new year

You know, WooHoo and all that.  I’m reserving my “Happy” until I find out just how it goes.

On the bright side, Ether’s up and running happily along on my new webpage. Have you started reading it yet?

On the “it’s happening to everyone” side, my sister/roommate is still looking for work. She had a great interview today, so that’s why I’m reserving my “Happy” to the new year.  I’ll call it Hopeful.

On the “what are you writers up to?” side, we’re contesting each other during the month of January – privately – to spawn huge word counts and spur forth new novels.  We’d all really like naps, but that’s not likely in the near future.

So pop over and read Ether, while I pine away for that nap and watch too many Top Gear videos.

what the heck?!?

You say? Where’s Ether, you ask?

Well I decided the blog format wasn’t the right venue for posting a novel, so Ether is now located on the Midnight Reading website.

Where’s that, you ask?  Well it’s at http://www.MidnightReading.com

But if you want to go straight to Ether, it’s here: Ether

Extras

Here you’ll find little tidbits of “dvd extras”. Added content in a sort of writer’s commentary, of the chapter already posted.

You’ll find no “spoilers” here, and you may wish to skip this altogether out of pure disinterest. But should you be curious . . .

Welcome to Ether

Welcome, to my latest novel Ether.

If you look above, you’ll find a tab labeled Ether (technically it says ether, this format doesn’t allow for proper caps!)  There you’ll find the Fantasy novel Ether posted one chapter at a time every Friday, beginning today, and finishing May 5th, 2009.

Like what you’re reading?  The tab that says Comments/reviews is where you can leave a comment, review, note, cookies 🙂

Really like what you’re reading? You can buy Ether as an ebook, trade paperback, and by this weekend, hardback book at my Lulu storefront: Midnight Reading. Or feel free to make a donation, it’s good for the karma 🙂

pardon my dust

I’ll be making changes to the blog this week – the design and layout – so if you’re popping in and see strange things going on, and changing around, be not afraid 😀

I’m just prepping for the free debut of Ether.

feel free to wander around while I putz, shouldn’t get in the way at all

frank sinatra would be proud

I wasn’t going to blog this topic, but a couple of things happened that made me think to myself “what the hell.”  And “maybe you should explain what’s going on.”  As well as “you should post something, you know, so they don’t wander off and assume you’ve become one of the undead.”

First, I was contemplating this on the drive home last night and it seemed like it could be an important thing to mention.  Then, later that night and again this morning, I was shown links to two other articles basically agreeing with my thoughts (and probably doing it with more eloquence, but you’re stuck with me, the potentially undead).

This post is about “Making it” as a writer. Both the myth and the reality of what it means to “make it” in writing/ publishing/ being an author, and being a success.

In an effort not to appear to be spewing sour grapes, I’m going to avoid a long diatribe about how I transitioned from joining an online writing forum, to having run screaming from them in search of my sanity. Suffice it to say — for those who might assume otherwise —  I am fully versed in how Traditional Publishing really works.  I’m properly informed in regards to agents, publishers, and bears, oh my!

There is a group out there who will label me as a failure. Someone who “couldn’t cut it in the real world.”  A writer who gave up, wasn’t good enough, or didn’t have the discipline and/or patience required by this industry.  As it happens – that’s not the case. (except that, sure, I’ve never been a very patient person).

The case, to be frank, is simply a matter of rediscovering my Happy Place.

It took a while. For a bit, I’d gone from happily writing away and enjoying the crap out of penning novels – to being completely and utterly embarrassed because I had, in the past, freely given away everything I wrote for the enjoyment of whoever wanted to read it. I had a passion then. A lust for writing. Not a day would go by that didn’t see me jotting notes, or spending hours at the keyboard, anxiously wondering what came next in whatever I was writing.

Then came a brief stint when I thought that — in order to continue, and in order to honestly consider myself a writer — I had to tuck in my shirt, put on a pencil skirt and white blouse, and follow the rules.  I came to understand that in order to “be a success” I’d have to spend years struggling, writing, and practicing my hoop-jumping and ass-kissing skills.

Thank God I snapped out of that!

The other day, I told a friend of mine that I’d come to the belief publishing agents are like nipples on the batsuit. They give the appearance of being real, and necessary, but honestly they’re just bumps on a rubber costume.  Now I’ve come to believe the same holds true for traditional publishing in general. If you think that’s sour grapes, it really isn’t.  Go out there, get yourself a publishing contract with a small or large publisher – sign with an agent. I’ll shake your hand, congratulate you sincerely, and maybe even buy your book if it’s something I’d like.

I’ve come to a different conclusion, one that works for me. It definitely doesn’t appeal to everyone.  I’ve made the decision to go back into the woods where the view is nice, the air a bit more clean, and I’ll stand a much better chance of seeing something different.  The world is changing, and I’m more than happy to change along with it, but that means the ideals of having “made it” are changing, too.

I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if bookstores will ever die out, and I don’t know if the internet is even going to stand the test of time. I don’t know if anyone wants to read what I write, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see myself on the shelves of Barnes & Noble in the future.

I don’t know if this venture of mine will succeed, or fail.

But I do know I’m moving forward.  I do know I’m a really good writer. Not a great one, certainly not God’s gift to novels.  But I am good. Much better than I was, and not as good as I will be.

I do know that anyone who finds my storytelling interesting, compelling, or just plain fun, will be able to read it all here for free.  And for those of you who really like it, or prefer to have and hold, to be read away from the computer like I do, will be able to buy it in paperback and/or hardback as you see fit.

I won’t lie – I’m really hoping some of you buy it.  My sister/housemate lost her job (thank you tanking economy) and right now I’m supporting the both of us. But we all know internet users like FREE better than sex, so I expect the vast majority of you will just come around here every Friday and read these novels a chapter at a time, gratis.

That’s fine by me. Posting the chapters free is not dependant on people buying a certain number of copies, or donating a certain amount of money. Once a novel starts to show up a chapter a time, it’ll keep showing up a chapter a time until it’s completed. I don’t show any fiction to anyone until it’s written, edited, and finished. So if you start reading, rest assured — barring the coming of the digital dark age, or the zombie hoard — you can keep reading until The End.

Agents, editors, publishing contracts, shelf space, advance checks, royalty payments – these don’t make a writer.  These things, while a nice pad to the ego, don’t mean you’ve “made it”.

Readers do.

What’s new?

snogSo, what’s new, you ask?  Well I’m glad you did ask – because as it happens, there is new.

That is, there is news.

The news being Free Fiction (yanno, since everyone loves freebies) Although there’s gonna be a catch this time.

What do you mean, you ask?  Well, it’s like this . . .

Starting in December, on the first Friday of the month, you’ll all be treated to my new novel, Ether, a chapter at a time. I’ll be posting one chapter of Ether, every Friday, until it’s completed. As there are 23 chapters, you’ll have read the entire novel by sometime around May. God bless blogs, I’ll have the entire novel set up to automatically post the next chapter in line, every Friday, so even if I come down with some sort of plague, nothing will get skipped.

BUT – if you don’t like to wait, you can purchase Ether as a trade paperback, or an ebook to read at your own pace.  By the time everyone else is reading chapter 3 for free, you could have finished the entire novel and given it as a Christmas gift.

When and where can I get a copy?  You ask great questions!  And I’ll answer that, on December 1st.  In the meantime, if you don’t mind a spoiler or two, you can read what Pete Tzinski had to say about Ether.

Continue reading “What’s new?”

guess what

No, seriously, Guess.

Come on … at least TRY to guess.

I’ll give you a clue: http://gotm.wordpress.com/

You GUESSED !  Good for you!  That’s right, Pete Tzinski is writing again. And, I might add, I take full credit for this revelation.  For ’twas I who cajolled him into returning to the Happy Place that is writing a serial and posting it on the interwebbies for the fans.

Yes, I cannot lie. I take full and complete credit.

Of course, I can’t take any credit for the writing – or the story that is God in the Machine – or the talent behind it. Nope, that’s all Pete.  And it’s F-ing fantastic writing, might I add.

So go there, bookmark it, and become a regular so you don’t miss out !

You can thank me later 😀

Just a step to the left

So I’ve been giving this time travel/parallel worlds issue some more think – if you recall, I went on at length a while ago about how traveling back in time and changing something will not result in creating a new and different future, but an alternate one?

Well – here’s the thing. . . It bothers me that an issue is often overlooked.  That issue being – the time machine itself.

Oh, and past vs present.  So okay, two issues are often overlooked and bother me.  And here’s the deal with them, one at a time.

If we assume Time is linear.

First off, let’s say Fred Flintstone built that time machine. It’s fancy and new and he’s all set to try it out. Barney, Wilma and Betty are there in the basement enjoying cheese and crackers, all set to watch Fred jump into that snazzy machine and do his thing.

Which he does.  Fred steps inside, flips the switch, and after some impressive noises and a puff or two of smoke, he’s gone back in time a few thousand years.

Are you with me?  Okay, stay with me and see if you follow.  Fred is now in the year 100BC (just to pick a number).  Right now – if we’re standing with Fred – nothing he’s ever known (ie; Wilma, Barney, Betty, exists.  Right now, it’s the year 100BC and everyone we know has yet to be born. Right now, they don’t exist at all.  Got it?

So theoretically, one could change the future and create an entirely new future with entirely new people and entirely new situations, because Right Now, they don’t even exist.

Which would mean, if Fred steps on a butterfly and Wilma is never born, when Fred goes back to his basement he’s not going back to his basement. He’s moving forward in time, to a fixed position (where he left) and it’s the luck of fate that will determine who and what he finds there.  Right now, Fred isn’t going back to where he started. Fred is traveling forward in time, in his time machine, from the year 100BC.  Reality was reset when he moved backwards. Now he’s moving forward, into a future that hasn’t happened yet.

Another thing that bugs me, and I finally had to just accept the possibility, is that the time machine isn’t moving.  Remember the book? Or the movie, if you prefer.  The time machine stayed in that room, and the world around it changed.  So instead of Fred entering that machine and going anywhere, what he’s done is entered that machine and caused the world to go backwards.

The impact here isn’t just Fred moving back in time. The impact is with Barney, Wilma and Betty.  When I realized Fred was creating alternate time lines, it was because I wasn’t traveling with Fred, I wanted to see what happened to Wilma, Barney and Betty if Fred went back in time and made it so Wilma is never born.  I couldn’t accept that Wilma would be holding a wine glass one instant, then not there the next – because Betty and Barney are standing there talking to her. They’re gonna wonder when suddenly someone isn’t there. They’re not going to watch her go poof, then instantly not know who she was.

So if we stay in the basement and watch Fred step into his time machine, what we’re really going to see, along with Barney, Wilma and Betty, is Fred stepping into a time machine one second, and the next – we no longer exist.

When Fred hits that switch, all of reality is shoved into reverse. In an instant, we go from standing there double-dipping a cracker, to nothing.  So if that’s the case, and Fred goes back in time, checks the place out, and wants to go back home, he’s actually – from this point in time (100BC) moving into the future.

Now if he’s stepped on a butterfly, and Wilma’s parents never meet, the future he’s going to land in is one that never knew a Wilma Flintstone. The Barney Rubble there never knew one, neither did his wife. In fact, it’ll be luck alone that keeps this spot Fred’s basement.  It could be an outhouse in this future.

But what if he didn’t step on the butterfly? What if he got to the past, glanced around, but was such a good boy that he didn’t affect anything?  He didn’t mash a bug, or snap a twig.  Now he wants to go home so he hits that Future switch and goes back.

Is it still his basement?  Is Wilma still there? What about Barney and Betty?

Chaos would tell us no. That the sheer act of Fred having gone and reset reality, forcing it to repeat, would change everything.  Even if he didn’t do a thing, the odds of several thousand years passing with not one single, minute change taking place, are ridiculous. Somewhere along the line, over thousands of years, something’s going to be different, and that would unleash an avalanche of changes.  So Fred can be as good a boy as he likes, not even step foot outside his machine, and he’s going to come back to a new reality – and a new basement.

If Time is not linear, but is – as Doctor Who put it, a mish-mash of wobbly sort of goo – then the past and future exist right now. That puts us back to my issue of alternate universes, where Fred makes a change and instantly duplicates reality, going back to one where Wilma isn’t alive, while his Wilma, Barney and Betty see Fred vanish, never to return again.

Let’s do the time warp again!

The Who

No, not the band – although I’ve always been a huge fan, myself.  I mean the questions you ask as a writer, of yourself, of your characters, of your novel.  Who, What, Why, Where, How.

When you have a new story idea brewing in your head, you have to start asking yourself the questions. Who are these people? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Where is it happening? How are they going to solve it?

It’s the most fun, and the most frustrating part of writing.  You’ve got a great idea, or a terrific scene, and you want to know if there’s a story there. Enough story to fill out a complete novel. So you start asking the questions – and if you can answer them, they only bring up more. If you can’t answer them, you stew and you fret and you fuss. Then you either have to set that scene, or idea, aside for lack of substance – or you stew over it, and turn it around in your head.  Upside down, sideways. You look at the questions from other angles and different perspectives, until you either admit there’s no story there, or finally get your answers.

It’s frustrating when that great idea or scene you had in mind won’t flesh out, no matter how many ways you look at it.  But, when it does – when you’ve turned that scene around enough times that suddenly, out of the blue, answers begin to pour in – there’s no better feeling.

It’s the same with any genre you write, but I can’t help imagining that those of us in the SF & F camps have the most fun asking the questions.

What if we all woke up one day and there were ships in orbit around our planet, but they never made contact? What if they just sat there, in the sky, for weeks, then vanished as quickly and quietly as they’d arrived, without ever saying a word?  How would that affect society? Religion? Economics?

What if the stock market really does hit bottom, and half the world’s population lose their jobs? Will the nation’s infrastructure be maintained? Will we resort to war just to feed our families?

What if zombies really did walk the earth?  What if they were functioning members of society, with a nagging penchant for human flesh?

If we colonized the moon, then looked “up” on day to view the Earth and saw it explode, how would we cope?

What would it be like to wake up some morning on an alien planet, with no idea how you got there?

Of course, those are just the beginning. You have to keep asking questions, fleshing out the story. One question leads to another, and another after that, until you finally know your new world – your new characters – so well, they’re as real as you are. You can answer any question, solve any issue, and write your way through their lives as if you were watching them unfold before you.

I’m enjoying that phase right now. Having created a few scenes in my head, and asking some questions that couldn’t be answered, I’ve had to turn those scenes around to look at them from a completely different angle. Now the answers are falling into place. The questions are more fun to ponder, the solutions coming easily. Like a three-dimensional puzzle with the pieces beginning to fall into place, the big picture beginning to take shape.

This is the fun part of being a writer 🙂