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Never thought I’d be letting it go this long between entries. But as the days went by, I’d think “I’ll take care of it right after I finish this.” Well, it looks like there was always another “This” just around the corner. In order to get things up to speed here, I’m going to make sure I leave enough time for “That” also. I think I’ve been letting micro-blogging take too much away from maintaining my regular blog and that isn’t a good thing. Especially since I’ve just gotten the wind back in my sails after a time where I wasn’t writing.

We’ll go ahead and start with a little flash fiction I had written for a contest on a new site called Figment. I had to create a 400 word story and decided to write a little scene with two characters I had created a long time ago. Have a read and tell me if you like it:

“What were you thinking? Just ‘cause you wanted out you’d get out? Thought I’d taught you better.”

Dana slid closer to the counter she hid behind, trying her best to make as little sound as possible with her boots against the grimy tile floor. In another life she was sure the floor would’ve been gleaming, absolutely reeking of bleach and other cleaning products. Now, the kitchen floor was broken and stunk of mildew. She had to dial down the scent to keep the out of control fungus from overwhelming her.

She also smelled gun oil, bore cleaner, rotting wood, and of course that faintest wisp of lavender.

With all the junk Intelligence Division put into her, you’d think her olfactory processor would’ve picked up her perfume. No, of course not.

The sound of a guided round going supersonic broke her out of her introspection, and Dana dove from her improvised cover as the steel prep counter screamed behind her. She didn’t need to look back to see the metal confetti that had been her hiding place. Dana tasted the rust and depleted uranium from the cloud of nanobots which extended her range of senses.

Automagically, Dana’s body twisted while falling and she fired a couple of shots at Sister Blue. Her former mentor reacted in the same way Dana had and jumped behind a decrepit wood and marble bar. While to Dana it seemed like the other woman moved normally, the chunks of rock and splinters of wood hung in the air like dandelion seeds, suspended in a miraculous spray of entropy and decay, and betraying the hyper-speed of their dance.

Dana’s shoulder slapped against the tile. She felt a jab and long slice of something against her leg and her olfactory implants instantly identified iron and hemoglobin in the air, but she ignored the pain and focused on the reflected laughter of Blue.

“God damn, you’re good! I swear, makes me proud to know I helped nurture some of the gifts God gave ya.”

“Wasn’t there something about nuns not taking the Lord’s name in vain?”

“As long as it’s not a habit, I can get away with it. Confession’s good for the soul. Bullets, even better,” said Sister Blue.

This was gonna be a long night. Hopefully it didn’t end with a shot between the eyes.

Well, at least her’s.

Hello everyone and sorry for the lack of an update. I’ve been working on some other projects and will return to regular posting as well as an updated look for Renegade Sanctuary. In the meantime, check out Calling Home: The Graphic Novel and watch how the story wraps up.

Also be sure to keep an eye out in Twitter for more information about the follow up story, Calling Home: Damaged Echoes.

It’s been a bit since I posted something to my blog, so I wanted to talk about my grand NaNoWriMo experiment from August-November of last year. Simply put, things did not go as expected.

As each month passed all sorts of personal events kept on intruding to the point where I couldn’t even think of writing much less get my head into completing my goals. I experienced a sort of meltdown in my personal life and this directly affected my writing more than I’d thought possible. Add to this the self-imposed stress of trying to get the draft done before December and you pretty much get a disaster.

But that was last year, and now in this new one, I decided to approach writing differently. Even though my personal and financial life is still in turmoil, I’ve forgiven myself for missing my own deadlines last year and set myself a more workable schedule. I try to write what I can daily, but not under the constraints of NaNoWriMo-type deadline. I think this will give me room to breathe and not paralyze me with stress.

It also gives me the ability to concentrate on stabilizing other parts of my life while keeping the story moving. I’m hopeful that once things work themselves out on one front it’ll make it easier for me to put more effort into writing.

Either way, I will try to post at least something each month about where I am and I hope I have better news to tell then.

As someone involved in IT for most of my life, it was very refreshing to see a writer who knew how things really worked. Who understood how networks, databases, and other pieces of infrastructure that runs our daily lives really functioned. Daniel Suarez, is the thriller writer I’ve been waiting for: Someone who actually has a clue what really is happening behind the computing curtain.

All to often, I’ve found that most writers who write science fiction and techno-thrillers have no experience whatsoever with technology and love to throw terms and ideas out in order to cover their ignorance. This was one of the first books of fiction I’ve read where I saw the writer knew exactly what he was talking about and wasn’t depending on a subscription to Wired for all of his technical information.

As a novel, I found it enjoyable and frightening at the same time. Since I know about the technology he talks about in his books, I can easily see some of the things that happened actually occur. As one reviewer on Amazon had said, “This isn’t a novel so much as it is an object lesson in what can happen.” What I found fascinating was looking at all the reviews, people who really didn’t understand the technology involved, or people who think they do (listening to CNET podcasts and what not does not count as “knowing about computers and the internet”) did not like this novel as much as people who really do know the way things work in the internet.

In some ways, Daniel has limited his audience to very technical people, but to be honest those in the later generations are more technical than the previous ones and it is very refreshing to read a book where they author isn’t dumbing down the novel in order to keep people who aren’t technically inclined happy. Its like the author is saying to his readers, “If you can understand, great take a seat and hold on to the pull bar for a wild ride. If you can’t, then STFU and find yourself a Grisham book”. I like that. I like it very much.

To sum things up, if you’re in IT or involved anyway in computer technology, you should read Daemon. If you really understand what Daniel is talking about, it should both excite and scare you. This is definitely a thriller for our generation, and I sure hope to see more like these popping up in the near future.

After reading most of my caffeinated entries on this blog I’m sure you know about my love and obsession with single serve coffee machines. One of my most loved is my Keurig B70. It is simply the best single serve system out there.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the company with the largest selection of KCups and who also owns Keurig as a subsidiary.

When I first started my affair with Keurig, I went through a multitude of sample packs of KCups trying to find the ones I liked best. I realized quickly that many roasters were not created equal. Some burned their roasts to the point where their full city roast was more along the lines of a French roast. And then some made weaker roasts of coffee.

This was where I found myself with Green Mountain Coffee. When I first tried some of their Colombian Fair Trade, I found it to be very week and lacking the flavor I expected from a medium roast. At that point I wrote them off and decided to keep with Diedrich Coffee’s KCups which I felt had the best flavor.

So, fast forward to a couple of months ago when my neighbor had purchased his own Keurig and being the neighborly sort, I gave him some Diedrich KCups and he gave me some of his Green Mountain Colombian.

Now, I wasn’t too thrilled about the exchange, thinking that I would end up tossing the those KCups into the trash, but it had been a while since I last tasted Green Mountain KCups (at least since they had purchased Keurig) and I have learned a variety of techniques to improve the flavor of weaker cups of coffee, so I decided to give them another shot.

That was when the unbelievable happened and I found that Green Mountain’s Colombian Fair Trade was actually very good. I found myself purchasing a large pack of the coffee from BJ’s the next day in order to supplement the other KCups on hand.

Initially, I was concerned when Green Mountain have purchased Keurig and thought that I would be relegated to either drinking KCups I hated or to just use the MyKCup adapter to brew my own blends, but thankfully they’re still licensing to other roasters and still bringing new ones on-board. The fact I also now like some of their KCups is of course also a plus.

I walk away from this with a fresh perspective on Green Mountain, and also with the desire to revisit some of the KCups I wasn’t too happy with in the past. Let’s see what other new “old” roasters I can discover.