Archive for the ‘My Writing’ Category

Federations Table of Contents

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Federations | John Joseph Adams.

John has posted the table of con­tents to Federations, the anthol­ogy to which I have made my lat­est sale.  Excuse me while I get a lit­tle starstruck and nostalgic.

The first author I ever shared with my father was also my first sci­ence fic­tion author.  When I was around 8 or 9, I stum­bled across a lit­tle book in my grade school library called Dragonsong by Anne McCaffery.   To this day, it is one of less than half a dozen books I have read more than once, an honor I reserve only for the most impor­tant titles in my life or, books I had to read for more than one class through my long edu­ca­tion. One of the first books I ever bought with my own money was an omnibus of the Dragonriders tril­ogy.    The first (and as far as I know, only) fan let­ter I wrote as a child was to Anne McCaffery.  I think she even wrote back.

My Dad and I read every sin­gle McCaffery book she pub­lished, pretty much.  She was one of those authors who the library sys­tem man­aged to get new books for, oddly enough.  Whereas I was mostly stuck read­ing Golden Age SF in the bow­els of the local library (lit­er­ally, the SF sec­tion was in the base­ment, in the back cor­ner), the new books shelf seemed to always have a McCaffery.

My Dad and I didn’t talk SF very much, but most of the time we did, it was regard­ing the lat­est McCaffery book.  We had long dis­cus­sions when [spoil­ers] Pern turned out to be a lost human colony of space far­ers.  [/​spoilers]  Later books, I haven’t been on top of.  Since her son started writ­ing them, I haven’t read them, not because of any rea­son other than lack of time, and well, nobody to talk about them with.

In one of the last con­ver­sa­tions I had with my Dad, when he was in the hos­pi­tal the day we learned that he wasn’t going to get any bet­ter and that it was time was hos­pice care (a med­ical term meain­ing ‘give up and die grace­fully’), I signed a copy of All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories for him, telling him that he could beat the can­cer like a pulp hero beats up Nazis.     He stood up, all 90-​​some pounds of what was left of him, and gave me the strongest hug I think he ever gave me and he said, “I’m proud of you son.”  I must have acted sur­prised because he said, “I’ve always been proud of you.”

That was prob­a­bly the most emo­tional moment of my life, and will remain so for a very long time. At least until I get to tell my own child the same thing,

Today, I feel like I earned that pride a lit­tle more, and I know that if he were here, he would be as excited about me being in this book as I am.

Sale: “The Culture Archivist” to Federations anthology

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have the plea­sure of announc­ing that my story “The Culture Archivist” (known to early read­ers as “Fuck U.P.s”) has been accepted to the Federations anthol­ogy, edited by John Joseph Adams and com­ing out from Prime Books some­time in the future, I think later this year.

Here’s an excerpt:

The first goods cap­sule hit half a klick away and unfolded into a blos­som of blue flames.  Judging from the size of the impact, it had to be a habi­ta­tion mod­ule.  The big stuff usu­ally came in first.  Toasters didn’t quite have the same awe fac­tor as four-​​wheel drive vehi­cles and two-​​story starter homes.  But the deliv­ery mech­a­nisms were noto­ri­ously flaky and the goods didn’t always arrive plan­et­side intact. Case in point.

I could make out the smell of fear excre­tions from the Humpty herd in the dis­tance. The debate had turned into noth­ing more than chaotic noise.  Other rogue cul­ture archivists might have taken the oppor­tu­nity to col­lect data on the dis­rup­tion of a native cul­ture, but I had seen plenty of that in my time, both in my cur­rent life and the one before.

The con­sumer goods that had begun to rain down from the heav­ens reminded me of Santa Claus, that mytho­log­i­cal mag­i­cal crea­ture that flew through the air bring­ing toys and gifts to all the chil­dren of Terra, deliv­ered simul­ta­ne­ously on a sin­gle night.  A col­league spe­cial­iz­ing in the old cul­tures long since sub­sumed by the U.P. did a cal­cu­la­tion once based on pop­u­la­tion esti­mates and given how absolutely fuck­ing huge every­thing was back then, and fig­ured that old Santa’s vol­ume of goods to be tens of thou­sands of cubic meters.

This was like that, only if some prim­i­tive gov­ern­ment had fired a surface-​​to-​​air mis­sile and blown that mag­i­cal bas­tard to smithereens.  Merry Clausmas, Humpties.  Try to get out of the way.

Thanks to all the won­der­ful peo­ple who pro­vided feed­back on this story when I was fran­ti­cally try­ing to fin­ish it for the dead­line.  I um, can’t find my list of who you are, so speak up in the com­ments so I can thank you again.

This will mark some­thing like the 4th or 5th sale at pro pay rates that still doesn’t qual­ify me for SFWA.  Heh.

Lest I Focus Solely on the Negative, And, Project PhotoRoadTrip

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve veer­ing into neg­a­tive blog­ging ter­ri­tory lately, so I think it would be wise of me to make a post talk­ing about the pos­i­tive things that have hap­pened recently to remind myself that life isn’t all bad.

  • 7 of 10 pho­tos sub­mit­ted to iStock­Photo this past week were accepted.  That’s a new record for me.  Of the three rejected, I some­what expected it might hap­pen.  I’m slowly learn­ing how to shoot for them. I guess I have more time to pur­sue this now too!
  • My photo Clouds of FootHills I on Flickr reached a high of #25 on Flickr Explore for the day.  It’s moved all over the place, but see­ing it hit the Flickr Explore front page was a high­light of my pho­tog­ra­phy career so far.  Thanks to those of you who gave the photo love.  It cur­rently has 911 views, 108 favorites, and 63 com­ments.  It’s by far the most pop­u­lar thing I have ever shot.  And I thought I couldn’t shoot land­scape photography.
  • I sold a story a lit­tle while back.  I don’t think I’m allowed to say which and for what, but I will let you know when I can.  It is nice to know that when I put my mind to it, I can still be a writer. Maybe I will get more writ­ing done thanks to my unem­ploy­ment status!
  • The out­pour­ing of help from my friends, espe­cially you guys on Twitter, has been noth­ing short of astound­ing.  Thank you.  It’s times like this that you real­ize how good your friends really are.

I’m slowly pulling myself out of my slump and set­ting my goals, sketch­ing out projects and tasks, and think­ing about where I want to go and how I want to get there.  My goal of pro­fes­sional travel pho­tog­ra­pher is cer­tainly going to have to take a back-​​seat to some­thing more prac­ti­cal. And then there’s this:

ProjectPhotoRoadTrip

I think I’m a pretty decent pho­tog­ra­pher at this point.  I think I write pretty well too.  I have all this time on my hands sud­denly and I was think­ing that maybe I could put it to you all to fund a lit­tle project I’m contemplating.

I’m think­ing about tak­ing 2 weeks and tak­ing a road trip somewhere–maybe the Southwest?  Arizona, New Mexico.  Some place where it’s not freez­ing cold right now, and some place that offers inter­est­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for pho­tog­ra­phy.  I’ll stay off the inter­state and use the old high­way sys­tem, look­ing for unusual sights and vis­tas along the way.

I’m think­ing of launch­ing a Fundable project.  I’ll bud­get it all out very care­fully and post a trans­par­ent account­ing of what money I need and why.  In return for spon­sor­ing me, I will post daily blog updates, inter­views with peo­ple I meet on the road, por­traits of said peo­ple, land­scape pho­tos, and any­thing else that I can man­age.  I will write and doc­u­ment a trav­el­ogue in the way that only I can.     Donors  above a cer­tain min­i­mum amount will receive a print of their choice from the product’s pho­to­graphic results.  And if that’s not enough, then maybe I can offer to pay every­one back once I’m gain­fully employed again.   Photo Essay, NPR style.

I’m not sold on the Southwest.  I’d like to poll you all for your opin­ions.  Remember that I live in Colorado, so where I go should be within 2–3 days dri­ving dis­tance at most, and it should prob­a­bly be some place not cov­ered in snow and ice in February/​March.  Or you could be masochis­tic and com­mand me to go to Yellowstone.  There would be amaz­ing photo oppor­tu­ni­ties, I will just freeze to death.  It’s all good.

What do you think?  Crazy enough to work?  Interesting in see­ing what I can do?  Share your thoughts. Later, maybe, I’ll ask you to open your wallets.

Photo: Clouds over Foothills I

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

A pack of coy­otes howl in the dis­tance as the sun dips behind the foothills behind me. Moisture-​​heavy clouds have gath­ered atop the hills in a nepho­log­i­cal traf­fic jam. They’re car­ry­ing snow and lots of it. It’s over­due here–the month has been far too warm, and one has a sense of impend­ing dread, that the weather karma must be bal­anced, and soon, or it will begin to rain frogs, it will freeze in July, or a super-​​tornado will form among the Rockies and sweep down through the plains, leav­ing a bar­ren land­scape in its wake.

Prairie dogs scream in ter­ror as the coy­ote cries grow louder and yet some­how no closer. They could be over the next ridge, or a dozen miles away. Today you can see for eter­nity. To be able to hear nearly as far would not sur­prise one.

Gravel crunches under my feet as I walk down the nar­row road across the prairie, back down from the hills. The sun has nearly set now, and I am in the shadow of the foothills. The land­scape takes on a gray-​​blue tint, but the sky is still lit up in bril­liant whites, grays, and blues. The sun punches through the jammed clouds and throws out beams that seem to point towards the south­ern sub­urbs of the city, a trick of the van­ish­ing point, and not some kind of heav­enly bless­ing upon the row after row of beige boxes. No deity worth wor­ship would con­done liv­ing that way, iso­lated from your com­mu­nity, your neigh­bors. No ser­vices, no gro­cery store, no parks for chil­dren. These hous­ing devel­op­ments will be the slums of the American West one day, mis­takes that blot that land­scape and remind our future selves of the folly of wealth and unearned prosperity.

The rays don’t bless that place. They merely point at it, as if to say, “get a load of that crap, huh?”

The coy­otes express their scorn, and I walk slower, to lis­ten more care­fully. After all, they’re singing my song.

Photo: Clouds over Foothills I

Read My Blog if LJ Goes Under

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m sure you’ve heard the news that the com­pany run­ning LiveJournal has a non-​​technical skele­ton crew man­ning the ship right now.  A stiff breeze could take the whole thing down in that sit­u­a­tion.  Welcome to the Bush Economy! We may be get­ting rid of the man, but his effects shall be felt for years to come.

Anyway, The vast major­ity of my Blog read­ers are on LJ.  Do me a favor?  Go here: http://​www​.jere​mi​ah​tol​bert​.com/​b​l​og/
And book­mark my page so you can find me in a post-​​LJ world should you need to?  Coming up soon, I’m going to try and make a post for LJ folks on RSS feed read­ers like Google Reader so that you can read all ofy­our for­mer LJ friends in one place should the unthink­able hap­pen.  In the mean time, it might not be a bad idea to down­load the XML files for all your posts in LJ in case you need to migrate to another service.

If you’re a mem­ber of the F&SF com­mu­nity from LJ and you’re relo­cat­ing to new digs, drop me a line and I’ll post an announce­ment here about your move.  I’ll keep an updated list of LJ han­dles. Hopefully this won’t be nec­es­sary, but if it is, I want to do some­thing to help pre­serve the community.

10 Lessons Learned in 2008

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m not going to do New Years res­o­lu­tions.  I’m going to reflect back on what I learned, and allow that to guide my progress forward.

In no par­tic­u­lar order of importance:

  1. Cyberfunded Creativity Does Not Work
    For me, that is.  At least at the level I would like (break­ing even on expenses).  I think you stand the best chance of mak­ing money online if you have pop­u­lar­ity for some­thing other than what you’re doing. It’s damned near impos­si­ble to build an audi­ence for some­thing like Dr. Roundbottom.  For one, it’s too much of a niche inter­est (steam­punk photo fic­tion).  Second, I don’t have the pro­file of a BNA (Big Name Author).  I’ll keep doing it in 2009, but not with the same level of dedication.
  2. I Love Photography But it Won’t Make Me Rich
    I do.  I really love being behind the cam­era, shoot­ing just about any­thing.  Sure, it’s frus­trat­ing and the pic­tures rarely turn out the way I pic­tured them, but I feel like there’s a ton left to learn.  In 2009, I will be expand­ing my for­ays into pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phy by doing some live band shoots I hope.  I will be mak­ing more and more trips into the Rockies to shoot wildlife.  I may open a print store to sell prints of some­thing other than Dr. Roundbottom images.  But unless I give up every­thing else, go back to art school, and pur­sue pho­tog­ra­phy as a full time pro­fes­sion, I can’t make a liv­ing from it.  Even then, jobs are scarce com­pared to the num­ber of peo­ple who want to be doing it.  Like many of my inter­ests, I got in at a time where the bar­ri­ers to entry were lower than ever.
  3. The World Doesn’t End if You Lose Your Job
    One of my great­est fears prior to this sum­mer was los­ing a job.  I take a great amount of pride in my job, and I also have a lot of school debt, so the two fac­tors com­bined cre­ate a lot of stress for me.   When I was laid off from my last job, I felt good, then depressed, and then 3 days later, I threw myself into look­ing for any kind of work I could get.  I picked up great new clients (Thanks, Jeff! Sarah! Jay!) and I learned a lot about the busi­ness.  Which leads to num­ber 4.  And by the way, head­ing into this econ­omy, this is an impor­tant les­son to remind myself of.
  4. I Can Run My Own Business
    Thanks to my lay­off. I learned that I do have what it takes to make it on my own, and if our health care prob­lem in this coun­try ever gets solved I will not hes­i­tate to start my own busi­ness.  Or if Sarah has a job with great ben­e­fits.  I really love work­ing for myself, even if it means 12 hour days.  The free­dom makes me so happy. And I have no trou­ble focus­ing on work while work­ing from home.
  5. I Still Want to be a Writer (Whatever That Means)
    I spent much of 2008 pretty sure that my urge to write had gone down the tubes, despite putting out quite a lot of work related to #1 above.  I didn’t write sto­ries, I stopped fol­low­ing SF news and blogs, and I stopped read­ing much SF.  But as I find myself grow­ing increas­ingly angry at the future and how it has been robbed from us by greedy bas­tards, I find once again that I have a few things I want to say.  I wrote 2 sto­ries this year, one within the last cou­ple of days (which I really need to edit and mail off tonight).  I’m hop­ing to at least dou­ble that out­put next year, and maybe, just maybe, finally start a novel.  I’m 31 years old and I have my whole career ahead of me.
  6. I Am Still in Love
    Sarah and I have had some rough times. My men­tal insta­bil­ity brought on by the death of many fam­ily mem­bers all at once nearly ruined every­thing.  But with each pass­ing year, I feel closer to her, and my love deep­ens sur­pris­ingly more.  Each time I think it doesn’t get any bet­ter, it does.  There are two dif­fer­ent kinds of love, and the first one is super­fi­cial, but more intense.  I think a lot of peo­ple get tied up in that love, in look­ing for it, and they miss out on the much more ful­fill­ing kind that only comes with time.
  7. I Am Loved
    I look at Twitter, I look at Livejournal, and I look at Facebook and I real­ize that I am a very lucky man to have the friends and fam­ily that I do. I wake up each morn­ing and see an amaz­ing per­son who any­one would say is way, way out of my league.  There are times when I feel iso­lated and alone, just a chem­i­cal imbal­ance really, but I think I have learned more in 2008 than any year before just how much peo­ple care for me, and how much I care about them in return.  I am look­ing to deepen my friend­ships and under­stand­ing of peo­ple in the com­ing year.  It will make me a bet­ter per­son in return.
  8. Change Can Happen
    I lost 70 pounds, and am mostly suc­ceed­ing at keep­ing the weight off.  We elected some­one truly new and fresh to the President of the United States.  Change does hap­pen, both within and in the world.  I can con­trol some of that.  Like our new President, I have the audac­ity to hope for a bet­ter tomor­row.  Not only that, but the deter­mi­na­tion to work for it in what­ever way I can.
  9. I Do Want to Have A Child
    I’ve been think­ing a lot about the mean­ing of life, and I think from a bio­log­i­cal stand­point, this is it.  Raising another life, another per­son into being.  That’s the point, and it should be denied to no one.  I don’t know when will be the right time, but my doubts about it have faded.  I want to be a father.  I think I’ll be a damned good one.  I’ve learned from some of the best; My father, my step­fa­ther, and my father-​​in-​​law.   Three great men.  I can’t go wrong.
  10. I Am Probably Not Going to Live Forever–But Who Cares?
    I’m slowly com­ing to terms with my own mor­tal­ity at age 31.  Maybe it’s my real­iza­tion at #9 that has begun to ease my fears which were brought on sharply by deaths in the fam­ily.  I still long for suc­cess­ful life exten­sion drugs.  I still want more time.  But I’m going to try and make the best of the time that I do have.  I’m not going to live each day like it’s my last, because that would prob­a­bly mean lay­ing in bed and wheez­ing a lot and clutch­ing at my chest.   I’m not ready to go yet, but maybe in another 100 years or so, I will be ready.  I’ll do what I can, and I’ll leave a mark on this world in ways that are almost as good as real immortality.

I hope that next year is bet­ter than the last for all of you.  I wish you all the best.  Times are hard right now, but we can make it through this together. We need to pull together as a com­mu­nity now more than ever before.  Look for those in need, and help them.  Share your pros­per­ity and it will grow in ways you never expected.  That’s what I will be try­ing to do in 2009, and I hope you will too.

Emergency Readers Needed

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Want to read a story and get me com­ments by late on New Years Eve?  Just gen­eral com­ments will be fine.  Plot holes, gre­vi­ous errors of judge­ment, and so on.  Email me via the con­tact form or my email address and I will send the story along.  Thanks in advance.

I finally wrote a story!  Woot!

New Roundbottom: Faery Wintering Nests

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

There’s a low-​​key new Roundbottom today detail­ing what faeries tend to do when it gets cold.  Feel free to drop on by and tell us how your local species pre­pare for win­ter, if your world has one.

We’re run­ning a sale until the end of the year, $5 off each mem­ber­ship kit, and large scale lim­ited edi­tion prints are now only $65 a piece.  After ship­ping and print­ing and every­thing, I don’t make much on these, so order a whole bunch okay?

I am lean­ing right now towards wrap­ping Roundbottom up again for the time being at the end of the year.  The real world is too scary right now for me to be able to con­cen­trate on cre­ated and telling such mostly whim­si­cal sto­ries.  That and I really need to find bet­ter ways of mak­ing money.  Roundbottom is a los­ing project, sadly.  If I sell more prints though, it’ll change my mind.

T-​​Day

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Thanksgiving is upon us. While the birds quake in fear, I plan photo expe­di­tions into the wild.    Thanksgiving is hap­pen­ing in Laramie this year, which means a drive up to Wyoming, which I rarely look for­ward to.  However, in this case, I’m schem­ing.  With my improv­ing pho­to­graphic skills, I have a cou­ple of sites I’d like to hit before eat­ing myself sense­less at the inlaws.  Dinner is late in day, so I ahve the early after­noon to drive up 25 into Cheyenne where I can shoot some inter­est­ing rock for­ma­tions, and then over to Laramie on I-​​80, where I can stop and shoot some Vedawuoo rocks.   I’m think­ing more HDR pictures.

I’m back to sub­mit­ting stock.  I just had two new stock pho­tos accepted, which I will blog later on, in case you’re eager to use a nice photo of a ground squir­rel or a close-​​up of a garter snake’s eye in your next design.    I find that if I go slow and just upload a hand­ful at a time, and have a big stack ready to go, I am much more relaxed about rejec­tions. I don’t care about my accep­tance rate.  I don’t care how well it sells.  I’m just inter­ested in slowly build­ing my port­fo­lio and get­ting bet­ter.   It’s nice.

Maybe some day I can treat my writ­ing with the same relaxed manner.

The rest of the long week­end will be devoted to build­ing Diamonds in the Sky for Brotherton and get­ting some Roundbottom scripts in the can.  I’ve got 2 more weeks of sabat­ti­cal and then I’m back at it again.  Bigger and bet­ter than ever, I tells ya.

Clockpunk: The Deadly Mr. Whiskers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This week was another heavy work week so I was unable to find the time to write a pod­cast script and get every­one together to record it.  With the Hiatus sched­uled now until December 8th, we should be able to get sev­eral scripts writ­ten and recorded.  I’m try­ing to move from writ­ing posts one at a time to writ­ing them in groups of sin­gle sto­ry­lines, and I’m try­ing to keep dif­fer­ent sto­ry­lines run­ning on the blog and on the podcast.

So, The Deadly Mr. Whiskers was a fun photo to shoot and chal­leng­ing to boot.  The model in this case is our cat Gildenstern (his brother’s name is Rosencrantz).   The toy was some­thing I spent the morn­ing mak­ing, and I have some behind-​​the-​​scenes pho­tos of it before the cats sav­aged it. It doesn’t really read very well in the cat photo unfor­tu­nately, but it’s made up to look like a lit­tle faery.  It had wings, but the cats demol­ished those early in the shoot, and they weren’t read­ing very well any­way, so we snipped them off.

Taking staged pic­tures of ani­mals is a pain in the ass.  Keeping the cat in the lights was impos­si­ble.  Getting him to play with the toy involved copi­ous amounts of cat­nip and even then, I couldn’t get him to attack it the way I wanted him to.  I have more pic­tures of my cats now than I ever really wanted.  This one was pretty much the best for what I was aim­ing for.  And with that, I’ll save fur­ther details for a members-​​only post on the Clockpunk site.

I hope you all have a won­der­ful week.