Michael Coorlim's Blog, page 30

Radioactive Grace migration

Radioactive Grace is moving! The Fallout 3/New Vegas playthrough is being moved to its own tumblr account, where it will…

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Optical Routers: From Radio to Laser

Scottish professor Harald Haas has been developing a way to transmit digital information using lasers, instead of the radio frequencies used in modern wi-fi.

His project has been working for the last four years to bring this “Li-fi” technology to life, using solar energy and a flickering LED system to transmit data. This would be faster than wi-fi, but requires line-of-sight connectivity.

This isn’t as big a limitation as it initially appears to be, as the LED pulses will be omnidirectional. A single Li-Fi router in the center of your room could supply information to everything operating on the same network.

For more distant transmissions, a similar technology could use multi-frequency laser beams. These beams would be almost impossible to “snoop” on due to their highly directional nature, unless the eavesdropping device were inserted into the beam itself. A community could set up a system of rooftop pylon relays to transmit the data along a set path, and as long as nothing interrupted said path, it would be powerful and secure.

A further extrapolation might see orbital (or stratospheric) information satellites beaming information to and from positions high above any receivers.

Staving off technoshock

Haas just announced the creation of a prototype Li-Fi router, and as I’m neck deep writing a thriller set in 2026 it’s causing me to re-evaluate some of the ways I present future technology. This is a good thing, though. I’m only on the first draft, so it won’t be hard for me to shuffle some things around without collapsing the whole house of cards.

I think.

That’s one of my goals when I write science fiction, though — to make my predictions as logically sound as possible, to extrapolate to a degree where tomorrow’s developments won’t invalidate today’s imaginings.

Have you read a science fiction book written in the past that was off-base enough about today’s technology that it pulled you out of the narrative?

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Stories to Order at the Chicago Book Expo

If you’re going to be in Chicago on November 21st, take a trip down to Columbia College and see me at the 2015 Chicago Book Expo. I’ll have a table where I’m selling books, giving away bookmarks, taking mailing list sign-ups, and offering spontaneously written stories.

Not buying? That’s cool. If you bring any books of mine down, I’ll cheerfully sign them for you.

It’s a bit last-minute, as far as holiday shipping goes, so I won’t nearly have as big a stock as I’d like, just the handful of copies I happen to have around the house. To supplement this for when I run out, I’ll also be writing spontaneous stories.

Spontaneous Stories

I got the idea from fellow author and all around good guy M. Todd Gallowglas. Essentially, someone pays me and I write a page-long story for them on the spot.

Now, I write novels these days but I started out with shorts. A single page is a short short, flash fiction, not a form I’ve dabbled in for some time. Still, with a week-and-a-half before the expo, I’ve plenty of time to get a feel for it again.

What do you like to see when you visit an author’s table? Beyond buying from them, what’s interesting or compelling to you?

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Radioactive Grace 12: Get Me to the Church on Time

Radioactive Grace is a Let’s Play of the games Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, told in a narrative epistolary form. You can find the index page here.

August 22, 2277

Just used up my last stimpack, and I’m in bad shape. Stupid, stupid Grace.

I left Big Town before sunset, hoping that the cover of darkness would help me sneak on in and save Red. Gets dark out here in the wasteland, and I began to rethink my plan. Saw a ruined church along the way, decided to shelter there for the night.

Before I could reach it, before the sun finished setting, I caught sight of my first Super Mutant. I’ll be damned, but the dumb name fits.

Can’t see much, I know, but it’s there. Just a dark shape. Massive. Hulking. But moving, and packing. I froze, but it must have seen me, because it came running, along with two of its friends.

I admit, I panicked at the sheer scale of the thing, at the dark, and just fired wildly into the night. The things just soaked up my bullets, full clips from my assault rifles. As things got more chaotic and darker and confusing I just screamed and fired and screamed until I realized my gun was empty and everything had stopped moving.

I just hid there, crouching, until morning.

This, friends, is a Super Mutant. All muscle and gristle. That rifle is like a toy in its big ugly mitts.

This is a… I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

I’m glad I didn’t see it now, because if I had I would have flipped my shit. Look at those hands. Human hands. That thing used to be human.

I was hurt and low on ammo so I decided to head to the church anyway, rest up, get some supplies. Turns out they had friends waiting for me.

Two of them.

That second one was even bigger and tougher, carrying some kind of flame thrower. Took everything I had to put it down. Three grenades, and I still had to finish it off with my pistol.

I hurt all over. The armor is torn to shreds. I’ve sucked up all my stimpacks just to keep standing. The mutants had some ammo, but I’m still low.

And the church.

Corpse strung up over the door. These monsters.

They had a prisoner tied up inside. Not from Big Town, I don’t think, but he was too out of it to tell me much, and I was hurting too bad to insist.

Sorry about the blur. Need to clean the PipBoy lens. Need to rest. Not safe here. Don’t know if I should press on to try and save Red, head back to Big Town and rest up, or just abandon these people.

It’s not my problem. They’re not my people. I don’t want to die.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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NaNoWriMo Week 1

This year, National Novel Writing Month coincides with the drafting of a new novel so, unlike most years, I will be participating.

Why?

Aren’t I already a successful (for certain values of success) full-time author? Why would you hold yourself to the NaNoWriMo schedule?

Why not?

There are a lot of writers who don’t like NaNoWriMo, or the fact that so many people pick up the pen to participate in it. They complain about how it emphasizes quantity over quality, about how the participants are only writing to join in on the month’s event, about how they’ll go back to being non-writers on December 1st, about how it all adds to the morass of unreadable fiction out there in the self-publishing marketplace.

So what?

I’ll never understand how so many writers can be so insecure about the way other people practice their craft. Or rather, how they can be so insecure about the way that they practice their own craft that they feel the need to disparage everyone who does it differently.

Does the way you write bring you closer to your personal writing goals? If so, great!  You’re doing it right. If not, maybe try something else.

That’s the writer’s journey. Recognizing that there are an almost infinite number of ways to go about this, and narrowing down “what works” to “what works for me.” And I personally believe that the habits NaNoWriMo encourages—writing every day, finishing your draft before you go back and edit—can only lead to a better process.

And if that doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. But don’t discourage others from exploring what might work for them. Their improvement and success doesn’t lessen you.

Okay so NaNoWriMo

The book I’m working on is the first in a new series, so there was a lot of worldbuilding and planning involved. I’d originally planned to start on this in October, but put it aside when my cat fell ill. Having the pre-writing done gave me a big advantage when it came to maintaining a strong work-rate, but naturally I advocate planning over pantsing anyway.

I started out this first week of November strong, with 4900 words on day one and 4200 on day two. These are good rates, and if I’d been able to keep them up, I would have hit the 50000 word mark by the end of week 2.

Of course, nothing is ever simple or easy.

I feel like an old man

I hurt my back. Not sure how. But I did. End result was that sitting for long periods became increasingly painful, and this had a notable impact on my word-count.

On day 3 I was able to get a few hours of work in lying in bed, ending the day with 2000 words written.

Normally I work at my desk. That’s one of the big writing tips bandied about… have a special place to write, and do nothing there but write. I stick to that most of the time, and writing in bed felt… well, wrong. Off. It’s not really easy, even when uninjured, to write in a recline, but it spared my back the agony of sitting.

Maybe if I had one of those standing desks I would have done better.

Still, Day 3 I didn’t otherwise take it as easy as I should have, and things were only worse on day 4. Day 4 I spent writing on the couch, but only managed 1200 words.

Book.

Day 5 I was feeling a bit better and attempted to do a hybrid thing were I switched off, hour by hour, at the desk and in bed. Back up to 1800 words. Yay me.

It’s Day 6 now, and while I feel less pain, my lower back is definitely keen on reminding me that it’s there. It feels very… present. So I’m being cautious. Careful. Perhaps overly so, but I’ve got some audio-drama directing to do tomorrow and I want to be at the top of my game.

So. Day 6 so far? 1000 words. I’d like to get to 2k, at least, which will bring me to around 16000 for week one. Not too shabby. But I could be faster.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Bus Cake

A short time ago the girlfriend and I had to duck out of a birthday party early. It was a smashing good time, with lots of great food, wine, and company, but the person who was kind enough to give us transport out to the distant suburbs had an early call the next morning, so off we went.

It was before the cake had been served, so our generous host gave us huge slabs of it to go, for which we were grateful but a little overwhelmed; they were big pieces, and part of our sojourn home (after we had returned to the city) was by bus.

So there we are, sitting on the bus with these giant pieces of cake protected only by paper plates. The bus was, fortunately, not too crowded… just us and a group of slightly drunk guys in their early 20s.

One of them asked if we were carrying wedding cake.

“No, birthday.” I uncovered it, showing them the excellent frosting job. “Want a piece?”

They didn’t think we were serious at first, but to be honest it was a LOT of cake and I didn’t feel like carrying it all the way home.

After some prodding one of them (I forget his name) accepted a piece, and we had a long discussion about the merits and dangers of accepting cake from strangers on the CTA. His friends thought it was hilarious and awesome. I enjoyed the end of our conversation the most.

Me: (in a creepy voice) Enjoy the cake [guy’s name].

Guy: Oh man, why did you have to say it that way?

But in the end they got some cake and I got to inspire some cool story that that guy will be telling people for years to come, a story of strangers on the CTA united by delicious bus cake.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Radioactive Grace 11: Big Trouble in Big Town

Radioactive Grace is a Let’s Play of the games Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, told in a narrative epistolary form. You can find the index page here.

After packing up the spoils from the raiders best I could, I hiked back down to the ground and continued on my way, eventually finding a small and heavily fortified suburb.

This is Big Town, and the kids who live here are in trouble. I say kids, because most of them are teens younger than I am. They all come from some place called Lamplighter, where the rule is that you have to move out at thirteen. They were told that Big Town was some adult paradise where living was easy and they’d be safe.

They were lied to.

This is Dusty. He’s the town’s sentry, and spends all his time sitting at the entrance on guard duty, muttering to himself and staring off into the distance. The stress of this responsibility has clearly taken its toll. While he’s well armed, he seems overwhelmed by the enormity of his responsibility.

This is Pappy. The oldest at twenty-three. He takes it as his responsibility to keep the town running and organize everyone, but there’s a defeated attitude to everything he does, as if he expects to fail, as if he expects to die.

This is Flash. Flash has a new gun. I know this because he takes every opportunity to show it off. What he lacks in common sense and experience he makes up for in confidence and enthusiasm. Can’t help but like the guy… he’s the only one here who doesn’t seem resigned.

Kimba seems like she’s got her shit together. She’s calm, at least. Practical. These people could use that.

Bittercup is almost the polar opposite. She’s whiny, self-entitled, moody, and reminds me a little of myself when I was fourteen. But she’s not.

They’re young, but they’re not that young. Most are in their early twenties, but they still act like children. That’s what happens when you grow up without adults. You either adapt and step up to the challenge, like Kimba, or you regress and cling to superficial bullshit, like Bittercup.

And they have a lot of challenges. A town populated by kids with three guns between them is easy pickings, both from slavers and from something called Super Mutants. Whatever the fuck that is.

They told me that some of the Mutants had taken their only town doc, Red, in the last raid. They have no idea what they do with the captives, but something tells me it’s not pleasant.

I should go.

I should turn around, back to the wasteland, finish up in Minefield and go find my father. Even if I could save Red, these kids are doomed, utterly incapable of protecting themselves.

I can’t, though.

That’s not me. I can’t just turn my back on these poor bastards. Maybe it’s because I’m from a Vault and not a true cold-hearted Outsider. Maybe it’ll be the death of me, and this diary will provide literate Super Mutants with a hearty laugh at my struggles, at my overconfidence just because I managed to single-handedly kill a half-dozen raiders.

We’ll see.

Technical Notes:

I have no idea if Grace is up to taking on the Big Trouble in Big Town mission at this point, but it’s what the character would do.

One of the problems with many of these quests is that after you encounter their hooks, they sit in a state of suspended animation until you resolve them. While that’s convenient for gameplay, it doesn’t make sense in a narrative sense. This means that once a quest is offered to Grace, I’ll have to choose to accept it or decline it right away.

I can ignore Moira’s book research or the delivery to Arefu indefinitely, but logically Red needs to be rescued as soon as possible.

What will I do if Grace bites off more than she can chew? If she tries and fails?

Guess we’ll find out.

 

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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October

So.

October started out well. I’d worked up a production schedule, rededicated myself to my craft, made great plans for the last few months of the year, had it all together… and then things started to go wrong. My cat grew ill, and eventually passed away. Between vet visits, concern, mourning, and other arrangements, I didn’t get much work done.

Understandable, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that it threw my production schedule into disarray.

These things happen. Disasters happen. Tragedy happens. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and sometimes that enemy is just life. So we adapt.

October might have been a bust, but life goes on. The book I was going to start on this month is going to be my NaNoWriMo project for next month; I’ll start from scratch. Every release slated for next year gets shuffled down a month.

We adapt. It’s important to build in a little wiggle-room into our long-term planning for the things we cannot foresee or account for.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Short Story vs Novel

Someone on Reddit’s writing board asked a question about evaluating whether a premise works better as a short story or as a novel. Here’s the answer I gave about my own process:

Well, it depends on how you see short stories. For me, they’re not short novels. Different structure entirely.

A novel follows a character through a transformative arc where they overcome some flaw (or fail to, or fix some flaw the world has) through overcoming some obstacle to achieve some goal.

A short story, on the other hand, is more like a “joke.” There’s a set-up that establishes the context the reader needs and builds tension, then a reveal of some sort – the character makes a decision, or discovers something, or solves a puzzle, or something is revealed to the reader that the character knew but which was not opposite.

A novel is an emotional experience that builds and builds and builds and keeps someone entertained for the duration.

But a short story is just a sudden and powerful emotional slap across the face.

So in evaluating I ask myself what the idea seed is best used for… is it a journey for the reader, or just a jolt? Is there a reveal powerful enough to stand on its own (short story) or is it just a piece of a larger puzzle (novel)?

Bonus Tip: Take the same general idea and extract from it both a journey and a jolt. Write both. Use the short to promote the novel.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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Radioactive Grace 10: Uphill Battle

Radioactive Grace is a Let’s Play of the games Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, told in a narrative epistolary form. You can find the index page here.

I set out from Megaton as the sun rose, following the road back past the pass leading up to Vault 101. The old man outside the gates was still there, and seemed almost confused when I gave him a bottle of purified water. Is kindness so rare?

I paused when I reached the path leading up to the Vault, stopping and staring for a long time.

It’s only been a few days, but it seems like it was a lifetime ago that I stumbled out into the sunlight. I was tempted to go back, to see if the door was closed, to ask about Amata. Probably shouldn’t.

Instead I trekked on, following the road  north and west around the hills, under the shadows of great half-collapsed overpass. I’m getting stronger, I think. Or at least, my feet don’t hurt so much from all the walking.

I was checking out my PipBoy map to find the best route to Arefu when a sniper shot me in the shoulder. Almost by instinct I swiveled around a chunk of fallen roadway, behind cover, and tried to see where the shot had come from.

Just days ago this would have sent me into a panic. Now all I feel is a cold calm certainty.

See him there? Behind the sandbags? I didn’t, not right away.

The bullet had embedded in my shoulder-guard, so it stung, but I wasn’t badly hurt. His rounds kept ricochetting off of my cover, but I braced myself, aimed the rifle I’d found in my new house, and pulled the trigger.

Boom. Headshot. A man died.

No.

I killed a man. Let me own it. His death was my responsibility. He was trying to kill me, probably had murdered countless other travelers. Survival trumps pretty ideals.

I don’t regret it.

I went to go see, to make sure so that he didn’t shoot me in the back, and found that he had quite the extensive set-up. He’d camped where the fallen overpass formed a sort of ramp leading up into the air, and built a series of barrier walls along the way.

Walls of corrugated steel and sandbag barriers. A strong defensive fallback, I guess. Made tactical sense, from what little I understood tactics.

That’s when the second gunman fired.

Instinct took over again, that cold calmness that centered my worldview on the man trying to kill me. I found myself in an uphill battle against an entire gang of raiders, penetrating into what turned out to be a superbly defended citadel high above the ground.

I killed them all. I’m not bragging. I’m not lamenting. I’m past the point where I can afford to be precious about protecting myself. I still don’t like it, don’t want to have to do it, but holding back will only get me killed.

So I’m sitting here now, at the end of this elevated overpass, feet dangling off the edge, next to a pile of guns and chems taken from the men and women who made the mistake of trying to kill me. I don’t know how I pulled this off. Maybe they underestimated me.

Maybe I’ve been underestimating myself.

All I know for sure is that there’s more death ahead. More danger. More raiders, when I hit DC looking for my father, if all the stories are true. I know that this stretch of road is a little safer now, at least until some other gang sets up shop here.

And I know I can handle myself. I know I can kill. I know I’ll have to.

I just hope I can live with who I’m becoming.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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