Posts published in “Uncategorized”

Back to Comic-Con

Published July 10, 2012 by centaur

It's back to Comic-Con this week. I have no appearances, no obligations; I even sent the revisions of "Stranded" to the editor before my departure, so it's just a fun week soaking in the concentrated geekery of one hundred and fifty thousand of my spiritual friends. I don't even know the schedule of the con yet; here's to having fun.

I do have to say it's getting ridiculous in size, though. Hotel rooms aren't quite as bad to come by as Dragon*Con - which you need to order a year in advance, whereas Comic-Con opens up hotel rooms at more like six months - but the ticket procedure is crazy. If I wasn't going as a professional, I wouldn't be able to make it; I logged on as early as possible that morning and still failed to get a normal ticket. I don't know how other people do it, but clearly, one hundred and fifty thousand of them do.

Still, the programming is great, the dealer's room is awe-inspiring, and San Diego's Gaslamp district is a wonderful place to hang out with friends for dinner (or even to retreat to with your laptop when inspiration strikes and the lines and crowds are getting a little too much to deal with in the Convention Center).

Here's hoping the Comic-Con team can find a way to continue to offer this wonderful event!

-the Centaur

First Steps Through The Doorway to Extra Time

Published June 26, 2012 by centaur

We now have 3 entries to the DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME anthology! The due date is still October 15th, so there's plenty of time to get in your entries ... of course, if you already have a doorway to extra time, you might not need so much time to get your entry in! For those who need a reminder ...

In our busy world of meetings and microwaves, car radios and cellphones, people always wish they could get an extra hour in the day. But what if they could?

Doorways to Extra Time is an anthology that explores ways to get extra time (be it an hour, a day, or a decade) and the impact it would have (whether upon a single life, a family or an entire world). We’re looking for stories with a touch of the fantastic--whether mystical, magical, mechanical, or just plain mysterious--but they can be set in any time or any genre: contemporary or historical, science fiction or fantasy, horror or magic realism. We could even find a place for a nonfiction essay if it was truly exceptional. In short, show us something showstopping, and we’ll make time for you.

Suggested Length: full stories (from 3,000 to 7,000 words) and flash fiction (preferred under 1,000 words). We will accept good stories up to 10,000 words but longer lengths are a harder sell.

Due Date: October 15th, 2012

Editors: Anthony Francis and Trisha J. Wooldridge

Submission Guidelines: Please email your submissions to anthology@spencerhillpress.com. Put your story in the BODY of the email (no attachments) and put “DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME” in the subject line along with the title.

Looking forward to reading your entries ... because I sure could use a doorway to extra time myself.

-the Centaur

The Science of …

Published June 24, 2012 by centaur

I've finally put up the presentation for The Science of Airships onto the site. Right now it's a ginormous PDF presentation linked off that page (no, really, it's huge, be warned, that's why I'm sending you to the parent page and not giving out the direct link), but I'm planning to break it apart into pieces that are easier to digest, which I'll work into the regular flow of the blog.

This is part of a more general The Science of... series I'll be starting on this blog. The pages are skeletal right now, just HTML, but I'm going to integrate them into the WordPress engine so that I can add to them more rapidly.

The plan (ha! ha! I kill me!) is to first I'll go through the +500 or so articles in this blog and reblog articles that fit under this description and link them of http://www.dresan.com/science/, then I'll start adding presentations. I'm thinking the next presentation will either be The Science of Steam or The Science of Rayguns, suitably steampunk titles ... though the Science of Spacecraft and The Science of Spacesuits won't be long in following.

-the Centaur

“Stranded” back from the editor!

Published June 21, 2012 by centaur

"Stranded," my young adult space pirates story set in the Library of Dresan universe, has been provisionally accepted by Bell Bridge Books and I'm responding to the edits now. It's set in a distant future where humanity has spread through the galaxy in two groups - one, the Dresanians, citizens of the grand and sparkling intergalactic civilization known as the Dresan-Murran Alliance, a mammoth polyglot alien culture of which humanity is the tiniest part, and the other, the Frontiersmen, humans who fled the Allied takeover of Earth to found their own civilization at the edge of the deeps --- but at least it's human.

What happens when these two groups collide?

Serendipity snapped her fingers. The map of the Alliance collapsed into the tiny glowing sphere, which leapt from the tree and flew into her hand. Tianyu scampered up onto her shoulder and rubbed her cheek, and Serendipity rubbed him back as the farstaff chimed.

“Let’s go on an adventure,” Serendipity said—and in a twinkle of light, they disappeared.

An adventure she wants? An adventure she'll get.

If the editor and I can beat the story into shape, it will come out later this year in an anthology called STRANDED, and later my space pirate sequence of stories will be collected into a novel called MAROONED. The alien child pictured above, Norylan, is actually from the sequel to "Stranded", "Conflicted", which will form part 2 of MAROONED. Got that? Good.

All coming Real Soon Now to a bookstore or ereader near you!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Norylan, a child (sort of) of the Andiathar, the dominant species of the Alliance, drawn by yours truly while working through story notes, photographed by my phone (you can even see the shadow of my hand in the original shot below), and colored (also by me) in Photoshop as an experiment for doing "quick" (ha) art for a blog post. There's a lot I'd like to do to fix this piece of art, but then that would fail my intent of making this a quick experiment.

The Science of Airships at Clockwork Alchemy

Published May 18, 2012 by centaur

I'll be giving a presentation on The Science of Airships at the Clockwork Alchemy steampunk conference on Sunday, May 27th at noon. UPDATE: The panel description is now up:

Science of Airships

Anthony Francis

Steampunk isn't just brown, boots and buttons - our adventurers need glorious flying machines! This panel will unpack the science of lift, the innovations of Count Zeppelin, how airships went down in flames and how we might still have cruise liners of the air if things had gone a bit differently.

I started researching this topic for THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE and it's fascinating! Come one, come all and find out how much each of you are buoyant!

-the Centaur

P.S. The first diagram was generated in Mathematica using the following code:

sphere = SphericalPlot3D[1, th, phi, PlotPoints -> 5][[1]];
Zeppelin =
Function[{length, width},
   Scale[Rotate[sphere, 90 Degree, {0, 1, 0}], {length/2, width/2,
   width/2}]];
Graphics3D[Translate[{
   {LightGray, Opacity[0.6], Zeppelin[7, 1]},
   {Yellow,
Table[Sphere[{i, 0, 0}, 0.2 + (2 - Abs[i])/20], {i, -2.7, 2.5, 1.0}]},
   }, {{2.5, 0, 0}}], Ticks -> Automatic, Axes -> True,
Epilog ->
Inset[Framed[Style["Zeppelin", 20], Background -> LightYellow], {Right,
Bottom}, {Right, Bottom}], ImageSize -> {800, 600},
ViewAngle -> 4 °]

The second diagram was generated in Adobe Illustrator based on calculations done in Microsoft Excel.

P.P.S. And yes I know that it's a bit weird to do calculations in Excel when I have Mathematica, but (a) I didn't have Mathematica when I started working on this problem, but someone donated me a free copy of Mathematica Cookbook and that convinced me to give Mathematica a try for some of my diagrams, and (b) after having worked with Mathematica's notebooks and with Microsoft Excel I'm still using both, each for different things, and have come to the conclusion that an Excel spreadsheet model powered by Mathematica's symbolic reasoning engine would be thirty-one flavors of awesome!

One day.

DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME

Published May 6, 2012 by centaur

Don't you wish you could get an extra hour in the day? Well, what if you could?

With Trisha Wooldridge, I'm co-editing a new short story anthology titled DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME forthcoming from Spencer Hill Press. From the call for submissions:

http://www.site.spencerhillpress.com/Doorways_to_Extra_Time.html

In our busy world of meetings and microwaves, car radios and cellphones, people always wish they could get an extra hour in the day. But what if they could? Doorways to Extra Time is an anthology that explores ways to get extra time (be it an hour, a day, or a decade) and the impact it would have (whether upon a single life, a family or an entire world). We’re looking for stories with a touch of the fantastic--whether mystical, magical, mechanical, or just plain mysterious--but they can be set in any time or any genre: contemporary or historical, science fiction or fantasy, horror or magic realism. We could even find a place for a nonfiction essay if it was truly exceptional. In short, show us something showstopping, and we’ll make time for you.

Suggested Length: full stories (from 3,000 to 7,000 words) and flash fiction (preferred under 1,000 words). We will accept good stories up to 10,000 words but longer lengths are a harder sell.

Due Date: October 15th, 2012

Be sure to click through to the Spencer Hill site for the details on how to submit, and for all the legal boring bits. (And as a side note, this isn't likely to be the cover; this is just a cover I whipped up for this blog post).

The anthology came out of an offhand conversation at the Write to the End writing group about how the way to get more time is to make time - a tweak of a line from the Merovingian in the Matrix Reloaded, but something I find to be very true. But my thoughts in fiction always turn to the fantastic and the supernatural, so I asked ... what if you really could make time?

And it really does seem to be true. Already this idea has sparked two or three short stories among my very busy collaborators, even before the call to submissions was fully complete. Now that Spencer Hill has put it on its schedule, it's time for all the rest of you to get cracking on your own stories about finding extra time ... by October 15th.

On my end ... wow. October 15th. It seems so close. Fortunately ... I have THE DOORWAY...

-the Centaur

Scam, Shame, or Simply Expected?

Published May 6, 2012 by centaur

I've just come across two instances of friends and colleagues getting bitten by bad products ... and the companies involved putting the bad product straight back on the shelves. First from my friend Jim Davies:

http://jimdaviesrants.blogspot.com/2012/05/reselling-bad-product-after-returns.html

Unfortunately, the game did not work. I cleaned it and tried several times, to no avail. I planned to bring it back. And even though I had no reason to suspect Chumleighs of any foul play, just to make sure I never bought that particular disc again I put a tiny dot of ink on the case insert in a place I would remember later. They gave me my money back. Just today I was browsing, and there was the Hulk game. With the same dot. I told the clerk that I'd returned this game and was disappointed that it was back on the shelf. She said that it might be a different copy, and I told her about the dot. She took the game to the back, and discussed something with somebody, and then put it back on the shelf, right in front of me.

And from fellow transhumanist Elf Sternberg:

http://elfs.livejournal.com/1504793.html

We tried playing it in the Playstation 2, then the Lasonic (which will try and play a frozen pizza, that thing's amazing, pity about the heat buildup issue...), and finally out laptops. Not even Handbrake could make it past 1:10. I called RedBox, and they were very kind about giving me two coupons (no refunds, sigh): one for this film, and one for any other film I wanted. Then she said, "Make sure, if you try and take another copy out, that you take it out before you put this one back, or it will just give you the one you have already tried." I expressed surprise. "Doesn't it know the disc is unuseable?" "When we send someone to service the box, if it is present we will take it out. But while it is in the box, it is considered in circulation."

Ouch. Needless to say, neither of them were happy.

I, in contrast, have had good experiences with returns. The image pictured is a cracked Kindle DX I got from Amazon that they replaced almost instantaneously. I buy a lot of electronics gear from Fry's, which has a generous return policy and often (seems) to put stuff back on the shelves because people can't distinguish between "this is incompatible with my setup" and "this is broken". And I buy a lot of used and discount books, including one recently from Kepler's, where I found a book I bought for a dollar turned out to have a missing section due to the printer error.

I didn't complain - I needed the book to help my wife out with a problem and the section I needed was mostly intact - and felt like, "hey, I got this for a dollar". I felt like, hey, this is simply expected. But should I have felt that way? Shouldn't the book have been marked? And shouldn't Jim and Elf have the expectation that the games and movies they buy or rent are in good condition? Even if many people bring things back as bad when they aren't, shouldn't there be an expectation that if someone reports they've tried a game or movie in a dozen machines that yes, it's probably bad? Can't stores have a machine to test their product?

I don't buy the argument that "it would cost more money". I buy the argument that the people who're running the businesses or even the local stores don't want to be bothered. That they'd rather follow procedure than be flexible enough to handle anything more than the default case. I've seen a lot of this attitude recently. I don't think it's new, but I personally have seen more and more of it, where people in charge of systems only want to satisfy the lowest common denominator. Often that means they're doing things efficiently and cheap - but if the cost of efficient and cheap is selling crap products, I think the cost is too high.

Or is that even fair? Stores know they're going to get returns. They plan on it. They even gave Jim and Elf their money back (Elf, with some extra). So you can expect to get crap from time to time. I guess what's bad here is that the system has all the information it needs to do better ... and simply doesn't. It would have been easy for the woman at the game store to toss the item into the garbage or the "for sale - damaged" shelf. It would have been easy for RedBox to mark a video with a damaged bit. That's what rankles here ... when we know what we need to know to do better ... and don't.

Sigh.

-the Centaur

Prevail, Victoriana!

Published April 29, 2012 by centaur

Today I finished the first hundred pages to the screenplay to JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, officially winning Script Frenzy 2012! Prevail, Victoriana!

I'm super happy about this, of course, but this has been a very interesting experience. Even though I've left out much of the story and many of the nuances, the script is coming in massively long - 100 pages translating to about 150 of a 450 page book, probably resulting in a 300 page script with a four-hour running time.

I'm learning new techniques to cut things out - breaking things into self-contained scenes which could be deleted wholesale, streamlining conversations, recasting thought as action that illustrates the same point. I probably could easily cut this script down from 100 pages to 70 or even 50 ... but then I wouldn't have succeeded at Script Frenzy.

I believe that you can't really tell what to cut out until you FINISH YOUR WORK (a philosophy shared by many in my writing group). Writing is not editing, and often you can't tell what a story really needs until you finish it. (If you're an expert author and have passed this stage in your development, bully for you; above, I'm talking to the not-finishers). For example, can this scene be cut? It might disappear, it might become one offhand line ... or it could be expanded to a fullblown argument, if we need to highlight the tension between our heroes:

Jeremiah leans back, her eyes narrowing at her companions.

JEREMIAH

Let me guess. He lied.

GEORGIANA

(nods)

I do love dear Albert, Jeremiah, but the reason I stole your mark was to make a personal appeal.

PATRICK

Einstein was about to rediscover the weapon that ended the Civil War. In the Victoriana, the Peerage suppressed that knowledge.

GEORGIANA

The point of the mission was not to steal Austrian secrets, but to convince him to keep them secret.

Jeremiah scowls, looking at the both of them.

JEREMIAH

And you kept this from me.

GEORGIANA

The mission was ... Need to know.

JEREMIAH

What kind of mad dictator came up with that rule?

(points at Patrick)

And why did he get---

PATRICK

To confirm what he was up to. The Lady Georgiana had to train me to operate the Crookes counter.

Jeremiah is glaring daggers at the two of them...

At my stage in scriptwriting, it's going to be far easier to tell what to leave out after I've put it all in. So, even though I'm going to shift gears back to Dakota Frost #3, LIQUID FIRE and the Science of Airships panel at Clockwork Alchemy, my plan is to finish THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE script in its entirety. Then I'm going to cut it mercilessly until it hits a 2 hour (ish) running time. Then I'm going to hold a reading where a group of friends will read the script aloud so I can see how it sounds (a trick I learned from my friend the playwright Jim Davies). And then I'm going to cut it again.

And then Script Frenzy will probably roll around again, as I'll have to squeeze all the above in around regular work and writing. But if I keep at it, after a few years of writing scripts I'll probably have something pretty tight, something that might actually be salable. Not that I won't try to sell THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, but I won't let failure to sell the first script I've written in twenty years stop me.

I'm in this for the duration.

Prevail, Victoriana!

-the Centaur

UPDATE: I forgot to mention SCRIVENER. Scrivener, Scrivener, Scrivener: without you I wouldn't have finished THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE on time. I don't know if you'll replace Microsoft Word -- I've been using THAT for almost a quarter century --- but you made the process of producing a script effortless. Thank you.

Back on Track

Published April 28, 2012 by centaur

We made it to "back on track". 94 pages, which is just enough to finish up by Monday if I do 3 pages per day. I'd rather "finish" Script Frenzy tonight, so I can relax a bit tomorrow and get back to LIQUID FIRE. Let's see what we can do to do that.

Oh, right, excerpts. I can't do latest excerpts as we've moved past the first twist of the story. Here's a bit from a bit further back:

Jeremiah arrives moments after Georgiana, who's wearing a slit-front traveling dress over boots and pants and has a leather satchel. She's discreetly checking a deranger.

GEORGIANA

Well, Jeremiah, have you everything you need?

She dry-fires the deranger, while Jeremiah checks a first aid kit she keeps in her left pocket.

JEREMIAH

Whether I'm to stab or be stabbed for the queen, I'm ready.

GEORGIANA

Is that a literal or metaphorical stabbing you're hoping for?

Patrick arrives wearing an aerograph pack, not unlike a cross between a television and a World War II field radio.

PATRICK

Oh, gentlewomen, please.

(notes blunderblast)

You've quite taken to that. I should give it to you.

JEREMIAH

(smiles)

Yes, you should. Check your pack?

Check your pack, wind your braces, buckle your chin-strap.

Prevail, Victoriana!

-the Centaur

UPDATE: Taking a break at 96 pages. That should be enough for tonight, and I've just about closed down the Coffee Society ... but if I get more beans and vinegar, who knows?

Aaalmost there…

Published April 28, 2012 by centaur

19 pages so far today. 1 and a half pages to go to put me back on the track I should have been all month.

Stay on target.

-the Centaur

Stay on Target

Published April 28, 2012 by centaur

Eighty-five pages in. There's so much I would want to do to this script; so much I want to cut out, to streamline. But now's not the time to do that. Now's Script Frenzy, it's only 7pm, and I'm just 8 pages shy of being back on track, back on the REAL track, the 3-a-day-to-finish track. Let's see if we can do it. Latest excerpt:

Jeremiah looks back at her companions, mouth hanging open. Patrick is struggling with the straps of his aerograph.

PATRICK

Why am I lugging this? I should just polish up a sliver of obsidian and pack it with magic---

JEREMIAH

Settle down. That wasn't magic. We need to establish our location---

GEORGIANA

Oh, I know where we are.

(staring overhead)

But that's less of an answer than a new conundrum.

Jeremiah and Patrick turn to follow her eyes. Fifty feet away, a weathered archway over a wide road says...

That says ... what? You'll have to wait and see. (Though people who've read "Steampunk Fairy Chick" can probably guess.)

-the Centaur

Today’s the Day

Published April 28, 2012 by centaur

Today's the day I can get back on track. Already 5 pages in to today's quota, it's barely past noon, and I'm not scheduled to do anything today except write. No birthday parties, no trips to the park, no ferrying people about the whole Bay Area and Pacific Coast Highway. Just writing. Latest excerpt:

Harbinger motions to an aeronaut to take his place at the console. Jeremiah leaps down into the navigation trench, art deco glass crunching under her boots. She peers about.

JEREMIAH

Lower us over the shorter tower at our five o'clock. It looks to have a flat roof and a fire escape.

BIRMINGHAM

(looks in telescopes)

We're on it, Commander.

JEREMIAH

Doubly capital.

She leaps up the stairs and joins Patrick, who is extending his hand to Georgiana --- but with his eyes on Jeremiah.

PATRICK

Just like old times.

Georgiana, as oblivious as Jeremiah, takes his hand and rises, and the three of them are together again.

GEORGIANA

Just like Austria.

JEREMIAH

Let's hope not, you stole from me all the best men.

PATRICK

There are other fish in the sea.

The three of them walk together from the bridge.

JEREMIAH

We'll keep an eye out for you---

PATRICK

Oi---

Here goes nothing. Onward into the seas of time!

-the Centaur

At 73 Pages…

Published April 27, 2012 by centaur

... 27 left to finish by Monday night. That is all.

-the Centaur

We Interrupt This Broadcast … to Bring You Art

Published April 26, 2012 by centaur

A pause, however brief, from THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. My wife Sandi has worked the past week collecting over two years of new pictures documenting her work as a faux finisher and artist, and I've just updated our gallery software to support detailed thumbnails (as shown above). After a long night's work, I've uploaded all this new hawtness to Sandi's newly refreshed website, studiosandi.com. New, improved, with her California Contractor's License number, 966222:

Now serving all your faux finishing, decorative painting, muraling and fine art needs in the Bay Area.

Soon back to your regularly scheduled clockworks...

-the Centaur

Excellent Progress is Not Enough

Published April 23, 2012 by centaur

I've done 6 pages of THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE today, double the needed Script Frenzy rate.

If only I wasn't already 40+ pages behind!

I don't think I've ever been this far behind on a National Novel Writing Month-like challenge, or with so much else to do in my life.

Time to step up my game.

New late-night coffeehouse detected, spouse alerted, necessary emails sent, distractions out of the way. 3 pages to go to get back on target; a magical 4 pages will put me ahead for the day - a pace that can only lead to victory! What would Jeremiah say?

GEORGIANA

Oh, dear God, I'm right.

The murmuring now becomes an open free for all. All the characters start speaking over each other.

PATRICK

Hang it all, it's not possible for him to undo history---

NATASHA

Fine for you, you're a man, you've a place in the world he wants---

BIRMINGHAM

So we've found him. Excellent. Any similarity to this speculation is surely simple coincidence---

SIR ALICE

Coincidence? We've never gotten a demagnetizer past the Confederates antenna arrays before---

Jeremiah calmly draws her sole working Kathodenstrahl and fires a blast straight up. The unlit chandelier beneath the apex of the dome flickers with lightning and light.

JEREMIAH

Do I have your attention?

(glances around)

Gentlemen and gentlewomen. The Lady Georgiana has identified an a threat to our very existence, and Sir Alice has just confirmed it.

She holsters her weapon, then looks at the spectroscope.

JEREMIAH

Sir Alice, I must recommend extreme boldness.

Extreme boldness, indeed.

Prevail, Victoriana!

-the Centaur

Stay on Target

Published April 23, 2012 by centaur

31 pages in. Stay on target. Latest excerpt:

INSET: she turns her pliers, exposing five distinct sets of wheels with settings at the heart of the navigear.

... perhaps five, though the last might be an imaginary residue---

SIR ALICE

An imaginary residue, leaving us with a time machine, like Wells's aerograph romances? Lady Georgiana, you've fallen too much in love with young Einstein for your own good!

GEORGIANA

(flustered)

Be that as it may, the Machine is gone from a sealed hangar, and Commander Willstone, Lieutenant Harbinger, Sargeant Natasha and twenty of her Falconers saw it disappear with their own eyes accompanied by the distinctive ripples I think would be generated by this device---

BIRMINGHAM

But why would he even do such a thing? Tomorrow comes whether you want it to or not---

GEORGIANA

But yesterday doesn't. If you could travel to the past, there's a good chance you could change it.

SIR ALICE

Good God. What would a reactionary like Lord Christopherson do with our history?

NATASHA

Amass an army.

BIRMINGHAM

Overthrow the crown?

JEREMIAH

I know. The blackguard told me. He's gone to undo Liberation.

Onward...

-the Centaur

Making Progress…

Published April 20, 2012 by centaur

Yerk. Still amazingly behind ... 23 pages in, need 77 more to go. Need to write 8 pages a day to get back on track. Can you say AAAAAAA! I can. People stare at me when I do. But I can. Here's a bit more about the script from the Script Frenzy site:

Latest excerpt:

Green crackling fire envelops the whole machine, tinged by a growing blue glow of Cerenkov radiation. The air around the machine ripples, like the machine is dipped in water.

Images begin appearing in the rippling miasma: Jeremiah and Patrick, Natasha raising her weapon, a footman falling. It's clear these are a jumble of events, past and future.

JEREMIAH

(tilting her head)

That's more than an air craft.

START FLASHBACK

Jeremiah, in a ridiculous dress, half undone, lounges in a punt. She waves at the shore, where Patrick walks with Georgiana, who glares jealously on.

Jeremiah plucks a bit of cheese from a basket, strong hands push a pole, and the camera pans back to a young Albert Einstein, similarly disheveled, pushing the punt.

JEREMIAH

I wish we had more time.

EINSTEIN

(smiling sadly)

What is time, but another kind of space? Ripples in one move us along the axis of the other.

Jeremiah looks aside, where a dragonfly alights on a leaf. Water churns around the pole, an eddy catches the leaf, and it is whipped back around the pole as it moves forward.

JEREMIAH

If ripples are time and space, what's flow? Can we get more time?

EINSTEIN

(winks at her)

Must I give up all my secrets?

JEREMIAH

(crooks her finger)

If you want to make more ripples.

The dragonfly alights ... and Jeremiah takes his hand.

Poor Albert! Jeremiah will only break your heart. Onward!

-the Centaur

Visualizing a Punch List

Published April 20, 2012 by centaur

Me and my buddy Nathan are refreshing BLitz Comics, our online tool to help us (and you!) break through logjams of creativity and just get DONE making comics! (Yes, I know, I'm writing a script, finishing a novel and editing a third, but the Earth continues in its orbit and to get stuff done you've got to just go do it).

To get started, we reviewed the site, page by page, and put together a punch list of things we wanted to update. "Punch list" is a housing industry term I picked up from my wife, a decorative painter, but which I find most people in the software industry know as well: a review of things to do to call it DONE, generated by a complete walkthrough of the home or site in question.

What we plan to do with the site, well, you'll have to see. However, it struck me that our 200 words of punch would make great input for a Wordle, which helps us visualize what we're doing and see how important we think it is. You see that Wordle above. Clearly, the sidebar and the showcase may be getting an update ... :-)

-the Centaur

Script Frenzy 2012: THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE

Published April 11, 2012 by centaur

I'm so busy I can't see straight, so that must mean it's time to take on another project. I'm doing Script Frenzy this month, a challenge to write 100 pages of a script in 30 days, much like National Novel Writing Month, only for film.

I'm adapting my recently completed novel JEREMIAH WILLSTONE THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE to film. I'm using Scrivener. It's great. Here's a sample of the screenplay:

EXT. NEWFOUNDLAND - CONSERVATORY. NIGHT

A mammoth complex looms in the night, an airship hangar made of glass attached to a hulking Victorian palace.

Lightning reflects off the glass of the hangar --- then flashes of light appear inside the windows of the palace.

INT. STAIRCASE. NIGHT

More flashes illuminate a long, narrow Victorian staircase with wainscoting and elaborate rails. A figure hurls herself backwards down the stairs, firing electric pistols from both hands as she bumps down the steps on her rear, sliding on her tailcoat.

JEREMIAH slams into the base of the stair, gritting her teeth, keeping both guns trained back the way she came. She wears a long tailcoat, an black corset vest filigreed with gold wire, and a pair of airman's goggles on her forehead.

At the top of the stairs, crackling green foxfire ripples over the metal bands of the stout wooden door. Holes are blasted in it, and light shifts behind them, but JEREMIAH has no clear shot.

She sees sparks coming from her left gun, and tosses it aside with a curse. She glances at her right gun, seeing the indicator bead hover between three and four notches. A creak upstairs refocuses her attention. Jeremiah murmurs to herself as she focuses on the holes in the door.

JEREMIAH

Very well, sir, show yourself. Three shots? I'll get you in one.

Here I mumble "J Michael Straczynski's the Complete Book of Scriptwriting," "The Empire Strikes Back Fascimile Script," "other writing resources I'm too tired to mention". What? I'm only 9 pages in when I should be around 33. Back to work!

That is all.

-the Centaur

What Are You Working On?

Published March 24, 2012 by centaur

There's an open call for comments at a post on Write to the End for people to list the current creative projects you are working on. My entry:

Hey, I’m Anthony Francis, and I’m a writer of urban fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. My day job involves the Search Engine That Starts With A “G” and my background is in artificial intelligence and emotional robotics.

I’m working on a steampunk novel called JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, which is aaalllmost ready to send to beta readers. I’m also working on an interactive fiction and a screenplay in the same universe. I’ll be participating in Script Frenzy this April to get the screenplay done.

I’m almost done with the rough draft of LIQUID FIRE, the third urban fantasy novel in my Skindancer series featuring magical tattooist Dakota Frost. I’m excited about this one and hope to have it out to beta readers this summer. The first two novels in the series, FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK, are doing very well.

I’m halfway done with the rough draft of HEX CODE, the spinoff YA series in the Skindancer universe featuring weretiger and math prodigy Cinnamon Frost. I’m also excited about this one which is going in an interesting new direction.

I’ve got the first third of a YA space novel called MAROONED out to the editor. We’re breaking it into 3 novellas and the first one, called “Stranded” we hope will come out this year. This will hopefully be a seven book series.

I’ve got a stalled webcomic called f@nu fiku I’m trying to restart, but while that’s going on I’m working with Nathan Vargas on BlitzComics.com, a project to help blocked comic writers and artists make progress on their dreams.

I’m writing a monthly column on writing on Write to the End called “The Centaur’s Pen” and I’m working on another column for my own website called “Getting Traction”, both as a part of trying to get into nonfiction writing.

I have many more projects in partial states of completion: novels, comics, artworks, webworks, computer programming investigations, games, and so on. But I’m comfortable not making a lot of progress on my side projects, because I’ve got enough main projects to keep me gobstackingly busy.

Just how I like it.

-the Centaur

Just how I like it, indeed. Do I agree with myself? Yes, I agree with myself. I am large, I contain multitudes, but we get along.

It's a surprisingly useful exercise to remind yourself of all that you're doing. So drop in on Write to the End and tell everyone what you're up to!

-the Centaur