A.R. Williams's Blog, page 29

Unhappiness

Misery thrives in the gap between what you think things are supposed to be and what they are.  Get rid of the “supposed to be” and suddenly, the unhappiness has no place anymore.

At least that’s tonight’s theory.

TCR I – The First Month

So it’s been a month since The Camellia Resistance (TCR) was published.  So far, we have one tattoo, four reviews, a couple of rabid fans, and 21 sales.  My favorite review so far reads like this:

AR Williams has spun an engaging tale of intrigue and action that will draw you in and hold you tight.
The Camillia Resistance is a fast paced read that manages quite an unlikely feat.  The author will please those readers with literary taste that requires exquisite character development, and exploration of themes which are reminiscent of The Scarlet Letter and 1984 both.  The author will also please readers looking to be pulled into a snappy, imaginative and futuristic tale of intrigue and surprise.
From the first to the last page, the reader is pulled into a world where nothing is quite as it seems, yet a world that is perhaps foreshadowed by the fixations of the early years of the 21st century.

Come on, being compared to Orwell and Hawthorne isn’t bad company, right?

If you don’t want to spend the $2.99, you can always borrow it from the Kindle Library for free…  I’d love to have 21 more people buy the book in February.  My aspirations aren’t huge – if I can get to someone who is having a rotten day and make their day a little better, I’m going to be good.  I’ll take fortune and whatever if it shows up, but that was never the point.

Is it Gauche?

To quote yourself from twitter?  I think it is.  I’m going to do it anyway…

Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think. ~ Horace Walpole  …  No wonder I’m effing bipolar.

Reasons why Book II is Harder Than Book I

Being aware that my mother is going to read it and she won’t be able to avoid noticing that there’s sex.

I’m all for the parent/child agreement where we acknowledge the hypothesis that the other party has, at some point, engaged in carnal activity.  However, that hypothesis should never be tested to the point of confirmation.  It isn’t even like any of this is taken from my real-life experience.  The fact that I know what a penis is is damning enough.

Argh.

Too Damn Old

I know it isn’t exactly stylish to sit in such self-satisfied ownership of your age, particularly when you’re on the north side of 20.  But can I just state for the record that I’m pretty happy to be too damn old for some of the foolish nonsense that seems to make sense to those in their 20′s.

Standing around to get into a club.
Compromising because someone else’s approval is more important to me than my own sovereignty.
Standing around in the cold to get into a club.
Thinking everything is about me and taking it all personally.
Standing around with my booty hanging out of my skirt and getting frostbitten while I wait to get into a club.
Believing what people say instead of watching what they do.
Ignoring my intuition because it goes against what everyone else thinks.
Apologizing for shit that isn’t my fault.
Believing that I owe someone something that I never agreed to.
Being easily manipulated.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we valued people who act their age?  I’m not talking about getting stultified in your routine or calcified in your thinking.  I’m talking about hitting 30-something and making some damn use of the experiences you had in your 20′s.

The View from 30,000

Words that is…  I keep trying to tell myself that I’m 1/3 of the way there and that getting to 2/3 will be hard work, but getting to 3/3 is going to be a breeze.

Telling myself it’s true ain’t making it so.  Thanks to Ratwell, I’ve worked out and argued through the major plot points, so I know *what* I’m writing, it’s just making the words line up on the page that is so bleeding difficult.

Anyone that tries to tell you writing is easy is smoking something powerful and, damn it, I want a hit of whatever it is.

And Here I Thought I’d Escaped the Scourge of the Era

But no, I got snarked on FaceBook, passive-aggressively, and in TS Eliot, no less.  After I got done laughing my ass off, I decided that I was flattered.

Seriously…  if you’re going to get a secret bitchslap message on Facebook, wouldn’t you want it couched in J. Alfred Prufrock?

Well, here’s my answer: There will be time, there will be time.

TCR II

I have no idea if this will make it into TCR II, but I found a note today that I’d written about this concept ages ago and tried to turn it into something that someone would say…

Listen, the universe has a lot more black matter than stars. It’s just the way things are.  It would be a shame if you spent your whole life staring at the sky, angry because there is too much space between the stars. It’s the dark matter that gives the light meaning. There’s just enough of both, so long as you’re willing to accept things as they are, not as you want them to be.

Once you give up on trying to make the world into what you think it should be, you can get on with making something worth having out of what it is.  There isn’t a lot of ego in acceptance, but there isn’t a lot of pain in it either.