Forever Learning

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A long time ago, I came to the realization that things in life were either going to go uphill or downhill. You were either conquering mountains or settling for living a perfectly flat and boringly dreary life until death finally remembered to come for you.

Nope.

When I met the Fabulous Publisher Babe™, she introduced me to the Anti-Stodgy Campaign, where she tries to do one completely new thing every month. Doesn’t have to be earth-shattering. Just new and different. Take a new way driving somewhere. Try a new toothpaste. Eat at a new restaurant.

New.

Uphill, looking for new mountains to conquer. I’d already been doing that, so it was easy enough to transition into a formal format of things. I’m still learning.

In fact, I always plan to be learning new things. Forever a student.

I joke with folks that my nickname should be Xuéshēng (Chinese), although I suppose Sinh viên (Viet) might be more appropriate, considering.

Learning new things these days means I started about a year ago with a new form of Tai Chi in the Park taught by a friend of mine: Sifu Stone. Traditional Beijing form via Taiwan. Chen Pan Ling 99. Nothing at all like the Yang style (24) that is most common around here. More complicated than just four times as long.

I took to it because in the mid-90s I studied (Vietnamese) Hong Gia Kung Fu at a dojo in Garden Grove, CA. (Orange County, south of LA). There were mornings where I had worked until 2am as a bouncer at the Riverside Cowboy (Riverside, CA, well inland), then driven straight to the dojo and parked in the lot and slept for a couple of hours until folks arriving at 730 tapped on the window of my truck to wake me up for 3-4 hours of training.

And I’ve studied other forms over the ages. All my Vietnamese cousins were profoundly weirded out to learn anything about English Quarterstaff, when they were used to the bo. But then, Robin Hood wasn’t a cultural touchstone with them.

So I’m learning. Got the 99 form down last year and continue to refine my understanding of the movement and the process. The intent.

Then Sifu Stone went back to Maryland to spend a week with his Sifu, and brought home a lot of new things for the PNW students to pick up. We’ll be learning a weapons form based on the standard cane that folks use to walk around, which is really something more of a basic sword form. All the motions are similar, but the stick doesn’t require perception of where your edges are as you move.

Not a particularly complex form, either. Probably about 25 motions, thought Sifu only taught us the first half-dozen.

One of the other students was surprised at how quickly I picked it up. I told her that I’d studied European longsword (1 and 2-handed) at various times in the past, and there are only so many ways to swing a stick to hurt someone.

After that, there will be at least one formal sword form, based on the Jian (a long, skinny blade intended to be wielded generally one-handed, and not typically sharpened more than about sixteen centimeters from the sharp tip. Thick spines that can be used to thump. Or as the old saying goes: “Edge wounds, point kills.”)

Lots of experience with that sort of thing. Plus I own property with blackberry brambles. And a machete. I have spent a lot of time over the last decade plus hacking my way through such brambles. You learn where the blade is, where the thorns are, and how to sweep through without getting hooked.

The definition of summer around here is best summed up as “I’m bleeding.” Because I do.

But I learn. Cane form. Then sword form. That will keep me busy.

I’m far more flexible today than I was a year ago. As in, bend over to put on and tie both shoes while standing, and not (usually) fall on my head. (Not today. I hurt from stretching new muscles too far yesterday.)

Still, student. Xuéshēng. Sinh viên.

Forever learning. Forever doing.

In my case, I wanna be that annoying old fart at the park doing forms when I’m 80. Because I’ll still be in good enough shape.

Don’t plan to teach. Sifu Stone is roughly 8 months older than me, and much more committed to that side of things.

But I’m forever learning. Trying new things, and in doing so, building up new muscles for excitement and long life.

Having fun, because at the end of the day, that’s what its all about.

What are you doing to stay active and happy?

Fanboy Report – 20220502

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I got to fanboy yesterday. Phil Kosnett (the now-former Ambassador) and his lovely wife Alison have been on a west coast swing, visiting their daughter in LA and then their son in Portland, OR. And they were gracious enough to carve out time for me and Fabulous Publisher Babe™ to have dinner with them last night.

Drove down Monday morning to see one of my step-daughters for the first time since before the plague (medical issues have kept her isolated from any possible infection) and we got to have lunch and hang out with her all afternoon. That included a trip to a hydroponics shop south of downtown where I got to watch the Babe nerd out entirely with the guys that worked there and buy bulk supplies for the hydroponics facility just off my kitchen in the main house.

Then the three of us sat in Rose City Coffee off Milwaukee and talked until nearly 6pm.

I love collecting interesting people. It makes life so much better when you can sit and lose hours jabbering about all sorts of things.

Then dinner. German place on East Division. Olympia Provisions Public House. Great food. Great staff. Fabulous dinner.

Went in expecting Phil and Alison. Also got to meet Alex and Nik (up from Los Angeles) and talk to everyone for several hours over meat and coffee. Four more interesting people to sit and listen to. All of them lead interesting lives. Interesting people. Lotsa fun.

Best part was when I got to ambush Phil. Brought along my Dad’s old briefcase that I stole from him some thirty-five years ago, because it was big enough and had the hard sides I needed.

I had brought along all seven Kosnett books currently available in print. Phil got a chance to read the whole series in Advanced Reader Ebook Copies last fall, because I wanted him to know the whole story while he still had Redshirts to taunt at the US Embassy. And I’ll ship him two sets of copies of 5 & 6 in the fall. One set I’ve signed and one for him to sign and ship back to complete my set.

After dinner, I got him to sign all seven.

Best part, however was having him sign my copy of the original Star Fleet Battles rules from 1983. Gonna scan the actual rules pages and put them back in the folder, because I’m framing this one for my brag wall.

And you can see the genesis of the whole CS-405 trilogy right there in Historical Scenario SH1.0 – Sabotage.

While on a special mission during Y161, the Federation cruiser Kongo was suddenly confronted by a Klingon Battlecruiser. Fearing possible interference with his mission, Captain Phillip Kosnett ordered the warp engines brought to full power and discovered that they had been sabotaged! The First Officer and Chief engineer began frantic repairs as the enemy cruiser closed for the kill.

Sounds an awful lot like a broken JumpSail behind enemy lines, doesn’t it? And his daughter laughed that this misspelled his first name back then. (Only one L, like Alison.)

And it turned out that I was wrong on where he found me. I thought he had a Google Alert, like many of the folks I know famous enough to pay attention to that. Nope, he had a subscription to Scrib’d and typed his name in to see if he got any hits. Boy, was he surprised. At the same time, he is the subject of various fiction from the Star Trek/Star Fleet universes, and even has his own Star Trek action figure. (I’m too cheap for action figures right now, unless someone knows a way to do them for less than like $500 plus printing costs for design, et al.)

He found Queen Anne’s Revenge, and had to read it. And reach out. ’cause he’s awesome.

Finally, we headed out and got several pics of everyone. I cropped this one to only show me, Phil, and the Babe, because it’s too early in the day to check with the other three that its okay to show them as well.

From there, the long drive home. Left the house Monday morning at 9am. Got home about 11:15pm. Grumptacular kittie only partly mollified by sitting on someone’s lap and purring as we unwound. I’d had coffee in the afternoon and with dinner, which I don’t normally do, because I knew I’d need to stay sharp. It had been monsoon all the way down, but the drive back was lovely dry.

And I got to fanboy all over Phil. Better, he took it graciously, because he’s such an awesome person.

Right now, he and A live on the east coast in a Carolina vacation home they’ve kept while being assigned all over the damned world doing things for the State Department. As both of the kids are on the west coast, possibly permanently, I’m hoping they maybe decide to live close enough that I get to see them occasionally.

They both have such interesting stories to tell. This is a picture of Alison holding an M203 (M-16 with underbarrel grenade launcher) while in Iraq, apparently as a joke with the troops guarding her while she was in the field.

To counter it, I also have a meme pic that has Phil in it, originally produced by his friends at State. He’s even putting that image on the cover of a book of essays he is editing right now.

 

This is why I like them so much. And look forward to hearing more of their stories. Fantastically interesting people.

Better, now that he’s no longer a formal government employee, he’s allowed to have his own opinions. And part of that might be writing some of the science fiction he’s been such a nerd for for so long. He suggested at one point a story that was basically Murder On The Orient Express, but told as a formal diplomatic cable, by someone who’s an expert in such language.

Y’all should lean on him to do it, because even set in space on a luxury liner or transport of some sort, it sounds like something utterly unique and really fun. The Babe looked him dead in the eye and said “You write it, and we’ll build an anthology around it.”

Snicker. Not like I haven’t already done that four times between Blaze Ward Presents and the Special Editions.

So that’s my show and tell this stupendous Tuesday morning. And my utterly amazing roadtrip ADVENTURE on Monday.

Sorry that I’m taunting you over leading such mundane lines but I got to have WAY TOO MUCH FUN yesterday, after too long cooped up in the house hiding from other weirdos. And then to hang out with two sets of fun folks I could talk to for hours.

What are you doing to make your world a more interesting place, and yourself the sort of dinner guest that people can’t wait to invite over?

Shade and sweet water

b

West of the Mountains, WA

Anti-Stodgy and Muppet Flailing

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I’ve talked elsewhere about Fabulous Publisher Babe™’s Anti-Stodgy campaign. It arises from research showing that between about ages 14 and 24, your tastes tend to lock down.

Same food. Same music. Same clothing. Same routine.

Humans are creatures of pattern, so they get into something and stay. That’s how mid-life crises come about, when someone wakes up one morning wondering what the hell they’ve been doing with their life for the last twenty years.

Or, to quote one of my favoritist characters recently (Kohahu Kugosu): Comfortable kills.

I try to keep myself uncomfortable. Simple as that.

Stay out of the rut.

A good chunk of that gets wrapped up in my own Anti-Stodgy campaign.

In answering “Yes” to new experiences when something comes up. Done some stupid shit. Made some mistakes. Learned some amazing new things.

Until recently, I did two monthly newsletters. One dedicated to Publishing news, and the other the infamous Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter. Combination of new experiences I’ve tried and new recipes I’ve come across. (Redneck Chef is now exclusive to my Patreon for folks at the $1+ level but still happens monthly.)

Same food? Nope. Want to try new things. Might not all work. Not get added to the repertoire.

New.

About eighteen months ago, I got interviewed by the local newspaper in Enumclaw, WA. Gave my usual spiel about “Do you want to be famous or rich?” by talking about Bernie Taupin.

Nobody knows who Bernie is, except fans. Man’s got more money than he knows what to do with, though.

Usual spiel. Given it dozens of times. I’d rather be rich.

Weirdly, though, I got an email right after that. Fellow in Enumclaw who was a composer. Asked if I wanted to be his Bernie.

We call him Elton, because he’s absolutely nothing like the original. (It works, just run with it.)

So he and I started collaborating on music. I’d never written lyrics, but I’ve written poetry, drama, non-fiction, and make a living at fiction.

Shit, yes. Let’s do it.

So I taught myself what lyrics looked like. How they worked. Not an expert. Not even the instant expert that writers can do.

But wrote a series of lyrics for Elton. He turned one of them into a song.

Then he looks at me one day and says “We need a singer. You sing?”

Well, technically yes. Have been known to crank the CDs to stupid and sing along. Used to be pretty good, once upon about forty years ago when last I had formal training.

So I recorded all the vocals. He played all the instruments. We’ve gone back and forth for a while getting the sound right because this is all new to me, and a new genre and art form for him.

He usually writes music samples that get picked up for television shows or movies. Incidental or introductory music. Nothing where you’d know his name unless you were the Music Director of the project who heard his stuff and decided that it fit what they needed.

Until now.

This last Friday, he pushed the launch button.

Ward & Rogers are in the process of releasing our first single. “Left It All Behind.”

Lyrics by B. Ward. Composition PJ Rogers. Vocals by B. Ward.

Sometime in the coming week, it will get out everywhere and I’ll share a link to Amazon and iTunes (along with a lot of muppet flailing, because muppet flailing) so folks can see what we’ve been up to. LIsten along. Even buy it and help me expand into my new multi-media empire.

First song. Already working on a second, as well as writing more and teaching myself how to use the MuseScore software in order to get down the melodies I hear so he can turn them into awesomeness faster.

And (this is the utterly cool part), I will have a Freddie Mercury Number of TWO. Somewhere, on some project that might never get released, the lead singer of Queen took some of PJ’s music and did something with it. And did it officially so that you see both their names when you look in the right database.

How awesome is that?

Worse, I’m already talking to some folks to see if PJ and I can create something like our own Alan Parsons Project, where I’m not necessarily always singing. (Got a couple of things that work far better with a female voice, so I’ve talked to at least one friend to see if I can blackmail her into playing along. TBD).

Anti-Stodgy.

Doing something new, for the sake of newness, rather than spending the rest of your life in the same chair, eating the same food, watching the same tv shows every night after a job you hate, but not enough to strike out and try something entirely new.

For me, it has included making music, weird as that should sound to anyone who knows me.

But it’s happening.

What have you done to introduce newness into your life?

Why aren’t you smiling more and occasionally muppet flailing?

Reach out

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One of the things they don’t tell you about being a grown-up is that you’ll lose friends along the way. Partly, at least in my case, that’s the outcome of living a full and adventurous life.

I wanted to talk recent times, but it dawns on me that I need to go way back to set up the scene. because I’ve lived a strange life so far.

My family moved from Wichita to Salina, KS when I was about five in the mid-70s. We lived there for two years, so kindergarten and half of first grade for me. Then back to Wichita for the other half of first grade, plus second and third, where I was at the same elementary school (Seltzer). Fourth grade in the gifted program at Minneha. Fifth and Sixth they split that group in half, and sent me to Clark.

That’s just elementary school, going to three of them without moving. Four in six years.

Then, for junior high (grades 7-9 in those days), they took half the folks I’d been with at Clark and sent them to a different school (Coleman) from the one the other part of us went to (Curtis). So all my bestest friends disappear and I’m pretty much starting over. Remember, this is before social media or even cell phones, in the early ‘80s, so they’re kinda gone.

Managed to stay at Curtis for all three years, which was amazing. And a record to that point.

Then all of us finally circle back to the same high school. (Wichita Southeast, when it was still on Edgemoor in town, instead of out in the middle of nowhere.)

But I’ve lost touch with everyone from elementary by this point. New friends in Junior High.

Then I graduated high school after what was functionally my Junior Year (technically skipped Junior and went from Sophomore to Senior, long story). So I was only in that building for two years, one of which I was suddenly in classes with folks a year ahead of me previously. They didn’t always react well to the kid. (Understatement.)

Graduate in May. Start classes at Wichita State in June. Don’t turn seventeen until the end of June, so I am not kidding when I say I started college at sixteen.

Stayed there three and a half years, which was my longest time in any school, and graduated in December of 1989. Took spring off. Went to graduate school in the fall in Los Angeles in the fall of ‘90.

Lived in LA until the fall of ‘95. Came back to Wichita, but only stayed about 18 months.

Moved to Seattle in the Feb 1997. New world. New life. Except that the woman who had convinced me to move to Seattle changed her mind after I got here.

On my own, in a whole new place. New everything.

Again.

I have been here (PNW) for twenty-five years now, having marked that six weeks ago. Was with Donna from 1998 until her death in 2008. Been with Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) since 2013 (the second time around).

Worked for an insurance agency for a year. Then a property management company for two. Then I spent seven years (the HORRORS!) at a software startup. Then a year at Microsoft at as a-dash.

Swapped sides of the lake and worked in downtown Seattle for a year at one place before it shut itself down, then down at Pioneer Square facing the Pergola for three.

Then some friends from a prior gig recruited me to a new gig down near the stadiums, and I was there from 2012-2018, when I retired from the day job and started writing full time.

Social media works for me because I’m kinda feral, and have lived the exact opposite of that life where you and the same three guys you went to first grade with stay together for sixty years.

I tracked down my best friend in 4th-6th grades a few years ago, through an ex-girlfriend I remain on good terms with. Hadn’t talked to him for more than thirty-five years, I think. Haven’t talked to my best friend in Junior high and high school since just before we turned thirty, so that’s nearly twenty-four years now.

Etc.

Amazingly, I am friends with half a dozen exes on social media. Like, interact with some of them at least weekly, and others regular enough to count.

But I obviously have lost touch with a lot of folks over the decades. Some, it was for the better, like a handful who are probably all-in Q-Anon whackjobs these days, based on where they were headed in those days.

Others simply vanished when everybody got busy and drifted apart.

The friends you make in school are because you see them every day. Once you get out into the world, you will see co-workers regularly, but I was in software for a big chunk of my career, in Seattle, where folks move around a lot. Being with three different companies that went out of business not long after I left (writing on the wall kind of thing) doesn’t help.

So that’s where I started this morning with this blog.

The Pandemic has caused a lot of folks to stay home. To maybe lose touch with some old friends because you haven’t been seeing them at work or getting together for beers.

As a man of a certain age, I’m also old enough to have not seen folks in a decade or more, and maybe only loosely track that number.

So I started reaching out. Just to say hello. Catch up on news. Poke sleeping bears. Something. Not all of them have responded, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Maybe they didn’t drift away but purposefully strode into the fog and I didn’t understand at the time.

Who knows?

But I keep trying. Maybe I have an old email address that doesn’t work any more. Or a bad phone number.

Or they don’t want to hear from me.

That doesn’t stop me, until they specifically say to fuck off.

You, now. When was the last time you reached out to that friend you haven’t seen or talked to in a while? Even to say hello?

What’s stopping you? Do you owe them an apology? Do they owe you one?

Has it been long enough that you don’t even remember why you haven’t spoken? I got a few of those, where I remember stepping back, but not what triggered it. Can’t be helped.

At the same time, there are remarkably few folks out there that I won’t at least say hi to.

Like you, I keep a list. Folks TSTL. Or folks who violate Wheaton’s Law. Something bad.

But there are a lot of folks that are just out there.

If you’re one of them, and I haven’t talked to you in a long time, maybe reach out?

We live in an age of polarization, but also atomization, as we can remain kinda in touch while being farther and farther away physically and emotionally.

But ya gotta try from time to time.

When was the last time you tried?

You are the brand

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Writers, you are a brand. You get that, right? When a reader sees your name on a cover, they will hopefully have a good idea what sort of story to expect. We’re beyond good art, good font, and good blurb here. Your name.

Your brand.

So what are you selling them?

This came up for me recently because I’m generally known for space opera kinds of actiony science fiction. At the same time, I write other stuff. Most of it falls into SF, but I also have the occasional sword and sorcery fantasy piece, some from the early days and some from ongoing efforts when the muse bites me on the ass.

But in 2022, I’m planning on dropping some books that fall into the Action/Adventure category. No magic or paranormal. Hardly any science fiction at all (less than any given James Bond movie, for comparison, with the sorts of technology you might have the Tuesday After Next).

I hope that my usual SF fans will come with me on a new adventure. Science fiction fans tend to be the most forgiving, by the way, when an author branches out. Mystery readers, on the other hand, tend to not come out of mystery as a rule. There will be exceptions, and most of those are brand related, when they love a particular author that much. Or the author happens to drift into a new category that is also one they like.

Buchman and I have been masterminding for a few years now. Trying to figure out how to glimpse the future and see where publishing is going over the next several years. Not all of those insights will help us make money, but more than a few of them have saved us time and effort. Opportunity costs.

Science fiction is going through one of those regular cycles where sales boom for a while, then slide down the waveform. In the last twenty-five years, we’ve seen YA Magic Academies become a major publishing event. Then YA Post-apocalyptic SF. Sparkly vampires, which was not quite horror like previous generations. Mostly Paranormal Romance, if you had to categorize it, but it resists being limited for a variety of reasons.

For each genre, there are expectations. When you build up a fan slowly, you will first do it by hitting enough of those expectations (not all of them) and providing entertainment value. Over time, they will come to know and like your brand. To form expectations about what your next book will be. To preorder your next book sight-unseen.

This is where cover art and font treatment come into play, because they form unconscious opinions about the story based purely on the art, in that first tenth of a second the (potential) reader see it. And those expectations shape everything, so if you are wrong, you lead them astray.

Blurbs help refine, but the cover art draws them in far enough to look at the blurb. Before then, they look for the author name.

Do they know you? Do the like you? Are they fans? Or do they have bad experiences because you maybe burned them in the past?

Lots to unpack here, but I’m going to focus on the brand part.

You know you are in a Blaze Ward story where someone is sticking it to the Man. Where you will have some manner of found family forming and enduring. I don’t do grand family arcs, because my personal history does not lend itself well to that sort of thing. Suffice it to say that there’s a reason I live in Seattle, which was about as far away as I could get from certain elements of family without crossing oceans or national borders.

My brand in SF is fast-paced, lean prose leaning heavily into my past as a poet. Stories that draw you in and hold you until you read the entire thing in one sitting if I’ve done it right. Smart characters. Competent women who are not defined by the man in their lives. Real people solving real problems, without any gods or deus ex machina involved. No Chosen One. No ancient prophesy.

I’ve talked in other places about why I will put such a (Chosen One) book down immediately. I don’t care what twist you’ve put on it or how cute you think it is. Not interested. Worse, if you’ve gotten me as far as reading a sample of your book when I find it is Chosen One, you can pretty much rest assured that I have now formed an opinion of your brand and marked you off of people I will have any interest in reading in the future.

But that’s neither here nor there.

What is your brand? What ten, individual words could you write down the left margin of a page that summed up your writing style for someone that had never picked up one of your books before?

Who are you?

If you don’t know, that means that you have never considered yourself from the standpoint of the readers you want to entice into giving you money. They will have opinions. Probably already do. What will they think?

If you aren’t selling well, is it because someone picking up any of your books has no idea what to expect? What genre it might be, based on cover art and title font?

What are you selling?

Any one book is a product in and of itself. But when you have a catalog, you are selling something bigger. A brand.

What is your brand? What should it be, if we were to ask you and ten fans? How do you reconcile if those opinions are radically different?

I am a commercial artist. That’s a fancy way of saying that I care about the business side of things. Because this is a business. I am publishing books because I want folks to buy them and read them. To support me in a lifestyle that no longer involves pants.

To do that, I have to take into account commercial considerations. That does not involve writing to market, because I write in genres and sub-genres with large fan bases. I love SF, and can make money in it, because my first mission when I start a new piece is to entertain my fans.

All the politics and ax-grinding is secondary, and largely hidden away inside the prose where you might absorb it without conscious thought. That’s also part of my brand.

I regularly hear about writers who just want to write. Who just want to put a story down on paper and have people fall in love with it. None of that icky, commercial crap. Lovely thought. Any story will have fans, but the weirder and more niche it is, the smaller that potential fan base.

What do you do when you’ve sold your book to all twelve fans of a sub-sub-sub-sub-slipstream-genre?

If you don’t want to work the commercial side of things, then I presume you are busy querying agents for a book deal. Best of luck, because those are rarer than hen’s teeth and pay hardly anything at all. But you don’t have to worry about anything except finding a home for your book, because the publisher will be on the hook for everything, which includes cover art, title font, and blurb. Maybe they’ll find a winning combination. Maybe not.

Either way, they will be forming your brand for you.

Read that again.

You have given up control of your brand, meaning that someone else gets to decide how the world of readers perceive you.

What are they going to see?

And is it worth it?

I Art

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Had a few conversations recently that got me to thinking about impostor syndrome and how many folks that want to commit art end up holding back.

I know a lot of creatives that can commit all manner of art. Could make money at it. Dunno about a living, because that involves a lot of work, but I started out making $258 my first year selling books.

From there, I decided that I wanted to art for money. As I spoke with various artists, I came to realize how many of them don’t believe that they should be allowed to be successful as artists.

Pardon me, but WTF?

Why are you limiting yourself? Why not at least try?

My first wife was an artist who worked in colored pencil to create lifelike portraits. I turn my head to the right as I type these words and I have a piece she did in 1991 of John Muir, the naturalist.

She’d tried doing commercial art in the 90s and hated it. Mostly, she had to deal with folks wanting her to do create specific pictures as part of advertising. Hated that. Hated people telling her to change things, because she drew it as she saw it.

Instead, she just took commissions from folks to turn one of their photographs into a poster-sized drawing. Enjoyed that. I have a number of her pieces, and the step-daughters have all the remaining originals and prints at this point.

But that was the old days. Today, she might be able to sell her art on-line. Maybe even make money.

For writers, there used to be a precisely specific pattern one was supposed to follow. First, you wrote short stories and submitted them to the lower-end magazines in your genre. Eventually, your rejections would get more personal, with suggestions. Finally, they would buy things. You worked your way up the food chain slowly.

From there, you sold more and more, making a name for yourself. Maybe winning awards.

Then you wrote a novel and looked for an agent to represent you with the traditional publishing houses. (Back when there might have been hundreds, instead of the remaining handful.)

Eventually, you’d get some sort of deal. Advance. Royalties, maybe. Fame.

Today, I know lots of folks that still think that is the only way to do it. They’re wrong, but they don’t generally want to hear that.

That world is gone.

I write. Publish. Write the next thing. I have been struck by lightning twice, but I have also worked my ass off at committing art, to the point that I have fans willing to buy books as soon as I put something up for preorder, sight unseen. To support me on Patreon. To tell their friends about me.

It can be done. You can do it.

It bothers me that I keep running into people who have the potential. And the desire. Except that when asked, they explain to me that they’re not good enough to art.

Seriously? How the hell would you know? Have you tried? Or are you listening to one of your parents, thirty or fifty years later, tell you that you aren’t good enough? (I know a few horror stories about New York Times Bestselling authors who still got that from a parent. Ugh.)

Why do you not commit art? What holds you back from putting it out there and making money from it? I’m not promising lots of money, but we all started with nothing. You will, too. And maybe get struck by lightning.

I had dreams, and a couple of friends or coworkers who might toss $5 in on a lark just because. Hell, I sold early collections off my desk at work more than once.

If you can art, why don’t you? It used to be that costs to get your art out there might be utterly prohibitive, which was why you needed a publisher. Or a gallery. Or a record label.

I’m a few weeks from releasing my first single, recorded as Ward and Rogers, because Paul and I are having fun creating music. My friend Toby just released another single this week. He tours and gigs relentlessly. He wants it. (Inspires me, too, when I hear those voices telling me to stay in bed today.)

Why don’t you? What’s holding you back from writing, drawing, (and/)or recording?

I think that most of you would be happier if you took that risk and put yourself out there. There will always be trolls, but you ignore the assholes and you’ll find fans. I get emails from readers thanking me for some of the things I write. Awesome reviews. (And a few assholes, but we ignore him, except to laugh that he will eventually buy every book I release AT FULL PRICE in order to give me a one star review complaining that my female characters should have been naked bimbos. Seriously.)

Ignore the trolls.

What art do you have in your soul? This is the time when the world needs more art. More entertainment. People are getting to the level monsters at the ends of the various streaming services, and looking for things to make them smile.

Why isn’t that you?

None of my books make me rich. None of them. All of them combined into a thing called a Catalog makes me a nice, middle class living where I don’t ever have to put on pants in the morning or commute to somebody else’s office.

I want to art. I want you to art.

What will it take for you to get past that voice whispering in your ear, so that you decide to art?

And how do we get you there?

I Can’t Save You

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Because it’s come up three times now in the last few weeks, I thought I might share some thoughts on where we are in the modern age.

Civility has taken a back seat for many people. Just the basic courtesy of not being an asshole to someone. I’m not talking about the ribbing and teasing I get from close friends. I mean semi-random strangers on the internet who feel that distance and anonymity gives them the right to go out of their way to abuse me.

I know a few folks who thrive on the emotional combat that comes from such interactions. The striving to find ever-more-poignant ways to troll people.

What does it gain? Other than the adrenaline rush of the moment, what does it matter? Have you made the world a better place by verbally assaulting someone on social media? By being an outright dick to them? (How many times have you failed Wheaton’s Rule today?)

I don’t argue with folks. I don’t fight people in a public forum. But I do keep score. I do look at those folks who would rather spend all their time lashing out at the slightest infringement on their personal space in apocalyptic tones.

I understand fighting the good fight. I don’t see any reason to expend all my energy going after someone that won’t learn a single thing from anything I might tell them. Their minds are closed. Their souls are unable to find joy in themselves or others. They cannot look on a stranger’s success and be happy, so they must find fault and find a way to tear someone down.

They are addicted to rage.

Are you? Answer me honestly.

When something inconveniences you, what is your first—automatic—response? Do you shrug phlegmatically at something beyond your control? Do you suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and get one with your day?

Or do you turn around and throw punches (verbal or otherwise)?

Since it’s come up again, I figured I’d say a few things that some people will acknowledge and others will ignore. They are addicted to rage. They cannot be saved.

We are approaching the second anniversary of my home state of Washington shutting down entirely as a way to control a virulent disease that had mutated into something new. Something deadly.

West of the Mountains is (with a few dumbass pockets) an extremely civilized place, where folks are willing to suffer a minor inconvenience so as to help complete strangers.

Not everyone, though. I was at the grocery earlier picking up supplies and noting the physical traits that a handful of unmasked yahoos had in common. I bet you can list them all easily enough, because those folks have become a caricature.

I no longer say rude things about masks to those people, because after this long, they cannot be saved.

Read that again: Cannot be saved.

Any energy I might want to spend trying to educate them, trying to find the slightest hint of empathy, anything, is therefore wasted.

They can’t be saved. They don’t want to be saved. Their entire identity is wrapped up in a thing of utter negativity, and they would rather die than change.

They are addicted to rage because they have run into something they cannot control, and have never grown up.

Because that’s what it is. You’re seeing the sorts of juvenile behavior that we display as toddlers until such time as we discover that other people exist and might also have value.

Some people never learn that lesson. All you have to do is walk around a grocery store to see it on display.

Pride. But the wrong kind of pride. Pride in individuality at the cost of every other human being they might ever meet.

I can’t save them. Someone asked why I ignored a few folks who had discovered emptiness when they demanded my attention. Ghost-mode.

I’m not there. Won’t be. Won’t be coming back again.

Because I can’t save you. And it takes an amazing amount of effort on your part to move me to that sort of intention. Three folks have all managed it recently. (Actually, far more than three, but these were object lessons brought up by others in the past few weeks, so I’ll leave it at them.)

All of them raged. In two cases, they were wrong, but will never admit it. In the third, it was my fault, and I apologized, only to have an extra heaping of scornful rage dumped on my apology and rubbed in my face.

Easy enough. I promise that I will never make that mistake again. Safest way to do that is to never speak to you again. Voila. Endgame.

I understand rage. I was addicted to it myself for the longest time. But I hardly ever let it out on someone else. In fact, in the last twenty years, I can only think of a few circumstances where someone else witnessed my rage. (Ain’t none of you seen me truly angry, no matter what you might think.)

Then one day I decided I didn’t want to be angry all the time. July, 2013. I’d woken up white hot. Worse than I could ever remember being.

That was bad. I realized that NOTHING useful came of that rage.

So I became someone else. I do that a lot. Anyone who has known me long enough has seen it happen, but this time I had a hard pivot.

I chose to be happy.

Took a while to recover from the addiction. Won’t deny that. But I did.

Walked away from it. Don’s miss it.

But I do recognize others who haven’t gotten to that point in their emotional development. They think that scoring points on folks like that matters, because they have no empathy. I probably have too much, and that was largely the basis of my anger for so long.

I’m not that guy anymore.

And I can’t save you. Because you don’t want to be saved. You want to be idolized for the volume, tenacity, and destructiveness of your rage. For the metaphorical scalps you have accumulated in any given day.

All of those scalps belong to people. Do you ever give a thought about them?

Or is the rage your fulfillment entirely?

So when you can’t figure out why I won’t take your call, why I’ve blocked you entirely on social media and forgotten you exist, perhaps you can look on these thoughts and learn something from them.

How often do you drive people off? How many people are willing to look at you and tell you that you’re being a total asshole to complete strangers? Or are they afraid you will go after them next?

Been there. Done that. Got the scars.

But I also have my freedom from your behavior.

Because I can’t save you.

As a result, I have absolutely no interest in putting forth any effort.

Maybe you’ll grow up one of these days. Maybe you’ll learn how to apologize. Doubt it, but I’ve been struck by lightning a few times over the years, so I’ll leave that door ajar.

But not for who you are today. I don’t like that person, and choose to not have them soiling my air with their rage.

You have to decide to save yourself.

Good luck.

The January Man: A few thoughts

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The January Man.

One of my favorite movies, because it flips so many genre tropes on its head without ever breaking the fourth wall or mugging for the camera. Rich (read: Insane) characters in a fun setting, doing crazy shit. I often wonder if they just kind of handed the cast the rough outlines of a script and told them to run with it. It has that madcap feel.

If you haven’t seen it lately, you should go watch it. Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Alan Rickman, Harvey Keitel, Danny Aiello, and Rod Steiger. Best of all, the angst of a man just trying to find a decent espresso. (Movie came out in 1989. Before Starbucks was the thing it later became. When asking for espresso could be a running gag.)

The movie is on my mind this morning because it takes a most interesting path to telling a mystery. Breaks almost all the rules in the process.

The murderer is never a character in the story. Only hardly makes an appearance, at the beginning and end. I had to go look him up. Played by Greg Walker, who was the film’s Stunt Coordinator and has one hell of an impressive IMDB page as a stuntman, running from 1970 to 2001.

That is to say, there is no murderer character in the movie. Instead, you have an All-Star cast alternatively chewing the scenery and bouncing off each other at high speed. And I do mean high speed.

Oh, and trying to figure out a whole OTHER set of crimes. The ones that got Kevin’s character Nick kicked off the police force to the point he had to become a fireman instead.

I’ve always loved this movie, in spite of the shitty reviews it got at the time. Watched it not long ago and it still holds up (assuming you set your mind in 1989, which was a completely different world).

Partly that’s because the movie is told In Media Res (which is the theme and title of a new Business for Breakfast book that just came out). Starting the story in the middle, rather than the long build-up of character development that takes chapters of a book and long stretches of a movie.

There’s a serial killer. Nobody can stop him. The Mayor demands that Police Commissioner Harvey reinstate his disgraced brother (Kevin/Nick) to solve it. Fabulous Publisher Babe™ had never seen the film because she thought it was some taut, psychological thriller, instead of a comedy. And it is a comedy. Alan Rickman playing a Bohemian named Ed, nuff said?

As I thought about it this morning, I realized that Greyson Leigh, the star of the Hunter Bureau novels (with #3 and #4 both coming out shortly), was loosely based on Kevin Kline’s character, except played by Humphrey Bogart at his roughest in Maltese Falcon. (Writer-brain is weird, but that shouldn’t be news to you folks at this point.)

But what got me going this morning was the realization that I don’t often really have villains floating around in my stories. I might have people on the other side, but rarely are they dedicated to evil. Instead, they are just people. Sometimes, the villain is just a bad situation. Or a personal issue to be dealt with in the middle of some mad caper.

But I can get away with it because I like to tell stories like The January Man. Have all the folks on one side of the equation going up against a ghost and trying to outsmart somebody who is not even there.

All the while, they are dealing with their own personal issues and problems that predate the start of the story. (Betrayals, failed romances, balsamic vinegar.) We don’t see Nick getting fired and denounced. We first see him being a hero, a fireman rescuing a kid from a burning building. Ed and Bernadette are mostly innocent and pure as characters, while the entire rest of the cast are some level of sleazeball played with great verve and joy by some amazing actors.

Mostly, I just like the In Media Res part of things. But you should know that about me. I like starting in the middle and just letting the characters fill in details as part of the conversation. (Seriously, the whole movie feels like some fantastic improv group trying to win a bet.) Telling, instead of showing, because that one throwaway line makes people stop and try to envision what really went down off-screen. (Sorry, Josh.)

I can tell a story at speed. Start in the middle, solve the mystery, save the girl, save the day. Never deal with how the characters got where they are.

That’s probably one of the reasons why the critics hated this movie. The other likely being that all the standard tropes get tossed on their heads. For me, I chalk that up to people expecting cops like the Police Commissioner and the Mayor to be heroic figures (obviously, they’ve never actually read the paper or seen the truth about most of those folks, especially NYC). Nick Starkey is more like a private detective here, and brings a PI’s sensibilities to the case. Turned that way, it fits exactly into the mold of those movies.

But there’s no real villain. Just a bad-ass Stunt Coordinator who engages in a fantastic chase sequence with Kevin Klein where they both fall down several flights of stairs.

“Who’s he?” somebody asks at the end as Nick has captured The January Man.

“He’s nobody,” Nick answers.

Because he really is. Nobody. Played by a Stunt Coordinator. And he is a completely different way to tell an old, tired story.

What have you done to turn tropes and expectations on their heads lately?

2021 in Books and things

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Because there is now way in hell to discuss the year in general and not offend your delicate sensibilities with my profanity. So we’ll stick with writing productivity.

For the year, I wrote fifteen novels. Five of those are the back of the First Centurion Kosnett books, of which Encounter at Vilahana and Consensus at Aditi are now out. Hegemony at Dalou and Princes at Ewin will come out in the spring, with Empire at Gloran and Domain at Yaumgan in the fall. This will generally wrap up the Republic of Aquitaine Navy books for a while, though I have notes on the next couple of sets that I want to write when I get back to it.

Two Hunter Bureau books: The Pleasure Model and Inhuman are Feb and March 2022. Bigger, badder, darker. Open-ended, so I can write more when the mood strikes.

The Fifth Handsome Rob Gig: Kinetic Solutions in May. I had WAY too much fun with this one, but this is me inverting most of the tropes of the secret agent action hero literature to do something more like what my research has suggested real spies do. Again, there will be more, because each of these is self-contained structurally.

Summer is a semi-cyberpunk trilogy called Captain Daring. I say semi-cyberpunk because they are not all that dark and gloomy. Mostly I rolled the world forward to 2104 and guestimated what things would look like. And presumed that not a lot of politics would really change.

My personal genesis for Captain Daring was reading Gail Carriger’s book on The Heroine’s Journey and working my way through a plot structure. If you split the difference between Carriger and the Harlequin movie, you’ve about got it.

Finally, the eleventh Science Officer: Buried Among The Stars. Thank you to everyone for the comments and the sales. I had a nice December and when all that money comes in around March I’ll get to do a little happy dance.

In addition to the fifteen novels, I wrote thirty-five other projects, for an accidental round fifty for the year.

Part of that is spinning up a new penname for the erotica. Cole Braddock, if you want to go enjoy some. I wrote the first half of the first Dirk Thruster series in 2020 and the remaining six this year. Additionally, the first eight Maddox stories, which will come out in the spring. Plus two Commander Machesky novellas.

Machesky and Dirk are both space opera erotica. You could pull out all the sex and still have a story. You could pull out all the plot and still have a pleasant interlude. Maddox is straight historical.

I’m having fun, and will continue to publish them.

Most of the short fiction went to my patreon folks. I say $5 will get you a short story every month, but more than once they’ve gotten two. Occasionally an unpublished novel. I actually had to write a new cyberpunkish short this week because I looked at all the unpublished fiction I have and realized that I only had three short pieces in all that they hadn’t seen. Might have to write more for January, just to get ahead.

My rule on Patreon is that any of those stories don’t come out for at least six months after they get it. Sometimes more than a year. Figure I should reward folks for supporting my crazy ventures.

So they got to meet Trevor and Night Butterfly. Roland. Quill. Otter Space. Nissa. Emily. Oleg. Senior Flight Officer Brannon. Wilson. And Harper. All of those are new universes, some of which will turn into novels and series at some point (Oleg, Brannon, and probably Wilson first).

This is your reminder that skipping a starbucks each month can get you some fun and imaginative fiction years before anybody else sees them. As a case in point, I’ll probably drop four collections of science fiction shorts this year, each about 65,000 words, give or take. You haven’t read at least half of it, and would have had to read every issue of Boundary Shock Quarterly, Blaze Ward Presents, and a couple of other places where I submitted stories, in order to be caught up.

See what you’re missing?

Boundary Shock Quarterly continues apace. I will be publishing Issue 017 in a week or so. Dieselpunk.

In 2021, we came out with Solarpunk, Space Marines, Cargo Wars, and Wandering Monsters.

2022 titles are Dieselpunk, Veterans, Sea Stories, and New Worlds, New Civilizations. That’s Year Five (Issues 017-020) so we’re still plugging along.

Blaze Ward Presents has gone from twice a year to annually, just because of the amount of work. This year we did “Crime And…” where the submitted story had to be a mystery with a one word title that finished the phrase. I got some fun and interesting stories, because BWP is always about letting writers swing for the fences. Far too often, editors put down multi-page specs about all the themes that they don’t want, then turn around and complain when all the stories that they get are identical. (I’ve actually sat in a coffee shop and listened to that exact bitch from somebody who should have known better.)

So now BWP is annual. Every year, I open the call on April 1. Close it April 30. Publish as close to June 1 as I can hit. Helps that most of the people involved are pros who give me quality stories and hit deadlines. (Plus a few of them I will tell the next theme well in advance, just so they can fit it into busy writing schedules. If you are a pro who can hit theme and want to play, hit me up via email.)

End of 2021-wise, I finished the year with 1,409,687 words. For much of the year, I was aiming to write about 5000 words per day, with Saturdays taken entirely off because I had started doing Tai Chi in the Park in Enumclaw, WA. Will get back to that.

Traditionally, 4,000/day means that I can take off a few days at the end of the month and just coast. 117,000 words for the month (or a little more) and done. This year, that mostly worked, except that August and September went sideways, and I struggled to hit 100,000 each of those months. Managed it, barely, but things were busy and I’m hoping that 2022 relaxes on that front.

I continue to be healthy. Vaxxed and Boosted and fuck all those people who refuse. Personally, the faster they can die off the sooner the civilized portions of humanity can get back to something like a normal life. I gave them two years of sympathy and empathy, but they can just die now and make the world a better place for the rest of us.

If you aren’t vaxxed and DON’T HAVE A MEDICAL reason (I have friends who nearly died from getting their first dose, so they are at risk and can’t get it), then I don’t want to know you. Period. Go away. Die in the underbrush and maybe feed the feral cats or something.

Yeah, lost too many people these last two years to listen to your whining.

I plan to live to be 100. Plan to die at my keyboard with a stack of novels for my great-great-great-whatevers to publish when I’m gone. I can’t do that if you people keep mutating new diseases because you have to stick it to the libs. I’m one of those libs. (Actually, a really hard pink these days, as the overton window slides off a fucking cliff.) I’m done with you. Whoever you are.

Nuff said? Clear?

Good.

Hope for the rest of you that your 2021 didn’t do more damage to your life than you can handle, and that ’22 is better. I’d like to see my friends in person again, instead of Zoom, Discord, or phone calls. I miss (a very compact number of) people. We can do this, but everyone has to act like a grownup.

I want to keep writing. Got a lot more stories to tell, and only forty-some years to get there.

Be safe and take care.

And smile.

Shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

Eden Package and the Power of Inspiration

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When I first became convinced that I could write fiction and make enough money to call it a living, I had a number of ideas I wanted to pursue. The first and most important turned out to be The Science Officer, which led us into the entirety of the Alexandria Station Universe (minus only a few parts I don’t consider canon at this point).

Another was the idea that became Kincaide Kataragama and The Eden Package. At the time however (2014), I knew that I wasn’t a good enough writer to pull off something like that. Too big. Too many moving pieces, considering that I expected six main characters who were all radically different people with different motives, goals, methodologies and even species.

So I waited.

I used to have a job doing Business Intelligence Systems design. Database Architecture and the like. Lived in t-sql and wrote incredibly complex filtering systems. (My favorite query started out with 17,000 lines of code, all well documented internally because I had a system, before I managed to refine it down to about 9,000 after polishing. Big. Any time you have 20+ internal temp tables, shit gets messy.)

On my machine I work, I had a notepad++ file and would keep story ideas there any time something interesting came up, emailing it home to myself regularly. For years. What became the Eden Package was huge, in the number of lines of ideas, notes, and other things.

Eventually, I reached a new plateau of my craft that I felt like I could go beyond the three chapters I had in my head (which came out pretty close to how you will read them in January). It was the rest that took a lot of work.

Eden Package came in at a little over 160,000 words. By far the single longest title I’ve written to date, mostly because I tend to keep novels shorter and use them as punctuation in much longer series arcs where 250,000-400,000 words is my goal. Jessica et al runs closer to one million, but I originally only intended to write a trilogy and go on to something else. (That’s a story I’ve talked about elsewhere, and might again later.)

Eden Package took time, because there were so many moving parts. Cloning, but a new form of cloning, where you walk into a booth that acts like a transporter beam from Star Trek, except that you don’t go anywhere. Just get reduced to information and stored in a database. Forever.

Or at least until they need a copy of you and decant one.

Maybe an earlier you died of old age. Maybe they needed your genetics for some experiment. Something. Personal timelines don’t have to line up with anything, because a hundred years might pass. Or they might Index you to have an updated copy, then immediately print you again, if you are important enough.

But where did the idea come from?

As you can see, my copy is a bit worn. I got it new, back in 1978, and kept it when I passed most of my old comic book collection on to a friend for his kids a decade or so ago. (Had I known that SOB would immediately turn around and sell them instead…)

There is a ship. It is fleeing ahead of some catastrophe that is never fully explained in the comic, mostly because these titles were always one-off things designed to see if they wanted to expand it into a full title, or maybe do a four-issue run like they did in those days. There have been a few reboots that went beyond that final frame, but they never went anywhere and were nearly impossible to find print copies these days for a reasonable price. (Haven’t looked lately, so that might have changed.)

The idea of a telepath as an organic component for the FTL drive is fantastically fun, especially if you have one who was built, instead of born. Or rather, some mad scientist (that fucker Hasan Ildar in this case) started with a woman who had telepathic abilities, then started pushing the envelope. Radically. She’s not human any more. Part squid. Part other things. Extremely powerful. Designed to never achieve maturity in body or mind, so perpetually twelve years old.

But the power to alter genes and print out new experiments means there will be men who want to create sex objects. (There will be. Human males today are like that. Maybe we change later, but I’m not holding my breath.) So another Bio-god created Monster Wives to have sex with. All the worst nightmares he could come up with, because the man was an adrenaline junkie and had to keep upping the dosage, as it were. Until it killed him. Hopefully, he’s enjoying his time in hell.

The species that originally found Earth (the Alvar) realized that humans would be far better than any of the slave species they had been using to power their engines, so they immediately conquered the planet and rounded up all the survivors they could. Then they filtered those for the one best suited to some mental abilities and bred them.

And let their human slaves tinker on one another.

Dashavatara is the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu, come down to kick ass when things go wrong, so that was what they named the ship. The humans, working in a little conspiracy, built it to carry them beyond Alvar reach, where they could be free.

Then Kincaide and friends change a few things, in order to rescue those Monster Wives, and leave  that asshole Ildar behind.

And run like hell for the warp-shroud.

Big. Messy. Complicated. I had a lot of space to cover what could have easily been two novels, but I wanted it all in one space, because the emotional arc was tremendous here.

It will be a trilogy. Today (12/20), I am about to finish the sixth and final First Centurion Kosnett novel. My plan is to start writing the second volume in Kincaide’s War in January. It will also be huge. Target again 160-170k. The series should be a trilogy, with Eden Package, Vehicles of Epiphany, and Ships of Heaven as the titles right now.

Eden Package, however, does stand on its own. And is an entire step bigger and more complicated than Jessica Keller or the Alexandria Station Universe, because I have aliens. Lots of them. History where the Alvar individually live 5000-8000 years, and their ruling dynasty has been on the throne since before humans emerged as a distinct species.

Book two will have an even older foe out there, because I enjoy contemplating the sorts of things that can happen when you really build for eternity in space.

When does somebody cross over and present as a god, anyway?

Personally, I’m looking forward to folks commenting on Eden Package. Something of a labor of love, but also a big sandbox that warrants the term Epic Space Opera.

Who will end up controlling the galaxy, when all is said and done? Or the universe?

Because humans and Alvar will never be able to live in harmony. Not unless there is a revolution.

Coming January 10, 2022.