tracker7 | Entries tagged with writing

A few days ago, I finally reached my breaking point with RPG.net's moderation staff. I'm broadly aligned with the site's policies, and the user community is really good, but goddamn. The newer batch of mods are just fucking terrible - deliberately reading comments in the least charitable light, assuming bad faith, and assuming that their own take is the only possibly correct one.

So, I'm out. I remembered having an account at another site, and have found some good discussions there. It'll do.

In fact, one of those discussions led to breaking a logjam I've been fighting for a while. Stop trying to tell an Earth story on Mars, just because you want to play on Mars.

I slept for a good eleven hours. Woke up still a little bit less than full-spec physically but just about stellar in the heart and mind. Cracked open some long-idled Google docs and did some work. Fits and starts, but it was wordcount and it felt good to do it.

Dad wanted to take the boat out this evening, but I still wasn't feeling up to anything like that. Maybe tomorrow, if I don't go somewhere to take that last chance to see Mission: Impossible.

I still have this hankering to paint something. I didn't go looking for minis at GenCon, blew past Miso's when I detoured in Louisville for lunch, and Derby was locked up when I stopped by there. So, if I do go up to Lexington for the movie, I'll try and find something suitable at a store there. I screwed around with HeroForge to design something suitable, and that's an option, but whew those aren't cheap.

I'm camped out at the Casey County library for a while today. Slow (OMG so fucking slow) Internet became no Internet Wednesday evening, and the earliest service window is this coming Monday - which is when Windstream is supposed to come out and complete the fiber-optic connection to the house, so I'm just dealing with it.

I still have the occasional cough, but I'm mostly better. Dad's taking another hit, unfortunately. He's pretty weak, sore throat, proper bad cold symptoms. I hope that we're not just trading viral ickiness back and forth.

Denny Crum died a couple of days ago. Super-classy guy, and will always be a part of UofL culture.

Goshdarn Noble Knight already got me to spend some store credit. There's a sale going, and some things I wanted were on the list, so I ordered stuff. Should be here Monday afternoon. I still have a lot of credit, and looking at the production schedules of the few companies that still keep my interest, that credit's going to last me quite a while.

The veracity of this prediction has yet to be determined, but, knowing me, I know how I'd bet.

Wow. There's a book by my favorite writing professor on the shelf in front of me. Allegiance, by the great Gurney Norman.

This was one of the best weekends of NFL games I've ever seen. Favorites beaten at home by last-minute field goals in three of the games - Bengals over Titans, 49ers over Packers, and Rams over Buccaneers. The Chiefs won at home, sudden-death overtime against the Bills. Close games, great play on all sides. I'm having some trouble believing that the Bengals are going into the conference championship game this coming weekend.

Played in an Armada tournament for the first time in forever. Went 0-2, had a heck of a good afternoon with some friends. I'm going to play a lot more Armada when I quit X-Wing, I think. It's far more taxing, and a whole other kind of fun, and so far, I haven't seen any sign of AMG making the kinds of changes that are driving me away from the other game.

I'm making some small daily progress in writing. Hitting the 300 words/day mark more often than not. Goodman liked my genius loci pitch. Still doing more with game stuff than fiction, but right now, writing is writing.

I've landed an interview with my home county's health department. Academically, I'm way the hell overqualified for the job, and that may disqualify me. Don't care. It's worth sitting for the interview. If I get it, it's a forward step.

Serif put their Affinity software on sale again last week, so I sprang for a copy of Publisher. Well, a license, since the purchase allows me to put the app on every computer I own. I've mucked around with Scribus over the years, and it's good and pretty capable (and free!), but sometimes it can be described as user-surly. I started playing with Publisher tonight, and it's pretty slick. There's a good and knowledgeable and helpful user community, and while it's not the super app that Indesign is, the purchase price is less than a month's subscription to Adobe's products.

SpaceX tested another Starship prototype today, and it did not go as hoped for. Successful launch, flight up to about six miles, but it did not stick the landing. That's why these things get tested, and retested, and redesigned, of course.

I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm still regularly surprised at how good getting together with some friends to move little toy spaceships around a table is for my mental health. I went to Heroes with two Armada fleets and four X-Wing squadrons yesterday. Only got in a single match - an Epic X-Wing game. Lost, but managed not to bring shame to my ancestors. Did find that I need one more B-Wing maneuver dial, so an eBay seller is going get a few bucks out of me for that.

I sicced the Bs, flying in a wing, on a wing of TIE/lns early on, and while the B isn't a dogfighter, it does punch hard. The Bs also had the GR-75's point defense lasers providing cover, and that was good for a couple of shots most rounds. In hindsight, I should have used the Bs for their intended purpose and attacked my opponent's Gozanti instead, but I only had five fighters in my squadron, and needed some counter to my opponent's wings. All in all, a good match and good scenario, and we'll do it again in a couple of weeks.

I've gotten the idea to try and write some gaming stuff for publication again. I'm looking at FFG's Android setting for one of the products, and since I'm here for the immersion, I snapped up the five novels FFG published a while back. The first one, so far at least, is plenty enjoyable - we've got a murder mystery going on, going with the setting's theme of "The world changed. Crime (or people) did not." I don't expect that these are going to be life-changers, but so far, I'm having a good time in the world.

With luck, I'm going to run a Dungeon Crawl Classics game this afternoon. Would have done it last weekend, but car trouble and floods and everything else conspired to force the delay. This should be fun.

My trusty, but aging, iPhone is probably getting succeeded this afternoon, too. It's solidly into the obsolescent category, with the latest OS update being a couple years old, a slowly failing battery, and a couple of other issues.

Thanks to YouTube, I've found another synthwave artist to follow - Lionface. A little heavier than Gunship, and way moreso than The Midnight, so they're a welcome addition to the list.

After too many delays and too much time spent overthinking minutia, I've gotten back on track with the PMC project that's been in my head for a while. Took a step back, rewrote the outline, and started looking at it in smaller chunks instead of one large(ish) whole. I still have no real idea what I'll do with it when its finished. That's maybe a conversation to have in a couple of weeks.

15 days until Indianapolis, and then hopefully a return to Night City.

Got a painful lesson reminder of why I shouldn't trust Microsoft products a couple of nights ago. I've gotten into the habit of taking my iPad with me when I'm working at PNC in the evenings or on weekends, and using the ample downtime to keep some writing going. So, Sunday evening, I'm feeling pretty good about things and cranking out some good stuff, and figure, what the hell, lets put Word on the iPad and see how it works on that platform. It works pretty darn well ... unless you're using iCloud for online storage. Word refuses to recognize that option, and when I tried to use Google Drive, Word threw a fit and lost a big chunk of what I'd written. Not at all how I wanted things to go.

I'm just fickle as hell about my tools, I guess. I sent the Macbook Air dock back to Amazon last night, and returned the monitor to Walmart yesterday morning. I agonized a little bit about keeping them, with the logic of "Hey, I might have a need for them sometime," and then I thought about the garage and barn at the Farm, and realized whoa, dragon, that's where that line of thinking leads. So, no fuss, it's done. And now I'm looking at newer iPads, either a 6th generation 9.7" model or a 10.5" one. My existing Air is still working as well as the day I bought it, but it only has 16GB of storage, and the OS takes up nearly half of that, if not more.

Okay. I'm going to embrace the workflow and do all of the writing in Pages. It exports to .docx, and LibreOffice will work for any final edits before I dive into Scribus for any self-published gaming products. Admitted, I've made these noises countless times over the years, so there's every likelihood that none of it will come to pass, but I'm remembering how good writing feels when I fucking DO IT, and that mental and emotional energy seems to be flowing again, so I'd best make the most of it. Paring down the number of active (relatively speaking) projects has helped out. I feel like I'm going to really have something together before long.

Started watching Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina tonight. First episode isn't bad. Appropriately spooky, wasn't expecting naked witch-girl stepping out of the tub, and I think I'm going to stick with it.

Some Star Wars stuff - Jon Favreau cited spaghetti Westerns and Kurosawa samurai movies as strong influences on his The Mandalorian for Disney+, the Cassian Andor series is promising me some espionage stories, and I'm more interested in these TV projects than I am in the end of the Skywalker saga.

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the Earth. - Psalm 96:1

Way back in the late '80s, I was pretty active in my home church. I didn't especially want to be there, but decided that since I had to, might was well make the most of it. I was a youth group leader, gave a couple sermons, and was a delegate or representative or something to my denomination's state-level organization - the United Methodist Church, if you're interested in the details of mainstream American Protestantism. At the time, there were two UMC divisions - conferences - in Kentucky: the western half of the state was the Louisville Conference, and the eastern half was the Kentucky Conference. They've since merged. For whatever reason, the three congregations - a charge, in UMC parlance - that my church was a part of were affiliated with Louisville, and the others in the home county were Kentucky Conference. I don't think there was any significance outside of some record-keeping.

The conference owned - still does - a large campground/retreat center called Camp Loucon. It was, and probably still is, a very pretty place, sited on the edge of a small lake. I went to a few camps at Loucon - mostly to (a) get out of the house for a few days, and, (b) to meet girls. Loucon also hosted a good-sized Christian music festival called New Song. A couple of stages, some of the bigger names in the business, and several thousand people. I went to a couple of these festivals, for the same reasons I went to camps. They were long days, at least two hours on the road each way, leaving crazy-early the morning of the show and waiting out the departing traffic that night.

A few weeks ago, I heard a radio ad for summer camps at Loucon, and it was a real blast-from-the-past. It had been years since I'd even thought about the place, and a whole lot of memories came bubbling up. The camp is still there, but New Song has come to an end - 2011 was the last one. For the last few years, or so New Song's Facebook page tells me, the festival was affiliated with another, bigger festival called Ichthus. Ichthus has gone tits-up, too, and probably won't return despite the claims of the IP's new owners.

Holy cow, almost 400 words and that's on top of a 840-word in-character writeup of today's Armada match. I should be able to do this far more regularly.

Since starting the rewatch of Battlestar Galactica (2004 edition) and catching a few episodes of the original on one of the local digital side-channels, I've been thinking about the role of religion and/or faith in my gaming and related writing.

I'm, for sake of labeling, a post-Christian atheist. I grew up in a pretty mainstream rural Methodist church, and was somewhat involved in youth groups and things like that, but never really wanted to be warming a pew on Sunday mornings (evenings, at Wednesday night prayer meetings, revivals, you see where I'm going). To be honest, I think I learned more about being good and doing right from episodes of Star Trek on WAVE-3 than I did from most of the preaching I was exposed to - I sure enjoyed them more and loved Sunday mornings when I didn't have to go to church.

I remember a Palladium Fantasy game in high school, where the PCs were crusader-missionaries, spreading their faith by example and at the point of the sword. There was a World of Darkness game in the mid-90s, with the PCs caught up, indirectly, in angelic and demonic machinations. My D&D 3 historian/lawman/wizard was devoted to his goddess, if occasionally angry with her, and cared little for the beliefs of others. Currently, my Pulp Cthulhu investigator was raised a Quaker, left that belief for something between non-specific Protestantism and agnosticism, saw some weird shit while part of the occupation of Haiti, and is now confronting Yig's cultists. My CP2020 solo was a lapsed Catholic, more so in stories I wrote about him than in play. In my current Star Wars game, there's no real discussion of religion, outside of the Force.

Met some new-to-Louisville folks at Colin's shop on Friday, and found myself in the role of ad hoc tournament organizer for the X-Wing players there. Everyone got plenty of loot, including some Armada goodies for us fleet commanders. Then, most of us decamped for more gaming at Heroes, and holy cow, did I get a surprise. I'd pitched it as a night for Epic play, and got some interest. Wound up with three 4-player games going. Pretty terrific!

Harvey's remains came through, dropping a lot of rain and cooling the air quite a bit. I didn't hear of any flooding or any other serious issues. There's another hurricane in the eastern Atlantic, probably hitting the East Coast in a week or so.

Last night saw North Korea's most powerful nuclear test yet, something in the 50-120 kiloton range, if seismic information is to be believed. NK claims to have developed a thermonuclear device, and they've progressed to test-launching ballistic missiles over Japanese airspace instead of into open ocean. I hate feeling alarmist, but I keep hearing Admiral Painter's words - "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it."

------

I don't know where the information came from, and today it doesn't really matter. We'd observed Imperial patrols ranging further and further out from the Onderon depot, and Sector Command decided to hit one of them. A target presented itself - a Raider rendezvousing with a Gozanti carrying the sort of material we can make better use of than Moff Vancyon's forces can. Sector assembled an appropriate force, a couple of CR90s, a GR75, a couple of refitted freighters, and all the fighters we could round up.

For a few blessed minutes, it was perfect. We dropped out of hyperspace a stone's throw from the Imperial ships and it seemed we caught them completely unaware. Less than a squadron's worth of TIEs showed on our scopes; we had more than twenty fighters. The Raider was caught between our corvettes, taking more broadside fire than it knew what to do with. We had 'em.

Then the sensors started screaming. Realspace reversions all around us, and coming in fast. The Empire had set its own trap, and we'd fallen for it. If only that had been the case.

It was a pirate force. Three of those damned C-ROCs, faster meaner versions of the Gozanti, and enough fighters and transports to give both sides pause. And they were spoiling for a fight. They came roaring right into the fight between us and the Empire, throwing both sides into chaos. We wanted that Gozanti's cargo, but the pirates must have wanted it more. What had been a straightforward engagement became a brawl, damned near three separate battles. I hate saying this, but the Imperials handled themselves better than our divided force. We lost over a dozen fighters before our own ships disengaged and ran for safety - we did manage to destroy one of the C-ROCs, at least. The one that made the mistake of tangling with the Raider didn't last long. The corvette and its fighter escort cut the thing to pieces.

We're licking our wounds now, and listening.

Hitting the Empire in regions it considers safe or under complete control was a pretty brave - maybe even foolhardy - choice, but after Scarif and Yavin, Command has been feeling aggressive. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Here in Japrael, we're taking advantage of the power vacuum and confusion that Moff Dardano's death brought on. Seven Bells and Archer are still our biggest sticks, and they got a workout a couple of weeks ago. After one of my teams met with resistance fighters on Akeforst, Sector Command sent the frigates and a couple of corvettes and every starfighter we could get out hands on over there. Successful raid. Destroyed an Imperial frigate and a couple squadrons of TIEs, plus one of the planetary navy's corvettes. We lost six fighters, and in the calculus of warfare, that's an acceptable trade. Big prize out of the raid, too. One of our corvettes was retasked with boarding a gas freighter before it could jump out of the system, and we got our hands on a few thousand tons of blaster and coolant gases.

The same team, a few days ago, got mixed up in some real trouble at Onderon. Our listening post (which has to be relocated and soon) got word of a real high-level visitor, extend all courtesy and all that. We figured probably a possible new Moff or something along those lines. Nope. Nothing less than the Devastator - Vader's Star Destroyer - dropped into the system and was in orbit over one of Onderon's moons for several days. It left a good-sized garrison there, and Sector Command decided that whatever was there was pretty important, so we sent my ops to investigate Sector parked Archer at the edge of the system. Well, things happened, and there was a fight, and based on the ops team's report, there was an Inquisitor there. I've given that team some off-the-leash time. They're good, and whatever Sector has coming up next, they'd be useful, but we'll manage without them. They've got ... something to pursue, and right now, no one else needs to be involved. They'll be back when they're back.

The offensive over in the Corellian sector isn't off to the best start. Two of the task forces there got beaten up pretty badly; the third handed the Imperial Navy a resounding loss. I don't know much more beyond that. High Command committed a big, big pile of resources to this and if it doesn't pay off, we're going to be hurting.

Flight Officer's Report, action of [date], Onderon system

Per Commodore Sougal's request, I am submitting my account of the engagement identified above.

Transmissions intercepted by Whisper Base indicated a small Imperial convoy entering Onderon system would be carrying several hundred tons of parts and supplies for the Imperial ordnance station near Iziz, and that the convoy's assigned escort cruiser had suffered a severe drive failure and would be unable to travel with the convoy during its final leg. Sector Command hastily organized a strike force of two Nebulon-B frigates, Archer and Seven Bells, the CR90 corvette Tarafa, and the starfighter and armed transport complement from Canval Base.

The Imperial vessels exited hyperspace near the edge of the system's gravity well, following procedure for entry into a safe system with high levels of civilian traffic. Our frigates immediately deployed their starfighters and moved at best speed to intercept the Imperial freighters. As expected, there was a small escort force still present - a pair of Raider-class corvettes and a small starfighter complement.

Within a matter of minutes, the Alliance frigates had the freighters under their guns and were preparing to launch boarding parties. A number of Imperial ships broke away from the main body, and Commodore Sougal directed the closest Alliance ships to intercept and prevent them from escape.

Tarafa led this hastily-dispatched force, consisting of my element of A-Wings, an element of X-Wings from Canval, and two armed transports, the Leap of Faith and Tilted Heart. The breakaway Imperial force consisted of one of the Raider corvettes, six TIEs of mixed type, and a Lambda-class shuttle. Captain Gerb, commanding Tarafa, ordered the starfighters to engage the TIEs escorting the shuttle, under his corvette's support and directed the transports to harass the Raider. Gerb stated his belief that the shuttle was carrying high-value personnel and that it should be the primary target for our part of the engagement.

Just before the transports entered weapons range of the Raider, the Imperial vessel suffered a series of explosions in the drive section and broke apart. The transports did not fire on the Raider; I believe that the ship had been struck by turbolaser shots from one or both of the Alliance frigates and incurred greater damage than initially identified.

Five of the TIEs - four G/T models and an Advanced - moved quickly to screen the shuttle and engage Tarafa. Captain Gerb maneuvered to keep his ship between the TIEs and the smaller Alliance ships. A single Interceptor flanked our starfighter formation, making no effort to join the other Imperial fighters. Tarafa fought well, damaging or destroying the TIEs and firing on the shuttle. The shuttle proved to have been outfitted for combat with a heavy cannon, however, and coordinated with the TIEs to deliver heavy fire to Tarafa. The Imperials overcame our corvette's defenses and Tarafa's drive section began to fail. With the ship's maneuverability and speed greatly reduced, it was an easy target for the remaining Imperial ships and was destroyed.

When Tarafa was destroyed, the shuttle and TIE Advanced moved to disengage and escape. We destroyed the remaining TIE and landed enough shots on the shuttle to collapse its shields, but the vessel ultimately made a jump into hyperspace. Our detachment assembled into formation and rejoined the main Alliance force.

I can find no fault with the conduct of the detachment, and credit Captain Gerb with preventing the destruction of a number of starfighters and armed transports. We enjoyed the great fortune of the early destruction of the Raider; I feel certain that that vessel would have inflicted severe losses on our detachment. Of particular note, one of Canval Base's X-Wing pilots, Jaina Pelar, performed extraordinarily well. Officer Pelar flew aggressively, keeping her fighter closer to my A-Wings than I would have expected. Pelar displayed an uncanny ability to coordinate her own weapons fire with that of her fellow pilots. Her piloting skill is notable, but she is a superlative gunner. While the loss of Tarafa and most of her crew will be keenly felt, I expect that Sector Command will soon replace the ship, likely through the method of stealing an equivalent Imperial vessel.

I am available for further discussion and evaluation of the events of this action, at your convenience.

J. Battin, Flight Leader, Nightside Squadron, Seven Bells

Last night, over on the G+ wasteland, I saw some comments on a kerfuffle involving this year's Hugo Award nominations. Short form - a couple of dudes got nominated and some other people think there's been ballot-stuffing or the like.

The dudes in question are Larry Correia and Theodore Beale, the latter writing under the pen name Vox Day (OMFG AREN'T I CLEVER NO ONE WILL GET MY CLEVER WORDPLAY ON BEING THE VOICE OF GOD). I've read only a little from each of these fellows, about enough to be comfortable in not wanting to read more. The borrowed copy of Correia's Monster Hunter International failed the 100-page test, and failed it spectacularly; occasional dives into his online presence haven't improved my take on him, and he was an utter dick at the one face-to-face encounter I've had with him. Baele's not a good writer by any means; well, his grammar's pretty good, but that's about it. Assuming he's not engaging in some kind of long-form trolling or performance art, his blog posting indicates that he's a pretty terrible human being as well (but has occasional reasonable economic ideas). John Scalzi refers to him as Racist Sexist Homophobic Dickweed (RSHD), and I can't find it within me to disagree.

Whether or not the nomination process was gamed doesn't affect me at all, and I'm not sufficiently outraged to buy a WorldCon supporting membership just for the privilege of voting against these guys and for some of the good stuff I've read in the past year (like, Charles Stross's very good and very creepy Equoid). There is no shortage of material out there for me to read or view, and I can continue to vote with my wallet.

That's easy enough to do in many, many cases. Take occasional whipping boy Orson Scott Card. He's a dreadful homophobe, and a disingenuous coward, and seems to be able to only write variants of one story. Makes it easy to not support him in any way. (Disclaimer: Yes, I saw the Ender's Game movie, and it was terrible, and I donated twice what I paid for the tickets to anti-bigotry organizations after seeing the movie.) On the other hand, there's Bryan Singer. I like Singer's movies, and I'm looking forward to Days of Future Past. Singer's long been known as a chickenhawk, and of late, some very unpleasant accusations have been made against him - Google's right over there, should you want to know more. I'll see the movie. I'll probably watch The Usual Suspects again. But if these accusations prove to be true, some part of me will probably be a little bit conflicted.

Current Mood: contemplative

I think my muse is back, at least for a little while. I've written 13,400+ words since Sunday night. My Anatomy grade has slipped to a B, but I'm going to consider that an acceptable tradeoff.

L5R stalled out again, due to venue issues. I think we've got those solved, although it means a longer drive to and from gaming. I'll take it. I want this game to go off, and be a good one, to a great degree because I'm really starting to believe that this is going to be my last regular gaming in Lexington.

On that front, this week saw more movement. My student aid report revealed one little hurdle, a default of $74. I'm one for picking my battles, so I just paid the amount - $74 isn't enough of a hill to fight over when $70K in aid is on the table. Friday afternoon, I get a call from the EdDept's default resolution center, and no lie, I expected to end up beating my head against my desk when I saw that number flash up on my phone. After confirming that I was, in fact, me, the caller started apologizing. Turns out that not only was the default record in error, I was owed some money instead. Holy cow. So, the appropriate university departments get notified, and one more hurdle is cleared. With this resolved, and the final old transcript submitted, things are now out of my hands. If this is going to happen, it'll be at the pleasure of the universities.

Got a fantastic surprise from one of my gaming buddies last night - a shiny new copy of Pandemic! Assuming the early March edition of Snowmageddon doesn't make such things impossible, we're going to break this sucker in at tomorrow's game day.

Current Mood: hopeful

Friday night - left work a few minutes early, ran out to CostCo, grilled some ridiculously thick-cut chops, enjoyed a quiet and not-super-cold evening.

Saturday - went to Louisville for a model train show, swung by a game store to see a buddy for the first time in way too long, went to dinner with a friend and her ... well, son's pretty close, but it's complicated. Talked about the probable move and related matters, like housing and work while in school.

Today - slept in, decided that I was going to blow off pretty much everything. Stayed in pajamas, read some L5R material, discovered that my trusty old roaster oven makes a pretty good slow cooker.

And I wrote a little bit, too. Couple thousand words. Seeds from five years ago. Sometimes the wheels grind slowly; hopefully they'll grind fine.

Current Mood: excited

I'm starting off the last day of a four-day weekend. It's been, mostly, a good stretch away from the office (and, hey, I've got another one in 57 hours). Friday and Sunday were the best days, and I'm going to credit getting out of and away from the apartment with that. No grand adventures or day trips, just running some errands, but it got me off of the couch for a few hours early in the day, and that kept me from just being a slug all day.

It seems to have paid off a little bit. One of my goals was to finish up a proposal for a SF game setting, and late last night, I got the response - "I'd like to see more." So, today's going to see some IM discussion and laying the foundation of this thing. And I'm going to make myself get out of the apartment to work on this today.

My game club is stepping up! One returning member has put out a call for an open and ongoing game to be played at game days. One of my regulars is pitching two options for the inadvertent post-apocalypse day in a few weeks. I'm still planning my own games, but if these come together, the additional options are going to be fantastic to have around.

Thanksgiving is this week, and to the best of my memory, this is the first time I've had the entire four-day weekend off from work since '96. I'm looking forward to it, even if (or maybe because) I don't have any plans between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon. As long as I'm not by myself or camped out at a hospital or something, I'll be happy enough. Or shopping on Friday. That's anti-fun.

Current Mood: cheerful

So, in addition to the word dump from Friday night, I've been trying (again) to write more. Getting in some bits and pieces during downtime at the office, and, of late, before heading in to the office. For most of the past two weeks, I've woken up around 5:30AM, fully an hour before my alarm's set. Like, wide awake, and fully rested. So, some mornings I pull the blankets back up and doze or meditate or whatever for a while, and some mornings I grab the iPad or head to my desk and I write something. Stuff usually goes into my Dropbox, sometimes it goes to the other blog, and sometimes it goes here. And sometimes it gets deleted, because I just wanted to purge it from my mind.

Anyway, Friday night was good. After a stressful week at the terrible day job, I needed good company, and D delivered. Conversation over dinner (at Boombozz Pizzeria - quite good) went to some strange places now and then, but it was so good just to talk with someone about something besides advertising or contextless griping. Still some dissonance, but I'm almost familiar enough with dissonance to be comfortable around it. Stayed in Louisville later than I meant to, and got caught by construction traffic on the way home, so I missed the midnight showing of Alien, but not the end of the world.

I got to indulge my Fading Suns love at today's game day; first part of an adventure to conclude in two weeks. FS was the second game of the day, and that's for the best. The first game was the beginning of Invasive Procedures, and man, Ben P can flat-out run a horror game. Some nice staging, and it doesn't (or maybe it does) hurt that IP is written around one of my personal terror triggers - corruption of the self and removal of identity. I think if this had been the evening game, I would have gotten home, poured a bourbon, and slept with the lights on.

UofL and Auburn won on Saturday, and the Bengals beat the Patriots this afternoon, and right now, my Dodgers are beating the Braves in Game 3 of their NLDS. As is normal with me, I'm trying to keep my hopes under control, but, man, LA looks so good right now. This is probably the best team they've fielded since 1988.

Current Mood: sleepy

I'm on a days-long vacation, as is my custom for some time around my birthday. Instead of being comfortably ensconced in my grandfather's old-but-ridiculously-comfortable recliner in my parents' living room, I'm in a comfortable bed in a hotel in Charleston, West Virginia. For, and stop me if you've heard this already, a funeral.

What I'm going to write isn't all that pleasant. I'm not here to honor the dead, or offer comfort to the immediate family. I'm here solely so shore up my father. The deceased is or was an aunt, and almost definitely the most broken and unpleasant person I've ever known. I've never seen her without at least one cigarette in hand, and often double-fisting the things, ash dropping into whatever lies below, her cognitive functions burned down by an industrial-grade cocktail of antipsychotic and antidepressant medications. To be honest, the only consistent emotion I've ever felt for this woman has been pity. Even as a child, and before I could put this into words, she never was anything I could call a complete person. She's always been, in my universe, this pear-shaped lump of flesh, watery-eyed and with a voice that was either a hoarse and entreating whisper or a demanding gravelly bellow in either setting existing only to call out for a drink or food or a cigarette, reeking of tobacco smoke and uncleanliness.

Upon arrival at the hotel, I was able to download the files that I'll be expanding and rewriting for the Spycraft 2.0 closeout book. There's a lot to review, and this work is going to be take up most of my time away from the office. This was the plan, by the way, and a huge part of my reason to spend my vacation time in a familiar-but-not-my-place environment. Once we get back to Liberty, tomorrow evening, I'll have the better part of four days to do nothing but work on this project. Dad's going to be on the road, and Mom will be at work for about 10 hours a day, and I'll have nothing to do but review the precursor work, peruse the notes and other material, and crank out wordcount. This is going to be good for me. Healthy

Current Mood: determined

Dinner, at least, was nice. Better than that, it was fantastic. Miz B has her money, and I've got a cargo hold full of freshly-stolen weapons in the cargo bay. Everything's fine, but I'm dreading what I know is coming next.

Miz B likes mixing pleasure with business. Nothing wrong with that; it's why I'm a pilot instead of a stockbroker or something. But … well, here's how it played out.

I accompany her up to her hotel suite. She's laughing at her own jokes, and I'm doing enough to be polite, but the braying laughter is getting under my skin. We do have an honest bit of shared amusement – the very government that employs her (and that she's betraying) and that I'm fighting against paid for dinner and this ridiculously posh suite.

“I'll just be a minute,” she says, and as she leaves me in the sitting room she slides a strap of her dress off of a shoulder, revealing a vast expanse of pasty-pale skin. Her smile as she looks back at me is meant to be alluring and naughty and predatory, but beneath the beady eyes and hair dyed a yellow not found in nature (at least on this planet), it's, well, it's nothing like it's intended to be.

I take off my jacket and flex my hands and start reaching down into those strange places where things smaller than atoms lurk. I've planned this out. I've got the gift, and to back it up, I've got a compact little airspray hypodermic tucked away in a pocket.

“Come on in, Jaaaay-bee,” she calls, stretching my initials out. I brace myself and head for the bedroom. Miz B is many things, but subtle isn't one of those this evening. She's on the bed, reclined against a mountain of pillows, sprawled. I force a grin, thank whatever gods there are that I'm not a telepath, and cross to the bed. She reaches up for me, and I extend a hand to hers.

And that's when I do something I'm ashamed of.

I generate a quick electrical charge, strong enough to stun her, and let it fly when our hands touch. She spasms and slumps back against the pillows. I've got a handful of seconds to do this. I climb onto the bed, pulling the hypo from my pants pocket and press it against her neck. A quick hiss, and a cocktail of brutally fast-acting muscle relaxants, anesthetics, and something designed to mimic the effects of a truly vile hangover hit her bloodstream. I stick around for a couple of minutes to make sure her breathing and heartbeat are steady, and then it's time to get outta there.

I don't take the suitcase full of money and gold. I'm a smuggler and insurgent, not a thief.

* * *

I should be flying over all of this. Treetop level or twenty thousand meters up or even in orbit. Fusion plant humming along, hands on the controls or tapping into a more direct interface for the really tricky stuff, telling gravity and drag to piss off and let me do my thing.

It's a nice thought, and my plane's a few kilometers away. At a decent run, I could get to her in an hour or so. Light off, lift off, and tear outta here.

All of this? Well, since I brought it up, “all of this” is a skirmish in a mostly-abandoned town somewhere in west Texas. FSA paramilitary police on one side and a mix of Texan ranchers and businessmen and Mexican insurgents (and my own way-too-valuable-for-this self) on another. Something to be said for 'em – they're brave as anything, and it's nice to know that all of the guns and other items of mankind's remarkable capacity for self-loathing that I was paid handsomely to deliver to these revolutionary types are all working out as promised. Lots of bullets and lasers and the occasional rocket. Loud stuff. Smells and sounds and sights of destruction and death, and I'm hunkered down inside an old storefront, occasionally popping up just long enough to trigger a spray of laser bolts at the bad guys.

Current Mood: sleepy

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Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Kiss Your Face Forever

The Way Things Go

Tears Run Dry

One of These Mornings

Under the Gun

Sold me Down the River

No Hope State

On and On

New Song

This is Where you can Reach me Now

Tale for Someone

Finding Our Way

Shine

Born to Run

Phone Call From Leavenworth

Dear No One

All The Things She Said

Down to The Wire

Coldwater Canyon

Between the Wheels

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June 2025

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