Flossing Philosophy

A Novella

2011-10-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

You know, I think I ditch my work too readily. A friend of mine has wisely said that the first draft of a piece is only 25% of the effort required, and in my experience that is essentially true. It's easier to lose one's charge when not generating new word count, because I don't find the revision process as exciting as the initial creation.

Maybe that's why I was stressing out over how long Darkweave Bloodwolf (working title!) is going to be, and when I'm going to finish it. I want to finish up a novella by the time I get to World Fantasy.

However, it was only today that I realized I've actually got a finished novella that just needs a little polish and will be ready to go.

Time to change gears.

Hot Tips to Understanding History

2011-10-04T16:14:00.001-07:00

1. You haven't found the cause until you've found out whose interests are served.
2. If you think there's only one cause, you don't understand the situation.
3. If your theory requires a large group of people to be evil or stupid for a large amount of time, it's wrong.

Work BBQ

2011-09-14T16:50:00.001-07:00

On Monday, we had a Mandatory +1 Barbecue at work, and at said barbecue I punched a latina girl in the back of the head.

I didn't punch her hard or anything. Certainly it wasn't hard enough to injure her, anyway. Just hard enough for her to whip around and playfully slap her aunt, he had graciously balled up a fist behind the target's head to cover my escape.

It was kind of a highlight of my day.

Awesome weekend

2011-09-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

This weekend was face-smashingly awesome.

On Friday, two of our would-be mages didn't show up for our game, so instead we ordered some pizzas and gathered the hooligans around to watch X-Men: First Class, which is more incredible than watching a panda defeat a chess grandmaster.
at a rousing game of Not Getting Mauled
Saturday, apparently feeling that our pizza was insufficient on Friday, we ordered more pizza and gathered a slightly different (yet strikingly similar) group of hooligans to play StarCraft all day while applying Funday-Monday style restrictions. This was more fun than being thrown from a giant chocolate fondue fountain onto a pile of money.

Sunday was nice.

Tragedy and Immortals

2011-09-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

Tragedy is moving out with 13 more food than your opponent, knowing that he's moved his army into flanking position and being ready for it, then sieging up your tanks about 2 seconds late and losing everything.

WorldCon Fridayish

2011-08-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

Those Klingons throw a mean party.

A highlight of today was getting attacked by Klingons when I went to visit their suite. Other than that, I'm extremely tired, and I bought some utterly beautiful dice for a kind of obscene price. But they are beee-yoo-tee-full. Anyway, I can't remember what else happened because I'm zonked out of my mind.

Worldcon Day 2: Sci-Fi

2011-08-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

A Klingon plays the piano.

Day 2 started with a stroll around Reno with a bunch of geeky folk. I got to meet Lawrence Schoen, who turns out to be a funny guy who wrote a book about a guy who flies around hypnotizing aliens, or something like that. The premise sounded close enough to the one for my current sci-fi that I decided I had found a sympathetic heart. This is conventient, because Schoen runs a small press. So I suppose I've found a target.

Beyond that, I went to a huge number of panels today, perhaps to compensate for all the panels I didn't attend at World Fantasy. The night ended with a Tor party, which was full of people, talking, noise, heat, people, talking, noise, and heat.

Now I'm tired, and I'm going to cuddle up with Good Omens and get ready for a jolly good stroll tomorrow as well.

WorldCon: Renovation Day 1

2011-08-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

A new King in the North sits on the Iron Throne.

The highlight of today was meeting George R. R. Martin, no contest. He was wandering around the casino, and I spoke to him briefly and grabbed a handshake.

Other than that, I wandered around the convention center and geeked it up for awhile. I picked up a copy of Good Omens so I could finally get around to finishing reading it, and other than that just hunted for and spoke with people from Utah.

Oh, and drank lots and lots of fluids. It is hot in Reno.

Things I learned

2011-07-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

Things I learned since last Wednesday:

Being homeless is lousy. That said, discovering cold noodles again is amazing. I'll call it a wash.

My job is awesome. We're having a Nerf war soon. These are not unrelated points.

If you're trying to be vegetarian, don't go to Carl's Jr. Their fries are gross.

Pringles are, in fact, crisps.

And there was something else really cool, but now I've forgotten what it was. There it is.

Vegetarianism: Here we go again!

2011-07-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

I was munching on a delicious Ebbet's Field sandwich from Gandolfo's today, and it got me thinking.

Thinking, specifically, about vegetarianism.

"It has no meat on it?" I asked the lady behind the counter.

She responded with something akin to sheepishness. "No. No meat."

But it had sauteed mushrooms. So I bought one. It was my consolation prize for staying late at work to run the recording studio.

As I took my first bite, my impression was sauteed mushrooms.

As I took my second bite, I thought, I could totally get used to this.

The thing about having a sister who's an adamant vegan is that every time you do anything vegetarian, you seek her approval. I do, anyway. So I emailed her and told her she should use the Ebbet's Field sandwich to convert people.

Oh, but it's not vegan.

Anyway, vegans of principle--like my sister--have some rhetorical bases that I just simply don't agree with, and most likely never will. However, my month of vegetarianism helped me form a fair amount of empathy for these folks.

When I was a vegetarian, I was told on almost a daily basis that I wasn't getting enough protein. I don't know whether this is true, but I doubt it. I ate a heck of a lot of beans and eggs that month. In fact, since I was watching what I ate so carefully, I think I was eating more healthily than I typically did. (That's not saying much.) And before the haters start hating, I'd like to point out that veganism is also potentially healthy. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Kim Painter of USA Today.

Anyway, I love steak and sushi too much to become a vegetable, and frankly, my time spent shopping and cooking during Vegetarian Month was excessive. Nonetheless, I do not mind the idea of fewer animals dying on behalf of my ability to snack on their tasty flesh, and I am certainly amenable to the idea of not supporting businesses that effectively torture animals.

The latter point I will ignore for now. The first point, however, is something that can easily be addressed.

I think I'm going to start doing vegetarian day. It will be one day a week--probably Friday. On this day, I just won't eat any meat. BAM. Nothing to it. I figure that Friday is a good candidate, because that's the day I'm most likely to go out to eat, and if I cut my meat consumption then, it's most likely to have the best overall effect.

I was going to reinstate Vegetarian Month, but honestly it was just a form of self-torture. I didn't enjoy it, and it just made me miss meat all the more. That's not the point. The point is to cut down on my overall meat consumption and be a healthier person.

Any thoughts on this? Better suggestions? Also, feel free to flame me about my inevitable lack of protein. I swear some rancher somewhere is laughing all the way to the bank over the idea that meat has a monopoly on protein content.

Weekend Update

2011-07-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

Welp, looks like I won't get too much fiction writing done today. All of last week was dedicated to writing that short story for the Machine of Death anthology. I feel pretty good about my submission, but at this point all that remains is to wait and see.

So I'm returning to work on Darkweave Bloodwolf this week, and I dare say I would have gotten a fair amount done today, save for the fact that I realized that A Dance with Dragons was out.

Yeah, I marked my nonexistent calendar and everything, and I let the release blow by.

Anyway, I went and picked it up today, and now I'm... distracted.

This weekend also involved a fair amount of WarMachine and a Japan-themed party. Although I would be (and am) suspicious of anything that uses "Japan-themed" as its selling point, Acius and Whistler put on a heckuva party, and I spent a significant amount of my time there chatting about video games with my cousin and brother.

Anyway, back to Darkweave Bloodwolf. Untold adventures await!

Mass Effect 2

2011-07-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

Mass Effect 2 is seriously cutting into my StarCraft time. I think if I were born in an era before video games, I'd be obsessed with some other hobby.

Mass Effect 2, as some of you may know, is a game about mining resources off alien worlds by shooting probes at them. Oh, and I hear there's some third-person shooter minigame in it too, but I haven't really played that much.

Writing and Big Mike

2011-07-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

Today I wrote a ridiculously high number of words on my short story about the Machine of Death. It's pretty close to done, but crello made a suggestion that's making me consider an alternate ending. I was going to wrap it up tonight, but instead I've been here chatting with my roommate Mike, who may or may not be a bounty hunter.

Mike, in case you haven't met him, looks like this:

Hey ladies, do you want a piece of this action? Next thought: Call me and I'll totally give you Mike's digits.

Genesis Earth by Joe Vasicek

2011-07-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody. My friend Joe Vasicek is trying to build a lifestyle around being an indie author, and as you may have guessed by now, I am someone who respects people who try to do impossible things. I guess that comes from trying to make it as a writer myself.

As part of the promotion for his first live novel, Genesis Earth, Joe is doing a blog tour, where he does guest posts on other blogs. I made mine available to him, and he's taken me up on it. I hope you enjoy, and I'll notify Joe to watch the comments if there are any questions or anything directed to him. Enjoy!

Dear Google Readers: Sorry about the edits. Formatting issues.

If you had told me a year ago that I would decide to self publish, I would have laughed in your face and called you a fool. Yet here I am, a self published "indie" author. What happened?

Nothing less than a revolution.

A lot of people point back to October/November 2010 as the turning point when self-published ebooks started to take off. That's when Amazon and a lot of the other companies rolled out their latest generation ereaders, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. As ereaders became a hot item, people began looking for books to fill their new devices.

At this time, I had just come back from World Fantasy convention and was taking off the month of November to work on the fifth draft of Genesis Earth. A friend of mine sent me a link to Joe Konrath's "You Should Self Publish" post on his blog, and it completely blew my mind. Everything he said ran counter to the conventional wisdom, and yet from a purely business perspective it made sense. A lot of sense.

Now, one thing you should know about me is that I want to make a full-time living as a writer. Whether or not epublishing is right for you depends on why you write and what you want to get out of it. For me, writing is more than a hobby or a part-time job--it's a career. I don't just see myself as an artist; I see myself as a self-employed small business owner.

So why did Joe Konrath's post blow my mind? Because all of the things that made self-publishing inviable are no longer problems with ebooks. The biggest prohibiting factors under the old print model were 1) high up-front costs, and 2) distribution. Even with print on demand, you have to charge around $15 to make a profit.

With ebooks, you can produce them yourself for free, upload them to major global distributors like Amazon and Smashwords for free, and make around 70% of the list price per unit. Seventy percent--that's more per $2.99 ebook than most authors see for their $7.99 paperbacks. But best of all, the book is up forever--there's no limited shelf space, unlike bookstores, where every few months the old books are cycled out to make room for the new. Your ebooks have an unlimited amount of time to find their audience.

I decided that this was something worth looking into, so I started following other people who were getting into it. Surprisingly, a large number of them were long-time professionals. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch both have excellent blogs that I started following closely. Michael A. Stackpole has been following ebooks for a long time, and makes some very astute points about ebooks versus print books. Robin Sullivan of Ridan Publishing is perhaps a little bit less of a veteran, but her blog Write2Publish is extremely interesting, as is up-and-coming writer David Gaughran's.

I was still hesitant to jump in with both feet, though, so I decided to start with a couple of my old short stories. Frankly, I wanted a chance to make my mistakes on something that I cared less about screwing up than my novels. Yes, the learning curve was steep, but once over it I found I could produce a professional quality ebook in less than an hour.

Granted, there were some unknown-knowns that helped me get to that point; I'd kept a daily photoblog throughout college, so I knew a little about graphic design, and I've been blogging long enough to know some basic html. I also worked in a college writing lab and graduated with a minor in English, so I have a pretty thorough understanding of the English language. But I don't think any of this makes me unique. I'm sure there are other people out there with far more experience who could learn epublishing much faster than me.

So I had a couple of short stories out, and they started to sell at a relatively modest rate. But the thing that tipped me over the edge to decide to release a novel was the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I submitted Genesis Earth to the contest, figuring a $10k publishing deal with Penguin was worth a shot.

To my delight, it made the first and second cut, becoming one of 250 other quarter finalists. Here was validation that I'd written something that was pretty decent--validation like the half dozen personalized rejections and requests for fulls/partials that I'd accrued over the past year querying agents. Yet when I didn't make the cut for the semi-finals, the Publisher's Weekly review was extremely condescending, giving me the impression that the reviewer hated all science fiction in general.

When I read that, something inside of me clicked, and I knew I had to self publish. Why? Because it was the best way to connect my work directly with the readers who would love it.

At its core, that's what indie publishing is all about--connecting books and readers directly, cutting out the middlemen like agents who would kill a work's originality to turn it into the next Twilight clone, or marketing people who say things like "there aren't any black people in the midwest." With epublishing, everyone not involved in the actual act of writing now answers to the writer, instead of the writer having to answer to the whims of an oversized corporate publishing system that doesn't know what it wants.

So here I am, an independently self-published writer. Was it the right decision? For me, I think it was. Things are changing rapidly, and for my personal career goals, indie publishing makes a tremendous amount of sense. Time will only tell, of course, but I'm in this for the long haul, and the one trend that seems to be holding constant is that ebooks are on the rise.

Genesis Earth is Joe Vasicek's first epublished novel. It is a coming of age story with spaceships, wormholes, first contact, and a touch of romance. You can find it at the following sites:

Amazon
B&N
Smashwords

Friday Photo: Finally

2011-07-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

I wish I were in that ward.

Morir Sonando Azul

2011-06-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

Here goes my one-day run at being a recipe blog:

-About a bazillion fresh blueberries that are going to go bad before you and your girlfriend could ever hope to eat all of them.
-One can of condensed milk
-All of the milk your twin sister left behind at the house when she bought some for her family while visiting over the weekend
-Two cups of ice

Instructions: Put everything in the blender until you're extremely happy. It doesn't take long.

Serve to a group of friends who have all gathered to play their new EDH decks. Oh, except Aegis because he got there too late.

Warmahordes RPG

2011-06-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a longer post about this, but I got busy, so now you get this stub.

It turns out Privateer Press is not necessarily writing an RPG ruleset to be compatible with WarMachine, at least on not any official level. Anyway, I am writing such a ruleset (I accept the challenge!) and I've been harvesting as many ideas as I can in order to put it together.

More on this to come.

Swirly Pop 4EVR

2011-06-03T14:26:00.001-07:00

My phone/camera isn't working properly today, which is a shame because I had a good picture from CONduit. Anyway, here's a snippet from my current work of fiction:

Nathin had pretty much dried in the hot sun by the time the Lem 'n Lime came into view. The company ship was painted bright blue with the Swirly Pop logo featured prominently on every single part of the ship. Probably the logic behind this was that if the ship blew up, it would still help advertise its products by shooting its various pieces of slag metal off into different directions in space.

President Morrow

2011-06-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

The scenery had the decency to look a little New Yorkish. The Month of Rain was kind to Utah in its way, and the mountains were green around that Wendy's where a handful of returned missionaries gathered, nearly strangers, and yet undeniably linked to one another.

We had just come from the funeral service of our mission president, taken from us early--albeit not unexpectedly--by cancer. The service was beautiful and emotional, as one would expect. Members of the family and a member of the Quorom of the Twelve shared experiences about President Morrow, rightfully praising his enthusiasm and his relentless pursuit of the greatest things this life offers.

"This sucks," his wife said with rare candor. She smiled through tears as she hugged me and another two of her missionaries who had come to see her. We briefly spoke about our lives before going to see the open casket.

President Morrow looked different. I feel like the dead look smaller, besides being paler than themselves. I wanted to say something to him, but what to say? Was he even listening? Did I want to speak to him for my sake, or his own? I found myself regretting that I hadn't come up to visit him before, back when he could have answered what I was saying to him. One of his college roommates came to speak to me, identifying me as one of "Jeff's missionaries," and told me I was very lucky to have him as a president. I agreed, but in the tone of voice of someone who was bored, reading a script. I was lucky to have him as a president, but it felt vain saying so now.

Everything felt so vain, really. He was a great man, responsible in part for the development of many great men. I just couldn't imagine what I could have said or done that would have properly encapsulated how I felt, or who he was. And so I said very little.

And it was at Wendy's that the missionaries gathered afterward, speaking to one another of wives, of children, careers, education, and StarCraft. We about New York , but no one discussed the funeral, or President Morrow. Is that what he would have wanted? Did it matter what he would have wanted?

Yes, and yes, I think. President Morrow was not without flaws, but there is something I can say of him for sure: he knew us, and he cared about us. No doubt he would have loved to have come with us to Wendy's, in fact. I believed Elder Ballard when he said we could all know with absolute assurance that we'd be reunited with President Morrow again, and then he can accompany us to whatever the equivalent of Wendy's will be at the time. For now, he's there, but we're all still here. Frosties were, in their own curious way, a fitting tribute. Really, it was a nice time to come together and look back on the shared experience that made us all a kind of family.

And President Morrow was the center of that experience.

Godspeed, President Morrow. I look forward to seeing you again.

BYU's new path

2011-05-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

I finally took the chance to walk along BYU's renovated pathway today. It's the one that runs from the back of the Richards' Building, along west campus, turning along South campus and concluding at the secret botanical garden near the MacDonald (McDonald?) building.

It was nice. It was surprising.

We're in week four now of continuous rain here in Utah, so our state is in a rare state of beautiful greenness, which is a nice compensation prize for the fact that we're facing flooding disasters.

Anyway, it made my drizzly walk along the path quite enjoyable. I have some interesting memories with what that path used to be, and I found it somewhat discourteous of BYU to change it without me.

It was that chain of thought that led me to the disturbing reality that BYU would join the ranks of my other schools, my mission, and Russia, in that it was going to go ahead and change, be vibrant, see countless thousands of stories much like mine, and arrive at the point where we have a mutual lack of recognition.

It made me sad, but in the way I think nostalgia is supposed to make you sad.

When I finally came to the botanical gardens, I noticed that the path's renovations were not complete. I guess they just wanted to rub salt in the wound. Not only had they changed, but they would belligerently continue to change.

It simply falls to me to continue having new adventures as fast as I can and as frequently as I can to try and take my mind of the sting of nostalgia.

Where I stand on things.

2011-05-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

So, every belief system seems to have a spectrum of adherents, although all of them seem to be weighted toward one end of the other.

Diplomatic|---|Superior

If you're too diplomatic, then you just compromise all your beliefs in the name of "friendship," and usually you just become the intellectual victim of people who are more willing to take a stand than you are.

If you're too superior, then you just annoy people. If this is your goal, bravo. However, why is this your goal?

Let's not worry about where you stand religiously on this spectrum. I have a good idea where I stand, and you should, too, but that's not the point.

When it comes to Republicanism, I'm here:

|X--|

When it comes to Conservativism, I'm here:

|-X-|

When it comes to Science-Fiction and Fantasy are Just as Legitimate as Any Other Genre, I'm here:

|--X|

Now you know where I stand. Where do you stand on things?

[EDIT: My pointy arrows were messing around with the HTML. Sorry, Google Readers!]

Darkweave Bloodwolf vs. Legacy

2011-05-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a book entirely by the seat of my pants.

I won't claim that this isn't the first time I've attempted to do this, but I will say that this is the first time I've attempted to do this and expected the result to be workable (not "readable" per se) and more than ten pages long.

It's not entirely by the seat of my pants, of course. I'm actually approaching it the same way I approach a D&D campaign. I create a cast of characters (in this case I had to write up the protagonists, too. A real chore, that.) and a situation that's vaguely based on some real-world place and time that I can base it on. Then I just make an interesting catastrophe to kick everything off, and let my imagination run crazy with it from there, taking cues from what my zany players do.

Now I get to be the players and the DM, and I can't stuff a chapter just by filling it with combat, but other than that the process is similar.

Oh, I haven't given up on Legacy, in case you're worried. My life has been so bizarrely stressful lately that I just found I didn't like the end-of-May deadline looming over my head so much, because between house hunting and work deadlines and the plethora of things fighting to occupy my evenings, it became increasingly clear that I wouldn't be able to hit that deadline.

I like making new wordcount more than I like revising, so I decided that this was one aspect of my life I could cut myself some slack on, and let myself just write and enjoy myself and my art.

I'll resume Legacy revisions when things have calmed down, and I have time to really devote to sharpening it.

Now I'm off to write the chapter that will include the phrase "refresh the shields!"

StarCraft: the Gathering

2011-05-09T17:08:00.001-07:00

Blizzard was happy to announce today the much-anticipated Magic the Gathering patch for StarCraft 2. The changes are already available for a small fee on the pre-release server, and the full release is scheduled for this Saturday. Highlights for the patch notes follow:

-The marine, zergling, and zealot have all been in existence for too long, and are being removed from the game.
- In order to address how OP thors are, a new unit, the Loki, is being added to the game. The Loki is a fast-moving armored unit that does 1 damage with a low rate of fire (+5000 against thors). We are hoping to remove thors from the meta forever, which will make both of these units obsolete well before they are removed from the game this coming October.
-The Lurker has been added to the Zerg race again, in order to make people with vintage lurkers angry.
-In order to address the strength of Terran infantry units against Zerg, Infestors are being given the "super kaploof" spell, which kills every enemy unit in a radius of 6 matrices. Every time the Zerg player casts this spell, they must enter their credit card information in the UI, and they will be charged $4.
- The UI has been updated to accept credit card information.
- A new unit, the Protoss Fathership, has been added to the game. It does silly amounts of damage and casts every spell in the game, but costs 20,000 minerals and 10,000 gas. We expect only to see this unit come into play during turtle-heavy FFAs
- After carefully monitoring statistics on Battle.net to determine the most popular builds, we have noticed that players are still trying to invent creative new ways to play the game. To discourage this kind of innovation, new units have been added to each race to make the most popular current builds even stronger.
- The artwork on hydralisks has been changed. We did this just to make Zerg players angry.
- Players who have already paid for a copy of StarCraft will be ejected from the official Battle.net ladder unless they pay an additional $60 to purchase this patch.

Friday Photo: Cleaning House

2011-05-07T08:01:00.001-07:00

Crello vacuums the carpet in my old apartment on the day I officially became homeless.

One of those boring posts that just exists to exist.

2011-05-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

It's warm in Spanish Fork!

Spanish Fork is where I live, because I don't really live anywhere. I was told that being booted out of your residence and moving in with a sibling makes you technically homeless, and I don't want to look that up in case it's false.

Anyway, the point is I'm incredibly busy between a work deadline approaching, hunting for a house, and a StarCraft tournament coming up, but I'm going to try to get back on the wagon in blog posts.

See you all later.

My Road to Fame Continues

2011-04-13T22:08:00.001-07:00

Do you know who David Nibley is?

Neither did I, so let me tell you. He's the guy who played the wicked missionary in The Best Two Years.

Anyway, he came to do a recording in our studio today, and I did all the cue lines, which I'll calling an acting gig.

So I did an acting gig with David Nibley.

And looked at houses. I'm very tired.

I'm famous!

2011-04-12T22:57:00.001-07:00

Follow this link to a blog about the StarCraft Utah scene:

http://starcraftutah.blogspot.com/2011/04/zerg-what.html

Second photo, all the way to the right.

It's me! I'm watching StarCraft

Let's all be shallow together

2011-04-06T16:17:00.000-07:00

If I had the ability to make myself anything, and to change my circumstances to anything, with anyone at this exact moment, I think I would:

-Live in St. Petersburg.
-Be married to an intelligent, geeky, beautiful woman with no children (yet, anyway)
-Be a successful published author, famous enough to be recognized readily at cons by adoring fans, but not famous enough to be recognized at the corner grocery store
-Own a house everywhere. A house in every single country in the world. Of course, I'm stinking rich, so I can afford the upkeep of all this.
-Be a Grandmaster level StarCraft player
-Own my own jet and on-call pilot.
-Maybe have my own chef.
-Oh, and I'd have convinced all my friends--probably included most or all of the readership of this blog--to move to Russia with me.
-Heck, while I'm at it: I'd be telekinetic

Right now I'd be sitting in my study with my malamute dog curled up nearby, snoozing peacefully as I worked on the final draft of the third book in my humorous science fiction series.

Man. That sounds great.

Anyway, o massive readership, come be shallow with me for a moment. If you could have and be anything, what would you have and be? Don't be shy! I'll look pretty stupid if no one comments on this.

StarCraft II Tournament at UVU

2011-04-04T17:31:00.000-07:00

I went to a StarCraft tournament last Thursday at UVU. It was enormously enjoyable, because I was in a dimly-lit room filled with smelly geeks, all of whom had a love for StarCraft. I also touched bases with WetSpot there, which was fun, not only because he's a much better player than I am.

I would have been the lowest ranked player at the tournament, but Crello was called in to help fill out the bracket, so she was the sole Bronze represented, and I the only Gold. Everyone else was Diamond or above.

My first and last match was against a Zerg player named Gon, and y'know what? I played well, but I was defeated by tournament nerves. If you know about StarCraft, you may find the purple paragraph enlightening. If not, I encourage you to skip to the green summary below, in which you will learn the moral of the story.

(Please forgive me, as I didn't get my replay, so I am recalling this from memory.)

I opened up with a rax into factory, which I lifted off to pick up the reactor for a 4-hellion harass, which I'm really enjoying against Zerg right now. I food-locked once on my way to factory, and another time when I was trying to pump out hellions 3 and 4, which was embarrassing. I didn't get much harass done, but my hellions were enough to chase off an attempt at a baneling bust.

I used the extra money I always seem to have around then to expand, and I got up two more factories with tech labs, and started building my way up to Tank/Thor/Hellion (with one raven for spiciness). I preemptively put up some missile turrets because the spire had been up for awhile, and ZvT seems to always always go mutas.

The turrets were enough to chase off an initial muta harass, and I kept building up toward my magical 180-food push. Unfortunately, my opponent built up a lot more mutas, and eventually just ran over my turrets, killing all my workers while I stupidly chased him from base to base with one thor.

After much worker death, I killed the mutas, and could have geared up for my 180 push, but sadly, I panicked, and decided to go in with my 130-ish food. To exacerbate the problem, I mismicro'd badly, and allowed the enemy to gobble up my split army. gg.

The short version also contains the moral of the story, which I'll make blatant.

I had just been practicing for exactly this kind of match. (Terran vs. Zerg) I knew what to do, and was in a good position to do it, but unfortunately I allowed my nervousness and some well-timed disruption from my opponent to throw me off course, and I strayed from doing what I knew was right, instead opting to give in to my panic. I was crushed soundly.

Anyway, back to the Battle.nets.

See what Netflix hath wrought

2011-03-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that a lot of (the majority, even) of conflicts in Battlestar Galactica could have been easily avoided if people had just explained themselves better?

Anyway, that's history. Crello and I are watching our way through Heroes right now, and I rate it about 5 out of 10. Good enough for now.

A post that turned into a post about BYU

2011-03-28T22:27:00.000-07:00

My life has kind of hit me with a tornado of late, and a summary of the events just doesn't seem to do them justice, so I may be in flashback mode for awhile, assuming I can keep up the postage on Flossing Philosophy. Or I just won't, and countless more events will just slip through the fingers of memory and be lost, to be recalled again at some random time.

My ward is reorganizing. It's kind of a double-threat, really, because the owner of my apartment wasn't legally allowed to rent it to me, so after a fruitless and frustrating day in court, I have to find another place to live before April's done. So General Conference approaches this week, and the week after that we'll have a "normal" Sunday in my ward, followed in a week by a reorganization, which is an event I've never attended, so I'm interested to see how it will look.

Then two weeks after that, I'll move anyway, so it will likely be a moot point. I'd love to stay in my ward with the new place, but obviously that won't be possible. Interesting.

Sometimes I think that the purpose of my life is to have as many different and interesting experiences as I can. If this is in fact my purpose, then I'm failing quite badly, but at least I can say I got the most out of my BYU experience. I have:

-been to the underground network of tunnels under campus. Not only are they real, I've been in them.
-played the bells on the belltower, not only to produce the James Bond theme, but also to make some poor bloke outside the Bean Museum think it was nine o'clock when it was, in fact, two.
-been on top of the SWKT. Also, I've been to the echo-proofed room underneath the ESC, which is cooler than you think. I've been to the central air conditioning area underneath the HBLL that you probably didn't know existed, I've driven on the sidewalks, sneaked around the MTC, watched a video (actually, several videos on various occasions) on a classroom projector after hours, and, well, you get the point.
-joined the 100 Hour Board. The application process is awesome.
-located BYU Info. Physically, I mean.

I know how to break into some of the vending machines, I know how to effectively dodge parking tickets, I am associated with some of the most bizarre nooks and crannies of campus, and really, I feel like I got about as much out of my time at BYU as I could have.

I did not:

-get married.

That surprises me, to be completely honest, but when I look at who I was at BYU, compare him to the person I am now and the trajectory I find myself on, I'm convinced that this is actually okay.

Anyway, I'm back, I'm bloggy, and hopefully I can keep Flossing Philosophy well-tended, because although it's an inanimate object, I find it's a pretty good friend to me.

Also, this.

Another Kingdom Hall visit.

2011-03-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

I went to the Kingdom Hall again yesterday, and I was hoping that the Jehovah's Witnesses would redeem themselves by having a fantastic public talk (similar to the amazing one I saw in New York.)

I wasn't terribly impressed, honestly. It was kind of boring. I'm starting to suspect that my first Kingdom Hall visit just caught them on an unusually good week?

Anyway, I still find them to be doctrinally and culturally fascinating, but my enthusiasm for visiting the Kingdom Hall has taken a serious hit of late.

Next week I'm off to see what Catholics in Utah are like.

But in just a few minutes, I'm off to make sure that Mongolian barbecue is every bit as delicious as I remember it.

Time to file for statehood.

2011-03-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

Today my boss told me that I looked like I'd slept in a dumpster and/or crawled out of a bottle.

Later, he insisted it was my facial expression, but either way I think it might be time for a haircut. Friday photo will likely be my plomf of hair. (Plomf is a word. Deal with it!)

Friday Photo on Sunday

2011-03-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

Rob, Drew, Yeiri, and Joe all relax in the studio after a long day of shooting. (Shooting film, not weapons.)

Look! A post!

2011-03-02T17:07:00.001-08:00

Quick updates before I go grocery shopping:

At work, I'm the Production Assistant for our video clips. I go get food for everyone, pretty much. It's oodles of fun.

My beta draft of Legacy is on the cusp of completion, a fact which fills me with joy.

Alex has moved into my apartment. I'm no longer living alone.

That about does it for now. I think I might start posting copious amounts of video. We'll see.

Beta Read: Legacy

2011-02-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

I'm so so very close to finishing the beta draft of my book. I won't quite make my deadline of tomorrow, I think, but I'm definitely in the home stretch here. I've just hit the part I wrote back in Logan when I was getting really excited about finishing the book, so it's very dialogue heavy, and blocking and description lite, which is making it kind of a chore to finish.

The point is this: I need to clean up three more sections, then write two or three more. I should be able to have this done by the end of the week.

I know several of you have talked to me about beta-reading my book, and I'm very grateful to you. Forgive me, but I haven't been keeping good track of who's willing to beta read and who's not. If you're interested in reading the beta draft (The book's just over 90k, and I'll probably start hounding you for comments in about three weeks) please let me know either in the comments on this post or by email. If I know your email address, you'll be hearing from me shortly.

Thank you in advance to everyone who's helping with this.

How to get Internet in your new apartment

2011-02-25T13:45:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted in a month.

Sorry.

A large reason for this is that my writing energy has been devoted to finishing up the Beta draft of Legacy. Anyway, to prove I'm alive, let me tell you what it costs to get Internet in your apartment:

Some amount of money
16 days
300 cell phone minutes.

When I was done being all phone-talky with Comcast, I told myself I'd make a blog post of them, but then Comcast, Veracity (iProvo), and Qwest were all so comically awful that I couldn't rightfully do so. Neither do I want to make three posts out of it, so here's a brief summary.

Comcast:
Number of minutes on phone: 120+ (Honestly. I was two hours late for my writing dig-in.)
Number of transfers: 7+ (I wasn't counting. This is an estimate.)
Number of times I spoke to someone from Utah (including the time I called the 801 number for the Lindon service center): 0

Eventually, someone told me that if I drove up to Lindon to show them my lease agreement for the apartment, they'd deign to come install a modem in my house. I didn't believe them.

Veracity:
Veracity insisted that my neighbors upstairs had a modem in their apartment, and they wanted to run a line down to mine. The neighbors upstairs are Comcast customers, and when I spoke to them, they checked and did not find any Veracity or iProvo hardware in their home.

When I explained this to the girl on the phone and asked that they just install a modem in my apartment, she became quite agitated and said, "We have a legal right to the modem in your neighbor's apartment!"

I agreed, but I didn't see why that was my problem. I moved on.

Qwest:
Nothing special, just pretty standard bad customer service. Several people with Indian accents told me that my line had been activated. The first time I found out this was not true. The second time this was true (as I later learned) but there was a connection problem in my house. They scheduled a technician, but called later to say he couldn't make it at that time, so he came later.

Honestly, the experience with Qwest was annoying, but not all that bad by itself. The problem was that it followed all the nightmares from Comcast and Veracity. As I was on an eight-minute hold with Qwest, my phone provider sent me an auto-text warning me I was about to go to pay-by-minute because I had used up my minutes for the month.

Anyway, I do have Internet now, provided by Qwest, and so far it's worked adequately. Getting from Point A to Point B was quite the adventure, though.

Friday Photo: Sushi

2011-01-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

I enjoy a tasty piece of sushi while Crello expresses her approval in the background. Merry Christmas to me from Acius!

Big News! re: Balgram

2011-01-19T17:47:00.000-08:00

So, I was going to write a post defending poor Sarah Palin, foolish though she may be, against the ridiculous accusations leveled against her in recent past. However, this has already been done to death, so I'm going to leave it and move on to bigger news.

Balgram's back from her mission!

This is an exciting thing. We expect great things from her in the near future.

And if Palin's still big news on Monday (and oh, I'm sure she will be) maybe I'll write something about her then.

Friday Photo on Monday

2011-01-17T20:30:00.000-08:00

Scytheanna poses on Crello's hand while Ismail develops Gamer Back in the background.

Parakeet Psychology

2011-01-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Did you know I've learned to speak Parakeet? It's true! Here's a typical conversation between my birds:

SCRAPPY: Look, Apollo, it's a Cav!
APOLLO: What's a Cav?
SCRAPPY: It's a thing that feeds us, speaks to us, plays with us, and is always nice to us!
APOLLO: What should we do?
SCRAPPY: We should PANIC!

Weird fact: My birds seem to be more easily agitated around the color red and the color black. Is that in my head? Possibly.

A smattering of scatterings

2011-01-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

A couple thoughts that are more or less random.

-We went to Dragon's Keep on Saturday. ("We" being myself, Urik, Crello, and my two geeky friends Drew and Janci) We played some WarMachine, including a ridiculously epic (re: long) match between Crello and Janci, which Crello eventually won based on some wacky dice rolls. While we were there, I saw the expansion to Rogue Trader, including vehicular combat rules. I thumbed through the rules, realized I could imitate and potentially improve them, and saved money by not buying the book.

-I did buy an adventure module there, though, because it came with a neato DM screen. Rogue Trader has, I think, the best modules I've ever read. Without giving away too much about the module (because at least one of my players reads this blog) they include contingency plans for:

-If the party kidnaps or kills a certain ally.
-If the party randomly bombards a friendly planet.

and many other tasty examples. Obviously their test group is awesome.

-Drew pointed out that his job is cooler than mine. This is true. It made me wonder whether I could make a living being a DM. Even if I could, I'd still aspire to be an author.

-On that note: Gamers II: Dorkness Rising. Yes.

-Today was interesting. Partially this is because the big boss was at work, and I had to stand there and smile while he talked about how awesome the company was.

Friday Photo: go gg

2011-01-07T15:35:00.001-08:00

A Provo driver (unintentionally?) expresses his love of StarCraft.

lol

2011-01-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

An observation:

lol has gone from being a term that only computer-literate people used to being a term that makes you sound like a below-average intelligence teenaged girl.

I was going to write a whole post about this, but I think that sums it up.

And I have 4 minutes of battery life left. G'night.

Atheism and Otherwise: Some thoughts

2011-01-03T21:46:00.000-08:00

I was once a guest in the home of a friend who was, at the time, in the process of leaving The Church. Apparently feeling the need to explain himself, he listed for me and my company the reasons he was becoming disenchanted with our faith. Without going into too much detail, I summarize his arguments thus:

If you accept every account supporting the existence of God to be unfairly biased, and every account denying the existence of God as balanced and factual, then it follows that the evidence indicates that God does not exist.

In a related conversation with a devoted Christian woman in the backstage area of a playhouse, I had explained to me what I would call the opposite argument:

If you accept every account supporting the existence of God as balanced and factual, and every account denying the existence of God as unfairly biased, then it follows that the evidence indicates that God exists.

Before I go any further, I will make clear that I believe strongly and deeply in God, and I make no claim that my own arguments on the subject of His existence are unbiased. In fact, I believe the most intelligent approach to this question is:

If you accept that all accounts that either support or deny the existence of God are biased, you will realize that it becomes a matter of which side to invest your faith in.

Both sides of this question make their arguments frequently and loudly, and the fact of the matter is that you must make a decision on this question. Both sides have everything to lose. If God exists, and I live my life as if He does not, then I tread a hazardous course in regards to my eternal welfare. If God does not exist and I live my life as if he does, then I am placing unnecessary restrictions on myself*. Belief in God is also blamed for many atrocities that have been committed throughout human history, but that argument only holds up if you very carefully pick and choose which parts of history you want to look at, so I'm mostly ignoring it.

Neither side of this argument can claim intellectual superiority on this question. Religion is by nature based on faith, and science is incapable of proving a negative. It falls to each individual to make their own decision on the matter, and from a strictly scientific point of view, both stances are equally valid, and you are accountable only to your own conscience.

*Admittedly, people who believe in God are, on average, happier than people who do not, but I'm trying to represent both sides of the argument.

Friday Photo: Autzen

2010-12-31T09:51:00.000-08:00

Autzen sees the light, and decides not to eat my birds. Shortly after this photo was taken, he joined a Jain monastery and vowed to never harm another living thing.

Parakeets, puppies, and people

2010-12-28T14:00:00.001-08:00

This week, I've living at Shana's place with her two dogs Peyton and Autzen whilst she is off spelunking in volcanoes. This isn't the first time I've done this sort of thing, and despite years of building up objections to tiny terrier-sized dogs, I rather like these two, and living with them is fun.

My birds, however, have not overcome their reservations. There's a problem that both parakeets and puppies realize how delicious puppies find parakeets.

Normally, I solve this problem by sticking the birds in a different room than the one the dogs run around in. Specifically, the bedroom where I'm sleeping, and then at night I bring them out to the living room and lock the dogs in the bedroom with me. This is usually a working arrangement, but this week the bedroom was freezing, and would do nothing to remind the parakeets of the tropics, so I just decided to let them endure, and brought them out into the living room with myself and the dogs.

After about five minutes of chaos and yelling at overexcited puppies, they got the point, and now dog, bird and man are all living in relative peace with each other. I call this a happy ending.

A Moment for Arthas

2010-12-27T10:41:00.001-08:00

I'm aware this is two really geeky posts in a row. Sorry.
but not really
With the fall of the Lich King, I think it's important for all of us to stop and remember something. Arthas had much to atone for, and I'm not just talking about the catastrophic horrors he unleashed on Azeroth. (really, those gave us a pretty neat expansion, so we should thank him for that.) But alas, Arthas is single-handedly responsible for a ridiculous quantity of predictable villainy, tooth-grindingly awful dialogue, and more or less making WarCraft III's storyline a migraine-inducing experience.

But on that note, can we not find redemption for young Arthas? Can one who has fallen so far have some glimmer of hope?

I say to you he can. Let us pause for a moment and reflect on how cool he looked when he stormed into the throne room of Lordaeron to kill his father.

Whatever we may think of the chap, he's gone now. It's time for a new campy villain: Deathwing!

Friday Photo. On Saturday

2010-12-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

Granny shows Jenny the Christmas tree.

Are you a Cylon?

2010-12-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

Don't worry--this isn't a spoiler. You find out Boomer's a Cylon in the first episode.

Are you concerned that you or someone you love is a Cylon? Take this quiz (or have the loved one take it) and set your fears to rest!

1. What is your favorite thing to do? (Highlight below after you answer!)
-If you said "Making out" or "Picking people up by the neck," you're a Cylon!
2. When you die, is your consciousness downloaded into a new body identical to the first?
- If you said "yes," you're either a Cylon or someone who plays video games.
3. How do you pluralize "Cylon?"
- If you just said "Cylon" again, you're a Cylon. If you add an S, you're a human. A pathetic, inferior human.

Provo Tabernacle

2010-12-18T11:30:00.001-08:00

The sun insistently shines through the smoke as the people of Provo say goodbye to a beloved cultural landmark.

Cavanian RPG

2010-12-15T22:55:00.000-08:00

So I've made that final step.

I've been stewing over this idea for a couple months, but I finally started applying layers of polish and watching it form into something that I'm falling madly in love with.

It's a tabletop RPG system based lovingly on the one found in the XDM manual by Tracy Hickman. XDM is condescending, but it makes some good points.

I was going to write an essay about my experience as a DM and the foundational philosophy for this system--and believe me, if you want to know, I'll tell you--but instead I think I'll just present the system and hear what feedback you might have, o massive readership.

CHARACTER CREATION:
You have four stats. PHYSICAL, MENTAL, MAGICAL, LUCK. The first three start with seven points in each of them, LUCK has only one point in it. You may redistribute these points however you want, but no stat can drop below 1.

Write a name on the character sheet. You have a character now.

HOW TO RESOLVE ABSOLUTELY EVERY PROBLEM IN THE WORLD:
This is where it gets really complicated:
IF THE ACTION IS SUCCEED/FAIL (Like breaking down a door or solving a Sudoku):
The Storyteller (or DM, if you insist) says, "Roll [stat], difficulty [number between 2 and 6], circumstance [number]."

You then roll xd6, where x is the number of the associated stat. Every number that equals or exceeds the difficulty is a success. If you have a number of successes equal to or greater than the circumstance, you successfully complete the desired action, and ace the Sudoku.

IF THE ACTION HAS DEGREES OF SUCCESS (Beating up a freshman, Writing an essay):
Same as above, but there's no circumstance roll. The number of successes you roll determines how effective the action is.

HOW DOES MAGIC WORK?
It's magic. In other words, the Storyteller will tell you a magic system ("You're all jedis again!" for example) and you just use it as creatively and awesomely as you can. The Storyteller controls the Difficulty/Circumstance, so s/he can keep a tab on things.

That's it. That's the whole system. If you've ever played a tabletop RPG with me and you're in my area, you can expect I'll be inviting you to a test game in the near future. If you think you'd be interested, you should let me know.

Either way, I'd be interested in feedback from them what cares about this sort of thing.

Cataclysm

2010-12-13T22:38:00.001-08:00

Crello took up WoW yesterday. She's officially started down that dark road. I reopened my account, and we, along with Curt and another friend started our adventures in Azeroth anew.

Cata is prettier than WoW was, that's something. Also, my character is profoundly ugly.

Anyway, I'm very tired, but I thought it was important to tell you all this news.

POST SIX HUNDRED

2010-12-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

Kind of weird, actually, that post six hundred would come after an unannounced month-long hiatus, but here it is. Apparently this is my six-hundredth post, although you should bear in mind, o massive readership, that this counts all my unposted drafts that are sitting around, too.

As you can probably tell, I rarely redraft my blog posts. I sort of mentally vomit my thoughts into the text window and send them out into the world. Nonetheless, there are some ideas that are too half-baked or personal to even post on my blog, so there you have it.

Anyway, it's time for my traditional check-in to see how I've... uh... improved... Let's have a look at five hundred.

...

Oh wow. Problematic. From five-hundred:

- Having a definite plan on when to go to Russia, in addition to receiving money for so doing
- Having sent RHIS off to a publisher in addition to at least one other work (Honestly, Cav, just send off NaNo 2007, you pathetic hoser)
- Holding a piece of British candy (Why not?)

So, I don't have a definite plan of when I'm going to Russia, but I have a good excuse, past self! I'm dating Crello, and we've been happily dating since April, so I kind of wanted to see where that was going first. I have a bad habit of dating girls and then leaving the country, well not this time!

RHIS was put on indefinite suspension for a variety of reasons, but NaNo 07 has bounced, and Legacy is nearing its beta release. I've kind of been behind on everything because transitioning to this new job has proven to be quite daunting.

I am not holding a piece of British candy. Unless you count my mother's fudge, which you should.

As for post 700, I would really really like to write it from a foreign nation, and I have some semi-fluid plans to go to Korea, but please see the comment about Crello above.

So, yeah.

-Post 700 will be written from a foreign nation.
-I will have three works out to agents or editors at the time of the writing of post 700.

Good luck, me.

Other than that, I'm just now swinging into financial independence any time now. I plan to move out of my parents' basement in January, and of course the last week of December will be spent at Shana's house. I'm working a job that I like and pays moderately well, and Crello and I are still dating quite happily.

Sasha died, and was apparently male. I was going to write a post about this, but it was going to be too emo, and I didn't want that to be my first post back. I miss him, but not as much as his cagemate Scrappy does. Scrappy and I have spent quite a lot of time together, because pathetic as it may sound, I really feel like she's the only other one who appreciates what a gem we lost in Sasha. I probably should get her another cagemate, but that's not a decision I want to make lightly.

Christmas is coming, and I've done my shopping already, for the most part. Whee.

I have a new phone. If you like yourself, don't sign up with T-Mobile. They were fine enough so far as hardware is concerned, but their customer service, in order to cut costs, has been outsourced to the coldest available pit in Hell. Careful.

I think that's it for news. I otter get my reading done for my writing group.

DTRs: A Quote

2010-11-08T16:45:00.000-08:00

"It is a well-established fact that DTRs are destructive to nature." - Cav

Don't you hate quote boards? I do. They're stupid and remarkably unfunny. A bunch of mental droppings splayed out without any context or explanation.

It's like Twitter, but less impressive.

A text in the night

2010-10-25T18:03:00.001-07:00

I don't know if I announced this on my blog before, but I switched phones a couple months ago, and due to Cavanian stupidity issues, I didn't transfer any of the numbers from the old phone, which is now literally in two pieces.

So if your number is in my phone, it means we've had some kind of phone contact in the last couple months.

See where I'm going with this?

Last night I got a text that read exactly this:

Having a Frosty... thinking of you.

Now, I intend no disrespect to the sender of this text message (indeed, I don't know who s/he is!) but I could not for the life of me think who would send me such a text, especially considering that Crello, who doesn't even own a cell phone, was standing next to me at the time. So I narrowed it down to two options:

1- A long lost friend with whom I have had a frosty.
2- A wrong number. That is to say, someone meant to select someone else in their address book, but accidentally picked me.

So I had quite the conundrum. If the sender was (1), then I couldn't very well send a message saying "Who are you?" That would be downright improper. I could explain that I broke my old phone and none of the numbers transferred, but that's usually interpreted as code for "I hate you and therefore deleted you from my phone." Even if I did somehow get past the awkward "Who are you?" text, what if this is an ex-flame making a convoluted booty call? I don't feel like dealing with that. Clearly, I am paralyzed by lack of options. My wisest (and most passive) solution would be to do nothing.

What if, then, it was (2)? Well, that's simple enough. One time I sent a pretty darned mushy text to a girl--or at least I intended to-- and got this in response:

Hey Cav this is [Co-worker] I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to send that to me, but anyway I'm married and straight.

This made me laugh and blush, but not quite in that order.

Anyway, clearly the best response to this kind of text is to ignore it. I wasn't the intended recipient, so there's no need to make a fuss.

Of course, I opted for neither of these fine choices. Instead, I responded to the mystery text with what seemed to me a perfectly logical and diplomatic response:

As you should be!

...

...

That was the end of the text conversation.

Beta time

2010-10-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I got back a batch of comments on my Alpha, and I realize that all that time I wanted to spend playing StarCraft 2 during my break was spent playing Civilization V and panicking about the fact that I don't have a worthwhile job.

Anyway, that "break" is over, and it's time to crack down on writing my Beta. I've got a bit more housekeeping to do than I expected, but that's okay; it should be enjoyable.

My first project is to flesh out some details a bit more, so I need to off and draw a map.

It's... optimistic... to think the Beta will be ready by November 1, but that's still the goal. Early November would be great if I can get it done by then.

If anyone is interested in reading the Beta manuscript when it's ready, please contact me between now and early November. Thanks.

Rights and Agency

2010-10-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

I'm back, and I have some questions I wanted to shoot at you, o massive readership, because I've been thinking about something.

1. What are "rights?"

Americans love to talk about rights. We talk about God-given rights, we argue that all men are created equal, we get deeply concerned and offended when people seem to be encroaching on the rights of others, and highly indignant when someone tries to take away our rights.

In almost any policy debate in this country, the issue of "rights" will be raised. It's kind of an American buzzword.

What are rights? Who decides what rights are and what they aren't? Is there such a thing as a God-given right?

Americans generally agree that men have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Constitution further outlines other rights we have, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right to trial by jury, etc.

Obviously you can take away a man's life. Additionally, our country has plentiful examples of removing someone's right to free speech, bearing arms, and even fair trials.

So are rights just decided by consensus? I mean, do we just respect people's rights when it's convenient, or do we believe that they have a truly sacrosanct quality? Does having a right to do something actually mean anything, or are these rights just handed to us by the government that we were originally afraid was going to take them away? If the government is just tolerating our rights, are they rights, or allowances?

Just some thoughts to warm you up. Here's the real question:

Is it possible to take away a person's liberty?

Now, that's a stupid question, I know. Let me try again:

Is it possible to take away someone's agency? Is agency a gift from God? If agency is a gift from God, does that mean He is able to take it away from us?

In Mormon understanding, one of the big flaws with Lucifer's plan was that it would remove mankind's agency. The fact that he could even propose such a plan, and then lead spirits after him out of God's presence, obviously demonstrates that agency existed before this life.

So is agency something God has given to us, or is it a fundamental universal law? Is it both?

So hit me, o massive readership. What are rights? What is agency? Does anyone have any profound thoughts on this?

Hiatus

2010-09-25T16:56:00.001-07:00

I meant to mention this sooner, but Flossing Philosophy is on hiatus until I get the Alpha draft of Legacy done. Expect to hear from me again in just over a week.

Things are almost happening

2010-09-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Well, as I'm at a loss to say anything profound, I'll just give an update of what's going down in Cavville.

I'm on the cusp of greatness.

See, this is how it goes: moving my manuscript from pre-Alpha into Alpha is (surprise!) taking longer than previously anticipated, but in order to keep myself moving, I've released the first installment to my Alpha readers. (Big big thank you, Alpha readers!) Already two of them have sent me some feedback, which is nice.

I've almost paid off Robin. That is to say, I think I'm about a month deep. Maybe a month and a half. I think it's going to end alongside the month of October.

That's really it. My job is still my job, although I got my raise (wheee, I make the same amount I did at traffic now). Crello and I are still planning to go to a Kung Fu class, but we need to get out to USSD this week. Apparently USSD (United Studios of Self Defense) was bought out by ULTIMATE DEFENSE!, which is a silly name for a studio.

I will not, under any circumstances, go to Balgram's dojo. Her sensei is a megalomaniac, and I don't deal well with people who have obsessive love for themselves.

Unrelatedly, I saw Inception this last weekend with Shana and Curt. (and Crello, naturally.) It was great. I said then--and I stand by this statement--that it's the next logical step in Matrix-style storytelling. I don't want to spoil anything until it's at least in dollar theaters, so I'll leave it at that. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, and my mancrush on Chris Nolan is cemented.

Oh. Scars of Mirrodin comes out this weekend. Hopefully Team Disco will be able to make their debut at a Magic event. We'll see.

Kung Fu

2010-09-15T18:42:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking lately about getting back into martial arts.

Why, you ask? Because I saw Karate Kid, and it reminded me how cool martial arts was, especially when it comes down to throwing your jacket at a wooden pole.

Is that a superficial reason to want to get into martial arts? I guess so. I'm trying to remember what made me want to do it back in high school. Although I don't remember specifically, I'm mostly sure it was a movie. O massive readership, what martial arts movies came out between 1998 and 2002? Help me out here?

Anyway, however stupid my reasons for doing martial arts in high school, I spent a lot of happy time with the Jasukai dojo in Orem, and then after the mission I really enjoyed what time I was able to make to attend my Jiu Jitsu classes at BYU. The fact of the matter is, I like martial arts, and I like having a body that can do what I tell it to do reliably.

Did I mention I'm getting fat? I'm not fat, not yet, but I'm getting fat, and this is basically unacceptable.

So I'm looking at a Shaolin Kung Fu place in Sandy, which is a heckuva drive, but they don't require contracts, which speaks very highly of them.

Now back to editing.

Book Report: Legacy

2010-09-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

Editing, it turns out, isn't a trivial task.

I finished the first draft, as I advertised, and I took Friday through Sunday to just not write at all, which was... well, not actually relaxing. My spare moments have been spent thinking up how I'm going to adjust the story and make it awesomesauce.

For example: Protectors (or Immaculates) are Sensory and Force Placers. Right now, they just basically hurl invisible balls of physics at each other, and the result is causing people to look awkward and fall over in a fight.

Well, Cav, what if they had to use light to focus those little balls of physics? Maybe it helps them focus on their abilities. Suddenly, they're hurling balls of distorted color at each other! See? Doesn't change the story hardly none at all, and now the fights look way cooler!

Who did murder Bishop Dauren, and why? I raise these questions in the first chapter to give a sort of murder-mystery feel to pull in the reader, but I never actually resolve who the second shooter on the grassy knoll is. (Actually, I do, but it's given very little attention and the motivations aren't clear.)

Also, the ending, which I won't discuss in detail, needs a lot of work. The book is slated to be the first in a trilogy which also happens to be a stand-alone. However, right now it reads like the first book in a trilogy.

Anyway, I'm slogging away at Legacy (working title. My Alpha and Beta readers get to help me title the book, because man, am I bad at titles.) and I hope to have the Alpha ready to go in two weeks... that's... September 27th. Then I'll get some Alpha readers to flash-read it and give me feedback. (In fact, now that I think of it, I may want to recruit my Alpha readers sooner, and start them reading what's already done at the end of this week. Hm.) Anyway, I'll move it into Beta hopefully by mid-October, and then pass it out to Beta readers. Depending on if I make it to World Fantasy (not looking likely, sadly) I'll bump up that timetable a little bit. Anyway, my Beta readers will probably get a full month to read the book, and then I move it into Omega over the last half of November. (Probably I'll do NaNo again this year? Probably?) Then Legacy is in the mail and off to an editor on December 1st.

Wish me luck!

... and now I'm going to send out some Alpha reader solicitation emails.

I meant for this blog post to talk about what was going on in my life, but then the entire thing was about my book. That's how it goes. It's also not an inaccurate reflection of what's going on in my life.

Eskayp 2: Day Four

2010-09-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

10,503 words later, it is DONE!

I'd include an excerpt, or even the word count of the first draft, but I have really run my battery down to the bones, so that information will have to wait for the post-week debriefing.

Anyway, the pre-Alpha is done. I expect to have the Alpha ready to go in two weeks, and my writing group is currently on fire, so I shall have to go recruit some Alpha readers. I expect the Beta will be ready to roll by October 1st. I will probably put up a recruitment post for Beta readers on my blog before that time, so if you're interested in reading Legacy, or you're interested in being my best friend forever, stay tuned.

Oh, and my beard looks like a fuzzy face. Not very exciting.

Eskayp 2: Day Three

2010-09-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

7,383 words today, and I'm only just hitting my stride. Alas, my battery needs to be taken home for a pep talk, though, so away I go. Things are looking good for finishing up the project, though. Let me see if I can get this beard pic to work.

There we go. I think I just look dusty, but whatever. I'll look like Riker soon enough.

Some folks in the cafe at Borders here are having a low-level discussion of StarCraft II. I was tempted to go talk to them, but then I realized I didn't really care. StarCraft II and I will have a sweet, sweet reunion on Saturday, I think, but as for right now, I'm thoroughly enjoying writing.

Today's clip comes from an unexpected POV, as I was struggling to find someone who could bear witness to a bunch of events that I want to be in the book without switching POVs to the "bad guys." So here we have Alksen, who is unapologetically based on Alex from my writing group, as he goes to fulfill an assignment for the resistance group he's a member of. The Golden Weeks have just come to an end, and he's, well, thinking about it.

In the next draft, there will obviously be blocking, and probably some dialogue with other train passengers, but for now, you can just enjoy having a look at his train of thought. Bon appetit!

Alksen stared out the train window at the first night sky to grace the Holy Voice in two weeks. Now the world could begin its natural heating and cooling cycle and bring temperatures back under control. One of the great annual ironies of life was that disciples of the Holy Voice looked forward so much to the Golden Weeks, and for the first few days, the entire Empire was nothing but festivals and celebration. Business endeavors were started, marriage proposals were made, vacations were planned, and generally people were happy. But as the reality of an endless day set in, the demeanor of the disciples would steadily decay, and by the end of the two week baking, people were hot, surly, and their body's natural concept of time was all but destroyed to the point where people were virtually begging for night again.

It was analogous to the Empire itself, really. Imperial historians would have the world believe that the Holy Voice was founded by the Unnamed as a beacon for the righteous, which would be protected by divine providence from all threats, and where humans could live in peace and joy. After the Liberation War, the Empire's army was disbanded, and the Holy Voice became the only nation in the world to successfully deter attacks for two centuries, using nothing but the memory of their former glory as a credible threat against attackers.

But that was the Holy Voice that was. When training to be an Evangelist in the Academy, Alksen had learned that their faith no longer depended on the divine assistance of the Unnamed, but rather on the manipulations of Placers, and strangling people's free will by seizing control of their emotions. The Holy Voice's power was nothing more than an illusion.

The Unnamed had another aspect, a rarely mentioned part of the deity: The Silent One. When the people had finally turned from righteousness, when they had quieted the Holy Voice, as it were, then Silence would fall, and the Silent One would remove the sinful nation from the world. It was clear to Alksen that the Holy Voice had, in fact, turned from its original intentions, and now Silence was falling.

He looked at the starry sky. The Golden Weeks were over. Night was here.

Beard Update

2010-09-07T14:34:00.001-07:00

Here it is in a separate post, because Blogger is behaving like a spoiled child.

Eskayp 2: Day Two

2010-09-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Beard pic isn't working. In fact, Blogger isn't working. I'll consider myself lucky to get this text printed.

So, I guess 8k a day is an okay amount, but I want to have another 10k day, like the one I had as an AWESOME finale to Eskayp 1. Anyway, I'm happy with 8k, and once again, I'll promise myself that I'll do some writing tonight, even though I was so zonkers lasnight that I actually got very little done, except hanging out with the family I'm staying with, which turns out to be a great family.

You might notice this post is going up a little early, incidentally; it's because my battery life isn't, apparently, what it used to be, and I'm in the red. This is further support for my Write Something Later theory on life.

Oh, and with some prompting from the Man of the House, I've decided to go with a full facial beard, which is to say I'm only shaving my neck. Now, as all you Mormons out there know, the neck beard is the most righteous kind of facial hair, but, well, it's a risk I'll have to take. When you hang out at bookstores, you tend to meet the fringes of moral society anyway, right?

Anyway, without further ado, let me go find a snippet from today's writing for you.

Okay, here we go. This is a clip about a character who's quickly becoming my favorite: Ramsen. He's an Immaculate (like a policeman) who has become disaffected by the brutal regime he lives in, and has basically been antagonizing everybody in his quest to Make Things Right. Here he explains to another character why he's been acting the way he has.

Also, commentary on this is more than welcome, but all of this is in Pre-Alpha format (I haven't edited it at all) because my focus this week is on generating new content. Editing will happen later. So be as brutal as you'd like, but forgive things like "which" replacing "with" or other such stupidities (the kind you usually forgive in my blog posts themselves, for example) because I'll catch them on my next comb-through.

Let me know if you like these clips, because if everyone is just groaning and skipping over them, I'll just hang onto them until they've been edited a bit.

Enjoy!

When they got into the house, Ailia whispered to him, "So, are we on their side or not?"

"We are on the side of the Unnamed, Ailia. It is in everyone's interest for the Holy Voice to repel the invaders. I don't see any reason to resist them. We need to get to Tarriv to stop Sragen."

"Ramsen," said Ailia quietly, trying to be as gentle as she could, "We can't do this. There are only two of us. You want to topple the corruption in the Holy Voice, fine, but you also want to stop Sragen, their most dangerous opponent. The Crea will undoubtedly try to kill us now, because they seem to have sided with Sragen, too, and yet you let Pheif live. At some point, you're going to have to compromise your principles, or we're going to be killed."

Ramsen bit his lip, and took some deep, slow breaths through his nose. "I compromised my principles, Ailia..." His voice caught. "I compromised my principles when I didn't go back to fight the invaders here. When I hid like a rodent while they oppressed and brutalized disciples."

"What you're calling a compromise of principles is what I call common sense, Ramsen! If you'd gone back to fight, the only thing that would be different right now is that you and I would both be dead! So do you want to stick by your arbitrary principles, or do you actually want to make a difference? Do you want to follow a code of conduct, or change the world?"

"Both."

Ailia sighed, exasperated.

"Ailia, the moment we give up our beliefs is the moment we cease to be working for the right cause. I want to see things change, but I'm not Sragen. I want to see them change in the right way. If we stand by our beliefs, everything will fall into place."

"Do you really believe that?"

"You might not remember, Ailia, but when I was complaining on the beach that the Unnamed wasn't helping us, you told me..." Ramsen stopped, his voice softened. "You told me that the Unnamed had protected you by sending me." Ramsen's arms dropped to his sides. "Well, I'm starting to wonder if maybe you were right. Maybe the Unnamed needs us to do something grander. To change the world. How can we do that if we abandon what we know is right? And so I will act with honor, and I will be just, and I will not compromise my principles, no matter what."

Ailia looked at him, perplexed. He was really devoted to this, with a commitment that was borderline suicidal.

"Ailia, I feel this is something I have to do. But I won't make you come with me."

So that was it, then. Take on the Holy Voice. Take on Sragen and the Silence. Take on the Crea. Their only ally would be the invisible and frustratingly distant Unnamed.

And each other.

Ailia stepped forward, and wrapped her arms around Ramsen. She pressed her cheek against his chest. His clothes were moist and warm from being baked under the golden sky for so long. He smelled of sweat.

Ramsen draped his arms over her shoulders and pulled her into him, holding her tight. As he felt him breathing, listened to his heart beat, confirming that, no matter how absurd the world had decided to become, he was real, she felt safe.

"You are a brave, brave, brave idiot."

Eskayp 2: Day One-ish

2010-09-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Actually, I arrived here in Undisclosed Location yesterday, but I didn't feel inclined to blog. Now, I'm pretty sure everyone who even cares remotely where I am already knows, but still, maybe I was lying to you all, and really I went somewhere else!

Maybe, but not likely.

Anyway, I spent a goodly chunk of this morning finishing up my application to Deseret Connect, which much help from Shana, so my word count today is only 5,297, but I plan to write a bit more tonight and then tack it on to my total for tomorrow. Safe diff, right?

Anyway, my battery is very very nearly dead, and I need to go have a barbecue with the family I'm staying with and their uber-cute kids, so I'm including an UN-EDITED excerpt from today's writing. This is the most intimate look we'll get in the book at a second magic system, which I don't plan to fully explain unless there's a sequel. Enjoy!

Comments are welcome. Also, please note that I plan to do something weird with my facial hair, but I haven't decided what yet, so I'm just letting it all grow for the time being.

Karsu's thoughts were not his own.

He had come to lying on his back in Gilnsport. The sky was still golden, so he could only determine that he'd been unconscious for less than a week, which didn't really narrow his options by much. He was mostly sure that the creature had killed him, but if that was the case, then his next life was an awful lot like its predecessor, and that simply wouldn't do for Karsu. Given his standing in the Holy Voice, Karsu was convinced that he was destined to return to life as a gnat, or some similarly glorious species like that.

But here he was, still Karsu, laying on his back in hot, dusty Gilnsport, staring at the golden sky.

Upon turning his head, Karsu realized that he had somehow killed the creature. Its form lay inert and lifeless on the ground.

Karsu was pushed to his feet by himself. This was the first indication that he was no longer alone in his head, as he had of himself expressed no desire to get up. It was like he was a puppet, and he had handed the strings to someone else.

He wanted to turn his head to look at the dead creature again, but he could not. Control of his body had been seized from him.

It wasn't long after that when the noise started. It was a voice, perhaps, or perhaps just the rumblings of another's mind, but Karsu had the constant sensation of an earthquake taking place in his head, and he no longer had to wonder what it would be like to have a mountain whisper sweet nothing in his ear.

Of course, Karsu had never wondered what that would be like, but he had received a free education in it regardless.

Karsu walked through Gilnsport, apparently greeting the other invaders in the town in a language he didn't understand. He was heading toward the ranches on the outskirts of town.

It took a few hours to get to the ranches, but over that period of time, Karsu realized that he was losing connection with his senses. He registered that he should be tired, but only on the purely intellectual level. His feet probably were sore, but they were little more than a memory at this point.

Can you read my thoughts? he thought. Free thought seemed to be his last fortress, and the thought of losing that terrified Karsu.

In answer, the mountains continued whispering their gravelly nonsense.

Please don't kill me. Karsu asked. In his head, it didn't sound pathetic. It was merely a request, like he'd asked someone to hand him something he had dropped. Since that's how it seemed to Karsu, he had to assume that it seemed the same way to the thing which controlled him.

Again, the answer was the movement of rocks. The sound should have been driving Karsu mad, but instead it began fading into the background. Contantly hearing a landslide in ones own head was no stranger than losing control of ones own body. Karsu would have shrugged. He couldn't help but be curious what intentions his parasitic visitor had for him.

Whatever the extent of the creature's access to Karsu's thoughts, apparently it wasn't a one-way arrangement. As one of Gilnsport's farmhouses came into view, Karsu realized that he had known his intentions back in Gilnsport. He had known this was where he was coming.

It was also how he now knew that he was going to fetch a horse.

His final destination was in Tarriv.

Stealing a horse and dashing off to Tarriv was fine with Karsu, of course. He wasn't really sure what he would do there, but maybe if he could get control of his body back, he could visit his brother and get better information regarding this war.

At the excitement of the gravelly noise, Karsu realized that bringing his brother to the forefront of his thoughts was probably a mistake. He would have to avoid thinking about anything important.

Now how am I supposed to do that? he thought furiously.

He had come to a field where a group of horses was grazing peacefully. They didn't react to his presence in their corral, which was apparently a good thing.

Karsu carefully and silently approached one of the horses in the field, extending his palms toward it. His intention now was specific; for some reason he wanted to push the horse.

As Karsu laid his hands on the horse's flank, he felt a strange sensation, like all the air being drained out his lungs, and his body losing his strength.

For one, brief moment, Karsu was in control of his body again.

A rush of sensation flowed over him. He could smell the horses. He could feel the pressing heat of the sky. His feet ached terribly from the long, persistent walk. His body, devoid of any commands, fell limp. Karsu caught himself and kept his feet.

I'm free!

Then an energy rushed into his body, like the force of being bowled down by a bear. His body was once again seized by the power that had held it before, and the horse fell clumsily to the ground.

Karsu felt strong. His body was full of energy and vigor.

What did you do?

The gravelly voice started muttering at him again. He began running, running away from the corral. He jumped the fence, and began running in a direction Karsu couldn't determine.

I'm sorry for asking.

Karsu ran at a full sprint for several hours.

How am I doing this?

The sound of the gravelly voice disappeared behind the invigorating rush of the wind past Karsu's ears. Although the sensation in his feet, arms, and chest had been denied him, he could still feel the breeze against his face. It was hot, to be sure, but it was a breeze no less, and with the absence of fatigue or pain, it was the only sensation for Karsu to focus on, and it felt wonderful.

Karsu ran, he estimated, for two days.

Actual Star Trek Quote:

2010-08-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

"Your old titles mean nothing here, Captain." - Some evil sorcerer on Star Trek

Don't believe me? Look here.
Can you believe that site actually exists?

Blixit, the brave little probe.

2010-08-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I entered Blizzard's short story writing contest, which means I committed the unpardonable sin.

I wrote fanfic.

I know, I know. See, the thing is, I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to write about a gaming universe the way it is actually presented?" I mean, respawn alone makes pretty much every MMO "story" a joke. (Here's to hoping, Guild Wars 2!)

So anyway, I bounced the idea around in my head a bit and pretty much ignored it, but then today Daniel (the man who left and thereby destroyed my writing group) asked me to proofread his World of WarCraft fanfic which he was submitting. I gladly did.

It was well-written. It was fanfic crap, but it was well-written fanfic crap.

So I told Crello that for Productivity Time that day (Monday, if you must know) I would be writing a StarCraft-based short story about what it's actually like to live through a StarCraft battle.

The story is told from the point of view of Blixit, the brave little probe who believes he's destined for more. He plays a small role in the epic struggle between dark green Protoss and pink Terran, but after many close shaves and a forbidden love affair, he realizes that in StarCraft/war, there are no small roles.

Anyway, just to cover my bases, I'm not publishing the story here, but I threw it at a bunch of you (I wrote the whole stupid thing about two hours before the submission deadline) on Google Docs for emergency editing. If you're a StarCraft fan, I will send you a copy, and you'll probably find it funny. If you're not a StarCraft fan, I advise you not to waste your time, but I'll send it to you anyway, if you'd like.

On that note, I'm going on another writing retreat soon. The date and location have both been finalized, but I'm going to keep both a secret for the time being.

Note: Timestamp is inaccurate. My bad. This was posted just shy of midnight.

The hidden art

2010-08-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Music, as I learned on Monday, has a lot of subtext. It's been around me all my life, and apparently I was never paying attention to the right parts.

Crello invited me to accompany her and her family to the Scera Shell, where they were holding an outdoor musical concert dedicated, more or less, to John Williams. They played E.T., they played Harry Potter, and of course, they played Star Wars as the finale. It was a highly enjoyable show, and it was the second time in my life that I'd been offered exclusive seating in a huge event which put me right up by the stage. (The first time, ironically, was tickets obtained from my British friend, John Williams, who put me within spitting distance of the podium at the First Presidency Christmas Devotional back in high school.) (No spitting took place, however.)

The concert was wonderful, but I caught myself staring upward at the sky a lot. Most of my memories of the Scera Shell involve sitting back on the grass, in the darkness with friends, watching with fascination as Percy saved the Dauphin from the villainous French, being dazzled by the intensity and righteous fury of the revolutionaries, or gazing up into the sky as a lineup of talented storytellers would make me laugh, think, or reminisce. The Scera Shell is Utah Valley's answer to the Shakespeare Festival, if you ask me. It's a local place where one can go to be enchanted.

Sitting up in a plastic chair two meters from the stage as I struggled to perceive the night sky past the spotlights was an entirely different experience.

I guess I don't understand music. Even in retrospect, I think I may have preferred to lay back on the grass, embracing what shards of heaven were made available to me, and allowing the music to run off with my imagination, but in the company of Crello's family, I realized that my primitive grasp of music was not unlike the teenage boy at the Geex Tournament who walked into the semifinals of StarCraft II and laughed derisively as he declared that if you put a burrowed zergling in an opponent's base, it will take him "forever" to figure out what was going on.

Like that boy, I could technically identify what was going on in front of me, but my lack of understanding was so profound that I didn't even realize I had it. I'm not proud of this, but during the show I may or may not have turned to Crello and asked whether the conductor actually did anything.

As we walked back to the car, the House of Crello began, with giggling excitement, to discuss the show we'd seen. They discussed the emotional flow of the musicians, and the musical "jokes" inserted in the melodies. They discussed the progression of the pieces, the ferocity of the encore, the psychology of the music, and for the most part, I didn't understand a word of it. If I'd had several minutes to think about it and three lifelines for support, I might have eventually been able to tell you the name of every instrument in the group. Maybe.

I'm not musically literate. I'm the guy whose own mother dismissed him as totally lacking in musical talent. I just sing really low notes in church to try and bury my voice beneath those who can do songs justice. The thing is, I'm okay with all this. I am not requesting (nor do I desire) pity. I'm good at plenty of things, and music isn't one of them.

I guess it was just eye-opening to realize how much depth there is to this world--how much of it has been staring me in the face. Now that I've been given a view of how insignificant my fragment of understanding music was, what does that say of my understanding of the visual arts? What hidden mysteries of drama left without my ever having tasted them? What aspects of literature have I never seen, or never bothered to have seen? It makes me wonder.

I love music. I love that tiny fragment of comprehension I have for it, because that fragment is what lets me stare up at the stars and let Vivaldi make my spirit dance with the night. I don't know how he does it, and I don't know that I ever will, and that's fine. I know that the world is a place of deep and profound beauty.

And really, that is enough for me.

I write, so you will read.

2010-08-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

I finished the StarCraft II campaign. Actually I finished it quite awhile ago, but it just didn't seem newsworthy. The problem with being so stubborn about wanting to maintain this blog is my life in general hasn't been newsworthy.

But then it occurred to me: Nobody's life is newsworthy. We're all trapped in this world, being uninteresting, unremarkable people.

So what's the point? If humanity's so astoundingly boring, why do so many of us maintain blogs?

Well, the blogs make us feel interesting. And it turns out there are few things more appealing to mankind than the illusion that we are interesting.
That's right. I just mocked Twitter
Feeling interesting is what prevents humans from all marching into the ocean to drown themselves.

Being alive means we'll still be here when the hungry Zerg invade Earth.

The hungry Zerg need to eat, too!

Man, I need to go do something insane; this blog badly needs fodder. Suggestions for insane things to do? Anything you've wanted to do, but haven't done it due to lack of lack of social compunctions? Lemme know.

Some thoughts, and then sleep

2010-07-28T22:02:00.000-07:00

1 - Those who say that the Mothership is just a bloated arbiter apparently never faced off against a skilled Protoss opponent in SC1, because the arbiter was a game-endingly awesome unit, to the point where we Terrans had to have fleets of science vessels in play to make sure that an arbiter didn't slip past us into our main production base. Because you only had to be wrong once.

Now the bloated arbiter is lower in the tech tree, it cloaks buildings, and it kicks the crap out of units with its own weapon. Couple that with the warp prism, and the bloated arbiter is out there beating down anyone with the chutzpah to call it that.

2 - Jim Raynor was always studly, but he has become dramatically studlier.

3 - I am very, very poor.

Could be worse

2010-07-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

You know, it could be a lot worse.

Crello is off in California at Comicon, leaving me here to fend for myself, but the fact is, Crello is at Comicon, which is awesome. I hope she's having a great time. And she'll be back. In any case, this has given me time to dig out Guild Wars and, through that medium, connect with my cousin, who is also my guildmaster. This is to help prepare me for the awesomeness I'm anticipating in the future, which awesomeness may or may not free me from a $15-a-month addiction to what I affectionately call my cheap girlfriend.

In a cruel twist of fate, Crello and the other other love of my life left me on the same day. But the other other love of my life promised to come back nexTuesday, and I currently have plans to go wait up until midnight at Wal-Mart at a self-declared "release party." It's still a release party if there's only one person there, but honestly, I anticipate that we'll be seeing plenty of geeks out there picking up what will be the most epic game of their lives.

Well, maybe.

I'm not making enough money to live on my own, so here I am, now entering my late-twenties, and still living in my parents' basement. This is perhaps the biggest thorn of all, but the silver lining in this case is that I can't afford to move out because I'm paying for the other other other love of my life. However, I will eventually have paid for the car, and then I'll actually have money.

Not the least painfully, Daniel had his last writing-group session with us this last Tuesday, and I wasn't even in attendance. Now we're losing a fantastic fantasy writer to Texas. For shame. My group is going on a month-long hiatus as a sign of our mourning, and also for other reasons, but that's the main one. The good news is that we'll all see each other again when we're on a panel together as published authors.

So, yeah. I got problems. A couple more and maybe I can make a self-indulgent blog post. However, as it stands now, things aren't that bad.

You have not lived...

2010-07-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

... until you've shoutcasted for a StarCraft 2 game, alongside someone who is paid to watch video games, and you realize that you don't know as much about StarCraft as you thought.

Which is to say, it's really hard to think of things to say sometimes.

Like blogging, but much faster.

The archetypes of Customer Service

2010-07-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

"Customer Service, this is Natalie."

"Your company is a sham! Why, I'm in a mind to come over there and kill every last one of you! If you don't refund 200% of my money, I'm going to file a complaint with the President of the United States. I'm going to get a can of kerosene..."

"Please hold."

(Pleasant Music)

"This is Tanya."

"Why was I transferred here? Anyway, you're a bunch of evil, conniving devils who ought to be cut to pieces and fed to horses which are then fed to other horses, then I'll take the kerosene and I'll... etc. etc."

"Uh huh. Yup. Okay. Sure. Uh huh." (Tanya is checking Facebook.)

"I want to speak to your manager!"

"No can do." *Click.*

[ANGRY CUSTOMER stands bewildered by the phone. It rings.]

"Hello?"

"This is Natalie. I just looked up your address in our customer database. I'm coming over to your house right now. Let's see, you live in... Dakota? Okay, so I estimate it will take me three hours of travel to get there, at which point I will kill every human I find at that location. Oh, I know ninjitsu, so don't worry--you'll never see me coming."

"I... what?"

"Sorry, I have to catch my plane! Three hours."

And afterward, Hillary gives donuts to Natalie and Tanya for a job well done.

What do you think of my Customer Service model? Tank, nuke, heals. Once again, MMOs teach us how to deal with life.

Bonus points if you can tell me what class each girl is and why. (Thinking WoW here.)

Macaroni and Cheese and Cav

2010-07-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

I broke my nail lasweek.

You guessed it. My right thumbnail. It wasn't a bad break, but enough to remind me that I'll never have a long right thumbnail. Ever. There are worse fates, I suppose.

Macaroni and Cheese. In the Russian House I was famous for mine, because I hijacked my mother's recipe and regurgitated it in a more-or-less successful fashion. In the Russian House everyone had moderate cooking skill (indeed, it could be said to have been a prerequisite!), but my macaroni and cheese was undoubtedly the best. So there I was, cooking up a quick dinner for myself and the girl who apparently identifies herself as Crello (not carnerik), and I burned the milk.

Did you know milk burns? Not only does it burn, it burns quickly, and it smells worse than just about anything. Including rabies.

Well, the macaroni and cheese ended up tasting like fire. Not sexy fire, either, just regular fire. It was revolting.

I destroy phones. My phone and my shoes usually get similar levels of respect, really. I buy 'em cheap and destroy 'em quickly. It suits my lifestyle. My latest phone had a tye-died (sp?) background, not by design, but because that's what happens to those fancy viewscreens when you walk into tables with them. Well, it breathed its last at a most inconvenient time, and literally fell to pieces. Two pieces, specifically, connected by a cable. Miraculously, it still made phone calls, and technically functioned as a phone. Well, as phones.

So I ran around asking everyone for a free T-Mobile phone. This isn't a light statement coming from me. My uncle has a bunch of phones that he uses for his smuggling outfit in China, and it seemed probable that he would have one. BYU has a big vault of unused phones waiting to be adopted. T-Mobile, of course, offers phones, but only if you're willing to sign your soul over to them for another couple years.

Eventually I turned to eBay, and lost an auction. I was the only bidder when I arrived, and the auction had thirty minutes to go. I got sniped.

Finally I ended up paying $30 for a used Blackberry, also on eBay. Could be worse.

Did I mention I was living at Shana's? Well, I have been.

Anyway, my mother, feeling highly sympathetic, helped walk me through the mac 'n cheese process, and my only job was to microwave the cheese sauce. That was it. Sauce. Microwave. Seems like something I could handle, right?

Well, I got distracted while microwaving said sauce, and sent rivulets of cheese cascading down the sides of the glass bowl, slowly filling the microwave as the apparently gaseous cheese sauce expanded to fill its container.

I ruined Macaroni and Cheese again. I'm planning to use the corpse of the meal to warn off other meals.

And literally minutes after I placed the bid on the Blackberry, my uncle called to let me know he had, after all, found a phone for me.
I bought my birds a treat
Well, life is good.
and it tastes like food
By the way, THANK YOU to everyone who responded to the call for a fourth writer. I have sent you an email explaining how we're going to move forward.

Writing Group Recruitment

2010-07-06T23:23:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time (again). Our writing group is about to lose a member to the wiles of Texas, and we're looking for a fourth.

If you or someone you know in the Provo/Orem area is a Fantasy/Science Fiction writer who's serious about getting published and you're looking for a group, we'd love to have you. Please email me. We submit 4,000 words a week and meet on Tuesdays at 5:30 PM in Provo.

Again, we're pretty serious about publishing, so if you're just a casual writer, then we love you, but you won't be happy in our group.

Anyway, I hope to hear from you.

Call Centers: Why you don't have to work through Freelancer.com to be enslaved in the Pits of Hell

2010-07-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just wrote an article for carnerik, who is being overworked and underpaid by her evil Indian masters. It compares call centers to an evil overlord's plan for world domination.

Also, last night my Rogue Trader players surprised me when, for the glory of the Imperium, they executed an unconscious, unarmed woman.

I love Rogue Trader, by the way. The system is really cool.

That's all for now.

Acius got married this weekend ALSO brainstorming

2010-06-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

My body can't decide if it's tired or well-rested.

No, that's a crock; my body thinks it's tired, which makes no sense because I've been getting sleep well in excess of eight hours a night.

Anyway, Acius has tied the knot, and we're more than happy to invite Whistler into our slowly-expanding dominion.

Anyway, this will be a short post today, o massive readership, but I'm interested in getting some feedback from you on an idea that may or may not make it into the realms of a story's setting someday. I'm thinking along the lines of a Second Dark Age, brought on by the fact that the Earth is out or almost out of oil, nuclear power doesn't work for some reason, and we don't really have any reasonable alternative energy sources to continue fueling our society.

I really like the idea of people looking back enviously on the days when everyone drove a car and had electricity in their home, etc. I also like the idea of exploring the ruins of civilization.

So here's what I'd like to hear from you:

What might bring on these circumstances?
What would be the effects of our society declining into major energy starvation?
What other interesting plot elements might exist in this world?

So be scientific. Be ominous. Be hilarious. Most of all, be creative; I'm really interested to hear what you folks have to say.

Mike Lee, Tim Bridgewater, carnerik, and Domestic Violence

2010-06-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

I didn't vote for Mike Lee.

That's not to say that I voted for Tim Bridgewater, either. The fact of the matter is that I sat out the Republican Primary, because I could not for the life of me work myself up to caring who won. Is that a bad thing?

Of course it's a bad thing, but let's cut to where this story really begins, which is six hours after the polls closed.

I was driving in my car with carnerik reflecting on the accomplishments and--arguably more importantly--the failures of the day. Carnerik has a particular pragmatic style in approaching life which I really appreciate, and she doesn't sugar coat things. For that reason, when I gripe about how hopeless I am, she will explain in level-headed terms why I am or am not justified in so doing. It's wonderful.

On this particular occasion, I was deliberately not thinking about the fact that the activities of the day, namely racquetball and moving a bunch of clothing and a pair of terrified birds, had prevented me from helping carnerik fulfill the one injunction she'd received from her superiors, which was to get out to the polls and vote for Mike Lee.

As previously advertised, I didn't care if Mike Lee won. In fact, I probably thought Tim Bridgewater was the better candidate, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for a man who can, with a straight face, choose STOP THE INSANITY as his campaign slogan.

As I stopped at the traffic light and stared off into the inky blackness of 1:30, I didn't think about campaign slogans, or the fact that Tim Bridgewater's campaign seemed to be built on pushing the line that Mike Lee did nothing but attack ads, which was established on a shaky foundation, because Mike Lee's campaign strategy seemed to be to do nothing and just avoid having creepy pictures of himself showing up on his lawn signs.

Okay, so Mike Lee didn't do nothing, but man, those Bridgewater lawn signs were creepy. I defy anyone to prove me wrong.

As the light finished a complete cycle, it didn't occur to me to worry about the fact that I was picking candidates based on creepiness factor. If it had occurred to me, it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because the polls had been closed for six hours, and I sincerely didn't care who won.

As the light finished another complete cycle, I didn't become disheartened by the fact that Utah seems to constantly find itself in a situation where it's choosing between one psychotic conservative or another, and almost invariably elections are lost because the loser "wasn't conservative enough." Salt Lake City, which tends to elect Democrats as their mayor and also their Congressional representative, would be a breath of fresh air, if they didn't give off the distinct impression that they were just doing this to be contrary to the rest of Utah.

No, this didn't dishearten me. What disheartened me was that the light had gone through two complete cycles and I was still sitting there. After asking carnerik's permission, I turned left through the intersection.

Of course that was as the police cruiser was approaching the intersection. I sighed as I saw the paint on his car, revealing him as a disciple of justice. I pulled over before he turned on his lights, but he turned them on anyway, because that's what you do.

"Bad timing," he said. He was a clean-cut cop who didn't look to be much older than me. His hygienic appearance and borderline friendly demeanor didn't remind me of Mike Lee. He didn't tell me my timing was bad with malice or even vindication, but rather the same tone of voice I myself often took with people who had parked illegally. In those two words, he said, You chose to play the game, and this time you lost. It was true. There was little doubt that I had broken the law in this case, so making excuses would have been fruitless.

I mentioned the double-cycle thing, but not to excuse myself--not really. I was basically making conversation. The game was over, and I had lost, and that was really all there was to it. I didn't know or care at that point in time that a similar feeling was probably coming over the Tim Bridgewater campaign at their headquarters. Actually, this defeat had probably arrived two hours prior, but I'm not sure when these things really occur.

I didn't have my insurance card. It wasn't in the glove compartment. This was about to become the most expensive left turn I'd ever made.

As the officer returned to his card, I adamantly refused to think about how much that little driving maneuver was about to cost me. It took no effort at all, though, to not think about the fact that if I had voted, it probably would have been to Mike Lee, and even though I didn't like Tim Bridgewater for his annoying campaigning, it may likely have been the creepy lawn sign thing that would have settled it. Although looking like a ghoul who stands slavering at the thought of consuming your soul might be useful in Senate debates, I wasn't totally sure that that was the right "image" for Utah.

The cop was in his car for a long time. I mean a long time. They usually take awhile for Dispatch to figure out if I was a car thief or a serial puppy-clubber, but this was taking an unusually long time. It occurred to me during this long time that it was probably a good thing that the copper hadn't looked at my feet, because driving barefoot is illegal in the grand State of Utah. It did not occur to me that, given the current political environment, I would most likely write in "Bob Bennett" this coming November unless the winning candidate (Mike Lee, in this case) did something pretty incredible (re: moderate) before then. It also did not occur to me that a second police cruiser had pulled up behind the first one, largely because that spotlight was in my mirror, and I couldn't see anything behind me.

Hint: A second police cruiser in Provo is usually bad news.

Carnerik and I didn't discuss the election. We discussed tickets and made jokes about how awful this was. After quite some time, I heard the officer running toward my driver-side window.

"Gotta go! Have a nice evening!" He tossed my license and registration onto my lap and then ran back to his car.

Not thinking about politics at all, I turned to carnerik and arched a brow. She shrugged. The officer behind me pulled around my car and immediately up onto the sidewalk of the apartment complex we were next to. This was when I saw the second cruiser. Two more cruisers were converging on our location from the south, Code Three. The cops got out of their cars and sprinted toward the complex.

I cautiously and lawfully drove away from the scene.

Five cruisers. Two ambulances. No ticket.

I don't know what to think, really. I mean... well, I guess to whoever it was committing an act of domestic violence (I'm guessing, of course) in that apartment complex... um... thanks?

And congratulations to Mike Lee on his election.

NO ONE KNOWS THE REAL ME LEAVE ME ALONE I HATE YOU ALL

2010-06-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

Life is too short to deal with people who treat you like trash.

Oh, how lovely a place the world would be if this were true. Better stated, how lovely a place the world would be if there were any way to uphold this ideology.

Once, in Queens, Elder Helps was with his son (Missionary lingo for: "Guy he trained") and they were in the chapel, joking around with a couple Mormons. I forget exactly what was said, but Elder Helps' son, over the course of this conversation, made a comment that essentially dismissed Elder Helps' humanity. It was said in good spirits, of course, and I know he meant no harm by it, but it really got Elder Helps' goat. (Note: This is a place where I'd like to say, "On this particular day it got his goat," or "It--for some reason--got his goat," but actually, this sort of thing is constantly depriving Elder Helps and myself of goats, to the extent where I can say that dismissive comments from people on my Team are a reliable way of taking pretty much any of my cattle.)

In the car afterward, Elder Helps said to his son, "I acknowledge my wackiness as a guy, but you will never, ever turn on me in public again." Elder Helps' son apologized, and the two were fast friends again.

This trait was not unique to Elder Helps. The Embryonic Elder Helps, known as Cav, carried this trait from his angsty teen years, when he dolefully ruminated on the fact that no one took him seriously. Seriously, didn't they realize that he was a bubbling cauldron of unrealized agony? His very spirit was a fireball, seeking its ultimate release.

Of course, Embryonic Cavan didn't realize that he was surrounded by bubbling cauldrons of unrealized agony. That's why public schools still have PE on the curriculum.

But that trait carried--albeit in somewhat refined form--and is with me today. When you act like a lunatic (which is kind of my hobby), you get used to the fact that people aren't going to hang on to every word you say. That's fine. In fact, I'd consider that an added bonus before thinking of it as the cost of lunacy. That said, however, there are people in this world who know me quite well, and the problem with having people who know you quite well is you effectively open up your vulnerabilities and say, "Here you go; stab away." And they have an annoying habit of taking you up on your invitation.

What's the answer? How do I resolve this conundrum? How do I stop people from hurting me?

Well, I could "build up walls," and insist that no one knows the "real me." To an extent, I guess no one does know the real me. This generally works to my advantage. As for building up a psychological barrier between myself and other people, meh, I'm not sure it's really possible. And if it is possible, I already tried it to death as a teenager, and the result, as previously advertised, was a bubbling cauldron of... well, you know.

The only thing that should be bubbling in a cauldron is magic potion. And clam chowder. Not angst, though.
Unless it's an ingredient in the magic potion.
The other alternative is to stop acting like a lunatic. Did you know the word "lunatic" comes from the Latin root for "moon?" This is because the Romans exported all their crazy people to the Moon, where they (the lunatics) built up colonies, and still today they wait for their moment, to return triumphantly to Earth and destroy us all.

But enough about RTS's. Life is boring unless you spice it up a little, and the moment I stop being a little crazy is the moment I stop being me.

That leaves the third option, which is pretty much what I'm doing now. Deal with the fact that not everyone is perfect, and even people who know and love you have the right to act like jerks sometimes. Hopefully by granting them this right, I win a little mercy for myself.

So why'd I write any of this? Well, I guess I wanted to do another completely self-indulgent post, and also I'm trying to get back up to three posts a week, and I was thinking about this today.

Props to any and every one of you, o massive readership, who know what that picture is showing. The URL is a hint, but I'm guessing that one of you will recognize it off the bat.

Oh, and in a related note, Acius is getting married this weekend. Stop by his blog (which I expect will be long neglected) and wish him well.

Farewell, Topaz

2010-06-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Naming things creatively is not my forte.

When I was a young high school boy and I obtained my first car by virtue of the fact that my older sister had found, in its place, a car that actually worked, I named him Mr. Car.

Then, returning from my two-year stint as a missionary, I obtained my second car from my brother, who was abandoning it for a car that actually worked. I named it Topaz.

You might think this is a creative name, I suppose, until I tell you she's a Mercury Topaz.

Well, now I'm happy to report that I have obtained another car from my identical twin, but there's a crucial difference here in that she was abandoning this car not because of its lack of functionality, but the incorrectness of its functionality. Her family size will be increasing by 25% in a few months here, and the old car is no longer suitably massive to serve as personnel transportation.

So I have come into possession of a car that works. This is breaking pretty new ground for me, as you might imagine.

As I was consulting my identical twin about this matter, and about the crucially important process of naming the vehicle, I asked if the car had any names.

"Civic," she answered, her tone and expression not allowing even the slightest bit of irony to leak out. You can probably guess the make and model of the car now.

"Civic," I said to friends later, as we drove in the yet-unnamed car across the rugged wilderness that is Utah County's road system. "I mean, it would fit the archetype of totally uncreative names."

My friends all murmured their agreement, which should not be confused with their approval.

"Cavan," said Aegis, "Why not name it Robin Galrin?"

Robin Galrin. The name of my Dungeons and Dragons character from days of yore. My iPod is named Komawyn, so naming inanimate objects after the equivalent of an inside joke was not without precedent, and Robin Galrin--of all fictional people I've created-- is one of my favorites.

Robin Hood's namesake, he was a conglomeration of every interesting rogue from any story anywhere. He had the nobility and idealism of his namesake, the cunning, the air of aloofness and uncanny ability to win any woman's heart of James Bond. He had just the slightest touch of Jack Sparrow's insanity, with the occasional sprinkling of Jason Bourne's psychotic martial ability. (Although the dice often had different things to say about that.)

Robin Galrin. The character who always looks down at the world with a knowing grin, making everyone around him assume that he's stayed a step ahead of the game, when really he's just an adoring disciple of the elegant art of improvisation.

Robin Galrin. The essence of a rogue.

So I named the car Robin Galrin, or Robin for short, because I know that by so doing, I will infuse the spirit of this dashing rogue into, well, the dash. We'll go speeding off from adventure to adventure, leaving mystified townsfolk, yearning maidens, and--most of all-- foiled adversaries in our wake. Who knows what's one step ahead? Who cares? The important thing is the now, and that the chandelier you're swinging on will keep you just ahead of the sabre in the hand of your pursuer. When you land on the opposite balcony, you'll deal with what comes. You don't have a plan, but everyone thinks you do, because you stride with such confidence that people have no choice but to believe in you.

A rogue. Eleventh level, if I'm not mistaken. Can the world handle it?

Robin Galrin. I like it.

A typical day under the new schedule

2010-05-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

I'd been up all the previous night fighting yetis, so the phone call woke me up.

"Hello?" I said, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

CAVAN, I KNOW YOU'RE RETIRED, BUT WE NEED YOU BACK. THE COUNTRY NEEDS YOU BACK!

I throw the phone down. My birds fly into a panic.

"Not now, birds! It's time to go to work."

I shower off the blood and dirt from yesterday, emerging spotless today. I pound some toast, then drive in my Ferrarri at breakneck speeds through Provo, engaging in gunfights with the CIA agents chasing me while I simultaneously engage in a gunfight with the Russian spies ahead.

I roll the van (new car pending) three times, jumping free just before the explosion. I dash into the building just as the phone rings.

I put on the headset. "Who are you, what do you want?"

"I will detonate an explosive in three major American cities," says the voice, accented with the topically evil country of the day, "Unless you find me three suppliers for camping goods who sell wholesale and provide dropshipping service."

"The United States does not negotiate with terrorists!"

My boss gives me a warning glare. Only then do I realize he's not my boss, but a terrorist himself.

"I'll play your sick game," I hiss into the microphone, "but I'm watching you."

Then I come home and play Magic: The Gathering.

My beard is gone

2010-05-19T13:50:00.001-07:00

It's true. Gone. Finito. Adios.

It was driving me crazy, largely because whenever I would look down (at my feet, for example, which I apparently do a lot) it would make the base of my neck itch.

Hmmm. This is where I would post a photo of said beard, which I snapped a shot of right before doing the deed, but my camera doesn't want to talk to my MacBook at the moment. Weird.

Sorry that I disappeared again, and I'll really try to not make a habit of it. My life has been interesting and altogether dull all at once lately. I've been mostly working on revision, so far as writing goes, but I put together a writing schedule today and I will have the Alpha of the Placers book (fingers crossed!) done at the end of June, which may or may not require another week-long escape; we'll see. Then I'll take a month for big revision (Note: the revision I've been doing has been moving from what I call pre-Alpha into Alpha. I'll explain in a second.) and the Beta should be ready to go come August. This time around I will attach a time limit to my beta readers, which is to say that I love beta readers, and I don't want to cause them undue stress, but I need to keep moving, so once August is spent, I will take what feedback I've gotten from beta readers and I will move the book into Omega draft. I'm giving myself two months to move it into Omega because of a new revision technique Daniel from the writing group taught me which I like, and which will take longer. That has the book finished at the end of October, just in time for World Fantasy, where (if I haven't found one already) I can find someone to send it to. Then I'm ready to go for NaNoWriMo if I want (although I haven't loved NaNoWriMo much these last two years) or move on with the next project.

Anyway, I'm feeling optimistic.

In case you were wondering, I will be in the country until March at least. This is either good news or bad news, depending on what part of my life I'm thinking about at the moment. Among the good news is that I can go to World Fantasy. Among the bad news is... well, yeah, I'll still be here. But I'm TEFL certified, so if anyone wants to give me a job, I'm here.

Here's an explanation of the drafts:

Pre-Alpha: First draft. I just write the scene through and get it out on paper. It's easier to fix things than create them. Usually my pre-alphas are almost entirely blocking and dialogue with very little description.
Alpha: I go back, add some description, tidy up the prose (usually removing redundant language) etc. This draft gets sent to my writing group. I should note that for Placers, I'm doing this draft a little differently. Instead of writing the whole Pre-Alpha all the way through and making notes of changes it needs (this bogged me down in Robin Hood) I have three designated stopping points at which I go back and move all pre-Alpha material into Alpha. Incidentally, that's what I'm working on at the time of writing this post. I've finished Act I, and I'm moving it all into Alpha material.
Beta: Based on the feedback from the writing group (and honestly, usually ignoring said feedback, although I do so with love) I go back and make plot changes to try and get the story closer to its original intent. Also, much more attention is given to prose as I move the draft into beta. This draft is sent to Beta readers, whom I recruit through soliciting and blog advertising.
Omega: Based on feedback from Beta readers, I make any additional changes I feel are needed to get the story closer to its original intent. I go through the story line-by-line and make it (in Daniel's words) "sound like a real book." Heavy attention is given to prose, grammar and spelling. This draft is sent to a professional editor for consideration.

Now you know.

The Fall of Sanity

2010-05-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

I've been frightfully unkind to you, o massive readership. I took a sabbatical with the intention of recharging my batteries, and then I quickly spent said batteries on a week of writing intensity the likes of which the world had never seen!

And then I disappeared. Right after advertising my blog on the 100 Hour Board, no less!

Oh well. Opportunities lost, I suppose.

Now I'm just killing a small amount of time to get something up here and hopefully, uh, prime the pump, I suppose, and express my irritation that Bob Bennett is now out of a job for "not being conservative enough."

May heaven help our state; we've finally gone crazy.

More details on this later, perhaps. Also perhaps not. Thinking about politics has just been depressing lately.

Day Seven: The Surprise

2010-04-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

When this posts, I expect to be driving north somewhere between my Undisclosed Location and Provo. It's the big surprise for the week!

I joined Twitter.

I know, I know: don't worry. I'm going to use it to track some people I've been meaning to track anyway, hopefully giving me slightly more of an edge when trying to get them to publish my books. As for me, I plan to tweet exactly once a day, as I already do on Facebook.

I'll happily follow you on Twitter if you ask it of me and I actually know you and care about you, but to be clear: If you tweet more than once a day, I will stop following you. Simple enough.

The total word count for this week is 33,236.

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Day Six

2010-04-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

10,080 words today!

This is me with my deliberate-looking beard as I look right now here at Barnes & Noble in Undisclosed Location, because I figured out how to use Macintosh Photo Booth, more or less. (It wasn't very hard.)

I look so shocked, because I just realized that I wrote ten thousand words in one day. Also because I refused to let myself go to the bathroom until I finished the last stretch. And the last stretch involved hot chocolate; that's all I'll say.

Lemme go find a good excerpt for today...

Okay, here's what I call a "cabbage head" scene. You'll get to meet Ailia, one of the main characters, and she's playing the Cabbage Head. She's training at the Academy to learn to be a Placer, and her instructor is explaining, more or less, the Law of Conservation of Placing. It's not exactly conflict-drenched, but since the magic is so central to the book, I will let you have a look at how it works, o massive readership. Enjoy:

When her vision and hearing returned, she found herself laying on her back, staring at the stone ceiling of the Academy. Not too long afterward, Balgren entered the room. He looked down at her.

“Those eyes look nice and focused. You're back?”

Ailia looked at him, her facial expression neutral. She nodded.

“Good. Get on up.”

“What did I do wrong?” asked Ailia, climbing to her feet.

“Well, you already understand from emotional Placing that you can only work with what's there. If everybody in a room is feeling nice and calm, you won't be able to whip all of them up into a frenzy.”

“Right.”

“The same concept applies to sensory Placing. You were really pushing yourself pretty hard there, and if it makes you feel better, you created a pretty astounding burst of light and sound. The instructor for the next room came in to make sure everything was all right.”

“How do I prevent myself from doing that again?”

Balgren smiled. “I hate to say it, Ailia, but practice, practice, practice.”

Ailia rubbed her head. “So I should look forward to going blind and deaf several more times throughout the training process.”

Balgren nodded. “Just like emotional Placing, sensory Placing is a delicate art. You have to have a strong feeling for the resources you're dealing with, know how to cut and divide them. Vision and hearing can be measured, divided, and spread.” Balgren produced an apple from his satchel, which he offered to Ailia. She gratefully accepted it. “Sensory placing is even more fun than emotional Placing, though, because it's not sight and hearing that you're Draining, it's light and sound.”

“What?”

“The reason you can't see in the dark is because your eyes see light, and your mind tells you what that light means. That red light means an apple, more or less.”

Ailia looked at the apple. “Red light?”

“Yes. And what you're displacing isn't only someone's ability to see, but you can actually Drain the light itself.” He reached over and placed his hand on the apple.

The air around Balgren's hand began to swirl, and all the color seeped into his hand, until finally there was a black sphere hanging in the air, obscuring Ailia's view of her hand and the apple. Quickly she withdrew her hand, and both hand and apple still remained, but there was a black sphere hanging in the air where it was.

Before her eyes, the blackness began lightening up, and after only a few seconds disappeared into the light. She looked incredulously at Balgren, who had small white slivers of light steaming up from his fingers.

“I didn't know Placers could do that.”

“There's usually no reason to. It's just a good parlor trick, and also a way to explain how sensory placing works.”

Ailia reached her empty hand out in front of her and tried to feel the light in the air.

“This is harder than emotional Placing,” she said. “How can I compare the light in my body to the light in the air? I can't move my awareness to it.”

Balgren nodded. “Right. You don't really have an equivalent. You just have to learn to be aware of the light on its own terms.”

Ailia closed her eyes and tried to concentrate.

“Don't close your eyes. When you're absorbing light especially, closing your eyes will only make it more complicated. Remember, it's your sight that makes you aware of the light. Start there.”

Ailia opened her eyes, and thought about her sight. She thought about her vision as a flat canvas that she was seeing from within her head, trying to detach herself from the sensation. She let that awareness, her inner Self, travel down through her body and arm and into the air. Nearly certain she was just imagining things, she passed her awareness into the air around her. She resisted the urge to press her eyes shut as she focused. Not the air, she had to be aware of the light. She thought of the light in the area, and imagined what it looked like from her hand.

For a brief moment, she felt something. She felt that she had connected to the light. She Drained it, not sure what exactly she was Draining, and sure enough, the area immediately around her left hand got dimmer, and she felt the light enter her body.

Next to her, she could hear Balgren fidget with excitement. She lost control of the light, and it fizzled out of her hand.

“Not bad,” he said, “not bad.” He patted her on the back. “I think we're done for today.”

She nodded at him, then returned to staring at her hand. The dimmed area where she had Drained the light had already recovered, and it was as if she had not done anything.

People can fix their emotional levels, she thought, and I guess the world can fix itself, too.

Day Five

2010-04-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

It seems silly to show you two pictures of my beard taken in the same day, so I'll just give you a beard update tomorrow.

I fell asleep after an enormous lunch of some fantastic Mexican food, which really cut into my word count, but was still probably the right thing to do. I don't know if I mentioned that it's warm here in Undisclosed Location, but let's put it this way: I forgot to turn on my ceiling fan, and I woke up having given myself what I would call a shower au naturale.

Anyway, the final word count was 6,678, which feels low. And I feel really good about the fact that a 6.6k day feels low. Brilliant!

I am running into a lot of worldbuilding problems, mostly gaps in the mythology, but so far I've just been using brackets somewhat generously, because I'm not doing any worldbuilding this week, just word production. However I will probably have a worldbuilding fiesta upon my return.

Anyway, today's excerpt shows you another POV character, and a use for the magic that I'm quite proud of. (You may have guessed by now, but Placing has an Awful Lot to do with the story.)

Not long afterard, when Pellin had disappeared to go to town, Barung eagerly dug out his pouch of dried Mana powder and his water skin. He freed a metal cup from his belt and filled it with water, throwing in a pinch of the luminescent blue powder. Then he Reached out into the air around him, absorbing as much of the sunlight's warmth as he could, rechanneling it into the metal cup. The air around him grew frigid, but he didn't notice as he listened with eager anticipation to the simmering water unlocking the Mana from the powder.

Before long, the tea was bubbling, and it had become a thick blue color, reflecting its light onto Barung's arms and chest as he huddled over it. With shaking hands, he raised the cup to his mouth. The hot metal seared his lips, but he didn't care. The tingling sensation of the Mana as it slid down his throat was all he wanted, all he needed.

Barung could feel his nerves calm almost immediately in answer to the Mana. He smiled, wiping the blue tea from his lips and looking up into the sky with satisfaction.

He looked around him. There wasn't a soul in sight. In his shaky mind, he had been afraid that Pellin would have used a Placing trick to make it appear he had left when he hadn't, but it looked that that wasn't the case, or at least if Pellin was interested in blackmailing Barung, he hadn't decided to bring it up yet.

Nonetheless, now that he had some Mana in him, Barung was ready to face the task at hand. He walked toward the trees of the Great Forest.

Day Four and a Half Beard Update

2010-04-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't update last night; I was too zonked when I got back in. So this is me this morning wearing my pajamas and without having shaved.

My beard still doesn't look good, per se, but at least it's starting to look deliberate.

Day Four

2010-04-27T15:52:00.001-07:00

As with yesterday, my Beard Update will come later tonight. Oh, and the van works fine now; it turns out one of the battery cables just needed tightening. Whatever. Apparently I will be in Provo this weekend after all, which means StarCraft 2 will happen. Just saying.

8,672 words today. I hit burnout before I hit my goal of 10k, but I'm feeling good about tomorrow. Maybe I'll see an elusive 20k day this week. That would be miraculous.

The best section of dialogue comes from Karsu again today, but I didn't want to use the same character two days in a row (Currently there are four POV characters, but there's another major character planned who hasn't had a single word written under her POV yet, and there's another who's already gotten two POV cameos who may turn into a major character because I like her so much) so today's sample come's from Ramsen's POV, and is mainly to show what a fight with Placing magic looks like in the current draft. Feedback is welcome.

A creature dressed in a woolen jumpsuit rounded the corner and rushed the Immaculates. It was in the shape of a man, but its skin was a pale green color, and its hair was a deep, dark blue. It was holding a length of polished wood that glowed with a faint blue aura.

It was Crea. A race the Empire had subjugated only ten years ago and annexed.

Judging by the firm smack Ramsen received to the head, this Crea hadn't been notified of the subjugation.

Swimming in pain, Ramsen collapsed to the ground. The Crea moved on Ipsen, screaming something in its language.

Ramsen rolled onto his back and through the red haze that was his vision, he saw Ipsen deflecting the Crea's savage blows. Those staves they made from Mana wood were famously light and hard, but still no match for a well-trained Protector. This Crea was stupid to attack Immaculates, especially in such a public place, but really it was a bad idea in general.

“Get up, Ramsen,” said Ipsen, amusement showing in his voice. His mouth cracked into a smile and he rechanneled all of the Crea's energetic swings to throw it off balance.

The Crea performed an awkward dance. It snarled and swung, only to have the energy reversed on it. It staggered to keep up with its Mana staff and stay on its feet, all the time yelling what Ramsen had to assume were increasingly vicious swear words at his partner, growing more and more frustrated at the apparent ease with which he rendered it impotent.
As Ramsen staggered to his feet, the Crea turned and took another swing at him, only to have his blow reversed. He was knocked off his feet.

“He's all yours. Great chance to practice.”

The Crea jumped to its feet. It stood for a moment, sizing up Ramsen, gripping its staff tightly. It had to know it was outclassed, but clearly its pride or savagery or whatever it was that was driving this thing to attack outweighed the hopelessness of its situation. The look in its eyes spoke murder and suicidal optimism.

Ramsen Reached out to feel the Crea with his soul. Finally, it decided to make its move. Ramsen felt the momentum of the swing, and Drained it. The Crea, with a snarl, stopped mid-swing. Ramsen used the force to push it backward, sending it staggering. Laughing, Ipsen jumped out of the way as it stumbled past him. Screaming, the Crea charged back in. Again, Ramsen Reached out and stole its momentum. The Crea, anticipating the counter, ducked as Ramsen sent the force flying toward its chest. It had dodged the invisible blow. It rolled toward him and swung its staff, but now Ramsen was tuned to its every motion. He easily stole the staff's motion and drew it in, immediately sending it in a sharp point through the middle of the weapon, breaking it in half.

The Crea looked with shock as his staff splintered into two smaller halves, and the wispy, airy blue Mana spilled out from the broken ends and dissipated into the air.

Ipsen laughed again, and the Crea lashed out at him with one of the broken halves, but again Ipsen easily stopped the blow, and took a step back.

“You're doing great, Ramsen. Keep it up!”

The Crea did another roll toward Ramsen, and again Ramsen stole the motion and used to to slash upward at its chin. The Crea rolled with the blow, then threw half of its broken staff at Ramsen, leaving swirling blue trails of Mana behind it. Ramsen stole the motion of the projectile, stopping the wood in midair, causing it to fall straight down to clatter on the cobblestone. He launched the motion back at the Crea, who again anticipated it and jumped into the air with surprising agility, throwing himself toward Ramsen.

Ramsen was too slow, the Crea landed right next to him, and Ramsen felt a strange cold sensation, which quickly erupted into an explosive pain in his stomach. He looked down to see that the Crea had driven the splintered end of its weapon into his stomach.
“Oh, blik,” swore Ipsen, running forward. He grabbed the Crea while Ramsen, his body filling with pain as a small red circle began expanding on his white Immaculate robes around the wound, fell to his knees. His breath quickened.

Ipsen struggled with the Crea for a moment, but easily stopped its motions. Ramsen heard a sickening crack and Ipsen turned its head on its neck, snapping the bone, breaking the Crea's body with its own energy.

“Blikkit, Ramsen,” said Ipsen, “Let's get you some help.”

Ipsen was whispering apologies as he lifted Ramsen up. Then his vision closed around him, and the world became dark.

Day Three Beard Update

2010-04-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

The van broke down tonight outside Barnes & Noble. I thought I'd be living in Undisclosed Location forever.

In any case, here's my promised beard update. Apparently I'm unable to make a straight face even when I'm the only person involved in the photography process.

Day Three

2010-04-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

I forgot to bring a camera today, so I may do another beard post tonight. Today's word count was 7,806. Having a nice time here in Undisclosed Location.

Unsure of what else to do, Karsu decided to try for negotiation. He unsheathed his knife and ran out to the inert body of the Immaculate he had felled with his impromptu slingshot. Seeing that the man was gasping for air on the ground and quite obviously still alive, Karsu put the knife against his throat.

“Let her go or I kill him,” he said. He didn't shout. It really didn't feel necessary, and Karsu wasn't one to be showy. This was not a good time to be drawing additional attention to himself.

“You think I care?” answered the Immaculate.

“Yes,” answered Karsu quite honestly. “In fact, I'm counting on it.” If the Immaculate was particularly talented, he could prevent Karsu from doing any harm to his partner, but hopefully he was dazed enough from the smack to the face he'd received earlier that he wouldn't. Also, if the panting creature on the ground had control of his Placing, Karsu's little game would be disrupted pretty quickly. This was quite a gamble, and Karsu loved it. Life was only exciting when it was just a few seconds short of ending.

“Step away from him,” said the standing Immaculate, “or I break her neck.”

Karsu sighed. He hadn't thought of that. They only needed her to get to him, and now he'd just offered himself up. Sometimes random acts of chivalry ended up getting him in trouble.

Usually, actually. It was kind of frustrating.

“You really feel like reporting the death of an Immaculate because you were too stubborn to give up an innocent woman?”

“Get away from him. You have three seconds.”

“You have three seconds!”

“Three!” shouted the Immaculate.

“Three!” warned Karsu.

“Two!”

“One!”

A moment passed. Karsu and the Immaculate stared at each other uncomfortably.

Day Two

2010-04-25T22:09:00.001-07:00

Actually I did very little today, but I didn't expect to start pumping word count until tomorrow anyhow, so this should be fine.

Here's a picture of my beard, which I'll try to keep you posted on as well. My face is... weird. Deal with it.

Day One

2010-04-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, o massive readership, as anticipated, declaring a blogging sabbatical did, in fact, make me want to blog.

In any case, I'm doing something kinda special this week; I've disappeared to an Undisclosed Location (hint: it's hot) and I'm going to be writing up a storm this week. I plan to do daily updates on this blog and on Facebook, and maybe I'll have a surprise at the end of the week. (Also: Maybe not. Haven't decided yet.)

Anyway, I'm back, I've graduated, and I'm very warm and wearing shorts. I look forward to updating you all.

Oh, as an addendum: I don't plan to answer my phone this week. I will check my messages a couple times a day, and if it's urgent I'll call you back, and I'll be pretty open minded about texting. But for all intents and purposes, I'm disappeared this week.

Blogging Sabbatical, but abbreviated

2010-04-14T10:07:00.001-07:00

I'm going to recharge my blogging batteries, which are obviously short on charge at the moment, and declare a blogging sabbatical until April 24th. Right. The day after graduation.

At least, assuming I pass my Music class; I'm still pretty worried about that.

Anyway, I will announce my situation come April 24th. Also, I'll get around to telling you, o massive readership, about the times I've been at gunpoint. Honestly, I meant to have done that by now, but clearly I need a sabbatical, because my motivation to blog lately has been ick.

My Salad Days: Pointing Guns

2010-04-06T02:00:00.000-07:00

I was having a conversation with a friend in the locker room here at BYU Traffic the other day, and I was talking about how vanilla and boring my life was. I wasn't complaining, mind; sometimes boring is a perfectly acceptable approach to life.

The topic of gun rights came up. Most police officers, I've noticed, are pro-gun rights. I don't think this is because they particularly want a heavily-armed populace, but American police officers unanimously own guns. They know about guns, they use guns, and from what I've noticed, most of them like their guns. They are what I would call Gun People.

I am not Gun People. Guns frighten me, and I get extremely anxious around them. I'm glad police officers carry guns, and I support the amendment in the Bill of Rights that protects people's right to own them, and even appreciate the logic behind it, but I do not like guns at all, and don't really want to be around them.

When my friend asked me about why I had such a distaste for guns, I answered truthfully.

"Well, I've been at gunpoint twice in my life. It's a miserable experience."

There was a stunned silence in the locker room.

"Weren't you just talking about how boring your life was?"

"Yeah," I answered with a chuckle, "I guess I left out my colourful past."

My Salad Days: Senior Prom

2010-04-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

It was a shortly before the Senior Prom. In direct contradiction to all the self-righteous rhetoric I had spouted for most of my high school career, I was dating a girl named Kara, and taking her to Prom would, of course, have been the logical choice.

Equally predictable, then, is the fact that I didn't do so. I don't remember specifically why not. Another friend of mine, Jenny, had approached me previously about competing in the Duct Tape Prom. I decided to do it. (I honestly don't remember what the logic behind not taking Kara was. Maybe it was a scheduling issue, maybe it was a pre-existing condition type thing, oh well.)

There was no doubt in either my or Jenny's mind that we'd be attending Prom together, and that we'd do it clad in adhesive. This struck me as an enormously appealing idea, and scholarship, shmolarship. Nonetheless, the culture of Provo dictated that there was a formal Asking to Prom event, which meant I had to do something clever and give Jenny an opportunity to respond in some clever way that was probably related to the way in which I made the request.

To keep things in context, I had gone to a dance with Jenny before, and although I've forgotten some of the details, I asked her by a literal open flame on her front porch*. It's a wonder I kept anything resembling a good relationship with her parents.

It was a chilly morning in early April or late March. Utahn weather, for those of you fortunate enough to not know about it, is somewhat brutal around this time of year. I had gone to pick up Kara at some uninhabitable hour of the morning, like four or five, as I was wont to do in my teenage years. I had to formally ask Jenny to Prom, and the most appropriate way to do so under the circumstances was, in my sleep-deprived brain, to write her out a message in duct tape on her front porch. I could use the tape to cover the scorch marks from the previous dance I'd asked her to.

I forgot scissors. That is to say, I'm not sure it ever occurred to me to bring scissors. People tore duct tape with their teeth, as far as I'd ever seen. I just brought a roll of duct tape and my significant other in order to ask another girl out to the Prom.

After what felt like an hour or so of ripping, tearing, and sticking, and after what was probably literally only a few minutes, my fingers were entirely numb, because what kind of idiot wears gloves in April? It was becoming difficult to tear the duct tape, and Kara and I were both chattering. We looked down at the message we'd completed on Jenny's front porch.

JEI

The I, of course, was the beginnings of an N.

The target message, for reference, was:

JENNY,

WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME?

FROM,
CAVAN

Well, given the enormous amount of physical suffering we'd already endured, this message seemed to be an eternity away.

Kara looked at me. I looked at Kara. We both chattered our teeth a few times.

When Jenny came out of her house that morning, getting ready to embark on her journey to the social dregs of society that was high school, she saw the following message, plastered in gray-silver glory to her front porch.

JENNY PROM OK

Apparently frowning upon my lack of foresight, (and Jenny's failure to answer in like manner!) Fate saw it fit to inflict the flu upon me on Prom day, which actually worked out particularly well, because Jenny was afflicted with a similar flu, and neither of us was in any condition to do anything.

*I don't remember if I included a joke about "You're hot!" But I certainly should have.

How to start a fight on your blog

2010-03-26T13:15:00.001-07:00

Just use any of the words from the following list:

Health care
Gay rights/Same-sex marriage
Illegal immigration
Obama
Gun control
Abortion
[Name of religion]
Boys/Girls are stupid because... (This will attract a younger readership to do battle in your comments section, of course, but what they lack in experience they more than compensate for with emotional fervor.)

And here's the secondary list, where you'll have to use the words in opposed pairs:
Macintosh/Microsoft (Also: Apple/PC)
StarCraft/WarCraft 3/Whatever stupid RTS you like that isn't one of these two
Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition/Pathfinder
Magic: The Gathering/Tabletop warfare games (Honestly, I'm less sure about this one)
Cats/Dogs

What have I left out, o massive readership?

The 10 Commandments of DM Storytelling

2010-03-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

Sometime when I'm not writing early early in the morning, I'll put my thoughts on the different kinds of DMs. For now, I'll identify myself as an Epic Storyteller DM, and give the Ten Commandments of DM Storytelling, in the order I thought of them

1. The PCs are the heroes of the story.
2. No force of good exists in the universe that is more capable and active than the PCs.
3. The PCs are always in danger
4. The PCs must occasionally fail, but it should always improve the story, not derail it.
5. The PCs' antagonists should, at length at least, become aware of the PCs, and come up with reasonable ways of dealing with them.
6. Victory must be possible for the PCs, but they must not feel that it is an inevitability.
7. If you have an epic story development in mind. now is always a better time to unveil it than later.
8. Stealing ideas from other media is not only useful, it is unavoidable. Don't shy away from it.
9. The major problems are always solved by the PCs.
10. The PCs should have a run of terrible luck (dice permitting). Skills and intelligence should solve their problems, not dumb luck.

I hope this makes your games better. Good night.

The great dilemma

2010-03-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

You know, every blogger has a choice. We can either do meaningful updates, or we can do regular updates.