Bastion vs Thorns: Why Bastion is Winning

Well it finally happened, and I feel like I've somewhat arrived:

I got a complaint that I haven't updated Mind the Thorns.

That tells me a lot of things.  First it says that someone is actually reading it.  That rocks.  Second it says that someone reads it and cares enough to want to know what happens next.  That also rocks.  Lastly it means that not only do they want to know what happens, they also are willing to go out there and ~ask~ for more of it.

I really need to work on it.

However, since the launch of Bastion, it has only missed one update for Spring Break and is currently on pace to keep going without interruption.  The real issue is:  Why?

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:

Love in Space ME3 Style

So I know I'm late to the game, but I am finally playing Mass Effect 3. Finally.

Actually if I'm being honest I've had the game for a while (as in when it came out) and I played it once before but I didn't get very far. I also took a passing stab at ME1 and gave up on it fairly quickly because I wasn't quite sure what to make of a FPS RPG and so despite the reviews I gave it a pass to indulge in other Bioware titles. One of the notable ones I really enjoyed was Dragon Age: Origins, even though I was unable to see it through to the end.

But I'm playing it through and I'm enjoying the story. It also happens that recently the question was raised about the relevance of in game romance and story telling.

And this takes us back to the nature of stories, video games, and the stories we tell. I know for me, part of my writing muse has been to work on the tapestry of a good game and adding my own stories to the characters there.

So, ME3 and the nature of romance....

Clip vs Mag

Some time ago I had the chance to get some first hand experience with firing a hand gun, the point of which was to have the experience to more accurately write the scene in Mind the Thorns where Regan defends herself from a band of hunters. It was a good experience and I think that it enriched my story telling.

For Bastion I have been networking with a mix of "experts" to get things right in the particulars given that all of my characters have such wide ranging backgrounds. But this also creates its own dilemmas.

Specifically, what do you use to load a gun? A clip or a magazine?

Passion for the Passionless or Regan becomes Bella Swan

I got an interesting email last week while working on the latest update for Mind the Thorns.  To paraprhase my Beta reader who sent the email:

"Is this girl ever going to grow a Superbowling* back bone?  Seriously!"

And that's when I realized that when I set out to write a "Better Twilight" but also with the twist of it being a Reader-Directed novel, I ran the real risk of it turning into "just another Twilight".  Only rather than Meyer-pires, it is populated with Oster-pires, and rather than being about a teenage angst ridden girl, it's a middle-aged, still somewhat angst ridden woman.

Here's a little backstory on the creation:

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.

No Genre Fiction For You

Here's the truth about writing genre fiction:

Frankly, no one new to writing should do it.

When I was in college I took creative writing class. It was an entry-level course in the English department. Something like English 140: Intro to Creative Writing. When we got our first assignment, the professor made it clear that she did not want anyone writing genre fiction for her class. If she wanted us to write a love story, she wanted it set in the real, modern-day world, with real, modern-day characters. No alien space scapes, no historical sailing ships. Just two people dealing with a problem.

Likewise, sometime after college, I became involved through my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, on a website for new artists. She had been active therefore sometime and invited me to join. Artists would submit their pictures and they were open to critique from others. And as you critiqued other’s pictures people would follow links back to your page and critique yours. It also had an incredibly active in Email list-serve. Advice about how to become an artist flew around fast and furious. The most common thread among the emails was the debate of whether or not a fantasy artist should go to art school. The prevailing opinion among starting artists was that art school was a waste of time and energy because all they did was make you draw oranges and bottles and useless things. If you were going to do nothing but draw dragons for the rest of your life why did you need to spend hours and hours drawing a cube? It was a waste of time wasn't it?

Mind the Thorns Reflections

Here I am, 100 posts on Fictional Omens, and 20 chapters of Mind the Thorns and I'm feeling very contemplative.

It's been a very interesting run so far on both counts but mostly I want to think about Mind the Thorns and how that has played out as time has gone on.  It was an experiment, to be sure, and one that I'm proud to have engaged in.  Quite a few things worked, a few did not, and for the most part I feel like my writing has done nothing but improve in the time I've worked at it.

Which, before I get into the nature of Regan and the dangers of trying to write something as immersive as a reader-directed novel, I want to talk about.

Writing is work.

Write what you know

Write what you know.

This is the mantra of writers.  I sometimes think that the code should be "If you don't know it, don't write it." One of my biggest pet peeves is not so much when someone writes something that's just a little off but when it propagates significant misinformation on a topic.

For example, in the 18th century, women wore pouches under their skirts called "pockets".  It was a relatively new invention to attach these directly to garments as we know them now.  Back then the pockets were separated from the garments and worn on a separate band about the waist and under their skirts.

Despite this fact, over and over, at re-enactments, women will walk around with their pockets on the outside of their skirts and show off the lovely embroidery on there.  They'll talk about the hours women would spend on needle work to adorn the pockets (they did) and the pride they would put into making them (they had it) and how women would be happy to show them off (they did not).  To suggest they did is a bit like talking about how women today would show off their lacy bras to anyone and everyone because they were so proud to wear such cute underthings.

Casting for Stories

One of the things that always struck me as very sophomoric with writing was the "Cast List" for a piece of fan fiction or story.  If a writer wants the reader to conjure up a specific mental image for a character, then it's their job to provide that image in the prose itself.  And to be honest even that task is not easy.

In writing FantastiCon, I had an exchange in the first chapter that provided a very indepth description of a walk on character.  Allison was at the desk of her apartment complex with a random, unnamed other woman.  I then went through everything the random girl was wearing and contrasted it with Allison.  Then Allison walks off and we never see random girl again.

This drove my wife nuts.  She got a full paragraph treatment to a character she never sees again, one that doesn't even get a name.  So why did I do it?

Guest Writing on Tears of Crimson

I was lucky enough to be invited to write a guest post for Tears of Crimson, the blog of one Michelle Hughes, author of "A Night at Tears of Crimson" and other vampire tales.  Feel free to sneak over to her neck of the woods for my take on what makes for a good vampire.

New Pricing Paradigms

Mind the Thorns has finished it's giveaway period on Goodreads, the books have been out in the wild for a week now and many have landed at their destinations.  Yay!  One kind reveiwer has already spotted some typoes that slide past me, my editor, or both of us.  More than likely my editor caught them but I didn't make the transition over to the document from the one he sent me.

This, dear readers, is the glory of Google Documents.  There's no file swapping.  He makes comments and they're right there for me to make the required changes.  It's glorious.

Now that all said there was one little thing I feared would come up, and I'm glad it did because the reviewer was very kind about broaching it.

It was a quick read (about an hour), and the author sets it up for a great series (though I think it would be better to compile it all into one whole book rather than a lot of self published novels). 

So I'm going to, if you'll indulge me, lay some cards out on the table.

Self Promotion: How many ways can you get yourself out there?

This week I was able to finally put the final touches on Issue 1 of Mind the Thorns.  It's the first three chapters, packaged as a mini-novella, and available as an eBook and in print edition.  This week, over on Mind the Thorns, I'll be posting chapter 6, which will also bring Issue 2 to a close.  Between time to edit it again, format for publication and have the copy editor work over it, I should, in theory, have it ready by the 30th.  It's still a little slower than I would like but it can work.


The real question, though, is if any of this will work to add to the overall exposure of the website, the story and my other writing.  


Just getting into brick and mortar stores is a challenge, too, because there just are not that many traditional book stores in my area any more.  There's still a Borders, about 45 minutes away.  There are a few comic shops that I'm hoping to get into but they're not really known for novels.  Really the best way to get your hands on a dead tree edition of a book is Amazon.com.

Mind the Thorns Give Away

While you can always find Mind the Thorns for free on the website, you can also enter to win a free copy of Issue 1 on the website Good Reads.  I'm happy to sign and dedicate any copies I give away if people would like.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Mind The Thorns Issue 1

by Rob Osterman

Giveaway ends August 03, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

MtT: Chapter 3 Temporary Posting

Chapter 3

~-~-~-~-~-~

Her fist clenched around a set of keys, Regan angrily sulked along the gravel road connecting the farmhouse to the barns and garage. She was not even sure which car she had selected, having only been shown a box of arranged keys and chains. Her other hand was still holding onto the plastic Meijer bag containing what was left of her blood-splattered, mud-soaked, dirt-coated wedding dress.

She was alone, in the middle of the country, in nowhere’s-ville Oxford. So far the only people she had met was a vampire had been a jerkwad of an aristocrat, his haughty witch of an assistant, and two thralls who were all about cleaning her clock with digging implements.

“Hey,” a voice said ahead of her.

“Daryl?” Regan stopped. He was leaning against the building, under one of the lights. She had been so busy glaring at the wide car doors that she nearly did not see him at all.

“Yeah,” he said a little sheepishly, “that would be me.”

Regan crossed the distance between them. “I thought you left.”

“We’re supposed to be running some stuff back down to His Lordship’s offices, but I just felt bad leaving you out here.” He reached up and scratched at the brown stubble lining his cheek.

Regan folded her arms. “You wanted to beat me in the head with a shovel.”