TheZot

In case you missed the announcement, the latest adventure of Ben and William's has gone up for your reading pleasure. Barbarians, wizards, princes, demons, undergrads, and existential angst. What could possibly go wrong? (Sequel to Firegrass, prequel to Dirty Basement, for those of you keeping track of chronology and other pesky things)

After altogether too long, it's time for another run with Ben and William. Coming Home is up for your reading pleasure. Prequel to Dirty Basement, and sequel of a sort to Firegrass, the guys are moving from itinerant barbarian heroes to men about town. Transitions are always troubling. Now that this is done, it's time to head back to other projects. Busted's been inching forward ever so slowly, but it is moving. And as you might notice from the minor cleanup of D'home page, Carpe Diem is officially on the way. Took me ages, but I finally managed to wrap my head around the story, so it should start inching its way out. The Plan is for a new chapter out every two weeks. Carpe Diem's going to have to share space with Wild Life, since I really can't leave Ben and William behind, so there should be a chapter of each every month. Assuming the damn alien doesn't win. He's been pestering me. (You know how those aliens are...)

Space Lion, Yoko Kanno

No, no, it's not that they have sex or that they want to jump each other or that they're really, truly in love, it's that the mention is entirely egregious. It's not clear from the snippet, but that's all the innuendo in the entire piece. It was meant to be playful, and give a feeling for their relationship, and while it does it doesn't do it in a way that fits with the rest of the story. Hence the need for its removal or rewriting. (Though in this case it ended up getting tossed and replaced with something that worked much better to set the scene I had in mind)

Well, fruitcake is supposed to be stuffed with dried fruits and nuts, soaked in alcohol, with just enough 'cake' to hold the thing together. It's a form of long-term seasonal food storage, the same way jam is. Nuts tend to go rancid relatively quickly (or sprout!), and many fruits are awfully dodgy for more than a month or two. Fruitcake lives up to its reputation and does, in fact, last for a very long time -- that was its point. Palatability was an entirely separate matter, and cooking definitely isn't something that comes instinctively to too many people. Jokes about fruitcake are probably nearly as old as it is, but when you're looking for something to eat in mid-February and it's a few hundred years before the invention of canning, refrigeration, or cold-nitrogen storage, well, y'take what you can get and hope for the best. Even dried most fruits get fuzzy, the ones like apples that do last are mealy, and even unshelled nuts have a tendency to go a bit off in the damp. (None of this means you've gotta like it of course, since we conveniently do have canning, refrigeration, cold storage, and ships more than fast enough to haul fresh produce from the other side of the world...)

If there's pastry involved in fruit cake, someone's done something terribly, horribly wrong. I bet you'll find you do rather like spirits with your pastry. Vanilla, for example. (It's usually 30 or 40 proof) And if you insist on it actually being distilled as a flavoring rather than just as a solvent, Frangelico (hazelnut liquor) and Grand Marnier (orange) are both wonderful in things with pastry. Or general baked goods, they both make amazing frosting flavors, though my current favorite is Bailey's mixed into a light whipped pastry cream for cream puff filling. Mmmmmm! Though that's all off-topic, so we shan't talk about it any more, even if I am feeling the urge to go bake something tomorrow...

Apparently some people just haven't had good fruitcake. (I think the invention of that obnoxiously green and red candied fruit, and modern maraschino cherries, is what truly did the thing in) Dense, packed with nuts and dried fruits, and soaked with good brandy... Mmmm! Though I'll grant, if you had your first piece young, the taste of the alcohol can easily put you off it for ages. It's worth finding some well-made fruitcake and having another try.

The Portal end theme. And Coin Operated By by the Dresden Dolls.

(I should know better than to throw out offhand little things. Geeks, like magpies, are distracted by shiny things, and I'm very much a geek...) "I'm so glad you could make it," Harold said. "I've tried everything I could think of, but my roses keep getting worse!" "Don't worry, Mister Hargrave," said the gardener. He was wearing a green t-shirt with the 'Jake's Lawn and Garden' splashed over the left breast pocket. "I'm sure we can find out what's going on and get it taken care of." "Thanks, thanks very much," Harold babbled. "It's only a month until the garden show, and things were going so well this year..." The eponymous Jake patted Harold reassuringly. "No worries," he said. While Jake made a survey of the garden Harold paced nervously around his living room. He thought he'd had a chance this year, what with the MacKenzies off on their european tour, and Phil Brant on that white kick. He snorted at the thought. White. Sad color for a rose, and the flowers showed every blemish, no matter what you did. He jumped at the knock at the back door. Rushing over he threw it open and almost overwhelmed Jake, who stood there brushing the dirt off his hands. "What is it, did you find out? I thought maybe it was aphids, or Japanese Beetles, or some disease..." he babbled. "I think we've narrowed it down. I'll show you, and we can see about working out a treatment program," Jake said. He turned and went back out the back porch door, Harold trailing behind. The garden was indeed in terrible shape, the many rose bushes wilted and sickly looking. Jake squatted down next to one of the near bushes. "Now, if it were aphids you'd see 'em clustered on the stems. And if it were Japanese Beetles you'd see 'em all scattered around and humping. Randy little bugs. Not to mention you'd have the dead patches in the lawn and moles. You don't have moles, do you Mister Hargrave?" Harold blushed to the roots, knowing how he'd neglected his grass. "Only a few," he stuttered. "I think they come from next door." Jake glanced at the yard to the left. It was a mess, the grass a patchwork of species and weeds, with bright yellow dandelions scattered thickly across it. "I see,. Good thing they're mostly down-wind. Anyway," he said, turning to the rose bush. "What you have here is your garden variety orc infestation." "Orcs?" Harold asked, pulling back in astonishment. "Yep, orcs. See," Jake said, pointing at part of the ground with is toe. "You've got the classic signs. Burned out firepits, the gnawed bones of hapless forest creatures, and see, over there?" Jake pointed at a squirrel pelt that had been crudely cleaned, tied to a stick, and stuck into the ground. "Fetishes." Jake shook his head. "Stupid buggers, they--" He was cut off by a roar. Jake spun, pulled a gun from the back of his jeans, and fired, all in one smooth motion. Harold turned to see an eight foot tall humanoid figure with tusks and a face like a pig fall to the ground. There was a hole dead-center in its forehead. He watched with horror as the creature's body turned to brown goo and spread out into the ground. "You'll want to put some fertilizer down, the things really screw up your nitrogen balance when they do that," Jake said as he tucked the gun back into his pants. "Oh," Harold said, nearly speechless. "Will they be... difficult to get rid of?" "Ah, don't worry, they're easy enough to clean up. Couple of guys, some day-old pizza for bait, and we should have them cleared up in a few days." He gave Harold a reassuring smile. "Relax, we've done this plenty of times. Could be worse, you could have leaf hoppers. The plants'd be shot for the season if things had gotten this bad."

I was going to spend some time here whining about opening scenes, 'cause I hate 'em. I really, really do; they're annoying, and hard to get right, and even when I do manage a paragraph or three that doesn't suck they never go anywhere. I mean, I get as far as: Harold took a sip of his coffee as he looked out over the deck railing at the lake in front of him. The soothing warmth of the drink flowed through him as the first rays of the rising sun bathed the lake's waters in rich orange light. The lilting notes of the early-rising birds danced through the trees behind him played counterpoint to the beauty in front of him as another beautiful day dawned. or something like that and I start getting the itch to have something explode, or a UFO crash into the lake, or marauding orcs start laying waste to the back garden. Or zombies, they're always good for a laugh. Anyway, after chopping William's lament about pants out of the current story I've been left without an intro. This is troublesome, as it's a story that really needs some good scene-setting to work right. (Not that what I had was perfect as a scene setter, but it wasn't bad) I was going to go on about it for a bit, but I think I've figured out how to cheat again. So I think I will, and maybe I'll put off the whining until later.

Urk, the 'f' word. That, if nothing else, is a sign it needs to be redone. Definitely not accomplishing what I'm looking for.

I'm up for admitting the obvious reason, though I've gotta admit it's not 24x7. (I'll grant I'm a bit older than you are... ) With some more thought, I realized I've made a mistake. The initial question is "does this fit in with the rest of the story?" The answer was no. That doesn't mean it should get yanked out. That means I should ask the question "should it?" The answer there is... yes. More rewriting for me...

The current Ben and William story I'm working on set this one off. I sent off the draft for their most recent story to a good friend of mine for a read through. He's straight, and while guys doing each other isn't his thing, neither does he much care. (Which is cool, though occasionally somewhat embarrassing for me) The boys, of course, are a couple, and more than willing to boink each other at the drop of a hat. (Ben keeps a bag of hats around, just in case) Regardless, in the few stories of theirs that are done, their relationship isn't obvious. It's important, certainly, and affects how they deal with each other, but if you didn't know they were going at it like rabid weasels it probably wouldn't occur to you. (Well, assuming you don't have a dirty mind and a penchant for guys having sex) The two stories so far could, assuming they were better written, show up in Fantasy and Science Fiction, or one of the other short story magazines kicking around and nobody'd bat an eye. Anyway, at the very beginning there are a pair of paragraphs that make it clear how William feels about Ben. This bit, actually, with the comment: William slumped in the seat next to the fireplace. The inn they were in was nice enough, as these things went, but it'd been a week, and he still hadn't gotten used to being in a city. Truth be told, he hadn't gotten used to wearing pants again. Being a barbarian prince had its advantages, not the least of which was the low maintenance wardrobe. And, he thought as he watched Ben stride across the common room, there was the easy accessibility. Pants were definitely troublesome. I jumped forward, but who is your ultimate audience? This is as blatant as you get, but I like a subtle romance/tension between the two. Not saying it

You forgot two -- vicious black-hearted cynicism, and the ability to weild a cluestick with deadly accuracy...

Right, as I've threatened recently, I've another Ben and William short I'm working on. (Though does it still count as a short story if it's 9K+ words? I dunno) Anyway, I've been trying to stretch some with this one and have a more deliberate structure and theme to the story. That's a good thing, I think, assuming I managed to do it, but it makes it tougher to tell; with a good adventure story you just have to make sure that the thumping happens in more or less the right order, the descriptions all match, and there's sufficient witty banter to make everyone overlook the inherent silliness of the genre. (A genre I very much enjoy, I'll add, but that doesn't make it any less silly) This one's been more work, and I need some careful read-overs of it to make sure I actually accomplished what I was setting out to do. If anyone's interested, I'd very much appreciate some beta readers to flag where it did (and didn't) work.

The problem's not that the scene's resistant to writing; it writes just fine, and comes out perfectly good. The problem's that the resulting scene is for a different bloody story. (Right, maybe not bloody, as it's a fight with a demon, but "ichory" doesn't have the same ring to it) My own fault, the story needs subtle, and unfortunately my idea of subtle's normally "only hit it over the head with a stick once"...

It's a grey and drizzly saturday, and I'm sitting here rewriting this goddamn fight scene. Again. This is its third go-round, and it's pissing me off. This is S&S stuff. It's supposed to be straightforward, "kill the monster, take its treasure, move on." I mean, there's formula. Possibly sacred formula, I'm not sure -- the genre both demands it and is antithetical to it, which might make it obligatory to acknowledge and ignore it -- but definitely formula. You'd think it was easy to follow, but noooo... I apparently insist on making things rather more complex than they need to be. Bah. I'm tempted to rip the whole damn thing out and replace it with some boinking, except I'm a little worried what'll happen if I do that.

In this case there actually was a moral, or if not a moral at least an emotional situation I was building up to and then kinda lost in the shuffle. It's better now, though.

It's damned annoying, that's what it is. Not, in this case, a "what the heck was that moral, again?" but more a "damn, I had a moral and I lost track of it!" I mean, here I am, typing away, pretty much done with the story and I realize that the big end fight scene (c'mon, it's a sword'n'sorcery story, fight scenes are obligatory) is disconnected from the rest of the piece. I have what I think is a pretty nice setup, and I managed to let the banter side track me. Pesky characters, always trying to run away with the story. Sheesh. Some people. Which means I have fifteen hundred words that need reworking. Bah. This whole 'writing' thing looks so much easier on TV...

I'd love some. Once it's closer to second draft being done I plan on hitting up some of the folks who read it the first time for a read-through to see if it held up under assault.

So I've been beating up Busted, and I've been finding (as so many people do) that making it good takes a whole lot more work than just making it exist. I'd planned on having it done and shopping it around by the end of the year, assuming my HR department was OK with it. I'm not sure if that's going to happen now, unfortunately. It may, given that it's not yet Halloween, but I'm not holding my breath. Still, the work going into the rewrite is definitely worth it. Even if the book ultimately goes nowhere, the thought needed to get the damn thing in shape means that the next one, and there will be a next one, will be easier. Or conceptually larger. Not sure which, I have a tendency to over-reach my current skills, so it's even odds which way it goes. Courtesy of my tendency to get captivated by the oddest things (in this case the phrase "combat mathematician") there'll be another Ben and William short in a few weeks. Not time wasted, they're always fun for a romp and a good twist on old standards. (And if I've repeated myself, well... I blame it on switching blog clients and laziness, as those're always good excuses... )

Yeesh, such a debate. Time to break out the bike sheds! I think the important thing is to pick either US or UK spelling and stick with it consistently. And that means more than just color or colour -- it means all the other variant spellings. If you're going for colour you want memorise and aluminium, if you choose color then it's memorize and aluminum. There are a dozen or two of these, so it's probably best to set your spelling checker to US or UK and trust it when it complains.

Ah, you're making one of the classic mistakes -- knowledge bases aren't hierarchical, not really. They're best modeled as network databases; using a different model makes some things awfully difficult to do, and tends to restrict how you think about certain things. Not always a problem, but still... (It's a pity that the modeling tools tend to suck in this regard, forcing you to compensate for their mis-characterization of the domain. It's also one of the places XML's done active damage, as it has hierarchy deeply welded into it) And are you sure you don't want to move somewhere within commuting distance of NYC? 'Cause, well, damn, I want to pass on your resume to my boss.

And more rewrites. I'm not dead, but you'd never know it from the postings, would you? When Real Life hasn't been getting in the way, I've been beating up the draft of Busted, trying to get it in shape to shop around for publication. It's been a !@$! pain in the ass getting it ready, too. I thought the worst part about this would be throwing out scenes. I've already tossed 30K words, the last third of the book. Not that it isn't bad; some of the stuff I tossed I really, really like. I hate that bit. The worst part is going back, gutting, and reworking the stuff I I've already polished, stuff I thought was done. The only thing keeping me going at this is sheer bloody minded righteous indignation -- the first draft was better than some of the stuff I've paid money for, and dammit if that crap can get published so can my stuff. There's just no way in hell I'd let something in the shape Busted was go out with my name on it, even if it is a pseudonym. I should know better by now. Righteous indignation's gotten me in enough trouble over the years. (And no, not in the way you might expect) Oh well, ya gotta play with what you got, I guess. So one more plot thread gets thrown out, and another thousand words get to get rewritten again. At least poor Toby's not going to be getting sick, and Joe doesn't get stabbed. And I still get to knock Joe on his ass with the gun, even if I had to work at that. (As was pointed out by a friend who read part of the first draft, handguns just don't have enough kick to knock an adult off his feet, something I should've known. f=ma, and bullets just don't have that much mass) Start to finish this damn thing's going to end up taking a year. I hope it's worth it when it's all done.

I've always been rather fond of the magic system in Roger Zelazny's Madwand/Changeling books.