the boy

Empathy, Stock Art, Eye glasses, Homeschool and Booze

Standard

Let’s start with Empathy. Everyone has been having a laugh at the Forbes writer who put together the “If I was a small black child” column. It was dumb, thoughtless, and actively harmful. Obvs.

But you can rely on Ta Nehisi Coates to talk about this stuff in the best possible way. One, Two. That second link contains links to a pair of Megan McArdle articles that are also invaluable. Excellent reading.

As for me, I was a total goof off in school–smart but continually bored and prone to do stupid stuff to impress my friends (like any teenage boy). There were whole years that went by when pretty much every day I did something that could have gotten me jail time.

And no, I didn’t want to work hard. I wanted to play rpgs, get high, smash stuff, throw a carpet over barbed wire so we could swim at the pool after it closed, etc, etc.

So it’s easy to say: “If I were a…” and then imagine the path you would take to success. It’s much harder to look back at your own self and realize what a lazy screw up you were, and admit that a more difficult environment would have defeated me.

Next is stock art, which is what I need right now. I have a sword and sorcery novelette almost completely ready to publish. All I need at this point is a decent(ish) stock image for the cover. Hard part? Finding something I think is decent.

Anyway, I plan to release this particular story only through my website. Why?

Let’s move on to “Eye glasses.” My son needs them. Not just one pair, either. He needs a reading pair and a non-reading pair. Add to that the sad fact that my landlord mailed me a little something–no, it wasn’t a Christmas card. It was a notice of rent increase.

Yay! Rent increase notice right before the holiday (but not so soon before that we could budget it into our spending.

It’s not a big increase and our rent is already very reasonable. It’s just hard timing and I hope enough people will want to buy this short story that we can cushion this blow. More about the story later.

Next: you know how public school teachers will sometimes show movies in class? Guess what! His homeschool family has found an excuse for the extended editions of LOTR! Starting tonight. More on that later, too.

Finally, booze. I just bought the smallest non-airplane-sized bottle of Jack Daniels I could get. Why? Well, I don’t drink like I used to (what with the kid-having and the belly-reducing and all) but I do love egg nog. LURRRVE egg nog. And it just doesn’t seem right without a little bourbon.

Plus, I couldn’t resist that cheap German spiced wine. I actually bought two bottles of it. You know the one I mean? You warm it on the stove and drink it until you’re loopy? I don’t care if it’s crap. I love it. And did I mention I only bought two bottles? That’s some self-control right there. (Tangentially related, the store only had two bottles left).

And that’s all for today. I was supposed to write 2500 words on A Blessing of Monsters today, but after all those revisions I only managed 1500. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow.

New site bookstore, and other things

Standard

1. The plugin I was using to sell Twenty Palaces directly from my website wasn’t working correctly, so I’ve switched to something else. This new thing is quite complicated, almost like getting an iPhone just so you can tell the time, but I hope soon to have more fiction to sell from my site, so here it is.

The only problem is that I can’t make the PayPal Sandbox work so I can’t test drive the whole thing first. It’s annoying, but if someone wants to buy Twenty Palaces through the site, would you let me know how it goes? I assume I’ll hear from people who have problems, but… you know. It’d be nice to be sure all this works. (Added later: It doesn’t.)

2. [Deleted]

3. I have the first eight(ish) chapters of A Blessing of Monsters ready to send to my agent. My wife is reading them first to catch anything deeply stupid (not that… ahem… there’s anything… oh hell). She’s not what you’d call a fan of epic fantasy, but she’s giving it a go anyway.

4. And having the new book is helping me deal with self-publishing Twenty Palaces. I can’t say I’m pleased to be releasing it this way. Yeah, I’m glad readers who love the series get this story, too, but it also makes me mourn a bit more.

Which is why it’s good to have something fun and cool to work on.

5. If I can get decent cover art together, I’m going to add short fiction to my online bookstore. Assuming the bookstore is any good.

6. And yes, I’m up late. My son is having a bit of trouble getting to sleep.

Turns out that this year, the things I’m thankful for…

Standard

are the same as last year. Family, talent, readership, friends I don’t see often enough: all of these things are at the center of my life.

But there are so many little things, too. I’m thankful for the other writers who create books, for the sunsets I get to enjoy on clear mornings, for the hummingbirds outside my window, for our local library systems, and for so much more.

Now I’m off to start my day. I hope you folks have a good one.

Wireless

Standard

So, I had no wireless on my laptop and that was frustrating. To test if it was a software or hardware problem, I reinstalled the OS, set up a new user and found that the problem was still there. If a fresh install of the software didn’t fix it, it must be hardware.

So I rode the bus across town yesterday to The Mac Store because they had a usb wireless adapter for sale. As the sales guy talked to the repair guy about the device, the repair guy suggested I pay to have it fixed instead.

“I can’t afford it,” I told him.

He shrugged and took the adapter off the wall. I asked if I could try it out right here in the store. He shrugged again and we started opening the package (which had been opened once before).

The install disc doesn’t do much in the way of installing, and the repair guy starts fussing with it. You know that feeling when someone else is typing on your computer and you want to push their hands away and do it all the right way? I fight that urge.

While I’m looking at the contents of the adapter package, the repair guy does something to my computer that completely fixes the wireless. As in, it was software all along and he’s thoroughly solved the problem. I make him explain it to me, showing me that he went into System Preferences and created a new “location” which easily connected to the web.

And he did it in the ten seconds that I was looking at a page of the user manual. He also didn’t charge me.

The Mac Store on 45th in the U District. They are awesome.

Today I will be rousing myself from this morning’s (somewhat unproductive) writing session and I’ll head downtown to buy an anniversary gift, after a very long walk to buy some stuff we need. It’s a school holiday, so my son has a chance to hang out with a buddy across town all day. Once I’m done, I’ll head home and do some more writing from there.

Zangoose and his sidekick Captain Weekend

Standard

IMG_5032

IMG_5038

Candy haul was modest and the boy didn’t get to meet up with his best buddy, but I got to eat a really good pizza.

For the record, three adults recognized that my son was dressed as Zangoose and four more pegged him as a Pokemon. Only two kids recognized him as a Pokemon and none guessed the type.

Friday quick notes

Standard

1) I’m taking the family to see Steven Tobolowski live on our local NPR affiliate this morning. Exciting! My son loves his show (my son loves oral storytelling) and we can’t wait to see how it goes. And I don’t think I have to say that I’m also a big fan of Steve Scher, the interviewer.

2) I get a lot of people asking me about the status of the Twenty Palaces books, so I’m going to say: Please stop. I’m waiting to hear something official from my editor at Del Rey, but I’m not going to announce anything until I get the final word from them.

Believe me, when I finally hear, the first person I share the news with will be my wife. The second person will be the whole rest of the world. But it’s a stressful time right now, so please don’t keep prodding me. When I know, you’ll know, believe me.

3) After years of hearing about other writers receiving anthology invitations, I’ve started getting some of my own. The only one I’m sure I’m allowed to talk about is a book related to Evil Hat’s Don’t Rest Your Head rpg, which is being edited by Chuck Wendig. And I have a nasty little story idea in mind…

4) I sent a revised copy of A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark to my agent. New book! Hopefully soon.

5) I’ve been planning a large politics post for quite a while, and hearing that the U.S. government just killed a U.S. citizen without due process is prodding me to get around to it. Watch (or avoid) this space.

Doing Without

Standard

So.

Starting Saturday I went on an internet fast. I didn’t check Twitter, read my friend’s list on LiveJournal (which is where I follow blogs, webcomics, whatever) or post to my own blog.

I did check email once a day in case something important came in. Nothing did, with the exception of some none-urgent short fiction stuff.

What did I learn from it?

Well, first let me admit that I broke my fast a couple of times. Cheating! Continue reading

Overdoing and Underdoing.

Standard

So I’ve been doing the Livestrong calorie/fitness counter and it’s been fine so far. I get a little hungry but nothing that makes me want to yell at my kid or whatever.

But yesterday got a little nuts. We made a run to the Staples, the boy and I, for various supplies (note to my agent if you’re reading this: yes, we bought a new phone), walking a mile and a half to get there.

After lunch, my wife came home from work early and we went to the local park. We hiked to the beach, then hiked back, over an hour and a half, which is a long way considering our various problems with our legs. We hopped over to the bus stop, all sweaty and exhausted, to wait for our ride home.

Except the driver picked us up, took us one stop, and told us he was taking a 30-minute break. We could take another bus if we wanted at this next stop, but since we weren’t going downtown that was worth fuck-all to us. We had no choice but to wait until 9pm for the bus or walk all the way home.

Let’s just say that I arrived home and realized my calorie intake was a negative number for the day. Not just below my goal: below zero.

“Oh my god,” I said to my wife. “I can eat anything I want.”

Mmm, grilled cheese sandwich with mayo and hot peppers. (840 calories)

Anyway, today will be a recovery day.

In unrelated news to my physical health but closely related to my mental health, I’m going to start an internet fast on Sat the 10th of September.

That’s right. I’ll be logging off and staying off.

I will check my emails once a day. I won’t be blogging, or reading my LJ friends list, or posting earworms on Facebook, or goofing around on Twitter. I’ll check email and allow my dropbox files to do their thing, then I’ll turn off my modem.

It’ll be a useful way to re-examine my internet habits (the way I used to when I did actual food-type fasts) and hopefully up my productivity. It’d be nice to have a little extra family time, too.

Anyway, I’m going offline to run some errands. Don’t forget there’s a Twenty Palaces spoiler thread to check out.

“That’s the end?”

Standard

That was my wife and son’s reaction when I read the final line of The Hobbit to them last night. (It was this edition, so we had to stop often to admire the artwork–although I can’t say I was fond of the way the elves were portrayed.)

As family reading time goes, this was a long one, or maybe it just seemed long because I was the only one reading it. Usually we trade chapters between the three of us, but there was no way I was going to ask my dyslexic wife to read all those dwarf names over and over. That would have been hell for her. And since my son is not enthusiastic about reading aloud at the best of times, I gladly took on the task myself.

The only problem: we were watching DVD previews of… something last week (not a good sign, eh?) and the LOTR blue ray was one of them my son was startled to hear Elijah Wood say the name “Gandalf.”

“Didn’t you know?” I said. “The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are set in the same world. They’re connected.”

“Oh. Let’s read those next.”

And my heart sank. I’m happy that he’s (finally) warming up to fantasy, but there’s no way I can ask my wife to read LOTR aloud, so all the books would be on me and me alone.

Not only that, but much of Fellowship… is freaking dire. I’m sorry; I know there are people out there who lurve the books so much they read them every year or whatever, but too much of the early travel stuff is just tedious. And Bilbo’s birthday party takes forever to get to.

I’m tempted to break the family rule and skip the books in favor of the movies.

An auspicious day

Standard

Today is supposed to be a Pokemon league day, but the boy woke up in the middle of the night with a bad cough, and I don’t take him when he’s all coughing on people. At this point, though, he seems fine, so we’ll be heading out.

In other super-fun news, I’ve started tracking my calories with Livestrong as of today. Reading Scott Lynch’s recent post on the topic, I accepted that there’s really no more excuses for putting it off. The writers who’d taken control of their fitness/eating all seem to be quite a bit younger than me–and that will make things harder–but it’s not like I’m going to turn 30 again.

If nothing else, I expect recording everything I eat will be an opportunity to re-examine my food habits. I used to use fasts for this, but my wife hates fasting, so what the hell.

Quick note: I’m not looking for advice regarding weight and weight loss.