Viral

Posted by tmycann on Aug 17th, 2020 in indie, writing | 0 comments

Another month has flown by. The days melt into each other with little distinction, and we see far too many viral videos about humans lashing out and beating each other up as they fight the nebulous fear of a virus that is still rampaging across the planet. I’m unbelievably lucky that my job was easy to switch over to working from home–the official authority for which has been extended month by month, and currently rests at the end of October. We’ve been told that unless the numbers change dramatically, we really shouldn’t expect to return full time to the office until sometime in the new year.

It’s amazing that such a large firm has has been able to implement that scale of change so rapidly. I’m seeing more articles that talk about the mental health downsides of this effort. The Guardian described it as the quiet, grinding loneliness. Politico went so far as to predict the death of cities (with their high rents and high stress environments) because so many employers have made this switch, and could therefore allow employees to live where they feel most at home. Meanwhile, the Electronic Freedom Frontier spelled out the dark side of these moves: Companies are so worried that they can’t SEE their workers working, they’re mandating intrusive “bossware“. Bloomberg, on the other hand, speculated that maybe, finally, the pandemic might turn around decades worth of workers’ rights’ and pay erosion. (That last one comes with some fancy, worthwhile charts to help build the case.) The key graf:

Covid helps clarify just how much employers have chipped away at the labor rights and bargaining power that came with the New Deal. Legislation and court rulings have outlawed key organizing and protest tactics, legalized aggressive anti-union efforts, and radically shrunk the range of occupations granted basic labor rights. Companies looking for a short-term jolt to their profit margin have more incentives than ever to hire workers indirectly, keeping payroll and liability off their own books. The pandemic certainly could give employers even more power to set the rules. Or it could give workers a chance to end the heist on a nationwide scale.

Josh Eidelson, “How The American Worker Got Fleeced,” July 2, 2020

As previously reported, for me, being at home all the time has been an unexpected bonanza. I like not having to make excuses about not wanting to leave home or spend time in large groups of people. (I conform significantly to introvert descriptions and apparently have a healthy dose of hermeticism to go with it.)

Until last week, though, all this time at home was not helping me get back in the flow of writing. My Goodreads list of books read so far this year is edging ever closer to 80, and I’ve already overshot my annual goal. It was more comfortable to retreat into other people’s fiction than mine.

My story didn’t help, either, being set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Finally, I figured out the plot twist that gets me out of that rut and into something more akin to revenge p*rn (though likely not quite as bloodthirsty a scenario as would make hubs happy… but we’ll see how it all plays out – LOL).

I also figured out that listening to binaural music helps keep me focused and able to churn out words.

So I signed up for Virtual Author Book-signing Bingo event on August 29. (Join me: I’ll be ON CAMERA for SIX HOURS!) As a consequence, Planet Seekers: Team Alpha is currently on sale, down to $2.99 on Amazon. I’m testing out layering visibility of this sale via the Dog Days Giveaway and BookSends. Any help you can give with spreading the word would be welcome.

I’d hoped all that effort would spur me on to finish writing book 2 in time to catch some follow-up enthusiasm from new readers of book 1… but work got busy. So… we’ll see how it goes.

Meantime, relevant to my research for the book, an interesting article about the heart of consciousness being frequency/vibration. And some interesting gaps in the understanding we’ve accepted about humanity via the Human Genome Project. Each has its place in my story line and should make for a different kind of cross-over story between scifi and fantasy–and naturally, also, romance, because I need to make sure that even if only in fiction, there is somewhere a mental model for what a happy ending might look like in disastrous circumstances.

Here’s hoping the next month helps us all find some light at the end of the tunnel, so we can focus more intentionally on our hopes and dreams rather than the catastrophizing that is being forced on us.

Introverted, Isolated, or Quarantined?

Posted by tmycann on Mar 29th, 2020 in indie, writing | 0 comments

It’s been about a month since my last post, and in that time life in America has come to the kind of grinding halt very few could have anticipated. I’m one of the lucky few who has a job that I can do entirely from home–though I do worry for my younger colleagues who have no roommates or pets, and the impact of so much isolation on their mental health. I’ve taken the unusual step to ask to connect privately via hangouts for non-job-related purposes, though, to be honest, I might just be looking for another excuse to share pictures of my beloved furry angels.

From their perspective, a pandemic might actually be heaven on earth: Nobody is abandoning the pack to go hunt dollars or find nourishment or run those mysterious human-centric errands that seem to crop up with distressing frequency. In fact, it is remarkable to note just how much can be accomplished with an Internet connection and the means to communicate using its channels. One could almost feel we’re the best prepared to ride out quarantine orders that we’ve ever been. Reading an article late last month about how people are using their home spaces to “cocoon” as opposed to hosting get-togethers was in some ways oddly predictive for how we’re being told to take refuge at home. In the same week, I read reporting about a business development idea in Tulsa driven by the concept that more people can work from home these days, and cities should lure those remote workers to locations where work-life balance can be more easily pursued.

I do notice, though, that work-life balance can be more difficult when you’ve been sequestered. I’ve seen exhaustive articles and training on how to make sure you don’t get sucked into being available for longer than is healthy. And then there’s that quiet, evergreen, background knowledge that career advice for women is gaslighting.

Which brings me back around to my writing. You would think that having an extra hour a day from not needing to commute would mean I’d be deep in the writing flow. Especially given all the recent speculation on topics that typically prime my creative pump: How religions would respond to proof of alien life; why we should NOT colonize space; why we SHOULD colonize Titan. Or even a discussion of consciousness as a field that is as pervasive as space-time.

Instead I’ve been reading other people’s fiction (six books last weekend might be a record even for me). Or worrying about the dear friend who was diagnosed with stage 3-4 pancreatic cancer almost two weeks ago. The weight of worry that pervades everything these days makes it hard to find the energy to do much more than maintain some minimal baseline status quo. We’ll see where I end up next month. In the meantime, the news that brightened my day was that hubs’ song Kintsukuroi is still in the top 40 of the European Indie Music charts. Maybe his creativity will rub off on me at some point soon. Until then, stay safe and think deeply.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi Virtual Book Fair

Posted by tmycann on Feb 23rd, 2020 in indie, writing | 1 comment

Quick update to let you know I’m participating in C.L. Cannon’s virtual Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book Fair for the next month. My books The Builders and Planet Seekers: Team Alpha are both half off in honor of this event.

For the moment, this is about as creative as I’m able to be, as my day job has taken up longer hours in the past month or two as we gear up to travel as a team to participate in a workshop. Naturally, that means articles about traveling (and how much flying messes with your body) and how unnatural it is for us to have a day job have been catching my eye. To wit, an interview with Jeffrey Pfeffer who argues that the way we work is killing us. Another on the bizarre nature of corporate-speak, more clearly described as garbage language. And a third that outlines the extra stress of being a night-owl forced to work a 9 to 5 schedule.

In some ways, reading about these studies makes me feel every one of my years. Which made running across an article titled “An Ode to Being Old” refreshing. As well as reporting on how marriages improve with longevity. As we celebrated our 22nd anniversary earlier this month, I can attest to the silliness factor.

🙂

All of these articles have bearing on my current protagonists, and I’m glad I followed my heart in making them both older than 50.

In other news, Gayla and I were given the gift of a writer’s retreat… on a cruise in September. We’re both looking forward to getting to see each other again, so it was interesting to run across an article on the importance of just spending time with friends. And another one on the nuances of “nice”.

So life is happening, even if that means I haven’t had the energy to invest in writing more fiction in recent weeks. But thoughts continue to percolate, so I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, enjoy the savings on two of my newest titles.

Super

Posted by tmycann on Feb 2nd, 2020 in indie, writing | 0 comments

Today marks the end of the 2019 American football season, and I’m holed up in my office, mostly avoiding the commotion. Seems about par for the course. Except that this year started with much more social activity than is the norm for us–including an extended visit from a friend we hadn’t seen in fifteen years.

The upshot of all this is that I’ve only written 500 words on Team TaoRuti since the new year.

As the meme indicates, experience with writing means considering all the angles while you’re in the middle of the slog. And thinking about the implications of choices even while you’re making them.

It’s not that different from life, actually.

But when you control the narrative, the echoes of those choices have weight and bearing in ways that aren’t so obvious as a newbie. With experience, they can become almost paralyzing. And then you read about the behavioral flaws common to humans, and you realize … that’s actually also a common human experience. So is mental fatigue. That last article made me wonder: is there such a thing as conditioning yourself to “be productive” on the regular? Then there’s the research that shows the level of impact of “luck” on “success”, too, and it becomes a wonder that anyone can sustain effort.

On the science research side of my reading, I discovered Christopher Medina-Kirchner, and his journey in learning about MDMA. His persistence in the face of ridiculous odds are on the one hand a heartbreaking case study about pseudo-science and class oppression, and on the other how scientific research takes guts and doggedness to break through stereotypes and preconceptions.

Two other thought-provoking articles have been tickling my brain recently, too. One on a team that appears to have proven the quantum entanglement of time. (For all you Outlander fans…) And then there was a vaguely disturbing summary of technical advances that have led to some cyborg-like implants to broaden the scope of human senses.

I hope all this percolates in a way that allows me to power forward with my own words. Certainly, I’ve enjoyed beta-ing for some of my writer friends, figuring out how to go back to weave in those bits of foreshadowing that underline the protagonists’ arcs. And being on that side of the experience reminds me it’s a good thing to return to Zen Mind, Beginner Mind state. I can always go back to edit… once I have words on the page.

So it’s back to the word mines I go.

On Teeth and Failures

Posted by tmycann on Dec 23rd, 2019 in indie, writing | 0 comments

It’s been a minute… I’m always amused that when I make plans, life throws obstacles at me. In this latest case, my dentist decided my jaw had healed sufficiently that it was time to come back in for the next step in my oral surgery series at the end of November. And we had an unexpected house guest early in the month. And of course all the cooking that comes with Thanksgiving–even though I only contribute appetizers these days. (And my nieces’ and nephew’s appetites have hit that uncertain point in adolescence where they eat … strategically? I came home with a LOT more deviled eggs and hot artichoke dip than I would have ever guessed, given how popular those offerings have been in the past.)

So. No NaNo win for me this year. And, honestly, I’m starting to think I’m an experienced (dare I say, trained?) enough author at this point, that I’m not sure I will again. These days, I spend much more time considering where I’m going than just running with the next random plot twist to pop into my head. I’m still only at the halfway point of this novel, and have yet another new deadline.

As part of my process change, I now read out loud to hubs for his feedback. Reading out loud is also effective at pointing out where language is repetitive, weak, or stilted. It’s just slow. And coordinating our schedules to make it happen is also an interesting exercise. But so far, it really does seem like my writing continues to improve book over book. (If I’m allowed to say that myself. 😀 ) Hubs is also massively helpful when I’ve backed myself into plot corners. That last was my real downfall in November: I couldn’t figure out what would make an effective bridge between the plot point I’d just completed and the next plot point… in two chapters. I spent a week just considering possibilities.

Along the way, I read about things like the dangers astronauts face from space radiation; research on a global fertility crash; and all the ways humans have tricked themselves into believing in time. Then there was the excerpt from a new book that talked about the storied history of women’s work in the kitchen. Given the experiences I’ve had with my Instant Pot, there was a lot of resonance in the thesis that our labor was always assumed, and never offset by understanding the impact of those hours we’re obligated to work outside the house.

Which ties logically to a summary of ten well-known authors who had interesting day jobs. Counterbalancing that was an author who documented all the ways the American Dream is killing us. Particularly relevant in my experience: the profoundly ingrained “sense” that if you work hard you will be rewarded, as well as its toxic corollary that if you’re facing hard times you must be lazy and are therefore available to exploit. Taking that argument a step deeper, that “billionaire-ism” could be a religion, I ran across this quote:

If you find yourself in possession of one billion dollars, and keep it, then you are willfully refusing to stand in solidarity with the whole of the rest of the human species.

Tom Whyman, November 5, 2019, “The Outline”

These thoughts all play through my mind at night as I weave plot points and worry about my day job responsibilities. So I lie awake with relative frequency. (Shout out to @farmgeek who tweeted my WHOLE mood today: “Spare a thought for all the struggling writers of dystopian sci-fi having to compete with this current reality.”) So articles that reinforce my sense of being a congenital night-owl, or that talk about the romance of sleep are particularly apt to catch my eye. Or an article on the nature of consciousness that concludes after a thoughtfully logical argument that:

Consciousness may be fundamental in nature—an inherent aspect of every mental process, not a property constituted or somehow generated by particular physical arrangements of the brain.

Bernardo Kastrup, September 19, 2017, “Scientific American”

These things all weave into my storytelling in ways obvious and subtle, and underline my feeling that each of us is in some way an individual stew, brought to boil at different temperatures and pressures and flavored to range from spicy to bland… to disastrously burned and congealed. I’m glad there are enough Dodo videos in the world to remind me of the good people out there, but I’ll warn you now, the assholes in my stories will be dealt with appropriately to their crimes. If I can just finish writing the book.