stonetable

It wasn’t the best year writing-wise. Eight new stories, one of which was flash and four were “hint fiction”. Two stories from 2008 were edited repeatedly and eventually submitted, both to Writers of the Future. Fifteen submissions, thirteen rejections, and one rewrite request. If my Duotope statistics are accurate, nine were personal rejections (one from a pro market).

Could be worse. 2010 will be much better, though.

[Crossposted from Adam Israel. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

apexblog

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/blog/2010/01/i%e2%80%99ve-been-playing-the-hell-out-of-assassin%e2%80%99s-creed-2-and-thinking-about-it-probably-too-much/

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/?p=1316

I’ve been playing the hell out of Assassin’s Creed 2 the last few days during my company’s winter vacation. I mean, when I say I have been playing the hell out of this game, that I have collected all the feathers, collected every item, won every race, fulfilled every assassination contract, beat someone up in every beat-up event, and delivered a lot of pointless mail for people. I may not get all the treasures but we’ll see how long it takes to clear out a city before the final assault on my enemies. This game is a fun game. I enjoy the hell out of it.

Yet, I also see the limitations of technology as a narrative form with this game.

AC2 is all about the AI and the level-design. This is the strength and weakness of the game as a story. The shiny polish of the design team is in every ornate crevice, every carefully plotted AI node for fleeing people who run screaming from you, and in the actions of guards who hunt you in hay bales and rooftops. The game is beautiful, down to the delicate cracks in stones that let you, as Ezio, clamber around the rooftops of beautiful Italian cities.

The beauty is also practical. Every detail integrates with gameplay. The cracks are ladders. The buildings are a giant set of monkey bars for the player to clamber around. The people on the street are obstacles or hiding places, if they aren’t hunting you.

As a narrative form, as much as I enjoy running over the rooftops to slash some poor archer in the throat for getting in my way, and as much as I enjoy vertical gameplay up the side of buildings to look-out points that reveal my map locations, there is one thing missing from this highly-polished, highly-enjoyable game.

Unpredictability.

I can visually look out at the map, and figure out exactly what the behavior and properties of every person on the street, every wall, every obstacle. As a narrative form, the game will never surprise me once I’ve learned the mechanics. I travel from cut scene to cut scene, fed the golden pellet of fun and success, never surprised after the first hour of gameplay when all the mechanics are revealed to me.

In contrast, in every book of political intrigue, like, for instance, The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, the intrigue reaches a baroque fugue of surprises and unexpected shifts. When I was reading The Lions of Al-Rassan (I’ll mention something from the beginning so as not to spoil too much) I’ll never forget the men walking through the door to the party, who are suddenly beheaded by the executioner just beyond the doorway. From the very beginning of the book, surprising twists arise out of the unpredictability of human nature, and by the way different independent actors struggle around each other’s goals.

In Assassin’s Creed 2, I never get that feeling that my enemies – these solid-state AI robots – are capable of genuine guile. I am the only independent actor. I am the only character capable of thinking with more complexity than a solid state machine. Despite the polish of the game, and the many pleasures of it, the narrative is hollow. The twists are telegraphed well in advance. No matter where I go in the world, it isn’t a place so much as a playground. I can stab everything. I can climb everything. I move from cut scene to cut scene, collecting feathers and treasures. I feel no deep connection to the world around me because after the first hour of game play, there is very little left to surprise me.

Video games are not quite up to the level of intrigue as a Guy Gavriel Kay novel.

On the other hand, I don’t necessarily need a video game to surprise me. I find something comforting in a world where all my actions are rewarded, and all my great successes are built around predictable designed mechanics.

Every knife in the back always kills. Every reach for a ledge succeeds. Every leap from great height into a random haystack is a safe landing. It’s something fun to do when I feel the need for mental attaboys.

When I finally finish getting all the achievements and stabbing people in the face, I’ll probably finish reading Push of the Sky by Camille Alexa. I expect her stories to be full of surprises more so than a series of AI bots.

J.M. McDermott - Last Dragon, his first novel, was shortlisted for a Crawford Prize, and #6 on Amazon.com’s Year’s Best SF/F of 2008. It’s currently available from Apex Book Publishing as an inexpensive eBook. By day, he is a game writer for an unannounced XBox 360 title from Xaviant Software, north of Atlanta.

Visit J.M.’s blog: jmmcdermott.blogspot.com

a_r_williams

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.

It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.
 
It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.

It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.

We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”

a_r_williams

Today is the first day, of the first month, of the new year. Good things are in store. I want to complete two novels this year ( have started, but not completed novels in the past ) so I need a monthly target.

The estimated word count for each novel is going to be 110,000 words. I want to write the first in the first 6 months and the second one the last 6.

If I can, I would like to do it in five months and take a month off for re-reading, changing notes on book 2, update world building, minor editing of book 1,and relaxing. If I hit my target date, that would put the month of leisure time in June when alot of the summer block busters will be out. Maybe I will allow myself to watch a few :)

110,000 words divided by 5 = 22,000 words a month

22, 000 words divided by 4 = 5,500 words a week

5,500 words divided by 7 = 786 words a day

January Writing Goals:

WRITE 786 words a day and post the word count to novel_in_90  by 9:30 PM 

norilana

• Was a Nebula Awards Finalist for the second time -- novella category this time, for The Duke in His Castle.
  
  
• Sold a new Compass Rose story "Niola's Last Stand" to Black Gate Magazine.
  
  
• Sold a SmartPop essay to BenBella Books on a topic I cannot announce yet (but it's awesome).
  
  
• In April, reissued my own collection Salt of the Air, revised and expanded with additional three stories, through Norilana.
  
  
• Received a couple of film rights inquiries from production companies (it came to nothing) and sub-rights foreign inquiries (also came to nothing).
  
  
• Wrote, illustrated, packaged and released a novel, Mansfield Park and Mummies, a Jane Austen monster parody, in under 4 months.
  
  
• A day before Christmas, my BofA mortgage loan modification papers finally came, a miracle!
  
  
• Released 48 books through Norilana, an even mixture of originals and classic reprints. This is a very low volume, only half of my normal 100-books-a-year business output. My productivity was cut down by half, attributable to the hellish stress of the year.
  

• Finally bought my very own house in 2000 after decades of trying and various financial misfortunes, qualified for a Fannie Mae sub-prime loan (later refinanced twice). This was the culmination of a poor immigrant's dream for me and my family.
  
  
• Lost day job, got laid off, rehired for night shift, then company merger, company gone, lost job again, for most of 2002.
  
  
• Declared bankruptcy in 2002. My bankruptcy lawyer told me I should have done it years ago, instead of enduring so many years of hell (post my 90s fiasco of auto accident + insurance company fraud perpetrated against me).
  
  
• Became a fulltime freelancer in 2002.
  
  
• Refinanced home loan twice in 2003-2005 to mostly make repairs and to live on while doing sporadic freelance work.
  
  
• In 2005 finally remodeled the fixer-upper house (complete remodel of kitchen, two bathrooms, laundry room, new stone fence, most of roof, 11 new windows, new copper plumbing and new sewer (that one last year).
  
  
• Lost and gained too many companion animals to mention, though I am going to try. Gained: Silva, Charlie, Robin, Simeon, Slavik, Eugene, Nella, Shura, Murray, Johnny. Lost to illness, accident, or old age: Masha, Susie, Seryozha, Zaika, Tasia, Misha, Sasha, Silva, Simeon, Slavik, Eugene, Nella, Shura, Angel, Tarasik, Rafik, Sophie.
  
  
• My first novel, Dreams of the Compass Rose came out in May, 2002 from Wildside Press (and in TPB in September, 2004). I busted my ass and used the last of my money promoting it as I was filing for bankruptcy (and gained the ugly reputation of an over-aggressive self-promoter fool when in fact I was singlehandedly fighting for my book's life). A handful of people read it. It made the Preliminary Nebula Ballot, was not even considered for the Tiptree because the judge lost the copy (!!) and disappeared in POD obscurity despite my best efforts and due to sheer crap luck (ibooks bankruptcy to top off this cherry sundae of hell) that has plagued me for the greater part of my writing life.
  
  
• My second novel, Lords of Rainbow, an epic fantasy about a world without color (that took me 18 years to write and dream), came out a year later in March, 2003 from Betancourt & Company (imprint of Wildside Press), then in TPB in September, 2004 (insert repeat of sad publication story, but this time even worse, since mostly things were out of my hands. The two books were contracted simultaneously, so in some ways it's a chicken-egg technicality to order them in terms of release date.)
  
  
• My far future novella The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass came out from PS Publishing, UK in 2005, made the Locus recommended list.
  
  
• Debut collection Salt of the Air finally came out 2 years late in September 2006 from Prime Books. Later, revised and expanded version of Salt of the Air I reissued myself through Norilana in April, 2009.
  
  
• Out of sheer desperation, I started my sole proprietorship small business Norilana Books in August 2006. To date, Norilana has 258 titles in print (and only 3 of them are my own books), and is proud to be the publisher of Tanith Lee, Sherwood Smith, Modean Moon, John Grant, William Sanders, Eugie Foster, Mike Allen, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Catherynne M. Valente, David Dvorkin, Leonore H. Dvorkin, Deborah J. Ross, Rosemary Hawley Jarman, Roby James, Ken Rand, The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Elisabeth Waters, Adam Campan, Dave Hutchinson, and numerous short fiction authors.
  
  
• Got a HELOC, and since they did not give me the amount I asked, I went into credit debt again to float the new business.
  
  
• In 2007 my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, got complete abdominal hysterectomy, chemo, three operations, one for corrective hernia, had to wear a wound vac to suction wound for over 4 months, was hospitalized 3 times. I took care of her round the clock.
  
  
• My Compass Rose short story "The Story of Love" originally published in Salt of the Air, then reprinted in Best New Romantic Fantasy #2, was a 2007 Nebula Award Finalist, and I attended the Nebula Awards Weekend in Austin, TX.
  
  
• I attended my college 20th reunion in 2008, and my 20th high school reunion in 2004.
  
  
• Meanwhile, after simultaneous deterioration while mom was being sick, my father died on February 1, 2008, just over a month after turning ninety. His ashes are scattered and buried in our back yard garden under the rose bushes -- part of the reason why I can never let this house go...
  
  
• In memory of my father I finished my baroque fantasy novella The Duke in His Castle, and released it myself through Norilana in illustrated book form. The novella was a 2008 Nebula Award Finalist. I attended the Nebula Awards Weekend here in Los Angeles.
  
  
• From 2008 to 2009 is a haze of mortgage hell, with Countrywide then Bank of America, as the economy crashed and my home was now over $100,000 underwater in terms of equity. No financial institution (but many good kind friends) would loan me money for business startup (since of course the bankruptcy was on my record still).
  
  
• In a desperate attempt to stay solvent, completed and released a novel, Mansfield Park and Mummies, a Jane Austen monster parody, in under 4 months.
  
  
• In all this time I wrote lord knows how many short stories, I don't know, but too few, since I mostly struggled with the money and taking care of parents and other problems, so writing was very odd and sporadic.
  
  
• Entered my 40s. Middle age, wow.

warren_ellis

Happy new year. May this one be kinder, funnier and more interesting than the last.

Photo by my good friend Brian Wood, who’s away with his family tonight. My family’s asleep, and I’m sitting here with whisky in the glass and Michael Cashmore’s SLEEP ENGLAND on the speakers, brushing the last traces of a brief snow flurry off my shaven head, and thinking about the future. Annual tradition, maybe, or perhaps just something coded into my bones. It’s the only way I know to break the new year in: to sit in the quieter part of the night and think.

This is Warren Ellis dot com, broadcasting into 2010.

stonetable

I’m going to try keeping this brief, because there’s not much good to say about two thousand and nine. I’m sure that, many years ahead, I’ll look back upon this year and have kinder words for it: character building, challenging, a turning point. Right now the pain is too close to analyze.

I believe the next year will be a turning point. There are many fine tendrils weaving their way towards good things. A brilliant, talented wife that tolerates my eccentricities with grace and snarky comments. Many fine people, met or imagined, that I now call friend. Writing that improves with each passing day. A job that, despite some rocky months this past year, continues to give me the freedom to craft my own future.

I’ve set many goals for the next year, personal and professional. Getting debt from the divorce paid and forever behind me. Getting personal finances in order. Deciding where we want to live and finding a house. Writing and editing many stories. Submitting said stories. Get more physically fit. Start walking again. Maybe take martial arts again. Things I, more or less, have control over. No more stressing over the things I don’t.

In like a lion, out like a lamb. A pretty apt description of this decade. Ten years ago I was working in New York City, a consultant for NBC. Working New Years Eve, armed with a special security badge (which I still have somewhere) allowing me into the building on the eve of the new millennium. Y2K fever spread rampantly, with security precautions and stockpiling. Much ado about nothing. Follow that with 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. As we bring this decade to its close, this era of ineptitude, insecurity theater, underwear bombers, Jon & Kate, and the Octomom, I say good riddance. Bitterly. Let’s have some forward progress and substance in the next ten years, eh?

[Crossposted from Adam Israel. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

cmpriest

Presented here for personal reference, and the sake of motivation. Plenty was set into motion in 2009 — Dreadnought, (part of) Clementine, Bloodshot, and my contribution to Fort Freak were all written and are now in editorial process — but there’s lots I’d like to see get underway in 2010. So here’s my tally of the definite stuff, and the stuff that definitely needs to happen next year.

Definitely happening:

• Fathom released in mass market (February 2010)
  
• Clementine released (May 2010)
  
• Dreadnought released (fall 2010?)
  
• Bloodshot released (late in 2010, I assume - maybe early 2011)
  
• Fort Freak released (late in 2010 I assume - maybe early 2011)
  

Definitely needs to happen:

• Write Hellbent and hand it in by summer
  
• Draw up pitches for 2 more Clockwork Century books, Ganymede and Jacaranda
  
• Hone pitch for unrelated novel Maplecroft and begin writing it
  
• Hone pitch/content for unrelated novel Engines of Wrath and possibly finish it
  
• Hone pitch/content for YA novel The Storming and possibly finish it
  

cartazon

Mirrored from Artifacts.

Happy New Year, friends! Here’s wishing you all happiness and success in the months to come.

This will be the final post on this blog. Don’t panic, I am not giving up blogging! I have just decided to switch addresses a little, to the main page of www.dumoski.com. I’ve also decided to start over with a clean slate while I make the move. I won’t be deleting the content here, but it won’t be updated, and it won’t be automatically included in the new blog set up, either.

This won’t make any difference to you if read this through LiveJournal–posts will continue to be fed automatically to my account there.

However, if you have bookmarked this site or subscribe to it via an RSS feed reader, you will need to take a quick trip to the link below and click the appropriate buttons to resubscribe or re-bookmark, as needed.

www.dumoski.com: hope to see you there!

cmpriest

In 2010 (which is pronounced “twenty-ten” in my head), heaven only knows what will become of us. The older I get, the more strongly I feel that I have precious little control over much of anything; but the things that are within my authority, I will do my best to manage.

Mind you, I don’t smoke, don’t drink to any prohibitive excess, and I’m not interested in losing weight (though I’m a little out of shape). I already keep my home tidy as a matter of personal routine. My credit cards are finally paid off. And, quite frankly, the bad habits I indulge are not the kind I can be bothered to address. My capacity for resolution is therefore somewhat limited.

Ergo. This year I’d like to sell more books, but I can only resolve to continue writing more books. To this end, I’m going to once more make it my goal to write every single day, even if it isn’t much. Likewise, I’d like to get in better shape, but I can only resolve to maintain my present exercise regimen and eat reasonably.

So I guess that’s it. I resolve to keep on keepin’ on. It’ll either be enough, or it won’t.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

bondo_ba

Said I wouldn't list the 2009 stuff.  Did you really believe that?

A list of things...

Novel subbed
Rock climbing
Freedom regained
Different novel finished
Unpierced belly buttons - first time in ten years! (no I'm not going to explain this one)
All sorts of publications (see www.gustavobondoni.com.ar for details, not going to list it here)
Tennis - how long had it been, anyway?
Old friends rediscovered
Solo singing once again, seven years later
New friends made
Web site created
Saw Metropolis for the first time
Lots of goals
 

Well, happy new year again!

bev_vincent

A happy 2010 to one and all. Have a great and safe evening.

You know all those things they say happen only once in a blue moon? Well, tonight’s the night that they all happen. Beware.

Next interesting date: February 1st, 2010. Why? because in the US, it’s a palindromic date: 01 02 20 10. In the UK, it’s January 2nd that’s palindromic.

We went to see Sherlock Holmes a couple of days ago. A decent movie, lovely to behold. I felt myself bristling against some of the liberties they took with Holmes and, to a lesser extent, with Watson. Lestrade was almost perfectly true to Doyle.  The scenery was visually stunning. I especially liked the Tower Bridge. I thought Robert Downey, Jr. mumbled a little, making some of his lines hard to understand. On the whole it was a fairly good film. Loved the Irish music, too, especially the Dubliners.

Yesterday we saw Blind Side. Sandra Bullock is really good in this film. The story itself is almost devoid of dramatic tension. They try to inject some with the incident with the NCAA investigation and the one instance where Big Mike vanishes, but for all intents and purposes, once Bullock’s character sets her mind on her goal, it rolls out pretty much without complication. Even her own kids don’t rebel or object in the least to the new status quo. I smiled at the irony of a woman who is such a socialite but at the same time a Taco Bell heiress of sorts. Kathy Bates brings a little humor to the story, but her “confession” felt a tad forced.

I don’t think I mentioned The Hangover, which we saw a week or so ago. It had its moments. Wasn’t as over the top or raunchy as I expected it to be, which isn’t a bad thing as I don’t tend to go in for that sort of film. A few bits were brilliant, some clever, and a fair number missed the target, but on the whole it was okay. I think the concept could have been made much, much funnier, though.

Finished reading The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith and moving into The Double Comfort Safari Club, also by AMS. Also reading Sleepless by Charlie Huston. An interesting concept but the book’s structure is a little confusing, at least in the early going. I also finished Don Quixote, finally. Glad to have read it, and was a bit surprised by how mean-spirited it could be at times, especially with poor Sancho Panza being “sentenced” to lashings and pinchings and slaps, on a whim. At least he figured out a way to get around the lashings.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

sfwa_admin
sfwa

Longtime review and news site IROSF announced today that they would be shutting down in February.

Seattle, WA, 12/30/2009 – After six years of publication the Internet Review of Science Fiction (irosf.com) will cease operations after the February, 2010 issue. Publisher L Blunt “Bluejack” Jackson and Editor Stacey Janssen expressed their gratitude to all the subscribers, contributors, authors, and especially the volunteers who made IROSF such a success since its first issue in January, 2004.

Continuous financial shortfalls added to the challenges of  publishing IROSF, and Jackson has expressed his intent to turn to new challenges related to the economy and logistics of Internet publishing. “What we learned with IROSF and AEon Speculative Fiction was that neither traditional nor community-driven economic models met our needs, and that the complexity of managing a distributed volunteer pool burned people out, despite a steady increase in revenue and readership. Our plan is to use this knowledge, and the ready availability of new distribution channels, to create the kind of environment that would have empowered the editors to achieve the success that IROSF’s superb content always deserved.”

Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA

jlassen

• 09:55 The battlecry of an independent publisher. (not me) bit.ly/8RPOAA #