Jason Halstead's Blog, page 60

Early Morning Post

As unlikely as this might seem, I had something witty to post this early in the morning. Screeching children have shattered any semblance of a coherent thought I may have had, however.

In other news, I have an iPad. It's my one and only concession to Apple, even though I consider Steve Jobs a tyrannical genius. It's a PC vs Mac thing and I'm a PC guy. Always have been.

So the iPad, I've probably whined or blogged about it before. It's a neat little toy, but really that's all it is. It functions very well as an e-reader, my principle reason for buying it. It also plays back movies, music, and has a ridiculous battery life. Those are positive things, but things I can also get out of my laptop save for the extended battery life. Come to think of it, the laptop does a heck of a lot more. Sure it's heavier, but it's also got a full size keyboard and a 17″ screen capable of HD quality. I'm a big guy (in a good way), so a little extra weight doesn't faze me. Oh, and the recent study regarding laptop and overheated testicles? I'm good there too, we have all the kids we need. (check the link, I'm not kidding)

Okay, so everyone says that about the iPad. I'm just a data point, but I still bought it so Apple is happy. Something I discovered this morning while making sure it was ready for my red-eye flight tonight was a free app I had installed a while ago and forgot about: Dragon Dictation. I'm on the tail end of a sinus / chest cold this morning but I fired it up and tried it out. In spite of the fact that I can do a great Krusty the Clown impersonation at the moment, it nailed every word I spoke into it. That sucks out some of my vitriol for the built in touchscreen keypad that, frankly, sucks. Then again if I tried writing via speech on a plane with other people around me, they might very well think they were sitting near a crazy person. Especially if they dared to listen to me and hear what I was saying!

And so the laptop comes with for writing purposes and all those many other things it is useful for. The iPad will be there as well, but it's purpose in life will be for reading any ebooks or watching any of the movies I've put on it. Layovers will see the laptop in use since I can plug it in to keep it fully charged, and when no plug is available…

Yes, I'm a techno-geek…why do you ask?

Shooting blanks

No, this isn't about Hollywood action scenes, nor the nocturnal activities of men who have had vasectomies. Rather it's me staring at the screen with a glaze over my eyes trying to come up with something witty and entertaining. I think there might even be a spot of drool running down my chin.

Two possibilities exist: 1) I've over-medicated myself to defeat this cold. 2) My medication is wearing off 3) My brain really is just that fried. It's probably not 3 since I can still do simple math and I realize that I offered up three possibilities where there should only be two. Call it thinking outside the box or maybe a living example of quantum mechanics at work.

Quite a bummer too, this will stop me from working out tonight. Lack of focus and heavy weights is never good. Lack of oomph associated with sickness plus the above is even worse. Add in my stubborn insistence that I can still lift the same amount as normal and the end result is a trip to the ER. Nobody wants that except the ridiculously overpriced hospital where I live. Maybe I'm off base but for an in-network claim does almost $600 sound right for a single staple to the back of a kid's head? No blood tests, no lab work, no x-rays, no medication. Just a single staple and about 10 minutes of time. If it does, not only am I in wrong business but I also need to know where you live so I can start up a residency there after I get my medical degree!

And now I've ran out of randomness.

What's now vs what's next

Picked up an obnoxious throat / chest cold. Not a bad one, but between that and medication I had a lousy night and a day of minimal productivity. Didn't help that the kids don't understand the time change last night either. Ugh.

And I just drank some pretend chocolate vanilla tea. Not sure how that works. Channeling the imagination of young children could very well be an unlimited source of renewable energy. Hmm, that's almost Matrix-esque.

But moving ahead, I'm thinking of Ice Princess, the sequel to Wanted. I'm also having a terrible fascination with Succubi, no doubt because of a recent question asked to me in an interview. No worries, no demons will appear in the Wanted universe, but I do have one in the third book of my Voidhawk saga which I'm working on here and there.

And still on the edit of Voices too. Not enough hours in the day…

Happiness is…

When I was a little kid I distinctly recall having a set of Peanuts pillow (not the salted or roasted kind, Snoopy and gang) that had a a blurb on it with those very words. It was followed up with Snoopy holding a massive ice cream cone with 40+ scoops of different flavored ice cream. Just to clear the air, this post has nothing to do with ice cream, Snoopy, or pillows.

A moment of happiness for me was last night when I finished my rough draft of "Voices." I've made some tweaks and minor edits already this morning, then printed it out for review / edit. I edit better on paper than I do on a screen. Not always, but usually.

My wife also wishes to read it. Or at least she notified me of such when she asked me last night what it was about. A few minutes into the conversation she interrupted me and said, "Am I going to need to read this after you're done telling me? I just want a blurb like on the back of the book, not the entire story!"

It's a tricky one for me to summarize. It's about an anti-hero in my Dark Earth setting who's led a lousy life and made a lot of bad choices. He's not a nice guy, but in the end he has a chance that he doesn't deserve to maybe put a little bit of "right" back in the world. That's about the best I can do without a lot of thought.

So, first up is the edit, then I've got to find some cover art for it. Self-publishing this baby since I'm giving it away, so either I find a talented and generous artist (I may know a couple) or I try to photoshop my way to success. Yeah, if that happens I'm screwed.

Maturity

It's not about stocks and bonds, nor is it a rant about people behaving like idiots. It's an observation I've made as I grow older and, I hope, more mature. Mentally and emotionally that is – I've no interest in maturing any more physically!

Let me cite an Interview Mickey Rourke did with Larry King to help promote The Wrestler. Great movie, by the way, and Mickey Rourke did a phenomenal job in it. Anyhow, Mr. Rourke had not done much of anything acting-wise in quite a while. He said it was because he made a lot of stupid choices when he was younger and he was a real punk about it. I'm paraphrasing, but the gist is the same I believe. He's since learned the error of his ways and I think it really shows in his acting. First The Wrestler, then Iron Man 2. He did a great job in both. Sure, his character in Iron Man 2 was rather shallow and limited, but he did as much with it as he could and he had me convinced he was a mad Russian scientist. The movie overall was light, fun, and action oriented but Mickey Rourke's addition to it was that he made it feel deeper and darker. He added some angst and some thought to it that made me, at least, feel as though under the right circumstances even someone with the best intentions could turn out bad.

Okay, enough about actors and Hollywood. How does this apply to real life and, more importantly, when am I going to get to a punchline? No punchline planned, I'm sorry to say. But as for the point, well the point is that we're all young punks at some point or another. We leap before looking. We say things we don't think through clearly. We do things that, in hindsight, we really shouldn't have done.

My wife, bless her soul, has spent many years working on teaching me that the internal censor is a good thing. I still sometimes fly off the handle but I'm a lot better these days than I used to be. I still use her as an external censor occasionally as well. I know I think and feel differently than a lot of people do, so I like to make sure somebody who's a little bit closer to "normal" can flag any glaring mistakes. It's not so different from submitting a book to an editor really. Otherwise I take forever as I deliberate on what to say or do. I like to call it making an informed decision.

Is there a magic age when we start doing this? I think not. It's a constant state of mental and emotional evolution and some are better at it than others. Men, in particular, are probably a little slower at it than women. Let's face it, we're impulsive and like to think we're the Masters of the Universe. Oh sure, there are exceptions, but the majority complies with that, I think. Then again I've known some pretty obstinate women who refuse to be objective.

So there, no moral and no decent punchline. Sure I've got examples a-plenty from what I see around me on a daily basis, but that's not what's prompting this either (at least not directly). Odds are everybody else sees it too. If we're lucky, we see it in ourselves and recognize it as something to work on. I know I've still got a ways to go – otherwise I might not have even posted this!

The Apple Machine and How to be an Organized Writer

I just had to work on a Mac and it left me flustered. Sure, I fixed the problem but they are just such alien devices. I want options and parameters and different things I can tweak. Mac's are built to be solid and reliable and to not have all that stuff without installing third party applications. And where's the right mouse button?! Especially if it's running Windows XP via VMWare. And while I'm at it, why spend extra money to buy a Mac so you can run Windows under an emulation program? Why not just buy a PC in the first place?

Now back to writing. I've been asked in the past about how I plot out my stories. Do I use an outline or a storyboard, do I have everything arrange in my head? I've tried many things but what I find works the best is not so different from voodoo or ritual prayer.

Don't worry, I have no intentions of bleeding any chickens or ramming needles into straw dolls. Reciting chants in Latin before sipping wine and eating a cracker aren't in my playbook either. What I mean is letting things go and having a little faith in them. Ideas come and go, and while it may seem really cool at first, I know from experience that the initial coolness factor is no barometer for success.

So I let the idea percolate in the back of my head. It sits there and when my brain has a few spare cycles to think about it, it works away at it. Ideas originate fleshing it out and giving me direction – or they fade away and I know it was not going to work out.

Just last night, for example, I had finished working out and I was cooling down in a tanning both (trust me, it's not as paradoxal as it sounds). While I was in there I was suddenly drop kicked by a bunch of great ideas for a couple of scenes for the next book in my Dark Earth series. Ironic, considering not a one of them has been published yet, but also consider I haven't submitted any of them yet either.

Likewise for the sequel to Wanted (working title, "Ice Princess") I've been stuck for months trying to figure out what happens next. I've got plenty of ideas but I didn't know how I wanted to get from point A to point B. I stumbled across another great idea for the Wanted setting and started working on it. I figured it would be a separate book but I ran out of steam as I considered it. I tossed the idea around with my wife and she chastised me for daring to even consider writing a different book for Wanted while so many people had lingering questions about what happened after the first one.

That made me realize what I had was not a complete book on its own. Rather it was something that I could and should blend in to Ice Princess to fill in the blanks. Now I'm full steam on it and excited. And a few more vocal readers who keep asking about it will finally be sated. That'll happen after I finish off "Voices", the Dark Earth freebie I'm on. Hopefully I can wrap that rough draft up in a week or less though since I'm about 75% of the way finished with it.

This answer, without all the details, often infuriates people who want a recipe or procedure that they can follow on how to get things done. It's taken me years to refine it to the point where I know that I should let my subconscious work on it. I have to say though that since I started doing that I have yet to receive a rejection.

Two for one!

I don't post for weeks at a time then I do two in one day. Freaky.

This post has to do with me hoping to post something useful. I wasn't sure it was, but I have been informed otherwise. It originated as my response to somebody asking a question on a private message board catering to weight training and healthy living. Matter of fact, I'll throw out the public props to the creator of said board, Will Brink. Check him out over at the Brinkzone.org.

Anyhow, the question involved how genetics and steroids factored into bodybuilders getting big and beefy looking. Especially the pros. Could Ronnie Coleman or Jay Cutler be the monsters they are without good genetics or without some assistance? My response follows…

As a non-bodybuilder, let me weigh in a useless opinion!

Genetics have been covered. Juice is beneficial, but if you take a 4 cylinder Honda "sports car" and soup the shit out of the engine to make it fast, it will go pretty damn fast. Now take a Viper or a Corvette and augment it similarly. Who wins?

I'd say less than .01% of the population have the genetic predisposition to turn themselves into a Ronnie, Jay, Arnold, etc.. These guys are big and huge thanks to nature and lots of work. We want them bigger and badder though, and they want it as well since they grew up in the same society. Plus they want to win and they know their competitors want to win – they do whatever they have to so they can win.

I've been close to 240 lbs before, at a height of 6'0. I have trouble sleeping when I get that big. 240 and around 11% bodyfat, for the record. I can't imagine getting bigger to the size those guys are simply because I don't know how they can get comfortable at night.

These days eating clean and keeping my bodyfat in the 9 – 10% range I can't seem to climb about 225. I'd like to be around 230 – 235 and 9%, but my genetics seems to be indicating this is about as big as I'm going to get – at least at this stage of my life training the way I do. If I switched from powerlifting to bodybuilding I might be able to pack on some more weight. Or if I took the plunge and pigged out for six months straight I could get big and fat then cut back down to something lean after another three – six months and hopefully have packed on 5 – 10 more pounds of muscle.

Or there are things I could take to help me grow and get where I want to, but once I stopped taking them I'd fall back to where I am now over time. I might keep a little, but not much since I've been doing this for quite a while now. The curse of the advanced lifter. I've got better than average genetics for this, but nowhere near the monsters that are out there that those of us in the biz look up to.

So yeah, for most of us the answer is to not quite our day jobs. Those that can, do. The rest of us have to watch and admire from the sidelines.

Turning something old into something new

The title sounds cooler than it really is. Then again, isn't that what headlines are designed to do?

The premise behind it is that I have had an idea for a long time now to write some shorter pieces and release them for free public consumption. My theory is that by doing so it will hopefully generate interest in my writing. I've long had plans to write up some short stories featuring characters in my Voidhawk series, but considering that setting has been around for several years now and nothing has yet been written, we can all see where that's going. I've even debated an occasional unrelated short story set in the Wanted universe to try and generate some interest for that world. Yeah, nothing happening there either.

With that goal all but abandoned, I started working on a story that takes place in the Dark Earth universe. The current one (which nobody has seen except my very talented editor, J.E. Taylor. More on that in a moment. First this story, which follows the life of a very unlikely anti-hero. He's haunted in a way that is maddening to even consider. And, ultimately, it proves to tie into the existing storylines I've written (but not yet released) to pique interest. Also because I just like it when things come together. Hopefully this story, under the working title of, "Voices", will be available soon. How soon remains to be determined. I'm 75% or so through the rough draft, then it'll need to be edited (of course), and I'm doing some things that are a first for me with this one, so I might be treated roughly by the aforementioned editor when (and if, she's a busy lady) she gets it.

As for the "to be mentioned later" bit, now is later. Or later is the new now…you get the idea. I believe I've mentioned this before in passing, but the current state of events in the Dark Earth universe is 40 or so years after the already published, "Dark Earth." That sets the stage and unveils the possibilities. The new stuff follows a small cast of characters that are struggling in every way through life, much as we all do. Love, identity, family, friends it gets complicated. It doesn't help that I keep dumping the heroine in the hospital for the repeated abuses she endures. Yes, it could be said that I am a heroine abuser. Sorry, I just can't resist a truly bad joke.

Anyhow, the newer Dark Earth books combine the Earth we know and love with it's dark twin in another dimension of existence. People will always be people and they continue to do so, plus add in the complications of magic, fantasy, and both scientific and medical breakthroughs using technology. Oh, and did I mention one of the main supporting characters is an elite class call girl?

One final note, and this is unrelated to just about everything. Blog length. I read very few blogs, I confess. Only one with any regularity. Shame on me, perhaps, but I'm still working on slipping a few extra hours into the day to take care of such things. I think a large reason that I don't read more blogs has to do with length. If it's interesting to me, be it entertaining or otherwise, then I want to read something of substance. One or two paragraphs seems more like a feeble cry for attention than a genuine attempt at putting something useful out there. And, in turn, I like to hopefully provide something useful to anybody crazy or bored enough to read mine.

So here's to hoping you find something useful here. If not, feel free to tell me I suck via a comment or email.

Rolling Stones

Great band, hands down, but that's beside the point. No, I meant that one must keep rolling forward to avoid gathering moss, fungus, dirt, and a generally unpleasant odor. Great, now that you're nose is wrinkled and your mildly concerned, let's get on with it.

Half a night's sleep has me feeling better this morning. It helps that a lot of work was invested into my web site and I even put together a Facebook fan page! Not sure I know what I'm doing there, but that's what we call growing pains. A special show of appreciation to my lovely wife for her styling and design tips. Okay, they were more like demands at some points, but that's okay – I have the graphical artistic abilities of a bat at high noon.

So in a show of shameless self promotion, check out my web page: http://www.booksbyjason.com/. I still have to add a few elements but it's up and cracking, for now. Not nearly as cool as some other moderately more successful authors, but I'm on a budget and time constraints here. (read: I made it myself in between work, writing, and spending time with my wife and very young children).

Oh, and I just got some feedback yesterday from Smashwords.com. It turns out through their extended distribution channels I sold some books in Q3 of 2010! I shouldn't act surprised, but my marketing / promoting has been mostly non-existent up until now. So hey, if people are buying and liking my writing without me getting it out there, maybe other people will too! I just have to let them know about it. So now I'm letting you know, go check it out!

Duplicity

Me? No, not in the least. Then again, maybe I'm lying to you. Or I could be lying about lying. Now you're wondering. Or maybe what you're really wondering is what the hell am I talking about?

Private story, I'm afraid. But I'm trying to work the anger out of my system through this. So how do I turn this into something useful and humorous. Perhaps I can use it as fodder for a story I'm working on. One of many, I should add! Now if only I was better at marketing / promotion the world could enjoy my angst.

Come to think of it, my current project is the sequel to Wanted and there's a couple of awesome opportunities to slip some treachery and backstabbing in amongst "friends."

Well a short post, but I'm not really inspired to do much with it. C'est la vie. What's important is that all things in life are lessons and fuel. We take from them what we can and learn, for better or worse. And, as I'm hoping, use them as well to create better things down the road.