New Followers

Looks I have a few new Followers.  I thank you all; old and new.


I've been praying to raise my numbers.  11 is the number I wanted....for now. :)


But one seems to be a secret even from me.  I don't how. Or if this is a software mistake. On the list of Followers inside it has listed one more than what is shown on the blog for the last three new Followers.

But even if it is a glitch it looks like I will be up to eleven soon.

I need to list one blog on my list on the left side I keep forgetting but I will. I apologize for taking so long.



Thanks again.

But how about a couple comments?  Not a lot but a couple more here and there would be nice. :)

Political Venting PS

It turns out that the water situation is worse than I knew.  They have cut off water to a new area of Farmers. A few years ago the Farmers, Environmentalists and Politicians made a deal--I knew of this but was recently reminded. It was signed and everything, immediately the Environmentalists took it to court and got it changed in their favor. I was going to say they hoodwinked the judge somehow but he was probably liberal so didn't need to be. So now there is even less water for farmers.

I dare say that the farmers have been here 200 some years--over 150 for sure--but that doesn't matter. All they care about is forcing their way on the rest of us. They have the people in government to help them. Not only state but federal too. Both Senators from Calif. are very much on their side.  Feinstein is suppose to have helped farmers a while back but now all she does is interfere with water legislation. As powerful as she is and as many friends in the Democratic party she has and supposedly she can't get anything done.  According to her.

Now I've heard that they want to blow up the Hetch Hetchy dam which surprises me for they usually leave that one alone for its where a whole lot of them get their water.

But there is more at the tail end of Victory Davis Hanson's latest column. Here


Okay this is all for now but probably will be more.

Update June 16

            Okay, first Update for June. Some of this might be a repeat, if it is please bear with me. 

         I sent in my story for Q3 of WotF. At least it will be mostly clean of nitpicks:typos, bad placed commas, misspelled and wrong used words, etc. All the technical stuff: right format, no author’s name, pages titled and numbers, is fine. David over there says he’s amazed how many people don’t do those things--he even gets cookbooks and non-fic. I also think it is at least close to the type of stories he seems to like. Of course he’s still new enough, on that job, that it may take one or two complete anthologies to figure out exactly what type of stories he likes. I said complete because his first one was edited by him and the late K D Wentworth. I think--it was 28 or 29. My poor mind decided to take a powder on that at the moment and both books only list one editor. Anyway, he didn’t choose all the semi-finalists and maybe finalists in one book. 

    I mentioned in a previous post that I sent out a bunch of stories, well getting back a bunch of rejections. Beneath Ceaseless Skies usually say something-one to three sentences-on why they rejected the story. This time it was a little bit more positive sounding than last time. Still nothing to say that I almost made it though. A new market sent a rejection saying that my world was interesting but didn’t fit what they wanted at the moment. Sounds nice but as I’ve learned that could be their stock rejection. I will have to send another one to see if it was or not. Which I will do. I have a list of ten markets to send stories to. I might make it eleven and send another to Asimov’s.  Ms Williams doesn’t seem to mind a writer sending in a story before they receive a rejection for your last one to them. Many markets do, they have even set up their internet submissions system to reject any new stories to them until they send a rejection. 

   My vacation is coming up. One: I plan on getting three sets of five stories ready for E-publishing. Well, one may have six. That means checking as throughly as I can for nitpicks and/or finding someone to do them for me. And it will probably mean a bit of rewriting as I check them over. Two: I want to take pics of various books I have that I want to sell and get them on Ebay and/or a free site. I wanted to do that last year but never got to it. Three: I have plenty of appointments. Twice with my Doctor, Dentist, twice with my pick-up or I hope it will be twice, one for sure. Four: I will be working on one novel revision--some. My first day is a Friday so that Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be dedicated to that novel, and I will probably work on it for bits of time during the rest of the two weeks. Five: I want to do at least seven crits for Critters.org. Last year I tried to do one per day but only got to about half which was a whole lot better than the year before. Six: I will probably be working on a story or three also: writing, revising, spellchecking, etc. 

Critter.org:

  For those who don’t know this is a critiquing site. You send in your story, in almost any genre now,  it then gets sent out to the list of critters. They choose to critique it or not. You need to critique about one story per week to stay in good standing. I don’t send in stories any more but I still like to crit stories, usually one or two per month. That’s enough to keep me getting stories. 

   I started a Space Opera Community on Google+. I looked for one four different times and concluded there wasn’t one, which surprised me. There’s at least two Urban Fantasy and maybe three Steampunk and Horror but no Space Opera. Until now. That reminds me I need to write a couple. I have one in mind already, it’s more a Special Ops story. I don’t think I have ever written a Sp Op tale before but this one popped into my mind. I love reading Space Opera and am very surprised I haven’t written more. 

That’s it for now. As usual could be a PS or three. 

     

Articles that are story Fodder.

I've done this a time or three before but it's been quite a while since the last time.

The idea is for me to put up links that I find which could be used to inspire story-novel ideas. I added a couple of questions to help get the Muse going but think of your own. I will hopefully be doing this more often. Usually there will be three at a time.




Here's one. I have used these in one of the two novels I'm working on revising,

Large Crystals

What could they be used as?  Or what might be in one?

Alaskan Monster

Sorry the video is out on that last one but it still describes it.
Could all these various monsters be the same one. Many seem to look similar to each other. Or Aliens using the same false holgram covering?

Hole

How did that hole really get there?  What else could be discovered in holes like that one?

Adventures with my Nook

For those who are new to this blog. I bought a Color Nook about a year ago. I have 28 books and a few short stories and PDF files from Laura Anne Gilman's new series and one from an online friend who sent me a copy of a novel he is, hopefully, be working on to publish. Obviously it is done he just has to redo a bit here and there.  I probably shouldn't name it or him yet but he is an excellent writer.  He just received a Finalist listing after only four to six tries at WotF.

But here is my post:


Just spent half an hour or so on my Nook even though it wasn't planned.


Anyway, I wanted to upload--or is that share--my friend's book, he was kind enough to send me. I used a magic trick and transformed it into a PDF file and wanted to see how it worked on the Nook. To do that I have to hook my Nook to my computer. (Hmmm, maybe not but more on that in a minute). So everything went fine but it didn't show up on my "shelves" So I turned off the Nook, waited a few second turned it back on. Still not in the right place...other PDF files just showed up there. So I went looking for it, while looking I found two other files I had forgotten I had. One was a E-book written by someone on a forum I am on. I was suppose to read it and make a review, I forgot but I wouldn't have been able to find it anyway. Now it's on my shelf.

I also found an E-mail app. I had planned on getting one the Nook people suggested, but I can't remember actually doing it but there was one. Wow, so I spent some time setting up two of my E-mail accounts. Now is when I explain the comment about more on that in a minute. Just thought, if I can read and send E-mail I should be able to download files from said E-mail. I need to experiment with that and see if it works and how it works if it does.

Oh, I found the friend's novel and placed it on one of my shelves. I can open it even though instead of scrolling sideways I have to go up and down. And I have enlarge the print too. So I can read his novel even though not quite as easily as with the usual novel files.

Niiiice though. 

Pardon a lot of political Venting.

Afraid this has nothing to do with writing--but I feel the need to vent on a certain created circumstance where I live.  I've commented on these two before and no doubt I will again I'm sorry to say.

  I while back I vented on what I called Liberal Bureaucrats who tried to fix something that wasn’t broken just because they could. For those who hadn’t weren’t reading my blog back then, the reason I was rather upset was that they changed the overtime rules for businesses here in Calif. Making things more complicated. At my company we had been getting off early on Fridays--we made up the time by working half an hour in the morning. We did that for close to 30 years. But no more, technically Management--who are the owners of this smaller company--could have worked something out but as I said it’s became more complicated...way too complicated. There was no real reason for them do that. There could be some small amount of workers who really were having problems but as usual that could be fixed without inconveniencing  everyone.  They like to do things like that though.

All that was just an comment in what I have stated before, now to get to the real purpose of this note.

Water--they changed the rules on that too, now many farmers here in the San Joaquin Valley have been left out of the water that they were promised. Yes, the rain level is down but the water didn’t have to cut as much as it was. A couple of years ago when the state did the same thing 400 farmers were cut off. A few bought water from other places or farmers a few pumped water but both of those things cost money. And it only helped a small percentage of farmers. Orchards died because of the lack of water, some of the small towns  around here almost declared bankruptcy and businesses closed because so many people were laid off.  Even workers who had been employed for ten to twenty years straight. They had a water March, with various politician coming by but nothing was done. 

Some environmentalists just say they are large cooperate farms implying they don’t need help or are lying.  There could very well be some large cooperate farms a month the 400 but I don’t care. They need water too and they hire local people. But many of the farms are small cooperations. Family size. 

Supposedly all this is because of a tiny fish some call the carney in the coal mine--it isn’t. I said supposedly because that fish isn’t native to that part of the water course, and it has eight other “stresses” that kill more fish than the pumps they use to pump water into the canals. If they really wanted to help they could either have fisheries and/or go to other lakes in the US and at certain times of the year use a bucket to dip fish up. The local people might even be happy about that. Or they could place special screens around the pumps as some people, who are trying to work with them, want to do. But they are not having any of that either. So people they are suppose to care for suffer, land sits when it could be feeding the world, providing jobs and tax revenue to the state government. No matter if Governor Brown’s budget really preforms like he wants to believe the state can always use more cash. It probably won’t so they need cash even more. 

So twice now Liberals have butted in to fix something that didn’t need fixing or as much as they claim. And it ends up hurting a lot more people than they wanted to help. 

Another update PS May 26 and a Thanks

So one more Follower Thank you. Talked to you on G+ but still appreciate the extra number here.



So:

      Sent out new stories this week. Looks like Scott P. Over at F&SF will be getting another break from my writing, at least from my alchemy tales. The one I am revising is over 11,000 words and it will take me week or three to finish it.  I may send a SF instead. 

   I was able to encourage one person this week. He wrote a novel a couple of years ago and is trying to get some cred by selling a couple of short stories. He was a finalist in Q1 with WotF.   Didn’t win but still  Niiice.  I know what story he sent in for Q3 it could get in or be another Finalist. We will have to see what David thinks of it but I was right about Q1.  This guy is a good writer.  Anyway, he will now be going back over that novel this summer because I managed to remind him of it. He was nice enough to send me a copy to read. I will enjoy it.

   I made a mistake entering that challenge I referenced last note. They post the first 13 lines--which seems to be the standard number of an Opening. It might be unofficial but evidently a lot of editors think of it that way.  It’s the number of lines on the first page of a manuscript.  Anyway, the people who entered the challenge comments on and votes on the best 13 lines. No one likes my Opening. Only read six out of ten comments so it’s possible one person might like it. That has happened before. But one person misunderstood something and another will be disappointed when he reads the rest of it. 

  My vacation is coming up in three weeks. I do a writing vacation. Besides working on my novels I want to get three sets of stories ready for E-publishing.  For me a set has five stories. One set may have six but that’s close enough.  More on that later.

A PS to Update May 26

A PS so soon.

But I was able to work on my Novel--”Two Struggles” if anyone here remembers my pervious posts on that novel...of course a few won’t. 

But I’m also stuck. I said I could use some help with figuring out where background info should go, well, I’m at one of those points. My MC’s Mentor was a Secret Service agent and now works for a clandestine boss. But I think that bit of detail breaks up the flow too much where I have it. I’ve already moved it twice--keeping thinking.

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I couldn’t help myself today at work I started a story on the 12 seconds premise. I will probably finish it tomorrow or the next day. It’s has a different way of using that term and maybe is a touch humorous. It probably won’t go far though since it’s very simple even though different for me.

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I mentioned that I forgot to place a stamp on my last SASE to Fantasy and Science Fiction. Well they did place their own stamp on it an included a handwritten pointed note about it.  It’s the only personal note for the story of course. But Scot P over there will have a week without my story, wonder if he will enjoy it a bit if he notices at all.   

My Reading: "The Iron Wyrm Affair"

"The Iron Wyrm Affair"  by Lilith Saintcrow


Interesting in that there is an interview with Ms Saintcrow in the back of the book.


But before I get into more on the book, that last name would make an interesting premise for a story. I may use it some time.

Anyway, the book is steampunk, Lots of magic. Ms Saintcrow did a great job in forming the world and characters. She did her own way of magic, guards and augmenting humans and animals.  The adventure was great and she was able to put her MCs (Yep, she has two) into more and more danger. Even though she may not be as skilled at that as some writers but still it is a well done book and worthy of being read. Well, the world is very dark which for myself lessened my enjoyment but still I will get the next one, which is out. She also keeps the characters separate both main ones and a couple of minor ones are each very unique to each other.

She used a dragon in a unique way and some time I will borrow that idea even though of course with my own twist.

Check it out http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-iron-wyrm-affair-lilith-saintcrow/1106244224?ean=9780316201261

Update May 26

  I was able to do some work on my to be E-published novel during the memorial day weekend but I rediscovered something. Chapter two needs a lot more work than I recalled and I somehow lost the connection or bridge to ch. 3. I had been thinking I could be done with Two this weekend but now it might take at the very least two more weeks with the other stuff I am working on.

    Of course the  WotF Q3 story can wait, since I have another month to do it. I just have one more crit, could be two soon, to go over. I thought I had most if not all of the misspelled words fixed but evidently I added a bunch more. I have no other stories to crit at this time, that could change soon though. All that means that I should have some time to work on the novel this week combined with what I get done on Memorial Day maybe I could be done with the chapter in one week but we shall see. 

    One problem is that I could use help with Chapters Two and Three. In both I have some of the background and previous adventures of my MC. It’s hard to figure out where to put that info. I originally had most of it in ch. One but it made that chapter way too long and broke up the adventure she was having. So I placed most of that in ch. Two but yet again it still made it way too long and broke up the progression of the story. Some of it can be fed to the reader a bit at a time over the length of the book. I have noticed that published writers do that. But which details and exactly where do they go? 

    That is the problem I am having, the rest of the novel is Okay--well, I’m sure there are many writing issues but at least I know where things go and how to do the scenes. I could really use some help with those chapters Two and Three though.  Preferably by a published writer but I doubt I’m going to be getting such so I guess I will just march on. 

One more thing about this week. I belong to a writer’s forum that has a challenge every year. The winner gets the latest Writer’s of the Future Anthology--number 29 in this case-one that is signed by the top winner. For those who don’t know WotF has three winners every quarter but they also have one top winner every year. 29’s top winner is going to sign the book for the winner of the challenge. For those who haven’t been reading this blog for long I gave up on all of the challenges put on by this forum. There’s usually five or so per year. I got tired of landing on the bottom most of the time. The rest of the time I landed in the middle.  Obviously they don’t think much of my writing and/or stories. Which is normal, editors don’t either thing much of my writing either. 

Anyway, the entries are down this year, which is a surprise, they usually have a ton for this challenge. So I thought maybe I will give it a try. Just have to write a story by May 31 having to do with 12 seconds--anything at all. That premise was chosen because the top winner’s story is titled “12 Seconds”. I will think on it and see if I can get something I think is unique. I figure it will be a thousand words or less, which gives me time to write it and revise it. I may have to put aside the stories I am working on at the moment-which includes that novel--but I think I can do it. But I have done that before so it’s not a big deal, except for the novel. (Shoulder shrug), it’s a challenge and I like to take on writing challenges--and sometimes other types. But we shall see what I come up with. I could cheat, I have one story that could have 12 seconds added in without changing the main story. 
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In a previous update I mentioned how many stories I have out. Make that one less. One market most have changed their address while I wasn’t looking, so I need to find the new one and resend that story next week. Along with a new story to F&SF.  Oh, that reminds me I also have to revise that story this week. I have done some work on it and I don’t think it needs a lot more so it probably doesn’t need much more. 

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Seems like there was something else I could say but can’t recall what right now so more than likely there will be a PS as usual.  

Venting on Seanan McGurie's book "Ashes Of Honor"

A bit of venting here this time at one of my favorite writers.

The other day I was thinking of a certain scene in what I think was one of Seanan's books.  I was explaining the use of the five human senses to another writer and how Seanan handled the sense of taste in that scene. I find that one hard to figure out in most cases. While reading Seanan's book I noticed how she used it so I described to this writer how Seanan put it in.

However that got my mind on Seanan and her last book. That reminded me of something that happened in "Ashes Of Honor" that did not sit well with me.

Now I am going to be very general with my comments here because I don't want to have this be a major spoiler so they may not make as much sense as I want them to make. However if you read the book I believe you will understand what I am referring to.


In Ashes, Seanan puts in a very minor character, not at all unusual or bad, but she does something with this one that isn't good. At least for me. The character does something to help--I won't go into details--but something bad happens to them.  Again not totally unusual and even not necessarily bad. However in this case it almost seems like Seanan forgets about that character.  Daye, the MC of the book, spares that character a thought but it seems added on and incomplete.

Bad things have happened to other minor characters, in various books, even characters that help the MC but as I said this it stuck me wrong and again as I said it feels incomplete like Seanan forgot and had to go back and quickly add something.  This person is a hero and heroes should not be forgotten.

Of course it's possible that it could be fixed in the next book, I shall see if so.  

Even with all this said, I am going to keep reading the Daye books, Seanan is still a very good storyteller--even if this was a mistake, and I will keep recommending her.