Archive for the ‘My Writing’ Category

It’s Monday! New Roundbottom! Boggarts!

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This week kicks off a new multi-​​part sto­ry­line over at Clockpunk​.com.  It appears that Dr. Roundbottom has got­ten him­self into the mid­dle of some strange hap­pen­ings and a war may soon be break­ing out in the Park!

Primitive BoggartIn this week’s mis­sive, the Doctor relates a dis­cov­ery he doesn’t seem too keen on, which is that a species of faery called the bog­gart pre­vi­ously though to have an ani­mal intel­li­gence, can actu­ally speak and use tools.  He has a very inter­est­ing cap­ture doc­u­ment­ing the tool use at least, and it appears that he’s ende­vour­ing to make a record­ing of the lit­tle crea­tures for next week’s Nature Sounds to prove to the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity that they have the capac­ity for speech.

So check it out, tell your friends!  Spread the word!

I took a bloody fan­tas­tic steam­punk shoot last night which I will most likely be show­ing you bits of pieces of this week.  Unfortunately, Daily Photo is now dead until spring.   I’ll post pho­tos now and then, but they won’t be com­ing daily until the shoot­ing sea­son starts up again.

The New Dr. Roundbottom Podcast is Live

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hi Folks.  After a ton of work on the part of myself, Sarah, and my sound engi­neer and good friend Nate Periat, we’ve fin­ished and posted our first Dr. Roundbottom Field Sounds pod­cast.  It’s only 5 min­utes long, so don’t hes­i­tate to just go to the site and hit play.  Please let me know what you think.  We’re very pleased with the results for our first try, and we can’t wait to do more.  I spent today get­ting ahead on next week’s entry as well.  Tomrorow, after some site updates I need to get done, I will start writ­ing the next pod­cast episode.

Let me know what you think!

Like Turning Rusty Gears

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Getting back into the habit of writ­ing has been incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for me for a vari­ety of rea­sons, but the gears finally turned a half rota­tion today.  I wrote actual story words not related to the Roundbottom project.  It’s the first thing I’ve writ­ten since the begin­ning of the year, and I hope it’s a sign of things to come.

I don’t find that writ­ing is like rid­ing a bicy­cle.  I think for me it is some­thing that I can get out of prac­tice with very eas­ily.  The more I do it, the more my brain clicks into the right place.  The longer I go with­out it, the harder it is for me to find that men­tal space.   When things work, it’s a glo­ri­ous feel­ing.  But right now, the brain feels like it needs some WD-​​40.

But hey, I actu­ally wrote, and you eat an ele­phant one bite at a time, and you write a story 1000 words (or so) at a time just the same.  Next thing you, know, I’ll be fin­ish­ing a novel.   Not hav­ing done that feels like liv­ing next to a really tall moun­tain, own­ing a lot of moun­tain climb­ing gear, but never actu­ally mak­ing an attempt to reach the summit.

What tech­niques do you have to get back to writ­ing after a long absence?  Any tips to share?

SF: Mind Meld– Changing SF

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I was asked, along with the rest of the authors in Seeds of Change to make sug­ges­tions for change in the field of sci­ence fic­tion.  Regular read­ers can prob­a­bly guess exactly what I said, but check it out and see what you think.   Not as rev­o­lu­tion­ary as I might have been in my youth, but still call­ing for big changes.

There are a lot of things I wouldn’t mind see­ing changed in sci­ence fic­tion, but they mostly revolve around grow­ing the audi­ence. I am most inter­ested in cre­at­ing ways for peo­ple who would like sci­ence fic­tion short fic­tion to learn that it even exists. At one time, the defunct mag­a­zine SF Age had nearly 175,000 in sales of a sin­gle issue. The largest cir­cu­la­tion of any mag­a­zine is barely over 20,000 today and has been falling for nearly a decade.

That’s prob­a­bly the last thing I’ll say on the issue of the mag­a­zines for a while.  I’m going to focus my energy on get­ting my work inside of them, instead of wor­ry­ing about sav­ing them.  It’s wasted energy at this point and has become just another way for me to focus on the wrong things.

New Roundbottom Live

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The con­clud­ing chap­ter of the Case of the Steam Wraith  is now live on the Dr. Rounbottom website.

This four-​​part story has had some bumps, and if I wasn’t writ­ing with­out a net, I can see some edits that I would make.  I’m going to try to write these things far­ther in advance of post­ing in the future so that I can smooth out some of the incon­sis­ten­cies that develop.  It’s far eas­ier to write one-​​shot obser­va­tional posts than the sto­ry­line based posts.   I made some strides towards that goal of get­ting ahead this week­end, design­ing a new cap­ture and we’ll hope­fully get a pod­cast made this week as well.

One prob­lem with writ­ing the posts in advance is that I like hav­ing Roundbottom being respon­sive to the com­ments.  one of the things that sets this project aside from the usual fic­tion ser­ial is this aspect of involv­ing the input of the audi­ence.   If you weren’t aware of that–Roundbottom does inter­act with his read­ers, so if you want to jump into the story, you’re per­fectly able to do so.  Just start post­ing com­ments.  Make up a char­ac­ter for your­self if you like.  I’m not sure who my com­menters are because of the aliases, and it’s a blast to read what they have to say on things.

I hope you enjoy!

New Roundbottom: To Bind a Steam Wraith

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Another Monday, and another Roundbottom post has gone live over at clock​punk​.com. This week, the good Doctor for­mu­lates a plan to recap­ture the dan­ger­ous wraith.

We’re hard at work around here on more Roundbottom con­tent. The first pod­cast might very well be ready in the next week or two. My sound engi­neer Nate sent me a cou­ple of files over the week­end that were great. The pod­cast is going to have fan­tas­tic engi­neer­ing. Episodes will be short, run­ning only 2–3 min­utes most likely. But those 2–3 min­utes will be packed with aural delights, I tell you.

Dr. Roundbottom needs your help to find his audi­ence. Please con­sider link­ing to the site if you haven’t done so already.

New Roundbottom: Interview with a Steam Rat

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Today, there’s a new Roundbottom image and story live over at clock​punk​.com.  This piece reveals a lot more about the world that Roundbottom lives in and some of the other peo­ple that pop­u­late it.

Also, um… if you wouldn’t mind, and if you like the site, could you link it on your blog per­haps to let oth­ers know that it’s active and being updated again? I would very much appre­ci­ate any eye­balls you can send my way.

New Roundbottom: The Escape

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Because I’m going to be in an air­plane when I would nor­mally post the new Roundbottom, I’ve decided to post it this morn­ing so I can make sure that noth­ing buggy hap­pens.   This post kicks off a new multi-​​part sto­ry­line involv­ing the super­nat­ural that I think you will enjoy.   Right now, mem­ber­ships remain closed and the only prints you can buy are the first series images.  The new series of pho­tos will be avail­able as lim­ited edi­tion, signed prints, but I haven’t quite worked out all the kinks there so it’s not open. I hope to have it open soon.  I’ll have the mem­ber­ship option open after I get back from Connecticut.  I just didn’t want any­body to have to wait too long for their goodies.

If you know of a zine or news site that might be inter­ested in the new Roundbottom,  please feel free toThe Escape for­ward the link on at this point.  I haven’t found any major bugs that weren’t expected at this point.  By the way, if you use gra­vatars, they will show up in the com­ments there.  I highly encour­age you to make a steam­punky icon for your­self when com­ment­ing there.  Feel free to com­ment in char­ac­ter.  Create your own per­sona, as many have done in the past.  It’ll be fun! The Dr. will respond to you in char­ac­ter as well.

We’ve got some fan­tas­tic audio engi­neer­ing going into the first pod­cast as well.  I hope to put those out, after an ini­tal roll-​​up, about once every two weeks.  They’re pri­mar­ily going to be Miss Watkins nar­rat­ing, with the ocas­sional grum­ble from Roundbottom him­self.  Remember that Mutual of Omaha show?  Same dynamic in the pod­cast. It’s going to be a blast.

So to recap, the new Roundbottom story is live.  Tell you friends.

A Call for First Readers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m look­ing for 3–4 indi­vid­u­als who would be will­ing to review the new Roundbottom posts before I make them live on the site.  I need fresh eyes that can catch bad sen­tences, stu­pid gram­mar, stu­pid any­thing really.  Without an edi­tor in the process, I worry about pub­lish­ing some really sub­par.  I’m less con­cerned with sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions, as this project is an exper­i­ment in dif­fer­ent meth­ods there–but any­one inter­ested in pro­vid­ing me feed­back, shoot me an email.  I’ll take the first few peo­ple inter­ested.  Thank you in advance.