Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
So ... HEX CODE is at 7380 words, which is 5836 more than the 1544 word seed I started with. I'm 12 percent done, a little bit ahead. Onward!
-the Centaur 
This is my sixth year attempting Nanowrimo and my sixth (and seventh) Nano book, and I've learned to adopt a few rules to help make the thing progress.
And seriously, I'm only 96 extra words into STRANDED. Instead of trying to complete two Nano books, I'm going to try to make progress on completing my beta reader draft of STRANDED during my Nano downtime, as long as I'm making ahead-of-schedule progress on HEX CODE.
And if I finish that ... THEN I can think of tackling STRANDED as a second Nano.
-the Centaur
So it's another year, another National Novel Writing Month. This year, what was supposed to be my first YA (young adult) novel, HEX CODE. Actually, I've already started one called STRANDED, which makes me feel even better about tacking this new genre.
A sneak preview of the first young adult novel featuring the mathemagical weretiger Cinnamon Frost, adopted daughter of the magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost:
It sucks trying to do your homework when you’ve turned into a tiger. It’s not that your body turns two sizes too big for your chair, that your balance goes so you can’t stand, or even that your claws are so sharp that you could punch straight through a keyboard. It’s the little things. Big cats are nearsighted, so you need big old dorky “tiger” glasses you can barely get on once your hands have gone to claws. And we’re predators, reflexes tied to movement, so I has to fight smashing the screen every time my mouse pointer moves. And turning into a tiger hurts like getting pummeled with a thousand bars of soap in socks, so the only thing I really want to do after the Change is gnaw on someone, regardless of whether I have three papers all due tomorrow morning.The material above is actually from the 1500 words of "seed" material I started prior to National Novel Writing Month. I always start with a seed, be it 500 words or 10,000, but commit to fulfilling the Nano challenge by doing 50,000 additional words. This year my final target, counting the seed, is 51544 words. Time to climb that mountain!
Already 1129 words into the challenge (not counting the seed). Go Team Centaur!
-the Centaur 
Shortly after a study from a former climate skeptic seemed to show that global warming is indeed happening, anti-climate skeptics are now accusing him of "hiding the truth" because the globe hasn't warmed in the last 10 years.
Ok, let's grant that, for sake of argument. I for one believe it. But climate is defined as the weather averaged over 30 years. So even if the temperature hasn't risen for 13 years, as they suggest, that means that it has risen for 17 out of the last 30 - and that the temperature is still rising.
Wait another decade and then you've got a case to make that global warming has stopped. If the skeptics are right, as they haven't been about almost anything for the past century or so, then we can throw a party. If they're wrong ... well, waiting another ten years makes fixing the problem much harder.
Understand: climate skeptics are just stalling in the hope the the problem will just go away. Personally, I wait in joyful hope for the Resurrection --- but when dealing with temporal problems, I pray for God's good favor, then get to work.
Why don't we all try being real about what our problems are and working hard to fix them, for a change?
-the Centaur 
John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, has died.
He changed the world more than Steve Jobs ... but in a far subtler way, by laying the foundation for programs like Apple's Siri through his artificial intelligence work, or more broadly by laying the foundation for much of modern computing through innovations like the IF-THEN-ELSE formalism.
It's important not to overstate the impact of great men like John and Steve; artificial intelligence pioneers like Marvin Minsky would have pushed us forward without John, and companies like Xerox and Microsoft would have pushed us forward without Steve. But we're certainly better off, and farther along, with their contributions.
I have only three stories to tell about John McCarthy. The third story is that I last saw him at a conference at IBM, in a mobile scooter and not looking very well. Traveling backwards in time, the second story is that I spoke with one of his former graduate students, who saw a John McCarthy poster in my office, and told me John's illness had progressed to the point where he basically couldn't program any more and that he was feeling very sad about it.
But what I want to remember is my first encounter with John ... it's been a decade and a half, so my memory's fuzzy, but I recall it was at AAAI-97 in Providence, Rhode Island. I'd arrived at the conference in a terrible snafu and had woken up a friend at 4 in the morning because I had no place to stay. I wandered the city looking for H.P. Lovecraft landmarks and had trouble finding them, though I did see a house some think inspired Dreams in the Witch House.
But near the end, at a dinner for AI folks, I want to say at Waterplace Park but I could be misremembering, I bumped in to John McCarthy. He was holding court at the end of the table, and as the evening progressed I ended up following him and a few friends to a bar, where we hung out for an evening.
And there, the grand old man of artificial intelligence, still at the height of his powers, regaled the wet-behind-the-ears graduate student from Atlanta with tales of his grand speculative ideas, beyond that of any science fiction writer, to accelerate galaxies to the speed of light to save shining stars from the heat death of the universe.
We'll miss you, John.
-Anthony
Image stolen shamelessly from Zach Beane's blog. The title of this post is taken from the Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual, and is the original, pre-implementation Lisp M-expression notation for code to remove an item from a list.
I've a guest post up at Reader's Entertainment News blog: Rebel Magicians of the Urban Jungle.
When I wrote FROST MOON, I had fun exploring all the different kinds of tattoo magic … but already, I had started to wonder: what other kinds of magic live in this alternate Atlanta where werewolves run in the night and vampires rule like gangsters? In the sequel, BLOOD ROCK, I explored one new magical practice: magic graffiti. The basic premise of the Dakota Frost universe is that if magic is real, then magic is real ...To read more, click through the link. Y'all come back alive, hear? -the Centaur Crossposted at the Dakota Frost blog.
Over at the Write to the End site, I've written a brief trip report of my Georgia Tech talk on the Dakota Frost, Skindancer series . It was a lot of fun and I had a great time.
It also includes a reading of the first twenty minutes or so of FROST MOON. Enjoy!
-the Centaur 
My flash fiction short story "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms" was just published in Smashed Cat magazine, illustrated by my wife Sandi Billingsley. Check it out!
-the Centaur 
No, I'm not doing 24 Hour Comics Day 2 weekends in a row ... but my buddy Nathan Vargas is. He's the other half of Blitz Comics and through an odd set of circumstances involving the Alternative Press Expo we ended up signing up for a 24 Hour Comics event at Mission Comics 1 week before today, the official 24 Hour Comic Day. (And I completed mine!)
I owe too many people too many things (fixing my wife's computer, finishing edits of "Steampunk Fairy Chick", finishing a draft of STRANDED, doing an interview, scanning last week's comic, etc) to do 24HCD again, but after tonight's Doctor Who finale I did drop by around midnight tonight with donuts and good cheer.
We hung out, gave donuts to the security guards, and watched some Batman fan film. Then, while the toiling artists toiled, I spent some time cleaning up the images from last week's 24 Hour Comic Day (which I had scanned while watching Doctor Who). I just finished, it's only been two hours, but it already feels like another 24HCD!
However, I'm happy with the results, and will do 24HCD again next year. I particularly like the dual page spread from Stranded, but I'll hold it back until I get the whole comic uploaded to Dresan.com and will instead tease you with the first page of the novella:
Onward! Upward! Homeward, for me!
And best of luck to the toiling comickers here in Sunnyvale!
-the Centaur 
24 Hour Comics Day can be quite the intimidating challenge, especially if you haven't done it before. Because Nathan Vargas and I had tried it before and failed, we started thinking hard about how to succeed - and I in particular started thinking about timing: how to break down your hours, how long you typically take breaks, and so on.
To keep myself on track, I started writing down panel timings as I was working, an almost unconscious decision that soon turned into a policy. As a result, I produced a nearly complete timeline of events of a successful 24 Hour Comics Day.
Everyone's method will be different, and this may not apply to you. But it shows at least ONE successful approach: preparing ahead, bringing good food, other refreshments and adequate supplies, getting planning done early, keeping each page tight, noticing that you're falling behind, finding faster ways to do things, taking breaks to stay energized - and never, never, never giving up.
And that's it. I'm pleased to see that even with adapting the novella on my side, I still finished early enough to absorb the 3-4 hours I took getting the story straight on the previous two 24 Hour Comic Days, so I think the technique would work even if I didn't have a story to tell. Knowing how many stories I have buzzing around in my head, that's never likely to happen - but if you're a 24 Hour Comic purist, it's good to know that preparing ahead, carefully tracking your page timings and shooting for 45 minutes or less per page is a technique that can make you succeed. Best of luck on your own comics! -the Centaur (Anthony Francis) Crossposted at BLitz Comics.BEFORE THE EVENT
T-Minus 1 year: Fail to finish 24HCD ... Again. Resolve to take more life drawing classes. As a result ... actually took more life drawing classes and practiced. T-Minus 4 months: Reminded by Nathan about 24HCD. Started to panic. Nathan mentioned he was thinking about how to succeed this time. I started thinking about that too. T-Minus 3 months: Drunk guy at a comics booth at the Sub Zero festival hears us talking about 24HCD. He suggests we should do a tutorial. We go to Slave Labor Graphics, find out they aren't set up to host a full 24 hour event. A tutorial or boot camp starts to sound like a better idea. T-Minus 2 months: We decide to do the boot camp. After a marathon brainstorming session where we came up with the name BLitz Comics, we start meeting every Wednesday, producing tutorial materials. T-Minus 1 week: We do a runthrough of the bootcamp. Around this time, we find out that 24HCD at the venue we've chosen is not October 1 but September 24 ... 1 day after our boot camp. Panic. T-Minus 18 hours: Last minute trips to University Art to buy notebooks, pens, pencils for the boot camp (which will also be used at 24HCD as well). T-Minus 15 hours: BLitz Comics hosts its first 24 Hour Comic Day "boot camp" at Kaleid Gallery. The camp includes a 45 minute tutorial (that ended up going on for an hour and a half) and included 2 1-hour drawing exercises. I learn precisely what I *can't* draw in just 1 hour. T-Minus 12 hours: Boot camp concludes. Hours of packing required. Get to bed at 3:30am, get up at 7. T-Minus 3 hours: Pick up Nathan. Trek to Mission Comics begins with a hearty breakfast at Stacks, a trip to Starbucks for coffee, and a trip to Safeway for bagels, cereal, tangerines and bananas. T-Minus 1 hour: Traffic jam. Panic should be in full swing now, but we just had coffee, a hearty breakfast, and have gone through boot camp. No worries. T-Minus 1 minute: Pull in front of Mission Comics; Nathan runs in with our art supplies and I leave to go find parking.24 HOUR COMIC DAY BEGINS
11:00AM, September 24th: Driving around for parking. Find a great place. 11:15AM: Arrive at Mission Comics. Nathan has found primo spots halfway back the main table; we're sitting opposite each other but are in easy view of the window, door, bathroom and 10,000 comics. 11:21AM: PLANNING PHASE Start comic with a planning page. Consider two ideas; decide to go for broke and adapt my novella "Stranded" rather than wussing out with the stick-figure "Story of Blitz Comics" which I had already done a 1-pager on anyway. 11:30AM(ish): Skim novella I'm adapting, especially chapter headings. Decide on a rough breakdown; can probably draw half the novella. Pick a good stopping point. 11:38AM: Did the 24-page thumbnail sheet. Laugh at my foolish notion that I can draw half the novella. Some things that take a line in the novella need a full page; other things that take a full page don't even need to appear at all or need to be completely rewritten. Added talking animal to the plot as the only way to make the story work (it's OK, it's a robot). Break down the pages into approximately the first third. 12:13PM: Done planning. Total planning time: 52 minutes In my experience, it can take 2-4 hours to plan if you don't have a story in mind (the first two years I had vague stories in mind but no novella in hand to adapt). As it turns out, that extra 3 hours of planning would not have hurt me. 12:13PM: START PAGE ONE Did a space scene (not recommended from the boot camp!) as the first image. 12:30PM: Panel 1 Done. Blacks are surprisingly time consuming even with wide Sharpie. 12:45PM: Panel 2 Done. More blacks, more time; starting to get worried. 01:08PM: Panel 3 Done. Damn spacecraft again. Almost no blacks, but it took longer. 01:34PM: Panel 4 Done. Closeup of a character in a pose I'm bad at. Argh. Total page time: 1 hour, 15 minutes. Did some calculations; need to DOUBLE my page rate to succeed. 01:37PM: START PAGE TWO No black space vistas on this page at all. Maybe easier going? 01:43PM: Finished roughs for the page. 02:10PM: Panel 1 Done. Getting a grip on figures, sound effects, word balloons. 02:25PM: Panel 2 Done. Needed to know fuse ratings to fill in detail on the end of a fuse pulled by central character. Decided to use phone instead of computer to look it up - the answer was "in kA" and 207 is a good super-high number. This worked so well I resolved not to turn computer on until I was "way ahead". 02:39PM: Finished Panel 3. Liking this "draw people from the back half obscured" trick. Total page time: 1 hour, 2 min. Need to pick up pace by at least 20 minutes. 02:39PM: START PAGE THREE One huge panel, but 4 characters and some perspective. 02:48PM: ~10 minute break + boxing in outer panel border. 02:58PM: Central character outlined 03:02PM: Dialogue outlined, drawing characters around word bubbles. LOVE the technique! Had to spend more time looking up the appearance of a bird's eye for a drawing. In hindsight, I'm glad I did that rather than wing it, I had to draw that bird eye on a helm maybe a dozen times or more over the comic. 03:22PM: Page finished. Finally ahead (ish) but not really: hour 4.5 with only 3 pages Total page time: 43 minutes. Counting the 9 minute break. 03:22PM: START PAGE FOUR Back to a multi-panel page with black areas. 03:34PM: ~12 minute break. 03:39PM: Panels done. Realize my target time (45 minutes) is 4:07. Oh shit. 03:51PM: Roughs done for Panel 1, a closeup of a character's face. 03:58PM: Panel 1 done. Came out rather nice, perhaps the nicest face in the comic. 04:02PM: Panel 2 done. 04:11PM. Panel 3 blacks done. Great music from band "07" is playing over Mission Comic's sound system. 04:16PM: Page finished. Total page time: 54 minutes. Almost on schedule. 04:16PM: START PAGE FIVE More panels, 5 this time, but no black areas. 04:21PM: ~5 minute break. 04:24PM: Pencil panel borders done. 04:27PM: Ink panel borders done. 04:40PM: Panel 1 done. Realize my human profiles suck. So do my full figures. Ugh. 04:49PM: Panels 2-3 done. 04:55PM: Panels 4-5 done. Total page time: 39 minutes. Not sure how I pulled that off. 04:55PM: START PAGE SIX More space vistas! And crosshatching! 05:04PM: ~9 minute break. 05:05PM: Pencil borders done. 05:09PM: Ink panel borders done 05:11PM: Dialogue done - needed adaptation from novella. 05:16PM: Frame 1 roughs done 05:31PM: Frame 1 blacks done 05:38PM: Frame 2 done 05:45PM: Frame 3 done 05:53PM: Page finished. Total page time: 58 minutes. Black backgrounds will kill ya. 05:53PM: START PAGE SEVEN 05:55PM: ~2 minute break ... then pizza arrives! 06:38PM: ~43 minute dinner break. Yum! 06:39PM: Pencil border. 06:43PM: Ink panel borders. 06:48PM: Roughs. 07:10PM: Panel 1 "done". 07:19PM: Further polish (it's a large and important panel that introduces Serendipity, the protagonist). 07:29PM: Panel 2 done. 07:36PM: Panel 3 done. Total page time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. 07:36PM: START PAGE EIGHT 07:53PM: ~17 minute break (flagging a bit?) 07:54PM: Pencils. 08:00PM: Panels 08:08PM: Panel 1 rough / dialogue. Realize we're in hour 10 now. 08:24PM: Panel 2. 08:38PM: Page finished. Total page time: 1 hour, 2 minutes. 08:38PM: START PAGE NINE 08:54PM: ~16 minute break 09:06PM: ~12 minute break (someone came by to talk?) 09:08PM: Panels penciled. 09:13PM: Panels inked. 09:18PM: AAARGH! Blocked. PHUQ IT. 09:26PM: Panel 1. Some of the facial positions are hard. Screw it. 09:35PM: Panel 2. 09:44PM: Page finished. Total page time: 1 hour, 6 minutes. 09:44PM: START PAGE TEN 09:50PM: ~6 minute break 09:52PM: Penciled panels. 10:00PM: Inked panels. Realize it's hour 11 (actually 12, but never mind) and you should be working on page 12 or more. Cut it in half! 10:11PM: Panel 1 done. Damn black space around spaceships again. 10:28PM: Panel 2 outlines done. Was intimidated by this crowd scene, easier than I expected. 5 people and 4 ghostly background outlines - 9 people total! 10:34PM: Panel 2 done. 10:40PM: Page finished. Total page time: 56 minutes. 10:40PM: START PAGE ELEVEN 10:46PM: ~6 minute break 10:47PM: Pencil outlines. 10:49PM: Panels inked. 10:57PM: Dialogue for all panels inked. This really helped, but as I found out later, I was reading in columns but other people read left-to-right, so this was a flaw. Zoned out around here. 11:14PM: Panel 1 done. 11:28PM: Page finished. Total page time: 48 minutes. 11:28PM: START PAGE TWELVE - on a roll, no break. Thought it was hour 12, actually hour 13. 11:34PM: Panels and dialogue complete. Met Google guy, should contact later. Also found out about Mobcomics, a comic publishing platform. 11:38PM: Panel 1 done. 11:44PM: Panel 2 done. 11:51PM: Page done. Total page time: 23 minutes. That seems almost impossible! But it happened, in part because I was skipping pencils or just doing light pencils on certain characters. 11:52PM: START PAGE THIRTEEN 12:00AM: Break. Didn't even realize it was midnight and September 25 now. Did realize it was not hour 12 but hour 13 (not true, actually hour 14 had started). "On Schedule" ... NOT! :-) 12:07AM: Script complete. All those people who are complaining that by adapting a novella I'm "cheating because the script is worked out already" can go jump in a lake. It isn't that simple. That's why they call it ADAPTING, folks. 12:21AM: Page done. Total page time: 29 minutes. This page went fast because it was primarily diagrams and dialogue, no figures - this is the point where the crew of Independence realizes that they're screwed if they don't land. 12:22AM: START PAGE FOURTEEN 12:32AM: ~10 minute break. 12:45AM: Panel 2 done. 01:03AM: Page done. Total page time: 41 minutes. I don't know it yet, but I'm just about to get caught up with where I "should" be to finish on time. 01:03AM: START PAGE FIFTEEN 01:04AM: No significant break, really. 01:14AM: Panels done. 01:38AM: Page done. Total page time: 35 minutes. I don't know it yet, but I am now officially AHEAD. 01:38AM: START PAGE SIXTEEN 01:55AM: ~17 minute bathroom break 01:58AM: Panels done. I now realize my hour count was off and this is hour 15. 02:06AM: Panel 1 done. 02:15AM: Panel 2 done. I am digging that it's hour 16 and I'm progressing on page 16. 02:23AM: Page done. Total page time: 45 minutes. We may win this thing yet! 02:23AM: START PAGE SEVENTEEN 02:31AM: ~8 minute break 02:34AM: Panel borders 02:45AM: Panel 1 done ... digging that it's STILL hour 16 and I'm on page 17. 02:54AM: Panel 2 done. 02:58AM: Page done. Total page time: 35 minutes. I am now officially a page ahead. 02:58AM: START PAGES EIGHTEEN AND NINETEEN - DUAL PAGE SPREAD 02:59AM: On a roll, jazzed that I have finally gotten to a dual page spread, will LEAP ahead now. Sure, it's a gigantic outer space vista that requires some actual diagramming and thought, but its SO COOL that I'm going to go from just about ahead to way ahead in one swell foop! 03:07AM: Borders and sketch done. 03:16AM: Inks done. 03:39AM: Blacks done. 03:47AM: Page done. Total page time: 49 minutes. I am now TWO pages ahead. 03:47AM: START PAGE TWENTY 04:04AM: ~17 minute break. 04:21AM: Panel lines done. 04:28AM: Page done. First (and only time I had to use whiteout) because I was inking and not sketching. Total page time: 41 minutes. I am now THREE pages ahead. 04:28AM: START PAGE TWENTY-ONE 04:35AM: ~7 minute break 04:43AM: Script done. Repeat note to snarky guys who don't know what "adapting" means. 04:44AM: Boxes done. Wow, that was fast for that many panels. 04:51AM: Panel 1 done. 04:54AM: Panel 2 done. Largely skipping pencils now. 04:57AM: Inks on Panel 3 done. 05:04AM: Panel 3 blacks done. 05:09AM: Panel 4 inks done. 05:13AM: Panel 4 blacks done. 05:26AM: Panel 5 done. 05:31AM: Panel 6 done, page done AND IT'S STILL HOUR 18. Total page time: 1 hour, 3 minutes. 05:31AM: START PAGES TWENTY-TWO AND TWENTY-THREE 05:33AM: ~2 minute break. I am so glad I put in two dual page spreads. And this is my favorite page - a redo of the very first drawing I did of Serendipity two or three years ago, before I even knew her name: a young centauress with her barrel draped in tapestries, bouncing along a field of wheat towards a castle beneath a gas giant floating in the sky. Had to completely redo the drawing, but ultimately this was the point of the story. 05:38AM: Border done. 05:48AM: Sketch done. 06:06AM: Page done. Total page time: 35 minutes. Woo woo on dual page spreads! 06:06AM: START PAGE TWENTY-FOUR 06:13AM: ~7 minute break. The last page is a huge single panel "to be continued". Go for it! 06:41AM: DONE and DONE! Total page time: 35 minutes. DONE and DONE! Total comic time: 19:20 minutes!AFTER THE EVENT
Not timing it. Chilling out. Futzed around for an hour or so, talked to people, texted my wife. Took a nap around 7:40 to 8ish, then read a comic I'd bought during one of my breaks. Chilled out a while, looked at other people's finished and unfinished comics, then when Nathan finished, bought one more book, thanked Leef of Mission Comics and went to get the car. We packed up, had a great breakfast at Mel's, and I dropped Nathan off at his apartment right at 11am - two 24 Hour Comic Day victors.
Nathan Vargas and myself are facilitating a 24 Hour Comic Boot Camp at Kaleid Gallery in downtown San Jose tomorrow, September 24 from 7pm to 11pm.
For those that don't know, 24 Hour Comics Day is a challenge held each year to create a 24 page comic from scratch in 24 Hours. Nathan and I have tried this five times between the two of us, and we've been discussing techniques to succeed over the last year.
Then a drunk guy manning a comics booth at the Sub Zero festival overheard us saying that and said we should put on a tutorial. And since we have a policy of always following the advice of random drunk guys when it sounds like they are serving as a hotline for God, we said OK!
Our work has produced a pretty nice 24 Hour Comics Day Survival Kit which is now getting distributed to a lot of 24 Hour Comics venues. And it's free under a Creative Commons license! So you can download it and use it on your own.
But we're going one step further and providing a "Boot Camp" where we'll help participants create a 2 page comic, involving discussions of comic theory and 2 hours of drawing exercises. So please show up and enjoy ... or at least check out Blitz Comics and our survival kit if you want to survive 24 Hour Comics Day.
-the Centaur 
Who are you? Good question. I'm Anthony Francis, and I write stuff and make computers jump through hoops for a living.
What have you done? I'm most notable for the EPIC award winning urban fantasy novel FROST MOON and its sequel, BLOOD ROCK, which are about magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost and are therefore hopefully both more interesting than my ~700 page PhD thesis on context-sensitive computer memory. Also on the computer side, I've done some exploration of robot emotions.
What are you doing next? Forthcoming in the Dakota Frost series is the third book, LIQUID FIRE, and this November for National Novel Writing Month I plan to work on HEX CODE, the first in a spin-off series featuring Dakota's adopted daughter Cinnamon Frost.
Are you working on anything other than Dakota Frost? I've also recently completed a rough draft of the first book in a new series, JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. A short story set in this universe, "Steampunk Fairy Chick", will be included in the forthcoming anthology UnCONventional.
What are you working on currently? I'm also currently working on a fourth new series with the working title STRANDED, a young adult science fiction novel set a thousand years in the future, featuring a spoiled young centauress who must rescue a shipload of children who have crashlanded upon a world she wanted to claim as her own. This story's set in the "Library of Dresan" universe from which this blog takes its name and which was setting of my very first unpublished novel "homo centauris", which I am now happily milking for its 57 billion year backstory.
Anything else? I have a flash fiction story called "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms" to appear on the Smashed Cat Magazine. I've also published one short story, "Sibling Rivalry" in the Leading Edge Magazine. I have a webcomic, f@nu fiku, on hiatus. And I'm actively involved with helping people succeed at 24 Hour Comics through tutorials that I and my friend Nathan Vargas have put together at Blitz Comics.
Is that enough questions for now? Yes, it is. Please enjoy.
-the Centaur 
IT'S HERE.
BLOOD ROCK has arrived at my home. Order the latest installment in the tale of Dakota Frost at one of these fine booksellers:
and of course, on Kindle.
Crossposted on the Dakota Frost blog.
-the Centaur 
The Street Mrkt fair is an independent art festival held at First Fridays in downtown San Jose. There are dozens of small booths each with an indie artist's unique artworks, including my wife, Sandi Billingsley's work under the Studio Sandi banner.
There's also an ArtCar festival in a nearby parking lot, a spoken word artist as MC, and a sequence of live bands.
I really love the funky, eclectic flavor of the San Jose art community. It reminds me a lot of the Atlanta art scene, which was just exploding when I left. It's real, earnest, and odd, but not pretentious, and people have a lot of fun here creating and soaking up creation.
The Street Mrkt fair is going on right now, August 5th, until 11pm. I've heard rumors it will also be at the next First Friday, September 2nd. Check it out!
-the Centaur 
At Comic-Con I catch up with a lot of old buddies, particularly one of the Edge who's solidered through many drafts of my early stories.
He's got a script he's working on, and is making a lot of progress. In contrast we know a friend who's written a dozen scripts and is making no progress at all. Why?
One of the conclusions we came to is that it's important to accept criticism of your work. Timely feedback is critical to improved performance - but you must respond to it.
I think writers should put down all their dumb ideas and then convince everyone that they're brilliant. Your quirky ideas are your contribution - I mean, who'd think a story about a naked blue guy and a homeless vigilante investigating a murder would make one of the greatest comics of all time, but hey, that's Watchmen.
But you've got to sell those ideas. "Ideas are a dime a dozen, but a great implementation is priceless." So if you show someone your story with a naked blue superhero and they don't buy it - you have to fix your story.
That doesn't mean you take out the naked blue guy, even if your critics want you to. It's your story, and just because it doesn't work for someone they may not know the right way to fix it. It's up to you, the author, to figure out how to solve the problem.
Readers give bad advice about how to fix stories because people are notoriously bad at introspection. If someone gets a funny bad feeling about the manuscript, they may latch on to the most salient unusual feature - not realizing it's the bad dialogue or structure which gives them indigestion.
But authors are also notoriously bad at accepting criticism because they take the criticism as a personal attack. But if you get criticism on your story, you've done a great thing: you've produced a story that can be evaluated.
Authors are also bad at accepting criticism because they have fragile little egos. But you can't afford to explain everything away. If people are complaining about your story, they did so for a reason. You need to figure out what that is - and it's your problem, not theirs.
So, if you get criticism on your story you don't think is fair, you get one --- ONE --- chance to explain yourself. If your critic doesn't immediately get it, then --- even if you don't agree --- say, "Yes, thank you, I'll take it under advisement."
Then put it in your trip computer and remember it for later. If others see the same thing, you have a problem. If you personally start to feel even slightly the same way, you have a BIG problem.
But your biggest problem is not taking criticism at all. Me and my friend have encountered a fair number of leaders whose egos are so fragile they've insulated themselves from all criticism.
You can still achieve some degree of success in an echo chamber if you're willing to critique yourself and you have high artistic standars. But usually it just makes for unnecessarily flawed stories, movies and products - and an unnecessary slide towards the dustbin when your ideas stop working.
So if you're lucky enough to have someone who reads your pre-baked work and gives you feedback, listen carefully, explain at most once, and take the criticism gracefully. Your art will be the better for it in the long run.
-the Centaur
I'm back at San Diego Comic-Con again ... my con home away from con home (my con home being Dragon*Con). Comic-Con is also where I get to visit with 125,000 of my closest friends.
Like Dragon*Con, San-Diego Comic-Con has grown far beyond its original roots. The
con is about far more than just comics: it's now a full bore genre media event.
They've got sexy space girls ...
... sexy space guys ...
... and everything in between.
And lest there be any doubt about what I meant, here's what I took the closeup of in that last tableau ... I am a roboticist after all:
While I'm here, I'll not just be renewing my creative juices ... I'll be working on the final proofs for BLOOD ROCK, which is due the day after I get back.
If only I had a way to get more time...wait, maybe I do!
Wish me luck!
-the Centaur 
Axually by the time you reads this am already atz the con now - but just befores I waz completely discombobulated from cats:
Anthony Last night our home was invaded by a quiet, timid but quite feral cat. 2 hours trying to locate the capture him - no dice, he was a wily fucker. Then 3 hours cleaning the pee he left behind when he bolted out the door. Emailed that I wouldn't be coming in and got to bed at 4:25am. Sheesh. Donna OK...while I am sure that REALLY sucked, I have to admit I also am still laughing. Sorry that happened...Febreeze works well. Anthony He's an adorable little cat. He's also a master of hiding (he tucked himself into the tiniest possible space in a bottom bookshelf) growls if approached closely and smells of pee. I think he's been causing my other cats to spray. I'd be laughing too if the situation wasn't so serious - just last night I lost two books, half a dozen magazines, some papers, and possibly an heirloom kitchen table I got from my grandmother to pee. The behavioral effects on our other cats are so severe one's on Diazepram, the other's on Prozac, and we're thinking of getting rid of them. I'm locked out of my own library most of the time because we can't let them get in there. I went out for coffee for an hour and a half and found the black cat on top of some clean laundry. Donna Oh no!! I take it all back... No longer funny :( I hope it gets better! Anthony There's some small amount of funny, I admit it. When not gnashing my teeth, I like to remember that it's better than a kick in the head with a golf shoe! William Good lord! I think you need the Cat Whisperer. Cortney Decoite O. My. That's almost as bad, if not equal to, a burglar. My deepest sympathies. John Have you ever tried a kick in the head with a golf shoe? It's not so bad. My eyes are still crossed and I'm falling down a lot, but I don't think it has anything to do with the kick to the head...Iz funny in a lolcats trainrecks kind of way. Don't worries, will not get rid of teh cats. But just catching the ups now. Response will be the slow, please be the patients. -the Centaur
Qumana is a good blog editor, but it's got two unfortunate interrelated problems: it isn't quite compatible with how I put images into posts, and you can't publish posts as drafts. I just found that out - I think perhaps I confused Qumana's interface with a blog posting app I have on my Nexus S - which is why some you may have seen a brief flash of a post in your RSS feeds that will instead show up later.
Saving posts as drafts on Qumana won't cut it - I need to upload the draft to WordPress as a draft and make manual modifications before publications, which I can't do in the current interface. So I'm going to back off from using Qumana a bit. It's still good for composing drafts offline, but I either need to dig through their manual, update it to a latest version (if applicable) or find another editor that works better with my process.
-the Centaur 
An exchange from Facebook:
Anthony: Just finished a rough draft of JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE ... my fourth completed novel! Wallace: Anthony it is great that you have 4 what are they? We know Frost Moon, blood Rock, what was the 3rd? Barbara enjoyed putting them on audio. Anthony #1 is one you haven't heard of ... HOMO CENTAURIS is my first completed novel written in the early 90's. The next two were FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK ... the third one in that series, LIQUID FIRE, is about 75% done. THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE is the first in a new series. P.S. The working titles of the next three Dakota Frosts (4,5,and 6) are SPECTRAL IRON, PHANTOM SILVER and SPIRITUAL GOLD. The working titles of the next next three (7,8, and 9) are something like SPIRAL NEEDLE, HELICAL LANCE, and CIRCULAR KNIFE. And the working titles of ... I'll stop there. I can keep going, but I won't ... don't want to spoil the surprise. I've already mentioned some of the later ones online. :-)Assuming I get that far ... no, I'm planning to get that far, and farther, God willing. -the Centaur Pictured: piles of notes between caffeine fuel and my computational engine.
