Weekly Update 3/7

One of my goals for March was to either write or exercise every day this month.  As a sub-goal, I guess I'll keep track of my progress each day.

3/1
I went to the library and wrote fairly extensively (including that word I cannot spell, the B in FBI).  Also did a few sit-ups at my cousin's house.

3/2
I went to the library again and wrote nearly to the end of the story (it's now 4000 words long, dammit).  Toward the end, it occurred to me that I had an enormous plothole in front of me, and if I wanted to fix it, I'd have to rethink the whole darn thing.  It would mean changing an earlier scene, cutting a little bit from the middle, and eliminating the ending I came up with for it tonight.  
In other words, I think I'm just going to ignore the plothole and move on.  It's not like this is screenwriting, where you do draft after draft, flailing wildly in an attempt to please the producers, a potential buyer, or yourself.

3/3  

Unable (unwilling?) to go to the library again, I went for a run tonight.  It was the full run I used to do (1.6 miles), and I made it alright.  Guess I should start doing it regularly again.

3/4 
I sat down and (finally) recorded the Introduction and copyright bits for my next story collection, along with a flash fiction story to include in the next one, and recorded on Abigail Hilton's new book until I'd filled my memory card.  I then deleted a file and recorded again until I filled it once more (two paragraphs away from the end of the chapter), and then I said the f-word.

I hit the library again, knowing I'll be busy Batmanning tomorrow night.  I am close to finishing the first draft of my story for the writing contest (due in thirteen days).  It's gonna be five thousand words long, and that's way too long to cut it down for the thousand word contest limit.  But I'll deal with that when I get to "the end."

I was reminded today, looking over the document, that I had left a blank the other day when Olivia was trying to start her car, because I couldn't remember the word for the sound an engine makes trying to turn over.  So today, I looked it up, hoping there was a word for it I had simply forgotten.  It turns out that, no joke, the word for a car starting up is vroom.  That's not a word, boys and girls. 

There seems to be no word for what I was looking for, but if you DO consider vroom to be a word, then the word for an engine's attempt to start up is ruh ruh ruh.  And that's what I went with, Bossk help me.*

So, I don't believe I mentioned this the other day (it's still so weird not to be blogging daily), but I got discouraged when I discovered a massive plothole in the story and nearly stopped writing it, knowing I'd have to do a major rewrite.  But I didn't.

I did alright, got so close to finishing the story I actually typed "the end."  Oh, wait, I guess that is the definition of finishing it.

Final word count: 5761.  But I am feeling alright with it. 

3/5
Plans got canceled on me this afternoon, so I hit the library right before it closed.  It was raining on the way there, but when I went out to my car, there were two inches of snow on it.  I took my first attempt at writing a story for the contest, sitting at a reasonable 1303 words, and whittled it down to a thousand.  The library announced it was closing when I was at 1007 words, so I hastily rewrote two sentences, hoping they wouldn't log me out early (as they've done twice now), and saved the file and emailed it to myself when it reached exactly 1000.  

The story is frankly not very good, but hey, that can't be helped.

3/6
No writing again today.  As penance, I ran my 1.6 miles.  I had considered wearing a short-sleeved shirt on my run, but chickened out at the last minute (it was 30 degrees out today, surely colder at night).  I listened to a podcast while running, and it's the sort of thing that makes me want to podcast more, in case there's someone out there doing the same (running, not thinking about podcasting).

3/7
This was one of those days where I neither wanted to write nor exercise.  I went running last night (around 9:00 or 9:30), and it was cold, but survivable.  Tonight, it was midnight, and about ten degrees colder out, and I absolutely could not MAKE myself do it.  And there's a treadmill, right there, all I'd have to do is plug it in, turn it on, and go . . . and I wouldn't do it.

Instead, I decided to watch a show my niece told me she'd watched yesterday.  About a week ago, I saw a commercial for a horror/mystery series that struck me as "Lost" but with vampires.  It looked really good, but then the title came up, and it was, no joke, the Worst Title I Have Ever Seen In My Many Years Upon The Earth.**  I mean, it just floored me.  The TV series was called "From."

"From," boys and girls.  "From."

That should not be a thing, ladies and gentlemen.  People should've lost their jobs over that one, perhaps been put in jail for a year or so ("What are you in for?"  "Me, I punched a child in the face at San Diego Comic-Con.  You?"  "Oh, I executive produced a television series . . . we called it From."  "You sick son of a bitch!"), and I absolutely should NOT have watched the show, due to the title alone.

But I didn't want to exercise, so I watched "From" instead.

And it was the sort of garbage tailor made just for me.  There's a little town (presumably up in Canada, based on the Michael J. Fox way of saying "sorry") where the inhabitants can never leave, and once the sun goes down, they board themselves into their homes, because shape-shifting monsters lurk outside, and appear as loved ones to get folks to let them in the door or window.

I enjoyed it (though I was frustrated by the "Lost"-inspired everybody's-got-a-secret-that-will-be-parcelled-out-episode-by-episode aspect to the show), but I felt guilty throughout, knowing I wasn't exercising, and more importantly, being reminded of the snowstorm story I wanted to write almost twenty years ago (when there was this blizzard that struck when I was visiting Big Anklevich in his then-new house, and it looked like I'd be forced to spend the night), and never did.

I did a round of sit-ups, then bumped my head on the coffee table and used that as an excuse to stop and watched the show for another hour.  Then, I got down and did a few more sit-ups, but my heart just wasn't in it.

*Because I didn't want to waste another seven or eight minutes on it.

**And you gotta remember, I've lived through action movies called SOURCE CODE, PEPPERMINT, THE RHYTHM SECTION, THE 355, and BALLISTIC: ECKS VERSUS SEVER.  And let me throw in THE LAST MIMZY, HOW THE WEST WAS FUN, and MISTER MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM for good measure.

Hatchling Update

I saw an old interview with Abigail Hilton (THUNDER!) in which she said, "You're not supposed to tell people when you think something you've done is not your best work" because it puts that thought in their minds, and I was reminded of all the times I've complained about how my book "Hatchling" wasn't working.

So, I will say this: I started editing it again this weekend (finishing Chapter 18 and now working on 19) and I do really like the character of Doug, Talia's father, who I envisioned as what I would be like if I were the father of a seventeen year old girl.  I suppose it's not outside the realm of possibility that I write a story about him at some point in the future, though I have no plans to.

7 Days Without Blogging Makes One Weak

I actually miss blogging.  Oh, not every day,* but things keep occurring to me to mention in my blog (for example, I heard a song today playing over an intercom, and I thought, "The band that does this is called Avicii.  I don't know how I know that, but I do."**), but then I remind myself I don't have a blog anymore.  So strange.

Big warned me that stopping writing every day might be disastrous (as it was with him), but the end of the daily blog also had the unforeseen consequence of no longer having to admit when I didn't exercise (or write) . . . and so I didn't.

And Big is right, at least partially.  I can't do in March what I did (or didn't do) in February.

At least I ran on the treadmill last night, and nobody complained about the noise.

I keep going to the library, from time to time, ostensibly to write, but on the 24th I spent pretty much the whole visit reading about Russia's invasion of Ukraine instead.  I guess it would be a relief not to have to admit I only had fifty or so words of writing in a day then (or the several other days when there's no writing at all).

Sometimes, some little thing occurs to me that I should mention it in my blog, and then I remember that I'm not writing in my blog every day anymore, so I shrug it off.  For example, I opened up the file called "The People We Touch" this afternoon, to see if it was ready to record, and after deleting the three alternate titles to it (including "Lara Valentine Story"), the file was exactly 11,110 words long.  I thought about arbitrarily adding a single word to it, taking a screen shot, and posting it on my blog, and then continuing the second draft.  But it seems like there's little point to such things. 

(I went ahead and did it)

I finished reading Abigail Hilton's new novella this week (it's called "Distraction," and I was going to post the cover art on here she sent me, but then it occurred to me that she might not want those images out yet . . . but I went to her website, and this one is up there, so I assume it's fair game).  It's about 98% sure that I'll be doing the audio version (after all, that's why I read through it . . . voicing all the characters aloud, right?  It's not just early onset dementia?), and I tried a new voice for one of the characters (Dazzle) that I hope I can replicate when it comes time to record.

This one will be a bit more challenging than the others due to a couple new wrinkles in the story, but it seems to be all from one character's point of view (Roup's), and that makes keeping the voices straight much easier.  Also, I just did "Lullaby" for her a couple of months ago, so nearly every voice is still clear in my mind.  I'll let you know how that goes.

It's been very cold this last week, with the temperature rarely getting above freezing, and I made the mistake of leaving a can of Coke Zero in my car the other day.  It did not explode--it's usually heat, in my experience, that causes that to happen.  Today when I foolishly opened the can to drink it, though, well, it practically exploded, at least so far as the liquid gushed out of the opening and wouldn't stop, until I was semi-covered with it.  

That's why I kept a blog in the first place, kids.

One of my goals for 2022 was to read x number of really good books (I can't recall the amount).  I've certainly managed with one already.  I grabbed "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett from the library, and I've been absolutely amazed by how well written it is.  

Follett was a spy and espionage writer** who wrote about assassins and Nazis and human/octopus hybrids trained to emulate monsters in Japanese animation, and then made a switch to a historical epic about the building of a cathedral in medieval England, and suddenly he had a new, broader fanbase.

One of the tricks he keeps pulling is letting a character pull themselves out of a bad situation and remark to themselves, "Okay, now things will be better," and then immediately hit them over the head with another terrible setback.  He does it over and over, to the point where every time a character thinks, "If this works out, some of my problems will be over," I slump in despair, knowing that this is NOT going to work out.

It's the sort of thing that makes me wish to be a much better writer than I am.

And that reminds me of where I am in my own writing.  There's a contest that Marshal Latham and I have decided to enter (and Big Anklevich too, though I won't hold him to it like I will Marshal***), and I have less than three weeks left to write the story and send it in (plus, it has to be 1000 words or shorter, which is always a pain).  So, I keep thinking about it, hoping for inspiration.

Last week, when I went walking, I discovered a little pendant or piece of jewelry on the ground by my car.  I feel like Baba Yaga put it there so that I would use it for a story.  I'll take the next fifteen minutes to try to think one up (feel free to time me).

Well, I just decided to "pants" a story, starting with "Olivia Turner had argued with her boyfriend, and seemed to have won the argument.  But it didn't much feel that way." and continuing from there.  I didn't know where the tale was going, so I've no idea if I'm close to finishing it (or if it's any good or not), but it (almost) always feels good to craft a story.

Unfortunately, the darn thing is already over a thousand words, so there's a cloud to the silver lining.

R.B.O.

*Oh, hell no.  

**I just realized "spy" and "espionage" mean the same thing (if they aren't literally the same word), like when you describe me to your friends as a "dumb and idiotic moron." 

***If Marshal fails to write a story for the contest, he has to mail me one of his fingers.

Cover Art For Next Collection

Gino got the final version of the cover for my Audio Fiction Collection Volume IV the other day, and I might as well post it here.

I do this for two reasons: Obviously, because I like how it looks.  But also because, if I post it publicly, it will pressure me to get this out sooner rather than later.*  I haven't uploaded anything to Audible in almost a year--I hope the process is less painful than it used to be.

*Feel free to bug me about it, if I don't say anything for a while.

Rish Outcast 216: Walk of Death

In "honor" of Marshal Latham's podcast "Walk of Life" (and his birthday), I present the tale of the Witherer, and his "Walk of Death."

Go ahead, download the episode HERE.

Go ahead, support me on Patreon HERE.

Go ahead, make my day HERE.

Logo by Gino "Spock of Death" Moretto.

R.I.P. Ivan Reitman

Sadly, filmmaker Ivan Reitman died over the weekend.  He was, of course, most famous for directing GHOSTBUSTERS, which was a seminal film for those in my generation (and one of the first films I ever saw twice in theaters, it played so long).  He's also known for STRIPES, TWINS, MEATBALLS, KINDERGARTEN COP, and DAVE.

I met the man back in 2000 when I worked a few days on his film EVOLUTION.  I played a student, a soldier, a partygoer, and an ice cream shop employee, and had a good time working on it.*  I'll always remember the seventeen-and-a-half hour day I spent on it, the longest one of my experience, and the shouts of joy from the Union members when they reached the sixteenth hour and "Golden Time" began.

It's sad how badly this photo turned out.  Ah well, better luck next life.

Reitman recently produced GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, which was directed by his son Jason (and I just read today that Ivan himself played ghostly Egon Spengler in the film's finale, and that's pretty great way to go out.

Reitman died on February 12, in his sleep.  He was seventy-five.  I read the Deadline obituary, and there was no mention of EVOLUTION.  Hmmm, guess they liked it as much as I did.

*I did learn, for the first time, not to overexert myself on a film shoot, as I leapt out of a truck in my National Guard uniform and ran past the camera, then had to do it over and over again for additional takes, making me wish I had taken it easy like the dudes around me.

I Narrate "The Apparition"

This is just a little video I made the other day to see how quickly I could produce a YouTube version of one of the ghost stories I narrated on The Podcast That Dares.  Turned out, it took about fifteen minutes, plus half an hour to save, and five more to post.  Maybe I'll do more.

I Perform "Lullaby" by Abigail Hilton

Recently, I got to narrate a novella from her "Hunters Unlucky" series, called "Lullaby."

Actually, "Lullaby" is the name of the collection she just put out, which includes the title story, as well as two shorter stories, "Awake" and "Water in the Desert," both narrated by the same guy.

Her work is very well-thought-out, clever, and multi-faceted, with a unique world her characters live in.  And I'd like to think the guy doing the voicework is pretty alright as well.

You can pick up the audiobook from Abbie's website AT THIS LINK.

Also, you can pick up all of her "Hunters Unlucky" items HERE.

I Perform "The Black Cat" on Journey Into...

Every year in January (or thereabouts), Marshal Latham has Edgar Allan Poe Month on the Journey Into... podcast.  And this year, I sent him a reading I did this past summer of his classic tale "The Black Cat."  So, it was only natural that he let me ruin the episode itself by my presence as a guest host.

Check it out HERE!

I Talk about Robert Sheckley's "The Store of the Worlds"

The other day, I took advantage of the children being gone to talk about (and more) Robert Sheckley's short story "The Store of the Worlds."  Enjoy.

Don't Forget The Daily Outcast

Well, here I am again, with a reminder that we're three weeks into my daily podcast, available over at my Patreon page.  Check it out HERE, and maybe you'll stay awhile.