Billions, Baggins and Befuddlement

The word of the week is belief.

September 24 - The Hobbit

Only a few months to go until the first half of The Hobbit is released in theaters! I was one of those folks who stood in line for the LOTR trilogy when the movies were released and I have a feeling I'll again be standing in the front ranks come December when the tale of Bilbo Baggins hits the big screen.

The Hobbit is the first fantasy story that fired my imagination as a child. We took it as a class project in Grade Six, having it tied in with the recently-released 1977 animated film along with a copy of the Deluxe Movie book that contained still images from the film:

For me, that film is a wonderful memory and my first step into Tolkien's world as well as the many others that awaited me as I discovered Fantasy literature. It ignited a passion that remains to this day and I'm glad to see others doing their best to pass on these treasures to new generations:

September 25 - Job? Nyet.

I'm feeling somewhat better today, but I still have no energy. I've been napping on and off as best I can, given the activities upstairs and outside. Earplugs, headphones and determination are the order of the day.

Jobs however, seem rather scarce. I've combed through the advertised ones and come up empty, save for the usual basic retail-sales-service jobs that pay a pittance and ask a lot of your soul. To find the jobs that aren't advertised and that I might actually find a better fit to my wants, it's going to be a grind. Networking will be the key, so I'm extending some more feelers this week and seeing what comes up.

Freelance work is always an option, though it won't work well if my wrists can't keep up. The burning pain in my left arm only returns if I type for too long or too often, so the specialist's prediction that it might take up to two years( or longer )to heal seems on the money. Learning to type with my voice means I'll have to find the time to practice more over the next few months and also means I'll be tied to my PC at home; the laptop doesn't have the power to run the voice-recognition software. I'm toying with the idea of recording articles and then having them translated after, but that doesn't work well with the writing process; nobody I know of does a perfect take the first time. It takes editing and time.

So we'll see where I am in a month's time.

September 26 - More Tiny Homes

The trend towards smaller homes continues, as designers and creative folk get on board the movement. One home by designer Jessica Helgerson is used as a weekend home by her family. It's simple and makes use of every bit of space inside as well as integrating a lot of outside space into the home's use.

There's quite a few tiny houses all around the world, but so far it's been hard to get images of more than a few at a time. However, I've found a site that seems to be collecting images of tiny homes from all over the globe: TinyhousesWoon.com. There's quite a few designs in there that I haven't seen; one and all, they look fairly comfortable for a few people to live in - large families excluded, of course.

September 27 - Mail-Order Monsters

You know, it's strange… I had a lot when I was a kid growing up in terms of video game systems, but I never had a computer. At least not until the Coleco ADAM, but that barely counts as such - which probably explains why I was so excited to get an AMIGA 500 in my teens, as it was my first 'real' home computer. My friends all had Commodore64's and Apple IIe's but neither made their way into our household.

So it's doubly strange that my favourite video game of all time( before I discovered NWN, that is! )is Mail Order Monsters for the C64. I loved that game, played it at my friend's houses as often as possible and saved my monsters on a floppy 5.25" disk that I toted with me, which was rare back then. Being able to design monsters and pit them against the creations of my friends was incredibly fun and I went at it with gusto. Which didn't last over a year as I just wasn't any good at it, aside from providing sport for my pals to pummel electronically. Yet the sheer sense of FUN from the game has stuck with me all these decades and I'm hoping that someone out there will update the game one of these days, maybe as a phone app.

I mean, what could be cooler than a dinosaur with a cybernetic brain and a pair of machine guns? C'mon!

September 28 - Fallout

The people upstairs and I have had a falling out, which I'm frankly surprised didn't happen before now. I'm tired of being involuntarily woken around dawn most days and they're tired of my leaving polite notes and / or texts about it. So today I was told not to leave any more notes, just to contact the landlord and / or the police - that's that. I had hoped that opening lines of communication would work, but it seems they can't control their kids well enough or just aren't willing to spend the energy. 

Which, having kids, they likely don't have a lot of; I understand.

Rather than try to sleep past when they usually start banging about, I'm doing the next best thing: modifying my own sleep schedule so that I'm up around the same time as them: 6am. It stinks, no: galls me that I have to cater to THEIR schedule due to THEIR inconsideration, but that's life. They're thinking of their family first and I can't blame them and who knows? By no longer fighting the inevitable, I may get rid of these dark circles under my eyes and start feeling human again. As well as proving the old adage "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" - now I truly know what that means. I might also order one of these to stick my head into and modify it with a lot more stuffing:

I just wonder how long I can hold off until making a noise report. I hope I don't have to, really; they're nice people, just under a lot of stress - same as me. Maybe they'll move soon, as they'd been saying… In the meantime, I'm editing my manuscript despite a lack of decent sleep or a quiet workspace. It's certainly causing me to focus and use what energy I have efficiently, especially in the quiet moments.

September 29 - Progress!

Whew! I managed to get a LOT done on my manuscript today, as for whatever reason the people upstairs were gone for most of the day. I've been using excellent feedback from several sources to comb through my text and correct many minor errors, completing a pass on the first half of the novel by dinnertime today.

It's just write, write, write for the next while. Once I've given the novel a full run through, I'll start to add in parts from my own notes, tighten things up and generally step beyond the technical bits into the 'make the story better and richer' part. I've set a deadline for myself a few days BEFORE the submission cutoff date by Harper-Voyager, to give myself a touch of breathing room. Which means it's heads-down, run-for-the-finish-line every day for the first half of October: I'll be working HARDER than I was at the end of August, to make this work.

I want it to be worth the effort. Here's hoping!

September 30 - A Billion-Year Plan?

I've often thought about the future of the human species, where we'll be in a thousand years, a hundred thousand, a million… but a BILLION? That's… a little TOO far for me to conceptualize as any of our descendants bearing any resemblance to the word 'human' after so long.

Yet this was part of the discussion at the recent 100-Year Starship symposium. In truth, the discussion ranged all over the place but this topic caught the attention of more than a few folks, originating as it did on the Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence Blog - a lot of smart banter there, also. Check out the highlights as posted on Centauri Dreams and wonder again at the wonder of our species, that we can look so far away AND so far ahead into our own future.

That's all I have for today, really. I thought about this a fair bit when I was much younger, but I didn't get very far as I didn't have the breadth of reading I do today. After reading through parts of the blog and the Centauri site, I realized yet again I'm still not as widely read as I could be. Maybe when I retire…

It's been a rough, rotten-at-times week that's drained a lot out of me. But I'm facing the new week with new determination, to plug ALL that I have into creating the best damn manuscript I can to submit in a few week's time. Once it leaves, it's literally out of my hands and I don't want to regret wasting a minute on such trivialities as a lack of sleep, no job prospects or a lack of a social life. 

Minor things, all, when it comes to being an author. Right?

Feedback, Flushed and Freebies

The word of the week is opportunity.

Sept 17 -Feedback!

As I've already mentioned, yesterday I sent out my novel's manuscript to a few people to get some feedback, vital to making a good draft into a GREAT second draft. I'm hoping to get enough feedback that agrees on the good parts AND the bits that need improvement, but not so much that I can't handle it all. Hence only a few people, for now - too many and I'd spend more time reading feedback than implementing the recommended changes.

In the evening I received some other feedback from my writer's group, who I hosted in the SkyLounge. It was a sub-group, focusing on a novel we had each written, going chapter by chapter. I received some very positive feedback on the first and second chapters of my novel, which was very uplifting and useful. I also gave some solid feedback on the works of the other four people there, who are all solid writers and more used to this sort of thing than I am, as it was my first time in such a group. Which means they were rather forgiving of my gaffes and errors, for which I was grateful. We'll be meeting again in a month's time, when I am expected to have re-worked my first and second chapters using their critiques.

Sept 18 - An almost-free NEW printer?

It's very odd that Providence has been providing me things of late as needed; I'm in NO way unhappy with it, but today was a good example:

For about six months now I've been looking for a good, inexpensive laser printer, as I knew I'd likely have to print a manuscript or six once my novel was finished. Well, I finished my novel and did print up half a manuscript on the HP P1102W that I'd bought as a one-day special( only $30!!! )at the end of 2011. But the little tyke can't handle extended print jobs and my manuscript is almost 400 pages right now. So I've kept my eyes peeled but there's been nothing I'd want to lay out money on for less than $200.

Today while traipsing through Value Village, what should I spot but a sleek HP printer on a shelf? A quick look confirmed it to be a P1606dn, a solid home office laser that only came out in 2010 and in great shape! For $20 it was worth taking a chance on, despite missing two paper trays; there was no toner cartridge either, but that's to be expected. I got it home and ordered an aftermarket toner for another $20, which arrived just two days later from Vancouver; plugging it in, I powered the laser up and to my delight it worked perfectly. The print count said that NO pages had been printed; it was an UNUSED and BRAND NEW printer!!! So instead of paying  upwards of $300 for a new 1606dn plus around $80 for an 'official' toner, I got it all for only $40 - talk about luck!!!

The printer is networkable, meaning I can print to it using its own email address from ANY device( like my phone )no sweat. It's also full duplex, which lets me print on both sides of a page automatically. I printed out the final 200+ pages of my manuscript in less than twenty minutes, which is incredibly fast. The print quality is HP-excellent as always and I'm just thrilled that I found such a PERFECT local bargain!

Sept 19 - A Publisher in October ???

Speaking of signs from the universe:

Today I JUST found out about an opportunity to submit my novel to a publisher!

It's BIG news, as a well-known publisher is making an OPEN call, allowing ANYONE to submit a manuscript to them - even if you don't have an agent, like me! Incredibly, they're VERY keen to get scifi or fantasy submissions… it's like someone heard that my novel was done and popped up this opening!

So I'm under another self-imposed deadline now, to whip my first draft into as close to second-draft shape as I can in LESS than three weeks! While the submissions to the publisher don't have to be in absolute-perfect shape, it cannot hurt my chances to weed out ALL the major bugs, fix a lot of the little ones and add as much as I can from my notes into the novel before I submit it. It's THE BEST chance I'll have to get my novel in the hands of a publisher in the industry and I WILL NOT miss this chance!

Sept 20 - Colds and Job Searching

The universe works in mysterious ways.

Yesterday, I found out I have a chance to submit my novel to a publisher fairly easily, IF I work HARD for the next three weeks on the manuscript… and today I discovered that I've picked up a cold.

CRAP. But so it goes…

My job search is progressing slowly; there's not all that many jobs I'm keen on applying for locally, at least that are listed. I'm going to REALLY push trying to find those 'hidden' jobs, the ones that I'd likely be better suited for and enjoy more than I might a 'standard' job in retail or somesuch. I'm really just looking for something to  a) Pay the bills and let me get ahead a little  b) That won't suck the energy out of me so much daily that I don't have anything left to write with   c) That I might enjoy doing   - none of which are unreasonable goals; I'm certainly not trying to pay a mortgage or raise a family with my pay.

I've thought about putting together a video resume`, but it just seems like overkill. However, THIS guy takes the cake for awesome creative video resumes. He's trying to get in on the just-announced TV series S.H.I.E.L.D. with Joss Whedon:

Sept 21 - Sick Stinks

Whatever bug I've picked up is now in full swing, having gone from my throat to my nose and sapping all my energy to boot. I did very little during the day today save domestic tasks, sleeping when and how I could. Which wasn't much.

One thing I did do was to discover an online repository forElfQuest! This was a comic I remember coming across when I was growing up in the Eighties, a hybrid mix of fantasy and scifi which caught my interest.

Now you can peruse EVERY ElfQuest comic ever made, for free! I'm not all that familiar with the series, but there's a devoted following out there so that does tell me there's more than a few good tales to be had in these comics. I'll peruse them more thoroughly when I have more time and more energy…

Sept 22 - Feeling Absolutely Awful

The people upstairs woke me four separate times last night, so that by the time morning rolled around I felt inhumanly exhausted. Not to mention feeling the cold in full swing. I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before they woke me again; at that point I just gave up and tried to get on with my day. I didn't end up doing much and had to leave soon after lunch due to the people upstairs moving a LOT of stuff around. I felt horrible, like I was walking around in a waking dream; even sitting on the patio at Moka House for an hour did little to restore any feeling of humanity. Or energy; I've almost never felt this close to being beside myself. Most of my evening was a blur of spot-naps for fifteen minutes and TV; thanks to some chicken soup for lunch and dinner I managed to get a little writing done but the words kept blurring. My feet and hands are cold, which tells me that the bug is sapping my reserves of energy…

However, my fortunes reversed themselves after dinner: in the morning, I had texted the couple upstairs about the noise levels keeping me from sleeping. Turns out the noises around lunch were them rearranging various bits of furniture upstairs! After dinner, they texted me, having VERY generously put forward making changes to their sleeping arrangements to deaden the sound of tending to their young kids in the night. They mentioned making other changes too, all of which added up to a 90% reduction in the sounds from overhead. It was wonderful and a testament to having a polite, open dialogue with your neighbours instead of letting emotion get the upper hand. I went to bed with a VERY changed mood, no longer a sleep-deprived zombie but just a tired guy hoping for a better night's sleep…

Sept 23 - Recovery Day

Last night I slept wonderfully, all due to the people upstairs after talking with them yesterday evening. It wasn't a perfect night's sleep but I did feel somewhat rested, even given my cold-wracked head. I spent the morning writing up part of my blog and then napped for a bit, which actually helped as my nose cleared up and I could smell my lunch, which was a pleasant change. I even went out for the afternoon for a few hours to sit in the sun and just try to enjoy the day, which was easier as my nose no longer looked like I'd been using sandpaper on it. Apart from the dark circles under my eyes, I felt closer to human today than I have for the last forty-eight hours. More chicken soup for dinner also helped, as did watching Flushed Away, a cute animated yarn that I've enjoyed a few times over the years; English accents always make a movie more enjoyable for me for some reason. Weird, eh?

I'm really hoping to dive into editing my manuscript tomorrow using the feedback I've received so far, if I get my energy levels back. Even if I don't, I NEED to, as the clock is ticking to make my novel the BEST it can be before I submit it in less than three weeks. I HAVE to get it done, to the exclusion of all else; this is an incredibly rare opportunity and one that may not come again for a LONG time. No pressure…

Driving, Dozing and Dragonboys

The word of the week is calcite.

Sept 10 - Treehouse Village!

Oh, treehouses - you seemed so simple as a child. Get boards, nails and hammers, pick a tree and a few hours later, you had… a mess. Which was pretty much as far as my friends and I got, scavenging materials from nearby construction sites and borrowing tools from our dads. Those were the days.

Now I've discovered that there's an entire community of treehouse lovers( nuts? )in Costa Rica, calling themselves Finca Bella Vista. They are dedicated to living 'off the grid' as well as being respectful of their environment, both worthy goals in and of themselves BEFORE you get to the cool part: they ALL live in treehouses! In a forest, no less! Have a gander at their website and take pause to consider: would YOU move to Costa Rica if it meant you could live as fabulously as they do? I'm considering it - lightly.

Sept 11 - Remembrance

Eleven years since 9-11. The horror and shock have faded.

But the memory endures. As do the scars.

I ask: what has the world learned? And I can't come up with a good answer.

Still. After all this time.

Sept 12 - Dragonboy

I love animation, I really do. Ever since I was a little boy, I've always loved seeing animated stories in every form and from every source. There's something about animation, I think in that it can literally do ANYTHING and take you places that regular film can't; the newer CGI still needs to tell a story and not just be done for F/X sake alone. It's the story that keeps us entertained, and enriches us.

There's a great story in Dragonboy, a charming short tale about a boy in a play who discovers that he doesn't have to be a prince to win the fair damsel's heart. I love this short; it really tugs on all the right emotional heartstrings… especially the one where I, too, feel like I'm a boy again, in a dragon costume. Or at least, I could have been.

Sept 13 - Vancouver Trip!

Up early and out the door by 9am today to catch the bus to Swartz Bay to get the 11am ferry sailing. Why? Because I was going to Vancouver today! Last time I did it with little research as to the 'how' and I ended up paying more than I'd have liked; this time, I researched the heck out of it. Bus to ferry, ferry to Tsawwassen, bus to Skytrain by the airport, Skytrain to downtown Vancouver! Total cost was less than $50 round-trip for all the transportation combined; cheap!

The total travel time was a little under five hours, all with someone ELSE doing the driving, which was good as I still don't do well going over water( thanks, Dramamine! ). I picked a little café and recharged the battery on my new cell; I'm disappointed that it only lasted a little past lunch. However, the viewing from the café was spectacular through the windows and I happily people-watched from the patio until dinnertime.

The view of English Bay that evening. Incredible!
I love the two people sitting at the sun-trail's tip!

What perfect weather to be outside! Sunny and calm and in the low twenties; I met my friend and we went to English Bay to pick a place to grab some grub. We took up a sweet spot on the patio at Milestone's, the same as the last time I was there( the wait at the Cactus Club on the beach was insane )and the viewing was incredible. We ended up there for a few hours and caught the sunset pictured above; it was simply amazing and a good experience of what people living in Vancouver get to enjoy - weather permitting. After that, it was time for a few drinks at Earl's on Robson St which I'd passed by a few times when I was last in town and thought would be interesting. The wait staff were excellent and I'll be sure to stop in again whenever I'm next in town. Heck, we ended up with a 'mistake' plate of appetizers from the kitchen that were simply delicious, tasting all the better for being FREE!

It was just a great night all around.

Sept 14 - Sleep

Ergh… the problem with a late night is that sometimes it runs smack into an early morning, as it did today. I ended up with about 3.5 hours of sleep and I felt it all the way home, but unfortunately I wasn't able to nap on the ferry or on the bus; I'm just too uncomfortable to do that. I also tend to drool while sitting upright and snoozing, so be warned. I missed a bus in the AM and so I didn't get back home until 12pm, which was fine as I immediately flaked out for a solid four-hour napcrash. Thankfully, the people upstairs were out and I felt much more balanced when I awoke. I was able to get in a few solid hours of work on my manuscript in the evening and felt the better for it.

I've taken a small break from using my sleep tracking app on my phone, as my case still hasn't arrived. I'm not going to put my 'thin and light' SIII within range of flailing elbows each night until it's properly protected. I don't like losing all the data for consistency's sake, but there's no help for it until the case arrives. Soon.

Sept 15 - Cars

Having access to a vehicle of your own used to be one of the rites of passage to adulthood. Walking was too slow, the bus was too unreliable and riding a bike was only as good as the weather. Cars gave you freedom, and that was addictive... until you realized how MUCH your car was costing you for that freedom.

Cars are unreliable, expensive beasts that eat through your wallet with ease. I've had my fill... I *may* get a new-used one again in the future, but ONLY if I deem it *necessary* for a long-term job... or a family. Where I am now, physically and in life, I don't need one. Which I like a LOT. :-) Just being able to easily walk everywhere I need to and easily hop a bus to get anywhere else really makes my wallet happy - plus I never get stuck in traffic!

Sept 16 - Manuscript!

Since I was woken by the people upstairs at 3am and again at 6:30am, I thought I'd get a head start on my day. So I dug into my manuscript to badger it into shape, copying in the last few chapters and then spending the morning getting it all shipshape. It's not as easy as you think; there's always a LOT of errors in a first draft and even fixing things like a misspelled name takes careful work. Otherwise all you've done is add ANOTHER error. Ensuring it's all properly formatted, that chapter and scene breaks are all put in correctly and that you haven't copied one title over another or put a chapter out of place… there was a lot of work to tidy, but I got it all done a little before noon. After that I created an encrypted PDF that can ONLY be printed and not copied / edited / etc, which I sent out to my few lucky Beta Readers along with a fair number of questions for Feedback Purposes. Now THAT felt GOOD!

In the super-sunny afternoon I went over to take a gander at the inaugural Victoria Chalk Art Festival downtown. It was the PERFECT day for it: the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky! The main art piece inside the Bay Centre was impressive and almost finished by the time we got there( see below )and some of the other pieces were done by then outside. I have to say I was a little disappointed by the art on display, as only two of the dozen were 3D perspective work - the least of them all was still leaps beyond my own talents, but I had high expectations I suppose. They were creative and colourful and lovely for works that will be gone by tomorrow and I enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the happy crowds of people that came out to see them. I hope they're back next year, bigger and better!

It's been an odd week: everything sort of steamrollered in a soft and cushy way to end up here on Sunday night, with the blog coming together rather easily in an hour or so. This week coming looks to be nothing BUT job searching every day, as I'm done the manuscript and there's nothing else major on my plate. Just the little things that I can attend to here and there as needed. That's a good feeling...