When I am Old I Will Be Cranky

When I am an old man

I will be cranky

And yell at the kids on my lawn

I'll blow all my savings at the track

Or at poker games where the cards just were lousy

Because my children don't deserve a dime when I'm gone

Hell, they never write

I'll drive no faster than I want to in the express lane

And shake my fist at the idiots swerving around me

I'll cut in lines at the grocery store or movies

And flirt lewdly with waitresses

Because no one will hit

Someone as feeble as me

Old farts don't care if their pants show their butt

Or their nostril hairs grow long

Or their breath smells of beer

Or general lack of hygiene

But for now, I'd better behave myself

I've got to pay the rent

So, I'd better not swear (too much)

and piss off the boss

(the wanker that he is)

I'll try to be civil when we have company

And not tell them that their politics

Are only shared by brain-damaged marmosets

And possibly not even then

But then again, maybe I should practice now

So those who still know me

Aren't too shocked (and probably not surprised)

When suddenly I'm old

And a complete bastard

Yeah, I took down Susie's picture as my userpic.  No, I'm not "getting over" her.  I still miss her terribly, even as I love our new puppy.  But that's life, and I'm not Queen Victoria.  I'm not going to wear black for the rest of my life, and being mopey does no one any good.  There's still an awful lot of tennis balls out there that need to be defeated in single combat.

And the final project for my 3D modeling and animation class.  Any resemblance to puppies I have in my house is mildly coincidentalish.

Because one can love again, while still mourning what you've lost




Allow me to present Molly, a 9 month old Border Collie rescue.  We got her from the same shelter we found Susie at.  And for the record, this picture was taken at someone else's house, because we'd never dream of using our living room couch for storing laundry  and the odd manuscript.  Ours is neat as a pin.   No, really.

She's super intelligent:  knew her name after a day, learnt sit and down in three.  Still working on the recall;  she knows I want her back but has a teenager's habit of taking care of what she wants to sniff first, then coming back.  It's funny:  in so many ways she's like Susie (to the extent we're beginning to think Susie was part border collie), particularly in the quickness and focus.  But she's not at all Susie, much more mischievous and self-assured, and she has different likes and dislikes.  But she really likes Susie's favorite toy.  I almost didn't give it to her.  But Molly is sleeping at my feet right now, that toy tucked under her chin like a beloved teddy bear.

It's a good thing to hear the jangle of a dog's collar in the morning.  Even at  "5:45 in the blessed morning??" (which is more or less what I said)(more or less).  She's right though, it's the best time in the world to chase a ball.

Yeah, I'm still doing computer modeling and animation.  Keeps me out of a street gang.  I have to admit I was a bit embarrassed when my instructor correctly pointed out that my last movie was completely lacking in narrative.  Like many a film maker, I was focused on the effects ahead of plotline.  That is, if you want to call "spaceship fly fast!" a plotline. 

Anyway, both this discussion and the title are longer than the actual class project, which I present here for your enjoyment or lack thereof--

Another take, with better camera work (but probably less interesting music, sorry Chris).  Making animations is a lot like writing--this is less than half the length of what I started with.  Anyway, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Today was a two rejection day, one personal (Asimov's).  Shelia found my science unconvincing, and truthfully it was fairly rubber, although based on real phenomena.  Call it more likely than traveling through time travel, less likely than human cloning.  But most people haven't heard of horizontal transmission of genetic information via viruses.  I think the lesson is -- you can stretch science a bit, but only with familiar things.  Or perhaps, the farther out from reality you are, the less you should explain yourself.  Or perhaps, just write another story.

Ah well, back into the mail tomorrow. 

I've been continuing to study 3D modeling and design.  In a way, it parallels the writing as it's another way for me to inflict the strange visions in my head upon the hapless public at large.  But at the end of the day, I wouldn't do it if it weren't fun (yeah, my version of fun involves being by myself and typing/modeling for hours on end.  I try not to examine that fact too closely).

Anyway, here's the preliminary animation for my current class project.  This is only a low quality render called a "playblast", which is used mostly to see if the animation is working correctly.  But I still have a few tweaks to go.  By the way, the film stops at the 3 minute mark, no reason to watch it after the credits unless you want to hear the end of Lazy Afternoon Among the Crocodiles

Okies, I write science fiction, I have a job allegedly oriented towards the mechanically minded, I even am studying three dimensional modeling and design.  So why do I find things like Livejournal so blessedly hard?  I just got done with spending ten minutes trying to figure out how to hide an illustration below the fold on an edit.  I eventually gave up and deleted it.   Anyway, I'm going to try again, so if you see something below the fold, perhaps there's hope for the computer illiterate yet. 

Edit:  Ok, I get it now.  Preview doesn't show the cut text.  I think I'm going to have another cup of coffee.


( Picture below the cut )

Finished up my latest story, which had its origins as the WotF one day story.  Not sure if I'd call it the same story, anymore;  I was truly grateful when it wasn't selected to be a group critique item.  But I had some fun ideas in there about horizontal gene transfer and frogs, so I felt it was worth strip mining. 

The story also has a number gratuitous aviation scenes, which may or may not work.  People seem to like it when I write about flying, which is odd to me as I've always considered it a somewhat boring subject to write about.  It's not that I don't love to fly, but it's like writing about eating an icecream cone:  pleasurable enough, but not really filled with tension unless the cone explodes into flames.  And that rarely happens.

Note to self:  work on analogies.

The following is long, and to be honest, I'm posting it more for myself than anything else.  But please feel free to read as much as you like.  And there are a number of photos of a dog, so that might make it worthwhile.  It did for me.

Story below the "cut"






( Read more.... )

Finished my Nanowrimo novel the other day.  Yes, it's a month after the theoretical end of National Novel Writing Month, but while I cleared the magical 50K, large parts of it were in outline form.  So, taking my new mantra of "Write and Finish What You Start", I decided to finish it.

Trouble is, a couple of months later, I look at it and say "Erm, this isn't really all that salvagable".  Janet called it "Northanger Abbey with cows", which makes it sound more interesting and normal than it really is.  Certainly not first novel material, and without a published novel to my name, ALL novels I write should be seen in that light.

Was it a waste of time?  I don't think so.  It may have kept me from more publishable projects for a month, but it was something of an etude.  Just because I wasn't planning on marketing it didn't mean that I didn't outline, watch plot tension and all that literary junk.  But no one other than Janet was actually going to see it (bear in mind the poor soul also sees me unshaven sans coffee on a daily basis).  So that allowed me a certain freedom to try things and see what worked and what didn't.  Mind you, much didn't.  But I might be pulling ideas from the story for other projects.

Anyway, back to being more serious.  Holidays are over, I've three shorts to critique by Sunday for my local writer's group, and some projects that need some polishing before sending out (in some cases, again).  And about five story ideas that are niggling around in my brain like puppies angling for the best position on mom.

I think I just heard my keyboard breathe a sigh of relief.

Just fiddling about with Photobucket, trying to see if I can post my attempts at artwork here:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

       -- E. E. Cummings

That was probably the first time I'd really gone to a con, although I'd been to them before (if that makes any sense whatsoever).  The panels seemed to be a mix of writer oriented discussions and more fan-ish topics.  I tried to go to as many of the former as possible.  I really enjoyed Tim Powers reprise of the WotF lecture on "Terrible Opening Paragraphs", which he gave as part of a panel discussion on how to escape the slushpile;  I'd heard it before, but it always serves to provide a certain "reality check" when we sit down at the keyboard.  Mind you, as I told him afterwards, my second sale opened a character who wakes up amnesiac and naked, so one CAN get away with it at times.  Also useful was a panel moderated by Tony N. Todaro of the Greater Los Angeles Writer's Society on the business aspects of writing--taxes, expectancies for first novel contracts, etc.  It might sound like counting chickens before they hatch, but I feel that if those chickens ever do hatch I want a coop ready for the little beggars.

I was suprised (but shouldn't have been) that I did run into a fair number of people I knew.  Of course Joni and the WotF set were there, and it was great to see her again and make the acquaintance of some more of the Galaxy Press folks.  And Mitch, if you're reading this, Ken Estes said hi (and seemed dumbfounded that I told Janet about our Hooters excursion with Raymond Feist.  Hey, marriages of 20 years aren't built on insecurity).  But we kept meeting people we hadn't seen in sometimes years.  It was kinda like going to the airport.  Admist the crowds, one keeps running into old friends and coworkers (ok, like going to the airport for me).

Was it worth the couple of hundred it cost for the hotel room?  Probably.  I do think it's important if you want to be a professional in anything to keep the finger on the pulse of the industry.  Not for the "networking", which I have an allergic reaction to (although I made at least one good contact, I wasn't trying to, and I didn't ask/press/have any untoward assumptions).  It's more like a chance to see what is going on in the big world of genre fiction, see what people are interested in, and get a chance to mack on icecream.  Fortunately for the later issue, most of the elevators were broken so I ended up doing about 60 flights of stairs a day at a light sprint. 

What, you were expecting a discussion of LosCon?  Intelligent commentary might come later, but for now, I'll indulge in the meme thing.

* Age when I told my first story and somebody believed it: I've lied since birth
* Age when I made a kid laugh so hard he wet his pants: I try not to notice these things
* Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 8, but the idea lay quiescent for years like some Lovecraftian eldrich horror.
* Age when I got my hands on a typewriter and taught myself to use it: REQUIRED at 10 because my teacher couldn't read my handwriting.
* Age when I got a WORKING typewriter: 10, Mom had a nice Selectric (she was a secretary)
* Age when I got my ass in gear, joined a crit group and wrote: Three years ago
* Age when I wrote my first novel: Three years ago
* Age when I passed 500,000 words of crap:Last year
* Age when I first submitted a short story: Three years ago
* Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: I've got three, I think.  And a handful of electronics.  Yeah, I need to submit more.
* Age when I sold my first short story: Last year.
* Age when I first won an award: Last year.
* Age when the money coming in exceeded my previous employment: My peak income was in '95, it's been downhill since then.  C'est la vie.
* Age when I got my 70th rejection: Not yet
* Age now: Old enough not to get carded in California most of the time, but young enough to get carded in Utah all of the time.
* Number of stories sold: 2
* Number of stories in print: 0.


Ok, everyone else's turn.

Headed off to LosCon this weekend.  That' s the convention in the town surrounding LAX, for those of you who are unfamiliar.  It's the first time I've gone to a convention as anything other than a performer, which I suppose means I can't go back to the "pro room" and try to mac on the usual junk food back there.  Probably a good thing, actually.

It's also the first time I've gone to a convention outside of San Diego, which means that other than the WotF set (Joni's hosting a booth and room, she tells me), I won't know anyone.  But hey, as Erin said in her Guide to Surviving Cons, one ought not just hang about with people you know.  You can do that back home.  I've heard they have a fair number of interesting panels, and hopefully it will give me a bit of needed perspective into the State of the Art with regard to speculative fiction.

Or maybe I'll just spend too much money on books.

I had no intention of doing Nanowrimo, darn it.  I've two shorts I needed to finish up and send in, and my ACTUAL novel I'm working on needs to be kicked in the teeth a few times as its current condition is--well, we all know what Hemmingway said about first drafts.

But I accidentally (no, really) wrote 25K words in the last week, so, I'm thinking what the heck?  It hasn't prevented me from revising other things, and frankly, just feels good.  It's as if the splatter fest that is nano writing actually helps me with the more "serious" work (if you call what I write serious, that is).

It's a bit like my dayjob, which earlier this week had me sucking down far too much of the LA basin fires, and found me spending far too much time on the tarmac waiting for the gate.  Not to mention an emergency fill in call at o'dark thirty which kicked my sleep schedule off.  So...today, I took off, literally, and pulled the old rag wing out of the hangar and spent the day hardly ever looking inside, save for the necessary glances at the fuel level and oil pressure.  Everything else is the sound of the air and the feel in the seat.

It's reduction to the essentials.  It might not be everything the respect fields are about, but when one is pulled back to their essence, one remembers what one truly loves about it.

Work:

:

Play:

90 years ago, the guns stopped.

For a while.

It's odd.  Up until now, I've either sold stories, or gotten no-comment rejections.  Today I got the bad news from Asimov's (looking above, I see I sent it out 14Oct).  Rejection is never a good feeling, but Ms. Williams was beyond nice about it.  I got a "This story is very well done, but not quite right for me.  I look forward to seeing more of your work."

BTW, seasoned submission vets out there, does that warrant a thank you note?  I'm still trying to learn submission/rejection etiquette.

Well, about a month and a half after I finished the WotF workshop.  I came back incredibly charged (and sick with the flu, but that's neither here nor there).  Despite having the flu, I jotted off about 30K on my novel, wrote another short, polished my WotF one day short up to what I'd call first draft status under normal conditions, and brought another old short (11K) up to publishable standards (or at least as good as I was going to make it).

And.

I hadn't sent anything out.  This tendency of mine has really got on my nerves.  I know full well that the accept/reject ratio runs at about 1:10, assuming that the work is decent enough.  I need to get over that fact.  Downtime sitting on my hard drive is a stupid waste of time.  I need to put the stuff in the main so the editors of the world can spit upon it, or perchance in a mirabile dictu moment, let it in from the cold.

Anyway, I finally put  the aforementioned 11K work into an envelope with all the proper trimmings that the Asimov's submission page asked for.  It should be hitting the mailbox this afternoon.  Next up is the two other shorts I need to polish.  Should take about a day for one.  The other (the zombie dog story some of you read) might take a bit more work, but still I ought have it done by the weekend.  But once done, I'm not going to let them sit around for so blessed long.

Honest.