Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 339

I hate printers, but…

…you know, come to think of it, there is no caveat here. I simply do not like printers.

The reason for this is that I have spent twelve years working in various forms of IT, and therefore have seen every sort of printer malfunction the human mind can conceive. The rollers wear out. The firmware melts down. The Ethernet connection burns out. Sometimes a little bit of the fuser roller melts, so every page comes out with a black stripe. Paper jams beyond numbering. Or someone prints out a website and it comes out as 600 pages of gibberish. The vast, bloated software packages HP installs just so you can print. Related to that, an endless, endless vista of driver problems and incompatibilities. Someone prints a malformed print job, and so kills the spooler on the print server and nobody can print (admittedly, this does save on toner costs). The motor dies in an inkjet printer, so the print head can’t move. Or someone neglects to use their inkjet printer for a few months and the ink congeals into a substance harder than diamond.

Color printers. Oh, I hate color printers. Listen to me, people: you don’t need to print in color. No one is going to read your handout, brochure, slide notes, thesis, or political manifesto. Don’t bother with color. And when color printers break, they break hard.

Multi-function printers (MFPs) are really bad. These are the units that combine a printer, a scanner, and a copier all in one. Invariably they come with enormous bloated software packages that inevitably configure themselves to start automatically, so you can had 45 seconds to your computer’s boot time as ScanThingy or InkThingamabob or whatever starts up.

And PowerPoint! Invariably someone will print a 200 slide PowerPoint presentation, and they’ll do it in Slides mode, which prints one slide per page. Why!? The Handout mode, which prints 6 slides per page, is right there in the Print dialog box! Right there! And then, because it takes the printer a bit to render a 200 slide PowerPoint filled with graphics, they’ll wonder why it isn’t printing and then hit print five or six more times.

Sometimes you open up the printer and the toner gets everywhere (the Brother 350n series was really bad at this).

And sometimes the print driver is buggy, and random documents come out formatted correctly, but look as if they were typed in a random combination of Spanglish and Engrish (the HP 2015/2035 series was really bad at this).

So because printers are the devil and I hate them, I haven’t personally owned a printer since 2002. It is amusing that as a writer, 2011 and 2012 have been my most successful years, and I’ve only needed to print out two – exactly two – sheets of paper. (The contracts for SWORD & SORCERESS XXVI and SWORD & SORCERESS XXVII.)

But circumstances, at last, have forced me to get a printer. Some kindly and well-intentioned people, meaning nothing but the best, were planning on buying a new printer, and wanted to give me their old printer, since I was a poor benighted soul without a printer. It was an inkjet printer, which are even more evil than laser printers, because inkjet printers work on the same business model as crack dealers – the first hit’s free, but you gotta pay for the rest. Similarly, inkjet printers are cheap – but the cartridges are expensive and quickly emptied.

And if these kindly people gave me their old inkjet printer, I would be stuck with it forever.

I had no choice but to take action.

So I bought a laser printer, specifically an HP LaserJet P1102w printer (HP LaserJet Pro P1102w Printer (CE657A#BGJ)). It is a bare-bones printer that prints black and white, and does nothing else. Additionally, it also comes with built-in wireless networking, so there’s no need to have it connected permanently to a computer.

Actually, it’s rather clever – the printer has some built-in flash storage, so when you plug it in via USB, the flash storage mounts as a CD drive, and all the drivers are there. By HP standards, the driver isn’t too terribly bloated. It installs the driver, a monitoring utility, and nothing else. The installation utility also allows you to set up the printer as a network printer right away.

For an entry-level networked laser printer, the web interface is actually pretty good. (A web interface lets you control the printer via a web browser, which for the P1102W is a necessity, since the printer doesn’t have an LED display.) The web interface also lets you download the driver and install it from the web browser, which is really quite handy and a nice touch. Additionally, the install automatically sets up the printer as a network printer on your PC, which is a bit easier than manually adding the TCP/IP port.

Further, the imaging drum is built into the toner cartridges, so every time you change the cartridge, you get a new imaging drum. This adds to the expense of the cartridges, but since imaging drums commonly break down in laser printers, it’s a nice bit of preventative maintenance.

So, I do not like printers, and it is best to have no printer at all. But if you are absolutely forced to get a printer, you could do worse than the HP P1102W.

-JM

Thursday of Sword & Sorceress 27 – the Jonathan Moeller interview

This is the sixth year I’ve been doing Sword & Sorceress interviews, but now the tables have turned, and Layla Lawlor has interviewed me! Read all about it here.

You can see my interview with Layla here.

-JM

Thursdays of Sword & Sorceress 27 – the Layla Lawlor interview

This week’s interview is with Layla Lawlor.

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1.) Tell us about yourself.

I’m Alaskan, born and raised, and I even had the stereotypical Alaskan upbringing: yes, I really did grow up in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere! I still live in Alaska, but I’ve grown to enjoy such conveniences as electricity, running water and the Internet. My husband and I own 11 acres on the highway north of Fairbanks, in a quiet semi-rural area surrounded by forested state land. I blog at http://laylalawlor.com/wordpress/.

2.) Why do you write?

I write to tell stories, because my head is full of them and I have to get them out somehow! I have been writing ever since I could pick up a pencil. I also write and draw comics. I spend most of my spare time daydreaming about the lives of fictional people. I’m not sure what could ever stop me from writing, honestly.

3.) Sword & Sorceress is known for sword & sorcery centered around a strong female character. Is there any particular trick to writing strong female characters?

I think the qualities that make a “strong” female character are exactly the same qualities that make a strong male character — or a good character in general. A character needs to be well-rounded, with flaws and virtues and strong, clear motivations for the things she (or he) does. And she needs to be an active agent in her own life, rather than sitting passively and letting the events of the story happen to her. I’ve never written women any differently than I’ve written men, except to the extent that their society’s expectations and the different social forces acting on them shape them into different people (but that’s also true of writing rich people versus poor ones, or the old versus the young).

4.) What would you say makes sword & sorcery different than other kinds of fantasy?

To me, sword & sorcery is to fantasy as space opera is to science fiction — a subgenre that is characterized primarily by its sense of escapist fun. Which is not to imply in any way that it’s less thoughtful or less well written than other kinds of fantasy, and it can still be insightful and mind-expanding, or grittily dark with a downbeat ending. But I go to sword & sorcery (or to space opera) looking for stories that will take me out of my ordinary world for an hour or three, and sweep me up in exciting, swashbuckling events far beyond the everyday. Like any other question of genre, however, I suspect that it is very much in the eye of the beholder.

5.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?

I know that for me, they already have. Living in an isolated area as I do, the Internet makes it possible for me to network with other writers, to research my stories, and to discover new books and new writers that I would otherwise have never have heard of. It brings the world to my fingertips. I think it’s doing that for everyone. The world is simultaneously smaller and more vast, for each of us, than it has ever been before. And as well as broadening all of our personal horizons, it’s also brought an explosion of new options for writers (and readers!), from serializing fiction online, to ebook self-publishing and print-on-demand. It’s an exciting time to be an author.

6.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.

“Netcasters” is a story that was inspired by macramé, the art of creative knot tying. Which doesn’t sound very interesting as a basis for a sword & sorcery story, does it? However, the idea came to me one day when I was studying a piece of ornamental macramé on my desk — as a lot of writers do, I keep all kinds of unusual, beautiful or intriguing items around my desk for inspiration. I thought it would be an interesting idea for a story to include a magic system that uses knots as a spellcasting medium (rather than, say, a spoken spell, a scroll or potion, etc). Then I started wondering what sort of people might find magic knots useful, and what instantly came to mind was “Fishermen!” So that’s what this story is about: a fishing village in which the fishermen (and women) have a closely guarded talent for tying very special knots, and a thief who stumbles onto their secret.

7.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?

A waxing crescent moon rode low over the marsh, throwing down a glittering trail from tidepool to tidepool and out into the wide dark ocean. The village’s hill cast a black shadow across the whispering sedge. By the slender shell of moon, Zair tapped her way around back of her house, past the middens and privies to the goat pen, where half the village had gathered.

“What are you fools doing?” Zair demanded, pushing her way through the crowd. More people trickled out of their houses, drawn by the noise. Someone said “Pirates!” in a hushed whisper, and Zair rolled her eyes. Oh, there were always tales of raiders up the coast, and there had been that one time with the smugglers in the marsh… But pirates weren’t known for sneaking into goat pens.

“We caught a thief, Auntie!”

She might have known: her nephews Rig and Orrel, along with a few of their equally thickheaded friends. Someone held up a lamp, and Zair could see that the boys were sitting on somebody, a stranger to judge by the long coat of colorful patches that was spread in the mud around them. No one in the village had a coat like that.

“Let him up,” Zair said.

The boys, looking disappointed, let the accused thief rise to his — no, her knees. She wiped mud off her sharp cheekbone and smiled brightly at Zair: an angular, long-legged scarecrow of a woman, with a mess of short dark hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a dull knife.

“Hello, honored mother. I’m sure we can work out this tiny misunderstanding like civilized people.”

8.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.

At this point, the work I’ve written that I’m most proud of is my self-published science fiction webcomic KISMET. It’s space opera, one part action/adventure and one part political intrigue, with a dash of humor. It’s available online for free — the first book, “Hunter’s Moon” is located here: http://www.kismetcity.com/huntersmoon/hmchapterindex.shtml. The second book, “Sun-Cutter”, is currently on hold — I’ve been focused on my fiction writing the last few months — but it will resume in 2013, and it can be found here: http://www.kismetcity.com/suncutter/.

9.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.

THE YEAR 1000: WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE AT THE TURN OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM, AN ENGLISHMAN’S WORLD by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. History is one of my most passionate interests, but I’m much less interested in the broad strokes of history — the wars and treaties and lists of kings — than I am in the little details of how people lived in past eras. It’s very similar to my writing urge, I think; I love imagining other places, other eras, and getting a feel for what people’s lives were like in those places and times. This is not the most historically rigorous book — that is, I’m not saying it’s necessarily inaccurate, but it contains a lot of speculation and a view of history that’s more through a novelist’s eye than an academic’s … which is probably why I like it so much! It’s a light and very readable look at the life of the common man in England at the turn of the previous millennium, a great resource for a writer, or for someone who is simply interested in the lives of people in the past.

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Thanks, Layla, for the interview.

Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, and Sword & Sorceress 26.

And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.

“The Words” and self-publishing

A film called “The Words” came out this weekend, and I was highly amused to read about its premise.

In it, a young writer works as a mail supervisor as a literary agency, desperately trying to sell his cherished novel, only to meet rejection after rejection. While on his honeymoon in Paris, the writer finds an old manuscript in an abandoned suitcase. Passing it off as his own, he sells the book and becomes a critically acclaimed author.

Of course, he stole the book, and naturally that act of deception winds up destroying his life.

The movie got thoroughly bad reviews, but I suspect the film’s problem comes from its faulty premise. The main character is trying desperately to find an agent to anoint his book and present it. He doesn’t need to do that. It’s like a teenage girl in a slasher flick desperately looking for a pay phone when she’s got an iPhone in her pocket. All she needs to do is pull out the iPhone, dial 911, and the cops will show up and shoot the serial killer chasing her, and the movie will be over in twenty minutes.

Similarly, the protagonist of “The Words” doesn’t need to find an agent and a publisher, and he doesn’t need to steal the Magic Book that will finally make the agents and publishers appreciate his latent genius. He needs only to turn his own book into an ebook, and there’s no need to bother with the agents. Of course, his ebook won’t sell at first, but that will give him time to write additional books, and gradually grow his audience over time.

Still, I suspect a movie about “man publishes ebook and works hard to gradually grow his audience over time” would not have sold as well. Actually, given how badly “The Words” performed, maybe such a movie would have gotten better box office numbers.

-JM

GHOST IN THE STONE progress update

13 chapters of the rough draft down, 14 to go. An excerpt from today’s writing:

“If you find anyone else taking wagers, give them a good beating and dump them in the street. No killing – the Lord Governor and the Lord Aedile of Games don’t want any bloodshed spoiling their festivities.” He snickered. “Except for the gladiators, of course. But we’re well within our rights to beat anyone else taking wagers into a pulp. Or to beat anyone who refuses to pay up.”

“How did you get the exclusive rights to take wagers for the games in the Ring of Valor?” said Caina.

Marzhod smirked. “I asked the Lord Aedile of Games politely, and he gave it to me because I was so charming and polite.”

A guffaw went up from the Sarbian mercenaries, and Caina rolled her eyes.

“How do you think?” said Marzhod. “A very large annual bribe, and a fixed percentage of the take. Of course, I make more than enough to cover it.” He scratched at his unshaven chin. “Especially since I fix a few key matches.”

-JM

Reader Question Day #38 – the anachronism of warrior women

Manwe asks:

Seeing as how you like to use history, rather than myth, to influence your writing, and seeing as how you do go out of your way to craft a medieval world…why some of the anarchronisms? I’ve been meaning to ask you that. Things like warrior women, for example. Granted that is standard fantasy stuff these days, and alot of your tales have strong female leads. I’m sure it’s not for feminist reasons! Is it just something you like doing? I don’t mean this in a negative sense either! Were there female warriors in the past, sure. It was rare though. How about the Middle ages (and renaissance)…actually yes! There were even a few generals that were female, rare of course, but still…. So it’s not a trope totally without merit, but…but I’ve never had a chance to ask an author why they like this trope so much!

In my case, it’s for four reasons.

The first, baldly, is commercial. More women read books than men do. I’m not sure why this is, but that’s what the data says. For while there is a market for a fantasy book where the men do all the fighting, it’s a smaller market. In fact, books where the men do all the actual fighting tend to be historical romance novels, which are read, again, mostly by women. So there’s no sense in cutting myself out of a big chunk of the market by having only male warriors.

The second is that while warrior women are a straight-up anachronism in an ancient or medieval setting, I’m writing fantasy, so you can cheat a bit. It’s common for “hip and gritty” writers to cite historical accuracy for the reasons their books are a torture/murder/mutilation/rape gorefest, but that’s no more accurate than a book that shows the Middle Ages with perfectly equitable gender roles. So I’m I going to cheat, I would prefer to do so in a way that tells a more interesting story.

The third is that while I’m writing fantasy, these are nonetheless preindustrial societies, so warrior women would be quite rare due to technological limitations. It’s hard to justify using female soldiers when there’s no birth control and no Social Security or 401K plans and living with your children is how you will support yourself in the infirmity of old age. So when I do have warrior women, I try to justify it in terms of the setting.

In Romaria Greenshield’s case, it’s because she’s half-Elderborn. The Elderborn live for centuries, and their women can generally conceive only about every century. This is different than say, a ancient human society, where it would be foolish to have the women fight, since a.) women can bear children, and b.) if all your women get killed fighting, you’ll have no children to support you in your old age. But if you live for centuries, that’s less of a problem. So Romaria grew up in Deepforest Keep, which was strongly influenced by the Elderborn way of thinking. (Plus, she hated her mother, and wanted to leave.) This flaunts the social conventions of the nobles of the Grim Marches, but they respect her and are a little bit afraid of her (the story about the traigs at Deepforest Keep has circulated), and they don’t particularly want to cross her, and they especially don’t want to cross Mazael.

In Molly’s case, she turned into a warrior because she was brought up by the Skull assassins of Barellion and the Old Demon. Molly is also somewhat nuts, due to the aforementioned upbringing by evil men. She’s also Demonsouled, which means she enjoys fighting in a way a normal person would not. Like Romaria, she flaunts the social conventions of the Grim Marches, but the nobles of the Grim Marches are afraid of her, so she can get away with it.

For Caina, she would much rather live the more traditional life of a Nighmarian noblewoman. If she could work her will, she would marry, have children, and spend her days overseeing her husband’s household. But because of what happened to her in CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, this is an impossibility. So instead she is a Ghost nightfighter.  (This tension between what Caina is and what she actually wants makes it interesting to write the character.)

The fourth reason is less of a reason and more of an observation, but DEMONSOULED has more male readers than female readers, and THE GHOSTS have more female readers than male reasons. I suspect the readership for DEMONSOULED is about two-thirds male and one-third female, and the readership for THE GHOSTS is two-thirds female and one-third male. (Obviously there is some overlap between the two.) I think of DEMONSOULED as a series with a male lead character and supporting female characters, and THE GHOSTS as a series with a female lead character and supporting male characters. So I keep that in mind as I write them.

Finally, I think the final rule is whether or not something strengthens the story. So if warrior women make for a better story, in they go!

-JM

The Five Stages Of New Gadget Lust

Now that Amazon has announced new Kindle HD tablets and the Kindle Paperwhite ereader, I think it’s safe to say that many, many people are experiencing a sudden uncontrollable case of gadget lust. And, in fact, gadget lust corresponds quite neatly to Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages Of Grief:

DENIAL

Amazon has come out with a new Kindle HD? I don’t need that. I just finished reading a book on my Kindle Touch, and my Kindle Fire is running just fine. A bigger screen would be a waste of money. And who uses Bluetooth anyway? 

ANGER

Argh! I don’t need a new Kindle! Why do I WANT it so much? This all just MANUFACTURED HYPE! I don’t want a new Kindle! I don’t want a new Kindle! I don’t! I don’t I don’t I dontIdontIdont!

WHY DO YOU TORMENT ME AMAZON!?!?

BARGAINING

OK. I still have $23.98 left on that one gift card. And if I have Ramen for dinner every night for 37 days, that might swing it. And I can give my old Kindle to Suzie for a present! So if I buy myself a new Kindle, that means I’m really getting Suzie a present! So really I should be doing this for Suzie, not for me.

DEPRESSION

I am going to put myself in the poorhouse because I CAN’T STOP BUYING SHINY TOYS!

(drinks heavily)

ACCEPTANCE

Hey everyone! Check out my new Kindle Fire HD unboxing pics on my Facebook page…

-JM

Thursdays of Sword & Sorceress 27 – the Nathan Crowder interview

Our first Sword & Sorceress 27 interview is with Nathan Crowder.

1.) Tell us about yourself.

I’m a survivor of the great geek uprising of the 1980′s, originally from the Four Corners area of the American Southwest but now living in the Seattle area. I may wear wing-tips and ironic t-shirts, but I’ll always be a cowboy at heart. My dad was an existentialist philosopher librarian and my mom was a former teacher, so I grew up surrounded by books and a love of ideas. I write a bit of fantasy and sci-fi, but most of my published short fiction tends to be in the horror arena. I love music, architecture, film, comic books, and social justice. I could happily spend several nights a week with vintage cocktails and karaoke, and the following mornings at the coffeehouse putting words on the screen. I’m the proud father of two adult children who grew up strong, free, and weird. Finally, I have a cat named Shiva who manages my career in exchange for fresh kibble and occasional head-scritches.

2.) Why do you write?

In a nutshell, I write to see the stories that I’m not seeing anyone else write. No, that’s not quite the entire truth. That’s a cop out. The fact is that I have a hyper-active imagination. I’m constantly asking “What if?” I collect bits and pieces of the world around me. They rattle around in my brain, then two spark against each other creating an idea of, “Oh, THAT’S cool. What if…” And, of course, I have to answer that question. Writing is my way of doing it. It keeps me off the streets and helps me rationalize the outside world a bit.

3.) Sword & Sorceress is known for sword & sorcery centered around a strong female character. Is there any particular trick to writing strong female characters?

I don’t write female characters any differently than male characters. I just write characters. Each and every one should be a unique individual—or at least as unique as I can make them. They have their strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and fears, and they all have their own voice. I tend to write more male characters as a default, but I’ve written several where I felt the protagonist needed to be female for one reason or another. In this case, I liked the contrast of a young girl who wanted to be a dancer who was now the berserker tool of the Inside-Out God. She’s small, and once had the dreams typical of the girls of her culture, but she is by no means weak or defenseless. Siri Viraj is a force of nature.

4.) What would you say makes sword & sorcery different than other kinds of fantasy?

Sword & sorcery is more personal, less focused on huge world-turning events, and more involved in the immediate world of blood and steel.

5.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?

I’ve heard a lot about the “death of publishing,” and I don’t buy it. Changing technologies have certainly made a huge impact on how books are marketed, published, and distributed, but there are so many more out there now. The traditional Gatekeepers of agents and publishers are giving way to the Gatekeepers of recommendation and word of mouth. A book doesn’t have to guarantee an audience of thousands to get published, so more and more niche books are seeing light, and new voices are given the chance to try their wings. Sure. There’s a lot of crap out there. But there was a lot of crap out there before, too. There are also a lot of amazing stories that might not have seen the light of day before. It’s an amazing time to be a writer and a reader.

6.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.

“Mahrut’s Road” gave me the chance to play with the concept of divine madness. Siri Viraj, the young protagonist, is the survivor of a high fever that put her into a coma when she was young. When she returned to wakefulness, she was indoctrinated into a religious order that reveres those touched by insanity. It begs the question, “Is Mahrut a real god, or is this just their culture’s way of dealing with those touched by mental illness? And ultimately, does it make a difference?” It allowed me to play with contrasts—a self-described “delicate little flower” who is a representative for rage and madness. And I’ve always wanted to see more fantasy set in non-western cultures like India, so that was a big influence on the flavor of my world.

7.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?

Siri Viraj would have been a dancer if not for the will of the gods. As a child she wanted nothing more than to welcome the monsoon season, to twirl in the temple courtyard with flowers in her hair. Mahrut, the Inside-Out God had other ideas. A fever in her tenth year left her clinging to life; sent her on a silent journey on the Shadow Road. Siri finally awoke when the fever passed days later, reborn anew to unexplained visions and sudden fits of anger. The village elder knew the signs well. Mahrut, he of the red rage and madness, had staked his claim. Siri had been marked as one of his chosen.

As soon as she could walk again, the young girl was sent from her parent’s home to the temple of the Inside-Out God. She entered the priesthood of Mahrut where she trained for years as a priest before being released into the world for a life of service to the community.

8.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.

“Odd Jobs” from Space Tramps, Flying Pen Press 2011.

9.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.

City of Quartz by Mike Davis. It’s a fascinating look at the history and sociology of Los Angeles, and with my interest in cities as living organisms, it has been my favorite for years.

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Thanks, Nathan, for the interview.

Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, and Sword & Sorceress 26.

And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.

-JM

GHOST IN THE STONE update and excerpt

10 chapters down, 17 to go.

An excerpt from today’s writing:

“Why didn’t he tell me this?” said Caina as they descended the stairs into the Painted Whore’s common room.

“Because the experience of his life has taught him that mercy is weakness,” said Saddiq, “but his heart knows otherwise. Also, he thinks women are treacherous and fickle.”

“Do you think that?” said Caina.

Saddiq grinned. “I have three wives, and they have taught me that women are just as treacherous and fickle as men.”

Despite herself, Caina laughed.

-JM

Ghost in the Stone and Skyrim

I said I was going to take today off and relax, but I totally lied, and wrote 5,500 words of GHOST IN THE STONE instead. That’s like six percent of the rough draft right there, if my math is right.

I did find some time to play some Skyrim today. My character dueled a bandit chieftain on a narrow bridge over a rushing river, and sent the bandit chief plummeting to his death in the icy waters. That was pretty cool.

And then my character got killed by a bear.

-JM