Archive for the ‘My Writing’ Category

Writing Progress, Lack Thereof and Tropes, Liked by Me

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am utterly fail­ing to keep up the pace of writ­ing this week. No words. Not even any revi­sions. I prob­a­bly shouldn’t have bought that design book ear­lier this week. It’s great for the day job stuff, but read­ing it eats up the time and energy I should be spend­ing work­ing on my next story.

There’s this trope I am exam­in­ing right now. One of the things about sec­ond world fan­tasy that both­ers me is that it’s rarely very ambi­tious with how dif­fer­ent things are from our world. Now, before you burn me at the stake, hear me out.
Continue read­ing ›

Seeds of Change ToC and Cover Copy

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

John Joseph Adams has posted the ToC of his upcom­ing Seeds of Change anthol­ogy with Prime Books. Some of the authors included are Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Mark Budz, Ken McLeod, and… me!

“Instead of a Loving Heart’ on Escape Pod

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am super, super excited to announce that my story from All-​​Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (edited by Jay Lake and David Moles–two of the finest cats to mark up a man­u­script) has gone live on Escape Pod. Escape Pod is the one pod­cast I lis­ten to every week with­out fail, and I’ve been using Escape Pod as an exam­ple of the best reader/​listenership you can find online. Having a story go live with them is one of my major career goals. I just gave it a lis­ten as I got ready for work, and I loved it. Major, major squee for me today.

Postmortem:“Babe, I Am Going to Leave You”

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Yesterday, I released my intensely per­sonal story of death, Led Zeppelin, and how fam­i­lies cope with death, “Babe, I am Going to Leave You” as a CC-​​licensed story. A friend asked what my think­ing was behind doing this, so I thought I’d break it down in a blog post, in case any­one else was interested.I wrote this story, over the course of about a year, in an attempt to come to terms with my own father’s death from can­cer. I always intended to try and pub­lish it some­where like any other story I wrote, but once I tried doing so, I found I had invested too much of myself to be able to han­dle the rejec­tions. Most rejec­tions are slightly painful, but you can shrug them off. I just couldn’t shrug off rejec­tions to this story.

I strug­gled with whether I should essen­tially “self-​​publish” the story. I don’t have a large read­er­ship here. I’m not John Scalzi or Jay Lake, although I hope to attract as many fol­low­ers some day. Am I the only writer who won­ders about max­i­miz­ing the audi­ence for their sto­ries, or do we all worry about that? I don’t make much money from my sto­ries, so I’ve focused on grow­ing an audi­ence more than the money.

I also wor­ried that some would see releas­ing the story myself as a coward’s way out. I do feel guilty for not try­ing harder to find a place to pub­lish the story that could have given it more read­ers than I could on my own. The story is, in a big way, my way of hon­or­ing my father. Did I do him honor just releas­ing it to the hand­ful of peo­ple who read this? I don’t know. I was tired of hav­ing it here, and hav­ing no one read it though. I really wanted to do good with this story. I had expe­ri­enced some­thing pro­found and painful, and I wanted to help oth­ers get through a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. The chance to do some good, even a lit­tle, is what con­vinced me it was the right thing to do.

I want to thank those of you who linked my story in your own blogs. I really appre­ci­ated that. It made me feel much more like I made a good choice here. And those of you who have writ­ten me, thank­ing me for post­ing the story. I am glad that it has helped you.

In the future, I will def­i­nitely con­tinue to release reprints of my sto­ries online under the Creative Commons. It can only help a writer at my stage of career. I don’t think I will release any other unpub­lished sto­ries though, because I think it’s too easy and attrac­tive to cir­cum­vent the rejection/​acceptance process.

For exam­ple, I have this story about a plague that turns famous peo­ple into plas­tic stat­ues and about the peo­ple who col­lect the for­merly famous like base­ball cards. It’s got a very polit­i­cal slant, and never found a home prob­a­bly because of that, or maybe because it’s not as funny as I think it is. There’s a strong temp­ta­tion to just pub­lish it on the web, espe­cially because it’s par­tially about Bush and he’s about to leave the White House (I hope) and the story will lose its rel­e­vancy at that point. I don’t know. Maybe I can find a pub­lisher for it int he next 9 months. Or I can sell it as alt-​​history futur­ism later.

Still, regard­less, I am glad I released this one story this way. Thank you for read­ing it.

A CC-​​Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

A CC-​​Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”

I slept very badly last night, and had a migraine to end all migraines. I’m slowly recov­er­ing this morn­ing. I recently woke up and, along with this lin­ger­ing headache, I found I have an over­whelm­ing desire to give some­thing away.

I’ve posted a story online under a Creative Commons license. It’s about death, Led Zeppelin, and how fam­i­lies cope. A lot of it really hap­pened. Some of it did not. It’s so intensely per­sonal that I can’t bear to receive another rejec­tion call­ing it “slight” or any­thing else, so here it is, posted for any­one to read and call “slight” or any­thing else they want to call it. What is impor­tant to me is that maybe some­one reads it who is going through some­thing sim­i­lar and feels a lit­tle less alone. Writing it sure helped me. But your milage may vary.

With that said, here’s the link to the story. Share it as you see fit.

Babe, I’m Going to Leave You

The Role of Idea in my Fiction

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Part of my mini­cri­sis last week about writ­ing and get­ting back to it was that I was hav­ing trou­ble gen­er­at­ing the ideas part of the equa­tion. This is almost always my start­ing point; a cool idea that I can at least delude myself is some­thing new that I haven’t seen done before. Or a twist on an old idea. Just, some­thing fresh. Some peo­ple might start with a plot or a char­ac­ter, but I don’t find myself work­ing that way​.My flow is Idea->Character->Plot ->Theme mag­i­cally appears when it all comes together. Theme for me is a mys­te­ri­ous thing that the sub­con­scious puts into the work. It’s like the under­pants gnomes from South Park/​Slashdot meme: Step One: Get Idea, Character, and Plot. Step Two: write story. Step Three:???? End Result: Theme (Profit!).

Lately, I have been try­ing to estab­lish an idea for an over­all mood when I start a piece, par­tic­u­larly in my fan­tasy sto­ries. From my read­ing of clas­sic, non-​​genre short sto­ries, it seems that mood is the most impor­tant thing. Stories can get away with not hav­ing a plot like genre read­ers expect, because the way the story makes you feel is the whole point. I think genre sto­ries are often thought as being about how they make you think. There’s no rea­son they can’t be about both, and I sus­pect the most suc­cess­ful sto­ries are ones that do both.

I think I’ve been work­ing on the mood/​how the story makes you feel thing for a while now, but I came to it first by try­ing to be funny. Later, I broaded my emo­tional hori­zons, you could say. I think “The Yeti Behind Me” (Published in the Fantasy Sampler) is my most suc­cess­ful story for cre­at­ing a mood. Followed by an as-​​of-​​yet unpub­lished story called “Maggie’s Man.” But even early work like “Girl with the Sun in her Head” had some of this. It wasn’t inten­tional then, but it ended up in there any­way, and I’m sure that’s part of why it sold.

I don’t know why, but I have real trou­ble try­ing to put a mood into a more sci­ence fic­tional piece. For some rea­son, when I work in that mode, think­ing about things like emo­tional con­tent is much harder. The ana­lyt­i­cal very eas­ily over­pow­ers the emo­tional for me. It’s some­thing I really need to work on, because I would like to write more sci­ence fic­tion than I do.

An Interview Regarding Dr. Roundbottom

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

K. Tempest Bradford has inter­viewed me for Fantasy mag­a­zine about my Dr. Roundbottom project. The inter­view is now live here.

K. Tempest Bradford: Did the ini­tial inspi­ra­tion for Dr. Roundbottom start with the pho­tog­ra­phy or with the story?

Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specif­i­cally in pho­tog­ra­phy. I had an oppor­tu­nity after a week of rain to go out and take some pic­tures of mush­rooms. I started play­ing with some of the images in post, and ended up cre­at­ing my most pop­u­lar pho­to­graph, the eye­ball mush­room. From there, I started writ­ing flash fic­tion around the pho­tog­ra­phy, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.

K. Tempest Bradford: Did the ini­tial inspi­ra­tion for Dr. Roundbottom start with the pho­tog­ra­phy or with the story?

Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specif­i­cally in pho­tog­ra­phy. I had an oppor­tu­nity after a week of rain to go out and take some pic­tures of mush­rooms. I started play­ing with some of the images in post, and ended up cre­at­ing my most pop­u­lar pho­to­graph, the eye­ball mush­room. From there, I started writ­ing flash fic­tion around the pho­tog­ra­phy, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.

Tempest: How does a typ­i­cal Roundbottom image come about?

Jeremiah: I’m pretty strongly lim­ited by my own sur­round­ings and what I have the capac­ity to pho­to­graph myself. Some of them come from exper­i­ments in pho­to­graphic tech­niques that I want to try out, and some of them come from spe­cific images that I con­ceive and then try and pho­to­graph. Then some just come about as happy dis­cov­er­ies of odd things as I explore my sur­round­ings with cam­era in hand.

For instance, there are not a lot of peo­ple in the Roundbottom pho­tographs at this point because of my lim­ited bud­get and access to period cos­tumes. Luckily, I have leads on some cos­tum­ing resources, so that will change with time as I do more sto­ry­lines for the project. Also, my wife is hard at work sewing a more for­mal Roundbottom cos­tume for myself, and a cos­tume for a female char­ac­ter that’s part of the narrative.

Whale Fall

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When a whale dies, an entire ecosys­tem blos­soms in its corpse. Species of clams, worms, and other inver­te­brates can be found on the bones of a dead whale that can­not be found any­where else. The “seeds” of these ecosys­tems seem to lay dor­mant in the ben­thos of the deep oceans, wait­ing for that one-​​in-​​a-​​million chance that a whale, it’s last breath escap­ing for the sur­face, will fall to the muck and mud. Imagine being stranded in the desert, your only hope for flour­ish­ing in the form of a giant falling from the sky. Tons and tons of meat and bone, pro­vid­ing nour­ish­ment and suc­cor. Later, sulfur-​​loving bac­te­ria pick over the bones and release hydro­gen sul­fide, launch­ing an entirely new ecosys­tem of chemosyn­thetic bac­te­ria. And it’s here where the diver­sity really gets wild, with nearly 200 dif­fer­ent species mak­ing up the com­mu­nity, feed­ing on the bac­te­ria, feed­ing on the feed­ers of the bacteria.

Swim in the sky
Creative Commons License photo credit: t2s

I see no beauty in death. I am ter­ri­fied of it, as a gen­eral rule. The loss of a human mind to the black maw of noth­ing is the only thing that fright­ens me, really. My panic attacks, at their root, are all about my fear of death. But, for some rea­son, I read about whale falls, and I am filled with awe and amaze­ment. There is beauty there, for me, and I don’t know why. A great, amaz­ing crea­ture dies, and gives life to not just one, but sev­eral ecosys­tems, for years and years after its death.

I want my death, when it comes, if it comes (as I hope to catch the wave of life exten­sion sci­ence and live for centuries–a fool­ish hope, but I can­not relin­quish it), to be as beau­ti­ful and as gen­er­a­tive as a whale fall. I want what I have done in my life to cre­ate as much, per­haps. And the fear of death that I have–maybe it’s because I know I haven’t done that yet. Now would be too soon. I’m not ready. That’s what the attacks are about. Not being ready.

I refuse to come to terms with the idea of my own mor­tal­ity. Not yet. Not until I can die like the whales do.

On Gaming and Writing

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

On Gaming and Writing

The sim­ple rea­son as to why I have not been post­ing much is that I have devel­oped an active social life that keeps me out of the house. It’s a very geeky social life, though. I am spend­ing three to four nights a week gam­ing with new meat­space friends.

On Tuesdays, I’m run­ning a D&D cam­paign. I’m not a huge fan of D&D, but it’s like oat­meal. It may not taste very good, but it can be filling.

On Wednesdays, I spend the evening at Gryphon Gaming & Comics. I pick up the new comics for the week and then play board games and card games with who­ever shows up. I’ve met some really inter­est­ing peo­ple this way, and tried a lot of new games that I have never heard of before attending.

On Thursdays, I’ve picked up a lit­tle war gam­ing sys­tem called Warmachine/​Hordes. I play the Hordes side of things, because I find the idea of run­ning an army of gigan­tic, unstop­pable trolls just irre­sistible. I find the paint­ing part of things very relax­ing as well. It’s not as hard on my right brain as the day job is, but it’s bet­ter than just turn­ing into a full-​​fledged couch potato too.

In addi­tion the the above, I’m in talks to run a monthly one-​​shot game at the store, and I’m talk­ing with some­one about play­ing a cam­paign of Shadowrun. I think I will draw the line at 4 days of gam­ing com­mit­ment. I need to get some writ­ing done at some point.

Speaking of writ­ing, I recently sold a story, “Groob’s Stupid Grubs” to Black Gate. I don’t remem­ber if I’ve posted that yet. Anyway, with that sale and a rejec­tion from Asimov’s this week (mov­ing, but didn’t work. I need to learn how to write sto­ries that work. At least I’m get­ting pathos now, which is an improve­ment on the old me), I only have one story out, the Yeti thing with Shawna.

Right now, I’m just enjoy­ing life, and enjoy­ing not spend­ing 60 hours a week alone behind a key­board. I’m tak­ing notes and read­ing, and I am not giv­ing up on my writ­ing. But I am def­i­nitely sidelin­ing it for a while so I can enjoy hav­ing friends and being around peo­ple again. It’s been a long time coming.