Jason Fischer's Blog, page 24
February 7, 2011
The Medieval Ski-Glove Smack-Down
So yeah, Gauntlet, steely fists etc. I have officially succeeded in getting a whole bunch of little things done by procrastinating on the one big scary task, which I count as a partial win due to achieving stuff. But with no excuses left, I have embarked upon my not-so-secret project. But because saying "jesusman novel and arts grant application" is a mouthful at best, I shall henceforth refer to this gauntletty project as Lucy, in a somewhat mysterious fashion :-)
Like many other writer folks, I've come into the game equipped with all sorts of deceptive and counter-productive fail-safes hardwired into my brain. Almost immediately I've run into one of my personal favourites, which is "OMG it's not looking as good on paper as it does in my brain." And folks, I do this EVERY SINGLE TIME, even though I know it's bollocks, and simply the natural inclination of the Fisch to follow the path of least resistance.
That's not how a gauntleteer should roll, hell no. Enter bogan tunes, steely-eyed determination, and the application of a concrete pill. You simply take one, and harden the fuck up 
My usual method of writing is to kinda do a 1st and 2nd draft at the same time, because I cannot cope with poking at a dog's breakfast every evening, and I almost always do a quick skim-through and fix a few things up before I add to the congealing mass. It's not the worst way to go about things, but it sometimes takes a little while to really get things going. A 2-3 hour writing session seems to be about the optimum window of productivity.
I have true admiration for anyone who can squeeze into twenty spare minutes and just crank out a bunch of new words! I can do it this way but it's like pulling teeth and I basically need to hire a hitman just to tap me on the back of the head with a dirty great gun, every time my thoughts wander, or if I think about engaging in internet faffery. In the perfect world, Peter would bring the medieval ski-glove smack-down whilst yelling the equivalent of "JUST WRITE, BEYOTCH!" (while effortlessly pulling another masterpiece out of his fundament) but he's in Queensland suffering the various wraths of nature, and there's only so much corrective motivation that can be delivered cross-continent. Fisch, it's truly up to you mate. One man and his Lucy.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – Funny videos are here
February 2, 2011
From the depths of Gauntlet 2011
Have polished up and sent out a formidable phalanx of short story submissions…struck at the trunk stories with a vengeance, in some instances completely rewriting them. Only one left to do, the remainder of the trunk is actually godawful and beyond salvage.
An important email went missing, and lo, I did weep, gnash my teeth, and turn on my "read receipts" option in Outlook. Yet 5000 lolcat pictures went through that day, no worries. DAMN YOU MURPHY'S LAW.
Drawing together names and background detail for an upcoming project, looking in the strangest of places. Scanning through a Thomas the Tank Engine toy catalogue, I find a character by the name of Rheneas. "OMG" quoth the Fisch, "I must use that name, for it is the shizzle". Turns out it exists nowhere but the Island of Sodor, and as such is guarded by the fell beasts of Copyright. Fie on you, Reverend W. Audrey, you name-hogging train nerd.
Gauntlet continues, transmission ends.
February 1, 2011
January 31, 2011
new review at ScaryMinds
The good folk at Scary Minds have just reviewed issue #2 of Jason Paulos' comic "EEEK!". My story "The Harvest" appears in this issue, of which the reviewer says:
"Our first story kicks off a duo of Science Fiction orientated nasties that will have most readers nodding their heads in approval. Jason Fischer provides a typically morbid tale in The Harvest that gets progressively nastier till a final twist worthy of Jason Franks nails the opening gambit and ensures the reader receives value for money right from the kick off. Highly recommended tale and one of the best yet to grace the pages of Eeek."
the rest of the review can be found here:
January 29, 2011
The Gauntlet is DOWN
The origins of the Gauntlet are somewhat lost to the mists of time, but sometime after Clarion South 2007, a bunch of us survivors slapped the bejesus out of each other with virtual metal gloves, challenging one another to write like one possessed, cranking out a stupid amount of work in a very short time. A bit like Nanowrimo, perhaps, but on a smaller scale and with many more friendly insults.
From time to time, it serves us well to blow the dust off the Fists of Steel, declare "GAUNTLET!!!" and have at the keyboard. Now is such a time. Following the fallow period that was Video Game January, my legendary ink-brother Peter Ball and I are taking 2011 by the throat and making it whimper. We've both got a bunch of writing goals that need meeting, and there's only one thing for it:
I won't be posting much in the way of word-counter thingies or updates, it's sort of a personal superstition and I just don't enjoy being publicly accountable if I have a crappy day or if Toddler Fisch/Real Life hijacks a writing session. But know this, there's eye-strain and bad 80s music and a stupid amount of writing going on, up till March or so. It's on, beyotches.
January 27, 2011
From the mind of a deep thinker
If a rebellious commoner in revolutionary France wore happy pants, would he be a Comic Sans Culottes?
Confessions of a double-spacer
Oh yes, I'll admit it. I'm a dirty double-spacer, and everytime I hit a full stop, it's automatically followed with a rapid tap-tap! of that big key on the bottom. I've been typing like this since forever, the practise instilled into me during typing class at high school (yes, I did this, and yes, I was the only boy). By all accounts this was a standard business practice, even during the early-mid 90s, and some folks in the class questioned this. Not only was it part of the curriculum, it was in all the style guides and text books, and religiously adhered to. So, when we all learned to type without looking at the keys, we also had the double-tap drummed into us, much like the protagonist in Zombieland. And this was in the era where PCs were already widely in use, and the nascent internet was just kicking off, so I'm not a crusty old typewriter fetishist (okay, I'm that too, but that's a revelation for another day). I honestly didn't even hear about the "OMG how dare they double-space" brigade until a few months back.
So yeah, nowadays some publishers are requesting that the extra space go the way of the dodo, and it's even occasionally in the submission guidelines. I'm pretty sure WordPress takes the space out, to protect me from myself, and I'm starting to run a Find+Replace before submitting my fiction to markets, replacing all instances of two spaces with one space. It's just another thing to think about, but I've resigned myself to the fact that it's a bugbear for many folks, and I just have to take a concrete pill and harden up.
But…I don't see what the big deal is. Some folks see that extra space and assume that I also kick puppies and push old people down the stairs. The double-space is completely invisible to me, and I personally never notice these supposedly horrific gaping chasms of white space in the average manuscript (which is *already* double-spaced vertically, with tonnes of room for comments and editorial jottings).
I'll do it, but I think it's bloody pedantic and I don't mind saying so.
January 23, 2011
Because January is video game month
Some time ago, I came to the realisation that, if I wanted to be a professional writer, I was going to have to sacrifice my one great love, the humble video game. Given that I favour time-sucking strategy games and RPGs, this was a wise decision. However, all work and no play makes me a grumpy sod, so once a year I down tools and scratch that itch for a month or so. Last year it was Fallout 3 and all of the Thief games, this time around I've dusted off the PS2 and rented me some pixellated goodness. Given that the end of 2010 was frantic writing-wise, and that a huuuge stretch of writing is about to kick off, this is some well-earnt me time and I've loved every button-mashing minute.
Silent Hill: Origins
I've quite liked this series; its weird, moody atmospherics, the resource scrabble reminiscent of the Resident Evil games, and just a shade of old school survival horror, looking back to the original Alone in the Dark. Good times. This is a prequel of sorts to the Silent Hill series, but effectively it's more of the same stuff – you trudge through a haunted hospital, a haunted loony-bin, a haunted theatre and then a haunted hotel. Oh, and there's another mirror world underneath all this stuff that is even creepier. You basically need to hit up the walk-through if you want to finish this game in under six months, lots of puzzles and to-and-froing. When I got to the haunted hotel, and saw how much stuff I had to do, I will admit that I ejected the disc in disgust. That's cool though, cause next up was:
Star Wars: Battlefront
Yay! I'm in an X-wing, I'm in an AT-ST, now I'm a wookie! Pew pew pew! Great fun, drop it like it's Hoth.
Civilisation IV
My long beloved time-sucking computer mistress. This game has carved away perhaps a year of my life in total? Worth every second. Settlers make cities, cities make units, units make with the turn-based conquest. I have all of the expansions for this, and must say I was never too enamoured of Beyond the Sword – it was just too busy, and with the addition of Espionage and Corporations, there was just too much going on for me to enjoy this game. Micro-managers might dig that level of control, but I just want to jam a trireme full of vikings and just wreck someone's shit. So I've been cranking out Civ IV: Warlords, and a cool fantasy mod (Fall From Heaven) for the original Civ IV itself.
So I've officially had my gaming fix, and now I'm onto the outstanding submissions, doing some long-overdue edits, and I have a particular story up on the blocks for a complete rebuild. Once that's done, I'm going to stomp 2011 in the face, and exciting times await!
January 20, 2011
Review – "gunning for a tinkerman", Aurealis #44
A review of Aurealis Magazine #44 has just been posted over at Suz's Space, covering the issue which contains my 2nd jesusman story, "gunning for a tinkerman". She says:
"All of these stories were top quality. There were a couple that stood out and screamed "write a sequel, write lots of sequels" as the worlds were just so good and while the characters might not have been likeable I certainly wanted to know more of them. Jason Fisher and KJ Taylor, I'm talking about you. I'm not saying the other stories weren't as good, but they stand on their own and don't seem to need anything else around them, they are complete by themselves. But Fisher and Taylor have written stories that not only stand on their own two feet but would also go well in an anthology of stories about their particular worlds.
gunning for a tinkerman by Jason Fisher is a wonderful little post-apocalyptic story where tinkermen have run the gamut of being wanted for their skills to being a dying breed who are both wanted and reviled in the same breath. I would like to know more about this world and more about the people in the world. It'd just be extra cool to have a story from someone else's point of view so we can see how the tinkermen and their roles have changed."
(the rest is here http://www.suzs-space.com/blog/2011/01/07/aurealis-issue-44/)
Well, that's just lovely, thanks Suz I'll see what I can do about that for you!
January 19, 2011
It's probably all a bunch of Taurus anyway.
Me: "So, there's this new 13th zodiac sign, and turns out it's actually mine"
Workmate: "Really, what's the name of it?"
Me: "It's Fisch's."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus
(true, it is mine!)
