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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s things with me. What’s up with you?
Then I noticed something in my inbox. It was from Google. It had come in overnight, and at first glance I thought it was spam that had slipped through the filter. Instead it was accusing this blog of being spam. The second line read, in part, “As a result of your site having pure spam, Google has applied a manual spam action…”
Excuse me!?!
I’m not sure what is going on here. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines say that if I post a lot of content from other sites with links back to those site but don’t provide original content, then the site is a spam site. Reviews of products with links back to other sites are not considered spam sites by the terms of the Guidelines.
Yes, I include links to a book’s page, publisher’s page, author’s page, and vendors (Amazon, etc.) as well as a copy of the cover. I do this as a courtesy to anyone who might be interested in the book. But there will always be plenty of original content. I also post rants and opinion pieces, news items if I hear about them soon enough, trip reports, and the occasional obituary or tribute. And while I am an Amazon associate, as duly noted at the bottom of the page, I’ve never made enough money ($10, cummulative) from it for Amazon to pay me. In other words, to the best of my knowledge I am not nor ever have been in violation of Google’s Guidelines.
I’m not sure how this blog got flagged as a “pure spam” since there are (at a guess) hundreds, if not thousands, of book related blogs out there that do essentially what I do in pretty much the same way I do it. Futures Past and Present wasn’t included in the spam classification. Just Adventures Fantastic.
So either something at Google flagged as spam or else someone reported this site as spam. Frankly, I can’t imagine who would do that or why. I have intentionally stayed out of most of the controversies in the field at the moment. I don’t usually write totally negative reviews. My intention isn’t to trash someone’s work. If I absolutely hate something, I usually don’t review it, assuming I even finish reading it in the first place. In my post at Amazing Stories this week, I did write a pretty negative review. (Okay, yeah, I pretty much trashed the book, but it was a biography, not fiction, and the standards of quality are different.)
I submitted a reconsideration request. The response I got was that it would take a few weeks before they changed anything, if they did.
I’m not going to wait that long. I bought a domain name earlier this year with the intention of self publishing some of my own work. Being a creature of inertia, I’ve not made the time to get up the learning curve on that yet, I’m about to. I’ll still review the items I listed a few posts ago, but August may be pretty sparse. I’m going to be switching blogging platforms and transferring everything from here and Futures over there as well as getting some things up for sale. If anyone has some suggestions about the best way to go about that, I’d appreciate hearing them. I want to move all 500+ blog posts over. I’m familiar with WordPress, but I don’t know if it will let me do that.
Once the site is up, I’ll post a notice here. At that point everything will move over to the new site.
I’m not going to get much time off. As lab director, I work all year because we have summer classes. I’m not teaching this summer, so I should have some time for fun before things get hectic in the fall when I’ve got another overload. In the meantime, I’m going to get some rest, get caught up on reading, increase my blog output, and get back to writing my own fiction. Hopefully, I’ll have some of my own fiction up for sale within a few weeks.
A couple of ARCs from Pyr were waiting for me when I got home this evening that I’m looking forward to diving into, I want to read some of the Nightshade titles I’ve not gotten to in an effort to show support for them with all they’ve gone through lately, and I have some eARCs from Angry Robot to read. Plus a couple of indie titles.
Does it sound like I’m going to be busy? I got tired just thinking about it. I’m probably not going to dive into any of that until next week sometime. I’m going to read for my own pleasure for the rest of the week, something along the lines of noir and/or space opera and let my mental batteries recharge. (There’s a blog post in there that ties in with something Tobias Buckell wrote the other day.) I’ll probably blog about whatever I choose to read, but for now I want to relax.
So that’s how things stand with me. What’s up with you?
Just a quick update since things are going to be hectic for the next two weeks. Today and tomorrow are the last two class day. Wednesday is Dead Day (when students supposedly study), then finals start on Thursday. I’m giving two, one Saturday evening and the other first thing Monday. In between then, I’ve got to compile the lab grades for 4 courses (~1500 students). The latter involves making sure all the TAs followed the grading rubric and nobody’s averages are out of line.
What that means is I probably won’t be blogging with any consistency until all of that is done. I’ll try to post every couple of days, but most things will either be opinion pieces or reviews of short fiction.
When the smoke clears, I’m going to try to read some titles from Pyr that have been piling up. The good folks there have started sending me review copies of nearly everything they’ve published lately, for which I would like to thank them.
Over the last year I’ve bought some titles by Nightshade authors which I’ve not gotten around to reading. I’m going to move those books up in priority. A number of good authors have gotten caught in a bad spot, and I’d like to help them if I can with some publicity.
So if it looks like I’m only reading a few publishers, that’s why. I’ll read some other things for review as well just to keep the variety up. For instance, there’s that new Margaret Brundage bio that’s supposed to ship later this week…
The summer should be slower than the spring has been, so I hope I’ll be able to post fairly regularly over the summer.
Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who stopped by in April, both here and at Futures Past and Present. Both blogs saw record traffic, and I appreciate the interest you’ve shown.