I don’t want to call them social networks. A social network, these days, is a tool, not a construct. What I imply is an older term. A network made up of personal connections and obligations. I’m at 36,000 feet as I write this, westbound from Kansas City, Missouri and the 74^th Worldcon/MidAmeriCon II. It was a really good con, as they go.

I’ve written elsewhere about my impressions of the future of fandom as the old folks today understand it, and how the world has already changed, but has also left them utterly bereft by the side of the road.

Through Fabulous Publisher Babe™ I met several new folks that she had known for twenty or more years, from her days in Minneapolis and other places. We also ran into other people we know, some from the west coast, others from elsewhere, but almost all of them almost entirely from conventions we all attend.

They are con-buddies. People we hang out with at panels. Bar-conning co-conspirators. Instigators of mischief, as well as witnesses at later dates.

What has changed over the last few years is that we no longer only stay in touch with each other via email or online bulletin boards where we argue with each other. The rise of technology has worked to even-more eliminate the virtual distance between us, so that we can stay in some manner of abstract day-to-day contact. Our feed is filled with their news: birthdays, weddings, parties, dirty jokes, silliness, etc. They see our lives.

My online feed is almost entirely business, mostly because Blaze Ward, Storyteller is a construct I maintain for that purpose. I rarely talk about general things, unless something or someone really pisses me off, and I have not deleted anyone from my life just because they are fools. Racists dumb enough to be racists in public these days, or anti-vaxxers who want to talk about how a vaccine is going to suddenly give their child a genetic disorder. Those folks get the boot. I don’t have time for that truck.

People who are on the other side of various social and political divides will, at most, simply get un-followed, at least for a while. When you reach the point where I feel like you’ve got nothing important to say, I stop listening. It has happened a few times this year.

One other group comes up in my life now and again: relatives. I freely admit I was the black sheep of the family in the old days. Folks who have known me long enough (and there are a few of you within the sound of my voice), can attribute to how angry I used to be. How hurt. How defensive. How mean I could get when provoked.

But we all change.

I chose to become someone entirely different a little more than three years ago. Woke up and realized I didn’t like the current me, and I needed to become someone else. Fewer grudges. Less anger.

Starting over.

I have striven to reach out to various members of my estranged family so that they could see what I have become, and maybe be proud of me that I turned out to be less of a shit than they expected. (You all have that person in your family tree somewhere.)

One of the things that struck me over the last few years has been how bad some of the grudges people hold against me. In some cases, I don’t even know why. In others, I have tried to apologize and make amends.

It hasn’t always worked, but I have tried.

There is nothing greater than that. I tried.

If you chose to dislike me anyway at this point, that is your prerogative. But it has consequences. I don’t know what your reasons might be, but something changed in me over the last few days.

I often reinvent myself. Once or twice a year I will take an inventory, keep the things I like, toss the things I don’t. Does it bring me joy, or angst? If not joy, then it is onto the trash heap of history with you.

This week, for reasons that doubtless made sense to them, several folks chose to not have anything to do with me. That is their right.

But there are always consequences.

You will decide that a wall needs to be built up between us.

I get to choose if that wall will be three feet tall, or fifty.

And I’m not even sure that I was the offending party, or just happened to be the closest male figure upon which a female (in all three cases recently: female) was allowed to safely heap her scorn and derision.

I try to live my life by a few simple ethical observations:

• If you don’t tell people lies, you don’t have to keep track of what you’ve told them.
• If the world gives you a little extra, it is better to build a longer table than a higher wall.
• Your word is your bond.

I’m sure there are others, if pressed or inebriated, but I start there.

But occasionally, I have to take inventory. If you can still hear these words, you weren’t one of the people I decided to permanently excise over the last few days.

I became someone else. Someone not as willing to take your shit, particularly when I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve it. Even Fabulous Publisher Babe™ has had to shrug her shoulders and make excuses for folks a few times lately.

But as someone I greatly value recently told me: this is not my circus, these are not my monkeys. I am happy to be helpful for no other reason than I can be. I am also quite content to hold a grudge forever.

And that is a terrible concept: forever. It means that I have built a wall fifty feet tall between us. Not five, where you might be able to jump up and see over it. Not ten where you could climb with some effort and see things on my side.

Tall enough to shadow the sun.

I would like to offer a few people the best of luck on their journey, and hope they manage to find a safe harbor, because they have sailed off beyond my horizons, and done so forever.

Tall enough to shadow the sun.

shade and sweet water,

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

So on Saturday, the first panel I went to was about small press publishing. Moderated by one of the editors at Locus Magazine. Seriously. “Small Press.”

There was a very fascinating gentleman from Israel named Ron Yaniv who publishes original SF work in Hebrew, and also translates things from English. He was useful to listen to, as he had original ideas about building a brand, communicating yourself to your real and potential audience, what sorts of things work and what don’t. I don’t read Hebrew, but he would have been someone I followed up with after the panel if I did.

The rest of the panel was a waste of my morning. The gentleman from Locus basically stated that going Indie Publishing through Amazon was functionally equivalent to a vanity press as far as he was concerned. And the definition of important versus unimportant publishers hinged on having a Manhattan office.

Seriously, I considered walking to the front of the room and peeing on the guy, just so he had no doubts what my position was, but he had his head so firmly up his ass he still might not have even noticed.

Part of the reason I get my back up with these people is their undying devotion to the idea that you can only be successful on NY terms. You have to earn your SFWA bones with “reputable” magazines and publishers to be considered anything greater than dog shit with them. It has been a conversation I have had more than once.

And more than one person has asked me why I haven’t joined the Science Fiction Writers of America. Cat Rambo is doing amazing things reforming the organization into someplace where I possibly won’t get insulted by the majority of the membership. In another few years. When pressed, I remind them that I was a best-selling Indie author before I was actually eligible to join their little club.

I have still had to deal with too many long-standing members who could be politely described as assholes in their private conversations when I “identified” myself as an indie. I suspect Cat will have to simply offer up about a dozen to a score of human sacrifices on the front lawn in order to move the organization to someplace I would consider “accessible.” But Groucho Marx covered this topic.

I wish her luck.

Later, I attended a panel on archaeology in SF, and what things writers get right and wrong. All four of the panelists were working archaeologists before becoming writers, and one still was. It was fascinating hearing them talk about their field, and how it could have implications for futurism. That was the first panel all weekend where I’ve actually taken notes. My Fairchild series, while it does not have aliens and the need for xeno-archaeology yet, I could see needing to interview an archaeologist for a story, as they pursue some topic.

After that, a panel on political world-building in SF. Again, taking notes. I knew the name Ken Liu, and something of his reputation for smarts, especially after his Hugo last year, but I had never encountered him. He was leaned back, looking kinda bored and “why am I here?” and then it came time for him to say something.

He leaned forward in his chair, dropped his weight onto his toes, and turned on the charm. It was like he hit the room with a searchlight. And then he proceeded to get arcane on how democracy and bureaucracy were technologies in SF, and how to understand and detail them in your writing in a way that is powerful and compelling.

I can see why he won his second Hugo a couple of hours later. He was simply an amazing speaker, particularly in his ability to take something that could be phenomenally boring, and make it interesting and useful. And I learned a lot from him.

Next to Ken was Ada Palmer, a historian by training who Fabulous Publisher Babe™ absolutely adores, both as a person and a writer. I had never heard of her before yesterday. She held her own with Ken Liu and was just as compelling about building up a world in layers (think pearls) by addressing how the politics used to work, and how they changed, and what odd little bits got left over and stuck around in the present tense of your work and your world.

Like I said, I took copious notes.

The last panel of the day was on Yaoi and Yuri, which is shorthand for m/m and f/f themes in Japanese Manga. Didn’t understand anything about the topic, but Lyda Morehouse was moderating, so I figured it would be fun. It was. One lesbian who reads, by her own admission, like a twelve-year-old boy looking for boobs, robots, and explosions. One demi-/bi-sexual woman. One other who never specified. All three panelists extremely smart women. Two of them librarians. All of them experts on the topic, having a very introductory bit on the what, followed by a quick tour of their favorites, and then a long Q&A on the why. Learned a lot. Expanded my literary horizons. Giggled a whole bunch.

Spent the evening trying to talk one of Fabulous Publisher Babe’s friends into Indie. He’s firmly wedded to TradPub, but even he can see the writing on the wall. That model is dying. I talked about it yesterday in my post. They have not replaced the current generation, and don’t “get” it.

And I made my choice early on for Fortune over Fame. I plan to build myself up to a comfortable mid-list lifestyle, all the while flying under the radar of the ijits in New York.

And then, last night, the Hugo awards. The last few years have been dominated by a group of racist, sexist dinosaurs who are deeply wounded that females and minorities have the audacity to commit speculative fiction, which they feel should be exclusively a white male prerogative.

If you haven’t see the results this morning, all three of the fiction categories were won by women last night (including Naomi!!!!!!). Two of those women are black. It was utterly awesome for the future of the field.

Got a lovely quote forwarded into my facebook feed this morning that made me giggle

“It’s hard being a straight white guy in 2016. Everything was always supposed to be all about us 100% of the time and now it’s down to like, 98%.”

It’s sad, but that’s been the case in the past. It is slowly changing, as the useless mouth-pieces die off and get replaced by people who aren’t assholes.

One last story: I am smiling about a mile wide today, because I met a unicorn this week. I talked about Cerece Rennie Murphy yesterday, and her panel on Afrofuturism. Fabulous Publisher Babe and I were seated almost directly in front of her, third row, during the panel, so maybe fifteen feet away from Cerece. Apparently, we were smiling and nodding at the right moments as she talked.

I saw her yesterday and went up to thank her for such a wonderful and useful panel. She recognized me and my sweetie, and she thanked us for helping her get over her nerves as she was surrounded by a potentially hostile crowd. We both got hugs.

So in addition to being an amazingly-smart, capable black woman writing science fiction, she’s also really, really nice and friendly. I need to go buy some of her books so I can write up reviews for everyone.

Going home in a few hours. Made some lovely friends. Learned a bunch. Considering going to San Jose in 2018, because I can take a train down. Recovering tomorrow, and then back to work.

shade and sweet water,

bd

KCMO

So after a full day of programming and fun at Worldcon, some rather interesting impressions.

I went to Sasquan last year in Spokane, WA. It is a smaller city, well inland across the state from Seattle, but close enough to drive. It left me with concepts and concerns. This year has not addressed them in a positive manner.

I’m 47. And I’m in pretty good shape (size waist 32 jeans as the numbers escalate, but I still weigh right around 200 lbs, most of the time.)

This thing, this World Science Fiction Convention, looks to have around 5000 attendees. That sounds like a lot, until you realize that the San Diego Comic Con had over 160,000 attendees in 2015. It feels like a small, local con of the sort I started going to thirty-five years ago in Wichita.

Second, I’m in the bottom half of the attendees, by age grouping. Seriously, the average age of all the people I’ve seen the last two days has got to be mid-fifties. These are folks that have been going to Worldcons for decades, and they represent a significant chunk of Fandom, as it used to be known in the bad, old days when these people were pups.

The problem is, they aren’t pups anymore. They’ve grown old, and not brought along the next generation of readers and fans. I might have seen a handful of people too young to drink in the last two days. That’s it.

For comparison, this spring at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, the average age of attendees might (barely) have been old enough to drink. That crowd was teenagers, lots and lots of them. Better, young parents, in costume, with their four-year-old daughter dressed up as Rey from Star Wars 7, or Wonder Woman, or something. Deeply engaged and doing it as a family.

I barely saw adult children of attendees here in KC.

And the energy at ECCC was off the charts, compared to WC. Hyper. Excited. Engaged.

The entire dealer room at WC is less than an acre, compared to ECCC that felt 4-6 times as big, and a hundred times as crowded and vibrant.

So, yeah.

Next, let us talk about the fans, in as gentle a way as we can.

I weigh 200 lbs. I’m pretty sure that puts me in the bottom half weight category for people, as I look around. And that includes the girls.

I feel bad for the people in such bad shape. It’s not that hard to walk more and pay better attention to what you eat. When I stopped drinking soda pop, I lost 20 pounds pretty quickly. When my wife gave me her old fitbit, I started paying attention to the number of steps I took each day. It had been 3500-4500. Now it runs around 6000-7000 on a weekday, and 12000-15000 on the weekends in the summer. (Winter, I don’t have as much work to do out at the farm, so I tend to write more instead, but I’m standing at the counter when I do and moving around still.)

People, walk more. That’s all it takes. Stretch in the shower in the morning to keep the muscles loose. Eat less processed foods. My diet has shifted over largely to dead critter and fresh veggies these days, with an emphasis on burning fat. I’m in better shape than I’ve been since the days I used to go out dancing several nights each week.

Now, the good parts.

Went to several fun panels yesterday. Afrofuturism in SF was an exploration of black authors and publishers in the field, and what it was like for them to get where they are, and how the field can be more inclusive. Cerece Rennie Murphy was absolute hilarious to listen to, as she recounted the stories about how nobody told her a black woman wasn’t supposed to write SF so she drove up to NY Comic Con and rented a table to sell her books. Another was Bill Campbell, the publisher of Rosarium Publishing.

After that: Taboo Topics in SF&F, which turned into a serious (if silly) discussion on why bodily functions are never discussed in SF&F. Imagine Aragorn up at two in the morning trying to pee with orcs trying to beat the door down. Or how no woman ever has to worry about packing emergency tampons and pads in space. (Science is actually getting close, but let’s talk chain mail settings.) This is topical for me, because my novel coming out shortly, Fairchild, actually addresses some of these topics, and I had to ask very pointed questions and get a good walk through on things from my wife, to make sure I had it all right.

They also touched on the fact that Americans do not deal well with class topics. The best suggestion I saw was for a group of British writers to have a panel on class at an American con, sometime, for American writers to understand. Americans do not see themselves (or admit to themselves) through the lens of class. Everyone is a temporarily down-on-his-luck millionaire. That is helpful at times, but it leaves out other things.

Also met lots of neat people and made some more con buddies. This being so far from home, few of the usual suspects made it this far, but Fabulous Publisher Babe™ knows everybody, and I get to tag along. Had dinner last night with Lyda Morehouse and Naomi Kritzer. Scheduled to have lunch today with Mary Anne Mohanraj. All folks she has known from way back, mostly from Clarion things.

Am off now, Saturday morning, for breakfast and more fun. Probably almost as much programming, but hoping to catch up with a few folks that I have not seen yet. (Left messages.)

shade and sweet water

bd

KCMO

Have arrived in Kansas City, MO for MidAmeriCon II (commonly known as Worldcon 74).  Have a list of panels I want to see, from hard Science Fiction to publishing.  There are several people here I hope to catch up with.  Already met a few neat people I hope to keep in touch with in the future.

One thing stands out in my mind as I look around: this place is Trad-pub. All of the panels are centered around the concept of New York publishing, from getting an agent, to writing a winning elevator pitch, to how to handle rejection (really?). There is even a panel on “Small Press Publishing” where the moderator is the Head Editor of one of the biggest publishing houses in the world. Small press, right.

Since I don’t suspect I’ll ever belong to Trad-Pub-Land (the next Hive story going off to the New Yorker in October to be rejected so I can publish it in January notwithstanding), I don’t think there is much there for me.

But that’s not why I do these things. The world of publishing is going through the fourth complete sea-change in the last fifteen years right now. Technology has broken the power of the big houses to control what the public sees. You all are able to buy my books directly and recommend them to a friend, and you cannot purchase them off a book shelf anywhere except the Powell’s in Beaverton, OR, and a small mailbox store in Seattle (the owner is a friend of my wife and likes having books for sale on his counter, me and several other local authors he knows).

To be “Trad-Pubbed” is to have been an author who used to get big contracts through the NY houses, but who has either seen the advances drop to almost nothing, or who has simply been cut loose and abandoned. I feel sorry for those folks, because they have to re-invent themselves mid-career.

For some of them, it isn’t as painful, as they are usually able to get their rights back after thirty-five years if it has gone out of print. (New books, being electronic, will NEVER go out of print, according to how contract law is currently working.) If they signed “good” contracts, they might have term limits built in (“you give it back after ten years…” etc.) or sales thresholds (it must sell X copies in a year or the rights revert, etc.), but most writers did not sign good contracts. (I won’t go into THAT stupidity, other than to say that young authors are taught to not ask questions by people who absolutely know better.)

For me, I have the freedom that Jeff Bezos is going to enforce on the world. (And if you think Jeff’s going to lose, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you, cheap.) ANYONE can write a book, slap a cover on it, blurb the back, and put it up for sale. You might never sell a single copy of it, except to your mother, but you have published a book. Most authors will never, ever, make a dedicated living from their writing alone. I don’t. (Yet.)

But all I have to do is keep publishing, and relentlessly hustle. Our waitress this morning wanted to know if we were writers, because our hotel is two blocks from the Con and filled with us. I handed her a business card for Auberon, which gave her a tangible thing to have, to look at, maybe to buy later. The return on my business cards is lousy, in that I probably only get a handful of readers from a box, but the box costs me $10, so it actually pays for itself.

I don’t need many fans, if they are dedicated to my words. I net about $3 from each e-novel I sell (less for the novellas and almost nothing from the short stories) on Amazon. You can do the math pretty easily from there to determine how much money you would want to make in a year, and break that down into how many novels you sell on a daily basis, average, to be free. If I have more novels for folks, and keep writing more, then my chances of replacing the day job go up.

Trad pub does not offer that, any more. Once upon a time, you could make a comfortable career mid-listing and have a happy, middle-class lifestyle. If you hit big, the spouse could quit their job and you could enjoy things. Today, those numbers measure in the hundreds in Trad-Pub land, and thousands in the Indie Press (me and folks like me struggling to get to that point).

So I hustle, and I blog, and I write daily. I try to talk you into introducing me to one of your friends you think will enjoy my writing, because that word of mouth builds my fan base. If I had enough support to stop day-jobbing, I would at least double my daily word count, at a dead minimum. Probably triple it once I got the brain muscles built up to do that regularly. Did it for Fairchild, when I had to turn out a new novel, in a new universe, from scratch, in a very short period of time. It worked out to 3000 words per day, for 15 days. 47,000 words, which is 7000 more than the definition of a novel.

I can do it. Trad Pub would never stand for it. But they don’t get a vote. And they don’t get to stop me. I view them as the competition for your dollars, so I have to know what they are up to, and how to produce a better product.

So that’s Day One of WorldCon (Thursday). Let’s see how silly Day Two can be.

🙂

shade and sweet water

bd

KCMO

I have words, but she does it so much better than I do this morning:

http://rebeccasenese.com/out-of-this-world-bundle-lets-blast-off/

Bundle: to gather together a wide and interesting group of folks and put one of their books each into a product for people to read for a single, cheap price.

The goal: I have fans who have (hopefully) read everything I have ever written, and wait with baited breath for my next installment. To tide them over, and introduce them to their new, second-favorite author. 🙂

This is a big bundle. 16 stories available when you normally get ten to twelve. I only know about half of the authors present and have read about a third of the books on tap.

Come join us “Out Of This World” for some serious (and occasionally silly) fun.

Oh, and, I drew the short straw, so Rebecca put me up first. It would help me look good if you could go buy this and then send the link to everyone you know, so Rebecca launches this beast in style!

Cheers,

b

It’s true.  And I post things there on a quarterly basis that don’t necessarily make it into my semi-regular blog posts. The blog is where I talk about stuff, but not necessarily things of any great relevance, beyond my usual snark.

The newsletter, on the other hand, is about schedules and events. And occasionally giveaways and stuff. And I promise not to share your information with anyone. I try to send out one newsletter quarterly, and the reason I was thinking about it was because I should have sent it out August 1, but never got around to it as a result of some of the craziness going on in my life right now.

On the brighter side, I just sat down this morning and started organizing my thoughts, so I’ll be able to send it out in another week or so, depending on what I have to say.

This is your chance to sign up and get the latest news.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

bd

yeah, I realize I haven’t posted on my blog in a while. This won’t be long, until the trolls find me and drag me back to work.

Was working hard on fixing the pumphouse. That’s about 3/4 done now, and I eke out a few minutes here and here as I can.

Then a special project came up and I had to throw out the rest of my summer schedule. If all goes fantastically well, I’ll have news at the end of this week. If so-so, two weeks.

Thanks for putting up…

bd

Just ’cause.

Much ago, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) was involved in the original Kickstart for the StandStand. (seriously: https://www.standstand.com/) It is a lovely contraption that you assemble and put on a table or desk so you can put your laptop up at a level to type while standing up.

She ended up with two of them, at different heights for different desks. Each one has two leg pieces that you assemble, and then put a top on. Total thickness, under two inches. Made from birch, so incredibly lightweight. Folds up and travels with you in a backpack.

At CampCon, last month, I borrowed hers, because my back was still out of sorts and I needed to stand while writing. It was a wonderful thing, with one minor (but significant) drawback. I prefer a 17″ laptop, and the fine folks that invented the device obviously all use teeny, little Mac Airs that are about the size of my tablet computer.

But they have come out with a new invention, called a StandStand Mouse. Three legs in a W shape.  In their world, they can rest their little computers on the left side of the top and have space for a mouse.

Mine arrived yesterday, and I just finally got around to unpacking and assembling it. My laptop has about a centimeter of clearance on each side, all by itself. That’s fine for me except when I need to edit and am mousing a lot. (I have considered red-necking an extension that would clamp on and provide another six inches of flat top, so I can actually mouse, but I’ll live for now.)

The purpose behind today’s free advertising is to remind all you creative types that sitting hunched over a computer all day, all night, and all weekend ruins your back. You will become one of those little old ladies, one of these days, who is so hunchbacked that she stares at the ground and has to tilt her head back to look ahead.

Don’t be that person.

I screwed up my back playing football in high school, a very long time ago now. It flares up every year or so (too often, but I’m too squeamish for surgery that might or might not fix it).  She and I have uncovered a regimen that reduces the primary healing time from weeks to days. I have used a kneeling chair at work for nearly twenty years. I started doing morning pushups after this latest back flareup to strengthen my core muscles.

I want to be able to walk twenty miles a day when I’m ninety.

You (YES, YOU!!) need to pay attention to your physical health. That probably means exercising more than you currently do. I got a fitbit this spring, and went from 3500-4500 steps/day, to around 8500-9500/day, just because I could measure it.

We get half a pig and a quarter cow every year from some lovely folks in Ellensburg, WA (windyNranch.com). That means dead critter than has not been raised with growth hormones, or adulterated with other crap. Plus, they let us choose whether or not we want spices mixed in with the ground pork, so I can make sausage for me and her that we both can actually eat.

I stopped drinking soda pop entirely over three years ago. Mostly, that meant a serious reduction in corn syrup in my diet, but I also skipped out on cane sugar flavored sodas as well, just to do it. (Two Root Beer Floats notwithstanding, in three years. Not bad.)

Starting to stand more while I write is another step on being healthy. It keeps the back muscles strong. It keeps you moving around and works your whole body in ways that sitting in a chair for 8-12 hours just will not do.

In the last four years, I have dropped from 225lb to 200lbs (that’s 16 stone down to 14, for you English weirdos). She and I got new life insurance this spring (from a fantastically White Picket Fence salesman). We both qualified in the top 3% of all people for health rating, so we got a significant discount on our rates (or rather, the same amount of money from me each month turns into a greater return twenty years down the line).

I’m a dorky, middle-aged, white guy. All of my grandparents made it into their seventies, despite smoking like chimneys their whole lives and drinking hard alcohol like it was going out of style. Both my parents are still going like hell in their mid-seventies now.

According to the government, I can consider retirements options of various flavors over the next fifteen to twenty years. On the one hand, yay, less day job. On the other hand, I’m already planning to quit the day job as soon as I can afford my lifestyle from the books I write.

And I will write lots more books:

Siren came out end of May.

White Crane at the end of June.

Demigod at the end of July.

The fourth Jessica Keller novel (Goddess of War) is set for October.

I just finished the third Hive story this morning. It will go for rejection at The New Yorker in a few weeks, and then get published sometime in the fall.

I’m working on a coffee table books tentatively titled “Uniforms Of The Fleet: Republic of Aquitaine” to come out with Goddess. Met with the artist this week and she’s got most of what she needs to do the last set of sketches.

I have another novel I’m 20,000 words along and will pick up this week. The fifth Jessica Keller novel keeps poking at me. Etc.

The point is this: are you healthy enough that you’ll still be alive when “someday” gets here? Are you doing the little things, every day, to ensure you survive and enjoy life? Are you eating healthy? Are you walking enough? Are you maintaining a positive attitude by using these two phases? “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” “That’s right. And the horse you rode in on.”

Are you making the right decisions, every day? The little ones, like cutting back on sweets? Like eating dead critter and fresh veggies, as opposed to a packaged something with an ingredient list fifty items long? (When was the last time you read the whole ingredient list and knew what every single thing on it was?)

So StandStand, for me, represents another positive choice. It represents me being in better shape than I’ve probably been in for at least twenty years. I represents me walking you into the ground, because I’m going to be here long after you’ve died of bad choices.

There’s a t-shirt I’m going to get printed one of these days, that sums up how I approach life, and the little things.

“You made those choices…”

Were they good ones?

Actually, if you pre-ordered, it probably appeared in your inbox list and library last night, since the Amazons appear to be running GMT for their go-code.

Above translated into english, kinda: White Crane (Modern Gods, Book 1) is now available for purchase at your preferred vendor.

The blurb:

“Kai Di laments the death of her best friend, who, it turns out, lived a double life as a super villain. A secret life she hid from everyone, including Kai Di.

Kai Di’s anger at the world smolders, unquenched by family and the rituals of death.

How can Kai Di properly mourn her closest friend, the one person who understood her, while the rest of the world celebrates her demise? How can Kai Di get vengeance on the “hero” who killed her?

“White Crane”—the first novel in the fantasy trilogy “Modern Gods”—puts a new spin on the superhero genre in this enchanting, engrossing tale. This story explores coming of age while dealing with great power, the true meaning of good and evil, as well as what sort of payroll options you should give henchmen.”

I really enjoyed writing this one. And spent way too much time thinking about how one handles being a super-villain, at the nuts and bolts level of secret identity costumes, hideouts, a bunch of other things.

And all I’m going to say is that someone who really does not like the superhero genre thought I pulled off a very entertaining story.

You should go buy a copy so you can see for yourself, ya know?

When I started writing science fiction again, the first story I wrote was Greater Than The Gods Intended. It’s a fantasy piece, and contained in a fantasy anthology (BTM2), but only because the whole story is told from the point of view of a three-foot-tall lizard-man, an Isaurian, who is the direct descendent of genetically-engineered humans, as are almost all the rest of the inhabitants of the planet in question.

The next collection (BTM3) included all sort of strange stuff, but that was because I was exploring and experimenting. Two Zolnernovy stories, one Hive, and some Dieselpunk. There was also The Librarian.

When I had been writing The Librarian, I realized that I needed to build up Suvi as a character, in order to have her better organized in my head. The result of that is The Science Officer, setting up Javier and Suvi at her beginning, so I could make The Librarian her middle point.

Suddenly, I had a universe, connecting Javier, Doyle, and then Jessica as I started to write Auberon. That turned into a spreadsheet, as I began putting dates down, making sure I left enough space everywhere for stories to be tucked in and for history to happen.

I’m thinking about that now, because, right after White Crane comes out, the next Doyle Iwakuma story, Demigod, is coming at the end of July.

There really was a lot of space in which to paint.

Suvi will be “born” on March 19, 7426 CE.

Javier Aritza will be born in 7510 CE.

The Concordancy War will end definitively with the annihilation of all higher technology and most of the life forms resident on Earth in 10397 CE.

Doyle Iwakuma will be born September 17, 12263 CE.

Henri Baudin will be born in 13059 CE.

Jessica Keller will be born in 13405 CE.

Fabulous Publisher Babe™ and I have talked a number of times about how to frame the Doyle Iwakuma stories, now that I have a third one coming out. They have become a true series, sort of. Or at least they will.

A friend of mine created the corporate logo for Iwakuma Salvage Interstellar a number of years ago, as part of an RPG campaign where I first created the character of Doyle and ship, The Last Waltz.

The new story, Demigod, takes place not long after The Librarian in time, but with four novels and half a dozen novellas in that universe written by me in between. Based on the way the politics of the future work out, most people in Javier’s era count years from the founding of the Union of Worlds (see The Mind Field for more details).

With that in mind, The Librarian takes place in year 4753 of the Unification Era, which will, in turn, become Year Zero in the Ballard Era, what history will eventually call The Story Road Era, based on what happens when Ballard suddenly leapfrogs ahead centuries technologically but does not turn around and begin conquering all its neighbors militarily.

Demigod will then be set in year 4754. It is a story focused on Piper, Doyle’s niece, who is still a young woman at this point, and not the famous explorer and philanthropist she would become in another decade or so.

The coolest part for me is considering what’s coming. I have at least one Doyle Iwakuma novel in mind, that will go into much greater detail about the Concordancy War, as well as more shorter stories. Henri Baudin will get at least two more novellas. I’ve just finished the fourth Jessica Keller novel and am taking notes towards number five. (She’s insistent that there will be nine before I’m done.) There’s even another Suvi/Summer Baudin story, set two thousand years after Jessica dies, that I will get to eventually.

Javier Aritza will have a bunch of novellas before he’s done, but that’s because he’s always been episodes of a television series, with Season One being somewhere between eight and twelve shows. And then on to Season Two.

So stick with me for a while, and there will be a whole universe of entertainment around Alexandria Station.

Meanwhile, this is your reminder that White Crane is available for pre-order, and coming out in a couple of weeks. It’s the first of a trilogy for Kai Di Peng. And a whole other universe in which to play, and I will.

And I’m deep into the next project, a completely different novel from everything I’ve done so far. Watch this space for news this fall, once I get it done and off to the First Readers and Editors for publication.

And I just got back from CampCon last week. Each year, we have done an anthology (Tales from an Alien Campfire, and Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Magic so far.) Next year, I’m editing, and the title will be Steam. And Dragons. (Note the period in the middle.) It will come out in March 2017, give or take. There have been some lovely, silly, fun ideas bandied about, so I’m hopeful it will be successful.

Oh, and: It must be summer. I was sitting in the living room yesterday afternoon, around dinner time, when Fabulous Publisher Babe ™ looked up and squeeeeeeeed. About ten feet out the sliding glass door was a deer. No, a fawn. Three feet tall and covered with white dot camouflage. Looking at us staring back at it. Even got a picture I’ll post eventually.

Then the little bambi bolted for the bedroom side of the house, and I was able to see the rest of the family in the upper meadow.

Mama had given birth to twins again this year. The other one was hiding behind a tree peeking out at me in the window, while Mama was drinking from the horse trough I keep for her.

I know how old they were, because I happened to see a deer about two weeks ago, looking a little ragged and baggy, for lack of a better term. Kinda like she had just given birth and was recovering. So I figure two weeks old, just about.

Got to watch Mama gather them up as the rain started pissing down, two little squirts gamboling all over the place like hyper bunny rabbits as she led them down the hill to the spot where they bed down, above the pond.

It was kinda cool. I’ve never seen wild fawns before, and one was ten feet away. That’s one of the reasons I bought this particular chunk of land out in the wilderness.

Additionally, the other day, I was mowing places that should have been gotten beforehand. I was back behind the workshop, knocking down ferns and other crap. Happily, I had the mower set to the highest elevation, because I managed to run right over a nest that one of the bunnies had made, full of fur and leaves under a clump of grass.

Movement caught me out of the corner of my eye and my first thought was fieldmouse that needed to be killed. Then I saw the shape of the ears and the haunches, as this tiny little guy tried to slither away from me, panicked and shell-shocked from having just been godzillaed. I’m guessing about a week-old, short-earred rabbit. Gave him a couple of nudges with my boot to keep him moving, until he got back into the remaining tall grass and ferns I was leaving. (I have owls and hawks around here, so I figured it was my job to make sure he got someplace relatively safe, since I had just mowed his house out from over him.)

I’m guessing he did okay, because when I was mowing earlier this week, I saw a bunny about the same size, but moving like lightning now. This time, I was mowing the overgrown front yard, so he took off when I got about twenty feet away and ran across the driveway and hid over there. Thirty minutes later, I was over there mowing, and saw him zip back across, zig-zagging through the remaining tall grass until he got back to the back of the workshop.

Saw him again this morning, ducking under the blackberry bramble.

It’s kinda awesome to have wildlife around. And having deer and rabbits around lets me know that there are no big cats in the area. (I live a WAYS out.)

And been eating freshly-picked strawberries and black berries, waiting for the salmonberries and the blueberries to get done. Because of the winter and spring, I will have about three cherries this year, but the pears will make up for it with Oh-My-God happy.

As always, I welcome questions and comments. I write this blog mostly for me, but occasionally people reply, and that makes my day.

shade and sweet water

bd

West Of The Mountains, WA