I have taken all the package deals from the Cast Directory and moved them to the Bible, or I will at the end of editing. Right now they are just copied. When the Setting Bible goes online, there will be a revised Directory without the package deals.
I have listened to a lot of hyperventilation about AI, and you all need to calm down. The day to truly worry about his is coming (I have written about this elsewhere) but the write-bots and art-bots are not going to be your shiny new overlords.
They could, though suck away what little precious compensation is left from art and writing. Against that future I propose two regulations:
1] AI content and art must always be identified as AI created and
2] AI content cannot be copy-righted. It is automatically public domain.
These rules would not solve the AI threat to the persistent fantasy of making arts and letters a day-job, but the will greatly reduce the crisis.
Speaking of mitigating crisis:
This was staged.
There were not a lot of surprises with the radiation treatment.
At one point I told my doctor:
“I thought I needed to take another Imodium last night, but I fell asleep.”
And he replied, “That is the most stereotypical response to radiation I’ve ever heard.”
So I did experience the exhaustion and diarrhea that everyone predicted. I am infamously hyper-active and have an iron stomach so this took a week longer than average, but I definitely have them now.
I did not develop any mutant powers, nor does my poop glow.
The TV series Yellowstone is totally cowboy Game of Thrones punctuated by shameless horse porn. Like GOT the writing is so good you forget that these are unlikeable people killing each other over self-created problems.
Ron DeSantis is doomed. No one who wants Trump is going to vote for the wanna-be Trump when they can vote for the actual Trump. Aerosmith, even at their advanced age, is still a better act live than any of their tribute bands.
I’m up a little later than I want to be hoping my wife will “call” (via FB messenger). I can’t call her.
My dear wife jumped out of a van at Sky Harbor to rush to make her flight. She left her phone in that van. We could not get it back to her before she had to get on a plane, fly to New Jersey, check into a hotel without a credit card (which she keeps with her phone, and then, as far as I know, board a cruise ship for a pair of back-to-back cruises around the Caribbean.
There are computers onboard. If she can get to one, she can Facebook Messenger me – if I’m awake.
Meanwhile, her phone, which does not work reliably as a phone at seas anyway, is dutifully charging in our living room.
So that’s why she hasn’t returned your call.
Now, she was a functional adult 25 years ago when we all got along without cell phones. But the infrastructure that made that practical has long since evaporated. Not just the disappearing pay phones (or land lines of any sort) but the increasing dependence upon websites and QR codes that used to be printed hand-outs.
I used to have an index card in my wallet covered with phone numbers, and a day planner in my fanny pack wherein I recorded all my appointments. I’ve replaced all that with a several hundred dollar plastic brick. And so have you.
Are we more efficient?
The pause before you answer that is telling.
The past, present and future past of the Suns
A few other thoughts that are not quite whole posts:
My Beloved Suns would have been second round casualties with or without the Durant trade. But now they have no draft picks for like the next four years. That’s a lot to give up for a guy who isn’t much younger than Chris Paul.
Both the regular news guys at KTAR and every sports talk show on the radio were flummoxed that Tempe voted down the Coyotes arena. What none of them seem to remember is that they were terrible tenants in Glendale, so much so that Glendale decided they’d rather have the place empty than put up with the Coyotes for one more season.
Yes – there is a perfectly fine hockey arena in the valley, already built. Tempe gazed upon it and decided – not in our landfill.
Comparing the debt ceiling to … Wait. If I have to explain to you why that situation is stupid and wrong, I am going to be unable to take you seriously as an adult. So do us both a favor and pretend you understand.
Cheryl comes back June 9th. We’ll probably have an economy that still staggers forward, or it will be collapsing due to a completely self-created crisis. Either way, she’ll have a lot of phone calls to return.
We’ll get to all that, but first some announcements:
UnObtanium Bazaar will be at the Las Vegas Pirate fest this weekend!
We will be at London Bridge Ren Faire (in Lake Havasu City) next weekend.
I am watching the Suns with the sound off partly so I can write, but mostly because I am tired of the local commentators whining about the fouls. In basketball, the accountability is fairly straightforward for playing defense with your arms instead of your feet. You can make a case that the Suns have been unevenly targeted by officials, but that’s not why they are losing to the Lakers.
That is all tangential to what I want to write about.
There is a peculiar challenge when running an organization of human beings in balancing accountability with accurate feedback.
Long ago, when I was a theatrical rigger, a building TD recounted for me an event that happened on a previous show: a curtain had been fouled up in the neighboring lineset and was left that way for the next operator to find.
“If I ever find out who did that,” the TD told me, “He’s fired.”
Which guaranteed he’d never discover which of several possible operators was responsible.
The natural impulse to punish the stupid or the careless can actually be counter-productive if it drives the focus from preventing errors to hiding errors. What this impulse demonstrates is a lack of trust in the workers.
In my lengthy but unscientific experience, workplace errors are evenly divided among three causes: lack of training , lack of resources, lack of attention. The first two are totally on management. It is the boss’s job to see that the worker knows what to do and has the means to do it. The third is 50/50 management worker, though that starts to tilt towards the worker the higher you go on the food-chain.
I could not, in my current job, credibly blame my lack of attention on my basically non-existent supervision. But it took me a long time to get there, including long stints as a supervisor.
The show makes the case, among many other accomplishments, that the inability to take responsibility for disastrous decisions – at any level – destroyed the Soviet Union.
It will also full-on give you nightmares.
The Suns have now lost. The whining continues. I turn it off.
An update on useful radiation: I have a standing appointment in the late afternoon of every weekday from next week until the endo of fucking May for radiation treatments.
I am told the treatments do not last long: 20-30 minutes depending on how close I manage to park.
We’ll get to a legit installment in a week. The short update is that we have a new trailer, my child has moved out of the old house, so I have to finish moving out of the old house, and my mother-in-law has moved in with us, as long prophesied.
Firstly, its 305 pages all told, packed with color illustrations and tables and other things that are a nightmare to format.
And you can print the Cast treatments as needed right from the PDF.
Meanwhile, I am quite worn out from the ehroics I shall describe next week perhaps.
Now we know.
I am never comfortable talking about my medical problems with actual doctors, much less strangers on the internet. However, after my stroke, I fund that account helpful both for dealing with FAQ’s, but also as a reference for my use for dated and actual medical terms. I have a new thing going on. I’ve added a sub-page to my About The Suthor page, where you can find the facts if you are somehow interested.
When Cheryl is out to sea, I find it helpful to embezzle some money from the grocery budget and buy a couple of large pizzas, which will provide one big meal that night, and several smaller, faster meals over the course of the ensuing week. I did just that a few weeks ago, as the High Commercial Holidays set in, not realizing that I was sealing my doom.
I am eating the last of that pizza as I write this.
That’s a lie. There’s still more.
My X-mas decor in 2021. All of it.
Tropical Scrooge and a Christmas Person.
But I did consume most of that first large pie while decorating for Christmas.
After my divorce, I thought myself free of having to decorate for the holidays. I let the 3-4 boxes of Christmas stuff float off with my ex. Cheryl, however, has 7-8 boxes of Christmas crap, but at least one box for every other holiday as well. She had started to decorate just before going out to sea. I then finished, partly because I am a good husband, and partly because this crap did no good on the floor.
About 30% of the indoor décor and all of the outside décor was by my hand. It seems what actually bothers me about the High Holidays is the artificial stress we put on ourselves, and the expense we justify in service of that stress. Then I spend several hours and over a hundred dollars on decorating. I’m not really sure I learned anything, honestly.
MaricopaCon had their kick-starter at Silver Key Lounge that Sunday. They brought in pizza. We have long known I can’t make money vending there, but I’ll be there running Go Action Fun Time. More immediately, the Silver Key hosts a game developers night every Wednesday, and I hope to be regular with Go Action Fun Time there as well.
Circling back to self-induced stress, I remain on pace to have the Cast Directory out around the first of the year. I retain the right to blow my own deadline rather than rush the editing. More on this in WORD COUNT.
Cheryl’s daughter and her husband arrive from New York a day before Cheryl gets back in preparation for Divorce Christmas I. One of the things they left at our house as they downsized to a Manhattan Apartment was a pizza oven. Guess what we had for Divorce Christmas dinner.
Between shopping for specific ingredients, carefully crafting the dough and managing the wood-fires they spent all damn day making pizza. Oh yeah – it was really good. Better than the pizza we used to make by the Betty Crocker recipe in a couple hours. But its not 6 hours better.
You can judge for yourself, if you want. We still have some…
After five years at the company I finally attended a RC Lurie holiday party, mostly because I was compelled to come to the office for other reasons. They served pizza.
That was the last of it. My end of Divorce Christmas happens over the new years’ weekend. We made a field trip to Cottonwood to get out of the smog, where we did not get pizza, and spent Christmas Day eating quiche, drinking cocktails and watching both local teams lose games in over-time.
We hope your holidays went as well or better.
Cheers.
WORD COUNT:
I’ve been doing a little editing, but mostly art.
I have two competing cover designs. The Cast group shot and the Cast audition line:
You have to imagine this with all 36 cast members, and actual title blocks and so forth.
OR
You have to imagine this one with characters in color, and a stairwell at the far right side with 3-4 additional characters.
You can chime in with opinions and preferences if you want, but this close to deadline I’ve decided. It’s going to be the audition line.
So now we know.
I am never comfortable talking about my medical problems with actual doctors, much less strangers on the internet. However, after my stroke, I fund that account helpful both for dealing with FAQ’s, but also as a reference for my use for dated and actual medical terms. I have a new thing going on. I’ve added a sub-page to my About The Suthor page, where you can find the facts if you are somehow interested.
Because it’s that season. And we want to balance the last post.
Finally barely profitable!
I haven’t got the check yet, but if I am reading the quarterly royalty statement that I get maybe once a year from Menasha Ridge Press, my book, 5 Star Hikes in Flagstaff and Sedona has earned out its advance!
I am due thirty something dollars.
We’ll see.
What else? We still seem to be a functioning representative democracy.
Britney Griner is no longer being held in Russia for no good reason. That’s good news regardless of politics. You can grouse about who is still in prison in Russia (or anywhere else) because those situations remain dumb and sad, but it is now one less person dumb and sad.
Human society has a surplus of whining, and I do not want to add to that, but some unpleasant things need to be spoken aloud for the record.
If you have 300+ yards of offense, five sacks, and still lose by more than a touchdown, as the Cardinals did Sunday, you have to start looking at the coach. And the quarterback. And the GM.
Kliff Kingsbury running in the shadows. Not foreshadowing at all…
Since all three of those people, GM Steve Kiem, Head-coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Kyler Murray got lengthy contract extensions this summer, the team’s performance has nosedived in most measurable categories.
Ah, but for the Bidwell family, who have long owned a football franchise that has not won a championship since 1947, this is depressingly consistent.
Katie Hobbs explaining why she settled for a field goal.
Katie Hobbs refusing to debate has become the defining issue in her campaign, and that’s not going to win it. You can’t play not to lose. That’s how you get 300 yards of offense and no offensive touchdowns.
Not worried.
The Phoenix Suns did not extend forward Cam Johnson’s rookie contract, thus guaranteeing they will pay more for him at the end of next year. Yes – they will, because barring a career ending injury, he will get at least one whopping offer that the Suns will have to match. And that is why Johnson is not likely to pout over this.
Has Suns season started yet?
There’s nothing going on in House of the Dragon that we didn’t see in Game of Thrones.
Speaking of blood in all the wrong places, I’m higher mileage and past my warranty, and every trip to the doctor feels like driving an old car into the muffler shop: you’re come away with a list of things that must be fixed, a list of things that should be fixed, and a list of things that can be ignored, until they get on one of the other two lists.
At the top of my list was a colon biopsy, which I have had, and it was not as much fun as it sounds.
This is NOT the colonoscopy that I also have to look forward to. It is a different but equally expensive procedure.
Yes, it is an outpatient procedure that I drove home from and was able to get to work the next day, but we are a week past the procedure at this writing and functions are just now returning to normal.
You want details? No- you do not.
Rule 6, corollary 1:This can’t be stressed strongly enough: No one wants to hear about your last bowel movement.
WORD COUNT:
In the past 7 days:
I have edited 10 Sample Cast treatments for Go Action Fun Time. These were already written. I am counting them at 250 words each. = 2500
I started a chapter of the next 64 novel. I didn’t finish, but I am 1000 words in = 1000
Writer’s group = 500 words.
That’s 4000 words, short of my 5k goal. I have some artwork I could throw in, or I could just accept that I did not feel well and that cost me a thousand words, or I could blame it on TV, namely sports and House of the Dragon, which for all my whining, I am almost caught with.
UPDATE: Between drafting this and posting it, I have finished both the chapter and the remaining cast treatments.
Just in time for Suns season.
Whiskey.
Now we know.
GAFT Cast members – and the reason I didn’t make word count last week either.
The first portion of the novel can be had for free or nearly free (depending on your relationship with Amazon) here.
You can peek ahead in graphic form where I attempted to make it a web-comic here.
I’m not saying the web-comic is dead, but it has been on hiatus long enough that I would not blame you for making that assumption.
Friends, I have been working on this book for 15 years.
I have had a complete and publishable manuscript for it for over eight years.
I had three requests for full manuscripts from agents – none of whom picked up the project. I’ve seen two small publishers evaporate with my book in their hands. I have turned down a couple of really insulting offers from vanity presses. I have had the publisher of my Jack novels turn it down over language concerns.
At some point, you do the thing (and spend the money) and get it done.
After editing and artwork, this book represents a nearly $4000 bet on myself.
If it pays off, great. There’s more where that came from.
If not – at least I’ll know my own sales numbers in a useful timeframe, something I cannot say for any of my works, fiction or non-fiction, in the hands of other publishers.
Physical copies of the 500+ page trade paperback are still available, but only from my hands. The next step is to monkey with the fonts and spacing, get that number under 500, and get that on Amazon as well.
WORD COUNT:
Last week’s What Have We learned [below] =1000 words.
Converting my Word document of Empress M into a useful Kindle file = 1000 words.
Seems like it took a lot longer than that, but there was a learning curve. Also have it in regular E-pub but haven’t settled on a destination for that.
A scene from the playtest
Writing the GAFT Episode Mighty Murder Mayhem Time = 4000 words (the length of the final document)
Submitting Empress M to Amazon = 500 words.
Writer’s Group = 500 words.
Playtesting Go Action Fun Time at Game-On Expo when no players showed up = 500 words [twice]
Playtesting at Game-On Expo with Players = 1000 words.
We’ve been busy around here, what with comprehensive life-event changes and all. I could, I suppose craft some winding narrative that artfully leads us all down the winding road past all these changes and what we have learned from them, or I could just blurt out some answers.
Reflecting upon the remaining To Do list, I chose B.
Here are some answers to questions you asked (at least in my mind):
Married life is treating my very well, so far, thank you.
Yes, there have been some adjustments, but we’ve both been married before, and we have both shared a residence with each other for weeks at a time before, so most of the questions are “Where are we going to put this thing?”
We think we had a hundred people all told in and out of the house during the wedding. The goal was 60. We provisioned for 80. There were no disasters. Keep flying.
Somewhere in this pile is everything we need.
I was not actually that drunk. I dance that badly sober.
We do not need anything, thank you. We got way more than we asked for at the wedding. Also, we are middle-aged adults who both ended up with most of their respective households following the divorce.
Why yes, I did get copies of The Secret history of Empress Em in time for Westercon. Mainly because I had them shipped to the hotel in Tonopah. These are technically proof versions – you print one to see how it looks, but I printed ten because vending. I have [goes to count…] five left if you want one.
They might someday be collector items.
The first version is always the best? [Art by Rose Wolf]
Westercon (at least this year) was a social gathering for people to LARP SFF cons as they were 30 years ago, only without near as many people. It’s not feasible to go to Anaheim for this thing in 2023. We have been invited to Salt Lake City in 2024, where the organizers assure us it will not be this dull small.
Bongo soaking up the excitement of Westercon 74 in the Tonopah Convention Center.
Cheryl and I took a class in regency dancing, which was not the disaster you might have predicted watching me dance at my wedding.
If you don’t count the hotel cost, the limited version of the UnObtanium Bazaar made money – but mostly because of one customer. (I was supposed to have paid for this with points, but the credit card I used to reserve the room expired before we got there, and in transferring, we magically lost the points. Thanks for nothing, Best Western.
Gracie Shotz making the money.
The best bar in Tonopah stocks 100 different kinds of whiskey. I don’t remember the name, but they are the only bar open after 9pm.
Bongo at La Posada
The Las Posada Hotel is the best part of Winslow AZ, full stop. It was also the Actual Honeymoon portion of our journey, so Full Stop there, as well. If you are curious, La Posada will tell you all about itself.
We did not take a picture standing on the corner. Didn’t get to it. Oh darn.
Medieval Mayhem in Show Low is a fun little ren faire, and we will be going back. Learned some hard lessons about the bell tent vs rain, but this was nuisance, not crisis. For a fair that drew maybe a thousand people counting all the staff, we did pretty well.
And there are worse ways to spend a July Saturday if you live in Phoenix – just saying.
The Dodge Journey is less like a long SUV and more like a short mini-van. And the touch screen interface is way more complicated than it needs to be. But it holds a lot of stuff, and gave us no problems until it was time to tow the trailer.
The Journey on the journey.
The Dodge Journey will not recognize that is has a towing harness unless you get the dealership to flash the computer. This cannot be accomplished in either Show Low or Payson on a Monday morning. Happily, I have long experience with derelict vehicles and know how to mitigate/hide the fact that I had no effective brake lights – all the way down the mountain.
Now that the trailer we borrowed (Thanks James!) is returned, getting this done is a low priority, but I have a bad feeling that when it happens, there will be a story.
I have hiked exactly twice in South Mountain Park since I moved here. There has been a basically continuous excessive heat advisory for most of that span.
WORD COUNT:
I write virtually nothing in the two weeks of wedding/vending/honeymoon/vending. The week after was spent sorting boxes so we could get the boxes we had to sort so we could unload the show and sort that. That madness goes on (for months, perhaps), but I was able to get some words down since last Tuesday:
Editing a section of Events on Loki = 500 words
It was actually close to 2000 total words, but editing is not writing.
Events on Loki is the novella-length prequel to Empress M and other works in that universe.
Writer’s Group = 500 words
Adapting Tom Swift (Sr) into a sample cast member of Go Action Fun Time: 1000 words.
The senior Tom Swift, who premiered in 1910, is largely public domain. I didn’t create any original art for him, but I can’t cite the images I’m stealing appropriating with any confidence. So, these are place-holders.
Ember – the last of the Aziza.
Creating Ember, the last Aziza, a cast member for Go Action Fun Time: 1000 words.
Image for Ember = 2000
Full color adds a thousand words. Reminder to myself to cancel my free trial of Adobe stock images (the background source.
Ember is #36. I now have my full Sample Cast for Go Action Fun Time. Huzzah!
A big arena show could have 18 semi-trailers full of gear, two dozen roadies and more than a hundred local stagehands to set it all up – usually in one day. For most of my working life, I have done 30 or more of these every year in some capacity. Every once in a while, even a grizzled veteran like me is taken aback by the scale of the thing, and that panicky voice in the back of my mind wonders “How are we gonna ever get this all done?”
The answer is always the same. One box at a time. Worry about the gear in your hands. Then worry about the next little thing. As long as you keep doing that, the rest will all happen. Somehow.
It always does.
The old truck hitched to the old trailer by the old house.
My life is changing, mostly for the better, definitely for the weirder and these changes are coming about right on top of each other – like a big arena load-in.
Cheryl (my fiancé – for those just joining us) sold her house in Las Vegas, bought a house in Phoenix, and we have moved her in.
This took 3 trucks, 4 portable storage pods and 5 separate trips to and from Las Vegas.
I have (mostly) moved out of the house I have been squatting in to move in with her.
We are getting married on June 28th.
At this new house.
Where most of our stuff is still in boxes.
And Cheryl is out to sea.
Our honeymoon includes vending at Westercon and then a ren faire.
I am trying to release a book at Westercon.
Casa Blanca
The new digs
The price of real-estate in Phoenix has shot up dramatically, but only from where it used to be – which was discount rates compared to any other city of comparable size.
Before Cheryl settled on Phoenix, she poked around. Phoenix is still cheaper than most of California, or coastal Florida. Coos Bay Oregon is more expensive per square foot than Phoenix.
Las Vegas, however, is within 5% of Phoenix, so this was a lateral move in real-estate terms.
When I started house hunting here (I was basically their scout), I was bombarded with horror stories of couples losing bid after bid, offering way above asking and still not getting the house. I soon put together that what most of these stories had in common was financing and either the east Valley or Scottsdale.
When you have cash, and you are not compelled to surround yourself with your own kind, the valley opens up for you.
The house we bought, at the base of South Mountain, in Thunderbird Estates, a former golf-course community. The golf course is twenty years gone, but the 1960’s house, and their big lots, remain. We live in one of them.
How do you afford a 3800’ former golf estate at the foot of the mountain? You sell a 4500’ 6 bedroom house with a detached casita, in a gated community, in the Centennial Hills district of Las Vegas – basically, Sin City’s analogue of Scottsdale.
That house sold in four days.
Truth be told, we bought this new house 48 hours after first stepping foot in the place, mostly because there was another bid. That bid was below asking – a speculator fishing. We bid asking, and got it.
It has white walls and a white foam roof, and we call the place Casa Blanca. The interior is an open expanse of white tile lit by numerous ceiling cans. Void of furniture it looked like a Pontiac dealership.
The ballroom – just add Pontiacs…
There is plenty of furniture now. I will spare you more current pictures as theplace still looks like Warehouse 13 after an earthquake.
Both Cheryl and I inherited the household inventory following our respective divorces. Despite our best efforts at purging, much of that is also at the house. It is faster to just pack rather than sort and pack, and our time became contracted. Plus the UnObtanium inventory, which, besides the show inventory includes enough random antiques to stock a small retail outlet.
An outlet for the antiques is a future us problem. Right now, we just need to find a place to put it all.
One box at a time.
The Wedding
While the marriage was my idea (I proposed to her) the wedding is all her. I’d be happy with an appointment with the JOP, but Cheryl wants a ceremony. As in she had ideas about this the day after I asked her (likely well before that). The way she lights up when she talks about it meant I had to help make it happen. We’re both event professionals – so here we go.
June 28th is a Tuesday, but that means tacos. Which we will have catered. We hope (that deal is not finalized.). It is also Tau Day [6.28], which is π x 2. We thought about getting married on actual π Day, which is March 14th. [3.14] but that was just not possible for a long list of reasons.
We will not have a wedding cake. We will have pies.
We have planned it as a big dinner party interrupted by a ceremony, followed by pie.
This one is fixed…
Ever mail out 40 invitations and then realize you forgot to put the event date on them? We have.
The invite list was slapped together in some haste. If you did not get an invitation, and feel you should have, contact us.
That said, it’s still just a house. We can only accommodate so many.
Tomorrow, guys are coming to fix one of Casa-Blanca’s two ancient AC units, at some expense. So we will not have a (paid) DJ or bartender. But we will have air-conditioning in the ballroom. I am at peace with that.
The Adventure Tour
We get married on Tuesday the 28th. We clean up and settle-up on the 29th. Thursday is a travel day, for we end the day in Tonopah Nevada for Westercon 74.
Yes. One of the largest straight SF-F conventions of the year will be held in Tonopah Nevada. Tonopah has a mining museum, and a small convention center, but is mostly known for the Clown Motel.
We are staying at the Best Western.
We are vending books, costumes and curiosities. I will have both Jack books of course, Go Action Fun Time, and with any fortune, physical copies of the first 64 universe book, the Secret History of Empress M. About damn time.
Westercon runs through July 4. On July 5th we travel to Winslow, where we have reservations at the La Posada hotel one of my happy discoveries on my Dilkon adventures (last post).
We thought about a cabin, but we don’t want to cook.
Good, clean mayhem.
On Thursday, we drive to Overgaard, where I will have stashed the trailer, and tow it to nearby Show Low for the Medieval Mayhem Renaissance Fair, where we set up the whole Unobtanium experience.
We return to Phoenix Monday July 11. July 12, I go back to work, and keep doing so until the end of the year, for I will have exhausted all my time off.
There are a lot of boxes between here and there. But I can’t let myself worry about how many.
One box at a time.
WORD COUNT:
Yes – this last week I got some words in:
Shamus McGuffin – Magic Hobo
Cam Cruz – designated driver
Writer’s Group: 500
Revising a section of Events on Loki – a prequel of sorts to the 64 – : 500 words (revisions count as half).
GAFT Sample cast treatment for Cam Cruz: 1000 (the art was already done)
GAFT Sample cast treatment for Shamus McGuffin (magic hobo): 1000 words
What Have We Learned? 