Rants & Ravings
This blog will contain information about my various works, resources related to them as well as miscellaneous rants and ravings of a lunatic… err author.
Discord Server
I’ve been hanging out on several discord servers lately and they’re kind of neat. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with my own yet, but I have one setup. Feel free to join.
500K Milestone
Today I hit the 500,000 word milestone for my Aliens & Cowboys series. The story is nearing the end, then it’ll be editing the third book and releasing it.
Then I’ll do a quick re-edit of all the books to link in some of the stuff from the new story I wrote for NaNoWriMo, not much changed, just a couple of paragraphs early in the first book and the way the medibays work, which results in minor changes throughout.
NaNoWriMo 2022
I participated in this year’s NaNoWriMo again. I just love the challenge, unfortunately, all other writing has to take a back seat during November.
This year’s project was originally supposed to be a Christmas story, but literally at the last minute (OK it was more like 23:50 on October 31) I decided to change projects.
The Christmas story is all plotted out and planned as I wanted to try being an organized writer this year. Alas, the pantser in me came out and instead I wrote a prequel story that happens about two decades before the events in Aliens and Cowboys.
I managed to make the 50K words in the month of November, but unlike last year, the story is only about 75% completed.
With that being said, I’ve switched back to my Aliens and Cowboys story and will resume writing and posting it.
Life goes on
My apologies for my absence, today is the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing, but the past few months of camping season have been especially difficult for my dad.
He’s tried attending various senior’s activities, but he doesn’t feel like he fits in with them. As such, despite being 82 years old, he’s actually turned to Virtual Reality and many of my family have now purchased the Oculus Quest 2 VR sets in order to spend more time with him.
We do a few rounds of virtual golf each week with various family members attending and my dad and I also do virtual fishing.
Even though it’s virtual, it’s awesome to sit on a boat or a shore someplace in the world with my dad right beside me and just talking about anything and everything.
We’ve also been doing lots of camping/golfing trips this summer, so we’re getting him out of the house and just spending some quality family time.
Sadly, it has cut into my writing time in a big way. I’ve been writing and re-writing the ending to Aliens and Cowboys and it’s just not coming easy. I know how I want it to end, but putting it into words is proving difficult.
Thanks to all my readers that have reached out to me and asked if everything was OK, you are my reason for writing. I hope I can be a little more consistent for you.
On the plus side, I already have outlines for the next 3 stories I’m going to write and I’m just starting work on the Witches and Werewolves audiobook.
Thinking of stirring up a shitstorm!
The other day I joined a discord channel and you have to create your own profile. Within minutes of joining, one of the moderators messaged me asking me what my pronouns are, because I hadn’t answered that question for my profile.
I felt like saying, “Looking down my pants, I’m a guy, so he/him.”, but I didn’t know the snowflake factor for that discord, so I simply replied, “he/him”. Turns out the snowflake factor is pretty high on that discord, so I doubt I’ll interact that much.
Then the other day, I witnessed an obviously female person go off on a poor food vendor when she ordered something. The food maker person brought up the order and the cashier person pointed to the customer and said, “It’s for her.”
Well the lady made it a point to say, “My pronouns are they/them.”
As if anyone would assume her pronouns from looking at an obviously female person that doesn’t have a huge they/them sign around their neck?!?? Anyways witnessing that spectacle and trying not to laugh, an idea for a future book popped into my head.
I immediately thought of calling it The Stupidity Virus, or The Snowflake Syndrome, but may well just go with some version of Infected or Pandemic… I’m open to ideas people!
The premise will be episodic and much like Mork and Mindy, except it will be Martians getting to know Earthlings a bit better because Earth is setting up a base on Mars, with plans for colonization.
The Martian researcher(s) will report back on various aspects of human life on Earth (I’ve got a lot of topics in mind… every one of them guaranteed to piss off some segment of the population!) 🙂
The Martians eventually come to the conclusion that Earth is infected with a virus that prevents rational thought and limits their intelligence. They don’t want it to spread to Mars, so they confront the humans. It begins with peaceful negotiations, but escalates from there because the humans we’ve elected to be our leaders are useless.
In the process, the Martians learn that there are some humans with intellect and common sense and they eventually work together to try and resolve the pandemic on Earth.
What do you all think?
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