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 🙂

the blank page

It’s a writer’s nemisis, the blank page. Be it a solid sheet of white hanging out of a typewriter’s innards, or 19″ of pure blank screen staring back, with a tiny little cursor blinking there. Even if it’s a harmless sheet of college rule looking up from a notebook, there’s something intimidating about it.

Nothing else has the power to send a writer to the laundry room, or in search of a dirty dish to wash.

No other instrument on this Earth or the next can make a writer feel the need to boil water for tea, bake some cookies, or pull lint from one’s navel.

Even when the next novel is Right There, waiting not so quietly to begin.  The research is complete, or at least satisfied enough for the beginning – names have been chosen, a POV figured out. Even the opening scenes are all planned out in exquisite detail.  Yet still that blank page threatens.  We’re terrified of it. We can’t sit down in front of one without a drink in our hands, something to snack on by our side, sometimes even a few songs keyed up on the MP3.

It’s a monster, that blank page. I saw The Grudge, and even just the other day I watched The Ring – neither of them were even a blip on my “ooh, scary” radar. But the blank page sends shivers down my spine.

Not 5 days ago, I finished my last novel, In The Time Of Dying. It’s a big one, currently (before edits) clocking in at just over 122,000 words. Epic SF tale, with space Marines, alien worlds, all the intrigue and suspense you could hope for.  And, contrary to what this blank page is trying to tell me, I’m all set to write another novel. I’ve got the plot figured out, the characters are well-developed in my mind. I have the opening scenes, several other scenes, all the POV issues and details worked out. I’m excited about it, too.  It’ll be a long one, I suspect, an epic SF tale with loads of all the intrigue and suspense you could hope for.

It’s called The Cold Beyond, and it’s begging to get started.

Just as soon as I can conquer this damned blank page.

Black or White?

I was watching television the other day and a commercial came on for some new game, I didn’t catch the name, and it seemed aimed toward the little tikes – but something about it suddenly brought a realization forefront in my mind.

See, I’m a gamer – I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’m very finicky about what games I play, and now my computer is too outdated to play the new ones. But one thing I enjoy doing, after winning a particular game and reaching the end, I like to go back and play it again. You can explore places you didn’t have time for, seek out little areas you missed, try harder to kill everyone instead of running to that level’s goal while screaming like a little girl and ducking bullets like a ninny.

When I do that, I also like to set free my inner evil.  I’ll frag compatriots (if there are any) I’ll blow up scenery if the game lets me. I’ll even ram buildings with vehicles if the game is good enough to show me results. I’ll drive over my commander with a jeep, run off in the opposite direction, and even leap from cliffs just because they’re there.

Back to this game — whatever it was called, apparently the object was for you to wander through life and be incredibly benevolent, and create a new society and ecology based on your generous, giving nature.  BUT – and here’s the rub – there was an option to be Evil instead. You could run around in what looked like hell and be as mean and nasty and vengeful as you liked.

It reminded me of a game from years ago called Black or White. Wherein you were a giant, disembodied hand with god powers and you could affect your worshippers directly by picking them up out of the ocean to save them from drowning, or dropping fish into nets by the handful so your peeps didn’t starve.  OR, you could pick some helpless smuck up and drop him INTO the ocean, roll massive boulders down over their measly little crops, and burn down their silly grass huts.  There were consequences, naturally. If you were mean, you weren’t worshiped, you were feared. And anything you created was equally nasty.

That game got dull after three hours of picking people up and flinging them about willy-nilly, so I never got into it.  But that commercial made me realize that – when given a choice of which character to play – everyone assumes you’re going to go into this thing as the Good Guy.  In order to win the game, you have to do the “right thing”.  But it’s so much more FUN to do exactly the opposite.

Clearly in real life, we can’t wander around god-like and toss people into the waves.  So we play at it in games, choosing to be evil just for the fun of playing, because in reality we’re exactly the opposite.  In books and movies, nine times out of ten, the bad guy has the most fun and the best lines, but the good guy always wins in the end (does that burn you too, or is it just me?).

Which would you rather play, if given a choice?  Would you naturally choose to flex your deltoids of compassion, or petition Bad Horse for entry into the Evil League of Evil?

Frustrations

I’ve often lamented my lack of artistic skills when it comes to the visual.  While I have great “ideas”, I lack the physical talent to pull them off. 

Never before has this been more annoying than now – when I’ve become the cover artist for Trunk Novels. So far, I’ve managed to pull off some pretty good ones (if I do say so myself). One I’m particularly impressed with is for a novel: Word Wars, that will be coming out probably January.

It’s relatively easy to do when all I need is space and some planets – ie: Keeper.  But not all of the novels we’re publishing are SF, or set in deep space, so I’m forced to be more creative.  Even now, with Madness coming out in December, I’m trying to be more creative and avoid the simple “space with stars and a planet” mode and get more interesting – and failing !

What’s really irritating me right now is my inability to do enough with fonts in the meager graphics programs I have now. And when I go out there into the big unknown to research better ways to make graphics, I’m coming up empty. Faced with having to shell out wads for a new graphics program then hoping I can figure it out well enough to do what I want . . . so far I’ve tried some demos and failed grandly.

sigh.

My Kingdom for some artistic talent!

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Thank goodness it’s only made of air.

No, this isn’t a post about the crashing economy or the failure of the stock markets or the fact that – really – everything is just settling back down to it’s pre overly-inflated status.

Oh, wait, that was a comment about the economy.  Well let’s follow that up with a question:

Since you can’t even turn on the news, or log on to Yahoo, without hearing about the Doom and Gloom that was once our economy (and the world’s economy) and you don’t want to hear my nutter take on the state of spending – you’re probably looking for some mindless entertainment.

In times like these, our entertainment outlets are even more important than ever. We need an escape, however brief. Something to take our thoughts away from that which we cannot control, and give our stress levels a break.

So I’m wondering – what’s your escape route? Do you sit on the couch, grab the remote, and surf the channels – or do you go to your local bookstore and invest in some between-the-pages respite?  What gives you the most bang for your buck when it comes to “Calgon, take me away” moments?

dammit, jim!

I hate when this happens – I am mere chapters away from The End in my current novel, slowing down a bit because I start to feel funny around this time, every time – and then it happens. There I am, in the bathroom, minding my own business and contemplating how this next chapter needs to start, when suddenly BAM!

I get this new idea for a tension-building twist.

Right out of left field, this one. And I admit, it would be cool. But there are logistical issues, can it happen logically or would this be a big stretch – one of those “Duex Ex Machina” nightmares?

I dunno. And that makes me nuts, becuase NOW I have to sit here and contemplate it all, see if it will fit, if it won’t fit – and oh Crap, I’ve just had another twisting version of the idea pop up.

Frak!

*wanders off to sit and THINKTHINKTHINK instead of write, dammit*

are all writers bipolar?

Yesterday I was flying high – enjoying discussions about the future of Trunk Novels, brainstorming ideas for marketing and sponsorships that would bring in much needed revenue to promote and help place Trunk Novels in bookstores and mainstream online retailers. Feeling generally rosy and positive about the future.

Today, as I keep working on my current novel In The Time Of Dying – nearing the End, actually – I’m struck with the strong, utterly convincing truth that I suck. That nothing I write is marketable in today’s publishing economy, I’ll never score an agent – or midlist publisher – and I am destined to wallow in the mire of the unknown.

Tomorrow is anyone’s guess, but most likely I’ll be even that much closer to The End in my current novel and feeling higher than the proverbial kite, convinced of my capable storytelling abilities, ready to practice book signings and day dreaming of what it will be like to read about myself in the local papers.

Friday will be interesting – if the pattern holds, I’ll be ripping my manuscript into kitty litter shreds and going out for a few Bahama Mama’s (extra shot of rum please, thanks).

I know I’m not the only writer who goes through these highs and lows. Even the big-name, major league, published authors admit to feeling this way off and on. So it has less to do with my abilities or lack thereof, and more in keeping with a creative mind – or so I like to think.

This morning I joked about being destined for a life as an underground cult classic, while my friends will go on to become “Literary Ahhtists“. But even as I typed those words, I started to think “would that be so bad?” Would it really be considered a failure if I did manage to achieve Underground Cult status?

What do I want out of writing?

To have my work read, and enjoyed, by strangers.

To have other people love these characters as much as I do.

To entertain, provide an enjoyable escape from the everyday that can be revisited and shared.

To earn a few bucks.

To earn a little respect as a writer and storyteller.

All of these goals could be easily, and probably more satisfactorily achieved if I were to manage Underground Cult status. Buck the “system”, avoid “the man”, go boldly into that which no man has — well, let’s not get carried away.

But how does one achieve Underground Cult status? I have no idea. But if I make it, I’ll be sure and let you all know.