Memory Banks Unloading

In case anyone is interested, I'm doing a new weekly "column" over on Josh's site as part of his Serials section. That is, routine contributions of any kind of plausible media. In my case, short bursts of episodic fiction.

Check it out. Just go to Sidedown, then click on the Serials bar (dark grey) in the upper right-hand corner. Mine is number 5: Escapee. Then tune in every Wednesday if you find it at all interesting. Vocabulary words! If you have any comments, feel free to express them in the Commentation area there.

And feel free to poke around Sidedown. There's all kinds of strange goodies over there, from colorful tirades (and I do mean colorful) to Photoshop competitions to dolphins who like things. The layout there got a facelift, too. Check it out!

In other news, while juggling about a thousand books, I'm also eagerly awaiting the release of the following books:

Realms of the Dragons II - Both Ed and Harley have got stories in there, and I'm emotionally invested in both!
Maiden of Pain - The contest for which helped me get back into writing more seriously. This one's penned by Kameron.
Legacy of the Savage Kings - Harley's own module with Goodman Games, part of the Dungeon Crawl Classics series.

Too Damned Much to Read

But I'm not complaining. I like it. It's just overwhelming sometimes. This is what happens when you really enjoy reading.

I just finished Ender's Game, at long last. Good book, a little sluggish near the middle of it, but very thought-provoking. Maybe the sequels are actually good, but I tend to think that this story is grander all by itself. Continuing the saga of Ender Wiggin feels like it would cheapen this story. Still, I'll not judge.

I also just started reading a book called The Historian, which so far looks like a cool mix of history and old books and research and travel: a sheltered, teenaged girl discovers that her father, a diplomat who travels all the time to faraway, exotic lands, once uncovered some kind of family connection to the famous historical figure Vlad Tepes—aka, Dracula. The character setup is sort of like Lara Croft, only without the balatant sexism and probably without the action-adventure. This book is an advanced copy (it really comes out in June) that Marisa got from work and her manager is wondering if it's any good, worth getting many copies of or not. My task is to merely give my opinion.

I've got two novels on my must-be-read-soon list (Venom's Kiss and Resurrection) merely because I'm antsy to get to them, and I'm also reading a printed out copy of a friend's story.

I'm loving it all...but life doesn't like to leave a lot of time for reading. I long for a big comfy, high-backed chair in front of a fireplace, rain outside the window, and a pipe. I wouldn't smoke it, of course, but it would complete the scene! And oh yeah, a completely free weekend.

We Suspend Our Disbelief

So much retro- and introspection lately. My oldest friend visited this weekend—in my life, an old friend is one I’ve known since high school. It makes me think back. So many experiences and faces, relationships, and struggles. But the truth is, I love to assay, when I have the time and inclination, all that I’ve ever seen. Life is scary when it’s constant and unexamined. Best to avoid too much complacency.

Here’s one thing I was thinking about lately:

Writers are regarded in higher esteem when they sell hardcovers. Most books are mass markets, the small paperbacks you see everywhere. R.A. Salvatore, the biggest name in at least all RPG-based fiction, was the very first author to get a hardcover. I remember because I met him when he was doing a signing for The Legacy. It was a big deal.

But the trend began. And now WotC has been putting out hardcovers for books they assume will sell the best. I’m not financially comfortable enough to be buying these all the time. I simply choose my favorites and wait for the paperbacks to come out roughly one year later. They’re $6 and up, more affordable. Salvatore's Legacy, the first hardcover novel put out by TSR (now WotC), started off in the area of $15-18. But hardcover novels are upwards of $25 now, sometimes more.

Where am I going with this? As a measure of success, if you’re an author, you want to get to the point where you can sell hardcovers. More money, more esteem. Good career move.

Personally, I’d love to just put out mass markets. They’re more accessible to people, more immediate, for monetary reasons alone. I don’t fool myself. Even if I do get a book published someday, writing will never be a good source of income. I don’t really care about that. If I could get books out that sold for $2 each, and each earned me ¢1 each, I’d be happy about it.

I love the idea of being able to share my stories, my convictions, with total strangers. People I’ll never meet. People I’ll never hear from. It’s half-selfish, of course; it’s the gratification of being able to impact or even influence other people, however few. People far away. I’m so in love with that idea. I recently read from a message boards in an "Ask the Author" thread a post someone made on behalf of their sister, who was in the hospital with a serious illness. She wrote: "...for the time I am reading your book, it almost makes me forget about the pain.....and for that I am thankful."

After which the author posted: "THIS is why I write, people. That right there. "

I don’t see what I want to do as pure escapism or fantasy entertainment. I see writing, and fantasy itself, as an interesting medium through which to express my own thoughts. But as in the case of the girl above, sometimes just escapism is enough. I'm okay with that, too.

But I’m realizing more and more lately that life is about trying to find expression. Think about how much time you spend trying to find the right way to get what’s in your head out of your head to other people. Whether it’s a story you’ve been wanting to tell since you were a kid or simply how you feel about a certain person, so much effort in life is spent in that solitary struggle: to translate what you know into something easier to understand for the people around you, be they strangers or good friends.

Ah, well.

Busy streets and Dizzy Heights

The last, oh, seven years of my life have been too idle. I experienced a lot, fell in love, went to cool concerts, dabbled in some art and writing, started up a D&D game....but there was also a great deal of free time spent unwisely. I feel that now. Hell, I felt that then. Although I'm in a good place now, I still find myself considering time more precious than ever. And I regret wasting so much time.

Having turned in my Goodman Games work (though revisions are pending), I'm floating free for a moment. As much as I love having a project, I think I also love being between projects, too. It's weird like that. "Free time" isn't as enjoyable when you've got a lot of it; but when you're normally working on some kind of deadline or any kind of time-consuming endeavor, when you do get free time, it's glorious.

Mentally, I'm falling back onto my old story, the one that I love the most. The City of Clocks, the Inquisitors, and all that. It's sort of a background thing right now, but it's on my mind a lot. What I'm thinking about when I'm not thinking about anything else.

At last I may have the time to get to our wedding Thank You cards. Sure, they're obligatory, but I'm grateful to many people for coming that I genuinely want to send them. There are a handful of people who are frowning at the delay (incured by events we could not control), but they'll just have to wait a little longer.

But this is all just surface stuff. Life at home with Marisa has been assiduous. Busy, happy, more than a little distressed now and then, as neither she nor I have been feeling up to par health-wise. But whatever, we're working on it. After the setbacks of the last six months, we're still not fully settled and unpacked in our apartment. I ordered an 800-CD swiveling tower and we bought some wood for a couple of shelf units her dad's going to make for us to hold a small chunk of our many books. Funny how organizing your living space can improve your productivity and sense of accomplishment. I hope it does.

Too many hands on my time
Too many feelings
Too many things on my mind