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

Yay!

After so long with no news, I have more now.

White Crane is available for pre-order in all the usual places. Comes out June 28.  Superheroic Contemporary Fantasy and the beginning of a trilogy, and a whole new world in which to play.

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 had fun with it. The genesis of the whole thing was a short story I wanted to tell. In the process of plotting that out, I needed to add back-story. Which turned into more back-story. Eventually, I realized that what I originally had was a couple of chapters in the middle of book three. Which was a pain in the ass.

But in the end, I think it worked out. I really enjoy it. I sent a friend a copy for some favors he has done, and because he really doesn’t like superhero stories to begin with. Didn’t figure I should make him buy a copy, just because he likes my writing.

Couple hours later, I get this email back from him: “God Blaze,this is really good stuff-more later…”

And mind you, he hates superhero fantasy enough to bark at me for wasting my time writing it, when I could be doing for epic SF for him. (One of his favorite categories.)

So hopefully, I done good. It’s hard to categorize this novel, but here goes: YA/New Adult, Coming of Age, Literary (cringe), Superheroic Contemporary Fantasy.

Seriously.

And the cover looks amazing, as well as the interior.

For me, the best part was exploring the seedy underbelly of putting on a cape and cowl. Building a “secret” base. Hiring henchmen. Fighting other costumes. Handling payroll.

And doing it all in a way that “explains” where superpowers come from and why we went from almost none to lots of these people, what Burnham calls Modern Gods.

I already know what book two is about. And most of book three was fully plotted in the course of figuring out how much story I had to tell, so I’ll probably write them over the next two years, assuming I sell more than three copies of book one before Xmas.

I have really enjoyed setting up these characters for a long run, and a lot of depth. It also lets me tell other tales like it, by creating a larger sandbox into which they can play.

It’ll be awesome.

Also, I just got back from CampCon in Oregon this last weekend. Got a good start on the next novel, while camping in the middle of nowhere with friends from all over the northwest. The group is almost all writers (a few artists and spouses), getting together for a solid weekend in the woods with no internet to distract you. I have gone three years now. If you are a writer, and enjoy car-camping with showers and flames hot enough to melt cast aluminium, you should go. We do nothing for four days but write, eat, and sleep. Send me a note and I’ll connect you with all the information.

And more interesting, I’m going to edit the CampCon Anthology that will come out in March. The title will be “Steam. And Dragons.” (Note the period in the middle.) Already have my story done. At least four of the people there have good ideas coming as well.

Watch this space for more news.

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

Hiya,

I would have given you more warning, but it came up at the last minute.  My SF thriller novel Imposters is part of a bundle on the Rabbit.

https://bundlerabbit.com/not-only-humans

Very short term bundle (as in, maybe a week, I think), and you’ll get awesome writers like Mindy Klasky, Leah Cutter, Douglas Smith, and  Kim Antieau at the base level. At higher levels, you get my favoritest person (after Fabulous Publisher Babe): Anthea Sharp. There’s also Eric Edstrom, Carl Plumer, Marcelle Dube, J. Daniel Sawyer and, for the really big guns: Dean Wesley Smith, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Sales Copy:

12 Thrilling Summer Reads

From galaxy-spanning alien cultures to the discovery of Bigfoot, these page-turning novels feature gripping stories where humans and non-humans work together, fight each other, and even fall in love.

Pounce now.  These deals will go fast, and this is a great way to explore strange new worlds.  🙂

The seven point plot structure definition of fiction writing starts out with a character, in a setting, with a problem. And you can have different points of view as you go. How does the reader get to see the scene? First Person is inside the character’s head, listening to “I.” Third Person Distant lets you watch the scene as if from the audience of a play, or on television. You can see everything that happens, but are never privy to what the character is thinking.

I generally prefer to write in what is called Third Person Close. You, the reader, are outside watching, but also occasionally get to dip into the head of one character enough that you can listen to their thoughts. In a complicated piece, you might have different points of view, and be able to listen to all of them. (Only one per scene, please, unless you are REALLY freaking good at your craft.)

This is on my mind today because this week I re-read Dash Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. It is a really good book, but I can make easy comparisons to the movie because it is always in Third Person Distant. You can see Spade working, but you never know what he is thinking, only what he says. For the reader, you are absolutely watching the action on a screen, and never get any closer than arm’s length. Think movie, in book form.

I found it somewhere disappointing. This was the first time I have re-read that book since I got serious about my own writing and began to study my craft. I would have made different choices, were I writing that story. But I have the advantage of hindsight, and nearly a century of other people building up the craft of fiction to something far greater than it was then.

Hammett wrote this like a screenplay. I have written those, so I notice and appreciate the difference. Screenplays are almost always Third Person Distant. You must show action and speak words for the audience to “know” something. (There are very few places where a narration effect works. Use them amazingly sparingly, and to set up some complicated money shot.)

In The Maltese Falcon, the story works because nobody knows what is going on behind the facades. You see the faces and hear the words, but all of the characters are duplicitous, and so everything constantly spins and twists until the ending comes upon you as a shock and a surprise.

And it works. I think the movie with Bogart is better, but that was because they took the novel and chopped out the soft spots, and left off the last chapter entirely for one of the best closing lines in the history of cinema.

“The stuff dreams are made of…”

But I found the novel to be a little too much cotton candy. Pretty and tasty, but not the least bit filling.

What is lacked, for me, was Voice.

You have the character, in the setting, with the problem. Spade, in dreary Thirty’s San Francisco, trying to figure out why his partner was killed, what’s the girl’s game, and who can be trusted.

But Spade himself is a cypher.

Hammett pretty much invented the genre of modern, hard-boiled detective. Certainly everyone else is competing with him (and Chandler). Some succeed. Some fail.

Setting is place. Where are you? What does the room look like? What did you have for breakfast?

What I was missing was Voice.

Voice is how the character feels about the setting. “The just-past-over-medium eggs reminded him of Sunday mornings at the old kitchen table back home, in a simpler time. Dad rounding up kids and getting them dressed with Mother running a perfect, little assembly line of food as he and his siblings cycled through, got fed, and waited patiently to go to Church and have their souled saved.”

Not just eggs. Eggs that remind the character of something, whether a good association or a bad one. That take him back to being a child, fussing with siblings, and then getting fed and heading off to Church. Voice.

There is an exercise writers go through occasionally, to practice Voice. Describe the exact same room from the point of view of three characters: One who is happy and excited to be there, one who has been dragged along kicking and screaming, and one who is neutral on everything they see.

You will get three radically different scenes. And this is a good thing. It draws the reader into the world more fully and colors their impressions. The Maltese Falcon kind of fades from my memory after a little bit, because while the characters are all classical archetypes, I’m kept at arm’s length from all of them.

I’m never emotionally invested in any of them.

For that novel, it is necessary. And one of the reasons why I find Chandler more fulfilling. For example, Marlow ending one story putting together a model of a P-38 for the kid. I know how he reacts to all the bad things that have happened up to that point. And that he is trying to do some little thing for a kid he might not otherwise ever see again, just to make the world a better place. Not on a grand scale, but that little corner he can control.

He had Voice.

That is why I like Third Person Close. As a writer, I can show the reader how the character feels about what they see, without long soliloquies. [Seriously, next time you are having a serious conversation on a topic with people you know, pay attention to how many words any one of you says in one stretch, before someone else speaks. Not monologue, but dialogue. (Not counting, of course, That Guy.)]

In a screenplay, we call that effect conversational exposition, where one character needs to spell out a great deal of information. You can always do the info-dump, but that’s clumsy. You have to talk.

In a novel, I do not have that limitation. I can let the reader see what Moirrey thinks about what’s happening around her. And Moirrey has a LOT of Voice, as many of you can attest to. (She has a sizeable role in book four, Goddess of War, which I just completed the first draft. Lots of Voice.) I can show you how someone acts, and then let you see some layer of why.

That’s something I enjoy in what I read, so I try to make it something I practice when I write. I think it makes me a better writer. Hopefully, it give you a better reading experience.

For me, Third Person Close is the most emotionally fulfilling way to craft or consume a story. I will occasionally drop into First Person (Kaleph, for example.)

I don’t generally like Third Distant, because I find it too off-putting. If I have to do something like that, I’m more likely to stay in Third Close, but use a different character as the Point of View, so that you see what they think, rather than the main actor. (In the big scene of The Librarian, I specifically did everything from Suvi’s point of view, while Doyle was trying to decide who to kill. You know her emotional response, and not his, but what you can see of it.)

What is your favorite way to enjoy a story?

My apologies for a wee bit of radio silence recently.  Managed to throw my back out a couple of weeks ago, and then caught a touch of norovirus or something this week as I was close to recovering.  Last night was the first I had slept through this week.  Kinda nice, but still on the mend.

News: Siren is available for pre-order on all the usual platforms, and will drop on May 31 (a little over a week from now).  Thanks to those of you who took advantage of the BundleRabbit Middlings bundle to catch the original release.

Siren takes place after Last of the Immortals (Jessica Keller Book 3) and fills in some of the gap. I needed to work on Vo Arlo and some things that I knew needed to happen in the fourth Jessica novel, so this gave me a chance to focus on him.

It also sets up Book Four, Goddess of War, which I have just about completed (almost done with the complicated last battle and then wrap up). Writer brain is helpfully filling in details and plot threads for Books Five and Six for me this week as I have been flat on my back on pain meds, not moving much. Looking forward to working on those, but in between now and then I have several projects to work on that, while not secret, are not ready to be shared with the whole world.

What I do know for sure is that I’ll be at CampCon in mid-June in Central Oregon. This year, I might be editing the anthology we do each year, so I have some ideas.  It will come out next winter, right before Norwescon.

Next novel comes out in late June. The White Crane, first book in the Modern Gods trilogy.

Kai Di’s best friend was killed and she swears revenge. The problem? The man who did it is a costumed superhero. So she decides to become a supervillain.

Superheroes, coming of age, alternate present world.  Planning other stories in the same universe, just because I spent a lot of time and effort working out the physics and history of superpowers and the world, and because I can. Already have the rest of the trilogy plotted out, but other projects take precedence right now (unless this one simply explodes in popularity and I find that I need to pivot).

After that, the novella Demigod comes out in late July. [REMINDER: Some of you will be getting copies ahead of time as a thank you for participating in the Bundle.] This is a follow-up to The Librarian, seeing the return of Doyle Iwakuma and his crew in their adventures exploring the fallen galaxy. Piper stars in this one, and has a great deal of fun. I had fun with it as well, taking one of my favorite characters and getting to explore some of what turned her into who she will eventually become. (One of these days, there is a Last Waltz novel out there, I just don’t have enough hours in the day right now. And nobody clamoring for more Doyle books. You could fix that, you know.)

Based on current schedules, Goddess of War will come out this fall, a bit before OryCon down in Portland, OR. Planning on being there again this year. Probably will volunteer for panels, but nobody down there knows who I am, so I doubt I’ll be on any. Next year, will probably not even volunteer if they don’t need me.

I’m also editing a couple of anthology collections later this year, as well as contributing, so this will not be a year I publish four novels. Two and some novellas should be enough for everyone, I hope. Depending, I have both the second Henri Baudin novella and the fourth Javier Aritza novella plotted out, and might be able to slot those into whatever free time I eke out. (Vote now!)

That’s about it. Just sent Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) off on her trip and I’m about to log off the interwebs and head off to the farm, where there be dragons. Hoping to grind out more words today and get deeper into that grand finale.

shade and sweet water,

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

So every day or so I log in and check my website.  It is probably not obvious, but I have the system padlocked.  If you make a comment on something (and I encourage the humans in my audience to do so), it goes into a queue until it gets approved by an Admin (me, or Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm), generally).

Threw my back out, middle of last week.  Its an old football injury, dating to when I was holding a tackling dummy during practice and a defensive lineman who was mad at my sister blindsided me at full speed, folding me in half sideways. (As an aside, 5’4″ coach grabbed 6’3″ lineman by the facemask after they got me vertical again (no concussion, but serious hurt). Pulled him all the way down to face level. Rattled his skull with an open palm (and class ring) to the side of the football helmet, loud enough the entire practice field turned around to look.)

So thirty years later, I get flare ups every year or two. Bent down, and something tore in the muscles in my back. When that happens, one of the vertebrae moves left and twists. And then everything swells up and holds. And I’m horizontal for a week, in a mind-boggling amount of pain.

Fabulous Publisher Babe has been working on a fixit regime.  Heat. Massager. The right meds. Was actually able to walk by Saturday, and am at work on Monday (sweating because I have a heat wrap around my middle cooking me). Going to try a new accupuncturist this week, now that everything’s largely aligned again.

Because we were at the farm, I had not internet access. I kinda like that concept. Got to Starbuckistan on Sunday and looked up bw.com.  I had 28 possible spams in my queue. (Thank God for Wordfence. If you have a wordpress site, install Wordfence right now and set it to shoot-on-sight.)

The crap fell into two categories. SEO was the smaller group. Lovely emails explaining how I can pay someone a small fee and they will optimize me for search engines. I might even believe them, if they ever had “real” email addresses, instead of randomly-generated hash.  That’s the mark of a script kiddie somewhere firing off fifty thousand emails and hoping for a sucker.

(Personally, I think we should be charged a penny each for the emails we send, by our ISP. Partly for infrastructure, partly so that fools will stop sending ten million spams. If Coca-cola wants to have that as a marketing budget, more power to them. But otherwise, piss off.)

The other group were more interesting. The same basic email, within small limits, explaining that the Orange candidate for USPresident was functionally identical to a former Chancellor of Germany in the thirties. Did I really need eighteen of those emails? I presume the included links were either crude youtube videos or drive-by download sites waiting to infect my computer with Russian Chat Relays. Or both.

Why am I thinking these mean thoughts?

A friends of mine took me aside at a con, a while back, to thank me. “What for?” I said.

“As long as I’ve known you, both online and in person, I still have no idea what your politics are.”

That still makes me smile. And she still doesn’t know.

Don’t get me wrong. I”m a political junkie of the first order. But I also believe that good fiction does not require a political axe being ground. (I have other axes, if you pay attention.) I don’t want to alienate at least a third of my fans by being “one of them.” (And that really happens. I will not read certain authors, just because I choose not to support them and their political views with my money. If I do it, you probably would, too.)

So I hope, with this little note, you might pay attention a bit more to things you read on the interwebs. Look at the actual sender address (and not just the display name) and see if it passes a sniff test. Get involved with politics, by reading things you don’t agree with, and deciding if your views need to evolve enough to accept that things might have changed and you need to change with them.

Vote.

That’s all. I don’t care who you support. Here in Washington, I will have probably 10 different candidates for USPresident this year, including both a Stalinist and a Trotskyite. (I love America. Where else do you get that kind of option?)

Make your voice heard, but not by walking in, picking a letter, and going down the line. Again, in Washington, I HAVE to vote my mail-in ballot. That means I open a beer, spread out the voter’s guide on the kitchen table, and spend an hour, reading what the candidate thinks is important. Not what the ads say (I gave my last television to Goodwill years ago, and don’t miss it. Spend too much time on a screen at work, thank you very much.) but what the candidate themselves wanted me, the voter, to know. Are they visionary? Completely insane? Hopelessly partisan? Bitter kitten?

“Will my vote make this a better world for my five daughters and my grandkids?”

Your vote will.

If you don’t vote, as important as it is, you are telling those lazy shits that send us spam that they don’t have to worry about things. This is good enough. The world could go to hell in a handbasket, to quote my father, and you would still be glued to your weekly shows and gossip sites.

Passive.

That level of spam only works if everybody accepts it. I don’t. That’s why I have to spend the time deleting it and blocking those senders. I shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.

But you have to care. I can’t want your world to be a better place than you do. Or, to quote Fabulous Publisher Babe: “You made those choices.”

Make better choices. You’ll be amazed what you can accomplish.

shade and sweet water

bd

West of the Mountains, WA