Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

It seems that every other post on here is an excuse-post as to why I’m not posting regularly. Shame on me!

(But, I did get a new job that’s absolutely wonderful, and I managed to swing it so that I’m working super-long nights for now in exchange for taking off half a day Thursday the 11th and all day Friday the 12th, because I will be attending a martial arts camp in San Francisco. I am doing nothing but studying and training and working until then.)

So, instead of giving you a post about excuses, um… here, look at some shinies! My Gurhai Wiki and my Bestiary Wiki have new designs now! And I have done some good things with worldbuilding, like writing a page about cultists in Gurhai and finishing all thirty sun system write-ups for Gurhai in two days! And I figured out how Shai, an as-of-yet-unreleased fantasy world, works. And I’ve finally resumed on Kalash, the original conlang love of my life.

To sum up, I suppose I could say I’m too busy being a martial geofictionist to blog?I will get back on the train again come the 17th, after the martial arts camp has ended and I’ve had a day to nurse whatever broken body parts I earn. Until then, mes amis!

PS: This blog and site are about to undergo a shuffling-about and reorganization. Bear with me if things are funky over the next few weeks.

My excuses, let me show you them.

I’ve been redoubling my effort at finding a job (and may have hit gold – stay tuned!). I’ve been taking care of the house. I’ve been doing a few metric tonnes of worldbuilding, and only slightly less brainstorming and outlining for a few different writing projects. I’ve finished archiving over seven hundred pieces of fiction from the last ten years, complete with tagging system, for my personal reference and ease of back-up. I’ve been rereading CJ Cherryh’s fantastic trilogy, The Faded Sun. (I just realized that, in my head, I say CG instead of CJ, but I always write it correctly.) I’ve been worrying over Orion, my dog, who has developed a stubborn cough with no apparent cause and no lessening of her general health.

However, I haven’t been blogging. And that’s unfair.

I’ll do better. Can’t go anywhere but up!

(But man. Guys. Over seven hundred. My brain about fell out when I was done.)

Happy New Year, folks! Mine has just begun, and with it comes a recommitment to this blog and what it represents – my efforts at authorship.

My last post was over a month ago and talked about my need to unplug. Well, true to personal form, I hit one extreme after the other and completely abandoned Twitter, instant messaging, most of my email, and this blog in order to get myself together. I focused on things outside of the computer and things inside of my head. I worldbuilt a lot, even finishing the Gurhai starmap. I spent the holidays with J’s family for the first time, enjoyed it, and missed my own people in Colorado and West Virginia.

Now, the year has that just-unpackaged crisp smell to it, and I’m ready to return. While I can’t promise I will immediately swing back into my every-odd-day posting schedule, I will be guiding myself back in that direction and writing here more often. I’ve written out my goals (not resolutions) for the year, and being right here is one of them.It’s going to be a better year than the one we’ve left behind. May everyone have a wonderful 2010!

Image Credit: Crestock Creative Photos.

I have a confession, my friends. I… I have been remiss in reading for the past few years.

Please, don’t judge me. I’ve been busy! I’ve lived in two hundred places! (Okay, maybe just seven. Wait, no, eight!) I’ve… I’ve… um…

Okay, so there’s no good excuse for a writer to not read. I hang my head in shame.

That’s why I’m here today. I need your help.

Please, take thirty seconds and comment with one long series (5+ books), two short series (2-5 books), or five stand-alone books that you consider must-reads. Fiction only, please! Make sure to include the author, and if you could summarize them in a sentence, that would be excellent. (Also, please read the comments above yours so you don’t recommend something already mentioned. Just assume I’ve read absolutely nothing; if I’ve already read it, I’ll let you know, and you can recommend something else.)

Thanks so much in advance, folks – I need to increase my awesome quotient broaden my literary horizons!

Image Credit: Yuri Arcurs.

In honor of awesomeness and a bit of creepiness for the death of the sun, I give you The Raven by Omnia:

And I don’t want to hear one word of protest from you, O reader! This is completely, totally, 100% your fault!

You see, I tried. I tried so hard. I started planning it out and everything! Then I realized, well, maybe I should add this other bit… and these parts… and man… these would be too long to be easily-digestible blogsnacks and…

…and I wound up realizing I’d have to write a book.

What do you mean, what am I talking about? (Yes, I know that’s not exactly what you said – but this is a professional blog, and we’re not gonna use any damn vulgarity here! –oh, whoops.)

I’m talking about Oh, The Inhumanity!, a miniseries I had planned to cover my approach to designing realistic, awesome, non-human intelligent races for fantasy, science fiction, or anything else. As you’ve seen with my Korats, I’ve got a sordid love affair with the decidedly non-humanoid sapients in fiction; I’ve been critterbuilding for over a decade now (wow, really?), and I wanted to share my methods, tricks, and insights with you. There may be plenty of worldbuilding resources out there, but not nearly as much when it comes to sapients who aren’t a direct offshoot of humans (like Klingons, dwarves, etc).

I got as far as an increasingly-detailed 14-post outline before I realized it wouldn’t work. If I’m doing this at all, I’m doing it well, and I owe you, my readers, nothing less than a stand-alone comprehensive resource. I couldn’t just talk about building a culture, a history, and a functional non-human physiology – I had to incorporate the world in which your species lives, the language that it speaks. Being just one person, I might miss something, so I thought of coercing persuading my fellow geofictionists to contribute some of their tips and tricks…

And, well, to be honest, the thing’s better off as a free ebook than an ever-lengthening series of too-long blog posts.

It will be epic! Consider the incredibly-tentative release date to be January 15th, 2010.

My humble request of you, dear readers, is that you share any resources you have that I haven’t already found in this post. I’m writing this ebook for you, and I want it to be spectacular, so I’ll need all the research I can find!

If you’re not familiar with the National Novel-Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, please allow me to introduce you to one of the most awesome things to happen to writers since ballpoint pens.

NaNoWriMo is a caffeine-addled, plot-fevered, ever-growing group of people who bridge geographical distances to write a novel in each other’s company. It espouses “exuberant imperfection,” quantity over quality, speed over strength, and the end of the “one day” novelist. (“One day, I’d like to write a book…” Trust me, your ‘one day’ will expand into thirty, and they are fast approaching, my friend.) NaNoWriMo begins at 12:00 AM on November 1st and ends at 11:59 PM November 30th. In those sweet, mind-boggling, too-short thirty days, you are going to write an original work of fiction of at least 50,000 words – 175 pages in your average Word document.

Writing so much in such a short time is bound to produce a crazed heap of scribbling, and NaNoWriMo’s founder, Chris Baty, acknowledges this – and encourages it. You can’t write the story lurking in your head if you’re too afraid of churning out terrible fiction to even pick up the pen or turn on the computer. NaNoWriMo gives you the excuse and the freedom to write whatever comes to mind in whatever fashion you choose, so long as you hit your word count goal by the end of the month. There is no competition – everyone who crosses the 50,000 word finish line is a winner.

The prize? Being able to tell everyone who asks (or doesn’t): Yes, I wrote a novel.

In a month.

Signups have started, and there’s more information waiting just a click away. Come join the madness!

(If you doubt it’s possible to succeed in this epic quest, let me reassure you – it is. I’ve participated six years in a row and won five of them… while working full-time jobs, and once while attending school and still holding down a job. You’d be surprised how easy it is to make time for something crazy in an already-busy schedule.)

PS: Um, if the site’s down, it’s simply overwhelmed with enthusiasm and will be propped back upright shortly. The NaNo crew always tries to prep the servers before November 1st, so October is a time of testing and upgrading. Be patient, be loyal, and be persistent until you can join the insanity!