K.M. Alexander's Blog, page 33
March 13, 2019
ECCC, St. Patrick’s Day, Public Transportation, and You
Emerald City Comic Con is this weekend in Seattle, and I will be in attendance alongside upwards of 90k other people. It should be a good time. (If you see me, say hello. I’m the big guy in all black—no not that one, or that one, or that one, no… I’m the other one.)
It is also Saint Patrick’s Day on Sunday which means there will be two other events bringing even more people downtown. That can make the city core a little chaotic at times. Since I live and work in Seattle, I figured I’d offer up some advice for those coming in from out of town. (This was born from a twitter thread, but having this all in one place will be handy.)
The con begins tomorrow and runs through Sunday at the Washington State Convention Center and surrounds just a few blocks up Pike St. from Westlake Park. Thursday and Friday should be fine (though the Friday night commute might be a little hairy.) Saturday and Sunday will be busy. Along with the typical beer-drinking St. Patrick’s Day revelers two themed-events are happening over the weekend.
Saturday:
The Irish Heritage Club’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is on Saturday at 12:30. It starts at James St. and 4th Ave. and heads north where it ends at Westlake Park. Here’s the route.
Sunday:
The 35th Annual Saint Patrick’s Day Dash is on Sunday and runs from 6:30-12:00. It starts at Seattle Central runs down 4th Ave, turns around and spring and comes back. Here’s the route.
That combo is going to draw a lot of people in green downtown. If you’re driving in, expect a bit more traffic than usual, and know that parking will be harder to find. Your best bet is a garage which can be expensive, but they’re convenient as long as they’re not full. Two main garages service the WSCC, and you can find pricing here. You can expect similar prices at other garages nearby. Those will fill up fast.
There is, of course, another option…
Transit:
Your best bet in my opinion, if you’re driving into the city from out of town, is to take the Sound Transit Link Light Rail—parking will be cheaper near stations outside of downtown, and it’s a single line. so it’s impossible to get lost. Convenient and cheap!
There is a stop directly under Westlake Park called Westlake Station and an exit for 5th and Pine (follow the signs) it’ll lead you past Nordstroms and deposit you on the other side of both the revelers and race. From there its only a few blocks to the convention center.
Plus with a Day Pass (about $5), you can skip the long lines for food around the con and ride up to Capitol Hill or down to the Chinatown-International District where you’ll find much better food than anything downtown and quieter crowds.
Hopefully, a few people will find this advice helpful. Whatever you do, I always recommend giving yourself more time when events overlap. Personally, I plan on taking the light rail every day—it should make things nice and smooth.
Have a question? Leave a comment below or shoot me an email, I’ll do my best to answer any questions.
I’m looking forward to hanging out this weekend. Hopefully, I’ll see you at ECCC.
March 10, 2019
The Whole Thing About Perfectionism
“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in…it’s actually kind of tragic because you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is. And there were a couple of years where I really struggled with that.”
March 7, 2019
Spam & Comments
In the last week, I’ve seen a significant uptick in spam comments here on my blog. Comments aren’t something I get a lot of on this blog and, generally speaking, WordPress’ Akismet service does an excellent job of filtering the noise. But with thousands of spam comments coming in I started seeing several an hour slip through my fortifications. Since I manually approve every comment, spam has moved from annoyance to problem.
At this point, the easiest solution is to turn off comments for older posts. (Spambots are really keen on old posts for some reason.) Most real people don’t comment on older content—so I don’t think it hurts anything killing comments there. Going forward if something strikes your fancy around here, you’ll have seven days to comment. After that comments will be closed.
Have something you want to say to me on older content, new content, or just anything in general. Shoot me an email.
March 5, 2019
Choose Your Fighter: An Oxford Comma or a Five Million Dollar Legal Loss
In this house, we respect and hold to the Oxford comma. We believe its existence is essential for clear communication and AP Style is inferior because of its omission.
But what if I told you that we’ve gone beyond opinion? What if here in the States a missing Oxford comma now holds legal implications, and its exclusion can cost a lot? Well, we Oxford comma disciples have recently won a great victory. Thanks to a 2017 ruling from The State of Maine we now have a legal precedent for the inclusion of our beloved Oxford comma as this handy video from Half as Interesting explains.
Huzzah! Long live the Oxford Comma! Long live our Punctuation Champion of the World!
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March 3, 2019
Garden of Horrors: Gymnosporangium Juniperi-Virginianae
The natural world is often stranger than we give it credit, case in point heteroecious rust fungi which requires two hosts to complete their lifecycle. And some choose to do it in the creepiest way possible.
Enter Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae more commonly known as cedar-apple rust. The only thing more disturbing than its letter-salad binomial name is the way it looks—in particular in the spring when the pathogen is ready to leave its cedar/juniper home and find its next host.
[image error]The gall of Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae with telial horns
See what I mean? There’s something downright disgusting in those creepy finger-like protrusions. They remind me of an inverted tree-anemone (a comparison that is even more accurate when they’re wet.) Those are called telial horns, and they sprout from galls created by the fungus from the year before. Once it warms up the galls “sprout” and begins spreading spores that are usually looking for apple trees, although it’ll happily infest pears or hawthorns as well.
It’s not kind to the fruit trees either. Infestations can reduce the yield on crops and cause blemishes in the fruit—they can also kill the cedar trees as well. It’s so widespread that there’s loads of information out there focused on prevention. Luckily, the Teliospores can’t travel too far. So the best way to control the fungus is to remove cedars found within a mile of orchards. No cedars no fungus.
Here’s a quick video from Cornell University showing a timelapse of the horns growing from the fungi galls over six days. Vermiphobes you might want to look away.
Happy gardening.
More Garden of HorrorsHydnora Africana
Pterocarpus Angolensis – aka – Bloodwood Tree
Hydnellum Peckii – aka – Bleeding Tooth Fungus
Clathrus Archeri – aka – Devil’s Fingers
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February 27, 2019
#NoBadMaps
I am a firm believer that creators should help other creators. I don’t look kindly on folks who refuse to share process, advice, and experience. The world is already a savage, selfish, and cutthroat cesspool, and dragging that attitude into the creative sphere is counterproductive. It doesn’t matter if it’s writing strategy, musical tips, painting advice, or one’s approach to performance; we should—as a rule—lift each other up. Make the world a better place.
Enter: #NoBadMaps. My next venture into doing just that.
For much of my life, I’ve been a designer. I’ve worked for companies large and small and I love it. It’s offered unique challenges, it’s changed the way I’ve viewed the world, and it’s made me reevaluate how I see others. (Plus, it made it a lot easier to release my own books.) But not everyone is a designer. That’s okay. We have strengths and weaknesses and we should use our strengths to help others.
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Recently, many of you have noted my release of Photoshop brush sets designed for the creation of fantasy maps. There is a reason for this and it harkens back to focus on helping others. Within the realm of genre fiction many readers, myself included, are keen on maps. They can help us see a world more fully and they go a long way to enliven the text with a sense of place. Are they necessary? Not always, but much of my own reading has been enhanced with the inclusion of a map. I want to pass that experience onto others as well.
We’re nearly two decades into the 21st Century and we’ve seen the rise of indie publishing and along side that enormous growth in genre fiction. It’s no surprise that many authors—traditional and indie—want to make their own maps. But, it can be a struggle. Fantasy cartography is a skill set that takes time to hone, most writers want to write and don’t want to put in the effort to learn map-making. This is why I started #NoBadMaps—my goal is to make it easy for authors to create high-quality maps for their novels and do it in a way that doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. While there is no substitute for professional illustration, I want to do my damnedest to help writers get as close to professional as they can.
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Using my brushes is easy: you load them in Photoshop, create a document, and place what you want where you want it with a few mouse clicks. Point-and-click. There’s very little drawing, no scanning, nothing complicated. In fact using any of my brush sets you can make super cool maps in minutes. That’s intentional. The end result is to empower authors to create better maps that fit the style of their books.
Of course, I have rules.
The brush sets will always be free. This is key, after all the goal is to help others. If I charge for this stuff it feels predatory. All of the work I am using is in the public domain, all I am doing is making the style more accessible. No sense charging for what is already free, ya dig?
The brush sets will always be royalty-free. I want to see people use my brushes for both personal and commercial projects. The maps are already public domain, no reason why the brush sets shouldn’t be as well.
The brush sets will always be varied. One of the things I want is to help recreate that feeling of hand-drawn maps. That means I will do my best to capture and share the imperfections found in ink-on-paper maps. If you want machine-made creations, look elsewhere. We’re going for authenticity with #NoBadMaps.
The brush sets will connect to history. I think this is vital. It’s why I name the sets after the engravers when possible and like to include a brief history on the map and the maker. I think it’s important to recognize the creators and in a way, this helps their creations live on.
With Monday’s release of L’Isle, I’ve now shared five sets in total and I have several more on the way. I’ve gotten enough questions that I felt this post was necessary to address concerns from my readers. Let me make this clear: my focus is still on writing, it will always be on writing, but I want to share my experience and empower others to create great maps. My brushes are a way of helping other authors create something beautiful.
A few people have asked how they can support this work. My first rule is very clear: these brush sets will always be free. I’m not planning on starting a GoFundMe, nor do I want to manage a Kickstarter, and—if I’m being honest—I cringe a little at Patreon. (A subject for another post, providing Patreon lasts that long.) If you want to support me and my work: buy what I create. In my case, it’s my books. Buy ‘em. Read ‘em. Tell people about ‘em. Leave honest reviews. Give them to friends. They’re good. They get positive reviews. They’re wonderfully weird.
That’s it. That’s how you can support me. It’s simple.
Going forward I plan on doing a few things:
Keep writing. I recently put up some big numbers in Gleam Upon the Waves and I have updated the tracker in the side bar. No ETA on launch, but I’m moving along.
Release more brush sets. I have at least three that I’m finalizing. So expect more to come. I’m really focused on finding variety. There are thousands of old maps, and making sure each set remains unique is key.
Write some more.
Tutorials! I want to share tips, tricks, and ways to best optimize the brush sets for your projects. This might include expanding beyond the typical map elements of landforms, flora, and settlements.
Write. Write. Write.
#NoBadMaps will continue for the foreseeable future. If you have questions feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email. There’s a lot more stuff to come, and I am excited to share it with everyone.
Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information. SIGN UP TODAY →
February 25, 2019
L’Isle: A Free 18th Century Battlefield Brush Set for Fantasy Maps
For a while, I’ve been releasing brush sets with the goal of aiding fantasy authors (and GMs, or anyone really) to create vibrant maps that really showcase their imaginary worlds. Personally, I love maps, a good map can draw me into a story and enhance the world.
Today’s brush set is a little different from previous offerings. Instead of focusing on landscapes, today’s set focuses on the battlefield. Violence, battle, and war is a common theme in fantasy and I figured this set would be perfect for those who are wanting something a bit different.
I’m calling this set L’Isle. The symbols are taken from the Plan Batalii map which was included in a special edition of The First Atlas of Russia in 1745. The map details the plan of battle near Stavuchanakh in Moldova, between the Imperial Russian Grand Army and the Turkish and Tartar Armies. The set is named after Joseph Nicolas de L’Isle who supervised the production. Usually, I name sets after the artist/engraver but this time around it was difficult for me to pin down the specific creator.[1]
[image error]A tiny fraction of the brushes included in L’Isle
With the help of my friend Redd, we translated the antiquated German from the original document. It tells a blow-by-blow of a battle during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. There’s a bit of a bias here—the Turks and Tartars are depicted as an unorganized horde while the Russian forces are shown using more standard and organized military symbols. But the symbols in themselves can work for anything: masses of soldiers, invading orcs, barbarians, an elvish army, fish men, whatever. If you’re looking to render elevation, I highly recommend pairing these symbols with Lehmann, my hachure brush set (you’ll need Adobe Illustrator.)
Inside L’Isle you’ll find, over 500 brushes, including:
51 Organized Unit Markers
75 Individual Horde Soldiers
85 Horde Armies
2 Tiny Tent Rows
40 Small Tents
13 Medium Tents
9 Large Tents
2 Extra Large Tents
5 Churches (Technically there was only one, but I did some Photoshop magic.)
20 Villages
25 Individual Homes
50 Individual Trees
25 Forests
30 Flags
3 Bunkers
13 Gun Batteries
47 Canons (Firing and Silent!)
13 Action Symbols (Explosions! Sword fights!)
4 Random Objects
The button below links to a ZIP file that contains a Photoshop brush set and two transparent PNGs in case you’re using a program that doesn’t support Adobe brush files. You can see the two transparent PNGs at the following links: Units and Elements (they’ll come up black if viewed in Chrome, but they’re all there.)
As with all of my brush sets, L’isle is free for any use and is distributed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that means you can freely use it in commercial work and distribute adaptations. All I did was convert it to brushes, L’isle and his engravers did all the heavy lifting—so giving them credit would be fantastic, but it’s absolutely not necessary.
If you like the L’isle brush set (or any of my free brushes, really) and would like to support my work, instead of a donation, consider buying one of my urban fantasy novels for yourself or a friend. (The first books is only $2.99 on eBook.) You can find them in stores and online, learn more about the series at bellforgingcycle.com. When my 2nd book in the series launched I made a map for the world, you can check it out here.
February 21, 2019
The Best Bookstore
“…the best bookstore would have no genre labels in it at all. That’s absolutely been my aim all along: to get rid of those distinctions.”
As someone who prefers his stories to be a cross-genre, this line really resonated with me. The quote comes from a great little write up from a recent appearance by the man himself where he discussed his work and his time at New Worlds. It’s worth a read.
February 16, 2019
I’m Going to ECCC (Again!)
In less than a month I’ll be attending Emerald City Comic Con for my second year in a row! (Read my Debrief for 2018 here.) Just like last year ECCC ’19 will be more of a work-focused convention. I won’t be running a table or appearing in any panels—the plan is to spend most of my time networking and catching up with some friends and fellow writers.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be a curmudgeon hermiting away in some dark corner. I’ll be sitting in on panels, wandering the show floor, and generally enjoying myself. If you see me—I look like this—please say “hi!” I love to meet up with readers, and it’d be great to chat with you. Don’t be afraid to stop me. As I said last year, I’m as much a fan as I am a writer and I love talking with readers and fellow fans.
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February 12, 2019
Raunch Review: Friday
Raunch Reviews is a series about profanity. Not real profanity, but speculative swearing. Authors often try to incorporate original, innovative forms of profanity into our own fantastical works as a way to expand the worlds we build. Sometimes we’re successful. Often we’re not. In this series, I examine the faux-profanity from various works of sci-fi and fantasy, judge their effectiveness, and rate them on an unscientific and purely subjective scale. This is Raunch Reviews, welcome.
[image error]Raunch Review: Friday
The Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Work in Question: Friday
The Profanity: “Slitch”
Heinlein has had his share of fans and detractors, and certainly, Friday isn’t his best-loved book by either group. (A few years ago, Jo Walton wrote a great review for Tor.com, ‘The worst book I love: Robert Heinlein’s Friday,’ which is worth reading.) Within the near-future world of the novel, there a pernicious vulgarity which we’re going to examine today. The word: “slitch.” Regardless of your Heinlein hot-take—something about this vulgarity works too well.
In the novel, the titular Friday —an “Artificial Person” or “AP”— must pass in the near-future world as a human, despite being genetically engineered and possessing mental and physical abilities which far exceed a normal person. There’s a lot of hate and bigotry toward APs. And throughout Friday, we see a world where society is built upon intolerance. In an environment like this, creating a portmanteau like “slitch” fits. (I’ll let you figure out its roots.)
“Slitch” builds off history — twisting and combining a pair of vulgarities we, the reader, recognize while still creating a new word. Its score is slightly held back because understanding its roots require a working knowledge of our modern vulgarities. (We value pure originality here at Raunch Reviews.) But, it feels as icky as its history and its link to the past goes a long way toward creating an effective piece of faux-profanity.
Score: [image error][image error][image error]
[image error] (4.0)Previous Raunch Reviews
“Yarbles” from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
“Cuss” from Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox
“Feth” from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts from Warhammer 40k
“Shazbot” from Garry Marshall’s Mork & Mindy and Dynamix’s Starsiege: Tribes
“Seven Hells” from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones
“Mudblood” from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
“Frak” from Glen A. Larson’s, Ronald D. Moore’s, & David Eick’s Battlestar Galactica
“Jabber” from China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series
“Storm it”/”Storms”/”Storming” from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives
Have a suggestion for Raunch Reviews? It can be any made up slang word from a book, television show, or movie. You can email me directly with your recommendation or leave a comment below. I’ll need to spend time with the property before I’ll feel confident reviewing it, so give me a little time. I have a lot of books to read.
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