Jason Arnett's Blog, page 4

JLA/Avengers and Avengers/JLA

I took some time to put down some thoughts on the brilliant DC/Marvel crossover at my Tumblr. I just finished a reread for the first time in a long time since I unearthed the series when I offloaded a bunch of comics recently. Expect more of this but also some more current readings, too, as I pick them up from my LCS.

Look at that rubble! Nobody does rubble like George Perez. That iconic image of Superman holding Cap’s shield and Thor’s hammer is pretty cool, too.

By the way, did you see this great guest announcement for Planet Comicon?

Planet Comicon Kansas City is thrilled to welcome Kansas City to our March event for all three days! Best known for its contributions to jazz, the culinary traditions of barbecue, and professional football, its most notable roles include appearances in The Last of Us, Queer Eye, The Day After, and numerous other popular films and television series.

bit.ly/pckc2023fb
bit.ly/pckc_ops2023fb

For more info, visit PlanetComicon.com.Additional guests to be announced.

Very clever PCC social media managers. Well done.

That’s all for this time. The Super Bowl is Sunday and my Chiefs are facing off against the Eagles. I’m looking forward to a good game. Be good to one another, keep the rivalries friendly, and stay warm and dry. Drink lots of water.

I’ll see you when I see you.

The Socials part II

Back at the first of the year I mentioned I was trying to figure out my social media presence a little more. The first step I took that I think will hold for a while is to start keeping track of the comics I read this year, so I’ll use my Tumblr for that.

I’ve already started with a couple of posts:

First up are my thoughts upon rereading John Byrne’s Elseworlds/Imaginary Tales of Superman and Batman: Generations 1, 2, & 3.Then I looked back on Timothy Hunter’s exploits in Books of Magick: Life During Wartime.

So if you’re interested, those thoughts are there for you to consider. I’ll try to keep up because I really want to track not only what I read, but what I watch and what I’m listening to for a while. See if there’s a pattern. Follow along and see what fun I’m up to, I guess. I’ll try to remember to post links here every so often.

I’m revisiting Kurt Busiek’s and George Perez’s JLA/AVENGERS for the first time since roughly 2003 next, but I’ll also keep track of the current books I’m buying and enjoying from my LCS. The Brubaker/Phillips books are top of the list as is any compilation of Tynion’s THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH plus monthly titles like the animated Harley Quinn series LEGION OF BATS and POISON IVY.

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your time and I’ll see you when I see you.

Necessary Energy

This winter is tough for some and not so much (yet) for others. Snow and cold signal the rebirth of the year and maybe that’s the theme of this post. Hi, I’m Jason and I write things I hope you’ll like. There will be an announcement of a new book soon while I’m revising a second again and will begin to write a third.

Melnibone Got Nothin’ on Me

I haven’t been writing much this year yet. There have been some organizational things in the home office that required my attention for the last years while I was in school. It’s been chaos all around me and it’s time to change the energy in the room.

Ugh.

The bookshelf on the right is one of those cheap, crappy things I’ve had for fifteen-ish years and was all I could afford at the time. Of course, since then I’ve continued to acquire all sorts of objects (books and comics among them) that end up in various places jammed into whatever available space there might be. I’m naturally a pack rat and that’s something I’m working on continually so it’s no wonder this has happened. My very patient wife often dumps piles of books and papers I’ve accumulated throughout the house in my little office. (Actually it’s not tiny at all, just filled to the brim with all my shit.

So early in the month, I decided to finally divest myself of some stuff. I started with my comics collection. This was the second purge in my lifetime and it was remarkably easy to let comics I thought I would treasure for my lifetime. Over the course of ten days or so, I pulled out all 30 short boxes, sorted out the books I absolutely had to keep and ended up with 3 empty short boxes and 12 that were filled with books I could let go. Last time I purged, I ended up donating them to my public library’s book sale. This time, I decided I would pursue selling them.

Midway through the initial sorting process.

Here’s the thing about selling anything you think of as collectible: it’s worth exactly what you can convince someone to pay for it. In comics, you see people searching for runs, upgrades to better copies of books they already have, and copies of books they always wanted to read. I’m not connected to a collector’s network, so I had to look for someone who would do the work for me. To maximize the return on a collectible, you have to spend time and energy to convince a potential buyer that what you have will be easy to turn around for a profit. Long story short, you have to offer what you have at a reasonable price. This means, realistically, my books (ranging from the 70s to last year) were ‘worth’ at most 50 cents apiece. A vendor at a comic convention would buy my mostly common titles and turn them around for about a dollar on average.

Anyway, the comics and some graphic novels/collections left my home to seek new readers who will love them as much as I did. I turned the money into a couple of new bookshelves and some bookends. Then I turned my attention to the mess on the other side of the room in the first picture above. I am letting books and DVDs and other stuff go, too. I even found another stash of comics that had to be sorted through. This stuff will go to local used bookstores, again for minimal cash.

Arioch in front of the Chaos Star from Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, illustrated by Jeff Dee in TSR’s Deities & Demigods.

I’m ready to write again, but this project has helped me begin to understand that what I need to write is a more organized space. I can write in the mess I existed in before, but at this moment in my life I crave some order to create the chaos of a story in. And if it doesn’t work, well, over time I’ll surely acquire more stuff that I will be sure I will treasure for the rest of my life. Just so you know that I’m serious, here’s a picture of the new shelves in place with all that physical media sort of heaved up on them.

Still chaotic, but there’s a plan and a lot of this stuff in front is going away.At Capacity

It’s weird to think that I’ve been able to work in an environment like that. I want to find out if it’s necessary. I hope not. Humans are adaptable and capable of achieving change over time and I want to initiate that change to make other changes to see what takes. Being open about this stuff might help someone else decide to do some work so that’s why I’m sharing my – weaknesses? fallacies? – whatever you call them here.

I hope you’re having a good day. It’s important to recognize when you need to make a change and then to take the actions that make that change possible. As scary as it can be, that’s living and that’s what I need to be doing at the moment. I want that for all of us and when we’re together next we can talk about it, whenever that may be. Until then, be good to one another because how we treat each other is all that matters in the end. I’ll see you when I see you.

The Socials

Here we are now, some of us, with three new social media accounts since the debacle over at Twitter exploded. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and some are greater or lesser depending on what you want out of it, right?

Find me as @ajasont on these platforms, if you like.

Mastodon is interesting but it doesn’t engage me the way Facebook or Twitter did. Its interface is not friendly to me though I can’t pinpoint exactly why. I see there are things happening there and maybe they’re interesting, but I’m not 100% there enough to find any of them. Hive, on the other hand, massively struggled to keep up with the influx of new users and still hasn’t quite shaken out many of the bugs. It’s infernally slow loading and the servers (I think) are still being taken offline at times. POST on the other hand, is a rich environment to write in, though their sensible approach to adding users makes it a bit lonely over there.

For my money, I want to like Hive the most, but its ups and downs are making that difficult. POST, then, becomes the default but I’m not sure I want to be there all the time. Maybe it’s because I am so comfortable in other social media arenas, or maybe it’s my age, or maybe it’s that I’m kind of burned out on social media. I think that’s why Mastodon doesn’t appeal to me; it’s a lot of work to find things there. Or it was. It’s been several weeks since I tried anything there.

So if you’re out and about on the socials, you can find me pretty easily. Maybe it’s about finding my people, or maybe I’m thinking that the time I spend on social media would be better spent writing. I’m lousy at self-promoting, anyway. Hit me up if you’re in those spheres, though. It’d be nice to talk occasionally. Or you can leave a comment here.

See you when I see you.

Wrap Up and Reset

A Sense of Elation

2022 was supposed to be the year everything moved into place and things were going to change. It’s true that everything moved and change was initiated, it just didn’t go the way I thought it would. But that’s okay. In the end, I’m as happy (and maybe happier) than I would have been if my predictions had come true. The added bonus is that from this vantage, I can enjoy everything a lot more than I might have otherwise. The world turns, mysteries still abide.

Writing was committed.

(And hey, there’s some discussion of GLASS ONION down below so when you see that pop up again, there are potential spoilers. You can’t claim you weren’t warned. It’s not my fault if you’re skimming…)

Hi, I’m Jason and I write stories for you to enjoy if you choose to seek them out.

Through Light and Laughter FlowORGAN OF RECORD

In July I finished a draft of one novella and thought I would dive right into fixing up the other one I had in my hard drive. With some disappointments both personal and professional affecting me more deeply than I had thought at first, I fell into a funk that I didn’t come out of until September. (And that’s the end of the recap, promise.)

But in September I attacked the remaining manuscript and did a bunch of work in revising it. Draft after draft after draft, I was still in love with the story I was creating in THE ENVOY and now, having completed five distinct drafts, I’m still in love with it. I’ve read it a dozen times at least and each draft improved it measurably until its current state of readiness for beta readers. I’m not nervous about sending it out (I’ve been sending a short story out regularly all year without any bites, so I’m even more hardened to rejection) and I know my beta readers are a little anxious to get a look at what I’ve been working on. 

Here’s a tentative pitch, which is the part I struggle to write the most:

A secretive military order goes public in their bid to take over the galactic Empire of Futusin Sah to enrich and empower themselves. The entrenched government wants to maintain the status quo. As the struggle spills into public, Walt’s life and family are in danger. A once powerful envoy trusted by the hereditary ruler of the Empire until his exile, he’s ready with a third option.

Political intrigue and family drama collide in this slam-bang space opera spanning worlds, cultures, and events at once familiar and strange. Can the envoy save anyone?

This is a first blush, or the first blush I’m willing to share, and it’s sure to change but you saw this here before anyone else. It’s running around 43,000 words and will hopefully be out in the first quarter of 2023. I’ll be sure to let you know.

But that wasn’t all I’ve been working on. I’ve got half a dozen short stories almost or completely done and I’ll be figuring out what to do with those in the new year, too. Then there’s the other novella that’s close to ready but needs some love. It will drop before the middle of next year, too. And I’ve begun outlining another solo novella that will continue the story of THE ENVOY from another perspective and I promise that makes sense because there are two more in that series. Stay tuned on that front.

As writing goes, 2023 will be a productive year and will include projects that may never see the light of day but which will inform the writing that does get out into the wild. 

Which is the point of writing. The more you do it, the better you get and it’s not easy to begin with. I haven’t reached the heights I thought were my sure destiny 10 or 15 years ago but that hasn’t discouraged me.

There’s a fire in me stoked by completing a story, a novella, a novel, a script. I want that fire burning hot and I work hard to make sure it’s got the necessary fuel. When the flames flicker and gutter nearly to extinction, that’s a low point like it was this past summer. If I let that happen, if I stop trying to create, I’ll wither. 

Maybe you need to hear this as much as I need to keep saying it to myself, but don’t give up on your creative output. It’s easy to say and fucking difficult to follow through, (for me at least) but each time I think I want to stop I find I can’t. I’m not ready to give up and I’ve been trying to do something positive and creative for over 30 years with varying degrees of success.

I can’t stop. I won’t. I need to keep going.

Don’t Underestimate Our Resolve

I only read 13 books this year, not counting comics and graphic novels, but that’s easily more than I read in the previous two or three years. My favorite book was NOOR by Nnedi Okorafor who I think is an author that every science fiction fan should venerate alongside all the Grandmasters of the genre and I loved NOOR because I’d read her REMOTE CONTROL right before it and I am enamored of all the stories of hers I’ve read. 

Okorafor is a fascinating thinker, too, and between her and Haruki Murakami (his FIRST PERSON SINGULAR hit me hard when I read it this year) I’ve got new heroes to learn from (also including N.K. Jemisin whose latest book is in my to read pile.) Move over Vonnegut, Bradbury, and Heinlein.

And my wife and I finally made it back to a movie theater to see GLASS ONION for the week it was released. We re-watched on Netflix the other day and we found it, both times, to be as much fun as KNIVES OUT was though in different ways. 

I tend to not actually review things here, only say I like them and give a brief explanation of why. (I try very hard not to talk about things I don’t like but AI art may eventually make it into a blog in the future. Sorry.) But there’s a thing in GLASS ONION I want to mention. 

There have been a couple of articles I’ve seen that seem to write off the character of Derol as just a chance for the actor and director to work together again. This actor, Noah Sagen, played the enthusiastic Trooper Wagner (no first name mentioned) in KNIVES OUT. In his first scene there’s a big deal made out of the fact that no one should pay attention to him and Edward Norton’s character plays him off by saying that Derol is “going through some things” and staying on the island but isn’t to be taken as being part of the events of the movie.

This raises some questions for me. It’s classic misdirection and when you note the opening date (May 13, 2020) the story takes place in the midst of the pandemic. Now who knows how far apart KO and GO are in their universe, but there’s no date assigned to KNIVES OUT. That seems like a clue and misdirection is another clue. And each time Derol pops up, it’s to remind us that he’s there more than anything else. 

So here’s the thing: KNIVES takes place before ONION so it’s not that much of a stretch for Rian Johnson to be building a story out of three movies (which he was denied the chance to do in the Star Wars universe, a complicated and typical adventure, all things considered) by taking a character like Trooper Wagner (no first name given) through the pandemic the same way we traversed it. Wagner is, after all, the fanboy of KNIVES and a kind of Greek chorus for the audience. 

I believe that Trooper Wagner IS Derol and we will find out what’s going on with him in the third Knives Out Mystery, whenever that drops. The kicker is that Derol is there watching everything blow up with Benoit Blanc at the end, before Blanc asks his final question of Helen, who ran into Derol when she was creeping through the house earlier. 

There are just too many clues for it to be two friends continuing to work together. I’ll be happy to be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am. Unless this somehow gets to Rian Johnson and I’ve spoiled the fun. I hope not. I don’t know what’s happening with Trooper Wagner/Derol. I only know that I want to know.

At Capacity

This missive has gone on long enough. I leave you with the thought that I hope you have a happy holiday season, that you are warm and fed and loved and have a good piece of entertainment to distract you. I’ll be back in the new year with more about my writing and what I’ve liked. 

Thanks for being here and reading along. I love you for that. I’ll see you when I see you.

LA SOURCIERE

WHISPER A PRAYER FOR THE DYING

It seems the world is already mourning the death of social media because of the acquisition of Twitter by a billionaire whose approach to business is — interesting.

A lot of friends are migrating away from Twitter, looking for the next thing. I’ve been on Twitter since 2008 and I was late to the party then. The history of social media will decide what the issues really are/were and for some it won’t be pretty. I curated my feeds well enough I didn’t experience “the hellsite” that many people (many friends, too) did and I’m not famous enough to have attracted terrible followers. I’m not interested in celebrity blatherings but I do follow politics and that’s always a shitshow but the various dust ups around things I’m interested in always had that element of trolling that I find distasteful.

But I’m not giving up on social media. I’ll maintain my Twitter account, my usually fallow Instagram, and a Facebook presence as well as implement long-simmering plans for my YouTube ‘channel’. I also have a Tumblr that recently celebrated ten years of very irregular posts and a WT.social account that is dusty around the edges but which holds some promise as it aggregates posts according to my interests rather than people I know. 

As we see what’s coming next for social media, I will keep this blog open no matter what. I doubt I’ll ever do a newsletter, but if I’m always here you’ll always know where to find me.

This is your monthly update on things in my world. Hi, I’m Jason and I write stories that I hope you’ll like if you read them. 

ORGAN OF RECORD: Busted

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll have seen that I’m into revisions on BLACK MOON and it’s going pretty well so far. I started the draft of this novella in February of 2021 when I was searching for something to write that I could come and go from as I finished up my degree. Following an exploratory experience with the periphery of Hollywood, I dug through my files, and found an old mini comic of mine that I am still proud of but which shows a lot of weaknesses in my writing then and definitely in my art. I thought, “why not adapt this into prose and see what happens?”

So I did. I turned a slice of life story into a space opera that wants to be a political thriller, too. I finished the draft in January of 2022 (43,000ish words) and set it aside until I matriculated in June. What I didn’t anticipate was the exhaustion that would take over when I was done with school. Or the emotional toll it would take when my day job career arc was suddenly (and somewhat unexpectedly) scuttled. Or the dozen other things that mounted up and rode like the devil down the slope at me all at once between May and August. 

All the plans I’d made to publish both novellas and begin writing two more this year as well as the plans for 2023 were blown to hell. Nothing will be published this year and next year’s schedule is pushed back at least six months. What’s the maxim about best laid plans?

But I’ve got two manuscripts that I’m proud of. They’re in the queue and I’m plotting one of the novellas and thinking hard about the other. BLACK MOON, however, is taking more time to revise than I might have anticipated back in April. It’s evolving into something more than a straight adaptation and that’s requiring some back-filling to make it look like I knew what I was doing all the time when you get the finished product in hand. Look, writing isn’t as easy as some people may think. To anyone who says they can write a book on a subject (or create a painting based on an abstraction they’ve judged to be equivalent to the work of a pre-schooler) I will always say, “Let me know when it’s done. I’d love to read it.”

(To be honest: I was depressed for several months when everything blew up, and it took things I learned from my therapy experiences to help me deal. [Therapy is important and can be terribly helpful years and years later. If that hand is ever extended to you, I encourage you to take it.] I’m considering going back soon to address some other issues, actually, but we’ll get to that in a minute.)  The point is, I can’t stop creating. If I do, I’ll descend into a miasma of depression with a tendency toward suicidal ideation and I don’t want to go there ever again if I can avoid it. 

Instead, I get so much joy in typing “The End” that when I push the button to publish a thing I’m happy for days and nothing can beat that.

I’M HERE IN YOUR FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE

Nowadays, everyone’s an expert on everything from fixing a leaky toilet to the proper execution of adapting books and comics to film and television (as well as the special effects involved). It’s a blessing and a curse and we, as a society, are smug when we get the inside joke or understand an oblique reference such as the Wilhelm Scream.

2022 was a good year for me learning more about the planet Krypton prior to its destruction. As a lifelong Superman fan, getting WORLD OF KRYPTON (by Venditti and Oeming) and HOUSE OF EL: THE ENEMY DELUSION (the second of Claudia Gray and Eric Zawadzki’s trilogy of graphic novels, the third of which is coming next month) is a real gift. Superman is a character that some people struggle with and these two stories don’t address the Man of Steel directly, but rather give the reader an idea of where he came from and how that society might reflect or intersect with our own.

Because we’re human and we have no idea what an alien society actually is, the authors and artists have to put themselves in a position where they’re taking ideas common among Earth societies and extrapolating them to different conclusions. Sometimes it’s successful (as in these two series) and sometimes it’s not, or it’s successful to far lesser degrees. 

I think what makes “experts” ‘hate’ a piece of fiction (or storytelling) is that they disagree with the conclusion the creator reaches in their work. They think it’s ‘untrue’ for whatever reason and then take it to an extreme and allow emotions to take control. This leads to less understanding of what the intention of the work is and a self-satisfied social media post that sometimes goes viral, garnering more comments from more experts with more and more opinions that reinforce the initially uninformed one. 

My feelings about 2013’s MAN OF STEEL film are mixed, but overall I find the film entertaining and a fine entry into the filmed adventures of Superman (making me one of a very small minority). (In general I find a lot to like in adaptations of comics to film and tv. They are such different mediums that not everything translates, and after all – the source material will always exist for your enjoyment if the adaptation is not to your taste.) Your mileage may vary from mine and that’s okay. I understand the issues of the film clearly, but the intent of the filmmakers didn’t reach a large swath of viewers because of them. (The wanton destruction is appropriate to a hero who isn’t in full possession of his powers yet but there’s no heroism shown when he should have realized they were destroying everything in sight, is the big one.) Still, if we took the time to be a little more understanding, to see the creators as human beings doing their best even if they fall short, perhaps we’d be less acidic on social media. 

And that would apply to a lot of things, not just entertainment. The opening sequence of the film shows a Krypton I want to know more about and I’m getting that from Venditti & Oeming’s comic as well as Gray & Zawadzki’s graphic novels. (Why is Jor-El more in tune with nature than Zod? Were there others like him? How did this sit with the council?) If the intent of the film was to create an opening for stories like these to be told and for us to accept them and enjoy them, then it’s a success. I don’t know if that’s the intent, but I would like to believe that someone in the chain said “let’s keep these things connected in some small way because they’re worthwhile.”

If ultra hardass Army Colonel Hardy (Guardian) comes to the conclusion that “[t]his man is not our enemy” maybe the rest of us can, too. As for how to come to terms with Superman as a character, I highly recommend reading SUPERMAN SMASHES THE KLAN by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru. 

AT CAPACITY

Well, that’s a lot isn’t it? After my annual physical, I got some news that I need to change some behaviors for health reasons. It’s the usual stuff for someone my age and I’m not in any danger — yet — but if I don’t change, I will be. The problem is these behaviors are so deeply ingrained it’s going to be a real challenge for me to make these necessary changes to my lifestyle. I want to live a longer, happier, more active life because I’ve got a lot of stories I want to tell. What am I going do? 

I’m going to try. 

That’s all we can do, right? If I’m as determined to change my behavior as I am to tell my stories I can do this. I will need help, likely from a therapist, so I can address the whys of my behaviors and with the support of my wife and some dear, dear friends, I’m confident I can change and make it stick so that I’m around a good long while to keep growing as a creator and a person. 

If we all keep trying to be better in some small ways, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish. Believe in yourself. Find a way through and when we get to the other side it’ll all be worth it.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your time and if you’ve read any of my books, please leave a review (even just a rating) and help others find my work. I love you all. See you when I see you.

The Hum

Scritchy Scritchy

When I was in school, especially the last two years, I fell in love with pencils again. I bought a little sharpener and box of No. 2 pencils and used them for all my notes and homework in that time. Since I graduated, I’ve continued the use and find that I love the way the graphite scratches across paper, the feel of the pressed wood barrel in my hand, and even the smell of them. When I’m typing I may tuck them behind my ear or grip it with my teeth like a dog with a bone. There’s something very, very satisfying about pencils that recalls grade school and childhood.

Hi, I’m Jason and I write science fiction (mostly) adventures that I hope you’ll read and enjoy. I’m the only one to blame for that.

Pencils, man. They make you look smarter.Organ of Record

When I finished school I had such grand plans to write and write and capitalize on my newly ingrained homework habits. Life, of course, had other ideas and August and September have turned out to be a total loss as far as creativity goes. However, the last two weeks have seen me start and nearly complete 1 short story, begin 2 others, and finish the first pass revisions on a solo novella. So as bad as things were – and there was despair at times – there’s blue sky above for as far as I can see. I feel like myself again. The ideas are flowing freely. Words are coming, my critical eye is kicking in, and I’m back. I’m finally fucking back at it.

There was a lot going on – a LOT – in my life in July and August and September just sort of got caught up in it all and gave in to the melancholy. Some of that translated into the shorts that are in progress and somehow more promising than what I anticipated but a lot of it I had to actually deal with. It’s the sort of average, everyday stuff that everyone deals with but my focus had been so finely tuned to one aspect of my life that when it all blew up, I wasn’t sure what to do. Crying wasn’t enough, drinking sure didn’t help, and being a lump on the couch watching whatever was on TV was worse for me than the things that exploded. Grief gets into you and doesn’t let go, doesn’t relent. Grief is powerful and can be overwhelming, especially when piled up, but it ends, eventually, and life begins anew.

Or at least, that’s where I’m at now.

I finally finished my read-through of BLACK MOON and have copious notes about this and that, but most of it was about character. When I sat down to start compiling these notes (because I print out the manuscript and write on it like I’m grading a paper) I realized I should focus more on the characters and see what delineating them more would do for the plot.

Turns out quite a lot. As I’m fleshing out these wonderful and not-so-wonderful people, I’m making more notes about scenes that need to be added that show the things that are now really important about the characters and add a whole lot more depth to the world of the story. It’s a wonky process to write, read, define the characters, then revise, but that’s exactly what I’m doing. And I like it. It’s got me excited for the story AND the process. I feel like, after months of crap, I’m finally back to where I thought I would be at the end of June.

So I’m revising my plans, as one does, and settling in for some writing that I hope will indicate a leveling up for me. Cross your fingers.

At Capacity

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to that person in your life who can help you work through the bullshit that weighs you down. Your friends love you and want you to be happy, which I’m sure you want for them, too. The thing you have to do is recognize what it is that will get you to a place where you can be happy. In my experience it’s not money or time to do whatever I want, but time spent doing the thing that I love the most: writing.

I have to create in any way I know how, or my mental health will skid off the rails and send me careening down a dark, dark path. So I take time off from work to take a day and just be with a piece I’m writing. Recently I had about three and a half days that I spent with friends, my wife and a manuscript and it was the most glorious vacation I’ve had in months. The pandemic did things to us, changed us in fundamental ways that it will take years to recover from.

But one of the things I hope doesn’t change is that comfort of being alone with my thoughts. When we were in lockdown, I spent time alone in the house with my wife also spending time alone when we both would have been working if the pandemic had never happened. I find, now that things are returning to what once was ‘normal,’ that I miss those hours I don’t get any more. Or not as often. Routines were disrupted into new routines that have also been disrupted but aren’t quite the same as they were before.

So if you’re like me, you should take the time to do what makes you happiest then share that with your loved ones. I hope you take care of yourself and get regular physicals as well as check in on your mental health. You’re the only you we’ve got.

Truer words were never printed. Source: https://boingboing.net/2010/09/01/woody-guthrie-pencil.html

I’ll see you when I see you.

The Breaks

One Minute Here, One Minute There

Our future is determined by the choices we make, yes? Good or bad, we are in a place of our own making because we did or said something that led to here. (Of course there are things that exert pressure on us to choose one way or another, but we are each mostly in control of what we choose.) Would it be valuable to go back and explore different choices or is it better to simply leave well enough alone and try to make better choices in the future? Hi, I’m Jason and I hope that you’ll choose to read things I write.

Organ of Record

Not much actual writing since the last entry other than doing research on the Milky Way, making notes, and hammering at some plot things, but that’s okay. Sometimes you need to reset after major life changes: take some time to rest, to do things you’d been putting off, see friends, or just sleep.

One of the things I’ve been working on is cleaning up my home office. For four years I worked away to get my bachelor’s degree and once I’d finished class I had time to figure out I was capital-Tee Tired. Exhausted is probably more accurate, but either way my brain was fried. Add in some stress in seeking a promotion at the day job and ultimately not getting it and you will have an inkling of what kind of tired I’ve been. It’s cool that I’m finally starting to think in terms of what I want to write and how I want to present it again, but it’s been too much to focus on actual fingers on keys writing.

But the home office. It was a wreck. Not the desk, necessarily, but my bulletin board over it is full of exhortations to keep plugging away, old deadlines now passed, ideas stuck willy-nilly here and there on scraps of paper and multicolored Post-Its and a couple of notes about the Kansas City Chiefs and their Super Bowl appearances. And the rest of the space is a junkyard of stacks of books, clothes I need to get rid of, and tons of paper that needs to be filed, shredded, or recycled. The path around my desk to the closet is just wide enough for the dog to turn around in and that needs to change. My time in chaos is over.

As I’ve been reorganizing, I’ve been reading bits and pieces of manuscripts I’ve unearthed (as I noted last time) and if I think about all the things I want to do with my writing, and the time I have now to do them, it will still take 10 years to accomplish it all. The least I can do is organize it. For now, it’ll be strategically placed piles because the jones to write is growing again.

Last week on Twitter, I pointed to this thread. Here’s the initial tweet:

From Twitter: https://twitter.com/rapscallison/status/1562442998717509635

And that dovetailed with a rabbit hole I’d been down recently regarding workshops, which can be great for some and terrible for others. I’d never considered anything about workshops being difficult for anyone based on the model. I think it’s essential that every person have enough information to determine that a group or service (of ANY kind) is of value to them, and that there are alternatives as much as possible. It’s a lofty dream, friends, but one I hope comes true. If you’ve got time, read up on the phenomenon starting with S.L. Huang’s history of writer’s workshops.

Remember, friends, writing isn’t just about the act of writing a story.

At CapacityA recent shopping list of mine.

A couple of friends have made forays back into music recently and I, still possessing an instrument from my youth, decided that I would like to learn some songs that I’ve been listening to obsessively. I retrieved the dusty Bentley acoustic with ancient strings from a corner of the office, struggled to tune it, and spent an hour reacquainting myself with chords and progressions I loved when I played in bands a hundred thousand years ago. I enjoyed it enough that I went out to buy new strings for the first time in 20+ years.

Playing some music and noodling around in an art I haven’t participated in for a while brought me real joy, which I desperately needed. My wife was surprised to hear me playing and seemed pleased by it and so did the dog. My fingers, however, showed that they were very unfamiliar with the process of forming chords and trying to move around the fretboard quickly.

There’s little danger of me inflicting any music of my own on you, so don’t worry. But having this other form of expression available again has kindled some excitement for writing more sooner than later. Recovering from the stress of the past 4 years is taking longer than I hoped, but playing some music and learning some new songs is something that I didn’t know I needed 6 months ago. My heart is full again, I guess.

I’m reading more (two books at once: Monica Byrne’s THE ACTUAL STAR and William MacAskill’s WHAT WE OWE THE FUTURE, with a collection of Haruki Murakami short stories on deck) and catching up on shows I’ve missed (including LOCKE & KEY, which is wonderful and compares nicely with SANDMAN (yes, I’m aware of the comics crossover)).

All that’s missing is the diploma that’s coming next month. I think once that’s here, I’ll be able to really get started again on being my creative self. Thank you for spending some time with me here, I’ll have more when there’s something to report. In the meantime, take good care of yourself. I hope your boss sees you as a whole person, too. I’ll see you when I see you.

The Center of Time

Count Us Off

We make grand plans for ourselves and hope they work out. We fill our heads with hope – because what else should be there? – and sometimes it pays off. As a lifelong Kansan I’m often at odds with my state’s legislature but I’ve stayed here because to retreat to where there are more people like me doesn’t help the place I love. Some of us have to keep the powers that be as honest as possible in the hope that things can be changed. We took a step in the right direction the other night with the primary votes to keep the state constitution as is. I hope there are more positive steps coming.

Hi. I’m Jason and I write things that are, if not hopeful, at least forward-looking.

Organ of Record

I’m still working on revisions for Black Moon but I’m gathering ideas for other stories, too. Now that I have time that I didn’t have a year ago or four years ago, the creative juices are seeping back in. Over the holidays I made a list of items that were already in some state of readiness, even if it was just an idea to explore. Revisiting that list has been inspiring but I’m not going to share any of it because who knows what will bubble up to prominence? I don’t. I can’t explain in any way how things pop up to become interesting enough to pursue. It involves myriad components that will be different for everyone who reads this so open your mind and see what catches fire in your imagination.

That’s not to say that there won’t be things I work on when I’m stuck on something else. Distractions often lead me from one project to another because a bit of reading or research may not be appropriate for one piece though it could fit with another.

I will say that I’ve unearthed a couple of manuscripts I’d been unable to locate on backup disks and I’m grateful for that. These two pieces are high on my list to revisit and I’m glad I don’t have to try to recreate them from scratch and some pitiful notes I’ve managed to hold on to. What may be misunderstood, though, is that some people may think these old pieces are old enough that I should abandon them and only work on new things. These works are valuable enough to me that I’ve never forgotten the core ideas behind them, nor the overall plots. Each has already been through several revisions, and will likely go through several more. Each revision improves the work, even if it sometimes is dragged off-track and has to be reset in the next.

This is how I learn and improve. I believe in these stories enough that I keep going back to them to try and make them better. Not that the things I’ve published are any less in my mind, only that I haven’t hit on a satisfactory version of these that I want to let loose into the world. I’ve come close, and I think this time might be better yet because, after all, I’ve learned a LOT since the last time I opened them.

Some Kind of Nobility

I’m a fan of a lot of science fiction. I grew up with Star Trek, Star Wars, Six Million Dollar Man, the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman show, Super Friends and Doctor Who. Bill Bixby’s Incredible Hulk is something that’s almost always hanging out somewhere in the back of my mind. Tom Baker is my Doctor but I love the relaunch, too. While I’m not an expert on any of the above, I am a fan and even though it’s an unpopular opinion, I think Donna Noble is one of the best companions in the history of Doctor Who.

Put the torches and pitchforks down a minute. Maybe I can’t change your mind but it’s okay to have my own view, isn’t it? Sometime in the future we’ll discuss why I like Jodie Whitaker’s Thirteen as much as any of the others and more than a few. For now, though, let me tell you why I like Donna.

She’s brash and she has her opinions, too. She holds the Doctor accountable more than almost any other. She reaches him more than any other companion, too, with the exception of Sarah Jane who just grabbed his hearts and never, ever let go no matter how hard he tried. But Donna isn’t romantically interested in the Doctor (a nice change from the others) although she allows him to romance her the way he does Rose and Martha. (“All of Time and Space. Where do you want to go?”) Donna is in this for the adventure and she happens to like her companion so that makes it even more of a blast for her. She’s doing something that matters in her life and she likes it. A LOT.

And at the end of their time together, he does the only thing he can to save her because he does, indeed, deeply love her as much as Sarah Jane and likely more than Rose. That ending, when Wilf, Donna’s grandfather, says she was better with him – man, that kills me every time. Aren’t we all better with the love of our life? No other companion (at least that I can recall, I may be wrong) – well, yeah okay, Sarah Jane is the only other – especially in this series) has ever been portrayed in such a way. That’s the romance I’m here for. That’s the way love is supposed to go.

So you may dislike the character, that’s fine. But I think you’re really missing out if you don’t try to understand her a little more. If you’re writing her off because of some superficial characterization bits, maybe take a step back and see if, now that you’re older, you might identify with her attitude more. Regardless, I like her and I won’t argue with you about it. I’ll just leave you to your own opinion.

At Capacity

Having a vision, working toward a goal, is what we’re told to do when we’re young. “You can do anything you put your mind to” and stuff like that, right? Well, I set some goals five years ago and started on a path that should have culminated this last week. I’m really proud of the fact that I hit nearly every one of those goals except the last, big one: a promotion at the day job.

I was realistic about each goal as I went along, knowing that it was a possibility that I wouldn’t reach them. Surprising myself every time I did hit a goal, I allowed that the next one might be just as attainable. I had hope, and stress – LOTS of it – that went along with every step. There was lots of cheering and support from friends and colleagues and over the last year I was believing that I had a real shot at the promotion. As I went through the 6-week process I was up and down, alternately convinced I had it and just as sure I didn’t. Up until the last second before I was told “There’s no easy way to say this…” I felt pretty good.

It’s okay I didn’t make it. The gut punch was tough and I put a brave face on it. “I’m all right. No really. NO. REALLY.” But I wasn’t then. Spending the time to come to terms with my disappointment is important. Allowing myself to be hurt and angry is not just okay, it’s essential to being able to move on. So I shucked off the brave face and lived with these feelings the last couple of days. I’m better now, and open to figuring out what’s next. In my mind, I heard Alfred ask Bruce, “Why do we fall?” I’m not giving up.

Goals are there so we strive to better ourselves and improve our positions in life. Platitudes aside, I build up the muscle I need with each failure to keep climbing.

Thanks for reading. I’ll have more another time so I’ll see you when I see you.

The Messes We Make

Hello Earth

Summer has always been hot here in Kansas. July is when an air conditioner will usually crap out and leave you sweaty for a few days while you try to find someone who will sell you a good machine for a reasonable price. Lots of challenges with that this year, so please be careful in this godawful heat. Climate change is a thing. Weather is a separate thing. Try not to confuse the two. If you can make choices that are neutral toward the environment we all share, please do. Not everyone has the option and there’s a lot of suffering that could have been avoided if we’d been better stewards. It’s not quite, but almost, too late.

Way to start a blog post, eh? I’m Jason and I write things that I hope show some glimpse of hope for the future.

Organ of Record

I finished a draft of revisions on WAR IN VAIN this month and will take another pass on it here before too long. It’s something I’m really proud of and I think contains some of my best writing. It’s right around 33,000 words, give or take, so it’s a true novella and there’s a lot of action in it. As I was reading it again before revisions, I was impressed at how it was paced. A lot of that comes from Rob who calls me out when I’m writing “the boring parts” that Elmore Leonard exhorts all writers to avoid. But I did put together some good, page-turning pulp-centric writing. These breakers on the shore of the full-length novel we’re planning have one of my favorite devices, the author’s disclaimer that the story you’re about to read is from a reliable source that they trust.

The first time I encountered that was in Michael Moorcock’s THE WARLORD OF THE AIR where the manuscript was presented as the tale of a friend of Moorcock’s grandfather. The manuscript was handed off to him after his father, not a writer, said it was more his thing. It was a fascinating way to plunge young me immediately into a world where these things could happen to other people and we could still know about it. I think Burroughs did the same thing with A PRINCESS OF MARS and certainly the vastly under-rated JOHN CARTER made the same sort of play for my interest. But I’ve gone down a rabbit hole.

WAR IN VAIN is our love letter to 80s action movies but with a twist. It’ll be out sooner than later. Stay tuned.

I’m also working on a revision of another manuscript I wrote over the last part of last year and into the winter of ’22. BLACK MOON is a space opera-style adventure that has ideas/elements borrowed from stories as disparate as ELIZABETH and STAR WARS. I’d hoped to have this revision done by the end of the month but that will be a challenge. It’s currently in the neighborhood of 43,000 words but I anticipate several thousand coming off in the revisions and edits. I tend to overwrite in the Zero and even First Drafts, so I’m developing better habits in the aftermath. I’d rather over write and cut than cobble together things that have to fit, so I don’t hold back early in the process. Anyway, it’s still early days on this one but I’m thinking it will be out in time for Thanksgiving and I hope to have an announcement regarding that in September. That is, IF everything stays on track. The way the world is today, that’s not always a guarantee.

I have some preliminary notes for my and Rob’s third novella that I’m organizing so that when we get together for our next writer’s room we’ll have an easier time pulling a plot together. I’m also organizing notes for REGENERATIONS that will follow that one, I think. Depending on schedules.

Once upon a time I was trying to be clever and come up with code names for things and then it hit me: what the fuck? Who did I think I was? I’m barely any kind of name let alone one that is producing paying work for publishers so why not just share the titles and make notes when they change? It was sort of an Earth-shattering ka-boom if you get my drift.

Fortification

I was part of a conversation a while back about how sun tea is kind of brutal, especially in Kansas in the summer when we have fourteen 100+ degree days in a row. Yeah, it brews quickly but it’s HOT in only a couple hours. So I broke into my cabinet in the kitchen and started looking through the bags of tea I had on hand. Sure enough, there was some Twinings Lemon Ginger and I had a thought: what if I stuck two bags in a pint glass of water and stuck it in the fridge? There’s cold brew coffee, why not cold brew tea?

So that I did and let it steep for about 5 hours. It was good. I mean GOOD. Smooth and flavorful. I repeated it the next day and set up my cold brew in the morning before I went to work. Sure enough, ten hours later it was even better. The ginger and lemon really popped. Wonderful stuff. I recommend taking 8 of those bags from the Twinings box and sticking them in a half gallon of water and put it in the fridge early in the day or overnight.

Black tea works pretty well, too. PG Tips you really only need one bag in that half gallon if you’re going for 8 hours or more. That stuff is strong. If you find it’s too strong, add water about 4 ounces at a time and stir thoroughly until it meets your standards. Happy cold brewing.

Noises

You’ve heard of Kate Bush by now, I’m sure, no matter how old you are. (And yes, STRANGER THINGS season 4 is amazing.) I listened to her back in the day and wore out my cassettes of LIONHEART, THE DREAMING, HOUNDS OF LOVE, and THE SENSUAL WORLD. For some reason, I stopped listening at some point and only in the last couple of years became aware that she’d continued to produce music but at a much slower pace. I was surprised to learn that she’d done a 22-date residency of live shows and released a live album in 2014. I knew she’d never really toured after ’79 so to have a record of a KB live performance was something else. BEFORE THE DAWN is a shining piece of art by an artist who is eclectic, meticulous, and exacting and yet it feels alive in a way that other live recordings do not. Standout tracks include Lily, Waking the Witch, King of the Mountain, Under Ice, and Morning Fog all for different reasons. I highly recommend getting the entire thing on CD because I don’t think the digital shops have every track available. Could have something to do with the actors in the speaking roles or it could just be her deciding you can’t have everything.

At Capacity

Things are weirder than ever now. At least within my memory. Things you once could count on are now more difficult to even find let alone reassure yourself with. I love physical media because if the Internet goes out I have something to read or hear or watch and that’s been some comfort to me. Your mileage, of course, will vary. I bring this up only to say that having a library at home is a dream come true for me. My childhood was very middle-class in the way you’re probably thinking of and not how it actually is now. I was lucky. There was always food, the lights always stayed on, and there was always something to engage my young mind.

But now, as the annual celebration of the first moon landing in 1969 wanes (today is the anniversary of the splashdown back on Earth), we are trapped in a place where our government is in disarray and the electorate is more divided than ever because of some really batshit crazy ideas. I exhort you to not let someone influence you to believe something that you know is wrong, please. Take some time to ask yourself “why is this person wanting me to abandon something I know to be true?” Keep asking yourself questions that force you to come to answers about the motivations of others.

And be kind. At least, that’s the best thing that each of us can do and it costs us literally nothing. Okay, maybe some time. A few seconds to a couple of minutes. In the grand scheme, kindness pays back more than tenfold when you give it. Wouldn’t you rather be thought of as someone who cares?

That’s it for this time. When there’s more to say, I’ll say it here. I’m grateful for the time you spent with me here. I’ll see you when I see you.