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.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 8

Scene: Esme Euphrasia and Agent Chwech in the room again, this time entirely from Esme's perspective looking at Chwech, faint wisps of smoke coming from her perspective, without actually showing her smoking.

Esme: Your betters are getting impatient.

Chwech: Don't you find that codename ironic?

Esme: I don't understand what you mean?

Chwech: Well they're all old aristocracy from before the war.

Esme: Every oversight committee is before the war.

Chwech: The first one.

Esme: There is a limited supply of the anti agathic

Chwech: Yes, I'm sure there is.  (beat)
Don't worry.  They're close.

Esme: They better be.

[Heliotrope] Shadows Over Rhineland

Fairy is a different realm but there were some fairies that dwealt in Terra.  Germany was at one time one of the richest places in the world for such creatures, but the Big One is the primary reason they are there no more.   Creatures of spirit and nature are disrupted by iron at the best of times, but especially the ones adapted to Terra.  Those that move back and forth fare fare better, and those that live purely in Outer Fairy almost all the time best of all.  Even a Sidhe who lives in Outer Fairy (albeit very carefully given how everyone hates them) is only minorly inconvenienced by toxins and iron whereas their distant cousins in Germany were tailored to the soil itself.

Each of these lancing spiritual wounds helped kill magic, which was exactly how it was intended.  People believe the Thule society harmless but love to make fiction about how they crafted with supernatural powers not of this world.  Those people would be mistaken, because the Thule society in Terra DID actually convene with these powers; gods, goddesses, dark angels, demons and fairies.  It is believed that Terran fairies alone were responsible for 10,000-20,000 allied deaths.  Specially constructed bombs penetrated the earth and disrupted the ley lines that allowed such creatures to exist.

While they were killed or disrupted, some have been permanently so.  Many fairies can come back in one form or another, and while Germany's forests are certainly spiritual places, gaining a natural boost for their efforts at green energy and atonement of their past crimes, the fairies themselves are simply gone.  Gods and Goddesses and a few of their servants walk the land from time to time.  Ghosts? Certainly.

But Fairies? Not so much.  There are rumors that a few members of Outer Fairy have attempted to colonize the area but even should they do so, their powers at magic and connection to the land would take centuries if not millenia to be the same.

Sometimes Humpty Dumpty really can't be put back into the bottle.  Or Egg Shell.  Or whatever.

[Script] Revolution Number Eight - Page 7

John: Stop.  Just stop George.  I am not breaking up with her.

George: I don't care what you bloody do with her, just stop bring her into the recording booth.

Ringo: You'd bring her here if the 8's didn't stop you.

Paul: Look, just-

Intern Adams: (coughs)

They all stop and look at him.

Intern Adams: So...how can I help?

There is a pause.

Paul (smiling): Well I think you just did.  I think the reason Chwex sent you to us is that we need someone to help us get out of our headspace.

Intern Adams: Wait, so he knows you're not doing what they want?

John: Oh yeah, he figured it out in about five minutes.  Smart guy.

George: I'd just assume get it over with.

Paul: We're close.  Very close.

Random Small Stuff

Sometimes being the sole representative from another world (technically third since Emmit and Redwin have been beaming poetry to you for a decade, but no one reads there or realizes they're from Terra) can be tiring.  I mean, sure there i a lot I can write about.  Sponge Werewolves, or Mayan Mummies vs Egyptian Mummies, but it is a lot of work to notice things.

And honestly?

I think the smaller things are more interesting.

Like the fact that we have beer vending machines just like in your Japan.  When we gave up Prohibition, we gave it ALL up and didn't find another victim to blame it on.  You know, like making hemp...I'm sorry "Marijuana" illegal.  Being more laid back probably means why we haven't elected some of the idiots you have on Earth.  I mean, we're not perfect.  We still had a Hitler.  Hell, we even have a Soup Nazi, but Jesus Christ....there are some uptight people over there.

We almost switched to driving on the other side of the road back in the early twenthieth century as solidarity with Britain, but the Rockefellers had just bought cars and learned to drive so they crushed that right off the bat.  But some of the same people you have who are anti vaccine or flat earthers believe that there is a legal right to drive on the other side of the road.  Its called the Wrong Way movement and they're responsible for 200-300 deaths a year.

Elvis really never died in our timeline and became head of the CIA under Reagan. In 1988, he stepped down and did a live tour with the Beatles.

The Berlin wall didn't fall in Terra until 2005.

China is split between North China and South China and Taiwan is actually a protectorate of Japan.

Bears are known to use tools to get into campers; including crow bars, explosives left at mine sites and occasionally acid.  No picnic basket is safe.

There is no Key Lime Pie in Terra.  It is horrible.