Dayton's Blog: A pimple on the ass of the Internet.

Goodbye, December. Goodbye, 2009. Don't let the door hit you in the junk when you try to open it, and I really don't care what happens to you on the way out.

Anyway, here's the monthly status report for December:

( Complete December rundown behind the cut! )

Even with the holiday madness, I still managed to find time to read through the first-pass pages for Counterstrike. For those wondering, first-pass pages mean that the manuscript has been typeset, and it's printed 2-up on the page, looking pretty much what it will look like when it's printed up as a real, honest-to-goodness book.



Considering we're talking about just shy of 500 pages, the number of corrections I had were pretty small, and there was nothing in the way of crazy editing/changing/rewriting/etc. I guess I got all of that out of my system when I read the copyedited manuscript last month.

We're almost there, boys and girls! Barring one other piece of housekeeping with respect to some pages which will go in the front, the next time I see this thing, it'll be on the shelf at a local bookstore!

Now, if the planets would just align properly for the next month or so, I can turn and burn on Paths of Disharmony.

Yep. Probably just jinxed the whole damned thing.

I always get amused when I read stuff like this. Posted as I found it:

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I am looking for a ghost writer. I will not say what a ghost writer is because the only people who hould bereplying to this job are those who know what it is and have been one in the past. THis is a great opportuniy to become very wealthy. I will not pay per hour or page or anything wlse. I want a good person who can get the job done and receive 5 % of the 25 % royalties that I will get from the published book. I have one book published already. MOst ghost writers get paid a certain amount and the are done and get nothing more. I beleive that a person should get paid for life for a job well done. If the ghost writer that I chose does a fantastic job then they willl be contracted fr the rest of the series and the other four books I need help with. This is a chance to be come very rich. The Ghost writer's anme will be in the credits of thebook so this person can have more jobs after me. If you feel that you gualify then give me a messag at the email above.

-----

I laughed at the whole "very wealthy" and "very rich" bits, myself, but my favorite is "The Ghost writer's anme will be in the credits of thebook so this person can have more jobs after me."

Hah. Hah, I say.

....was the UPS package being dropped onto my front porch, which contained the first-pass pages for Counterstrike, all 500 or so pages of it.



And here I was wondering what I might do with that extra hour or so of sleep I'd been getting the last couple of nights.

Having read earlier in the week the very ads to which this "rebuttal" references, I absolutely love this person, whoever he/she is.

Please, kick us in the junk harder...again. (Kansas City, MO)

What up scrubs? Oh, yeah. Unemployment. That's what. As a fellow 'jobs > writing/editing jobs' seeker who currently feels a little bitter towards the really expensive and apparently useless MFA that seemed like a good idea at the time, I feel your pain.

How tired are you of reading things like "Volunteer to write my crap for me! Homeless people might read it if they happen upon internet access and a computer, and also happen to know how to use said computer. I doubt it, but it's possible.", "I'm going to dictate stuff to you...er, ummm...what I meant to say was 'take my words and make them great! Oh, and strike through every word you change so that I can micromanage you'!", "I supply what I presume to be substance because I don't fully understand what you as a writer do, but I feel like I should hire one of you and say words like "sizzle" just to piss you off", "Maintain our twitter account and stuff. Or don't. It's whatever bro.", "Relevant, interesting, personal injury law. Damn straight we used them together in a sentence", etc., etc.? Really damn tired, right? Ditto.

I wish this post were some sort of call to arms. It's not. I don't really know how that would work anyway, but I bet I could make it really motivational. Regardless, perhaps this post will be read by the next organization or individual seeking to hire a writer for menial task #967. Perhaps it will be carefully considered, acknowledged and subsequently spare me from yet another insulting job search. Probably not, but it's all good! Ya know why? Cuz I love being kicked right there...there...no, a little bit to the left...there ya go, right there. Ahhhh, that's the stuff. Pain baby! Pain!

•Location: Kansas City, MO
•Compensation: WHATEVER WE SAY IT IS, BITCH! WHAT YOU THINK THIS IS? THE PRICE IS RIGHT?
•Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
•Please, no phone calls about this job!
•Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

PostingID: 1505515128

Hidee-ho, neighbors!

I'm renewing my call to all Trekkies who have A) a camera, B) one or more tribbles, C) a bit of free time, and D) no shame, to snap a pic of a tribble in an odd/weird/crazy place.

See my original post on the topic here: Calling all Trekkies! Calling all Trekkies!

The wackier or more fun the situation, the better. For example, from @starfleetmom on Twitter: Who reads this crap?

I've got some other examples as already provided via e-Mail. For those who sent me links to where pics are stored, if you would be so kind as to provide such links again in the comments section for either entry I've made on this, it would go a long way toward refreshing my swiss-cheesed memory.

Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to help out so far!

Madame Editor was nice enough to send me a handful of cover flats for Counterstrike: The Last World War, Book II (and, yes, the cover looks even better than the jpeg lets on). She also cleared me to share with anyone who might care the back cover text. So, without further ado:

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When the alien war engulfing a distant planet spilled to Earth through a
network of hidden "portals," humankind was plunged into an apocalyptic,
generations-old conflict between the Plysserians and the Chodrecai. Now,
months after the world's most powerful military forces formed a tenuous
alliance with the Plysserians and countered a devastating, three-pronged
Chodrecai offensive, alien survivors continue to wreak havoc on a
shell-shocked Earth. Martial law and civil unrest run rampant. Resistance
cells and pockets of Chodrecai sympathizers are gathering strength. And two
U.S. Marines - Sergeant Major Simon DiCarlo and Sergeant Belinda Russell -
remain trapped on the alien planet of Jontashreena.

Now, as human and Plysserian scientists and engineers race to unlock the
intergalactic portals and harvest alien technology, Earth prepares for the
most explosive battle for its existence. Joining the war effort are
recruits like young colin Laney, who will advance from Marine boot camp to
the forefront of a massive invasion on alien terrain - with the fate of two
worlds hanging in the balance.

-----



Woo, and...dare I even say it? Hoo.

First, allow me to state for the record that my first "attempt" to participate in National Novel Writing Month was a spectacular failure. I knew back on November 1st that I probably shouldn't have signed up for it, given everything on my plate at the time, but stupid me, I thought the presence of some form of external deadline would provide the necessary impetus for me to find a way to make it work.

Note to self: Stop doing stupid shit like that, and just stick to your normal routine.

Maybe I'll try again next year, but I'll be sure to take better stock of my situation before making that decision.

Anyway, here's what happened in November:

( Complete November rundown behind the cut! )

Well, even with yesterday's activities, which included the consumption of too much food, watching some football, and even cracking the case on the Season 7 DVD set of 24 (4 hours down, 20 to go!), I still managed to get a bit of writing business accomplished.

One of those things was the completion of final edits to a short story I'd been writing for Selina Rosen, she of Yard Dog Press. Selina is putting together what will be the fifth in her ongoing series of anthologies based in the universe of her creation known as Bubbas of the Apocalypse, and I couldn't resist writing a story to see if it might make the cut. Readers of my stuff know I had another story, "Jack and the Weird-Ass Box," published in the fourth Bubbas book, Houston: We've Got Bubbas! and later republished in The Best of the Bubbas of the Apocalypse.

(If you liked Zombieland, then you'll be happy to know that Selina and the Yard Dog gang have been doing the same thing for quite a while now, arguably better than what you saw in that film. Just sayin'.)

Anyway, this new tale, "One Small Step for Bubba," uses characters from the first story, and takes advantage of the new anthology's theme, which is time travel. I'll let you fill in the blanks from there. It's on its way to Selina as I type this. Here's hoping she digs it.

Up next, back to Paths of Disharmony as well as reading over edits to another story I plan to submit (this time via e-Mail) to its target market before Monday.

Back on Halloween, I presented my flash-fiction story "Last Stand" as a series of tweets on Twitter. Each tweet was appended with the hashtag #laststand so folks could keep track of the feed I was conjuring.

Since then, I've had a few requests to make the story available so that it could be read by normal people, without the hashtags and the need to read the feed in reverse chronological order. I've also asked about some kind of follow-up for Twitter, either a sequel to this story or something else entirely. I haven't had time to give that much thought, but I do have an idea or two percolating in the back of my brain. If I have time over the coming holidays, I may put some juice to that and see what happens.

In the meantime, here you go: "Last Stand"

A while back, Kevin and I were asked by our friend glennhauman to write an article about Star Trek comics for his comics/genre news site ComicMix.com. The piece was intended to offer fans of the new Star Trek film some examples of good "classic" Trek comics from the more than forty years' worth of stories in which Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise have appeared.

Armed with that mandate, and the knowledge that the piece would run as one of the site's "ComicMix Six" features, Kevin and I descended into our respective vaults. Once there, we began sifting through the archives and other detritus, searching for six stories which we thought offered a balanced representation of "the good stuff" from Star Trek's long history in comics. Since we're incapable of following even the simplest of instructions without finding some way to dork things up, we ended up offering seven candidates.

The result is just in time for the DVD release of the new Star Trek film! ComicMix Six: Classic Star Trek Comics You Should Read.

It's worth noting that we don't offer up these titles as what we think are "the best." Instead, we wanted to provide a worthy candidate from each of the different publishers who have given us Trek comics over the years. Hopefully, our list serves as an entry point to a treasure trove of tales featuring Kirk and Company that many fans might not even know existed.

Many thanks to Glenn and ComicMix for having us over to play!

Despite a notable lack of progress on Paths of Disharmony, my still-in-development novel for the forthcoming Star Trek: The Typhon Pact mini-series, a bit of progress on other writing fronts has been made over the past couple of days.

First, I completed my revisions and review of the copyedited manuscript for Counterstrike: The Last World War, Book II and mailed those back to Madame Editor on Thursday. The only outstanding task on that front is drafting a new section for the front of the book, a sort of recap of major events from the first novel. I dorked with that yesterday, and I'll finish it either tonight or tomorrow before sending it on to the aforementioned Madame Editor sometime before the end of the weekend.

Next, Kevin and I gathered at Stately Ward Manor to tackle our next assignment: an article for ComicMix focusing on Star Trek comics. We completed a first draft today, and once we both have a chance to read it and make any necessary tweaks, we'll likely fire it off to our editor sometime tomorrow. No idea when it might make it up to the site, but as it's intended to tie into the new Star Trek film and its pending DVD/Blu-Ray release on Tuesday, we're hopeful it will be soon.

Okay. Now I can get back to Paths of Disharmony, right?

Oh, and I still have another short story to write before the end of the month.

Why did I enter NaNoWriMo again?

My contributor's copy arrived in today's mail. Sweet!



As the cover says, this here be the "Villians!" issue, featuring an in-depth rundown on the "Top 10" villians from onscreen Trek, as well as a look at seven bad guys from "Trek Literature." Thrown in an interview with writer/director Nicholas Meyer, an exclusive sneak peek into the forthcoming Star Trek: The Art of the Film book, and an extract from David Mack's Precipice, the fifth book in Pocket Books' Star Trek: Vanguard series, and you've got a mag chock full of TrekkieGoodness(tm).

Among the TrekLit Peanut Gallery making contributions to the issue:

Christopher L. Bennett
Greg Cox
Keith R.A. DeCandido (kradical)
David R. George III
Bob Greenberger
Bill Leisner (bill_leisner)
David Mack (infinitydog)
Andy Mangels
David McIntee (lonemagpie)
Marco Palmieri
Lance Parkin

Kevin and I also contributed a piece focusing on Nero, as well as a smaller bit highlighting Adrik Thorsen, the Bad Guy du jour for the seminal Star Trek novel Federation.

I've seen this on store shelves, so you should probably run out and buy two or three copies.

Just sayin'.

Earlier this week, Book View Cafe held a "Twitter Fiction" contest to celebrate the release of the first title to be released under their Book View Press imprint, Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls, a collection of favorite science fiction stories by writers who are members of BVC, and edited by Phyllis Irene Radford (ramblin_phyl).

The rules of the contest were simple: Create a story using the basic theme "Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls," and compose it for Twitter. In other words, the story could be no more than 140 bytes long. Well, 126, if you count the "@bookviewcafe " which had to precede your tweet.

On a whim, I dashed out the following and fired it through the Twittersphere:

-----

@bookviewcafe Rocket Boy shouted, "Prepare to be boarded!" The Geek Girls laughed. "Your rocket's too small to penetrate our shields!"

-----

This just in from the "No shit, Sherlock" Department: Even on Twitter, I'm able to find the gutter.

As luck would have it, somebody at BVC has a sense of humor that approximates mine, as evidenced when they posted the winners list.

I ended up winning a copy of Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls in e-Book form. Not too shabby for 140 bytes worth of work, eh?

Thanks to the kind folks at BVC for hosting the contest, and for selecting my goofy little story. Be sure to check out their site and all the cool stuff they offer, and for those of you looking to get in on the action for a bit of fun, be on the look out for their next TwitterFic contest. They hold them every few weeks or so.

I've seen this posted to Amazon.com and SimonAndSchuster.com, so I felt safe enough share it here. I think it makes a nice counterpart to the cover from the first book:


(Click for larger versions.)


Publication for the new book remains scheduled for late April 2010. Stay tuned!

A little later than I normally post these, but here's what happened in October:

( Complete October rundown behind the cut! )

With the renewed fanboy/fangirl maelstrom that's accompanying the pending release of the new Twilight movie, to say nothing of the stacks of Twilight and other vampire/vampire hunter/vampire lover/etc. books I see whenever I walk into a book store, I've been thinking again about my back-burnered idea for a vampire book.

Maybe what I need is to give my would-be vampire hunter/pursuer/whatever a code he follows, whereby he only kills whiny emo vampires who insist on standing around moping and glowering at everybody with their head down and just generally annoying the fuck out of the rest of the vampire population (to say nothing of the humans who have to put up with their shit). Everybody knows that if a bloodsucker needs stakin', it's one of these blubbering bastards. What we need is a guy (or lady) who can deliver some hard truth smackdown and maybe even some common sense to these shrill crybabies, punctuating that tough love with the strike of a mallet.

You know: Dexter, the Vampire Interventionist.

Hmmm....

Well, considering everything else going on today, it's not a bad way to start. I'll make up the ground tomorrow...uh, maybe.

1280 / 50000 words. 3% done!

I went and entered this year's National Novel Writing Month contest.

I'm just starting work on my next novel, Paths of Disharmony for next year's Star Trek: The Typhon Pact miniseries, anyway. I was supposed to start back on October 1st, but some other stuff came along which demanded my attention, and I ended up back-burnering the entire thing until November so I could clear the decks. That means the timeframe I was given to write the book isn't as big as it once was, and I was going to have to make up the lost time between now and February 2nd.

What better motivator to do exactly that, than to make myself accountable in such a public fashion? Since today is the first day I've actually sat down and started writing...you know...actual words toward the novel, it seemed like a damned fine idea. So....



I've had a good morning so far, good enough that I can with a clear conscience turn toward other writing matters. Once I'm done for the day, I'll post one of those word-count meter thingees...assuming I can figure out how to make one of them work.

Onward!

So, I decided to try an experiment this Halloween.

Tomorrow night, starting sometime after 6pm Central time (about the time I assume my post as CandyGuy at our front door), I'm going to start "live tweeting" over on Twitter. One tweet at a time, I'll present a flash fiction story I wrote back in 2007 called "Last Stand." It was a story I originally wrote as a favor to friend and fellow writer Christopher Pimental (chrispimental) for his e-Zine Thug Works and its Halloween-themed issue.

I'd been thinking of posting a "Twitter-fied" story of some sort for a while, and a month or so ago, as Halloween 2009 began looming on the horizon, I decided that was a good time to try something. Thug Works unfortunately has passed on into the aether, taking with it "Last Stand" and all the other, better fiction that once called the zine home. With the story appearing nowhere else -- at least, not so far as I've been able to determine -- I figured it might be the right vehicle for test-driving this sort of thing. It's short (850 words originally, but I pumped it up to just over 1,000 while reformatting it and tweaking it for Twitter), is told in first person (perfect for Tweeting), and it's got foul language, violence, and zombies.

Trick or treat, yo.

Anyway, tomorrow night, you can follow me (@daytonward) on Twitter, and/or the "#laststand" hashtag, to watch "Last Stand" unfold in all its Twitterific glory. For those of you with lives and/or better things to do, I'll likely post a transcript at some point in the coming days.

Hope to see you there!