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.

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."

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.

Excuses to day drink and start fires

What is up my D-O-G-E's? How does you this Labor Dabor?

Blah blah, sorry missed last week, and this is a day late, blah.

Trust me, not much was missed by me not checking in. Just busy days at work, and busier times at night, learning Español and finishing up The Martian Chronicles. I also finished writing the next chapter for To Slice The Sky. It seems like Act II has mostly been revisions and full on rewrites to accommodate a slumping mid-section that didn't really rise action, and sort of meandered about without much direction.

It's been a pretty mixed bag of emotions doing rewrites for this draft of the novel. Here we are staring down at the last quarter of the year, and I'm 1 chapter away from closing up Act II. Granted, everything for the novel flows considerably better, and should just need a proofreading and slight tune-up around the newer additions to get everything uniform. So I'm sort of exasperated with myself for not being further along in the process, and that I've done such huge sweeping changes on things that weren't working. But on the bright side, I'm also realizing that since I began the outline back in Summer of 2011 that I've thankfully become a better writer during that period and can discern that what I had at first was crap, and now I'm able to craft much more coherent narratives. At least I think I can. You're more of a judge of that than I am.

I've also decided that for the omnibus version release of The Lilim Chronicles wave 1, I'm going to have to go back and do one last retouch on By Starlight as well as Urban Legends of the Future. For the release, not only will I be editing the two collections, but also making some needed changes to make the world more cohesive. They'll be getting new--unifying--covers, and I'll be rebranding myself as well.

I've been working on a writing assignment for my Spanish class, and my original topic was going to focus on Latino/a science fiction authors. I came across two major problems, 1) I needed articles in Spanish, and everything I found on the topic was in English. & 2) Every article was pretty much a repeat of, "Where are all the Latino/a science fiction authors?" A quick look at the name at the top of this website, or the name above the link you clicked to get here, probably has you wondering, "What the hell does that have to do with you, gringo?" Well, my father's European surname and Western naming conventions aside, I'm Mexican from my mother's side. I specifically made my character Decker Mexican-American because pretty much the only Latina character I've had to look up to in Science Fiction is Vasquez from Aliens, and while externally I'm a blue-eyed, lightly tanned, whiteboy I grew up with my mom's family in Los Angeles.

In my writing, I've wanted to express a lot of my frustration with being trapped between two worlds as a mixed race person in America, and try to write a lot about conflicting dichotomies, and while it's all well and good, I don't feel that my voice does anyone anywhere much justice coming from another white guy trying to tell everyone how to live. That, and my current pen name is clunky as hell, and being called, "Chris-py" my whole life is pretty old after thirty+ years. So after two paragraphs of justification, with the re-release of my wave one books, I'm going to be changing my pen name across the internet, borrowing my mother's maiden name. So, my book making moniker will be Christopher Fernandez going forth. Doesn't that just flow so much better? Say it out loud with an accent: Christopher Fernandez. ¡Muy picante!

Reconnecting to a culture that got lost in pre-civil rights era American white washing has been a thing in my adult life that I've tried to achieve, and along with learning Spanish like my aunts/uncles/mom never did, this is just one more link in that chain. Not like I'm planning on changing my actual name, but as far as pen names go, Bollweg just ain't sexy. Which is probably one of many reasons I've never heard it used during intimacy.

Aside from moral queries into what is and isn't cultural appropriation, I finished reading Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Man, what a fantastic read. It definitely is a collection that builds upon itself and got way better with each passing story. In particular, I really loved the chapters Usher II (where a former English professor builds Poe's House of Usher on Mars, inviting all the moral watchdogs from Earth on a deadly tour through it), the highly reprinted, "There Will Come Soft Rains," (a story of an automated house when there's no more humans to automate for) and the final story, "The Million-Year Picnic". For being such a fan of poetry, I'm really surprised I wasn't ever as enthralled with the lyric delivery of Bradbury's prose back in high school. It's so flowing and evocative that pages disappeared before my eyes before I realized, "Oh, shit. I was so wrapped up in the flow, I don't know what I'm reading about." And going back, realizing all these beautiful words I'd read were about such bleak and alienating topics.

Even if the science has harshly shown everything about The Martian Chronicles to be a Space Opera fever dream from 1950, the biting satire on Cold War American life, and the destructive tendencies of well meaning Americans when faced with the consequences of our cultural lifestyle, is as fresh as it was 66 years ago. Yeah, sixty-six damn years, and we still haven't learned a damn thing, and are possibly on the verge of making all the same mistakes we've been warned about for over half a century. It's things like that that make me wonder if everything I wrote about representing the Latino-American science fiction writing population is a waste since clearly humanity has learned jack and shit from reading SciFi over the years.

But at least we have smart phones now.

Well, without further ado, here's chapter 16 from To Slice The Sky. Dog:

Take Meta Mars

I almost didn't blog this week. You know, like last week. But I have a lot of good reasons that don't involve wasting my time playing Civilization. Well, I did that, but I finally finished my chapter, did a ton of school work, fought with financial aid, had a busy work week, and am now sitting here with my dog, ready for the attack of the blog.

So yeah, in a nut shell, I went to work and got prepped for the starting of the fall semester. I'm currently halfway through Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. I first read it half-assed when everyone else was reading along to Huck Finn in English class. I didn't really enjoy it the first time around, but I also didn't really understand McCarthyism, nor did I really pay it much attention since I had to periodically pretend that I was paying attention. Now that I'm reading it with a contemporary mind aged about 18 years, I'm noticing more to it. Also, I've never really been too stoked on Bradbury from any of the other books I've read from him (Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, & Dandelion Wine) but something about this book this time around, I'm enjoying the poetry of Ray's prose. While it seems dated in some regards, particularly the romantic Mars of H.G. Wells and E.R. Burroughs, and the pre-space race knowledge of what it was like traveling to outer space, the novel has a certain charm, mingled with a 1950's paranoia and sense of blind optimism.

I don't care who you are, that's a sweet cover.

A Princess of Mars was quite a pulpy and overly dated adventure. Not like I could expect more from Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, but despite its shortcomings by contemporary standards, it still has plenty of things that awoke that boyhood spirit of adventure in me. Even if at it's heart it's a story about a Mary Sue former Confederate officer that basically wins everything on Mars by fortune and force of will. He teaches savage warlords how to love, he rises to the top of the civilized and technologically advanced army in one battle, he ends a bloody civil war, and beds the most beautiful and beloved princess on the red planet. All in a days work for our hero, John Carter. It's one of those stories about the white man's burden that really could be about anyone else, but because it comes from a time of social bigotry and backwards thinking, it's unfortunately really a book about systematic racism and power fantasies. However, it's also just a bad ass, ultra-violent, kinda ridiculous, tell not show, sword and sorcery romp on a dying planet, so it's technically science fiction. The main saving grace is the world building Burroughs does. The world of Barsoom and all it's rich inhabitants are just as much racial space opera expys as all the ones from Mass Effect, but I'll be damaged if they're not both dear to my heart. Speaking of Mass Effect, the Krogan are totally just shorter Tarks missing a set of arms. They even keep Caldor's, aka Varrens. Still, choice read if you don't want to think to hard and just get wrapped up in a dumb adventure story that's fun to read.

Besides my playing Civ (I managed to pull off a culture victory as Gandhi after having to eliminate Kamehameha since I didn't have enough time to wait for Polynesia to come under my influence) and reading Mars fiction, I've been overloaded with work from Spanish class. I wish I had a group of six other ethnically diverse people to form a study group and have wacky online adventures with. Maybe we'd even have a catchy theme song sung by some Alt Rock band. I would type something funny for you to toss into Google translate, but I'm sick of halbar Español for today, or however you conjugate hablar in Spanglish. I spent most of my time setting up all the ridiculous hoops one has to jump through when learning a language online for credit. The online third party site, with proprietary useless book that's a vessel for the $150 access code so you can participate in the class.

BTW, if you've been under a rock for the last few decades, higher education is a damn grift.

So, book reviews, life update, oh, right... novel chapter. So I just wrote today's chapter. This is essentially a first draft. Not really a rough draft, but definitely all new material that hasn't had much editing. This actually got an upvote on /r/cyberpunk_stories (which is standard), so I've got that going for me. We say it's not about the internet points, but how else am I supposed to gauge if I'm on the right track with the limited fanbase I'm shilling to?

So let's kick some tires and light some fires. Dog:

The First Breath After The Coma...

I feel like half the openings of my blogs are me apologizing for missing weeks.

So, yeah, I was MIA. Not like I really have much of an excuse. I was at home for a couple weeks, being lazy and lethargic, and mostly playing Civilization when I was supposed to be writing. But life has regained structure. I'm no longer just a blob of matter that likes to day drink and play turn-based strategy games, I have dusted off the ashes and am in my reborn Phoenix form, ready to punch words at you like so many concrete blocks. KIYAP!

So, like I mentioned, I've mostly been playing Civ.

To think they adopted Tit Worship so early.

I've also plowed through a few other games, particularly the original DOOM, which I haven't played... since it came out on PC and had to be started with boot discs. If you're a faithful reader (and why would you be?) you know I'm fond of playing videogames in self-constructed sequences. So, finishing off DOOM was a part of my "history of the FPS" playthrough. Next up is DOOM 2, and I've played through the first few levels of hell on earth. I've never played DOOM 2 without cheat codes, so we'll see how this goes. The first game is actual genius. While Wolfenstein 3D is intense and has some survival aspects to it that add to its difficulty, DOOM is at some points a survival horror/ platformer/ FPS. There's a reason why every FPS that came out after was called a DOOM clone. The action is intense, the enemies are tenacious and frightening, it throws curveballs at you at just the right time. It's free form in regards to how you can attack combat. There's even stealth elements to it at times, and actual tactics you can use to make the game play in your favor, which are necessary on higher difficulties, which are absolutely unforgiving. And it's ridiculously ultra-violent and as overtly satanic as Wolfenstein 3D is overtly nazi, because shock value, like the dollar, had better mileage in the '90s. If you dig retro games, or if you're old enough to where me talking about this is giving you nostalgia, fire up a copy of DOOM. If you weren't counting, including this sentence, I said DOOM seven times.

I fired up the Vault-Tec Workshop in Fallout 4. Haven't really dug too deep into it. I'm building my atrium and have to clear out the rest of the workshops in Vault 88, I've assembled four brave young souls seeking solace from surviving in the Commonwealth. I plan on shooting at least one of them out of a canon into a rock outcropping. There's a lot of space to play with, so we'll see what kind of trouble I can get into as I become the ultimate overseer.

So I started up at the office last week and am acclimating to that environment. I feel it's going well, and everyone around me seems cool. But I always have that sneaking suspicion of paranoia that everyone is merely tolerating my presence while talking shit behind my back. Living in LA definitely breeds that into you. Every social circle is like a house in the great game of acquaintances. Because in the game of acquaintances, you win, or I am like totally calling everyone I know right now. Did you see her shoes?

So far I've gotten mostly compliments on my desk decorum.

Roll for initiative.

It's in its larval stage, and I imagine it will evolve into a sprawl of kitschy gifts and posters I'll receive on birthdays and end of year gift exchanges. Much like my fy-ance made the mistake of becoming a teacher, and as such will receive teacher memorabilia for her desk till the end of time. Gift giving is such a weird thing, as is nesting.

So, I kicked around a bit, avoided my blog for two weeks, started a new job, played some videogames, I watched the first half of Buffy Season 2 and will do my write up of it next week. In all of my confessed sloth, I've also been busy on rewrites for To Slice The Sky. I'm currently working on the subterranean fight scene I've been excited for/dreading. So far it's a lot of talking in the dark, but I'm right on the cusp of the climactic moment where all the world building and heavy handed class war metaphors pay off with a distraction moment. I should be working more on it, but I'm procrastinating with other duties at the moment. What that means for you? Well, the chapter I'm writing now comes after the one I just finished. So today is new chapter day! Yay!

Today's chapter is very heavily edited from it's original version. It didn't play too well when I posted on r/cyberpunk_stories either. But I'll let you decide how you feel about today's offering, after the dog pic.

80% of my life is spent sleeping in weird positions.

This is a trick

OK blog. You don't like me, and I'm indifferent about you, but we're going to get through this week if you like it or not.

So this week was one full of uplift, upheaval, realignment of goals, and a shot in the arm for creativity. I'd rather not weigh in on the heavier aspects of it, because, well, this isn't a private blog for me to boo-hoo and say casually offensive things about what makes me angry. This is for the hypothetical future fan to stumble upon, and have enough time to kill and read back entries, and think, "Oh, cool, so this is where that part came from."

Or, I don't know, something like that. That's what I do when I look at people's websites. I creep. But that's the type of guy I am, a creeping voyeur who thankfully has an internet connection and doesn't have to stare into people's windows. I'm simply fascinated how varied people live, and have a generally curious nature. At least I have the good sense to people watch in a way where they don't know I'm staring at them. You know, like a polite creep.

There, I avoided telling you something personal with something else personal. I hope you're satiated hypothetical reader.

Anywho, this week was full of getting writing done, both for school and for rewrites. I'm trying to pick up the pace and make up for lost time a few months back. I've been watching Batman: The Animated Series and Superman Adventures concurrently on Amazon Prime. I've watched Seasons 1, 2 and half of 3 of Batman so far, and the first for Superman. I'm normally not much of a Superman fan, and find it difficult to find him interesting, but the Animated Series version works for me so far. It was a pretty solid first season, not amazing, but good. I do enjoy a little more depowered Supes, since I feel everyone just goes right to invincible and can punch a planet type power level, and that stuff doesn't excite me. I did quite enjoy the Lobo episodes. I recall enjoying them when they aired as well. But Lobo is the main fraggin' man, so there is that.

And let me confirm your suspicions, I did get the idea of substituting fuck for frag partly because of Lobo. Also from the old term for deathmatch kills and fragmentation grenades. Skag is '70s slang for heroin, which I've never done, but I think it makes a great defecation word too. Now that I think about it, I think I heard skag used in some show I watched recently. Can't recall which one, but it'll come to me.

I also just started playing Rock Band 4 again, now that the songs from 1-3 are available. I have so many songs already, and there's even more that I still want to download. Rock Band really is one of my favorite game franchises. I've had so many magical moments playing that game with friends, and moments in the middle of parties getting everyone singing along and having a grand ole time. And even playing solo, it's just a fun damn game. It combines two of my loves of music and videogames, and it's one of the few games where I haven't gotten worse at it with age.

So after all of that, here's your dog picture and chunk of story. Chapter 11 is very close to being done as well and may get sandwiched into this post. Later skaters.

Caution: Street Walking Cheetahs.

The week was long and full of trials, its ending welcomed like a returning lover. But its end only began a brief respite in the face of ever rising odds stacked against me like so many decks dealt from the bottom. I kept telling myself my troubles were light, and that for each day passed through was another victory for life. But life was a tricky mistress, and she didn't like to return after she flitted off on a whim.

"Why are you talking like that?"

This week was a testament to what I'll do to release tension, and how I have no clue how to relax anymore. With dual-day jobs in full effect, I'm cherishing the moments I can take to myself whenever I can. Especially since work has always been my greatest generator of misery, and as such creative fire. I'm sure I've done more side project planning and drafting while on the job than my actual job over the last 16 years. It's like Bukowski working at the post office and writing reams of pissed off poetry and a book. As much as I hate working for other people, I do fear I'd lose all my inspiration if I ever had to give it up. Granted I'd probably become a shut-in if I didn't have to leave my house for work, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Getting a jumpstart on summer session for school, I'm taking a Noir Fiction class, I read The Maltese Falcon for the first time. I also have The Big Sleep (which I've previously read), The Killer Inside Me (reading next), Strangers on a Train and Double Indemnity (only seen the movies), and I've been falling back into my habits of film noir love. I was a little underwhelmed by The Maltese Falcon, since I had such high expectations of it. The structure and parts of the story were excellent, and the tropes it codified are some of my favorites in fiction, but Hammett's writing was pulpy in the, "I'm getting paid per word for a serialized story," unlike Chandler's more poetic prose. It was too descriptive while it was going for atmospheric. Also, the entire thing could have been a short story over a novella with all the conversations of everyone going, "We know you know something, spill it." "Well I know you know something, so you spill it and maybe I'll spill it." And repeat for 217 pages. Hammett seems like he was a cool guy with a lot of issues, but unfortunately one of his issues was writing dull prose for his cool ideas. I dunno, maybe I should read Red Harvest too, since that's hailed as his masterpiece. Maybe if I didn't read Chandler before Hammett I would have had lower expectations, but Raymond Chandler's prose is exactly what I think of when it comes to Noir.

And all this steeping into Crime Fiction got me thinking randomly about Vegas. I used to live there, and I have friends who used to and currently do live there, not to mention it's just a four-hour drive away from LA, so it's pretty much treated as our weekend retreat so we don't puke in our own city (that's what the rest of the week is for). And of course with Vegas comes gambling. I'm not much of a gambler, but I do like a drink at the end of the day. And with no last call Vegas for me was hanging out with people gambling while I got free drinks playing video poker. Or sitting alone in my crappy apartment playing MMORPG's. I really don't have many fond memories of the place, and they usually manifest themselves into story ideas, so this week I started some character sketches for my team of over the top Gambling Outlaws that band together by circumstance to take back a big score from someone cheating the odds.

I'm probably going to write it for NaNoWriMo this year, since what I've jotted down for the first scene is kinda in the vein of Some Call Me... which was fun as hell to write. I'm planning on doing it as a series of 10-12 or so vignettes tied together to tell the story in a broken manner. Figure with each scene about 3-5k words that should work as a NaNo entry. In reality it's probably going to be a lot more scenes that are shorter, but we'll see how it goes. I've been wanting to do more Villain Protagonist type works since By Starlight. Writing from a bad guy's perspective is much more fun, since you're able to go places only an anti-hero can. No need for any moral boo-hooing before the action, just quiet regret that they're used to choking down and getting over it after the fact. I'm definitely going for a Sin City type of vibe, but that's just my love of Frank Miller, and my unashamed nature to steal from anyone that comes across my path. Rogue life for life.

In gaming news, I played through Quantum Break this week, and it was well worth the wait. When I first saw the gameplay demo, I thought it looked like a sweet looking game with cool mechanics, and I was right. I don't think I fully utilized all the mechanics I could have, but I had a blast playing the game. If you're that interested in watching someone bumble through the length of the game (including the live action TV show episodes in between game acts), I streamed it all on my twitch.tv channel.

It was nice having time to relax for a tic and kill some time with a game, but I was also busy on the rewrites front. GASP, yes I also finished chapter 7 this week. I told you I was busy. I technically finished it this morning, but you wouldn't have known unless I told you anyway. So after this fair-lengthed post, you get more updates into my writing process with the second draft of a novel I'm trying to release at the end of the year before it goes to an editor. I think I should have had a better back up plan. Release 3 books one year and then nothing the next? That's a fail. At least I've gotten a lot of new content for a non-Lilim Chronicles release. We'll see. As of now, I'm just trying to keep all the chainsaws I'm juggling in the air without losing an arm.

"Did someone say they want to lose an arm?"

Making up for lost time.

Okay, I know, I'm a terrible person, I skipped last week. My excuse, I was working on writing instead of blogging.

It's workshop time in my literary fiction class, and I've been working on helping everyone else out so much in class that I left out time for my adoring fans (pst, I mean you. Hey, where are you going?!). So, I apologize, but I finally have work to show you.

So my story I've been working on in class has been through some ups and downs, I have a couple other pieces I've sketched out, but need to go through some drafting processes to flesh them out and get them ready. But as for now, I have one lean mean story ready to rock. I'll post it next week if no further progress is made elsewhere.

Furthermore, on the To Slice The Sky front, I finally finished chapter 5's rewrite. And rewrite it was. I ended up writing in a new scene to replace boring ass exposition, and I realized that the 120 page chapter I had originally divided into 3 parts, has now become 4 parts. I may be shrinking down a lot of chapters in the future as well, and I know I have one complete rewrite of a scene coming up in the not too distant future as well as closer to the end.

I've written dozens of shorts, and I've written a few novellas, but I've never done a rewrite on a project this big. Writing a novel really is a whole different beast, and I feel that breaking it down into smaller parts is the whole way to do it without going crazy. Just thinking of writing out 300 pages worth of crap itself is a huge task. And then you have to chop it up and put it in an order that makes sense to other people and not just the fever dream it was when crapped into this world. I'm just hoping I can keep focused and actually have a 2016 release like I was hoping. We're already halfway through April and I'm still rewriting act one. How ambitious I was in January. At least work is getting done, and I'm not putting it off for a whole year like I did when writing the first draft.

And speaking of all that work, here's the fruits of all my labor for chapter 5 of To Slice The Sky as it stands now. And a bonus dog picture for missing last week.

A mixed bag of nuts and chews.

It took me three weeks, but I've hammered and banged another chapter into readable shape.

Man that was a lot of hard and easy cuts and pastes. Chapter 3 was a complete dump chapter, and still is. But you get to be the judge on whether or not it suffers for it. I trimmed about 1500 words out of it. Had to add a bit more too, but the parts that are added are necessary while everything trimmed wasn't. And this week, my efforts on this current rewrite is what you get to witness. The best part is, all of this hard work is just a foundation for something completely different later. I've already got plans on how to completely change chapter 1 so who knows how that will effect everything that comes after. But this is all future stuff.

As for the here and now, before I copy and paste some genre fiction for you, I beat Resident Evil 5 and am gearing up for Resident Evil Revelations 2. The end of my survival horror fest is coming fast. I also have The Evil Within that I'm going to play after. I've been putting it on hold to do this playthrough and it took longer than expected.

I also smashed through the current gen Grand Theft Auto V. First person mode was nice sometimes. It's useful playing online and killing people with it, that's for sure. Finally playing that puts the nail in the coffin of my huge game series playthrough I started last year. I strung together a chronological order of all the games in Rockstar Games canon (except for Manhunt, because I never played the games in the first place and didn't see a reason to start now). From Red Dead Revolver to GTAV I completed the Red Dead, GTA, Max Payne and Midnight Club series. Also in there was LA Noire, Bully, The Warriors, and all the available DLC packs for the last and current gen titles. So it was a long, fun, open world sandbox experience. And even in some of their worst games, Rockstar games will have something redeeming to them. Not many companies can say that about themselves.

I also gleaned a lot about the sliding scale of cynicism and optimism, and each franchise seems to do better the more it teeters on it. Max Payne is off the deep end of cynicism, while Bully is very fun loving and optimistic. GTA and Red Dead games straddle that line, with GTA being more moderate to cynical while Red Dead is moderate to optimistic. One could argue that it breaks down from the tropes/genres that each series is drawing from (Hard boiled detective, mobster/gangster crime, Spaghetti Westerns, prep school/college comedies) to dictate its place on the scale. But GTA definitely takes itself extremely serious about not taking itself seriously. I do have to hand it to the writing teams of each series that they at least don't pull punches. Each series is potentially offensive to anyone who doesn't want to believe the real world exists. I had numerous times while playing Bully where I'd think, "Wow, that kid's life is ruined forever". And while playing GTAV as Trevor Phillips, "This is what Rockstar thinks of its client base." There's definitely a lot of validity to the company's praise, and I await their next title.

After I finish Resident Evil, I'm looking to break things up with their other franchises Devil May Cry and Dead Rising. I've been a DMC fan since its birth back in 2001, and while I own all 3 Dead Risings, I haven't played a single one. Tsundoku for videogames and all. But my next big playthrough is going to be the entire Metal Gear series in chronological order. And since an official Hideo Kojima timeline exists, I consider that a challenge. I don't know if you've been keeping track, but I tend to enjoy putting stipulations on how I consume media. I guess I want to be told a story from start to finish after hearing it all jumbled up.

Speaking of stories, I'm done talking about videogames. Here's a chapter about a lonely drug addict and a picture of my dog eating a volleyball:

I should not have said that...

This week was eventful. Some of those events were fun and by choice, but some where not. Regardless, progress on To Slice The Sky has been sluggish.

Some work has been put in on proofing/form editing Chapter 10. Not much, because what was going to be a productive day turned into my writing partner/editor being called away for other matters. So that was a bummer to say the least. Especially since we're getting into the nitty gritty of the climax. Where we're proofing is right at the beginning of act 3. The cards are on the table and our plucky heroes are about to pull together their plan for one last ride to freedom.

On the rewrite front: Still hacking apart Chapter 3 into something actually readable. The worldbuilding aspects of it are being leaned up in thanks to the previous releases. After all, I've technically already published 3 chapters out of To Slice The Sky as short stories. Say Goodbye, Hollywood (which covers Decker's story in between Chapters 3 & 4), Sucking Out Loud (a slice of life from Trip & Decker living in Das Komplex between Chapters 10 & 11), and The Clone Wars (what our rebellious clones do during Chapter 9 while Trip and Decker have a road trip across The Wastes). I've even gone over the backstory of an important character, Manner, in Mind Your Manners. (If you're wondering what I'm talking about, you can pick up my short story collection, Urban Legends of the Future, for free in eBook form on Smashwords. I'd appreciate it if you left a review after reading.)

I still have another "Interlude" short to write that happens when Decker and The Clone Wars gang are on the road between chapters 5 & 6 that evolved out of a cut portion of the novel itself. I wanted some way to show that Native Americans were slowly reclaiming and nurturing the blasted out parts of middle America where no one's really settled. I scrapped the part of the chapter for many reasons. Some of them are these:

1. It was well researched, but kinda hokey.
2. It had werewolves in it, and I wanted to keep the novel more humancentric.
3. It originally had the group leaving Clonetown (which is essentially the leftovers of West New Jersey down to Philadelphia) southwards to the ruins of St. Louis to follow the Mississippi river bed up north to the ruins of Dubuque, IA where they cross over the outer border of Metro City. I don't know how well you know American geography, but you wouldn't really dip down south to Missouri since it's a pretty straight shot west from Jersey to Iowa. To be fair, if you're going to New Jersey, Iowa, or Missouri, you have bigger problems than the route you take to get there. I even wrote in a whole argument about why it was dumb they were too far south.
4. It was pretty much a Wacky Wayside Tribe scene. It was just there to interject action into the boredom of a cross country road trip when all the sights are bombed out buildings, dead plants, and pockets of radiation.
5. Speaking of wastelands and post-war tribal society, I played the Fallout: New Vegas DLC - Honest Hearts - for the first time after I wrote the scene. I realized the scene was too similar to survive as it was.

So those were all pretty good reasons for cutting it out. The kernel of the scene is going to be the story (travelling group happens upon wary settlement that could use some outside help against a new threat) but the details and structure are completely different. From the notes I have scribbled down, and the original scene, the story's looking to have more of a solarpunk bend to it. When I wrote it, I had this guy in mind as the leader:




Now, inspired by The Many Mothers in Mad Max: Fury Road, I'm thinking of something more matriarchal. Not an all female enclave or anything, but definitely an elder lady keeping things together. That and I feel that the elderly are a rarely explored topic in Science Fiction.

Usually when age is brought up, it's in a life extension context. So you're dealing with people who usually haven't aged physically from biological immortality, "reset" their bodies via rejuvenation/mechanization/genetic therapy, uploaded themselves into a clone/sleeve/machine, etc. or in general made it so they're not really old people. Sure they prominently pop up from time to time, but a majority of SciFi is a young man's game.

Aside from having experience working with the elderly, elder care is a for real issue in the coming years, especially as life expectancy rises. People live to 100 without even trying these days. Of course we have all those parts of the world with ridiculous infant mortality rates that offset the scales, but modern medicine and lifestyle has allowed a lot of people to live a lot of years. Not dying of typhoid by 30 is pretty cool, but still having a bunch of old people sitting around watching TV all day with the volume on max leads to a slew of social issues. It'll also lead to a bunch of olds needing reading material, so why not cater to a growing market?

Aside from that, I've started drafts of a few stories for Wave Two once To Slice The Sky is released. I've also been working on new covers for Urban Legends of the Future and By Starlight - Before Dawn to match To Slice The Sky.

Furthermore, I'm planning on releasing a Wave One Omnibus 2 ways. One is the books separated as per their original release order. The second is in-universe chronological supercut format. This means that the aforementioned short stories at the beginning of this post will be woven in between the chapters they belong too.

Sound frustrating and Disjointed? PROBABLY! We'll see. I'm taking this self-published author thing one mistake at a time. Toodles.

Sleepwalk

This past week has felt like a year.

Sales were actually existent for By Starlight - Before Dawn. Thank you to everyone who bought a copy in eBook or Paperback. If you bought it in paperback, you can get a free kindle version through matchbook. If you bought it on Smashwords but would like a paperback, I'll be running a promotion Thanksgiving weekend for 50% off. And while I make sure all my products are the best quality I can make them, I'm a fan of the printed word, so the paperback is the preferred version in terms of formatting and style. And it looks great on a shelf when you're not reading it!

My busy week has mostly been filled with me plugging away at Some Call Me... for NaNoWriMo. I'm at the close of Act 1 and 15,813/50,000 words in. I've also been annoying about my progress on social media already, so I'm less excited to be throwing up my hands in the air and celebrating the first week of my new novel being written.

I really should be more excited, because the story is turning out really fucking cool. Of course it's a mess currently, and being done for the word count at this point. But, there's definitely a diamond surrounded by a bunch of coal in there. I've been wanting to write something set on Mars ever since I read Bradbury's Martian Chronicles back in 11th grade English class when I was supposed to be following along in Huck Finn. And while I've read more than my fair share of cyberpunk and generic Science Fiction, I haven't really delved into Steampunk as a literary genre (really only read Bruce Sterling/William Gibson's The Difference Engine. If you have suggestions where to go from there, please share in the comments). Or westerns.

I've never read a western. Watched tons of sing-songy Gene Autry ride alongs, rough and tumble John Wayne and Henry Fonda fodder, and blood and whore drenched Spaghetti Westerns, but never read one. So translating the feel of the idealized Wild West on a planet that will kill the shit out of you if you step outside, all won by the power of your steam powered sidearms, it felt like a fun challenge. And it really has been. I've been having a blast writing it, with only one day of slogging through that dreaded but necessary exposition so far. I haven't been this stoked about writing something than I was when I first wrote To Slice The Sky.

But you didn't come here to see my rattle off things that I'm currently writing (unless you did. Did you? If so, sorry, your time in this world grows short. The collectors will be by shortly with pliers and hacksaws to make sure you never make that mistake again). You're here to read what I've already written and polished into a presentable state. We're almost at the end of By Starlight. Our players are gathered into place, and shit is about to get real as we slide into the action packed climax.

So here we are this Sunday. Part 7/8 of By Starlight.

Feeding the mind, body and soul.

This felt like the longest week in between posts. By all means, I could have done this post at any time during the week. I felt that keeping with the regularity of updating was good for me in regards to continuing a consistent blog in the future. That and it afforded me with plenty of time to play videogames. Taking a little post book release breather. It's good to give yourself a break here and there, since usually other people won't do it for you.

Aside from all of that, it has been an uneventful week in the aftermath of getting By Starlight - Before Dawn ready for purchase. I pulled the typed out manuscript for the novel, To Slice The Sky. Time to pick up at the halfway point in rewrites where I left off. Funny enough that I stalled out at the exact same point I stalled out while writing it. Granted the back half all came to me at once and I knocked it out in a fraction of the time it took me to write the front half. It's going to take a lot of work and some professional help, but there's something pretty underneath all those rough edges. To Slice The Sky follows Trip and Decker, whom we first met back in Urban Legends of the Future (now available for free at that link), in a big whirlwind adventure across New America that's about half their fault. It also features Manner, who was introduced in her standalone story Mind Your Manners in Urban Legends, and the clone team we'll meet in The Clone Wars, a story bundled in with By Starlight - Before Dawn. It's a story about two best friends and the price of achieving your dreams set against the backdrop of the Clone Rebellion. If it was the year 2099, that shit would be Pulitzer material.

This week brings us to part three of eight in the story of Tressie, Johnny and Gribelle. Plans are undertaken, investigations are afoot, and meals are had. This section is a little longer than the last one. Enjoy:

Startling revelations about the mating habits of fictional characters

Welcome back. Continuing on with promoting By Starlight - Before Dawn, we now arrive at the next step in the tale of Tressie, Johnny & Gribelle. Rising actions and fun with body mechanics await you in the text below. The covers are complete, the proofs have been read, and at least the eBook versions are available for pre-order. I wanted to stick with Halloween as a release date, opposed to releasing whenever, mostly because I think I deserve at least one release date to be Halloween in my bibliography. If only I could write fast enough to Long Halloween it and release a new horror upon the world every holiday. One day.

So, about those eBooks: Amazon. Smashwords. Each version has a separate cover. While the Amazon version is the "True" cover, I still like the Smashwords variant better. I fear I may be trying to make eBooks like comics. The paperback is still being worked on. The paperback sports much nicer formatting than the eBook. Both of which have better formatting than this blog.

Beyond cover variations, the Smashwords version of the first book in the Lilim Chronicles: Urban Legends of the Future, is now available for free. Non-related to the Lilim Chronicles, my poetry book, Pretty Words for Hateful Bastards, is also available at whatever price you want on Smashwords.

If you download, please review. But I've talked enough. It's time to give you what you came for.

Universally Subconscious

Hello again dear reader. With my next book, By Starlight - Before Dawn, being released at the end of the month, I figured what better way to entice one to read it than by letting them read it. Over the next few weeks leading up to the release day, I'm going to be releasing the chapters of the novella through this site. When the book becomes available (pending the completion of the covers), this site will be the first to let you know. I will also be reducing the eBook price of Urban Legends of the Future to the low low cost of $0.00 on both Amazon and Smashwords. Like Urban Legends, By Starlight - Before Dawn will be available in paperback as well as all eBook formats.

The following story is the first chapter of the novella that makes up the By Starlight portion of the book title. By Starlight picks up 25 years before Sucking Out Loud. We meet DJ/Slicer Tressie Unknown in the flesh and see Johnny Marko as a young, 17 year old punk in the SFV818 district of Hollywood. It's another story revolving around the Incubi/Succubi, so be prepared for sexy cyberspace fun.

Without further ado, I present to you: By Starlight.