Busy Day Today?

I just thought it was kind of funny that as of 2:30 PM EDT, I hadn't had a single visitor to the blog today according to Google Analytics. Interestingly, Woopra shows that I had a single visitor, who stumbled in here looking for info on Reese's T-Shirts.

Both of these figures are way below my average typical traffic of around 15 visitors. I guess it must be a busy day for folks today.

[Game Review] Torchlight

Regular readers may recall when I took advantage of a big holiday sale on Steam to buy a slew of games. I've already finished and reviewed Assassin's Creed. That's a link to the review there. I've also finished Judge Dredd, but I never got around to reviewing it. The short version is that it was totally worth the $1.59 I paid for it.

I actually only paid $4.99 for Torchlight, which was really a remarkable price for a game that was only a few months old and of such high quality. Torchlight feels like the original Diablo, done with modern graphics and a few nifty tricks. Like Diablo, the game randomizes its maps, so that it's never really the same game twice. Also like Diablo you get to choose from a selection of classes, in this case a melee-focused barbarian, a magic-focused alchemist, or an archer. Each of them also gets to choose a pet - either a dog or a cat.

The game, made in part by some ex-Blizzard employees who worked on Diablo, keeps many of Diablo's basic features. It has pools of health and mana that are used up when you take damage or cast magical spells. It has a variety of weapons, it has an array of spells, and each character has statistics controlling things like how hard they hit, how well they use magic, and how well they resist certain types of spells. Each character has a tree of special abilities that they can learn and improve as they go up in levels. These abilities use mana just like spells. There's a town with merchants to buy and sell your stuff as well as characters who give you quests to kill certain monsters or find certain items. And, lastly, there's a dungeon into which you descend, level-by-level, gaining power, gold, better spells, and superior weaponry.

You get to determine how to beef up your character as you go up levels, which means that really any character can be as good or bad at whatever you want - you can have a barbarian who casts spells really well, or an alchemist who uses a bow. I didn't really try this, but by the end my barbarian was a pretty fair spellcaster.

The game was long, which I consider to be a good thing. There's nothing worse than a game that's over before you're ready to quit playing it. More, Torchlight lets you keep playing indefinitely once the main questline is complete and the "final boss" has been defeated. The main problem I had was that there didn't really seem to be any point in doing so. There was almost no chance of getting a complete set of any of the really useful magic items, yet they weren't really necessary anyway. I played the game both without any really great magic items and also, often, without even bothering to assign all of my skill points. I very rarely died and the penalty for dying wasn't that severe anyway - generally just a loss of some gold.

It was a fun game, but it wasn't a great game. I can't put my finger on the difference, but there was something missing from it when it get the inevitable comparisons to the blockbuster hits Diablo or Diablo 2. It had some interesting differences. The pet was nice, both because he could hold stuff and because you could send him off to town to sell crap you didn't want. Also, there were fishing holes where you could play a little fishing mini-game, and the fish you caught could be fed to your pet to change him into various monsters, some of which could be quite powerful.

So, again, I don't exactly know why Torchlight wasn't as good as Diablo or Diablo 2. It just wasn't. But it wasn't bad by any means, and if you can get it for a few bucks, it'll keep you entertained for quite a while. The graphics, music, gameplay and voice acting were all fine. The spells, skills and items made sense and worked appropriately. The game wasn't terribly challenging for the most part, but I also played carefully and made sure to take every advantage I found, which probably made my character's power above-average for the levels he was on. Torchlight is a fun, discount, single-player only game reminiscent of (but not quite as good as) the Diablo series. I recommend it and rate it a B+.

Nope, no iPad for me

I'm not getting an iPad. But Mike, you say, you're so hip and you love technology. Why wouldn't you want an iPad?

Note that I didn't say I don't want one, just that I'm not getting one. Because, honestly, as much fun as it might be to have one, there's no gap in my life that's begging for an iPad to fill it. Would I play games on it? Not in preference to my DELL XPS system with its 24" monitor, no. Would I write on it? Not in preference to my office computer, also with a 24" monitor (and the continuous multitasking I do between Word, OneNote and the Web). Would I watch TV and movies on it? Not in preference to my 55" TV with its 400-DVD changer and its TiVo, no. Would I surf the web on it? Sure, but 98% of the time, I'm already sitting in front of a real computer, so having a handheld, even a very nice one, is kind of redundant.

And, let's face it, if I were to get one, it would be the 64 gig variety with 3G access, which would set me back $830, plus another $15-30 a month for the data plan. That's a buttload of money to spend on something I don't need.

But, you might argue, I could recoup some of that cost by buying ebooks instead of hardcovers, saving an average of $15 on each. Nope, not so. For starters, I don't buy a hardcover a month, so that approach wouldn't even pay for my data plan. More, if we assume that buying the ebooks I want to read is really easy to do from an iPad, it would almost surely tempt me to buy more than I otherwise would, which would drive up the Total Cost of Ownership on this thing beyond just the initial investment and ongoing data fees. Besides, the ebook business is still very much being worked out. I'm in no hurry to leap into that fracas of competing formats right away. And, lastly, there's the fact that I like my bound paper novels. I have a soft spot for books and the library is probably my favorite room in the house. I keep virtually every book I buy and I enjoy seeing them there on my shelves. I'm not embracing the notion of switching over to a virtual library where the books are just bits and bytes on my eReader.

I did get to play with an iPad recently. My fellow Writer's Roundtable member Linda has one and was proudly showing it off at our meeting Monday night. It's a nifty little thing. The gestures you use to scroll through lists of apps or through websites felt very natural. Turning the page in a book really looked like you were leafing through an actual novel. It's a great little piece of technology. But, much like when I've played with iPhones and even fancy iPods, it didn't really scream at me "YOU MUST OWN THIS."

I confess, part of it is the endless braying of Apple fanatics over the last 30 years. I've learned to mostly tune it out, but egads it's irritating. I mean, I know it's tough being the underdog (the way, way under underdog), but making up for it with volume and fanatical proselytizing doesn't impress me, it just gets on my nerves. So I've got a bias against Apple products that goes beyond the insanely counter-intuitive GUI of the Mac OSs, touted for so many years as "oh, so intuitive." Well, it ain't. I've had to teach that OS, and it's every bit as mystifying to a newcomer as the windows interface is.  The fact that it's more expensive, entirely proprietary, and comes with a legion of fanboys (and fangirls) just makes it that much worse.

But while I'm interested to see Microsoft's Courier product, I don't know that it will be innately superior just because it's a Microsoft product. It wouldn't need to be, though, to edge into my comfort zone just by having apps based around Microsoft Office, with which I'm already innately familiar. But let's be honest - I don't need a Courier either. It's not just a Microsoft vs. Apple thing. I'm honest enough to admit that Apple makes some evolutionary products, even if they're not products I really need and even if their superiority over the alternatives is sometimes dubious. It's just that Microsoft's product no more fits a niche for me than the iPad does. I just don't need it, and getting one would be a needless extravagance. And you know me, I'm all about needful extravagance.

Aaaaah-chooo!

Went to the allergist yesterday.

It's odd. I grew up with a cat. I mean, I literally had the same cat from the age of four until I was in my mid-20s. I used to pet that cat, brush him, play with him, sometimes use him for a pillow. He was a very laid-back cat, even for a cat. And in all that time, never so much as a sniffle or a sneeze.

Cut to shortly after my cat passed away and suddenly I have pet allergies. Severe pet allergies. "Holy cow, I think my eyes are melting because they itch like crazy and there are tears streaming down my face" pet allergies. "My sneezes are registering on the Richter scale" pet allergies. And let us not forget pollens, grasses, dust and so on. I've been suffering with increasingly severe allergies for more than fifteen years. They're not debilitating or dangerous like a food allergy could be, but they really mess me up when I'm exposed to an allergen.

So what did I learn at the allergist? Not much new, really. It was more a confirmation. That I'm allergic to damn near everything. The worst offenders are dust, dog & cat dander, grasses, birch trees and mites. Those were all rated 4+ on a scale of 1-4. For the numerically impaired, that translates as "off the charts."

About the only things on the list that I wasn't allergic to were molds. Yippee - now I can keep using my shower without fear of an anaphylactic reaction. It also turns out I'm not allergic to my daughter's gerbils or the family's guinea pigs. Hooray. I may go stuff a gerbil up my nose to celebrate.

So, anyway, the next course of action is to start a 5-year regimen of weekly/bi-weekly and eventually monthly allergy shots because this level of sensitivity can easily lead to sinus and respiratory complications as I get older. The nice side-benefit will be that if my family wants a real pet (like a dog or a cat, rather than just fish and rodents), we'll be able to get one without turning me into a big gob of runny, sneezing, itching mucous.

So to sum up:

Allergic to everything
Yay
Looking forward to 5 years of getting jabbed in both arms

[Garden] Putting the Man back in Manual Labor

This weekend was the start of our garden for the 2010 season. That meant hauling out the hoe and breaking up the soil for planting. Then my wife came along behind me and planted some of the seeds for our veggies that are able to go in before the last hard frost. That includes stuff like peas, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, and peppers. It was a hard weekend.

When you’re hacking at the dirt with a spade on a stick, you spend a lot of time wondering if there mustn’t be a better way to do all of this. Of course, there is. A roto-tiller would be ideal. It would churn up the dirt and break up the clumps, almost surely better than I could do it by hand. I considered this, to be sure. It’s how my father always used to do it. I could remember him using a roto-tiller every year to do my grandfather’s garden and, in the years when Dad had one, his own.

So why didn’t I? Well, this garden is rather ill-advised to be honest. We don’t eat all that many vegetables and when we do, it’s mostly corn. So why put all this effort into a garden (where, it must be noted, I'm not actually growing corn)? I’ll be damned if I know. Isn’t that odd? I mean, we will sort of eat a lot of what we grow and my parents will eat some, too, so it’s not as if it’s going to waste, it’s just that it’s not really needed and it’s hard to argue that it’s really saving us much money on produce from the store.

So, since it’s not really saving us any money, I hate to spend any MORE money on it than is minimally necessary. I spent quite a bit last year, between fencing, dirt, mulch for the path, seeds, and other stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting. I never totaled it up, but $200-300 is probably in the ballpark (though it wouldn’t surprise me if I got all the receipts together to discover that it was really $400 or more). But that was last year. That money’s spent, regardless of what I do this year. There’s no fancy bookkeeping going on where it would make sense to pretend that I could spread those costs out over multiple years because I can’t. I paid for the stuff last year and the money’s gone.

So now I have this patch of earth with a decent fence around it and a lightly-mulched path (in truth, I need more mulch). Whether I use it or not, it’s there. It’s paid for. Whether I spend $300 more on it this year or nothing at all is up to me, but we’re starting over at $0 spent in 2010 and going from there. So far, I’ve spent about $10 on seeds, some of which it turns out I probably didn’t need. I didn’t realize we’d had so many left over from last year.

So we took a huge loss on the garden last year, no doubt about it. We grew peas and beets, lettuce and spinach, carrots and green onions, and all told probably saved around $30 in terms of actual produce that we would have bought but didn’t have to buy because we got it from the garden instead. Maybe not even that much – we just don’t buy that much produce except for things like grapes, strawberries and bananas that I don’t grow in my garden. So this garden isn’t likely to ever save us real money. Instead, I look at it as improving our nutrition.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with better nutrition. I’d just like to see if I can keep costs under control this year. Since I’m starting with a ready garden, I don’t need any of the stuff I bought last year. I’ve got my seeds (some of which are redundant), and I’ve even got a leftover bag of mulch that I can use to spruce up my paths. I decided that I didn’t need to add in the cost of a roto-tiller if I could possibly do the work myself. So far, I’m about half done with the work. My back aches and my left thumb has a huge raw spot where all the skin was rubbed away.

I’ve lamented in the past that if my family and I were dependent on growing our own food, we’d surely starve. One thing about tilling up the soil myself, I get to know it rather well. I can see where there’s clay beneath the few inches of topsoil I’ve added. I can see where the soil furthest from the house is lined with roots, though I’m not sure from where. Some I suspect are from a nearby willow. I’m at a loss as to where the rest of them are coming from. I can see that the soil does loosen up pretty well when I break it apart, and I can see that there are virtually no rocks in it. I assume that’s good.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s peaceful or relaxing to be out in my garden huffing and sweating and swearing and viciously attacking the earth with my polearm. I wish it were, but it’s not. It’s just hot, tiring, and tedious. It certainly takes a lot longer than it seems like it should. I’m careful to pull out as many of the leftover weeds as I can, since I know they’ll gladly re-root themselves and get back to growing if I leave them there.

Yet, for all of that, I can’t say that I have a real need for a garden or a really good justification for the cost and effort of having one. It’s just one of those things that it seems like I ought to have, so I do. There are certainly worse things I could have talked myself into, so there’s that. And it’s very nice to go out and grab a bowlful of peas and just munch away at them right off the vine. The taste of garden-fresh produce can’t be beat, and gives the lie to anytime you see those words used on a can or package at the store. Garden-fresh and stores are mutually exclusive. So are fat guys and gardens, usually, but I seem to be the exception there. Though I must admit that after a few hours sweating in my garden, there’s nothing fresh about me.

Have a Good Friday!

Aren't they all good, though?

I plan to spend at least half the day continuing to re-write Chapter 6 for the umpteenth time. I now have the original Chapter 6 (which is pure backstory info-dump), Chapter 6b (wherein I pull a character forward from Chapter 13 and elaborate on THEIR backstory while also trying to cram in some useful info-dump, so far with dubious results) and Chapter 6c (wherein I go back in time to the timeframe of the backstory, expand on one character previously mentioned only as a historical reference, and add a new (rather cool if somewhat pathetic) character.)

So far, 6c offers the most hope of incorporating most or all of the key info-dump data into a more character-driven chapter, but the result will be looooong. It's up to 7 or 8 single-spaced pages already and I've still got at least half of the original 6-page info-dump left to go.

So the bad news is that I have yet to complete a replacement chapter for chapter 6 (which I'm still not entirely convinced needed to be totally re-written. The more I've studied and dissected it, the happier I am with it in its more-or-less original form). Further bad news is that I've created TWO chapters in its place, neither of which do I exactly know where they'd fit in the book and at least one of which (if not both) may actually end up as TWO chapters for a total of FOUR chapters that I don't know what to do with but which nominally would replace ONE chapter that actually may not have needed quite this much attention.

Sigh.

Anyway, that's it for me - I'll be back after Easter. To commemorate the holiday, here, have a picture of Zombie Jesus! It's Blaspha-tacular!

Another Great Article – Knock on Wood

Superstition

No, it’s not about the Stevie Wonder song. I was thinking about superstition the other day. Not so much in the broadest sense of all things paranormal, but rather in the more specific sense where people use words, gestures and symbols to try to influence “luck” or “good” or “evil.” These are almost universally pagan in origin, but they’re still in extremely common usage in a society that is almost entirely either monotheistic or agnostic/atheist. People who believe in “One True God” still commonly feel a need to “knock on wood” to ward off bad luck. People refrain from speculating about potential good fortune out of fear that they’ll “jinx” it. They feel a need to say something when somebody else sneezes. Even if it’s just something as benign as “gesundheit” or as seemingly pseudo-religious as “God bless you,” you have to wonder – why? Why do you need to say anything at all? It’s just an autonomic reaction to irritation in the nose’s hairs or mucus membranes. Does that really need an acknowledgment, much less a benediction?

What it comes down to is control. All of these old superstitions derive from man’s uninformed attempts to understand and exert control over the world around us. We all want things to go our way. We’d all prefer it if misfortune passed us by as much as possible. Life’s hard for most people, but some seem to live a “charmed” life – things just seem to work out in their favor. Mathematically, it’s just a matter of random probability, but it sure seems more likely that they must be doing something to influence their outrageous luck. And if we can figure out what that something is, we can imitate it and thus live the life of Riley ourselves.

At least, that’s the pagan, pre-science way of thinking. So they came up with gestures to ward off evil and sayings to hold onto good luck or persuade bad luck to go bother somebody else. The question then would be – why do we still do it? If we believe in the Christian, Jewish or Muslim God, we believe that all good AND bad comes from Him. He’s the maker of heaven and Earth and whatever isn’t the result of our own free will is part of God’s plan for us. Catholicism specifically condemns superstition as a “lack of trust in the divine providence of God,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Atheists or agnostics believe the opposite – that there’s no plan or there’s no influence or that, at best, there’s no way we can understand it if there is. Either way, the notion that “luck” or even “God’s will” can be influenced by saying “Bless you!” after somebody sneezes is laughable. Knocking on wood? Pointless! Tossing salt over your shoulder? Wasteful! So, again, WHY? Why do we still do it?

Well, it’s still about control. We STILL want to believe we can influence unseen forces to bring us good luck or steer away misfortune. We know better, but then we’re also keenly aware of how much we don’t really understand. There’s a whole universe out there of sub-atomic particles and energies and even spiritualism that we don’t really understand well at all yet. And since we don’t, well then, maybe there actually is some way to get a little more control over the winds of fate. Until something better comes along, of course, we might as well stick with the tried-and-true beliefs of our great-great-great-great ancestors. And if you think that’ll really help, well, good luck with that.

Indoctrinating the Kids

I'm a good geek. A nerd among nerds. There's no point in denying it, so I might as well embrace it. My kids will have to fight their nature if they want to be cool - I can't help them. In fact, I'm not even trying.

What I am doing is indoctrinating them to nerd culture. We started reading a new bedtime novel this week - the iconic Dragonlance Saga, Volume 1: Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I LOVED this series as a young teen. They first came out when I was 14 years old and I bought each new novel on release day. (As an aside, some cretin borrowed my original first-edition paperbacks in High School and never returned them. If I knew who it was, I would name them but I don't. This is a big part of the reason that I abhor lending out my books to this day. I've been scarred for life.)

I suppose you can't call them fine literature. Fair enough. But it's an action-packed story in a full, rich world with entertaining characters who are such blatant stereotypes that it must be deliberate. But whatever. What's important is that my kids are EATING IT UP. For some reason, my daughter hates it when I suggest things she might enjoy. I have no idea why, but if I tell her "You might like this" she instantly dismisses it. In a few instances, I've dragged her along to something she swore she wasn't interested in because I was positive she'd like it and I have yet to be wrong. This was one of those times. She had no interest in this book when I first suggested it. I think my wife had expressed some reservations about it that my daughter picked up on (I honestly can't remember what the reservations were. They were mild and, from what I remember, utterly unfounded) and that biased her against it. Well, we're now 6 chapters in and at the end of each she's begged me to read another. I know my little girl, dammit! My older son is enjoying it as well and my younger son tolerates it as he does most books that aren't targeted right to his age. Sorry, kid!

I'm enjoying it, too. It's been decades since I last read these novels and I've forgotten so much about them. I'm enjoying meeting the characters once again - as cookie-cutter as they are, they're still old friends of mine who I'm glad to see once again. Plus, I get to do LOTS of different voices. The group of main characters is huge, and I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that my kids might have trouble keeping them all straight. My older son mentioned it just yesterday. So to help bring each character to life, I've given them each their own voice. The noble knight, Sturm, gets a booming, overbearing brass voice. Tanis the half-elf ranger gets my regular tenor reading voice. I grumble in the low bass for Flint, the dwarf, and I swing up into a childlike falsetto for the kender, Tas. Raistlin the frail mage speaks in a throaty whisper, while his giant brother Caramon I like best of all. I do Caramon in the voice of Lenny from Of Mice and Men - medium-deep and oafish.

I have a tough time with the gravelly, groveling goblins sometimes - it irritates my throat and makes me cough. It's probably just as well that I'm not a voice-actor by profession. But I'm enjoying my chance to not just spend time with these characters again, but to actually bring them to life.

There's three books in the first series, followed by three more in the "Dragonlance Legends" series that we may read as well. After that, there's about a bazillion more books set in the same world, many of which I own and most of which I remember as being not very good. So we may not spend much time with those. BUT, I'm pretty sure I've got the original Dragonlance D&D modules, so when it's time to start playing, perhaps we'll start with those to ease the transition. We'll see, but one thing's for sure - the legacy of nerddom is already encroaching on my kids lives. It's been a lifestyle I've enjoyed and embraced, and it's never been more socially-acceptable to be a nerd than it is today (and I suspect that it will continue to become moreso over time). So there you go, kids - your inheritance is a love of fantasy and sci-fi, computers, gadgets, and comics. Run with it!

[Book Update] March Wrap-Up

Ugh

My wife is traveling on business, so I'm home with the kids. The last time she had to travel was about six week ago, during the week-long Winter Break. This meant that the kids were home with me all day, which should have made it harder, but it turns out to be the opposite. You see, this week I'm still trying (and expecting) to get work done, but I'm also having to help with homework, make lunches in the morning, wrangle school papers, and cram dinner in before it's time to get the kids into bed. To further complicate matters, this is "Turn off the TV Week." And I have to give my kids a ton of credit on this (at least so far). During any other week, you'd swear that they're multimedia addicts - they're perpetually watching TV or playing Wii or playing games on the computer. They hardly ever go outside to play, and virtually never just sit and read or play. Yet this week, I made it clear that all such devices were to be turned OFF, and they've adapted almost without complaint. They're playing, reading, spending tons of time outside - everything kids ought to be doing in their free time. Still, they do need a little more of my attention than they otherwise would. It's all a bit dizzying.

Last night, I took it a step further. I attempted to make a good, healthy dinner. My sons will eat chicken as long as it's nuggeted. But try to hand them a real drumstick and they'll flee in terror. Well, last night I decided we were having a mandatory chicken dinner. I also made home fries and frozen corn. Everybody had to eat. It wasn't required that they clean their plates, but they had to put in a real effort at it. It basically worked, but creating the meal (it was oven-fried chicken, so I had to dredge it in crushed, spiced corn flakes and then bake it), enforcing the mandate and then cleaning up took over three hours. We read some books and got everybody stuffed into bed, but now this morning it feels like no time at all since I was loading up the dishwasher. Tonight the dinner will be simpler. It has to be - we've got Karate. Ugh!

Still, I did get some work done yesterday. I got tons of feedback about my "infodump" chapter - chapter 6 - when I took it to my writer's group. The result is a total re-write, pulling a character previously not introduced until chapter 13 all the way up to chapter 6, and then using his knowledge and experiences to drive the infodump. I may still need to "dump" some of the info into other chapters, plus I'll need to do something about the page or two that I ripped from chapter 13, but overall I think I like the way this is going. That's major change #1.

Major change #2 is that I've decided to create a new chapter 1. It will go ahead of all existing chapters, which will need to be renumbered. A process which, incidentally, is a royal pain in the nuts. I decided that it was less cumbersome to keep my chapters split into separate Word documents and generally speaking I stand by that decision. It makes it easy to track version control on a chapter-by-chapter basis because I simply save a new copy of any chapter that I edit and I put the current date in the filename. It's really easy to see what chapters are new, and how long it's been since the last time a particular chapter was updated. BUT, it means that a major renumbering will involve editing the filename and footer of more than a dozen separate files.

So why bother, you might wonder? Well, a couple of reasons. One I can attribute to one particular reader who seems to be fixated on S.M. Stirling's works. This reader mentioned that series to me on the very first night we met, almost a year ago, and I mentioned at the time that I'd read it. Clearly it's much on his mind. Yet every time he critiques my book, he mentions how "this is just like Stirling's "Dies the Fire" series.

Well, folks, it ain't. We both take a "what if" approach wherein we ask "What would happen if X occurred." And then we both answer that question by saying "I believe that modern civilization would collapse, resulting in many small, fortified agricultural communities subsisting at a pre-industrial-era level." But while our answer is similar, the "what if" question we're answering is as different as can be, and the worlds that result from our approach to that question are, likewise, so different that they bear virtually no resemblance.

Still, he brings it up every time. And while I'm confident that the similarities are superficial at best, I have to wonder - will I run into agents and editors out there with the same tunnel-vision on this topic? It might be beneficial to write on a submission form that my novel might appeal to people who like Stirling's work, but it's not going to be beneficial at all if I keep running into people who decide in the first chapter that "This is a rip-off of Stirling" or McCarthy's post-apocalyptic "The Road" or the Mel Gibson classic "Road Warrior."

So I said to myself, "I can fix this. Easily, in fact." I just have to be a bit less circumspect. I had planned to unveil some of the really unique aspects of my world in dribs and drabs over time. Start off slow with things that are familiar to the reader - things he or she can grasp easily and relate to. Then WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! start lashing out with revelations that show just how crazy things are in this world. I'm still going to do that, but I'm going to pull one WHAM! forward into chapter 1. It's not even a huge WHAM! in the grand scheme of things, but it's going to establish right up front that this isn't just a post-apocalyptic nightmare type of book. It's a post-apocalyptic FANTASY nightmare type of book, and that's a totally different ball of wax. Some of the more fantastical elements already appeared as early as chapter 3 in the current version of my manuscript (which is part of my incredulity when my reader keeps telling me "This is just like Stirling!" and I keep saying "There are no bloody monsters in Stirling's world. At all! And I show some big ones in chapter frigging 3!"

Anyway, if it were just a matter of wanting to put a stop to "Dies the Fire" comparisons (unfavorable ones, anyway. I'd be very flattered if people were just saying "this is in the same league as Stirling's work"), I probably wouldn't be making the change I'm making. But there's one even more vital consideration that worries me a bit. Action. Currently, chapters 1 and 2 have minimal action. Chapters 3-5 are pretty action-heavy. Then chapters 6-12 have almost no action at all. One option would actually be to slide this new chapter in as, say, Chapter 8 or 9. It's very much a standalone chapter and it could work there, too. I may even go that route, but right now my plan is to put this into chapter 1 and really kick the book into action mode right at the start. I think the lull between major action-oriented events will be a lot more tolerable if I pile on a bit more in the beginning, and it turns out that I think this chapter makes the start of the book much stronger anyway.

Today I got probably 1/3 of the chapter 6 re-write done. It's tough because I'm interweaving new stuff with stuff from at least two other chapters. Once chapter 6 is done, I believe I'll go ahead and write the new chapter 1. Lastly, I've given a lot of thought to my first real "battle chapters," which are 14 and 15, and I've come up with some changes that will make them much better. One may be a complete point of view shift, but regardless they need major re-writes. So that will come next. Grand total - three chapters torn down and rebuilt. New material - one chapter. This is a ton of work which will actually result in only a single additional chapter beyond what I had at the end of last week. That's a tad discouraging, since I really really need this book's draft manuscript done before the kids finish the school year and right now that ain't even close to happening. But it is what it is - no sense in writing the book if I'm not going to do it right, so my job right now is to get these chapters right. Then I can move on to chapter 16 (which, by then, will actually be chapter 17) and finish off the first big battle.

Ugh.

The Quote Book

I couldn’t find a really suitable quote about quotes

We keep a Quote Book. It lives in the drawer in the kitchen. It’s small and thin and the cloth glued to the cover clashes flamboyantly with the flowered shelf-paper. Over the spine is draped a thread strung over with pastel and iridescent beads. It makes a handle, as if this treasure were to ever be carried more than a room from its home. Inside, the lined white pages are written over with scrawls that set down the wisdom and folly of youth.

Inside, past the heavy paper page that’s actually part of the binding, is stated:

This journal belongs to
The De Lucia Family

Started on
August, 2006

For nearly four years, we’ve written down the funniest, cleverest, most telling statements, assertions, complaints and conversations that have erupted from our children’s mouths.

It holds gems such as:

(arriving at Chuck E. Cheese’s)
Kid 1: Is Chuck E. Cheese a mouse?
Kid 2: No, I think he’s a rat.

(later, standing near a 6-foot Chuck E. Cheese statue)
Kid 2: Well, he’s got 3 toes. Maybe he’s a 3-toed sloth?

Also, there’s:
Kid 3: (aged 2 at the time. He’s pointing to keys on the computer keyboard). A, L, F, G, K, crocodile…

Lastly, there’s
(daddy belches loudly)
Mommy: You’re disgusting.
Kid 2: Mommy, I think the word you’re looking for is “funny”!

The book is more than three-quarters full, now. But in it are all of those adorable sayings that, at the time, you’re certain you’ll remember forever. Then a few days later, you and your spouse are trying to recall what was said and all that remains is a vague notion that it was “so cute!”

My wife is collecting favorite family recipes into a scrap-booked cookbook. Those will be nice when they’re done and certainly practical for the kids to take off to college and their lives beyond our home. And we have literally volumes of photographs - a veritable encyclopedia (for those who remember the days when encyclopedia meant a pallet-load of books that were obsolete before they were even printed). But in terms of cherished memories, few pictures, few mementos can come close to the joy we get revisiting these words. We hear them in the voices of the past – the high-pitched, toddler’s intensity. The child’s wonderment at the unfolding nature of reality. The youth’s enhanced vocabulary and increasingly clever turns of phrase. Each of these voices is lost to the lengthening, thickening vocal chords of maturity. But I hear them still, in my head, spurred on by the pages of this magical book.

Editing - Outcome

The editing of my short story is complete. Well, complete enough to submit, anyway. It was quite a bit more painful than I'd really anticipated. I've rarely edited my fiction before when I really, really felt I needed to get it as good as it could be. Nearly all of my work to date was either for personal consumption (written just because or perhaps to use in a D&D game) or for a creative writing class (where I wasn't usually concerned that it wouldn't be good enough, even without extensive editing. It just had to meet the teacher's expectations, which I usually found weren't painfully high).

In this case, though, I'd taken the time and effort to write a work of fiction explicitly to submit to a particular publication. Sure, I can shop it around elsewhere if it doesn't get picked up the first time out (and, realistically, I'd be crazy to expect that it would), but that's not why I wrote it. I wrote it in hopes of being published in a particular anthology, so it felt fairly important that I get it right on the first try.

The bulk of the actual work went into adding depth and clarity in a few places that my readers had suggested were shallow or unclear. But the bulk of the angst came from re-reading and re-re-reading my evolving work and wondering whether I was certain that the changes were improvements over the original. I ended up adding a fair amount of additional text to a story that was right at the 5,000 word limit, which meant that I also needed to find around 400 words worth of deletions to make to get it back down to its fighting weight. I wasn't emotionally attached to those 400 words at all, but I was really very worried that I was chopping out detail, elegance, poetic language, or whatever else it was that one might have been inclined to argue was the "soul" of the work (assuming someone were to make such an argument).

So here's where I ended up: The story weighed in at right about 5,000 words, and I'm confident that I found and crushed every typo, missing comma, missing quote, or other amateurish error that might have instantly kicked it to the reject pile without deeper consideration. I also took care of a couple of places where continuity was lacking or the story was otherwise broken in some fundamental (if usually minor) way. I still think that the story is fun to read and it feels well-written to me when I look it over. Whether or not it's one of the 7-10 best-written short stories the editor received, well, we'll have to wait and see on that one. The editing process took a day or so longer than I'd expected, but at least when I clicked the send button to deliver it I felt confident that it represented my best work as I'm currently capable of doing it.

Today I start the morning cooking with the kindergartners, after which I'm very much looking forward to diving back into my novel. It's funny how much I begin to miss it when I have to go for a few days without working on it. Especially now, as chapters 14-16 represent the first big battle and I'm having a ton of fun writing those scenes. That said, I also suspect I may need to re-write huge swaths of those chapters now that I've had time to reflect on them. Good thing I've had all of this practice at editing, lately!

The Generational Impact of the Recession

It seems as if everywhere you look these days, schools are cutting programs, positions and, often, entire buildings. Our local district, Liverpool, voted last week to close one elementary at the end of the year, and there are plans to close a second at the end of next year. Syracuse's city school district is also drawing up plans to consolidate elementaries. I saw on the news yesterday that Ithaca's school district is proposing to make massive cuts to their music program, ending the elementary instrumental program altogether and eliminating music positions at multiple grade levels.

You might argue, of course, that this is a New York State phenomenon. But anecdotally, at least, it isn't. My sister-in-law and her family live in Lynchberg, Virginia, and they're also struggling with the prospective elimination of instrumental education in their schools.

But nobody's going to argue that what I'm seeing locally isn't directly related to NY's overall fiscal health. We're broke, folks. The state coffers are running on empty, to the point where they actually are delaying payment on tax refunds until after the new fiscal year begins on April 1st. And, honestly, I think that may be optimistic. There's no way that a budget will be in place by April 1st, so the temptation to hold onto that money "just a little longer" is going to be overwhelming. But it's a sign of the times hereabouts.

Most school districts get massive cash infusions from the state. This isn't the state government being nice - those are our tax dollars being allocated back to where we live. But in recent years, a combination of factors have resulted in NY being destitute. In some cases, the cause lies with former governor Pataki's administration. They were able to arrange for certain debts to come due after they had left office, so now the new administration needs to deal with them. We do this all the time - we pass the debt onto our children. The difference is that often we don't really see what happened, because the impact is 30 years out instead of 3 years. It's easy to forget that 30 years ago we passed a law or made a change that would have an economic, environmental or political effect three decades later. Why are we having this problem now? Oh, right! Because Carter or Reagan or (governor) Cuomo enacted some legislation and handed us the bill here in the future. Sometimes living in "the future" is pretty cool, other times not so much. Right now is looking like one of those other times, as least where schoolkids are concerned.

Adults get lots of chances at getting stuff right. You might say "you never get to be 34 again," but then it turns out that being 35 looks pretty much the same. It's different for kids. They literally only get one shot at their primary education, at elementary school, at 4th grade. If you mess up a kid's education for a year, repeating it can be just as traumatic as pushing forward and trying to catch up. But either way, the boat on "normal 4th grade year" has sailed. It's gone - you can't have it back, you can only deal with the consequences.

So how much are we losing by jamming more kids into smaller classrooms, or uprooting kids from their neighborhoods and sending them to schools that are miles further away? How much do we lose by not teaching a kid an instrument during those critical years when their developing brains soak up information and process it and turn it into lasting knowledge? For that matter, do we even fully understand the neural connections that might be enhanced or improved because a child is mentally stimulating their "musical" sense at the same time they're trying to learn algebra? Ok, so that last argument is spurious because we don't know whether there's an effect, but we do know that the fine arts have had a valued place in virtually every human culture going back to pre-history. Losing that in this generation of kids is sad, and once it's gone, it's gone. You don't get a second chance to teach that 8-year-old the flute. You may catch them when they're 10 or 14 or 39, but they're only 8 for one year and then they're not anymore. And being 8 is a lot different in the broad spectrum of the human experience than being 28 or 38 or 48.

That's what we're dealing with now, though. The generational impact of the recession. Every year that we cut programs or schools or teachers, we've lost that once chance to provide the best education possible for that group of kids in that particular year. It's gone and you can't have it back. The kids grow up and change and, ah, well, maybe we'll do better with the next batch of kids, right?

It's far too early to know what the impact will be. Maybe it will be a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of our culture and our nation's emerging history. Or perhaps in 20 years people will be wondering why the symphonies lack for fresh blood and why all of the job applicants seem just a little less spectacular than the groups that came before them. Or a lot less spectacular. I do know that it worries me to see these broad cuts affecting such a wide swath of students. If we can't really ever make it up to them and we certainly won't write them off, where's that leave them? Where's it leave us?

[Karate] The Yellow Belt Road

I've mentioned before that my whole family is now taking karate lessons at a nearby dojo. It's Mixed Martial Arts, a foundation of Kenpo onto which they've added Muay-Thai kickboxing techniques as well as a smattering of Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and, I think, some miscellaneous stuff picked up from other styles over the years. The name LaVallee's Karate goes back 35 years in the Syracuse area, with the original dojo being right here in Liverpool where we live (though the Clay dojo is even closer, so that's where we go). My wife got her ni-dan (2nd degree black belt) from Tearney's Goju-Ryu Karate back in the early 1990s, but Tearney's is way far away and LaVallee's is super-close, so LaVallee's wins. It's kind of interesting to compare the two schools as businesses, actually. They seemed to be big rivals back in the 80s when I was semi-interested in such things. My wife confirms that they always gunned for each other at the various competitions (which LaVallee's, at least, now eschews). In the 30+ years that their respective schools have been around, Tearney's has opened one additional dojo, whereas LaVallee's appears to have a dozen locations. Point: LaVallee's, I suppose.

The kids actually started training back in October in an introductory program through school. My daughter loved it, my younger son likes it, and my middle son... well, he pretty much hates doing anything that doesn't involve the TV or the PC. Refer to my daily struggle to get him to practice the guitar for further details.

We took a break for a couple of months when my wife's former company, Penn Traffic, declared that they were going out of business once and for all (after limping along for most of the last 15 years in a semi-conscious, vaguely pathetic state), but we've been back at it since early February now and it's going well. Their family plan allowed my wife and me to join at no extra cost, so we both figured what the heck. It does feel good to be back in the dojo, I admit, and I've been making steady progress in being able to get through an entire 30-minute class without needing chest-compressions and an intravenous drip. Now, it's time to prepare for our first belt test.

LaVallee's has a lengthy belt progression - long enough that I haven't even memorized the whole list. I think there's something like nine belts before black, but for the most part they don't seem to have intermediate steps between belts, like "stripes" or "tips," so it probably works out to about the same as typical progressions at other schools. The exception is the "red-stripe" belt, which is the last belt before black.

Anyway, we're on step one of this roughly five-year-long road. We need to learn the basics so that we can really begin to master the intricacies of the style and the techniques.

I found a really good site to help us do our homework, too. John Edelson decided a few years ago to get his black belt through LaVallee's at age 50. Reminds me of my mother-in-law, actually, who did the same thing when she and my wife were training at Tearney's. Anyway, Edelson maintains the blog A Black Belt At 50. Aside from his observations on training at LaVallee's, his blog offers some really great videos of some of the techniques we'll need to learn as well as the ritualized forms we'll be performing, called katas. It's nice to be able to come home from the dojo, think about what we learned, and check out a video on Edelson's site if we can't remember exactly how something was supposed to be done.

So, for yellow belt, we need to demonstrate:

Front Choke
Rear Choke
White Belt Appreciation Form

If I understand right, we'll also be drilled on basic kicks and punches during the test. We've got about three and a half weeks to get those under our belts. If we do, we'll get new belts! And the road to orange belt begins!

Editing

Editing is necessary. I wouldn't say I like the process of editing my work, but I don't generally hate it either. It's almost like doing a puzzle - there's a really solid story buried on these pages (well, hopefully it's really solid, if I've done any of my job well up until that point), but there's all manner of incorrect, sub-optimal or additional words in there, too. I need to find those words and change or remove them, so that all that's left is the story in its ideal form. I get really excited when I discover that reworking a sentence or paragraph makes it stronger - builds in more emotion or gives it a greater impact or just makes the meaning clearer.

But there are different levels of editing, too. Sometimes snipping a word here or a phrase there aren't really what's needed. I liken it to the difference between a makeover and surgery. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of a haircut and a manicure - really just sprucing up the outward appearance, but leaving the thematic elements and the base storyline pretty much alone. But what if that's just putting perfume on a pig?

What if I've got a good, working story, but it's a little sick? Then I need to operate. I need to cut open that otherwise healthy body and, without breaking anything that's working, I need to cut out the diseased parts and implant something stronger and better. Then I need to sew the whole thing back up and check its vital signs to ensure everything works. Much as Hippocrates said, I must "first, do no harm."

But that's HARD! It's hard to be sure where you're supposed to cut. It's hard to make sure that you don't snip a major blood vessel - say, a theme that you've woven into the story - and then fail to reconnect it properly later on. It's hard to not cut away too much healthy tissue - imagery and action that worked well and needed to be there to move the story along. It's hard not to throw off the pace or the continuity or, if you were good enough to have had it in the first place, the lyrical poetry of the prose.

I'm in the final stretch with my short story, The Songbirds of Arroyoverde. I took it to my Writer's Roundtable a couple of weeks ago and got some great feedback about what did and didn't work. I also got some good advice about how to fix it and was inspired to think of a number of improvements myself. Monday morning, I started with a makeover. I worked through the least of the changes I needed to make - issues of word choice and some deft cuts that tightened and strengthened the piece. Or at least I hope that's what they did. They felt like good changes and a whole lot of this writing business is running on gut instinct.

After that, it was time to go under the knife. I try not to get too emotionally attached to the specific words and phrases in my story. I don't ever want to feel like it's going to hurt to have to make a change. I confess that sometimes the ideas and concepts in the story feel a bit more sacrosanct to me. It becomes a feeling of "this is what the story's about. If I'm going to change it, I'll be telling a different story." But these weren't changes of that sort. They were, I think, all improvements. And one in particular I really thought took a chunk on the story that I'd never really liked and replaced it with something I liked much better.

So this wasn't an impassioned exercise. The only emotion I had going on was fear. Fear that I'd make a mess of this thing that, in its current state, wasn't awesome but wasn't terrible. It was a fear born in part out of my utter ineptitude as a handyman. I'm all about taking stuff apart. That's easy. But when it comes to fixing the pieces inside and then putting it all back together again, I'm useless. I usually make it worse. Now, granted, there's not really much comparison between my capabilities at manually repairing stuff around my home and my function as an editor. That's why they call them irrational fears.

In the end, I needed to simply knuckle down and do it. It's a process that I'm going to work through over a couple of days so as not to get into trouble by rushing. I may need to throw in lots of breaks and comfort foods. The good news is that I actually have done this before and I know it will work. In the end, everything will coalesce and the patient will get up and dance a jig - happier and healthier and stronger than before it went under the knife. By week's end, this story's going off to the anthology editor for his consideration.

The Quiet Time

This week marks the beginning of a slightly less hectic period in the year. This weekend, my daughter performed in both a dance recital and an all-district chorus concert. Which means that she no longer has rehearsal for either of those activities during the week. They weren't what I'd call a major inconvenience - certainly nothing to compare to those "soccer moms" (and dads) who run themselves ragged getting one kid to dance and another to scouting and a third to football then the first to gymnastics and the second to hockey and the third to pottery, etc., etc. I know there are a lot of families like that out there. I do not envy them and could not emulate them.

But as much as these two activities added a little extra hustle to our weeknights they are over. A couple of thoughts.

My daughter's been in this same dance program for three years, I think. Prior to that they had had a different program running out of her school, but that one disappeared and the kids who were interested had to go to a nearby school in the same district if they wanted to dance. It was a little uncomfortable at times being the kids/families from the "other school," but since the alternative was to have no program at all...

I have to imagine that getting a dozen or so elementary-age girls to do anything in unison is effectively impossible. This year's dance program was a couple of months shorter than in past years, but one thing my wife and I both noticed was that the dancers weren't any less adept for the lack of rehearsal time. They lacked energy, seemed to have no clue what they were supposed to be doing, and no doubt had just as much fun. Attending the two-hour recital was interminable, but everything happened on time and they did a great job moving it along. The playbill (we actually got one this year) was thick, full-color, and exceptionally well-made. I'm very glad that my daughter was able to participate in the program - I know she really enjoyed herself as she never once complained about having to rehearse. The dance director and all the other adults who ran the program did a great job.

The choral program was equally exceptional (and 75% shorter!!). It was an assemblage of upper-elementary-age kids from across our (very large) school district. There appeared to be around 50 in all. They performed four or five songs in 3 and 4-part harmony and they sounded really good. The program was run by the music teachers from every school and they definitely knew their stuff.

So now that we're so unburdened what will we do with the extra time, you may wonder? Well, we got an email from one of our karate instructors that he wants to see us to discuss "goals" and "next steps." I presume that this will involve, at least in part, selling us on the idea of upgrading our membership to the "Black Belt Club," which changes your gi from black to white and lets you go to class a third time each week. There may be other benefits, but I don't know what they are. So if we sign up for that, it would take the place of one of those weekly rehearsals.

Otherwise, I'm kind of looking forward to an extra night to actually talk to my wife a little bit. You can always tell when things get busy, because we don't get to talk and we fall behind on TV shows. TiVo makes it really easy to pick shows to watch, but it doesn't guarantee time to actually watch them. We've had the first disc of Shogun waiting for us from Netflix for nearly two full months, so that's an indicator of how busy we've been. Now that Spring is officially here, maybe we'll get caught up. Wait, doesn't V start again in a week? Ugh!