David Barron's Blog, page 3

Science Fantasy Romance 10 - Kritarchy

Kritarchy


SF010


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

For much of an Earth without nations, the roaming
Judge-Ships of the Kritarchy are the only law, and Judge Lightner is one of the
best. But when a vicious marauding fleet sweeps through the Kritarchy, the
Judge finds out just how much the law is worth as he is forced to make one of
his own.




Memories

before reading

I remember this story as being really, really dark--hence
the excellent cover art--the story of a tragic fall from a just society into
tyranny in response to outside attacks. Yes, that’s political. Yes, I’m a
political scientist. Yes, I was depressed. I also remember that this
story got very mixed reviews for content, and that, as a consequence, I avoided
reading it. Well, I’ve got to now...




Review

after reading

This story is not just dark, it’s brutal. From the
opening to the ending, it does not let up. Violent, tragic, emotional, despairing...nobody
wins. I’m reading it, and I’m thinking I was channeling “King Lear” into a very
well-constructed (in political science terms) alternate history. But I can
definitely see, now that I have an emotional distance from it, where the mixed
reviews came from. This is the story you get when a political scientist is
pessimistic. This story is not for everyone...is it for you?




Next Week

Science Up Some Love






Thanks for reading!

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Science Fantasy Romance 9 - Bitsy Pollo Save Us!

Bitsy Pollo Save Us!


SF009


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

In a cow-eat-human world where chickens are slaves to bulls,
one middle-class rooster is pulled too fast and pushed too far.




Memories

before reading

I take full responsibility for this one. Creative Voice said
“I wanna write a story about an anthropomorphic rooster and human cattle, and
it’s going to be serious,” and I was too lazy to argue, so we wrote it.
And here it is, for your reading pleasure.




Review

after reading

Surprisingly good, and that’s all I have to say. If anybody
asks “What’s Science Fantasy Romance?” you can point at this story and they’ll
know. I really like some of the descriptions in this story, and Bitsy Pollo’s
hen-pecked home life feels ‘real.’ I regret nothing!




Next Week

Kritarchy 






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A Writer's Office

Now that I'm back in the USA and safely ensconced in my house, I've upgraded from "writing in a jungle" (a not wholly-unpleasant situation, to be fair) to "I own furniture!". Also, I have Internet which, naturally, lead to instant productivity downgrades. But I have kicked the collective asses of the Internet horde, and punched my way through the wall and into a sexy office setup, which I here present. But first? A pretentious quote.



"A writer's office is an extension of his personality, and an expression of his writing voice by different means." -Anonymous. (It was me!)



Stick with me for a whirlwind tour! Don't worry: if you're bored, there's a cat.


Desk


Embrace my wireless lifestyle!

H2NH ePub, my Compaq Presario CQ56 publishing laptop, hooked up to my monitor in lieu of a desktop computer. ...it'll do.

It's running Windows 7 Home Premium for

Kapow

Microsoft Office 2010

jEdit

calibre

GIMP



Annette, my Asus EeePC 1000HE writing netbook. It survived the jungles of Thailand for two years!

It's running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for

FocusWriter

...and that's it.



Kelly, my
Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G smartphone (not pictured because she can't take a picture of herself), my constant friend, eBook reader, and portable secretary. I use MetroPCS because I have an allergy to contracts.

It's running Android 2.3 Gingerbread for

Skype

Amazon Kindle for Android



Aye and Nay, my two external hard drives, providing nearly a thousand gigabytes of storage! Yes, one is a backup of the other. ...it rotates.



They're all hooked up in THE CLOUD by DropBox! Taste the rainbow.



And my Motivation is on the desktop.


Chair


with Murphy Fogg, a cat.

This is where the magic happens. Annette has been ruthlessly pruned of every program that would conveniently allow me access to the Internet, while still allowing DropBox to backup my TXT scribblings as I type it all in FocusWriter. This increases my peace of mind, and not obsessively pressing Ctrl-s increased my composing speed by at least one hundred words an hour.



I don't necessarily do all my writing in this chair, but this is representative of my ideal writing situation. I just need a netbook, wireless, and a loyal cat.


Schedule
9AM

Wake up

face existential dread, conquer



~10 AM (9 PM Thailand)

Good Night! Call

good night, my beauty.



Noon

Lunch

fresh from the microwave



1 PM to 9 PM

Writing

at least two thousand words



9 PM

Dinner

whatever is delicious



~10 PM (9 AM Thailand)

Wake Up! Call 

to my darling 



Midnight

Reading

I get through at least one book a week



~2 AM

Sleep

perchance to dream, dread


Bed


More cat, for your viewing pleasure.

I like my bed to be up high so that the ideas have a shorter trip to fall from the heavenly muses. Also, maybe the muses will fall one of these days. We can but hope.



Thanks for reading!

-daB

feel free to comment


Available Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 8 - Sharia & The Gays

Sharia & The Gays


SF008


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

Twelve year old Sharia suspects her next door neighbors of
villainy, but will she and her quiet friend Sydney be able to find out what Mr.
and Mrs. Gay are scheming before it’s too late?




Memories

before reading

This is an (almost) all-dialogue story, started as a
challenge to myself to write more and better dialogue, finished fast because I
started the story and the two main characters just took over, bantering one
with another, until the story ended. One of my favorite humorous stories. Oh,
and this isn’t a political story, but obviously the character names are ripped
from the headlines! at the time of the writing.




Review

after reading

It reads fast and funny. I kinda want to make an audio
version, now, with professional voices. I think that’d be pretty great.




Next Week

Bitsy Pollo Save Us! 









Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 7 - Cosmast Rhyt

Cosmast Rhyt 


SF007


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

When a far-future academic wants to find a long-lost
asteroid, who better to hire than a bored space wanderer looking for a way to
pass his longevity? The journey proves to be just as surprising as the
destination in this darkly humorous science fiction short story




Memories

before reading

I wrote the opening line of this story in a windowless hotel
room, then I sat pondering it for a long, long time before I set is aside and
went to the hotel bar. A month or so later, I was in a mood, and so I sat down
and wrote the story. I recall that it’s pretty gloomy, ironic...but with an odd
feeling of hope. Let’s see what happened.




Review

after reading

I love this line: “Very good, then. I will know everything,
S will do everything, and Rhyt: you, as usual, will go everywhere.”. This story
is erudite science fiction, and fantastic. This is one of my new favorites,
with some great characters and a fun fake ‘academic paper’ in there, too. I
used a lot of political scientist brain on that one. I really suggest
you read this one; it’s the exemplar of the Science Fiction point of the
Science Fantasy Romance triangle.




Next Week

Sharia & The Gays









Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 6 - Time Travel...Laterally!

Time Travel...Laterally!


SF006


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

A hot summer day, a group of bored teenagers, and a time
machine that runs on pure bull turns out to be the recipe for a disastrous trip
past the future. If by “disastrous trip”, you mean “Adventure!”




Memories

before reading

I wrote this story while I was testing a voice recognition
software, but when the software turned out to be horrible, I transcribed it
myself. Once I’d left out all the ums and ers, and cleaned up a few sentences
that got lost in the rambles, it was surprisingly clean. I only remember adding
in one paragraph, in re: the ‘time travel spindle’, because I’m bad at
describing machinery impromptu. So, if you want to read how I talk when I’m
just bullsh*tting my way through a story, here’s your chance...and mine!




Review

after reading

I like how the 16-year-old protagonist and first-person
viewpoint character is actually writing the story, and how I added a lot of
little ‘writer-touches’ in to reflect his character voice. There’s some good
stuff in here, and this counts as YA. One part suffers from a mild case of
Info-Dump fever, though. Sorry about that. All in all, though, it’s a solid
character-based story, and that’s Science Fantasy Romance.




Next Week

Cosmast Rhyt 









Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 5 - Ernie Centrifuge, Private Eye

Ernie Centrifuge, Private Eye 


SF005


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

Ernie Centrifuge has to pick up the case where his murdered boss left off,
but to save the girl he'll have to find his selves first.




Memories

before reading

Years ago, I wrote a ridiculously long (and terrible)
version of this story while wine-drunk at a beach house, then I wrote a
terrible NaNoWriMo novel-length version of it. I burned them. Once I started my
Second Better Million, I rescued the characters from the fire and wrote this
story. Later on, for whatever reason, I used the same character names for
different characters and wrote The Tisroc Series. I'm still a little sketchy on
how that happened, but whatever. It's quite possible that "Ernie Centrifuge" is
my very first (surviving) character name, so let's see what he's up to. Let's
read!




Review

after reading

This story is kinda cheesy, or corny, or corn with cheese on,
which is delicious. I think this is the first story where I just let my love of
dialogue roam free and followed it around while it did stuff and amused me.
This is a very silly story, but it's acceptable. I really want to write a
series of stories set in "LIQUOR STORE Abaissé, WINE! BEER! (& Spirits).
Psychic Reading available upon request WITH PURCHASE!" now. It could be
my Callahan's Crosstime Saloon!




Next Week

Time Travel...Laterally!






Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 4 - Drugs are Legal, People Ain't

Drugs are Legal, People Ain't 


SF004


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

In a future where reproduction is strictly regulated, gonzo
reporter Daniel Dean Harlan infiltrates a back-alley maternity ward. But will
the people he meets infiltrate his cynical heart?




Memories

before reading

This is the story that crystallized Science Fantasy Romance
in my mind as a genre. Written in Full Creative Mind--after seeing the phrase
"gonzo futurism", and while ridiculously drunk, and with dim memories of Hunter
S. Thompson's writing style (viz: 'drugs') from when I'd read Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas—in a matter of hours, then edited slightly more sober to make sure
all the hymn lyrics were right (the Scripture was, of course, from memory), and
that I hadn't spelled gwan' wrong, or accidentally said going to instead. I'm
also reasonably certain that this is the only story of mine that my mother
likes. I'll enjoy reading this one...




Review

after reading

"I was gwan' have to ask her to get pregnant by me, for the
purposes of journalism."

...you know, this'd make a pretty good movie, or a stage
play. Talk to me.




Next Week

Ernie Centrifuge, Private Eye






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I'm Just Writing This Down

I did try to avoid this situation, but now a critical mass of people I know have read something of mine, or, at least, know that I do, indeed, write, that I have written and that I am, currently, writing a lot, all the time. Fortunately, this has come well after the point where I'm not embarrassed by what I write. No, not even by the chicken story. I've put altogether too much thought into the hard question ("Do I Suck?") and have answered it for myself. (I'm not going to tell you the answer.) So, when people ask easy questions like



"Where do you get your ideas?"

I shrug, and say: "I'm just writing this down."



It's not a stupid question (or, at least, it's the kind of stupid question your teachers encouraged you to always ask, which is just as good.) and it's not a flippant answer (although it's not as dramatic as people want, for which I apologize). When I write—once I've removed all distractions and sat down in front of the computer—I turn off the brain-filter and translate the slurry of images that result into words. "The Craft of Writing" is a writer's skill at said translation, and a writer's skill at getting the images to queue up in an orderly fashion so they can be translated.



"But where do the images come from?"

I order another beer, cough and reply: "They're…er…they're just there."



It's a roiling stew of everything I've read and thought and felt (which is my life), mixed with my various neuroses, aptitudes and geniuses (which is my experience) and salted with empathy (which is what I choose to call the solipsism of "What do I like to read? I'm gwan' write that!") and the Secret Ingredient™ (which is, of course, Sex).



"What do you write, then?"

"This one's more fun," says I, leaning forward.



So I've got a big cauldron full of delicious stew, but there's only me as can eat it, so I need to ladle it out into a whole bunch of bowls, depending on my mood. Perhaps one bowl has more gristle, perhaps one bowl is only onions, perhaps one bowl is that strange beef that's still on the bone and is annoying, and perhaps the stew metaphor is becoming unwieldy. Yes, that last one. The bowls represent pen names.



They're not exactly a secret, and you can see most of them up there. David Barron writes Science Fantasy Romance; Dave Frost writes Mystery/Crime, off-ball political screeds and all the rants that I know I'll never publish anywhere; Jillian Nice writes Horror, and is having a wonderful time; Spider Frost writes romances set in Thailand, sometimes in Thai; David Allen Barron writes Literary Fiction; &c &c.



I don't care who writes what and what about, so long as I get at least two thousand words a day (part-time), a book is in progress, and at least one story gets finished every week.



"How do you write so much?"

"I'm glad you asked!"



David's Rules of Writing

1. Sit Down And Write

2. Write What You Want To Write [ Dean Wesley Smith ]

3. Finish What You Write [ Robert A. Heinlein ]

4. Get Paid For What You Write [ Harlan Ellison ]

5. Write Some More



"Huh. Interesting. So, what's your next book out?"

"Hold Your Horses."

"What? So I should wait?"

"No, you should not. For…"

"Where are you goin—"

"Behold!"



"It's like Black Beauty meets Game of Thrones."

"…why does your cover art suck?"

"Shut up."



Thanks for reading!


-daB
feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 3 - Director Chen Saves the Day

Director Chen Saves the Day


SF003


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

A fast-paced tale of a taciturn administrator's
behind-the-scenes juggle to keep his asteroid from being blown up and to pay
the bills on time.




Memories

before reading

I hand-wrote this story in an incredibly boring meeting
which had very little to do with me, then I essentially rewrote the whole thing
when I typed it up. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I mention Ceres in
my fiction, though. I'd revisit that colony many a time. I remember that the
characters were fun, and that the story was pretty funny...but I don't remember
the plot. Guys, this is either going to be good, or really, really bad.




Review

after reading

I think this is the kind of story that arises when writers
throw down the gauntlet. "I double-dog dare ya to write a story about the
background coordinator in the over-the-top SF action story. Oh, and he can't
talk." ...OK, I'm not going to nominate this one for the Hugo, but I
laughed out loud, twice. It's a fun story, guys, and I really like the setting.




Next Week

Drugs are Legal, People Ain't









Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories