Jack Campbell's Blog, page 5

Got the start!

And in between dealing with goats, I finally figured how to start the sequel to Invincible.  I’ve been writing it but couldn’t figure out how to start it, especially since there’s a problem confronting Geary that needed resolved but didn’t seem to have any solution.  Now I know what to do.  Or rather, what happens.  I can finally write the beginning of the book I’ve been working on for months.  Now I have to figure out the title.

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Goats 2

The goats came back.  After successfully evading animal control the rest of the afternoon, the goats reappeared outside our house as we were eating dinner.  We called animal control and we watched the goats.  The goats didn’t seem to want to go anywhere, and were wearing what looked like collars, so I took a chance and opened our garage door.  The goats went in, doubtless seeking shelter for the evening, I closed the garage door, and we settled down to wait for animal control to show up.  Animal control eventually did, then had to locate the goats in our garage, which has the usual piles of this and that here there and everywhere.  When last seen, the goats were in the animal control van on the way to the county barn.  If no one shows up to claim them they’ll be given to one of the local farmers.  Hopefully a farmer some distance from us.  If anyone wants a pair of goats, call Calvert County animal control.

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Goats

So, I’m preparing for my trip out to the west coast for The Release of my latest book Invincible (my publicist and agent insisted I put that in) and when I come home with groceries I pause for just a moment to look toward my wife’s butterfly garden, which is about to bloom.  As I do, I see two goats walking over the slight rise in the front of our yard.  Now, we live in a rural area (mostly), but are in a housing development and all.  Goats have not been normal visitors.  Or ever visitors at all.  But here they were.  They stopped and looked at me.  I looked at them.  I’ve dealt with plenty of cattle so I knew what the goats were thinking.  Will he let us eat this?  Finally one of the goats opened its mouth and leaned toward a butterfly bush.  I opened my mouth, yelled “no, you don’t” and walked toward them using hand gestures that every animal knows mean “go away.”  The goats reluctantly left, wandering off into the woods, perhaps in search of a bridge with a troll under it.  Why did goats show up today?  Why was I there and looking at the garden at just the right moment?  Such are the mysteries of life.

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My rules of writing – The Gilligan’s Island Rule

I know what you’re thinking.  It’s not the Gilligan’s Island rule where Gilligan does something stupid at the end of every episode to keep your characters from winning.  No, my Gilligan’s Island Rule is based on the first Gilligan’s Island reunion movie, which was broadcast far back in the last millennium (in late 1978, I think).  In that movie, the castaways finally get off the island, and promptly run into serious culture shock problems.  In one case, Gilligan and the Skipper visit a movie set where Ginger is attempting a comeback, only to see her running off the set in tears.  “They want her to do a nude scene,” the Skipper tells Gilligan.  Of course they do, Gilligan says, because for any film to succeed “now” it has to have nudity in it.  Gilligan starts to describe Star Wars.  The skipper interrupts him.  “Star Wars didn’t have any nudity.”  Oh, well what about…and Gilligan starts describing Jaws.  No, the Skipper breaks in again.  “Jaws didn’t have any nudity.”  The ended up going through a list of the most successful films of the last decade or so, none of which had nudity.  And this got me thinking (yes, a Gilligan’s Island movie got me thinking) that they had a point.  Up until I saw that, I would have agreed that the modern market needed nudity in a movie.  Everybody knew that.  But it wasn’t true.  In fact, the most successful films of the wild and licentious Seventies had gotten by without it, instead depending on stuff like story, characters, and so on.  Since then, whenever someone says “nowadays you need to do X” or “your story has to have X” I think about the Skipper and Gilligan.  Is X really necessary?  Is it even important?  Or should I be focusing on other things that really matter?  There’s no set formula, and no particular something that will guarantee success if you do it and guarantee failure if you don’t.  And that’s my Gilligan’s Island Rule for writing.

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One week to go

Next Tuesday I’ll be packing for my book tour, and heading for Oregon on May 2nd.  That’s going to be a long day.  A bit over nine hours in planes and waiting to connect in Dallas, then after a few more hours my appearance in Tigard at the Barnes and Noble.  Jet lag, here I come.

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The Corps Wins Again

I just saw the latest Katy Perry video (for “Part of Me”), in which Katy joins the Marines.  Really.  No comic book theatrics, just following her through boot camp, training, and on to deployment.  Marine recruiters must think they’ve gone to heaven with a video like that out there.

What about the other services?  The Navy already has Demi Moore and Cher.  (Plus the Village People, though the “Join the Navy” video doesn’t actually seem to have been shown in the States.)  The Air Force could use Beyonce or Lady Gaga, and Miranda Lambert or Rihanna seem like a good fit for the Army.  (Angelina Jolie is probably CIA, but of course no one will officially confirm that.)

As long as they’re doing movies based on old TV shoes and even board games, why don’t they do a remake of the Dirty Dozen using female singers?   Taylor Swift in the Trini Lopez role, Pink has the right attitude to fill Charles Bronson’s shoes, and the veteran in charge of the force would be none other than Pat Benatar.  It might be a lousy movie, but we’d get one heck of a sound track out of it.

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Stupid Software Tricks

How many times have you seen a science fiction story in which the human characters discover a piece of alien technology and within a few minutes figure out how it works?

When was the last time you actually encountered a new piece of software, allegedly designed by humans for use by humans, and were able to figure out how it worked within a few minutes?  Or a few hours?  Or days?

One of the things SF rarely gets right is how ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated software often is in the real world (especially the software labeled "intuitive" which is your primary clue that it will require months to learn how to use basic functions).  I recently encountered a prime example of this when I was trying to figure out how to turn on closed captions for my TV.  After much effort and research, I finally discovered the answer – in order to turn on the closed captioning feature, you need to use a menu which you can only access if you press the "menu" button on the cable remote while the TV is on and the cable box is turned OFF.

If you ever need to define "Counter-Intuitive" you now have a perfect example.  Access the menu while the box is turned off.  Who thought of that?  Who thought of it and thought it was a Good Idea?  Is this stuff actually written by humans, or have aliens already secretly taken over and are writing software that matches their own mysterious ways of thinking?

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Book tour!

I'll be doing a bit of traveling to mark the release of Invincible.  Here's where I'm headed at this point -

Wed, May 2nd – Barnes & Noble in Tigard, OR [at 7pm PST]

Thurs, May 3rd – University Bookstore in Seattle, WA [at 7pm PST]

Fri, May 4th – Borderlands Books in San Francisco, CA [at 7pm PST]

Sat, May 5th – Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, CA [at 3:30pm PST]

These aren't just signings.  I'll mingle and talk to people as much as I can.

Later on in May I'll be at Balticon in Baltimore, and then in August in Chicago for the World SF and Fantasy Convention (aka Worldcon).  After that I'll be at Capclave in DC.  I hope anyone interested will be able to find me at one of these locations.

John G. Hemry/"Jack Campbell"

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Armored anthology

On 27 March a new anthology named Armored will come out.  I have a story in it (Hel's Half-Acre) as do such fine writers as Tanya Huff, Jack McDevitt and David Sherman among many others.  The anthology is edited by John Joseph Adams and you can read all about it here http://www.johnjosephadams.com/armored/

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Upcoming travels

It looks like I've got some appearances coming up on the West Coast.  At this point I'm confirmed for University Bookstore in Seattle, WA on Thursday, 3 May, Borderlands Books in San Francisco on Friday, 4 May, and Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego on Saturday, 5 May.  With any luck there will be a couple more appearances worked out to promote the release of Invincible on May 1st.

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