The batteries in my spiffy wireless keyboard had the temerity to die on me today. Thankfully, I have a spare keyboard to plug in until I get a new set of batteries. Poor thing – there was no warning for it, no ‘flee! Flee while you can!’ for it. Well – welcome to the NFL, here’s your helmet. Speaking of needing helmets, Wednesday is coming – which means I will be heading back to work. On the plus side, no one from work has called me, so as far as I know, I am still working there. Granted, I would like to leave there one day, and with any luck, I can leave during the next year and start going to conventions for business rather than pleasure… most of the time. I might have to have a gopher and a booth babe in tow, but that’s for later.

I’ve got to get 3,000 words today if I am to stay ahead for Nanowrimo. 3,000 might sound like a lot, but I can usually get that down in an uninterrupted setting. That’s the key word: uninterrupted. I have to admit that I am my own worst enemy sometimes, with the TV and the radio being willing and highly skilled accomplices. I think after this and dinner, I am going to retreat into the study and get those 3K out today. I also have to admit, I like the feel of this keyboard as I type. One of the few things I don’t like about getting a tablet is missing the feel of the keys under my fingers. I like the sound of the clicking keys – while, yes there are programs that can replicate that sound, but I shouldn’t have to put on headphones to feed my nostalgia. I should put on headphones to keep the outside world at bay.

I/O Error is taking a bit of an interesting tack before I had to stop for the night – I’m looking at Gail as being far more like a battlefield than a character. There is the quantum and logical sides of her warring about the day to day, while there is another battle going on about the ship between two camps of entities aboard ship. Not to mention Gail versus other members of the crew – there is going to be a lot more going on in this story than what I had originally planned – I love being a hybrid writer. I love (sometimes) when the characters go in a different direction. I said sometimes – there are points when the characters want to go one way, but I have to bribe, threaten and cajole them back to the right path. I swear I am not crazy. Really. Stone cold sane. Just me and the voices.

Speaking of voices, I need to get back to work and make some peppermint tea. So, I hope y’all have a good day and a better evening.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Yes, I know that I am working on I/O Error for publication, but I want to look forward to the next novel – my question is that should I start a long term series (without end) or something that has a definite end to it (a trilogy)? The long term series is called Spooksayer and is a series of murder mysteries. The short term series doesn’t have a series title so far, but it’s a fantasy (steampunkish/western/gothic that if you squint hard enough, you could see some Gnostic influences) series that I’ve been working on for a few years in my head (it’s the series that goaded me into writing). I actually could use some advice. Would I be biting more off than what I can chew by doing the long series or could I alternate between the books? Well, one of the reasons I am looking for some advice is that I don’t want to fall into the George R. R. Martin trap (years in between books). Anyway – my mind is always working ahead, and I just found out that Amazon has a serial option with books. I might do something with that, I have another idea that would fit nicely into it. Yes – I have ideas on top of ideas and very little time with my schedule of work. I will iterate this: I feel that 2013 is my year… unless that whole Mayan thing is true, then I’m gonna be pissed.

My vacation is going to end in a few days (Nov. 7^th) and I will be heading back to work. *Sigh* It’s been a fun few days away from the chatter and the phone sounds. I have one vacation day left and I am going to see if I can get just one more three day weekend before the end of the year. It’s been a productive break and I got some great movies (seriously, get ‘Sunshine’ – a movie that was robbed in the box office). I’m now looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas when I get a Blu-Ray player and “The Avengers” on Blu-Ray and make some Turkey Stew and dumplings for Thanksgiving. Gonna be a good holiday season this year – even better if I can get something to press; which will happen soon, I know it in my bones. Don’t worry, when that happens, I will let you know…. unless you happen to hear my screams of joy, which you might if you’re close enough to where I live… in the US.

Well, I do have some housework to do – dishes to scrub, laundry to finish washing and a spiffy movie to watch. I hope everyone here has a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

I went to the Nanowrimo write-in and it was exactly what it said on the tin; a bunch of people with their lap-tops writing their novel in silence (mostly because they had headphones and music – like me) until the last fifteen minutes, when the conversation turned to Pokémon. Seriously. It was at that moment that old age took a bat and a surly attitude to my psyche. I remember when Pokémon first hit the shores of the US. Heck, I remember when crystal meth was ‘the new danger looming on the horizon’. To hear these kids – admittedly, one of the more knowledgeable people there was 15 years old – talk about them with a depth of knowledge reserved for medical doctors or war weary vets made me want to tell them to turn down their dagburn rock-n-roll and get off my lawn. The writing itself wasn’t too bad – same as if I was back at home. Of course, I didn’t speak that much since I was writing. Might go to another one just to see what else can happen.

Now, onto the freaky dream I had. If anyone here is an expert on dream analysis, or is an armchair psychologist (why armchairs need psychologist is beyond me – unless you have some 500 lbs. guy sit on you, then I can see where trauma could occur), this is your chance to flex your analytical muscles. Granted, I don’t remember a whole lot of the dream, but I can remember a couple of things very clearly (coming to a novel soon):

• My right arm is greatly diseased and possibly rotting – I did comment on the smell. I remember being concerned that it’s going to just drop off. Parts of the arm are discolored like I’m bruised and some of the discoloration is accompanied with lumps, or pustules. I remember noting that I have no feeling in that arm at all. In fact, I was holding it up with my left hand (for the record, I’m left handed).
  
• I also remember walking up a sandy hill (one of the settings in Borderlands 2 – Washburn Canyon, I think) while holding my arm.
  
• Another concern I had was my right thumb. There was a cut, or a split in the skin in which I could move it around freely, even take it off on a hinge of flesh near the knuckle. I kept tamping down that piece of flesh, commenting that while it was fascinating that I could lift it up and over, I knew I shouldn’t do it.
  

Good luck on figuring this one out! I’ll be in the back wondering about my sanity.

The novel is coming along well, I finished the first chapter and there seems to be a conflict within the main character between her logical processor (the robot side of her) and her quantum processor (the human-like side of her) as she tries to handle these issues and problems that arrive. It’s shaping up to be less of an id-ego conflict and more like a squabbling married couple. How this is going to fit in with the rest of the novel is going to be frankly a mystery. I’m not a pantser in the strict sense of the word. I do have some organization to it – I know generally where the story is going, but the smaller details I don’t get into until I start writing. It’s kinda neat when I see something start that I didn’t think of immediately and have it develop in the course of the novel… which I should be getting back to about now.

Hope you all have a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

I got my hair cut yesterday (and I know that this makes for captivating reading) and I went from someone who looks like an extra from Sons of Anarchy to someone who looks like they would at home in a clock tower in Texas. There is never any sort of middle ground with me. It’s actually a little too short, but I figure I’ll grow into the length I like and take a picture of that. For those of you who are extremely curious here is the link to a photo album online. I will warn you – with or without hair, I am hideous. Now that this has been put out of the way, we can move on to other things of questionable social value.

There is a writer’s meeting for Nanowrimo today, and I am thinking about going to it. Yes, I’ve stated that I am not really happy about most social situations, but I figure that this should hopefully help with my writing. I do need to come out of my shell every now and then, and I figure that the best way to ease myself into this is to go to situations where I have an interest in something. So, we’ll give this a try. At least I will be able to go to that Mongolian Grill place.

Speaking of no sleep until December…

I/O Error is still blocking me a little bit. I might end having to do the whole skip-ahead thing just to maintain some sort of momentum. I’m also not trying to think of this as ‘work’ when I sit down and write. This is my biggest dear – I get to a point where I am writing professionally, and I sit down in front of the computer and instead of the joy of telling a tale, I feel that same weariness come over me that I feel when I am at my current job. You have no idea how much I dread that moment. As much as I feel the hand of Fate moving me along at times, I fear that my own mercurial temperament will undo me. I sabotage romantic interests, friendships, work and even fun on some bi-polar Puck-like whim. This is material better suited for a therapist… unless there is a therapist reading this – then feel free to barrage me with questions privately. For now, I will let this stand and move on to other things.

While my first novel is getting edited, I am getting together other things: website hosting for starters. I do plan on having a website to hock my wares and garner attention. So far, all the reviews I’ve read leads me to believe that Host Gator is the best one, and for about $300.00 a year, I can not only get hosting, but also get Search Engine Optimization – meaning that my website will be placed higher on a search engine list like Google and DuckDuckGo. I just have to ask them about credit card processing… which means I can use my work expertise outside of the job for a change.

Oh – let me also push a book on y’all: Babylon Confidential by Claudia Christian (Ivanova – that’s all I need to say). I got this book Friday and I finished about 80% percent of it that day. It is a hard book to put down, and I would advance it as a cautionary tale for those who have dreams of taking L.A. and Hollywood by storm. If I ever have the privilege of meeting Ms. Christian in person, I’ll have to have her sign my copy. After this, I’m going to real Rule 34 as well as try to finish up a couple of private books. I’ve been letting too many of them drop by the wayside as of late.

Well, that’s all for now. I wish you a good day and good fortune.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello, everyone. I want to say this about being a homeowner.

Don’t.

Here’s why: my furnace is acting up. It will run for a while and then stop – not when the temperature is right, but when it darn well wants to do so. At first, I could jiggle a wire and the filter and it would kick back on. No problem, I could keep this up for a few months and then have it looked at in the spring or summer. No big deal. It cut out last night, so I did the jiggle-tug and put the cover back up. The blower turned on and I waited for the comforting *fwoof* the gas igniting. There was no *fwoof*. Now, it’s not bone-chilling cold here in my neck of the woods (Heck, the day time temperature today is 41 degrees – not the worse I’ve had to endure, but still…), but I live in an area where during the winter daytime temperature can get to a balmy twenty degrees. Yep. You read that right. 20 in the daytime. So, I’d better get this furnace whipped into shape before winter. Not looking forward to it, since… again… strange people in the house. The cost isn’t getting to me, thankfully I have some savings, but the idea of people coming in here just unnerves me. I’ve gone into detail about this before, so I am just going to say this: not one of my better days thus far, but I am still on vacation, so it’s a little better.

Tomorrow begins Nanowrimo. I am going to throw myself into it completely and hopefully come out with a finished novel and a minimal lack of sleep. For those of you who might not have heard of it, you plop yourself down in front of a computer and write a novel (50K words) in 30 days. You can do that, but your social life will suffer somewhat. Well – yours might dear reader, not mine, I am an amateur recluse (I still have dreams of competing in the Olympics in men’s single recluse. I wanted to try men’s team recluse, but I didn’t make the first cut) so I have no issues with sitting in front of a computer for hours on end – I do it for a living and I hope to make more money off of it. If you’re interested, I always tell people to give it shot. It’s only one month and it costs nothing to join the site. Give it a shot. Who knows? There might be a writer in you.

I/O Error is stumbling a little bit. I want to get to the good stuff, but I need to stick to the plan and get the set-up finished. The last novel, I would skip around and do all the ice cream scenes and write stuff to stitch it together. I didn’t like doing that because when I read it back, it could tell that the scenes were there to carry me on to the next neat scene. Of course, I knew what the scene was for, so I might not have been completely subjective. Well, we’ll see what the editor will say about it. Hopefully, all will be well and I get it to market before too long.

Well, I should go and get to work. Hope everyone has a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello all – I know I haven’t been keeping this blog on a regular basis, so with the vacation I have this week and part of next, I am looking to get back into the habit. So… what’s new you ask? Well, let me start with a couple of birthday pictures:

The funny thing about ice cream cake – it does limit how many candles you can use.

I got a couple of gifts: the two best sci-fi
movies around and a gift card to Starbucks. I also got some birthday love from Amazon: Empowered: vol 7 (get it), Babylon Confidential by Claudia Christian and The Walking Dead, vol. 16 (get this series!). I also got myself a little gift – the Kindle Fire, a wonderful little device to entertain myself. I have that and a Nook Color; the Nook is for writing and the Kindle is strictly entertainment… no, really. Lest you think I just sat around all day and played Borderlands 2 all day (only three hours, thank you very much), I actually did something useful – something that I have needed to do for a long while.

There’s a desk under there? I’m just as shocked as you are.

So – yeah, I did something good on my birthday. Didn’t do any writing, but then again – it was my birthday. Today, it’s going to be back to work with I/O Error and hopefully get it finished before the beginning of the year. Getting the first novel finished and off to an editor has given me a great boost of confidence. With this week and a half off, I should get a lot of headway into the book. I am also looking to start a more public blog for a website to sell my books. Once I have three novels together and out there, I will (hopefully) be able to go out to conventions and sell, or at least get my name out there. I have a good feeling that 2013 will finally be my year. Feelings are all well and good, but this needs to be buttressed by action. Which means I need to get to the grocery store, see if they finally have that good white chili and some chicken to go with the rice I might cook. Yeah – I’m going to be lazy about this. While I don’t mind doing dishes… if I don’t have to do them, then I am not going to do them.

On the TV front – Burn Notice is coming back and I am happy. That show is one of the consistently best ones out there. That and Warehouse 13 are the TV shows I enjoy. I’ve watched the first episode of American Horror Story: Asylum and I am going to give it another two or three episodes. Well, I should hop off to the store and get my stuff together for dinner. I hope everyone has a good day and a better week.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

The novel is finished and off to the editor! Yes, there have been some delays – but all that matters are that it’s done and I can move on to the next novel. Finally. I can switch gears to horror. In my head I am still dithering over some things, but I’ll get them worked out by the time I get to them in the book. The next step (once the novel is edited and ready for release into the cold, cruel world) is to get a website set up so I can sell it. Of course, I am hampered by one tiny thing: I have no idea what to do next. So the next few weeks in between writing about the heliopause and dealing with Evil.

On the other hand – Evil does get shot in the face a lot in this game.

On other fronts, I’m working a 3 day work week and a full week, and then I’m off for a week and a half for my birthday and the Halo 4 release. Oh – there is a webseries on YouTube that you should give your attention to, (especially if you’re a Halo fan… but if you are, then you might already know about this) it is call “Forward Unto Dawn“. Why can’t we have things like this on broadcast TV? Yes – I am a fan of this, but there is more to this particular grief than not being able to see Master Chief on the big screen. It seems like all the talent has fled from there to cable and from cable to the Internet. I’m not saying there’s nothing to watch on broadcast, but there is just painfully little to watch. I was primed for “Revolution”, but I wasn’t wowed after two episodes. I watched an episode of “Last Resort” – the jury is still out on that. Most of the stuff that I watch is documentaries, movies and very old programs (NCIS is in its 10^th season!). I’ve got my eye on the Kindle Fire as a test to see if Hulu Plus and Netflix might be a better alternative to TV – as a lot of friends have told me.

Well, this edition is going to be a little short – there are more electrical problems at the house and I need to get a electrician this time. Huzzah for being a house owner.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Now, I like post-apocalyptic fiction, especially in movies – I’m not limiting myself to just zombie movies. I loved the Mad Max movies and I loved the novel The Road (yeah, it’s depressing as anything, but it’s well written), so when I heard about ‘Revolution’, I was thrilled. When I saw that ‘Gus’ from ‘Breaking Bad’ was going to be in it, I was ecstatic. I watched the first episode and I felt that it was OK – left some questions to be answered, but that is the job of the pilot episode. Now some people have asked some questions about the world and how some things operate – I am one of them and I had a few questions that I would like to see answered by some post-apocalyptic series or movie:

1. Where the hell are the bikes? The skateboards? Mopeds? (Lord knows we have enough of those things buzzing around here) I know the central premise of the story is that electricity no longer works, but what about gears? Seriously – road bikes are very efficient for travelling long distances and mountain bikes are still very hardy. Bicycles themselves require little in the way of maintenance. Screw raiding the gun shops and grocery stores – I’m hitting the Schwinn Shop to get a couple of road bikes, a mountain bike, some helmets and patch kits (no, I am not getting those lycra bike shorts until I’ve lost weight – the world has ended… hasn’t it suffered enough?).
   
2. This is the big one: Main character has a flashback to when she was a child. Her parents (one of them being a scientist that predicted this event and had a back-up plan) were at the university when the girl playing with a ball (the main character) had it bounce away from her (the dad was inside getting something, so it was just her, her little brother and their mother) and a guy picked it up. Naturally, he was giving off the creepy vibe and took her hostage, asking in an even tone for the food they had. The father comes out, sees that his daughter is captive and raises his pistol to the man’s head. The man calls his bluff and gives away the food. We cut away to him rolling along with the wagon of food:
   

    

   Husband: You give that food back! I swear to God I’ll shoot!
   

   Man: No, you won’t.
   

    

   … and the guy was right, because we hear a shot and the guy flops down dead. Camera cuts back to reveal the mother with the gun in her hand, the barrel smoking and her hand not shaking a whit.
   

    

   Now here comes my unpopular gripe: really? Men can’t kill even in defense of their own children? You can say: “He was a professor, not really a gun person.” Why have the gun in the first place? I’m sorry, while the writer in me understands the need for this sort of thing to show that this guy isn’t going to be the stalwart, action hero type to set up his big death to kick off the series; the viewer in me just rolled his eyes and took it off of the record list on the DVR. I am not saying that women can’t kill. I’m not saying that women in television need to go back to playing weaker stereotypes, but the idea of a man not being capable of violence, while the woman is a steely-eyed machine of death (especially when it’s not set up that way in the pilot) is becoming horribly clichéd.
   

    

   The three people that know me and read this blog know that I am a fairly happy-go-lucky sort of guy. I am perfectly willing to go along to get along at times. However, if this scenario happened as listed above – there would be changes:
   

   1. My wife, son and daughter would stay with me at all times – or at least within earshot. If my daughter whines about it (and she wouldn’t because by now she knows better, but the stress of the times gets to the best of us), I would tell her: “Sweetie, things have changed. There are people out there now who are going to try to do things they were afraid to do before for fear of getting caught. I need you to stay with me so I can keep you safe. You need to stay with your brother to keep him safe. OK? My biggest job right now is looking after everyone here and I need you to help by staying with me.”
      
   2. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I am separated from my wife and child, with me having the only gun (why didn’t the husband give her the gun in the first place? Why didn’t she have a gun for herself? This is why I’m not watching ‘Revolution’ – the writing is lazy.). I hear a disturbance and come out to see my daughter hostage to a shady looking character. Now, he thinks he’s going to say something like ‘gimmie your food and I’ll let her go’ or ‘that’s a nice daughter you have there…’. He’s not going to say much of anything, since the language center of the brain is now a pink mist exiting out the back of his head. It’s the end of the world, kids. It’s going to be anarchy. We are going to have to do what needs to be done to survive.
      

       

So – the reason why I am not watching ‘Revolution’ ultimately is lazy writing. Sorry – I wasn’t blown away by it. Better luck next time.

Some of you may be complaining that I am not following that ‘blog once a day’ rule I set up, to which I say ‘it’s my blog and I’ll do whatever I darn well want to do’ and follow it with ‘the word day is defined by the period in which I am conscious’, so it’s still today and this will be the blog for today.

Anyways – the title refers to this quote from the great Greta Garbo. I work in a call center, which are 8 ½ hours of non-stop noise and none of it is desirable – if it’s not the beeping of the phone, it’s the people on the other end of the phone making demands and somehow thinking that by saying ‘I’ll just take my business elsewhere‘ will somehow give me reign to alter the laws of probability (quick answer… no. Long answer… hell no and I don’t care if you leave – caring is not my department). When I go in the break room, the TV is on CNN and that offers no real relief. I might have to start taking my lunch outside now that the weather is cooling down. One would think that I would unwind at home, but I still feel stressed there as well – I come in and it’s more noise and chatter around me. The only time I feel any sort of relaxation is on the way to and from work, when it’s just me in the car. I just turn on my CD player and I listen to some of my favorite tracks alone. Isn’t it sad that out of the 16-18 hours I am conscious, I only feel relaxed for about an hour? The more I am here (in an existential sense) the more I feel everything closing in around me. I try to get as much out of it as I can. I don’t sleep that much on the weekends not because I am trying to pack so much living in only two days, I stay up so that I can have some more quiet time. Is this being greedy? Seriously, I’m asking this. It’s not like I hear voices in my head telling me that no one wants to see me and that I would be better off dead (they usually only say the last part… apparently they’re more outgoing than most other disembodied voices), but I feel stress when I am around people. That’s why I shop in the evening. That’s why when I do have to shop in the day, I wear headphones.

This is why I hope to make it. I would love to get to the point where I can afford some land in a less densely populated state (maybe Idaho – no one says nothing about them in the news. It’s like the wallflower state in the big U.S. dance) and build a house. I would still have everything connected – running water, power and a halfway decent Internet connection – and have a lot of open room. Maybe a couple of acres, not to farm or forest (heavily, maybe a few trees to shield the house from prying eyes) but just to have some all-important breathing room. A cabin with no TV, maybe just a small radio to listen to if I get tired of listening to music or just if I want to turn everything on and just take in the silence… and my tinnitus. I promise you, if you get an invite to visit, I won’t have my feet in Kleenex boxes – but I will not give you a guarantee about any jars of urine.

On that cheerful note, I am going to end this day and say good night.

Is it wrong to want to nail Jen Riddle? I hope not, because I don’t want to be right…

Sincerely,

Seething With Apathy

… except it’s going to take a weed trimmer to get through my hair.

Sorry things have been a bit scattered over the past few days, but I had to pay for more storage on WordPress and find out that the problem might have been with my laptop. I’m glad I got the extra space, which should take me for at least another 300 or so entries for now. I’ve also been waking up later than usual because I’ve been going to bed later than usual…

A Tiny Hint as to why…

Now that everything has been squared away, I should be getting back on track as far as posting and writing in general. That being said, there isn’t a whole lot going on. I’m just patiently waiting for my first of two vacations and my birthday. Right now, I just feel out of sorts – which is why I am getting a new coffee pot and something I found called Death Wish Coffee. Maybe this will perk me up in the morning… or it will make my heart explode. Either way, I am going to be awake in the morning.

I am still doing some rough editing (adding chapters, changing dialogue, banging my head against a wall – you know, writer stuff) on the novel. This Saturday is going to be the last of the big push days. Get those two short chapters done and merged into the manuscript and make some important word changes, then send it off to the editor to let the hacking begin. You may not be able to tell this, but I am really excited about this happening – another space monkey moment in the works. Sorry – just fell asleep for a minute there. Yeah – getting new coffee pot and that coffee next week.

Well, I am going to get ready for work, so everyone have fun and I will speak at you later.

a

Sincerely,

Seething