M. Thomas Apple's Blog, page 63
March 10, 2018
Starving the smartphone addiction
[image error]It’s been six weeks since I decided to take a break from Facebook. Back in mid-January I took a screenshot to show students how to figure out which apps they used the most (Line, by far, in case you’re wondering, followed by YouTube… not surprisingly, since my students are all Japanese).
It was a little shocking to see that I was spending over 8 hours a week on FB on my iPhone. My train commute is about an hour and a half each way, and I go to campus four days a week. So basically I spent 2/3 of my train time looking at FB posts.
Yuck. What a waste of reading time.
I deleted the app from my iPhone and iPad, and made conscious efforts to avoid visiting my pages on my desktop PC and laptop. (I kept Messenger to keep in touch my friends and colleagues. And of course this blog automatically posts to FB and elsewhere because of links…)
Since then I’ve managed to write and edit two academic papers, prepare for a new intercultural communication class from April, and finish all class materials for my current psychology in language education graduate class for the next five weeks.
And two whole paragraphs in my SF novel.
Grrr.
In the interim, I did go ice skating with my kids, where I threw my back out so badly it’s taken a month to touch my toes…
February 15, 2018
New Apple Award for Adam’s Stepsons
[image error]Yes, yet another award for my science fiction novella, Adam’s Stepsons! This time, in the category of “E-book Science Fiction.”
The official rollout of the 2017 New Apple Awards hasn’t yet started (they announce winners in each category slowly over several weeks), but I felt I should announce it here anyway.
Competing against full-length science fiction novels, that’s not too bad!
I guess I really do need to write more. And more. And MORE.
February 11, 2018
The beating of my hideous heart!
[image error]So much for my New Year’s resolution of writing more regularly on my blog.
I can blame “writer’s block,” which is sometimes just a convenient excuse for general laziness and sometimes stems from a genuine fear of being entirely uncreative and uninnovative.
(My software program tells me that uninnovative is not a real word. Well, now it is. So there.)
But my most recent bout of writer’s block is at least partially related to work-related stress and insomnia. Whenever I start to feel that I have too much to do and too much to think about, I have trouble sleeping, which leads to an even greater sense that I have too much to do and too much to think about.
So as a result, I wind up doing not much on the whole. Which of course gets me stressed out because I’m not accomplishing any of my goals and tasks (of which I have too much, which is what made me insomniac and led to my not doing anything productive…).
But for the first time this past week I could hear my heart beating. Faster. Faster. Late at night. Echoing in my ears. Faster. Pounding against my ribs. Thud. Thud. Faster. Body shaking. Faster.
And so I would get out of bed, creep downstairs, and watch hours of old SF vids buried on a backup HD. Which of course gets me depressed, thinking, “It’s all been done before, none of my ideas are new, why am I wasting my time trying to write SF?”
And then stay up til 3 and head back to bed. To hear the thudding, pounding, hideous heart. Surely my wife next to me could hear it. Surely this was keeping her awake, too.
Of course not. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Last week I even went to the hospital and sought medical advice, I was worried my heart rate had accelerated so much.
Feeling fine on the way there, just a short fifteen minute walk downtown. Getting a ticket, filling out forms, sitting for half an hour in a giant open waiting room, the 54″ flat screen perched high on the wall to my right. The morning insipid talk show.
I could feel my heart begin to tremble. Thud. Thud. Chest shaking. Faster. Faster. I tried to breathe deeply. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Thud. Thud. Staggering to my feet when called, bringing my bag and coat under one arm.
The doctor calmly checked my blood pressure and pulse, then sent me to another room to have my heart rhythm tested using an electro-cardiogram machine. The kind where they stick tiny suction cups to your chest and put clamps on your ankles and wrists. Hooked up to a battery. Like jumpstarting your car.
I went back to the sneezing and hacking filled waiting room with the insipid TV. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The diagnosis?
It’s all in my head. No high blood pressure. Normal heart rate. No irregularities.
The advice?
“Get more sleep.”
Well, damn.
January 20, 2018
A post about nothing in particular
Is it wrong to post something when nothing’s really been going on?
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Well, not exactly nothing nothing. What I mean is, nothing particularly special.
Just work, family, day to day routines.
Influenza. Type B. (Not me, my daughter.)
Preparing materials for class. Doing it again. And again.
Trying to write. Failing epically. Zoning out on YouTubes on Ancient Greece and the Hittites (I’m on a big Hittite kick right now for some reason).
Finally getting to see the new Blade Runner at a friend’s house on Bluray (with kids it’s almost impossible to watch movies I want to see).
Practicing guitar for the first time in nearly a year. Then doing it every day a week straight. For 10 minutes at a time. (Before being told “Daddy, that’s noisy.”)
Yeah. Nothing in particular. Just life, I guess.
January 4, 2018
2017: Year in Review
[image error]This past year was an eventful one, to say the least!
By January, my science fiction novella/novellette Adam’s Stepsons, which I had come back to after a long ( ~ 18 year!) hiatus, had already been rejected by three separate SF magazines. So I made the decision to go the self-publish route.
But before that, I sought out some advice from a fellow self-publisher, Greg Spry, whose debut novel I very much admired (Beyond Cloud Nine). He pointed out several areas to be corrected/emended/improved and although I initially resisted further changes, I soon realized that he was right.
Lesson 1 learned: Always listen to advice about your writing. It helps.
Of course, this wouldn’t have happened if I had been able to get somebody to read my story before sending it off to magazines.
Lesson 2 learned: Get a beta reader. Or two.
By the end of March, I had revised the story by adding a new chapter and fleshing out the details of the relationship between the two main characters. Then I submitted the story to as many appropriate contests that I could find. And approached online reviewers. And did a review swap.
And of course kept writing. Or at least, kept trying to find time to write.
Time passed. Life interceded. By which I mean I had loads of work duties, martial arts practices (and subsequent lack of cartilage in both knees!), and family time (including weekly piano and swimming lessons and a summer trip involving poison snakes and canoe rides).
I got sidetracked by a project about my own family history. I took copious notes about relatives in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Spent more time with folks dead than living. You get a strange feeling when, after searching for some long lost relative you never knew you had, you then find out first when and how they died before you find out when and how they lived.
Also, I read book after book about German and Irish history. Then found out there were French Canadians in the family tree as well. Too much! Several thousand words and hundreds of photos and maps stored for the meantime, I set it all aside and took a break with my actual, living family.
By the fall, my SF short stories had racked up an impressive collection of steady rejections. But my novella had received honorable mention in the Reader’s Favorite yearly contest, been named a Finalist in the Independent Authors Network as well as a Bookworks Selection.
Encouraged, I managed to get down close to 30,000 words of a SF novel (Bringer of Light) whose basic outline I’d inherited from a friend (meant to be originally a jointly-authored story, then turned over to me entirely).
Then I hit a major block. And the holidays came soon after. And then I got another award. Yay!
Which brings us to now. 2018: The Year of the Dog.
So what does 2018 bring?
The completion of Bringer of Light! (I hope! There are two more books in the series mapped out already, after all…)
At least one short story published in a magazine somewhere! (The goal…)
Losing at least 10 lbs! (OK, that’s not a writing goal, but still…)
Writing at least one blog post every week! (Um. How about at least one every two weeks…) And…
Avoiding Facebook! (Yeah, right…)
December 28, 2017
Adam’s Stepsons awarded Pinnacle Best SF
A late Christmas surprise!
Adam’s Stepsons won Best Science Fiction in the Fall 2017 NABE (National Association of Book Entrepreneurs) Pinnacle Book Achievement Award contest.
It’s gratifying to see my novella appreciated, but it would be even better to hear from individual readers.
If you have read Adam’s Stepsons, please don’t hesitate to write what you think about it – even if it’s just a single sentence – on Amazon, Goodreads, your own blog, Twitter feed, or Facebook page, anywhere!
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October 25, 2017
Month of the Gods – or Without?
It’s been a very trying month, and yet rewarding.
[image error]At the beginning of the month, I found out that my science fiction novella/novellette Adam’s Stepsons had won an award (Readers’ Favorite). The next day, I was selected as a Featured Author by BookWorks. And then less than a week later, Adam’s Stepsons got another award, this time Finalist for Best Novella by the Independent Authors’ Network. Inspired, I worked on my next SF novel and got the word count up to around 25,000.
Pretty cool.
And then it started to rain.
And rain.
And kept raining. For about eight to nine days straight. Mold everywhere in the house: the entranceway, the hall, the bath, the kids’ bedroom, even our little library nook (which doubles as my writing room/man cave).
Yuck.
And then (not done with us yet!) the typhoon came. No damage for us but plenty for some of my colleagues and neighbors up north in Kyoto and Gifu.
[image error]Our daughter’s sports festival – her last at the nursery school, in which she gets to play snare drum in a marching band – was delayed, and then cancelled.
Then both kids got sick. Waking up several times a night, coughing with stuffy noses, and still having to get up early each morning (6 – 6:30) for school and work for all four of us.
The Month of the Gods (神無月) became the Month without Gods (無 = na (of) as well as naki (without)). As if suddenly abandoned.
So it’s fitting that after only two days of sun, October will end with yet another typhoon. Yikes.
Probably a glancing blow, but the heavy rain that accompanies the storm will no doubt scuttle our plans for a Halloween party for our kids and their friends. It may inspire some writing, however.
After all, isn’t that how Mary Shelley started?
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October 13, 2017
Adam’s Stepsons Book Giveaway
October 4, 2017
Adam’s Stepsons – BookWorks Featured Author
BookWorks has selected me as their weekly “Featured Author.”
Please check out the BookWorks pages for me and for Adam’s Stepsons, where you will find a free Chapter 1 (PDF).
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October 1, 2017
Adam’s Stepsons Wins Award
[image error]It’s official now! Adam’s Stepsons won “Honorable Mention” in the Readers’ Favorites yearly contest in the “Best Short Story/ Novella” category. Stoked!
Read the reviews on Readers’ Favorites here:
https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/adams-stepsons
And don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a Kindle version of the novella!
https://readersfavorite.com/giveaway?sort=title
(Don’t forget to check out the author’s interview on Literary Titan!)
