Separated At Birth

I am not actually the first person to work with TC to present stories from Terrah.    Emmit Other and Redwin Tursor both are biological twins but were raised in different pats of the country.  Emmit was raised in the north eastern part of the country around Maine and Boston.  Redwin was raised in Denver Colorado but both were born with a remarkable talent for going to other places besides their own world.

I must admit, I am not sure if they astrally project or use the darker methods that EP Blingermeyer does, but whatever method it is, it is pretty flawless.   Redwin has been effectively living in Earth ever since he found out about it,  Emmit uses it to view both Terra and Earth from a very skewed lens.  TC has hinted that they have both helped him immensely, with Redwin adding moral strength and Emmit putting things in perspective.  The thing that he hasn't been clear on is how they met or WHY they would help.  I mean, Emmit seems like a nice enough guy, but Redwin is very much a realist.

Do they really believe that they are fictional character created by TC? I mean, I use the word "Fictional" to describe myself but from my perspective I certainly feel real.  And just because someone 'creates' you doesn't inscribe loyalty by itself.  Ask Frankenstein.

[Writer Stuff] Surviving Blockage

Interesting article here on Writer's Block.  Not the "I can't think of an idea" but "I don't see a point to this anymore."  Burn Out.

It's pretty short really, but cheating on your writing project might be fun.  I've been the master of finish projects one after another and nothing has come of it.  At least with this blog I have 20-30 people (well...clicks...some or all of them might be bots) but even unfeeling subroutines are better than....a total absence.

The blog seems fun to write right now, and the writing forums are also good.  If Project Daedalus works short stories will get a lot easier, and by working on the blog I *AM* working on Heliotrope.  I might consider short stories about the characters in the other novels.  We'll see.

But really? I don't think the article really addresses the question of burn out.  I think a better solution? Write what you love? Writing is hard sometimes, and you have to make yourself get into the habit but if WHAT you are writing sucks, pick something else.

[Heliotrope] The Fuses

Everyone has heard of the Muses, minor greek Goddesses who eventually reproduced and has several offspring that dwell in Middle Fairie, but have you heard of the Fuses? No, of course not because the way you hear about Muses is through epic mythological of fictional works.  A muse has a symbiotic relationship that draws worship and inspiration from her inspired work.  A Fuse is a parasite that only exists to take ideas before they are even formed.

Have you ever heard of a library of unwritten books? Books that might have hypothetically been written if the writer hadn't died, gone mad or gone into a career of used telephone sanitation?  Well that's made up mostly of works taken by the Fuses.  Of course, there are many many works that don't happen simply because they are awful, or bad time travel wrecks a lot of possibilities, or someone really does get hit by a bus, but there have been millions of things that have never been created by fuses.

There are exceptions to this, of course.  To begin with, Fuses have a naturally antagonistic with muses.  But fuses are particularly vigilant about works written about them and snuff the idea without snuffing the person.  Sometimes they even work on the same author, inspiring or removing the idea before it even occurs.  But sometimes they go too far.  Terra is a world without stories and it is not merely because the people there live more active lives which allows them to BE in stories or be stories rather than tell them.  Terra's proximity to fae often allows access to rarer creatures of Fairy to access layers of reality inherenetly hostile to them.

But there are rare instances where a story can engender reality.  And if one were, for example, upset at a group of Fuses for interfering with a podcast who did so with a paid bounty for one EP Blingermeyer, then one could theoretically use their psychic link to a writer in a higher reality that you were astrally possessing to allow them to write.  Convulted? Here's what's not.

Astral space is harder to track than real space, so by the time they figure out that this is going on, it can give you just enough time to write "A large anvil appears over ever Fuse in Terra and smatters them in the head, cartoon style until they go limply away back to Middle Fairy"....oh.

Strangely the pounding on the door just stopped.

Go figure.

Script will resume Mar 1.

Retooling.

Feeling Like Frodo

I had the most curious feeling today.  I wasn't sure I really even wanted to finish incorporating the changes to Forever West that my brother Greg had made, even though he put so much work into it.   Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars and time was worked to show me the flaws in my own work.  Artistically, one is wise to not seek to knit the perfect sweat but insist that one's older work is flawed and move on which leads to greater, better works.

My short stories are a lot better than when SFWA told me to shrivel up and die and dont write more sci fi.  A few, like Mr Hamburger and Waiting for the Monsters to die are REALLY good, to the point I'm considering posting the older stories just here, for free while selling them on Amazon.  I've already done them in the podcast.  I'm starting to realize that I really just want my stories to be heard, preferably liked, but I feel I have something to say and would like someone to hear it.

But novels are acts of faith.  You start writing them, vast oceans of words, trusting your future self that they will finish and edit and polish and sell.  But...I'm kind of over it.

Writing seven novels is on my bucket list and I've done six.  Seven will be really really really hard.  Heliotrope has been sitting for months since I wrote it because....I just KNOW it isn't as good as Forever West and I just KNOW it isn't as good as many of my favorite authors.  So why even release it? I mean, I probably still will but I writer has to believe in their own writing, and I just don't.  Sophistries with Rhombus Ticks aside, I just....I KNOW I can write some great stuff and love these flash fiction pieces at places like Naked City or the 500.  Novels are titanic behemoths.

Thank god I'm waiting until visiting Scandanavia in three years or so to do a 'thriller/mystery' novel set there, because I just dont feel sequels to any of them in me; even though Heliotrope promises interesting things.  Should write Tossing Grenades at Windmills, but my flash fiction piece in the 500 got published....Grenademan isn't being bought.

So am I going to finish Forever West? Indubidably but....I keep pushing it out.

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhatt?

The numbers don't lie but we will send another war crime or two before giving up in despair.

 

Go away.

Check out this episode!

[Writer Stuff] Clarkes World

Clarke's world is a SFWA qualifying venue that has always impressed me.  They are relatively new compared to the big three (asimov, analog and SF&F) but they have what might be considered a meteoric rise and were basically a literal up by their own bootstrap kind of organization.  Their podcast is quite impressive and this episode in particular forced me to include them here because of just how amazing "Everyone Loves Charles" really is.  It is a translated award winning piece of Chinese sci fi about the american and japanese governments (because, let's be honest....he can't freely write about his own, can he?) but still contains powerful themes of immortality, morality, celebrity and abuse of power as well as identity.  It's a Novella and it has gotten me interested once again in the venue. I'm CONSIDERING writing one in the latter three months of this year if the film comes off well.  We'll see.

There's a lot to do but mainly I need to get Forever West off my plate first.