Unanimity

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This blog of love, by summer’s ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again, which always seems to happen soon after Wednesday, at least here in the English-speaking world.  I have heard the shocking tale that there are some other places that seem not to have those specific days.  One wonders how they remember when to read my weekly blog posts!

I hope you all had a lovely Summer Solstice.  It’s June 25th today, which means that there are “exactly” 6 months until Christmas, for those of you who celebrate it.  Being at the midway point, this date probably serves nicely as a measure of a person’s optimism.  Whether you say to yourself, “Only six more months until Christmas!” with an anticipatory grin (perhaps noting that it wouldn’t be bad to start thinking of gift ideas), or whether you instead dwell on the fact that you are now as far away in the year from that joyous holiday as it is possible to be, probably could be used to predict your attitude about a great number of other things.

Of course, you won’t have to wait nearly six months for the release of Unanimity—barring some personal catastrophe on my part—so that’s at least a crumb of comfort even for the most ruthlessly pessimistic.  Those of you who are already thinking of Christmas shopping for your loved ones could do worse than to order a copy or two when it comes out to give as gifts (though it might be better suited as a Halloween present).  I dare say that it should even be out well in time to begin reading it on or before the date on which the story begins*.  The final editing, layout, and planning for the release are going strongly and smoothly.  If I had more free time—and more free energy—I could probably get it all done within the next month, but I don’t expect that goal to be quite achievable.  That is, unless someone out there wants to option the movie rights (sight unseen) for the book and will give me a large lump sum payment for that option.  It would probably be best as a mini-series, since it’s quite a long story, and I don’t see how it could all fit into even an Avengers: Endgame length movie.  But perhaps that’s a personal bias.

Anyway, it’s going well.

My music is going well, too.  As you know, my single Like and Share is now up on Spotify and is available on iTunes and on Amazon.  It’s also either now available or will soon be available through numerous other platforms internationally, but I’m not as certain of the links and whatnot to those.  If I become aware, of course, I’ll be happy to share them.

I’ve been trying to think through where to go from here with respect to music, and I’d welcome feedback from any readers who have an opinion on the matter.  My internal conflict revolves around whether to proceed as originally planned and release one or two more singles in the coming weeks and months, then to release a full album of my songs, or whether to release them all as singles, one by one.  After all, though I have a deep love of great albums and of consuming music in that form, I can’t deny that the advent of music sites such as mentioned above, and the general digital availability of the music, raises the question of whether releasing an album is the best way to go.  It’s not as though it would be any kind of “concept album”.

I’ve heard (but cannot be certain) that “Weird Al” Yankovic is planning on mostly releasing singles in the future rather than putting together albums, for reasons much like my thoughts above.  I’m no “Weird Al”, obviously, and he’s also not the measure of all things, even if the above rumor is true.  Still, he’s a very savvy individual, and one could do worse than to pay attention to what he’s doing.

As I think I’ve mentioned, I am developing some new songs currently.  Nothing has been recorded on any of them yet—except some musical notes and lyrics on paper, of course—and I probably won’t be doing much more than that until after Unanimity comes out, unless I need a mental break, and/or find the urge irresistible.

I do seem to require at least some form of “new” creative activity as a bulwark against depression, and editing Unanimity has led to my longest run of not writing anything new since perhaps 2013 or 2014.  Also, writing is my oldest persistent love.  But writing music seems to produce the desired psychological benefit almost as much as writing fiction, so it’s been quite useful to me during the long revision/editing process of Unanimity.  All this is what I do in lieu of having close, fulfilling relationships with other human beings, since I’m apparently unpleasant to be around for any prolonged time period.

I’m sure you can all readily imagine why that might be so.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on this week with me.  I’ll be releasing Schrodinger’s Head as my next official single, but that won’t be for at least several weeks.  I think.  In the meantime, I hope you’re all as happy and healthy as it’s possible to be given the current state of public affairs.  I’d wish for you to be even happier than possible, but that would be a silly and contradictory wish, so I’ll abstain.  Not that I’m any more averse to wishing for the impossible than the next person, I’m just…more prone than average to accept and internalize the inherent impossibilities.

TTFN

*Though, unless you have a time machine, you won’t be able to preempt the literal starting date, since the story begins on Thursday, September 14th, 2017.  But you know what I mean.

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I…heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s blog uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath that the rude sea grew civil at her song

Hello, good morning, good Thursday, and welcome One and All to my weekly blog post!

Yes, that’s an exclamation point at the end of that very first sentence.  It may be in poor taste, but I feel enthusiastic this morning, for reasons on which I’ll elaborate below, and I need to make the most of such times when I can, because they’re unreliable and comparatively infrequent.

First and still foremost, of course, the final edit of Unanimity is going well.  I’ve already finished “Part 1” of the book—about a quarter of the way through—and I’m moving along quickly.  Obviously, that’s exciting for me, and I hope there are those out there for whom it’s likewise exciting.  It’s been a looooong time coming, this mega-novel, and with only minor breaks it’s been the only fiction I’ve worked on for well over a year, if memory serves.

I won’t say that I’m getting tired of it—I don’t easily get tired of my own stories, that’s one of my few areas of unapologetic narcissism.  However, I do still get impatient for my stories to be finished and out there in the world wreaking whatever havoc they are capable of wreaking.  This particular novel is obviously not going to be available for purchase any time in June, and probably not in July (though that’s not entirely impossible), but I suspect that, barring the unforeseen, it will be released by end of the summer at the latest.

Speaking of releases:  I am absurdly pleased to announce that I have just released my first commercial single.  It’s my song “Like and Share”, which lost its quotation marks in the release process, I’m not sure how.  Oh, well, though they were deliberate, their lack doesn’t seriously change the message, which is sort of a lament about one of the darker aspects of social media.

I’ve taken the “video” off YouTube because it seemed kind of silly to compete with a free* version of myself.  The single is in the process of being released on many worldwide venues and will even be available as a purchasable CD single on Amazon, if anyone uses such things anymore.  It’s currently available for your listening pleasure—I think it will be pleasure, I’ve gotten quite good reviews from listeners—on Apple/iTunes and on Spotify.  Other venues will follow.  Here are the links:

Apple music: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id/1518756570

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1518756570?ls=1&app=itunes

Spotify URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/1pw3cSfHBysZu5ZyfIvJn1

Spotify URI: spotify:album:1pw3cSfHBysZu5ZyfIvJn1

I’m not sure what the character of that last link is or how specifically it works.  It doesn’t look like a typical URL, and of course it has a different acronym designation.  Perhaps it’s used in the Spotify app, which I do have on my smartphone, but on which I have NOT yet listened to my own song.

Don’t be too impressed by my restraint.  I used the web player on the desktop computer to listen to it as soon as I saw that it was available.  You cannot expect a kid not to eat chocolate eggs on Easter morning when they’re all just sitting there in his basket!

I’ve used my Iterations of Zero symbol, or icon, whatever the term might be, as the art for this single, and it will likely be the look of the final album (and probably the name also) when it’s released in the end.  It was a toss-up between Like and Share and Schrodinger’s Head for which song to release first, but the former got more votes in my small poll, so I chose it.  It’s certainly the most topical song that I’ve done.

So, anyway, I’m excited about this.  It’s not as monumental as having my books out and published, but it is very cool, nevertheless, and all the more so because it’s me doing something I hadn’t ever done before.  I mean, I’ve only really been playing electric guitar for a short time, and I’ve definitely not been arranging, recording, producing, mixing, etc., my music before the last year-ish.  So, it’s a nice feeling to have accomplished it, and of course I’m going to be releasing more, and am in the process of writing a few more songs as well.

For all my difficulties with depression, dysthymia, self-hatred and so on, one big strength I have is, I never assume or even suspect that a thing isn’t doable**.  I figure, if other people can do something, then with enough work, I can do that thing.  Throughout my life, whenever I’ve become enamored of some form of expression—music, poetry, books, comic books, science, math, medicine, etc.—I’ve always just automatically felt that I wanted to try doing my version of it.

Remember, there’s nothing magical about other people that isn’t also magical about you.  Obviously, innate gifts vary somewhat from person to person, but as Albert Einstein is reported to have said, every human being is a genius.  I think, sometimes, that’s what frustrates me about people the most:  I know how much potential every person out there actually has, and it’s so infuriating to see the way it’s used and not used.  But it’s not my place to tell other people how to run their own lives.  It’s not like I’ve been uniquely impressive at running my own.

Anyway, that’s my exciting bit of news, which is good to have amidst all the far-from-exciting*** madness filling traditional and social media lately.  Perhaps listening to the song will give you a bit of ease from the stress out there.  I hope so, for though it’s not exactly a happy song—it deals with troubling things—it has a nice melody.

I’ll release Schrodinger’s Head next, don’t worry; that’s more upbeat and kind of funny.  But that won’t be for a little while yet.  I hope you all are feeling and doing as well as you possibly can.  Thank you for reading and, hopefully, for listening.

TTFN

*A bargain even at twice the price!

**Unless there’s some physical limitation…I will never play professional basketball, for instance, and I am unlikely ever to fly under my own power.

***I suppose, from a certain point of view, some of it could be considered “exciting”, but only in the same sense that all catastrophes tend to arouse our fight or flight centers.

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Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valor of my blog

Good morning, all.  It’s Thursday, of course, and therefore it’s just about the perfect day for another of my weekly blog posts.

I still struggle to get a pattern rolling for Iterations of Zero.  I thought of a way to make use of “idle” time to do longer form “Audio Blog” entries that might become a regular feature, but my first attempt was met with static and road noise.  If you’re interested in hearing more about that—literally—then by all means, listen to the follow-up audio blog I did yesterday for IoZ.  I think it’s worth your time if even just for my description of various social media as…well, let’s not spoil the joke.

Of course, out in the wide world, things proceed as absurdly as always.  Viruses, both literal and memetic, trouble us all.  This is not always a terrible thing.  While it’s hard to see Covid-19 as having much of an up-side, if it forces us to be better prepared for future, still more virulent pathogens—which are all but inevitable, given the enormous and lovely petri dish the human race instantiates for pathogens of all types—then perhaps it will be a net good in the long run.  It would be nice if humans could learn without having to be hit in the face with disease and death, but the principle of least action seems to apply at all levels of nature.  As for the societal, memetic flare-up, though rooted in a real tragedy, it is much more a positive happening.  Some things, thoughts, and people—probably all of us—need to be troubled from time to time.

More pivotal to me personally, though, is that the final run-through of Unanimity is going well.  We’re* working on layout and pacing, deciding how to divide up the sections and chapters of such a long work, as well as developing the cover design.  This all tends to go pretty well when I write books.  My biggest failing is that I have trouble advertising/promoting myself and my work.  I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it feels almost unseemly to me to tout my own products.  I feel not just embarrassed but often ashamed when I try to shout my own praises.  It’s a strange thing, and I don’t know if the area under the curve of that function is net-positive or net-negative, but at this moment in history, we can at least say it’s not “presidential”.  I need to improve it, though, because I have books and music that I really would like people to read and hear.

One of the things that most makes me hesitant about bigging myself up, as they say**, is that I fear that I’d very easily go too far and veer toward full Khan/Kanye/Doom/Trump mode once I got started, and there are already enough people in the world who think I’m an asshole.  But perhaps I worry too much about such things.  For a time, in high school, I was able to pull off being faux-egotistical as a self-parody of sorts, and it worked quite well (I think).  But, of course, high school is a time of immense possibility, and I was younger then***.  Still, if I could work that persona up, or some acceptable version of a similar process, it might be useful.

I’ll have to think about it.  Your input would be welcome.

There’s not a whole lot more to add.  I’m continuing to practice guitar and to develop a few original songs.  I’m also working on an arrangement of the old, beautiful song “Come Little Leaves” and my version of the Joker’s song from The Killing Joke has long since been complete except for the actual recording.  Both of these could stand to be heard, in my opinion.  Of course, the latter is nothing I could ever produce for profit—unless I left the lyrics out, I suppose.  The music is all me.  I think “Come Little Leaves” might actually be in the public domain, since the original poem, at least, came out in the early nineteen-twenties.  I’m not sure it would fit in with the other songs on my imagined “album”, however.  Though it has a vaguely melancholy feel, and is in a minor key, it is a hauntingly beautiful and ultimately positive song, whereas my work tends to be a bit dark.

Oh, well, time enough for these decisions to be made as and if they happen.  Unanimity remains my top priority, and it is happily speeding toward release, possibly by the end of the summer, but more likely in the autumn…which is, after all, the perfect time for a long, dark story to be told.

TTFN

*This refers to me and my creative team, including but not limited to Trevor Smith, Nathan Talbert, and Franklin L. Ritemoore.  I thought they deserved some credit.

**They do say that somewhere, don’t they?

***Duh.

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But when the blast of war blogs in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger

Hello and good morning, everyone.  It’s raining here in south Florida; I got more soaking wet on the way to work today than I have at times when swimming in the ocean.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but at least when you’re swimming in the ocean, you plan on getting wet, you expect to get wet, and your clothes—such as they are—are made for getting wet and for drying off quickly.  This is not the case for work clothes, even when one works in a fairly casual office.  This weather almost makes me wish that there were a 24-hour curfew in place that restricted people even from going to work, but no such luck.  I was allowed to go to work even at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, which has apparently passed, and I’m certainly allowed to work now.

In America at least, news of the pandemic has been all but superseded by news of various protests, some of which have turned violent, over the murder of George Floyd.  Both topics seem particularly good at bringing out human stupidity, which is never a tall order, but there is more unified sentiment—where I work, anyway—about the latter story.  Everyone here thinks the cops involved need to go to prison, but that violent protests and especially looting are idiotic, counterproductive, and are probably (mostly) not being done by legitimate protestors.  As for me, I can at least sympathize with occasional, directed violence in such matters.  Peaceful protest is ideal when it works, when you’re dealing with people of conscience and appealing to their better natures, but it wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis, or against Genghis Khan, or against the Roman Empire, and it wouldn’t work in North Korea.  Random violence, however, that hurts one’s own neighbors or other innocent people, seems thoughtless and pointless at best, and looting seems simply opportunistic and despicable.

All right, enough politics, if that’s what that was.  On to more auspicious matters.

This week, I have finally begun the last edit, layout, preparation, etc. of Unanimity.  I expect that, with the finish line in sight, I’ll probably accelerate work on it somewhat, perhaps pushing back my music…though I did make a post on Iterations of Zero this week with embedded videos of my five original songs that are on YouTube, as well as a few comments about them. Check out that post if you’re interested; I’d love to know what people think of the songs.  I’ve also recorded another audio blog for IoZ, but that’s still being edited—those take longer to polish than do written blog entries, though they’re certainly easier to initiate.

As you may know, I’m chronically conflicted about the whole podcast/audio versus writing of thoughts and commentary.  Writing is more efficient for storage and dissemination of information—compare the size of a word-processor document with even a compressed audio file—but there is a certain nuance of expression as well as a greater spontaneity that can be achieved in audio.  As I admit right at the beginning of the new recording, this audio blog post is not intended to be uplifting.  Neither is it meant to be down-pushing (if that’s a term).  It’s instead meant to be a rebellion of sorts against the notion that we all must try always to be positive and optimistic and upbeat and inspirational.

If you need to be inspired—if you need to be “motivated”—to get your work done, I think you’ve already failed.  Motivation—in the modern, self-help sense, not in the basic, fundamental meaning of the word (which is fine)—is a bit like the notions of heroism and leadership.  These are concepts that come into play only when you’re already far from optimal circumstances.  We should all aspire to achieve a world in which there is no need for leaders or for heroes, and to strive to reach a state in our own character in which “motivation” is irrelevant.

No one feels “motivated” every day, but if you want to earn a living, you need to go to work whether you feel “motivated” or not.  The tiger that won’t hunt until and unless it’s “inspired” by something is a tiger that’s got a good chance of dying.  Or perhaps a better animal for that analogy would be the squirrel.  Squirrels keep gathering nuts (and maybe other foods, I’m no expert on squirrel diets) even when they have enough for their immediate needs—even when they don’t feel particularly hungry—because, as they apparently say in Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.”*

To quote Christian Mihai, “The work that you do when you don’t want to is the work that most defines you.” Maybe this is just a different kind of motivation, a more long-term motivation that evaluates the area under the curve of one’s success and happiness, and not merely its moment to moment y-value.  That kind of motivation—or drive, perhaps, would be the better term—seems perfectly fine to me.  But if you have to get jazzed up to get out of bed and get moving, then you’re careening toward failure, because no one can feel jazzed up every day, not even someone in the upside of a bipolar cycle.

I’m not sure how I got onto that subject, but anyway, I’m happy at least to know that my own personal commitment to working on my fiction five to six mornings every week continues to deliver results.  It’s a lesson I learned fromthe King himself, and it’s paid off already in all my published books and stories.  And soon, I’ll release my own megalithic horror novel that matches in size even Stephen King’s longest work.

I would be delighted if Unanimity is read and enjoyed by even a fraction of as many people as have enjoyed any of King’s works, of course.  But if even one person reads it and likes it, that’s a huge reward.  And even if no one does, well—I still know that I’ve written it, and I like it.  If I didn’t like it, it really wouldn’t matter all that much if everyone else in the world loved it.  I can only be inside my own head.

TTFN

*I’ve neither watched nor read any of the GoT stories.  This fact surprises even me.  It’s not a matter of stubborn contrarianism or protest; I see nothing wrong with people loving the stories or the series.  I simply haven’t been interested.  These are the types of entertainment that I tend to want to enjoy with someone—not just anyone, to paraphrase John Lennon—and I simply have no one with whom I’m interested in sharing such entertainment.  More’s the pity, but there it is, and other such long-in-the-tooth clichés.

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The young and tender wit is turn’d to folly, blasting in the blog…

Hello, good morning, happy Thursday, and—as always—welcome to another edition of my blog.

There’s not much to add today, I’m afraid.  I launched the “final” version of my song “Breaking Me Down” on my Iterations of Zero blog and on my YouTube channel, for what it’s worth.  To the surprise of no one, it doesn’t seem to have been listened to by many people, so far.  I suppose that’s what happens when one puts a song out and no one’s ever heard of the person who made it.  I certainly have no marketing apparatus at my back to try to promote the song, and I would probably rather use such an apparatus to promote my books if I had such a thing.  The song is honestly just for my own self-indulgence, though of course I’d be delighted if anyone listened to it and liked it.

I’ve written only another page or so on Neko/Neneko since last week, and I’ve done a smattering of editing on Unanimity.  Some of this relative dearth of output is due to the fact of my song.  Most of my “free” hours in recent weeks were burned in arranging and playing and singing and producing “Breaking Me Down,” so my usual work—not my day job, obviously—got left by the wayside.  If there exists a person who is actually looking forward to any of my written works in progress—and I doubt that such a person exists—then I apologize.  I can only say that I would be much more motivated to continue working and to go faster if I but heard from you once in a while.  I have accounts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as my two blogs here on WordPress…and, of course, you’re free to leave reviews of my books on Amazon.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Well…I would certainly like to hear from you.

Anyway, that’s more or less all I have to say for this week.  I hope you’re all well, and that you continue to be well, in this most possible of all possible worlds.

TTFN

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I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blog…

Well, it feels like the end of an era, but I’m able finally to be able to say that I’ve completed the first draft of Unanimity.  I say, “the end of an era,” because it feels as if it’s the longest I’ve ever worked on anything in my life.  This is not literally true; my horror novel, Vagabond, which I wrote through college and med school, took longer, but that was because I wrote it so sporadically.  I foolishly worked on it only when “inspiration” struck, whatever that even means.  And the first full-length (hand-written) novel I ever wrote, Ends of the Maelstrom, probably took longer as well, for broadly similar reasons.

There’s no denying, however, that Unanimity is the biggest thing I’ve ever written.  At 530,549 words, its first draft is longer than the published version of either It or The Stand.  I don’t know how many days of writing it’s entailed.  I took at least one fairly long hiatus during the middle of the process, to complete various other authorial tasks, but even given that…well, in length, at least, it’s definitely my magnum opus.  So far.

I had no idea when I began it that it was going to be so long.  I don’t often really think in such terms, which is probably good, since I tend to run off at the keyboard.  I love words, I love written language, I love writing stories…and I’m self-indulgent when it comes to those loves.  I hope you’ll be patient with me, but I’ll understand if you’re not.

So, Tuesday I finished the rather melancholy final scene of my novel, and then Wednesday, as you may have noticed, I published Penal Colony, my latest short story (It’s available for purchase in Kindle format, for less than a buck, American).  Having both things happen more or less contemporaneously makes them feel more momentous than they probably are.

Now I must try very hard to take a break from Unanimity, and not to do any rewriting or editing on it for the month of February.  Fortunately, I have two short story ideas eagerly waiting to be written, and I really should finish up In the Shade as well, so I’ll try to get most, or all, of those works done this coming month.  They’re all horror stories—no big surprise—but at least one of them is a slightly jokey, cynical horror story, in which very honorable, morally upright, and laudable impulses and deeds are used against a well-meaning, if slightly self-righteous, person by dark forces.

Such—all too often, and regrettably—is life.

Hopefully, though, we won’t let that stop us.  Dark things and dark people are generally a lot noisier than good things and good people, so sometimes it feels as though they dominate the universe.  Yet the fact that civilization has survived at all, and continued to advance, seems to be mathematical proof that good and creativity are stronger than evil and destruction.  After all, it’s simpler by far to destroy than to create, and yet creation—in the human world—vastly predominates over destruction.  QED.

Sorry about that little digression into philosophy, but I thought it might be warranted.  It would be all too easy, I know, based on the types of things I write, for someone to imagine that I’m a pessimist about human nature, or the universe in general.  I’m not.  Though the second law of thermodynamics is as inescapable as any other mathematical principle, it’s also the source of life, and of our experience of time.  Life—certainly as we know it—can’t exist except where entropy is going from lower to higher.  I’m very much on board with the ideas David Deutsch describes in his wonderful book The Beginning of Infinity.  There is no guarantee that humanity and our descendants will go on to achieve a cosmic-level civilization, but there doesn’t appear to be any reason it’s not possible.  Whether or not it happens is entirely dependent upon our actions (and a lack of local astronomical catastrophes, of course).

And that’s about enough of all that for now.  I’ll leave you to the rest of your day.  It’s bitterly cold up north, I know, and it’s even relatively chilly down here in south Florida, so wrap up warm, all those who are affected.  Curl up by the fire in a blanket.  Drink a mug of tea, or coffee, or hot chocolate, and read a good book, if you get the chance.  Listen to that cold, bitter wind howling outside, with a chill that seems more than capable of freezing the very flesh from your bones.  It sounds almost alive, doesn’t it?

It sounds almost…hungry.

TTFN

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This blog of darkness I acknowledge mine.

For those of you who follow this blog regularly, you’ll probably be relieved to read that this will almost certainly be the last time I’m going to write, “work on Unanimity is proceeding well.”  As predicted, I should be finished with the first draft of that novel by this time next week, barring illness and/or accident.  It’s been a long haul, and though the editing and rewriting that follows will surely be a laborious task, at least this stage will be finished.  It is, by far, the longest book that I’ve ever written.

In a similar vein, you may also be pleased to learn that I won’t be speaking much more about Penal Colony*, for that story is all but ready to be published.  It may well be available by this time next week.  In many ways it’s a much lighter-hearted tale than Unanimity, to say nothing of being shorter, but it deals with a few of the same themes and ideas—namely the possibility of insidious threats to personal autonomy, and the possibly illusory nature of such a thing in the first place.

Don’t worry, though, if you don’t like to deal with serious ideas or themes when you read a story.  I’m no highbrow literatus at heart, however much I love Shakespeare.  One of the problems I often had with literature courses in college was that I never had the knack—or perhaps the interest—for trying to dissect works of fiction for deep meanings and hidden messages.  I just read stories to enjoy them.  With Shakespeare, at least, I’m darn near sure he wrote to entertain people.  This explains why I tended to get better grades in Calculus, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics than in English courses.  You didn’t have to try to figure out how to say something the professor thought was insightful, or that agreed with his or her personal take on a given work.  In math and science, if you know the material, you pretty much can get the right answer.

So, you don’t need to worry about my stories being unnecessarily complicated or deep.  I do, of course, tend automatically to put into them whatever I’m pondering at any given time, as I suspect any author does, and in real life I’ve been told that I tend to invite chaos.  But chaos can make for good stories.  It’s an odd fact of human nature, but things we like to read, or to watch, or the games we like to play, are rarely what most of us would ever want to experience if we could avoid them.  This has been said, and far better, by many others before me.

I plan on taking most of the month of February off from any editing or rewriting Unanimity, following Stephen King’s advice in his book On Writing.  We’ll see if I can meet that ideal; I make no guarantees.  If I’m able, though, it means that next month will be one in which I can dedicate myself entirely to new stories.  I have one or two works of short fiction that I hope to finish in that time.  Then will begin the proverbial wading-through-blood of making Unanimity fit to be read by other people.

It’s gonna be a while before that’s done.

In other news:  I’m always trying to think of ways to make my parallel blog—Iterations of Zero—work for me and with my schedule, and I may try something new with it.  I’m a fan of a few podcasts, and I am also an enthusiastic consumer of Audible books, especially nonfictions ones.  My own commute-based listening has convinced me that, however much I want to participate in, promote, and preserve the art and craft of written language, it may be useful to do more audio work, sharing thoughts and ideas that I’d planned eventually to turn into written blog posts.  As you know, I’ve done audio (and associated “video”) of three of my short stories and nine chapters of CatC, and I’ve developed a modicum of skill at using the medium, so I may start posting some more audio stuff on IoZ…perhaps starting by reading aloud some posts I’ve written previously.  Further bulletins on this as events develop.

Finally, a forewarning:  I’m planning, hopefully sooner rather than later, to rewrite the “About Me” section of this blog.  I wrote that piece many years ago now, and when I read it now, it just feels like I’m trying too hard.  I also left out a fair few of the more unpleasant but pivotal things that have happened to me.  I suppose this is understandable, even excusable, but I must remember my above-noted insight that unpleasant stories are often interesting to read.  Mainly, though, I just want to be honest about myself, as much as I’m able, and anyone who’s read my fiction can probably tell that a jolly, happy-go-lucky Dr. Pangloss I am not.

Also, if one is open even about the most embarrassing aspects of one’s life, then one need not fear that those events can be used against one, even inadvertently.  I’m in some ways fortunate that many of my most damaging personal tales are already matters of public record; my personal darkness is rather well-illuminated.  If it contains the sorts of things that would drive you away from me if they were to be revealed later, then by all means, stay away now.

I am what I am, I’m my own special destruction.

But destruction and creation aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re just ways of looking at the processes of change.  And at this stage of the universe, embroiled as we are in the long transition from order to entropy, change is something with which you’re just gonna have to deal.  It doesn’t ask your permission, it doesn’t need your approval, and it will certainly never seek your forgiveness.

TTFN

Here’s a peek at the planned cover picture:

penal colony cover 2

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…and he must needs blog that the devil drives.

Good morning and welcome to another Thursday.  There’s no longer anything very interesting or specific to say about the date.  It’s not the week before Christmas, or the week between Christmas and New Year’s, nor is it even the week immediately after.  It is, instead, yet another featureless span of time, trapped in the wasteland of days that marks the first part of every year.  The next truly celebrated holiday—in America, at least—is Valentine’s Day, and that’s a highly artificial, commercial holiday, mainly celebrated by people in romantic relationships (known to the rest of us by various uncomplimentary epithets).  After that comes St. Patrick’s Day, which is a little better, and then the Easter/Passover time, which has much to do with the arrival of Spring.  Once Spring is here, certainly for those who live up north, one hardly needs a holiday in order to feel like celebrating.

Of course, here in South Florida, at the same latitude as Upper Egypt*, Spring arrives a bit earlier.

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I’ve gone back and forth a bit on the topic of how many projects to work on at once.  Well, I’m thinking of going back (or forth) yet again.  As you may recall, I decided to write Penal Colony and to publish Solitaire because Unanimity was taking so long, and I needed to give myself some variety so that I could maintain my pseudo-sanity.  But all along I’ve dabbled in other matters, such as my experimentation with audio versions of my stories and trying to put out a weekly posting on “Iterations of Zero.”

I can’t help but think, though, that if I hadn’t allowed myself to be distracted, that Unanimity might well be done by now.  Of course, that would mean that it would probably be slightly different than it’s going to be in this universe, but it would be done, and that’s the point.

So…I may go back to the purist’s recommendation and stick to one story at a time (except during the cooling off period between the first draft of a novel and the rewriting/editing process, which is a very good time for a short story).  Of course, there’s little doubt that, someday down the road, when I feel bored or impatient, I’ll switch it up again.  I’ll keep you posted on how that all goes.  I’m sure you can hardly wait.

One reason I’m thinking about this is that I’m frustrated that editing Penal Colony is going so slowly…or feels like it is.  By my usual standards, it’s not that long of a short story; it’s only about twenty-five thousand words.  But of course, for the moment, most of my writing time is dominated by Unanimity, as I come ever closer to its end…it’s hard to walk away from it when my schedule calls for me to do some work on Penal Colony.

This would all be easier, of course, if I were able to write full time, but alas, I must needs make my living in other ways for the time being.  Perhaps in days or years to come this will change.  Hopefully at least some of my Everettian branches have a full-time-writing future…which would mean that I will have such a future, even if I also have other futures, in which no such thing happens.  Each of those futures will be just as contiguous with—just as identical with—the current person writing this blog as any of the others.  All of which speculation assumes that Everett’s “Many Worlds” interpretation is right, of course, which is my personal suspicion.

Isn’t quantum mechanics fun?

I hope all of you who live in climates north of me are staying safely warm to as great a degree as possible.  It feels cold down here when it goes into the low fifties overnight (as it did last night), but I know that’s just because we’re all soft and weak.**  On the other hand, I have mangoes and papayas and avocados and bananas and coconuts all growing in my yard, so there are compensations to such softness and weakness.  I know that you’re all enduring much greater privation.  You may console yourselves with the knowledge that, before long, my home may be (literally) underwater.  A little schadenfreude helps keep the blood warm in winter; indulge yourself.

And what the hell, a belated Happy New Year to you all.

TTFN

*The “Upper” part, by the way, apparently refers to the course of the Nile, so Upper Egypt is actually farther south than Lower Egypt.

**I grew up in Michigan, did my undergraduate degree in upstate New York, then lived in Chicago for two years before med school…so I’ve known what it’s like to be through real, relatively severe cold.  Of course, people from North Dakota, from Minnesota, and from Canada may laugh at my presumption.  I accept such laughter as a just rebuke, even as I stand outside in the sunshine without a jacket in mid-January, wondering why creatures such as we—with almost no fur, and with the highest concentration of sweat glands of any living organism—ever left the rift valley of Africa.

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I will encounter darkness as a bride, and blog it in mine arms.

Good morning!  Allow me to welcome you to another Thursday, which I know you’ve been awaiting with bated breath.  It’s the first Thursday of December 2018, and the new year rapidly approaches.  Hanukkah has already begun, and some other biggish holiday is also coming up, based on the various decorations and songs one hears in the shops.

I’ve been working steadily, if sometimes not as quickly as I like.  Solitaire should be ready to publish soon, probably before the end of the year.  We’ve already begun working on the cover design, which I don’t expect to be a great surprise, but which nevertheless is so appropriate as to be all but inevitable.

I’m excited about publishing Solitaire, and I’m enthusiastic about people reading it, but I want to say again before that day arrives:  this is not a happy story.  It has its moments of sardonic humor, I suppose, but it is supremely dark…so dark that, when I originally wrote it, I couldn’t imagine where to send it to get it published.  I couldn’t see how any magazine would want it.

Not that it’s not a good story; obviously, I think it is.  But it’s not science fiction, and it’s not supernatural.  Thus, venues dedicated to those genres were not readily available.  And though there is a surprise revelation involved, it’s not really a mystery story, either.  It’s the tale of an advertising executive having a breakdown, and contemplating the recent events of his life, and that of his family, while dealing out a hand of solitaire at the breakfast table.

But this is not the whole story of why I never tried to have it published; it’s actually a bit of excuse-making.  The fact is, especially as a younger man, I was nervous about putting Solitaire out into the world.  From then to now, the reactions of those who have read it have ranged from, “Man, that guy’s really bitter,” to “Doc, you’re fucked in the head.”  These comments have always been made in good humor—the commenters clearly meaning what they said as a species of compliment—but these were people who know me, after all.  They know I’m a good guy.

Strangers reading Solitaire might be rather put off.  I suppose that’s okay.  People who can’t handle dark things should avoid it; for certain others it may even be “triggering.”  I would go so far as to say that someone in the throes of a significant mood disorder probably should not read it.

Still, I think it’s a good story, and I’m proud of it, despite its darkness…or perhaps because of it, who knows?  If I don’t, I don’t see how anyone else could.  I think that, although sometimes the best way to deal with darkness is to whistle past the graveyard and make jokes, at other times its just as well to dive right into the deep, dark end of the frigid pool and get it over with, or get used to it, or whatever you want to call the process.  Maybe such fiction is a way of saying, “The world can be dark.  Sometimes it can be very dark.  We can take it.  Bring it on.”

Whatever the meaning, I’m delighted to have rediscovered it, and to be able to present it to you in a venue all its own, hopefully for your enjoyment.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m also editing Penal Colony.  It’s taking longer than Solitaire, partly because it’s a longer story, and partly because Solitaire gets priority.  Penal Colony is more light-hearted, and it is definitely science fiction, though not of the ray-gun, starship variety—it takes place in the modern world, mostly in an all-night diner.  Make of that what you will.

And, of course, Unanimity is moving along as well.  We’re about to reach the final confrontation, something I’ve been approaching for many times longer than have the characters in the story (which takes place over only a few months).  It’s been a long road, much longer than I expected, and it’s good to be able finally to catch a glimpse of the end, even if it is still off on the horizon.  Or some other, better metaphor.

Have a happy holiday season, even you only tacitly celebrate the Winter Solstice.  It may be cold and dark outside, at least in the northern hemisphere, but that’s okay.  As I said above, we can take it.

Bring it on.

TTFN

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Come what come may, time and the hour blogs through the roughest day.

Well, Thursday has caught me off-guard again.  This really shouldn’t happen, considering that it comes every week at the same time—like clockwork, or at least like calendar-work—but I guess I’ve got a mental block in that area.  The days do all seem much the same, with very little that stands out from its surroundings; certainly, there exist plain few inherently exciting events.  Goodness knows the news cycle is too depressingly idiotic to vouchsafe much attention without losing IQ points each time; it’s probably worse for your brain than sniffing glue, though I’ve never tried the latter, and I don’t intend to do so.  If glue-sniffing is worse than paying attention to popular and social media—well, then it is very bad indeed.

Of course, there are exciting things coming in my personal future.  The writing of Unanimity proceeds well, with the story arcing gracefully (I hope) toward its climax, but it continues to be longer than I expect.  I’m pretty sure the first draft is going to be over half a million words before it’s through!  But I do expect it to be complete before the end of the year, and then rewriting/editing can begin, leading ultimately, in the fullness of time, to the release of the novel.  So that’s fun.

I also finished rewriting the original portion of In the Shade, that short story I pulled out and decided to complete.  I am not, however, going to finish writing the story until after I’ve completed at least the first draft of Penal Colony, which is going more quickly now that I’m not splitting my secondary writing time between it and In the Shade.  I expect that both short stories will be complete, rewritten/edited, and released well before Unanimity is ready to go.

I have a tentative plan to put together a new collection of short stories before long, since I write them with some frequency, and release them as the equivalent of “Kindle Singles.”  I know there are people out there who prefer to read physical, paper-and-ink books, and sympathize strongly with that point of view (though I do love being able to carry my library around in my pocket).  Since publishing even my short stories (which tend to be long) in paperback individually just makes for a product that’s probably too expensive for what you get, I like the idea of releasing a new collection of stories, like Welcome to Paradox City, but with more stories than that collection.  I’ve even started playing around with title ideas, like Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, or something along those lines.

And just now, literally, as I wrote this, it occurred to me that—going in the other direction—I could also publish the individual short stories from Welcome to Paradox City as Kindle additions.  These would be The Death Sentence, If the Spirit Moves You, and of course the titular Paradox City.  Interesting.

Of course, if I release these as individual works, it might be tempting to produce audio versions of the stories, which could be fun and rewarding, but which could reinstantiate the trap in which I use a lot of my spare time recording and editing.  I really need to find a way to dedicate more of myself to writing, and its associated pursuits, in the rapidly diminishing (and highly unpredictable) life that remains to me.  Maybe I should set up a Patreon account or something.

Discussing audio leads to an amusing little side-note.  As I think I’ve commented before, I have a longish daily commute, and I like to listen to podcasts and audio books during the trip.  Well, recently, I was fiddling through my phone and found the old, unedited recordings of some of my short stories and the early chapters of The Chasm and the Collision.  I listened to one of these on the way home the other day, and it was quite amusing to hear all my mistakes and retakes, and the inevitable copious profanity that went along with them.  But it was also surprisingly fun simply to listen to myself reading my stories, so last night I opened up the YouTube app on my phone and listened to the first part of Hole for a Heart on my way home.  I don’t know if this is the most narcissistic thing that’s ever been done, but it certainly ranks right up there in my personal experience.  It was, however, honestly enjoyable.  I wonder what, if anything, that says about me, but it’s at least reassuring in that I still find the story to be a good one, and it makes me want to write more.

I just wish I could finish Unanimity more quickly.  Sometimes I think I’m never going to live to see it published, or even to see the finished first draft.  Probably that’s too melodramatic—I do tend to be a bit dark, but then again, if you read my writing, you know that already.

And that’s pretty much it for today, on this surprisingly unexpected Thursday.  I hope I haven’t shortchanged you, but then again, if you enjoy my writing, there’s plenty of it available commercially.

TTFN!