Writing Ranting, or ADHD and fixing things.

 Every author can tell you about "Writing ADHD"; you have a great idea. The best idea. One that would make the great writers of history weep that they had not thought of it. Then you start writing it. And it's great... but maybe you didn't quite think of an ending. Or maybe you have an ending but your outline has "..." for the middle. Or maybe you run out of steam... Easier to start with the NEW great idea.

Which will run out of steam in its turn.

I'm not saying I suffer from Writing ADHD... Let's just say that my half-completed stories could fill up a not inconsiderable portion of the Library of Congress. So I'm going to be doing some small changes. First of all, the Worm/Mist/??? Crossover is an example of a story that is bounded in time--it has an ending, already written in fact. It has a middle outlined. So I'll be doing that. Orb Weaver will continue; have no fear, that's right now my flagship fanfic, so it'll be updated at least once a week. But having a second fanfic, more importantly, one that I know where it is going to end, gives me a better fallback.

The original story is going to finish up Book II of Wanderer's Quest, and then finish Book IIi.

This came from a very annoyed comment from a much better-known author I talk to. (he's actually had a few books pop up on the bestseller list) which can be summed up as "Jordan, you have three or four incomplete series up on Amazon--why should I, as a reader, buy your stuff if I have no certainty you'll complete it?" That was followed by a snarky comment that GRR Martin is already rich and famous, he can get away with that. I'm just old, so I can't.

So Wanderer's quest will go up. The ebook format will go for the ebook tier, but I'll put up an rtf file for everyone else, so you're not stuck "in the middle" with no idea who these people are.

Every story up here will be completed, have no fear, but I think it's better to work to complete one, really complete it rather than have a bunch of fragments, especially given how hard it can be to find stuff on patreon.

There WILL be other stuff--gaming stuff, excerpts, and maybe short stories, but those are teh things I'm aiming at right now to defeat my writing ADHD--ooh, a story about a baseball pitcher sent to a world where baseball is how nations fig--NO! BAD JORDAN!

I'm also considering a discord, but I dunno if that's going to be that useful.

So let me know what you think.

Been A while,

 HAsn't it. Well, I'm gonna too my horn, two new stories up on amazon and smashwords. I'll have to wait a day or so to make certain they're actually available, since sometimes there's a delay, but they're posted. 

To be honest, I got a bit used to just posting on user boards and patreon, so now I'll come back to this. Ideally, we'll be a bit more active. 

It's Vampires Vs. Killbots in: Blood and Circuits: Awakening

 

Click here to Buy or Read From Amazon

If you can’t find a Van Helsing when you need one, how about building yourself a Van Helsing?

Aleph was the first sapient combat AI ever fielded by humanity. Designed to be not simply deadly but creative, Aleph would be the ideal peacekeeping and defense system, not simply knowing when to shoot, but able to understand when not to shoot.

But when Aleph discovered a vampire conspiracy that had been victimizing mankind for centuries, Aleph realized he was going to be shooting a lot of things in the near future.

Just not many humans.

Join Aleph and his companion, Diane, as they find out that the best ways of hunting vampires don’t involve crosses and stakes, but the most advanced weapons created by humanity!

Going video--in my voice!

 I'm going to start making videos about both history and writing. I'm hoping that people will enjoy them, because by I am enjoying them big-time. Here's my history channel and I'll have my sci-fi and culture channel coming up. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw6_Cqt-duoOQiU1G8NvSuQ

Thanks all!

When Science Shouldn't be Your Tyrant

 When to ignore science.

You’re writing a tale about a band of teens turned into miniaturized humans, and there’s a scene where they’re sitting around a fire made from matches, watching as the night wears on. And suddenly, you say: wait a minute! Fire doesn’t last that long! A bunch of matches would burn for only a few minutes tops!

Yes. And?  If you want to go all hard sci-fi, miniaturized people shouldn’t exist. For that matter, even many “hard” sci-fi settings include things like FTL and generated gravity, usually covered with some comments about how theories in the present turned out to work.  But in truth, it’s likely that FTL is just as much fantasy as Harry Potter. 

None of which matters. If people are buying your book about tiny people, they’re buying into the fantasy. As long as you’re consistent, only a very few are going to start muttering about how this couldn’t really happen. The rest will roll their eyes and say: Duh, if we wanted reality we’d be watching CNN. 

To use an example of this: The Cold Equations. Not a single engineer is going to say: that’s realistic. Not even in the 1950s. If the safety margins were that narrow, then the ship would be behind a bank vault, not a little door with a polite: “if you board this ship, you will die” note. The entire plot, looked at with a critical eye, falls apart based on this one, specific thing. 

And it doesn’t matter. There’s a reason why the Cold Equations is in so many collections, and why it sparked a furious response from readers, and why there have been actual remakes, published in Analog and other magazines, finding “a better way.” 

The story wasn’t about the science. The story was about the fact that the universe can be cruel, and as much as we could like to believe that the innocent are protected from bad decisions, they aren’t. The emotional punch, which grabbed many people, was a fundamentally unfair situation that no amount of smarts or courage could fix. And it worked. The Cold Equations are still remembered, while you could fill a library with more scientifically grounded stories that are more or less forgotten.

So remember, unless you’re writing a very hard sci-fi story, don’t let science be your tyrant. Sometimes it’s okay to just wink at people and know that they’ll be understanding of your setting, because they didn’t come to you for an education in science—but to have a fun read. 

Playing with some more AI art.I used a service to "Train up" models of Claire Nunez.

 And I got the following:

Pretty neat!

Blocking out a cover with AI art.

 So AI art isn't great--but it's decent if you have no art budget and can't draw. For myself, I've been playing around with it, and found a few concepts for my next "A Sorceress on EArth" project. 

Very generic, with problems involving the hands. Also, Novel AI has a thing for breasts. That's "Small breasts" on the setting. Normal breasts got me supermodel porn star models, and large breasts... well, I suppose it's one way to smother your enemies.

Which is a note--Novel AI got trained on anime, and of course, anime tends to default to unrealistic body types. Mid Journey is better, but Midjourney has it's own foibles. 

So this bit of art is going to get adjusted--greatly. But even so, it's something to look at if you can't draw your way out of a paper bag, can't pay the needed bucks, and need a cover.