Category Archives: update

What’s Coming Up This Week

This is a quick update on what’s in the pipeline. I spent the weekend at ConDFW, so look for a report on the convention.

I need to write the next post on the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series for Black Gate. That will probably be the first thing I do, since I’ve finished the book (The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris). I just need to carve out the time to write the thing. John O’Neill will probably publish it within a day or two of my turning it in.

I’m about two-thirds of the way through Steve Rasnic Tem’s new novel, Blood Kin. This a good, creepy southern gothic. If it holds up all the way to the end, it will be a solid novel. At this point I’m not expecting it to go off the rails. Tem knows what he’s doing.

I’m trying to squeeze Space Cadet in since I need to get this month’s Heinlein post up at Futures Past and Present. That one may not happen until the first of next month.

And finally, I’ve switched from weekly to biweekly at Amazing Stories. I’m not quite a third of the way through the book I’m reviewing next, but that review isn’t due until the weekend.

Finding time to read isn’t the challenge right now. It’s finding time to sit down and write when I’m not so tired I can’t put two words together. I can get reading done while I’m waiting on my son to finish whatever activity he’s involved in during the evenings. My wife is still recovering from rotator cuff surgery, which take her a few months to get strength back. Picking up the slack is what is throwing me off my schedule since anything that involves lifting is verboten.

Last week I posted almost every day, but the trade off on that was not getting much reading done and going without sleep. This week is going to be slower paced. Those are the things I’m working on at the moment.

The Next Few Days, Plus a Kickstarter of Interest

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Classes start today; I’ve got one from11:00 – 1:50. On top of that, my wife is having shoulder surgery tomorrow morning. Nothing big, i.e., not a rotator cuff, but I’ll be tied up with that and won’t be at work. Depending on how long her parents stay and if her painkillers are working, I may or may not be at work on Friday. (It hey are here and the drugs aren’t working, I’m coming in to work.) Anyway, I might not be very active online until next week.

In the meantime, there’s a new Kickstarter readers of this blog might be interested in. It’s called, Farewell, Something Lovely. The title is a play on Raymond Chandler’s novel, Farewell, My Lovely. It’s a collection of hardboiled sword and sorcery tales by Fraser Ronald. Since S&S and hardboiled/noir are two of my three favorite subgenres, I’m looking forward to this one.

And if you haven’t been following the discussion at Howard Andrew Jones’ blog on the relationship between hardboiled and sword and sorcery, start here.

All Over but the Crying

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Well, finals have been graded and grades turned in. The great email deluge has begun. (“Why did I get an F? I made a 76 on the mditerm?” Because that’s the highest grade you made all semester and your final/lab/homework/quiz grades were failing.)

Answering them takes time. (“I feel I did better than a D in this class, even though my grades don’t reflect it. What time can I come by your office tomorrow and go over my exam? I’m sure I can find a few fractions of a point to push me over a 70.” I really got an email like this. My rule for this sort of time wasting is if you get to find points to add, I get to find additional points to remove.)

I’m thinking of having a tray of cheese nearby to go with the whine I’m finding in my inbox. (“I think that your giving me a F in the course for cheating in lab, even though I was warned verbally and in writing in both lab and lecture and I signed a copy of the lab policies which included the cheating policy, is extremely unfair, harsh, and mean. I look forward to hearing a decision from you that will be more in line with the grade I want rather than the grade I earned.” I really got this one, too, although I’ve paraphrased and condensed its multiple paragraphs considerably. This was a major case of academic fraud. I can’t talk about the details yet, for reasons I can’t talk about either.)

Of course, hope springs eternal. (“Dr. West, I see I earned an F in your class. Could you please bump me up to a D?” Considering that your lab grade was in the low 60s, all your other grades were failing, and your average was below 50, probably not.)

All of the quotes, while based on real emails have been changed, not so much to protect the identity of the authors, but to cover my ass in the extreme event one of them actually reads this blog. It’s been a rough semester. And, yes, there was a major case of academic fraud which I can’t talk about, and I really can’t talk about the reasons why I can’t talk about it, either. At least, not yet. But soon…

Anyway, I’m going to be posting either here or on one of the other blogs almost everyday until Christmas, starting tomorrow. There will be reviews, opinions, and who knows what else.

Stay tuned.

Final Exams

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We’ve got one day of final exams left. I’ve given mine, but I’ve barely scratched the surface with grading. I spent the better part of the last week dealing with a major academic dishonesty situation involving a group of students. It’s still ongoing, so I’ll not say anything more about it at this time. Anyway, between that and getting the lab grades to the lecture faculty, I’ve been rather busy. I failed to post anything at Amazing Stories for yesterday, the first time since I started blogging for them.

Anyway, it’s going to be a few days before I can get my head above water and post more. I finished with Chuck Wendig’s latest Miriam Black novel, Cormorant, over the weekend. The review will probably be the first thing I post. Then some short fiction, and a review of Brian McClellan’s Promise of Blood.

Just so you know I haven’t dropped off the planet.

NaNoWriMo

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I’ve added a page for NaNoWriMo 2013. You can find the link at the menu up top. Rather than bore the people who read this blog with regular updates, I’m going to place updates and the occasional excerpt there. That way if anyone is interested in reading about the experience, you can find it there. I will post at least once a week (hopefully more often), but I don’t think it will be the same day every week. I’ve got too much traveling to do to be that consistent.

NaNoWriMo 2013

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I’ve been debating this for a few weeks, and I’ve finally decided that I’m going to give NaNoWriMo a try this year. I participated two years ago and managed to finish a novel, although it’s not in any shape to be seen at the moment. I gave the program a pass last year because I had too much on my plate.

I suspect that’s the case this year. I’m seriously behind on some review commitments, and there are some blog posts I need to write that require some research. Plus there’s a blogging announcement in the post that immediately follows this one. But I don’t want to limit my writing to blogging. Don’t get me wrong. Blogging is a lot of fun, but I want to write fiction as well. Writing a blog post is a lot easier than writing fiction, though, and I tend to take the easy way out when I’m tired or there are too many interruptions. Participating in NaNoWriMo will force me to make fiction writing a priority. I hope.

I’m going to deviate from the stated guidelines in NaNoWriMo, though. You see, the problem is that I don’t have a novel ready to go. I’ve got a crime novel I want to write, but it’s still in the gestation stage. I need a secondary plot to screw up the schemes of the main characters, and that hasn’t come together yet. I could write the sequel to the novel I wrote two years ago, but I need to work out some details of the worldbuilding that will become problematic in the second installment. Plus, I just need to clean up the first draft.

So what I’m going to do is write a novel’s worth of short fiction. For NaNoWriMo, I recall that being 50k. I tried to check a few minutes ago, and the site was down for maintenance. Anyway, I’ve got a list of short story ideas that could fill a book. I need to get started on them.

There have to be some ground rules, though. To keep from violating the spirit of the program, all stories need to be completed in November, start to finish. In other words, works in progress aren’t allowed. Otherwise, I’d just work on the deep space disaster novel. Any progress I make on something I’ve already started will be in addition to what I do for NaNoWriMo.

The advantage of writing short fiction is that if I get stuck, I can just work on something else for a while. I’m something of an organic writer to begin with, so this approach works for me. I may not make it, but I’m going to try. I’ll keep you posted on how things go.

The End of Summer, or the Long and the Short of it

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Things have been hectic this week as classes start on Monday, and I’m trying to get everything organized I need to do. On top of that, we’ve been a one car family for the last 10 days. My wife works outside the city limits, by the way. On the other side of town.

Anyway, I’m not sure how much I’ll get posted in the next couple of weeks. I’m still planning to go to Worldcon. I don’t have any classes on Friday, and my department head doesn’t object to my leaving after my 8:00 a.m. on Thursday. I usually don’t get much reading done at a con, and I’m sure that will be even more true about Worldcon. Add to that my column at Amazing Stories needs to be ready to go before I leave, and I’m going to be busy. (That’s the column that will go live on Labor Day, not next Monday. I still have to do that one as well.)

The next few novels here are going to be (in no particular order at this point) Duma Key by Stephen King, Trial and Glory by Joshua Simon, Saxon’s Bane by Geoffrey Gudgion, Sworn Sword by James Aitcheson, Prince Thief by David Tallerman, and The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich, Seven Forges by James A. Moore, The God Tattoo by Tom Lloyd (short stories rather than a novel), plus Winter be my Shield by Jo Spurrier (for a review I owe the Gemmell Awards). I’ve been dipping into Duma Key for about a month in between other reading and will probably finish it first. After that it’s a tossup.

I’ve also got a few titles I want to slip into Futures Past and Present and Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams. In addition, I’d really like to get back to reading more short fiction. I’ve not read much in the last six months. I tend to do better in a number of areas if I’m reading short fiction regularly. Not sure why; maybe the mental stimulation helps with productivity and general mental well-being or something.

So that’s how things stand at the moment. Not a lot happening here on the blogs since the launch, and not a lot likely to in the next couple of weeks. But that will change.

I’d like to thank everyone who has commented or sent me emails supporting the new site. While it’s still very much a work in progress and a learning experience, it’s good to know I’m doing something right.

Opening Salvo 2.0

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Hello. Welcome to the new home of Adventures Fantastic. If you’re reading this shortly after it was posted (as opposed to stumbling upon it some time later), then you’re aware of the problems I ran into with Google deciding the old blog was spam. As a result, I’ve decided to change platforms and work from a space that is mine rather than someone else’s. I may still run into problems with Google, but at least I control the site completely rather than piggy-backing on some other platform.

So, what to expect: Rather than run two blogs, I’m going to run four. Crazy, I know, especially if you noticed how much more frequently I posted at Adventures Fantastic than I did at Futures Past and Present. Those two blogs will still be in existence here at the new site. The two I’m adding are Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams (detective and noir fiction) and Dispatches From the Lone Star Front (Texas and Southwest history). The former is completely new, while the latter is something I started at the Home of Heroics blog a couple of years ago. (Links to all of them are on the menu bar at the top of the page, along with info about me and the blog.)

Neither seemed to fit well into Adventures Fantastic, but there wasn’t any other place to put the posts dealing with noir or history. Fantasy, especially sword and sorcery, historic adventure, and things related to pulp will still be posted to Adventures Fantastic, along with general news and updates. I’ve posted a brief introduction at each of the new blogs, giving more detail about the themes and titles along with what to expect.

While all the main components are in place, it’s still a work in progress. I’m getting some things figured out, but it will probably be a while before I’m completely satisfied with everything.

I plan on adding a page to at least the fiction blogs (although I’m not sure about Dispatches) that will contain links to my own works. I’m starting to learn how to publish things myself, although I haven’t gotten very far. With classes about to start and Worldcon less than two weeks away, I’m not sure I”ll have time to have that ready. I didn’t want to rush into that aspect of things, nor did I want to delay things while I got up the learning curve.

Anyway, welcome aboard. I’m glad you’re here, whether you followed me over from the other platform or have joined since the move.

Progress

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I’ve spent part of this evening working on the new site. All four of the new blogs have been created, and I’ve written the introductory post for three of them. I don’t have any graphics in place yet. Since each blog will have a different focus, I want each one to have it’s own logo. That will take a little time to set up. Hopefully within a couple of weeks.

On a unrelated topic (not really since time spent on one is time not spent on the other), I’ve almost finished the last of the novelettes that received Hugo nominations. I should manage that before I collapse and go to bed. I won’t be able to read the novellas before the deadline to vote. That’s tomorrow, so I probably won’t vote in that category. I’ll post some thoughts on the nominees when I get a chance in the next day or so.

Jury Duty

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I’ve got jury duty in the morning. If I get selected, I may be out of pocket for a while. I got the new webpage started, but it’s very much in a state of construction. I’m hoping to make some progress in the evenings this week. The weekend taken up with yard work. The joys of home ownership.

That’s things with me. What’s up with you?