Doc Coleman's Blog, page 19
July 26, 2012
Another year has been vanquished!
Once more, I stand victorious, having weathered the storms of another year. A lot has been thrown my way in the past year, but I’m still in the fight. While my weight loss has become more of a struggle in the past year, my health has gotten better. It still warms my heart when people tell me that I seem to be smaller every time they see me, even if I know it isn’t strictly true. While some things haven’t exactly taken off for me, I’ve still managed to move forward and gain a better understanding of the writing world that I’m trying to break into.
My plans have changed for the coming year, but I believe those changes will make me more successful in the future.
We’re on more solid ground financially now, even though we still have a mess of debt to pay down. Kee is still out of work, and things are still tight. For now we need to find some new ways to cut costs so we can get things paid off. I have had more paid writing this year, but it really hasn’t amounted to anything significant. I need to get more stories onto the market and build up a back catalog. That is one of my big goals for the coming year.
I’m still podcasting, although I haven’t been able to get my own episodes out as regularly as I did last year. This is because I’m also juggling a LOT more projects. I have been on more podcasts, though. I did a guest co-host spot on two episodes of The Roundtable Podcast, and appeared in an an episode of Nathan Lowell’s Talking on my Morning Walk. I’ve had more voice work opportunities open up for me, although it seems like some of the productions are going to take forever to release episodes. Two of those productions changed hands… and came into my hands. For the next year I’ve got two new full cast audio dramas to produce in addition to the work I have been doing. That’s a big order!
I returned to Balticon as a panelist for second time, and did a killer schedule of 12 panels, and had my first reading. The reading was well received, even though the audience was small. It is a great feeling to read from a work in progress and have someone come up to you and say, “I want this book!” I also had an acquisitions editor from a small press say “Send me your manuscript when you finish.” after hearing a description of my work in progress. Very heady stuff.
This past year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and managed to turn out over 50,000 words in the first draft of my novel. Unfortunately, the novel had over 75,000 words of story in it, and it took me more than six more months to get the first draft finished. So while that is a milestone accomplished, it seems I still have more to learn from NaNoWriMo. Soon I will begin editing that first draft and polishing off the rough edges. In the next year, I want to get it ready to submit. Which means that I’m also going to be looking for an agent. The Perils of Prague is the first book in a series, and the characters mean a lot to me. I want to place it as well as I can, even if it means that I may have to sit on it for a few years.
That means that I’m going to be starting something completely new this fall. A new novel and a completely new world. I haven’t even figured out what it is going to be, yet. But I do know that the next novel is going to be for podcast. I’m going to write a novel specifically for podcast, so I can get my name and my writing out there and build up an audience. My original plan had been to move on to creating the sequel to Perils, but that will have to wait for now. I’ve been toying with doing something in modern fantasy, or perhaps Sci-Fi. I need to come to a decision sometime soon.
I also need to get my short stories ready to publish! I’ve got two more short stories from Every Photo Tells… that I need to put out in text, plus another two shorts that need work so they can be submitted somewhere.
Yes, I am getting more serious about writing. And that raises some questions about what is going to happen to The Nifty Tech Blog, and The Shrinking Man Project. I don’t have enough time to keep both of those projects going, and deal with the writing, editing, and audio production that I want to pursue in the next year. I had hoped that I would be able to have some contributors for The Nifty Tech Blog, but where there has been interest in the past, it has been impossible to get people to actually turn in reviews. I’m not ready to close the doors on either of these projects, but will be making some changes in the coming year.
Swimming Cat Studios, has gone from being my hidden little corner of the net, to being the flagship of my new endeavors. You’re going to see a lot more here in the coming year. For now, I’ll just keep swimming.
July 17, 2012
Balticon 46 Wrap-Up – Part 2, Steam Powered: The Rage of the New Victorians
OK, I’m back with Part 2 of the Balticon 46 Wrap-up, and for some reason it is not June anymore. How did that happen?
Well, things are a few weeks late, but now I’ve worked out enough to get them moving forward. So here we have the first audio from Balticon 46 panels. This audio is from a Reader’s Track panel on Friday night at 5 PM. The Panel was called Steam Powered: The Rage of the New Victorians. On the panel were Phillippa Ballantine, Tee Morris, and myself. Tee ended up subbing for our missing moderator, and even let Pip and me talk from time to time.
Show notes below the cut.
Show notes:
Who’s the Moderator?
The New Media Cookout
Introductions
Tee, your moderator
Pip, the author
Doc, the new guy.
Ten years of Tee at Balticon
What is Steampunk?
Victorian Science Fiction
“What he said.”
Goggles and Corsets
Retro-futurism
Doctor Grordbort
Fun and Adventure, with a dark underbelly.
K. W. Jeter and the coining of the term “Steampunk”
What puts the punk in Steampunk?
Steampunk vs Gaslight Fantasy
The DIY movement and unconventional behavior
Eliza is the punk in Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
Except when Wellington is the punk
They’re a couple of punks.
Tee plugs “Sins of the Father (Tale from the Archives)“
Going against the grain
The originals in Victorian Society
The proper facade
Private lice
The improper private lives
Being your own person in a conformative society
Can you take the punk out of Steampunk?
You can take the steam out of steampunk, but you can’t take the punk out.
The Wright Brothers
Fracturing the punks
Dieselpunk?
Ricepunk?
Bustlepunk?
What gives? Does it help or hurt Steampunk trying to have a niche for everything?
It’s counterproductive to subdivide.
Tee tells a story about his dad and the Steampunk Bible.
The Wild Wild Westis Steampunk!
There’s a good wayto do it, and the Wild Wild West is both examples.
Mis-casting in the Wild Wild West movie.
Was there a question?
The fashion of Steampunk
Which one is really Steampunk?
It’s splitting hairs.
It’s not just literature.
The Frenemy thing.
The New Media Cookout, reprise
What would you recommend for a starter Steampunk experience?
Phil and Kaja Folio’s Girl Genius graphic novels.
Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorateseries.
Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Centuryseries.
The Prestige
David Bowie is Tesla!
Time After Time
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Questions and Comments from the audience
The Wright Brothers revisited
Flight will never be commercially viable
Great day to be a geek
The Hugo Awards
Neil Gaiman’s Famous Hugo Acceptance Speech (NSFW)
Steampunk Month in Massachusetts. (and New Zealand)
Steampunk Town in New Zealand
Beyond Victoriana
Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Steampunk Contest
“We gotta pick two winners.”
“There were lots of things going on in the rest of the planet”
You can go anywhere in the world and throw a stone and hit an Englishman.
The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne
The Airship Goliath
Brute Force Studios
Castle Steampunk episode
Brazil
Doctor Parnassas
Do you like your Steampunk Light or Dark?
Light, adventurous and fun, with just a touch of dark.
Light smudged with soot and grease.
“You just like it dirty!”
Hold onto high ideas, but don’t lose touch with reality.
Need some kind of bad to fight
Characters need their own foibles.
The contrast makes it interesting.
Why is Steampunk popular now?
We are in the future.
Nostalgia
Yearning for the frontiers
Finding ways to survive in a rigid and constraining society.
Expressing individuality without being crushed by society.
The individual can make a difference in the world.
DIY, the maker movement, and the trend to physicality
We want to see the gears
The pimpage!
Doc Coleman.com
The Nifty Tech Blog
The Shrinking Man Project
Swimming Cat Studios
Treasure Island
Taming of the Shrew
Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
PJBallantine.com
The Shared Desk Live and Janus Affair Trailer release, Sunday 4PM
New Media Picnic reprise, part two
Val Ford is pushing me to do an anthology of Steampunk Fairy tales.
Aladdin and His Wonderfully Infernal Device
Close
July 9, 2012
Did I mention the interview?
No. No, I did not. How silly of me.
I got interviewed in June. Jim Crawford, a friend of mine who recently turned horror author interviewed me last month for his blog Blood Soaked and Writing. Jim has been out of work for a bit and has thrown himself into freelance writing, having turned out two horror novels, doing daily zombie hunter fiction on his blog, and doing regular posts on writing over at NewbieWriters.com. I still don’t know why Jim wanted to interview me, but I was happy to answer his questions. The interview actually went live on June 21st, and I can’t believe that I’ve let over two weeks slip by without mentioning it here. I guess I really need to get back on the ball.
Anywho, go check out the interview, and let me know what you think. I’m sure Jim would be happy to see your comments, too.
July 3, 2012
The Wayback Machine: The Shrinking Man Project: Episode 19 – The Medical Mystery Tour
Time once again for another trip through the Wayback Machine. Today we’re going back to April 26th, 2011, and an episode of The Shrinking Man Project. This episode was right after they discovered the blood clot in my right arm, and it is a tale of woe, stupidity, and medical neglect. And my bad attempts to sound like the Beatles. Sorry about that folks. There’s other good stuff in there to make it worth putting up with my singing. Really.
So, just sit back, relax, and enjoy this little trip into the past.
Show notes included below.
Show Notes:
Welcome!
Off to the scales…
Promo – Phoenix Rising
Weigh in
Week in review
Computer stuff.
One exercise
The Medical Mystery Tour
There goes the riding season.
Remember that food plan?
The Parsec Awards!
New look on the web site!
Lessons learned. No matter how much you think you’ve got things covered, life always reserves the right to get in the way.
Moving forward. Take care of your health first.
Feedback!
Sign off
Leave comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
Tell your friends about the podcast.
Have a good week! Keep losing that weight.
End credits
Mentioned on the show:
Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel
The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
Geist
Dragon Moon Press
Parsec Awards
Every Photo Tells…
Dragon*Con
Balticon
Fans of The Shrinking Man Project
P.S. The Squeal is NOT mine.
June 29, 2012
Going Nowhere.
This week has been such a waste. I have gotten next to nothing done.
I’ve got a bunch of audio from Balticon that I’ve been wanting to put into the feed, and I’ve had next to no time to get it ready. The first panel, Steam Powered, with Phillipa Ballantine and Tee Morris, is almost ready, but I haven’t been able to work with it at all this week. I wanted to release it on Tuesday of LAST week. Obviously that didn’t happen.
And the litany of #FAIL goes on…
Monday I was so tired I just slept through the evening. Tuesday I at least got out to exercise, but after that I ended up pretty much fiddling around and not getting anything accomplished.
Wednesday ended up being a high-point of the week, even though I still didn’t make any progress on any of my projects. That was because my wife and I met up with Tee and Pip for dinner at Dogfish Head Alehouse in Gaithersburg. As a special bonus, Charlie, aka @Quonundrum, and his wife were in town and they joined us for dinner. We had a good time with much tasty food and beer and it was one of the few things this week that seemed worthwhile.
Yesterday, I was dragging all day long, although I don’t know why. I’d actually gotten more sleep than usual on Wednesday evening. I managed to drag myself through a long day at work, and a longer commute home. My wife let me get some rest, but then we had to head out to Costco to pick up some supplies. Unfortunately, we had hardly gotten there, when they informed us that they were closing. Somewhere along the way since the last time we’d been there, they started closing at 8:30 PM. We at least got a few needed things.
Today, I was so exhausted I ended up calling in to work. I slept in until about 11 AM. When I finally got up, I started battling recalcitrant technology. We’d had a power outage last Saturday, and since then Crash Plan hadn’t been working properly on the box that has been providing backups for Paul Fischer. I’d rebooted the box several times, but it kept freezing up, and otherwise being impossible to deal with. On top of that, I pulled out my scanner to scan a couple checks for my wife so they could be deposited in the bank. This is a portable document scanner, so the checks have to feed through it during a scan. Unfortunately, the checks wouldn’t pull through the scanner. Between this and the balky Crash Plan box, I was ready to throw things through the wall.
My wife recognized this, and dragged me out to see the movie Brave at the local theatre. The movie was very good, and I recommend seeing it. There were a number of girls in the row behind us that started talking during the closing credits. One of them asked, “Why are we here? This isn’t The Avengers.” They got up and left the theatre before the credits finished. So, naturally, this meant that there was a final post-credits scene. And they missed it. Silly children.
So… I am still trying to get things done, but don’t expect to see anything until next week. With luck, I can get some work accomplished this weekend. Without luck… tonight’s rain will kill the power again.
That would be bad.
So, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this rambling gripe-fest, there will be more interesting things coming in the feeds, they’ve just been a little delayed.
June 19, 2012
The Wayback Machine: Galley Table Episode Thirty-three: The Rise of Steampunk
June 18, 2012
Not as silent as I seem...
Not so much. The reality is that Goodreads seems to have taken an objection with my primary blog feed from Swimming Cat Studios, and it has stopped updating the feed. Unfortunately, I can't find the problem in the feed, so I haven't been able to get things updating again. I'm still working on it, but it is taking some time.
So, a quick recap: Had a great time at Balticon, including giving my first reading. Best response from the reading: "I want that book!" I finished the first draft of Perils of Prague, and have now put it aside to work on getting "Welcome to Paradox" ready to e-publish, and to get organized for two audio dramas that we will be producing this summer. I'll get back to editing Perils later this year. Once I get it ready for submission, I'll start shopping it around to publishers. I may start work on a podcast version, or I may give the publishers a first shot at it. We'll see.
More later. Much more if I can get this feed fixed.
Doc
