A Giant Cotton Candy Cloudship Enterprise

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I was driving back from Vegas after CES back in January—in southeast California to be precise—and there was this killer cloud formation. It looked a lot like a spaceship. A giant cotton candy Enterprise. I posted one pic to Instagram—shown below—but threatened to post more of them on my blog. Nine months later, let’s do it!

One caveat: I like these pics, but they don’t do justice to what I saw that evening. The textures and swirls and layers that were in this formation…I’ve never seen anything like it before.

Here’s the Instagram post. I upped the brightness and lowered the contrast for the post:

Fiddle About

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ZOMG, but Giorgio A. Tsoukalos is one of my guilty pleasures. First on Ancient Aliens and various standalone UFO specials, and now on his own show, a reboot of Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of…I love this guy. In fact, if there’s a show on H2 where the answer to every question asked by the narrator is “No!” Mr. Tsoukoalos is probably involved, and I love them all.

Right now, I’m watching the In Search Of… episode dedicated to Puma Punku. This place fascinates me. I reject the conclusions reached on every show I’ve seen about the site—i.e. that aliens built it thousands of years ago—but it’s an amazing site.

"Puma Punku landscape" by Janikorpi - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puma_Punku_landscape.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Puma_Punku_landscape.JPG

“Puma Punku landscape” by Janikorpi – Own work.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

So, anyway. I’m fiddling about. I’m also fiddling about with the theme of my blog. I’m looking for something modern and modern that I can install myself. I haven’t found it yet, but you may see a few different looks here at GeekTells while I’m looking.

I’m also in the home stretch of my final edit on my book. I should be querying in a couple of weeks. That is, if I can stop fiddling about.

Scattershot: Writing Update, Guitar Show, Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

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I know, it’s been roughly forever since my last update. I’ve been working quite hard on my novel(s), and I have a new query letter that’s almost ready to go out. I’ve also been working very hard at TMO, and have resumed my original role there as editor-in-chief.

It’s made for a very, very busy me, and updating my blog has was one area that suffered accordingly.

Querying

Some of you might remember that I queried my novel before, roughly two years ago. I’ve explained all that, but with the newly completed novel came the need for a new query letter. This time around I hunkered down for some help from the Query Letter Hell thread at the Absolute Write forums, and it was fucking brutal.

But thanks to the awesome folks there, I have a brand new query letter all ready to go. I hope to send it out in early September, starting with some of the agents I queried the first time around.

Stick a Fork in It (Again)

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I am delighted to announce that my book is finished. Again. I know, I said that before. OK, I’ve said it twice, but I think it will stick this time. I am ready to shop this puppy. Again.

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Mayhaps I should explain: a few months ago I finished the book and got it out to beta readers. Based on their feedback, I decided to tweak the ending.

That ended up being much harder than I was anticipating, and I ended up writing some 24,000 words for what ultimately became a 2,600 word tweak. Just imagine me at an old-fashioned typewriter hammering out page after page after page of story that went straight into the trash.

I’ve been working on that for weeks, and then I went through the manuscript again to trim it down to my goal of 120,000 words. Tonight I made the last edits I intend to make, at least until an agent or editor asks for changes

What’s in a Year?

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It’s been an interesting year in very many ways, but I decided to use Tax Day to look back at what’s most important. My hair.

Yeah, I know. I haven’t updated my blog in something like 5 months, and now I’m back talking about my hair. That’s how I roll. Besides, lookit:

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A year ago, 6 months ago, and a week or so ago

in thirteen or so months, I’ve gone from metrosexual wannabe to a William Shakespeare impersonator, with a pitstop trying out for Beck’s band in between. I also stopped coloring my hair, so there’s that.

While we’re talking about me, check out this photo my friend Jim Tanous took at Cirque du Mac 11 from the year’s Macworld/iWorld. If you like it, we posted a whole gallery of his photos of the Macworld All Star Band at The Mac Observer. Jim is a heckuva a photographer, a gifted writer, and a great guy.

Scattershot: The Doctor, Bitcoins, Moving Forward

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Things have been pretty busy in these parts (while I eagerly await feedback from more beta readers), which makes it a good time to write a Scattershot post.

The Doctor

First up is Doctor Who, and the 50th Anniversary episode (also the 799th episode) called “The Day of the Doctor.” It aired this past Saturday, and it was very cool. No spoilers outside of trailer-level stuff, but the gist of the episode is that the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) get all up in each other’s business. Crossed time streams ensue, and Jenna Coleman’s delightful smile is there to keep us happy.

If you didn’t watch it, look for it in rerun on BBC America here in the States. It’s also showing in 3D in some theaters. I haven’t seen that version, but Jeff Gamet did (earlier tonight), and he said it was pretty nifty.

Oh, and can I please have a spin-off of John Hurt as the War Doctor? Yes, please!

Off to the Beta Readers…

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It’s weird. Really weird, but I don’t have anything that I can—or even should—do to my book, and that’s because I’ve sent it to a few beta readers. While I still have 1,000 more words to cut, I need to let it sit before I go through it for what is probably the 50th time.

And with that last pass, I was pretty pleased with it. I feel like it’s close, but as I mentioned last week, no one but my trusted critique partner has seen 70 or so percent of it, so now it’s time to find out what some other people think.

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Until I hear back from them, there’s nothing I can do. I don’t want to make any changes, not even axing a few unnecessary words, because the betas might find a major problem or have some excellent comments and suggestions. I want to be able to consider their feedback working from the same manuscript they’re commenting on.

Like I said, it’s weird. For three years, there hasn’t been a single day when there wasn’t something I could work on. From writing it to editing it to refining it to trimming it down, there has always been something to do. Even when I thought I was finished two years ago, I was working on the second half of the story (what I thought then would be a second book).

Buried in Words

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I got yelled at on Twitter for not having updated my blog since…July. That was in October, and here it is November, so I might be doing this wrong.

Never you mind! Onwards and upwards! Storm the castle! Hip! Hip! Hooey! No time like the present, said Bryan. Never.

So what have I been doing with my time? Lots. And lots.

For one thing, I’ve been tink, tink, tinkering away at my manuscript. Back in July, I mentioned I was done, but had 35,000 words to cut. since then, I’ve added another 3,000 words in the process of rewriting and honing the ending, but I’ve cut a net of 36,300 words, leaving me at 121,699 words as of right now. If you remember, my goal is an even 120,000 words, or less.

Counting Words

Counting Words

I Finished Writing My Novel (Again)

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I finished writing my novel last night. I should say that I finished writing it again, because technically I thought I finished it about a year ago. This time is different, though, because I finished what was originally going to be the second novel, which means the full story is complete for the first time.

Mason Truman. He has a fork.

Mason Truman. He has a fork.

There are caveats, of course. The last chapter is only in a first-and-a-half draft state, and the last two chapters haven’t faced the withering scrutiny of my critique partner, let alone my bank of awesome beta readers.

Also, it’s sitting at 155,000 words. That means I not only have a LOT of polishing to do, I have to cut out 35,000 damned words before I can start shopping it out again. In the SciFi realm, no agent will touch a first time author with a manuscript longer than 120,000 words—90,000-120,000 words is the range most will consider.

But, this is a big deal for me. I have learned a lot about writing during the last two years, and the book I just completed is head and shoulders above the book I thought I finished a year ago.

Inching Inexorably Closer

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It’s been a little more than two years now since I began working on my first novel. I started it two or three weeks after Black Friday. I thought I had finished it a year ago, only to realize that I needed write it differently last fall.

It seems that I’m inching inexorably closer to that goal. I’ve rewritten the prologue and a completely new beginning to the novel. I’ve pored over the middle, cutting big chunks out of it out in the process, and am so near the end of the story I can taste it.

In fact, I’m 4-6 major scenes away from completing it. Of course, the closer I get to that ending, the slower the progress. I very much feel like the snail in the Monsters University trailer (starting at 40 seconds):

I imagine it’s part of the process of learning how to write a damned book, but I’ve been very interested to see that the closer I get to this (new) end, the more often I scrap scenes entirely and the more often I rewrite from scratch.