can get at the thing. And hope against hope that I don’t change my friggin mind again.
My ancient colored-pencil and smeared-marker pic has been pressed into service as the cover. I added some lettering I developed a couple of years ago, did a little photoshop sharpening, and that was that.
Now I just need to do the writing. I’m actually shooting for @75k, as that’s the projected wordcount of the whole thing, and I’m still waffling over whether or not to edit what I do each day and put it up here. Very possible-I’m going to take a look at what I actually have and make that decision.
On other fronts-I’m still waiting for GoDaddy to finish the transfer of my domain to my new webhost so I can get after rebuilding my website. I was hoping that could be done before NaNoWriMo so as not to complicate things any more than they already are, but no go. That’s going to be a cause for more waffling as I try to decide whether to go with a more conventionall website or to make everything wordpress. Very likely that it’ll be some combination of the two like I’ve had before, but I just don’t know. I’m pretty sore about the short shrift I got from GoDaddy and really don’t want to do a whole bunch of coding. That’s all up in the air for now.
I almost chickened out of Nano, but when I was established as the community leader from Writing Forums, I had to buck up and run with the ball. WF recently promoted me to global moderator from my previous position as forum mod. Have to set a good example.