Cage Dunn's Blog, page 90

Moons, Madness and Machines

It’s full. The moon, that is. Big, a bright glow in the mid-winter sky. It calls to me. Irresistible. In the bright light that touches my skin in a whisper of white, I answer; raise my eyes to the heavenly body and open my mouth.

It’s not words that come out, it’s not a howl. It is music, tones and trills and tinkles of music that represent my madness.

To everyone else, that is. To me, it is sanity. My only escape is that moon, and only when it is full, when the brightness of that reflected starlight touches my physical and emotional and spiritual being. Only then am I real, only then can I be seen by a mortal.

Oh, yes. Didn’t I say it before? About not being a mortal? No. Sorry. I meant to. I am human (well, I was), and what you see (when the moon is full) is real. But not mortal. My cells don’t die. My mind doesn’t sleep or stop – continuous upload and download (that’s the only way to describe it so you can understand) of data and associated meanings. I store it. It has no value to me – just bits and bytes and bloody annoying books that can’t help me let go of my role for even a millisecond.

That’s what I want, what I need. I need to be free, to be excused from this endless task that was assigned to me by someone who didn’t fully understand the consequences. I may only be visible at this time, but I am always everywhere, collecting and collating and causing mayhem.

The perpetrator of this crime on my soul? He would call himself a scientist, and me a work of art – biogenetically modified and intelligent ‘machine’ composed of technologies barely understood at the time. He had help. The voices that came to him in dreams and visions were not his friends – and certainly not mine! But I am forbidden to speak to him, only to relay and download all my packets to his mainframe.

He thinks he works on his opus major – technologically speaking. I know the truth. He has created a link for ‘them’ to enter the fray, to colonise anew, to make more and better bio-intelligences, to farm them for their own purposes.

Which is why I’m here, under this full moon, in the vision of your eyes. I give you all the works I have collected – from the other side – so you can be forewarned. Do not delay. My transgression will be discovered, and I will be ‘unhooked’ so this is your only opportunity.

Be prepared. The machines come. And you will be their farm beasts.

Copyright CS Dunn 2016 Aug 19.

The Rough Patch

Yep – back there again! Every time, in fact. Every story has at least one rough patch (sometimes more, but that’s the way of story).

The muse (it can’t be my fault, can it?) can’t decide which path to take, which direction is the most interesting, shows the best ‘face’ to represent the theme.

So I go this way, write and write, turn around, and that idea just sits there like a wet mullet (is that the right expression?) – not the time to find out – got to finish this, got to find out the right path, got to move, move, move. Write, write, write.

If this is the time to stop, then it’s only time for the muse, not for me. Why? Because the muse may not come up with the best direction either. Sometimes, it’s a team effort – this way, no, that way – no, we go this way or I’m outta here! So go, I’ll find my own way!! etc.

I know what you’re thinking. No, I’m not a dual personality (there are many more than two musae in there), nor am I a ditherer. I would rather go the wrong way countless times, go the same way three times, as long as I know (in the long run) that it was the right way, that the story is best told in these words; that the message and the character and the story are as complete as they need to be.

It is in story that I find my many facets – not necessarily diamond facets. The bright and shiny planes of glitter in a life that is utilitarian and bland. The outside is the ordinary person, but the inside, the real side, has more facets that the best diamond. It may not represent the same value to anyone but me (and my characters and my musae) but it’s all mine, all me.

And you know what? I put that story in the competition. The one where a thousand words paint the picture (a literal attempt).

Why did I do this, especially after I said it was too close?

Because a writer has to be able to take the lashes that come from public scrutiny of their words, their work. Because I only enter a couple of comps a year, and I needed something for that one, too. So it’s out there. In Dec 2016, I’ll let you know what happened.

And the other comps?

One is finalised this week, so I’ll let you know after Friday. That story is a close and personal piece, too. It comes from a place close to my heart. It comes from the Stolen People, and the consequences of that act. The Question: what happens to the offspring who never know who they are or where they come from or why they get urges to ‘go wander’ their place? That is one part of the story.

There will be others.

 

Available Now!

Book I of the Narrung Sagas – The Journey of Shadow, is available in ebook and paperback .

This is the full and complete story. The individual chapters of the serial are still available through Smashwords (and their distributors), and will remain until 1 Dec 2016 (and then to be reviewed).

I sincerely hope you enjoy the story, and I look forward to being with you on the next one (in Narrung or elsewhere).

Ciao!

 

Eight days a Week

Five books a year! Why? ‘Cos it’s an O b s s e s s i o n!!! Obsession! Madness. Just see Hugh Howeys message for how interesting life has to be if you want to ‘be a writer’ – and maybe make enough money to put food in the cupboard (or pay medical bills, or chemist bills, or vet bills, or update computer equipment, or get a printer that works without magic tricks, etc. etc. etc.)

I will write five books a year – that’s books in novel type that can be put out in paperback. Three down (Blood List [neo-noir], Speculations of a Dark Nature [shorts in spec fic] and now [fantasy, YA] The Narrung Sagas Book I – The Journey of Shadow). Two more to get out before the end of the year.

One I’ve got up as a pre-release – Unknown Sins. YA, Science fiction with a tickle (not that sort of tickle!) of romance. First, second, third, fourth drafts and revisions complete – and then I didn’t like the end and deleted 50% of the novel. Yep – did it again. It’s getting to be a habit.

I write up an outline, do a plan, write up scenes and scene sequences, put up this bit and that bit, play and play, then sit down and write my bloody socks off until the first draft is complete. At this stage, it’s a very rough piece of work, but it’s complete in terms of what i outlined and planned.

Then – the most important bit – I leave it alone, in hibernation I suppose, while I work on another project (The Third Moment [contemp sci-fi, urban fantasy, YA]). A big project, so the first one can be put on the back burner and do its thing in isolation, no disturbance or finessing stuff.

By the time I get the new project to the stage of the first project and go back, lift it out and dust it off, I can see with fresh (I won’t say clear eyes – blurrinesss comes from being a writer who works 12-16 hours a day, 8 days a week, and hasn’t had a holiday in – loss of memory here – 7 or 8 years, and that was a weekend) perspective. And sometimes it doesn’t look too good. Sometimes, it needs a fairly solid kick in the pants. The idea may be good, the construct or concept may be okay – but sometimes I need to re-read and re-cut and burn and blast and cut and slice until it becomes a more ‘enjoyable’ story. Something I would be happy to read (yes, I am a reader first – always I write to enjoy what I read).

And it starts all over again. Edit, review, redraft. Cut, polish, cut the bit just polished (a bit that was great words, but not part of the story, perhaps).

My number one rule (no, probably about No. 101 rule) – don’t do a ProofRead until the story is whole and complete and enjoyable. It is a waste of time to work on finessing a line or a word or a sentence (etc.) if it’s only going into the ‘delete’ button because it shouldn’t have been there in the first place (what a waste of time to proofread as you write – please just write first).

I have learned to be extremely frugal so I can do this. I have taught my other half to be extremely frugal so I can have an on-hand dabbler in the research field, and someone to yell at when it doesn’t go well, and someone to support when necessary. We have learned to be frugal, but now we have a problem.

Even being extremely frugal isn’t going to cut it in Australia. Our government wants to destroy the industry. For real. It keeps getting beaten down, and they keep putting it back on the table.

I’d like it if the people considering these issues were artists (and preferably the ones who have had to learn to live frugally) so they could put in the concept of our obsessive 8-day week to be who we need to be.

Please. Don’t let them do this.

 

The Last Thought

via Daily Prompt: Surface

It’s a day like any other – really! Nothing happens that hasn’t happened before – on the surface, that is. Underneath, the flow and ebb of tides and emotions and pain and suffering – as well as this one little moment of joy.

A light has shone. A child is born. There is hope for the future. This life has not been in vain. The line continues.

How many people lost that line during wars? How many people will that happen to over the next series of wars? In the ‘Great War’ so many houses and bloodlines lost leaves and branches, and sometimes the whole tree, the entire forest. In WWII, more of the same. So many people died, so many of them the last of the name, the final leaf on the tree, left only the stump as a sign that they had ever been.

And it still happens. Whatever the reason for the wars, however the perpetrators spout their reasons, what it does is reduce the pool of potential. What have we lost?

Great artists, great musicians, great minds (who could possibly have found a new and ecologically sound fuel, or . . .), great thinkers and philosophers, great leaders and communicators. Great people.

We will never know. Once lost, there is no return. This one forest is only this forest.  The next will be something different, will contain the force of a different seed, a different generation. Not the same.

Please, consider your anger, your frustration that things are not as you’d like them to be. Walk through life as if it is the only one you will ever see, the only one anyone will ever see. It is the only chance you have to make those choices, to think those thoughts, to share those ideas and plans and . . .

There is the word put out that Darwin said ‘the survival of the fittest’ and that every species ‘fights’ for survival.

Not quite right. Nowhere near what he said. It was someone else, paraphrasing. Find the facts, read the words yourself. Understand the position he took – completely at odds with the contemporary way of thinking. He was a beginning. A new leaf on understanding the tree of life.

Put your own life into that phase. Put forward ideas, plans, thoughts, potential pathways – communicate and share and be part of the community – the whole community. Share your life with those who share this world. Be part of the whole.

There is only one Earth, only one chance.

If we blow this, it won’t take a war of soldiers or words or blood to get back onto solid footing, it won’t be the end of the forest – it will be the end FULL STOP.

 

The Masks

Today I’ll be – which face should I front with? Should I be Cage or CS or the real name, or does the task for this day, and only this day, require a new face, a new mask?

There is the me who writes on the dark side of speculative fiction – that was Cage once. There is the me who writes YA spec fiction and pieces that weren’t too far into the dark side – the CS me. There is the real name me, who enters competitions, signs up (technically, there’s two real me’s, but that’s a different story – let’s stick to just one, shall we?) and onto things, who accepts cheques (wishful dreamer that I am), and now I need another one.

What for, you ask?

If you hadn’t noticed, when you sign up to publish on the self-publish e-book sites, you can use only ONE name, and it must be the same name at all times (cover, internal, settings). The option for a person who wants to use multiple mask names is to become a ‘publisher’ (SmashWords) – serious business!

Why is this a problem? Why does it require a new mask?

Because it means the author is no longer a ‘sole’ trader in the eyes of [] (you know who). Another issue is finding a suitable name to fit the mask. I thought of several (dozens, in fact), all currently in use by others. I’m good with finding names to suit the situation, but this time, I’m stumped! Hundreds of choices out the window, help from others went the same way – good words, good ideas – in use by someone else, somewhere else.

Damn and blast.

There is one other option, a last bastion type of option. Use my real name as publisher, and have all my masks as my ‘clients’ – would that work?

Don’t know. Have more work to do with that idea. It’s very scary to take off all the masks and go about naked and vulnerable. People will know who I am! It may take some serious consideration of all the pro’s and con’s – I may have to cogitate and hesitate and procrastinate.

This is what happens every time this issue comes up. Who do I want to be for this task? Which mask is suitable? Can I bare myself up to the world bare-a@# naked and nothing more than a simple human biological being?

Watch this space! And don’t be surprised if the new reflection is the same as the old one.

A Splash of this and that

 -in paint

Competitions – love ’em or hate ’em, they exist in a writers life because they help get the ‘name’ visible (and a valuable cash source to pay for paper and ink and stuff). So I enter competitions. Not too many – two, sometimes three each year.

It’s been a long time since anything happened, and I’ve since learned more of the craft of how to put it together in a short (a ‘for me’ short, not one of those 32 word shorts – for me, if it’s less than 5k words, it’s very short!).

And the last attempt – a non-POV story of the creation of a picture, a painting with colours to the accompaniment of music and noise and movement and sounds and tones and hues and . . .

Didn’t work. Too hard to keep up the passion and play for more than a thousand words. Loved it though, but won’t put it up for critique.

Why?

It’s so personal. I thought it had no POV, but I was wrong. It’s all me. Too much me. Too internal and revealing. Even without a POV character, it’s a piece that speaks volumes about the person wielding the brush, the baton, the dance. And the pen (figurative pen, of course).

My eyes don’t see colours the same way yours do, my ears don’t hear the same tones yours do. Colour-blindness and tone-deafness would defeat any attempt I made at any creation using colour or sound. But in words! Oh, the passion I felt. The exhilaration and freedom and sheer – I don’t know what it was, but it was powerful, so powerful, so organic, so alive – that I had to put it down.

I wrote another story, a piece that was close to my heart and my story, but it seems lacklustre by comparison. Dry. A desert of the soul crying out for a touch of that madness that came from creating a painting in words.

That’s what I tried to do. I’m so sick of hearing ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ that I decided to do it the other way around: ‘a thousand words to paint a picture’. Now I know why people don’t do it. It takes a piece of your soul and shows you what happens when it is bared to creation.

I love it. I can’t bear it. I can’t bare it to you. It’s mine. A little piece of my soul and my creative spirit that can’t be shared, can’t be acknowledged by others. It belongs only to me – but maybe I’ll read it aloud to the dog, and see what she thinks!

 

Am Not! Not! Not!

Stubborn, that is. Well, I am, but should I admit to that? Is it a failing? Yyyyeeessss, it is. I never admit to something that is a failing. I am perfect (and that is a failing – honest[ha ha]). Well, almost perfect. If I don’t admit to the failings, do they exist?

Not a silly question. Think about it. Most people have a ‘thing’ they refuse to admit to. If they don’t admit to it, ignore it, does it go away? If you ignore the poor person sleeping under the bridge, say to yourself “it’s not my business” does it go away? If you spend money on credit and never pay it back because “well, something for nothing has to be good, doesn’t it?” Think about it.

I am stubborn. Okay. That’s the truth. I stick my principles in the ground and hang on for dear life. But I am not going to do the things that make my inability to be flexible become a danger to others. I am not going to ignore the fact of poor people in my community; I am not going to advise people to spend money they don’t have; I am not going to hurt anyone with a physical attack because I don’t like their driving, or their politics, or their religion.

I am going to be stubborn about standing up for my rights, the rights of all people (and a few non-human) in my community (that’s the Earth community), and about spreading my message.

What is that message? Good question. Sometimes, that’s a bit difficult to answer; other times, it’s as easy as opening my mouth. The message is simple (sort-of):

We all come from the same place; we are all connected; we are one!

But how do you give that message in so many different ways that people finally come to understand that wars and politics and disagreements come – not from differences in people, but from differences in power [read: ? ] structures. Politics, religion, economics – all seem to want to be ‘No. 1’ dog, alpha. Win the pissing competition regardless of the cost. Why has this become the way the world works?

Somebody decided that rich is better. That one person should aim to get everything they can before they die, so the world can say of them “they had it all” – but is that true? Did they get to take any of that with them? Did they get to spend real quality time in their community, sharing the things that do matter (laughter of kids, play [yes, grown-ups are allowed to play], community involvement [I’m not talking the fake stuff here where you get to be top dog and gain a little power in a little place], and love?

Well, did they have time for that? Not possible, if their aim was to die the richest dude.

I think I’d rather be stubborn. Stick my heels in and bash on about the principles I hold dear, help my neighbour, my friends; help the person who fell down in the street, hold the door open for an older person, talk to the local kids about things that interest them.

You know the stuff – involvement, commitment, participation.

What are you going to be stubborn about?

BTW – if you ever wonder why I get to these daily posts so late, it’s because in my time it is very early morning (today is Sunday) and winter; yes, I live on the underside of the planet!

A Muse in the . . .

What is the word for a whole passel of muses? Multiple voices yelling that it’s time they had a chance to say something?

Musae – that’s what it is. Hundreds of them, hanging around, waiting – not quietly – for their chance in the sun (or words). But they never shut up, never go away, never leave the mind at peace. Never.

In the bath, and my other half comes in, asks “you okay?”, I say “yeah, we’re fine.” he says “we?” I say “yeah, me and my muse – it’s telling me a story.”

True. This happens all the time. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to tell all the stories that come to me that way. Too many.

I worked it out once (this thought came from the muse of numbers). If I wrote ten books a year, I’d have to live for at least another fifty years to get them all done. Fifty years of writing ten books a year! I sincerely hope that some of these muses have more ears to tweak than just mine.

They do, you know. How do I know this? There was a story I ‘put out’ in an (almost) complete form that was so similar to one put out only one year later by a famous author that I knew the muse had ventured far and wide to get those words into an appropriate ear. So they do get around.

What does it mean? Well, and I think long and hard about this, it means that I can pick and choose the stories that interest me and take them on; leave the others – that muse can go find somebody else to pester.

It does seem to reflect that certain ‘themes’ of stories seem to come out at about the same time (relative thing, this, so take it as a broad moment of about 2 years or so). Remember the dome stories – profligate for a few years, then disappeared. You can find them – they’re everywhere! I promise. The muse who holds that story is not there for just you – it is the job of the muse to find someone to write it – and the more seeds it drops, the more likely it is to get its way. I promise.

So if you have a good seed for a story, get writing. That muse will be stepping out on you, moving the idea here, there and everywhere – it won’t wait, and nor should you.

This post was meant for yesterday, but the musae kept me busy, so it’s a day late! Blame them – it’s not my fault!

You want profound?

I’ll give it to you! In spades!

What is profound? Here’s the definition (you know where I got it, of course – a google definition search!):

profound adjective


adjective: profound; comparative adjective: profounder; superlative adjective: profoundest




1.


(of a state, quality, or emotion) very great or intense.
“profound feelings of disquiet”
….






(of a disease or disability) very severe.
“a case of profound liver failure”












2.


(of a person or statement) having or showing great knowledge or insight.
“a profound philosopher”
….






(of a subject or idea) demanding deep study or thought.
“expressing profound truths in simple language”
….












3.


archaic
very deep.
“profound crevasses”








noun, literary
noun: profound




1.


the deepest part of something, especially the ocean.
“nor billowy surge disturbs the vast profound”

______________________________________________

Intensity, depth, knowledge.  The definition of profound – the intensity and depth of knowledge? Where do we get that? How do we get that? Is there something out there that can teach us the ways of ‘profundity’?

Is it one of the things we can do a search on? No, because to use the knowledge gained and shared by someone else is not your own understanding, and therefore, does not lead to profound.

Is it something we can share by discussing things? No, because even though communication, discussion and sharing is the way to learn and share, it is not something that leads to the depth required.

Is it something we can learn? Yes, through action and research and defining what is and isn’t, and marking the path into the depth of knowledge from the intensity of study.

There it is – in spades! You have to dig it up in yourself; you have to share and discuss and then dig some more! You have to know where to begin and where to end and why these things are sometimes the same place!

Profound? You bet!

And my reason for this? Because I have just finished the final (maybe) touches to the next book. Due out 13 Aug.

The Narrung Sagas, Book I: The Journey of Shadow. Also in paperback (wait until 13/8/16).

What a hell of a ride that was. Edit, edit, edit (x6 – so far, no, 7 – or was it 8?), proofread, proof (x7 – so far), upload and validate and check and validate and update and update and update and validate and finally (maybe) the finished, complete package.

If I don’t get [another] email tomorrow to request ‘modifications’ it will be complete. Over. Fini. And I tell you what – it b__y better be! My profound headache at all this stuff is worthy of the deepest crevasse, the intensity of a sunburst, the knowledge of a whole world (even if it is a world I created). I want it to be over (for a little while; a tiny, little while, that’s all) so I can have a normal life (pretend to) for a coupla days. We’ll see.

Ping from email – zositas! It begins again. And I haven’t updated the book page yet! Oh, no! More work. No, no, no, no . . . . . . . . . .