Monthly Archives: December 2015

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December 20, 2015

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fun, Life, Science Fiction, Star Wars

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Oh, yes, I finally saw it!

I’m talking about the new Star Wars movie, of course.

I bought a pair of tickets, one for me, one for my dad, and off we went! I had to drive down to Phoenix and pick him up, then we went to a local theater.

He was waiting for me, inside the house, down at the end of a dark hallway. I couldn’t quite see what he was up to until he lit up his lightsaber.

He was dressed like a Sith Lord! Keep in mind, this is a man who turns 70 next year! He had gone to the trouble of buying a toy lightsaber and renting Jedi robes from a local costume shop, just to surprise me. That’s my dad!

I had been planning for months to take him to see Star Wars, totally excited to be doing it, as he was excited way back when he took me and my brother to see the original Star Wars in 1977. I was 9 years old and my brother was 8. We were hooked from that moment on to the Star Wars universe. He had seen the movie before he took us and was absolutely stoked to be taking us to see it. He knew we would love it.

I was so excited to take my dad to see this new one. And it turned out to be such a great movie. I plan to write a more detailed review about it later. I had two hours driving back home to chew it over thoroughly, and my (limited) experience in film-making as well as my more robust experience in story telling may offer some insight into the story and how I think it will progress as the next two movies come out.

So, watch for that, but beware! It will be fairly spoiler-y, but nothing huge. I will discuss some of the revealed relationships and speculate on a few that weren’t revealed but expect will be true and how I think J.J. Abrams has a better handle on this than everyone thinks. Some of the reviews I’ve seen have been brutal, and I think a fair number of them miss the mark completely on just what Abrams was trying to do with this first installment of the new trilogy.

Anyhow, when we got back, I was talking with my dad about our experience together (he told me how misty-eyed he got at several scenes) and I remarked, “Since I’ve taken you to see a new Star Wars movie, the circle is now complete.”

I think he got misty-eyed again.

 

 

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December 14, 2015

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I got nothin’

I don’t have any idea of what to write about tonight.

I mean, I do have ideas. I want to write about writing. I also have a ton of very opinionated ideas about how the world should work, how things should be run, how our lives should be better. I just can’t articulate any of them right now. Not one, even though I’ve thought about many of my ideas over and over again. I know them well, and yet the words won’t come tonight.

That’s ok.

No, really, it’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with not having an idea. I can just spend the evening doing something completely pointless, or at least, less productive.

Like playing my current favorite video game.

Or catching up on the latest episodes of my favorite TV shows. (I’ve been really into The Flash and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lately.)

Or even better, reading! I’ve gotten pulled back into two classic series that I read years and years ago.

One is the Shannara series. Mostly because I started reading the Elfstones of Shannara in anticipation of the new mini-series MTV is broadcasting in a few weeks.

The other is the Well World saga, and that’s because I recently discovered I somehow missed three books from that particular series and now I’m reading them.

So, short post, but I got some writing done today, at least.

Move along.

Nothing to see here.

😉

 

 

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December 12, 2015

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fun, Life, music

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Making music on PVC pipes

So last night was this thing called Acker Musical Showcase, or Acker Night, as they say, and it’s a really neat festival that happens the first or second Friday of December in which nearly every single business – shop, restaurant, art gallery, etc. – in downtown Prescott all host a musical act or two. You can wander from place to place, enjoying hot chocolate and cookies, while listening to all kinds of different musical performances.

Flute quartets or quintets, some guy on a keyboard singing, small band ensembles, choral ensembles, a jug band, steel drum band, all kinds of tribute bands, jazz bands and choral groups, barbershop quartets, the list goes on and on.

Then there’s my band – we play something that we call a tubulum. It’s a musical instrument made out of PVC pipes. Here’s a picture:

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They have a really neat sound, and you can google for a video or three of different ones in action. It sounds like a synthesizer, but is completely analog, simply a vibrating column of air tuned by the pipe. We used paddles made from cut up flip-flops, of all things.

The instrument itself was inspired by a similar one used by the Blue Man Group, although I think ours is a bit more sophisticated. We can play just about anything on it, and we’re constantly coming up with new arrangements.

If you ever find yourself in Prescott, AZ during Acker Night, you can find us playing there. Make sure you grab a program as you’re wandering around and look for Twisted Tubes!

 

 

 

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December 10, 2015

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Life, politics

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Absolutely black and white

What strikes me the most when I see people talking politics on Facebook and elsewhere is how polarized everyone seems to be. I say seems, because we often put things online that are less nuanced than what we might say directly to our friends in person. We post memes and the like that tend to be fairly black and white in what they express, when the reality is most issues are quite gray.

Take gun control, for instance. The clear answer, in my opinion, is not utter and complete unregulated freedom to purchase and use any kind of weapon at all, nor is it to ban them completely. I support the second amendment of the constitution here in the US, but not without some regulation.

In fact, I support quite a bit of regulation. It should be as difficult to get a license to own a gun (and ownership should be licensed everywhere, no exceptions) as it is to get a license to own a car, which, granted, is not really that difficult, but you should be required to undergo training, background checks, obtain insurance and then re-up, so to speak, every couple of years, in order to keep that license, just like you have to do to keep driving (except for the background checks, of course). Also, if you commit a violent crime with a gun, you can never own one legally again and will be severely punished if caught in possession of one.

It would not be burdensome, at least, no more so than keeping a driver’s license and I don’t hear anyone complaining about that. Nor about having to have insurance in order to register the car. Guns should be exactly the same. It will cut down on ownership overall, which can only be a good thing, because guess where the bad guys get their guns? They’re probably not getting them from Mexico, that’s for sure.

Most stolen guns obtained by criminals were stolen from legal gun owners right here in this country. Which makes you wonder why they have the gun in the first place, since the idea is that owning a gun is supposed to deter crime, right? Having that gun in your house is supposed to make the criminal think twice, right? Except it doesn’t. It’s just one more thing for them to steal.

Then there’s the idea that a “bad guy with a gun can only be stopped by a good guy with a gun” which is technically true, if the good guy is a fully trained police officer. When you think about it, especially about open carry, how do you tell a good guy practicing legal open carry from a bad guy practicing legal open carry? Guess what? You can’t. At least, not until the bad guy opens fire. And then it’s too late. Even if he’s gunned down by a good guy, chances are he’ll have hurt or killed someone before that point, so then the good guy failed. Good guys with guns can’t stop bad guys before they know they’re bad guys, and by the time they do know they’re bad guys, it’s too late.

So all of this I just talked about is just to illustrate that my position is not absolute, although it’s definitely more on the progressive side of things in terms of gun control. But I’m still not advocating a complete ban of all guns. You’d never know that, though, if I posted this on Facebook and watched the response from my more conservative friends. They’d say I was all for completely banning gun ownership, even though clearly I’m not.

It’s the nature of the debate now-a-days, as you can see. Pretty much no matter the issue, it’s framed as absolutely black and white, when it’s really gray. I wish there was a way to get people to see that, and to realize that compromising when it comes to finding solutions to the craziness that seems to happen more and more often is not a bad thing.

But that’s a discussion for a future post.

 

 

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December 9, 2015

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Life, Work

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Work work work!

I’ve just finished a training session for a new job, something that may be exactly the right fit for me in regards to generating enough income to live on while not sucking away every hour of my waking time to do it. In fact, it’s basically part-time, and I don’t anticipate it will be more than about twenty hours a week. Yet it will pay enough to cover over 90% of my expenses each month.

A dream come true for a wanna-be novelist, leaving me enough time to write while also not having to severely pinch every penny. I think I’ll still have to dip into my savings each month to close the gap, but that gap will be tiny now. My savings will last for years and years at this rate, assuming I have the job that long.

No reason to think I won’t, either. It’s an interesting business, providing a needed service that I only see demand growing for. If anything, I will have to be careful not to get sucked too far in, maybe. You know how it goes. Part-time for now, then suddenly business growth happens and you’re working more and more hours. I certainly could do worse, though.

I can’t say anything about what I do, except that being a virtual personal assistant led to it. Oh, and did I mention it’s a work from home deal? That’s right, I go to work in my pajamas, and it takes me about fifteen steps to get there. Gotta love it.

I hadn’t realized how much pressure I was feeling in regards to making ends meet until this new job came along. A lot of self-doubt about my writing ability, first and foremost, and whether I could make enough to make a living at it. To be honest, I probably can’t. And then I’d have to find a full-time job and work so much that writing would be commensurately more difficult for me to accomplish. Now, perhaps, a better balance and the best of both worlds.

For a while, anyhow.

Wish me luck.

 
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December 7, 2015

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Write-ins? Write-ins!

Mondays are fun days for me. My local NaNoWriMo group has gotten into the habit of meeting on Monday evenings for a few hours in what they call a ‘write-in’. We meet at a local coffee shop and basically take over the entire table area, and write together.

Well, some of us write. The rest of us (myself included) kibitz like crazy. I generally don’t get nearly as much writing done at a write-in as I do at home, but then, that’s not the whole point of it, anyhow.

We like to bounce ideas off each other. We have discussions about our characters and offer insight to each other on how to write about certain emotions and express them properly in our story. We talk about plot points, story structure, where to start, how to end…heck, you name it, and we’ll talk about it.

It’s also a good social outlet. What better place for writer-types to hang out than in the much clichéd location of a coffee shop, right? Yummy coffee and good friends.

Winter is my favorite time to do this as well. I like the progression from late afternoon to early evening, as the sun sets and darkness sets in. If I’m lucky, it might even be snowing or raining. (I know, that’s weird, but I live in Arizona. Rain is a Big Deal here. And yes, snow. I live in the mountains of northern Arizona and we actually get snow a few times during the winter. Yay!)

The other great thing about write-ins are that they are a good way to commit to your project, especially during the month of NaNoWriMo. Everyone is focused on getting their word-count in for the day, and we all encourage each other to keep going, offering goals like, “You can’t use the restroom until you write 200 more words from right now!” or “Go go go! You can reach 3,000 words today!”

And, as it turns out, I am writing this very post at a write-in event. We keep the Monday night one going throughout the year, outside of NaNoWriMo, which is great as it also keeps all of us who are really involved with NaNo a place and time to keep seeing each other regularly.

I encourage you, if you can, to find and go to a write-in at least monthly, if not weekly. And if you can’t find one, maybe start one. It’s nice to have a bunch of like-minded writers at your beck and call for a few hours. I am grateful for my writer friends. And for coffee. Mint mocha coffee.

We’ll save the yummy coffee concoctions for a future post.

 

 

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December 6, 2015

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fun, Gaming, Life

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Party time!

So, you may have noticed that I’ve already missed a day in my daily writing commitment. I’m not one to get hung up on things like that, though. It won’t be the last time this will happen, so why worry, right? I’ll just do two posts today to make up for it!

Anyhow, my reason for missing it is a good one. I’ve recently gotten back into a pastime I used to enjoy years and years ago: LAN parties!

In case you don’t know what that is, a LAN party is when a bunch of normally introverted PC gamers drag most of their computer setups across town to set up in the same room so that we can all play games together on them with each other. It sounds silly on the surface of it, since now-a-days it’s absurdly easy to just connect over the internet, but there’s something extra added to the gaming mix when you’re all in the same room.

It’s actually a big thing, too. There are huge LAN party tournaments many times a year throughout the country. Hundreds of gamers will get together and compete, playing all kinds of games. It’s even spawned a professional league of gamers.

I’m certainly no professional gamer, but I do have a lot of fun at these things. I hadn’t realized how much fun they could be until I joined a local group. There’s five or six of us that show up every month now, and we play all kinds of games, from zombie-blasting shooters to creative games like Minecraft. Good times!

 

 

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December 4, 2015

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Writing

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NaNoWriMo TGIO!

So, I did the thing this past month. You know, the thing. NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. That crazy thing where you write fifty thousand (or more) words in just thirty days.

I made my fifty thousand, as you can see in the little box to the right of this text. Fifty-two thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine, to be exact.

Technically, you’re supposed to write a brand-new manuscript, but I wanted to get a bigger chunk of a much-needed rewrite finished. I’ve been working on this particular piece of fiction for more than a year now. I’m hopeful it will be ready for beta readers by the end of December, and then a final polishing and reworking before the end of January. I really want to get it published.

As to that, I’m probably just going to publish it myself on Amazon using their ebook program. I have a lot to do to get there, though. I still have to buy some ISBNs, get a cover done, get some other bits and pieces written and polished (synopsis, a few blurbs, etc.) before I can put it on Amazon.

Then, I’ve got to work the whole promotion thing. Luckily, I have some real experience building brands, valuable experience, as it turns out, since that is the only thing that is going to get my work out there. I already have a substantial twitter feed built up, but I still have to create an author page on Facebook and then once I have the book on Amazon with a real ISBN, I can also create an author page on Goodreads.

Then it’s just marketing the hell out of it, spreading word as best I can while trying not to annoy anyone (that much).

Wish me luck!

 

 

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December 3, 2015

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Atompunk

I’ve really gotten into a new game on my PC called Fallout 4. It’s a hoot! I’m very much into story-driven games, and Fallout 4 delivers that fairly well. It’s been getting panned, however, because it’s not as much of a role-playing game as its previous incarnations were. It’s more of a first-person shooter with branching story elements, than anything else.

The story is pretty much set on rails that you have to follow, and although you can take several paths to get to the end, it’s basically the same no matter what you do. This is what has many fans expressing disappointment in the game. They expected a much more customizable experience and story than what they got, namely, an action movie where they get to participate in the action and that’s pretty much it.

I can overlook that for a really good story, however, even though I am very much in the RPG camp. This one has a terrific world that it’s set in, and that’s the part I really enjoy. Being a world-builder myself, like the worlds I’ve created for my novels, makes me appreciate it all the more when it’s done well by someone else, or in different media.

This one is what they call atompunk. It’s a world where the 1950’s-imagined future of nuclear-powered everything came true, with huge finned cars filling up on nuclear coolant instead of gas at the corner station, nuclear-powered monorails soaring overhead and even nuclear fusion powered robots serving mankind. Then a huge war happens and you find yourself in that world 200 years afterwards, the sole survivor of a cryogenics facility that froze you right before everything went to hell.

fallout-4-screenshot.png

All in all, it’s a fun game and a fun world to explore, as the developers put in plenty of details and references to other fantasy worlds and even things in our world, such as the bar Cheers! from the sitcom of the same name. It’s a hoot finding all those Easter eggs!

If you’re looking for something fun with a decent story and not too difficult a gameplay challenge, give it a whirl. It’s a bit pricey right now as it just came out, but give it a month or two or three and it will be cheap enough to pick up.

 

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December 2, 2015

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fun, Life, music

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Making music

I am a musician. Not professional, but maybe a little bit more than an amateur. I play several instruments, one in a very large concert band, another more eclectic sort with a few other people. It’s fun, cathartic in many ways, and it entertains others (usually). I’m lucky to have the ability and thankful beyond anything my parents made me stick to my saxophone lessons when I was younger.

I encourage people to play, especially if they learned an instrument when they were much younger, but then gave it up after high school or college. I tell them, “It’s like riding a bike!”. And it is. Your muscles never forget how to play.

I know. I stopped playing regularly for several years once I got out of college. Ok, I stopped completely. For nearly ten years. Then one day I moved to a new place, and there was my old saxophone sitting in the back of a closet. I had completely forgotten that I used to play it, and play it quite well, actually. So I decided it was time to play again.

I pulled it out, put it together, found a still-sealed box of reeds in the case, and tootled a bit on it. I was very, very rusty. I kept thinking I couldn’t play it anymore.

So back into a closet it went. But it stayed in my mind. For weeks, then months. I didn’t take it out, but I was very aware it was there. Finally, I did some digging and found a community band that didn’t need auditions, that would take anyone that wanted to play. So I signed up and went to my first rehearsal with them.

The band director gave me some music, and it looked like Greek to me. I was sitting there, holding my saxophone and trying to finger out the notes once again, but I had to think hard to remember what valves to close. One of my fellow saxophonists saw what was happening and told me not to worry.

“You’ll remember how to play the very moment the director raises his baton. Your body remembers. You’ll see! It’s like riding a bike! You never forget.”

He was absolutely right. The very moment the band started playing, my body just took over and the music came out, as if I’d never stopped.

So, if you’re someone who played a lot in high school and/or college, and really, truly enjoyed it, it’s not too late to start up again. Dig that old instrument out of the closet, put it together, find a band and go play again. You’ll remember how to play. Trust me.

It’s like riding a bike.

 

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