Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 12

Fall Back

Whyyyy?

Tonight, Daylight Saving Time ends in the US. The ending of Daylight Saving’s in the Fall is always harder for me than its beginning in Spring, because I wake up earlier than I want to in general. Sometimes several hours earlier. Today? I was up before 5:30. Tomorrow, that same time will be 4:30. And while it shouldn’t really matter, since I work when I work, I work from home, and whatever…the fact is, at 4:30 am in the winter it’s cold and shitty and dark and I’d rather be asleep in my bed.

What about you, what’s easier for you? Spring Forward or Fall Back?

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A Down-to-Earth Sci Fi

[image error]I recently re-edited the third book of my Mnevermind Trilogy for audio in anticipation of the audiobook production. I can’t wait to hear Seth Clayton perform it. He totally killed it on books 1 and 2.

Is this trilogy for you? The Mnevermind idea has its root in mnemonics, having to do with memories. In the series, a technology exists similar to virtual reality where people can get temporary recreational memories implanted, in semi-professional settings similar to tanning salons. That’s about as science-y as it gets! Other than that one technology, it’s a down-to-earth story about a struggling small business owner, his family, and his love interest on the autism spectrum.

I often recommend this series to people who’ve enjoyed the films Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Black Mirror fans might dig it too, though it’s more romantic and less dark.

The first book, The Persistence of Memory is on sale for 99¢ through Monday, November 6.

Amazon | Smashwords | Kobo

And I’ll be sending out audiobooks to all the wonderful folks who requested them from me at GRL! (I need to do some data entry and figure out how to perform a gmail mail-merge, but never fear guys, it’s in the works.)

“The emotional ups and downs of Mnevermind were enhanced by this medium. Hearing the characters come to life made it impossible for me to turn off the novel. The story itself is equal parts fascinating and heart-wrenching.” Audible review by Terri-Dawne

Listen to an audio sample

Font-a-licious

OMG OMG OMG

So I was watching a course on what’s new in Photoshop CC 2018 and I realized I was making the kinds of noises and doing the flails regular people do when they watch sports.

Variable fonts. Holy shit. A game-changer for sure.

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(I’m excited…in case that wasn’t obvious!)

Confession time: I have a thing for Jughead.Not comic bo...

Confession time: I have a thing for Jughead.

[image error]Not comic book Jughead, but the angry loner character in Riverdale, one of the latest TV series I’ve inhaled. Generally, if someone says, “Archie comics reboot,” my interest would not be piqued. However, I also heard, “It’s really dark,” and I had to check it out. I ended up totally glomming it on Netflix.

One odd thing I noticed in the show was obvious product placement. Whenever anyone puts on makeup, the camera lingers on the Cover Girl products super obviously. But when I found out Riverdale was a CW show, I recalled how they did the sponsorship thing heavy-handedly with Smallville too, back in the day. (“Come drive in my YARIS, Clark! Oh, I love my Toyota YARIS, it gets such great mileage and it’s surprisingly roomy.”)

It got me to thinking about real-life brands in written fiction. Details like brand specificity can help anchor a story in reality, which I think is particularly important in speculative fiction, to give it the sense of realism it needs to contrast with the speculative parts. But on the other hand, readerships have become truly global, and the brands that evoke a sense of familiarity and tradition in the States wouldn’t necessarily mean anything elsewhere on the globe.

When I first started writing PsyCop over 10 years ago, I decided to create my own department store, SaverPlus, mainly because I was always portraying it in a bad light for comic effect. I’m sure people imagine SaverPlus as many different things, from K-Marts to Targets to that weird locally-owned department store that’s been there ever since you can remember. And this is perfect.

I moved to Wisconsin in 1999, so it’s been a few years since I lived in Chicago. Recently, a couple of Wisconsinite friends and I drove down to poke around Vic and Jacob’s haunts. I was really excited to show them SaverPlus…which exists in this physical reality as the Ravenswood Sears. Or, at least, it did.

It’s closed. They’re turning it into condos or something.

Man, that was hard. I managed not to cry, but it was rough. I took this pic through a broken window.[image error]

 

On a lighter note, my dad sent me this pic from San Fransisco. He doesn’t read PsyCop so it’s just one of those happy coincidences.

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Also, I opened a box that hasn’t been breached it years…I know this because I have been looking for my Dremel tool for a few years now and it was in there…and I found the diagram of the hotel room from GhosTV. I could identify it because the one room just says DREYFUSS.

My Gayromlit Retreat Schedule

Coming to GRL?
[image error]Come say hi at GRL

Make sure you come see me! And feel free to hug. If you ordered paperbacks from me, I’ll have them at my author lounges or the big book signing for you.

Here’s where you can find me:

Thursday 10/19 – Author Lounge 3pm

Friday 10/20 – Author Lounge 10am

Friday 10/20 – Storyteller Series: Murder in Romance with Jordan L. Hawk and C.S. Poe 2pm

Saturday 10/21 – GRL Massive Book Signing Event – 10am

Please come say hi

Dusty old spreadsheet

My friend Dale Cameron Lowry recently posted a short story market accepting entries, and that call for entry ignited a little spark that got me looking through all the interesting tidbits on my computer and passing them along to markets where they might be seen and enjoyed.

Back in the day before self publishing, submitting short stories to magazines and anthologies was one of the main ways for a new author to break in to the biz. (Possibly, mainly for sci fi/fantasy, erotica, and literary fiction. Romance might be different.) Stephen King tells in his memoir On Writing about a spike in the wall where he used to stick his rejection slips until it was full.

My spike in the wall was a spreadsheet. Many markets I didn’t hear back from at all. The ones I did were mostly rejections. Rejections are funny things. I don’t take them personally but they’re still disappointing. I remember getting ready to give a keynote at a writing conference, and receiving a story rejection email just before I spoke. It was kinda surreal. A good reminder not to get too full of myself.

[image error]My Hard Drive

I can’t find my old spreadsheet, which bugs me. I know my original acceptance for several stories that are still active today are on there: Channeling Morpheus Payback, Hemovore, and Among the Living! But that was nearly 10 years and many computers ago. I have an old Windows XP laptop and a backup hard drive where the spreadsheet might still be lurking. I guess I just want to see.

And to pat myself on the back. Because I started a new spreadsheet thanks to that oddball spark (and Dale), and one of the first entries on it has already been accepted, a deleted scene from Hemovore that will appear in an anthology next year.

The new sheet is in Google Docs. Hopefully I won’t abandon and lose it.

ETA: I found it on that drive! Hemovore was the last item on it from 2009. One hundred submissions, fourteen accepted. Better ratio than I remembered, actually

Murdery Questions Anyone?

[image error]© The Whiteness 2009

I’m eagerly counting down the days to the Gayromlit retreat, because I’m doing a panel with my pals Jordan L. Hawk and C.S. Poe about Murder in Romance!

If you’ll be at GRL, come see us! The panel is at 2pm on Friday Oct 20.

And if you’re not going to be there but the topic interests you, post your question for us here. It might inspire some lively discussion and future blog posts.

 

Halloween and Ghost Stories

October is my favorite holiday month, ’cos I’m all about Halloween! Come hear me read a ghostly Halloween snippet from Everyone’s Afraid of Clowns, a Halloween PsyCop tale.

[image error]Did you know PsyCop Briefs features TWO Halloween shorts? And did you know that while some of the shorts were collected from my past newsletters, nearly a third of the book is brand-spanking new story?

And did you know Gomez Pugh narrates a hell of a lot better than I do? (I’m guessing most people know that!)

Hear me read at Binge on Books

Find PsyCop Briefs: Volume One in ebook, audio and paperback

What are the cool kids candying these days?

I saw a sale on candy today which made me realize, wow, I’m probably going to get trick or treaters this year! It’s been a few years since I lived somewhere kids went door to door.

When I was a kid, I was ALL about the chocolate bars. My favorite might be Mounds, Nestle Crunch, or Kit Kat, depending on the mood. Rollos if they’re fresh. And I felt cheated when I got a sucker. I mean, I ate them. But I ate them last, and with lots of resentment.

What about you, what was your favorite candy?

And if you have kids, do you think tastes have changed? It really would be ideal if something other than chocolate was in vogue now, so I don’t end up scarfing the whole bowl and hiding in my basement with the lights off come October 31.

I think Victor Bayne is a nougat guy. He’s not quite sure what it is, but it intrigues him.

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Photo credit: Pauls Imaging Photography via VisualHunt / CC BY-ND

Speaking of Halloween, I’ve been creating T-shirts in my spare time, after my writing brain is fried for the day. If you’re looking for something less slutty-banana-costume to wear on Halloween, how about my Dia de los Muertos T-shirt?

Speaking of which…

I’ve been having some luck lately with dictation software. Does it give me those 5- and 10,000 word days other authors seem to get from it? No. And the problem isn’t with the software–it’s that I simply don’t think that quickly. Frankly, my prose is cleaner when I sit down at the keyboard and type. I’m a pretty fast typer when I know what I want to say, and thankfully, I’m not suffering from any repetitive stress injuries.

But my avoidance factor should not be underestimated.

I discovered myself in the kitchen making hard-boiled eggs in the pressure cooker* during my designated writing time. I have no idea how this happens. I just came to in the kitchen setting a timer and the pressure cooker hissing away. I realized there’d be several minutes of egg-steaming followed by several more minutes of egg-resting. Precious minutes where I could be working on my scene.

And then I realized my phone was at hand.

Dictation time!

I don’t use any one method to dictate. If I’m at the computer and making a lot of typos, I might pop on my headset and turn on the dictation software (Dragon for Mac) and start speaking instead of typing while I watch the words scroll along the document. This isn’t an efficient way to do it. It’s more of a “my fingers aren’t cooperative” way of doing it.

But a better way to dictate is to record your voice on another device (such as your phone) and then transcribe the recording in Transcription Mode.  By doing that this morning, I managed to squeeze out a few hundred more words even though I’d somehow blacked out and regained consciousness while pressure-cooking eggs. And surprisingly, all the beeping timers didn’t register.

“On a scale of one to ten, how anxious are you feeling right now Russian Mark”

Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how this Russian Mark dude fits into the whole scene.

*If you have a pressure cooker or Instant Pot and you like hard boiled eggs, I heartily recommend combining the two. The eggs are super easy to peel. Here’s the method I used.