Weekly Omens 8/9/13

And we're back to weekly updates!

So here's what's happening around the various writings and whatnots:

Weekly Update 6/1/13

You all know how this goes.

You're sitting in the cafeteria when you see that one of the popular girls of the school is looking at you.  She gets up and starts to walk towards you.  She knows you exist.  She is coming to say something to you.  You are someone she has something to say to.  Finally, the moment has come and you have a chance to tell her how beautiful she is, how much you love her laugh, and her smile and her hair and how she smells, and how she writes her sevens on the board in Algebra and how she crosses her T's in her poetry in English.  Finally, you get to tell her everything because she's coming.

To.  Talk.  To.  YOU.

Then she's there and she leans in close.  She's going to whisper to you.  OhGodsofKobal.  She has a secret. You tense.  You close your eyes.

"Your fly is open."

Yep.  That was how my Saturday started when I got a lovely comment from the ever amazing Mary Janice Davidson pointing out that I'd mistyped the title of her novel Undead and Unwed.  I saw that I had gotten a comment on the blog post a few weeks back about Charlaine Harris and Vampires and I had referenced a lovely blog entry that Davidson had posted on that topic.

And blown the title.

Which still upsets me because the Queen Betsy stories are such inspirations for my own writing, that bend of quirky characters, fish out of water themes, vampires, etc.  Of course Regan didn't become obsessed with shoes until after she was a vampire but let's not quibble, shall we?

So... what's been up the last two weeks?

On Mind the Thorns

As I slide into my Summer hiatus, there has not been an update.  See below for comments.

On Bastion:  The Last Hope

Owing to the Memorial Day holiday there was no update but we did all contribute to a special thank you to our veterans, those lost in military service and their families.

On Fictional Omens

I weigh in on the new project Kindle Worlds, an licensed fanfic program by Amazon.  I really do think that it could be the end of Fan Fic as we know it.

At Home:

Well, it's that time of year.  As I mentioned above, all of my writing properties are going on a short Summer Hiatus.  Why is this, you ask, dear reader?  Because final exams are the toughest time of the year for me.  I'm absolutely swamped with papers, grading, finals, students asking for late work, extra credit, and a million other things.  I just don't have the time to sit and write in the way I write best.  So rather than kick out something half assed, I'm officially declaring all properties on hiatus until the first week of July.  Then they'll return with their usual weekly or bi-weekly updates.

Also at home, Xander has completed his first year of Kindergarten (or nearly has).  And that brings us to ...

The Weekly Video

This is a compilation of images and videos for my son over the last year as he finishes up his first year of school.  It's amazing how fast the time goes.

Weekly Update 5/11/13

The week opened with two days of inservices, followed by a day off due to a sick out by our bus drivers (long story and I'm not even sure what happened really), and then two days of work.  It was a very short week for me at the day job yet oddly tiring all the same.

On Mind the Thorns:

Sadly, no update this time out, but I can assure everyone that the next chapter is in the works.  However, as you will see below, it might be delayed just a pinch.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

Bastion came back with an update following the KC130 crew, this time from the point of view of one of the copilots.  We get a chance to see the group from a different angle, meet a different character, and find out a little bit about what exactly is happening.

On Fictional Omens

Owing to a wacky week I went back to the archives and found a great post about writing in 1st person and why its so hard.  Which is ironic because this week saw another dust up of "Authors Behaving Badly" as one tried to defend his rather casual writing style and his informal treatment of the audience.  I may write more on it, if I feel I want to take the risk, as his response to the review got him pretty slammed.

At home:

As a heads up, the next few weeks are going to be crazy at work as we end out the school year.  Final grades are due, and for the first time in a long time it looks like I'll need to clean out my classroom in case I teach somewhere else in the fall.  Finding time (and energy) to compose is going to be tough.  So everyone knows Mind the Thorns will get another chapter before Memorial Day weekend, and Bastion has three more posts before the buffer is exhausted.  After that it may go on hiatus for a few weeks to rebuild the buffer as we move into summer.  The one perk of teaching is that I will have time this summer to muse and write in and around spending time with the kids and the family.

Plus my parent's cottage now has high speed internet and Wifi so I can go work up there as well.


And.... your weekly video:

A few weeks ago Wil Weaton was asked what he might say to a woman's newborn daughter about why it was awesome to be a nerd.

Here goes:

Weekly Update 4/4/13

Up and down and up down went the emotions of the week.  One drama led to another and then another.  Most of them were work related (not writing work the kind that pays the bills)  but all in all it was not a bad week.  Just one that kept the hits coming.

Like a jack hammer.

On Mind the Thorns:

It does seem that polls are borked so I'm going to be looking for something other than the Blogger resident poll system to keep tally week by week.  The winning vote ~appeared~ to be to rescue Emma so that's what Regan's going to do.  Of course, technically the vote was to ~try~ to save her.  I never said if she was already too far gone or not.

We'll just have to wait a week and see.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

This week was a hiatus week with no update.  I should be hearing back from my friend in the Marine Corps tonight or tomorrow so that will give me a little bit to get the chapter edited and posted and from there it looks like we're on track for a good 4 week run without break.

On Fictional Omens

Last weekend a major dust up took place for author Charlaine Harris, the woman behind the wildly popular True Blood novels also known as the Southern Vampire stories.  Long story short, spoilers to her final book in the series leaked and many "fans" were none too happy.  I took on the issue of Reader Entitlement in this week's Fictional Omen.

At home:

Okay so Amazon Prime has this thing going where you can watch pilots for original shows that they will put on the "air" next season.  We watched a few and here are our votes:

• Zombieland The Series - Green Light
• Alpha House - Yellow
• The Onion News Network - Red

We'll watch more and get back to you.

And.... your weekly video:

How am I just now finding out about this amazingly talented young woman?

Weekly Omens 4/21/13

At work I've started Flipping my classroom.  That means that I send the students home with a list of videos to watch, and then when they walk in the next day we start right in on the "You Try" variety of problems.  It gets rid of the 30 minutes of silent note taking and moves that part of the class home.  That means that I need to plan my work days ahead of time and it's incredibly labor intensive on my end.  I've barely had time to breathe, let alone write and I'm seriously considering some hiatus time until I figure out my personal schedule.


On Mind the Thorns:

When this post is up I'm off to write the next update which will go live tonight.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

A new plot thread is started as we meet members of Action Team Easy, specifically Spice, the demolitions expert, Colt, the hothead, Probie, the rookie, and Sid, the new XO.

On Fictional Omens

I took some time to reflect on the fact that it's a little easier to write for Bastion than it is Mind the Thorns and I was promptly schooled by my fans for not updating Thorns more often.

At home:

Strep Throat for Kaylee and a case of being 5 for Xander.  Yep.  Tons o' fun.

And.... your weekly video:

There is nothing this man can't do.  And what he does do, he does with all his soul:

Weekly Omens 4/12/13

This week has been a curious one, with some odd bits of closure on certain fronts.  I'll do a dedicated post on it in the near future, but in the short term I'm more or less letting FantastiCon go where it will without a lot more dedicated promotion.  I have a lot of other awesome (and I think better) projects running and the fatigue of putting FantasiCon out there just isn't worth the returns.  Speaking of those other projects....


On Mind the Thorns:

Yes yes... over due.  Yes yes... we want to see that dress.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

Bastion returns from Spring Break with this video clip showing the mission briefing for Action Team Easy.  We haven't met the team yet, but we do know that they are shipping out to some point we've seen before.

On Fictional Omens

Things have been nutty crazy at work so I went to the archives again to pull out a post on what the world might be like once we get rid of the Terms "gay" and "lesbian" and we simply treat all relationships as just "relationships".

At home:

Redwings game.  Overtime.  Shoot out!  ANNNNNNNDDDDD...... we lost.

Then, because we didn't get into the stadium garage and I didn't know where else to park, we walked about a mile along the Detroit River, in the rain, back to the car.  Cold.  It was a rough way to end the night.  Sure I felt invigorated by the time we reached the car, but after the hour drive home, we were all ready to crash, and crash hard.

And.... your weekly video:

This is just a haunting rendition, and personally I like the lady's voices.

Weekly Omens 3/8/13

So the blizzard that slammed Montana, Minnesota and Wisconsin decided to turn hard south and skip Michigan.  Thanks.  It's been a fun week of work, sorta writing (curse you ME3!) and the like.  Even so, I did manage to get a lot of stuff done, I think, and I only have a small pile of stuff to work through this weekend.

On Mind the Thorns:

The polls closed and Regan has opted to head out in her vampire finest to the party.  She's going to strut through the doors like a woman to be respected, rather than slipping in the back to quietly watch.  I'm also very happy that I slowed down my posting schedule because this week has been a very active week for musing and I feel like a lot of good things have fallen into place over that time.  Now will I manage to get the next chapter written for Sunday?

On Bastion: The Last Hope

This week's update to Bastion is the first real flashback to before the meteors fell.  I'm planning more of these to help flesh out the back stories of the main characters.  I really went back and forth on including the subtitles because I do think there's something fun about having a hidden story in the French, but I'm not sure I'm ready to hand over an entire video to that.

On Fictional Omens

Marketing.  It's all about the Marketing.  Over on Stop the Good Reads Bullies as well as countless other Meta-review sites there always seems to be some kind of drama brewing about who's out to get who and threatening who.  After reading ChibiNeko's comments on the never ending font of drama, and efforts from the StGRB to get more of "their side" out, I decided I would weigh in a bit on why reviews matter so much to people trying to make it happen.

At home:

In gaming I'm still plunking away at ME3 but I'm annoyed at my own lack of abilities as well as how far behind the equipment curve I am.  Because the more times you play the more chances you get to unlock cool weapons (all randomly), I'm very far behind on the equipment curve for Multiplayer.  Plus what you get is random so there's no "I'm working towards X".  You just roll the dice and see what you get.  If you don't usually use a shot gun, or a sniper rifle you can easily find yourself progress.

Kaylee's sleeping through the night again (yay!) and her lower GI stuff seems to be sorting itself out (you know you're a parent if you've ever thought "Yay, Poop!").  And Xander, the 5 year old, is now sleeping on the top bunk.  He likes it.

And.... your weekly video:

I've been playing around with iMovie as part of my work on Bastion.  It is functional for the layman but for any real Power-Editing it totally doesn't have the tools to do much beyond lining up clips for play back.  Either way here's a montage of last week sledding:

Weekly Omens 3/1/13

You'd think I'd have done more work this week (I say that a lot) as I was home sick on Monday and we had a snow day on Wednesday.  Wednesday was pretty cool, spending the day playing with the kids, sending Xander off to go sledding with Mom (his preferred sledding parent), and continuing to recover from the flu that knocked me out Monday.

On Mind the Thorns:

The new chapter is up and Regan is trapped in a well.  The votes are still open about what she should do once she escapes and if you haven't voted you should hop over there and do so.  Also, no Collies were involved in the writing of this episode.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

Finally we are looping back to revisit characters we had introduced earlier in the story.  That's right, folks, no new characters this week!  That is unless you count the passengers on the 717 that our Marines have joined up with.  Curses.....

On Fictional Omens

I've been playing a lot of ME 3 and took a few minutes to muse on the nature of romance in story telling within video games.  I've often defended video games as a story telling medium, and so I thought I'd look closer at the way these stories unfold when not in the middle of playing them.

At home:

Last night I finished the Geth/ Quarian story arc.  I felt very guilty because at the end of the arc there is really only one choice:  Save one race and sacrifice the other.  There is no "make them live in peace" option.  It was glorious, emotional and a little "wow".

And.... your weekly video:

It's March so it's time to break out all the cool Irish music and we begin with the best one no one knows about:  A Biologists view of Beer:

Weekly Omens 2/23/13

Ahh, Midwinter Break... a week of "working" which really translated to playing with the 5-year old, playing through Mass Effect 3 (I'm still getting the hang of the combat system) and poking at my writing.

Not the most productive week I've ever had but a good week over all.

On Mind the Thorns:

I'm halfway through the next chapter.  This one is proving a bit harder to write than I'd like mostly because I also see that it's time to start to move towards some resolutions of the story.  No new updates this week but expect one soon.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

This week saw the first posting of a video diary for Bastion, specifically the personal log of Emma Morgan, Mr. Max Ryan's personal assistant.  It was one of the most exciting things to do with this project and I'm very excited by the way it turned out.  I'm looking forward to doing more of these to support the story.

On Fictional Omens

One of the challenges of writing is to keep the language evenly balanced for what you want to accomplish:  Being true to your source material as well as being readable to your audience.  Some people (Meyers) do little to no research at all and thus have wildly inaccurate facts in their writing while others go to such an extreme (Clancy, Crichten) that you almost learn more about the subjects than you do about the plot.  This week I take a look at that on a smaller scale.


At home:

This weekend is the birthday of my beloved so it's out for free birthday dinners, enjoying family time and maybe sneaking out to do some sledding.  I've been putting more time into Mass Effect 3 and the game is growing on me.  I love the story, I love characters, but I'm still getting the hang of the combat system.  It's just a little too soupy compared to a dedicated shooter to really be fun for me after all my hours on Call of Duty.

And.... your weekly video:

I am absolutely cheating and this week's video is the video diary of Emma Morgan, one of the characters in Bastion: The Last Hope.  Yes, I'm using my own blog to post chapters of my web novel.  Sue me.

Weekly Omens 2/9/13

Well, here we are another week down. You would think, dear reader, that with a snow day on Friday that this weekly wrap up would have gone up on time then. But no, I took the day off to relax with the kids, look out at the piles of snow in the yard and just enjoy the day away from the computer, mostly.

It is a little odd in that the last three weeks of school, we have yet to have a full week anywhere. The first was cut short by Martin Luther King day, the next by and ice day, and this past with a snow day. What next? Locusts day?

Over in Mind the Thorns:

There is a new chapter up! Finally some direction for Reagan as she learns a little more about the Earl, Jeremiah, Vampire politics and herself. Head over there and cast your vote for how she will get through her current predicament.

In Bastion: the Last Hope:

This week's update features a radio broadcast from a day into the mysterious meteor strikes and a little insight into their origin. As with any multimedia chapter your feedback is very appreciated.

At Fictional Omens:

I love commercials and their unrepentant need to convince us to consume. This week I featured some of my favorites from Super Bowl Sunday.

And lastly a video. Today was my son's first trip sledding. Remember kids- red makes it go faster.

Weekly Omens 2/1/13

Well, the week started off slow, picked up speed sickly fast, and then cruised into another weekend.  Not a bad time, though a bit tiring on its own.  I'm finding it harder and harder to listen to NPR without getting annoyed that they keep covering the same things over and over, and I don't agree with half the spin they put on the things they do cover.

I also had a chance to actually have a fairly real conversation with a family member about race and ethnicity and that was one of my week's highlights.  Of course this weekend I have 130 quizzes to grade, and three chapters to write (two for Bastion and one for Mind the Thorns) if I want to keep on my current schedules.

So... on to the wrap up:

On Bastion: The Final Hope

We get an insight into what kind of progress mankind is making at countering the "Cloud of Death" spread over the land by the meteor shower.  Look this coming week for a multimedia piece as the next installment.  I should probably figure out what that will be....

On Mind the Thorns

I continue to suck and owe everyone another chapter.  I need to do that this weekend if for no other reason than to stop having say every week that I suck.


On Fictional Omens:

I reposted something from last summer about the way in which self-publishing may have contributed to the demise of Foyt and her racist scifi novel Save the Pearls.  I dug it out of the archives because it appears there is a sequel to this travesty coming and she's looking for reviewers to pre-read it.  I can only imagine how much she's learned about sensitive topics since her last foray.

I should also note that my own frustration with lack of notice by the larger writing world is starting to build given that I've yet to really do anything too stupid and thus have been rewarded with heaping piles of obscurity as thanks.

And now a musical interlude:

Weekly Omens 1/25/13

This has been a good and bad week for me.  Some great things happened, and some not so great.

Here's a wrap up of the week's posts and news:

At Fictional Omens -

This week I finally got up my post about writing what you know and if you don't know it you need to research it.  The post was heavily informed by fellow author and fan-nerd Janine Spendlove.  Check out her War of the Seasons if you haven't.

At Mind the Thorns -

There has been no update because I suck and I haven't made myself write it yet.  This is bad.  This is very bad.  I need to write it.

Think of this as an opportunity to play catch up for those of you who are a few chapters behind.  See the favors I do you?  Here's Chapter 1 for those that have never read it.

At Bastion: The Final Hope

This week's update is an image from the point of view of one of the survivors. I'm still not sure the "story" there is direct enough but the whole project is an experiment anyway so we'll see what happens.  Comments are, of course, welcome.

In life -

It's been a bit of a crazy week.  Monday was off because of the MLK holiday (I was supposed to be writing) and I was sent on an errand to get Hot Dog for the Skylanders game.  I love my wife dearly but she's more obsessed with getting all the Skylanders than the 5-year old.

The new semester is off to a great start and content for Bastion is rolling along at a great rate.  I have several actors involved to create the multimedia content.  I have to admit that I'm very excited for it and it's distracting me from what I should be working on.

And your video of the week.... hmm...  How about Glee?  What I want to know is why do I need the Glee cover to have a great version of this song without profanity?

Weekly Omens 1/18/13

So what a weird week it's been.  Finals week is always rough because there's so much to do and none of it is due until the middle of next week.  As someone who works best under pressure this is always a challenge because I'd so rather do anything besides work.

Speaking of anything else:  Double Prestige on the MK48 on Call of Duty.  Go me.

So here's what happened around my little patch of the web:

On Mind the Thorns

The vote was finalized and it appears that Regan is going to wait at home for Jeremiah's associate to come fetch her so together then fetch some item for Jeremiah.  More than likely she's going to spend the time scheming.  Watch Monday for the next chapter!

On Bastion:  The Final Hope

My second web-novel launched this week with a gripping (I've been told) first chapter.  Chapter one introduces Gunnery Sergeant Beaubein and the crew of a KC-130 as they escape yet another mysterious cloud of death.  It's not reader directed and it will update weekly.  Have a read if you haven't yet.

Here at Fictional Omens

I have been so lucky to have the help of fellow author Janine Spendlove in my work and she has further blessed me with a guest post on the top 5 things people screw up when writing about the military.  It's a must read.

At home

Kaylee has strep throat and Xander has a horrible case of being 5.  Fortunately there are antibiotics for the former and an early bedtime for the latter.  But aside from work and writing it's been a quiet week.

I also want to thank Spendlove and her "friend in the Herc community" for further entertaining my questions and confusions.  She has been patient and dilligent in making sure that not only do I get the details right but that everything makes sense for what a Marine would "do" in these circumstances.  As such my To Do list includes some minor revisions to BtFH Chapter 1, but thankfully nothing that overly shifts the tone or plot.

This week's Video:

At first I thought this was all me and then I saw that the Raging Vegetarian was right there with me so it was a combined effort to completely eliminate the other team.  That's me coming in from the distance, gun blazing.