Today I had to reactivate an email account for the English degree I was working on.
It was working as of September: I haven’t had a chance to confirm that for a few weeks.
I doubt I lost anything of real importance (although… who know!?), but it was a pain in the butt to get around to reactivating. I’ve submitted the appropriate forms, and now… we have to wait.
The funny thing is that the email the IT people sent to me said that my account had been deactivated because it hadn’t been used in two years. That’s… impossible… but on top of that, they didn’t know who I was when they sent the form (the form requests my identification, so NOW they know who I am). Just silly.
Anyway, hopefully that will all be sorted out shortly. I don’t need the school email often, but it’s nice to have in case one of my profs wants to get a hold of me (and they have a few times in the past year or so).
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Tired Bones
This time of year is always exhausting.
Even if I didn’t work at a game store to pay for my writing, the “holidays” have always been somewhat fraught. My family has rough tensions that have strained our relationships for years, my partner’s family has heaps of its own problems, and generally all I want is to be left alone so I can write.
That’s it. Just peace, quiet, and enough coffee to keep me going through a day of writing. You’d think that wouldn’t be so hard. And yet.
I shouldn’t complain. I say that a lot, because I complain a lot, but I shouldn’t. Things could be much, much worse. With the political situation that’s unraveling to the south, it very well might be much, much worse soon. But until then the days grind on in their daily pace, and all our yesterdays light fools the way to dusty death.
Little bit of misquoted Shakespeare for ya. That’s the kinda mood I’m in.
Anyway. I’m tired in the very fiber of my being. Another… 8 days to go, and then I’ll get a few days off to recover, and hopefully things hold together until then. We’ll see. It’s going to be… “fun.”
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Review of "Tales from the Silence" by James Bow et al
A few months back, James Bow, a local sci-fi author who I have enjoyed in the past, asked me to read and review two of his upcoming releases: “The Sun Runners,” which I reviewed a few weeks ago, and “Tales from the Silence,” a collection of short stories that I didn’t have a chance to finish until yesterday! Not for lack of trying, I assure you… November and December are just hideously busy.
The book is a wonderful reminder that the science fiction is at its best in short stories. A collection of authors all writing in the same universe/timeline as "The Sun Runners," this work was a lovely revisit to the setting as seen through the eyes of some truly talented and gifted writers.
Bow himself adds a few short works to the piece, but most of them are written by other contemporary writers, and even the worst of the lot was very good (just a little deus-ex-machina for my tastes). But the best of the bunch are extremely well done... my favourite is probably "The Guards at Chelela Pass" for its simple, unassuming humanity, but "Right to Repair" by Fiona J. Moore was clean, well-paced, and fundamentally very human.
This collection reminds us what great sci-fi is about: Using a setting or situation as a lens which we can all examine ourselves, and "Tales from the Silence" provides enough width and depth that I was always drawn along to the next story, the next batch of characters, the next moment.
Exceptional work by all involved, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys good short-form sci-fi!
A Calling, As It Were
I love being a writer. I think, to some extent, being a writer is all I’ve ever really wanted to be.
When I was young I knew I wanted to tell stories. The idea of a wandering knight seemed too far fetched in the 1980s, but the idea of somebody who traveled around and, rather than actually slaying monsters, got to tell stories about slaying monsters? Hells yes.
But reality is a cruel thing sometimes, and I didn’t pursue becoming a writer until many, many years later. And now I am in the position of somebody who desperately wants to be a writer but can’t currently survive on my writing.
Not enviable.
So I have been looking for work. I have a job already, one that pays some of the bills, but it doesn’t leave me much time or energy for anything else. So the hope is to find gainful enough employment that I can do it on the side while I pursue my writing. Because all I really want to do is write.
The hunt continues. There are no easy answers, and with the economy being what it is (and has been for almost 20 years now), the few answers that existed are often disappearing. Almost impossible to be a tutor any more. Good luck writing part-time or freelance for some publication. And so on, and so forth… all of the standard options available in the years before I tried to become a writer are mostly gone, or incredibly difficult to get into. Can you believe they used to just hire teachers without having to go through two years of university to then become a member of a college to then maybe find work somewhere!? Blows my mind.
Ah well. What can I do but to keep hunting, and hoping. Maybe someday my luck will change.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Podcast Out of the Bag
I mentioned it over on ye olde Patreon, but I’m considering running another podcast.
I used to host one with a buddy about a decade ago. It was a silly little thing… I mean, I took it seriously, but we were never really “big” even in the microcosm of podcasting we found ourselves in. But I did get pretty good at it. I contributed to a few other podcasts for a few years, but nothing serious or long-term.
But I am toying with starting up a new one. I’ll link it here but it would be hosted on its own (humble, inexpensive) website. And it hopefully won’t directly impact my writing except to give me another creative venture to work on and towards. That’s the idea, at least.
I’ve written up rough scripts for the first 7 episodes or so, and I recorded one just to see if I still remember how to do all the technical stuff (spoilers: I do!). But it won’t actually become “a thing” until 2025 at the absolute earliest… no time to dig into the technical elements of hosting and RSS feeds and all that until then.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Let Slip the Dogs of Winter!
Gosh time flies during November and December, and I apologize for that.
My normal job that I work to pay for my writing (which, tragically, still can’t support my modest and humble lifestyle) ramps up a huge amount in the final months of the year, so I’m basically scrambling from day to day.
And that’s fine, I suppose. It’s not as if I have a lot of choice in the matter, so I just try and make the most of it. But it does mean that a lot of the stuff that I do just because I enjoy it… well, I don’t get to do it because I don’t have the time or opportunity. Like sitting down for 10 minutes to write a blog post. Ah well.
Not a lot of other news that’s exciting. Reading John Scalzi’s most recent and enjoying the heck outta it, but that’s not a surprise. Scalzi is a craftsman, and each of his books has been either good or great. This one is turning out to be pretty great so far. A lot of fun! I just wish I could read it straight through, rather than in 20-30 minute chunks over my lunch! Ah well.
And then after that I’m going to finish the James Bow “Tales from the Silence” collection of short stories. I’ve finished over half of them, and they’ve been pretty consistently strong. A nice reminder that great sci-fi really has its roots in short stories, a format I’ve always struggled with personally. It’s nice to read other authors who are good at it!
Anyway, that’s it for today! Finally got some snow where I live, so if you’re dealing with some winter weather wherever you are, be careful out there!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Writing Begets More Writing!
I’ve been writing up a series of scripts for a podcast I’m toying around with (I’m still not 100% sure I want to commit to it, because the most important part of podcasting is consistency, and I’m not currently sure I have enough time to make consistent content).
As a result I’ve written… oh, at least 20,000 words this week. Maybe more? Each episode is hanging around 3K, and that’s after the edits, and I’ve written 6 episodes so far. So yeah, about 20,000 words. Which is pretty good!
But as a result of that, I’ve also written a few short stories that I’m thinking about submitting to a magazine… and as a result of that, I’m writing another blog post!
So many words!
I love when I get into these grooves when everything just kinda flows from one word to the next. Even when the majority of those words will be cut (and they will!), it’s nice to have the flow-state that encourages me to sit down and actually get stuff done. And that’s where I am right now… riding the flow for as long as I can to get as many projects as I can kinda-finished-ish. Or at least mostly finished.
If I do end up doing the podcast, I’m going to have to look into Podcatchers, and a website, and an RSS feed… I was doing all that like, a decade ago with an old podcast I ran for over 300 episodes, but it’s been a minute since then (our last episode was in 2017, I think), so I’m going to have to do a lot of re-learning.
But at least I can still edit audio pretty darn quick.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Psychic Problem
As a general rule, I don’t like “Chosen One” stories. Although the original Star Wars and most of its sequels are all about The Chosen One (quite literally, as both Anakin and Luke are referred to as the Chosen One by the Jedi), and there is a long and noble tradition of Chosen One stories in both sci-fi and fantasy (and history, sadly)… I just don’t like them.
I don’t like the idea that the hero has to be special to be a hero. I much prefer the idea that anyone, with hard work and training and enormous effort, can be the hero. Most of my stories are about people that are very talented, but aren’t “special” in any particular way.
The novel I am working on right now has a Chosen One as a hero. Somebody through a twist of genetic fate has psychic powers… very weak powers, granted, but powers nonetheless. And I don’t like it.
The reason that the novel is taking so long to finish is that I’ve decided to write those out. They never sat well with me, so it’s time they go. But that involves some pretty hefty rewrites, and I’ve been stalling at getting that part done.
My own fault, really. Shouldn’t have used psychic powers as a Deus Ex Machina in the first place! Live and learn!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Well, That Happened
Oh, USA elections. A fun time for the entire planet.
Canada is going to have its own issues in the near future, but for now we can just watch as things progress south of us.
I suspect it’s going to get very, very bad before it gets better. But what do I know?
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Review of "The Sun Runners" by James Bow
A few weeks ago, James Bow, a science fiction writer that happens to live in the same small Canadian city as me, approached and asked if I would read and review his newest book, The Sun Runners. Since I enjoyed his last book, Icarus Down, quite a bit, I told him I’d be happy to give it a stab.
It’s an easy read, and I was able to start and finish it within a few days despite it being a thick book. There are two stories taking place in overlapping but independent timelines: a princess grappling with a paranoid and increasingly domineering grandmother, and that same grandmother fifty years earlier when she is a young officer dealing with the sudden and cataclysmic isolation from Earth.
Oh, I suppose that’s an important note: the story takes place on Mercury, in one of the massive city-trains that roll across the surface on “Robinson Rails,” huge monorails that both power and move the cities. It’s a neat bit of science, all laid out quickly and concisely at the start of the novel.
The princess, Frieda, is the next-in-line to rule one of the two largest latitude towns, the Messenger, and has a very significant accident (I want everyone to appreciate that I didn’t make the joke that “things go off the rails,” despite how it’s right there). Her grandmother, Adelheid, steps in to take control of the town.
As things spiral out of control, we leap back and forth between the grandmother’s time in command of the Messenger when Earth went silent, fifty years earlier in the aftermath of a limited nuclear war. It’s interesting because it lays the foundation for the paranoid and dominating behaviour of Adelheid when her granddaughter is thrust, unprepared, into the same sort of situation that Adelheid originally had to step up for.
There are a few niggling issues with the story: a bit of repetitive bad luck that strikes the Messenger and her sister city, the Hermes, that seems somewhat implausible, and some technical issues near the climax of the story that don’t quite fit with the narrative, but nothing that really distracts from the light and clever story.
My only real complaint is that there are two crises in the Adelheid storyline that are robbed of their power due to overly aggressive foreshadowing in the Frieda storyline. Because we see the solution to one of these problems clearly laid out, it feels anticlimactic when Adelheid stumbles over it, and the horror of the other is taken away because we already know what’s coming. Again, not a major issue, and maybe I wouldn’t have noticed if I was reading at a slower pace.
Overall, it’s a great bit of writing, and the characters in both stories are well fleshed-out and interesting. There are a few head-scratching decisions from several characters, but then I remember the Frieda isn’t eighteen yet and everyone else is in incredibly tense and fraught situations, and those decisions suddenly made a lot more sense.
Plus, I think this is officially the first sci-fi I’ve ever read that’s set on Mercury! Mars and Venus, sure, but never Mercury before… tip of the hat to Bow for managing that, and for making the setting both a seamless part of the story without devolving into info-dumping every chapter. Damn fine work!
I’m happy to recommend The Sun Runners to anyone who enjoys solid science fiction. I hesitate to use the term “YA,” but only because I don’t think you specifically have to be a fan of YA to enjoy the book. It’s got enough depth and crunch to satisfy most sci-fi readers, but is light and pacey enough for younger audiences. Two thumbs up, 9 out of 10 stars, can’t wait to read the sequel if/when Bow writes one!
Cold Weather and Chocolate
I love sweets. I love sweets a lot. Ice cream, cake, candy, baked goods… whether European, Canadian, Chinese… there are very few sugar-infused edible objects that I don’t like.
I’m not crazy about sweet pea dessert soup. It’s okay, but it’s weird that it is warm.
But most of my consumption of sweets takes place in the summer, and most of it is ice cream. By volume and by calorie. As the weather turns cooler, I’m just not as interested in eating sweet stuff… I mean, I still will, but the desire is much reduced.
So as the temperatures dip below freezing here, I am realizing that I’ve probably finished with the main sweets consumption portion of the year for me. Not a complaint or anything, just a realization…
Also, as an aside, I really hate the cold. I wonder if this is a contributing factor to why I dislike when it gets so cold? My body craves the sugar, but my brain just isn’t interested as long as it’s freezing out?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Catching Up on My Reading
One of the perks of being a writer is that one really needs to read a lot in order to do the job well.
And I love reading sci-fi. I mean, I love reading a lot of stuff (having recently finished Jane Eyre and Murder on the Orient Express), but sci-fi is really my jam.
I picked up two relatively new novels recently, and I’ve already finished one and am working on the other. One is The Worst Ship in the Fleet, which I’ve finished, and I was surprised by how short it is. I mean, good little book, but it felt a lot like it ended right when it was just getting started (and there’s a late-story twist that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense… not a deal-breaker, but not foreshadowed nearly enough).
The second one I forget the name of, but involves somebody waking up inside the body of an agricultural robot and not knowing why. Almost immediately he’s attacked by hunter mechs, and from that moment on it’s a big chase/escape scene, one stacked on the other. Great pacing, interesting setup, and I am really curious to see how the book will end. I’ll have to remember to write down the title for next post and let y’all know it’s name.
And then after this one, I have a new book by James Bow, a local sci-fi author, to dive into! I really enjoyed the last one he wrote, and I’m excited to give this one a read… it releases in mid-November, but I was generously offered an early copy to read, and I very much intend to do just that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Writing Sequels
So my next novel, after I finish up this one, is going to be a direct sequel to one of my earlier works; specifically, part 2 of the Caitlyn Morcos series.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written a direct sequel, but it will be the first time I do so from scratch. My Tintian series were homages and inspired by specific Tintin stories, so I kinda knew the rough layout of what was happening before I even started those books… Tintian and the Mysterious Meteor was directly inspired by Tintin and the Shooting Star, so I had the arc mapped before I sat down.
But not so with Caitlyn Morcos. Her first sequel is untouched territory. There are no shortage of problems in Delta Quadrant for her to tackle, so it’s really just a question of picking one and having her go at it… but the previous work was action mixed with murder-mystery, so I’m going to see if I can tap into that again. The stakes won’t be quite as personal as they were the first time, and I have to be careful of power-creep (that thing where the big bad for every novel becomes more and more of a threat by incremental steps… as much as I enjoy the Honor Harrington series, every threat she faced was one ship-class larger in neat, sequential order. Too predictable, and too… video game.
Anyway, today I’m finishing up a big painting project that I’ve been working on since April, so that will be very nice to have done, and then I’m going to spend a little time working on a rough plan for Morcos Book 2! Exciting!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Getting the Big C
Well, I think I finally caught COVID.
Not 100% sure, of course. All of the tests I have access to (without going to a hospital) have long expired, but I managed to catch some form of serious respiratory issue. Lots of sneezing and whole-body exhaustion which has since morphed into lots of coughing and muscle soreness.
I’m eating chicken soup by the kilolitre and have consumed my body weight in tea daily, but it’s still a slow process recovering. Today I felt better when I woke up, but since then I’ve basically been coughing non-stop, which, it turns out, is exhausting.
I got sick on Saturday evening, initially, and it’s now Wednesday, so hopefully it’s run its course. because this sucks.
Anyway. Another day of watching old anime and taking it as easy as I can.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
October! When Did That Happen!?
Holy snakes it’s, like, 80-something days until that gift-giving holiday hits. Where has the time gone!?
September passed in a bit of a blur, but it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant blur. It was a busy one, though… October should be a bit slower-paced before diving into the pure insanity of November and December.
There’s also been a fair amount of family-drama, although most of it is arm’s length so I don’t have to deal with too much of it directly. Still stressful, and still chews up time, but otherwise just more fuel on the general dumpster fire my life so frequently is… sure, things will burn a little brighter for a while, but it will all (probably) work out eventually.
Okay! That’s it for me today… with any luck I’ll actually get the novel finished for it’s final edit in the next couple weeks! How many times have I said that this year!?
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Rosmersholm
It has been years since I’ve been to a live theatre production… possibly a decade? Maybe not quite that long.
I used to love going to Shakespeare plays, or to musicals in downtown Toronto. They’re expensive now… they were expensive back then too, but I used to be able to afford it.
Yesterday I was able to attend an incredible performance of Rosmersholm at the Crow’s Theatre in Toronto because a good friend of mine is in the cast. It was… devastating. I can still feel the performance sitting on my chest.
It was one of those times that makes me feel both unbelievably proud to be an artist, and sad that I have never written or created anything as raw and powerful as that. Gosh is it good. Calling it “good” is actually a grave disservice.
Some day. Some day I will write something as good as that.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Conspiracy Theories Suck
I don’t talk about him much, but I have an older brother. Used to look up to him a lot… he left home when I was still very young (certainly too young to understand why he and my father argued all the time), and he has lived a very different life from mine. Certainly more adventurous.
About a decade ago he got really deep into some conspiracy theories. He’s still locked into a bunch of them, which is a shame. He is mostly a rational, intelligent guy… but there’s this massive blind spot when it comes to several well-established and easily countered conspiracies.
And before you say it: yes, I know that being able to disprove a conspiracy in no way stops people from believing them. There are lots of things that we can’t prove that people believe… it’s a fundamental cornerstone of many faiths. But it’s still frustrating!
Recently he’s been on a big “Aliens are real” kick, which as a scientist, is frustrating because it’s one of those “Yes, but” sorta conspiracies. Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Definitely. Are there aliens somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy right now? Mathematically it’s possible… are they here, on Earth, right now? Well, there’s no real evidence of that (or, alternatively, there is exactly as much evidence for that as there is for the Flying Spaghetti Monster).
Anyway, just a rant. Work on the book is still stalled for another week, but I’ll get back to it. I really miss writing.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Dreary Wet Fall
Okay, it’s not technically autumn yet. I don’t think so, at least… I’ll be honest, I barely keep track of time (as you may have noticed with the lag in my posts recently!). I’m going to get back to frequently updating the blog, even if I don’t have the most exciting things to say because I do think lines of communication are important.
Anyway, it’s been raining almost non-stop for the last few days. Just cold and cloudy… a pretty clear indication that summer is officially over and we’ve moved on to the dark months.
Which is okay! I love autumn and winter (as long as I don’t have to go outside in it!). Dreary days are perfect for staying at home and writing, which is basically all I want to do these days (and shoot videos, granted, but that involves a lot of writing, so I’m including it).
So here’s to the cold and dreary! Bring it on!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Thoughts on The Acolyte
There has been a lot of Star Wars content recently… new shows are popping up almost constantly, as well as additional seasons to slightly older shows. They’ve been of mixed quality for the most part… Andor was spectacular, Obi-Wan was generally weak but not bad, The Bad Batch was generally very good…
And then there was The Acolyte.
Generally great acting. Some spectacular fight scenes… like, really, really spectacular.
But the writing. My gods. The writing is awful. The last episode in particular is so bad as to make the series almost unwatchable in retrospect… kinda like the last few episodes of Game of Thrones or Battlestar Galactica. Not a fumble on the finish line so much as a full-body explosion.
On the plus side, I’m hopeful this means that people are starting to realize how important good writing really is!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
It's the Olympics!... Apparently!...
I’m not a sports guy. I’ve done sports. I’ve done a lot of sports… soccer and hockey when I was young, a smattering of several martial arts, and Japanese fencing up until I damaged my Achilles pretty severely. Plus running, biking, swimming… like I said, a lot of sports.
But I don’t really care about other people doing sports. Sure, fine, some people care a lot… the existence of “professional” sports is definitely proof of that. But I don’t really care for any team, nor do I find attachment to how my nation’s athletes perform against other athletes. I don’t have a personal interest other than to acknowledge that it’s something that a lot of people care very deeply about.
And hey, if it makes you happy, more power to ya. But I just don’t get it. Not my jam.
That stated, I hope everyone who does enjoy such events is enjoying this Olympic thingy. May your team do better than the other teams.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!