Therapy

New year, new goals, and new grasp of reality.

I wanted to call this shit quits because I really got down on myself for not creating anything last year. Really, I've just been wrapped up in life, but I can only use that as an excuse so much. At least this year is starting to close some long overdue chapters in my life, so with that hopefully comes more freedom to achieve my goals.

I've stripped down my online presence and gutted my ebooks because I've been disappointed in their quality. I'll leave the print versions untouched, but I'm going to finally start releasing the individual shorts that have been rewritten. The last two years of only getting one publication has shown me that the story buying public doesn't want what I'm selling in their current form, so I've decided to put down my idea of the Lilim series and just start writing whatever comes to me. The thought of building a whole universe, while nice and already in place, I'm tired of trying to sell a whole series idea in multiple disjointed forms. So, to add some cohesiveness, I've pared down my writing endeavors into the following: Edit and release my individual shorts as chapbooks and ebooks, Release a physical and ebook version of  To Slice The Sky, Edit and release my Space Western, and lastly, Work on the comic script for Cold Cases.

I feel that after Blade Runner 2049 and Bright have been released to limited fanfare, my cyberpunk/urban fantasy conglomerate idea is kinda dead in the water with its bedfellows. But really, it's time I stopped talking about wanting to write a comic book and fucking write a comic book.

So since I'm putting a pin in the Lilim Chronicles, I'm also revamping my author presence online and have regressed into this state. So, the blog will be going through some URL changes shortly to something easier to remember. This is also not so much a, "I want to sell people stuff," page as it is my personal blog, so while this is written as if someone is reading it, it's really more of a personal blog in the vein of early '00s online diaries. Neatoreato.

Anyway, That's all I need to get off my chest. Until next time.

Checklists

What a fucking year.

I don't think I actually achieved anything I really set out to do this year, but upon introspection, that seems to not be the case. Really nothing that I succeeded at could be considered worthwhile in the grand scheme of things, but let's be honest with ourselves, what is?

So I'm finally, finally, looking down the barrel of my last semester of university. I just have spring 2018 to complete and I'll have my BA in English and gearing up to begin my teaching credential program in the Fall. I started working at a charter school where I'm a teaching assistant for 6th grade. That's been a mixed bag of weird and awesome. While it's stressful at times, the kids are awesome, and I feel like I'm in a place where I belong for a change. This is the first job I've had where I haven't repeated my usual litany of, "I hate this place, I want to go home," within the first three weeks.

I had my one publishing credit happen this year for my short "Suicide Queen", but I count that as an achievement of last year since it got accepted last December and printed this summer. I didn't finish NaNoWriMo this year, with school, work, wedding planning, social obligations, on top of plain exhaustion and laziness got in the way of that one. Because everyone wants you to follow your dreams as long as it doesn't interfere with their lives...

Much like you, I also spent a good majority of the year outraged at the deconstruction of the world as it should be into the world we always knew it was. The swamp has been drained and all the gators and snakes are exposed, looking to eat the first thing that comes near it.

I didn't read nearly enough. I think I finished maybe three books, including ones I was supposed to have read for class. I did read a shit ton of scholarly articles though, so that's cool. Maybe I should go out of my way to read more short fiction so I can have the feeling of completion. Granted, the majority of short fiction I've read in the last few years has been like wading in a lukewarm pool. It's only offensive because you're certain there's piss in the water. Everything I've read that's been exciting has been from years long past predicting the crumbling state of the world we're currently inhabiting.

I've started getting migraines, so that's fun. I also haven't really been very strong as far as my cooking game goes either. It seems like 2017 is where I let all of my passions and joys wither and grow stagnant as I attended to real life. Not like it matters to you, but it's a realization I just had. I haven't been inspired much to create anything which is the polar opposite I was hoping would happen.

About the only thing I've succeeded at this year was raising my gamerscore and attending cinema events. I'm apprehensive about the Disney/Fox merger, even though I've wanted a Marvel Studios Fantastic Four and Avengers v. X-Men/House of M films. I'm worried for the future of streaming technology with the upcoming Disney streaming service and what it means for Netflix and Hulu (aside from the Fox and Disney content strewn across both services) in the wake of Net Neutrality's crumbling state. Granted, with the current state of Hollywood finally acknowledging the corruption and sleaziness of casting couch culture, who even knows what we have waiting for us in 2018. Maybe a year of reckoning? Maybe?... holding out for hope.

On the videogame front, I can't help but feel that this generation of consoles have only brought more tepid releases that lack the innovation and magic of the previous generation. We're 4 years deep into the current cycle, and while we've gotten some awesome games, nothing is pushing the envelope. More safety, nostalgia, familiarity, just like everything else. It's not like the games are bad, we're just stuck in a logarithmic formula state of creation across all boards and I'm too old to waste time digging through the underground all the time for sparks of creative fire. I know they exist, but finding them is a pain in the ass. When I was a teenager and had nothing better to do than read music magazines, post on message boards, and scroll through pages of unknown artists looking for someone that flicks my switches.

This may seem petty to be bummed about, but I feel stuck in the mainstream. Everything that I used to love in the slipstream has gained clout along with time. While I should take solace that I was right, and I really did have awesome taste all along, it always feels so alienating to have something you felt was special and definitive be co-opted by newcomers that change the definition of what it was to be a fan. There used to be a time where you were a nerd for loving Star Wars. Now we're fighting over the true essence of Luke Skywalker's character in the wake of The Last Jedi, and while I thought the film was fantastic (granted, Rian Johnson can film grass grow for 2 hours and I'd watch it) it's just a stark reminder that the world is no longer mine and it's time to let go of feeling special.

Or maybe I'm really falling prey to the Steve-O, SLC Punk syndrome, and I've really been a goddamn poser this entire time and I needed a wake up call about 20 years ago.

At least mainstream TV has still been awesome, granted I mostly watch popular shows and Marvel properties as of late. I loved Defenders and Punisher and have been thoroughly digging on Runaways even with the strong deviations from the first story arc. Once I found out they were making a Runaways show, I was already on board. I love Brian K. Vaughn's work, and was a fan of the comic series when it first came out (sadly, I stopped buying comics in the mid '00s). Otherwise, I haven't really jumped on any new shows.

This all started out as a talk about what I achieved this year, and mostly it was in achievement hunting form. I managed to raise my gamer score to a current 90474 G. I managed to complete all the series playthroughs I'd set out for myself. I blazed through a shit ton of Telltale Games series, pretty much all but the 2nd seasons of Batman (which I still have to play episode 3 until 4 & 5 release) and Minecaft: Story Mode (which my save got deleted for season 1 so I have to replay that before I start on s.2 because I'm insistent on shit like that). I upgraded to Civilization VI, so I've been playing that for hours on end as well, despite taking advantage of the Steam summer and Black Friday sales.

For my proposed series completions, I knocked out: Resident Evil (of which 7 was a highlight and look forward to going through it again. Top 3 in the series: 2, 1 [REmake], 7), The Arkham series (Almost 100% achievements on City and Knight. One away for Knight), Gears of War (finally played Judgement and 4. Judgement was garbage and forgettable, 4 was really cool, but FUCK SNATCHERS. Top 3: 1, 3, 4), both South Park games (The Fractured but Whole was obviously where all the season 20/21 side plots were heading towards), both Dishonored games (2 was alright. Only did 1 playthrough as Emily. Not a big fan of her magic skills compared to Corvo's in 1), a competitionist playthrough of all 4 Mass Effect games (Andromeda's Insanity mode was way too easy), all the Halo's except 5 (still haven't bought 5. Top 3: 3, ODST, 2), the BioShock series (1 is still my favorite), and the Deus Ex series (unfortunately, Deus Ex on PS2. I've since bought it on Steam and will be doing my next playthrough the right way on PC).

I never did finish my "history of the FPS" playthrough, and kinda gave up after I played Half-Life. I'm alright with this. I'm not a huge FPS dude anyway, so I was content with reading a few retrospectives on the genre. Pretty much, I ended up playing all the big titles in the genre anyway, and everything else was window dressing. Though one FPS I haven't started yet, but probably will next, is Wolfenstein II. I loved The New Order, was underwhelmed by The Old Blood, but have heard nothing but glorious words about the latest entry into the long running Nazi-killing series. If it's anywhere as fun as New Order, I'm already on board.

Really, all of these playthroughs are just excuses to get me to actually get my money's worth out of all the media I buy. If I don't make it into a thing, I'll just make excuses and never get around to actually using the things that I buy. I can't abide by that. Now I just have to do that with my literature. Maybe 2018 will be a year of reading and writing.

No need for alarm

I've been neglecting my blog for a while, and at this point, while it's a constant itch in the back of my mind, I'm starting to wonder why something I enjoy doing has been a point of procrastination. After much blogular introspection, I've decided that it may be best if instead of a schedule I can fail at, I should get back to my idea of whenever I feel compelled to post an update, I'll do one, and otherwise, this is more of a backdrop to my greater internet presence. That way, it seems more like I'm already doing some great esoteric master plan instead of being a lazy bastard letting hypothetical people wanting.

But, holy shit, here we are, a quarter of the year behind us since the last entry. I've been horribly bogged down with maintaining my grades in pursuit of my degree. I've been alerted that I apparently have to waste one more semester before I graduate. I have 9 units of upper division electives to do. So my degree is literally being held ransom for 36 hours a week of my life and $4500 in student loans of bullshit classes. I'm already showing the first symptoms of senioritis, and I highly doubt that come Spring 2018 it's going to have gotten much better.

While I haven't written in my blog, I've had all sorts of fun on paper. I recently submitted two pieces of flash fiction and a brand new short to some contests, and I've been trying to be more active in looking for avenues to write more material. On top of completing a whole brand new story, I've been continuing my revisions and rewrites of my original short stories from Urban Legends of the Future in order to shop them as unpublished works. While this has turned into a whole shit ton of work I didn't plan on it being, it is definitely a boon for me to have at least two years of not even looking at my first book, and then seeing all of those stories again for the first time. Needless to say, a self/friend edited, self published, short story collection as my first release is not how I would do it if I could start all over again.

Especially, since I'm finding that I'm less interested in keeping the supernatural side of my series going when it comes to writing stories. With humans alone in the future years that I've been writing about, I've been writing more and more human/technological based stories opposed to ones that have any of the Lilim in it. Everyone hates vampires these days (thanks Twilight), werewolves are strictly erotica fodder (which reminds me, I need to finish parts 2 and 3 of my werewolf erotica trilogy. And again, thanks Twilight), no one gives a shit about fish monsters that aren't mermaids, and while Incubi/Succubi are still awesome to write crazy dream stories about, I haven't thought of a worthwhile story since By Starlight. I doubt I will drop it entirely, but as of right now, I'm much less excited to write futuristic horror stories than I was three years ago. Most of my supernatural writing predilection is focused more on stories set in the past 100ish years, but it's a matter of actually writing new things instead of dwelling solely on perfecting my already complete work.

I've actually been writing more crime fiction than anything else since I began Suicide Queen for NaNoWriMo, and been seeing much more success and positive feedback regarding that work. Even to the point that my short story Suicide Queen was picked up by Flumes Literary Journal for publication in their Summer 2017 issue when it gets released. I've been going back over those characters I made and I want to use them again. The whole gambling outlaw motif was a very fun one, almost in a Gotham City gang manner, and I've got a few ideas brewing in my head for The Smokin' Aces to square off a tarot card themed mirror of their power trio of pilfering in a heist race for a MacGuffin. I have a lot of ideas, but the ones that get made are another thing.

So, yeah, don't know how often or when I'll be posting in the future, but I'm not going to make a big deal about it. Dear reader, when I have news you want to know, you'll be the first one to know it.

Excelsior

Goodnight, Travel Well

Heyooooo.

Another weekend to another week with all sorts of stuff that happened, and not very much of it was interesting. Well, unless you enjoy hearing about people playing videogames, which I hear there's a market for that.

I've been working on edits and drafts of short stories for their rerelease. I'm going to keep my original books out on the market, but move them to free. Basically keep them like "garage days" versions of the stories that I'm releasing now. I've rewritten Heroine of a Thousand Faces and almost finished with Things that are Cold. They're retitled and are so restructured and remixed from the original version, it's almost like they're alternate universe versions of one another. Granted, the new versions of both stories are like, way better written. Or at least on the level of where I'm at now compared to where I was at when I finished the last draft. I also heard back from a couple magazines with the most positive rejection letters I've received so far. I'm invigorated to rock out some more work and touch up a couple others. I'm glad to finally have people tell me, "didn't quite make it, but please send more". That's been my #writerslife this week and the previous.

A deserted Chinese playground is the perfect metaphor for this game.

Videogamewise, I beat DOOM (2016) last night, and it was awesome as awesome can be. I finally started playing Resident Evil 6. Remember how I was playing through all the Resident Evil games last year? Well, I played all of them but 6, and it's been about the biggest disappointment so far.
It's mostly disappointing because it won't get the hell out of its own way. And I'm really not a big fan of the crossover sections where you have to essentially play the same level as a previous storyline, "but this time, two other people got their first." I don't know if that makes sense, but it sure is annoying to be cheated out of additional content because of game concept. In other Resident Evil related news, I just ordered VII from amazon. It should be here tomorrow. Yay president's day.

In the wake of finishing DOOM, and since I already played through (and loved) Wolfenstein: The New Order, I fired up the prequel, Old Blood. I played through the prologue of it, and it was like a less cool version of New Order. I'll give it some time. I found the Skyrim iron helmet. See. Look to the left. Just a little to the left. There it is! Aren't easter eggs neat?

Since I've been playing Bethesda published games, on top of playing Resident Evil, I've been looking to play The Evil Within for... over a year now. So that's on my horizon. I've been trying to chip away at my game catalog as best as I can, and I've thankfully been getting it done. Especially since I've finally been spending time with Final Fantasy XV, rolling with the homies on my bro trip.

"Isn't being rich awesome?!"

I've enjoyed the game while I've played it, but I know that it's going to be a big one. Last time I played a modern, highly anticipated, RPG, was Fallout 4, and I sunk 2 months of my life in game time into it. And all my stuff kept getting lost underneath my house... Damn you Fallout 4! Damn you! I've been a fan of Final Fantasy since the SNES days. Final Fantasy VI was the game that solidified my love of JRPG's and I've since made my way through the entire series from start to finish multiple times. I haven't sunk more than 4 or so hours into it, but I've enjoyed my time thoroughly playing the game. I just know that FFXV is going to be a time commitment before I'm done with it. Hence why I'm "getting sidetracked" by playing shorter games.

Fitting in time for media is a very serious affair. Much like I've been back to binging on Buffy, and have started Angel as well. The missus and I are groaning through the last season of Hell on Wheels. We have 3 episodes left and man, it started out as such a great western. Since I'm watching Buffy again, I finished season 3, so I'll be writing a recap soon. Since I'm watching each episode back to back, I'm on S4e4 of Buffy and S1e4 of Angel. I'd like to do my season 3 recap before I get to the end. As of now, I'm standing on season 3 being my favorite season. That could possibly change at any moment.

Alright, what games I'm playing, what I've been watching, and what work I've been doing. I think we're all wrapped up here. And this is where I leave you with the final final chapter of To Slice The Sky.

This is the epilogue, and was again well received as an ending on reddit. I'm pleased with the ending I landed on, but still feel like I could make it a little tweaking when I do my next pass over. So, with that, I leave you with the tail end of this serial novel that will turn itself into a traditional novel with a little bit of final buffing and stitching.

NAKED DOG

Arguing with the Deus Ex Machina

I really was planning on making good on my tweet earlier this week, but instead I made other decisions. This week was a really boring week where all I did was work for monetary and scholastic gain. Otherwise, working on some story rewrites and coming up with great revisions. Should be on sale through Amazon, Smashwords, and other fine eBook retailers by spring.

I'm nursing a hangover from a pub crawl last night, so this is going to be short and sweet. Today's post is the final chapter of To Slice The Sky's thrilling conclusion. Yes, we are finally here.

The ending was well received on its round through reddit, and I hope that you feel similarly. I'm gonna get back to drinking water and eating spicy food to sweat out all this beer.

Year of the Cock

你好, 新年快乐!

Are there other people out there who wonder when they'll forget the lyrics to Ice, Ice, Baby? Besides Robert Van Winkle.

It's one of those songs where I'll never do it for karaoke, it never comes on randomly in people's cars or on the radio, it's just a dark stain of the hip-hop boom of 1990. When MC Hammer pants and Cross-Colors were the shiz, right before Ice Cube told us we could New Jack Swing from his nuts. But really, I think that Ice, Ice, Baby only exists as bad fever dreams in the minds of white kids that love '90s hip-hop, even if its video has 151 million+ plays. After all, the man himself symbolically wrecked the tape in the presence of Janeane Garofalo, Jon Stewart, Dennis Leary, and--for some reason--Chris Kattan. No offense, Chris. Just, let's be real. Your cultural relevance in 2007 was about as strong as Vanilla Ice's, and he released a Nu Metal album

Okay, mid blog-writing I ended up in a Wikipedia hole. Did you know that Vanilla Ice is a Juggalo and signed to Psychopathic Records? He's also invited to be a part of the Juggalo March on Washington come September. Miracles, yo. Water, fire, air and dirt.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if the Juggalos are the ones that truly end up healing America? But like, hilarious in the actual way where it would make you laugh so much it would drive you almost insane. It only could take a clown to make America smile again.

"Smile!"

Aside from triggering people, I watched the animated Killing Joke last night. I'm going to be vague and assume you already know about Alan Moore's The Killing Joke in hopes that if you have no clue what I'm talking about, you'll want to experience it.

The film was great without all that pointless, winking, nodding, opening hour. Like, they even open the movie by going, "oh, bet you didn't expect it to open this way." *waggle eyebrows* *winkwinknudgenudge* *smackpunchkick* *dropanvil* DID YOU GET IT YET? THIS IS ALL NEW STUFF THAT HAS NO CONNECTION TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL! And then proceeds to have a completely separate and not even worked into the narrative hour of Batgirl/Batman erotic fan-fic. Like, it wasn't unwatchable, but it really had nothing better to do than oversexualize Barbra Gordon, and reframe the Joker's actions for a less ambiguity. Regardless of the weird overly sexual and violent criminal chase, Tara Strong is just as great as ever voicing Barbra, with emotion and that bit of cocksure swagger she has. She did amazing while working with unfortunate consequences of an ill planned stitch-job onto the beginning.

Which is really weird, because the second half, the actual comic portion of the film, was perfect. Oh sweet baby jane, it was like coming home again. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill's performances were amazing, much as they have been. But Hamill's Joker now carries a whisp of age, and palookanishness, borrowed from John DiMaggio's work in Under the Red Hood. Much like the DC Animated The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke is lovingly recreated in fluid motion on the screen in an almost shot for shot translation from the recolored version. It captures the already cinematic essence of Brian Bolland's artwork, coupled with the framing of each shot. It was just as chilling and unnerving as the comic itself. The supplemental material unfortunately recontextualizes The Killing Joke into a definite statement, instead of an ambiguous one. It takes away the mystery by giving answers. Which is bullshit, because what makes the original piece so great is that, while it overtly shows one path to madness, we peak into plenty of other doors along the way. It leaves the notion of Batman as a tool of justice or a dispenser of vengeance hanging in the air, letting the reader take their own interpretation from it with what's in their hearts.

 If Bruce Timm and Brian Azzarello wanted to make that into a stand alone, I'd watch it. It was one of those things that was well done, but just kinda enforces a Running the Asylum type of feeling to Batman. At this point, the character has no true canon outside the characters and origins. Everything that happens in between is made up on the fly within a rough context of loose Batman tags. Dresses in black, rich kid whose parents were shot in Crime Alley and it made him want to fight crime, has an invincible butler named Alfred. You can fill in the logic in between depending on which comic Age you're in. But really, this was not the worst appearance of Batgirl/woman in cinematic history (thank's, Batman + Robin. Sorry, Alicia Silverstone) and anyone who says otherwise is trolling for internet points.

"It takes a real wildcard to come up with that."

I really don't know why I get so fired up about The Killing Joke. It's one of my favorite comics, and I've seen so many people pushing their team's agenda in arguments about it over the last few years. Internet comments sections are were dreams go to die.

So, aside from more Batman related actions, I'm reading back through To Slice The Sky now that it's complete. I'm really enjoying it. I know it's egotistical to praise your own work, but I just find it hard to believe that I wrote something so fun. To be fair, I pretty much wrote it to entertain myself. I'm halfway through reading, at chapter 19, and there's thankfully only one glaring plothole I wrote in at the end that I need to fix. Most of the stuff I want to fix is cosmetic to help with flow.

I've also been adding to my new story, tentatively titled Beta Test. Try saying that one aloud. No, really, go for it, I'll wait.

Done? Good job, gold star!

But, yeah, I know where I want to go with the story finally. Now, it's a matter of writing it. Though it feels like my memory has been slipping recently, even though no one around me seems to have noticed. I should probably get it down faster than I am.

I've also given myself a lot of extra work regarding releasing shorts and such. I'm looking into different Patreon strategies, granted that would require me to be consistent and think of realistic prizes. Now that I have access to better desktop publishing features, I'm spending this year trying to expand my brand and actually have people know who the hell I am and what I do.

All of this is guided by faithful readers like yourself, looking at the process before the product. I'm sure most of the clicks I get are from bots, but if there are for real people out there reading this, that I don't know personally, thank you. And for my friends that give me pity clicks, you're all winners in my book. No, really, you are. And no I won't pay you for likeness rights. I'm not even getting paid for your likeness.

So, after all that book and reading talk, here's what's going to earn all those hashtags when I share this post. When I was coming up with names for our heroes, I knew I was going to name a chapter this title. Part 3/4 of the thrilling climax of To Slice The Sky! On tonight's exciting episode: Tripping the Light Fantastic, Trip descends into the bowels of Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals Headquarters with naught but a bucket of tools and a trusty robot companion. Can he and Decker succeed in their plan of shutting down the Biodroid's hive mind? Continue on, dear reader, and find out!

dawg

"Won't you play with me...forever?"

Sad bastard music.

Look at me, leaving you hanging right at the end.

This week has been a struggle to get through, especially since it seems that everyone I come in contact with seems to find me distasteful just for being myself. Needless to say, it left me in a state where I very much didn't want to create content for something where all it contains is me. I'm sure everyone feels like they don't belong in the world, but I know not everyone takes it that hard.


So, yeah, I'm lonely, frustrated, and depressed. That's why I didn't post until Saturday after starting the year off OK and then some. I'll spare you from ranting about my first world problems of feeling unfulfilled in life while living in the largest major metropolitan county in the richest and most populated state in America, here's some good things that happened.

Soup inside

I made French Onion Soup for the first time, so that was cool. Granted, for my first time making it, I also didn't really make it, since I added in beef chunks and topped it with bacon. So good. It's definitely soup weather, since it's been raining non-stop. Not like California doesn't need it, but, I'm tired of being out in it.

I also made a Guinness beef pot pie, but I didn't take any pictures of it. It's a pie. Not much is photogenic about meat pie.

School's continuing to go well, now that the new semester has begun. My Short Stories class has been interesting so far. But, since it has over 60 students enrolled, it's not very engaging on a classwork level. I'm pretty much posting A level work to be ignored by goobs that get away with writing a paragraph generally with no depth or insight. And all the low hanging fruit pickers comment on those posts, lazy bastards. It's not like it's my grade that's going to suffer, but it's just another example of trying so hard, and getting so far, but in the end, it doesn't really matter.

"PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!"

Math has been insular, and mostly me just chugging through the daily work, trying to maintain as high a grade as possible. It's pretty much cheating, since I'm taking the lowest level of required Math, because of course my previous units didn't transfer. But being a basic college level math class, the other students attending it are pretty damn dumb. On the class forum, someone actually asked where the Roman numeral keys were on a keyboard. If you're also currently wondering that, there's no hope for you.

I'm already on week 3/8 for this session, and all I want is for it to be over. I want this year to be over to move on with the next one. Just hoping I can maintain my schedule of actually graduating by end of year.

My fiancée and I have officially begun wedding planning. My responsibility is looking for a DJ and catering, and all things entertainmentwise. So it's my job to make sure a party half in my honor is fun for everyone else who attends. What kind of twisted world do we live in where this has become an expected tradition? We haven't even gotten close to the nitty gritty of planning and already I'm longing for the days when marriage was little more than contract negotiations with a ceremony paid for by the father of the bride. I say nuts to this modern liberated woman business and saddle me up with 3 fatted calves and a parcel of land. If you've ever wondered why boorish and outdated modes of thought are still prevalent to this day, it's because the alternative takes too much work.

If you're confused how I can talk about being lonely when I'm also prepping to be married, let me quote OKGO's song, "The House Wins": You don't have to be alone to be lonely.

And in the best news, which will segue into our next part, I'm officially done with my draft of To Slice The Sky. Yay! 🎉🎊🎈

Now that I'm done with the novel for my second time, I'm currently giving it a read through and seeing what needs to be tightened up and fixed. The beginning needs a bit of work to catch up with the end, but it's all manageable. I was pretty surprised that it jumped in word count instead of shrinking with all the cutting I've done. There's entire chapters that were excised and changed, and whole swatches of useless first draft junk removed.

Today's chapter for TSTS picks up on Decker's side of the plan to deal with all of our problems with New America. While Trip is infiltrating Roplaxive's east coast servers, Decker is on the side of the country where the actual fighting of the clone rebellion is taking place. There, he's tasked with making sure that Gene Works Inc.'s rogue AI gets shut down before its infection spreads beyond the neuronet and into the real world. So here's part 2/4 of our climax. I posted it on New Years Eve on reddit to try and be all symbolic since the whole plan takes place on New Years Eve. However, because of that, or because this chapter sucks, or because the new title I gave it is dumb, it was wholly ignored. So... have fun!

Fat dog.

"I'm not fat. I'm just drawn that way."

Never stopping pill popping

Nobody likes a barking dog. I say that all the time to my dog, and yet he still barks. It's a good thing he's cute.

"Bark, bark."

It's a new week, and I've got a chapter to share, since all I'm doing otherwise is waiting for dinner to finish cooking while I'm watching Top Chef. How lucky for you.

Tomorrow starts my next semester in school, and I feel like I have to ramp myself back up into scholastic mode. I'm basically getting a math credit with the easiest class I possibly could, and taking a short story literature class. It would be more fun if it was a writing class, but apparently writing stories is only in workshop classes. So, I'm going to be spending more time reading for class than reading for enjoyment, which seems to be a thing that I only do on the bus or on my breaks at work anymore.

I'm about a third into Kim Stanley Robinson's second part of the Mars Trilogy, Green Mars, and it's been slow going. Those books are dense as hell, and an awful lot of reading scientific approximations of terraforming Mars, but they're fun and engaging adventures with a strong humanistic bend to it. I really should spend a day and just read, but there's so many other things to do and experience. And I easily get distracted by pretty pictures and petty arguments.

My week hasn't been very exciting. Finished Mass Effect 1 and am just past disc 1 on Mass Effect 2.

 I've also been playing DOOM 2016, and enjoying brutalizing the legions of hell with chainsaws and shotguns.

I've upgraded to videos over screen shots since for some reason my Xbox isn't cooperating with OneDrive on screens. At least I hope I have. We'll find out when this posts if the embedding works. I could just preview this entry, but I prefer the suspense, don't you? No? Well too bad!

I've also been back to playing Civ. I still haven't bought 6, since I don't feel like buying another game to lose myself in at the moment. I just got Final Fantasy XV, and while I'm beyond excited to finally play a new Final Fantasy title, I'm holding it off until I finish the last chapter in To Slice The Sky. Why am I replaying Mass Effect, stomping through DOOM, and pretending to be the British Empire if they started out in Alaska/West Canada (which is going rather poorly)? Because I like making excuses to stop myself from doing things I want to in the face of what I should do.

Also, I'm kinda scared to crack into XV, despite everywhere I've read saying it's a keen piece of work. I was mixed on FFXIII (the combat was great, but everything else sucked), and missed out on XIV: A Realm Reborn since I don't do MMORPG's anymore, so I'm anxious as well as guarded for diving back into the series. I haven't had any issues with the main entries into the series outside of XIII, and X-2 was... well, it was a game with a lot of ideas that were better utilized elsewhere, but those were enough to give me pause, but Square-Enix has been going out of their way to publish excellent games so I'm still quite excited to play XV. I don't imagine that it'll outmaneuver VI as my favorite in the series, but I'm looking forward to playing around with Chocobos and spamming Ultima.

But speaking of To Slice The Sky, today's post is part 1/4 for our final heist. Trip's solo adventure back in Ocean City to shut down Roplaxive-Pharrel's east coast servers. I don't have much to set this up with, and it was well received so far. Welcome to the beginning of the end.

Dog Pic 2: Electric Boogaloo

"We're going on an adventure!"

The Revolution Will Be Compromised

I joked about a new Monday time slot, but, hey, third time's the charm.

I've been spending my free time sleeping, watching Top Chef, or playing Mass Effect. I just finished up another chapter on New Years Eve, and have been taking the last couple days to chill on the writing front. We'll see if I spend my time wisely tomorrow.

I have plenty of chapter work left to give, and I plan on hitting out the last two chapters of the novel before the end of the month. So, here's a dip into more serious turf after all the breeziness of the last couple chapters. Not to say that this chapter doesn't have its lighter moments, but this is the first look of the actual rebel clones that have taken up the background of this story.

The fighting is much more prevalent on the west coast than in Ocean City, where it was more of an underground movement localized in a ghetto. But now we're in full blown fighting in the streets, hit and run guerrilla tactics and trying to capture how a movement sprung from whispers in the dark. This chapter is a pay off of chapter 3's news reports of clones setting themselves on fire in protest, and a little more light gets shed on the rebellion at large that our Clonetown group has been trekking across new America to join.

Today's chapter actually almost catches us up to where I am in the rewrite progress, which means that it's also quite close to the end. We've got 5 more chapters to go before this whole preview experiment comes to a close.

It's weird thinking about how long this novel's taken to even get to this point. This whole deal started as a blurb in my notebook back in 2010 after I had a dream. I was living in apartment 211 at the inspiration for Das Komplex and I woke up alone that morning. Trying to hold onto all that I could from the dream, I opened my notebook to the first blank spot I could find and jotted down the basic premise at the core of the story. Essentially a barista hacker saving his best friend from a super mega corp. Over the years more inspirations and pieces fell into place. The clone rebellion started as a conversation over breakfast about cloned actors reshooting classic films for holovision. That added the clone angle, which isn't really a cyberpunk trope, but it's in Neuromancer. The name+number convention that I use for Brawl17 was inspired by 3Jane. I felt the number before the name didn't flow as well as the number after.

But from that dream it turned into an outline, into a first draft, and now we're here. It took six years, and we're almost at the end. It could have taken much less time, but hey, it's about the journey, not the destination, right? Whatever, I've rambled enough. Here comes the chapter. DOG!

Trading Places

Not much to talk too much, just here to give you content.

Welcome to this foul year of our lord 2017. Now I'm glad I never said I was releasing my novel in 2016, but damn, I was supposed to have released something.

I got the best rejection letter back for my piece Suicide Queen. It was deemed more poem than short story, due to my delivery and the loose narrative. That's probably the best way I could have been let down, and the first time I've actually gotten feedback from a publication, so I think that means I'm advancing in my career.

No beating around the bush, let's get down to chaptering and science fiction fun! And I mean that. This chapter started out as sort of meandering and weighty and dark night of the soul. But this is a little closer to what I wanted it to be when I wrote it. Basically when we were editing the manuscript, I just wrote at the top of this chapter, "Complete rewrite". So all but a few lines are completely gone.

Happy new year, dog.

Internet Archiving and You - The Necessary Job of Our Future To Make Today Matter

Hello world and internet archivists of the future (by me recognizing your profession, you have to save this blog's contest in the future. That's the rule here in the past. It's true, look it up. First link you'll find is this blog. Citationed). Welcome to another posting in our new weekly time slot of Monday. Maybe. Who knows. I'm trying to get myself to blog just to blog. Not really attach a day on it.

If you just randomly clicked on a link somewhere and you ended up here, and now you're all compelled because I'm talking about internet archivists and such, let me tell ya a little something about me. I tend to not do well with structure, and really prefer to do things when I do them within my ever so endless checklist of wants and needs. I have the feeling that I have an obligation to do things, and I blame it on being allowed to put things in archival lists and queues. It was just steamsale, man. I have like ten more games to play now, and I want to try and rebuild the heavy metal theme park my buddy & I built back in the day on Roller Coaster Tycoon. Why are you trying to deny me that? Anyway...

You would think that expressing myself to a potential audience as a voice shouting in the crowd would give me more drive to actually do it, but man, I got other stuff going on just like you. I have to actually do all the stuff I talk about in order to talk about it. Lest someone call me out about it in the comments one day and go, "Yo that shit's lies, man. Ya dindo shit lolfag" and then I'm the one who's the asshole. No thanks.

But to quote Stan Lee in Kevin Smith's overstated commercial flop and understated cult hit, Mallrats, "You keep reading them, I'll keep writing them."

And more refers to stinkpalms.

So, yeah, Holidays and flash flood warnings, and playing Mass Effect, and trying to find a copy of Christmas Vacation and having to settle on the edited for basic cable where they abuse the hell out of saying non-defecation, "shit," but heaven forbid you let grandpa drop that he drank to deal with Christmas going to hell. I don't really feel like going on a censorship rant for no reason, but the mood may hit me.

Habenero Hot Sauce Tamale Shooters - only @ Black Angus

I made tamales with my family. AND for my first time ever, hot sauce, from my bongwater grown habaneros. We've got the beginnings of a Mexican restaurant from the amount of friends and family asking for some, so that's cool. Ended up with 16 or so dozen out of 75lbs of masa. We ended up doing a number of variations with the fillings. That is to say, when I took over stuffing, I mixed it up with all of the ingredients and stopped being as stingy as my sisters with the filling. My mom & I had a spirited back and forth about spreading masa. She's all into the glop it on and spread method, and I'm all about the nice even layer. I feel the superior tamales were shown in the final taste test. You know what the best part of masa is? The thin little bits that get stuck on the hoja that are all crispy. All I gotta say.

In the hot sauce department, it was cool making something out of a plant that grew by complete accident. Inspiration hit in thanks to catching up on Pretty Good Cooking. As luck would have it, the latest episode at the time was Habanero Hot Sauce. My only deviation from Phil's recipe is I added garlic, substituted lemon juice for lime, and in my final blend, I added cilantro. I feel that really boosted the flavor of it, while giving it a nice look in the bottle. Your food should always be pretty. Picture up above notwithstanding.

Present Day

So, yeah, that's what my week was full of. And serving coffee too early in the day and trying to slang words by night. Still waiting for responses back on all of my pieces. The waiting game sucks. Just silent indifference after an autoreply@donotrespond. But it gives you the opportunity to futz about with other things, as you nervously edit everything down by self doubt, and because you realize that rough drafts are way too unimaginative and stale.

I mentioned last week I have a lot of chapters done already that I haven't posted, so today's ramble about antique computer games and a potentially current discipline within the social sciences that will preserve internet history for as far as evolutionary life will allow us to spread the past knowledge of the internet, our diligent internet archivists, leads us to one of those chapters. Those stream of consciousness, mid sentence asides, are exactly what you came for. Same with meta, fourth wall breaking nods to an audience that was never really there. That one was for the internet archivists of the future that know when I finally abandon this site. I'm really swinging for the fences in this one.

Which is just silly because the chapter today is also silly. We met Trip's trainwreck of a mother back in what was at one point chapter 9 (my novel is going through metamorphosis) and now in, for continuity's sake, chapter 21 we meet Decker's. This chapter is light and airy and still needs some work, but it's meant to be a breather chapter before everything gets all serious (well, as serious as it could be).

Decker's mother is sort of an amalgam of my Grandmother and my mother. As well as how my far more latino friends were treated by their mothers. That on and off switch of, "I love my sweet Angel, even if he is a worthless troublemaker," is what I tried to capture. I really need to work on my Spanish in between classes. Would my audience grow if I switched languages?

Is the English speaking world tired of me already? Am I over conflating the dynamics of grassroots marketing with a lazy and self-driven exploratory energy to make myself seem like, to an internet archivist of the future, on the cusp of my game, ready for a breakthrough? Probably.

I always imagined releasing this novel when I was first outlining it. I couldn't keep up with the schedule of that, so this has worked for me so far. I have until, what, February or something for it to be a year of me posting chapters? Lazily at that? I wanted to release a book online then package it at the end, and when I think about it, that's exactly what I've been doing. I thought of it more along the lines of me releasing chunks of chapters, and adding in notes and such in hyperlink, like above, to hilight where certain ideas were pulled from, in order to give a better understanding and more tangible world to the text. Since this is my first time doing something like this, it's pretty unpolished, and sorta slapdash put together since I'm learning on the fly, but like I said up at the top, I do things at my own pace and be real about it.

And that pace has ramped up to give you the chapter I've been hyping up as if to overconflate its value as a pet scene. How you feel about it may vary, but here's my pet dog in his Christmas cape.

Source: Internet Archive Photo - Dogs in clothes

Not Entirely Sure What A Constable Is

Hello dear readers. Welcome to our idiosyncratic routine of blog posting.

Man, I was really baked when I wrote that last post. So many sentence fragments that go nowhere. I should probably edit it, but, meh. Too much work. I'll just sound like a disjointed idiot forever in the digital ether.

But yes, I'm brimming with content from not only my month of NaNoWriMo (where I hit my word goal for the month, yet haven't finished Suicide Queen) and the last few weeks of hyper productivity. Because in the middle of last month (a little over exactly a month ago) I got laid off from my office job in thanks to the parent company "cleaning house" after the buyout finalized.

So, I'm fairly bitter about that. I'm also working back as a barista again while looking for writing work and looking down the barrel of my senior year at ASU starting up early January. Barely hung in with a B for Spanish 102. Barely. Still have to take 201 & 202 in the near future. Taking care of my Math requirement, and have to take another science class/lab (not sure which discipline to take yet. Probably Chem, since I've never taken it before) as well as a slew of upper division English courses. I'll be applying for their Media Studies masters program at the end of the year as well. Yay for increasing student loan debt with degrees that sound highfalutin.

Hip-hip-HOORAY

In my time of being unemployed, I got plenty of gaming done as well as writing. I blasted through quite a few First Person Shooters from yesteryear. Quake, DOOM 2, Half-Life (full life consequences), & Halo: Combat Evolved. I played through Deus Ex:Mankind Divided, and plan on giving the PS2 version of the original a whirl. After playing the PS2 version of Half-Life, I regret downgrading myself graphically and sticking to the DualShock 2 controller for Deus Ex. Especially since I could probably pick them up on steam for hella cheap and play it on max settings. Eh, whatever. At least it gives my PS2 something to do besides gather dust in my living room.

I'm a little burnt out on playing games in first person perspective, so I finally played Alan Wake for my first time. Hot damn, that was a game about a writer writing his way out of something. It was a fun ride, and I'd recommend it if you like survival horror games. It's not entirely survival horrorish, but it made me think of a lost Silent Hill game, heavily influenced by David Lynch and Stephen King. I also realized I own a slapdash Alan Wake costume out of different articles of clothing I own.

Not the cover.

So in reference to getting some writing work done, I'm shopping another round of shorts to see if anyone wants to publish my work. I'm remaining optimistic, but I'm thinking about just saying fuck it and start self pubbing my shorts as "singles" for $.99 a piece, then collecting them after the fact. Now that I have Scrivner to start making epubs in an easy manner, I'm more inclined to start getting more titles under my name. As of right now, it comes down to another load of work to do, which is tough to tack on when I'm in the middle of a big project I need to get done.

And what project is that? To Slice The Sky!

My good friend/editor/collaborator and I finished hacking apart the manuscript in its entirety. And I'm now working on new draft chapters for the final stage of the story. So, if I continue to blog at a less disjointed and more on time manner, you'll see them all. If I can keep myself motivated (which is a stretch), I might even be done with the novel by the time we catch up with what I have.

I've also been listening to a lot of outrun and played through Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. It was exactly what I needed at the time. In the midst of all these things, I began working on a new short that is very outrun in its feel of futuristic loneliness, on top of fitting nicely into the series. Roplaxive Pharmaceuticals infects patient zero with a graybox virus to use them as a guinea pig. They send him to a corporate hospital retreat in Singapore where everything goes wrong. It came from a long night and morning of dreaming and half-awake visualization. I've got the first page and the set up done. It's going to be a short, and I really want to keep it below 6000 words, but I'm feeling like I need to take them through the streets of Hong Kong or something.

So, that's it for housekeeping. Let's get down to some gritty science fiction action. Dog.

Blood & Tears - A Slayer's Life by Buffy Ann Summers

Let's gloss over supplication over a lapse in blogging. We all know life sucks and shit happens. Let's do this.

So I think it's time to write about Buffy. It's been damn too long, and I'm finally getting back to stalled out watching, all because I was last on "Killed by Death" which is totally a monster of the week, but has some great moments that work in the mythology of the series. So now I'm on, "I Only Have Eyes for You," which is just great horror writing with heart and depth. So now it's time to finally drop some Buffy love.

You know why? Because I'm sick of being pissed off by everything on the internet and I feel like writing about something I love. Obvious Spoiler Alert ahead for the whole show.

Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the greatest cultural touch stones in the world, and most people don't even know it. It takes the completely ridiculous premise of a cheerleader blonde SoCal girl slaying vampires, demons, and the legions of the undead and makes it the most engaging thing to be on an up and coming tv station with a teenage demographic at prime time. Buffy stands tall in story telling, paying homage to the medium of television as well as being a mishmash of genres.

The series hallmark is its ability to dip in and out of any contrivance and novelty with pure fluidity. It's allowed to go from a tear jerking death right into whimsical or outright silly within a line. I'm trying to keep it strictly to season 2 but it does it during the entire run of the series. And it does as much with a television budget as one can be asked. The '90s truly were an era of incredible television CG. It is stronger for its idiosyncrasies opposed to hampered by inconsistency because it maintains to be consistently likable.

Season 2 is where the show grows its fangs. It plays with being a campy monster of the week while each time chipping away at an overarching narrative in the B and sometimes C plots. The show's team tackled a lot in a one-hour time slot on the WB's New Tuesday, and right off the bat, we're shown what dying for the first time does to Buffy Summers. It then goes on to a deeper understanding of Angel, having both died in the same manner, and ramps up their romance and rivalry into intense metaphors that are layered and nuanced in thanks to a creative team that paid homage as it laid new ground.

The main cast also helps bring it home and delivers such powerful performances at the right moments, and are able to just nail a line. Quite a few of season 2's plentiful whatever'sville episodes, like in between When She was Bad till Halloween. It's in the background of these camp-fests meant to make you laugh, the bubbling darkness of the real story. Sandwiched between an episode about teenage boys reanimating a collection of fresh female bodies to build a girlfriend for one of their reanimated brother, and a Xander episode about a soul sucking mummy that seems to try and recreate the magic of Season 1's The Pack, but falls pretty short, we get introduced to Season 2's part A villains, Spike & Drusilla. Our punk mate, Spike, and his Lolita Gothic Vampire-Princess, Drusilla.

School Hard is the first time that Buffy's mom, Joyce Summers, encounters Buffy in her element. It's the metaphor of her world's clashing, juggling her three responsibilities of home, school & slaying. The interplay between her authority figures of her mother, Giles & Principal Snyder that would be the line Buffy continues to walk. Much like the line of Comedy, Horror & Teen Drama the show nimbly walked the intermingling of the supernatural encroaching upon the daily life of Sunnydale. Particularly in episodes like Lie To Me, where Buffy's old crush moves to Sunnydale to convince vampires to change him. It guest starred that weird looking dude who was '90s hot from Roswell. I don't feel like looking up his name.

That's what helped everything move so great in Season 2. Buffy trying to have a normal life as a sixteen year old girl, while she slays vampires is a theme that grows up during the show, but kinda goes away then comes back again, and always with consequences. Everything is over heightened by her being a teenager, only to have the responsibility of playing The Chosen One to fight back the Hellmouth. That theme culminates in the end of Season A with What's My Line parts 1 & 2.

The two parter throws the first issue where Buffy feels like running from it, as well as placing her relationship with Angel as a priority in his life. It plays very strongly on the relationship theme where everyone paired up in Season 2. And these relationships, Buffy/Angle, Xander/Cordelia, Giles/Jenny, and the ever romantic, but never OTP, Willow/Oz, are just set ups for your happiness to then rip out your heart. It leaves us with Drusilla  returned to strength, and becomes Goth Queen with visions, while Spike ends up in a wheelchair.

We come back to the show with a John Ritter guest appearance in Ted, which shifts the story back into Buffy's home, illustrating that even her mom can't live a normal life independent of Buffy. Ted wasn't built by a villainous trio of mad scientists, nor a constructed body by an ancient corruption demon. Ted was the robot of a genius who also was obsessed with his wife to the point he built an android to keep marrying women to play out a fantasy life until they died. Willow says at the end of the episode that the police found a lot of bodies in the closet, so who knows what went on in the backstory there. But it's amazing how it happened in Sunnydale. What are the odds that someone who looked enough like Ted's ex wife would move to Sunnydale with enough frequency? Or would he hunt them down? Is it just blonde women, or any woman with wavy blonde hair and high cheek bones? There's a lot of unanswered questions in Ted.

Bad Eggs follows that question mark with a good ole body-snatcher story coupled with Buffy and Angle arguing about how they'll never be able to breed. It's a ridiculous episode featuring the first appearance of the Gorch Bros. I guess someone on the team just really wanted a couple of bumbling cowboy vampires on the show. But Buffy and Angle's relationship becomes more troubled as they talk out the difficulties of mating on top of the fact that Buffy's one job is to slay vampires, and just because Angle is good looking and has a soul, he gets a pass.

And that leads us to our mid act 2 reveal for season 2. Surprise has Buffy's 16th birthday, and to "Answer the question, 'What do you get the Slayer who has everything?'" Apparently she gets a severed arm of a big bad unkillable demon named The Judge. After his assembly and attack on Buffy and Angel directed by Spike and Drusilla, B&A have to run for their lives. In their brief respite, Buffy and Angel have the most tastefully cut night of romance and passion, leaving us instead on badass cliffhanger.

Innocence sees Buffy blossoming into womanhood after her deflowering. She has to reject and overcome the immediate feelings of having sex for the first time with her true teenage love who turns out to be the epitome of your sworn enemy. She has to grow up in that moment, because the childish thing would be to curl up and cry about how sad she is about it. Instead she rises to the occasion and kicks Angelus square in his evil vampire nards.

The next milestone of episodes after we find out Oz is a werewolf (and the only appearance of a. werewolf poachers and b. Wolf looking animatronic snout werewolves.) and a valentines episode that leads into an everybody loves Xander silly chase (also Buffy rats) is Passions. Passions shows Angel as his Angelus self in all the twisted glory the show can rain on one character. All of Angel's post-coital interactions are used to emotionally damage Buffy, leading up to the first truly Joss Whedon kill placed into the world.

Jenny Calendar was the first Agent Coleson, though Jenny stayed dead. She's one of those deaths where you don't really see how important she was to the core, and how likable she was. Never get attached to anyone who's whimsically likable in a Mutant Enemy Production. Ms. Calendar, Phil Coleson, Wash... never again. For being the kinda blossoming girlfriend of Rupert Giles, the effects of her death ripple through all of the Scooby Gang, from Willow taking over her class, to Giles being so taken aback and trying to ignore the loss of someone who challenged him romantically as an equal, Xander seeing it as a turning point to where Angel needs to die for what he did, and Buffy finally seeing the consequences of her one night of losing herself to passion.

But Buffy carries that weight. Even when she runs away, which is her number one answer for the first few seasons. When trouble rears its head, Buffy flees. In Prophecy Girl, she threatens to quit slaying when she finds out The Master will kill her. The beginning and end of the season is Buffy figuratively running away from her friends and attempting to isolate herself. While the first time she's trying to run away from memories of her own death, at the end of Becoming part 1 & 2, she's literally running away from her shattered life of expulsion from home and school, and the dissolution of her relationship with Angel... by killing him.

Before we close out the season, there's an episode that would be otherwise known as the, "DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME BITCH!" episode if it wasn't so powerful and emotionally charged. I Only Have Eyes For You takes a monster of the week as a framing method to get Angel and Buffy in the room to say the things that they wanted to say to each other while possessed by poltergeists. It makes the two-part season finale even more powerful when it comes time for her to save the world from being sucked into hell.

The final moments of season two's climactic battle between Buffy and Angel comes to a halt once Willow completes the gypsy curse to restore his soul. Angel and Buffy's tender moment of pure, unadulterated, love holds with soft piano music as the portal into a hell dimension opened by Angel's blood appears behind his back, with only his blood to close it again. Choosing the world to her love like a dutiful slayer, Buffy kills the newly good and completely reformed Angel as she feeds his blood to the portal on the length of a sword.

Season 2 was a lot of things, and many of them happened all at once. The final word in vampire romance, a meditation on the power and position of women, and action mingled with tears. It proves that the quirky introduction from the mid-season replacement last season has enough emotional weight and engaging story hooks to make it a prime time slot holder. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has its cheesy moments, but they're around nuggets of true televised wonder.

Fist fights with God

Hey cats & kittens. So I actually promised I'd post Sunday and here I am. This is also the last amount of prepared chapter rewrites I have to share with you. I'm currently working on chapter 20 of To Slice The Sky, and I'm about halfway done. I thankfully don't have much in the way of work getting in my way.

To preface tonight's selection, it's the official meeting of the novel's, "Big Bad," that's made some physical appearances in The Raw prior to this meeting. It so far has not been popular in regard to content, and I definitely kinda slacked in tying things together well. I more wanted to be done and get over with the chapter, and I feel it suffered for it. I'll have to go back over this and give it a little smoother transition and more of an ominous tone. I feel I breezed over this important moment, and I've been wanting it to really pop and shine. I mostly wanted to just get it over with because this chapter has been what's hung me up 2 years in a row from completing this project and it just needs to be done. I'm planning on one more pass before it goes off to the editor anyway, so I'll tighten it up then.

I'm just excited that the end is finally in sight, and the look of it is way different than how it started. You've been enjoying yourselves, right? For my beta readers that know what the rough draft looks like, I imagine it's a vast improvement.

In other writing project ideas, my NaNoWriMo book, Suicide Queen, has been coming together in my notes. I've got a good idea of the direction I want to go, but it seems very subdued for the genre it's going to be. It'll come out differently in the mix, and I'll have to work not to impede myself. It's weird that writing a story really is helping to create a living, breathing, thing, and watching it outgrow your own weak aspirations.

I've never gotten the people so timid to get started writing because they don't have a good enough idea. It's not about having a super original idea, it's about just having an idea. There's so many different forms of storytelling out there that as long as you tell it in your voice, that's all that matters. To quote Neil Gaiman's Sandman, "Trust the story, not the teller." The story is always going to be there at the core, but the changes are with the person that tells it.

I've always loved sitting around a table, trading stories, especially ones that involve more than one person in the circle. Tag teaming stories, trading off different perspectives all Rashomon style, the inevitable, "You're telling it wrong." I live for that stuff. Humans share stories and that's how we pass on the wisdom we've gained.

Well, enough beating myself off about writing stuff, here's a completed chapter that needs more work but has still been hit with the rewrite train.

DOG!

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Dude, I would have like three times as many posts on this blog if I posted consistently.

So, what's up neglected yet faithful readers? I have a couple chapters that I want to share still, and I really want to hold myself accountable to post on Sunday again. It's not like I'm doing anything with my time on Sunday anyway. Well, nothing that requires me to not be at a computer.

I've been unenthused to write just out of being exhausted for no reason whatsoever. It's not like I have kids to sap my energy, but working in an office and doing classwork has been leaving me with a strong desire to just switch off my mind, relax, and float down stream.

The downside is that it doesn't afford me much creative juice to forge on ahead in the novel this close to the end. But I'm still determined to have Version 2.0 complete by the end of the year. NaNoWriMo is going to be a serious obstacle, and I'm also feeling worried going into the challenge if I'm going to be successful at it.

So, I'm just going to dive right in. I believe we're on chapter 18 now. Beginning Act 3. The heroes are returning home to cross the final thresholds into manhood. And threshold they meet.

This hasn't won many upvotes, so the chapter probably still needs some work. It was largely unchanged from its original version, and still seems contextually relevant, even though it was inspired by Occupy Wall Street and the suppression of the movement. Especially since the movement is looked at as a failure, opposed to the silencing of the voice of the people, and the turning of the American people against each other again.The heavy handed metaphor of a corporate sponsored rebellion of the slave class that permeates the novel? That's what it was inspired by.

That's another reason why I've been silent for the week. I'm so burnt out on people talking politics everywhere I turn. Especially the partisan answers and how fucking smug everyone's been about it. I worry and fret over the results of this election, because seriously, the damage is going to be great. We're going to be stuck with a tepid fraud or a delusional megalomaniac. I mean, that's not really that different than any other nation's choice, but America has done a pretty decent job of not electing tyrants up to this point. Your feelings on the subject may change depending on if you believe Johnny Booth or Spielberg.

Whatever, we're far beyond the point of voting. A definite line has been crossed in American history at some point, and unfortunately it's as crass as the gang wars of the '90s, all about Red vs. Blue. Once again our eyes are off the real enemies. The slaves fight among themselves to their master's delight. Because at the end of this fight, unless we look at who benefits from everyone salivating at the mouth to lash out at someone who is out of line with their groupthink, we'll end up back in the same old rut.

See, this is why I didn't want to blog.

Just glossing right over it

So here's my dilemma. I finished rewrites on two chapters for To Slice The Sky, and now that I have a moment in between school sessions, I want to blog at least more than a week in a row. So, do I milk out content in a cheap manner over multiple weeks, or do I shove it all down your throat and make it so I have something new for next week?

Well, since you really have no say in this, outside of whether or not you're going to continue reading this blog again, I think I'm going to go for option 1. And hey, what's up gang? Haven't seen you in a while. What has it been, like 28 days? A lunar cycle? Really? Wonderful news!

I just finished session A for my fall semester. Session B is going to run halfway through November, and into NaNoWriMo. I'm all ripped and raring to get started, working on my crime/heist/noir deconstruction, Suicide Queen. It'll be fun writing a story about a trio of outlaws in a Sin City-esque manner. I haven't done an extended Noir piece, but I've always been a disciple of Chandler.

The only thing really on my mind has been politics, but such is life during an election year. This isn't a place for me to indoctrinate you into the reason why anarchy works as a sustainable method, but like any other form of governance runs afoul because of its mitigation through humans. But let's just say, if you're a red or blue, we should be uniting over the fact we're pissed this country is fucked up, and the sides we're yelling at aren't to blame. And that's the most political I'm going to get.

I did a lotta stuff in the last month, and going over it would take a long time, soooo... DOG PICTURE AND STORY TIME!

Ladder to Heaven

Oh shi... waddup?

Taking a break from my 9/11 festivities of playing Civilization and watching Amazing Race reruns on Hulu.

This week blew by but was a whirlwind of stress, frustration, and a heavy workload. Regardless, I still managed to get started on chapter 18 for To Slice The Sky. Nothing substantial, but at least I can cut out the parts I know I don't need, or have changed too much to work as is. It seems to always take me about a year to get up to this point, and all I've done this year is work on the novel in my free time, the small bit that it is.

For class, I'm currently reading Philip K Dick's Martian Time-Slip. I've gotten a little over halfway through it so far and have been enjoying it immensely. It's another mind-bending study on psychology and humanity's future, as well as the ripples death causes through people's lives. It's a very fast read as well,

Last night I watched Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 action masterpiece, Point Break. It was awesome as per usual. I'm fairly certain that Point Break is the greatest action movie ever. For real. Die Hard and Commando aside, Point Break is top to bottom a well put together, gripping thrill ride. And it was most likely the last time Gary Busy acted like a human on film.

Well, I don't have anything to offer for this week. Unless you want to see a bunch of pictures of me taking back America on 9/11.

Coming across the waters

The invasion begins

Splitting the atom

Irradiated wasteland blues.

See ya next week.