Getting back into life

It's been a while since I've gotten back to this blog. As 2015 moved toward 2016, life got increasingly complex. My wife, Joy, found out that the cancer she'd been living with and working against (she hated the term fought) for six years had spread to bone and liver. She finally asked her doctor if it was time to contact Hospice and the doctor said yes. Joy asked if there was anything the doctor could do to keep her mobile and active until she finished teaching the beekeeping class she had undertaken in spite of increasing problems with the cancer. The doctor treated her and she finished her class before she finally contacted Hospice. She kept the news from the students who were surprised by her death.

She wanted to have a birthday party, so with enormous help from friends, we threw her a big one, invited everyone and had a great time. The morning after, we went to breakfast with our neice who'd come for the party. Within hours Joy started to deteriorate. A week later, she was dead. She died at home and I spent most of the time by her bedside. My escape from that room was writing. For a time, I could be in an entirly different reality.

I wasn't ready to write those two paragraphs for a long time.

That was May. I was starting to get my life into some kind of routine when November came around. I participated in National Novel Writing Month and had managed to crank out the highly rough draft of a 35k word novella in the first eight days of the month. Then a national disaster struck on election day. I wasn't feeling great the next day, but a friend had invited me to try out a new restaurant with him in Arcata, the town about ten miles north of Eureka. I got to Arcata early because I needed to get some cash. The local Co-op has a teller machine in the lobby. Still with plenty of time, I picked up some crackers on sale and a bag of candied ginger (a favorite of mine). I checked out and walked out the front door.

A mentally disturbed man was in the Co-op. Unfortunately, we have a lot of them up here. He ran out of the door behind me, hit me once in the neck with something sharp (the weapon was never retrieved) and ran off.

I felt like he'd punched me in the neck. I stood there saying over and over, "Why did he hit me?" and then put my hand on my neck and saw the blood on it.

A series of actions happened round me in rapid succession. A man in the parking lot jumped into his truck and chased my assailant. One of the assistant managers from the store ran out with a clean rag in her hand and slapped it on my neck, holding it in place to control the bleeding. Another employee got a chair so I could sit. The police arrived. They asked me some questions and I requested the policeman get my car keys from my pocket and give them to a friend who lived in the building across the street from the Co-op (which he did -- two days later). All this time my angel of mercy applied pressure. She saved my life. The ambulance arrived and took over. They transported me to Mad River Hospital. I remember being wheeled into the Emergency Room where the anesthethiologist was waiting. He asked me a couple of questions.

That's the last thing I remember for a week.

They were afraid my throat would swell shut, so they installed a breathing tube and had to sedate me to keep me from attempting to pull it out (an instinctive reaction). My friends visited during that time and say I tried to communicate with them, but I remember nothing. The first thing I remember coming out of the sedation was a series of weird dreams. When I did wake up, one of the Intensive Care nurses was attending me. I tried to tell him that my nose was completely blocked and I wasn't getting enough air. The oxygen tube in my nose was doing me little good. But I couldn't speak and my hands were still tied down. It was a terrible two hours. When the tube was finally removed, I could speak almost immediately. They moved the oxygen tube to my mouth and I was much better. I stayed in Intesive Care for a few days afterward. The nurses were kind, considerate and highly competent. They too were angels to me.

Having laid on my side for an entire week without moving, I was unable to walk. It took weeks to get me back to where I didn't require a walker to get around. I couldn't go home until I could navigate with a walker which gave me an incentive. When I finally could go home, just before Thanksgiving, I still couldn't take care of myself. My neice traveled from the San Diego area all the way to Eureka and spent a week cooking and watching out for me until I could manage on my own with only daily visits from friends. I cannot thank her enough.

After I got home, I sat for days looking out the picture widows at the garden in the back yard marvelling at the beauty and wonder of the flowers and the birds, grateful to be alive.

When I think back on the entire incident now, I mostly remember the people I am grateful to. From the employees of the Co-op whose quick action saved my life, to the caring staff at Mad River, my wonderful neice, the "7 Friends" group who helped coordinate my care and made sure my cats were taken care of, Liz who did the rest of the cat care, the many people who visited me in the hospital, my co-writers from Writer's of the Future, Vol. XXIX who set up a GoFundMe page for me, and the State of California which is helping me through their Victim Assistance Program. I have much to be grateful for.

A few weeks ago, I went to a hearing for the man who stabbed me. He wasn't there. He's still in a mental hospital. That's good. The entire world and he himself are better off with him there.

My mind has nearly cleared. The effects of the prolonged sedation took many months to resolve. I'm back to getting my life into something that approaches routine. Once again, I'm doing NaNoWriMo and working on a complete revision of the story I did last year. The day after the anniversary of the attack, I donated blood for the first time in a year and made it to the eight gallon mark -- my small way of saving a life and repaying.

Firefox's Quantum stumble

Firefox Quantum was released this week to some excellent and some scathing reviews. The difference between them has to do with whether a user had addons that were broken. Addons that were not built using the new method, ceased to exist, and users who relied on them were furious. Several of the ones I used went away with the new implementation. I understand why Firefox made these changes. The old method of creating addons was inherently insecure. In addition, the new rendering engine (the software that changes the code from a web page into the pixels and actions on your screen) is significantly faster. Also, if one web page fails, the entire browser should not crash as it used to do. All of this is good.

What bothers me is the way Firefox rolled this entirely new browser out. First, this shouldn't be "Firefox 57.0", it should be "Firefox Quantum 1.0". That may seem a trivial distinction, but it is a warning to the user that they have an entirely new experience ahead of them. For many, this might have spurred them to do a bit more research on what this new browser was and what the update entailed and they might have decided to wait. Personally, I almost never use 1.0 software. I wait until the bugs have been worked out in versions 1.5 or later. The rollout as a simple version update was deceptive. Second, just as my instinct says about 1.0 software, it's not ready for prime time yet. Most of it works, but the cursor control was jerky, the browser hung and it wouldn't close. The latter problems I experienced in both the Windows and Linux versions of the browser. This is Beta software. Just because an arbitrary date was about to arrive didn't justify releasing buggy software. If Firefox wants to lose the small user base it still has, just release a few more buggy versions. I went back to their Extended Service Release software to keep a working version of Firefox on my computer.

Worst of all, the demise of Firefox could create an enormous security problem for the internet. This requires a bit of explanation. I previously mentioned the term "rendering engine". In the distant past, every browser had its own, unique rendering engine and web pages looked different on each. Over time, as HTML, CSS, XML, Javascript and other protocols for web pages became more complex, the number of browsers dropped and some browsers began using the rendering engines of others. When Google turned over its Blink rendering engine to an open source project, it rapidly became the rendering engine of choice for all browser makers. So if you're browsing the web using Chrome, Iron, Safari, Opera (one of the last to give up on its own rendering engine) or any of dozens of others, your browser is using the same rendering engine. Possibly a different version, but generally the same underlying software. Currently, I know of only three rendering engines: Blink, the Firefox engine and the one used for Edge (although some may still use the now defunct Trident engine from Internet Explorer). With the majority of browsers using the same rendering engine, any vulnerability in it could impact the entire web, and without an alternative browser to fall back on, the web could be rendered nearly useless. It is essential to have alternative browsers and not ones with security flaws like Internet Explorer had. For anyone running Windows 7 or earlier, Firefox is the only safe alternative. If it goes belly up, where do we turn? Firefox has done a distinct disservice to the world by foisting this brand new product on us while it's still in Beta form. I'm disappointed and disturbed about this development.

On hunting and Cecil the lion

Let me start by saying I do not have a problem with hunting. We are, under this civilized skin, still hunter-gatherers. Our bodies require animal food. Humans don't produce vitamin B12 which is necessary for healthy nerves and the only source of that vitamin is animal food. Hunting is how we have traditionally procured it. In my own young adult novel, the protagonists hunt; however, they hunt legally with all licenses and in designated territories, they hunt deer which is not endangered or threatened, and they eat what they hunt. I do not object to hunting if either the quarry is eaten or it constitutes an imminent threat to life or property.

But trophy hunting makes no sense to me. Why would you want to kill something just because it's big and beautiful and then drag the dead carcass home and mount it on a wall? As to the argument of "pitting man against nature", the man (and it almost always seems to be a man) is almost always armed with a weapon that is a technological marvel. If the man really wants to pit himself against nature, let him find the resources and make his own bow and arrows or spear by hand and then take on nature. That would be a much more even fight.

As for the case of Cecil the lion, personally I think this is a Casper Milquetoast dentist hypercompensating for his internally perceived lack of masculinity. The man is pitiful and probably in need of psychiatric help. A stuffed head on your wall doesn't make you a "man". For the price of his crossbow, he could have bought an incredible camera and then went to Africa and stalked all the animals he liked, brought them home and mounted their pictures on his wall to the amazement and delight rather than revulsion of his friends. His $50,000 would have been better spent on mental health treatments than big game poaching.

The falacy of the religious liberty argument

Back in 2013 I took on the argument that marriage was for procreation purposes in a blog post about why my late wife and I should not have been allowed to marry. So now that the gay marriage issue is behind us thanks to five Supreme Court justices who recognize, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," it's probably time to take on the next fight - the religious liberty argument. To start with, the scare tactic that clergy will be forced to perform gay marriages is complete nonsense. Clergy are not required to perform any wedding that is not in keeping with the tenants of their faith. Rabbies don't have to marry Catholics, priests don't have to marry couples who are not in good standing. The law does not oblige them to do any ceremony that is against their conscience.

So the argument boils down to whether civil servants can be obliged to perform ceremonies for gay couples and businesses obliged to provide goods and services. Both are fairly straight-forward arguments. Lets take the first: If I was an engineer working for a defense contractor and converted to the Quaker religion, could I expect my employer to keep paying me if I refused on the grounds of my pacifist faith to do any defense work? Would my employer be legally bound to keep me or could they fire me? I think the answer is obvious, I could be fired. The same is true of a civil servant whose job it is to perform weddings or issue marriage licenses. If they refuse on faith grounds to perform the job they were hired to do, they can be fired. If the task they were hired to do is so odious, they should find new employment and not expect the public to pay them for non-performance of their job.

As for businesses, if faith can be an excuse for not providing goods and services, where does it end? If my religion does not believe in mixed marriages (as is true of many), can I refuse to provide a wedding cake for the wedding of a Catholic and a Protestant? If your church bans interracial marriage, can I refuse? Can I refuse anyone not of my same religious faith? What can I refuse to sell on the grounds of faith, food, medicine? Can I refuse medical treatment? The implications of a faith based opt-out go well beyond a wedding cake for a gay marriage. If we don't want to go back to the days of Jim Crow, businesses must provide good and services to all regardless of race, ethnicity, creed or gender identity. Again, if that is personally odious, then sell your business or prepare to be run over by the steamroller of history just as the segregationists were in the 1960s.

Civil rights took a great leap forward this morning. About darn time.

Windows 10 or why I hate "Modern" apps

I've been testing out Windows 10 (never mind asking where 9 went) for a few months now. The good news is that it's fast and works with any computer that will run Windows 7 (and probably most that run XP). But with Microsoft there's always bad news. In the case of Win10, the bad news is they're trying to bring us kicking and screaming into the era of "modern" apps whether we like it or not. They're not so subtle strategy is to give the operating system away. Already most owners of computers running Win7/8 have found an icon in their system tray urging you to reserve your copy of Win10. You can expect the pressure from MS to increase as rollout time approaches.

Anyone who's seen Win8 will recognize Win10. It starts with the same stupid, useless lock screen. Unlike 8, it drops into the familiar desktop after login, and there in it's expected place is a Start button, but it doesn't bring up the classic Start menu we've been used to since Win95. Instead, the menu is a hybrid of the Win8 start screen and a dumbed down version of classic start. The program list is rudimentary and can't be user modified. To the right of that list is an area where you can place tiles. The resultant Start menu is neither fish nor fowl and unsatisfactory to either a confirmed desktop user or a tablet/phone user. I installed "Classic Shell" which returns a Win7 style menu; however, it can't load a list of "modern" apps in Win10 like it does in Win8.

MS introduced "modern" apps with Win8 (initially called "Metro" apps). Pretty much the first thing that everyone who got Win8 did (after installing a program like Classic Shell to restore the Start menu) was to get rid of as many "modern" apps as they could. Why? For one thing, in Win8, "modern" apps had to run full screen, not windowed as we've been used to since at least Win3. Win10, thankfully, corrects this. What it doesn't correct is the inherent slowness of "modern" apps. Understanding why they're slow requires a little lesson in computer history.

In the beginning, programmers had to code everything their computer did. This included handling bit-by-bit how the computer talked to the world. This was hugely inefficient, so the industry coded a set of low-level programs that handled things like booting the computer up, finding what was attached to it and handling how the computer talked to peripherals in a standard way. This was BIOS or basic input/output system. And basic it was. So on top of the BIOS the manufacturers built the OS or operating system which handled yet more of the operations of the computer. DOS was an example of this type of operating system. It would let a programmer talk to disks, printers, monitors, etc. in a standard way that minimized the work, but they didn't handle graphics well. Programmers still had to do all the work of creating graphics themselves. Individuals and companies created sets of standard routines that handled graphics, but each of these solutions was proprietary. Xerox created a solution to this problem by loading a set of standard graphics routines on top of the operating system so any programmer could access them. This was the GUI or graphical operating system. Because it is larger and more complex than earlier operating systems, it is slower, but the loss of speed is made up for by the ease of writing programs for it. Jobs stole the idea from Xerox for the Mac and Gates stole it from Apple for Windows.

The problem with the GUI operating system is it only runs on one family of computer chips. So when Apple moved from the Motorola 68000 processors to the Power PC processors, they had to rewrite the operating system and software that worked on one type of machine didn't work on the other. They did it again when they moved to Intel processors making orphans of yet another generation or their computers. When Apple made the IPad which uses a different processor, they wrote an entirely new operating system for that. MS is trying to get around this problem with their "modern" apps. They will run on any machine with the Win8 or Win10 operating system even though they use a variety of processors. To do this, they set up an idealized processor and build an emulator for each different processor that there operating system runs on. An emulator is software that takes the commands given to the idealized processor and translates them into commands to the actual processor. In short, it's yet another layer of software that has to be loaded and worked through, which is why the "modern" apps load slowly (the emulator has to load before the app can) and runs slowly. And to make matters worse, "modern apps" don't die when you stop them, they keep running in the background taking up memory and processor power. A native Windows program will always run faster than a "modern" app. In spite of this, MS wants to migrate everything to "modern" apps.

So when you get Win10, it will come with a passel of "modern" apps. With each iteration of the operating system that has loaded on my test machine, the number of apps that you can uninstall has decreased and each time the OS updates, it reinstalls all the apps whether or not you've deleted them and it makes them the default programs. It also deletes your antivirus program and installs its own.

And if this wasn't enough, it tries to force you to create a Microsoft account so that it can store tons of information about you. It also makes their cloud storage as the default place to store new files, so you might not be able to access them if you're not online. If you manage to figure out how to create a local account, it won't let you access the Windows Store. On the other hand, since I really didn't want to load any "modern" apps, not being able to access the Windows Store is not a problem for me.

If you haven't guessed, I'm happy with Win7 and have no intention of updating to Win10. At some point, updates for Win7 will cease as they have for XP. Then it may be time to consider Linux, but not yet. Linux is still too geeky and too likely to fail. I keep hoping it will finally stabilize into a unified, reliable operating system, but it hasn't yet.

If you feel you must update to Win10, I recommend two programs: Classic Shell gives you back a useful Start menu, and Unlocker gives you a tool that makes it possible to delete "modern" apps in spite of MS's attempts to make it impossible to do so.

On sexual politics, religion and Sci-Fi

There has been an open dispute in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy community about openness. The Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies contend that the community is too politically correct, causing it to overlook some authors whose work is otherwise meritorious. If this was their only point, their arguments might have some merit. What bothers me specifically is, in this supposedly Christian group, their prejudice against gays. I realize Brad Torgersen is Mormon which some people do not consider Christian, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints says it follows Jesus teachings, so I include him as Christian also. And what did Jesus say about homosexuality? Nothing. That's right, nothing. Paul mentions it three times in Epistles, but Jesus, never.

Christians like to selectively pick and choose the sections of the Bible they want to believe in. They will point to the verses in Leviticus that say gay sex is punishable by death but overlook where Exodus allows you to sell your daughter into slavery, or Leviticus injunction to put fortune tellers to death, or Exodus statement that any man who strikes his mother or father should be put to death, or Leviticus where simply cursing mother or father is worthy of death, or Deuteronomy where conversion is grounds for death, or in Exodus death for not keeping the Sabbath. As that goes, most Christians keep Sunday as the day of rest although the Bible explicitly states it's Saturday (Sunday was chosen to co-opt the worshipers of Mithras, an early rival to Christianity). Most Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter although both of these are, again, held on pagan feast days as a means of co-opting their worshipers; but they don't celebrate Passover, Tabernacles, Day of Atonement or any of the other of the seven feast days expressly called for in the Bible. So if you're being selective, why not select to ignore what Jesus ignored? Jesus, as stated before, said nothing about homosexuality, but Jesus did say that "prostitutes and tax collectors will enter the kingdom of God before you" (referring to the Chief Priests) (Matt. 21:31) and Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners (Matt 9:10-11, Mark 2:13-17). So I doubt if Jesus would have ostracized gays. Rather, I think if he were around today, he'd be more likely to have dinner with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (who do wonderful charitable work, in drag) than the Christian right. Amen.

Lessons of life

Recent events have me thinking about the important lessons we only take to heart after the bad breaks in life. My wife, Joy, has cancer. The oncologist says it's chronic. How precious time is only lifts to consciousness when it is limited. Currently, the cancer is under control, but it could, as it has several time in the last few years, pop up in new places requiring yet more debilitating treatments. For now, we have a quiet summer to watch the bees fly, harvest honey and fruit and enjoy the delights of coastal northern California.

A friend and fellow Writers of the Future winner, Tina Gower, had a tragedy in her family. Her parents house burned down. No one was injured. All that was lost were material possessions. Her response to the tragedy, Memories don't burn is a reminder of how unimportant the "things" we obsess about truly are. She is turning the experience positive with #100DaysofGoodKarma.

Time is short — write, read, love.

Visiting my target audience

I'm working on a young adult novel and have been for about a year and a half. I started two Novembers ago during NaNoWriMo (see my post from Dec. 21, 2012) creating a base story of 45,000 words which I built on. Last November (Dec. 4, 2013 post) I added another 57,000 words to it. The story has gone through two alpha readers who are middle school teachers (thanks Deborah and Lisa) and two critique groups. All have helped me refine the story.

Recently I got an exceptional opportunity — one of my middle school teacher friends offered to let her class read the first two parts of my book and comment on it. Here was my target audience. I jumped at the chance. With more than a little trepidation, I finally got to meet a dozen sixth through eighth graders who had read my book. The experience could not have been more pleasant. The young readers proved intelligent, insightful and as nice a group of people as I could have ever wanted to meet. I left the two meetings I had with them energized and impressed with the young people in my region. Perhaps Humboldt county grows a better, nicer, more involved youth. If so, it's all the more reason to be truly glad I live here. It was a wonderful experience and I thank them for their help and cooperation.

Follow-up on Self-publishing

Once you have your book in epub form, publishing it on all of the major outlets is pretty much a snap, so my novel with an alternate view of the Rapture and Tribulation, The Remnant is now available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Kobo, and in print at Amazon. We shall see how it does.

Venturing into Self-publishing

Well, I did it. I entered the wonderful world of self-publishing. My second novel (let's not even get started about the first one which does still exist in two hand-written notebooks) has been sitting on my hard drive for a couple of years, untouched. After eight years of work, I just couldn't chuck it, so I decided to put it on the market and see what happens. This, of course, required converting it into a format that the dear folks at Amazon would accept.

There are entire books written on this subject and I picked up a few of them. I won't try here to go into all of the detail, but will give you a taste of what the process was like. I started with an MS Word file with the entire manuscript in it. As is probably true of most manuscript files like this, it was messy. A few of the pubs that talk about formatting for ebooks suggest that you copy and paste the entire text into a new file omitting all formatting (in Word, do a Paste Special, paste as plain text). This might work if you haven't used italics or bold text much, but otherwise, you're going to have a heck of a time putting all that formatting back. I didn't do this. What I did do was go to the Format menu and select Styles & Formatting to open the style sidebar and then use a special function in Word (I'm still using Office XP, so the commands may be different in 2007 and 2013) that allows you to "Select text with similar formatting". Once selected, the text could be quickly changed to the style I wanted.

This is crucial. All the converters work from the Style of a paragraph. So all of your text paragraphs should have the "normal" style and all of your chapter headings should be in one of the "Heading" styles. Getting the text paragraphs into "normal" style required doing the "Select text with similar formatting" and scrolling through the entire document looking for paragraphs that were not selected. Then I would do the "Select..." on that paragraph and change all paragraphs like it to "normal". Occasionally, I would come across a paragraph that was "normal" with something else added. Just clicking "normal" in the styles didn't change these. To get them to be just "normal" I had to change them to an entirely different style and then change them back to "normal".

Chapter and section headings had to be done manually. I scrolled through the document, put the cursor in the heading and chose one of the "Heading" styles. I had four different levels of headings: Parts 1-3, Chapters, Years, and locations. Each of these used a different level of heading. The three parts of the book were done in "Heading1". The Chapters were in "Heading2" etc. It is important to use "Heading1" not "H1" because some of the conversion programs don't handle them interchangeably.

Once you've standardized the formatting of your document, you need to save it in ".docx" format. If you're not using the latest version of Word, there is a converter you can add to Word 2000/XP/2003 that will do the conversion. Search for "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack" to get it. It's free.

The last thing you need before conversion is a cover for your book. I used a graphic of a painting by 16^th century artist Hieronymus Bosch. Make sure any art you use is in the public domain or purchase it. There are several sites on the web where you can buy the rights to a wide variety of photographs and drawings for prices in the range of $50. With my ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro, I added the title and my name to the picture. That completed the cover for the ebook.

From this point, you need to get some conversion software. If you want to do the conversion process the cheapest possible way, you will need to download "Calibre". Calibre is free. It will catalog all the ebooks on your drive, has a reader, and performs conversions from various formats. The conversion process is fairly straight-forward. My problem with this software was that it didn't incorporate the cover into the format for Amazon (.mobi). It did incorporate it into the format that is the standard for everyone else (.epub). Later, I found I could have used the .epub file and Amazon would have converted it for me. As such, I recommend Calibre.

I did try another piece of software, Jutoh. Jutoh costs $39 and has a few bells and whistles that Calibre doesn't. It also has one drawback, it has a far less intuitive interface for creating the internal Table of Contents for the book than Calibre does. Calibre allows you to designate three levels of heading for your Table of Contents while Jutoh only lets you designate one. Jutoh will let you create a perfectly formatted Table of Contents that is placed inside the text, but the one the reader gets when they press the Table of Contents icon on their reader is lame. What Jutoh did do correctly was incorporate the book cover into the .mobi file, so I went with a lame Table of Contents that points to the internal Table of Contents. I hope Jutoh clears this up some day. Their product is otherwise excellent and they respond quickly to email questions.

Once the files are finished, you need to create an account on Kindle Direct Publishing and fill in all of the forms. It costs nothing. You can also get the book into print through their Createspace service. This is also free, including the ISBN which would, otherwise, cost you $125. Do the ebook first and you'll get an invitation for Creatspace.

I won't try to tell you the process was without frustration. I spent over a week on it part time. I could probably do another one in a couple of days now that I've got the hang of it. It is simple enough for someone with only a good working knowledge of MS Word to do, so don't spend your money having a service do it when you may never get that cost back. Remember, for every book that makes it in the virtual world, there are hundreds that never see a sale.

And in case you're wondering, my novel, The Remnant, is now available.

Followup on NaNoWriMo

It's now December. I finished National Novel Writing Month with a word total of over 57,000 words or the equivalent of 99 pages single spaced. Not all of it is good. Much of it will be useless, but what the exercise does is to force you to silence your inner editor and critic and just write. I recommend NaNoWriMo for any of you who find it difficult to get the words down on paper or who feel they have to get it right the first time. There is a time for editing, but it's not while you're in the flow of writing. There will be time for that later. This is what NaNoWriMo teaches and it is a valuable lesson.

November is National Novel Writing Month

We're on the verge of another National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. Every November, ambitious writers take on the challenge of producing 50,000 words in one month. That averages out to 1,667 words per day. And a lot of them actually do it.

Last year, I was one of the winners of the Writers of the Future contest. Winning such a prestigious contest should have been a spur to produce ever more writing. Instead, I ended up with what I later found out was a fairly common after effect of such good news, imposter syndrome. I couldn't believe that I had bested thousands of other unpublished writers and ended up blocked. I did almost no writing for four months. In October, I decided to sign myself up for NaNoWriMo just a way to force myself to start writing again. Taking an idea I'd come up with during a writing conference a year earlier, I started a new novel with only a vague notion of where it might be going. In 30 days writing I cranked out 42,000 words, finishing up part 1 of the novel.

The novel continues being written. It is now over 190,000 words and has been split into two books. This November I'll work on it again and hope to add another 50,000 words and maybe figure out where this story ends. Yes, a year later I'm still writing it seat-of-the-pants and the story continues to evolve.

NaNoWriMo is a good way to kickstart your novel. I highly recommend it. In addition to the personal incentive it gives, you can have writing buddies online and there are local NaNoWriMo support groups. The FaceBook page for our local group in tiny, rural Humboldt County has 101 subscribers, so writing your novel doesn't have to be a lonely pursuit.

Good luck to all who take the challenge. May you be a NaNoWriMo winner.

An open letter to Congress concerning Syria

The proposed cruise missle strikes on Syria are based on flawed logic. The most serious flaw is the assumption that parties in the Middle East will react in what we as Westerners consider to be a logical fashion to the application of force. Have they ever? Did the Taliban in Afghanistan? Did the Sunni in Iraq? And if you go further in history, did the Arabs react with the kind of logical submission we expect of Syria when they were confronted with overwhelming force from the Ottoman Empire during World War I? Did the Afghans submit to the mighty British Empire in the 1830s? No, they fought on. We continue to miss the lessons of history both past and present. Force will not achieve our goals, only diplomacy and negotiation will.

For some unfathomable reason our nation seems to believe that just because Bashir Assad was educated in England, he is, somehow, a Western individual. He is not. His mindset is Middle Eastern. He believes that unless he fights on to the bitter end, his Alawite brothers and sisters will be slaughtered by the Sunni majority and he is probably correct. As long as his people are in danger, he has no incentive to end his fight and every incentive to continue fighting more desperately using ever more force and killing ever more of those he considers the enemy of his people. Attacks from the outside will only increase his desperation and his incentive to use ever more intense force to end the struggle quickly. Obama's plan will backfire horribly just as the use of force has backfired every time in the Middle East. We will end up in yet another quagmire. Need I remind you how much the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq have already cost us? Our nation is mired in debt and unable to educate, house, feed and care for its own people because of the treasure we have poured into Middle Eastern rat holes through ill planned military fiascos. Let's not do it yet again. Syria requires concerted international diplomacy not reckless military bluster brought on by failed posturing about "red lines."

The nation cannot afford another war. The world cannot afford another war. And another war will not accomplish any worthwhile goal -- history, recent and past demonstrates this clearly. Encourage the President to take bold diplomatic action in international forums, but vote against this reckless, hopelessly ill thought out military action.

The discipline of 99 word fiction

I was introduced to the concept of the 99 word story when our local free paper, the North Coast Journal ran its 2012 short fiction contest. Writing a 99 word story requires a unique discipline. Every word counts -- more than this, every word must count for the maximum it possibly can. I start the exercise with a concept which I let roll around in my head for a while. The concept can only be a vignette but it must have a twist to complete it and make it memorable. I type the story in and check the word count. They started anywhere between 110 and 124 words. Then the tough part begins: How to pair the story down to only the necessary words. A word here, a word there makes all the difference. My first entry, about a housewife finally enjoying herself, was a finalist.

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Harry

Harry really was right, single malt Scotch was better than blended. Lois swirled the snifter and let the potent fragrance tickle her nose. She closed her eyes and sipped. It tasted of caramel, smoke and the pungence of 100 proof. Lois grabbed the bottle from Harry's private cabinet and settled in Harry's favorite easy chair. In the humidor beside it rested Harry's illegally imported Cuban cigars which she would eventually compost. Harry had spent a lot on his little pleasures. That was over. Tonight she'd bask in the warmth of his Scotch. Tomorrow she'd worry about the blood stains.

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The slow pace of the story was resolved in a startling conclusion. In 2013, I wrote a 99 word sequel to the original 99 word story.

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Lois

Lois danced around the sofa, gliding and twirling. Harry would have told her to act her age - old poop.

A knock interrupted her. A police officer greeted her. "We were wondering about Harry, ma'am."

"So was I," she said, hands over heart. "Have you questioned the people from that meth house down the street?"

The officer cocked his head. "Why? Harry is a pillar of the community."

Lois shook her head slowly. "Always the ones who fool you."

"We'll check." He left.

Lois smiled, danced round the sofa again and headed downstairs to finish the new basement wall.

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Writing 99 word fiction is a good exercise in restraining verbosity which I can always use.

Scientology and the Writers of the Future contest

Yet again in 2018 the controversy over the association between Writers of the Future and Scientology has reared its ugly head. I wrote this post nearly five years ago and it remains relevant. A few overzealous Scientologists may have tainted the contest by attempting to push their religious beliefs on a winner. I fully expect Author Services to take them aside and give them a talking to. Author Services (which runs the contest) tries to keep a firewall between the religion and the contest. For the most part, they do a good job. They want the contest to be unbiased.

Does Scientology help finance the contest to keep Hubbard's name out there, of course. Everyone knows that. And, yes, at the end of the week they asked if I had anything nice to say about him and I refused and they did nothing.

Personally, I'd hate to see the contest get a bad reputation and lose the depth of talent it has traditionally had and, along with that, the opportunity it gives new writers. So to everyone who's thinking about withdrawing because of the latest controversies, I strongly advise against it. This is the best chance most talented new writers will get to break into the business.

The original post follows:

An article from last year's Village Voice about links between Scientology and the Writers of the Future contest was posted recently in a Facebook group in order to dissuade people from entering the contest. Let me start by saying, I'm prejudiced. I was one of the twelve winners of the contest in 2013. As I sit here writing this blog post, my trophy from the contest is on a shelf in front of me, the cover art from my story hangs on the wall alongside a picture of me, for the one and probably only time in my life, wearing a tuxedo. The contest offered me a great opportunity to break into the Sci-Fi business that I am pursuing now; an opportunity I would never have had without the contest. Had I refrained from entering the contest because of its association with L. Ron Hubbard, I would have missed that opportunity.

The Village Voice article points out that, in spite of claims made to contestants to the contrary, Scientology may be helping to finance the contest in order to keep Hubbard's name in front of the public in a good light. I don't doubt that they are correct in this. Hubbard's name is plastered everywhere across the contest and on the anthology of the works of the winners. He did, after all, start the contest and set up its continuing financing. How is this different from Alfred Nobel's (who made his fortune from inventing dynamite) name on the Nobel Prizes, or Joseph Pulitzer (some times accused of yellow journalism) on the Pulitzer Prizes, or Andrew Carnegie (the steel baron and not a champion of labor) on all those libraries? If you endow it, you get your name on it. We were asked by the people at Author Services (who probably were Scientologists) to thank Hubbard in our acceptance speeches; I didn't and that was fine.

Perhaps there could have been a less controversial person to endow the contest, but, then again, the writers of the so called "Golden Age" of Sci-Fi were, on the whole, an old boy's club of womanizers and misogynists. Heinlein's wife, if a recent best selling book is to be believed, slept with Hubbard and Heinlein didn't care. Would you rather have had a church-going author set it up? How about, say, Orson Scott Card? He's a nice fellow, I'm told — if you're not gay. Real Science-Fiction writers are real people with real problems — Hubbard included. Anyone else could have set up the contest, but Hubbard had the foresight and generosity to pay-it-forward and create a venue for discovering the next generation of Sci-Fi talent. For that I thank him.

The prestige of the Writers of the Future contest is not based on Hubbard's name — quite the contrary. The prestige of the contest is based on the number of entries (not published but estimated in the thousands), the quality of the judging staff (none of whom are Scientologists), and the quality of the winning pieces which, I'd like to think, is excellent. None of the winning authors in my year was a Scientologist. The list of authors who got their start through this contest is like a who's who of Sci-Fi. Dissuading talented new writers from entering the contest because of its connections to Hubbard and Scientology is a disservice, cutting them off from one of their best chances of breaking into the business.

On the problem of congratulating a friend for being declared human

I'd like to congratulate my friends on today's Supreme Court decisions in the cases of Doma and Prop 8, but somehow it seems inappropriate. What should I say: "Congratulations on having your marriage valued as much as mine." or "Congratulations on narrowly winning recognition of having equivalent human rights to me."

And the decision on Prop 8 was narrow. With only a one vote majority, the Supremes only said was that the people who brought the suit did not have "standing" to bring it. This leaves open the possibility of a different California administration resubmitting the appeal. The Supreme Court has always tried to stay a step or two behind the society at large and this has led to some dreadful decisions like Dred Scott. Still, some of the narrowest decisions have had the greatest consequence. Marbury v. Madison was a narrow decision yet it enshrined the principal of judicial review of laws (a decision I think Justice Scalia would like to overturn). Hopefully some future Court will broaden their decision to say that no minority group may be discriminated against for any reason by a prejudiced majority.

The long-term arc of history is toward greater justice, equality and tolerance. There will always be individuals and groups who resist that arc of history. No amount of reasonable argument will dissuade them. How, for instance, can my marriage be anything but strengthened when it is recognized that everyone has the right to marry? A fuller recognition of rights will have to wait for our children's generation. They have grown up with the knowledge that who you love is less important than who you are as a person. Justice Scalia's generation, the generation that grew up before the Civil Rights movement, will have to pass from power before this can take place.

So in the meantime, to all my LGBT friends, congratulations on finally being granted some of the civil rights you should have had all along. May you see the greater fulfillment of the arc of history.

Writers of the Future

The past two weeks have been momentous. I had the honor in the first quarter of 2012 to be picked from among thousands of worldwide entries as one of the winners of the Writers of the Future contest. From April 8 to 15 I was part of a group of 13 highly talented writers and 12 illustrators who experienced a week of intensive training topped off by an award ceremony (it's three hours long, I'm at two hours four minutes) that resembles the Oscars. The week of classes were taught by several of the top names in Science Fiction: Tim Powers, Dave Wolverton, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Todd McCaffrey, Robert J. Sawyer, Eric Flint, Mike Resnick, Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta as well as past winners and now published authors Brad Torgersen, Jordan Ellinger, Eric James Stone and others. With such an outstanding group of teachers, the learning experience was unsurpassed.

The Writers of the Future contest is a chance for new writers in Science Fiction and Fantasy to get exposure and enter into the world of publishing. It is a showcase for new writers. I cannot recommend it too highly. The judging is blind and strictly on the merits of the story. Send in one with strong characterization, good plot and competent language and you stand just as much chance as the next person. I've been published locally but Writers of the Future, Vol. 29 (totally unsubtle plug for the book) is my first national publication. Submit your story. Among the many advantages of the contest is that it's free to submit.

One last point. If anyone is worried about the connection of L. Ron Hubbard and the contest and Scientology: the contest is separate from Scientology. Hubbard endowed the contest, but it and Galaxy press are under a distinct corporate entity. None of the judges, to my knowledge, has any connections to Scientology, and Scientology was not brought up during the week.

Why we never should have been allowed to marry

If you believe the proponents of Prop 8, then the reason the state sanctions marriage is for procreation. If this was the case, I should have never been allowed to marry since neither of us wanted to have children and took measures to ensure we didn't. By the same token, no one over 55 should be allowed to marry. No one who is infertile should be allowed to marry. Indeed, the primary requirement for a marriage license should be a pregnancy. Yet these same people only want pregnancy within marriage.

To say their arguments lack logic and merit is to give them far too much credit. The same people who do not want committed gay and lesbian couples to marry because it would sully the sanctity of marriage have no problem with multiply divorced hetero couples marrying. Why aren't they opposed to divorce? The fact the most marriages end in divorce is far more a stain on marriage than allowing same sex couples who love each other to enter into it.

I guess when you have the word from on high, you can ignore the failings of your argumentation. But wait: What is traditional marriage? In the Bible, all of the patriarchs had multiple wives and concubines. If you're looking for true Biblical marriage, there it is.

And Jesus does not offer a better picture of marriage. In Luke 14:26 he says: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple." Or Matthew 19:29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." Hardly what one would call a ringing endorsement of "Biblical marriage."

I am friends with a lesbian couple who have been together nearly thirty years and a gay couple who have been together nearly fifty. If marriage is about love, then they deserve to be married. It it's not about love, then what is it about? Certainly not what the Prop 8 proponents say. We can only hope the Supreme Court shows courage and forethought in their decisions.

How to save a life

It's been nine and a half years since we moved behind the Redwood Curtain and in that time I hope I've saved several lives. I'm a writer, not a fireman or policeman or member of a search and rescue team, so how could I have saved several lives? I donate blood. Today I gave the pint that makes my sixth gallon of donations since moving here. That's 48 chances to give another person the gift of life -- the victim of an accident, a person facing surgery, someone with a blood disorder.

Most of us never get the chance to perform a heroic act and I don't consider donating blood an act of heroism, but it does give me the opportunity to change another persons life as profoundly as any act of heroism. My small gift of a pound of myself is a more direct gift to another human being than any donation to charity.

For anyone who has never donated before, the process is fairly simple. Count on it taking about an hour to and hour and a half. You fill out a survey of health questions and then have your temperature, pulse and blood pressure taken. A finger is stuck and a few drops of blood taken for a test of the iron level of your blood and, if everything checks out, you sit in a comfortable reclining chair while a technician finds the best vein, swabs your arm and sticks a needle in for the extraction. The needle stick is the only part of the process I don't care for, so I don't look. Then you just sit back and let the blood flow into a bag. I always bring a book to read while that's going on. Once you've donated, you stop in the snack room for something to drink and goodies. You're not supposed to do any strenuous exercise or heavy lifting for 24 hours, so you can go home and have a pass to be lazy for a day.

And then your blood goes to work helping one or more people. That's a good feeling.

National Novel Writing Month

November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. I highly recommend it to anyone who is having trouble getting either the inspiration or the discipline to write. I've been feeling like an impostor since winning Writers of the Future (a feeling that seems to be fairly common among the winners) and needed to break out of it. NaNoWriMo proved just the thing. I took a new idea that had been rattling around in my head for only a couple of months and took off writing. Sixteen days later, I had a 40,000 word first draft. A month later, I'm working on a third draft and have the first chapters out to my highly tolerant and helpful associates in the two writing groups I participate in.

Which brings up writing groups and I can highly recommend them as well. The longer a writer stares at their prose, the less they see. It's the forest and trees metaphor. A fresh set of eyes will find the weaknesses in your story far faster than the author could. Too often we can't see our own assumptions within our writing and need a third party to honestly evaluate it. The group members should be supportive but not hold back on their critiques. I get some of the best comments on my writing from the people who hate it. It's difficult not to balk at criticism, but it is necessary to hone the work and it helps if the environment is supportive. If you write and are not part of a group, consider joining one.