The Library of Dresan – Page 47 – Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis

Support the HOTBLOOD! Kickstarter

Published May 13, 2016 by centaur

I think it’s in the contract of a guy called “the Centaur” to support the Kickstarter for the HOTBLOOD! comic - “A Centaur in the Old West!” This quirky centaur-themed comic with a “Brokeback Mountain” vibe - about a centaur secretary, his criminally minded boss, their romance, and exploding trains - completed earlier this year, and has already hit its first goal, so the HOTBLOOD! print omnibus will be, well, printed. But now the project’s just 18 hours - and 5 thousand dollars - away from the "stretch goal” which will enable Toril Orlesky to offer for free the sequel comic, Zarco, about the centaur sheriff who will track our two heroes (or villains?) down.

Toril’s art has been becoming increasingly accomplished and ambitious, and I hope you’ll all consider supporting the Kickstarter to bring the sequel to this great project to life!

-the Centaur

They’re Heeere…

Published May 13, 2016 by centaur

It is with an enormous sigh of relief that I can announce that THIRTY DAYS LATER will indeed be available by Clockwork Alchemy!

Above is the stack of books as they arrived at my house today, and below is my smile when I inspected the shipment!

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I don’t even want to start to go into the snafus which happened at the last minute, because they are OVER! I can at last add this to the stack, and move on. More later on how THIRTY DAYS LATER is Thinking Ink Press’s first fiction anthology, how it features the next of the Jeremiah Willstone stories, and why you want to watch out for yaks and Sasquatch … but for now … they’re here!

-the Centaur

Unexpected Complications

Published May 4, 2016 by centaur

So if I haven’t posted here in the past few days it’s because I’ve been FREAKING OUT about an unexpected problem with a project, where two separate contributors had computer failures and travel disruptions. What seemed like a nice, on-time, if tight project became a total freakout O.M.G.-we-may-miss-the-date over the course of a week and a half.

That slow slide off the cliff was halted today and it looks like we’re back on track, but it was touch and go for a while - I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and sent a round of emails trying to get things on track, which worked - but I found out a more experienced coworker had been worried about this last month, and had been trying to say so.

Ah well. Hard lessons. I think it will be fine … but I was motivated to take this picture for this blogpost as I sat here and worked on it, and after a bit, I realized why: it’s another example of unexpected complications. What you see is a giant pile of cat bedding, which didn’t work … because why sleep on something warm, fuzzy, and sheltered when hard shingles will do just fine.

And who could have anticipated that, but a cat. Sigh.

-the Centaur

Viiictory the Fourteenth

Published April 30, 2016 by centaur

Viiictory! I successfully completed Nanowrimo for the fourteenth time - adding 50,000 words to PHANTOM SILVER, Dakota Frost #5. And, by working hard, I did it!

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Because of work, life, and other writing, I got behind early this month, and had to press hard to really make it. But I successfully got it off my plate one day early. Because Nano’s site counts words differently than Microsoft Word, I had to push a bit past my Word word count, and so saw something I rarely see on this graph: a negative velocity debt, meaning I could write backwards and still end up finishing the count (at least the Word count) exactly on time.

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For a bit late in the month, especially around the 26th, it was as bad as I’ve ever gotten it: 6000+ words behind only 5 days from the end of the month. But somehow I managed to pull it out, setting a couple of daily records on writing … though I never even came close to my absolute max writing rate of 7,000 words a day.

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Strangely, even though Camp Nano doesn’t have November’s holidays, it still works out that most of the writing gets done near the end of the month. Go figure.

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Alright, late, tired, going to bed, more commentary later.

-the Centaur

Life is More Important

Published April 29, 2016 by centaur

So after catching up for a while on Camp Nano, I fell behind again … because I and my wife traveled back to Greenville, South Carolina to assist my mother’s rehab from knee surgery, and frankly that’ more important than any amount of word count. The good news is, she’s doing very well, and came home from the hospital yesterday … the even better news is, that my wife and my mom patched it up after eight years of not speaking to each other, a feat which I didn’t think was even possible. What a wonderful trip!

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I lost my momentum the moment I hopped on that plane, and after that it was tough to get it back when I was caring for Mom - you can see the dent in the schedule around the 20th - and getting back on track after that required a full court press. But, in the past several days, I was able to do just that, and managed to pump out 2000+ words on all of the past five days, and double that on three of those. As of tonight, I am caught up.

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As for now, there’s two days left, which I could tackle at a normal pace—though I’ll likely try to finish by Friday so that I can chill out on Saturday and have a nice relaxing weekend.

Wish me luck.

-the Centaur

Reality intervenes, but …

Published April 26, 2016 by centaur

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… we may still pull it out. We’ve been in worse scrapes ...

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Er … well, no we haven’t, but it’s still clearly possible. More news in a bit.

-the Centaur

THIRTY DAYS LATER reviewed by the Punkettes

Published April 23, 2016 by centaur

Excellent news - THIRTY DAYS LATER has been reviewed by the Punkettes!

Need help steaming up your Summer? The other day I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to read the THIRTY DAYS LATER anthology put on by Thinking Ink Press. I wasn’t expecting the soirée of steam/clock infusion. I soon found my tea turning cold and me turning the next page. Thirty Days Later is full of interesting diverse stories that will appeal to a wide variety of readers with sightings of Royals, ghosts, dragons, Japanese folklore, spies, and even a Sasquatch(?!).

Very cool! Go check the review out, and remember, THIRTY DAYS LATER comes out in a couple of months!

Now it’s starting to feel possible again …

Published April 20, 2016 by centaur

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I was literally dreaming all night about the chapter I wrote today - I got up several times with tears in my eyes, as one of Dakota’s enemies unexpectedly turned into one of her strongest allies. Fascinating what a fictional world can do to you. But the upshot is, I got 4,000 words done for two days in a row … and have a clear path for what I need to write tomorrow.

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We may win this one yet! Assuming I survive this weekend’s craziness! Which I can’t tell you about, but … aaaa!

-the Centaur

Now that’s what I’m talking about …

Published April 19, 2016 by centaur

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4200 words today! Keep that up for 3 more days, I’ll be more or less back on track.

And then I’ll still have 18,000 words left to write this month. AAAAA!

Onward!

-the Centaur

Briefly …

Published April 18, 2016 by centaur

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Is the novel back on track? NO. But am I up to speed? YES.

Of course, I know I’ll lose more days, so really, to finish, I’m going to need to do even more than the—hork!—2750 words per day that my spreadsheet predicts I’ll need to do to get back on track.

But I’ve gotten a much better groove, the story is starting to dovetail nicely, and some sections which felt out of place have, after a few moves, found a nice home in the story.

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The rocket is taking off, but there’s a long climb ahead.

Back to it.

-the Centaur

The good news and the bad news

Published April 17, 2016 by centaur

The good news is I wrote ~2800 words yesterday, more than I needed. The bad news is I wrote 900 of those words by hand in my notebook (so as to not disturb the other diners in the dark and quiet restaurant with the typing coming from my glowing laptop), and took most of this afternoon’s writing session to get them all typed in. Argh! Still, I’m happy with the results ...

“So,” Avenix said. “We have begun to seek out, in all our holdings, other threats—”

I raised my hand. “Hang on,” I said. Filling in the blanks, this ghost had to have been a fae hunter; that’s why they called me. But Avenix wasn’t saying that outright: he seemed to be feeding me my own lines. “You feared a threat to your realm … started a search for dangerous use of magic … then called me to deal with the problem. Did I get that right?”

“Well … yes,” Avenix said.

“Don’t lie to me!” I said, slapping my hand on the table. “What’s your real goal?”

“I am not lying to you,” Avenix said.

“Why would he lie to you?” Nyissa asked. “It’s a reasonable course of action—”

“Are you all insane?” I said. “Do you have no memories? Ten years ago—ten months ago—you’d have all been tearing each other apart, lashing out at everyone in sight, blaming anyone you could get your hands on to deal with your problems. You’d have been at war with Sidhain just because this happened on her doorstep—”

“Not likely,” Avenix said, shuddering.

“Save it! She has a real bad attitude,” I said, “but she’s pretty damn inoffensive for an alleged apocalyptic horror, and I’ve seen you in action against witchhunters! You can’t expect me to believe you’re all playing nice just because I came along!

Sounds like Dakota and Avenix are going to have it out. Onward!

-the Centaur

Back in motion, but not yet on track …

Published April 16, 2016 by centaur

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Several times in the past few days, I’ve finally gotten up to speed on Camp Nanowrimo. Only problem is, because I got so far behind, I need to go 50% faster than I’m already doing … and to catch up this weekend, even if such a thing was possible, I’d have to write eight times as much as I’ve already written today. Aaaa!

Still, onward!

-the Centaur

A Partial Answer …

Published April 15, 2016 by centaur

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… to how I made so little progress yesterday: halfway through yesterday’s writing session, I started entering yesterday’s wordcount into today’s row of the spreadsheet, effectively cutting my apparent wordcount for the day in half.

That would do it.

No excerpts; I just experimented with a new chapter 1 and I want to try it on for size before I share it. But it seems to dovetail nicely with what I’ve already written … and it was 800 free words, springing fully formed from my pen, uh, keyboard.

Onward!

-the Centaur

Gaah!

Published April 14, 2016 by centaur

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Gaah! How do I spend an hour writing a new long scene and only get 500 words out of it? 17% done, 30% behind. Aaa! Still, I got this. Just … need … to … write … faster ...

-the Centaur

“Can’t talk; I need to rescue a vampire from a ghost”

Published April 14, 2016 by centaur

A real conversation from my life. Love my life.

-the Centaur

Surfacing

Published April 13, 2016 by centaur

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Is the novel back on track? NO. But I am reaching the point where I have enough traction in the story that I’m starting to make real progress. I’m 14,000+ words behind, I need to write over 2,500 words a day to finish my 50,000 words in the month … but at least I’m making real progress now. An excerpt:

The looming tower of Brendelbane Manor leered down at me, its three irregular windows looking even more like a skull. Yes, it was the same room, the nook at the front of Alissa van Kreveld’s room—but was there now flickering light within?

And … was the thing we’d seen Alissa van Kreveld? The phantom hadn’t looked like a Scottish refugee or a woman of Dutch descent; its hair and face had looked distinctly Asian, like a concept drawing for a mash-up of The Grudge and Memoirs of a Geisha.

So if it wasn’t her … who was it? What was it?

In horror movies, it seemed like you had a fifty-fifty chance of a ghost being a human ghost or a real demon. My personal experience told me next to nothing about ghosts, but any kind of phantom had a seventy percent chance of being a projectia, and a ninety percent chance of it turning out to be something hostile.

I stopped for a moment. No. That was my bad attitude talking. Chris Valentine’s projectia, the Streetscribe’s projectia, Cosgreave’s specter: all hostile. My Dragon, Arcturus’s vines, Avenix’s tentacle monster: all benign. The odds were closer to fifty-fifty. Even if this ghost had chased us out of the property with phantom fire, it might not be a hostile.

Still … my girlfriend was inside, and this thing spat phantom fracking fire.

Screwing up my courage, I drew my sword, ascended the steps … and went inside.

Onward!

-the Centaur

Hounded

Published April 9, 2016 by centaur

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Is the novel back on track? NO.

For an idea of why I push so hard on this, though, take a look at this graph of how popular my books have been over time (a graph compiled by myself looking at data from various sources). It may not be readily apparent, but every time a new book is released, all my books spike in popularity, then slowly decline. The graph starts at the release of BLOOD ROCK, and the big gap between that and LIQUID FIRE - working on stories for anthologies - really caused things to fade away. If I want to write all the time, I need people to buy my books, so I need to produce books, to get back on track with novels coming out on a regular basis.

So … back to PHANTOM SILVER.

-the Centaur

Blood in the Water

Published April 8, 2016 by centaur

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Well, shoot. Camp Nano not going well so far. Blast ye, taxes. Is the date right? Should I make Dakota worry about her taxes too, just to be mean? Checking The Grid … no, dangit, her taxes wouldn’t be due until the next book. Sigh.

Back to work.

-the Centaur

Beautiful Garbage

Published April 7, 2016 by centaur

I blogged this before, but now the formal description of Sandi’s art show “Beautiful Garbage” is up:

http://www.kaleidgallery.com/2016/03/beautiful-garbage-by-sandi-billingsley/
KALEID Gallery presents Beautiful Garbage a new feature exhibition for the month of April by Sandi Billingsley.

The goal of this body of work is to continue awareness of the need to recycle. Working in various states, in many homes and living with clients for months at a time, I am witness to the fact that it is still rare to recycle. In fact almost every home uses disposable cookware, cups, plates and utensils for every meal. Not only is this a questionable use of gas to transport the goods, and power to make the disposable goods but it all ends up in a landfill. I would like to encourage a change in mindset from a disposable to sustainable by creating beauty out of garbage.

Exhibition dates: April 1 – April 25, 2016
88 South Fourth Street (@ San Fernando), San Jose, CA 95112
Tuesday – Saturday, noon -7pm
Free admission

It will be showing through most of April, so go check it out!

-the Centaur

An Open Letter to Matt Damon, Andy Weir, Ridley Scott, and Harry Gregson-Williams

Published April 7, 2016 by centaur

Thank you for The Martian. That is all.

Oh, while I’m here I should also extend my thanks to Michael Peña, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and the rest of the fine cast and crew that made it possible. But that which pops most to my mind is Matt Damon directed by Ridley Scott to say Andy Weir’s lines, with Harry Gregson-Williams’ music in the background. Thank you.

Back to the novel (and the book launch, and the deep learning, and the taxes). That is all.

-the Centaur