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.

NaNoWriMo or Bust

Posted by tmycann on Nov 3rd, 2019 in indie, writing | 0 comments

Fair warning to friends and family: This year I’m trying to complete book 2 of the Planet Seekers trilogy by the end of November. Since it’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’ve had success following that path in the past, I’m aiming to get my final 50,000 words for this book by hopping on that bandwagon. You can follow me on the NaNoWriMo.org site, if you really want to see how I’m doing.

All of which is to say: I’ll be disappearing from view from an online perspective.

In the meantime, here is a reminder of very useful words from other languages that have no English equivalent.

I won’t say much about the stories I’ve been reading online, but will share links to stories about heroes old and new. And reporting on how rich idiots are set up for success despite themselves. And muckraking about how hard it is to stay current with evidence-based medicine.

While you catch up with what I’ve been reading, I will inspire myself after my day job hours with reminders of all the other authors who wrote after work. And I’ll jump up and down once more to celebrate hubs, whose two songs are continuing to climb the Euro Indie Music charts. He’s up to 112 and 122 this week, and we hadn’t even realized until yesterday that WE CAN SEND PEOPLE TO VOTE, too! If you’re so inclined, go here, select other, and paste in either “Lumen Jingos – Kintsukuroi” or “Lumen Jingos – DragonFly”. You’ll be supporting the other indie artist in our household, and making both of us very happy while I try hard not to be distracted by all the other things going on in the world.

Feed Your Mind

Posted by tmycann on Oct 14th, 2019 in indie, writing | 0 comments

It’s been two months since last I posted. Crazy how time flies. Especially since I was lucky enough to get to visit old family friends in Germany to stand up for their wedding. It had been … decades since I’d last been there. On the one hand, there was so much that was familiar, on the other, the Frankfurt area has seen as much explosion in building and failing infrastructure as what I’ve seen in the DC area, so it felt as at home to me as it ever has.

Upon my return, I switched job location/assignments at work, we had visitors, and I learned about the National Language Service Corps. If there’s anyone else out there who is fluent in other languages aside from English, I would encourage you to consider joining as well. I also discovered a source of 3D interactive globes that show a wide variety of data about humanity and climate information in an easy-to-grasp way… that was helpful background to my writing process.

With all that hubbub, I’m grateful tomorrow is a federal holiday. Maybe I can finally catch up with myself. And maybe even get back to writing. (Interesting article from Fast Company affirmed there really are no shortcuts to performance and productivity. As a reminder to everyone out there who thinks they can just keep powering through.)

I’ve managed the first third of the story so far, and made a couple changes based on an article about mushrooms. I’m not really a fan of them myself, and know people who are allergic enough to them that they can die of anaphylactic shock after exposure… as well as knowing that some mushrooms are poisonous enough to kill. But: if people are living in bunkers, that whole lack of sunlight situation would be a significant issue to overcome, and mushrooms would thrive naturally.

On a completely different front, Gayla has also been pushing to finish writing the final book in the Discord Jones series, so I’ve been busy with editorial tasks, too.

So I’ll close with a series of links that document how being a dog owner can help women succeed at work and remain emotionally balanced; what it is that makes dogs successful (love); the radical empathy of Deanna Troi (I still love ST:TNG); and a very cute animation of the Finnish folk tale about the fox responsible for the northern lights. These echo the conclusion in my most recent post about how important feelings of love and connection are to help provide balance and context to our lives.

This may be why I keep diving back into the romance genre, both as a reader and a writer, and certainly is why I treasure hubs for the heart-centered life we share. The fact that we also share a core value centered on creativity is part of why I’m also super-proud of him for his music having broken into the European Indie Music chart. I wish you that heart-centered connection, too, and will return again next month with another status update.