15 January 2013

Alien on the Sidewalk

I have a hard time con­vey­ing to an out­sider how strange it feels to live in a place like Tonganoxie after fif­teen years in other places.  My last five years in Colorado prob­a­bly changed me the most.  But I finally thought of some­thing that con­vey how out of place I feel at times.

I like to go for walks as exer­cise dur­ing the day.  The side­walks here are on only one side of the street, if any (as opposed to Colorado, which is cov­ered in side­walks, run­ning trails, and bike paths.)  I make do with what I have.

On two occa­sions in the past few months, I’ve had com­plete strangers in pickup trucks stop and offer me a ride home.  The idea that some­one would walk around the neigh­bor­hood in mid-​​winter as a delib­er­ate choice is com­pletely for­eign to my neighbors.

The lat­est per­son was a big burly bearded man with a pit­bull in the pas­sen­ger seat of his 70s Ford pickup.  Very friendly.  Very sur­prised when I told him that I was good, and in fact walk­ing on pur­pose.  I swear even the dog looked at me with a con­fused, cocked head as they drove away.

14 January 2013

In Search of Authenticity

One of the rea­sons I haven’t been writ­ing so much for the past few years is: I was forced to con­front my own com­mon­ness.  There are innu­mer­able genre writ­ers out there much like me in gen­eral shape and form; geeky white males work­ing in com­put­ers who write on the side.

In any over­crowded mar­ket­place, one key to being suc­cess­ful is to stand out from the crowd, and I felt like the direc­tion I had been going for a num­ber of years was not really doing that for me.  So for the past few years, I’ve tried to dig deeper and iden­tify what makes me unique–where do I stand apart from the crowd, if at all?

Ihaven’t found easy answers to that ques­tion, which is partly why my pro­duc­tiv­ity is low now. I could, and did, churn out a story a week, but the qual­ity and care wasn’t always there.  Was rarely there, more like.

So, hon­esty and authen­tic­ity are the things I am look­ing to con­nect with these days, rather than the sim­ple need to be pub­lished and acknowl­edged.  I don’t care what the mar­ket wants for the most part, because I know the mar­ket has no idea what it wants until it sees it anyway.

I’ve mostly given up fic­tion writ­ing as a pro­fes­sion.  Writing now, for me, is sim­ply my best hope for leav­ing some­thing behind after I’m gone, some fos­sil foot­print that sur­vives into the great unknown.   When you make that shift to think­ing about how you want to impact the world, it gets harder to write well.  It takes more time.

So that’s (one of) the rea­sons I haven’t been writ­ing much.  Not an excuse, but sim­ply an expla­na­tion.  My hope is that these efforts will pay off with some­thing beau­ti­ful, some day. But maybe never.  I’m ever aware of the pas­sage of time.

What do you think makes you uniquely you?  Any idea what makes me uniquely me?  I won’t turn down insights from others.

11 January 2013

On Rainy Days

In Colorado, we didn’t see a lot of rainy days.  It rains, but it does not rain all day.  Cloudy skies gen­er­ally mean it is about to rain or snow any sec­ond now.  And when it stops, the clouds clear up.  In the sum­mers, it will often rain for days at a time for an hour or two in the after­noons.  It’s a lovely way to cool down the day.

Kansas, no sur­prise, is dif­fer­ent.  The storms that rise up from the Rockies roll out across Western Kansas and build in strength and size, draw­ing their mois­ture from who knows where (a mete­o­rol­o­gist, I sup­pose), until by the time they reach the lit­tle Northeast cor­ner Tonganoxie sits in, they are great sweep­ing pas­tures of rain-​​laden clouds, let­ting rain fall like flour from a sifter in a fine mist, or some­times, a heavy driz­zle.  The down-​​hill energy peters out some­where east of Topeka and the front crawls, edg­ing east­ward so much more slowly.  We did not see the sun yes­ter­day, and nor will we see it today.

With the rain has come warmth.  At 8 AM, it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit  this morn­ing. The fore­cast calls for a high of 62 on this day, January 11th.  Troubling, but wel­come change from the bit­ter, windy cold we’ve been fac­ing for the past few weeks.

Everything wants to slow down with the rain. It almost feels like time itself has dif­fer­ent vis­cous prop­er­ties in the rain. Perhaps this is some­thing rooted deeply in our evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­ogy   Hunters and gath­er­ers likely stuck to shel­ter on rainy days and con­tem­plated their exis­tence.  There’s a safe feel­ing that comes with that.  Muscles relax… we’re unlikely to be attacked by preda­tors today, for they too hun­ker down and wait out the sky  Or per­haps that’s all a just-​​so story and mean­ing­less.  But it amuses me to think of my dis­tant ances­tors lan­guidly paint­ing on a cave wall to the rhythm of rain against the trees and rocks.

10 January 2013

Lonesome Links For a Wet Thursday

I’ve got my head down design­ing and cod­ing two sites this week, so just about every­thing else is get­ting next to no atten­tion, but I’m deter­mined to keep this blog mov­ing with inter­est­ing mate­ri­als.  They just won’t always come from my own brain.  Here are a few links you should check out today.

Sequence a sci­ence fic­tion writer.  My friend Jay Lake has been bat­tling can­cer for four years now, and he’s run­ning out of options.  One pos­si­bil­ity is to sequence his genome, which may lead to novel treat­ments.  Many famous writ­ers you enjoy are offer­ing hilar­i­ous rewards to the world for rais­ing money to fund this sequenc­ing.  Jay didn’t ask for this help, but he’s get­ting it because sci­ence fic­tion fans and writ­ers have big hearts.

What is shart?  IBM’s Watson super­com­puter mem­o­rized the urban dic­tio­nary and began curs­ing.  I wish Suri would do this.

Amazon AutoRip.  Ever bought a music CD from Amazon?  You can now use their new ser­vice to get mp3s of those CDs. Cue the *IAA throw­ing a fit in 3… 2… 1…

 

09 January 2013

The little things of Kansas

Barred Owl - Strix variaI’m still strug­gling with what it means to come back to Kansas after being away so long.  A part of me is insis­tent that com­ing home makes me a bit of a fail­ure, but it’s a voice that grows dim with time.

I will say that it has turned out so far not to save us any money.  Kansas is sup­posed to be cheaper than Colorado, but our expenses have not dropped much what with all the dri­ving we do, and the util­i­ties are higher here across the board.  Go figure.

Little things help me feel bet­ter about it.  Yesterday, I took a short drive out to the county lake with a fish­ing pole in my car, think­ing I might spend an hour and fish.  I was the only per­son at the entire lake, and for good rea­son; the damned thing was frozen over, but not so frozen that I could ice fish.  So I drove around in the golden hour and spot­ted this beau­ti­ful owl right beside the lake.  It was ner­vous, watch­ing me for a while, then real­iz­ing I was no threat, returned his atten­tion to the small things flut­ter­ing around in the under­brush. A barred owl, as it turns out witha lit­tle research.

This morn­ing, I needed to have the Highway Patrol inspect the VIN on my car so that we can finally get plated with Kansas plates.  The woman was very nice, asked if I was a stu­dent.  “Nah, I’m 35,” I said, and she said that was impos­si­ble, that I could pass for a stu­dent.  I wasn’t even wear­ing my hat, cov­er­ing my grey hairs.  I explained that I’d just moved back to the area after many years away, and as I left, she said, “Welcome back home.”  I smiled for a long while after that.

Little things, but the lit­tle things help make it feel like home, instead of a place that used to be home, and now just feels foreign.

Edited to add: I didn’t take the photo above.  That’s by Flickr user hatchski.

08 January 2013

video

Flogsta Scream

Every night at 10 PM since the 1970s, stu­dents scream out their win­dows.   Wikipedia is some­what short on details.

First, I just think this is really cool in a pri­mal sort of way.  The com­mu­nal nature of it makes it more accept­able.  I love that one guy starts kinda faux-​​singing.  It’s not super-​​pleasant to lis­ten to, but it’s gotta be invig­o­rat­ing to do.

If I were a mys­tery nov­el­ist, this would give me a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to stage a fic­tional mur­der.  Who’s going to come run­ning to help a vic­tim dur­ing the Flogsta scream?

Found via Tobias Buckell, who got it via Kotke.

07 January 2013

I am Jerry Gergich

We’ve recently become con­verts of the show Parks & Recreation.  I’d given it a try a cou­ple of times, but never made it past the first cou­ple of episodes.  Much like the office, it seemed cruel and cal­lous about the char­ac­ters, focused more on embar­rass­ment humor than gen­uine laugh-​​out-​​loud moments, and I don’t have patience for that most of the time.

But I read some­where that Season 2 was a fresh start for the show, and  Season 1 was only 6 episodes any­way.  So on a whim, I pulled up the first episode of the sec­ond sea­son, and lo, it was bet­ter.  A lot bet­ter.  It had gen­uine humor, and wasn’t intent on mak­ing me hate every­one in the cast.

Sure, the faux-​​documentary style is a bit played out, and it can fall back on easy gags in the “funny faces to cam­eras” vein, but it quickly devel­ops into a show where you can gen­uinely love the char­ac­ters, and they seem to gen­uinely, in their own ways, love each other.  The whole show is a kind of med­i­ta­tion on love and friend­ship.  It has tremen­dous heart for a lit­tle 22 minute comedy.

However.  I have a huge prob­lem with how the show treats the char­ac­ter named Jerry Gergich.

Jerry is a buf­foon in the clas­sic sense.  He’s the char­ac­ter who bends over to pick some­thing up and splits his pants.  He’s a klutz.  He con­fuses words when he gets nervous.

And the other char­ac­ters pick on him for it ruth­lessly.  Sure, they love Jerry for real, but they also kinda hate him.  And I find it really unsettling. I really empathize with Gergich.  To be hon­est, I am Jerry Gergich.  I am a klutz.  Sometimes, when I’m ner­vous, I mix up words.  And I’ve been the butt of office jokes because of those things.  I’ve been the guy peo­ple don’t take seri­ously because he trips over things.  Dismissed for the dumb­est of rea­sons.   Sure, I’m prob­a­bly overly sen­si­tive to being made fun of, because I was an easy tar­get in school.  Kansas grade school kids are fuck­ing ruth­less lit­tle mon­sters.  I can admit that.  But I don’t miss work­ing in an office one bit for that kind of crap.

I’m happy to see that in later sea­sons, they’re address this issue of how the rest of the char­ac­ters treat Jerry.  Because he really doesn’t deserve it, as nice and sweet a guy as he is.  And per­haps that is the joke, but it’s the wrong joke for the wrong show.  In a show that gets so many other things right, it just feels off, out of place, a sour note.

But seri­ously.  Check the show out if you haven’t.  I’ve really come to love it.

04 January 2013

10 Things To Do Better This Year

I’m in a list mak­ing mood today.  So you get a list.

  • Be less apolo­getic and feel less guilty about the cost of my web design ser­vices.  Authors don’t have a lot of money, but I have bills to pay and I don’t price-​​gouge.  My costs are real­is­tic based on the time and costs involved, as well as my years of expe­ri­ence.  There was a time when I did sites too cheaply and I cut cor­ners too much to make it hap­pen.  In 2013, I have a price floor and I’m stick­ing to it.
  • Check the inter­net less often.   I should just make sure every client has my num­ber and can call or text in an emer­gency. But there are very few emer­gen­cies, and I’m not sure most of my clients really need some­one who replies to every email within 20 min­utes.  Checking my email con­stantly no mat­ter what I am doing is degrad­ing my life experience.
  • Cook more.  In the con­stant bat­tle between my desire to eat well and my dis­in­ter­est in food preparation, disinterest usu­ally wins.  Still try­ing to find my angle of attack here.
  • Spend less time engag­ing with enter­tain­ment media that doesn’t fully engage me.  I spend entirely too many nights watch­ing some bland TV show while I fid­dle around play­ing dumb mini-​​games on my iPad. Doing two things half-​​heartedly does not begin to rival doing one thing deeply.  I need richer expe­ri­ences than this.
  • Start tak­ing pic­tures again.  I haven’t touched my cam­era since Costa Rica.  Surely there is beauty in my new sur­round­ings wor­thy of sharing?
  • Get bet­ter at fol­low­ing through on what I set out to do even when it’s not going to result in get­ting paid necessarily.

Man. I really need to work on that last one.

03 January 2013

Why you should periodically check your spam folder

On a whim, I looked into my spam folder today for my pri­mary email account. I can’t remem­ber the last time I received valid email in there.  Google is usu­ally spot-​​on.  But today, I found an inquiry from the edi­tor of “Nowa Fantastyka”, a Polish spec­u­la­tive fic­tion mag­a­zine, and they would like to pub­lish two of my sto­ries– “One-​​Click Banishment” and “The Culture Archivist.”

This marks my very first for­eign rights sale, if you over­look my sales to Interzone. And I’ve always had a fond­ness for Poland.  This only deep­ens my love for that lovely country.

So that’s a pretty good start to 2013.

Coming Up in 2013

I like to set goals for a year.  Resolutions are often goals that they have no con­trol over, like “get pub­lished.”  You don’t make that deci­sion your­self. Your res­o­lu­tion should be “sub­mit my work.”  Everything past that in the process is out of your hands, and putting expec­ta­tions on your­self for things like that are a recipe for unhappiness.

This year, I have a large num­ber of goals.  If I accom­plish 25% of these, I will sat­is­fied with my results.  Without fur­ther pre­am­ble, here are my goals for 2013:

Revise my last novel, and if it feel okay, send it somewhere.

About a year ago, I wrote my first novel.  It’s called TAKEDOWN NOTICE and it takes place in the set­ting shared with a series of sto­ries about peo­ple who pirate magic on the inter­net.  TAKEDOWN NOTICE has, I believe, a solid core of ideas, but there are seri­ous flaws.  I’ve let it set over a year, so it’ll be time to start read­ing it and mak­ing changes, try­ing to turn it into some­thing I will let some­one other than my wife read.

Get a min­i­mum playable pro­to­type of Caravans going.

I’ve been work­ing for the past few months on design­ing and devel­op­ing a browser-​​based online RPG with the code­name Caravans.  It’s basi­cally a steam­punk Oregon Trail at its core.  You’ll out­fit an expe­di­tion and attempt to sur­vive to your des­ti­na­tion, fac­ing a wide range of obsta­cles.   My goal for this year, at a min­i­mum, is to be able to play through the core mechanic in a browser and have it be playable and enjoyable.

Outline the Kansas Oceans book

I have a time travel novel about the Cretaceous Kansas ocean I’ve been research­ing off and on for a few years.  I’d like to get started on it.

Write and sub­mit 3 short stories.

Short sto­ries are still my first love as far as writ­ing goes, so I’ll be try­ing to sharpen my skills on them again.

Buy a house and spend the fall prep­ping it for a gar­den the fol­low­ing spring.

We are likely set­tled here for good, but who knows.  Either way, Sarah and I are both really excited about grow­ing our own food.  We should be in a good posi­tion by mid-​​summer to buy a house.  I’m excited to own a home again, know­ing what I know now.

Read more books, less Facebook and Twitter.

I read quite a few comic books in 2012, but not a whole heck of a lot of any­thing else.   I spend an inor­di­nate amount of  time on the social net­work sites in my spare time, and I know that I can put that time to more grat­i­fy­ing use.

Find a reli­able, depend­able, and expe­ri­enced graphic designer to part­ner with on Clockpunk Studios projects.

I’m at the point where I want to start spe­cial­iz­ing fur­ther in what I do, and I’ve real­ized that my graphic design isn’t as good as my front-​​end cod­ing and WordPress devel­op­ment.  So to take it up another notch, I’m look­ing for a designer to part­ner with.   It’ll allow me to focus more on what I am totally awsome at.

Continue to make new friends and con­nec­tions in the area.

We’ve made sev­eral groups of new friends here in Kansas–faster than I expected, really. I do wish we weren’t all scat­tered all over Northeast Kansas, but what are ya gonna do?

Continue to main­tain and grow exist­ing friendships.

I like the friends I have. I want to keep them.

Start plan­ning an addi­tion to our lit­tle family.

If we’re going to have a child, we’re going to need to do it soon.  Things are start­ing to line up so that it’s a pos­si­bil­ity. It’s time to start tak­ing the lik­li­hood seriously.

Back to Resolutions

I do have a sin­gle res­o­lu­tion in 2013, which is to put my hap­pi­ness, rather than greed or desire for acclaim, ahead of the rest.  I’ll be mak­ing deci­sions based on what I think will lead to greater, deeper hap­pi­ness rather than just what I think will make me more money.  It’s a sim­ple one, but not easy. It’s so easy in life to for­get what you’re doing it all for.    And when I say my hap­pi­ness, I mean my family’s hap­pi­ness, so includ­ing my wife.

What are your goals and res­o­lu­tions for 2013?