Category Archives: Writing

Entries where I talk about my writing: stories, novels, general creativity.

Difficult Decisions

Today I decided that I’m going to fire — or, at least, shelve indefinitely — my pirate novel. I had a vision for it, and I wanted it to take place in the real world as a novel of historical fantasy; however, the more I learned about the history and culture of pirates and the world they inhabited, the more I realized my vision just wasn’t going to work out. I may return to it someday, I suppose. I still have all the books I bought on the topic of pirates, and the books that people have given me, so I’ll continue the reading. Pirates are fascinating, and the history of piracy is a really interesting topic, but it just wasn’t gelling.

The other difficult decision I actually made several months ago, when it was time to enroll in spring courses for the MLIS program: I decided to drop out. This decision was made for a number of reasons:

  1. Stress. Last spring, I was very stressed out about the classes I was taking. While it didn’t really have any deleterious physical effects on me, I was getting depressed and anxious. And definitely not looking forward to the following Fall semester of courses.
  2. Academic ability. This is probably the wrong term for it, because it implies that I’m not very smart. I know I’m an intelligent guy, and that I can accomplish a lot when I put my mind to it. I’ve done it before. However, writing academic papers on obscure topics just isn’t my thing. I did write one, on the information-seeking behaviors of cryptozoologists, but it received a poor grade, and even though the professor gave extensive feedback, I still have no idea how to improve it. I have books on how to write academic research papers, but I haven’t read them.
  3. Career prospects. I did quite a bit of research into career prospects for entry-level librarians. They don’t look good. I would need to be a high-level librarian to make the kind of money I would need and earn a salary equivalent to what I earn now. This was extremely unlikely. In the field, you rarely are able to find a job that (a) pays what you need, and (b) is located near you.
  4. Future satisfaction. There’s also the fact that a lot of librarians simply didn’t like their jobs, and the more I learned about what their job entails, the less I liked the idea of being a librarian. Public librarians must act as liaisons to the community in addition to serving regular patrons, and these community members are often insane (think of the growing number of book bans happening throughout the country). Academic librarians — specifically, science librarians, which is where I wanted my own career to go — must deal with academia (very often a toxic environment), and, to progress in the field, often must possess an advanced academic degree IN ADDITION TO the MLIS degree. No thanks.

“But Richard,” I hear you say, “isn’t this the second time you’ve dropped out of library school?” Aye, it is. This time, though, I feel good about my decision, whereas the first time I was ambivalent and never really felt good about it.

The only guilt I feel about these decisions is financial. I spent a lot of money on pirate books and one-shot lectures about pirate history. I spent even more money on tuition and class supplies and various professional memberships. But without the semi-annual tuition cost, our finances might be better off.

The sunk-cost fallacy is hard at work here. I mean, you put a lot of resources into a thing, you may as well see that thing through to the end, right? Well, not if the end result is no good. In the long run, my creativity will be freed up to work on other projects, and my brain will enjoy not having to study all the time.

On the other hand, my brain has decided to punish me with an idea for a new trilogy of novels, which frustrates me since I haven’t finished And the Devil Will Drag You Under yet. But that’s a topic for a different blog entry.

Publication Alert! Woo hoo!

I had two short story acceptances in 2022 (out of 100 submissions). The first acceptance, “Blank”, is available from the Dark Recesses website (see my Writing page for a link). The second, “How the Old Ones Saved Christmas”, is available now in the anthology LOLCraft: A Compendium of Eldritch Horror!

You can get to the Amazon page for this fine collection by clicking the picture above.

I’m quite pleased with this story, which features the Old Ones Hastur and Nodens trying to save Christmas after Santa goes insane, for reasons which are revealed in the story. I don’t remember the true origins of the story, but it does feature some of the same characters found in “Night of the Frozen Elf“, even though it’s not a direct sequel or prequel. More of a “sidequel”, if you will. Whatever. The characters are the same. The story is different.

If you go out of your way to purchase the collection, either in paperback or electronic, I really hope you enjoy my story. The other stories are enjoyable, I’m sure (I haven’t read them because I haven’t received my author’s copy yet), but rest assured, my story is quite fun.

‘Tis an eldritch season for Holidailies

Day Twelve: X Marks the Spot

A Map of Antarctica, I guess
In which we discover the name of Pancake’s home village

Waddleberg. That’s the name of the place where Pancake the Penguin set out for her journey to find the mystical treasure chest that will give her the power of flight on Christmas Day. I’ve never heard of such a place, and it doesn’t come up when I do a search for it on Google Earth. I doubt such a place exists, particularly in Antarctica.

There is a forest called Snowflake Forest that will be part of the journey of Pancake and Pep, and apparently an icy monster lives there. Beware! I wonder what fate will befall our adventurers?

I am about 95% sure this adventure is happening on the land, and I still think it’s unfair that Pep the fish does not have a backpack with a land-SCUBA outfit. How is she supposed to survive on the land? Poor little fish.


In writing news, I submitted my 100th manuscript today! Now I’m going to take a break from submitting until the new year. My stats for the year (so far):

SUBMISSIONS: 100

ACCEPTANCES: 2

REJECTIONS: 87

OUTSTANDING SUBMISSIONS: 11

One of those acceptances, “Blank” is up and available on the Dark Recesses website (see my “Bibliography” page for the link). The other will be published soon in LOLCraft: A Compendium of Eldritch Humor, and when that goes live I will be sure to let you know. I had dreams of making a professional sale this year, but apparently that was not meant to be in 2022.

‘Tis a navigatable season for Holidailies!


Today’s entry in the Episcopal Advent Calendar reads, “Take a new or different route to work, or school, or out to run errands. See how using a different route requires you to see the world differently — to pay a different kind of attention. What do you notice along the way that makes you stop and take a second look? Does anything on this new route inspire your faith journey or remind you of lessons learned?”

This is a really difficult one for me to put into practice, since I work at home 100%, and my commute is literally from the bed to my workspace at the dining room table. Most days, I don’t go anywhere. I have plans to go to Target tomorrow evening, but that’s about it.

I’ll keep pondering this, though.

Advent! Plus, a NaNoWriMo post-mortem

It’s Advent season, likely my favorite time of the liturgical year. I’m not sure why, because while it’s not Christmas and it’s not Easter by a long shot. I think it’s because, in the Episcopal Church at least, we are in a season of anticipation and waiting for the world to change in the presence of the Christ Child. And the world is changing, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. We’ll see what the next few years bring.

Of course, Advent Season also means Advent Calendars! They’ve been around forever, and I’ve been getting them since I was young. One of my favorites that I can remember was shaped like a zeppelin. It was a folded cardboard zeppelin that you could fold and glue yourself, and the doors of the calendar were attached to the body of the zeppelin. It was super cool. Behind each door was a little picture of an elf or a reindeer or something; I don’t remember that part. I was pretty young, and memory is sketchy with me, unfortunately. Side effect of the bipolar 2 and anxiety disorder, I’m told.

For this year, Jennifer found me Pancake the Penguin’s Christmas Adventure Advent Calendar, and we had to buy it on Amazon because it has penguins and I like penguins. Here’s the, uh, unboxing of this silly calendar.

First, the exterior:

La! It’s an advent calendar, atop my closed laptop! I won’t show all the details of the opened box and all its components because some mystery should remain. But the first assembled penguin sculpture looks like this:

Ta da! A folded paper penguin! He’s called Pancake because he likes pancakes so much that he utterly eschews the traditional penguin diet of herrings and whatever else penguins eat. Peanut butter, probably. I should look that up.

Of course, the problem with having little paper statues of penguins and associated adventurers is that our house is full of cats. I placed Pancake in a place of honor on top of the molding above the door between our dining room and living room. Here he is:

I just realized he’s lurking in shadows in the first picture above. Ah well. I will photograph the rest of them better for you.

And that’s the first day of my Advent calendar for you, but by no means is today the actual first day of Advent. That was last Sunday, the 27th of November. And now you know.


In other news, I did not complete NaNoWriMo this year. It’s interesting to me that I completed this challenge every year from 2001 to 2017 (though I did skip 2002 because I was on the road a lot that year), then… stopped. I haven’t managed it since.  This year, I started The Outer Darkness with grand hopes and only reached 14,370 of the hoped-for 50,000 words. It was interesting, and I had some great ideas, but it wound up being a story about a transwoman and her girlfriend, and ultimately, I felt weird writing about it. I don’t have a problem with transwomen, but it felt weird because this is not my story to tell. I’m not trans, so it’s not in my experience, so how much justice could I have done the topic? I suppose I could have finished and gotten a slew of sensitivity readers to go through it, but ultimately, I just chose to stop writing.

Next year, though… Next year will be better! I swear!


Holidailin’ all over the place in December 2022!

 

Once Again, NaNoWriMo Looms Before Us!

As you probably know, having been a dutiful reader of my blog since the very beginning, National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo for short — starts November 1. I used to participate every year, and had done so since 2001, before there was a website with a forum and graphics and all that. I skipped 2002, but did every year from 2003 through 2016. In 2017, I started to write And the Devil Will Drag You Under, but found myself blocked by characterization problems and plot problems, and just didn’t finish. Since then, I’ve started a couple of times, but haven’t gotten very far.

This year, though, I’m gonna do it! Yes indeed! I signed up, set up a project, and all that. The project is The Outer Darkness: Genesis, based on an idea for a role-playing game that three friends of mine and I developed back in the late 90s. I had originally signed up with the intent of writing the first draft of The X of Doom, my pirate novel, but the plot hasn’t really come together yet; I just don’t have a clear idea of how everything comes together. So I’m going to continue to plan for that one as well. Pirates! Yar! The Outer Darkness: Genesis has no pirates in it, despite how many suggestions I’ve been given to base it on a Dungeons and Dragons Spelljammer campaign.

Cover of The Heroine's Journey
A fine book to help authors plot character journeys

The Outer Darkness: Genesis is a space opera with horror elements. I’ve also been reading The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger, which has really solidified some plot ideas for me. This is a great book which outlines for authors some tools to use for plotting out character arcs that aren’t so depending on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. I’ve known writers who swear by the Hero’s Journey but I’ve never been able to successfully pull it off. And it’s problematic in some ways. It’s not hard to find critiques of Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey, so I won’t list them here.

In other words, if I can avoid getting distracted, this year I will, once again, win National Novel Writing Month by writing 50,000 words of The Outer Darkness: Genesis by November 30.


I wanted to talk here a little bit about creativity and emotional disorders. I’ve never made it a secret that I have bipolar type 2 and generalized anxiety disorder and that I take medications for them. I’ve been in therapy (although my therapist discharged me a few years ago, noting the progress I’d made in regulating my emotions), and I currently see a psychiatrist primarily to make sure I stay on track.

Recently, though, I’ve seen a couple of posts on Instagram and in various blogs stating that medications can dull creativity, or that suffering is necessary to produce great art. Both of these statements are demonstrably untrue. I am far more productive and creative and produce better fiction when I’m on my meds and feeling good about life in general. When my mood is cycling downward, I can’t concentrate on my writing and I’m just not productive.

So if you’re a writer and you’re worried that taking anti-depressants will dull your creative wit, I seriously suggest that you given them a try. Most people I know who take them swear that their creativity skyrockets when they’re feeling good.

That’s just my own experience and anecdotes, though. I am not a doctor, so you should consult with your own physician to make a decision.


In other news, because its a FAQ, I think I’m pretty much done with social media. I still use Facebook Messenger, and I still check my Facebook Memories every day, but I don’t really look at it beyond that. Nor do I post that often, except to post links to my blog updates. Same with Twitter. It’s not that I hate social media, it’s just that I found it was taking up a lot of time that I could have been writing or reading. This might all change in November, when distractions are plentiful and desired. I’ve deleted bookmarks and removed the apps from my phone, and it’s been a few months since I’ve really gone on to either site for more than a few minutes at a time. I get most of my social interaction online through the various Discord servers that I belong to.

I’m still reachable, though. You can reach me via Twitter Direct Messages, Facebook Messenger, email, phone, text, telepathy, or the contact form on my website.

Happy Friday everyone, and if you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, may the odds be ever in your favor.

 

I should blog.

A Manuscript, a Bunch of Pens, and a Spiral Notebook
All printed out and ready to revise!

Here it is, October 4, and I haven’t blogged since early September. Alas! Alack! Aghast! Etc.! I should really blog more often. I mean, I don’t have much to say, I suppose, but sometimes just because you don’t have much to say doesn’t mean you don’t have to say it. Or something.

Since last month, I finally finished the second first draft of And the Devil Will Drag You Under. I say “second first” draft because after feedback on the earlier version I decided to start over from the ground up, and I’m much happier with this version. I printed out the whole thing, grabbed pens of multiple colors, and a spiral notebook for writing down issues; you can see it all in the picture above. I’m all ready to go! My new deadline for completing these revisions is November 10. I should be able to complete that.

In September I submitted eight manuscripts and received four rejections. No acceptances; all those leftover submissions are still waiting for responses. My submission stats for the year so far:

SUBMISSIONS: 80

REJECTIONS: 67

ACCEPTANCES: 2

I’m planning on submitting another twenty manuscripts before the year is out for a total of 100. Just like last year. I had better get cracking on getting some new short stories written!

I didn’t do much editing in September, though I did some minor revisions on “Meep” before submitting it (no response yet), and completely revised “Gorgo’s Redemption Arc” (now entitled “An Ending Worthy of the Bards”) and submitted that as well (no response yet). I haven’t worked on my android rights story because I realized the premise itself could be deeply problematic and needs fixing. I’ll fix it.

And, of course, November is National Novel Writing Month! This year I’ll be writing the first draft of The X of Doom, the first in a planned trilogy of pirate novels tentatively entitled Oceanbound. I know the titles of the next two novels; I also know how the second novel ends. Beyond that, not much.

I have friends who are planning on blogging daily throughout October. I am not one of those souls. I do plan on blogging weekly from here on out. Let’s see if that happens.

Happy October, my friends! Excelsior!

 

Holy Cow, it’s September Already!

Why is my computer smoking?

September 2022, and I haven’t posted for nearly a full month. I mean, it’s not as though I have anything to say, but I still feel like I ought to say it. And, as always these days, it’s probably not very interesting, because it’s all about writing.

First, the novel. I had hoped to finish this draft of And the Devil Will Drag You Under by the end of August, but even though I’ve been averaging 500-800 words per day, I haven’t reached the end. I think I have another 5,000 words at least to go. This puts my plan to have the story ready for submission to my writers’ group in October in jeopardy. Ah well. Maybe in the new year. I’ve been working on this revision for over a year, and I’m looking forward to working on something else. I’ve still got pirates on the brain.

Second, the short stories. I’ve finished “Meep” and a flash fiction piece about a failed redemption arc in a fantasy setting, and am awaiting feedback on them. I’ve gotten plenty on the flash fiction piece, and may start revising and sending it out. I’ve also started a new science fiction piece, “Just a Little Bit Human”, which presented itself to me a few days ago as a full-fledged idea. It’s part Se7en, part Silence of the Lambs, and part Bladerunner. So I will need to do some research into police procedure (or, at least, crime scene investigation), and so on. One of the major characters in the story is trans, so I’ll need to hire a sensitivity reader as well. This is definitely a fun story to write, and addresses some deeper themes that I’ve been thinking about for some time.

Third, this blog. Well… you know. I haven’t been updating it as much as I’d like to.

In other news, it’s hot. Crazy hot. We’re in the midst of a heat wave in the valley, with temps hitting 107 at least, breaking a record set in 1988. The whole country has been, except for those parts of the country which are suffering from massive floods. I feel like we’re living in an episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Midnight Sun”, where the characters are dealing with the fact that the Earth has drifted out of its orbit and is headed directly at the sun. It’s a good episode — check it out if you can — and the twist is magnificent.

So anyway. Thank you climate change. And to all the politicians who ignored it and all the corporations who profited off of it and to everyone who dismisses the dangers of it, a hearty fuck you. Sort of like the covid-19 pandemic, I feel like we could have gotten a handle on it if people had just made some minor sacrifices and listened to the scientists. It’s a little late to address the covid-19 pandemic and turn it around, but we’ve still got time to address and possibly prevent the very worst of climate change. Katherine Hayhoe’s book Saving Us is a great one. I highly recommend it to everyone who is concerned but doesn’t quite know what to do about it.

Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind lately. How about you?

Writing Update Number… uh…

Writer with dragon
Me, writing, under close supervision from a dragon

I have no idea how many of these writing updates I’ve done on my blog, and I’m too lazy to count, and besides, I’ve probably embedded writing updates in other topics too, so… Well. You know.

But here’s a writing update!

Work on And the Devil Will Drag You Under continues apace. I hope to have this draft finished by September so I can do a quick polish for my writers group in October. We’ll see. I’ve been very optimistic about this draft — which is a complete, bottom-up rework of my previous draft — for some time.

I also wrote a couple of stories recently, one of which I’ve sent to a few different people for feedback, and one of which I’m letting simmer for a bit before revision. But I’m pretty happy with both of them. If you’re interested in reading them to provide feedback, please let me know!

So far, this year’s submission stats:

Stories submitted: 64

Rejections: 56

Acceptances: 2

One of the accepted stories, “Blank”, has already been published. The other one is still awaiting a contract, but once that’s signed and everything’s ready to go, I will definitely share here.


In other news, if you pay close attention to every page of my site, which I’m sure you do, always, you may have noticed that the link to my science blog, The Penguin Scientific, is gone. That’s because I’ve decided to discontinue it. I posted one last entry, a line from a Sublime song, and that’s it. I realized that my real interest in writing is in writing fiction, so I decided to focus on that instead. Maybe someday I’ll write more nonfiction pieces, but today is not today. I feel fine about this decision, and don’t regret it at all.


Also, my self-imposed exile from Twitter and Facebook continues. I’m noticing that Elon Musk and the Twitter investors are sort of playing Hot Potato with Twitter itself, indicating that no one really wants it, probably because no one’s figured out how to make money off it. If it dies, what will replace it? Personally, I pine for the days of LiveJournal, before it was bought by a Russian company; maybe an LJ clone will replace Twitter and bring back the glory days of the Internet, before it consisted of about four sites, each carrying little but screenshots of the other three (thank Cory Doctorow for that summation).

That’s what’s up for now. As always… How are you?

…And just for fun, here’s a video for “Closing Time”, that song by Sublime that I mentioned. If you lived through the 90s, you probably recognize it.

Various Dribs and Drabs

Not much to report right now.


WRITING

However, I need to let you all know that my creepy short story “Blank” is now up online at Dark Recesses, and you can read it on their webzine here. This represents my second acceptance of the year! I still haven’t signed a contract for the first, so I can’t yet reveal the market that accepted the story, which I also can’t reveal at this time.

In other news, I have been continuing to work on my novel And the Devil Will Drag You Under, adding approximately 500 words per day to this particular revision. This was one of those “tear down and rebuild from the ground up” revisions. I’m hoping future revisions won’t be so drastic, but I’ll have to wait until November when my critique group gets done with it to find out.

I’ve also been working on a new short story, “Meep”. It represents a couple of themes that I’ve been obsessed with for quite awhile. Someday you’ll get to read that one, but first I have to finish it.

And I continue to submit two manuscripts per week to various markets. I admit it’s sort of a buckshot approach, which I think lots of writers employ. Lots of misses, but a few hits.


CATS

Goodness, we’ve got a veritable sickhouse of kitties right now. Our poor resident cat Ruby has an autoimmune disorder which is attacking her red blood cells. Fortunately, this can be controlled with regular cortisone doses. Right now she’s getting a pill a day, but hopefully she’ll be able to get injections every few days soon. She’s a shy little thing, so catching her to pill her can be difficult.

We have a couple of sickly foster kittens right now as well, but they’re hanging in there.


THAT’S ALL

I’ll be at WesterCon in Tonopah, NV, in a couple of weeks. Will any of you be there as well?

 

Just Some Random Ramblings of an Earthling

Cover of Carl Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World"
Should be an all-time bestseller, but isn’t.

Just for kicks, I’m re-reading Carl Sagan’s wonderful book, The Demon-Haunted World. I’m loving it, as I always have every time I’ve read it, which has been every couple of years or so.

One thing that struck me this time around is how much time and space he spends debunking alien abduction stories by putting them into a larger cultural/mythological context. I side with him on the issue: while hundreds of thousands people have reported being abducted by aliens, there is no physical, undeniable proof that it has actually happened. No mysterious “implants” have been analyzed by MIT or other reputable university and found to be made of alien metal, memory is fallible, and so on. But the alien abduction/UFO culture were tied up with conspiracy theories in the 90s involving the government; such conspiracy theories have fallen to the wayside in favor of modern antisemitism, racism, and the bonkers “Q” conspiracy theory, which encompasses them all. If Carl Sagan were around today, he’d be sickened, I’m sure, by what passes for the modern conservative movement.

Ahem.

So this year, for Earth Day, I committed myself to spending a year learning everything I can about this amazing, beautiful, endangered planet that we live on. I haven’t really started that yet because I’m still taking my MLIS degree seriously and thus taking classes for that, and it’s eating my time. But I am reading Sagan’s book, so I’m counting that as a step in the right direction. I’ll keep you all updated on what I learn, and I plan on updating my blog, The Penguin Scientific, with various facts and things.


In other news, my depression and anxiety have been kicking my butt recently, and have convinced me that I’m never going to get anywhere with my writing. I’ve talked back to it but it refuses to listen. Stupid brain. My brain and I are supposed to be on the same side, I don’t know why it won’t cooperate.

But I continue to persist with the writing and submitting anyway. I’m on track to submit 100 manuscripts for the second year in a row. Stats so far:

Submissions: 32

Rejections: 29

Waiting on: 8

I haven’t quite worked out how those numbers work out, but I’m not worrying about that.


That’s all for now. What are you learning?