Back of the Envelope

Unpredictable stories

2012-02-06T23:58:00.000-05:00

Last week, I talked about how to make stories unpredictable. This week, I want to talk about some stories that did it right and really surprised me. I didn't warn you last time, but this time, you should know that there will be spoilers. So let's include some spoiler space.

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What I'm going to be talking about are short stories that really surprised me, moving away from the predictable to something different. Like most things, your mileage may vary, but here are some short stories that surprised me, and why:

Saviors - This one's twist probably should have been easy to see coming, but I didn't see it at all. Why? Because it so violated the cultural norm, was so far out of what's acceptable, that it wasn't obvious to my normal way of thinking. (Don't think that this story's twist hasn't been done. It has. However, it still hasn't lost its ability to shock, especially when you don't expect a character to accept it easily.)

Cold cuts - This one surprised me by leading me to think that the choices were different than they actually were. It was in essence a third way story, where the choices you see aren't the only ones. The fact that the other choice was particularly gruesome helped to make it unexpected. Of course, there were some deceptive things done in the story, and I find those sorts of things annoying. You shouldn't have to lie to surprise your readers.

Seven Ways to View a Monkey - This one's not yet online, but I'll add a link once it is. This one used an unreliable narrator to make its twist. But it wasn't really the reliability of the narrator that created the surprise, but the insanity. Which just goes to show that crazy people are unpredictable.

I wanted to show various ways to make a story unpredictable, but I'm not sure I've succeeded. All three of these stories actually had the same device, at root--shock. People behaving in brutal ways, well outside the limits of what society accepts, which is what allowed them to surprise me, since I didn't think the authors would go there. I may have only succeeded in proving that I'm a little naive. I'll try to come up with other examples next time.

Avoiding Predictability

2012-01-30T22:22:00.000-05:00

I'll admit. I find most fantasy and science fiction short stories rather predictable. This is especially a problem with shorter stories. The issue is that these sorts of stories (flash fiction stories, generally 1,000 words or less) are generally expected to have a twist ending, a surprise that you're not supposed to see coming. However, if you expect that it'll end in a twist, you can usually figure out what it is the moment you understand the premise of the story. For example, let's suppose you're reading a story about a student who failed his drug test, but it's vague what the drug test is. It's because he's not taking the intelligence boosting drug his school requires. Or how about a man wondering whether to tell his wife that she's actually a replacement, with his dead wife's memories downloaded. It turns out he's a replacement too. Or how about a guardian being assigned an unspecified task by his superiors concerning his charge? He's supposed to kill her, because he's not guarding her, he's guarding everyone else from her. (I'll admit, that last one's mine. I never said that I was immune.) The thing is, for each of these (including mine), anyone with a modicum of genre-savvy could predict the ending well before getting to it. All the examples are from Daily Science Fiction, but I don't mean to pick on them. They're convenient because I read most of their stories, and the stories are usually very short, which, as I mentioned earlier, makes them harder to make unpredictable.

Why? What makes these stories predictable? First, people expect a twist. It's a standard trope of the genre, and because people expect it, they're on the lookout for it. Second, shorter stories are simpler stories. There's usually a single science fiction or fantasy element that's being explored, so readers know where to expect the twist from. Third, writers learn to set up their twist early in the story. Usually by the first couple of paragraphs, it's already been telegraphed. The reason for this is that readers will complain if the twist comes out of nowhere. They have to be allowed the chance to guess it, so it's expected that there will be hints of it in the beginning. So they now know where to look for the clues to the twist. And if they do that, there's a good chance that they will find it.

Can you frustrate these expectations and make your story really surprising? If I really knew how, I'd be a better writer. But here are some dos and don'ts that have occurred to me:

Don't rely on word ambiguity for your twist. "Guardian" or "drug test" are words where a little thought can reveal alternative, but equally valid, meanings. If your reader is looking for a twist, he'll pick up on those words, and be able to figure it out.
Don't put all your clues in one place. You need clues. If your twist comes completely out of left field, your reader will feel cheated. But if you put everything in one place, it will be easy for them to figure out.
Do write stories without a twist ending. Not every flash fiction story needs a twist ending. As long as you can tell a good story, you can feel free not to try to surprise your reader. Of course, if he's expecting a twist, that in itself may surprise him.
Do make your stories more complex. If there's one premise or concept, then of course there's a limited number of ways for the story to go. Throw in more ideas, more science fiction or fantasy, or both. This will open up many more permutations and possibilities.
Do write longer stories. Longer stories are harder to predict. More concepts come into play, there are more plot points and more complexity. Of course, it's possible to write a simple long story, but even in that case, a twist is more of a surprise, since you've had longer to lure your reader into a false sense of security.
Don't rely on a straightforward reversal for your twist. Want the innocent victim your monster is hunting to turn out to be an even worse monster? It's been done. Want a girl to have cybersex behind her boyfriend's back, only to learn that he's the one on the other end? That's also been done. The reversal twist is a common technique, and has been done so often that it's hard to fool an alert reader with it. The simple reversal is too obvious a possibility to be overlooked, especially in flash fiction stories which often have just two significant characters. But more subtle reversals still work.

Top Ten List

2012-01-23T23:41:00.000-05:00

I've never been in a top ten list before, so I was happy to see that "Her Majesty's Guardian" has appeared in the editors' top ten list of Daily Science Fiction stories at Diabolical Plots (scroll to the bottom--almost). Now, each of three editors had their own top ten list, and "Her Majesty's Guardian" only made one of them, but it still makes me happy, as that makes my story one of 30 or so out of more than 250 stories to be recognized. Thanks, folks, and thanks to Michele and Jonathan for accepting my story at Daily Science Fiction.

Hours in a day

2012-01-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of hours in a day. That's something that isn't so obvious when you commute over an hour each way to work, stay there for eight or nine hours, and come home and spend time with your family, and maybe squeeze in two hours for writing before going to bed. But when you have a day to yourself, like I did this Saturday, you can get a lot done.

So you generally spend most of it watching television or playing games, because frankly, you've already planned what work you're going to do based on the old time allotments, and you simply don't have enough to fill those hours. What I really should have done is gotten some short story submissions in. Of course, the problem is that many of the places I would like to submit are closed, so I'm waiting for them to open rather than sending them off to other places.

Superhero movies

2012-01-08T19:12:00.000-05:00

In preparation for the Avengers movie coming out this year, my wife and I have been watching all the "prequels"--the Marvel superhero origin movies for the Avenger characters. A number of them have come out the past few years. I thought it might be helpful to rate them in order from best to worst, at least as Kristin and I see them.

Thor -- Thanks to an intricate plot and a complex villain, Thor was my wife's favorite. It didn't hurt that it was heavy on fantasy, and Kristin's a fantasy author.
Iron Man -- Tony Stark's not a very likable character, but at least he's trying to be a better person. He sort of succeeds in this one.
Captain America -- Kristin was originally reluctant to see this one, worried that it might be too jingoistic for a Canadian. Ultimately, she thought it was all right. I thought it was fun, but Captain America isn't really one of my favorite superheroes.
Iron Man 2 -- And Tony backslides, into being even more of a jerk than before. Kristin hasn't seen this one yet, so I haven't gotten her opinion.
The Hulk -- The least of the movies. Part of the problem was that while the others were origin stories, The Hulk showed the origin of the main character in the opening credits. It also suffered from stiff acting and fake-looking special effects.

So, that's our thoughts so far. Hopefully, the Avengers will be closer to Thor and Iron Man than the Hulk.

To be or not to be

2011-11-24T09:33:00.000-05:00

While revising my novel these past couple of weeks, I've come to realize just how badly high school English damaged my writing technique. A parade of English teachers impressed upon me the importance of using the active, rather than the passive, voice. The active voice was always good, while the passive voice always bad. So far, not so bad. Stephen King agrees. But they went farther. Some teachers I had went so far as to mark up every time I used the word to be, whether it was passive voice or not. (Ironically, science papers were supposed to be entirely passive voice.) As a result, I'd developed a pathological aversion to the word "to be." Looking over my novel, which was first written ten years ago, I've come to see just how problematic this aversion was. Some of my writing was ridiculously convoluted just to avoid the words "was" or "were." A lot of my revision has been killing these overly contrived evasions and just rehabilitating the word "to be."So, for other writers recovering from high school English, here are three reasons to embrace "to be".

Sometimes things just are. Compare "She was angry" to "She felt angry." The first is a stronger statement, more definite and clear. When I was trying to avoid "to be," I used equivalent words, words like "seem" or "feel" or "become" or "appear." These are useful and sometimes necessary words, but they're weak words. When something is, say that it is, don't try to weasel around it.
A whole tense depends on "to be." The imperfect tense, where we say "He was coming," as opposed to "He came" or "He did come," needs "to be" as a helper. Imperfect is a useful tense, conveying incomplete past action, and I needed it to write a book in the past tense. Without "to be" there's no imperfect tense, and it's a shame when that's gone.
Passive voice is sometimes the right voice. I'll admit, new authors often write in passive voice when they need to use active. It can make writing timid and weak. But the reason it does that is not the voice itself, but the subject of your voice. We tend to use passive voice when things are happening to our characters, as opposed to when they are doing things. That's what it's for: passive voice puts the emphasis on the object of the action, rather than the subject. When our heroes stop doing things and things happen to them instead, then our writing is weak and timid, no matter what voice we use. There are times when things do happen to our characters, and passive voice is perfectly good for keeping the focus on them even when they're not active, but if the characters are inactive too long, active voice won't save the story.

Why the iPhone needs a hard reboot button

2011-11-21T09:49:00.001-05:00

My iPhone died the other day. When I took it out of my pocket I noticed that it was hot, but when I tried pressing the home button, nothing happened. I tried the power button, I tried holding down the power button, but still nothing. Then I tried plugging it in, in case the battery had run down. Still nothing. No sound, no screen, no indication besides its heat to let me know it was anything but plastic and glass.

Finally, I plugged it into my computer and started up iTunes, which recognized that the phone was there, but wasn't able to do anything with it. It hung backing it up, and it hung canceling the backup. There's an Apple store near where I work, and I considered taking it to them, but I didn't want to ask for help until I had at least rebooted the darn thing. The problem was that there was no way to reboot it. I suspected it had simply hung, and was now unresponsive. You could use the power button to turn it off, but first you had to hold it down, then it would prompt you to swipe the screen to shut it down, and as I mentioned, there was no response when I hit the power button. I couldn't even take the battery out, since the iPhone doesn't give you access to it.

Ultimately, I had to let the battery run down. When I charged it back up, it was fine. But this has convinced me that the iPhone really needs a hard reset.

World Fantasy Convention: Day 4

2011-11-18T20:12:00.001-05:00

I honestly thought it had been only a week since my last post, but novel revisions create a time distortion field, and it's really been two. To be honest, Kristin and I didn't do much Con related on our fourth day. We didn't go to any panels or readings. We did go to the banquet, which was held on the last day. The food was so-so, but Connie Willis gave a very funny toast. There were awards too. A number of our friends were nominated, but I don't think any of them won. They were robbed, of course. I can say this with absolute confidence, despite not having read any of the nominated books or stories.

Afterward, we went to the beach. Kristin's Clarion West class was staying at a beach house, and we went to visit them. We took advantage of the California weather to wander along the beach while we were there.

Kristin on the San Diego beach.

Afterward, we had dinner with them, then went back to the hotel, where the final con party was. We hung out there as well, mostly with Kristin's Clarion West class. So we saw a lot of them.

After that, we went to bed. We were exhausted, and I had my flight home the next day. Kristin also had a flight, though she was going to San Francisco to visit her sister.

Overall, it was great fun.

World Fantasy Convention: Days 2-3

2011-11-03T23:53:00.000-04:00

I expected to have a lot to say about the rest of World Fantasy. But it can be summed up fairly quickly: I went to panels, I went to parties, I met interesting people. I talked to John O'Neill and the Black Gate crew again, which is always fun. I hung out with friends, and with Kristin's friends. More Kristin's friends than mine, actually, as she knows more of the regular Con-goers than I do (which is only natural, as she's been going to Cons longer than I have).

That said, let's try to hit the high points.

In terms of panels, the most interesting one I went to was on the role of character stupidity in genre fiction. I felt that this was somewhat one-sided, as the arguments of the panelists boiled down to "your characters shouldn't be stupid." But I felt this was unfair. The real issue with characters, especially in horror movies, is that they don't know that they're in horror movies. Much of their stupidity stems from this fact. People, all the time, will go downstairs, alone, unarmed, in their underwear even, to check out a strange noise because they think the dog knocked over something or something toppled over, and they won't be expecting someone to be lurking there. If they knew they were in a horror movie, or a suspense movie, they wouldn't do that, but they don't know. That's not stupidity, it's just ignorance.

The most interesting party was the pajama party, which was a release party of N.K. Jemisin's new book, The Kingdom of Gods. You were supposed to wear your pajamas, and there were kids' games like Hungry, Hungry Hippos and Operation, and there was liquor in sippy cups. The book supposedly has a god of childhood in it, hence the theme. It was fun. We went, but didn't wear our pajamas, since we were going to the aforementioned panel on stupidity later.

One thing we enjoyed was the sun. San Diego in the fall is nice--the temperatures in the 70s, rather than the 50s, like it is here in Boston.

World Fantasy Convention: Day 1

2011-10-28T12:17:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was the first day of the World Fantasy Convention. To be honest, I didn't have too much con stuff to do, but I figured I'd tell you about it anyway.

I arrived at San Diego yesterday around 1 pm, and immediately made my way to the hotel, the Town and Country Resort, where the World Fantasy Convention is being held this year. Kristin had already flown out the day before to spend some time with her Clarion West class. I arrived at about 1:45 pm, only to be told that the room wouldn't be ready until 3 pm, so I went and registered for the convention and got lunch before I could check in. This might have been a mistake. As part of registration, I picked up my "book bag"--a big bag of free books every participant gets. It's about twenty pounds of books that is not a lot of fun to carry around. (I've since gone through the books, and separated the books I'm interested in reading from the ones I'm not, so it's now a more manageable weight.) Once I was able to check into the hotel room, I settled in to wait for Kristin.

Kristin arrived around five, and after some time together, we went to get dinner, and finally to the main event of the con, at least as far as we were concerned: Kristin's first ever con panel: "Magic and Metaphysics." The main idea being, "How do you design a believable magic system? Why is it important?" Kristin's already written about it, but it was fun to see her talk it out with some other big name authors: Ted Chiang, Mark Teppo, and Peter Orullian. Of course, the panel, like most con panels, tended to stray off topic, mostly discussing whether there really is any such thing as magic, and when they did get asked the question I was really interested in, they didn't seem to understand it. The question, as it was asked, was "Is it more important to define the magic system when it is the protagonists using magic?" The way I would have phrased it would have been: "How do you use a defined magic system in order to show the reader what the limits of your characters are, so it's clear what situations and conflicts are actually a challenge?" There's more to the question, of course, but I hate it when people asking questions of panels talk and talk rather than just asking a question. Instead of addressing the question, the panel (and the audience) talked about quantum physics, in ways that made me, with my Ph.D. in quantum computation, cringe from time to time.

Kristin was much better than the others at staying on topic, by the way. But you could tell that she was jet-lagged. So afterward, we went to bed.

So, really, we didn't do much con-related stuff yesterday. Hopefully there'll be more con stuff to report after today.

2011 World Fantasy Convention

2011-10-23T20:19:00.001-04:00

Kristin and I will be going to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego next week. If you've seen Kristin's blog, you already know that she's going to be on a panel this convention. It's one of the panels I thought sounded most interesting, on the metaphysics of magic, at 10 pm on Thursday evening. As I'm arriving on Thursday afternoon, I suspect that I'll probably be badly jetlagged. Which won't stop me from going.

I applied to participate as well, although I indicated a preference for giving a reading. That may have been a mistake (there appear to be fewer slots for readings than for panels), as I wasn't scheduled. That's disappointing, but since I did an unofficial reading at the last World Fantasy Convention, I guess I can't be too jealous of Kristin.

In any case, I expect it will be a fun convention, and I'm looking forward to it. If you're going to be there, let me know. And do go to Kristin's panel.

Kindle Fire Battery Life

2011-10-16T10:55:00.000-04:00

I've read some of the information available on the Kindle Fire, and I've come to the conclusion that the Kindle will live or die by its battery life. This is because the Fire is placed directly at the high end of the Kindle line. Since the Kindles are e-ink screens, with little in the way of interaction, they have a battery life of days and weeks. With an LCD screen and a touch sensor, as well as a browser and video playback, the Kindle Fire will not be able to compete with them. However, if it does not have at least the battery life for a full day of reading, then it will fail to successfully live up to its market niche.

From what I'm hearing right now, the Kindle will have enough juice for 8 hours of continuous reading (slightly less for watching video). That is what I consider the absolute minimum. If it fails to live up to that duration, then it will soon find itself going the way of other fancy, but less than useful, gadgets.

This has not stopped me from adding the Kindle Fire to my wish list, of course. If anyone's interested in giving me one for Christmas, I'd be happy to test out the battery life for you and report it here.

Story now online

2011-10-07T21:58:00.000-04:00

I announced last week that my story, "Her Majesty's Guardian," was out. That was the e-mail version, which you received if you're subscribed to Daily Science Fiction. Yesterday, it went up on the Daily Science Fiction website. Now everyone can read it here.

"Her Majesty's Guardian" is now out!

2011-09-29T03:00:00.027-04:00

My short story, "Her Majesty's Guardian," is being sent out to Daily Science Fiction's e-mail list today. It'll be appearing on the website in about a week. Here's a small taste:

"The Council's vote was unanimous," Duke Richard said. He looked ridiculous in a bright yellow doublet. The color would make anyone look foolish, as the other old men seated around the table proved, but its gaiety was especially jarring against Richard's habitual dark expression. "You know your duty, Guardian."

Alric, in his customary black, stood out like a crow among canaries. He wanted to protest further, but he had no arguments left after the last hour's debate. More arguing would only convince them to give his task to someone else, and he couldn't do that to her. He felt a heavy weight settle on his chest as he bowed to the Duke. "I will do as you command, Your Grace. But I will never forgive myself." Or you.

I hope you enjoy the story. If you're interested in other stories I've published, here's a quick list:

The Office of Second Chances -- Published in Coach's Midnight Diner: The Back from the Dead Edition (2009) (Kindle Edition)
The Hunter of Shades -- Published in Residential Aliens (July 2007)
A Stranger in the Library -- Published in Aoife's Kiss (December 2008)

My wife, Kristin, also writes science fiction and fantasies. You may also be interested in her stories.

Writing vs. Blogging

2011-09-26T00:04:00.000-04:00

I've been looking over my most recent blog posts, and I'm worried that my blogging skills have atrophied. Once upon a time I wrote three posts a day, every day, generally on political topics. Then I got a real job, started writing fiction seriously, got in a serious relationship, and got married, in that order. My blogging dropped off to once a month or so. I decided, fairly recently, to try to blog more regularly, and now I'm writing a post once a week. But my blogging has taken a hit. I don't think I'm as good a blogger anymore. I'm not, however, a worse writer. I'm pretty sure that I'm a better writer. But the skills involved in blogging and in writing are different enough that I can be good at one and not the other.

There are several reasons for that:

Blogging is shorter. When I write, I'm generally writing a story on the order of 8,000 words, or a novel on the order of 80,000. For a blog post, 800 words is long. My tendency to write longer does not help me write the succinct posts that blogging requires.
Blogging has little, if any, chance for revision. My fiction has a rigorous, four revision process. A blog post may get a quick once over. I'm used to pushing through to the end of a story, then going back and making sure I get all the details right. One of the most important parts of that revision process is waiting. I can't go back and revise something right after I've finished. I have to wait some time, typically weeks, to get some distance from it, before I can look at it with fresh eyes. I can't do that with blog posts. I might be able to give it an hour or two, but that's all the distance I can manage before it publishes.
Blogging has a different purpose. This one's so obvious that it's easy to overlook. In a story, I'm focusing on things like plot, characterization, and description. In blogging, I'm writing about facts and opinions, often in bulleted lists like this one. In a story I'm making things up; in a blog post, I need to get facts straight. Oh, they aren't entirely orthogonal endeavors. I need to get facts straight in stories too, when it comes to the real world parts. Blogging can often benefit from detailed description, and even a clear plot structure. Overall, though, they do have different purposes, and require different types of writing to meet those goals.

Since I don't intend to stop blogging, I'm trying to get better at it, or at least recover my atrophied skills. That requires blogging more, but I don't want to blog so much that I don't have time for other things--such as fiction writing. Still, I'll be making an effort to pick up the pace of my blogging.

Getting ideas

2011-09-14T20:49:00.001-04:00

One of the most common questions writers get is "Where do you get your ideas?" Their most common answer is "I don't know." Writers have ideas. They don't really know where they come from. But as any writer can tell you, ideas are a dime a dozen. They're plentiful and manifold, and not really worth anything. The real work of writing is always the execution, turning the idea into a story.

That said, it's not, contrary to what some writers say, impossible to teach how to come up with ideas. Writers don't know where ideas come from because they don't really think about it. But there is a process. Or more accurate, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of processes for coming up with ideas. One of the most common is to take two ideas which are out there and combine them. But where do those ideas come from? Newspaper articles, technical papers, real-life experience, movies, other stories, etc. They're all around you. Any real story is going to intertwine dozens of ideas. Just about every story is about how someone reacts to something. Psychology meets technology, sociology, or even just some more psychology.

But what I want to talk about is something a bit different. Rather than talk about how you combine ideas, I want to talk about how you develop one. What do I mean by that? Well, to start, you need a concept.

Concept. The concept is not the idea. Rather, it is the basis for the idea. If you're writing a science fiction story, it may be a technology--nanotechnology, or genetic engineering. If you're writing a fantasy, it could be a magic system. If you're writing something more down to earth, it could also be a social structure, an organization, or even a relationship.
Research and Development. This is where you figure out how your concept works. This may involve real world research in the technology, or similar societies. It will also involve some thought into how things work, and figuring out the details. Some of this will be made up. Even if you're working with a real society or technology, you're probably going to need it to behave differently than it does today.
Destruction. Now that you've developed your society or technology or magic system, it's time to break it. Figure out what can go wrong. Then ask yourself, "Is this too obvious? Is it too easy?" If it is, then maybe you need to fix it. Things which are too easy to break are fragile, and anyone with half a brain wouldn't put their trust in that technology. Readers won't be able to suspend their disbelief. But some things aren't obvious, or just are very hard to break, even though these can have catastrophic effects. Should you fix these too? Of course not!
The idea. By now, you have your idea. Have fun with it! ... "What idea?" you ask. The one you just came up with. You figured out how to break your system. You found the interesting part to write about for your technology or society: when things go wrong. There's a great story there--go ahead and write it.

Hiking this past weekend

2011-09-11T20:48:00.001-04:00

Kristin and I went hiking this weekend. It was an adventure. By which I mean, Irene and the following storms had left things a mess. It started when we got to the road leading to the trail and found a sign saying Road Closed (though not actually blocking the road). Not to be deterred, we continued until we reached the turn off for the trail head, only to find that the dirt road was impassable. Rain had left huge ditches in the road, more than our tiny car could handle. So we decided to hike 1.8 miles up the road until we reached the trail head. After getting a little bit lost, we found it, and ate lunch. Then we started on the trail, and got a mile into it before we reached a sign saying "Trail Closed" due to unsafe conditions. After some discussion, we turned back, and returned to our car. Overall, we hiked about as far as we had intended, but not on the trails we 's had planned.

Nevertheless, the hike proved a good chance for me to test out some new equipment. Most notably, a new backpack which I had just received from my wife. An Osprey Atmos 65. It held up well for the hike. It's most notable feature is the ventilation--the part that presses up against your back consists of netting, rather than solid material, in theory so that your back doesn't get overheated. It was indeed better than normal, though I my back wasn't really cool and dry, as some reviewers claimed. Maybe I just sweat a lot. I also wore my new hiking boots, a pair of Oboz Yellowstone II. They also held up pretty well. They had good traction, decent support (once I tightened the laces), and were comfortable, not raising any blisters. The waterproofing on them seemed good as well, though I didn't tramp through any brooks.

So, overall, I thought the trip was worthwhile, even if we didn't reach any really good viewing points.

Upcoming Story

2011-09-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

Daily Science Fiction has announced its stories for September 2011, and if you look there at the bottom, around September 29th, you'll see my name listed. My story, "Her Majesty's Guardian," will be coming out at the end of the month. But if you want to read it then, you'll need to subscribe to Daily Science Fiction, which delivers its stories via e-mail. Of course, if you're willing to wait a week longer, it'll appear on their website, but as I know you're all eager to see my story, I'm sure you'll get a subscription.

Irene come and gone

2011-08-28T23:16:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Irene was hyped as a dangerous storm here in New England. But ultimately, its bark was worse than its bite. There was a lot of rain and wind, and some fallen branches, but we never even lost power.

The only downed branch I've seen so far.

Not that there's been no damage. 500,000 people in Massachusetts are without power, and at least 15 people were killed in the US (though none reported in Massachusetts so far). Kristin and I stayed inside all day, finding ways to keep ourselves occupied. We didn't want to be outside in it, but overall, it looks like we've come through the storm all right.

A Million Words

2011-08-21T19:17:00.000-04:00

There's a saying that every writer needs to write a million bad words before he writes any good ones. Like most aphorisms, there's some truth to it, and some exaggeration.

I started writing in middle school. I wrote a lot all through high school, and submitted my stories to all the contests they have for middle school and high school writing, and placed in a number of them. So I was actually a fairly good writer for my age group. That did not mean that I was a good writer overall. It was just that I and everyone else at that age was going through our one million words. So my bad words were maybe a little less bad than a lot of the other bad words.

One I started college, I pretty much stopped writing, and didn't pick it up again until I was well into Grad school. And lo and behold, I discovered that I was now a much better writer. I've always sort of wondered how that happened. It wasn't like I wrote my last bad word in high school, and when I started back up, I was starting to write good ones. For one thing, I had never written that much. But it does seem like it should have taken a lot more practice to turn the corner. Something must have changed in my life so that I was better.

Well, something did change. I was older. More to the point, I was wiser. I had read a lot more, experienced a lot more, thought a lot more, and even written a lot more, even if what I was writing was mostly technical. This, in turn, made me a more competent writer by the time I set pen to paper, or more precisely, hand to keyboard, again.

This did not, however, make me a good writer. I had become better, without practice, but that was not enough to make me good. I still needed the practice. I still had to write a lot, until my better prose became decent prose, and maybe even good prose (good enough to get published, at least). That's where I am now. I've sold five stories so far, and I'm hopeful that I'll sell more, so I'm at least that good, and I did it in well under a million words. But I have a long way to go in becoming a better writer, in learning how to do better dialogue and stronger characterization, in making my descriptions richer and my settings more alive. So in that sense, maybe I still have a ways to go in my million words.

So is there truth in the saying? Yes, in that every writer must write in order to become good at writing. That it doesn't come without effort. But the exact number isn't set in stone, and neither is writing the only thing that makes you better at writing. It's a necessary part of it, but it's not the whole of it.

That movie stole my cliche!

2011-08-13T11:22:00.001-04:00

Kristin and I saw Cowboys & Aliens last night. I had something of a professional interest, as one of my stories had turned into a weird western while I wasn't looking. Once I knew where it was going, I watched a lot of westerns as research, including a few weird westerns. This let me incorporate a number of western tropes in the telling of the story, enough to give it the right flavor, while still having what I thought was a unique twist. I'm proud of that story. I sent it off to Fantasy & Science Fiction, the premiere speculative fiction magazine, just yesterday.

Watching the movie last night, I was struck by the horrible realization that I'm going to have to change my story. When we went to see Cowboys & Aliens, I was interested in seeing which tropes they would use. As it turns out, all of them. Including one of the driving tropes of my story--the antihero getting into a fight with the spoiled son of the rich landowner, and this leading indirectly to his arrest by the sheriff. I mean, it was uncanny how similar it was. I can just picture the editor reading it and saying "Oh, he stole this from Cowboys & Aliens," and then tossing it aside with a chuckle. And he'd say that even if it were a good movie.

Cowboys & Aliens somehow missed the first rule of western story telling--you need to be selective of your tropes. If you just throw them all in, it becomes campy and corny. Which is what the movie achieved, intentionally or not. Of course, I might have enjoyed it more if not for the folks sitting behind us snickering at most of it. Granted, a lot of it was snicker worthy, but I think I could have had an easier time turning off the critical part of my mind if not for the constant reminders.

I'm hoping that the next time a movie borrows from the same cliche as one of my stories, the movie will at least be a good one.

The Discipline of Writing

2011-08-09T22:50:00.000-04:00

Mike Duran has argued that the craft of writing is at least as important as creativity to a writer. If creativity is about inspiration, craft is about discipline. It is about spending the time and the energy to learn how to write well, and to do the work of writing.

I've been trying to develop a more disciplined writing schedule. I usually write as I feel inspired, writing as much as I feel comfortable writing, until I get the ideas that I already have in my head out. Recently, I've started trying to write consistently, at least 800 words a day, five days a week. I'm focusing this writing on producing a novel. At this rate, I produce one chapter a week, and should finish in about twenty weeks. I'm about a quarter of the way so far, so I think it's going well, at least as far as the word count is concerned.

One of the frustrations of maintaining this discipline, even though every writer I've ever heard give advice on writing insists that it's necessary, is that it feels as though the quality of my writing suffers when I focus so much on the word count. I feel like the creativity portion of the craft and creativity suffers from me trying to force my brain to come up with something rather than letting the ideas bubble up on their own, and simmer for a while before putting them to paper. Writing at this rate forces me to come up with new ideas on the fly, and to devote them to paper without the proper aging.

I wonder sometimes whether this is my imagination. When I look back on some of my earlier writings, I don't always find that my ideas were as well thought out as I thought they were at the time. And when I read over stories that I've written quickly before, they seem less disjointed and wandering than they felt when I was writing them.

Some people say that you can't force inspiration. I really don't think that is right. Prolific writers are capable of writing at high speeds because they learn to come up with enough ideas to maintain that speed. But I'm beginning to think that I need to figure out how to force inspiration.

The Office of Second Chances now on Kindle

2011-07-25T18:30:00.002-04:00

In 2008, I wrote a story inspired by TVTropes.org (WARNING: this site will suck your life away if you let it). Specifically, I postulated that if the world is always in danger and the odds are always against the heroes, then sooner or later probability will win. As the world is still around, there must be something at work to defeat probability, or at least reload the last save point. Hence, "The Office of Second Chances."

It was a fun little story, and I sent it off to Coach's Midnight Diner, where it was published in the 2009 anthology Coach's Midnight Diner: The Back From The Dead Edition. I strongly believe that the story still has some life to it, and I've been considering other places it might thrive since the rights returned to me a while ago. One possibility is an audio edition, but I really don't have the acting ability to do it justice. And there are very few places that will publish reprints. So ultimately I stole an idea from my wife. She's decided that once her story rights return to her, she'll put them up as ebooks on Kindle. She's kind of annoyed that I did it before she did.

So "The Office of Second Chances" is now online at Amazon. Here's a small taste:

World-threatening dangers are a fact of life. Most people can’t accept that, so they tell themselves it isn’t true and then make up stories about it. None of the details of those stories are right, but they do reflect the greater truth that there is always something threatening the world, and always a need for a hero to save it. Where they get it wrong is in thinking that the hero always succeeds. In real life, sometimes the plucky comic relief isn’t plucky enough, the wise old mentor isn’t that wise, the cryptic clues are too cryptic, or the ragtag band of heroes just can’t manage to overcome their differences. For whatever reason, there are times when the heroes don’t have what it takes to save the world.

When that happens, the world gets destroyed. Six thousand, seven hundred, and twelve times at last count. That’s why the Office of Second Chances exists. When things go wrong in the World Saving Department, they fix them.

You can download it to your Kindle (or free Kindle app) for $0.99. Just follow the link to your right.

Blog upgrade

2011-07-24T15:48:00.000-04:00

I've finally gotten around to adding Bio and Writings pages to this blog. I'd put it off because I had a feeling it was going to be painful to integrate this blog and my hosted site, and I wasn't wrong. But they're now online, and links appear at the top of each page. There's not much there now, aside from links to my published works and the all important Brief History of Donald, but I'll be adding more as time goes by.

Presidential suite

2011-07-14T01:27:00.001-04:00

In case anyone's wondering what's in a Presidential Suite at a hotel, I can now say that it's about the equivalent of a nice apartment (minus the kitchen). There's a living room with couches, chairs, a television, and a grand piano. A dining room with table and chairs and a sink. A bedroom with a king sized bed and a television. Two bathrooms, the larger with separate shower and bathtub, two sinks, and a bidet. A kitchenette with a microwave. And humongous mirrors everywhere.

The real question, of course, is how I ended up in the Presidential Suite. I haven't yet figured that one out.

Keychain LED knives

2011-07-03T12:26:00.002-04:00

There are some things I think everyone should have with them at all times. A cellphone is a common one. I personally like to have a multitool, but not everyone wants to carry that. What I consider absolutely essential, though, is a flashlight and a knife of some sort. That's why I like having a keychain flashlight/pocketknife combination. Since I keep it on my keychain, I can be sure that I'll remember to take it with me, as long as I don't forget my keys. I have a Buck Metro LED which I find very useful. Unfortunately, it appears to be discontinued, though I'm not sure why. It has an LED and a knife, along with a very sturdy "ring" to hook onto a keychain.

Recently, I bought another flashlight/knife combo, ostensibly for my wife. She doesn't really see the need to carry it around though, so mostly it sits in our key basket, on the second set of car keys which she rarely needs. It's a Victorinox Tech Signature Lite, and it's pretty nice. Since she's not using it, I've considered swapping out my old knife for it, but before deciding to do so, I'd need to do a side-by-side comparison. I figured I'd do that here.

Size: While they're both small, but the Buck knife is definitely bigger, made more to fit comfortably in the hand than in the pocket. The Victorinox is small, the same size as their classic keychain knife, and is thus more comfortable. Advantage: Victorinox

Blade: While the Victorinox blade is slightly longer, the Buck blade is wider and sturdier. It also locks into position, and has a grip that makes it easy to open with one hand. Unfortunately, it's a little bit too easy to open. While I've never had it come all the way open in my pocket, I've had it come partially open. Still, I have to say I prefer the Buck one. Advantage: Buck

Flashlight: Both of them have a bright, white LED. Either one works well for navigating in dark places. The Victorinox has a protruding button, while the Buck has a recessed one. Both have features to prevent the flashlight from coming on in your pocket and staying on until the battery drains (a common failing with keychain flashlights). Victorinox solves the issue by having a button that must be held down to remain on, while Buck's clicks on, but automatically shuts down after three minutes. I've never noticed the Buck accidentally turning on in any case. Either one works. Advantage: Tie

Ring: Victorinox has the standard, small wire keychain ring, the type that I find very annoying because they commonly bend out of shape and fail in their function of holding the knife and the key ring together. In contrast, the Buck has a solid metal ring, the type you couldn't bend without a metal press. It's also well positioned, opposite both the knife and the flashlight, while the Victorinox ring is opposite the flashlight but on the same side the knife opens, making the knife a bit awkward to use while on the keyring. Advantage: Buck by a long ways

Other tools: "What other tools?" is all you can say for the Buck. There's nothing but the knife and flashlight. It does it well, but that's all. By contrast, the Victorinox managed to cram in most of the other things you might need in your pocket: a nail file with screw driver, scissors (probably the single most needed tool), and even a pen. Advantage: Victorinox by default, but it deserves it anyway.

Side by Side of the two knives.

Verdict: So what's the verdict? I love my Buck, and it has a lot of advantages. But after working things through here, I think I'll try out the Victorinox for a week, and see how I feel about it. There are a number of things I dislike about it, but there's enough good there that I think I should at least try it out.

Update: My wife has reclaimed the Victorinox, cutting the experiment short. It seemed to work pretty well while it lasted. I'll be keeping the Buck for now, but if I ever need to replace it, I now know a good alternative.

Naples: The city and Paestum

2011-06-24T19:27:00.004-04:00

After spending two days in Pompeii and Herculaneum, we decided to spend the next day in Naples and see one of the castles.

Castel Nuovo

The problem with seeing Naple's castles is that while you can see the courtyard, and some of the interior, you can't actually go up into the towers and the battlements, which is what I'd really like to see when I'm visiting a castle. Instead, Naples seems to have turned all its castles into art museums, which seems to me to defeat the purpose of going to see a castle. There were some interesting paintings, I admit, including one of the Visitation of the Magi, where one of the magi was clearly a midget. There was also this door:

Which is most interesting for the cannonball embedded in it. This is supposedly the door to the gate, but as the sign next to it notes, it's far too small to span the gate to the castle. It may have been part of a larger structure spanning the gate, but I believe the sign suggests that it actually belongs to another castle.

The next day we went to the Naples National Archaeological Museum. This is where many of the artifacts recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum end up. Once more, there seems to be an emphasis on the art rather than the archeology. The museum mostly contained statues, mosaics, and pottery. There were a few exhibits of everyday, household items. These would have been the most interesting ones to Kristin and I, if any of the signage for that section was in English. But they seemed to save their English for the more artistic items, like these:

We also managed to accidentally follow a tour group into a part of the museum which isn't normally opened to the public, displaying some of the more erotic artifacts found in archeological digs. Let's just say that phalluses were widespread and common as nicknacks in Pompeii. I didn't take pictures, though.

On our last day in Naples, we traveled to Paestum. Getting there proved to be a chore, starting with a train to Sorento, and then a long bus ride to Paestum. Getting back was easy though, as there was a direct train between Paestum and Naples, which would have made things much easier if we had known about it for the trip thre.

Paestum is the remains of a Roman colony, which was originally a Greek colony. It has some of the oldest temples in Italy.

A temple built by the Greeks.

A Roman house with a traditional layout.

There's also a museum, which I thought was one of the better archeological museums, not least because it had English signs for everything.

After that it was time to return to Rome, and from there to Boston, because we'd seen all of Italy we could see in two weeks.

Naples: Pompeii and Herculaneum

2011-06-06T18:02:00.003-04:00

Last time, I talked about the first part of our honeymoon, in Rome. I've been negligent in talking about the next part, which involved traveling to Naples. Our goal was not so much to see Naples, but to visit the important historical sites close by: Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Paestum. Naples, being the largest city near these, was our home base for this part of the trip. It also had a large museum, collecting many of the artifacts recovered from these sites.

I remember, when we first got to Rome, thinking "Wow, the traffic here is worse than Boston." Well, Naples was even worse. The streets were filled with pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cars, all honking and zooming past one another.

A taste of Naples traffic.

But we managed to survive Naples, and even get out of the city to visit some of the important sites. First up, Pompeii. There was a lot to see in Pompeii, and it'd be easy to overwhelm with pictures. Pompeii was buried in ash when Vesuvius erupted, and its rediscovery was one of the great archeological discoveries of Ancient Rome.

Kristin walking down a Pompeian street

It's been a long process unearthing Pompeii, with many mistakes along the way (some say that it was a real tragedy that Pompeii wasn't discovered a couple of centuries later than it was). Still, there's a lot to see. For example, this very famous mosaic (technically a copy, as the original is in the Naples museum).

Cave Canem--Beware of Dog

The best preserved building in Pompeii is the Villa of the Mysteries, famous for its paintings connected to the Dionysian mysteries. But what I found most interesting was this room:

A storage room?

According to what I could find, this is supposed to be a storage room. My difficulty, however, is that it apparently has no door, just the hole in the wall that looks like it was made as part of the excavation, and this window:

The only way in or out?

Maybe I'm wrong, and the door was just very narrow, and it was merely widened. I did notice that some of the maps of the building showed no door there. I couldn't find much more information on what most people consider an uninteresting part of the house. But to me, it's rife with story possibilities.

And one last photo, also located in the Villa of the Mysteries. A grim reminder of the tragedy which gave us Pompeii as we have it today:

One of the bodies found in the house.

The next day, we went to visit Herculaneum. This city was also buried when Vesuvius erupted, but since it was buried deeper, much of it was better preserved. Overall, I preferred Herculaneum over Pompeii. It's better preserved, and thus there's more there for the amateur archeologist. It's also smaller overall, so you can see all of it without being rushed. Finally, they provide you with a free English map and guidebook, both of which you had to pay extra for at Pompeii.

Herculaneum. The grassy area is where the beach used to be.

The view from the beach. The cliff on the left shows how deep the volcanic tufa burying the town was.

I took many, many pictures, of which only a few will be interesting to those not fascinated by Roman archeology.


Kristin taking a picture of the impluvium (a pool for catching rainwater) in the atrium of one of the houses.

Kristin taking pictures of a shop, which probably sold those jars you see in the upper right.

One of the interesting things about Herculaneum, from an archeology view, is that some of the wood from the town was carbonized and preserved, giving us some rare samples from the time period. That's why I have pictures like this:

Part of the door to one of the houses

Lots and lots of pictures like this. Which maybe aren't so interesting to folks who aren't as into ancient Rome.

I was going to finish up Naples in this post, but I'm thinking maybe I can save some of it for later. So I'll wrap things up here for now.

Donald and Kristin's Roman Adventure

2011-05-23T17:08:00.004-04:00

On the Tuesday after our Sunday wedding, we departed for Rome, Italy. We took an overnight flight on Al Italia, arriving around 8 am on Wednesday morning. Then, on little to no sleep, we had our first day in Rome.It was tough, since we couldn't check into our hotel right away. We could, however, drop off our luggage there. After which we went down to St. Peter's Basilica (where there was a large gathering of people associated with John Paul II's beatification), got lunch, and then saw the Pantheon. By this time we were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel and checked in, and I, at least, took a two-hour nap. Kristin got maybe half-an-hour of sleep, before we went to a nice restaurant for dinner.

The Pantheon from the square outside.

The Pantheon's dome. Note the large skylight, aka the hole in the ceiling.

For the next week, we did a lot of stuff, more than I can easily recount in one blog post, and the number of pictures is staggering. This is partly because Kristin's idea of a relaxing day is to do two museums, rather than three outdoor ruins in the hot sun. She also had very specific ideas about what restaurants she wanted to go to, based on various guide books, and she was willing to spend a significant amount of time wandering around in order to find them. My idea of a relaxing day is to spend it inside doing not much of anything, and maybe get a meal at a nice, nearby restaurant for dinner.

After our first full night's sleep in Rome, we spent the next day (Thursday) seeing the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine hill. It was hot, tiring, and we took many, many pictures, mostly of things that will be boring to anyone without a deep interest in Roman history.

Me in front of the Colosseum

On Friday, we went to an Etruscan museum in the morning. It would have been more enjoyable if more of the information had been in English, but it was mostly in Italian. We intended to take the afternoon off, but instead spent it wandering around a park lost, trying to find a restaurant. This made Kristin grumpy. The restaurant we did find really wasn't anything special. That evening we saw the Vatican museums, including the Sistine chapel, which was great fun.

From the outdoor exhibits of the Etruscan museum. I'm not sure that it's really Etruscan, as there was no information included, but we weren't allowed to take pictures of the indoor exhibits.

From the Vatican museums, the famous statue of Laocoon and his sons being devoured by serpents.

The next day, Saturday, we saw the Imperial forums, ate lunch at a really expensive (but also really nice) restaurant, then climbed up the Capitoline hill to see the Capitoline museum. There was a whole lot of walking and climbing involved. This made me grumpy.

Kristin in a shop (taberna) at Trajan's market

Me in front of the famous Capitoline wolf. The wolf statue may be ancient, but the infants (Romulus and Remus) weren't added until the Renaissance.

On Sunday, we went to Ostia Antica. This was an abandoned Roman city. Since it wasn't buried under mud or volcanic ash like Pompey and Herculaneum, it was in fairly poor condition. That said, the staff are much less protective of it, and visitors can wander around and through most of the buildings.

Me in a thermopolium (restaurant) in Ostium Antica.

That's me walking around the amphitheater at Ostia Antica.

On Monday, we visited three different catacombs along the Via Appia Antica (the old Via Appia, which is famous to anyone familiar with ancient Roman history). While the guides for each tour told us largely the same information--for example, catacombs were purely for burial, the Christians never hid in them--this was fascinating for anyone interested in the history of early Christianity. And also for any aspiring writers who think catacombs would make a great setting for a story. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside, so we have no boring pictures of the catacombs.

The outside of the catacombs.

On Tuesday, we went to Hadrian's Villa. Hadrian was a Roman Emperor who built the luxurious retreat to end all luxurious retreats (at least until the next Roman Emperor came along). I wasn't as impressed with the villa as I wanted to be, but it was still fun.

The Canopus at Hadrian's Villa.

Finally, on Wednesday, it was time for our trip to Naples, for the second stage of our honeymoon.

The Wedding of the Century . . .

2011-05-14T04:58:00.007-04:00

...happened two weeks ago. Prince William married . . . some woman, I presume. I really wasn't paying attention. I was more concerned with the wedding of my lifetime, which happened this past Sunday, when I married the lovely and talented Kristin Janz.

Kristin and I met in the writing group of Park Street Church in April of 2009. We quickly discovered that we were both published writers who wrote similar types of stories, specifically fantasy with a society based on Ancient Rome. This became something more, thanks largely to generous hints dropped by Kristin. Even so, it took me awhile to notice, but by July we were dating. Aside from going to conferences together, we've also gone camping, backpacking, and to restaurants much nicer than I would ever think of going by myself.

After a year and a half, I proposed to her in December, while we were visitng her parents in Nova Scotia. This gave me the opportunity to ask for her father's blessing first (note that I asked for his blessing, not his permission--it's an important distinction). We didn't leave ourselves much time to plan for the wedding. There are limits to the times her family can travel, so that meant that the wedding would either have to be before mid-May, or we'd have to wait until October, and we decided earlier was better than later. Less planning time encouraged us to keep things simple, which was how we preferred it.

Kristin had long dreamed of having her wedding as part of the regular church service. It's not unheard of, but it's not something that our church had done before, so when we approached the Park Street's associate minister about doing it that way, he was originally reluctant. We laid out our case in e-mail, and apparently the senior minister was enthusiastic about the idea, so he eventually came around. We scheduled the wedding for the 6:30 pm service at Park Street on May 8th.

Ultimately, the wedding ceremony was the easy part. There were, over the course of the weekend, no less than four parties, although I'm using the term "party" a bit loosely.

The first party was really just dinner out for us and our families on Friday night. The twelve of us went out to Legal Seafood, one of the nicer family-friendly midrange restaurants. Present were Kristin's parents, her grandfather, her brother, and my parents, my sisters, and my nieces.

The next day was what we'd been calling "The Saturday Event." Since the wedding ceremony was so late, the reception would be even later. So we knew that we needed something at a time that families with children could enjoy. We also wanted to spend more time with our families and other friends who'd come from out-of-town to see us. For this purpose, we planned a party for Saturday afternoon, from noon to five. This took place at our old apartments: prior to getting married, we lived in the upstairs and downstairs apartments of a two-family house.

For this, I wanted to do something special for the food, namely crawfish. Crawfish is a very Louisiana food, which you just don't see a lot up north. For a while we didn't even know if we could get crawfish in Boston, but we discovered a restaurant called Brother's Crawfish, in Dorcester, that catered. They delivered plenty of crawfish for our meal.

As you can see, they look like mini-lobsters. They're good, but often pretty spicy. I got to teach some Canadians how to eat crawfish, though, so it was fun. My niece, Kara, already knew how to eat crawfish, of course.

Aside from crawfish, we got some barbeque and sides from Blue Ribbon. This ensured that even those who couldn't eat shellfish (like my sister) had plenty to eat.

After we had cleaned up, Kristin and I went home to rest up for the big day. And it was big.

The first order of business was getting set up for the reception, which would take place that evening in the same two apartments where the Saturday Event had been. Then we picked up the food for the next party: coffee hour. Our church has two evening services, a 4 pm service and a 6:30 pm service. In between, they have a coffee hour. We decided that we should be present there to greet guests who were coming to the wedding, but not the reception. But since coffee hour usually only has a limited amount of food, we brought extra: a full gross of desserts from Quebrada. We had cupcakes, croissants stuffed with fruit or chocolate, lemon tarts, fruit tarts, chocolate tarts, chocolate dipped strawberries, and five pounds of cookies. We also brought some Italian sodas, apple cider, and some teas to drink. We wanted to make the desserts available to the entire church, but we also knew that they'd go quickly, so we told our guests to come at 5:15 pm. The 4 pm service let out at 5:20 pm. By 5:30 pm, all the desserts were gone.

Nevertheless, we were able to talk to most people at the reception.

Kristin and her roommates

After that, it was time for the main event. We had a reserved row for family, but everyone else found their own seats.

From left to right: Kristin's brother, Stephen, her parents, and her grandfather

From left to right: my sister, Rebekah, her daughter, Kara, and Hope with her mother, Sarah, my other sister

In order to keep the wedding from being too disruptive of the regular service, we kept things simple. That meant no wedding party, just Kristin and I, no wedding dress, and no special music or readings. When the time came, we went up, stated our intentions, received the blessing of our families and the congregation, said our vows, exchanged rings, kissed, and sat down. Okay, sure, it sounds like a lot when written out like that, but the whole event only took about ten minutes.

Intentions

Vows

After we had our receiving line--really, we just stood where new members stand after they join the church, and let people say hello and congratulate us--we went to the fourth and final party, the reception. For this party, we had sushi from Whole Foods, as well as fruit, vegetable, tortilla, and mediterannean baskets.

While many of our guests with children weren't able to make it, we hung out with a lot of friends, some local and some from out-of-town.

Kristin with her father, brother (Stephen), mother, and sister (Lisa)

More guests

Around midnight, we went home to our new place. We didn't take any pictures of what happened next, though.

Our new place--taken the next day

Nuclear Power--all stop or full steam?

2011-03-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

Given the events at Japan's Fukushima reactor, many folks, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have said that we need to take a step back and reconsider the entire question of nuclear power. I intend to offer a contrary view--rather than slowing things down, we need to speed things up.

The problems at Fukushima occurred because the earthquake and tsunami knocked out the backup electrical generators needed to cool the reactors (when they can't provide their own electricity for cooling), which led to the partial meltdown. This is because the reactors used need electricity to cool the reactor, even after it has been shut down. Because the generators were down, the reactors could not be cooled, and hence the partial meltdown. The reactors at Fukushima use an older design of the Boiling Water Reactor. Newer designs use a passive cooling system, which can cool the reactor even without electric energy. However, most plants, both in Japan and the US, use the older design.

If we decide that the current design is unsafe, we have several options. One is to mothball the current plants and replace them with something new. The problem is that the only thing we can replace them with, that has the same energy output and baseload capacity, is coal. For all the hype, energy sources such as wind and solar don't have the ability to match current needs. Much more likely what will happen is that the current plants will continue to operate, but will not be allowed to expand, and new plants will be put on hold. The problem is that these plants will continue to use the older reactors, which are just as vulnerable as the Fukushima plant. And as they age without being replaced, they will just become more vulnerable.

I think the smartest move, if we believe that the vulnerability to earthquakes is a problem that must be solved, is to streamline the process for getting the new designs approved, and to push plants towards upgrading to the new reactor designs while making it easier for them to do so. This would allow the older reactors to be phased out while maintaining capacity.

Storyblogging Carnival CXVII

2011-03-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the 117th Storyblogging Carnival.We had to skip a month, since we were short on entries. Unfortunately, we still only have three, but I felt that I should at least put up the ones I've received.

A Limerick Affair
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 75 word brief story rated R.

The tale of a cheating spouse in limerick form.

The Virgin Wife Chronicles
by Andrea DiGiovanni of Living Out Loud
An 1:18 minute video trailer rated PG.

The Virgin Wife Chronicles is an inspirational online serial where I share my journey through an unconsummated marriage.

The Confidant of Jericho
by Tim King of J. Timothy King's Stories
A 980 word brief story rated PG.

From the moment they appeared at my door, I knew the two men weren’t from around here... I try to be careful about making mistakes... (An historical short-short, based on the story of Rahab of Jericho.)

This concludes the one hundred and seventeenth Storyblogging Carnival.

Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Storyblogging Carnival Cancelled

2011-02-15T03:06:00.000-05:00

I'm afraid I didn't get enough entries for a Storyblogging Carnival this month. We'll try again in March.

Storyblogging Carnival delayed

2011-02-07T23:39:00.002-05:00

I hate to do this, but I don't have enough entries to do a Storyblogging Carnival. If I get enough within the next week, I'll post the carnival then. If not, then I'll cancel this month's carnival and save any entries I have for next time.

Superspeed

2011-02-06T00:51:00.000-05:00

I've been writing a Weird Western story, and as a result, thinking a bit about superspeed (as it's an ability I want some of my characters to have).

The idea of how superspeed works, at least in my story, is not that the flow of time really changes, but that you are operating at such a high speed (including your mind and your muscles), that everything else seems to be going slower. Now, this being the case, gravity seems to slow down. Let's say a wagon goes off a cliff. If you're moving at superspeed, it seems to take a long time to fall. If you're sitting on it, it still seems to take a long time to fall. If you and the wagon become separated, you still take a long time to fall. So from your perspective, gravity seems to be slower. So when you move, do you move as if you're in a low gravity environment, with long leaping strides?

Now at issue is the fact that the forces of the universe haven't really changed. Gravity isn't any weaker. So if you move as if you're in a low gravity environment, then you're not just faster, you're stronger too, such that your leaps carry you a great deal farther and higher. Higher strength, however, is one of the prerequisites of superspeed in the first place. The extreme acceleration of superspeed means you need to produce that much more force. So if you have the strength to move at superspeed, then gravity should seem weaker.

One question is whether I should deal with speed and strength as separate powers. Technically, my story already has a Mark of Speed and a Mark of Strength, I've just been considering superspeed as coming from the Mark of Speed, and dealing with the Mark of Strength as a separate matter, not that you need the Mark of Strength to make use of the Mark of Speed.

Now, there are some disadvantages to moving at superspeed. First, there's a lack of control. You've seen how people on the moon move about. Their long leaps don't exactly give them a lot of coordination. And when you're in the middle of a jump, you have very little control at all until you reach something, be it the ground or a wall. Second, things don't operate how you think they should. You pull a trigger on a gun, and it's going to take a while to fire. Let's assume that no matter how fast you're going, you're still much slower than the speed of the bullet (and the detonation that produces it). You still have to wait an interminable time for the hammer to fall. And while you're proportionally stronger so you can pull the trigger and activate the mechanism faster, how well will the mechanism stand up to the wear and tear?

Thinking about these things is what I've been doing tonight instead of actually writing.

Fixing the Academic Job Market

2011-02-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, you read about solution so novel, you just can't wait to see it tried. This was presented by Jeffrey J. Williams in Inside Higher Ed (hat tip TaxProf Blog):

Academe is in crisis. Young academics have been left out in the cold: according to American Association of University Professors (AAUP) statistics, only about 25 percent of new Ph.D.s find full-time, permanent jobs. We are wasting the talent of a generation.
...
Therefore, the best recourse is to solve the problem ourselves, taking matters into our own hands, as it were. To that end, I have recently founded an organization, Academic Opportunities Unlimited (AOU). Our motto is “We can’t guarantee you’ll get the job, but we can guarantee an opening.”

AOU is elegant in its simplicity, rebalancing an artificially skewed market. One of the effects of the job crisis is an aging professoriate. Since the 1970s, the scales have tipped heavily AARP-ward: while only 17 percent of faculty were 50 or over in 1969, a bloated 52% had crossed that divide by 1998. It is no doubt worse now, and strangling the air supply of potential new professors.

AOU would work to remedy this bias against youth. It would, through a rigorous screening process, pinpoint faculty who are clogging positions and select them for hits, or “extra-academic retirement” (EAR). While this might raise qualms from the more liberal-minded among us, we would argue that it is more humane, both to potential faculty who otherwise have been shunted aside and to those languishing in the holding pattern of a withered career, than our current system. The retirement would be efficient and quick, and strictly limited to those who, as the saying goes, have their best years long behind them.

This gives whole new meaning to the term forced retirement.

A Marriage Bed

2011-01-30T23:01:00.005-05:00

I bought a bed yesterday. Or at least a mattress and box spring. This is a product of two circumstances:

I am getting married in May.
My old bed breathed its last.

I had been sleeping on a wooden futon frame, but rather than using a futon mattress (the only one I have is old and thin, such that you can feel every wooden slat beneath you), I used an inflatable mattress. I found that it was comfortable, and while it got cold in the winter, I could cover it with some foam and an open sleeping bag beneath the fitted sheet, and I'd be fine.

Which worked until it sprung a leak on Thursday. Exactly how that happened I'm still not certain, but I lay on it Thursday night, and woke up lying on the aforementioned wooden slats, with the remaining air in the mattress surrounding, rather than beneath, my body.

So I needed a new mattress fast. Rather than going out and buying one (or ordering it on Amazon for overnight delivery), I talked to Kristin first. Kristin's my fiancée, and we had been talking about buying a new bed when we got married. She was not impressed with my air mattress, and her own bed is kind of small and creaky. So we used this as an impetus to get a new bed--or the mattress and box spring, as I mentioned earlier. Said items were installed on top of the futon frame for the moment (an actual bed may have to wait until we have an actual apartment), to produce this:

Which is just a little bit tall for a bed, roughly as high as my stomach. Apparently the mattress + box spring combination would work better on a bed frame somewhat lower than the futon frame.

Update: For reasons I haven't figured out yet, a whole lot more carriage returns were included in this post than I put there when I hit the publish button. I've deleted them, but we'll see if they come back.

Upcoming Storyblogging Carnival

2011-01-24T23:33:00.000-05:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, February 7th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

Name of your blog
URL of your blog
Title of the story
URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
(OPTIONAL) Author's name
(OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
A word count
A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, February 5th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Doc Rampage on Kant

2011-01-20T00:11:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I linked to Doc Rampage, but he's had some interesting things to say recently. I especially like his two posts on Immanuel Kant and irrationality. Here's a tiny piece, from the first one:

Kant is not saying what the a simple reading of this sentence suggests: that he has to ignore the facts because they make it hard to believe in God. The reasoning that Kant is referring to is not reasoning that tries to show the non-existence of God --he is referring to reasoning that tries to show the existence of God.

In Kant's time, there was a common belief that reasoning could be used to prove all truths, including the existence of God. There were various "proofs" of the existence of God considered persuasive by influential thinkers. Although there were some who didn't buy any of the proofs that they had heard, it was widely believed that the question of God's existence could be settled, one way or another, by logical proof. Kant rejected this idea.

What Kant is saying in that quote is that since reason can never, even in principle, prove the existence of God we should give up the attempt and rely instead on "faith", by which he means another way of arriving at the knowledge of God.

More generally, Kant argued that we have different ways of arriving at different kinds of knowledge. There is no single faculty that is the ultimate source of all knowledge. This is in contrast to a very popular view in his day (associated with Descartes) that pure reason was the ultimate arbitrator of knowledge. In fact the title of the book that contains this out-of-context quote is "A Critique of Pure Reason"

As they say, read the whole thing.

Update: Doc made an update to correct for a mistake for a misreading. I don't think it makes a huge difference to his interpretation, though.

Fortune Cookies

2011-01-14T15:58:00.001-05:00

Kristin and I had lunch at a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant with a friend of ours, Rene, today. Rene got a fun fortune cookie:

Keep your courage up and it will keep you up.

Which is kind of bland unless you play the "In bed" game--that's where you add the words "in bed" at the end of your fortune cookie.

My fortune cookie, by contrast, was kind of creepy:

The thing in us that we fear just wants our love.

Adding "in bed" doesn't exactly improve it.

I think that the best fortune I've ever seen wasn't one I got, but a friend of mine did one time when we were out together. It said:

Kiss the person next to you.

She declined to follow its advice, hopefully not because I was the one sitting next to her.

Storyblogging Carnival CXVI

2011-01-12T12:06:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the 116th Storyblogging Carnival. Once again I'm late, which is a shame, since there are some new contributors this time.

Not a limerick
by Stu Savory of Eunoia
An under 100 word brief story rated PG.

A video reading of a short poem.

Who Needs A Door, Anyway?
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 150 word brief story rated PG.

A blizzard creates an unusual predicament for my husband and me

Dynastic Ambitions
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 200 word brief story rated PG.

Examining the dynastic ambitions of Reginald Tweedsmuire, and why they will not be realized.

Grandma's Zipperby Jessica S. of Literary Journey of a Freelance Writer
An 700 word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a new town and a puppy.

Clark in Florida
by Stu Savory of Eunoia
An 1,300 word short story rated PG.

Mr. Inept makes a humorous insurance claim.

The Emperor's Edge Ebook Excerpt
by Lindsay Buroker of E-book Endeavors
A 1,695 word excerpt from a novel rated PG-13.

An excerpt from my fantasy adventure novel: The Emperor's Edge.

This concludes the one hundred and sixteenth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The four revision process

2011-01-07T22:21:00.000-05:00

I used to have a three revision process for all my stories, which I know I posted about before, but I think the post got lost in the move back. Since I've joined a writer's group, that's expanded to include an extra revision. Let me describe briefly how I do it.

Rough draft - This isn't really a revision, but it is where the process starts. The rough draft is what I write when I have a story to tell, and thus I tend to rush from beginning to end to get there. Thus I will sometimes skimp on the details, avoid getting bogged down in things I ought to research, and even just leave out scenes I'm not eager to write. I tend to leave notes to myself in these so I can come back and fix these issues later.

First revision - In the first revision, I fill in the gaps of the rough draft, correct the obvious mistakes, whether in plot, character, or style (or grammar!). After this revision, I show it to my writing group.

Writer's Group - This isn't a revision for me, per se. Rather, it's a meeting where some fellow writers come together and critique my work. Generally, when they do their job well, I can find out what works and what doesn't, and they'll give me back my story with lots of comments in the margins.

Second revision - This is the revision where I go through the comments made by my writer's group and incorporate them in the story, as best I can. Sometimes I'll disagree with the device, and sometimes different people will give flat out contradictory advice, and sometimes I'll see what they want but just can't figure out a way to do it. Regardless, after this revision, I should have a much better version of the story.

Third revision - This is the hardest revision. This is where I print the story out and read the story aloud, all the way through, making corrections as I find issues. Generally, this means there's a lot of red ink on the page by the end of the day. Then, of course, I take the hard copy to a computer and rework the story so it conforms to my notes.

Fourth revision - This is the final revision, where I go over the story one last time, polishing it up, and correcting issues the previous revisions either failed to correct or created.

It may sound like a lengthy process, but even at this point, it's not really done. Oh, I'll format it and submit it to some places, but as the rejections come back, I'll make revisions based on what they say. Or, when I'm lucky, as editors request revisions. Or as new ideas present themselves. Ultimately, the story is only really done once it's published.

New Year's Resolutions

2011-01-03T23:55:00.000-05:00

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions. That said, I do have a couple of goals for the year. These are:

Get married. Okay, there's not much doubt about this one, but I figured I should put it out there, especially since my fiancee told me it was her New Year's Resolution for the year.
Find an agent. I've been looking for one already, but I figure now's the time to put more effort into it.
Get back to regular exercise. I've managed this in the past, and I'd like to do it again.
Write regularly. I've been doing okay with this, but I'd like to do even better.

We'll see how well I manage these things.

Year in Review

2011-01-01T23:29:00.000-05:00

This has less to do with newsworthy events, and more to do with my personal life. You may or may not be interested.

I don't usually post a lot on my personal life, so a whole year can go by with very little blogging on life events. Then I decide to do a year-end wrap-up, and I end up having a ton of stuff to share. So, let's begin.

January - I began the year by moving into a new apartment, in a very nice old house in Medford. For the first time in a long while, I had roommates again. That proved to be a challenge. I also received payment for a story sale to Black Gate. That was very exciting--and still is.

February - Valentine's day, and the first time I actually had a date for Valentine's day. That made it much more fun. Valentine's day is also the anniversary for this blog, which should tell you all you need to know about my love life pre-Kristin. This month I also attended Boskone, my third ever writer's conference. Sadly, however, this was also the month in which our small group died.

March - In March, I sent my new story to John O'Neill at Black Gate, a requested sequel to my previous sale. I'm still waiting for a response. Kristin also had her birthday party this month. It was a good time for all.

April - While I'm certain things happened in April, I can't for the life of me remember what they were.

May - In May, Kristin started her own blog. In addition to adding her own brand of bloggy goodness to the blogosphere, she also tends to write about more personal stuff than I do, so I now have a reference to figure out what I was doing each month. So, let's see . . . Kristin and I took a lesson in Medieval sword fighting (which we registered for at Boskone), we went for a hiking trip, and we went to New Hampshire for a writing retreat. This was a weekend trip where we stayed in a cabin and spent most of our spare time in separate rooms writing. So, a very romantic weekend. (I wrote over 2,500 words each day.)

June - In June, I had to move again. Our landlords decided they wanted to renovate the house and rent it to a family rather than a bunch of individuals, so they wouldn't be renewing our leases. I had only opted for a six month lease. Fortunately, Kristin's house had an opening in the upper apartment (her house is divided into two apartments, one on the bottom two floors, and one on the top two floors). I took the room, and now we live in the same building. Also this month was my 36th birthday.

July - In July, Kristin and I both attended the Readercon writer's conference. It was fun. At this conference last year is when we decided to start dating, so it was also our anniversary, of a sort. Kristin and I also went camping, with a dose of hiking added in.

August - This month, Kristin and I went backpacking (this, for those who don't know, is camping where you carry all of your equipment on your back, usually up a mountain). All the previous camping/hiking trips were supposed to build to this, but we still weren't really prepared for it. Backpacking is hard work (and renting camping equipment is expensive).

September - This was Kristin's and my longest trip together this year, beginning with a wedding of one of Kristin's friends in Texas, then a road trip to visit my parents in Louisiana. It was good to see them, but my allergies were pretty miserable. During this time we went to Baton Rouge, Avery Island (where Tabasco is made), and Rosedown plantation (in St. Francisville). We saw my parents, sisters, nieces, and brother-in-law to be.

October - This month we visited Montreal, where we stayed with Kristin's friend Rene (my friend too, now). We also went to the World Fantasy Convention. While the other conventions we've attended together are small and local, this is a big one. I met John O'Neill and the rest of the Black Gate crew, and took part in a reading they had. This was the first reading I ever gave, and it was pretty monotone, but otherwise went well.

November - For Thanksgiving this year, Kristin did the cooking. I helped. It was pretty intense, really, but we then had Kristin's friend Bob over, and had a nice time.

December - In December, Kristin and I cooked a Roman meal together. That was a lot of fun, although the ingredients weren't exactly easy to find. We also visited Kristin's family in Nova Scotia for the second year in a row.

You've probably noticed that Kristin appears in this post an awful lot--so much so that you'd be forgiven for thinking that my life revolves around her. Well, that's for a couple of reasons. First, I've been using her blog to remind me of everything that happened this past year, so I've had an easier time remembering events in which she took part. Second, anything that's fun to do is more fun to do together, so I haven't done a lot of solo outings. Kristin also tends to be more interested in traveling than I am, so she was the instigator for most of it. Finally, well, there's some truth in your thinking. Kristin's a very important part of my life. That's the sort of thing you should do something about, so I did. On Christmas Eve I asked Kristin to marry me. She said yes.

And on that note, I'll wish you all a happy new year.

This past year in writing

2010-12-28T21:38:00.001-05:00

Livia Blackburne has a post about how she's improved in writing this past year, namely how she's improved her style of writing. That got me to thinking about ways in which I've improved as a writer this past year. I don't think I can point to any particular aspect of writing in which I've improved, but I have improved in one way: I've become a more disciplined writer. Not perfectly disciplined, mind you, as I still have lapses, but I've become better at setting aside time for writing, and writing stories from beginning to end. I've also broadened my horizons and begun writing in more genres, tackling ideas farther afield from my usual area. There are plenty of ways in which I'd still like to improve, of course, but I think that's a significant step in the right direction.

Storyblogging Carnival coming up

2010-12-27T17:28:00.000-05:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, January 10th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

Name of your blog
URL of your blog
Title of the story
URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
(OPTIONAL) Author's name
(OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
A word count
A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 8th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

Review of "From Words to Brain" by Livia Blackburne

2010-12-24T15:27:00.003-05:00

Disclosure: Livia is a friend of mine, and sent me a free review copy of this essay. I will nonetheless endeavor to be as balanced as possible in my review.

Livia's essay, "From Words to Brain," is a 7,700 word overview of the scientific literature on how the brain interprets stories. Using the example of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," she reviews how the brain recognizes letters and words, visualizes the scenes and actions, empathizes with the characters, and draws moral conclusions from the story. The writing is tight without being dense, and easily understandable by the layman. And I, at least, find the subject fascinating.

The essay's weakness is that it is too short. As a writer always looking for ways to improve my art, I'm certainly interested in what brain science tells us about how people read, and write, stories. While there were some useful tidbits in the essay, most of them are tricks that experienced writers already know--such as that readers fill in the details in a scene without requiring overdone description. There were a few things which I had never thought about or didn't know, such that women tend to sympathize more with the antagonist than men do, but I feel like there's a lot more that Livia could have shared with us in a longer essay.

This probably wouldn't affect how I viewed a free essay available online, but the publisher is charging over $5 for the essay. Considering that you can get entire classic novels for free on Amazon's Kindle, this seems like too much for this essay. I would still recommend it if you are interested in the subject, and would like a stepping stone to more advanced work, such as the literature Livia cites. But I'm hesitant to recommend it to those on a writer's budget.

Experimental Archaeology

2010-12-22T01:28:00.004-05:00

As I mentioned the other day, Kristin and I did some ancient Roman cooking a week ago. The great challenge in doing something like this is finding the ingredients. Garum, a popular fish sauce in ancient Rome, isn't exactly available at the grocery store (although there's a reasonable substitute used in Vietnamese cooking). We managed to make do there. Harder to find was a substitute for defrutum, which is reduced grape must. We had to go to a wine supply store to get something roughly equivalent.

That was the most difficult part from our end, but in reality the most difficult part of Roman cooking is figuring out the recipes. There are a few ancient sources of Roman recipes, Apicius being the most famous. However, Roman recipes tend to lack such niceties as amounts and cooking times. For example:

For mussels: Garum, chopped leek, cumin, passum, savory, and wine. Dilute this mixture with water and cook the mussels in it.

(This is taken from the Nova website, which is quoting from the book we used.)

This brings us to the topic of this post, experimental archaeology. Experimental archaeology is when modern scholars attempt to reproduce the work of previous generations, doing their best to follow their techniques. This can include reproducing an Ancient Greek repeating ballista, running an Iron Age farm, or cooking a Roman meal. There is of course a lot of variation in how rigorously this is done. Our cooking, for example, used a lot of ingredient substitutions, along with modern kitchen appliances, following an interpretation of the Roman recipe. So not very rigorous on our part. The authors of the various cookbooks based on Roman recipes are, fortunately, better scholars. They were the ones who did the actual experimental archaeology in order to turn the the recipes into something usable in a modern kitchen in the first place.

Another way that Kristin and I have taken part in experimental archaeology is in the medieval swordfighting lesson we took earlier this year. Medieval swordsmanship is a lost art--no one's practiced it for hundreds of years. The Eastern traditions fared better, as practitioners continued to pass down their fighting techniques, even after they had been surpassed by the gun on the battlefield. However, European sword techniques have been preserved in one way: there are a number of surviving fight manuals, which display the techniques used in medieval swordsmanship. They look something like this:

Usually, with a one or two word caption. This, from Talhoffer (the most famous of the fight books), has the caption War-work. ARMA (the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts) has lengthy excerpts available online. Even with the complete fight book, it's hard to make out exactly what's going on in the images. That's why experimental archaeology is so valuable. It brings together all the manuals, with real swords, experience with related martial arts, and actual sparring, and attempts to reproduce the techniques which are only hinted at.

That turns a number of images like the above, into something like this:

Aside from the exercise, why would anyone want to reproduce sword fighting techniques from the late Middle Ages? Or, for that matter, recipes from the late Roman era? It's partly a scholarly exercise, useful for archaeologists. But I find it very helpful for a different reason. As a writer of fantasy that draws inspiration from both Roman society and the Middle Ages, such experiments give me a better understanding of how the people of that time lived, allowing me to write with greater verisimilitude.

Plus it's fun. And I, at least, thought the Roman food was pretty good.

Storyblogging Carnival?

2010-12-20T14:11:00.000-05:00

Since Christmas is coming this next week, and I think people might be a mite busy, I'm going to delay the Storyblogging Carnival by a week. The normal announcement will go up next Monday, and submissions will be due by Saturday, January 8th. Of course, if you send me something early, I'll hold it in reserve until I start accepting submissions.

Roman cooking

2010-12-13T00:27:00.000-05:00

Kristin and I made a meal based on Roman recipes today. Well, mostly Kristin made it, and I helped. She has all the cooking details, if you're interested, in a post on her blog:

Today Donald and I thought it would be fun to prepare an “authentic” ancient Roman dinner. I have several books on Roman cooking, most making liberal use of Apicius (the most famous ancient Roman cookbook author). I’ve found the most accessible and interesting to be Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa’s A Taste of Ancient Rome (translated by Anna Herklotz; original title was A cena da Lucullo). The author is a foodie with an archaeology background, and her goal was to take recipes from Apicius, Cato and other sources and provide a version that a modern cook could follow. The ancient sources tend not to provide a lot of detail. They’ll give the ingredients (most of them), and some vague clues as to preparation. America’s Test Kitchen it ain’t! Giacosa’s versions of the recipes should, theoretically, be doable in a modern kitchen.

It was a lot of fun, and I thought the result was pretty tasty. It did take more work than I'd be willing to spend on cooking with any regularity, though.

Storyblogging Carnival CXV

2010-12-07T02:05:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the 115th Storyblogging Carnival. There are six entries this time, four of them from new contributors. Enjoy!

Trippy Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a foiled vacation trip told in a two verse limerick.

Just like old times!!!!
by Witty Jester of Witty Humor
A 200 word graphic story rated G.

A different take on "Noah and his ark"

The First Legion: Part IV of The History of the Domini (To the beginning)
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
The next 340 words of a 2,500 word story in progress rated PG.

Randall continues the story of the Domini by recounting the summoning of the First Legion.

This is Necessary
by Mr. Squarehead of Squarehead Diaries
A 388 word short story rated PG.

The world, as I see it from inside out.

WOLFDOG
by Ingela Richardson of storywishes
A 997 word brief story rated G.

"When Wolfdog was apuppy, he was very cute and fluffy. He was taken from his mother and given to aboy for a pet one cold and snowy Christmas."

On Giving Thanks: grateful I am not a cranberry
by GrrlScientist of Punctuated Equilibrium
A 1,073 word short story rated PG.

My favorite Thanksgiving memory.

This concludes the one hundred and fifteenth Storyblogging Carnival.
If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The History of the Domini: Part IV

2010-12-04T22:45:00.003-05:00

Old Post: Part III can be found here, while the beginning is here.

Being a further account of the history of the Domini, as recorded by Randall Aurelius.

Part IV: The First Legion

The details of the magic involved in the calling of theFirst Legion are long forgotten. We doknow that it was the first of only two times that the disparate magics of theShades and the Amaranthine were combined. The Circuit involved hundreds of magic-users, and many of them died inthe effort. But when it was done, anarmy had been summoned to our aid.

From where they were summoned is still a mystery. The First Legion neither spoke our language, norunderstood what we wanted from them. They were angry at being ripped from their own land, but terrified ofthe magic we wielded. With greatdifficulty, we found a way to communicate. From what we were able to learn, they came from a land similar to oursin many ways, but there they had no contact with naka or goblins orMalwer. Instead humans warred upon eachother for control of the land and the sea. It is difficult to understand now how strange that was to us then,humans fighting wars against each other. We were far from a peaceful people even then, but we had nounderstanding of conflict on such a scale. The First Legion did, and we needed that understanding. After a great deal of bargaining, withthreats on both sides, we were able to reach an agreement.

The numbers which the First Legion added to humanity’sbeleaguered forces were small, but the expertise was considerable. They were among the best trained and mostdisciplined soldiers in their land, and they shared their training andexperience with us, first strengthening our defenses against the naka and goblins, and then leading the assault to drive back the invaders. Unprepared as they were to face competentwarriors, the nakan advance faltered and then collapsed, and their conquestswere quickly retaken. Emboldened by oursuccesses, we pursued the naka and goblins as they retreated, and may havesucceeded in eliminating both races entirely, had not the Malwer themselves takenthe field.

This is a 341 word continuation of a 2,500 word story in progress.

Upcoming Storyblogging Carnival

2010-11-23T11:01:00.000-05:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, December 6th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

Name of your blog
URL of your blog
Title of the story
URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
(OPTIONAL) Author's name
(OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
A word count
A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, December 4th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

Storyblogging Carnival CXIV

2010-11-09T00:45:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the 114th Storyblogging Carnival. It's a bit late, partly due to me being overloaded at worked, but also due to the fact that I was fishing for more entries. In the end we have six total. Enjoy!

First Christmas in a Queen Sized Bed
by Tash of Love Santa
A 99 word brief story rated G.

A child's short story about a special Christmas memory

Pigheaded Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a stubborn man whose car is towed, told in a three verse limerick.

Introducing the Venkman Brothers
by Mark A. Rayner of The Skwib
A 150 word short story rated PG-13.

The epic tale of Herbetron and Merculia Venkman, brothers from a proud tradition of Norwegian clowns.

The Amaranthine: Part III of The History of the Domini
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
The next 750 words of a 2,200 word story in progress rated PG.

Randall continues the story of the Domini by recounting their relations with the Amaranthine.

How to Keep Good Time with Rare Cogs and Orphan Springs
by Klara Bow Piechocki of Violet Hustle
The first 3,148 words of an ongoing story rated R.

"Kumiko had only had herbaby four hours ago and her body felt exhausted. She had let herself intoRheam’s quarters and turned down the corners of the fresh bed sheets for him,before she sat on the edge of the bed and waited for his return. She knew thatit was a job for his courtesan, but she had been eager to see him."

Wizards Don't Have to be Smart
by CJ Burch of Divas for Geeks
A 5,500 word short story rated PG.

A Weird Western.

This concludes the one hundred and fourteenth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The History of the Domini: Part III

2010-11-06T23:37:00.001-04:00

Old Post: Part II can be found here, while the beginning is here.

Being a further account of the history of the Domini, as recorded by Randall Aurelius.

Part III: The Amaranthine

To humans, a hundred years is three to four generations. Events that happenedthat far back are no more than legends to people without written histories. Tothe Malwer, it was just enough time to prepare the means to avenge themselveson their escaped slaves. By that time, the humans who had fled the Malwer hadlost all contact with those who remained behind to fight. The communication hadslowed to a trickle over the years, stories of a distant war that most of thenewly free humans did not believe was worth fighting. When it finally stopped,there was some worry, but a few years passed and the worries ceased.

The free humans were focused on the business of surviving and building farmsand communities in the their new lands rather than on the distant,mostly forgotten threat of the Malwer. The Shades among them were likewiseoccupied with building their cloistered communities and finding recruits amongthe other humans. Over time, methods of recruiting were developed to take youngmen with the ability while minimizing the trauma to him or his community, butin the process the Shades became more and more isolated from the rest ofhumanity. Some preferred reclusiveness, while others used their power to try toforce people to serve them. Occasionally, Shade communities of differingphilosophies would clash, but these were mere skirmishes compared to the laterwars.

The Malwer would have overwhelmed humanity when they finally came upon them inforce, if not for the Amaranthine. The Amaranthine are nearly as great amystery as the Malwer. They lacked the Malwer’s ability with magic (althoughthere were a few among them, called wizards, who had powerful magicalabilities), but they were similarly long-lived, and they knew a great dealabout the Malwer, whom they held a bitter grudge against for unknown reasons.They looked nearly human, although with odd coloring and strangecharacteristics. Many today say they were related to the Kawyr, although theyregarded humans with more sympathy than the cold Kawyr ever could. When theAmaranthine first came, warning that the Malwer were coming with a large forceof creatures which no one had ever heard of, no one knew what to make of them,including the Shades. Just a few messengers came at first, but soon it becameclear that there was a mass migration of the Amaranthine, women and childrenalong with men, fleeing from something. Although many took their warningsseriously, a few saw them as interlopers. The Shades themselves were divided,and many of the communities forbade the Amaranthine from entering areas undertheir control. There were a few skirmishes, but no widespread conflict, andeventually the Amaranthine settled just outside the human areas. They continuedto warn of brutish, violent creatures behind them, but the humans saw no reasonto take their warnings seriously, until the Orcs came.

There were, in fact, creatures of two types in the initial invasion: Orcs andGoblins. Orcs are roughly as tall as humans, but more muscular. While most ofthem are not very intelligent, the commanders of their armies are as smart aswe are. There were no warlocks or witches among them at this time. Goblins aresmaller, uglier, and stupider. The humans had little chance against theinvaders. In the hundred years they had been free, there had been no wars moreserious than a skirmish, and no human community had formed anything resemblingan army. The Shades fared little better. They too had only skirmished, and theyhad developed little magic capable of facing armies. While the goblins wereless an army than an unruly mob, forced to fight by their Orc masters, the Orcsshowed a surprising grasp of tactics and strategy, even though their forceswere lacking in discipline. And if what the Amaranthine said was true, theMalwer were the ones truly behind the attack. They had recruited the Orcs tocarry out their vengeance on the humans.

Fortunately for the humans, the Amaranthine had been fighting Orcs for years,and they lent their aid against them. It was not enough, though, as theAmaranthine were few in number, and their wizards were even fewer. Humanity wasforced to retreat from their attackers, driven towards the sea in a narrowingstrip of land as the Orcs laid claim to the countryside. In desperation, theShades and the wizards pooled their abilities, and performed an act of magicunlike any seen before or since. They called the First Legion.

This is a 750 word continuation of a 2,200 word story in progress.

New Post: The next part can be found here.

Review of Towers of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

2010-11-05T13:11:00.003-04:00

In 2007, James Oliver Rigney, who authored the best-selling Wheel of Time series under the pseudonym Robert Jordan, died. He had not yet completed the series. His widow selected Brandon Sanderson, the author of the Mistborn series, to finish the work.

The first result of that effort was The Gathering Storm, released last year. It was a promising effort which, despite some flaws, captured the spirit of the Wheel of Time and moved the plot towards completion. Now the second book, Towers of Midnight, has come out. How does it compare?

I hate to say it, but I was disappointed. As much as I like the Wheel of Time, and Brandon Sanderson's work, this one doesn't feel quite right. Or maybe, it's because I like them both so much that I was disappointed. It's not a bad book. It's about average for a Wheel of Time book, which makes it above average, even good, compared to a lot of fantasy fiction. But I expected better from the penultimate book of this 14 book series.

The first problem I noticed is one of chronology. Much of this book focuses on Mat and Perrin, and follows their character arcs as they are prepared for the Last Battle. I found both these stories engaging and productive (something which Jordan's books sometimes just aren't). The problem is that their stories begin well before the end of the last book. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that Brandon switches viewpoints much more often than Jordan did, and their chapters were interspersed with Rand's and Egwene's chapters,which start after the end of the last book. So one chapter you jump ahead in time, and the next you jump backwards. This leads to some odd moments, such as Tam al'Thor being in two places at once.

The second problem is one of characterization. Most of the characters are fine. Perrin, in particular, I think is handled well, finally growing into his role. It was a little quick after just wanting to be a blacksmith for the past 12 books, but there really wasn't a lot of time left, and it happened in a way that made sense. Elayne's a lot nicer than she used to be (since when did she feel affection for Galad?). But since a lot of people didn't like the old Elayne, we'll just say she's mellowed with pregnancy and move on. Rand.... I'm not sure what to make of Rand. It's good to see him sane again, but throughout this book he's just a little bit too perfect. Messianic, in fact. I know that he's supposed to be taking on a messianic role, but I'd prefer it if he were closer to how he was in earlier books, rather than suddenly being wise and calm and kind of dull.

Mat... ah, Mat. It's sad to say, but I don't think Brandon really gets Mat. Mat's supposed to be funny, and he is, but Brandon's Mat is... well, he's kind of dumb. Now Mat's certainly not an intellectual, and he can be foolish, but Jordan's Mat is clever. Very clever, in fact. He has to be, in order to be the best general of this age. His foolishness is due to the fact that he doesn't think things through. Not because he can't see the consequences, but because he doesn't bother to consider them. He shines when he's forced to think and plan, such as when he's leading a battle. It's hard to see how Brandon's Mat could ever be a successful general, even with his luck and the memories in his head.

One particularly egregious scene comes when he's explaining why he doesn't want to be a noble. It's the boots. A normal man only needs three pairs of boots, but a nobleman needs dozens. He doesn't want to deal with that. Another character asks whether that's a metaphor (doing so with one of those jarringly modern phrases that Brandon sometimes uses), and Mat explains that no, he's talking about boots. Now, aside from the fact that Mat's shown the most interest in clothes of any male character (though he'll deny it if asked), the simple fact is that it's obvious why Mat dislikes nobles and doesn't want to be one, and that he's fully aware of those reasons. Mat simply values his freedom too much. Nobles (and Aes Sedai) threaten that by telling him what to do. Mat doesn't let anyone tell him what to do. And worse, they try to manipulate, bully, and force him to do what they want, and Mat can't stand that. As for why he doesn't want to be a noble, he realizes that being one would threaten his freedom even more. The Pattern has had to drag Mat kicking and screaming into the responsibility he does have. While he'll do his job as well as he's able (he doesn't like responsibility, but he definitely feels a sense of duty), he'll do his best not to take on any more responsibility than he absolutely has to. Unfortunately, that really doesn't come through in Brandon's Mat.

Finally, there were a few continuity errors. This was the book where the characters finally start learning each others' secrets. The problem was, Brandon lost track of who knew what secrets. For example, he forgot that Perrin's Asha'man told him about saidin's cleansing right after it happened. And there were a few places where people suddenly knew things, and we're left to wonder whether Brandon just forgot or the reveal happened off-screen. There were other places where it looks like Brandon might have forgotten a detail earlier and then hastily tacked it on in the revision. And at least one reveal that I think should have gotten more attention, and resolution, than it did.

Okay, now that I've listed all the things that the book did wrong, did it do anything right? Well, yes, it did quite a bit right. Even with the Mat characterization off, I think Brandon managed the character arcs of Mat and Perrin very well. They both grew into the roles they would need to fill in the final book. Granted, Mat didn't have as far to go as Perrin, who had gotten stuck a while back. Perrin gets to resolve a few nagging issues, and then make something really, really cool. Mat, even suffering from a sudden drop in IQ, managed to accomplish some things which we've been waiting a long time for. I think the cover of the book is enough that it's not a spoiler to say that he finally made it to the Tower of Ghenji. Not all of that went as I expected, but the final key was very clever. I didn't see it coming at all, but it made perfect sense once it did. Other plot threads were resolved at an alarming rate... something I don't think Jordan could have done as well as Brandon, not without giving many of them short shrift. But don't think that this was just about wrapping up plot threads that have been hanging for a long time. There were a few surprises that actually, sincerely shocked me. Pay attention to Aviendha--that was one of those scenes where I was thinking "let's get back to someone interesting" until I realized just how intriguing what was happening was. And the epilogue... well, let's just say Olver's first POV is a gut-wrencher.

A few links

2010-11-04T21:26:00.003-04:00

I've come across a few interesting links recently, and I figured I ought to share:

Jonah Goldberg talks about one consequence of the election: there'll be a lot of infighting in the Republican party. Why? To quote:

It's the nature of politics that when you're out of power, everyone can agree on what the top priority should be: Get back in power. But, the only way to get back in power is to attract people who might not share all of your goals or your passion. Majority coalitions by definition have diverse groups within them. FDR's coalition had everybody from Klansmen to blacks, socialists to industrialists. The new GOP coalition isn't nearly so exotic, but it does have its internal contradictions.

Marcia Morrissey asks "What does God really look like?" Marcia, who has never seen her husband or child, has a unique perspective on this question.

Jason Wire shares twenty untranslatable words from over a dozen languages. He writes:

Thus these words, while standing out due to our inability to find an equivalent word in out own language, should not be appreciated for our own words that we try to use to describe them, but for their own taste and texture. Understanding these words should be like eating the best slab of smoked barbequeued ribs: the enjoyment doesn’t come from knowing what the cook put in the sauce or the seasoning, but from the full experience that can only be created by time and emotion.

Sue Granquist shares what she's learned about the folklore of the Jinn in Morocco:

In Moroccan myth, each time a human is born into our world, a “Jinn” is born into another, adjacent world; more specifically the underworld.

Human beings are created from clay kilned in fire while the Jinn is created from the black smoke produced by the fire; two products of the same creation process.
...
This genie is evil incarnate and is each human beings’ personalized gift straight from Satan himself, so Happy Birthday!

As the story goes, the Jinn’s entire purpose is to stick close to its human counterpart like a dedicated poltergeist pushing him to wicked deeds, tempting him into acts of damnation and generally being a lifetime nuisance.

The Jinn love excess and whisper in the ears of their humans encouraging them to over-indulge in all things because apparently, if we’re too fat and happy, the Jinn finds it easier to plant nasty notions into our psyches.

This potentially explains a whole lot of unaccounted for chunks of time in college if you ask me.

The Jinn also know our deepest, darkest desires and use these “wishes” to tempt us into wickedness.

Livia Blackburne talks about a study showing that how erotic romance is written can have a measurable effect on condom use, and then asks the question: "What, if any, obligation does an author have to avoid promoting dangerous or self-destructive habits in their fiction?"

All in all, a lot to think about.

World Fantasy Convention Report

2010-11-01T08:48:00.002-04:00

I'm currently on my way home from World Fantasy in Columbus, Ohio, one of the bigger conventions for speculative fiction professionals, including writers, editors, and agents. It was fun, but exhausting. Most nights, there are parties going on until 3 am or so, and the hotel bar is where most of the networking is going on.

On this convention, I met John O'Neill, the man behind Black Gate. John was fun to talk to, and introduced me to many of the people involved in Black Gate, including Howard Andrew Jones, Ryan Harvey, and James Enge. I also got a chance to participate in my first Con reading with them. I read an excerpt from A Phoenix in Darkness, which will be coming out in Issue 17. I'm not great at readings, but I think it went pretty well. At least, a lot of people remarked that the image of little girls cutting up dead bodies will be sticking with them . . .

I also got an opportunity to chat briefly with Dan Wells, the author of I am not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster. I complimented him also on the work he does on Writing Excuses, the writing podcast. He did ask me whether it was still helpful when applied to short stories. It is, but as I told him, you have to do more in less time in a short story, and that's often a challenge. In fact, I'd say the hardest thing to do in a short story is wold building. How do you create a unique, secondary world, when you only have six thousand words to do that, while still telling a story with interesting characters? It's an interesting question, and may be worth pursuing.

I met lots of other interesting people, but it's hard to type up long posts on my iPhone, so I'll wrap this up for now.

Storyblogging Carnival coming up

2010-10-25T23:33:00.002-04:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, November 8th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

Name of your blog
URL of your blog
Title of the story
URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
(OPTIONAL) Author's name
(OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
A word count
A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, November 6th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

Next Storyblogging Carnival

2010-10-20T14:33:00.000-04:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be going up on November 8th, rather than the 1st. I'll be traveling next weekend (going to World Fantasy), so it'll be a week later than usual.

From the iPhone

2010-10-15T17:12:00.001-04:00

So I'm posting this from my iPhone. I'm really just playing around with the software that lets me do that. It seems to work okay, though the free version doesn't have a lot of options.

Review of Mr. Monster by Dan Wells

2010-10-14T21:25:00.000-04:00

Mr. Monster is the sequel to I am not a Serial Killer. John Cleaver is a teenage sociopath. He lacks empathy and compassion, and shows most of the traits of a burgeoning serial killer. He is not, however, a bad person. He knows the difference between right and wrong, and has a list of rules he follows to keep himself from becoming the monster he knows he might be. Mr. Monster is what he calls that part of himself that dreams of torturing those closest to him. He might be able to hold Mr. Monster in check, but he can't slay him. Because sometimes, he needs that part of himself.

In the first book, John's small town is haunted by a real serial killer, and it's not long before John discovers that the killer is not human. It is only by letting Mr. Monster out, just a little, that John can stalk and kill the real monster.

The question of the second book is whether John can contain Mr. Monster again. At first, it looks like he'll be able to manage as long as he starts keeping his rules, even the ones he had to break last time. But the killings have started again, and John may need to let his own monster out to stop them.

Mr. Monster is what is sometimes called a Terror novel--one that's more psychological, where you fear for the sanity of the protagonist rather than his health. And that is certainly the case here. John is scarier than any of the supernatural dangers we've seen so far. The absolutely most frightening part of the book is not when John faces down the demon, but when he starts dating. He likes the girl, and she likes him, but he has to break many of his rules to act normal on a date, and we get to watch as his control on Mr. Monster slips further away. I won't tell you exactly how far it slips, but it's a relief when he's fighting for his life against the real serial killer.

And that is in large part what makes this book different from the first. In the first book, John knew who the monster was, and spent most of the book stalking him--in the modern sense. That included threatening letters and anonymous tips to the police: ways he could keep the demon off-balance until he could find a way to kill him. The way he does find shows exactly how dangerous John can be. But in this book, we spend most of it not knowing who the new demon is. He's just background while we watch John's psychological drama unfold. To his credit, Dan Wells brings the drama to a head in the confrontation with the real demon. Unfortunately, when we did see the real demon, he was something of a let-down. He just seemed a lot less frightening in the end than the first one.

Overall, I do think this was an excellent book. The psychological drama worked well, which it had to, since the external threat was ultimately disappointing.

Storyblogging Carnival CXIII

2010-10-04T23:28:00.001-04:00

The latest Storyblogging Carnival is up at Divas for Geeks.

Trip report

2010-10-02T16:09:00.001-04:00

Back in September, Kristin and I went to Houston for a wedding, and then visited my family in Louisiana. I haven't talked about it, but Kristin's been blogging away, with pictures. See what she has to say, starting with Houston, then St. Francisville, and finally Avery Island.

The History of the Domini: Part II

2010-10-01T21:45:00.003-04:00

Old Post: The beginning, Part I, can be found here.

This is the second part of the history of our order written by Randall Aurelius.

Part II: The Exodus

For a while, the Malwer feared the Shades, and whisperedthat they were ghosts or demons. But no conspiracy can continue forever, andeventually the Shades were found out. Atthe realization that the Shades were humans with magic, fear and fury alikeswept through the Malwer, and a hunt began to find the Shades and exterminatethem. As an extra dead slave here orthere did not concern them, they did not burden themselves with proof that ahuman was indeed a Shade before executing him. This hunt forced the Shades to flee. Many innocent humans fled with them, fearing the Malwer who had turnedon them, although many blamed the Shades for bringing this additionaloppression upon them.

The Shades and the other slaves who had joined them were farfrom unified. The Shades themselves weredivided. Their structure as a loosenetwork of independent cells had protected them from the Malwer’s ferocioushunt, but left them with no hierarchy or leadership. There was fierce infighting, especiallybetween those who had participated in the Malwer-hunting, and those whobelieved it to be as bad as anything the Malwer had done. Many wanted to fight against the Malwer andfree all the humans from their grasp, while others thought that those who hadnow escaped should flee beyond the reach of their former masters. The mundane humans overwhelmingly wanted toflee.

In the end, the Shades split. Half remained behind to fight, joined by afew humans who hated their Malwer masters more than they hated the Shades. The remaining Shades led the vast majority ofhumans to try to find a land far from the Malwer’s rule. They headed north, to warmer climes.

If the Shades expected the people to be grateful, there weresorely mistaken. Most of the formerslaves blamed the Shades for the situation they were in, and they all fearedtheir power. They shunned the Shades,and even the Shades’ own families wanted nothing to do with brothers, sons, andhusbands who had been inducted. Theywere wise to do so, since, while the people were too afraid of the Shades tothreaten them directly, they harassed and sometimes even harmed theirfamilies. The Shades soon discoveredthat they had as much need to protect their identities from their fellow humansas from the Malwer. The fear andresentment of the Shades even extended to those with the ability to learn, onceit was discovered that there were many untrained humans among the exiles.

The Shades made several decisions during this time that havecontinued to shape the Order to this day. Only young men were taken to be trained, lest they take fathers andhusbands from their families. They weretaken in secret, so that there would be no reprisals against their families,and they were required to make a clean break with their old lives, as anycontact put their acquaintances at risk. Not all the young men were willing, but they understood that once it wasdiscovered they had the ability, they were outcasts. Finally, women were not taken. There were fewer women than men among theescaped slaves, and the Shades realized that the long-term survival of theindependent humans would require children. They also worried that if they recruited women with the ability, theymight deplete the number of boys with it in future generations. It should also be remembered that in theseancient days that the egalitarian impulses which are rare outside of thePhilosophers even now were practically unheard of. The Shades saw themselves as warriors, andthey did not believe that women were suited for their task.

Eventually, the independent humans moved beyond the reach ofthe Malwer Sovereignty, and settled in a land to the west of it, likely wherethe Novar Empire is now. Informationtrickled to them from those who had remained behind to fight. While these warriors had been whollyunsuccessful in a direct assault, they still managed to cause difficulty forthe Malwer, and to assist many among the remaining slaves who wished to escape. Meanwhile, the exodus of slaves had triggeredinternal turmoil among the Malwer, and the infighting would keep them occupiedfor years to come.

New Post: The story continues here.

Next Storyblogging Carnival is taking submissions

2010-09-21T02:42:00.001-04:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be hosted at Divas for Geeks. Take a look at the submission guidelines if you want to participate.

Review of Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

2010-09-18T13:10:00.002-04:00

I've just finished reading Brandon Sanderson's first novel, Elantris. Since I read his most recent novel, The Way of Kings, about a week ago, this means that I've read every novel he's published so far. I'll get to The Way of Kings later, but for now, what about Elantris?

Let's start with the premise, which is original: Elantris is the city where the Elantrians live. Elantrians are those people blessed by magic: it can come to anyone, rich or poor, old or young. The blessing transforms them physically, giving them silvery skin and white hair, at the same time that it gives them access to AonDor, the magic they wield by tracing runes in the air. Their city glows with the magic, which imbues every corner of it. But ten years ago, the magic stopped working. Those blessed with it were cursed. Their skin became gray with black spots, their hearts stopped beating and they no longer bled. You couldn't kill them by normal means, but they continued to feel pain. In fact, they felt it even worse: since they could no longer heal, their wounds never stopped hurting, and a neverending hunger gnawed at them. (Okay, so they're magical zombies.) The common people turned against them, killing them. But the blessing never stopped occurring at random. Anyone now struck by the curse is sealed away in Elantris, a city that is now crumbling and covered in slime. There they live wretched lives, unable to die, but slowly going mad from the hunger and pain.

The story centers around three characters. The first is Raoden, previously the prince of the surrounding nation, Arelon, now cursed by Elantris. He attempts to build a real society among the Elantrians, even while trying to discover the reason for its fall. The second is Hrathen, a high priest of the Derethi religion. He's come to Arelon to convert it to his religion, before his master brings destruction upon it. Finally, there's Sarene, Raoden's betrothed. She arrives in Arelon to find that the betrothed she never met is dead, unaware that his true fate has been hidden by his father. She takes it upon herself to oppose Hrathen's conversion, while trying to fix the problems caused by the king's inept rule.

It's a colorful and original premise. But, after reading his more recent work, I can confidently say that Sanderson is a better writer now than he was then. Simply from the point of view of style and technique, you can see how he's improved his writing style, learned where to put the details in his descriptions, and made his dialogue smoother and more natural. While modern idiom in fantasy doesn't bother me, in Elantris, Sanderson's use of it can be jarring. He still does it, but you can see how he's gotten better at knowing what works and what doesn't. But he's gotten better in more than just the details of writing, and you can see it in some of the weaknesses of the book.

While his characters have distinct personalities, they're often simplistic, and his characterization can be ham-handed. He really doesn't need to tell us that Raoden's an optimist at least once a chapter, or that Sarene's bold but insecure.

Plot-wise, there are a lot of twists in this book. Some of them really are surprising and necessary, but some just feel contrived. And none of them had quite the feel that I think the big reveals should have: when a reader is completely surprised, but thinks to himself, "I should have seen that coming."

I say all this not to say that it's a bad book. It's actually a very good one, and better than most of the fantasy fiction out on the market. Sanderson's one of the best new writers in the field. But I always find it fascinating to see how writers improve. Almost universally, their first book is going to be their worst one, and I was impressed by how good Elantris was for a first novel. But I'm also happy to say that he's gotten better since.

Who wrote the first fantasy story set in an other world?

2010-09-09T00:39:00.001-04:00

Over at Black Gate, Matthew Surridge explores this question in a couple of posts. It's an interesting question, but before it's asked, the first question is "What's meant as an other world?" Matthew lays out four requirements:

The world has a distinct logic (the existence of magic fulfills this)
The world is not meant to be perceived as part of this world (many mainstream fiction stories create countries or cities that do not actually exist, but are meant to be accepted as existing in this world)
It has its own history
It has its own geography

Matthew points out that many fantasy stories fulfill three of these, and he considers three (specifically 1, 3, and 4) to be sufficient to constitute an other world. Why skip two? Because many of the early fantasies were set in a mythic time in our world, but the time is sufficiently different that it still counts. Before getting into the question of who the first author to write in another world is, he asks:

Before naming that writer, though, I’d like to tackle a related question. And that is: why did it take so long for somebody to come up with the idea?

Consider: Morris’ The Wood Beyond the World was published in 1894. Even if the first otherworld fantasy was in fact a few decades earlier, then people were still telling tales for thousands of years before coming up with the idea of an independent world (it would be interesting to see when the term ‘world’ began being used in criticism, as in ‘the world of Dickens’ or ‘Shakespeare’s green world’). Why the long delay?

It’s not because people were less imaginative. Rather, it seems to me, looking at older stories containing fantastic material — stories close to being high fantasy — that certain structural devices keep recurring, which in retrospect prevented the need for the development of the idea of an otherworld independent of the ‘real world’. These devices were ways for a story to contain strong fantasy elements while also situating them in this world. You can find stories from before 1800 in which a setting seems to fit three or even four of the characteristics I listed in my first post; but, rather than be established as its own world, the setting is, one way or another, given a relation to conventional reality.
...
It may be more accurate, though, to turn my phrasing around. Rather than talking about frames or links to this world, we could say that there are a number of techniques by which fantasists displaced their fantasy, putting it beyond the bounds of the world of everyday life. The idea of the otherworld, then, is just one of the most recent displacement strategies to be developed. You could even say it’s the most sophisticated, because it most thoroughly embraces the idea of fiction as fiction, of a story as a self-contained creation that does not need to be justified by a precise placement in relation to the real world.

So who was the first one? Matthew hasn't told us yet, but he's promised to get back to us next week.

Storyblogging Carnival CXII

2010-09-06T22:00:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the 112th Storyblogging Carnival. This is our sixth anniversary edition. If you're wondering how six divides into 112, I have to admit that the carnival's period has varied over its life. Originally, the carnival occurred every two weeks, but we reduced its frequency once we'd gone through people's repertoire and had to give them more time to write stories. We also skipped a few due to moves and other life distractions.

Brassy Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a woman with husband problems and music problems, told in a three verse limerick.

The Green Piggy
by Elijas Zaremba of The Vault of Thoughts
A 269 word brief story rated PG.

A story with a moral.

The Blue Light, 2011
by Mark A. Rayner of The Skwib
A 330 word short story rated PG.

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm tale, The Blue Light, 2011, tells the story of a soldier returning from war, and his encounter with an economist.

The Birth and Death of Nameless
by Webster of The Vault of Thoughts
A 497 word brief story rated PG.

"I woke up. For a split second I sincerely wished I hadn’t. I couldn’t say why. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to answer that question."

The Shades: Part I of The History of the Domini
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
A 690 word brief story rated PG.

For the first time, Randall Aurelius reveals the history of the Domini, the mysterious society of sorcerers who wielded such power in the world before the War of the Elementals.

Home Sweet Home
by Thom McNeilly of The Blog of Thom McNeilly
An 1,464 word short story rated R.

"Nigel Kingsley looked down at the crumpled heap in the darkdoorway and sneered. The disgust he felt for the woman looking up athim with her grimy face was unparalleled. Leaning on his walkingcane, something he never left home without, Kingsley consideredspiting in the tramp’s face, but at the last moment he decided tohave some fun with her instead."

The Zapak Gambit
by Surendra Singh of Sury's Stories
A 2,379 word short story rated PG.

When a chess player needs money to buy a phone that satisfies his one addiction- facebook, he decides to scam people in a chess game... When he meets an 18 year old, well, almost!, what turn of events will surprise him?

A Bad Box
by CJ Burch of Divas for Geeks
A 4,774 word short story rated PG.

It's sort of a steam-punk thing...sort of.

This concludes the one hundred and twelfth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The History of the Domini: Part I

2010-09-06T14:50:00.003-04:00

This history is based on a draft written by Randall Aurelius just before the War. As you know, the War rewrote our understanding of our history. As such, this manuscript is more an historical curiosity, an explanation of how the Domini saw themselves at the time, than an accurate account of our past.

Part I: The Shades

Any history of the Domini must begin with the Malwer. Unfortunately, so little is known about theMalwer that every history of the Domini is, of necessity, incomplete. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to record whatis known of our origins, and hope that someday the blanks may be filled.

Who, or what, the Malwer were is the great mystery of ourorigins. Today, the uninitiated refer tothem as demons, but in the days of our enslavement we considered them gods. At a time before humans had any magic, everyMalwer was gifted with it. It came tothem as naturally as breathing, and they viewed their magic as the proof oftheir right to rule mankind.

Our tradition calls the first human to discover magicSaul. This is almost certainly not hisname, and his identity is as much a mystery as how he discovered magic. Human magic only comes through training: tothis date there is no verified case of any human developing this abilityspontaneously or through his own meditation. It is as ludicrous as gnats forming spontaneously from dust or frogsfrom mud (a belief still held by many of the superstitious Novari). Many have speculated that Saul must have beentaught, either by a renegade Malwer or, more plausibly, by one of theAmaranthine, although this was centuries before they revealed themselves to therest of the human race.

Whatever the source of his power, Saul knew that magic mightbe the key to humanity’s freedom. However, he also knew that he did not have the ability to challenge theMalwer on his own, so he could not risk discovery by the Malwer. Saul was most likely a field slave, withlittle enough contact with the Malwer to avoid their suspicion. Even so, he proceeded with the greatest ofcaution. He found others with untrainedmagical ability and taught them, all the while keeping his identity hidden fromhis students as much as anyone else, wrapping himself in an encompassing robeevery time he met with them. He knewthat if any one of them were discovered, the only chance he and the rest of hisstudents would have for survival was anonymity. His students did the same, perhaps hiding their identities even from oneanother. Eventually, his students grewknowledgeable enough to train students of their own, maintaining the practiceof keeping their identities hidden from their own students.

The teaching spread throughout the Malwer lands, and somehowthey avoided discovery for several generations, most likely because theyconfined themselves to teaching fellow field slaves, who had little Malwersupervision, and because they did nothing but teach and learn. While the masters continued to keep thestudents from learning their own identities, some cells allowed the students toknow each others’ identities. Thisbecame the only means for cells to contact one another once age claimed theformer master of the current cell leaders. Even so, after a few generations, the secrecy had taken its toll andmost cells had no contact with anyone removed by a generation or two.

It is not clear whether the teachings were confined to mendeliberately at first: it may simply have been that there were more men thanwomen among the field slaves. It iscertain that those learning magic were exclusively male by the time they tookthe next step, perhaps for the same reason that all soldiers are men.

It was unlikely a concerted decision, since, as I have alreadyexplained, most cells had contact with only a few others. But at some point the cells began actingagainst the Malwer. Rather than ahead-to-head war, a cell would track down and kill an individual Malwer,generally one against whom they held some particular grudge. Other cells, hearing of the rumors, began todo the same, and soon the Malwer found themselves being hunted and killed by anelusive enemy they could not identify. When the human magic-users were spotted, hidden in their voluminousrobes and no doubt further obscured by magical illusion, they appeared asshapeless black shadows. Thus theyearned the name Shades.

New Post: The next part of the story can be found here.

Storyblogging Carnival LXXVI

2010-09-03T21:39:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is a repost of an old carnival, so I can't guarantee the links.

Welcome to the seventy-sixth Storyblogging Carnival. There are eight entries today. Enjoy.

Proceedings
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A woman finds a note in her husband's pocket.

She's a Lady
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A vamp finds a new lover.

The Last Journey
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A well-traveled individual finds his jaded experience is no good to him on his latest and last journey.

Sunburnt
by the Dodges of Dodgeblogium
A 143 word brief story rated PG.

"Sunburn...it’s the heat from your lies."

The Five Second What???
by Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
A 279 word brief story rated G.

Not everyone knows the five second rule.

Thag Grok Free Will!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 500 word brief story rated PG.

The continuing adventures of the caveman Thag: in this story, he wrestles with the difficult question of free will vs determinism.

My Friend Peter
by Ian Welsh of The Agonist
A 993 word brief story rated G.

My clothes were threadbare, and I would look in the mirror and I could already see myself at fifty, living the same hand to mouth, job-to-job life. Through it all two people helped me; two people stuck by me and never made me feel worthless. One of them was Peter.

Paparazzi Fodder
by Elvis D of 365Fiction
A 1,861 word short story rated R.

A disturbing tale about disturbing people.

This concludes the seventy-sixth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Storyblogging Carnival LXXV

2010-09-02T21:34:00.001-04:00

NOTE: This is a repost of an old carnival, so I make no promises that the links will still be good.

Welcome to the seventy-fifth Storyblogging Carnival. There weren't many entries this time around, possibly due to the summer doldrums. Still, we have four stories this time, including one of my own. Enjoy.

Sage of Wales Writes...
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 317 word brief story rated PG-13.

The sage is inspired by song.

Thag Not Talk Much!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 450 word brief story rated PG-13.

The continuing prehistoric saga of Thag. In this episode, Thag unveils his cave art that he's painted for the Drunka Grunka tribe, and they wonder why he won't talk about it.

Abort! Abort! Abort!
by Elvis D of 365Fiction
A 1,160 word short story rated R.

A paparazzo's tale.

The Hunter of Shades
by Donald S. Crankshaw at Resident Aliens
A 5,307 word short story rated PG-13.

Searching for the dark things which are killing his people, the Hunter finds something unexpected.

This concludes the seventy-fifth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Storyblogging Carnival LXXIV

2010-09-01T21:34:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is an old post, so I can't guarantee the links.

Mark Rayner has the latest Storyblogging Carnival posted at The Skwib. Eleven stories this time, with a breakfast theme.

Storyblogging Carnival LXXIII

2010-08-31T16:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the seventy-third Storyblogging Carnival. Enjoy.

The Mouse Killer
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

About a cat who behaves much like a person.

The Return
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

Fallen angels seek a laborious, but poetic return to Heaven.

Conscience
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

Conscience as a skin condition.

Rogue Signals
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

In the future, containment is the only option, even at the expense of beauty.

A Lamb on the Lam
by Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
A 100 word brief story rated PG.

News story in limerick form.

The Turtle and the Rabbit
by Phil at Phil for Humanity
A 212 word brief story rated G.

A fable about reverse discrimination.

Necklace
by Jolanda Dubbeldam at Reason and Rhyme
A 346 word brief story rated G.

A caring woman is angry at an uncaring man who caused her to fire a family man.

The Monkey’s Tail, as Told by Marcel Duchamp the Day After Charles Lindbergh Landed at Le Bourget Field
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 500 word brief story rated PG.

The last Dadaist pursues his absurd desire to have a tail.

How Potter Ends...
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 520 word brief story rated PG-13.

A vision of how the Harry Potter series might end.

Uprising
by Elvis D of 365fiction
A 1,553 word short story rated R.

Home robots keep the peace--sorta.

Chain
by Elvis D of 365fiction
A 1,882 word short story rated PG-13.

The story of a misplaced cigarette.

Generations
by Elvis D of 365fiction
A 1,917 word short story rated PG-13.

A young man discovers his grandfather's secrets.

Tales from the Riverbank
by Riversider of Save the Ribble
A 2,000 word short story rated PG.

In this humorous tale, two friends kayak their way down the river Ribble, then ride the tide back home again.

This concludes the seventy-first Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Storyblogging Carnival LXXII is online

2010-08-30T16:05:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-post of an old post, so I can't guarantee the link.

I meant to get this up sooner. There was a problem with the permalink at first but it should be fixed now. Anyway... the latest Storyblogging Carnival is up at Dodgeblogium. Thanks for hosting it, Andrew, and I apologize for not getting the link up earlier.

Storyblogging Carnival LXXI

2010-08-27T17:41:00.005-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-post of an earlier carnival, so I make no promises about the links.

Welcome to the seventy-first Storyblogging Carnival. This one is a bit unusual as a number of entries come from a single writer, Jeremiah Lewis. Jeremiah's a great writer, but because of technical problems, some of his submissions to recent carnivals were lost, so we're putting them all in this one. Since they're all part of his fifty word series, they're all really short. Enjoy.

The Weekend After
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated R.

Reflections on a violation.

Marketing Education
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

An executive makes the evening news.

Ancient Vessel
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A valuable antiquity, overlooked.

Entertainment is a Killer
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated R.

The secret life of clowns.

Marriage Proposal
by Jeremiah Lewis of Fringe
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

For some things, only a shotgun will do.

Jesussic Park
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 800 word brief story rated PG-13.

Imagining what the Sermon on the Mount would have sounded like if there were raptors (and a T-Rex).

Crippled
by Elvis D of 365fiction
A 1,398 word brief story rated R.

The ultimate test of artificial intelligence.

This concludes the seventy-first Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Figuring out the tricks

2010-08-27T11:37:00.002-04:00

Old Post: I talked about buying a new laptop in this post.

So my new computer has arrived. It is, as I mentioned in my previous post, a Dell Inspiron M101Z, running the 64-bit Windows 7. I'm still figuring it out, which means, among other things, working out the tricks. I have the cheaper version, with the slower processor, but so far it seems to do what I need it to, which is mainly web surfing and writing.

The first thing I did when I got it was install the software I wanted. It comes with Internet Explorer and the starter versions of Word and Excel (which lack the full functionality and contain ads). I've never been a fan of Internet Explorer. That said, I've been playing around with the starter version of Word, and there are a lot of things I like about it. The continuous ad in the bottom right corner gets on my nerves, however, and it hasn't been enough to convince me to buy the full version. Maybe someday I'll be willing to shell out $120 for it, but not yet.

So for now, I've downloaded Firefox and OpenOffice, an open source browser and office suite respectively. Firefox is top of the line, and OpenOffice has the same functionality of Microsoft Office 2003, so it has the advantage of familiarity (it also has some odd quirks, but I've managed okay so far). I also installed Framemaker, an old Adobe word processor that I like, and which is still the core software I use for writing my novel. It gave me some trouble, as the install program wouldn't run on the 64-bit Windows 7, but I was able to get it working just by copying the files.

Speaking of Adobe, I wasn't able to install Adobe Acrobat 6, which I had lying around. There are known compatibility issues. I took a look at what a compatible version, Acrobat 9, would run me, and quickly decided that $300 was outside my price range. Instead, I installed PrimoPDF, which gives me the PDF printer for free, which was the main thing I needed. I still miss Acrobat, but I may try NitroPDF (free trial, $70 to buy) rather than Acrobat.

Anyway, I said I was figuring out the tricks, didn't I? Well, here's a few I'm finding useful.

The touchpad accepts more than simple gestures. For example, if you use two fingers at once you can scroll through documents. You can also use gestures to zoom, rotate, and flip forward and back, but I'm finding that most software is not compatible with those.
While these features of the touchpad are nice, I find that when I'm typing, the heel of my hand has a tendency to brush the touchpad. If this is interpreted as moving the cursor, then that's not much of a problem. However, the touchpad sometimes interprets it as a two-finger touch and scrolls the document, causing me to lose my place. Fortunately, pressing F6 will turn the touchpad off and on. I find myself using that to deactivate it while typing.
Pressing F3 will call up the battery controls, and under the Battery Life tab, you can turn off battery charging. Why would you want to do that? I've ruined batteries before by constantly charging them, due to using my laptop plugged in. Batteries have gotten better, and laptops smarter about charging, but I like having the option. The computer reminds you that charging's turned off every time you wake it up, so you're unlikely to forget to charge it. You're much more likely to forget and leave charging on. (In an ideal world, there would be a setting that would prevent the battery from charging until its charge dropped below 90%. Then it would charge until full, and turn off charging again until it dropped below 90%).

So those are the tricks I'm using to get my computer running how I like it.

Storyblogging Carnival LXX

2010-08-26T17:18:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-post of an old carnival, so I can't guarantee the links.

Welcome to the seventieth Storyblogging Carnival. If you're wondering, I did delay this carnival by a week in order to get a few more entries. That was enough to bring us up to five entries. Enjoy.

Only in Queens, New York
by Madeleine Kane at Mad Kane's Humor Blog
Less than 100 word limerick rated G.

Story in limerick form about a Queens, New York encounter with a cop.

Thag Grok Cow!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 351 word brief story rated PG-13.

Thag continues his sabbatical with the Drunka Grunka tribe, where he learns that everybody is a critic.

The Quiet Bar
by Elvis D of 365fiction
A 925 word brief story rated PG.

The new boss puts in an appearance.

But there were times, Dear...
by Postmodern Sass of Postmodern Sass
A 1,083 word short story rated PG.

It's about the Dean of my college, who died.

Displaced in Time
by Patrick G Cox at Dodgeblogium
A 2,977 word short story rated PG.

A time travel story.

This concludes the sixty-ninth Storyblogging Carnival.

It's not just terrific, it's tenebrific

2010-08-26T12:45:00.001-04:00

I find that I know most of the words which thefreedictionary.com publishes in its Word of the Day. Today's word, tenebrous, was no exception. It means dark and gloomy. What caught my eye was the word listed as the synonym: tenebrific. Now that's a word I've never seen before. So I checked the definition: thefreedictionary says it means dark and gloomy. Well, I guess that's to be expected, since it was listed as a synonym to a word that means exactly that. Not completely satisfied, I went to dictionary.com, where I got a significantly different definition: producing darkness. I like that. That I can use. But I'm not so sure people will understand what definition I want when the dictionaries say different things (I will point out that another source, which gives the definition as "dark and gloomy," then goes on to use tenebrous, rather than tenebrific, in their example sentence, but I think the source is more thesaurus than dictionary).

Ah, well. I still like the word, and I hope someday to make the "producing darkness" definition the accepted one.

Storyblogging Carnival LXIX

2010-08-25T17:13:00.001-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-post of an old carnival, so I can't guarantee the links.

Welcome to the sixty-ninth Storyblogging Carnival. We have four entries this time, but a number of them are significantly longer than usual, so there's plenty of reading material. Enjoy.

Loneliness
by Fred Vaughan at Reason and Rhyme
A 650 word brief story rated PG.

Ray finds himself minimizing his good fortune with statistics and analogies to discovery.

The Ark
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 956 word brief story rated PG.

So you thought you knew what Noah was on about...

At Recess, There will be Worms
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 2,500 word short story rated G.

A semi-autobiographical story about April worm-flinging and other childhood rites of passage.

Bangkok Adrenaline
by Conan Stevens of World's Biggest Action Hero?
A 25,075 word screenplay rated G.

"This is a script I wrote, which has been filmed and is due for cinema release in Sept. The script is about 4 broke foreigners living in Thailand coming up with a plan for some easy(?) cash."

This concludes the sixty-ninth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Blogging or Writing?

2010-08-25T12:55:00.002-04:00

Mike Duran has a post on writing and blogging:

Do you have Schizo-blog? Here’s some of the symptoms:
You feel guilty for blogging because you should be writing your novel
You feel guilty for writing because you haven’t updated your blog in a week
You feel guilty prioritizing one over the other because with some creative management, or self-discipline, you should be able to do both
Please note that the common denominator of Shizo-blog is “Guilt”. Closely related to the guilt of Schizo-blog is the guilt you may be experiencing as you read this — because you probably should be writing. I haven’t found a name for that condition yet, but I suffer the symptoms as well.

I know that feeling. He then talks about whether a writer should be blogging. A while ago, I let this blog languish while I worked on my writing. It still hasn't recovered from that. But I thought that writing, and getting published, was more important than this little, low-traffic blog I had going here.

Which is why this part of Mike's post caught my attention:

But there’s something else I can’t deny: Despite the demands it creates, blogging can really benefit an author. That’s the conclusion I reached in Blogs and Brands. A writer’s books support his blog, not vice-versa. Your blog does more to further your “brand” than your novels do. Of course, this shouldn’t diminish the necessity of a good book, but heighten the importance of a good blog.

I actually hope that's not really true. I'd prefer for my books to define my brand, not my blog. But it's hard to deny that readers connect more personally with a blogger than with a writer. And that personal connection can be parlayed into getting people to buy your books.

Tragedy and the Arts

2010-08-25T01:29:00.002-04:00

Is it wrong that this gives me a story idea?

Over the last year, more than 40 albinos have been murdered in Tanzania, some as young as six months old. Many more have been attacked with machetes, their limbs cut off while alive. Their body parts are used by witchdoctors in potions and remedies as they are believed to bring wealth and success in business.

I do have an albino character in some of my stories, ones which haven't been published yet. In the stories he's an adult, but the idea of something like this happening in his past could definitely be made into a story. I'm not sure how well this would fit my world's society. Not that I think they're above this sort of thing--just that they have a different concept of magic than what gave rise to this macabre harvesting.

But the first question I have to ask is whether it's right for me to draw on this tragedy for a story. Tragedies always give rise to stories. There are stories about 9/11, the Titanic, the Holocaust. Why? The crass answer is that tragedy has emotional power, it has drama, it has all the ingredients that go into a good story. It's why the simple factual accounts of tragedies, such as the video above, have such power. There's more to it than that, though. Stories are one of the ways that we try to make sense of the world. It's one way we process tragedy: to try to find something redemptive in it, to learn some lesson from it, even just to let others share in the pain.

So my hesitation in writing the story has little to do with whether art should deal with tragedy. It has more to do with the type of story I write. Would a fantasy adventure story really be a good way to try to make sense of this tragedy? I have my doubts.

Stoicism and Psychology

2010-08-24T18:09:00.000-04:00

Jeremy Pierce has an interesting post on Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It's a topic I know pretty much nothing about, but what caught my attention was a short discussion on how it relates to Stoicism:

Powlison bases a lot of his critique on the fact that CBT uses (sometimes consciously) methods that can rightly be described as Stoic in that they do have a strong enough similiarity to key ideas of the ancient Stoics that I don't think the comparison is inapt. Stoicism, at least on the issues relevant here, involves one key claim. The Stoics didn't think it's worth worrying about something outside your control. The reason is that your life is made worse off by your worrying, but you can do something about the worry. You can't do anything about the fact that George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2004 or Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008. You can't change the fact that lots of people died recently in China from landslides. You can do something to help those who remain, and you can do something to change people's minds on policy issues and perhaps help elect a different sort of person next time, but there's no point in worrying about something you can't do anything about.

That element of Stoic philosophy seems entirely reasonable to me. The Stoics do go on to say that we should remove all emotions, but it's important to be clear on what they meant. They defined emotions more or less as bad reasoning. Things we call feelings that aren't bad reasoning and are compatible with good reasoning would not be emotions for the Stoic. So there's no reason to complain about that view on the ground that it's healthy to have emotions and inhuman not to. We should eschew the things they called emotions without actually eschewing emotions as we understand the term. They had a strange view about what we should call emotions, but the substance of their view is mostly right, as Augustine so deftly argued in his critique of the Stoics. Feelings of any sort should be submitted to reason, and those that are irrational are best removed. Augustine shows that the Stoic view, when reworked into ordinary language without their odd view of what counts as an emotion, is largely correct and fully compatible with Christian teaching.

Where the Stoic goes wrong, as far as Christianity is concerned, is in not submitting things to the lordship of Christ. I can't even say that they don't equate submission to reason with submission to God. They do. They just have a false view of what God is like. Does that affect the practical level? Not so much. Does it affect CBT? Not remotely. The reason is that CBT is really a method, a placeholder in which you insert the content you intend to replace the unhealthy and irrational beliefs. The Stoics insisted that irrationality comes from false thinking. They may have been wrong about that as a fully adequate explanation of all irrationality. But they were certainly right that a whole lot of irrationality comes from false beliefs. I know at least two cases of chronic depression that in large part involves flat-out false beliefs, even if there may also be neurological causes. In one case it's someone who consistently interprets any possible information that could be stretched to show that people don't like him or that he's a failure as if everyone doesn't like him and as if his abilities are the problem, when in many of these cases no one is even evaluating him negatively, and often enough their evaluations aren't seen that way by the people doing the evaluating. Such a person might benefit from neurochemical supplements, but CBT would encourage him to replace those false beliefs with a more hesitant approach to such negative interpretations, one much more like how most people would respond.

CBT is offered as a correction to the biggest problem [of] Applied Behavior Analysis therapy. ABA insists on treating only behavior without dealing with anything internal, e.g. unhealthy beliefs. It stems from the behaviorist model of psychology, according to which we shouldn't postulate anything internal that can't be measured empirically, and thus any psychologist who talks about beliefs, desires, and so on is engaging in unscientific behavior (notice that even the way I've constructed that sentence admits only to the behavior of such a psychologist; a behaviorist shouldn't even say that such a psychologist has false beliefs about how psychology should be done, just that the speech and methods of such a psychologist are unscientific).

It's an interesting analysis, but I know too little about psychology to have much to add. I do know a little about Stoicism, although not enough to correct a professional philosopher. As I understand it, at its core, Stoicism was fatalist. I don't mean that in a necessarily negative sense, but in the technical sense. Stoics believed that the future was set, that it had indeed happened before and would happen again, in an endless repeating cycle. This didn't mean that anything you did was meaningless. You, too, had a part in that cycle, and what you did had meaning and relevance. But you had done it before and would do it again.

At least, that's how I understand their beliefs.

Storyblogging Carnival LXVIII

2010-08-24T17:13:00.000-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-post of an old carnival, so I can't guarantee the link.

Andrew hosts the latest Storyblogging Carnival, with six stories, at Dodgeblogium. Go read.

Storyblogging Carnival LXVII

2010-08-23T09:10:00.001-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-posting of an old post, so links may be broken.

Welcome to the sixty-seventh Storyblogging Carnival. We have five entries this time. I won't bother writing a long introduction, and instead we can jump straight to the stories.

Small Packages
by Jeremiah Lewis at Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A man contemplating suicide sees something that changes his mind.

Loneliness
by Jeremiah Lewis at Fringeblog
A 50 word brief story rated PG.

A girl sees her singleness as a measure of time.

Taxing Times
by Mad Kane at Mad Kane's Humor Blog
A 570 word brief story rated PG.

Humorous adventures in tax return preparation.

Faithful are the Wounds of a Friend
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
A 970 word brief story rated PG.

While technically more of a homily, this story recounts some painful, yet helpful, real life events.

The Shaft
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 1391 word short story rated PG-13.

It takes place just after the Norman invasion. A man gets an odd knife from a Saxon raider.

This concludes the sixty-seventh Storyblogging Carnival.

Storyblogging Carnival LXVI

2010-08-20T09:00:00.003-04:00

NOTE: This is a re-posting of an old post, so links may be broken.

Welcome to the sixty-sixth Storyblogging Carnival. We had five entries this time, one from a new authors. I didn't have a lot of time to put into this one, since I'm gone for today and had to get up really early. Still, I'm sure the authors put plenty of work into it, so enjoy.

Glitch 100 words
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated PG.

It's 100 words and the title says it all.

Real Friends
by Anonymous at Zechary White
A 273 word brief story rated G.

A war story.

Thag not grok big bottoms!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 350 word brief story rated PG.

The continuing saga of Thag — in which he learns the penchant the Drunka Grunka tribe has for an overabundance of rump.

The Long Journey Back
by Mama Kelly at A Blog of Two Witches
A 3,261 word short story rated PG-13.

While this story is a work of fiction, elements of the abuse are inspired by real life events.

Leprechaun Love
by Charmaine Frost at Reason and Rhyme
A 3,403 word short story rated PG-13.

A painfully shy new employee lifts the fortunes of a dating service.

This concludes the sixty-sixth Storyblogging Carnival.

Dreams

2010-08-19T16:08:00.002-04:00

It's sad, but Kristin's dreams are more coherent than some of my stories.

Storyblogging Carnival LXV

2010-08-19T09:54:00.003-04:00

This is a re-post of an old carnival, so some of the links may be broken.

Welcome to the sixty-fifth Storyblogging Carnival. We had five entries this time, one from a new authors. I didn't have a lot of time to put into this one, since I'm gone for today and had to get up really early. Still, I'm sure the authors put plenty of work into it, so enjoy.

Plates of Meat
by 100 Words of The Centurion Diaries
A 100 word brief story rated G.

A shoe story.

[Although I normally reject submissions that don't include a blurb, I let this one slide since it was so short... plus, we were short on stories this week. -DSC]

Steaming
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated R.

100 words of steaming... er.

Mist Magic 22 (Beginning)
by Dave Gudeman at Doc Rampage
The next 271 words of a 7,000 word story in progress rated PG.

In which I learn the origins of the story of the Minotaur.

Thag not got milk!
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 600 word brief story rated PG.

The latest chapter in the humorous saga of Thag — prehistoric everyman — in which he learns about milk, and asks the Elder's council to let him go learn to make beer.

Surmounting Marriage
by Madeleine Begun Kane at Madkane's Humor Blog
A 700 word brief story rated PG.

What happens when a couple who has no business mountain climbing, does it anyway.

This concludes the sixty-fifth Storyblogging Carnival.

What a let down

2010-08-17T00:00:00.001-04:00

Glenn disappointed me with this one:

TALKING CARS with the Car Lust guys.

Here I was expecting a post about talking cars, and instead I get a post talking about cars.

E-book Book Help Desk

2010-08-16T20:06:00.006-04:00

I thought it couldn't be done. I didn't think anyone could combine two of my favorite things: computer humor and the Middle Ages. I was wrong.

More on Christian Horror

2010-08-15T22:33:00.003-04:00

I've already touched on this subject, here and here. But Mike Duran, who's a Christian horror writer whose first book is coming out soon, has more on the subject:

Likewise, the “dread” invoked by the Christian writer is dissimilar to that of the atheist. Scripture warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). This “fear” is pivotal to “Christian horror.” Whereas the atheist author invokes the fear of the absence of God, the Christian invokes the fear of the presence of God. The “horror” is in His existence, not His non-existence. Of course, this “horror” is for those who deny Him, ignore His warnings, and refuse His mercy. Sadly, terror awaits those on the “wrong side” of the Universe.
...
Perhaps there is no greater horror than that of an atheistic worldview. Forget blood, gore, and ghoulies. A world without meaning and purpose is the ultimate horror. A universe that arose by chance, exists without meaning, where lives plummet toward annihilation is the worst kind of horror. The child huddled in bed, fixated upon the dark closet, becomes the adult gaping into the void of what, he believes, is a godless universe. And unlike the Christian novelist, the atheist author has nothing but more “dark closets” to offer their readers.

It's an interesting post, but there are some things I'd quibble with. For example, the argument that only those who "deny Him, ignore His warnings, and refuse His mercy" have any reason to fear God. The Bible's account makes it clear that anyone who meets God feels dread. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Proverbs 1:7) We tend to whitewash this, to say what the Bible really means is respect. The word, though, also means terror. And terror is probably a better description of what people feel when they meet God, or even an angel, than respect, in the Biblical accounts.

Why is that? What is scary about God? It's not that he is capricious or abusive. It's that he's unfathomable. Completely beyond our ken, and because we don't understand him, yet are completely under his power, we fear him. What's more, we realize that we are unworthy of him. We are fallen and sinful creatures, who by all rights should be the subject of his wrath. Thus fear is the natural and right response--it simply acknowledges the truth about who he is and who we are. That is why fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Now if I only knew how to capture this in a story...

Now accepting submissions for the next Storyblogging Carnival

2010-08-14T00:54:00.003-04:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and twelfth. It will be our sixth anniversary, and I'll host it here, at Back of the Envelope. The carnival will go up on Monday, September 6th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

Name of your blog
URL of your blog
Title of the story
URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
(OPTIONAL) Author's name
(OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
A word count
A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, September 4th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

Writing Sanctuaries

2010-08-13T00:29:00.012-04:00

The other day, Instapundit linked to this article on Man Caves at The Art of Manliness. A "man cave" is defined as "an area within a house frequented by a man, as a workshop, garage, basement, or den." It's really a sanctuary, where a man goes to be alone and do what he enjoys doing, whether it be tinkering, playing guitar, or writing. It's supposedly a play on "caveman," but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of Batcave (the name of Batman's hidden base) in the etymology.

The man caves in the article include a number of writer's studies, including Ernest Hemingway's, Frederick Douglass's, and, my favorite, Mark Twain's. It got me thinking about my own man cave. My room in my apartment serves as bedroom, work area, and writing studio. It's spacious, if nothing else, but hardly orderly:

This is just one corner, but it tells you most of what you need to know about me. There's an air conditioner, because I live on the third floor and it can get pretty hot, and the curtain is pulled closed over that window. There are the boxes that I haven't gotten around to after a month of living here, and the bookshelf containing just the books I felt that I most needed to unpack. The higher shelf contains books that I've either started reading or plan to soon, while the lower shelf contains the writing reference books I thought that I needed right away. The remaining shelves are filled with junk. Next to the shelves are some filing drawers, containing important papers in the top drawer, and printouts of stories with revision notes from my writing group and myself in the lower drawer. The bed, which is unmade, is set on a frame that was in the apartment when I arrived. Atop it is an inflatable mattress, because I'm too cheap to buy a real one.

This side of the room is where I do all my work. There's my computer and my business class color laser printer. Most importantly is my comfortable desk chair, an absolute necessity considering the number of hours I spend in front of that computer a day. There's a fan nearby, and bottles meant for recycling on the shelf above. Beside them is a black case with my tools. And on the floor is another box I haven't gotten around to unpacking.

Somehow, I doubt I'll be making anyone jealous of my man cave.

UPDATE: Fixed the links, which had somehow gone missing.

Storyblogging Carnival CXI

2010-08-10T14:48:00.007-04:00

Welcome to the 111th Storyblogging Carnival. Enjoy the stories.

Not So Clean Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a bachelor who hates to clean, told in a two-verse limerick.

Spot the Differences
by Mohit Salgaonkar of Still Waiting to Wake
An 539 word short story rated PG.

In a photo album of an old trip, I noticed picture of a person who never was on the trip! Bizarre? Creepy? Read on!

The Disciple
by Terry Haferkamp of Shadow Dwellers
A 2,400 word short story rated PG.

Supernatural / horror. Police question a young writer about his connection to a series of gruesome murders.

Cyberteapunk
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 5,080 word short story rated PG-13.

A tale of the future of the tea party movement (20 years). Cyborgs, anarchists and neo-luddites with a touch of humor.

This concludes the one hundred and eleventh Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

UPDATE: Wow, the Storyblogging Carnival got an Instalanche. It'd be nice if we'd had a few more entries for this one, but hey, I'll take what I can get. See here for more carnivals. You may notice that it's slightly out of order--that's because I've been moving old carnivals over from my old blog, and I haven't put them all in order yet.

FURTHER UPDATE: I'm now accepting entries for the next carnival, our sixth anniversary version. The details are here.

Laptop hunting

2010-08-09T11:29:00.005-04:00

My laptop has been dying a long, slow death. My monitor's been acting up for a while now, freezing the lower part of the screen until I tapped it. A couple days ago, it acquired wavy black lines that won't go away. So I figure it's time to either repair my laptop or get a new one, and I'm leaning in the "get a new one" direction. The reason is that the laptop is out of warranty, and repairing it will require replacing the monitor. I can't imagine it costing less than a few hundred dollars, and I can buy a new netbook for that much.

Therefore I've been looking at netbooks. They generally run in the $300-350 range, and are small. They don't have great screen resolution or speed, but they make up for it in low weight and long battery life. Since I primarily want it for writing (and web browsing), that should be fine. I particularly like the Dell Inspiron 11z. I've looked at the reviews, and they almost universally say not to buy it, because the touchpad is unusable. Fortunately, Dell got the message and replaced the touchpad a couple of months ago, but I haven't seen many reviews done on it since then (customer reviews on the new touchpad are generally positive, though).

At $350 the cost is reasonable. Unfortunately, $350 is for the very basic model, and it'll probably end up costing more than that.

I've been trying to figure out what I really need and what I can do without.

First, there's the non-negotiables:

Windows 7 ($30 for upgrade) - The default is Windows Vista, and I'm unwilling to inflict that on myself. All the reviews say that Windows 7 is better in every way, so I'll shell out extra for it.
External DVD drive ($65 separate) - As it doesn't come with an internal drive, this is necessary if I want to install any of my old software on it.

So it's already $100 extra. Still reasonable, however.

Then there's the definitely want:

Processor upgrade ($75 for upgrade) - According to all the reviews, this makes a definite difference. It certainly sounds worthwhile, and it's the sort of thing that's not easily changed later.
6-cell battery ($35 for upgrade) - This I'm a bit more hesitant on. I want the battery life, but this apparently sticks out a bit and makes it heavier. However, longer battery life helps it to fulfill my main objective--a portable computer for writing.

And finally the cheap nice-to-haves:

WiFi n card ($25 for upgrade) - Not that I have an 802.11n network, but it'd be nice to be able to use them.
Internal bluetooth ($20) - This one would be nice to have, but I can do without.

So if you add that all together, it comes to closer to $600 than $350. I'm still trying to convince myself that that I don't need the processor and/or the battery.

UPDATE: And... I've changed my mind. This review convinced me that the M101z is a better choice. It has a more expensive base price, but many of the features I was willing to pay extra for, so the total price is lower.

Cirque du Soleil

2010-08-08T22:11:00.003-04:00

Kristin and I went with some of her friends to see Cirque du Soleil. I'm sure you're familiar with it... it's a circus that's well known for its spectacles. Bizarre costumes, a narrative, very artsy. It was my first Cirque du Soleil performance. And the thing you realize is that, although it's very artsy, it is indeed a circus. There are no animals, but there are jugglers, acrobats, a tight-rope walker, and even clowns. In fact, the clowns are the driving force behind the narrative, which is actually pretty slim. The show I saw is called Ovo, and it has a very vague narrative about insects (each performer played an insect), a stolen egg, and a love story between two bugs. But the story was really just an excuse to set up various performances.

Despite my lack of excitement about the insect story, I was very impressed with the performances. There was some very good juggling, and the high wire and the trapeze act were both very good. One thing I noticed is that the performers occasionally slipped up. One of the trapeze artists fell into the net, and the jugglers occasionally dropped what they were supposed to be juggling. But each time they simply started again as if nothing had happened, which I think was exactly right. Considering the very fancy things they were doing, perfection's pretty much impossible, and recovering from mistakes well is important. I'm sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere, but I'm equally sure that it's a hoary cliche, so I'll just leave it alone.

Overall, it was worth seeing.

A writer pick-me-up

2010-08-01T00:12:00.006-04:00

If you're ever feeling bad about your own writing, you should listen to this podcast with Brandon Sanderson. In it, you'll hear just a few sentences from the first novel Brandon ever wrote, back in 1994. For some unknown reason it remains unpublished. Well, technically speaking, it's pretty obvious why it's unpublished. While Brandon is now a well-known and well-respected writer who was asked to finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, in 1994 he was just an amateur, and it shows. What this demonstrates is that even good writers start out pretty bad. The difference between a good writer and the bad writer he began as is time and practice. And if he can do it, so can you.

Update: And thanks to Mike Barker's transcript, here are the first few sentences from Brandon's novel:

The wind blew carelessly and freely. It caressed the stark dunes with its whispering touch, catching fine grains of sand between incorporeal fingers and bearing them forth like hundreds of tiny charioteers. The sand, bone white in color as if it had been bleached by the sun's harsh stare, seemed to shine for a second with a sharp inner light. Then it dulled in color to a deep black.

And as you can see, Brandon's come a long way.

Now accepting submissions for the next Storyblogging Carnival

2010-07-28T23:28:00.003-04:00

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and eleventh. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, August 9th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

Name of your blog
URL of your blog
Title of the story
URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
(OPTIONAL) Author's name
(OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
A word count
A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, August 7th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

Salem

2010-07-18T17:06:00.005-04:00

As Kristin mentioned elsewhere, I recently attended a Writer's convention called Readercon. One of the panels I attended was about horror and New England. New England is a popular setting for horror stories, for a multitude of reasons. The reason I bring it up was that the topic of Salem was raised. Salem, Massachusetts has turned itself into something like a theme park of witches. One of the people on the panel, a Wiccan, in expressing how she felt about that, said that it was like how a Jew would feel about a theme park called Auschwitzland.

There are a couple of problems with this analogy. The first is that approximately 1 million Jews died at Auschwitz, while 0 Wiccans died at the Salem Witch Trials. All 24 people killed by the trials were Christians. And therein lies my biggest pet peeve. Witchcraft, as practiced in the Wicca religion, is a very different thing than what the Massachusetts colonialists considered witchcraft. Casting it as persecution of a religion that didn't exist then misses the point, and Wiccans have come pretty late to the game in order to claim that that they have sole authority to define what witchcraft means.

Witchcraft, by the definition used by the colonialists, involved making a deal with the Devil for power and using that power to torment and kill others. I believe that C.S. Lewis was the one who pointed out that if we truly believed that such a thing existed, we would agree that those who practiced it should be brought to justice, and thus our main disagreement with the people of Salem is simply that we no longer believe in witchcraft. Personally, I prefer a somewhat more balanced view, that is agnostic to the existence of witchcraft. I believe that the Salem Witch Trials were a grave miscarriage of justice and a failure of due process, convicting people on hearsay and superstition.

So what do I think of Salem? Well, comparing it to Auschwitz is silly. But so is its attempt to make witches into some kind of mascot. Because the mascot witch is yet another definition of witchcraft, very different from both the colonialist and Wiccan one, a caricature with none of the religious connotations of either. To pretend that it has anything to do with what happened in Salem over 300 years ago is an injustice.

Cooking and Writing

2010-07-16T22:28:00.003-04:00

Kristin has a couple of posts up that folks might enjoy reading. The first, "The 10 Habits of Highly Irritating Editors,"are 10 items that editors do all the time, but shouldn't.

The second talks some about my cooking travails.

It's all good stuff, and well worth reading.