Posts from — August 2008

Welcome back!

When you talk about McCain, do you feel the blood coursing through your veins?  Does hearing Obama’s name make you want to shout out in unconcealed patriotism?  Do you have to have that morning cup of coffee before you can even think about the presidential race?

Well, then you’ll love what the folks at Coffeewiz have cooked up for you.  For all of you coffee lovers who own the miracle of modern coffee known as a Keurig machine, you now have the choice of not only having your morning cup o’ Joe, but also telling everyone waiting in line at the coffee machine exactly who you support in this race:

Yes, candidate Kcups, folks.  Pick your favorite candidate without worries since both have the excellent Coffee People Doughnut Shop Kcups nestled within.  Now, of course there’s no hiding who I’d like to win this particular poll, but don’t let that discourage you. Show your support today and vote with your coffee mug!

Have you ever been assaulted by rabid fans pushing their favorite science fiction stories and novels like a drug dealer pushes heroin? Or when reading said classics do you feel like putting it down and saying “What was the point?”

It is these and many more memories which come to mind whenever I meet someone who also happens to be a science-fiction fan. After establishing our mutual interest in the genre we usually start bombarding each other with what we had read. This is then followed by the recommendations, and reproaches, of having, or not, read so and so who had written this and that. Finishing with assertions that you can’t be a real science fiction fan if you haven’t read X (Asimov, Heinlen, Bradbury, etc.).

Does it really have to be this way? Why can’t we talk about science fiction on the bleeding edge. Stories relevant to us now as opposed to classics which held relevance in the ’60’s or ’70’s? A beginning science fiction reader would find themselves mired in classics that hold nothing for the reader and may serve to alienate them from the genre. You know the books I’m talking about. For myself, I found The Forever War to be an abysmally boring and preachy book which made me question why I was writing science fiction at all if this was one of the best the genre had to offer.

In a recent blog post, writer Ian Sales also feels similarly. As a genre which is primarily concerned looking forward, why are we as readers and writers so eager to push fiction from the past? Shouldn’t we be recommending the latest and greatest? Evolutions and revolutions of themes we had read in those same classics?

As an author, I had begun to ask some of the same questions Ian had poised in his entry. Are these classic stories really stories or are they historical documents as Sales asserts? Looking back at some of the Foundation novels I’d read and loved when I was a kid, I can see things in it as a writer now that I hadn’t seen before; a mistake here an expository dump there. Writing errors which I would be taken for task by a critique partner or an editor if I had done the same in my own work.

But I believe Ian was right in the last sentence of his post:

Further, modern sf readers shouldn’t need to be aware of everything which has gone before, but modern sf writers certainly ought to.

As writers we do need to know what came before and build on it. But I think from now on when I do give my recommendations to other fans and readers, I’ll tell people who ask me to read more recent works so they can see the SF of today and not of yesterday.

Have your coffee and Twitter, too!

This is must have been what they had in mind when they made the Twitsig Mug:

Take your favorite Tweet and have it emblazoned onto your mug for all to see for however long the cup stays in one piece.  But I’d suggest you be careful about which Tweet you put on the mug.

Yes folks, the end of humanity is nigh. Get ‘em while they’re hot.

Thanks to Single Serve Coffee for unearthing this.

I love Social Media.  I’m on at least five different services and spend way more time than I should on them, but I enjoy it considerably and have befriended many great people.  With as much enjoyment as I get out of these services I thought it would be great if could combine together two things I feel passionately about: Social Media and Writing Fiction.

But how do you develop a story in only 140 character bite sized morsels? You could write a longer piece and serialize it, or you could even write Flash Fiction which thrives in such small spaces.  Also, how do you develop characters in serialized stories when you use one account for both posting and comments?  I felt all those approaches left much to be desired.  What I wanted to see was a story, using Social Media where one character interacts with another using separate accounts.  And what’s more, I wanted the story to be science fiction.

The big problem with writing science fiction or fantasy is you usually need quite a bit of space to build your world and have your characters explore it.  Could this be done in 140 character pieces and still be a compelling read?  My answer is yes it can.  And the way to do it is by telling the entire story in dialogue.

Dialogue is powerful.  It’s one of the best tools a writer has in their arsenal to convey emotion and feeling.  Think of the last novel or story you read.  What were the parts which moved you the most?  It was when the characters were speaking.  The author manipulated the words coming from the character into a stream of emotional strength.  You knew how the character was feeling because they told you so in their own voice.

With this in mind, the idea for Calling Home popped into my mind.  A story entirely told within the confines of a damaged ship’s system status messaging and emails.  Each character would have their own Twitter and Plurk account, and communicate with each other through those accounts only.

After some refinement of the idea, I’m proud to announce I have started posting the individual Plurks and Tweets for the story.  Here is the information you will need to follow the story on Twitter and Plurk:

Twitter
Hastag: #chh

http://twitter/ISSMontserrat

http://twitter/JFCAllen

http://twitter/JFCSandeep

http://twitter/ISS_Safeguard

Plurk

http://www.plurk.com/user/CallingHome

http://www.plurk.com/user/Allen

http://www.plurk.com/user/Sandeepz

http://www.plurk.com/user/ISS_Safeguard

If you don’t have your own Twitter or Plurk account, you can get your own Plurk account by following this link and then click on the CallingHome link on my profile.  For a Twitter account, go and register here and then follow the accounts in the list above.

Don’t want a Plurk or Twitter account?  That’s a shame to hear, but I can understand.  If you still want to read the story, you can go to Calling Home’s Archive Page on Tumblr and see the story in the way it was posted.

This story will run for at least a couple of months, so feel free to follow and see what happens to our characters in the deep reaches of space.  For the time being, there will be twice daily updates, however that could change as things progress in the story.  Read and you’ll find out why….

Lastly, if you enjoy the story please tell your friends about it and spread the word on any other Social Media services you’re on.  If you’d like to see it posted to another Social Media service then email me and I’ll look into it.

Enjoy the story!

Have you ever found yourself staring at your screen and praying to your fickle muse to grant you the strength to take the words out from deep within you?  If you say yes, stop it.  Yes, I said stop trying to get a hold of her, because she’s on vacation in Cabo San Lucas and the last thing on her mind is you.

So how do you get back on track?  How are you going to write that blog entry?  Finish that piece of flash fiction?  Top off the novel you’d been writing for the last six months?

Try a writing burst.

A writing burst is a session of writing where you concentrate on nothing but output.  It doesn’t matter what you write as long as you write.  If you wanted to you could focus on writing a letter to your grandmother, a blog entry, a recipe, a short story, or your comprehensive plan on taking over the world using only strawberry Twizzlers.   The point is you just have to write something.

To keep things flowing well, I recommend your writing burst be fifteen minutes long.  Fifteen minutes is a small enough piece of time where it doesn’t feel like a major commitment, but isn’t small enough were you’ll be out of time before you even started.  It also helps you silence your inner editor long enough for you to sit down and produce.  Once your fifteen minutes are over, you’ll be surprised at what you’ve accomplished.

For example, I finished this entire blog entry in fifteen minutes.

If you’d like to try a writing burst, call or message a couple of your friends who also have writing to do and do an impromptu writing burst.  Have no writing friends?  Join me on Plurk and we’ll go ahead and do a writing burst together.  You’ll be happy you did, and your muse will be even happier you’ve left her alone with her tall Piña Colada sunning at the edge of the pool.