Posts published in “Writing”

The art, craft, and life of writing.

The IRONHAND Triathlon

Published October 4, 2014 by centaur

So, it's coming on like a freight train: the IRONHAND Triathlon, the new evolution of 24-Hour Comics Day that Nathan Vargas and I are hosting at the Alternative Press Expo October 4-5. Actually, it came on so fast, and I had to do so much to prepare for it, that when I had a little trouble finishing this blogpost, the actual event came up before I got back to it!

APE is held at Fort Mason this year, and they gave us a space in the back provided by ComicsPRO, the comics retailer's association. The tables were all right, but once Nathan, my partner in Blitz Comics, arrived and took a look at the scene, he put some thought into it and rearranged the space to make it more inviting.

The end result is that our yellow tables made an arrow pointing at the Blitz logo, and there was now a central entry space where Nathan could put information designed to guide creators to "drop in" at the event.

We had seven people signed up for the event, which we marked with nametags. Not all those people showed up, but many did, and we had a sizable table of people tackling at least one leg of the IRONHAND Triathlon.

The pure 24 Hour Comic Day experience is unbroken - 24 pages in 24 hours, with no preplanning or preparation. But Fort Mason closes at 7, so we had to break up the event into three shifts of 8 hours each, the first at Fort Mason and the two latter ones nearby. But once we split it up, we decided to evolve the event further, and to encourage everyone to just drop in and draw!

After some iterations on the signage, Nathan hit on "Creator's Drop In Area" and enough messaging so people knew how to use the space. At the end, we had artists dropping in to draw without us having to explain anything, and I got to kick back at our table and draw and shoot the breeze with Marco of ComicsPRO and with Nathan.

The event was a big success, and we then moved to the Sandbox Suites for the latter half of the event. We were a bit worried as we only had two people join for the overnight session (and one of those got lost in a bus snafu) but after a while we started to have more and more people drop in.

We had the place to ourselves, so creators spread out over a few different rooms. I think we succeeded in creating a creative oasis for our creators, as some who had left earlier made it a point to come back and join us.

More people joined in the IRONHAND Triathlon remotely, so Nathan is hard at work on the winners certificates, which will have laminated pieces added to them, one for each of the segments of the Triathlon they completed.

We're still chugging away, with Paxti's pizza about to arrive, so I think I'm going to close this blogpost and get back to it. I may not be doing 24 Hour Comic Day this time - I did it last week - but I want all of our creators to be happy. Excelsior! -Anthony

Resurrecting Fanu Fiku

Published August 1, 2014 by centaur

SO, I have this webcomic some of you may know about, f@nu fiku (that's Fanu Fiku, stylized with an @ sign, because aren't I oh so clever :-P). f@nu fiku is about Xiao Dreamweaver, a fifteen year old girl who can travel between all possible combinations of all possible realities … only she doesn't know it yet. What you may or may not know is that this webcomic is cursed.

Early on working on f@nu fiku, I broke my arm in a karate match, forcing me to use guest artists and rough notebook scans for several months. I blogged that extensively, but what I did NOT blog - because it was too disruptive - was the failure of the computer and theft of the notebooks on which I did f@nu fiku.

Back then, I produced f@nu fiku on this great Windows laptop, but eventually its cooling fan gave up the ghost, and I decided - purely as an experiment - to try out an old Macintosh laptop that I had gotten in a clearance sale, since I already used a Mac at work. Four days in to this new laptop, I attended an art show in San Francisco - and my car was broken into.

Many books were stolen. My personal laptop was stolen. One of my writing notebooks was stolen, including the one with the original outline of the Dakota Frost series. My f@nu fiku sketchbook - in which I created the pages - was stolen. None of this was ever returned, of course, but I retained all the data, I had all the scans, and in theory I could easily have resumed the comic.

Only one problem: the laptop was stolen before I realized I couldn't produce f@nu fiku on the Mac.

I edited f@nu fiku in Corel Painter (a creditable replacement for Adobe Photoshop) and lettered it in Xara (a powerful, but much easier to use version of Adobe Illustrator). Corel Painter exists for the Mac … but Xara does not. At the time, I was completely inexperienced at Adobe Illustrator, and found working on the comic extremely difficult.

What's worse, at the time the Mac's support for Python wasn't so hot. I wrote the f@nu fiku webcomic software myself, but found that it adapted poorly to the Macintosh, requiring a partial rewrite of the image processing layer. I eventually got the software running, but by this point FROST MOON was taking off, and without meaning to, I let f@nu fiku drop.

Fast forward more than half a decade. I'm more committed than ever to Dakota Frost, but I'm also more involved than ever with the comic community - with Blitz Comics on the 24 Hour Comic Day Survival Guide, and with our umbrella organization, Thinking Ink Press. At Comic-Con, I got energized, and decided that I should resurrect f@nu fiku, perhaps even in print form.

At first it seemed impossible. Many originals were gone. Some of the completed art was corrupted. And all of the art was way, way too low resolution to be printed. It was depressing. And in truth, this is the real state I've been for the past few years on f@nu fiku: too depressed about it to come back to it, regardless of how much time I had. And I started to give up hope.

But it is a half a decade later, and I've learned to never give up hope. This was a hard won lesson: when I left the PhD program, I despaired of ever using my degree. Well, it took ten years, but eventually I returned to that work … and now, I'm using those skills more than ever. Over time, I've learned that the more patient and perseverant I become, the more I am rewarded.

So, when I started to lose hope … I really had just forgotten how paranoid I am about backups, and soon found the original scans AND backup copies of the completed art. And I had just forgotten how perseverant I have become, and how much I have changed my thinking about solving problems just like this one. And soon, after a little thought, I found a way to get high resolution images.

As before, I had a spare laptop lying around - this time a Windows 8 machine, that I'd tried as a replacement for the Mac (and quickly discarded for that purpose, though it isn't really bad). And IT will run Xara, and IT could load all my old f@nu fiku files. I don't know whether I'll try to save these as Illustrator files, now that I'm comfortable with it, but regardless, I now have a way.

I almost always find that if you think something's impossible, you're thinking about it the wrong way … and a solution awaits you nearby. I don't have to solve the nearly impossible problem of getting Xara to run on the Mac (I have tried virtual machines, but they were virtually impossible to use) but just the far simpler problem of using Xara on a PC to dump high-res images.

Now, I have almost 60 issues of f@nu fiku backlogged … more than a year's worth, almost ready to go. It will take me some time to get all of them beaten into shape, to rework the fanufiku.com site, to get set up on tapastic and get a posting schedule going. But it will be worth it: it will not only break this creative logjam, it will help me prepare for new comic projects, like Quarry.

So don't give up hope. It's just an excuse - just a way to give yourself license to wallow in self pity and to fall into inaction. Often enough, the files are saved on backup, the original scans are on disk, and there's a laptop laying around somewhere, waiting for the software to be installed on it that will give you the power to resurrect something you thought long dead.

You just have to have a little faith, and work a little harder.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the Windows laptop, with Page 1 of f@nu fiku successfully loaded in Xara.

Mission Accomplished, Part 1 of N

Published July 25, 2014 by centaur

A year ago Nathan said he wanted to be on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, and to shake the hand of Scott McCloud, creator of the 24-Hour Comics Day challenge. I told Nathan the first goal would happen but was ambitious, that it might take us a few years, but that he'd certainly meet Scott if he set his mind to it.

What neither I nor Nathan ever expected is that not only is Nathan going to be on a panel, not only did he meet Scott McCloud, we together gave Scott a signed copy of the 24 Hour Comic Day Survival Guide. And not just any copy of the guide: Scott got the #1 of a limited print run of 100 done as a Comic-Con Preview Edition.

And we got to listen to a very nice talk by Scott too.

Nathan's appearing - along with Nate Gertler, Chris Brady, Jimmy Purcell, and Marco Devanzo on Friday at 5:15 in Room 18 to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of 24-Hour Comics Day. I'll be in the audience, and the two of us will have (roughly) fifty copies of the Guide which we plan to give to all the participants.

Excellent … it's all falling into place.

So … what should we put on the agenda to do next year?

-the Centaur

Pictured: From left to right: Nathan, Scott, and me. How am I taller than Scott? I always imagined him as ten feet tall..

My Presence at San Diego Comic-Con 2014

Published July 24, 2014 by centaur

The submarine surfaces, oh so briefly. So, between work, writing and life, things have been stacked up on me so much that not only do I have several half-finished blog posts begging me to finish them and put them up, but also I now find myself already a day into San Diego Comic-Con - and just now blogging about my presence at San Diego Comic-Con.

This year is the tenth anniversary of 24-Hour Comics Day, a challenge to create a 24 page comic in 24 hours, a challenge which me and my buddy Nathan Vargas have tackled a dozen times between the two of us (him seven, me five). It's a difficult challenge, and we failed the first few times, so we collected our advice on how to succeed in the 24 Hour Comic Day Survival Guide.

Nathan worked with ComicsPRO to create a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary of the event, and will be on the panel along with the creator of the annual event Nat Gertler and several other creators. But what's special is that we were already planning to update our Survival Guide for this year's 24HCD in October - and were able to put together a Preview Edition of the Guide.

Thanks to our friends at Thinking Ink Press, we have expanded our original 8-page guide into a 76 page booklet, with over a dozen chapters of tips and advice and interactive exercises. We'll be giving away signed copies of the Preview Edition of the Guide at the panel celebrating 24-Hour Comics Day, and also giving them away at various events or on the show floor.

The panel is at 5:15 on Friday at Room 18 at San Diego Comic-Con, and Nathan will be appearing with Nate Gertler, Chris Brady, Jimmy Purcell, and Marco Devanzo (with me in the audience). While Nat Gertler created the annual event, the actual 24-Hour Comic challenge was created by Scott McCloud, who will be appearing himself at Comic-Con, and whom I hope to meet.

Regardless, the official 24-Hour Comics Day is held the first week in October every year - this year, October 4. Nathan and I will be appearing at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) on the same weekend, hopefully with some 24HCD themed events, but will take the challenge at Mission Comics and Art in San Francisco which this year is holding 24HCD one week early.

So: that's what's going on. As many of you know, I have two novels sitting at the publisher - LIQUID FIRE and JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE - but Debra Dixon is still reviewing them, so I'm hacking away at Dakota Frost Book 4, SPECTRAL IRON, and blissing out on comics while I wait for the edits to land.

-the Centaur

Victory again, my friends

Published May 2, 2014 by centaur

SO yet again I've completed a challenge to finish 50,000 words in a month … this time the April Camp Nanowrimo challenge. My goal was to write 50,000 new words in the 4th Dakota Frost book, SPECTRAL IRON … and as of April 30th, I did it:

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-30a-lit.png

Normally I write a lot about how this happened, bla bla bla. But the big thing that happened with this month is that it has gotten me ahead of the game for a change. I've had breaks, of course, in the past year and a half, but no matter how easily I breathed, I always had two almost-finished novels hanging over me (LIQUID FIRE and CLOCKWORK), and chunks of several more half-finished novels waiting in the wings (HEX CODE, SPECTRAL IRON, and MAROONED).

Now both of those books are at the publisher, my editor and I aren't going to talk until after Memorial Day … and I, for once, feel like I'm starting to get caught up.

If you see me wielding a stick, it's to beat off new projects with.

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-30b.png

The last thing I learned is that I can basically write 50,000 words of rough draft material in approximately 20 days, and that's with having serious work responsibilities and personal responsibilities I have to put first. It's a push, but it isn't an impossible push, and that means I can seriously start looking at other projects and start figuring out where to wield that hammer.

First up, the frontispiece for LIQUID FIRE. Then, my upcoming talks at Clockwork Alchemy. Oh, and the next version of Blitz Comic's Survival Guide. Lots of projects … but all were on the plate before. Now I just no longer have a giant sword of Damocles hanging over them; I instead have Thor's hammer, ready to strike.

-the Centaur

UPDATE: actually, first up, was an image for Blitz Comic's Free Comic Book Day Creator's Kit. But that's still Blitz. So it's OK.

A 2 meter exhaust port just beneath the main port

Published April 27, 2014 by centaur

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-26a.png

I had decided to take out Aprils to do do Camp Nanowrimo, but as you can see, this was thwarted by my work to finish LIQUID FIRE, which spilled over into the beginning of the month. So since then, I've been racing uphill to try to get back on track … and as of a few days ago, I think I can at last say I'm almost there.

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-26b.png

What's even more amazing is that I was able to keep up this pace even when I was out for Easter … and THEN after I caught the cruds on the flight home and ended up spending two days out sick. And it wasn't even crashed out sick, either; we had some internal deadlines at work that I needed to keep moving forward, so I spent most of my sick days working from home, sitting on the front porch bundled up in a blanket with my work laptop on my lap, trying to massage a tricky chunk of data through our pipelines while I watched surreal scenes unfold around me, like one of our elderly neighbors getting taken to the hospital.

But I've grown good writing in the margins, over lunch and at dinner, whenever I can, in the corners. (I'm writing this blogpost at dinner at a nice Irish pub right now, itself squeezed in between afternoon writing group meetings and Sunday evening prep for work). So I was able to, somehow, put in my time each day massaging that data, then still spit out the chunk of words I needed, and not kill myself, or at least not make myself any sicker than I was. And by the end of the week, we had the candidate chunk of data we wanted, I had the words I wanted, and I was out a lot of cold medicine and cough drops.

The weekend was even better for me, with a great swathes of time spent Friday late night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday lunch and early evening chasing that 2 meter exhaust port just below the main port. Allmost there … now I'm just 300 words away from begin caught up. Hopefully, I'll close that final gap late tonight. Wish me luck!

Oh yes, an excerpt:

“Dakota,” Terrance said, not turning his head towards me, eyes guiding the pointer on the screen. “When you guys go back to see this,” he said, reaching his head aside to puff at his air tube to rewind the footage, “I so want to be there.”

My heart fell. I didn’t think it was safe to take a quadriplegic into a war zone. But perhaps that was just me trying to shield him; we could work the security arrangements out. I opened my mouth to warn him of the risks, but just then, he puffed, and the video played.

“There,” Terrance said, the red crosshair of his eye tracker active again. “Watch for it!” At first I saw nothing, and grimaced as my yapping mug nattered on. I was rapidly growing tired of seeing this. Then the black form moved behind me—and in the red circle Terrance had laid out with his eye tracker … I saw the tail of my Mohawk brushed aside.

“Jesus!” I said, fear clutching my heart. “It touched me!”

Oooh … buggedy.

Now let's blow this thing and go home!

-Anthony

Getting Some Traction on SPECTRAL IRON

Published April 21, 2014 by centaur

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It's been hard getting back into SPECTRAL IRON - the beginning of the story is a smoothly progressing freight train, but about a third of the way through, the story went off the tracks --- not because there was anything wrong with the ideas, but because they lacked the right organization. I had to move many, many chapters around before I got the overall structure right.

Then, I found that I'd done "tricks" to speed up the narrative---scene changes, description, shifts of scale---which work great when a story is complete, but in early drafts just distract from creating what John Gardner called "the vivid continuous dream" of fiction. National Novel Writing Month material, for me, must be like that dream, continuously moving forward from point to point.

Often, if I was willing to just "dethrone my darlings" I could make progress. The old writer's advice to "kill your darlings" is something I have a love-hate relationship with, but in this case, I interpret "darlings" as a great turn of phrase that started a scene or chapter in the early draft---but which I found were getting in the way.

Usually, when I couldn't go forward from the next unwritten part of the scene, it was because the darling, while it sounded cool, glossed over too much. To fix the problem, I generally didn't have to delete the darling; I just instead demoted it from its privileged status of starting a scene, rolled my mind back to the point just before the scene break, and asked: no, seriously: what would really happen next?

Thinking very closely about how characters would react to a life-changing event, in the next hours or minutes or even seconds after it happened, is something that produced (for me) more real, honest, and compelling reactions---and, usually, created a far more solid framework for all the scenes that followed, enabling me to think about them clearly and write more quickly.

This strategy has been working well for me, and today it really has started to pay off. I'm getting back on track at last.

Oh, yes, an excerpt:

“No,” Nyissa said, delicately picking up one of the gumdrops with her chopsticks. She gingerly put it in her mouth, sliding it past her fangs with the white ivory prongs, closing her mouth—then her eyes closed in bliss. “Ahhh. You’ve cultivated a different set of skills.”

“Beauty is a skill?” I asked.

“Dakota,” Nyissa said, smiling at me mirthfully. “You are beautiful, but you’re not trying to be beautiful: you’re trying to be a butch badass biker. You wear leather, and a Mohawk, and actually ride a bike, even a fuel efficient one. Your whole outfit says: don’t mess.”

“It’s supposed to say, check out my tattoos,” I said.

“It does say that,” she said, though today my arms were covered with the sleeves of a turtleneck. “But hairstyles and transport are more serious choices than a coat. You’ve cultivated a whole set of lifestyle skills to project a butch image, down to your manly handshake.”

Now I covered my face with my hand. “Ah, I’ll never live that down.”

“I, on the other hand, am a vampire dominatrix,” Nyissa said. “I lure men and women to my bed with my beauty and the promise of a mixture of pleasure and pain. That, too, is a set of lifestyle choices—down to my quite extensive wardrobe, and the shopping that goes with it.”

"Your success at that,” I said, “has a lot to do with your physical beauty.”

“Yes, but, you don’t need a great body to look hot,” Nyissa insisted. “It’s all about your sense of style. You need to project the aura that you’re fuckable. Not dressing in a way that asks or offers sex—but how you show off your body shows you know what sex is, and how to do it.”

I was staring at her. My jaw was dropped. Nyissa slowly raised her chopsticks, taking them in her mouth with a sly smile. She cleaned them between her fangs with a lick of her tongue. Then she leaned forward and touched them beneath my chin, closing my mouth.

It occurs to me that the art of finding an excerpt which is interesting, yet reveals no plot points, is itself a skill. Hopefully I'm doing it well.

-the Centaur

Weather spotty with increasing chance of progress

Published April 17, 2014 by centaur

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-17.png

Overall I'm making some progress, but each day has its ups and downs. Today was one of the downs (more because I spent a great deal of the day cracking a problem at work, then following up with a nice dinner date with my wife), but hopefully I'm going to get caught up over the next few days and through the weekend, when I've got some long plane flights to write on.

No excerpt: a lot of reorganizing today to get pieces in place so the story flows forward smoothly. I do write out of order, quite a bit, but the pieces must all make sense in order so that when I sit down to work on one the past concepts all build to and constrain the current moment, and the current moment supports the future concepts going forward.

Oh, okay, maybe one excerpt; I may have actually shown this before, but now I've written up the backstory for this:

“Here, Cinnamon,” I said, reaching for her with the Santa Claus cap. “Wear this—”

“No,” Cinnamon growled, jerking away. “I ain’t wearing no Santa Claus shit.”

I blinked. Most children I knew loved Santa Claus. Loved Christmas. So did most people, for that matter. Sure, I knew a few grinches, but not even they would have turned down a Santa Claus cap, much less snarled and swatted at it. This was something more.

“I’m guessing,” I said gently, “it isn’t disgust at his square fashion sense.”

“New word’s jank,” Cinnamon said, wrapping her arms around herself, turning away.

I put the hat down and walked out onto the porch, sitting on the sofa, stretching my long arms out over its back and my long legs out to the bottom rungs of the bannister. After a minute, Cinnamon joined me, curling up next to me, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Sorry, Mom,” she said. “Santa Claus is a son of a bitch.”

That is all for now.

-the Centaur

Now we’re talking

Published April 13, 2014 by centaur

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Finally, got 3400+ words done today, starting to get back on track. We can win this thing! An excerpt:

Cosgreave cleared a space on the table, then opened the black plastic case and withdrew a small bundle of embroidered cloth, which he unrolled upon the table. He reached into the case and withdrew by its leather-wrapped handle a long, dark object, which rang as it hit the air and kept singing faintly until he carefully set the weapon down on the soft, bone-white cloth.

“The Salzkammergutschwert,” Cosgreave said reverently.

The Salzkammergutschwert was a strangely curved dark sword almost four feet long from the circular pommel of its oddly-angled leather-wrapped hilt to the oddly-angled tip of its gleaming blade, forged from some strange lustrous metal so dark it reminded me of hematite.

Upon closer inspection, the sword wasn’t curved, merely angled, like a geometric S. The hilt had two angled parts, one short, one long, neither quite aligning with the dark blade, which was straight like an European sword, but with a strange triangular taper, like a cleaver.

I had never seen anything like it … and it creeped me the heck out.

-Anthony

SPECTRAL IRON gathering steam

Published April 12, 2014 by centaur

Definitely not the official cover of SPECTRAL IRON … something I just whipped up for my Camp Nanowrimo page. My goal this month is to take this novel from 52,881 words to 102,881 words - adding 50,000 words, just like in Nanowrimo, except now I'm taking the novel from a ghost of nothing and turning it into a full bodied spirit.

Because publishing stacks deadline after deadline, I had to shift from scheduling 50,000 words a year to 100,000 in order to keep to my schedule. 50,000 words is a half-finished book, and I have plenty of those (SPECTRAL IRON, HEX CODE, and MAROONED from Nano, plus STEEL TEARS and few other older books).

100,000 words, in contrast, is a book that can be feasibly completed, and I don't have so many of those ready to go. My 2002 Nano, DELIVERANCE, is at 150,000 words, but it needs a lot of work; my first novel, HOMO CENTAURIS, is a similar length with even more work needed. Not that I will never go back to them … but I need to move forward with new work.

Today was the first day that I really got my groove back on SPECTRAL IRON. The end of last month, when I was supposed to be finishing LIQUID FIRE, was consumed by EOQ (end of quarter) work at work, and so the start of this month was consumed with getting LIQUID FIRE to the publisher. I've only really been working on SPECTRAL IRON seriously this past week.

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-12.png

Some of the delay was re-reading the manuscript, some was reorganizing it (some of the sections crept out of plot order as I worked on ideas here and there), some was legitimate work-work getting in the way (gotta pay the bills, so the Search Engine That Starts With a G gets first dibs on my time) but most was just getting my groove back.

Now it's back. I just give you a tiny tease of an excerpt:

“Alright,” Terrance said, becoming less frustrated by the moment. “Alright. I may have no fucking clue what’s going on, but I’m still on the B team, and I have the entire sum of computable human knowledge at my fingertips. What can I do to help?”

“We’re tackling the ghost line,” I said. “But from a new angle. I’m less interested in the places that want to show us their ghosts—and more in the ones that didn’t. I want to know why they declined—particularly ones that were on ghost tours in the 1970’s and dropped out.”

“You may not remember this,” Terrance said, “but there was a recession in the 1970’s. Oil embargoes, gas lines stretching around the block, the double nickel—and the tourist industry in California collapsed. Most just went out of business—”

“But not all of them,” I said. “I know there are dozens of sites, and probably dozens of reasons a site might decline to appear in our show, but we can narrow it down considerably. I’m not asking them to change their minds—I’m asking if the ghost sightings stopped.”

The silence on the line stretched long enough that I thought something happened to him.

“Whoa,” he said at last. “Magic is real—you’ve proved that. Ghosts are real, or at least there are ghost like effects—you’ve caught them on film. So if ghost sightings stopped, it might not be because the light of day has burned away the campfire tales—”

“But because there was some real phenomenon that stopped operating,” I said.

More to come...

-Anthony

SPECTRAL IRON slowly leaving the station

Published April 10, 2014 by centaur

Camp Nanowrimo 2014-04-10.png

Having trouble getting up to speed … after all, didn't finish LIQUID FIRE until several days into the month ... but made some conceptual progress tonight. That is all.

-the Centaur

And Nanowrimo Draws to a Close Yet Again…

Published November 30, 2013 by centaur

Well, Nanowrimo has drawn to a close once again. I finished early, and then used the time through Thanksgiving to spend time with friends, family and my wife. Hence the gaps near the end:

MAROONED 2013-11-30.png

As you can see, the last few days have seen a few words added to the manuscript, but they're mostly the addition of notes and other materials to make sure the story isn't lost. However, the total added words: 52761. Success.

MAROONED 2013-11-30a.png

Now it's back to THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, and when that's off to the editors, I hope that I'll have my betas back for LIQUID FIRE so that too can go to the editors. Then I'll be finishing SPECTRAL IRON. So it may be a while before I return to Serendipity to finish her story; until then, however, I will leave you this:

“But … our last Loremaster died of the plague,” Dijo said. “We’ve saved the data, of course, but all the stories are lost—”

“Then we’d better salvage the ones we can,” Leonid said, staring at Serendipity. She was rapt: she was a historian. And as young as she was, she probably hadn’t had the chance to collect living history. And he’d given her just that. “So, Serendipity … you up to the task?”

“Am I,” she said, flicking an ear, leaning forward. “Tell me the stories of your people.”

“Alright, but we don’t tell stories,” Leonid said, motioning to Beetle, who drew out his strumstick. “We sing them.” Serendipity’s mouth fell open, and Leonid smiled. “Beetle, you’ve got some pipes on you. Sing the Song of Iranon, and remind us why we keep fighting on.”

Beetle smiled, tuned the stick, then began strumming. He sang:

Into Teloth Station wandered a spacer,
The vine cowled, yellow haired Iranon.
His suit was torn
His cloak was frayed
From mining the rocks of the belt Sidrak—

Soon they were all singing, Serendipity more than a bit awkwardly—she had little rhythm, and clapped at odd places, unable to keep time. But she quickly learned the chorus and response, and by the last verse she was singing along with them.

The spacers of Teloth were dark and stern
With frowns they asked his course.

And he said:

I am the spacer Iranon
With a cowl of vines, and myrrhwax in my hair.
I came from the Arkship Aira
A ship I recall only dimly, but seek to find again.
I sing the songs learned in my youth
In that far off paradise
And my course is set to find my way home once again.

And he said:

My trade is making beauty from memories of my childhood
And my wealth is in dreams of the places I have known
And I chart my course by the light of hope inside me
The hope I’ll find again my near forgotten home
On the Arkship Aira
In orbit round the gardens of the Lotus Moon.

Fare well, spacers...

-the Centaur

Viiiictory … in … Spaaaace

Published November 27, 2013 by centaur

For the 8th time, I have won National Novel Writing Month! This year, I knuckled down early, focusing on getting as much ahead as possible so I could coast early in the month. This really worked because my story soon started turning in unexpected directions as I mined the emotional relationships of the characters, rather than the overarching plot. And I think it worked well! Look at that:

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I was successfully able to stay ahead of the game essentially for the whole month, enabling me to finish several days early. I hope to keep writing, to core dump the ideas I've had about the story, as while it is wonderful to find unexpected elements of the story (including a shout-out to one of my oldest childhood toys and the origin of the Dresanian universe) there's more to write.

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But now I can take a more leisurely pace, read the giant stack of books I've accumulated to help me flesh out the plot ideas, and turn it all into something more interesting. For example, here's an interesting combination of plot and emotional interaction, none of which I ever really expected:

The mammoth city-sized collection of globules drifted by. Some were firm and puffy like gasbags; some soft like pillows, some trailing and drifting like punctured balloons. So many tentacles fell down from it that it looked like it was raining beneath. Slowly, the globules crested a ridge and began to sink.

Leonid’s mouth parted, but he maintained his firm, watchful, captain on deck boots-wide stance on the window, even though his legs had begun to cramp. Then the city slowly settled to the earth in a cloud of dust.

“It is a city,” Serendipity said. “Or something very much like one.”

“I’m not willing to give it that yet,” Leonid said, as the globules settled and burst, gas streaming up from some, gasbags lifting tentacles up from others, remarkably like towers. “But my mind is open to the possibility. Spores, your grandmother said.”

“Yes,” Serendipity said. “Perhaps the gasbags make the cities, and the spores that they release inhabit the cities. I don’t know—like she said, it appears most of the records of Halfway were sealed after the war. Damnit. And Greatgramma Clarice led me straight into this—”

“Sounds like a dick move,” Leonid said, “but you and your family are all geniuses. Let’s not give up on her just yet. Maybe she thought you were your grandmother’s granddaughter, that you were the right person to deal with Halfway.”

“Maybe,” Serendipity said uncertainly.

“One thing for certain,” Leonid said, smiling down at her, legs still firmly planted on the rail, cutting as heroic a pose as he could, “black sun or no, Halfway is a beautiful world—and we’re going to make the best of it.”

Then something slammed into the ship so hard it knocked him backwards into the soup.

So, my Nanowrimo winner's t-shirt is on it's way, I've "won" … but I've got a lot more to go to get this novel done.

Onward!

-the Centaur

Breaking Horizon

Published November 25, 2013 by centaur

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At some point over the past weekend, I broke 40,000 words on Nano. This is no time to get complacent: even though I'm a few days ahead now - only 6200 words from the end - and I'm supposedly on vacation, I may need to go back to work tomorrow to deal with a minor, well, not crisis, but something that demands my attention.

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So while that mountain above has impressive height and slope, it ends in a plateau, because the month of November is not done. And if you don't retain focus, you can end on that plateau, because the end of November is friends and family and Thanksgiving and Black Friday and the year-end scramble at work, if you have one.

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SO while I have a lead, I'm going to do what I can to keep it. Speaking of which … I wrote 375 words between what I wrote above and the end of this article. Here's an excerpt:

“So, still thinking Halfway was a steal?” Sirius asked. “Was it worth it to spend your inheritance on the hideout of a war criminal, no doubt on her way back here?”

“She’s not a war criminal, and she’s not coming back,” Serendipity said. “She’s a prolific and nurturing mother. She would never have left her grandchild behind, much less her own daughter. Same rules as Norylan’s parents: if she could have come back, she would have—”

“Nurturing mother doesn’t mean,” Sirius said, “she wasn’t a war criminal.”

“A few hard choices don’t a monster make,” Serendipity said. “She led the First Contact mission between Dresan and Murra. For all practical intents and purposes, she founded the Dresan-Murran Alliance, the most harmonious grouping of aliens in the universe—”

“Founded on annihilating everyone who didn’t fit that mold?” Sirius said quietly.

For a moment, Serendipity didn’t say anything.

“I can’t take responsibility for the sins of someone who wasn’t even my ancestor,” Serendipity said, “but I’ll defend the values they bequeathed to me, values they developed trying to learn from their mistakes. When my grandmother came, I could have had her kill you all—”

“Hey!” Sirius said. Then he punched her arm. “Ass!”

“Hey!” Serendipity said back, feeling her arm. “Ow—”

“No, you couldn’t have had her kill us,” Sirius said. “She would have sliced up that blaster, and maybe lopped a few arms, or perhaps just gut checked a few of Toren’s goons with the back end of her scythe blades. Your back was turned. She took the room in an instant—”

“She’s a killer,” Serendipity said. “You don’t know her—”

“She’s a First Contact Engineer and a pregnant mother,” Sirius said. “I saw her face. Yes, she’s scary—I’ve never seen anyone that scary—but I could also see relief when she saw we were children. I refuse to believe she would just windmill through us all, rolling heads.”

Serendipity stared at him.

“I’m not sure I agree with you,” she said, “but I think you’re also making my point.”

Back to work.

-the Centaur

On Their Way…

Published November 18, 2013 by centaur

In only tangentially related Nano news, the beta copies of LIQUID FIRE are on their way to beta readers, and signed copies of DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME are on their way to the winners! Huzzah. I hope you enjoy them!

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Not that things are going poorly. They're actually going quite well… UPDATE:

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Quite well indeed.

-the Centaur

Buck up, spacer

Published November 17, 2013 by centaur

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One of the great things about National Novel Writing Month is that it takes you into places you never anticipated. Well, for most of this month I've been working on Section 2 of MAROONED, "Conflicted", but much of what I've written today comes from Section 3, which I've alternately called "Determined" or "Galvanized". And the following section logically follows from the setup of the story … but I had no idea that it was going to happen. No idea at all:

“Buck up, spacer,” Eslyca said. “We’re at war. We have to make hard choices.”

“Like Toren said,” Kyrnal said. He shook his head. “Doesn’t mean I don’t regret it.”

They watched, from behind the cargo bay lights, as Leonid's crew kept punching. After a while, Eslyca got uncomfortable and shifted; then Kyrnal did the same thing, setting his hands and shifting his boots. But the crew below kept punching … and punching … and punching.

“How long are they going to keep this up?” Eslyca said. “Did she just say five hundred?”

“How long can they keep this up?” Kyrnal said. “And I thought they’d gone soft—”

“YOU THOUGHT WRONG,” boomed a deep mechanical voice behind them, and Kyrnal and Eslyca whirled to see the huge fox-like head of a robot the size of a cargo loader loom behind them, two scorpion-like pincers rising from its tail. “DON’T MOVE!”

Kyrnal whirled and tried to reach for his gun, but the scorpion-pincer shocked him. Eslyca dove aside, but a giant mechanical paw scooped her back up, then Kyrnal too, bringing both of them together—and in range of those darting pincers.

The paws spun them about, and Krynal felt the pincer snap tight on the upper safety harness attachment of his softsuit—the hardest to reach. He tried to grab for it and release himself, but when his hand touched the pincer, he got shocked again.

Then the robot shoved them both out into empty space.

Wait … who are Kyrnal and Eslyca? What do they regret? Why are they spying on Leonid's camp? What is Leonid's camp training for? Who's the robot? And will our intrepid young heroes or villains survive getting thrown out into space by this mechanical monster?

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A day or so ahead now, taking a break to run errands. Onward!

-the Centaur

Just Try to Get One Day Ahead.

Published November 16, 2013 by centaur

Each day in National Novel Writing Month, you need to write 1,666 words. It's the math: 50,000 words, 30 days, no excuses. The math seems simple: 50,000 / 30 = 1,666 and 2/3, so 1667 words will end you up with 50,010 words at the end of the month. So you may think you can get away with 1,667 words, or 1,666 with 20 words tossed in at the end.

It isn't that simple.

As you can see from the graph, or from following this blog, some days you just can't get 1,666 words done. You're off your game, you're off on a hike, or a distressed person shows up at your door in need of help. So, I prefer to say that you need to do more than you think you need to in a day - because you need to be caught up before you slip, or you'll fall behind.

For 24 Hour Comic Day - a challenge to do 24 pages in 24 hours - I and my buddy Nathan at Blitz Comics recommend trying to finish each page in 45 minutes, so you can absorb the inevitable eating, drinking, bathroom breaks and pencil sharpening and still finish your pages on time.

For National Novel Writing Month, I recommend something simpler: just try to get one day ahead, as soon as you can. Work super hard to get that first day of buffer, and then, even if something happens to throw you off, you're not behind.

So now, at lunch, I've finished my daily word count. I have a few errands to run - but tonight, I'll try to add that second day's worth of words, so that I'll not just be ahead for the day, but ahead of the game.

-The Centaur

Life Intervenes

Published November 15, 2013 by centaur

I'm still ahead on National Novel Writing Month, again on the skin of my teeth. Only by being already ahead. Because after I had dinner with my wife last night, after she retired to her art studio and I was just sitting down to finish my word count …

A disoriented older woman showed up on our street, unable to find her way home - and speaking no English.

Our neighbors found her first, and came by for help. We took her to our front porch and tried to calm her while the police were on their way. Slowly her English returned, and slowly we drew out her story: she'd been sick for a long time, she didn't know where she was, and she just wanted to go home … to a mother and father who in her clearer moments she remembered were dead.

The police arrived, we all tried to comfort her, and then the presence of the police cars attracted the attention of the woman's husband, who had been driving around the neighborhood looking for her. He confirmed what we suspected: his wife had Alzheimer's, and could no longer remember her street address, or even her married name.

A moment's nodding at the couch watching television, and when he looked up, she was gone, out in the street wearing slippers with her shoes in her hand. Alzheimer's patients often have disrupted sleep or activity schedules, moving when other people expect them to be still - so this experience was by no means unusual.

For the record, report the loss of a loved one to the police immediately, so it will show up in the system if someone finds them.

She ended up safely home. Our prayers go with her.

Sometimes, writing must come second.

-the Centaur

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Still on track, by the skin of my teeth and writing to 2:20am

Published November 14, 2013 by centaur

On track. A brief excerpt:

“We could always double bunk, if it comes to that,” Leonid said.

Andromeda and Serendipity both looked at him. Then shot daggers at each other.

“Why would you need to double bunk,” Serendipity asked. “This ship was designed for a crew of six hundred and fifty. It seems like you’d have plenty of bunks—”

“It’s the load of the oxygen farm—how large a space it can oxygenate,” Leonid said. “We used to have twelve segments, but we were down to six—before the crash. Now, once we get back to space, we’re going to need to husband things more carefully. For example, adding you and Norylan—”

“Yeah,” Sirius said. “I’ll bet you just chew up oxygen.”

“Not to mention calories,” Andromeda said.

“Hey,” Serendipity said.

“Seriously, both of you eat a lot,” Leonid said. “I’m guessing … six thousand a day?”

Serendipity seemed to weigh that. “I think that’s about right—for him,” she said, nodding at Norylan. “And I was pushing close to eleven thousand leading up to the tournament—”

“Eleven thousand calories a day!” Leonid said. “You eat for four people?”

“In training, a human Olympic athlete can consume ten thousand calories a day,” Serendipity said defensively. “A normal centaur requires closer to six or seven, and an athlete like myself pushes closer to nine thousand on a regular basis—”

“Let’s budget nine thousand for starters,” Leonid said. “But Norylan—”

“Is an Andiathar,” Serendipity said. “Their metabolism is very different—”

“No wonder he was starving,” Sirius said.

“Don’t you have fights, tournaments?” Serendipity said. “Toren was huge. He’s got to be pushing four, maybe five thousand calories a day, even if he isn’t in training—”

“Six,” Leonid said. “That’s why I guessed what I guessed for you—”

“I’m a little out of his weight class,” Serendipity smirked. Her face fell slightly. “How did you all get this way? I mean, I know you were attacked by pirates. But there’s more to it than just one attack. You’ve got traditions for fighting, ways of decorating your suits—”

“Don’t you like them?” Leonid asked.

“Oh, I do,” Serendipity said, moving that thread of hair aside. “But … what made you decorate them? Did it develop naturally, or were you trying to intimidate the pirates? Or to impress each other? What are your stories?”

“You’re a historian,” Sirius said. “And this ship has seven centuries of history—”

“Seven and a half,” Serendipity said. “Tell me the stories of your people.”

“We don’t tell stories,” Leonid said, motioning to Beetle, who drew out his strumstick. “We sing them.” Serendipity’s mouth fell open, and Leonid smiled. “Beetle, you’ve got some pipes on you. Sing the Song of Irannon, and remind us why we keep fighting on.”

Onward into the deep…

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Progressing…

Published November 11, 2013 by centaur

Back on track, mostly. Head above water. That is all.

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