Harry Connolly's Blog, page 38
June 24, 2015
Guest post by Steven Harper Piziks: Sometimes the writing gods laugh at you, and sometimes they laugh =with= you.
Today’s post is by author Steven Harper Piziks. Check it out:
Several years ago, I decided I wanted to write about Ganymede, the teenager who was kidnapped by Zeus to serve as his cupbearer on Olympus. Zeus sees Ganymede on the earth below, decides he’s the coolest kid ever, changes into an eagle, and snatches Ganymede up to Olympus. Zeus then persuades Hebe to make Ganymede immortal, then dumps Hebe as his cupbearer and gives that exhalted position to Ganymede.
When I got older and read the actual material instead of the summaries and children’s versions, I learned that Ganymede was more than Zeus’s cupbearer. Zeus also took Ganymede to his bed. This was part of Greek culture–a powerful man would often serve as a mentor/teacher/second father/love interest to a teenaged male. Usually the parents went along with this: “Good news, son! Your uncle has offered to be your mentor!” So Ganymede was a mythological parallel to this mortal custom.
The stories, however, never went into what it was like. What was it LIKE for Ganymede to be snatched away from his family and friends and suddenly made into the cupbearer and lover of the king of gods? You have the ultimate mentor, but it wasn’t anything you’d asked for. Your culture teaches you that being taken to this guy’s bed is a good thing, or at least something you can put up with because all of us men went through it, but how do you =really= handle it?
The only way to find out what it was like was to write it myself. The trouble was the setting. Did I want to write ancient Greece and writing a straightforward fantasy novel, or could I get away with this in a modern setting and using characters who were parallels to the myth?
Ultimately, I settled on using both, and DANNY was born.
The writing sometimes turned out to be torturous. DANNY stalled out, went down dead ends, or just died on me. DANNY also rushed along at breakneck speed, hurtled around bends, and leaped to life under my fingers. I never knew what it was going to do.
During this book, I suffered from terrible insomnia. I was turning into a zombie from sleep loss. I finally went to the doctor, and she gave me a scrip for Ambien. Some of you may have heard of an Ambien side-effect, that some people take it, fall asleep, and sleepwalk or do other things in their sleep, with no recollection of it afterward. The writing gods were ready to laugh here.
I was working on a chapter of DANNY one evening. This was a torturous night, and I swear I was sweating at each word. At last I noticed it was getting close to bed time. Since Ambien takes a while to kick in, I took my dose and went back work, intending to continue working until the medicine made me sleepy.
Naturally, that was when everything started to work really well. Words flowed wonderfully. But the Ambien would start working any moment now. I worked as fast as I could, even after I felt the medication pulling at me. At last, in a fog, I saved my work and stumbled off to bed.
The next day, I called up my file tree. There was a new chapter I didn’t remember seeing before. What the heck? I opened the file and found most of a chapter. It was definitely my writing, and it was in the voice and style I had chosen for the book. It continued the story in the proper direction. It was even good writing. But I didn’t remember writing a word of it. Ambien and the writing gods at work.
It was both fascinating and chilling. For the first time in my life, I had the experience of reading my own writing as a reader, something every writer dreams of. But I also felt like a ghost has possessed me and written all this. I didn’t dare delete it–the writing gods were laughing too hard.
The chapter appears in DANNY, which is available at Book View Cafe http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/danny/ and at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Danny-Steven-Harper-ebook/dp/B00ZYTNYUK/
Steven’s Blog: http://spiziks.livejournal.com
Steven’s web page: http://www.stevenpiziks.com
June 23, 2015
Things move quickly because we’re aching for change, stars and bars edition
It didn’t take long for a groundswell of public opinion to start pushing against the Confederate battle flag. Walmart, Sears, eBay, and Amazon have stepped forward to say they are not going to continue selling the stars and bars. Also:
BREAKING: Prominent U.S. flag maker, Valley Forge Flag, says to stop producing and selling Confederate flags
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 23, 2015
BREAKING: Mississippi House speaker: Confederate emblem is offensive, should be removed from state flag.
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 23, 2015
Top Republican in Ky House, Jeff Hoover calls on @GovSteveBeshear to issue exec order, relocate Jefferson Davis statue to Ky History Center
— Joe Arnold (@WHAS11Joe) June 23, 2015
Next we should get rid of Jefferson Davis Highway, and rename the last high school in the country named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the founders of the KKK.
It seems like it’s coming very quickly, doesn’t it? Public opinion is shifting decisively. All my life I’ve heard people saying that the Civil War was not really about slavery, and blah blah blah, but those old stories don’t stand up any more. They’re too easily disproven.
If you’re the jerk I recently unfriended on Facebook, you might think this is all reactionary bullshit that accomplishes nothing, but I have to lay a giant NOPE on that. There’s no serious argument to be made that the stars and bars belongs on US government buildings. It’s a flag of treason. US soldiers were shot by rebels marching under it. There’s no serious argument to be made that the flag has nothing to do with white supremacy. It was flown in a rebellion fought over the keeping of slaves, and it has been resurgent since the fifties as a giant fuck you to the civil rights movement.
Taking down one flag, changing the name of a school or highway, or moving a statue into a museum isn’t going to solve all of our problems with racism. They don’t have to. These victories are cumulative.
And they matter. They may seem like petty things on their own, but taken together they form the gigantic foundation I was talking about last week.
There’s change to be made in communities far from us and in our own neighborhoods. Make your voice heard.
Randomness for 6/23
1) Peanuts comics with Game of Thrones quotes.
2) The Tumblr I Work At A Public Library.
4) Energy harnessed from humidity can power small devices. Cool.
5) If JK Rowling had written the Harry Potter books from Voldemort’s point of view.
6) Remove cat before takeoff. Video.
7) Six SF/F authors who hated their legacy. Quick note to the universe: I don’t know if I would grow to hate a book of mine that became wildly successful, but I’m willing to risk it.
June 18, 2015
This is not the floor
It will be difficult to keep this short. There is so much to talk about, and it’s all important, that the temptation to digress is powerful, and I’m easily distracted. But I want to keep this short and to the point.
On Wednesday, Dylann Roof, a 21yo white man, walked into a black church in Charleston and murdered nine people. You can read more about the victims here and you should.
Right now, as I write this, it’s late in the day on Thursday. I’m sure there is a lot of misinformation floating around, but one thing that seems clear is that he shot those people because he is a racist.
And there are ten thousand things to say here: from the prevalence of gun violence to the friends who said nothing when Roof made racist jokes, from Roof’s claim that he was defending white women to the Confederate flag still flying all over this country.
But what I want to point out is that, for too many white people, Dylann Roof is the face of racism in this country, and that’s a problem.
When yet another white guy freaks out because he’s been called on something racist he’s done or said, it’s because he thinks he’s being compared to people like Roof. Or Bull Connor. Or James Earl Ray. He’s outraged because that’s what he things racism means.
That’s too easy, though. That’s describing the problem by it’s most extreme manifestations, while ignoring the rest. These people want to define racism by its most egregious actions, then put a floor under it. Everything below that doesn’t count. Unfair hiring practices? Police profiling? Unequal education? Refusal to cast any black actors in shows set in racially diverse cities? None of those things, the argument goes, are as important as a mass shooting. None of those things, the argument continues, deserve such a heinous label as “racist”.
Except those things are racist. Absolutely so. And being called on racist behavior is not equivalent to being called another Dylann Roof. There’s a whole range of behaviors and assumptions that make up a racist society that don’t approach the level of mass murder. And those assumptions and behaviors–and worse, the complacency in the face of continued injustice–are what makes Roof possible. He may be the highest expression of the murderous contempt that makes up white supremacy, but he stands so high because we have given a gigantic foundation.
Now is the time to mourn the victims and to speak out against racism. Now is also the time to accept that Dylann Roof is not the face of racism. He’s just the far end of the bell curve. The rest of us–me included–need to do better.
Deleting Games
I don’t play a lot of video games for one reason: it’s bad for me when I find a good one.
Frankly, that’s rare. With most games, it’s pretty at first, with some fun puzzles and an interesting setup. Maybe there will be a couple of easy fights (I don’t have a lot of patience with frantic, complicated fights) and the suggestion of a fun story.
Then shit starts to turn into a grind and I lose interest.
An exception was FREEDOM FORCE, and old squad-level superhero game, which had a sense of humor about it and let you pause the action to give the characters instructions. You fought giant ants, dinosaurs, alien invaders, minotaurs, the whole deal. I really enjoyed that game, and my poor wife saw nothing but the back of my head for two weeks. Not much writing got done, either. I finally had to delete the thing and put it away for good.
But I still own games and occasionally buy new ones. I keep hoping I’ll find a big name game that will really hook me, even though they all seem to grind.
Anyway, as a reward for finishing The Great Way, I bought myself the video game version of Sentinels of the Multiverse. We own the card game but never play it because a) it’s hard to read the text on those cards and b) the game has a simple structure but can become really complex. The video game version solved all that, because the cards were huge on the screen and the program kept track of all the little bullshit: how many plusses to damage, now many negatives, how many cards to play, etc.
When I say the structure is simple, I mean it. It’s a cooperative superhero-themed game, and each hero, villain, and environment has its own deck. The villain goes first, then each hero in turn, then the environment, then back to the villain again.
When playing a hero, you play a card from your hand, then use that hero’s power, then draw a new card. The villain and environment, in their turn, just play a card. That’s it. That’s how complicated it is.
However, some cards have an effect and go away, some stay around. Some take damage. Some let you play more cards, or draw more, or use extra powers.
In that sense, like M:TG, the cards are about breaking the games rules.
And I really, really liked playing it. It was absorbing as hell, with a lot of interesting complexity. The video game version turned a cooperative game into a solo one, but whatever, my wife and son didn’t like the game anyway.
When I played, I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t in pain. I just had flow. It was so great that I bought a year-long season pass to get all the new heroes, villains, and environments.
On Tuesday, I played one more game against Lex Luthor Baron Blade, and took him out with The Flash Tachyon, then deleted the game from my wife’s iPad. I lose all the characters and all the variants I’d unlocked, but the truth is I was becoming obsessive about it. I was falling behind on things (not writing this time, but other stuff) and even though each game was not very long–mainly because I know the cards so well I don’t have to think about strategy too much–I kept returning to them again and again. Yeah, it made me forget my numerous discomforts for a short while, but it was also drawing me in in a way I could no longer allow.
So, it’s gone. For now. When the next update is released, I’ll probably download it again to try out the new characters and face the villains, but until then it’ll feel good to recapture some of that time. The older I get, the more precious it is.
It’s a great game, though. If Steam would toss it into the Summer Sale, I’d recommend it to everyone.
June 17, 2015
Kindle Unlimited Switches to Pay Per Page
Cue surprised reaction.
I’ve been arguing for a while that Kindle Unlimited is a bad idea for writers. Instead of taking a commission on book sales (don’t bother calling it a “royalty”, because it isn’t), they set up a fund and divvy it up among the authors.
That fund has been getting smaller. And that makes sense, since Amazon has long been in the business of squeezing other people’s margins. For authors who have been paying 30% or 65% commissions, it’s difficult to work out why they would agree to bigger cuts. Amazon’s idea of creating a subscription library that paid a share only if the reader read 10% of the book.
Naturally, authors began to game that system right away. Why dump a 400-page novel into the KU marketplace when you could drop in, say, 50 eight-page novels? If a reader merely opened to page one, that was enough to reach the 10% threshold and trigger payment.
That was clearly not a situation that was going to last (although it lasted much longer than I expected). Now Amazon has switched to a “pay per page” system. Instead of dividing their (arbitrarily-designed) kitty among partially-read books, they’re going to distribute it according to the number of pages people have read.
That improves a terrible program somewhat, but I still wouldn’t put my work in it.
June 16, 2015
Randomness for 6/16
1) One-bedroom home for sale in Minneapolis: $150K. Every picture is weirder than the one before it.
2) Eight of the best D&D modules of all time. Warning: gallery.
3) I have 227 browser tabs open, and my computer runs fine. Here’s my secret.
4) Things to never order at a fast food restaurant.
5) Beautiful hand-carved skateboards from Mumbai.
6) Like movies and reading screenplays? Simon Barrett’s shooting scripts for the films THE GUEST and YOU’RE NEXT are online.
7) The worst fucking shoes on the planet: Cowboy sandal boots.
June 14, 2015
Rest in peace, Bruce Durocher
I learned from Making Light that Bruce Durocher has died.
I didn’t know him well; we mostly spoke over LiveJournal. He was local to me, and he had a love of books that didn’t find a large audience but were good nonetheless. It was on his recommendation that I read Bucket Nut this year. He was also kind about my books.
I knew he was sick and had been for a long time. I’m sorry that he didn’t get more of this world, and that this world won’t get any more from him.
My condolences to everyone who knew and loved him.
June 12, 2015
How to make sure your dice are balanced
This requires a fair amount of salt.
I can’t help but be curious to see how well this works for six-siders.
June 11, 2015
Elder Scrolls fan builds $50K Elder Scrolls basement
And the dude is a comic book artist.
The video makes the basement look cool enough, if you’re into that sort of thing (and I’m not) but I can’t help but wonder how much this dude earns for his comic book art. Also, what’s the cost of living in SLC? Apparently, he can afford a big house with a beautiful back yard.
The ka-CHING noises in the video are annoying: $8K for wooden furniture? That seems pretty cheap for all those pieces. I also wonder how much he saved by having his contractor father do the work with him. Maybe it ought to be a $125K fantasy basement.
