State of the Self, Feb 2017

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Let’s talk about where things stand in general with me.

1. Last night I posted fiction onto my Patreon. It’s the first scene of ONE MAN, the novel I’ve been working on, and I thought my patrons deserved a sneak peak. Just my way of saying “Thank you.”

Someone immediately cancelled their pledge.

Can’t please them all, I guess.

2. My gaming group has been playing MASKS, which is a genuinely great game about teenage superheroes. For the longest time, we couldn’t settle on a team name, so I’ve been throwing out joke suggestions (The Integriteens!)

The other players have latched onto one of my jokes as the name they actually want to adopt.

It starts with a hashtag.

3. I shipped my latest revision of ONE MAN to my agent last weekend, and I feel pretty good about it. She may have additional tweaks, but maybe not. If she does, I’m not sure how long it will take me to do them, because

4. I’m sick and getting sicker. Low-grade fever. Body aches. Exhaution.

And a cough that could shatter marble. At this point, I’m coughing so hard that my vision goes fuzzy and my extremities tingle. I honestly feel close to fainting. Which sucks.

Now that I’ve gotten older, it’s common for me to suffer a lingering cough after a cold, and I mean that it lingers for months. My wife hates it, because I cough big. BIG. She tells me to see a doctor, but they never do anything except prescribe cough suppressants and try to placebo me into thinking they’re super powerful. That never works and I’m sick of going. This time, though…

5. I’m not doing too much social media right now, because HACKING. It’s too hard to focus, which is why I’m doing Lemony Snicket and PI shows on Netflix.

6. My rent just went up.

7.Buy my books.

Tech Hell

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Fun things for Christmas: To video Giftmas morning and all the opening of the presents, only to have that video be borked beyond repair.

The SD card in the camera became full, so I downloaded it to the desktop, then deleted everything on the card. Immediately after, I got a message from PHOTO saying some files were corrupted and couldn’t be viewed.

Had I stopped the import before it was finished? (It LOOKED finished). Were the files recoverable from my SD card?

One $20 app later, I undeleted everything I could from the card and saved it to my drive. Unfortunately, none of the recovered files (I tried twice) are viewable. The video “type” is unrecognized (they’re avi files) and the jpeg photos “have no metadata.” Neither can be imported into my Photo library and neither can be viewed at all.

Late last night I made another small video to make sure it works. It does. I have no idea why or how I lost my Christmas video for 2016, but I suspect it’s my fault and this bullshit year keeps getting worse. Watch this be the year I keel over dead and because of my own stupidity my family doesn’t even have a record of our last Christmas (which is not a thing I can say to them but I’m thinking about it).

Anyway, that sucks. All advice on restoring those files gratefully received through LJ or social media.

BREAKING: I Do Not Have Skin Cancer

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I’ve been feeling weird as hell for the last day and a half: I found a weird new thing on the side of my face, where my baseball cap doesn’t protect from the sun. Immediately, I feared the worst, and my wife was pretty sure I was right.

The hard part was the idea that I’d have to tell my son. He’s just started high school after spending most of his life being homeschooled, and the transition has been challenging for him The idea that his father had cancer, too, would have been too much.

Thankfully, the doc looked me over and confirmed that the spot is something else entirely. It’s literally my body’s natural ugliness manifesting itself more fully; apparently, I’m going to be one of those old people who get all age-spotted or whatever.

Whatever. I made my peace with the way I look a long time ago. As long as I get to stick around a while longer to see my son grow up, share meals with my wife, and write books, I’m content.

Back to it.

No more Facebook account for me

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Not to make a big deal of this, but I shut my Facebook account and unfriended/unliked everyone on it. I didn’t deactivate it because that would have erased the Facebook Page I maintain for people who want to follow my blog there (with all the usual caveats). Publishers expect FB presence, and at this point that’s the minimum I’m willing to put in.

Instead, I set everything to private, unfriended everyone, including friends I’ve known for 40-some years and my siblings (along with many many complete strangers).

I realize this will cut me off from people I care about, but it was time.

If you’re a Facebook person who absolutely has to follow me there, go to my page, which is in the sidebar of my website.

I created a Patreon page

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Cost of living in Seattle keeps going up, and I still haven’t finished the book I’m sending to my agent, so I’ve created a Patreon page. If you want to support me and the work I do so I can keep writing full time, that’s the place to do it. The pledge levels are small, but frankly, you don’t get much, either.

Thanks.

It’s my not-birthday

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Since I share a birthday with my wife (which is how we met, but year-to-year it sorta sucks), I moved my birthday celebration to July 1st. So today is my not-birthday.

I’m old.

If you think it might be nice to get me something, I’d ask that you buy one of my books for yourself or as a gift for a friend. Some of those ebooks are pretty cheap surprisingly affordable! Also good.

State of the Book/State of the Self

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[I wrote this on Saturday night, before news struck of the deadliest mass shooting by a civilian in this country’s history. Rather than let it go live at the scheduled time, I’m just going to post it later in the week, along with my wish that sensible gun control be enacted in this country, starting with a lifting of the ban on CDC’s ability to study gun violence.]

You’ll be reading this tomorrow, but I just tweeted this:

If you’re not a long-time reader, let me explain: When I finish a draft of a novel I treat myself to a bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale.

Which means that I’ve wrapped up the zero draft of ONE MAN, and what a fucking relief it is. I started this book in March of 2015, according to the creation date of my Scrivener file. That’s a long time for me, even if you count the amount of time I spent traveling on vacation and taking a digression to work on side projects, like The Way into Fate, the rpg game supplement that closed out my Kickstarter campaign, and short fiction, too.

So, that’s a long haul, and I’m still not done. I have a list of 90-some changes that need to be made, from small ones like adding a couple characters to a scene or changing someone’s name, to systemic ones like giving certain characters their own slang. Then, once those changes are done, I have to manage the numerous comments I’ve left myself recommending I check various details in the book. Then, once THAT’s done, I have to reread the whole book, smoothing out the text, searching for word echoes, and generally prettying things up. If I were sensible, I’d do that twice.

Only then will this draft be truly done and ready for my agent to read. If you’re waiting for THE TWISTED PATH, which is the next Twenty Palaces story, you’ll have to wait until then. Sorry. Gotta get this book on the market.

Personally, I’m relieved to have accomplished even this much. This has been a difficult book, and I’m not entirely sure why. It’s a fantasy with a made-up setting. It’s a crime story. It has a bunch of POV characters. It has stakes and magic and betrayals and secrets.

And if this book flops, too, I’m going to have to rethink my whole approach to writing.

All the binge-watching suggestions I received:

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In my last post, I asked people to suggest movie series or TV shows that would be appropriate for a birthday binge-watch. I asked for TV shows, genres, creators, sequels, anything. I knew I’d get a lot of responses, but damn.

Here’s a list, in no particular order, of all the marathon suggestions from Twitter, Facebook, G+, LiveJournal, Goodreads, my blog, and the whispers from the crows that nest outside my bedroom window.

Harry Potter
John Carpenter
Coen Bros
Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Fast and the Furious
Season 1 of Poldark
Every movie titled CRASH
Movies with Roscoe Karns in a supporting role
Movies starring Warren Oates
Planet of the Apes
Movies scored by Michael Small
JW Tarzan
70’s disaster films
Ray Harryhausen movies
Hitchock movies
Tati movies
Val Lewton movies
Top box office movies from the year I was born
Clint Eastwood: bit player
Jurassic Park
BBC’s The Musketeers
John Hughes Comedies
1940s noir
1990s neo-noir
Jason Statham movies
Older Sci-fi/Fantasy: Dune, Barbarella, Blade Runner, Highlander, Ladyhawke, Beastmaster, Dr.Strangelove, Red Sonja, Secrets of NIMH, & Willow.
MST3K
Philip K. Dick-a-thon
Quatermass movies
Rocky movies
She-Ra
Whose Line is it Anyway
Monty Python’s Flying Circus/Fawlty Towers
Occupied (a Finnish TV series)
Person of Interest
Foyle’s War
Orphan Black
Burn Notice
Covert Affairs
White Collar
Tremors movies and TV series
Alias
Step Up movies
Avengers movies
Tinkerbell movies
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Slings & Arrows
MCU movies
Chow Yun Fat movies
John Woo movies
The Lost Room + BBC’s Ultraviolet
Kenneth Hite’s 10 Westerns to Watch
Jackie Chan films
Jet Li films
Donnie Yen films
Shane Black films
Twin Peaks
Miyazaki films
Cronenberg films
Firefly & Serenity
The Wachowski films
The Middleman
Enlisted
Red Dwarf
FlashForward
John Hughes movies
Broadchurch
Resident Evil
BBC’s Sherlock
Toy Story
How to Train Your Dragon
Marx Brothers
Game of Thrones
Peaky Blinders
Dexter
Banshee
Creature Features
Lonesome Dove
Fargo (TV series)
Back to the Future/Jason Bourne movies
Star Wars (Machete Order)
Luthor
Best of Schwarzeneger
John Cusack movies
Best of [insert decade here]
Alien(s)
Karate Kid
[New suggestions since this post went live]
Freaks and Geeks
The Prisoner looks like 14-15 hours.
Series 1+2 of Being Human
Con films: Ocean’s 11-13, Lucky Number Slevin, Now You See Me, Catch Me If You Can

There were fewer repeat suggestions than you might think. One thing I didn’t expect was that my wife got involved; she wrinkled her nose at some stuff that I would like, but even though it’s my day, if I can spend some of it with my wife, that’s a plus.

Still not sure what I’ll pick, but thank you all for your suggestions.

Actual Question: What would make a great movie binge marathon?

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My birthday celebration is coming up next month. For the last two years, I’ve taken the day off to watch the extended edition of LOTR and I have loved it, but this year maybe I should try something different.

But what? The Indiana Jones, Terminator, Star Trek, and Mad Max movies have some duds mixed in. The Three Stooges would be too repetitive. Star Wars has those damn ewoks, and I’m feeling like I’ve had enough Batman for a while.

It doesn’t have to be movies, though. I could do season one of Veronica Mars, or all of Jessica Jones, or take a heavy dose of Wallander.

Or, I could choose a bunch of different but related movies: martial arts fantasies, post-apocalyptic movies, or spy films, or something.

So I’m turning on comments so I can ask for help from you, dear reader: If you were to design a binge-watching marathon that ran from 12-20 hours (approximately) what would it be?

Sadly, the Cornetto trilogy is too short. The James Bond films are too long. Most TV shows are too long, especially if they run over several seasons. This website helpfully lists movie and TV lengths, but I didn’t see anything that made me jump up and salute.

Now, obviously I’m asking because I’m looking for ideas. Equally obviously, you probably don’t know me or my tastes. Don’t let that hold you back. I generally hate zombies and Saw-like psychopath movies, but any suggestions at all would be welcome.

I will say this: I’d like for them to be available on Netflix Streaming or on DVD (so my library will have them). That rules out semi-obscure series like the old Zatoichi films.

If I can’t come up with a better idea, I’ll probably be stuck with the Harry Potter films, and who needs that?

What do you say? Any ideas?