I love old sci-fi. I mean, I was raised on it… Dune, Foundation, Starship Troopers, Red Shirts… I can’t claim that I’ve read a tonne of classic sci-fi, but I’ve read my fair share. The first sci-fi I ever read was a Ben Bova collection called “Future Crime,” and the hooks have been sunk deep into me ever since. It’s my comfort reading… I love fantasy, romance, modern alternate history, basically speculative fiction of any colour and stripe, but sci-fi is what I always go back to.
Along that track, I’ve been reading a lot of older Battletech novels, since my new podcast is all about Battletech stories that I’ve written and performed. And there is a certain… je ne sais quoi about old sci-fi that, as much as I love it, tends to permeate works of the 70s and 80s. They can be quite casually sexist, for one thing (although I doubt it was intentional, just below the threshold of the time for what constituted inappropriate male gaze) and often casually racist in the same vein (skin colours of characters are either “dark chocolate” or “normal,” that kinda thing), but there’s more to it than that.
Things like… the scope of what the future would hold is often missed. Look at the exceptional “Neuromancer,” in which William Gibson does his damnedest to dream up the most bleak, terrifying, oppressive future imaginable… and it’s still less depressing than modern life in many, many ways. Society’s casual disregard for personal privacy, our acceptance of police and government surveillance, our surrender to the megacorps and monopolies in almost all regards… Gibson thought people would fight for these rights, but instead we have lineups around the block for the newest pocket panopticon from Zeibatsu 071.
Anyway, it’s just something you notice when you read old sci-fi. People using terms like “Megabytes” or “gigabits” with reverence, unaware that we’d explode past such paltry data usage within years of them writing how insurmountable a threshold such numbers seemed.
With all that stated, I have an old book I want to start and finish today, if at all possible, so I’d better get back at it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Creatives, and the Hazard of Being One
I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I like board games. I play a fair number of them, I have a very large collection, and for about a decade I worked in a Friendly Local Game Store.
For the most part, good times. The holidays were a little hard, no surprise, and working during COVID was a challenge, but for the most part I really enjoyed my time there. Good people on both sides of the counter.
Recently, a video board game reviewer (technically a pair of them, a husband and wife team) put out a video asking for more subscriptions in order to get a raise, basically. I have cut almost all of my Patreon outwards-support, but I figured I could throw a few dollars at these two because:
1. They do really, really good work. Great editing, solid writing, insightful reviews.
2. They’re creatives who are struggling to make ends meet. Their ambition outstrips my ambition (they want to get studio space, and I couldn’t ever DREAM of having studio space for my own projects!), but at the core, it’s two talented people who want to make a living doing something they are both good at and passionate about.
Of course, I don’t have enough money to support myself, but part of the reason I chose to support them (at the lowest tier possible because, yes, I am mostly broke) is because I have to believe that talented creatives are allowed to make a living. I need to believe that, because if that’s not true then what am I even doing?
So I now support two board game review channels: Shut Up and Sit Down (who I have supported for 14 years now? For as long as they’ve accepted any form of donation, significantly earlier than Patreon has existed) and No Pun Included. My two outwards Patreons are slightly less than the amount I currently receive from Patreon, so I guess at this stage I’m just sharing the love a little. I hope it helps.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Busy Summer
I think it’s the nicer weather that is why I am always busy in the summer. I can take more car trips (driving to see friends a few hours away in the summer is arduous, but in the winter it can be impossible or exceptionally dangerous), I can do more chores around the house, and I can write in more places (either in the home or nearby).
Busy!
I didn’t manage to get any writing on the novel done this weekend (boo), but that’s okay. I still have a stockpile of good ideas, and it’s really a question of sitting down and putting them on paper. Which I will do. Today, maybe.
And of course any time I think about writing the novel, that reminds me I also have a stack of short stories I need to finish (a few of them are almost finished), and the audio stuff for the podcast (which is getting more critical as I run out of pre-recorded episodes… 3 more weeks of content, which sounds like a lot, but it’s taken me 5 weeks to record 2 more episodes… gotta speed that up!).
Anyway, all this to say that I am busy! And busy doing things I love, which is good, but busy nonetheless.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
And then Suddenly, July!
The summer has hit Southern Ontario with a vengeance. It is WARM outside… and as somebody who almost never notices the heat, that’s a statement of some weight.
I like the warm. It makes it a lot easier for me to do work in my basement (where I write) when it’s not freezing, I like running and the air not hurting my lungs, and I’m quite insensitive to humidity. So summer is kind of my favourite time of year in many ways.
Except for bugs. I hate bugs. But other than that, summer is great!
It’s kind of opposite to many people, I suppose. I am way more productive in the summer than I am in the winter. You’d think the traditional time of “Staying Inside and Reading” (Winter) would be better for me as a writer, but for whatever reason, it tends to be the summer. Weird.
Anyway, I have a laundry list of work to get done (not least of which is the novel, which I am hoping to get to 20K words by this weekend!), so I should enjoy the warm weather as best I can: by staying inside and writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Scope Growth
One of the reasons I love writing is that I can do anything. I can create massive starships, or entire alien civilizations, or brand new languages… anything I can think of, I can write about.
Sure, it takes effort and a lot of editing to make it good, but I can do it.
The problem is that this same ability to do anything doesn’t translate super well into other forms of media. For example, the audio stories I’m currently publishing once a week… the most recent one I am recording requires a total of 6 voices that are different and distinct. I wrote them, no problem… but now I have to record them, and that’s a lot trickier. I know 6 people willing to do it… but now I need to have everything setup so that when they’re available, I am ready to go. And then there are sound effects, and foley work that needs to get done.
But I want to tell interesting stories! And in audio, that means a bit of scope-creep. Or growth, at least… but remembering that I actually have to manifest the results of this writing… that’s tricky.
Anyway, I’ve recorded most of it (4 of the 6 necessary voices), and now am doing the editing work. That will probably take me the rest of the day (aside from a brief hour-and-a-half trip to a park for some exercise). And with some luck I can get everything ready so that I can get those last two voices in quick.
Next episode? Next episode I am reining in a bit, so I can create a few episodes relatively quickly. Less sprawl, more focus. That’s the plan, at least…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Reading Fast!
I am a relatively fast reader. I can consume most regular books in a day, sometimes two if I’m interrupted or have significant plans.
That stated, I don’t usually start reading a book unless I have a full day to devote to it. I don’t like having to pick up and put down a book, in general. I used to spend days reading at home… basically every evening after school. My parents had a couple very comfortable chairs in the living room, and I would curl up in one with a copy of “The Hobbit” or “Dragons of Autumn Twilight” and chew through them.
These days my reading is a bit more pointed… I read to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. I want to know what other writers are producing in the space, and so I have to read what they’re writing to both learn what people are reading, and how people are writing it. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but it’s lost some of the lazy allure it once had. These days, I read on a mission.
Today I have to chew through 300 pages (approximately) of dense technical writing. It’s RPG stuff (Starfinder 2E, specifically), but I’m kinda looking forward to it? I enjoy these sorts of breakneck “absorb everything you can!” reading sessions. Reminds me of university.
Anyway, I should get back to it… I’ve only finished a few chapters today, and I have a lot to do in the next 8 hours!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
"Short" Stories!
I’ve mentioned before how short stories aren’t my forte.
I can write them… I have written them, and a few of them have been sold professionally. So I can do it.
But it’s not a natural place for me to write. It’s more effortful than me writing long-form stuff like novels and novellas. Those feel more natural… I can’t tell you why that’s the case, but I have been doing this writing thing for long enough that I know it’s true.
The reason I mention it is because right now I’m working on the novel (12K words and counting!) as well as two short stories. Technically three if you include the one that’s off with my editor. But regardless, the short stories involve a lot more editing, a lot more second-guessing, and a lot more work to get that final product on a per-word basis.
That’s not a bad thing, I think. People seem to really like my short stories, so the extra time and work seems to pay off. And that’s good! But it does mean that days like today, where the emphasis is on the short story side of my work, feel more like I’m working harder to do less work. It’s a weird feeling… even when the end result is extremely satisfying.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Musical Pondering
I like listening to music when I write. I usually have to pick either purely instrumental, or stuff that’s in a foreign (or fictional) language. Otherwise it tends to creep into the writing itself. But I have a stable of music I like… stuff like the entire “Mass Effecct” soundtrack, or the Sardaukar throat singing from the new “Dune” movies.
The reason I bring it up is that I’ve been incorporating some music into my audio story podcast. All instrumental at this point because it’s what the budget I had to work with (minimal, and the music is definitely worth way more than what I paid for it), but the idea for a few more songs have been rattling around between my ears for a few days now. Just ideas, just thoughts… but the thing about being an artist is often about converting those random thoughts into actionable creative outlets.
And I’m working on it.
I did play a tiny bit of guitar (quite badly) for one of the fictional in-universe commercials I recorded. That was kinda fun. Oh, and today I’m working half on the novel, and half on the podcast. Progress on both has been deeply satisfying!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Exhausting Weekend of Fun
On Saturday I ran a tournament for the Battletech wargame at a local charity event. We drew in 18 players, which is honestly about 12 more than I expected.
It was a long day, lots of rules questions and organizing and herding of metaphorical cats. Sadly, no real cats… that would’ve been amazing, but twas not to be.
But such events are supposed to be fun. And running such events decidedly isn’t fun… I mean, it’s fine, it wasn’t the worst way to spend a day, but I had really hoped to get a bunch of writing done while at the tournament, and unfortunately I was just too busy. I didn’t get anything done.
Well, almost anything. I did a few edits to a short story. But that was it.
Still surprising to me how exhausting it was. And this was a low-stress, friendly tournament with nothing really on the line besides glory and pride (valuable things, certainly, but of no material worth one might argue).
Anyway, it’s going to take me a day or two to recover, get my brain to brain in the correct way again, but apparently everyone had fun. And it gave me fuel for the podcast, so certainly not a waste of my time!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Banner Question
The marketing guy who is helping promote my books (or, I should clarify, will be helping me promote my books, as currently he is in the process of starting to start thinking about maybe helping me promote my books) mentioned that a banner across the top of my website might be a nice touch.
It might! I honestly haven’t put a lot of thought into it… my website, such as it is, exists because it’s an expectation of the writing career. This place exists, not for me, but for everyone who wants to find my work or likes my books and wants to help support me and my endeavors.
That’s cool, and all, but it means I don’t think of it as an “arm of my writing career” or whatever. It exists by necessity, and because of my particular mix of neurochemicals, that means I’m going to do it well. Because I don’t half-ass things… like… ever. I don’t know if I’m capable of half-assing. It’s whole ass or no ass.
But that stated, having someone who is trained in such arcane arts as “marketing” and “A/B Testing” and whatever is very useful because I don’t think about that stuff. Marketing and advertising are firmly in the “no ass” realm of my life. They’re intimidating and byzantine, and so I’ve avoided them.
Anyway, all this made me realize that I also don’t really have a clean way to link my podcast here… something else I’ll have to think about. But the banner… I’mma have to give that some thought, especially because now I have other technical doo-dads linked in with these pages. Ugh. Unraveling the decade worth of work I’ve put here could be tangled.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
75th Most Popular Sci-Fi Podcast!
… in Sweden. And I can’t actually confirm whether that’s true or not, but it DID make me smile.
As most of you are probably aware, I released a new Battletech-themed short story podcast last week. You can find it right here if you’re curious and I’m quite proud of it. But a few days ago I received an email stating that some podcast-analysis app that I’d never heard of (and certainly never signed up for) claiming that my new podcast was currently the 75th most popular podcast in the Sci-Fi category for Sweden.
I mean… hey, I’ll take it. It’s a very, very niche genre I’m preparing content for, so it’s possible that there just aren’t that many people in Sweden listening to podcasts (in English!) about science fiction. But it couldn’t have been more than one or two people who downloaded it… last week I only had a few dozen downloads total, and I’d be stunned if many of them were in Sweden.
Although, I suppose, it’s not strictly impossible. It would be surprising.
Anyway. I thought it was a funny claim. The podcast hasn’t hit 100 downloads yet, but it’s still young and I’m certainly not doing a tonne of effort into promoting it. I’ll see what the numbers are for a few weeks, and then consider trying to get the word out more widely. Maybe. Either way, I’m having fun.
75th most popular podcast, baby!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Back to the Novel
I’ve started working on the novel again. I mean, I never really stopped… I just switched priorities.
It’s a weird thing to explain to people. I don’t ever really stop writing. In my head, I’m always working on dialogue, situations, plots… it’s always churning. Sometimes on the novel, sometimes on the podcast, sometimes on stop-motion movies that I still really want to shoot but don’t have time for… but always working on something.
But that means that there is usually one project that is the priority. That when the churning in my brain has to translate into words on the page, that’s the one I go for first. Sure, I might still work on a short story or two (I am, in fact, working on one right now), but by default I sit and work on the primary focus. And for the last month, that was the podcast… but now? Now it’s the novel again.
Which is good! I still want to finish it in the next few months to get off to my editor. 2026 is rapidly disappearing (we’re almost at the halfway point!), so I gotta get on that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
New Podcast!
I’ve mentioned it… I’ve muttered and mumbled about it… I’ve outright talked about it, but now… it’s finally here!
Well… technically… it’s over THERE… but the idea is more metaphysical than it is physical.
I have a new podcast! It’s a story-focused thing, where every week I will publish a new story set in the Battletech universe. Some of it will be lore, some gladiatorial ‘Mech combat, some of it will be different stuff! But I really like doing silly little things like this, and it gives me a way to work on my audio editing skills in a low-stakes kinda environment.
Plus, I think the stories are pretty cool, honestly.
So! Go check it out! One episode is up already, and the next month of content is already lined up to go out like clockwork, make sure I don’t miss a week!
With that… I’m going to go back to editing the next couple episodes before I get back to writing the novel! There are days where it is good to be me.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
This is Where the Fun Begins
I kinda like audio editing.
Which is not to say I am particularly gifted at the craft. It is something I have dabbled in as a rank-amateur for many, many years… I’ve certainly gotten faster with the process, and there are elements that I can do now that would’ve felt like sorcery to me ten years ago when I started doing audio editing.
Was it ten years? Lemme check real quick… November 14th, 2013 was the first audio podcast I ever published. Thirteen years… crickey. I can feel that in my knees. Anyway! Back then the entire podcast-thing was rudimentary in the extreme and there were a lot of things I barely understood about the process. These days I have a System… is it a good system? No, it’s as good as possible as I can make it. The end results are definitely better than they were! And more consistent… there were a few times in the old podcast where episodes would just be lost due to digital glitches (usually caused by 3rd party recording software), and that took hours off my life.
Back then, I had hours with which to re-record. Ain’t nobody got time for that these days.
Anyway! All this to say that I’m having a good amount of fun polishing and preparing to publish these stories. I hope people find them as much fun to listen to as they are to record and edit! More, even!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
"Good Enough"
One of the curses of being a creative is that there is no real objective “finish line” for any of your projects.
There is almost always a temporal line. “You must be done by September” or “Published this year” or what-have-you, but that’s independent of what I am talking about.
It’s very hard, if not impossible, to look at any creative output and say “Yup, that’s where I want it to be,” and not be lying at least a little. There are always ways to improve, always things to work on, always new tricks and new tools that you can use (or not use!) to make your work better. But despite all that, at some point, you have to say “Yup, that’s good enough.”
“Good enough” are extremely powerful words in English. Is my short story perfect? Gods no. But is it good enough that I can send it to my editor? Yup! And then when she sends it back, is it going to be perfect? Nope! But it will be better, and that’s almost as good as good enough.
All this to say that the audio stories I’m creating? I think they’re good enough. The one I am going to spend today editing will be better than the last 4, but it won’t be perfect. But I’m still excited about releasing it! |
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Short Story Draft Finished!
For once I managed to hit more-or-less my word target on the first draft. That’s a little unusual for me, I normally overshoot and then cut out a bunch of words in editing, but this time I hit a lot closer to the mark.
Granted, this is only the first draft. I still have to let it sit for a little bit, percolate for a day or two, and then read the whole thing out loud to figure out how it “sounds,” but then it’s off to the editor.
Still! It’s nice to have it finished to this point, and I’m quite proud of its current state. So that’s one more thing off the checklist, and more time for me to pump back into the novel! It’s sitting at 10K words at the moment, which is about halfway to where I want it to be by the end of the month, so gotta get those words in there!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Small Website Revisions
So you might’ve noticed that the front page now prominently features a quick link to received a free short story. Send me your email, I email you “Pit of My Stomach,” a short story set in a new sci-fi universe with new characters.
If you’ve already signed up for my newsletter… which, since I know everyone on that list, I am quite confident you haven’t… then it’s the same story you received then, although the formatting is a little nicer and cleaner. Bit easier to read.
I’m proud of that story. I’m also proud of the short story that I’m writing right now that is almost finished… I’m at the climactic scene, and I just need to wrap everything up in a somewhat satisfying way to call it a day (for the first draft, of course!).
I’m also looking for a cover artist for the next book… gotta line these ducks up in advance, make sure everything goes smoothly once the rubber hits the road.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Missed a Post... and Two Teeth!
On Wednesday I got my last two wisdom teeth removed. This is about… fifteen years after I had the first two removed? Those ones I absolutely didn’t have a choice, they were causing constant pain and suffering.
These two were a bit preemptive. The dentist said they will cause pain and suffering if I continue to ignore them (as I had for years and years), and it was getting to the point that they might also skyrocket in price.
So out they came. And now for the last three days I have eaten nothing besides applesauce, yogurt, and pudding. Whee.
Tomorrow I’m allowed to resume eating soft foods (mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs) which is a dang shame because we’re going to visit friends who are extremely talented cooks and I won’t be able to enjoy most of it. But such is life, sometimes.
The real downside has been the pain has kept me from writing. I really want to finish this story I’m working on… I think I may, in fact, finish it today if my jaw responds well to pain meds. We will see!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Finishing Touches
There is always a risk in any artistic endeavour to never finish. The hurdles never stop coming… it is hard to start writing a story, it’s hard to continue writing a story, and it’s particularly hard to finish writing a story.
That final hurdle looks like one issue, but it’s really a few dozen issues all crammed together in a trench coat. Adding one more line here, removing a few more words there, tweaking the layout, modifying the chapter headings, revising the introduction to cut unnecessary stuff, fluffing out the end to make sure the ending is satisfying… the inclination to polish the product until it gleams is powerful.
But at some point you do have to finish. Or at least I do, I know plenty of people who don’t, but they’re not writers or artists. At some point you have to push the baby bird out of the nest, and whether it flies or not, you gotta start working on the next clutch of eggs.
I say all this because the audio story podcast I’m working on is within spitting distance of being ready for release, and I’m currently mired in the desire to polish it more. To add more stuff, to change the audio levels, to work on it until it is as close to perfect as I can make it… but the reality is at this point I’m just adding polish to the polish. It’s almost ready, and soon I’m going to push it out into the world and hope people like it.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
I Love My Job
I mean it. I love writing. I love creating new things out of the weird, misty recesses of my mind. I love crafting stories that people enjoy.
I don’t love everything about my job, of course. There’s a lot of work that goes into creating the stories, and a lot of not-writing that is involved in writing. These days a fair amount of that is marketing, and I really don’t like marketing. I don’t have the mind for it.
But writing? Oh yeah, I love writing.
So it’s good that right now one of my priorities is to do a whole lot more of that. I want to get two short stories done by this weekend (at least the first draft of both). One is about half done, the other I haven’t started yet, but the nice thing about short stories is that they are, by definition… short. So I should be able to handle the first draft pretty quick.
Editing them will be a pain in the butt, as short fiction is always harder to focus, but that’s a challenge I enjoy as well. But first… we write!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!