the boy

After a rough weekend, a new book is released

Standard

This past weekend was pretty rough. The one bright spot was lunch on Saturday to catch up with an old friend, but the rest was a litany of minor difficulties: tiny black ants came through the wall that divides my bathroom from a neighboring unit, the section of book I’m writing “feels” wrong while I push through anyway, I’m getting phantom food reactions, and my son had one of his irregular bouts of insomnia which meant he was up in the ass-hours of the morning and punchy through most of the day.

It gets to the point where a guy can’t even steal time to post on his blog.

I have a post brewing about peoples’ tendency to see fantasy as a conservative genre and another about the interesting Amanda Palmer TEDTalk that’s been going around, but both have fallen victim to the demands of making wordcount for THE WAY INTO MAGIC.

But I do want to announce the release of this:

KingKhanCover.jpg-large

Yes, the Spirit of the Century tie-in novel I wrote for Evil Hat has been released as an ebook, but only to the people who backed the Kickstarter. If you’re one of those people, you can download the book from here. If you didn’t back the project when it first went live, you’ll have to wait a bit for it to hit the stores.

Now, I know there are lots of folks out there who could find a way to torrent a copy or whatever so they have a chance to read it right away. If you do, please consider buying it anyway when it hits the stores, maybe as a gift or something.

Thanks!

EMP followup

Standard

Remember last week when I mentioned that I had taken my family to an EMP event to see a specific panel and the room was so packed we missed it? No? Well, you better click on that link then.

I never did get an email back, but I did get a phone call. The dude was quite apologetic and very nice. Unfortunately, there was no recording of the event; apparently the companies many of the presenters work for had a bug up their butt about what could be recorded and what art they were going to show. Understandable, really, except that the panel we wanted was two local educators, so I suspect they would have been cool with a camcorder or two, but never mind. It’s done.

On the plus side, EMP intends to refund the cost of the tickets.

That’s very nice of them. While they might have made an error in planning their event, their customer service was pretty great.

In which I deny my son an Xbox

Standard

On Twitter, @JoshDaws asked me to explain my reasons for not buying my son an Xbox and I figured it was too involved to do it in a few 140-character messages, so I’m putting it here.

Everyone is a consumer. Everyone consumes culture of some kind, whether it’s radio, TV, games, books, movies, theater, whatever. For some people, it’s Honey Boo Boo. For others, it’s sitting on an overturned bucket in a warehouse while they watch a play about women in Afghanistan. For others, it’s that one Merle Haggard album they just can’t get enough of. And for still others, it’s a whole weekend shooting zombies on the Xbox.

Now, I don’t have a problem with any of this, right? God forbid, considering some of the movies I’ve wasted portions of my life on. Consume what you want. Enjoy it. With my son, he’s latched onto things that I thought were dumb enough to kill brain cells (like Garfield books) and other things that were mostly a waste of time. But he enjoys them and I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.

However! When he came to me to say he wanted to buy an Xbox–with his own money–I told him he couldn’t. (FYI: he’s 11.) He was pretty upset (and is still trying to wear us down) but I was adamant. It’s not that I dislike video games. He has some right now and has played them ever since he was small; Minecraft is his current obsession. Yes, it can be difficult for him to stop when we ask him to, but that’s true of any kid doing any activity that they love. We also have a Wii (which was supposed to be used for the Wii Fit, but nevermind) although he doesn’t much like the games we have.

It’s not that the games are violent. There are plenty of sweet, non-violent puzzle/platform/whatever games. Besides, we’ve watched every episode of Burn Notice and he’s played Call of Duty (and #2) on the iMac.

The question is: how much of his life is spent consuming, and how much is spent creating?

See, when he was small, he would spend hours making things. As a toddler he would make endless lines of tiny blocks all through the apartment. As he got older, he made comic books, then baked goods, then finally short animated Lego movies.

And they were all terrible. The comics, actually, had some effective layout and design, but the food he made was a random mix of whatever he could grab and it tasted like poison. “For you, Mom!” (and she would always taste it.)

The Lego shorts were always busy but there was never a plot that made sense, half the snaps would be out of focus.

They were good for his age–actually, they were excellent for his age. Look at the “novel” of his I published last year on the blog; I couldn’t write with that much verve at his age.

But he lost all that when he went to school. The biggest lesson he took from public school is that “fun”, “projects”, and “learning” are all separate categories. He still likes to make things, but only in Minecraft and it’s been a long time since he set aside several hours to create something. At best, he’s been putting in an hour or two a couple times a week with Garageband to make electronic music.

I don’t much care what he wants to do with his time, as long as he spends a good portion of it making things. Any asshole can spend every weekend of his life shooting baddies in a video game (and I’ve been that asshole, sometimes). I want him to have more than that. It’s not enough just to consume products made by some corporation, even if they’re cool products. He has to turn that around, too.

To that end, we’ve suspended regular homeschooling so he can work with me on a “book trailer” for THE WAY INTO CHAOS. We’re shooting it in our living room with Lego figures. It’s completely inappropriate for the tone of the novel, if you know what I mean, and would be terrible marketing if I were remotely impressed by the marketability of trailers anyway.

Still, it’s a project. He’s throwing himself into it with his old enthusiasm, and I love him for it. I just wish we could return to the days when this was a habit.

Anyway, that’s why I won’t let him buy an Xbox. He has games already, and Netflix, and DVDs from the library, and books, too. That’s a lot of opportunities to consume. I don’t think he needs enough to fill his whole life.

Experience Music Project Fail (or Let me share my pain with you)

Standard

Last night I took my wife and son to the Experience Music Project for the opening night of their “Game Nite” exhibit, which is their new video game project, I guess. Let’s start by saying it didn’t go well.

My wife has zero interest in video games at all, and I really enjoy them but try to keep my distance. I can be a little obsessive about things, and video games sometimes take over my whole life. However, my son loves them and has been making noises about creating some. Unsurprisingly, we want to support that.

The main feature of opening night was a series of talks given by game professionals and educators who teach game-making. That page is gone from EMP’s website but you can see the Google cache while it lasts. We were especially interested in this one:

So You Want to Make a Video Game?
Raymond Yan, Senior Executive at DigiPen Institute of Technology
Jason Pace, Executive Director at University of Washington Center for Serious Play

Now, I know there are resources online for creating games. I’ve looked. We were especially interested here because it was two guys who were local to us and because they would have a chance to bounce ideas off each other. I wanted to see a contrast between them. I also wanted to ask questions.

To that end, we skipped the tour of the actual games and got in line early for the keynote speech. We even got ourselves some good seats. The keynote was fine if not life-changing.

Unfortunately, because there was a line of people waiting to get in to the theater, they make the audience exit the room and get back at the end of the line. Because we had good seats we were one of the last out. The line went around two corners and up a flight of stairs.

We did not get into the one panel we most wanted to see.

Much of our time was spent standing beside game stations waiting to play one of the DigiPen games on offer. All the games were made as student projects and they are all hand-coded–no engines at all. You can play any of the games in their gallery for free. Most of the kids were playing a driving game I didn’t learn the name of, but “Solace” and “Nous” were other good ones.

My son did get to play some and so did I. My wife was interested in eavesdropping on some of the sound designs but nothing more beyond that. However, the largest portion of our time was spent playing a board game in the lounge. Pandemic. Damn, that’s a great game.

Anyway, I sent an email to EMP pointing out how frustrating it is to drop $35 on an event and then be barred from the think you most wanted to do. With luck they’ll post video of the event and someone will have asked the questions I wanted to ask.

2012

Standard

I’m going to keep this short.

The most popular entry on this blog is the one where I dissect the reasons why my series was cancelled. I’m not what you’d call excited about that, but the fact remains. With luck, I’ll have a post in the new year that will finally draw more attention.

The year itself has been tough. I’d hoped to sell A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark but my agent was reluctant to send it out and I took her advice. Thank god. Last fall I took another look at the manuscript and realized I’d blown it. The novel needs major revisions and christ but the moment for it has pretty much passed. I’ll still finish it, eventually, but that leaves a big hole in my schedule. I put out no new work in 2012.

As for 2013, the only novel I expect to put out is King Khan, the tie-in novel for Spirit of the Century. If Epic Fantasy With No Dull Parts sells, it’ll probably be scheduled for 2014. In any event, life is short. I am working constantly. I don’t have a lot to show for it right now.

On a personal level, my family life has only been getting better. I am a very, very lucky ugly fat man.

And that’s it. I don’t do New Years’ resolutions, because they carry the cultural baggage that no one keeps them, and I never wait until Jan first to make the changes in my life I think I need. But I’m going back to work now, and I’m going to keep working on a sequel to a book that hasn’t even sold yet and which probably won’t come out until 2015.

I don’t even know what to say about this except that I can muddle through it.

Giftmas report

Standard

Let’s start by saying this was a Card Kingdom Giftmas. Between the three of us, we must have dropped almost $600 there for card and board games, plus the never-ending Pokemon purchases.[1] Curious what we got? Here’s a pic.

IMG_1540

Except that’s not everything. We forgot to include HIVE, which is a two-player game best described as “nature chess” except with fewer pieces and no board. The other game we forgot is FRIDAY, a solo deck-building game about a Pacific Islander who finds himself saddled with a hapless European shipwrecked on the island. You have to teach him how to survive and defeat pirates (by building the deck) in order to rid yourself of him. [2]

Also, the pic does not include the Pokemon stuff we go, including an entire booster box which went over… well, see footnote 1.

We haven’t played all the games yet, but there isn’t a dud among them. Some of the new Dominion cards are brutal, Munchkin Apocalypse is just as funny as the base game, and Guillotine is a surprise favorite.

Dixit is great but will play better with four players. 7 Wonders promises to be great fun but we shouldn’t have tried to play it when we were so exhausted. And even though Gloom promises to be great fun, I would have never bought it if I’d known the cards smelled like perfume. It’s a sunny day today, maybe I’ll air them out outside.

We finally replaced our ailing 19″ CRT television with a 32″ flatscreen; that’s not as large as most families have, but to us it’s a huge treat. Naturally, the first thing we watched on the big screen was the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (I received the extended editions last year)[3]

After that, we hooked up the Wii. My son got DJ Hero 2 and I got Lego LOTR. Yes, we’re hardcore gamers over here.

The two best-received gifts were (first) the Sensu iPad paint brush we bought for my wife. Theoretically, the art programs on her tablet should let her make art anywhere and anytime, but she hated using her finger because she couldn’t see the mark she was making. With the brush, that’s all changed. It will be a challenge for her to work on such a small surface, but that’s a challenge she’s willing to face.

The second gift was the laptop my son received for his birthday. He was born on Boxing Day, and we do our best to carefully separate the two celebrations. Anyway, his new computer is better than either of mine and he’s already pushing for Call of Duty or Skyrim for it.[4] In it’s way, this is also a gift for me, since he won’t have to do his schoolwork on my desktop all damn day.

So that’s why this blog has been dormant lately: holidays and birthday. Plus I’ve been working hard on EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS. Sorry if I’m not around as much as I normally am but there’s work to do and fun to be had.

[1] Or is there an end? The boy is taking a break from Pokemon; he’s bored with his deck and bored with the game. As much as he likes the kids he plays against, it’s just not doing it for him the way it used to. We’ll see if he’s permanently moved on or if he just needs some time off.

[2] I’m convinced there’s another game that we left out, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it would be.

[3] I’ve decided I prefer the extended editions. There’s more room for nuance in them. Boromir is not just this desperate, untrustworthy character, he’s also the hero who offers words of kindness to Frodo when their needed. And he has scenes with Aragorn, a ridiculous omission from the theatrical releases. However, I could have done without the avalanche of skulls bit and the orcs who use grapple attacks in the middle of a battle.

[4] As if his mom would let an 11yo sit in his room playing first person shooters. As if.

Random catching up

Standard

1) My wife is okay. Her bicycle accident (mentioned in the last post) is going to cost north of 200 bucks to fix, but she’s recovering nicely. In fact, she was planning to loiter around the bike shop while they worked on it so she could ride home. She really, really loves to ride her bike.

2) My son is okay, too. He slept all morning yesterday and woke with a smile. At first, he credited me with magical healing powers, then he immediately started being annoying. He’s still not 100%, but he’s getting better.

3) Will he be well enough by tomorrow evening to try my newest recipe, the reuben salad? Time will tell.

4) I have a tumblr now, but there’s nothing on it. Yet. It’s here.

5) I’m just going to go ahead and say it: this has been a stressful week. I may take tomorrow off from writing.

6) My wife asked for this, so it’s not exactly going to be a surprise, but she’s getting it for Giftmas.

May you live in uninteresting times

Standard

I’m typing this on my wife’s iPad, so forgive any weird autocorrect or capitalization issues.

Yesterday, about 20 minutes after sending my wife off to work her evening shift, I got the call I’ve been dreading for 19 years: she’d had an accident on her bicycle.

Luckily it happened on the bike trail (all hail civilized cities and their off-road trails) so there were no cars involved, but she was still banged up pretty badly. The accident happened because the bolt holding her seat to her seat stem sheared off and she fell backwards onto the rack. One of her pedals gouged her knee pretty badly and she struck her cheekbone on her handlebar. There will be other lingering aches and pains, but those were the worst.

So, no head injuries, no broken bones, no hospital visits. We’re very fortunate.

I convinced her to skip work to stay home and ice, elevate her leg and go to bed early. She was already nursing a cold, so there’s no reason for her to exhaust herself.

Then, after dinner, my son began to complain of stomach pain. We figured it was just gas but at around 10pm the vomiting began.

There’s always that hopeful moment after the first barfing that makes you hope everything’s all cleared up. Nope. He was sick on and off throughout the night.

My wife, who had gone to bed around 8:30, woke naturally around midnight. She took over for me a little before one then woke me around 5:30. The poor guy had been waking every half hour with pain and vomiting and couldn’t even keep water down.

Finally just before 7 I told him that h was still in the worst of it, that he needed to sleep so he could recover enough to hydrate himself.

He crashed out as though he was implementing a plan and has been sleeping for nearly 2.5 hours, with only minimal moaning and stirring.

Have I ever mentioned that he found me passed out on the bathroom floor once due to flu-related dehydration? He couldn’t have been older than four.

Have I also mentioned that, when my wife and I were first together in the nineties, I used to get up a 4am every day for my crapy job, but would be unable to sleep at night because I would be worrying about her nighttime bike commute? I used to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling while I imagined terrible accidents. Then I would hear the distinctive sound of her brakes out front and I’d drop right off.

So, yeah. A couple of mildly stressful days, especially since I’ve started falling behind on EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS.

Anyway, I’m going to sneak out of his room and make myself more coffee. I hope autocorrect hasn’t done anything embarrassing to this post.

Today is my 11th anniversary

Standard

But we celebrated yesterday. While my son was at a friend’s birthday party, my wife and I did some pre-Giftmas gadget-scouting, then had great Thai food at Jai Thai in Fremont. We didn’t spend the whole time talking about our son, only 75%, which is a good percentage for us. And we told jokes, planned our future, and indulged in actual adult conversation.

Did you know that the appropriate gift for the 11th anniversary is steel? That worked out pretty well for us; I bought my wife two screwdriver sets that had very organized ways to store the switchable heads. She liked them so much she cried a little, for serious.

Anyway, adult time officially ended when I pulled up a chair in Card Kingdom for yet another Pokemon tournament for my son. I’ll be stuck here all day, trying to write today’s goal (about 1300 words) and goofing around on Twitter.

I hope your Sunday is a good one.

6 Things About My Trip to San Jose

Standard

1) I still like riding on the train, despite some of the later points here.

2) During the trip, I went back to every bad food habit I have. I ate without planning. I ate because of stress. I ate when I wasn’t hungry to be social. I ate my son’s leftovers because I didn’t want to waste them. Yowch. Bad habits might go but they never go far.

3) This trip was wall-to-wall Pokemon. On Thursday during the train trip he found another player and stayed up until midnight playing in the observation lounge. On Friday he met some other kids in the hotel lobby and he played until after dinner. After the tournament on Saturday he played all evening until midnight again. On Sunday, even though he didn’t make the playoffs, he went right back to the event to hang with is friends and play pick up matches. Then we caught the train on Sunday night and he kept playing late into the night and all the next morning until the other kid’s stop arrived. Who knew there was so much Pokemon to be done?

4) One downside of riding the train is that there is usually one person who’s had too many. It doesn’t normally get too ugly, but sometimes people can be loud and obnoxious. On the way down, for example, I was sitting across the boys while they played a match, and a man walking the aisle fell flat on his face. He was in his 50’s, kinda tattered, and I had the powerful urge to Not Engage.

Someone else in the room asked, reluctantly: “Are you okay?” As the guy tried to get up, he answered “Of course I am. I’m tough.”

Since then, that line has become something of a joke around here, along with (no context) “Trees are made of cells. Your argument is invalid.”

5) The long, long train trip left me with a screwed up back. I’m moving like an old man, stretching my legs and back as much possible, slathering on the Topricin, and gulping acetaminophen. At the moment, it’s mostly better which is good. The bad thing is that I’ve completely lost the thread of the Twenty Palaces short story I was going to write. The POV was supposed to be from a predator instead of Ray Lilly, but with the way I feel I just can’t find the voice.

So it’s shelved for now. EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS opens with a scene where someone recovers from terrible injuries, and that’s coming along just fine. I just wish I had more places outside my home where I could write while standing.

6) The Coast Starlight offers really beautiful views. Not Oakland, but northern California and southern Oregon were gorgeous: mists blowing through evergreen valleys, stands of dogwood with golden leaves, broad rivers and lakes with pelicans, herons, ducks and even an eagle. Even a rainbow. It’s a lovely country, if you get the chance to see it.