Tuesday, February 27, 2018

An interesting night tonight, but on the music scene. I said a bit ago that the high school band our daughter is in is in the middle of their spring concert/contest season. The last time was solo and ensemble performances by the wind instruments, tonight was the percussion ensemble's turn.

All in all, a lot of fun. They set it up so that we had a general parent/students meeting ahead of time for the general spring doings, and then the percussion ensemble got to strut their stuff. Most everybody left, but one of our daughter's friends is in the percussion, and I spent most of last fall on the pit crew helping set up and tear down for the marching band season, so sitting for the percussion was on our agenda for the evening.

They done good. They closed out the show with this piece (youtube link, 5:80) Jose/beFORe JOHN5, which you'll notice if you watch the video is normally a graduate recital piece for percussionists. So the percussion instructor was rightly chuffed at having his crew play it... (the fun here: watch for the number of different instruments each of the percussionists gets to. The piece is subtle, and a blast)

Good times, and a good way to spend a couple hours.

I did get writing done, A Wolf in Taos Valley is up to about 1500 words. No clue yet where it's going, but that's the fun part of the story, figuring out where and what and who.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Nothing much major today, it was one of those where my brain recognized we had a hole in the schedule, signaled it, and we both decided it was a chance for a semi-quiet day (i.e. reading, thinking, notes and such for the day gig, but nothing heavy lifting wise.)

I thought at first I'd probably have the same to say about fiction, but then an idea reached out and bit me on my way home. I blame Dave Grohl... well, that particular Foo Fighters song, anyway. And no, the idea doesn't much have anything to do with the song, but the timing set off a free association that landed me on...

Well, I'll just put this right here. I doubt it'll much matter, but just in case: Guys (you, you, you, and especially you), you're probably gonna think this song's (er, story's) about you. It's not. I've changed the names, and clearly none of what happened could have happened in real life.

Um, except for that part, well and maybe that, and... ok, the plot's different.

I regret nothing! And, I hope when it's ready everybody gets a giggle out of it.

The story's called The Wolf in Taos Valley, and I'm about four hundred words into it so far.

And any accidental overlap with real life is purely coincidental. Any suggestion otherwise is base slander meant by my friends to try and make me feel guilty for stealing a great straight line...

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Almost forgot...

It's the first rose bloom of the year (we're south of I-10 for the USians, so our spring is, pardon me, only the first blush...)


A New Old Thing is complete today at about 3400 words. I'm happy with it, and I hope that when you get the chance to read it you'll be happy with it as well.

Actually, I hope I scare you with it, but, well, that's the part of the gig that goes along with writing scary stories. It was never the jumping out of the closet thing that got me excited, it was the late at night, staring up at the ceiling, telling stories into the dark and wondering if I'd scared my cousins doing it. That's what got me excited.

Now, not all the time. Just mostly.

Anything else this weekend for me? Wrapping up the Olympics coverage, wondering how on earth the blue collar gang in the curling end of the world managed to snag the media attention this year. I love those guys, always have, even though I don't pretend for a second to understand any of the game. It's what you watch when you're drinking beer at the bar, darts in the summer curling in the winter (and no, I'm not from up dere, I'm from warmer climes, but one great thing about cable tv is that they have hours to fill. Shoot, BBC America has my wife hooked with their darts coverage lately...)

I had a ball as usual. There are a million little stories whenever the Olympics crew get together. It's a bit harder these days to find them through the tv coverages, the reporters used to feel a little more obligated to go out and find at least one "look what I found" story in another country's team, but I think the online media has made up for that a bit.

And the week begins.. hang loose, hang cool, and be careful out there, it's a mean old muddled up shook up world.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

About 2500 words into New Old Thing tonight, and it's hit that magic spot where I see the ending, and what awaits. This one's a bit of a surprise now, in perspective and viewpoint. And I think I understand now a bit more about some other perspective shifts in other stories, how writers got to where they were with certain characters that might not have otherwise been the "standard" protagonist.

I'm not being coy. I just don't quite trust my ability to be analytic about my own stories. Certainly not while I'm in the middle of writing the thing! There's a time and space for that, but to try it in the doing is, for me at this time and place, courting throwing the thing away for stale bread.

Nope.

On another front. (NBA/basketball/sports argument, all for fun, so if you're not interested now's the time to turn away don't get caught it's a trap!!!)

All right Boston Sports Guy (link here), if you can call yourself that, how on earth, in a universe where

Bill Russell has eleven championships, one of those as both player and coach simultaneously

Kareem Abdul-Jabar is the career points leader, and has never been seriously threatened. (Karl Malone and Kobe Bryant are 2 and 3)

John Stockton is the all-time steals leader (Jason Kidd is 2, Jordan is 3)

John Stockton is the all-time assists leader (Jason Kidd and Steve Nash are 2 and 3)

Wilt Chamberlain is the all-time rebounds leader (Russell and Kareem are 2 and 3 respectively)

Hakeem Olajuwon is the all-time blocks leader (Dikembe and Kareem 2 and 3)

can you possibly consider Michael Jordan the greatest player of all time? It's not even up for discussion. He's behind Karl Malone and Kobe Bryant for points? Much less Kareem at number one who he never even threatened. (Seriously, it's not even close, and Jordan was a scorer!)

And you can't even point to individual games, where Jordan doesn't crack the top ten in highest scoring games (seriously, for points in a single game, there's Wilt and then there's nobody else. It's not even close.)

Same thing with rebounds. Really? There's Russell, there's Wilt, there's Malone, there's Hakeem, oh come on what's the point.

He's behind Stockton in steals and assists.

Now, Jordan as greatest player of his era? Maybe, but I've got Hakeem ahead of him (so, I'm from Houston go away), plus Jordan was in the league at basically the same time as Magic Johnson, and no way on earth is Michael ahead of Magic, not in my book. Magic is a different player all together.

Besides, I remember well when they quit calling travelling on Michael. That's when he went from interesting rookie to winning the scoring title every year that he wanted to.

But then, failing to call a rule against you makes you a better player? Uh-huh.

They invented rules to try and stop Wilt. You know, the guy who decided to go for 100 points, won the assists title as a center, retired to play pro beach volleyball and play the heavy in Conan the Destroyer?

But really, you're from Boston and you don't consider Bill Russell the best ever? Titles at every level he played, 11 in the NBA, oh and one of them as player-coach? Yeah, no, not feeling it. Jordan's maybe in a universe where Wilt just laughs when you claim Jordan's better.

Russell's in the next universe over, just smiling at all of it.

And somehow I doubt Bill Russell would ever have let David Stern run him out of the league... twice.

And as much as I love Lebron, it's the same argument. Only, there's no real question that Lebron is the best player of his era. That one, I'll not only grant you but I'll stand up and cheer him on.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Ah, Friday. And not a lazy Friday, either.

One of the side effects of my day gig, it's a day I got a couple thousand+ words done on non-fiction for that side of my world, and only a few hundred for the fiction side of my world. Such is life. But A New Old Thing is up to about 1400 words or so, so that's good.

Even a little bit is a whole lot better than nothin', in this endeavor.

I've a few tweaks and realizations to get up to on the publishing side this weekend, but mostly I have story to put down. It's there and waiting for me. There are a few other things in outside life that threaten to crop up, so I'll probably be measured on words; but maybe not. Who knows?

Thursday, February 22, 2018

a busy day all around for me. It was another day where I had meetings that ate up my time. The big thing about this particular set is that I'm visiting with people in a different part of the area, not in my daily digs, so there's no chance for me to sneak back to my desk and get a little work done after the meeting.

No big deal, it's just one of life's little things.

Still, I managed to push A New Old Thing to just over a 1000 words, so that's a win.

Finished up the publishing for Through the Foggy Dew, as well. The links will go up as the retailers finalize their acceptance and I get them. The big difference for me this time is that I'll probably check more deeply into the Nook print options.

I'm intrigued by the opportunity there to have a hardback version. So, paper via Amazon's setup, hardback through Nook's, and ebook in every retailer I can access (Apple, Overdrive and so on I send through Smashwords distribution in my current practice). It's not necessarily ideal, as I doubt that Nook's hardback will be available outside Barnes and Noble, but the idea of it interests me as an additional version available for those who wants it.

Plus, let's face it, everything's an experiment, and if I don't play with it I'll never know for sure. At the moment, what'll slow me down is that Nook's process for this is a bit slower than otherwise.

Eh, once more into the breach...

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

A couple of things in the writing world, today. I started a story title "A New Old Thing" today, got about 500 words into it given schedule, pretty good for the past few story starts. Tomorrow may be sketchy in terms of adding new words, but I'll at least get some in.

Tonight's project has been to begin the upload process for my next novel, Through the Foggy Dew. I'll post links and etc. as a single post later, but I thought you might enjoy the backcopy below

Through the Foggy Dew, Book 1 of the Old Empire by M. K. Dreysen

In which we discover...

That being the guest at your own execution is probably not a good idea...

Being chased by an entire Roman legion does not make for the most entertaining hiking trip...

Stopping for philosophical discussions in the midst of that chase has a tendency to sidetrack things...

Dragons and their caves can also be a little bit distracting. Unfortunately, not all dragons consider Roman legions appetizing enough to fool with...

Sea crossings, while very useful for providing some breathing room, can bring in reinforcements for the pursuers; there are in fact competent members of the Imperial command staff, and in this case they're part of the Navy...

That being the guest at your second execution in a matter of weeks tends to get one talked about in certain circles...

And, finally, that one should probably be just a little suspicious of traveling philosophers...

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Tonight was a fun one for us, our daughter had an ensemble performance, the
members of the freshmen low brass band getting together for a fun chamber
music session.

Basically, the whole of her high school band members are engaged in their
spring solo and ensemble competitions, and the band directors asked them to
put together juries for each other, and the parents. It's a good way to break
in the nerves in front of a sympathetic audience (the parents) and a jury of
their peers (who managed not to throw tomatoes at each other, again see the
parents in the audience).

Of course, what was supposed to be a quintet turned into a trio, so our little
group of bass clef readers got to learn the value of all the parts...

Fun fun fun, and pride for us for sure.

And I saw her smiling on stage in the middle of the piece, so papa is
cheering...

Monday, February 19, 2018

I finished Motivated Reasons today, complete at about 3300 words. It was a little bit of a different end than I expected; rather, the writing part of the end was different. There wasn't that *pause*, hey, I know how this ends *pause*... put in some measure of words... *pause for a day* finish.

Everything compressed today, and I just went write through (not sorry) to the end in about a 1300 word day. I figured I'd start seeing things like that, it's what I have some feeling for from other instinct training paths. I don't expect it to happen consistently yet. But it's also a nice thing to know and remember, when the work gets hard.

That's the other part of working on instincts, the part where I have some memory, some idea that it's going somewhere I'm familiar with. Not in strict terms, just the process path, the idea that 'if I just sit down and do, it'll come'.

For the Foggy Dew manuscript, I've got cover, formatting, back matter, so tomorrow I'll be working on posting it to the etailers. I don't yet know whether it'll be like with San Angelo and Badlands, more likely this time I'll be focusing on getting Foggy Dew as something a bit more coherent.

No promises of course. But that's cool. The key element here is to get it up and
get it available for you to read. (You being the reader generally, depending, time being a flexible concept in this here internets era; you and me we're having a telepathic conversation across both time and space)

Sunday, February 18, 2018

So I didn't have a lot of reading to get through today, so I didn't dump a bunch of stuff to the blog in response. Just the nature of the beast, really. I've got a bunch of last year's reading that I'm thinking about working through, all the fiction at least. Especially for the short fiction, it might be a good exercise to help me remember them distinctly.

And it'll make it a lot easier when I see a good story mentioned, and my brain goes "hmm, now do I remember that one or not?". One may hope, at least.

The current story, Motivated Reasons, is up to about 2000 words after today's work. It feels slower than the last few, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm not seeing the end logic yet, or if it's because I know there's a novel waiting for the same characters, so my brain has a setup it's working on without bothering to tell me about. Trust the process, right?

Though there's also a gameplay aspect to the story. There's an element of conversational rhythm in this one that I haven't tracked for a whole story yet. It's one thing to have a page or so of good rhythmic conversation in any one story, or here and there in a novel, but an entire story wrapped around it takes the thing to a slightly different level, the difference between a marathon and a sprint.

It does make me further appreciate His Girl Friday, though. That sort of conversational interplay has its own rhythm, its own rules, it's fencing with yourself and your characters, on a tightrope over the gorge, while giving the Erryl Flynn smile and daring Basil Rathbone to do his worst.

Yeah, oh yeah is it fun though.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

I'd done a little bit of fiction writing this morning, then I switched over to reading. Mostly just internet stuff. The posts I put up were my trying to organize my thoughts and store the articles's main themes in my head.

I've done a little more writing today, the current work's up over a thousands words now. A little bit slower start than the last couple, and it's probably one that will last through Monday or Tuesday. Very much fun, another sci-fi short, and one that sounds in my head like a novel-related story, but here short enough to tackle as a short. I don't know what the lead-in will be, but I'm fairly certain I'll stumble across it at some point. And the structure of the story itself is neat. It has me chuckling and writing, so that's cool.

Newcomb's paradox (summary) to me sort of falls apart when you quit playing with the parameters and think about it from a pro poker player's point of view.

The payout has already been set before the player appears. The player has no ability to change anything, the player has only the ability to choose a box, and the predictor cannot change the payout in between asking the player to sit down at the table and when handing the player their choice.

Therefor, there's only one choice from the gambler's point of view: pick A+B, i.e. maximize the payout *regardless of what the predictor's accuracy and precision are* because there's no possible way the player can know or influence the predictor's ability to guess what the player is going to do once the player knows she's involved in the game.

The only way choosing B is a possibility is (and here's the sci-fi writer's chisel into the game) *if and only if* the player knows the game is on, and that the predictor's accuracy and precision are not predetermined, and there is sufficient time for the player to use this knowledge before being faced with the choice.

(working on (pdf) this freedom in the machine piece from Scott Aaronson)

question 1: what if freedom at the macro level is an operator-specific equivalent to the uncertainty principle at the micro level? Scott dismisses Heisenberg uncertainty (the particle inside a volume dXdP = is indeterminate) as fundamentally distinct from the freedom operation/definition. What if they're not? What if the operator has its own uncertainty principle on the space of the whole of obervable spacetime? This probably doesn't change any of the logic, but it might have interesting mathematical uses. (And yes, I read Scott as basically saying he disagrees with this, but as a handwave in this particular essay. Not a big deal really, since there's as yet no reason to care about the distinction, nor a way to test it if there were.)

observation: can we just point out that the quantum perturbation (the inevitable entanglement with observable-system at the quantum level) is simply that the act of measurement unavoidably introduces a new force to the system? And that, for small enough systems, that force matters? I.e. if I hit an electron with another electron (or photon or whatever) *it's going to have an effect on the target that I may not be able to account for*? Please? Over and over again, until we come up with a better description to replace quantum mechanics (unlikely as that is)? It's really not mystical.

question 2: The human brain is a quantum computer in the trivial sense. Are not atoms quantum mechanical in nature? Does this imply anything regarding the quantum to classical transition involved in the conjecture? Generally, specifically? Less trivially, I think that the classical limit of a quantum system being tossed aside so readily is a result of the assumptions in question 1. Likely a trivial one in the case where whatever the boundary conditions are have a ready transformation from the relevant quantum problem to the classical problem.

observation 3: The discussion of "if we have brain uploads to external computational hardware, now philosophical experiments have a very real and immediate consequence (wait, isn't that what religion, political ideologies, etc do in the observable history?)" has prior art, the one that occurs to me is the particular branch of faster-than-light travel that posits that the human mind must shape whatever the mechanism is (see L. E. Modesitt, but there are many others, think of it as the human mind needing to derive a brand new equation each time the ship needs to "make the jump past lightspeed", Frank Herbert=> Dune and the Navigator's Guild, etc)

final: the final paragraph of the conclusions is a wonderful list of the real meat of the thing. And one I don't have any arguments with. My quibbles here don't change the questions that matter. I might have more sympathy for (limited forms of) some of the questions Scott dismisses e.g. quantum computers vs. classical computers, in the following narrow sense, that there's an argument to be made that the quantum computer is roughly similar to using a simulation to sample the configuration integral or the partition function, in that it's a reduction of an n^{6m} problem to something like an 6mn problem, or basically an empirical necessity for some problems but not otherwise immediately "the all encompassing solution to all problems everywhere" that the hype for quantum computers in some quarters would have us embrace. Again this is a limited quibble, not a general argument.

(In response to this (pdf) think piece by Adam Elga at Princeton)

Mostly because first I need to applaud Adam's setup and tear-down on this. I especially liked the "I'm *not* defending this overly broad misconstrual of my argument that I'm anticipating in my paper" bit.

On to the meat of it. This gives an entire generation of Dr. Evil-building writers a lot of meat to work with.

The real question that occurs to me is, wouldn't the applied version of the argument be something like (if you're hell-bent on evil-overlord galactic domination, as every proper Dr. Evil should be): Indifference until you can distinguish the the difference, and then beat the PDF to death with a lead pipe?

Meaning, I wonder if there's a game theoretic extension to this that leads to a fun takeoff from here?

(Responding to this (Arxiv pdf) link to a Sean Carroll think piece on cosmology and the multiverse; for the sci-fi writers in the group the multiverse is a standard part of our toolkit now; for the science branch of my world, it's sort of a philosophical kludge, the mathematics of the thing are undeniable in what's going on, it's our attempt to turn that mathematics into a physical reasoning that reaches a limit in translation at the current epoch)

Ok, Sean, stipulated: any physical/mathematical theory (equation, in this context) that seeks to describe an observable spacetime event is scientific. I've got two questions, though.

One is the problem that all hidden variables share: they're ultimately the same thing as having an extra set of parameters to fit a curve. A theory which can fit a curve with three parameters, say, owes little to a theory which has forty-two parameters (to exaggerate and pun simultaneously), except only for the case where an interesting new mathematics can be developed from the different descriptions (this is a significant thing to theoreticians, it's essential for coming up with new methods e.g. Einstein, Heisenberg, Dirac, Feynman etc).

But my second question: neither case, in my view, actually describes what's going on with multiverse in the colloquial sense versus the mathematical-physical description that might ultimately lead us somewhere. In precise terms, we mean that the (human) measurable universe has a conceptual lightspace volume, beyond which we have no current means of accessing. However, the numbers we use as basis for the equations involved extend well past our physics description's current restrictions for that lightspace volume (meaning, regardless of our explanation for why, precisely, our telescopes can still only see so far into the darkness).

In which case, the real meat here, from a theoretician's point of view, is whether, if we pick any given means for reconciling the countably infinite number line with the finite limit of observable spacetime in our current physical equations, do we get anything new and interesting (i.e. predictive) out of it?

Friday, February 16, 2018

Ever have that feeling, the Friday night train crash?

I don't mean the kind you have when you're young and foolish, and head out to the bar/club/wherever and have a few too many drinks.

I just mean that feeling where you get to the end of the week, have the pizza, sit down, and then... feel the energy. Gone.

Not drain away, so much, as just sort of disappear. For me, it's just the after effects of the cold I have last week, and the remainder of it. But it's still that sort of feeling.

Enough to not fool much with anything related to the projects ongoing tonight. Such is life sometimes. It's been a week of progress, a couple weeks really, on a variety of them, so I'm not too worried about it. Life intervenes sometimes.

Ah, well. I'm gonna post this and find something else to entertain myself with this evening. I hope you all have a good weekend.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

An interesting day for me, busy and head down again on the daily grind. I deliberately made myself not write fiction today.

Of course, I admit I kicked a bit, back and forth, but I know I've put together a few stories in a row, and my mind needed a day to itself. I'm a few years off I think before I have the tools and tricks built into the daily practice. But I know which ones I'll be learning. And that sounds like a fine thing.

I didn't blow everything off. On the publishing side, I got the cover for the Foggy Dew novel roughed in. I may let it marinate; probably, I'll go with it. There's a balance, in my stage of things, where there's the bigger step of getting each step done, put it together and be done, and the need to do well at each step.

Where I'm working at the moment, on covers at least, the nuts and bolts of getting each step done, with the image I have in mind, is foremost, still. I have some refinement methods I'm learning, but for this one I think I'm comfortable with it.

Oh, I can spot the problems people more experienced than I might point to, in terms of genre, etc. And I understand where they're going with the argument. But when I've got the tools in my arsenal, and a few more covers under my belt, that'll be the point to address more refined elements. Besides, it's not like I'd be the only writer/publisher in the world to ever bring out a new edition of a book...

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

On a night when... Well, no. That just sounds odd, don't it, when we're in the middle of the Olympis season. Like I need my "movie announcer voice" to bring the big effect home.

Nope, no drama to the day, really. Work work work, busy busy busy. Sort of like that, it was one of those days where I went from project to project. Next thing I knew, it was time to head home.

I did finish the current story, Heavy Shadows complete at about 4600 words total. I think I mentioned that I'd reached the point in the story where nerves as 'writer' kicked in. I'm still in love with the story, and now that I can look back after typing The End for it, I love the setup and payoff and the space between even more.

And, well, I hope that you the reader love it when I get it up and out there into the great beyond. But I had the fun of writing it.

I'm through the initial formatting setup for the novel manuscript for Foggy Dew. That's the basic finish copyedits=> set up for e-book and printed versions. The cover work to go along with it begins tomorrow. Which is always fun, because now I get to remember where I put the master image file that I have in mind. There are some parts of the organization game that are ahead of others. The directory structure for my images isn't one of them.

There, I'm afraid I'm still something of a magpie. It'll get there, that's the learning part of the gig. Time and escavation wait for noone.

Right, anything else before I sign off? Oh, something that tickles me, even though I'm probably just dreaming. But, I find on searching that I've never discussed this on the blog. Therefore...

I have a Theory About River Song! for the Doctor Whovians among the audience.

Well, no. I have a theory about the *writing* of River Song, and something that may be involved in Steven Moffat's conception of her. Specifically: Go listen to Van Morrison's "Crazy Love", and then find the lyrics and take a look at the verses again. I'll quote the first verse an example.

quoting:

  I can hear her heartbeat, from a thousand miles,
   And the heavens open, every time she smiles.
  And when I come to her, that's where I belong,
   Yet I'm running to her, like a river's song.

    (she give me love, love, love,
     crazy love... etc.)

Ok, fine, it just may be a coincidence, that you can wrap a great deal of the Doctor's perception of River around this song, and River's view of him.

But if it is a coincidence, I don't wanna know. I'd rather think that Moffat's a genius on this... Hey, writers have to stick together, even wee junior writers sticking up for the big dogs.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Ah, formatting. I'm working on the copyedits/formatting/cover etc. for my
next story to publish. It's a novel that's technically in the same universe
as the Open Wounds series, but many many years before the events in Meg's
stories.

The novel's title is "Through the Foggy Dew", and it's the first book in
the Old Empire series.

As you might guess, this is the story of the empire that was, reconstructed from
a memory by Megan's era, when power both political and magical allowed it.

There are powers long lost, in the dim mists of time, ancient whispers,
thoughts, dreams. Places where the Fae still dwell, trolls with bridges
to hide under.

Dragons with secretive hiding places.

Philisophers endeavoring to knit all of these powers into a coherent story.

Into an Empire? Perhaps. Or perhaps, instead, into a story of protection, of
dreams hidden away from the nightmare of power gone awry.

Hey, that's a pretty good start. I'll need to remember that when it's time
to put together the back copy...

My writing for the day went well, I'm up to about 3900 words on Heavy
Shadows.

And naturally enough, now I'm nervous. I love the character, the point of
view, the challenge he's facing. Enough to be enthralled and headfirst into
it now three days in a row.

But I'm still just a bit nervous. That's ok. It means I'm learning, as well
as having a lot of fun with the story. I'll take it.

Monday, February 12, 2018

So, if you look down to the next post, and over to the right where I keep
my series/book lists, you'll see I've now got a working page for the Open
Wounds Shorts series, the series where San Angelo and Badlands are at home.

Basically, this is where the in between times, the learning for Megan,
at least at the current state of the series, is hiding. There are other
stories to be told here, but a good way for me to think about the Open
Wounds Shorts is where I go to find out what happened in the couple of
decades between Open Wounds, the first book, and Passing Fancies, book 2.

So that's done for now.

On the writing front, I worked through another 1600 words or so on Heavy
Shadows today, up to 1900 after the initial sketch yesterday. This is the
current near-term sci-fi story, and it's another one that took a twist on
me. In this case, probably, oh, about 1000 words in or so.

That's when I realized what the point of view, and the general tense of the
story, were for. There was a character involved, and an overview that when
I realized just whowhathow, made me giggle.

Oh, and no, not in a nice way, either... Let me put it this way, depending
on your tv viewing habits, and age, when you get a chance to spot the
setup, I hope you'll smile too.

Open Wounds Shorts

Come visit the world of the Open Wounds series. Come here, and find the cracks, the seams, the forgotten nooks and crannies.

The places where children go to learn, and perhaps to vanish. Where mages learn the price of power, and knights the price of loyalty...

San Angelo: A Short Story of Open Wounds

Way out west, where the wild wind blows, A young woman has been told it's time for her to go out and make her way in the world. When Megan finds Tony D'ags, a Righteous Man whose job is to protect and champion plain folk when they seek justice in the Empire, she doesn't know just what she's gotten herself into. Her mentor seems like such a simple man, and his crew a funny collection of misfits brought together from all corners of the world.

Their first night in San Angelo, Megan finds out that Tony, his crew, and now Megan herself, have greater responsibilities than political representation. They owe their lives to their hosts, and there are bandits out there ready to take them.

So tonight, eating food given to them in joy, playing with children and listening to the elders list their complaints to her mentor, Megan learns the first lesson of being a paladin.

What do you do, when the wolves on two legs come howling? What do you do when men who are more animal than not decide they're after the children you protect, and they'll do anything to get them? Where do you stand?

San Angelo is the first in a series of shorter works set in M.K. Dreysen's Open Wounds Universe. Here, Megan meets Tony D'ags and begins learning what the Empire means to people who don't have a position in it.

Available as an ebook at

Kobo

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

Lulu

Badlands: A Novella of Open Wounds

When Megan and Tony D'ags and crew came to San Angelo, they were surprised to find that the sheriff was an old acquaintance of Tony's. Not quite a friend, not quite an enemy, the whole situation was odd enough to keep Megan and the rest of the crew on their toes. Even Tony didn't really trust the sheriff and his cronies.

When they found out the sheriff was crooked, and that they'd set themselves up with a little black market operation on the side, nobody was surprised.

When they found out that the sheriff, the town, and now Tony and his crew were about to be dragged in to be sacrificed to something from the outer darkness, an evil being from beyond too hideous for human comprehension...

Badlands is a novella set in M.K. Dreysen's Open Wounds Universe, the second in a series of shorter works. Here, Megan and Tony continue as apprentice and mentor, and Megan discovers for the first time that there are things stalking the Empire, indeed humanity itself, from outside space and time.

Available as an ebook at

Smashwords

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

Lulu

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Tonight's my night off for writing, publishing, etc. That being said, I got
a few hundred words on the next story, it's called Heavy Shadows, and is
a near-term scifi story. No idea where it's headed yet.

I also did some behind the scenes work stuff, as it's that most wonderful
(ugh) time of year, tax time!

Something occurred to me while doing our taxes (following is not professional
tax advice, I am not a tax pro of any sort, I'm simply a fellow freelancer
who may have some experience to pass on. Talk to your own accountants,
people.)

So the U.S. congress, in their infinite wisdom, has changed the tax laws. As
yet, there's been little effect due to timing. And just when my wife and I
had gotten used to a significant fraction of our income being freelance work
(her all, me some, it's been like that for a few years now). Meaning, we'd
become used to the quarterly tax payments, the business structure and how
it's reflected on the tax forms, etc.

The changes in the tax law ongoing are a bit odd for us, from what I've been
able to tease out. The rate changes aren't a big deal, at our level they
basically don't make enough different to matter (no, we're nowhere near
putting aside forty percent of our gross, we should be so lucky). But what
will matter is how the 199A deduction is built into the tax form structure.

As with any big change, the IRS hasn't published their guidelines yet for
where the 199A deduction will line up compared to existing deduction
categories. What this means as a practical matter is that this year's
withholding allowances are going to be pretty much guesswork. The rates are
known, but what we don't know yet is the degree to which the deduction
applies. and the examples the law provides don't quite answer the question
with respect to withholding.

In other words, what we don't yet know is whether the deduction is going to
be part of the schedule A type deductions, the class of above the line
deductions such as the social security deduction, or whether the IRS is going
to have to make something up. Some of the tax pros are calling the 199A a
"between the lines" deduction, a new beast entirely.

The bottom line here is that I think we're going to be very (in the financial
sense) conservative about how we approach the 199A for next year through
the withholding allowance. The irritating part about this is that I much
prefer to have as little of a refund as I can manage.

Why? Because ultimately too large a refund can lead to questions from the
IRS, just as much as too large a deficit in the other direction. For the
simple reason that we're supposed to have knowledge enough of our business
structure so as not to be completely out of whack with our tax obligations.
Habitually blowing through and asking for a big check from the gov't, or
sending a big check to the gov't, is going to have them knocking on the
door wondering why we can't get our stuff straight.

And until there's been a couple of years of forms and guidance on the 199A
to go by, there's no avoiding it. We're just going to have to anticipate that
we're sending more in withholding than we would if we knew precisely how
the deduction was going to apply, and then adjust down the line. The good
thing is that we won't be the only ones, so we'll all be in the same boat.
Next year will be when the auditing department expects the knowledge and
guidelines to have become well established enough to be common business
knowledge.

Here's a little p.s., though. In spite of themselves, for the first time in
my working lifetime, the congress has done something with the tax laws that
will significantly benefit people who work for a living. And I think they
did it completely unknowingly. The 199A deduction (so called pass-thru
deduction) is understood (in the same way that "everybody knows such and
such", which should make you nervous, it does me) to apply to high-end
incomes, doctors, lawyers, real-estate moguls, etc.

However. People like us, nobodies who happen to have a schedule c income,
plumbers, electricians, hell handymen and landscapers, mechanics, fishermen,
farmers, artists, writers, all the lads and ladies who go to conventions and
quilting shows, anybody with their own shop or truck or sewing machine?

That twenty-three percent 199A deduction, once the dust settles and we know
how it works? Is going to be the most significant impact of the whole thing.
And if there's one thing I understand about congress/dizzy city, it's that
this particular group of people, the people who were/are the gig economy,
have been and will always be invisible to them.

And they went ahead and helped us anyway, entirely by accident. Shh, don't
tell them. And, figure out how to make the 199A permanent, 'cause it'll
expire in ten years. If this thing works out the way it looks like it will,
for people in the gig world, or carpenters working weekends on their own,
gardeners selling an extra basket at the farmer's market, the hit on the
back end when it expires is going to be a much bigger kick in the pants than
the benefit over the current known legal lifetime. Once we get used to the
deduction, having it yanked from us is gonna hurt.

Enough of that. I'd love to have written a story that made taxes make sense,
but it'd take a much greater ability than my poor skills to make that work.

For the week, where am I? Stories wise, daily words. First, last, always.
Publishing wise, links page for San Angelo and Badlands, and then start work
on the next book to go up.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

And now Badlands and San Angelo are available at all of the distribution points that I currently work with. Yay!

Kobo, Nook, Smashwords, Lulu, Draft2Digital, and Amazon ebooks for all, and paper for Badlands through Amazon at the time of writing; provisionally some experiment with paper through Nook is possible, but at the moment I think it more likely that I'll wait 'til later to continue playing with that option.

Cool. I know it likely seems dragged out, but I'm still learning processes, at several levels. Everything seemed to go well, but there's little things like Lulu wanting a more restricted sales copy/description than the others, and more that I'm probably forgetting at the moment. No big deal generally, so next time I'll probably feel a little more comfortable doing more of them together than I did this time. That, and it had been long enough since I'd done it last that I felt a little better taking my baby steps through the process.

On writing, I finished Provisional today, it's about 4200 words total, and it was another ending that snuck up on me. Mostly, what I'm finding with short stories at the current point and time is that there's a magic point in the story setup, and it can show up at different times and places, where the logic of the story, the setting, the characters, all reach up and merge, and tell you what the story is, precisely.

And then, the ending just fits. The story has its own life, its own logic and language, and when it does, there's really only one way it can go.

It's really very cool.

Friday, February 9, 2018

On the state of the writer... basically, on the mend but still
pookie. And fighting an allergic reaction, to boot. I'm allergic
to a very common additive in skin products, to the point where I've
had to hunt to find things like sunblock; for a while there the only
sunblock I could find that didn't have this additive was a store
brand. The major labels have since re-introduced their traditional
formulations, at least one of them has. But I'm always worried
that I'll find out the hard way that they mixed it back in. In this
case, my lovely and wonderful wife makes up a lotion that helps me
control an entirely different skin disorder, in the eczema class.

She usually puts cortisone cream in the lotion she makes up for me.
Yesterday, I picked up the packages of cortison she'd picked up for
the next batch, because the packaging had changed and I am once bitten,
twice shy. Sure enough, they'd introduced an intensive healing
version of the cortisone cream that contains the additive I'm allergic
to.

So we had to go and hunt down the plain-jane, original formulation
of the cortisone cream. I'm just glad they still had it.

Oy.

Ok, on the publishing front, I got the ebooks for San Angelo and Badlands
up on Nook today. And then I got caught up in Nook's paperback production
setup. I've looked at it before, but it's now similar enough to the
Amazon setup for the print on demand side that I'm probably going to
experiment with it.

After I finish getting up the ebooks on the rest of the retail sites
I'm working through. Basically, there's enough of a difference on
the way Nook Press handles covers for the paperback that I have to
go back and redo my setup for the Badlands paperback. Not a big deal
but I'd rather go ahead and finish the rest of what I was planning
on before I dive into that.

And the writing. The story I'm working on (about 1300 words today)
is called Provisional. It's a relatively near-term sci-fi story, and
apparently there's a part of my mind that's exploring representational
AI in near and far scale human interaction terms.

Basically, think of AI as a natural language compiler/OS, at least in
terms of how such systems would interact with humans. And then go
from there.

Not that that's the story, that's just part of the background that my
mind has been playing with.

No, the story setup for Provisional can be summarized, I think, in this
excerpt:

(excerpt from "Provisional", a work in progress, all rights reserved -mkd)

Problem was, this company, well the family company that owned them, had been
suckered by their own next generation. One of the kids had gone off to school,
then come back with big dreams of what the next gen AI could do for the
family concern.

No big deal, right? They'd been around the block enough to know just what to
do.

That is, give the kid just enough rope, a little project of his own with budget
small enough to make him work for it, turn him loose. Most likely he screws it
up, blows the money on a pile of computers and software out of date before it
came out of the package. At worst, he turns loose a virus that gets caught in
the sandbox the IT crew built around him and melts down his toys.

And who knows, if he actually makes something of it, the family concern comes
out ahead of the game, with the next generation lined up and learning a little
something.

Turns out, they got the worst of both worlds. They got an AI that works just
well enough so they can't justify tearing it out, and just bad enough to make
everyone in the family and the company itself crazy trying to deal with it.

(end excerpt)

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Followed by a 1900 word day. So I've got that going for me!

Now that I've stuffed the story in backwards, let's go back to the beginning.
So, I've made myself stay home from the day gig today. I've been working, but
I figure there's no point in passing my cold around to others. Besides, at
least in my case I don't always have to be there to get the job done.

And I got the words in that I didn't yesterday. In the writing sense, normal
for the time, and I can see 2000 daily as reasonable in the near future.
I also finished the Badlands process at Amazon (hung up in review because of
a file naming hiccup). (goes away for a minute to take a poke at Kobo if I
remember the password without getting up from my current chair)

So now we're live on amazon and kobo with both badlands and san angelo, in
both formats (paper/ebook) where available. Not too shabby for a sick day.
And I got some other work done. I'll take it.

And I avoided dropping myself into spending a couple thousand words talking
about something I read on the internet this week. Nothing major, it's not
even something that I think most people would care about. It's just part of
the subset of (would I rather be doing other things?) questions, that's all.

Ok, wait, I can't let it go at that. Suffice it to say: one of the hazards
of reading for a living, reviewer/tech/scienceEngineering/Pro Writer of any
sort, is that (in my experience) you run the risk of hitting a wall with
fiction writing. I went through a long stretch where reading for pleasure
was an absolute chore; spend somewhere like 10 to 15 hours a day doing nothing
but reading (for work though, not fiction just for the hell of it) and the
last thing you want to do is pick up a book.

I wonder if sometimes, that particularly cynical reviewer (or maybe not
reviewer, maybe it's a pro in another field who's spent an awful lot of time
looking at video or drawings or... it applies to many areas, I think) that
we all know (different for you than me, but you almost certainly know of one)
and love to hate; well, maybe what's just happened is that they've been
carrying around too much effort, and simply lost the habit of just letting
the words wash over them.

Blaming the writer, specific or generic,
(and remember sturgeon's law, and the garbage man's corollary: one man's trash
is another woman's treasure) is poor form in my opinion, if this is a hazard
of the job, generally speaking.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Well that was a surprise. This was a day where I didn't expect to get much,
if anything, done on the writing and publishing front. Mostly because I think
I've caught my wife's cold, the one that's kept her laid up on the couch for
most of the past week.

I also had a long meeting as part of my day gig, and that ate me up in terms
of my normal writing time.

But then my wife said she'd like to do some drawing, is there anything I can
do to keep her quiet company while she's working on her couple projects she'd
like to work on...

So I did what I'd heard somewhere, I figured I'd put in a couple hundred words,
even just ten minutes or so, check on some formatting and copy-edits, and
then go crash on the couch.

Naturally, instead I put in about five hundred on a story that came out of
nowhere. I did Dean Wesley Smith's route, I didn't have any idea what I
was gonna write until I sat down, and it was not at all the story I was
expecting.

And then I got Badlands up on Amazon, in both e-book and paperback.

A bit more than I expected, to say the least. Tomorrow, Barnes and Noble for
both, assuming I'm not down for my turn on the couch.

A good day then, I'll take it.

P.S. One of the good parts of writing and focusing on it, yesterday even though
I'd had my eye on the Falcon Heavy launch all day, I didn't even think about
posting my congratulations to SpaceX and all the gang there. So I'm doing that
here, SpaceX crew you rock! And my favorite part is the Don't Panic sign on
the interior of the orbital Tesla, I guess there are a few Douglas Adams fans
here and there...

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Well ain't that kick in the can.

Sorry, just one of those little things that occasionally come up in this
often random old world. At current, San Angelo, A Short Story of Open Wounds,
is in review at Amazon, for the ebook. It's a bit too short for a paper copy,
so much as I might wish to have a paper copy to put up for sale, I'm also not
much interested, at the moment, in padding it out to the necessary length.

Which just means that there'll likely be a collection in the future.

I'll put up a link here; rather, I'll be building a page for both the San
Angelo short, and the Badlands novella to follow, as I work through all of
the retailers I'm working with, and links galore will be posted as I work
through them.

On a completely different subject... on the writing side of things. While
I'm working on putting stuff up, the real nuts and bolts of my writing life
are the words, the stories. It's just not all that interesting, or at least
repetitive, to say I got 1400 words on "A Lucky Man", and 1300 more words
today.

That being said, I discovered two things about that story today. First was
that about 2700 words was all the story wanted and needed to be. I crashed
headlong into that at about 3/4's of the way through my writing day. That's
when the story basically grabbed me, said "That's it, boyo," and I was all
of a sudden done for the day.

The second thing I learned was that this story is the first of a series of
(at least) short stories called Chronicles of the Luck Man.

Right now, I'm scratching my head over a couple of things. First off, where do
I send a fairly short fantasy story, about a magician, that only has magic
in it if you know to squint your eyes and peek in the corners? (I know that
just means send it out, and if it does slip through the cracks it'll be up
with the rest of my stories under my own banner. I don't mean that I'm
discounting my own publishing side of things. But I do see a real value
to publications like the digests, both as a writer and a reader.
And I'd like to have stories there as well. My point being that I'm in the
middle of the jitters. I think it's a great story, and I can see where it's
going. Will the editors I'm sending it off to feel the same way?)

The other thing I'm scratching my head over is the opening line for another
story in the series (and no, I don't know if it's the next one or not, I just
know that it's in here somewhere; this is the same series that the magician
definition/line I posted a couple days ago came from. I don't know, I'm just
surfing the wave here.):

And it transpired that the Luck Man heard of a land ruled by a god.

Monday, February 5, 2018

And brain cries uncle.

The short description is a good evening, with just the wrong amount of work/life etc for me to be worth anything as a blogger tonight.

The slightly less short description is that I got caught on a conference call late in the afternoon, after I'd come home from the day job. The conference call was enough to drain my energy down to ugh-level.

Fortunately, that didn't stop me from digging in and going a bit more on both the story in progress, and the publication schedule.

Unfortunately for the blog, it means I'm writing this, rather than posting anything more on the works in progress. Specifically, for Badlands and San Angelo, what happened is that right now I'm brain dead enough to not go through the part I'd like to do next.

Which is a long way of saying I'm filling space. Ah, well, sometimes it's like that.

...

You know, there is actually something else, something that I just might have forgotten about... Oh, that's right. I've got the cover images for both books for you. I present thumbnails for San Angelo and Badlands, short and novella, respectively.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Today was a little light, by design. But I did get the back copy started for the Open Wounds Universe short story and novella that I was talking about. I've posted both of them below for to whet your appetite.

These are very likely to change a little before I finish up the rest of the process, but the gist of it is certainly there. And, I would only tweak things a little.

First though, I have a bit of the opening snippet for my next story. I'll find out what this means over the next couple of days.

Magician, def.: one who takes advantage of the opportunities, fortune, luck, etc. that are made available; alt., one who knows which way the wind blows.

San Angelo, a Short Story of Open Wounds

Way out west, where the wild wind blows, A young woman has been told it's time for her to go out and make her way in the world. When Megan finds Tony D'ags, a Righteous Man whose job is to protect and champion plain folk when they seek justice in the Empire, she doesn't know just what she's gotten herself into. Her mentor seems like such a simple man, and his crew a funny collection of misfits brought together from all corners of the world.

Their first night in San Angelo, Megan finds out that Tony, his crew, and now Megan herself, have greater responsibilities than political representation. They owe their lives to their hosts, and there are bandits out there ready to take them.

So tonight, eating food given to them in joy, playing with children and listening to the elders list their complaints to her mentor, Megan learns the first lesson of being a paladin.

What do you do, when the wolves on two legs come howling? What do you do when men who are more animal than not decide they're after the children you protect, and they'll do anything to get them? Where do you stand?

San Angelo is the first in a series of shorter works set in M.K. Dreysen's Open Wounds Universe. Here, Megan meets Tony D'ags and begins learning what the Empire means to people who don't have a position in it.

and Badlands, a Novella of Open Wounds

When Megan and Tony D'ags and crew came to San Angelo, they were surprised to find that the sheriff was an old acquaintance of Tony's. Not quite a friend, not quite an enemy, the whole situation was odd enough to keep Megan and the rest of the crew on their toes. Even Tony didn't really trust the sheriff and his cronies.

When they found out the sheriff was crooked, and that they'd set themselves up with a little black market operation on the side, nobody was surprised.

When they found out that the sheriff, the town, and now Tony and his crew were about to be dragged in to be sacrificed to something from the outer darkness, an evil being from beyond too hideous for human comprehension...

Badlands is a novella set in M.K. Dreysen's Open Wounds Universe, the second in a series of shorter works. Here, Megan and Tony continue as apprentice and mentor, and Megan discovers for the first time that there are things stalking the Empire, indeed humanity itself, from outside space and time.

oh, and in this week's entry for "John Carpenter and assorted other gurus of the twisted" sweepstakes, we have the hitherto unknown depths of the Mayan Ancient Temple Complexes.

I don't if the graduate students will necessarily be up on the jokes and spring to mind over this, but I know for damned sure that the professors involved in these projects are going to be walking around the halls, sneaking up behind each other, skulking, and generally making arch comments about the dangers of the unknown awaiting our intrepid explorers deep in the jungles of Central America... (cue soundtrack)

Saturday, February 3, 2018

And it's done. Opening Bid part 7, posted below.

Not that she's done. But this story's found its end. I hope you enjoyed it.

'Cause lord knows I did. This was an absolute blast. Just telling the stories are fun, no matter how it turns out. But putting up a daily story, part of the larger, performing if you will, now that was an added part of the fun.

Now, I've learned a couple things. I'm thinking it'll be a bit before I repeat the experiment of daily serial, but I know that I'm not done doing it. Let's face it, this was sort of the digital equivalent of the story round a campfire.

I remember seeing a few different times over the years, especially in fan fiction circles, but plenty of others, where writers put up their story chapters, night after night, in similar fashion. If you've ever done it yourself, I raise a glass to you, this playing without a net is exhilarating and tough, but most of all fun.

As for my next project? Well, in the immediate, I have a short story and a novella, set in my Open Wounds series between the first book and the second book. I'm in the midst of the publication nuts and bolts, formatting, back matter, etc. So my daily blog work for the next little while will focus on getting those up.

As well, I've a fair few other finished stories in the queue, both long form and short form. Those again are my daily publishing steps, so I'll be busy for a while. The long form, I think I've got at least two (nope, missed one, it's actually three. I forgot about a sciFi...) novels coming up, those are pretty straightforward. The two shorter works for Open Wounds, but I've got a few short stories, mystery, fantasy, sciFi. Some of those I'll format for putting up with the novels myself, others I think I'll be sending in to the short fiction markets.

Don't know which ones, I'll probably make it up as I go along. That way, publication is as fun as I can make it, just as with the writing.

And there's the real fun. I have some writing goals for the year. Here, near term, I'm playing day to day, short stories. I want to dive into a few branches I've put myself out on, both in the worlds of the novels that'll be coming, as well as in some other worlds that are either short stories only so far, or worlds yet to come. We'll see what happens after that, as far as longer works.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Incidentally, if you're a game geek, especially tabletop RPGs, or if you're a fan of Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or if you're just plain feeling your silly bug nibble away this evening:

I give to you the Jane Austen RPG Kickstarter!

This is gonna be an absolute hoot. I've got a lot of game books sitting on my shelves that I go to for fun reading. This one, I have a sneaking suspicion, is going to be in that same category of books to just take down and get lost in.

I'd heard about this a while back, but never quite believed they were actually going to get here. I think it was Moe Lane who mentioned it, and Moe also pointed out that Naomi Novik might have a few interesting things to bring to this sort of RPG. By kitbashing if necessary, by extensions if they can work it out with Ms. Novik as the best option. The RPG world has been as hit by the whirlwind of indie writing as any of the other writer niches, there are a lot of good game people out there.

I thought for a while that I was going to finish "Opening Bid"(with part 6 posted below) tonight. But
I realized that the ending, while apparent, isn't something I can just polish
off with a couple hundred words and done.

Sort of the way the story has gone from the beginning. It has its own pace
for me. Its own voice, and damned if they, Ernie and the lady yet unnamed
(don't be fooled by the name painted on the outside of her trailer. That's
just for the rubes in line. But then, I don't think you'd be surprised, at
this point, to know that she protects her name. Yes, even from me so far.)

Ernie has his moment coming. I know that, and so does he. I wonder still, at
this point, how he's going to come to it. What makes him, drives him, to the
point in his life that's beginning to come clear? Let's find out, you and me
together. Tomorrow night, I think.

Though fair warning. She's been tested before. They're gone, she's still
here. One way or another, I don't think we've heard the last from her.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Heh. I was about halfway through reading the comments to this post on Bagheera the panther before I realized what it was that my mind was trying to remind me of. Blues Traveler, specifically their song Bagheera! (youTube version of the song). It's absolutely my favorite take on Bagheera's point of view, outside of the stories.
I posted the fifth part of "Opening Bid" below for your reading pleasure.

Now I've got to run balance the checkbook. I know, not much of an evening, but
I got my words in on the story; everything else is gravy.