I read or heard from some authoritative source that I do not recall that if you do something consistently for 30 days you can either make or break a habit. Thirty days seems suspiciously convenient, but I have tried this with a few personal habits recently, and it seems to be holding.
My wife is six days into what will be about 30 days out at sea. What kind of feral nerd habits might I develop without direct supervision? We shall see.
One I’m working on now is draw everyday. I’ve yet to decide when or if I’m going to post my results.
Somehow, before she got on board, my wife managed to slip a lovely, heart-felt valentine in the mail that arrived today.
On my end, I drew a picture of a lizard and sent a photo of it by Facebook Messenger.
The first few months of the year is when I traditionally re-think all my blogging strategies. This year my notion is more but shorter posts distributed evenly across my now sprawling blog empire. More about that in Word Count below.
This doesn’t mean I won’t write and post the longer posts when they occur to me. But I’m not going to dig for them – or beat myself up for not digging for them. Short is the new done.
UnObtanium Bazaar has a new website (same URL). It’s a wordpress blog (the devil you know) because we are going to be more about creative content and less about internet commerce. The Bazaar is and always will be primarily a physical pop-up operation. [1000k] [Counting the first blog post]
Revised an Episode of Go Action Fun Time for Friday night. [500k].
Just finished writer’s group. [500k] where we have the kind of writer’s who use the Hilbert Transformation as a plot device (don’t fret – there’s no actual math in the manuscript – so far.).
Plus this post – which weighs in at just over 500.
This post contains no useful information about the actual animals.
We’ve been busy and things have piled up, so I have some announcements, and then some links to dump – er bounce of a reflective surface. I was going to try to build a metaphor around that, but this turned into an Armadillo thing.
We will open the full tent for our first big show of the year. Come by and be social, maybe drop some coin.
Happy to not be dead…
You might notice the new bareness of the website. we jumped ship from Wix, and I haven’t had time to rebuild it. No complaints regarding Wix except it was a lot more graphic goo-gahs than we needed and and a lot more money than we can justify.
I turned 57, and my cancer levels came back undetectable – meaning my final cause of death remains a mystery. My wife took this as good news and threw a party.
Those events, and the 14 boxes of Christmas I had to wrangle made for a busy month. Which is how I like it.
My good friend Mathew Howard has beaten me to a graphic novel about dinosaurs going into space.
My friend Joseph Schwartz has a new volume of his Thomas Berenford Chronicles: Wilder Fire. Straight-up fantasy action-adventure with a bit of noir at the edges.
I know these guys from the old Armadillo Writers group (which persists, but now only by Zoom). We were named for the now-defunct bar we once met at. The fate of that establishment is finally revealed by Reality TV Update.
No on left to sue us now…
A couple of things:
We left the bar when they closed the back meeting room we used to turn it into an office. We made do a the Duck and Decanter across the street until COVID forced us into Zoom.
We are still on Zoom. It’s just so much easier.
The loss of the lease was the final blow. I think they might have made it otherwise.
That lot is now empty.
LINKS FROM RECENT MEETINGS OF THAT GROUP:
[From Zoom’s chat function that I copied, pasted, checked out and now choose to reflect back to you]
Full disclosure: I don’t use either one of them. I pay for Microsoft because I long ago accepted that the world works in Word, and Excel is by far the better spreadsheet period. But those operating theories are expensive.
This will follow our Open House Trunk Show for UnObtanium Bazaar which will feature costumes and garb.
We have refreshments but you are encouraged to bring your own and share. Cheryl is organizing a friendship salad.
I am organizing Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster mix-off for those interested. If you don’t know what that is, or imagine that you might drive yourself home – you are not interested. Warning: there may be no survivors.
Fire outside – weather permitting.
[You do not have to be a nerd to be welcome. We are very tolerant…]
If you read this blog – you’re invited.
The Phoenix Suns did what they had to do, and likely closed their championship window by doing so. And I did what I had to do about nine months ago, and I am measurably diminished for it.
About nine months ago, the Suns changed ownership and almost before the ink dried, new owner, Matt Ishbia, pulled the trigger on a standing trade offer that previous ownership had balked over: they traded two starters and almost all of their worthwhile draft picks for Kevin Durant.
Ten years ago, Kevin Durant was an MVP candidate, a fixture to go deep in the playoffs, and reliably the guy pretending to guard Lebron James in the All Star game.
The current Kevin Durant literally limped into the Suns locker room – he came with an ankle injury – which he re-injured during warm-up on his first game back. Warm ups.
Ten months ago, the Suns were a likely second round playoff casualty with no cap space, but the normal ration of draft picks. A month later, they became a likely second round casualty (as they turned out to be) disastrously over the cap and with no draft picks. And everybody blamed…
DeAndre Ayton.
Let’s get this straight: is DeAndre Ayton the best player he could possibly be? Almost certainly not. But even with his goofy, soft touch, occasionally pouty approach to the game, he was the second best pure center the Suns had ever put on the court.
(Alvan Adams – if you’re wondering.)
We traded that guy for a center who would not start on most contending teams.
Not the problem, but too expensive to not be the solution.
Jusuf Nurkic was the starting center for the lottery-bound Portland Trailblazers, but other than perhaps interior passing, his game is inferior in every way to Ayton’s – including his reputation for checking out of games. And he’s older. And he’s had a lot of injuries.
But he comes at half the cost, and that was the real reason. The Suns were into double-jeopardy with the salary cap. They can’t move Booker – who IS the franchise at this point, and they can’t move either of their shiny new expensive trades (Durant and all-star guard Bradley Beal) so that left Ayton, who everybody whined about anyway.
This same logic sent Chris Paul packing. But unlike CP3, Ayton has been consistently healthy – even late into the playoffs. And we essentially got Bradley Beal, who, redundant as he might be with Booker, is a legit all-star.
It is likely true that they will not miss Ayton UNTIL the fourth quarter of a close game when they absolutely have to have that rebound. Ayton could get those in a way we haven’t had since Amare’ Stoudamire. Nurkic is going to be the other guy in the poster.
Had to be done, I suppose. Deep Sigh.
But the championship window has closed.
About ten months ago, we decided we were going to treat my prostate cancer with radiation. (More about this in the previous post). The worst part of that, long term, has turned out to be the Lupan injections.
Prostate cancer visualized
Prostate cancer feeds off testosterone. So, the theory, in addition to radiation, is to starve the cancer of testosterone. That’s what Lupan does – it suppresses my ability to make testosterone.
As a practical matter, that ahs aged me twenty years in terms of muscle recovery. I also get hot flashes. The effect on my sex life is predictable. Deeper Sigh.
Unlike the Suns, I will be out from under this in about 18 months.
The Suns will still be crippled by the contracts of their shiny sportscars. And likely remain second round play-off casualties.
Happily, the metrics for my success are not as stark. I do not need a whole lot of testosterone to program architectural lighting systems. The most physically aggressive thing I am likely to do on a jobsite is move a ladder down a hallway because the electricians have abandoned me, but I think I can solve this without them. And I’m not supposed to do that stuff anyway. Because our insurance thinks we are consultants.
An it hasn’t hurt word-count at all.
Through September I challenged myself to make word count for 30 days, and then didn’t actually keep good track. But I feel like I made my quota.
Yes- this counts towards word count. Okinushi and Xinji discover that Hippos are mean.
BEHOLD:
I have combined the Go Action Fun Time Basic Rules and the GAFT Setting Bible into a single document the Go Action Fun Time Show Bible, and I am on pace to have it available in PDF at least by Christmas.
It stands at just under 70k words, and with editing counting 1/10 that means 7k words.
Some of you may be old enough to remember flashback episodes, where a TV sitcom would take a week off, and just have maybe ten minutes of the cast recalling anecdotes that led to flashback scenes from previous episodes. They used to mark the half-way point through a season, back when seasons had duration and structural norms.
This is not one of those[1]. I actually have new material. But if you like that sort of episode, this entry refers back to previous entries a lot.
And Pipa is free of her cone.
Oliver has let the cats out of the box. Specifically, the two cats they have been cat-sitting indefinitely have finally been spade, and have been released from the bedroom, where they have been held captive for the better part of three months. They now roam the house yowling and hissing.
Oliver – to whom these cats now effectively belong – has gone off to class.
My cats are not pleased.
Before you jump on your neighbor for their perceived selfishness, reflect that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
Thus far, it has not come to blows. We have been worse. Recall Fireball[2], or even more tragic, Vet Bill[3].
The wheel rim for a 2001 Dodge Dakota has six bolt holes, specifically 6x114mm, which makes it a magic, special unicorn of a rim. Happily, Phoenix Junkyards have an app for this. I am not joking. I found one on my second try and got it for $45.
What should have been a two-hour chore, revising one of the Sample Cast for Go Action Fun Time for the final rules and an “improved” format, turned into a three evening ordeal.
The elf who ate my weekend
Greycloak is an elf. And because we are now writing a published product instead of a out-of-hand hobby, I realized I had to set some canon for GAFT Elves.
Greycloak , aside from being an old D&D character of mine, also appears in a variant form in the new Jack Book Taliesin’s Last Apprentice. It comes out in November. Thanks for asking.
Then I wondered how much my notion of making You Tube videos about creating the Sample Cast would entail. Just drafting a script, and talking screenshots as I went, easily tripled the time.
Friends, I think I spent 18 hours on this project.
I have a character sheet. And a blog post. And a draft script. At least another evening or two to actually shoot the video. But we must move on.
What have we done?
Oh no…
We are making a Barbie centaur. Because we can. This will eventually be on sale at UnObtanium Bazaar. It might be ready by the Toy Fair on October 30th that we will be at.
Because you were about to ask about our next event.
There are tutorials on this. I know for a fact they spent a lot of time on them. Here’s one we started with:
Over the last few months, Cheryl and I got our drink on, in tiny doses, at three different distilleries. You can read about that at Are We Lost Yet?
WORD COUNT:
Are We Lost Yet -1000 words.
GAFT Fae Primer – 2000 words
Greycloak Character sheet – 1000 words
Greycloak Video script – 3500 words
Fantastical History – 1000 words.
Blog posts and GAFT character treatments have 1k word minimums because of the requirement to produce related content (that means pictures in the case of blog posts, and actual math with the GAFT sheets.)
Next week I need to produce another chapter of the 64 sequel, and maybe update Curious Continuity. Plus this blog will count.
We have a website – and you can gaze upon it, but it is not functional yet.
To that end, a few lessons:
Formatting is no longer the nightmare it was ten years ago. It is now the easy part.
Getting content is harder.
Configuring for actual sales is harder still.
That said, I still fight with formatting.
Go Action Fun Time Episodes are starting up soon. I promise. I may be throwing in with a larger gaming group – but I have no useful details to report.
Meanwhile, I’ve been slaving away at interior art for the real version of the rules.
On Fox Sports, the announcers are re-hashing the strange calls that led to the D-backs 3-2 loss to the Rockies.
On CNN, Don Lemon is shaking his head sadly. I did not watch long enough to find out why.
But I doubt the reason would surprise me.
Ten years ago, in this space, I regretted not being a more consistent blogger. My next post would not be for 5 more months. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I finished at least the rough draft manuscript for Taliesin’s Last Apprentice, which is the place-holder title for the sequel to The Beanstalk and Beyond. I did this with 10 minutes to spare before my self imposed end-of-November deadline. (see two posts ago).
The beginning of the end.
If you’ve written a book you know that I have a LOT of editing to go before its a thing that normal people will enjoy reading.
In particular, because first drafts of Jack are always hand-written, I do not have the last four chapters even in Word yet. When it goes to word, each chapter is its own document for a while, until I finish a section. Then I edit each chapter and compile it into a section (TLA has 5 sections). Then I will edit it again before compiling it int a full draft manuscript.
That is my task for December. My goal is to have a beta-reader friendly manuscript (or two) by the start of 2020. Then a submission by the end of January.
Then a book by next Christmas.
This is not my only pan in the fire.
I have regained the uncontested rights to The 64-the place holder title for my sprawling space opera.
The first full novel in that series, The Secret History of Empress Em, is in the can, and set to begin editing in January.
I am the publisher. My hope is to get this out in some form by summer 2020.
(I adapted the first chapter into graphic novel form if you want a bit of a preview. )
I will also be looking for beta-readers for this, sometime in the spring.
If you were enjoying a break from Go Action Fun Time, too bad. That’s the third iron in the fire, and I have some announcements:
Go Action Fun Time Christmas Special: All I Want for Yuletide is the Graal of Plenty
A parade of Arthurian tropes including the secret origin of Galahad!
There will also be a non-fiction project starting in 2020, a guide to either Arizona wineries, or hot springs and swimming holes, depending on my sense of the market, and logistics.
One more promise to myself before I go: the next post here will be about something else besides my writing.
I have set some ambitious deadlines for myself and this may become one of the many other things in my life that gets neglected in those pursuits. Which will disappoint maybe six people. But to you brave six, my apologies.
Looming first is Crit Hit 4, where I have 3 scheduled episodes of Go Action Fun Time, one of which is actually written. Yes, you will need a badge to the con to attend any of these games.
In a small town in 1958 Nebraska, your teen-age time-traveling super-heroes have been given a task that will chill them to their very marrows: find a date to the Homecoming Dance. Also of interest: murder, mayhem, the living dead and the town’s unsteady relationship with time and space.
The village is surrounded by mutant zombies. You are here to help. Of course it’s worse than that. Because the only thing more terrifying than constant war with your neighbors is being forced to agree with them about every little thing. A cross-over adventure with Sage and Sand.
The other quest is that I have dared myself to finish Taliesin’s Last Apprentice by the end of the month. That would require 2 chapters a week – no exceptions, as opposed to the current pace of a chapter a week unless I don’t.
So it’s on.
When I come up for air I have a few things to reflect upon, a few adventures to brag about, a few lessons to share. Until then, if it’s not on fire, or actual paying work, it drops below these foolish deadlines.
I am determined to be the single biggest problem in my life. This is how you do it.
I was out of town most of last week. I got a little bit of artwork done, but nothing else of substance creatively. So that’s the word count update. Beyond that, I learned a lot, and have a bit of news.
Before we get to the past, let’s look at the future a little bit.
I had plans to run Go Action Fun Time at G3: Gaming for Charity Game Marathon next weekend, but they did not actually schedule my game. It has always been my policy that I do not announce events that do not have actual time/space coordinates. I’ll have GAFT in my car when I attend, but I cannot guaranty that it will be played.
Note to game event organizers: struggling game designers are willing, nay even eager partners in drubbing up publicity for your event, provided that you actually include them.
I’ll show up anyway, drop some money in the fishbowl and maybe just play for once.
In contrast, I have three games scheduled for Crit Hit 4, and I will be loudly announcing the particulars in the coming days.
Last week I went to Flagstaff on business, camped in the forest, then went to Las Vegas to attend Amazing Comicon, then went back to Flagstaff to pick up Rey, as she is spending most of the summer at my house. (Which, FTR, is her legal address anyway).
Ruby Vroom vs all the bugs on the highway. (with Rey)
Things I learned in no particular order:
Ruby Vroom, my 2015 Subaru Forester, has an ideal speed that is appropriate for picking your way down jeep trails without startling elk.
For me, paying a little more for gas in Flagstaff is worth not having to glide into Kingman on fumes.
The nacho loco appetizer at El Capitan is just an absurd amount of food.
The north rim of Sycamore Canyon in the Kaibab NF remains one of my favorite areas to camp. Ruby and I found the end of Forest road 56C. I didn’t get any writing done there, but I got some thinking done, which is an important step.
Ruby Vroom at the end of the road
The brief camping excursion was the only part of the journey that I did any real documentation on. But that’s another post for a different blog.
Amazing! Las Vegas Comic Con is over-all a fine event for what it is, but I could not, in good faith recommend travelling to Sin City just for the event itself, especially not if you live in Phoenix. ALVC is a fraction of the size of Phoenix fan Fusion, and while the vendor hall is substantial, the porgamming is miniscule, and other events are non-existent. It is, in truth, more skewed to actual comic fans that Fan Fusion, and comics dominate the vendor hall and much of what programming exists. So if that is your focus, you might enjoy the weekend.
If you are a more casual fan, however, one day will be more than sufficient.
Of course, I went for the company:
Fiona (mid transformation) in Ruby Vroom
Going to a con by yourself can be amusing, and maybe even educational. Going to a con with good friends is fun. Going to a con with your costumer girlfriend is very fun.
Even if you are not in costume.
My link dump from the Con:
Anomaly Comics are trying to combine augmented reality apps with regular graphic novels. Meh. But the novels themselves are good quality. http://www.experienceanomaly.com/anomaly/
Every time I find myself frustrated wit the direction my life is going, which is more often since it was upended a couple years ago, I remind myself that I am on the switchbacks.
For the non-hikers, switchbacks are the trails that wind back and forth up or down a steep slope. They take forever to climb, but are easier (and healthier) than trying to charge straight up the slope. Sometimes the wind through a tunnel of trees bending over the trail in search of sunlight. Very often they are a shadeless, stair-well grade chore made worth it only by the destination.
I have a couple things I could use advice on, if you are so inclined:
I am tempted to abandon my six + blogs and combine all that content into one blog – this one. (My other blogs are all listed on the sidebar).
I may exempt Are We Lost Yet? because it actually gets a bit of traffic, and I’ve still paid for it. But when I have to re-up, that would be hard to justify at current traffic levels.
The only other blog with any traffic is Curious Continuity. Not so much for the occasional Doctor Who content, but for my longer essays on the possible future. Go figure.
I have abandoned Tumblr for customer service reasons.
The case for combining everything here is a greater frequency of posts. The case against is the potential sprawl of topics. I dunno. But I’m pretty sure I’m not keeping all six.
My other issue is Chrome (on my personal laptop) will occasionally just refuse to launch, and I have to remove and re-install it to remedy the problem. This symptom started to appear about the same time something enabled pop-up notifications from Chrome. This is a nuisance, not a crisis but any ideas are welcome.
WORD-COUNT
From last blog to this:
1500 new words for Taliesin’s Last Apprentice (the sequel to Beanstalk and Beyond)
Transcribing a previous chapter of same = 1500
Wednesday Night Writer’s Group (this was a fluke appearance, but still counts) =500
Thursday night writer’s group =500
This blog entry= 1000
Plus some GAFT back-end stuff that doesn’t lend itself to word-count, but should. Last entry we learned some things about Facebook Pages, and maintaining that has consumed some words.
A near tragedy forced a rare occurrence: I lost a check and cleaned my desk trying to find it. Before we get to the collection of strange notes that unearthed, i’d be remiss if I did not get some self-serving marketing out of the way:
While making it, I discovered that Facebook is very helpful – nay pushy about tips to increase traffic to your page. The punchline for most of those tips is how you should spend money on ads, which should not have surprised me.
I also discovered Facebook provides more immediate and accessible metrics than any web-page I have used, including the WordPress back-end for this one.
“Being an immortal, indestructible calico cat does not make you a good storyteller.”
Wisdom from Matthew Howard, author of the Meteor Mags series, in which Patches, the above referenced cat, is a regular character.
I have a note about minds.com which seems to be a curated version of Google Plus.
On that same card I found ” Phoenix Publishing & Book Promotion” with no context. (The link came up with a Google search). Its is “A blog by authors for authors (and would-be authors)”. Which the internet needs like another porn site, but good for them trying.
They are, I should note, an arm of the Meet-up of the same name, which I think I have joined, but I have never attended a meeting.
Another note reads Hiding places of God, which I assume to refer to The Hiding Places of God by John Cornwell, as it is the only search item for this phrase that is not scripture commentary, clearly insane or clearly insane scripture commentary.
Siddhartha also appears on that card. Let’s say it refers to the novel of the same name by Herman Hesse. Both novels deal with a search for the spiritual by the initially skeptical, and both books have also in common that I have not read either of them.
And now I can recycle those cards.
A search for octopus+toilet yields mostly toilet paper holders shaped like octopi.
I am here because I am JPG.
Marketing tip for sellers of books and octopus toilet accessories: If you want random bloggers to repost your cover or product images (and you do) you have to present them as JPG’s – which should not be hard.
One more note: avocado pits are surprisingly bouncy.
weekend, but they did not actually schedule my game. It has always been my policy that I do not announce events that do not have actual time/space coordinates. I’ll have GAFT in my car when I attend, but I cannot guaranty that it will be played.
What Have We Learned? 