Rusty Carl's Blog, page 16

How Many Aliens Are There?

I've been waiting for this for years.... I can finally plug numbers into the Drake Equation and get some meaningful answers about whether or not Aliens are visiting earth.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien-worlds-exist
My best guess, there are 34 technological Alien species currently active in the Milky Way galaxy. How many do you come up with?

How Does Magic Work?

The fine folks over at io9 have posted a little article advising all of us would-be fantasy authors to ask ourselves these 12 questions when it comes to how the magic systems work in our worlds.

http://io9.com/5936277/12-questions-to-ask-yourself-about-the-system-of-magic-in-your-fantasy-novel

I've been struggling with this in my fantasy book for a while. My magic kinda sucks. I've been trying to work on it and I just happened to see this today.

I wish they'd elaborated on it a bit more though.

H...

It's FAKE!

I read a fair amount of science related items and think of myself as pretty darn savvy when it comes to being exposed to internet memes that promote made up things as true. But, when I was first shown the newly famous pic of Earth, Venus and Jupiter as seen from Mars, I didn't think I was seeing anything phony. I don't recall swearing it was real, either. But I've been seeing this thing tweeted and retweeted so much lately I thought I'd share this article by the great Phil Plait where he call...

Sigh Time

LOTS OF STUFF on the plate for this week so I may be scarce around the interwebs.

I DID FIND this amazing youtube channel with all these concept painting tutorials... it's one of the greatest things I've ever stumbled across. I watched a ton of them.


THERE WAS A NEW review for A Dead God's Wrath over the weekend. It's funny, as I've done no promotion whatsoever and despite all that almost no one has read it. Wait, that's not very funny, is it?

Still, the review was somewhat mixed, they commente...

When the World is Broken

I've started tinkering with a new short story. I don't know why, but I got a quite a kick out my concept. I thought I'd share a first draft excerpt.

It's a story of a cosmic entity that is cast down and forced to live as a human child.


"The indignities Billy suffered were beneath him. How could he hope to rule the cosmos again when he had runny bowels thanks to the undercooked meat in his burrito? The universe was determined to undermine him.
And so the universe would pay.
And the playground was...

I'm Not Above Being a Fanboy!

I absolutely love Peter V Brett's books, The Warded Man (In the U.S. - The Painted Man abroad) and The Dessert Spear are amazing. I think The Dessert Spear may be my favorite book I've read so far this year, and that's saying a lot, since I've read a lot, and I mean A LOT of books that I've loved in 2012.

I was so wowed when I finished the the second one that I whipped up a piece of fan art. Peter Brett himself stopped by my deviantART page and told me that he'd made it his new deskt...

What if I Kept a Diary?

I’ve been inspired, of sorts, to live healthy. Now, it was a spur of the moment decision, so I have had some stumbling blocks.  But I figured I would spell out a bit of what it was like to be me for a day.
Sunday night, my wife and I drew a line in the sand and decided Monday was going to be day 1 of our new life. No more poor diet and no exercise. The plan? Monday morning, up early to make a healthy breakfast and to take extra time to pack a healthy lunch and a gym bag so I can go workou...

IWSG - May Edition... Part 4

The great Alex J Cavanaugh once had a dream. To give all the writers of the world who suffered from one neurosis or another an opportunity to vent to the world all their frustrations or fears into the world without the worry of judgement.
And the Insecure Writers Support Group was born.
My big take for this month: I’m not so bad.
I’m turning 40 this month. The big Four-Oh. And as such, I think it’s given me an excuse to examine my life. Not just writing, but everything. My wife, trying to be sup...

I'm Still Me, But Then Again...

JUST A QUICK word of thanks to everyone that chimed in from my previous post regarding pen names. I made some edits to A Dead God's Wrath that I've been meaning get to for the last 11 months and finally took care of some typos and grammatical oopsies that have been nagging at me. While I was at it I went ahead and changed the name on the cover. I'm now Rusty Carl.

Of course, that meant I had to go to the other outlets, B&N and Smashwords specifically, and change those too. I have not...

I'm Not Going To Be Me Anymore

The dreaded pen name bug has bit me. I don't want to be Rusty Webb anymore. I think I'm going to start writing under a pen name, at least I think I am. I'm not sure. But something happened at work the other day and I realized that I wasn't so sure I want my professional life (ha!) and my online life colliding.

I'm not sure how much work that would be, I'd have to change the blog, my twitter, my publishing stuff. I don't know. Anyone have any opinions on the matter they'd like to share?

Also, th...