I like many military sci-fi stories. In fact, almost all of my favourite sci-fi authors have written military sci-fi stories of one stripe or another… The Forever War by Haldeman, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, Old Man’s War by Scalzi… the list is extensive. Even some of my newer favourites (Chamber’s Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and Leckie’s Ancillary Justice) have an element of military sci-fi in them.
But at the same time, I don’t like military fiction as a general rule. The new Top Gun movie is going to be a pass for me because I see it as transparent military recruiting jingoism. I’ve read a few of Clancy’s books, and they’re fine, but they lose something by being… realistic? If that makes any sense?
It’s a weird line to walk. My current work has a protagonist that’s a starfighter pilot (and her partner, a starfighter mechanic), but it’s so divorced from the concept of the military being an absolute of any type that I don’t have issues with that. The military isn’t absolutely good, but it’s also not absolutely evil. It’s an arm of the government, and that means it’s complicated.
But I could be rightly called out for the hypocrisy of this position because, honestly, it’s subjective rather than objective. I like reading about starships exploding and laser swords and waves of droids fighting hordes of clones. I can identify the problematic elements of it, but I still enjoy it. And I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with that… we should always be critical of the media we love.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Happy (Insert National Identity Here) Day!
On Friday I had a day off from my other job (the one that pays for this one, the one I want to do) as an opportunity for national pride. American readers are probably getting today off for a similar reason.
National pride is a weird thing to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and I am very, very grateful that I was born and raised here instead of many other countries with more regressive or oppressive governments. But part of pride in one’s country is the understanding of what sucks about it, and I gotta be honest… there’s a lot that sucks about Canada. We have a long and ignoble tradition of genocide, colonialism, and a military budget that way, way outstrips our theoretically pacifistic identity… and, like many places around the world right now, we have a serious problem with certain political factions within our nation that are stretching for every iota of power they can grab. Dangerous, at the very least.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t a lot to be proud about. There absolutely is. But part of that pride should be funneled into trying to make the country great, rather than just assuming it is already as good as it could possibly ever be. It involves looking at other nations and figuring out how they got to be better at the aspects they are better at, and how they are worse in the areas they are weaker. It’s a moment for reflection and understanding, rather than jingoistic screaming about our ‘superiority’ without any consideration for what those kinds of messages say about us, as people, and our nation as a whole.
But, hey, don’t let me get in the way of whatever plans you may have for today. I hope it’s a great day, no matter where you live or how you show your appreciation for the flag you were born under.
Hope everyone out there stays safe and healthy!
Dating
Dating is weird, folks.
Like, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t revolutionary or unexpected or whatever… and I think dating has been weird since it was invented sometime in the 1500s or whatever. But modern dating? Weird.
I am in a very happy long-term relationship. This has insulated me from having to deal with the ravages of the dating world, a fact for which I am very grateful. I’m not saying it was better back in my day, because that sure as heckfire isn’t true, but it was a field that I was familiar with at least.
For those of you curious, I applied for a job today that is for a company that works very specifically in the dating world. I doubt anything will come of it (honestly, most of my job applications work out to be nothing), but it was an interesting application for my writing. And if something does come of it, it might be really interesting.
Anyway, we will see, we will see. But it at least gave me a tiny little taste of what dating is like these days!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Superstore
There is something really magical about well-written comedy. Superstore isn’t the greatest show I have ever seen, but for a six season show, they did a really good job of giving interesting characters an opportunity to grow and shine in interesting ways. I’m glad I watched it, I’m glad they got to finish it so strong.
While I think Kim’s Convenience is overall a funnier show, it didn’t really end… it was cancelled before the writers had a chance to wrap it up, and as a result I will always be a little unsatisfied by it. But they’re both really great shows in their own ways, and I recommend either of them without hesitation to people who want funny shows that still manage to be intelligent.
Still, it’s nice to have the story wrapped up, and it’s nice that the romantic arc resolved itself in a really smart way. So, I guess, thank you to the writers for being emotionally intelligent as well as clever! Great job, folks!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy.
Old Cats
So I have two cats: Donut and Koko. They’re both torties, and sweethearts, but they are also starting to get a little up there in age. Donut is a little older at around 15 years, and Koko is rapidly approaching 12.
They move a little slower these days, although they still get the zoomies sometimes. They eat a little less and drink a little more water, but otherwise they are still the same sweet, loving little furballs they’ve always been.
Donut has been to the vet a few times this year already due to some health issues that I hope aren’t serious. It’s been more expensive than I would like, but she’s a distinguished old lady and is worth a bit of difficulty.
We lost Bean, their middle sister, in October of last year. That was a hard time, no question. But things have calmed down since then, and I’m just doing my best to appreciate all the time we have together before we have to say goodbye to another one (hopefully in many, many years).
If any of you reading this have little furbabies of your own, give them a big hug from me tonight.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Other Mediums
Longtime followers of me and my work (hi mom!) will know that I have frequently dabbled in other mediums for my creative work. I paint, I draw, I play guitar (badly, but still)… I have written audio performances, and I have created and edited podcasts and even written a picture book over a decade ago.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a novelist first and foremost. I enjoy dipping my toes in other fields, sure, but at my core I am a long-form writer.
That stated, I have been thinking about trying out a few different things in the next little while just as… joyous experiments, I think. I wrote a whole stack of short stories back in 2016 (six years ago! Gosh), and I might try my hand at a few more in the coming months. When autumn comes I am going to be buried in school work again, so this summer is going to be my only opportunity for the near future, at least until I graduate.
This shouldn’t impact my writing schedule, but I did want to share it now to see if anything comes of it in the future… you can all say that you heard about it before it happened!
For now I’m just going to leave it as a teaser, though. No details, just… other things in the works.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
It's the Humidity
I am told that Southern Ontario is often very humid. I am told this in such a manner, and with such authority, that I am inclined to believe it, despite being entirely immune to the words.
I have a sort of vague understanding of how it works. Higher humidity means that it is more difficult for sweat to cool down your body, since the act of sweat evaporating from your skin is the actual main method of heat regulation in that process. Sure, a breeze works as well, but your body can’t control or generate a breeze, while it most certainly can generate sweat.
But for whatever reason, I live a life that is primarily immune to the ravages of heat. Like, I feel heat, and it’s not my favourite feeling, but I’ve had days where my friends and family have insisted they are melting, and they all look very unhappy about this… and then I go turn on the oven to bake bread. Like, I get it, but it just doesn’t sink in? Like “hot” is a weather that exists in a sort of abstract.
I’ve been to a Chinese desert city once (Xi’an, on the sand-duned shores of the mighty Gobi desert), and I have traveled to a few tropical locations a few times in my life (mostly in South America and Mexico), so again, I “get” that these places are hot. But it’s just a word… unlike “cold,” which I loathe. Being cold is the worst… but being “too” hot is just something I sort of vaguely understand on a conceptual, not physical, level.
Anyway. Apparently it’s hot right now? Who knew.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Storytelling in RPGs
When I was younger I played a lot of D&D.
That’s not strictly true. I only played a little D&D… probably about seven or eight games when I was in Grade 4, and again a few more when I was in high school after the whole “D&D is a pathway to Satan” nonsense had passed. I played a lot of other roleplaying games, though… basically once or twice a week, every week, for the entire time I was in middle and high school. Years of campaigns, stories, and game systems.
After I went to university I basically completely stopped. RPGs are a way to tell stories with friends, and although I had a few friends in university I never really gelled with any of them enough to want to play a true RPG again. That lasted until just recently, when my partner decided they wanted to start playing D&D.
The last time I played D&D it was “first” edition (technically “D&D Basic”, since my friends never played enough to get to “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” where there were way more charts). It is currently on its 5th edition, and probably going to release a 6th edition in the next year or two (probably).
The reason I bring it up is because RPGs are basically guided storytelling, and it was that element of the game that I was always drawn to. I like telling stories, in case you didn’t know, and at their core, good RPGs are all about that collective storytelling experience. It’s kinda like being a writer, in some ways, although being a storyteller in a D&D game is less about “telling” and more about “learning”… although to be honest, that’s quite true to my specific writing style already. While I usually have some idea of what I want to happen in a given narrative, most of the time the characters or the story surprise me at least a few times before they’re done!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Feels like Work
Your average adult in the Western world spends more than a third of our total waking hours at work. A lot of my identity and happiness is tied to my performance of my work, and a lot of the joy I have experienced in the last six years has been connected directly to my writing.
”But does it feel like work?” is a pretty frequent question, often phrased in different ways (“It must be nice to do something that doesn’t feel like work!” is relatively common, as is “Oh, it must feel weird to work in your PJs!” isn’t rate). And the answer is… yes. Yes it feels like work because it is work.
Back in 2019 I had my first trip to Japan, and it was glorious. Ten days, eight of which were spent in Tokyo and two of which I spent in Kyoto. And I wrote every single day. It was great!
Since 2016, I have taken most of my vacations as week-long trips to a small rented cottage on the lakeshore… in the middle of winter. Why? So I can write in peace without interruption. Sure, it’s nice to be in a place that has nice hiking trails, and to eat different food (my vacation breakfast-of-choice is crumpets… no idea why, but I really love crumpets and I only eat them on vacation!), but mostly I’m there to write.
Wake up, eat breakfast, write, eat lunch, write, go for a walk, eat dinner, write, go to bed. An ideal day.
So yes, writing “feels” like work. It feels like work I love doing and I am constantly trying to get better at, but it’s still work.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Soundtracks to our lives
Music is weird. It meant absolutely nothing to me until around when I hit high school, when suddenly music was a huge percentage of my time and life. I joined four or five different bands and a few choirs, performed and practiced constantly… but didn’t discover pop music until my first year of university, when there was a little program called “Napster” or something like that which allowed the masses to download as much music as they wanted.
Turns out that I wanted a lot of music. My collection sprawled into thousands of songs, tens of thousands, so much music that I rarely heard the same song more than once a month despite listening almost non-stop.
And then around the time I joined the workforce (reluctantly, granted) music kind of slipped from my regular life and exclusively into my social life. I had more rhythm games than you could shake a stick at… Dance Dance Revolution (“DDR”), Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Karaoke Revolution, and eventually Rocksmith (which came with a real guitar!)… and then into actual guitar lessons, which I’ve been taking for years now.
I’m still a mediocre guitarist… and I suspect I always will be, but I can play chords and easy riffs and stuff like that.
These days I almost exclusively listen to music when I’m writing, and I try to match the style of what I’m writing to the music itself. I listen to Skyrim’s soundtrack a lot, or the entire Star Wars audio anthology… stuff that doesn’t have lyrics is best. These days a lot of the music I listen to is cyberpunk (and some of it is from the video game “Cyberpunk 2077” which I haven’t played but does pop up constantly for searches of cyberpunk music).
Today… today I might go listen to a few DDR songs, just for old time’s sake.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Things You Know
Traditional advice for writers is to “write what you know,” which is well-intentioned but I feel inaccurate. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but the concept should be “write what you want to read,” or possibly “write what you read.” If I spend all my time reading sci-fi, then I probably shouldn’t be writing romance, and if what I really want to read is cyberpunk then I probably shouldn’t be writing horror. Genre-mashing or mixing aside, I think it’s a pretty safe rule in general… although there are always exceptions to these kinds of rules!
In my case, I am firmly in sci-fi these days. Almost all the media I consume is sci-fi. I read sci-fi (the Broken Earth trilogy), I watch sci-fi (Altered Carbon), I’m even listening to sci-fi podcasts while I bike to work… it’s just kinda my wheelhouse. I like thinking about worlds that are… better than the one we live in. Not necessarily radically different, but just… smarter. Better.
But still with problems, of course. Just maybe not problems related to stupidity or ignorance so much as related to greed and arrogance. Small differences, I suppose, but meaningful to me.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Significant Milestones
I like numbers. I don’t like equations, per se, but only because your average equation requires you to be methodical and patient, neither of which are traits I possess in abundance. But I like numbers, I like data, and I like look at those numbers in order to better understand the data.
Like, I enjoy looking at my monthly sales numbers. I don’t like generating those numbers because that’s basically fell sorcery, but looking at the graphs of how my books are selling and which are selling is fascinating to me.
All this is a rambling way to say that I also like other people’s birthdays (although I loath my own for unrelated reasons), especially those of close friends, because it gives me a data point that I think is significant. Sure, one successful circumnavigation of the closest stellar object isn’t intrinsically significant, but we give these numbers meaning and, by that, it gives us meaning to examine them.
One of my friends just bought a house: how old are they, and what was I doing at that age? Not as a competition, but just as an interesting data point. I am now the age my father was when I was born: how was he doing compared to how I am doing? And so on.
So I get to arrange and attend a birthday for my partner this weekend. I’m excited! There is going to be food, and sure, because of the whole pandemic-thing there will be only a quarter of the people we’d like to invite, but that’s still okay! It will be intimate and close, as opposed to chaotic and loud. Both fun, in very different ways.
On that note, I should go clean the BBQ… it’s going to get a lot of use this weekend!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Big Storms
There was a big thunderstorm yesterday. Short-lived, but it inflicted a lot of damage in the surrounding areas… lots of toppled trees, broken branches, and torn roofs. Our home escaped more-or-less unscathed, with some minor damage to a tree in our backyard and one section of a fence, but we also lost power for about 7 hours.
Losing power has never really been a big issue for me. It’s not ideal, sure, but there was a four day power outage back when I was in university (the early 2000s) and that was a lot worse. And even that wasn’t awful… I didn’t have a cell phone at the time (I have always been a bit of a Luddite) and the university cancelled classes so I just hung out with friends and played board games while BBQing everything I owned in the fridge and then freezer. It wasn’t ideal, sure, but it could’ve been much worse.
7 hours means we lost a fair amount of stuff from the fridge (about $60 to replace eggs, milk, cream, and a few open cheeses… that kind of stuff), but the freezers were both fine (never opened, lots of stuff in each, so the temperature barely budged). But there are people in the area that lost chunks of their roof, or had severe damage to their car, or lost windows… lots of really bad stuff, and we were basically just inconvenienced for a few hours when I got back from work.
We played a few board games to pass the time. It was nice!
I suppose I’m just grateful for the things in my life that are going right. Even when things really suck in many ways… there is stuff good stuff, or stuff that could be much, much worse but isn’t. And that’s worth remembering.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Altered Carbon
I’m a few years behind the curve here, but i just started watching Altered Carbon on Netflix. In a surprise to nobody, it’s pretty good!
Now, in my defense, I read the book years ago and enjoyed it a great deal. I was a little worried that the show wouldn’t be true to the source material, but for the most part that seems to be unfounded… I just hit a point of pretty major divergence, but for the most part I think they’ve been pretty true to the book.
And this is nice, because I’ve been struggling with my own cyberpunk novel, and so seeing a beautiful visual representation of a cyberpunk universe is pretty neat! Even noticing some of the visual and story changes from what I remember of the original is interesting, trying to decide if those choices were stylistic, or unintentional consequences of the shift in medium, or if it was required to increase the length of the show, and so on.
I’m a big fan of the AI in the show, for example, whereas I don’t really remember the hotel AI from the book having much of a personality at all. Correspondingly, Ortega is a bit short in the show for my expectations, but otherwise seems like a pretty flawless choice for the character.
It’s nice to find inspiration! I’m looking forward to finishing up the first season today!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Plodding Plots? Plan Lots!
Writing books is a weird activity, if I haven’t made that abundantly clear yet.
I mean, honestly, I don’t know how many people out there read these posts when I actually post them (hello everyone who does!) versus people who will be viewing these posts months or maybe even years later (hello all of you fine folks!). But if you’ve been reading the last few weeks of posts, you’ll notice that the novel I’m working on (“Starocean’s Eleven” is the working title, but it will definitely be called something else when I’m done) has been causing me a lot of trouble.
It’s not my usual style. I’ve done a few action novels (the Tintian novels are action-adventure with a little dash of mystery thrown in), a few military sci-fi (Spinward Expanse and Starconvoy EH-76), a YA action (Queen of the AIs), and one or two space westerns (Caitlyn Morcos and Wind’s Howling Rage)… but none of them require the level of planning and careful plot that a good cyberpunk thriller requires. I kinda need to know what my characters are going to do, at least broadly speaking, before they do it, and that’s not my usual style.
I really like exploring with my characters, learning about both them and the world at the same time. I have a loose plot for Starocean’s Eleven, but each time I sit down to write a chapter I have to expand on that loose plot because so many pieces need to fit together at the end to give a “sudden but inevitable” conclusion…
The moral of the story here is that the more I want to pick up the pace in my writing, the slower I end up having to go. This is a weird workflow for me as a result, but I hope the ends will justify the means!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Writing Books is Hard!
I know I’ve said it before, but writing a book is pretty easy, really… unless you want to write a good book. Almost anyone can string words together, one after another, and writing a book at its core is basically just doing that for long enough.
But writing a good story, with engaging characters and a coherent plot and, hey, good editing while we’re at it… that’s tricky. Even at the first stage before you sit down to write the story, thinking about what story it is you want to write… even that can be tricky! I say this as somebody who has written at least one novel a year for the last six years… it’s hard!
Upside is that I love doing it. It being difficult is just a statement of fact. Like… if you want to be an Olympic athlete, you can’t approach your sport as “just a game” although, at its core, that’s all it is. That’s just like saying a book is a bunch of words strung together. It’s true but also grossly insufficient.
I guess I’m giving myself a bit of slack for how slowly this current novel is going. It’s partially my fault… cyberpunk isn’t really my genre, it’s just a genre I love and want to do proper credit to. I suspect that there will be people who don’t even think it is cyberpunk when I’m done. It’s more… cyberpunk-inspired?
Which I think will still be really cool. Assuming I can finish the silly thing…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Good Music
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked before about how I like to listen to music as I write. It helps get my mind in the right headspace, and back when I was “that guy” in a coffee shop working on my novels it also helped me isolate myself from people around me.
Not a complaint about other people of course. But they want to have discussions and talk, and that can be really distracting from the voices I’m trying to listen to in my head that are often whispering where the story will go. It’s much easier to listen to my internal monologue when there’s music I can listen to.
Right now I’m listening to “Through the Fire and the Flame,” which is a thoroughly over-the-top rock piece that I first encountered in one of the later Guitar Hero games… just a lovely game, and the opportunity to play this song (over the final credits, as memory serves) was really cool. It feels appropriately heroic, and it feels kinda fitting.
Added bonus: as a guitar player myself (albeit an amateur one), I can really respect the guitar playing. Just insane level of talent. Ridiculous, really. The fact that anyone’s brain can work at that speed… much less their fingers… anyway. It’s great!
I won’t be able to listen to this while writing the novel, unfortunately. I can’t write in the same language that I’m listening to… the lyrics tend to work their way into my work, and that’s really annoying to catch in editing. I’ll probably switch over to some nice instrumental riffs… I’ve been listening to “tavern music” lists on YouTube, and that seems to be working pretty well.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Lots of Writing Today!
Last post I talked about the second most important element of being a writer: reading a lot. Specifically reading a lot in your chosen genre, to learn about what the market is providing and to learn about how other authors tackle the same sorts of problems you are going to encounter in your own writing, but also reading lots of other genres to see what they do particularly well (or poorly) and to see what you can incorporate into your own work.
Today is all about the first most important element of being a writer: writing! That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but it is remarkable how many writers I know really struggle to put words onto paper (or digital paper or whatever). And that’s not to say there aren’t tougher times to write… these last few years have been a real strain on every creative I know, trying to balance their mental health with their ability to continue producing quality work. And I don’t think it matters if you produce at Stephen King-like levels (2k words a day every day) or if you only put out a few dozen really good words… what matters is that you do it.
And that’s what I’m going to be doing today! Putting words, one after the other, until I finish a bunch of sentences, and linking those together to finish a bunch of paragraphs, and so on and so forth until, boom, finished first draft.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Lots of Reading Today
I love reading days. I love them. Part of the best thing about being a writer is “having to” read lots of stuff in order to stay abreast of what everyone else is doing.
Not that I’m trying to match or surpass any of my fellow writers: this isn’t a competition, and a rising tide lifts all boats. Besides, the caliber of writer that I really enjoy reading (Scalzi, Jemisen, Chambers, Leckie) I have no illusions that I write as well as they do. Maybe someday if I can do this gig full time I’ll be close… or at least in the same conversation… but for now, reading their work gives me a lovely sense of what really brilliant sci-fi is like these days.
Today I’m reading a few classics (specifically The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde) and then maybe tackling The Risen Empire by Westerfeld. After that… gosh, I don’t know! So many choices…
I’m told that there are people out there who re-read books they’ve already read!? Sounds like a luxury, honestly… I look forward to someday having time to even read the majority of the books I already own once!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
In Praise of GOAT CHEESE
It’s a silly trick, and I mentioned it on Monday, but it really works for me. I know I took the words “Goat Cheese” specifically from another writer I follow on Twitter, but I don’t recall who specifically it was.
The idea is simple. Any time something needs to be ignored-for-now and clarified later (or written later) I just put in big bold letters the words “GOAT CHEESE” surrounded by square brackets. That’s it. Skip anything super difficult right now, and come back to it later with a simple Find command in your word processor of choice.
I don’t think I’ve ever written a story with any cheese in it, much less goat cheese, so there’s no worries about that coming up (and even if it did, it would be pretty clear by context whether it’s supposed to be there or not!) and it’s a nice little reminder not to get too hung up on the details, but rather to focus on the big story and then come back for the little details later.
As mentioned, I did that with the chapter I had been really struggling with… and boom, wrote most of the next chapter within a few hours. Progress! It feels nice, not gonna lie.
So just a reminder out there to anyone else who writes and reads this blog… if you’re stuck, just move on to the next thing. But do put in a note or a flag or something, whatever works for you, to make sure you go back and fill in that hole later!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!