Brand Gamblin

Totally Mad

BrandG — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:16:32 +0000

See this? It’s a picture of a seven-disk collection called “Totally Mad.” It has every single issue of Mad magazine from 1952-1998. That’s over 500 issues, running all through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and most of the nineties. By reading through this, you get a taste of how America dealt with ideas like Vietnam, the sexual revolution, the rise of the Internet, and other cultural milestones.

I bought this about a decade ago for about $60, and have had it in storage for a few years. Recently, I came across it and thought I’d check it out again. All that Sergio Aragones, all that Spy vs. Spy. These disks had fold out pages just like the covers, which let you simulate folding the sheets over. They would let you turn the page around and zoom in on sections so that you could read the border cartoons as well.

But I quickly found out that it also came with DRM. Windows 98 DRM. Non-portable DRM. They could have made the magazine out of images, and then built the wrapper around it. The content would outlast the viewer, but it would be portable and future-compatible. However, that’s not what they chose to do. They chose to lock it down so that only people who purchased the data and used it on that operating system would be able to view it. Maybe it made them a sale or two. We know it didn’t stop piracy, because they were just CD-ROMS, which were cracked before these disks were ever made.

On a lark, I did a search for “every issue of Mad Magazine”, and on the first page was a link to a torrent where I could get issues from 1952-2005. So, because I was an honest consumer, I got less than the pirates did, and paid for it. This is why SOPA and PIPA won’t work. This is why the MPAA and the RIAA are being slowly phased out. They insist on crippling their products, and making people pay for the right to be honest. There’s only so long people can take being penalized for their integrity.

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Brand’s First Law of Creative Works

BrandG — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:17:42 +0000

Years ago, I was at a con, in a panel on intellectual property. At the time, I said, “If anybody out there can make a better ‘Calls For Cthulhu’ than I can, they deserve the right to do it, and I’ll help them if I can.” It was considered a magnanimous and surprising statement, and I stand by it.

(Let me take a moment to explain my thinking) I consider C4C something I created. No, I did not create Cthulhu. I did not create the mythos surrounding him. Hell, I didn’t even make the puppet. However, I did come up with the idea for the show. I came up with that interpretation for the character (how would you play the part of ultimate evil? Would you humanize it? Demonize it?). I came up with the Rapid Fire Round gag, I came up with the new interpretation for Xenu, I wrote every single line from that series. So while I didn’t make the character up, I did make the show the success that it has been.

I made a TV show about an ultimate amoral alien whose claim to fame was destroying humanity in violence and madness, and I did it without using any profanity. I did it without using buckets of blood or overt violence. I made a PG-13 version of ultimate darkness, and made it popular enough to have a fanbase. That’s something to be proud of.

So if someone comes along and can make something better out of it, they are a force to be reckoned with. I don’t mean that they’re a threat to me, but they are a danger. If I fight them, then my fanbase goes to see what the big deal is, and I lose the fans. If I ignore the threat, their quality will show through, and they will rise to greatness while I am left to antiquity. That’s what happens if someone can do the show better than me.

If, however, I embrace them, then they are my friends. I offer them access to the fanbase, and receive the benefit of their goodwill. I may learn how they do it better, and while they learn how I do my show, I can learn how they do theirs. A high tide raises all boats, and we would all do better for the effort. If, after that, they are still better than me, I can move on to other projects, knowing that I did a good job with my stewardship, and that there will always be another project.

So, that was my thinking at the time, and I stand by it. If anybody can take my characters, my storylines, my gimmicks, and make a better C4C than I can, I will help them. But let’s talk about what I’m seeing now.

There are people who have taken my show, and made WORSE shows with it. They put the puppet on YouTube, spewing hate speech (not against humanity, but against specific groups). They use profanity to the point that it dilutes any effectiveness. They have no set, no effects, no decent sound, no decent video. They put a puppet in front of a camera, then pitch shift their voices down, and go on racist, sexist tirades.

I’m not okay with that. I’m not going to call them out specifically, because I don’t want to give them that much notice. I want them to disappear in their well-deserved ignomy. But I do want to amend my statement. Let’s call this Brand’s first law of creative works: When you stand on the shoulders of giants, you must be taller than them.

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My 2012 Writing Schedule

BrandG — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:31:33 +0000

Last year, I created a writing schedule in January that I actually stuck to pretty well. Because of that, I was able to write several books last year and publish two of them.

So I’m going to try it again here. This is my wishful thinking schedule for the year. If I do it right, it will let me publish four new books this year.

Here we go:

January – Edit Discount Miracles (DM)
February – Send DM to editors. Record DM for Podiobooks. Edit Tumbler Sequel (TS)
March – Record DM for Podiobooks. Edit TS
April – Record TS for Podiobooks. Start New Project 1 (NP1)
May – Record TS for Podiobooks. Write NP1
June – Record Danny for Podiobooks. Write NP1
July – Record Danny for Podiobooks. Write NP1
August – Start New Project 2 (NP2)
September – Write NP2
October – Edit NP1
November – Write New Project 3 (NP3)
December – Finish NP3. Edit NP1

Now, you may be asking yourself, what are NP1-3? The answer is, I don’t know. One possibility is a sequel to The Hidden Institute, which is less Dickens and more Austen (The Silk’s Glove). Another possibility is a sequel to Discount Miracles (which I think people will be very interested in once they see DM). Also, there’s the chance we’ll do the Film Noir story of Hades and the Zombie Armageddon.

I suppose I’ve got a few months still to find out what those books will be. In the meantime, follow along with me while I try to publish two books this year and write two new ones!

The constant evolution of blog spam

BrandG — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:54:26 +0000

As a computer programmer, I find that I’m fascinated by the evolution of spam comments.

I mean, the first ones were blatant – “BUY MOAR CHEAP WATCHES AND VIAGRA!!!”

After that, spam filters got better, so the commenters started avoiding obvious phrases – “BY MOAR CH3AP W4+(HES AND V1AGR4!!!”

This made the spam filters broaden their blacklists, and made it harder to read. Also, spammers ran into the problem where blog owners would read every comment, and the human filter was just too good to get around.

So the spammers found another tactic – Comment from BuyCheap@WatchesAndViagra.com “Really great post! I’ll be looking for more of this!” The flattering was effusive and varied. Unfortunately for the spammers, the human filter is way too good for this one as well, which culls a lot of their effectiveness.

So then they tried a more subtle approach – Comment from fred@WatchesAndViagra.com “That was a great post about . You’ve really opened my eyes about and it’s importance in all our lives.” This version was more difficult to track down, because if it is done well, it can seem like a very organic comment.

So the human filter was a little more suspect, but it was still able to recognize those where the drop-in portions didn’t fit with the rest of the sentence. The spammers also ran into a problem where it was more obvious that English wasn’t their first language (Spammers are generally based outside of English-speaking countries, which makes them more easy to spot).

So, time and again, I’ve seen the spam comments get more and more involved, more and more organic-looking.

Today, I saw this one as a comment on a blog post called “Body Swapping and Having a Soul”:

E-mail : *********@live.com

URL : http://www.backpackvacuums.org/

Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/***.***.***.***

Comment:

Body swapping means that moving the body. What a amazing way to swap the body.

thanks,

Now, seriously, how cool is that? I figure the bot scans my blog post, recognizes nouns and verbs from the text (which is actually based on some pretty cool open-source software called the Stanford NLP), then uses a separate search to pull out definitions for the words.

I mean, yeah, the human filter can generally catch these as well (if for no other reason than we can tell the URL is an ad). But this process is evolving, and it’s not showing any signs of slowing.

I look forward to the next innovation I’ll have to trash.

Sample from “Discount Miracles”

BrandG — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 02:30:21 +0000

I just finished editing this section, and I really like how it turned out, so I thought I would share it with you lovely people:

The Prime Minister made a spectacle whenever he moved. Each day Parliament was in session, he was surrounded by analysts, representatives, assistants, and the press. Lackeys and frantic petitioners pushed to gain his attention, and even inside his own office, his workers would vie for attention during that brief opportunity as he walked from one meeting to another.

This Prime Minister, Joran the third, discouraged the process publicly, but never threatened punishment. He answered queries amiably, smiled and shook hands, and generally received the attention with quiet dignity and kindness.

So it was that half a dozen men surrounded him as the guards opened Joran’s office doors. The room was large and spacious, with a long table in the center and sitting areas to either side. Dark tapestries hung between the tall windows, arrayed like a church sanctuary. At the end of the room sat a large desk next to the fireplace. The Prime Minister stopped as he saw the prince sitting at his desk. Joran took one moment to tamp down his response, then turned to his lackeys.

“A word with his eminence in private please.” He made shooing motions with his hands. They bowed and scraped as they backed out of the room.

The Prime Minister looked at the guards standing around the Prince. His voice was low and neutral, holding only a tinge of menace, “I said ‘private’.”

The Prince gave a quick nod to the leader of the guards, and they left without ceremony. Once they were gone, Joran’s smile returned, “My Prince, how wonderful it is to see you here!”

Prince Dayner Raeburn was thin and gangly, and never seemed dressed correctly. Thick bangs that he refused to cut fell across his eyes. When brought to court for important functions, the royal dressers managed to make him look presentable, but never without hours of cajoling and flattery. He slouched and pouted, refused his lessons, and fought every effort at looking like a true leader. Even as he sat in the Joran’s seat, he thumbed through papers with his feet on the desk.

“Did you do this, Joran?”

“Sir?”

“This!” He held up a fistful of papers, “You allowed the McLeans access to the wetlands that I was working on.”

Joran put his hands behind his back and took a deep breath, “My Lord, the McLeans have suffered a terrific drought over the last two years. They were beginning to threaten the Hutchins clan to the North.”

“But I was working with those wetlands. I was going to make something out of it. An adventure resort, you know? For vacations! Hunting in the swamps.”

“Yes sir. But those lands are largely unused, and I knew that giving the McLeans temporary development access to it would help defuse the tension between the warring factions -”

“I don’t care about that. That land was mine!”

Joran put his hands out by his side in a gesture of submission, “My Liege, all the land is yours.”

The boy blinked, then nodded, “Yes, well. I had plans for this. You had no right to take it away.”

“I was trying to stop a war, sir.”

“Then stop the war. Just go down there and tell them I won’t have them fighting. Bring the army if you have to.”

“Sir, an iron fist breaks more than a whispered promise. By avoiding -”

“I don’t care. That was my land.” The boy got up and walked over to Joran, “You’ve been telling me what to do my whole life. Now you’re promising my land to others without my permission. You’re using my name behind my back.” He pouted and scowled at the old man, “You made me look stupid in front of my advisers.”

The old man stared levelly at him, “It was never my intention, Dayner.”

“Quiet.” The boy kept his voice low, and beneath the sullen child’s pout, Joran could see steel, “You won’t have that power when I’m king. If you try something like this a month from now, I’ll make you regret it.”

Joran held his gaze for a moment, then cast his eyes to the floor. He turned to face the Eastern window and asked lightly, “Have you given any thought to the ceremony, your grace?”

The boy stood close to him, “I don’t care about that. I’ll have to put on some stupid robes and say some stupid words, and then I’ll be king.” He leaned in close to the Prime Minister, “More than that, I’ll be a god. My word will be law. My will, the will of the land and the air and the people. After that, if you ever countermand me again, I’ll have you arrested or worse. You’re not my father. You’re not my king. After my birthday, you’re not even regent. You’re nobody. And you don’t want to see what happens when a nobody fights with a god.”

Joran’s face flushed, though he refused to meet the Prince’s eyes, “As you say, my Liege.”

The boy stood and stared at him for a long moment, then threw the papers down, “After the ceremony, everything is going to change.” He stomped out of the room.

The old man muttered, still gazing at the bright horizon, “It certainly will.”

—

I’d like to remind you that I am a professional fiction writer, and each post I write takes time away from other writing. So please, if you’re getting something out of the blog, help fund my blogging habit. Thanks so much.

“Discount Miracles” gets a cover!

BrandG — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:02:10 +0000

I just received the final cover art for my new book “Discount Miracles”. Check it out!

This is the story of a salvage ship’s crew who are marooned on a backwards planet. Left in a world where their science is seen as magic, they hire themselves out as wizards who help keep the prophetic promises of the gods.

This cover was made by the Hugo-award-winning artist Cheyenne Wright. Now I just have to get the book edited, podcasted, and out there for the world to see!

What do you think?

Discount Miracles

WriterOS

BrandG — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:00:16 +0000

I’m a self-publishing author, which means that I take stories from the germ of inspiration all the way to the ebooks of Amazon and the permanence of paper. Over the years, I’ve noticed that there were certain tools that I consistently use to shepherd a story from one point to the other. Write Or Die, Scrivener, TrueCrypt (for protecting works-in-progress), Dropbox (for portability and backup), OpenOffice, Calibre, etc.

I found myself thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if I had a thumb drive with all the tools installed already? When on vacation, I could use whatever system was nearby and plug it in, then continue my writing right where I’d left off.”

Luckily, I’m a computer programmer by day, so I was fairly conversant with virtual machines. I used Ubuntu 11.04 and added all the tools that I normally use. Everything I included is either open-source or freely distributable (actually, Scrivener is a temporary beta while they evaluate the Linux version. Enjoy it while you can!). Now, when I start up my VM, I have my entire environment saved exactly where I left it, ready to run. I call it WriterOS.

Lots of people ask me how to self-publish, so I decided to make my VM public. I wrote a ReadMe that tells what each program does, and how I use them together to go from a basic idea all the way to custom-made, ready-to-ship, ePub files.

As an added bonus, I put in ePub versions of my first three novels. So, not only would people see what tools were available and how to use them, they would also be able to see the results of such tools.

I’m hoping people download the VM and enjoy it. More than that, I’d like for this to become a vibrant and useful tool that people contribute to. If you have questions about how to use things, I’d like to hear from you. If you have suggestions of tools that you think work better, I’d like to hear that too. Let’s make this a real valuable tool for as many people as possible.

Grab the VM now and see what you think!

Click Here for the Torrent File

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My little girl got BoingBoing’d!

BrandG — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:03:52 +0000

This is a link to BoingBoing, one of the best megablogs out there.

Also, this is a pic of my little girl’s Halloween costume, which is freakin’ awesome.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/31/adorable-minecraft-creeper-and-candy.html#disqus_thread

Brand appears on a fashion blog? What madness!

Discount Miracles

BrandG — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:06:16 +0000

I know I don’t update this much, but we got some big news that I thought I should share.

First, I finished my novel. This, my fourth book, is about a ship salvage crew from the future who crash-land on a planet that is stuck in the middle ages. They use their futuristic skills to make prophecies come true, at a price. The first pass is about 50k words long, and it’s current title is “Discount Miracles”

Second, I just signed up for NaNoWriMo again. This year, I will be writing a sequel to Tumbler. The working title is “Backer” and we’re basically seeing the fruition of Woody’s curse. Libby learns that going from dead broke to the richest person in the Universe may just be a step down.

Bodyswapping and having a soul

BrandG — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:44:57 +0000

So, let’s talk about Bodyswapping.

It’s a pretty common storyline in Sci-Fi. The basic premise is that a person’s conciousness can be transferred into another body. In “Dollhouse” people signed up to allow new psyche’s into their bodies. In “Gamer” people got paid to let someone else control their bodies. Heck, in Red Dwarf, one character loaned his body away so that another one could exercise it and get it fit. Lots of shows harp on this as a terrible thing, a loss of identity. But, all morality plays aside, let’s think about how we’re doing it right now.

C.S. Lewis once said, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” Certainly, Mr. Lewis wasn’t privy to modern Sci-Fi storylines, but even with the distance of science and time, he realized a fundamental truth. We are each hitchhiking on the back of a flesh-covered organ bag. We have so much control over the organs that we tend to act as though we were one with the body. Some people forget that there is a distinction at all. But the first time our organs fail on us, we realize (often painfully) that we are not the true masters of the flesh. The mind is not the brain, the heart is not the life.

Even with that belief, though, the practial philosopher has to ask, “So what?” What does it matter whether we are one with our bodies. After all, we can’t jump into other bodies. We are only as alive as the flesh that holds us. So what practical benefit comes from thinking of ourselves as souls? Philosophers spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of nature, but unless it helps us make a change in the world, what good is it?

This is what I take from it: I take care of my car, make sure it has oil and gas and all that. I make sure to keep up with it’s maintenance, and I try to keep it clean. I don’t particularly like the car, but I do some basic work to keep it in line. If it were someone else’s car, I would take even BETTER care of it, because I would want to be polite to the owner. I’m totally paranoid about that kind of thing. I always re-wound the video tapes from Blockbuster. I always clean the sink after I wash my hands. Polite to the point of being obsequious. It’s just how I roll.

So, applying that to the bodyswapping idea, what if I were borrowing a body? I guarantee you that, if I were borrowing your body, I would return it in pristine condition, nails trimmed, hair neatly groomed, exercised and fed (though not too much). That’s just the way I work. I take care of other people’s stuff more than I do my own. I guarantee you that, if I were in charge of your body, I would return it in the same shape or better.

So, why don’t I do that with my own body? Actors always say that their bodies are their tools. Why don’t we all think of it that way? Imagine again that you are not tied to your body. Imagine that it was just something you are attached to, something you control. If that’s the case, isn’t it the most important tool you have? I mean, hell, your eyes are in that thing. Your mouth, your hands . . . It’s the most important tool you’ve got.

Now I’m not trying to get all “the body is a temple” on this, because I don’t really like going overboard on that. However, I do like the idea that I am just holding on to this body for a friend. I’m borrowing it for about seventy years or so. Because, when I think that I’m taking care of other people’s stuff, I’m going to be even more careful about it. I’m in control of a body that is capable of amazing things, and if I don’t do general maintenance, it’s gonna fall apart. I looked in the mirror this afternoon and found myself thinking, “There’s this guy, Brand. I’m borrowing his body. If I can’t keep it exercised and healthy, I’m just letting him down. He may not ever let me borrow anything again!” For some reason, that really motivated me.

So yeah, it’s not a new idea, but it did strike me as a new angle. I have to take care of this body, because I don’t have the right to let it just fall apart. If I think of my body, not as a part of my soul, but as a thing that my soul is using for a while, it’s abhorant to think that I would just let it wither.

Does that make it a good philosophy? Or does it just mean I’m going schizo?

—

I’d like to remind you that I am a professional fiction writer, and each post I write takes time away from my fiction writing. So please, if you’re getting something out of the blog, help fund my blogging habit. Thanks so much.

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Every Sale Helps: Amazon Analysis

BrandG — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:50:27 +0000

I just discovered something cool about Amazon sales rank. We already know that your rank is based on current sales from that day, week, and month, but did you know that all books by an author have the same boost in rank?

Check this out: I have three books available on Kindle. My bestseller “Tumbler” was released a year ago and sells for $2.99. It hovers at around 50-75k in sales rank. My second book “The Hidden Institute” is very new (priced at $4.99) and has far less of a following. It generally hovers at around 75-100k. My third book, a short story collection called “The Danny”, costs only $0.99 but is the newest of them all, and has the lowest sales. It is in the 200k range.

Earlier today (see point 1 on the graph) I made the first sale in several hours. That made a big drop in my sales rank, pushing it from 72k down to 35k. Now look at the other sales at the same time. . . no change. They continue to rise at the same level. So, when there is only one new sale, there’s a big change for the first, but little change on the others.

Now look at point 2. Clearly, there has been another sale, but this one has far less change. Whereas the previous sale dropped our rank by 37k, this one only dropped by 15k. The interesting thing to note here is what happened to Hidden Institute and Danny at the same time. As soon as Amazon realized that there were multiple sales in a short time, they halted the rank drop for both of my other books.

Now, take a look at point 3. By this time, Amazon has realized that there were several sales within the same timeframe. Note how the angle of growth on Tumbler’s rank started to flatten out. At this point, Amazon isn’t ready to make Tumbler start rocketing back up because of sales. (It’s worth noting that, as time goes on, the rank starts growing at it’s original rate. If you don’t make consistent sales, the rate starts to move faster.)

But again, the cool thing to note is what happens to Hidden Institute and Danny at the same time. Their growth flattens out the same way that Tumbler’s did.

So, a lot of this is just general chart fun. What does it actually mean for the writer?

For me, it means that I should be writing. Every time I make a sale, I don’t just help the rank of that book, but all the books I’ve written. Therefore, the more books you have, the more sales (overall) you will make, and the more you will help all of your back catalog.

So the lesson is pretty obvious. Get back to writing.

The Old Gray Fool

BrandG — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 03:10:18 +0000

They say that all sorts of men walk into a tavern, and I’m not going to argue it, but they do still fall into two groups. The first one is the social drinker. He’s there looking for friends and drinking with friends. You can spot them by the grin on their faces and the expectant way they look around a place as they enter.

The other sort is trying to drink alone. He wants to get away from something, wants to hide. He wants to drown out a woman, a mistake, a life badly lived. That sort will walk in without looking at anything, head to the far end of the bar, and wait to give their order.

That was the sort of fool who walked in last night. He was utterly gray and featureless, his clothes were a drab, weatherbeaten motley. They looked like rags torn from a dozen bright dresses and stitched together without care. Mud and sweat and ceaseless wear had sapped them of their fine colors. His long, pale face blended perfectly with the gray of his former finery.

Pale, haunted eyes were set deep within dark rings that framed a long, thin, imperious nose. A kind of blonde stubble had gone to gray around his chin, looking not so much like a beard as part of a charicature of a man that the painter had smudged with lack of care. Dark lines dragged from the sides of his mouth, looking as much like wine stains as palsied skin. His gray hair was long and wispy, trailing down to his shoulders on the sides and radiating from a wide bald spot in the center of his pate.

He moved slowly and without care, drifting down to the end of the bar as though he didn’t see us. He didn’t sit down at the stool. He just picked that spot to stop.

Once he was settled, I headed over to him. My part was clear, and I knew how to play it with his sort. I moved to the end of the bar and stood across from him quietly, still cleaning a glass with my apron.

Behind him, a minstrel had given up on wooing the candlemaker’s wife, and had switched to a jaunty tune meant to enflame the people with gaity and dancing. The tone of the room lightened as people clapped and laughed and sang with the lyrics they knew. I just watched the gray man. He moved not an inch.

I waited as a courtesy, knowing the drink choice before he spoke it. I reached for the fortified wine and gave him a cup, leaving the bottle within arms reach. He filled the cup twice while I stood there and waited. Some wanted to drink alone, lost in their thoughts. Some wanted to share their sorrows as a form of exorcism.

“A fool is the joy of the king,” he muttered. I nodded sagely and waited. He took a deep breath, “A fool doesn’t just bring joy to the king. He is the joy.”

I nodded for a moment, then sensing that he was done, I shook my head, “I don’t get that. Are you the king’s fool?”

The old man looked up at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “I am no man’s joy. Not anymore.”

He looked around us, at the merrymaking tables, “A king can’t do this, you know. He can’t dance with ordinary people or sing bawdy songs. Every ball, every dance, every movement must be carefully measured out so that he does not offend this lord or that. He cannot dance with one woman too much, for fear that they be seen as courting. He cannot dance with her too rarely, or he is thought cruel. He can’t tell a joke without fearing that the wrong one may laugh. He can’t laugh at jokes without considering the subject, the teller of the tale, and the diplomatic situation with one group or another. A king measures out his vitality, and shares it with few.” He shook his head slowly, “There is no joy in that.”

I nodded, “A lonely life, to be sure. But that’s what you lot are for, yes? Everyone laughs at the fool.” He glared at me for a moment, “No offense, brother. But that’s your place, isn’t it?”

“No.” He said it flat and emotionless, and it seemed to punch a hole through the gaity around us. He gripped the cup and looked back down at the wine within, “A king must mete out his attention, even to the fool. A good fool knows this, and learns when to tell the jokes. A good fool knows who can be made fun of, and when.” He looked up at the beaten brass mirror behind me, and stared himself down, “A good fool becomes the joy of the king. He can tell the jokes the king cannot. He can insult the people that the king cannot. When a king laughs along with his jester’s jokes, he supports the jesters position without actually saying it himself. A good fool can find the strong petitioners and the weak. He celebrates the ones that the king wishes to prosper, and humiliates the kings secret enemies. A good fool makes sure that every joke he tells is one the king can laugh at, and in doing so, he learns the king’s business just as surely as the king does.”

“I can see you’re one of the good ones.” He frowned at me, and I smiled, “Well, you’ve got me in stitches already.”

“You don’t understand. The king . . . he knows the fool’s place. The king watches his every move, measures his every reaction. He wearies of watching all the intrigue and treachery. After a time, he just wants to let someone else do the choosing for him. He wants someone to tell him who to trust and who to fear. He wants an advisor who has no political stake.”

I frowned now, and placed the glass on the bar, “Are you saying the king listens to the fool?”

“I’m saying that the king can be led by his joy.” The gray man pulled his hands back away from the cup, and stared down into the open palms. “My king trusted me. He knew I saw with clear eyes and listened to the whispers behind his back. More than once, in times of troublesome conflict, I saw his eyes dart to me, to see where I would stand. If I mocked one side, he would agree with the other.”

I think the music was still playing, but I couldn’t hear it. The soft words of the gray fool captured my attention, and I was aware of nothing else. He kept staring into his hands as he said, “I doubted, of course. How could a fool have that kind of power? What kind of King would follow the wishes of the fool? So, I tested my mad idea. When next I saw a lordling come to call on the King, I targeted him.”

One corner of his mouth quirked upward for a moment, as he stared at his hands, “The lordling had the largest, most ridiculous red ears, so I deliberately ignored them. I found other things to ridicule him about, and I mocked him ruthlessly. I said his family name reminded me of an old bay my father had ridden. I asked him if his mother had known the horse, as he was a randy beast. The court laughed as I asked him impossible questions like, ‘Do you still patronize the stables with such vigor?’ The lordling laughed along at first, but grew redder and more upset by the minute. When I was done with him, the court had turned against him with suspicion and bile. He excused himself from the royal presence in haste, and I worried little, for the king had done nothing to him. I thought, briefly, that if the king had acted against him, I would stop and through my words, redeem him in the eyes of the court.”

The old man looked up at him, his bottom lip shaking, “I slept the untroubled sleep of the dead that night, and by morning the lordling was dead. Pulled from his bed by a pack who had heard the tales and spun them into accusations of perversion which were presented before the king. My king. . . my king passed judgement and sentence that night.”

The old man looked down at his cup and sobbed. I watched him for a moment, then walked away. I knew that, if there was justice in the world, the gray fool would find his end peacefully.

—
I’d like to remind you that I am a professional fiction writer, and each post I write takes time away from my fiction writing. So please, if you’re getting something out of the blog, help fund my blogging habit. Thanks so much.

No related posts.

Calls For Cthulhu Episode 11 is now live!

BrandG — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:37:01 +0000

It has been so long since the last episode, I wasn’t even sure I remembered how everything worked. But after the success of the Kickstarter fund, I was determined to make the best C4C episode I could, and the longest one to date.

Thanks to everyone who donated to bring the series back, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of this effort.

Calls For Cthulhu Episode 9 – The Lost Episode

My Real Name

BrandG — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 21:53:42 +0000

My real name is Brand.

When I was born, no one knew that. Even I was not aware. The words on the government paper read “Brandon” and that was enough for us all. The word identified me, but did not define me. That was enough, for a child.

However, as I outgrew my name, it began to show wear. It was a formal name, and I was not a formal person. I was rambuctious, garrulous, quick to action and willing to laugh at myself in the attempt to commune with friends. And so those friends gave me a new name, Brand.

The new name fit better, it not only identified me, it defined me. It was intimate and casual, while still asserting my individual attitude. It had the inferance of business, a buzzword that referred to a unique and valuable idea worth defending.

It’s not an easy name for many people, because it is so closely tied to my birthname. When I shake hands with someone and say, “Brand Gamblin, nice to meet you,” they invariably frown and blink at the name.

Many will try to correct it in their minds, “Did you say ‘Brian’?”

But I’ve seen that reaction so many times, I’ve turned it into a joke, “No, Brand. Like what you do to a cow.”

More blinking. (Honestly, this is one of my ways of feeling out new people. The smartest, geekiest people will comprehend quicker)

I don’t mind that my name is uncommon. It is a Brand, and I want to tell people about it.

My friends, my co-workers, the guy at Pizza Hut, they all know me as Brand.

It is my real name.

If I had to sign in online as “Brandon” it would feel wrong. Disingenuous. Officious. It would turn social media into the DMV.

And as uncomfortable as it would feel to me, I’m one of the lucky ones.

There are those who would be hunted if they used their “real” name online. There are some who would be taunted, tracked, and terrorized by the people around them if their psuedonym were revealed. Some would be stalked merely because their name was feminine. For them, social media wouldn’t become the DMV. For them, it would become a nightmare, forcing them to hide in the corners of the internet.

And some of the people I most respect would be encouraging it, saying, “If you don’t have anything to hide, you wouldn’t mind saying it out loud.” They would be branding me and all those like me as perverts, conspirators, frauds, and terrorists. They would paint us with a broad brush, making every pseudonym into a crime.

This is not a problem with names. This is not a problem with Google. This is not a problem with the Internet. This is a problem with people, and it needs to be discussed. Only education can fix this.

Remember, a name is only the psuddonym that you have used more than all the others. A name is still a nym.

For more than half of my life, I have used a name that was not on my drivers license. How can you say that one name is “real” and the other isn’t?

My real name is Brand. I can’t prove it with government papers, but you know it to be true.

—
I’d like to remind you that I am a professional fiction writer, and each post I write takes time away from my fiction writing. So please, if you’re getting something out of the blog, help fund my blogging habit. Thanks so much.

Without purpose, not without worth

BrandG — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:41:14 +0000

I was supposed to write a blog post about writing for audio, but early in the post, I got distracted with another theme. I’d love to finish it, but I have to get back to the original topic. So, I thought I would share it with you, because while I can’t use it, it’s not exactly useless. And hey, there’s stuff here that people might like to argue with me.

—

Pick a novel, open to a page, and before you start reading it, just look at it. Without knowing what book you chose, without knowing what page you flipped to, I would bet I can guess what you’re looking at.

Dialog and action. The page has chunks of it, right? There are really only four types of paragraphs that I’ve seen. Setting, Contemplation, Action, and Dialog. While I’ve heard of many books being heavy on setting or too introspective, I’ve never heard of a book that had too much action or dialog.

Now, before you start casting me as the lead in the Micheal Bay biography, please understand that I’m not advocating more action or dialog in a book. I’m just trying to recognize what is already there. A good book is a story. A story has movement and change.

Now here’s the interesting thing. The best way to tell a story is through a storyteller. Look at how many novels are written as old men reminiscing about their past adventures. Look at how many are told from the first-person perspective. People love a storyteller.

—
I’d like to remind you that I am a professional fiction writer, and each post I write takes time away from my fiction writing. So please, if you’re getting something out of the blog, help fund my blogging habit. Thanks so much.

A Fun Lie About History

BrandG — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:00:46 +0000

On Monday, the tribe sat down around the fire to eat. As was normal in the silence of the meal, the chief called on one of his warriors, “Tell us what great things you did today!”

The warrior sat up straight, “I killed two boars. One of them we are eating now.”

The chief said, “That is good,” and they continued their meal in silence.

On Tuesday, the chief called upon another of his hunters, “What great things did you do today?”

“My chief, I saw a mighty ox, which I tracked all morning, but when I caught it at mid-day, it escaped.”

“You lie!” The mighty warrior Tak stood up. He was as large and as strong as the chief, though he would never presume. “I saw you in the camp at midday!”

The chief stood up, “A liar! We will not abide liars! Strip his clothes and stripe his skin!” And so, the liar was dragged away, and the meal continued.

On Wednesday, the chief called out to another warrior, “What great things did you do today?”

The warrior looked worried, then after a moment, he said, “Well, as I was going to refresh myself at the pool this morning, I came across a giant sabertoothed tiger, with three tusks! He was as tall as a man, and as long as a mastodon!”

“You lie!” Tak jumped up again, “We have not seen a sabertoothed tiger for generations!”

“Of course not,” the warrior thought quickly, “This giant one ate all the others. He was a vicious creature, and a cannibal besides!”

Unable to refute this logic, Tak sat down.

The warrior continued, “Of course, I am a brave man, but even I found my bravery tested. My skin prickled, and my stomach churned. I hoped the creature could not hear my stomach rumbling, because it had a head as wide as a man’s arm is long. Then, as I turned to slink away, I tripped over a twig, and it looked up. It ran for me, roaring, as I lay there -”

“Lies!” shouted Tak. “Three tusks! A head as wide as a man’s arm is long? No such creature exists! Kill the liar!” He jabbed an accusing finger at the liar, and three men grabbed him.

As they began to drag him away, the chief shouted, “Wait!”

They all stopped and Tak looked at him, unbelieving, “My chief! He has lied to us! He must be punished!”

“Yes, I know but. . .” The chief’s brow furrowed, “Well, I want to know how it ends.”

Tak gaped, “But he’s not telling the truth!”

“I know, but he tells it so well!” The chief said, “You, tell us what happened next.”

The men let go of the liar, who looked at the chief, unsure, “So, you won’t kill me?”

“Not if you tell us.”

“How big a lie can I tell?”

The chief’s eyes grew big, “I don’t know.”

The liar grinned, “Very well then.” He clapped his hands together and went back to the fire, taking the best seat next to the chief, “Break us off a knuckle of that meat, would you dear? So, there I was . . .”

And so, storytelling was born. We storytellers celebrate thousands of years of not getting killed for our lies.

No related posts.

Sneak peak inside my WIP

BrandG — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:53:10 +0000

Here is a short sample from the first third of my work-in-progress, tentatively titled “We Fulfill Prophecies” (it is, obviously, unedited, and I apologize for spelling, grammar, etc.):

Anvir fumed from the bottom of the gangplank, “It’s all a collosal waste of time you know.”

Amory helped Josh plug in the last few connectors, “Your position has been made known, Mr. Moore.”

“I’m just saying, isn’t it better to be rich, and happy in a quiet little country than being poor, unimportant, and outcast in the bigger universe?”

Amory turned to face him, “Your thoughts are well known, sir. You don’t want to go back, because you rightly fear incarceration.”

Josh piped up, “Okay, we’re all set.” Everyone stepped back away from the device. Anvir sulked at the bottom of the gangplank, while Tandy moved over behind the crates used to carry the radio down.

It looked like an oversized can, the sort one would use for carrying a large fuel tank. Along the outside, there were monitor lights, all quietly glowing green. In the center, near the base of the can, was a single monitor. Beneath the can sprouted three solid steel feet that extended in places to bring the radio around and aim it at the particular location they wanted to talk to. Wires descended from the bottom of the radio, and ran back to connect to the ship’s propulsion. On top of the can sat a large parabolic radio dish, with three smaller dishes inside it that whirred and rolled around a central axis.

Josh beamed up at it. He made one quick circuit of the can, checking to see that everything was in place. Once he had checked all the lights and satisfied himself that it was working, he turned back to the group.

“The way it works is very simple.” He said, “A standard radio signal could never reach as far as we need our signal to go. It would take hundreds of years to reach the closest waypoint. So, instead, I have set up a laser radio beacon. This radio will fire a laser in hundreds of different directions at the same time.” He pointed at a bulbous antenna that stuck out of the center of the radio dish. “Those lasers will be modulating constantly, at a very high frequency. That modulation carries the signal we mean to get across. Now, normally, a laser is only useful if the listening party is also prepared to recieve at the same time. Since we’re trying to get someone’s attention, we cannot assume that they are already listening.”

Anvir chuffed, “So, your choices are to send a standard radio signal, which would take hundreds of years to reach them, or to use lasers, which no one is looking for, and will never reach them. Brilliant. We’re practically saved already.”

Josh ignored him, “The positive side of using lasers is that they will reach further, with less dissolution of the signal. What’s more, anyone who gets the signal could tell just by the red shift how far out we were.”

“But you still have no one listening! Doesn’t matter how efficient it is if no one is listening.”

“That’s the thing. Nobody’s listening for us, but everybody’s listening for this message.”

Amory blinked, “Ah. You lost me there.”

Josh turned to face him, still grinning, “You see, every ship is required, at every waypoint, to do a basic scan of the area. It’s company SOP.”

“Right.”

“The standard sweep checks that the ship’s coordinates match up with star charts, and the observed stars in the sky. Every ship gets a snapshot of nearby stars, and compares that before moving on.”

Amory frowned, “I see that, but I don’t see how -”

“We will show up on their snapshot! We won’t show as a star on their charts, but they’ll be seeing the light from this laser. The message that’s hidden in the laser will look like a tiny dot, flickering on the ship’s viewports. The ship may not be looking for us, but they’ll be seeing a new star in the sky. And what is the SOP for finding a new star in the sky?”

Amory started to smile, “Stop immediately, and radio into headquarters for further instructions.”

“Exactly. And while they’re waiting for instructions, somebody clever is going to notice that there’s a pattern in the light. By the time they get the order to check us out, one of their comms guys will crack the code, and tell the captain that there’s a group in need of rescue.”

Amory nodded, “That’s still a kinda slim chance, isn’t it? That we’ll hit a ship in the area with a laser from so far away?”

Josh shrugged, “Yeah. It is kinda like hitting a missile with a speck of dirt, but it’s the best chance we’ve got.”

“Then let’s take it. Mr. Kemuel, please start up the radio.”

“Gladly, sir!” Josh stepped up to the immense can and hit two keys on the monitor. A low thrum sounded from the base of the can, and the satellite dish atop it sprang to life. It began orienting itself slowly on the target sector, “I’m going to have it look in the sector where we last jumped in. That way, we’re going to hit the closest ship around.”

The thrum built up to a bass rumbling, causing the can to vibrate a bit. Josh frowned and tapped a few more keys on the monitor. The bass rumbling subsided, as if multiple spinning internals synchronized with each other. The sound got louder as it reached a harmonic. Josh smiled and stood back.

“Now, obviously,” he said, “we’re not going to hear anything back. This is a transmitter, after all. It’s not meant to recieve transmissions. But even so, just letting them know we’re out here should be enough to . . .” he trailed off as he stared at the can.

Around the middle of the can, green lights winked off. A couple turned red, but more just switched off entirely. The top half of the can began to stretch outward slightly, wobbling on an unseen rotation. Josh stepped forward to deal with it, but Amory grabbed his arm, “Stay back!”

As they watched, the top half of the can began to glow with an eerie red luminescence. Most of the dummy lights were off already, and some were melting away. In the space where the can had started stretching, bits of the skin turned red and drained away, like melting ice. Josh tried to shrug Amory off, but he grabbed the engineer and pulled him away.

Josh reached for it, even as the low whirring rose to a fevered pitch. Everyone clapped hands over their ears except Josh, who ran for the radio. His powerful lumbering gait carried him up to the can and got him close enough to touch the monitor before the whole unit exploded.

The metal burst outward, spraying the area with hot metal. Tandy screamed and Amory fell back from the blast. Josh was thrown back about ten feet as the bright red bulb of the explosion knocked everything away. They all took cover, shielding their faces and eyes, but there was nothing more.

The noise of the explosion still echoed in their ears, making them all temporarily deaf. Tandy looked around to see the others unmoving. From behind the crates, she was not affected by the bulk of the blast. She staggered toward Josh, still unable to hear anything. Amory crawled up to his knees, and looked around. He saw Tandy dealing with Josh, and crawled over to Anvir.

Amory took the con man’s shoulders and shook him. The thin man blinked and reflexively covered his face, coiling up into the fetal position. Amory tried to tell him it was over, but neither one of them could hear it. After a moment, Anvir brought his hands down and blinked up at Amory. He asked something, but neither one of them could hear it. They looked over at Tandy and Josh.

Josh was still lying flat on his back, and Tandy was crouched next to him, feeling for a pulse. They ran drunkenly over to her and dropped next to her. Tandy put her head down on Josh’s chest, then brought it back up. She shook her head violently while saying something, but Amory couldn’t tell whether she was saying she couldn’t hear a heartbeat, or she was saying she couldn’t hear anything from anyone.

Anvir reached around her and ripped open Josh’s shirt. There were rents and burns in the shirt from where the explosion had hit him, and the skin underneath was no better. Anvir felt around the cuts, pushing down on some of them, covering others. He grabbed Tandy’s hand and put it down hard on one seeping wound. He caught her eye and said something she couldn’t hear, but the intent was obvious enough. She put pressure on the wound as best she could.

Josh was a heavy-worlder, which made his skin thick, and his heart strong. Anvir felt around on his neck until he could get a pulse. Then, once he was satisfied with that, he reached for one of Josh’s eyes. Anvir pried the eye open, and nodded, then made sweeping motions with his arms. Amory and Tandy both stared at him, nonplussed for a moment, then they grabbed Josh and began to turn him over on his side.

Once he was resting on one shoulder, Anvir inspected the back of his head. There were cuts on his head and back, but nothing life threatening. He told them to turn Josh back over, and everyone could tell that they were getting their hearing back as he said, “He’ll live, but we need to patch him up, and get him rest. I don’t think he’s concussed, but we won’t know until he wakes up.”

Amory looked back at the smoking husk of the radio. Their hearing was still patchy, so Amory shouted, “Anybody know what went wrong?”

They all looked at each other, but no one answered.

Sharon’s Text

BrandG — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:45:47 +0000

Photo by ZenRoxie

Sharon ran down the stairs, putting on her earrings. She shouted upstairs, “You have one minute, and then I’m leaving without you!”

She stood in front of the mirror, checking her hair, her lipstick, and her eye shadow. From above, she heard, “You can’t go to ballet without me!”

“You don’t know that. I may just go to hang out with the other mothers.”

Scotty wasn’t home. It didn’t worry her a lot, because his schedule was erratic recently, but she had hoped he would get home before they left for class.

“Mom!”

Sharon talked around the lipstick, “Fifty-two seconds, and we’ll know for sure.”

From the kitchen, her phone chimed. She walked in, reaching for her purse. It would be Scotty, texting her about being late. He loved texting, and generally chose it over calling her phone every time.

Cindy came barreling down the stairs in sneakers, a leotard and an oversized sweater. She held a toeshoe in one hand, “Oh. I thought you’d gone.”

Sharon picked up the phone, talking to her without looking, “You called my bluff. Get your other shoe and fix your hair.” She looked at the phone, expecting to see another three-paragraph explanation for why he was still at work. It surprised her to see only one line.

“car crack hlep”

She blinked at it for a second, wondering if the message was even from Scotty. Then, as realization hit, a cold chill ran down her back.

“I’m thinking about leaving it down,” Cindy said, looking around the living room, “It doesn’t really help to tie it up, anyway.”

Sharon whispered, “Be quiet, honey.” Her hand felt disconnected and seemed to float as she hit the “callback” button.

Cindy started checking under the cushions of the sofa, “Because it really gets hot in there, and it doesn’t exactly keep the sweat out of my eyes to have my hair back.”

She listened to the phone ringing on the other side. It rang for a long time.

“And besides, I saw Mike and some of the others hanging around outside the studio last time. If they see me, I don’t want to look all -”

Sharon shouted, “Shut up!” and held the phone with both hands. It rang for a long time.

Cindy looked up at her, stricken, and slowly walked over. At last, the phone crackled with a connection. Sharon asked, “Honey? Are you okay?”

She could hear him, but he seemed to be a long way away, “Sharon? I . . . something happened. . . “ He wasn’t holding the phone up to his ear.

“Honey? Are you okay? Where are you?” She shouted into the phone.

“I’m . . . I – I don’t know what happened. Something . . . I don’t know what -”

Sharon hung up and dialed 9-1-1. The phone didn’t ring for as long this time, “911, what’s your emergency?”

Cindy, standing next to her, whispered, “What happened?”

“Yes. My husband has been in a car wreck. He’s hurt, but I don’t know how bad.” Cindy covered her mouth with her free hand.

The voice on the other end was calm and measured, “Are you in a safe place, ma’am.”

“I’m fine. I wasn’t there. He texted me. I tried to call him, but he’s in shock or something. He can’t talk in the phone.”

“Ma’am. I’m sending a car out there right now. I need to know where he is.” Sharon could hear the quiet tapping of keys.

“I don’t know where he is. Can’t you find him by his phone or something? You can do that, right?”

“What is his number, ma’am?”

“555-470-0235. You can find him, right?”

“We’re working on it now. It would help if you could tell us where he is.” Cindy started pacing, hands over her head.

“I don’t know! I don’t know where he was!” Sharon closed her eyes and put her free hand up to her forehead. “He’s probably just left work, so it would be somewhere on the 35, between the King’s Fortune exit and the Calloway exit. But that’s about twenty miles!”

“Yes ma’am. We’ve had a report of an accident along the 35, and there are officers headed there now.”

Sharon grabbed the phone with both hands, “What did they say? The reports! Was it a bad wreck?”

The voice on the other end remained calm, “We have officers on the way now, ma’am. I need you to stay by the phone so that we can call you with other news. Are you in a safe place where you can wait by the phone?”

Sharon looked around the kitchen, and nodded, “I – yes. I’ll hold. I mean, I’ll be here. I – Oh, God.” Cindy walked over to Sharon and put her arms around her shoulders.

“Thank you, ma’am. We will call you back as soon as we have any news.” The phone went dead and Sharon slowly eased it onto the counter next to her purse.

Cindy held her mother and said, “It’s gonna be okay. He’ll be okay. It’s okay, Mom. Really.”

Sharon nodded and hugged her close, not hearing the repeated mantra.

My Lost Phone – Addendum

Tumbler writeup in “Reading the Paranormal”

BrandG — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:54:47 +0000

I don’t know how I missed this, but the good folks at the “Reading the Paranormal” blog had an excellent review of my first novel, “Tumbler“. Check it out.

Brand appears on a fashion blog? What madness!

BrandG — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 02:20:48 +0000

Gail Carriger, New York Times bestselling author of the “Parasol Protectorate” series posted a picture of us together on her fashion blog!

Check it out!

NYT Bestseller Gail Carriger talks about C4C!

Calls For Cthulhu Episode 9 – The Lost Episode

BrandG — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Originally, Calls For Cthulhu Episode 9 was posted to Far Point Media exclusively, which caused some problems for some people, due to video player issues. Well, the episodes are no longer exclusive, and so I am posting this lost episode to YouTube.

Note: This has nothing to do with the Kickstarter fund, which just reached it’s $500 goal. That episode is in full development right now. Look for more info on that this month.

Hidden Institute makes iTunes “New and Noteworthy” list!

BrandG — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:19:46 +0000

What does “The Hidden Institute” have in common with the Beatles? We’re both featured on iTunes!

In the Literature section of the iTunes Podcasts list, my new book shows up on the first page of the “New and Noteworthy” list.

Today, iTunes. Tomorrow, the world!!

Balticon Day 1: Friday

BrandG — Sat, 28 May 2011 12:58:55 +0000

So, we weren’t able to travel north to Balticon until after the little one got out of school. After that, we were scrambling to pack, get business cards (BTW, when making business cards, don’t try to print out cardstock at the last minute. Pay the extra few bucks to go to Kinkos. Trust me, it’s worth saving the hassle).

So then we were on the road. About an hour drive, we reached the Towson Sheraton, and checked in. Because we’d done the Priceline bidding on our hotel, we managed to get rooms at a nice hotel despite being dirt poor. Can’t speak to their airfare or car rental, but I was really impressed by how easy it was to get a really great deal on a lovely room.

But enough about that. After we’d swiped our way into the room and tossed all the bags inside, we went running for the Hunt Valley Inn. We headed for the bar, knowing that the location was a point of focus for all the writerly types. Inside, we saw Mur Lafferty, Thomas “Cmdln” Gideon, Steve Eley, and Scott Roche, among others. It was kinda loud and there wasn’t anywhere to sit, so we adjourned to the comparably quiet lobby outside. There we met P.C.Haring, A Kovacs, Nathan Lowell, Zach Ricks, Nuchtchas and her husband (who were in the most amazing steampunk fantasy garb). We briefly saw Tee Morris and Phillipa Ballentine, and we chatted a bit with Scott Sigler. We sat and talked with people for hours. It was my idea of the perfect vacation.

One thing that made it especially amazing was that I met a fan. Not one of the, “Oh, you’re Brand. I read your stuff. It’s pretty good” kind of fans. No, this was an “Oh, my God. I came to Balticon just hoping I’d get to see you. I love Tumbler. No, I mean, it touched me. There have been times in my life where I WAS Libby. I totally related to the story. You are just amazing!” with tears welling up in her eyes.

Now, okay, it may have been the fact that we were out there late at night, and she may have had a couple to drink. It may be that she’s totally regretting her effusive kindness. But all I know is that it was the most amazing display of love for my writing that I’ve ever seen.

I know I’m a newbie to writing, and I know I’ve got to earn my place for recognition, but that lady just made my night.

A Short Sample of my Next Novel

BrandG — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:04:34 +0000

Prologue

“So that gives us,” the captain did some quick calculations in his head, “Just under two minutes to live.”

Josh nodded, his wide face grim, “That’s what I get, sir.”

Captain Amory Pershing looked up at the main display. A cutaway view of the ship showed one engine pulsing an angry red. He took a deep breath, then turned to the pilot, “Tandy, I’m going to need some options.”

She blinked up at him, “Options?”

“We’re not going to make it to Bhont, and I’m not going to let us coast through space for the rest of our lives. If we’ve got a minute and a half of propulsion, I want it pointing us toward somewhere livable.”

“Sir.” The pilot nodded and turned back to her station.

The captain turned back to his engineer, “Get the prisoner and bring him up here.”

The stocky man blinked up at him, “The stowaway? Uh, look, captain, if we can squeeze a bit more thrust out of that engine by losing some weight, I know how we can get rid of about 80 kilos.”

The captain’s stare was icy, “Don’t think I hadn’t considered it. But it wouldn’t buy us as much as a second in thrust, and he’s more useful to us alive.” He turned away and started walking over to the navigation station. Over his shoulder, he said, “Just bring him up here. The bridge is shielded. It’s the safest place to be in a crash.”

As Josh nodded and left the bridge, Amory put a hand on Tandy’s shoulder, “Anything nearby?”

She shrugged a bit, “I’ve got three solid bodies with a period similar to Earth. There’s one that seems habitable, but it’s not mapped. Can’t tell if there’s life there or not.”

Captain Pershing stroked his chin, “Lots of seeder ships never reported back. Something could have crashed out here.”

“So you don’t think it’s got life?” An air vent near the captain’s station burst off it’s hinges and shot a gout of flame into the room, singeing the console. Amory looked at it, wide-eyed. The engine heat was igniting oxygen storage tanks.

He shook his head, “Doesn’t matter. If it’s got air, land and water, we aim for it. Can we hit it?”

Tandy took a deep breath, “Ah, just barely. We’d be coasting the last million miles or so. After that, it’s navigation thrusters only.” She squinted at the screen and shook her head a bit, “Yeah, I’d say I could hit it, cap.”

“Fine. Get us there.” He stepped away from the nav console, looking back at the cutaway of the engine. A thousand different checks were performed every time they set foot on the ship. But there were a million ways the trip could go wrong. Something had the engine sucking in it’s own exhaust, causing a brutal feedback loop. He didn’t know how to repair it without a lift and a team that could dig into the engine. All he knew was that it would go critical in a little over a minute.

Amory turned to the entrance as he heard feet stomping up the stairs. Josh’s baritone voice snarled, “I don’t care what you think you’re owed. In my book, you’re just dead weight.”

The captain pointed to the thin man as he entered, head held high, “Mr. Moore. I’m going to need to detain you here for the duration of the trip.”

The tall man nodded and let his shackles sizzle as he shrugged his shoulder, “I’m honored, Captain. My previous berth was not quite up to my standard.”

Josh came up behind him and shoved the thin man into the room, “Go on, stowaway. You’re lucky I don’t toss you out the airlock.”

The captain pointed to the communications station, “Put him there.”

Josh pushed him again, and the thin man sniffed, “The in-flight entertainment has much to be desired as well. So far, it seems to be limited to klaxons and sirens.”

Amory walked over to Josh, “How long does it take to shut the engine down?”

Josh shrugged, “If we do it properly, spinning down and everything, about a minute and a half.” The ship bucked suddenly, throwing Amory and Josh to the floor. Tandy threw her arms around her station, and the stowaway hung on by his manacles.

Shaking his head as he looked up, Josh said, “All the same, I could just yank the power couplings, and we’d lose thrust in less than a second.”

Amory got to his knees and nodded, “Right. You get down to the engine room and wait for my signal.”

Josh stood slowly, then turned back to the Captain, “Wait. This is the safest room on the ship, and right before the engine goes critical, you want me standing next to it while you put him -” he jabbed a finger at the stowaway, “up here where it’s safe? How is that fair.”

The captain glared at him, “I don’t trust him to shut the engine down in time. I don’t trust him with our lives. In thirty seconds, I don’t want him down there deciding he has the power over us.”

“Yeah, but -”

“Go!” the Captain roared.

Josh frowned, but then hurried down the corridor. From the navigation station, the stowaway asked, “Is it really that bad, Captain?”

Amory looked at him for a long moment, then checked the time over the main screen. “My count is fifteen seconds. Tandy, we on course?”

“Yes sir. I mean, I’m pretty sure that, with maneuvering thrusters I could get us to -”

“Fine.” He stabbed at a button on his console, “Josh, we’re on course, and we’ve got ten seconds. Shut it down.”

Josh’s voice came crackling through the speaker, “Roger.”

The captain took a breath and closed his eyes as the ship shuddered. Either the engine would overheat and explode, or they would be left adrift in deep space. It all came down to their numbers and timing.

A deep, powerful thrum that had been building up over several days suddenly died away. The whole ship seemed to sigh and relax as the forward thrust dropped away. Amory let his breath out in a whoosh. He opened his mouth in a forced yawn, trying to deal with the change in pressure. The lights dimmed, then came up at half-power. Amory turned to Tandy, “Make sure we’re on emergency power rations until we can charge the banks back up. Without the engine, it’s going to take a lot longer to recharge.”

Josh stepped onto the bridge, “So, we’re not dead then. There’s that.”

The captain nodded, “Thank you Mr. Kemuel. Now, if you could dislodge our interloper from the communications station, we need to see if we can get any broadband signal before we fall off the trade route entirely.” They both looked at the stowaway who was fearfully gripping the communications station with both arms.

He stared up at them, a haunted look in his eyes, “Okay. Look. Changed my mind. Want to go home.”

Kickstarter Project for my next book

BrandG — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:37:50 +0000

I just finished launching a Kickstarter campaign to get professional editing for my next book. If you’d like to get a limited-edition, signed version of any of my books, this is the only way to do it. You can also get a Bear Polo shirt, or have your name in the next book! Come check it out!

The Best Promotion For Your Book

BrandG — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:55:27 +0000

Quick post. I just wanted to show you a chart that proves an old adage that we should all remember. This chart shows downloads of “Tumbler” my first novel, over the last couple of months. Notice the spike over April? What could have caused that? I mean, I’ve been doing a little promoting here and there, but nothing to merit such a consistent rise. So what changed for “Tumbler”?

The answer is that, in April, I started seriously promoting my second novel, “The Hidden Institute”. Promotion for THI actually bled off to help downloads and sales of “Tumbler”. And from what I’m seeing on THI sales, promotion for Tumbler actually helps sell that book too.

Nathan Lowell tells me of a writer who asked his agent, “What’s the best way to promote my book?” The agent responded, “Write another book.”

Here endeth the lesson.

Oh, and if you’d like to check out those books, you can find “Tumbler” here and “The Hidden Institute” here

The Wars

BrandG — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 21:53:14 +0000

Recently, a reviewer mentioned some problems with my new story “The Hidden Institute”. Goodreads won’t let me link directly to it, but you can find it here: ( http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/156317501 ). Don’t worry, this is not a condemnation or defense against the critique. In fact, I welcome negative comments, as they help me determine what I need to do in future stories.

What I’d like to do here is explain why I allowed one of these issues to remain, even after I recognized it. I would like to explain it as part of how I write.

From the review:
“The major flaw, for me, was that there wasn’t enough of it. I wanted to know more — a lot more — about the world our hero Cliffy lives in. What is daily life like for the “commoners.” Do they work? At what? And what’s the deal with the nobility? How did they take power, and what are they doing with it? How did such an obvious gulf open between the social classes? And what exactly are these wars about that get mentioned but never explained?”

When I started writing this story, I put a lot of thought into what the world around Cliffy was like. I sketched little maps, drew aristocratic hierarchical charts on the backs of napkins, I thought about how much money each group should have access to, and how much power. I thought about the place of the clergy, and the military. I built up how the political power was distributed among people, and tried to make it balance out enough to where it would all fit. My main concern was that I built up a world that would work, would be plausible, and was not in danger of revolution.

Then, when all that was done, I threw it away. Well, not really, but I did put it aside so that I could tell the story. I knew that, in the end, this story was about one boy. In some places I had to describe how the world became what it was, but even when I had to do that, I made sure to tell the story in the context of the main character’s life.

The worldbuilding is important, of course, and I paid close attention to it. However, if the story is not about the world, that description must take a back seat to the character’s story. In a way, the world becomes a character in itself, which reveals it’s secrets only as they become needed.

In fact, there are points where I took a certain delight in hiding elements of the world. The “wars”, for instance, were deliberately vague. Throughout the entirety of the book, no reference is made to who is fighting, or why. All that is known is that there is a war going on, and that people continue to go about their duties, not even bothering to mention how the war is going.

That was a deliberate addition that I put in as a nod to one of my chief influencers, George Orwell. In his book 1984, Orwell made the argument that a government needs a perpetual war in order to stay in power. He said that, when people get used to sacrificing their own needs to help win the war, the government can hold them forever.

In The Hidden Institute, I created that same mentality. The people go on about their lives, knowing that somewhere soldiers are dying, but not being affected by the knowledge. That kind of mentality should be horrific to us, should stand out as impossible. If we look back to WWII, and we see the kind of involvement every individual played in the war effort, it becomes ridiculous to think that a people could just ignore a war. But Orwell said it could happen, and that governments would do well to make it happen.

And here is where I get myself in trouble. I put that in partially to show people, however subconsciously, that it is happening right now.

At the moment, the United States is involved in five active wars (that I know of). These are places where we have soldiers standing by because of an armistice, or in active duty. South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Lybia. Without making commentary on how right or wrong it is that we should be there at all, the mentality that has grown from this situation is exactly the one that we were warned of.

America is involved in multiple wars, and no one talks about them. People are dying, but it doesn’t make the daily news. This is largely because the news of it would be wearying if it were told every day, but the alternative is that people enter this way of thinking where perpetual war is a fact of life.

I was never trying to make this book a call-to-arms, but at the same time, I hoped I could make someone think about the kind of mentality that accepts perpetual war without question. That’s why I made it part of my worldbuilding, and that’s why it was barely mentioned in the actual story.

Worth and Cost

BrandG — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:48:35 +0000

As a professional writer, I write for money. I work hard on my writing, to make it as good as it can be. However, as a self-publisher, I also work hard on selling my writing. These are two different aspects of the business, the artist and the publisher. The artist wants to say that a story is an ephemeral thing, born of sweat and inspiration, worthy of telling to kings and scholars. The artist feels that each story is special, precious, and worthy of protecting at all costs.

The publisher wants to make money.

At this point, we have a problem because the best way to make money is to treat a story as though it were not a precious little snowflake. The publisher knows that the best way to make money is to treat a story as though it were a widget, a product, and a brand. A story is a creative thing, and as such, it is capable of brand promotion. What that means is, if you read a story of mine, there is a non-zero chance that you’ll want to read another story of mine.

The self propegating nature of that is incredibly useful to the publisher, to the point where it can overshadow the value of the first sale. While I may be able to sell a book at $50, I probably won’t sell very many, which limits my book’s ability to spread its brand promotion. If, however, I give away my book, I maximize the brand promotion, while kneecapping myself on the first sale. So, somewhere in between free and overpriced, the publisher tries to find a way to get the books in as many hands as possible, while still making money.

But already there is a gasp from the artist. “What? Give the book away! But it is art! It is beauty! You cannot disrespect that by saying it is less valuable than a happy meal!” And so we run into the problem. The publisher realizes that there is a balancing point between free and unprofitably expensive. The artist doesn’t care. The artist looks at other books and says, “This is how much ‘Twilight’ costs, and my book is at least as good as that!”.

Different people are going to look at it different ways. Some have more of the publisher in them, and less of the artist. As a self-publisher, I have changed my sales price several times, trying to find the best way to improve revenue. In doing so, I have even dropped the price of some books as low as $1 to improve the brand promotion and sales rank.

By comparison, there are some artists who will set the price of their book to $10 on all versions, and never touch it. Without consideration for other factors, they will say, “This is what I think the book is worth” and denegrate those who would say that they aren’t interested in buying a new author’s work at a steep price.

All of this is personal choice, and we could all happily sell our works in different ways, were it not for one cancerous idea. Some people feel that they have the right to tell others how to price their work, attempting to add value to books by price fixing.

Say there are two writers. One is an artist, the other a publisher. The artist sets his price months before shipping, without doing any research, and proudly declares that his price is based on the book’s “worth”. The publisher shifts his price constantly, trying successively lower prices, until it starts to cut into his revenue.

At this point, the artist becomes angry, not because his book is affected, but because he feels like the publisher is devaluing all books with his experimentation. The artist becomes nervous, seeing more and more publishers experimenting with prices. “What will happen to me?” The artist worries, “when people assume that you can order a richly-crafted story off the dollar menu?”

Then he turns on the publisher, attacking him for “devaluing” writing, for not respecting the craft, and for dragging down the entire institution. He denegrates the publisher in the Wall Street Journal, in the New York Times, in his own personal network.

In response, all the publisher can do is shrug. He wants to help the artist, wants to respect writing. But he’s not willing to give up money for it. The publisher doesn’t feel that he should have to pay a tax on the “sanctity of writing”. And so he trudges along. They call him cheap, they call him cut-rate, they question the quality of his writing (if it were that good, he would charge more!). And while they hurl insults at him, he quietly cashes his checks and works on his next book.

My guess is that this is not a sustainable model. I think that the publishers, by being more successful, will “breed out” the artists. In five years, there will be no $10 e-books. Artists will either admit that there is no one price for every book, or they will be left in a special cupboard on Amazon reserved for overpriced and undervalued books. They will be proud of their rarity, and in a fit of business sense, might raise their prices because the books are so rare.

—

Brand Gamblin is the author of several novels and short stories. His first novel “Tumbler” can be found at Amazon.com for $2.99. His latest novel “The Hidden Institute” can be found at Amazon for $4.99. Brand likes experimenting.

Tumbler now has a book Trailer

BrandG — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 03:12:00 +0000

If you’d like to explain what Tumbler is about to your friends in a little over a minute, send them this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZtgI_LVwoU

So, What do you think of it?

My Short Story Collection “The Danny” is now online!

BrandG — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:46:07 +0000

I just published “The Danny” for $2.99 USD on Amazon and Smashwords, which means it’s available on the Kindle, Nook, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, or e-reader of your choice.

The Danny is the story of a creature unstuck from time, which bounces between realities, looking for an anchor to the world it calls home. Along the way, it runs into several “cusps”, moments of extreme joy and pain. Moments where the world changes. The Danny encounters zombies, time travelers, nanites, alien invasion, mechanized infantry, and magical heroes.

Some of these stories have been previously published. Others have never been seen before. For those familiar with my work, here is a list of stories in “The Danny”:

Worse Than The Disease
The Rogue Prince and the Newborn Threat
A Moments Pause
Firebugs
Snake Skin
Howdy’s Revenge
Sandys

Sample from my short story collection.

BrandG — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:37:05 +0000

I decided to put some of my short stories together and release them on SmashWords. Some of them you may have seen, others have never been published anywhere.

Here’s a small sample of the book:

The Danny had lost his anchor, his body, and most of his memories. He was bombarded on all sides by lights, pieces of images, parts of sounds. The pieces of reality from different times and dimensions pushed him further downstream.

He had panicked at first when he lost his anchor, when he felt the stream pop him out of his life like a cork from a child’s gun. His child had a gun like that. His child.

The Danny wondered whether he was male. Could a thing with no body have a gender? He remembered some of his life still, but his memories were in his brain, and his brain was in his body. Whatever part of him survived, swimming against a tide of unreality, it was slowly losing touch with the life he’d had. He fought it, clinging to his life. He had a child, there was a woman waiting for him. Cindy.

The Danny decided he was male. It helped him remember his life. He was a man, a researcher, an explorer. He travelled in dangerous waters to places others wouldn’t believe existed. But he had lost his anchor, and the waters that had once taken him between worlds now dragged him further and further from home.
The place between times was undefined. Nothing could happen without time, and so The Danny knew that none of what he was seeing was real. None of it could happen until he observed it. He remembered that rule, but could not remember why.

The Danny knew he needed to find a shore. He needed a place, any solid ground, from which he could travel back to his own time. He had to find a cusp.

Bright flashes in the distance called out to him. Hard decisions, painful sacrifices, they shone out as anchors before him. One of them would lead him home. The Danny fought against the tide and pushed for one close to him. It shone with pain and loss. The power of the emotion kept it steady when all other potentialities swam around it. The Danny grabbed at it, and saw it. He experienced it from outside, waiting for the point where he could re-enter the world.

Show your love for The Hidden Institute!

BrandG — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 02:17:53 +0000

If you are a fan of podiobooks, you know that there is a link on each story’s webpage that allows readers to donate money to the author. This is because some listeners feel indebted to the authors for giving them full, unabridged, professionally-developed audiobooks. It’s a nice policy that has been much appreciated by both listeners and producers.

As I finished the last episode of my podiobook this morning, I realized that I would not be listed on Podiobooks for another three weeks. So, while listeners can come to my site to find the free audiobook, they didn’t have that same outlet for donation.

So, I’ve added the following button. There is no set amount, and no one is required to pay for this story. All the same, any donations you can afford will be appreciated.

Episode 15 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:40:50 +0000

I just finished building the fifteenth and last episode of my novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 14 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 19:27:18 +0000

I just finished building the fourteenth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 13 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 19:44:26 +0000

I just finished building the thirteenth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 12 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:20:23 +0000

I just finished building the twelth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 11 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:58:06 +0000

I just finished building the eleventh episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Dramatic reading of a truly great blog post

BrandG — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:12:03 +0000

I came across a really wonderful blog post from Levi Montgomery, and as soon as I read it, I thought it should have a dramatic reading. So, being a busybody, I got permission to do a reading of the post. Hope you like it.

Direct Download here

Episode 10 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:50:41 +0000

I just finished building the tenth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 9 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 01:32:32 +0000

I just finished building the ninth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 8 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 02:58:34 +0000

I just finished building the eighth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 7 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 04:10:58 +0000

I just finished building the seventh episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 6 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 06:14:21 +0000

I just finished building the sixth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

How a self-publisher publishes: part 2

BrandG — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:30:55 +0000

In a recent post, I went through all the steps that a self-publisher makes when publishing. I knew at the time that I was leaving something out, but I couldn’t think of what it was. Then, when I realized that the print version of my book was available, but the Kindle version wasn’t there. Doh!

This is a very important addendum, because Kindle is HUGE. I’ve been fairly happy and successful with my book sales, and 90% of the money I’ve made has come from Kindle. This is not commentary on the death of print or anything like that, but if you’re distributing online, your customers are probably buying e-books. And as e-books go, the Kindle is the 500-pound gorilla in the room.

So, how do you get your book set up on Kindle? You use KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, at kdp.amazon.com. If you don’t already have an amazon account, you may need to create one. Once you get to the “Bookshelf”, click on “Add a new book”. Here you will see a form with the same kind of details that you filled out on CreateSpace (Title, Description, Book cover, etc). When you get to the “Upload your book file”, you need to stop and put some serious work in.

As I said before, Kindle is going to be a huge part of your sales, so you need to be absolutely certain that it looks as good as it possibly can. This means formatting, and of course, Kindle uses a different type of formatting than everyone else.

I’d spent a day in LyX formatting my book to make the PDF version look it’s absolute best, because that was the one I used for print. I was really glad to see that the KDP would take my PDF file, but nearly cried when I saw that they cut out all formatting information in that version. In the preview, my book looked atrocious. So I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and went looking for the best way to present my book in Kindle.

The good news is that the format that works best for Kindle is HTML. For some people, this is going to be hard, because they haven’t had to restructure a web page. If, however, you’ve spent some time online, manipulating HTML tags, you’ll find this pretty straightforward. You insert double
tags at the end of paragraphs, you change the header style for chapter headings, and it comes together pretty easily.

Special note: Amazon has a couple of specialized tags that they made just for this format. You can find that here. The most useful of those is . This one will, obviously, insert a page break. This is very useful for separating the title page from the contents, or separating a new chapter from the old.

Another formatting note: If you’re looking at a 75,000-word manuscript and saying, “Wait, I have to put breaks on every paragraph? No way!”, let me recommend Notepad++. It’s a notepad program developed for programmers, but it’s entirely accessible to regular users as well. The reason I mention that tool is that it has a very good find-and-replace function.

This is how to change every linefeed in your manuscript to a
. You hit CTRL-F, the dialog pops up. You choose the “replace” tab, and then click on “Extended” search mode. This will get it to look for non-printing characters. Then, in the “find what” textfield, you write “\r\n”. This is DOS-text programmer speak for “newline”. In the “replace with” textfield, write “
\r\n” then hit the “Replace All” button. In seconds, it will tag your entire manuscript with HTML newlines.

But I’ve digressed. Let’s assume you’ve finished your formatting and uploaded the book to Amazon. At that point, the preview is hugely useful. I had to bounce back and forth between notepad and Amazon, uploading over and over again, to get that preview just right. But as you know, the effect is worth it. You want your best possible work out there.

Once that’s done, you fill in the “Rights and Pricing” page. The rights are pretty direct. The pricing is one of those things that’s a personal choice, and no one price fits all. I have one book that I’ve priced everywhere from $4.99 USD to $0.99 USD, and experimented with several others. Right now, one of my books is $4.99, while the other is $0.99, just because that’s where they fit best.

Once you’ve filled that out, you’re pretty much done. Click “Save and Publish”, and then just sit back and wait for the money to roll in. It’ll take a day or so for the Kindle version to show up on Amazon.

When it does, though, be ready to start your marketing. Shout it from the hilltops, and give copies to all the reviewers who read your genre. Because at that point, marketing is all you need to do.

Well, there is one other thing. . . you have to go write the next book!

How a self-publisher publishes

Episode 5 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:38:17 +0000

I just finished building the fifth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 4 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 04:48:35 +0000

I just finished building the fourth episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 3 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:54:31 +0000

I just finished building the third episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

How a self-publisher publishes

BrandG — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 20:07:03 +0000

On March 1st 2011, at just about midnight, I finished the edits on my new book “The Hidden Institute”. Up to that point, I had thought of the book in terms of character, plot, pacing, theme, action, and description. But on that day, I took off the author cap and replaced it with the publisher cap. After that, I saw it as product, units, sales, and widgets.

It’s a different type of work, and one which most authors shy away from. I wrote this down, partially to show everyone what goes into the business of self-publishing. To be fair, though, I also wrote it as a checklist to myself, for the next time I publish a book.

TypeSetting

The first thing I did on March 1 was convert the source to a formatted file. I had done all of my writing in Notepad (and “Write Or Die”). My editing was done on a wiki site that I set up for communication between myself and my beta readers. While those were good tools for their purpose, they did not answer the problems of formatting. For that, I turned to LyX. It’s an open-source tool for formatting formal writing which was recommended to me by Nathan Lowell.

I’ll say this for LyX. It is powerful, it is open source, and it is very useful. With that said, it is also a royal pain in the ass. The learning curve for this tool is abominable, and the tutorials are laughably vague. LyX is very proud of not being a word processor. . . but I don’t know why they’re proud about it. They say that LyX isn’t WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get), but rather WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean). I can tell you now, after wrestling with it for a day and a half, that it does not give you what you “mean”. When I put in newlines, I MEAN for those newlines to stay. And their support online is the worst sort of open-source holier-than-thou BS I’ve ever seen. Nine out of ten responses are “Read the manual”, which is useless to any edge case question.

I have to thank Nathan Lowell for sticking with me during this time, when I was ranting and raving about it on IM. He had to go through the same thing when he started working with it, and I was lucky enough to benefit from his knowledge.

Ranting aside, though, LyX does produce the most beautifully professional file you’re likely to find, especially for the price. It is a trial by fire, but well worth the work. And once I was done, I had a PDF version of the book that was as professional as any you’ll see rolling off the presses at any of the big six.

CreateSpace

So that was my first 1.5 days. After that, I submitted my PDF file to CreateSpace. This one is my big moneymaker, the website that has consistently done the best for me with Tumbler. I spent about half a day formatting my cover (don’t use their cover creator, it’s rubbish for anything that doesn’t want to LOOK like vanity press) but aside from that, the process was fairly easy. You need to know what size book you’re making (trust me, stick with the industry standards) how many pages you have (which you get while formatting the book), and simple information like pricing and teaser description. Once I was done with that, and happy with all of my answers, I was ready to order my proof copy. The purpose of the proof copy is to ensure that there is nothing wrong with the book by sending me one copy that is made the same way all the others would be. If it was perfect, then we were ready to pull the trigger, and start selling books.

Timing Mistakes to Avoid

Now here’s something I did wrong. I didn’t get any blurbs or reviews from my beta readers, so at the time of publishing, I had no testimonials for the cover. I was in too much of a hurry, and because of it, I had to ship without. Don’t let this happen to you. When you send out beta reader copies, leave a form at the end of the text for them to fill out with a little mini-review that you can grab quotes from.

Since we’re on the subject of things I did wrong, let me bring up another one. Pre-orders. I totally forgot about pre-orders. So here I was, March 1, with a full manuscript ready for publishing, and I hadn’t posted a thing about pre-orders. I jumped online and put together a blog post, telling people that I was ready to accept pre-orders, but that was only days before the actual product would be available for purchase online. I tried to make up for that by offering numbered, signed e-books, but I still should have given them more time. Note to self: Pre-orders start when you START editing, not when you stop.

SmashWords

Moving on. So, CreateSpace is my favored channel for physical distribution, and for Kindle distribution, but it doesn’t cover all the bases, reader-wise. For that, I went to SmashWords. SmashWords will take your document and convert it to multiple e-book formats so that it can be read as anything from text to nook. The good news is that it covers all your bases. The bad news is that it takes a little while to format the manuscript, it must be formatted their way, and their format is not terribly pretty. Still, it is the best way to get your book out there in multiple formats.

Once I submitted my document, I started out at #762 in the processing queue, and half a day later, the book was available for purchase.

With CreateSpace covering my physical media and Kindle, and SmashWords covering all the other e-book formats, I was all set, right? Well, no. There was one other version that I wanted to get out there. Google.

Google Books

I’ve loved Google for more than a decade, and love the idea of Google books even more. As a comparatively new writer, my biggest enemy is obscurity, and teaming with the world’s greatest search giant is a big plus. So, I logged on to my Google Partners account, gave it the new ISBN number (Oh, I got the ISBN number from CreateSpace, more on that later), and uploaded my cover art/manuscript. Three days later, and it’s still processing. Honestly, I have no idea what could be taking so long. It’s 300 pages, so even if they were actually reading the thing, they should be done by now. But I digress.

Regarding the ISBN number. I get mine free from CreateSpace, and did a lot of study before I did so. Now, you can buy your own ISBN number, but it’s pretty pricey, and you have to buy one for every format you support (an e-book does not have the same ISBN as a p-book, or an audiobook). If you were only to buy one, it would cost around $100 USD (last time I checked). So, that was an expensive proposition to me. By comparison, CreateSpace will let me use one of theirs, but I give up the publishing right. What that means is that, I am not technically the publisher of those books. CreateSpace is. I have the right to end my association with them at any time, pull my book from the shelf, and buy a new ISBN if I want, but so long as I’m using their number, they are the publisher.

Landing Site

So at this point, I was waiting on my proof copy from CreateSpace, I was waiting on the queue for SmashWords, and I was waiting on Google’s “Processing” (still am). After all that, I created a landing site for “The Hidden Institute”. A landing site is the place where you send people who want to know about your book. It has contact info, sales info, reviews, whatever. A one-stop shopping center for all relevant information about a book. I tend to keep mine pretty spartan, showing only a preview of the book, with links to places where you can buy it, read reviews, etc. Throwing the page together was easy. Putting the content together has taken more time. I still don’t have a preview available, because I’m waiting for Google to finish “processing”. The Google Preview is a great way to embed a large portion of your book in a webpage.

Promotion and Podiobooks

With all that done, I was ready to sit back and rest. Time to let the money roll in. Well, no. As it happens, a self-pubbed writer’s work is never done. I still had to promote it. I got up on Twitter and told people about it. I got on Facebook and told people where to find it, but that was only the tip of the iceberg for my promotional plan.

My real promotion is in podiobooks. It’s a lot of hard work, which leads to incredible promotion for an indie writer. So, as soon as I had the book available for sale, I sat down in front of a microphone and started recording. It’s going to take at least a month of work, but when I’m done, I’ll have opened my book to a whole huge group of readers who like to take books with them when they’re travelling or commuting. It allows me to offer my writing to the blind without publishing in braille (which I never thought of doing before . . . how do you self-pub in braille? . . . note to self, check that out).

Anyway, it’s a week after finishing my edits, and I’m now published. Your path may not be the same, but I hope it helps to see how one person did it.

What’s next? Goodreads, Facebook, paid ads . . . and most important of all, the next book. Hope to see you then.

Update: I don’t know why I forgot to put this in, but it’s worth noting that everything I did last week was 100% free. Now, I did decide to go with the pro plan for CreateSpace, which meant that I could make more royalties at a lower price point. The Pro plan cost $40, but everything else was completely free.

Episode 2 of The Hidden Institute is now up!

BrandG — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:58:24 +0000

I just finished building the second episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.” You can listen to it here:

For a direct download, use this link

Thanks for listening!

Episode 1 of The Hidden Institute is up!

Episode 1 of The Hidden Institute is up!

BrandG — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 05:33:05 +0000

I just finished building the first episode of the podiobook for my new novel “The Hidden Institute.”

For a direct download, use this link

I’ve tried to make it Podiobooks.com compliant, but I’m not going to submit it to them until I have at least five episodes in the can. Still, if you just can’t wait until it gets up there, we’ll be uploading them here as fast as we get them in.

And thanks for listening!

Pre-order The Hidden Institute today

BrandG — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:26:49 +0000

I just finished editing, formatting, and typesetting my new novel “The Hidden Institute”.

Cliffy is a child born on the streets of a Neo-Victorian world. When he witnesses a murder, the nobleman presumed to be guilty offers him a very unique bribe. If Cliffy will keep his silence, the nobleman will introduce him to the Malcolm Rutherford Holden Institute of Regentrification. There, Cliffy will learn to walk, talk, and act like a nobleman, so that he may infiltrate high society. But that type of fraud is punishable by death, and when Cliffy uncovers a plot to assassinate a head of state, he’s hunted by more than just the aristocracy.

I’m submitting it to Amazon, which could have it available for purchase in the next few weeks. However, if you already know that you want a copy, you can pre-order it now using the links below.

For $4.99 (the price that Amazon will offer the book) you will receive a copy of the e-book e-mailed to you on the day that it becomes available on Amazon.

For $9.99, you will receive a signed, numbered version of the e-book, with whatever inscription you choose. If no inscription is selected, I will choose the first spam e-mail in my folder and use it’s text for the inscription (cause I’m crazy like that).

My First Paid Ad.

BrandG — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:59:01 +0000

Recently, I took a bold new step in my publishing career. About nine months after I published my first book (Tumbler), I decided to pay real cash money to advertise it. Prior to that time, I had done nothing for promoting my book, outside of podcasting the story, and telling people about it on Facebook and Twitter. This was a huge step for me, and so I did a lot of research and study before taking the plunge.

I decided to go with Kindle Nation Daily, a website that promotes Kindle books to their reading group of thousands. I chose their “eBook of the Day Sponsorship”, which included promotion on their “Planet iPad” sister site, a single post on their website with detailed information about the book and author, a FaceBook status post, a Twitter post, and a place on their sidebar for 18 hours. The whole package cost me $59.99 USD.

One of the reasons I went with this blog was the fact that I recognized some of the other authors there, specifically Basil Sands, author of “65 Below”. Another reason was that they posted their sales results, including a percentage of how much their authors sales improved after advertising with KND. The spreadsheets are very impressive, with some people seeing a thousand percent improvement or more.

I didn’t expect that level of return, but I figured that it was worth it if the ad only covered it’s own costs. I make around $2.09/book, so I knew I would need to sell 28 copies to cover the cost. If it could add four sales a day, then it would be worth it. So I gave it a shot.

The day before my ad appeared, a strange thing happened. Nobody bought my book. Please don’t think this is hubris talking, but that was a really odd occurance. On average, Tumbler sold about four copies a day. Not a bestseller by any scale, but it was fairly consistent. However, the day before my ad went up, sales stopped completely. Because of this, my Amazon Sales Rank shot up from #15,000 to #30,000. Not the best control case, to be sure, but there was nothing we could do about that.

Then, at around noon on the 5th of February, the ad showed up. Here’s a link to it. I didn’t write it, and I was kinda surprised to see the direction they took with it. Tumbler has always been a Heinlein-esque story. From the beginning, I wanted it to be a homage to one of my most favorite writers. I use Heinlein names, politics, and the by-your-bootstraps mentality that he so often shared. However the ad had a couple of references to Stieg Larsson. They refer to it as “Stranger in a Strange Land meets The Girl Who Escaped from Earth?” I get that one would want to tie a work to a bestseller, but that still seemed odd. I mean, there’s no intentional violence in my story, nor is there any sexuality or revenge. Still, if it would sell books, I guess it was their site. . .

And it did sell books. I don’t have sales numbers for the day, but I watched the sales total grow that day, and we definitely did sell at least 28 copies. In the space of one day, we dropped from #30k on Kindle Sales Rank down to #4358. We were listed in three different “Top 100″ Amazon lists:

#59 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera

#65 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction > Adventure

#73 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Adventure

The effect didn’t last for long, but the sales did improve. Look at this:

In this graph, you can see the spike that came just before the ad went up, and you can see how the sales rank dropped on the day of the ad. Ever since that day, we have hovered around 10k, which isn’t bad, but look at this:

This is a graph of the sales rank for Tumbler over it’s entire run. In it, you can see how we started near #30k, and slowly dropped in rank as fans of the podcast began to pick it up. At that point, we were trending around #10k or lower. Then, as everyone knew it would, the trend diminished, sales got more erratic, and started to drop off.

In early January (footnote 1) I took a risky step that made a huge difference. I dropped the price of Tumbler from $4.99 to $2.99. The number of sales increased and (outside of a couple of abberant days) the sales rank dropped to around #15k. The $2.99 sales point made more money, and improved our sales rank. More than that, it fixed that dying trend, and flattened it at the same time. Compared to that, the ad placement (footnote 2) did not make a huge long-term difference.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy with it. After all, even a slightly higher sales rank means more sales. I can’t complain about that. Also, the ad made back it’s investment in the first day. This is great news for an advertising client.

In short, it was definitely worth the expense, and I do plan to do it again for other books (I might even do it for Tumbler again in six months or so). But if one is looking for a way to significantly improve flagging sales numbers, a price drop might suit you better.

Update: Mr. Talbot points out that there is a difference between sales numbers and sales rank. This is a valid point, and while I don’t want to post specific sales data here, I thought I would share a graph of actual sales. You can see from this that, while the graphs are not identical, they do match fairly closely.

How to get a signed copy of “Tumbler”

BrandG — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:00:45 +0000

I’ve had copies of “Tumbler” available at my house for months now, ready for signing, but I just realized that I never told anyone how to get their own copy. Well, today we fix that.

If you use the button at the bottom of the page, you can buy a copy for $15. It will be signed and shipped to you for free (within the United States). Also, you can customize your inscription with the text field just above the button.

So, if you’ve been waiting for that special gift for the sci-fi lover in your life, or if you want a really obscure way to send an enemy threat mail, or if you’re just looking for a really inefficient form of firewood, I’m here to help.

No related posts.

Career Path for the Modern Writer

BrandG — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:35:14 +0000

Many writers have told the stories about how great self-publishing is. They talk about how much more money and how much more control they have over their titles. The message seems to be, “Get into self-publishing now. You can make crazy money that way.”

Successful writers talk about their half-million sales, and the control self-publishig gives them over their empire. Well, in my little writer’s circle, I have one of the more successful self-published books, and my success just about covers my car payment. As a writer just starting out, you won’t have a half-million sales.

In the beginning, it’s not about distribution, it’s about visibility. Traditional publishers make sure that your book is in a bookstore, on a shelf, where people have to decide to pass it up. Online, they need a reason to see your book at all. There is a huge difference that is rarely given credit by the self-publishing success stories. If you’re going to do well in self-publishing, you must have an audience. And a good route to an audience is to get traditionally published.

So, to have a really successful career self-publishing, you must first get traditionally published. The Big 6 can help you get the audience, and once you have that, you can self-publish and make better royalties with more control.

So, what’s the quickest route to getting published with the Big 6? Oddly, the answer may be self-publishing. I know, it sounds like I’m talking in circles, but hear me out. Publishers don’t want to buy a book from someone who’s never sold a book before. Agents don’t want to work with someone who has only got one book. But, if you’ve written three books in three years, and you’ve put in the work to self-publish each one, if you have a decent Amazon Sales Rank and good reviews, the publisher will be more likely to read your next query.

By the way, I’m talking about approaching the publisher directly, because I’ve lost some faith in what agents can do for a writer. From what I’ve read, there are two kinds of agents. There are the ones who truly do have clout with the publishers, who do have power lunches and who know the publishers by name. These people are not going to hear you if you call them. You need them more than they need you.

The other type of agents I’ve seen are just starting their careers, and need you as much as you need them. The only problem with that is, because they’re just starting, they know as much as you know. They don’t have any secret connections, no special knowledge. And what’s more, they aren’t as interested in selling your book as you are. There’s too many books out there now, looking for a publisher, so even new agents get swamped with queries. Stephen King says that you don’t need an agent until you have something to steal. In that spirit, I wouldn’t get an agent until I had already procured a publishing contract. It would guarantee that I could choose a good agent, and it would let the agent do what they do best, negotiate contracts.

So, first you write a few books, then you go to a publisher, then you get an agent. What next?

You write another book. Yeah, I know, kinda obvious, but here’s the thing. You write at least two or three books for traditional publishers. Make them in the same genre or even better, part of a series. Chances are, you’ll be offered a multiple-book deal in any case, so it’s good to put them all together in one series. This is what readers like, it’s what publishers like, and it sets you up for the next step.

Next, leave traditional publishing behind. Self-publish from then on. This is especially good if you’re in the middle of a series. Traditional publishers won’t worry that they’re losing you (they’ve got too many books to publish as it is), and you will have the audience that’s interested in seeing what your hero does next. You will have the traditional publishing audience, with the self-publishing control. And then, my friends, you’ll have truly arrived.

Self-publishing is easy. Getting the audience is hard. But if you follow this career path, you should be able to reach that point where you have the best of both worlds.

Write a bunch of books and self publish them.
Get a traditional publisher contract.
Get an agent.
Publish a second book with Big 6.
Switch to self-publishing.

Update: Nathan Lowell pointed out to me that, with some modern contracts, once you sell the book, you could lose control of it forever. If you don’t cover the advance in sales, and they decide to stop printing it, you may have to give it up. In that case, I would consider the book a loss leader, created to build your audience rather than to be resold.

Image © Copyright Glyn Baker and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The Hidden Institute is complete!

BrandG — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:33:57 +0000

I just finished the first draft of my new novel “The Hidden Institute”. It’s a little bit Harry Potter, and a little bit Henry Higgins, and weighs in at about 66,000 words.

Cliffy is a child born on the streets of a Neo-Victorian world. When he witnesses a murder, the nobleman presumed to be guilty offers him a very unique bribe. If Cliffy will keep his silence, the nobleman will introduce him to the Malcolm Rutherford Holden Institute of Regentrification. There, Cliffy will learn to walk, talk, and act like a nobleman, so that he may infiltrate high society. But that type of fraud is punishable by death, and when Cliffy uncovers a plot to assassinate a head of state, he’s hunted by more than just the aristocracy.

Now that the first draft is finished, I will spend the next few weeks editing it, and then I’ll put it on CreateSpace, for publication in both e-book and p-book format. If all goes well, “the Hidden Institute” should be available in Amazon by March.

As soon as the book is submitted for publication, I will begin podcasting the story, hopefully at a rate of two chapters per week.

It’s an ambitious plan, but well worth it, I think. And hey! I finished my third novel! Woot!

Another Excerpt from “The Hidden Institute”

BrandG — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:19:54 +0000

This is a small section from my new novel. I kinda liked it, so I thought I’d share it with you lovely people:

Cliffy lept from the runner as they reached the school, sprinting for the doors of the building. As he burst through the side doors, running past the guards who called out even though they recognized him, he turned in the direction of the Headmaster’s office. As he turned the corner, he saw something that stopped him short.

Cliffy gaped, then grinned, and asked, “So, what happened this time?”

Diz frowned from just inside the hallway, “Honestly, I cannot be blamed for this in good conscience.” The boy stood leaning against the wall in full regal vestments, with one arm braced tight against him in a sling.

Cliffy nodded at the arm, “What happened there?”

Diz took a deep breath and looked around, “How long have you got?”

Cliffy pulled him lightly by his good arm, and they began walking toward the headmaster’s office. Diz said, “I started off all right. Playing the son of a knight. Safe, quiet. I figured I could run that for a couple of years before trying anything more ambitious.”

Cliffy nodded, “But then, one day, you couldn’t take it anymore. . .”

“No. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t get bored or anything. Just had a bit of luck.” He shrugged, “I was away, visiting a neighboring country, when I heard about a young prince who had joined the war against his parents wishes. He’d been valorious in battle, but had suffered an injury.”

“An injury to his arm, I gather?”

“No, his face. He’d had reconstructive surgery, but was still in hospital. He was the same age as I was, the same build, it seemed a natural. Honestly, at first it seemed like a trap. Too easy, too sweet.”

“So you showed up at their door, wounded from battle.”

Diz grinned, “It was brilliant. Returned the conquering hero. Everyone was very understanding when I said that war changed a fellow. It explained why I didn’t sound quite right, and the surgery explained why I didn’t look quite right. There were feasts, parties. All the young ladies wanted to kiss me. Some wanted to see what I’d learned in foreign lands.” He paused and blushed a bit, “I’m sure you understand.”

Cliffy grinned, “I have an idea.”

“What’s even better, it turns out the prince was a bit of a wastrel when he left. I showed up, older and presumably wiser, able to understand and concentrate on issues of state. The advisors were giddy. The family was wildly pleased.”

“But then, one day, the itinerant hero returned?”

“No. As near as I can tell, the true prince was perfectly happy out there, fighting his war. Some correspondence with others in his unit showed that he had no love for his family or those in his court. He simply wished to stay with his brothers-in-arms.”

“Really? Sounds perfect for you.” He cast a quick look at Diz’s bad arm, “So, then, what went wrong?”

“It was the cat. The family pet had apparantly been attached to him since kittenhood. I avoided it at first, not knowing how it would take to me. Then I tried to win it over with treats and affection. Evil, vicious little brute. Then one of the maids happened to see me struggling with the thing as it tried to scratch my very eyes out. Well, she told her friends, they told others.”

Cliffy nodded, “And then the rumors started.”

“I had maybe a day from the point where people looked at me askance to the point where they came for me with pitchforks and torches. Traitor, they called me. Fraud and liar.”

Cliffy grinned, “Well, at least they stuck to the truth.”

Diz frowned and took a deep breath, “It was all I could do to escape the grounds intact. I wrenched this,” he raised his bad wing, “on the way out. I don’t think I’ll be visiting there for a while, which is a shame. It truly was a beautiful country, and for a short time, it was mine. The perfect score.”

—

If you like this excerpt, click the “Like” button on the right side of the blog.

For more of Brand’s writing, check out “Tumbler” available on Amazon.

Another sneak peak at my new project, “The Hidden Institute”

My 2011 Writing Schedule

BrandG — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:00:58 +0000

I find that I get more done when I expect to get something done. To that end, I’m going to plan out 2011 in the large scale, and see how close I come to meeting these expectations. Note: I’ve intentionally made my estimates conservative, to follow Scotty’s law of padding.

Note: You will see a reference to “Hell Hath No Fury”. It’s a secret project that Allie and I have been working on, which features the Greek Pantheon in a Film Noir mystery regarding the zombie apocalypse. There’ll be more news about that, as we get more done on the project (as it is, I have nothing more than an outline. . . but it’s a damn good outline).

If this schedule is correct, we should be able to podcast two books this year. . . and maybe even sell one to a publisher. You never know.

2011:

January – Finish Hidden Institute
February – Editing/podcasting Hidden Institute
March – Editing/podcasting Hidden Institute
April – Editing/podcasting Hidden Institute
May – Editing/podcasting Hidden Institute
June – 25k words on “Hell Hath No Fury”
July – 25k words on “Hell Hath No Fury”
August – 25k words on “Hell Hath No Fury”
September – Record “Hell Hath No Fury”
October – Record “Hell Hath No Fury”
November – NaNoWriMo “37 Days”
December – Record “Hell Hath No Fury” – Possibly release.

My personal experience with Sci-Fi Conventions

BrandG — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:40:23 +0000

(Warning: This gets a little dark and personal. I won’t blame you if you back out right now)

J. Daniel Sawyer wrote a blog post today about conventions. You should probably read if you’re into creative stuff. (It’s here). In it, he talks about con fatigue, the feeling that you just aren’t “into it”, and no amount of cool on the part of the con can make up for it. I only mention that because it totally mirrored my first con experience.

This was around 2008, I think. I had gained some small notoriety for a YouTube puppet show I’d produced called “Calls For Cthulhu”, and some of the fans said that I should go to “the cons”.

At the time, I lived a little north of Baltimore, in Towson, Maryland. It’s only about 20 minutes away from Hunt Valley, which is where cons are often held. Even though I’d lived there for years, I’d never been to a convention, because it always seemed like something foreign and strange. There were badges and maps, schedules and a dozen different talks all at the same time. The whole idea seemed exciting, but made me nervous, and I didn’t want to go alone. However, my wife at the time was not really into sci-fi, and definitely not interested in paying money just to watch people talk about sci-fi. So, I let it go, and just went about my life without worrying about it.

Well, as it turns out, Sci-Fi wasn’t the only thing we disagreed on. My wife and I had a lot of problems, small things that built up, and culminated with her dating a co-worker. We went to counseling, we had shouting matches, we worked hard at fixing it (at least, I know I ran myself ragged with it). In the end, though, it didn’t work. After four months of counseling, she couldn’t agree to stop seeing her boyfriend, and I forced a decision. I was sick from months of worry and I couldn’t take that anymore. I forced her to choose, and she chose to leave me.

The next day, she was gone. She went back out to live with him, and I was sitting alone in a house that felt empty and seemed ten sizes too big. I tried to watch TV. I read news on the computer. I played the same level of a game dozens of times without realizing it.

I felt dead. Not angry, not sorrowful, not bitter. Just empty. Empty, and alone. I felt hollow. I felt so empty that I was lighter than normal. I would stagger as I stood up because I felt like I weighed so little that every movement was more pronounced.

I decided to go to work. It was a Saturday, but I didn’t care. If I was going to be mindless and dead inside, I might as well get some work done, right?

I worked at a video game company called Firaxis. The company shared a parking lot with the Hunt Valley Inn, where the Farpoint con was being held. As I parked, I saw the mass of cars and busses that swamped the hotel lot. Standing there, feeling unhooked and adrift, I realized that I wasn’t nervous about going to a con anymore. I certainly didn’t have anybody who would go with me. I was still feeling dead inside, and sleepwalking through that made just as much sense as sleepwalking through work.

So I walked in, paid the door price, and started wandering around. I had a little plastic bag full of paperwork and maps that I didn’t bother to read. I just walked around the hotel, looking at stuff.

There were lots of people there, obviously. They pushed past me and argued good-naturedly with each other. I saw the stands full of amazing art and decorations, ancient books, miniature catapults, walls full of card games, and melee weapons. While I knew it was all cool stuff, it didn’t touch me. Any other day, it would have amazed and fascinated me. But right then, it was just stuff.

As I was walking around, I saw a table promoting Farpoint Media, and a skinny woman sitting behind it. My YouTube show was attached to FarPoint Media at the time, so I stopped to say “Hi”. She was friendly and engaging, and at one point, she asked me who I was. I said I was Brand Gamblin, and that I did C4C. I held up my hand and wiggled the fingers like I do to work the puppet.

The young woman squealed and jumped up, running around the table to tackle me in a hug. I was, frankly, stunned. Let me tell you something about that dead, hollow feeling that you only get after terrible heartbreak. . . It does not prepare you for strangers being wildly friendly and personal.

And that’s just what happened. The woman who tackled me was Heather Welliver, and she immediately started looking for others that she could introduce me to. They all gushed like I was a superstar, and I was totally unprepared for it. Soon, there was a group of people introducing themselves, shaking my hand, getting pictures with me, and chatting like we were old friends. I think I must have seemed terribly rude, because I just wasn’t able to reciprocate the kind of excitement that they showed. I nodded and smiled, but my brain just couldn’t fit what was happening in with the rest of my life.

Tee Morris has said several times that he thinks they scared me, because I was so laconic and spent most of the time blinking stupidly at them. But I wasn’t scared. I was amazed.

I didn’t feel alone. In less than a day, I had gone from losing the only important person in my life to gaining a whole circle of friends who accepted me instantly, and treated me like family.

That day, I met podcasters, doctors, authors, artists, rocket scientists, and we all went out to have dinner. The next day, I came back with the puppet to show everyone. When it was over, and everyone went home, the house still felt empty and too big, but I didn’t feel alone.

And I haven’t felt alone since.

So, yeah. My story isn’t typical. And yeah, there’s some bad stuff about cons, too. But I attend every one I can. I’ve hosted events at cons, and sat on numerous panels. I’ll always go to cons if I can make it, because to me, it’s a homecoming. It’s a special time where I get to go see my family again.

(all pics herein were taken by Thomas “CommandLine” Gideon)

Because I wanted to play with a story.

The book I won’t sell.

BrandG — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 21:32:14 +0000

Just about a year ago, I made a big mistake. It was a simple mistake, anybody could have done it. But in the midst of all my research, I forgot to check one thing that invalidated everything else . . . Sorry, too vague. Here’s what happened.

A year ago, I started work on a Steampunk retelling of George Orwell’s amazing work “1984″. Same basic story, but told as an adventure, with daring escapes, dirigible explosions, submarine battles, giant cities built on moving railroad cars. The ideals behind Steampunk lend themselves well to the concept that each man is a cog in a huge machine.

It’s a really fun idea, and I had a lot of fun writing it. I figured that, with the success of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, coupled with the rising interest in Steampunk, there was no reason this couldn’t be a seller as well.

I wrote it for last year’s National Novel Writing Month, then cleaned it up, and shipped it out to agents and publishers. I even started to podcast it, though I’m only about four episodes in. My plan was to shop it around for a year, then, if I hadn’t sold it, self-publish it. Self Publishing has worked out well for me with my previous book, “Tumbler”, so it was a viable backup plan.

From the agents and publishers, I got a lot of form rejections. This didn’t bother me, as everything I’d read said that it was pretty standard to get dozens of rejections. Then a note from a publisher floored me. The publisher said that they liked the writing, but that there was no way they could publish this. After all, 1984 isn’t in the public domain. If my story was anything like 1984, it would violate copyright.

Honestly, it was something I just hadn’t thought of before. In all my research, I didn’t look into whether someone would think that I was trying to violate copyright. So I did some more research, had a chat with a lawyer friend of mine who knows his way around this. What I came up with was three options:

Shelve it. Orwell died in 1950, and copyright holds for 70 years after the death of the writer. So, by 2021, I can shop it around again without concern.
Keep pushing with big publishers. If I find a publisher that really loves this work, and is willing to bear the risk of fighting this battle, then it could still get published.
Change the book. When I say change it, I mean fundamental shifts. The title would be gone, Big Brother would have to be removed as a character, the plot would have to deviate sharply from what I’d written beforehand. . . basically write a whole new book. I decided not to go that route because, not only would it destroy the best part of this novel, but with all the changes that I’d need to make, I might as well write a new story.

I’m still going to try to find a publisher, but honestly, I don’t think it’s worth the work. Why would a publisher buy a book written by an unpublished unknown author, when there’s the risk of being sued if you sell it? If I’m going to be smart about this, my time would be better spent working on the next book. In another decade, I may try to push harder on this, when I have eight more books available for purchase (yes, I plan to do at least one per year until I die).

The really sad thing is that I can’t self-publish it. Self-publishing is fun and easy for me, and I’m really sorry that I can’t put it out there.

I also feel bad because I’ve been telling people about it for the last year. I’m sure there are a few people out there who were looking forward to it, and I wish I could help there.

I’m probably still going to put it together in CreateSpace, and print out a couple copies for myself and for family. But the sad fact of the matter is that I don’t think we’ll see 1884 for sale anytime soon.

Another sneak peak at my new project, “The Hidden Institute”

BrandG — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:40:26 +0000

Whister pulled out Cliffy’s chair, and said, “This way, if you would, sir.”

As Cliffy jogged up to walk beside him, he asked, “Howzit all those lads know the wherefores? Did they get special schoolin’ on the way out?”

The metal man gestured at the boys around them, “Many of the young masters have been here for some time. The school runs all day and all night, throughout the year. New students join every day.”

Cliffy thought it sounded strange, but he’d never been to been to school before, so he just wrote it off as normal. Then a thought struck him, “How’s a body graduate, if none start at the same time?”

The robot seemed to consider that, “I know that the curriculum is set by the school, and that it shifts according to the needs of the student. If my understanding is correct, one simply ‘knows’ when one is ready to leave.”

Cliffy grinned, “Really? So ‘s a party school. No flunking out?”

The robot’s eyes widened, “Oh, no sir. I must not have explained it properly. If one graduates properly, having gone through the whole curriculum, then one will know when one is ready to leave. If, on the other hand, one should fail at all in one’s classes, one is summarily rejected.”

“Whazzat mean, ‘rejected’?”

Whister’s eyebrows raised, “Honestly, sir, I’m not sure. The most humane thing would be to take them back to the surface and let them go on about their lives.”

“But you don’t viddie it so?”

“It is hard for one not to question. After all, failures represent a danger. They have intimate knowledge of the workings of the school, coupled with a jealous anger directed at the school.” The robot’s voice fell off as it spoke, “It is hard not to wonder whether it wouldn’t be simpler to just have the failures put out of their misery.”

“When you say, ‘their misery’, izzat the failure’s misery, or the schools?”

Whister stopped and turned to face Cliffy and pressed a thin, flat object into his hands, “Please do your best, sir. I would not like to be left wondering on that score.”

No related posts.

How to lose with style

BrandG — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:01:11 +0000

While we’re not quite halfway through the month, we are at the end of the second week of NaNoWriMo. By this time, we’ve identified three groups.

People who have way too much time on their hands. Devoted individuals who are already over 30k, and asking on Twitter what they should do with the rest of the month. Let’s not dwell on these bastards.
People who have put in the extra effort every day, but carefully meted it out so that they didn’t burn out. Now they are watching the little black line on the NaNo Stats page, making sure that they can keep up with the pace.
People who are lost. These are the people who are looking at 10k words, seeing that they should be nearing 25k, and saying, “There’s just no way.” If you’re in this group, I’d like to talk to you.

Okay, you’re boned. You’re looking at the stats, your schedule, and you know it’s just not going to happen. That’s cool. Understand that it’s a fact, don’t get mad about it, just let it sink in for a moment.

Now, that’s a fact staring you in the face. The question is, “What will you do about it?”

If you think there’s no choice, and you just have to give up, that’s fine. It’s entirely up to you if you want to do that. But consider how you’ll feel about it six months from now. You’ll look back on this and say, “Yeah, I didn’t get the whole story written, but I got 10k, and that’s a really good start. I wonder why I didn’t build off of that 10k?”

Because here’s the thing. Whether you like it or not, those words are written. You’ve made an effort. It’s out there, now. You’ve invested, you have the small tendrils of something. You can waste that if you want, but you have to realize that you are actually wasting something you invested yourself in.

So, what’s the alternative? We already decided there’s no way you can win, right?

Well, not quite.

Option 1 – Amp it up

If you’re at 10k on the 12th (when I posted this), then you have 18 days left. You have 40k words left to write in 18 days. That’s a lot of words, more than you started out with, but at the same time, it’s not impossible. In fact, it’s around 2200 words per day.

Imagine you get up 20 minutes early and sneak over to the computer to write. Now, I’m not the fastest typist, but I can get 500 words in 15 minutes. If you can do that, you start the day off with a 500 word lead. Say you get an hour lunch break. Eat at your desk (just for this month) and take the first 15 minutes to write. Now you’re looking at 1000 words, and you aren’t even home from work yet. When you get home, tell the family that you need just a few minutes to write before dinner (another 500), then, just before you go to sleep, you take a quarter hour to top off the day (2000 words by now, minimum).

It’s not easy. I won’t kid you. It sounds easy to say “15 minutes here, 15 minutes there” but it requires a lot of willpower and stamina. At the same time, you knew that when you started, right? Now it’s just a little bit more willpower and stamina. In fact, it’s really only 15 minutes more each day.

But okay, let’s say that you’ve seen how it’s gone so far, and you can tell you just won’t be able to find the time. This leads us to:

Option 2 – Don’t win

I know. What’s the point of being in the race if you’re not trying to win? And besides, what’s the difference between failing and just giving up?

What I’m recommending here is that you recognize the difference between not winning, and quitting. You’re a writer. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t have 10k down if you weren’t a writer. So to decide to quit cold turkey is nuts. Imagine that you’ve already lost NaNo, or imagine that you’ve already won it. It doesn’t matter because either way, you’re going to keep writing. It’s what you do.

So, instead of worrying about getting 1,667 words per day, just keep trying to put words down. Keep updating the NaNo website, keep cheering on your friends. Use NaNoWriMo as a chance to work on your own writing habits. Make writing a habit for yourself. Screw the deadline, and keep writing.

Imagine you get to December, and you’ve “only” written 40k words. . . that’s forty thousand freaking words! That’s a novella! You can hold your head up high with that, and call yourself an author.

But I’ll let you in on a secret. If you keep writing until you get to December 1st, you won’t stop with 40k. You’ll have the habit, and you’ll want to finish your story. You’ll write until it’s done, and you’ll have something monumental to tell people about. You will be a novelist.

So, even if you’re not going to win, you can’t lose. . . as long as you keep writing.

—

BTW, this blog post is 891 words long. I wrote it before work. It can be done.

- Brand Gamblin is a two-time winner of NaNoWriMo, and author of the sci-fi novel “Tumbler“, available through Amazon.

An open letter to the NaNoWriMo detractors.

BrandG — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:18:25 +0000

It’s November. Fall has finally taken hold and started making threats about the upcoming Winter. The election is over, Thanksgiving is yet to come. . . It’s also time for the NaNoWriMo whining to start.

Every year that I’ve been involved with the National Novel Writing Month, I’ve seen a proliferation of blog posts regarding it. Those posts fall into two categories:

1) Tips on how to put a huge, devoted effort into one month for a story you’ll probably never sell.
2) Snide remarks about how stupid it is to waste a month of your life on a story you can’t sell, and how you waste hours of editors time with those same stories. I’d like to speak to the writers, editors, and publishers who have advanced these ideas.

Let me lay a groundwork for my position by pointing out the things we agree on. NaNoWriMo stories are crap. Yes. We know that. You don’t need to tell us anymore. It’s on the website. We’re writing for quantity, not quality. So we agree there.

Also, there are some people who delude themselves into sending their first draft, fresh off the presses, to agents and publishers. These people are wrong to do it. I agree with you there.

Where we differ is the reaction that you have to this. First of all, if you are an agent or publisher who wants to avoid unedited NaNoWriMo stories, simply list on your submission guidelines that you only accept NaNoWriMo stories during the month of October. If you see the word “NaNoWriMo” anywhere in the query, ship them the form rejection. They deserve it for wasting your time.

You’ll still get a glut of writers who think they can get around you by not admitting that their work is a NaNo story. You know how to deal with that? Treat them like all the other hapless, unagented writers that you tell us about the other 11 months of the year.

When you write articles about submissions that say “Greatest story ever put to paper” or “Completely original idea that you are lucky enough to publish for me”, understand that these people are no more noble than the NaNoWriMo writers. There are people just as lost and goofy, who didn’t put the work into devoting one month to writing.

In the real world, there are good writers, and there are crap writers. In NaNoWriMo, there are good writers, and there are crap writers. Going out of your way to deride the people most interested in the devoted pursuit of a novel doesn’t help anybody.

And by the way, the only reason I care enough to tell you this is because I respect you guys. You are the established writers, the seasoned publishers. You guys have been the purveyers of quality writing for years, and I would love someday to join you. But when you take on the general populace, people striving to be like you, and call us all clueless hacks, you diminish yourself in our view. Take the high road. Pass on the nutjobs, but relish in the fact that, in a world where people are reading less, this group still reveres you enough to want to be one of you.

By the way, we’re not all that bad. In the NaNoWriMo press pack, you can find a list of authors who did get their NaNoWriMo stories published, including the bestseller, “Water for Elephants”. I, myself, am paying for my car with royalties from my first NaNoWriMo story, Tumbler (self published after editing).

It’s trendy and hip to insult the unwashed masses. I get that. But before you deride an entire populace, realize that your real beef is with a small segment of the group. Target your complaints at the unwanted symptom, and leave the noble cause alone.

How I pulled myself out of a NaNoWriMo Lull

How I pulled myself out of a NaNoWriMo Lull

BrandG — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:09:03 +0000

Today was a bad day, writing-wise. We’re on day two of NaNoWriMo, and I was spitting fire on day one. Over 2,000 words on the first day is a good way to start. I knew I’d burn out eventually, but I was feeling good.

Today I hit a slump. It’s not that I didn’t want to write. It’s just that I knew what was happening in the story, and this was going to be a boring bit. I mean, all stories are peaks and valleys. You have new, exciting things, full of plot twists and gunfights and dramatic heart-wrenching breakups. But then you have the lulls in between, where you set people up for the next big peak.

I hit a lull. On day two, I hit a lull. That fundamentally sucks, and it kills my wordcount. Again, I had no problem sitting down and writing, I just didn’t like what I had to write next, so I couldn’t get the motivation to start.

Then I realized two things, which totally saved me, in different ways:

1) I don’t have to write that bit right now. If the lull bores me, just skip over it, and go for the good bits. When I hit the end of the book, and I still need to flesh it out for a NaNoWriMo wordcount, I can go back to lulls like this and fill them in while I’m bleary and not giving a damn whether it’s exciting or not.

In fact, screw the lulls. If there’s a part of the story I don’t want to write, it’s a good bet that it’s a part of the story nobody’s going to want to read. I’ve got my hero in location A, he needs to be in Location B. Rather than describing how he packs up his stuff, waits for the bus and thinks about (love interest to be named later), sits on the bus and waits until he gets to the right stop, then walks three blocks to Location B (because they never have the bus stops where you really need them, do they?). Rather than doing all that, I just write the sentance, “Then hero hopped on a bus and went to Location B.”

Chances are, the lull in the story would feel like a pause for the reader, and a pause is a good place to put a book down and go do the dishes or start that really good book that your friend was talking about. So, lulls do nothing for either the reader or the writer. Skip them, and get back to the exciting stuff.

2) Even better. Don’t let it be a lull. Everything that happens can be exciting, all we need to do is add conflict. Hero has to get on a bus? Okay. Did I mention that he has an irrational fear of diesel fumes? Or that he has to get to Location B in the next ten minutes or (love interest to be named later) will suffer a violent, tragic and unnecessarily long death? Did I mention that the bus has been hijacked by Mutant Nazi Kittens?

Okay, that may be stretching it. Not everybody can slot Mutant Nazi Kittens into their story without throwing off the narrative a bit. But you get the idea. Find an element of conflict to keep the hero, and the reader, interested, nervous, anxious, and involved. Remember, boredom is the enemy. Not just for you, but for the reader as well.

Anyway, that’s how I managed to get 700 words done this morning, while I was stuck in a lull.

Instantaneously

Help Support the GrailPack

BrandG — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:40:08 +0000

Marc Bailey and Heather Welliver are some great friends of ours that are going through a very rough time. They are good people who have been hurt by the current rampant unemployment. Now you know my family is having trouble after being attacked legally for so long, but if you have anything to spare, help this family keep healthcare for their sweet little child.

http://grailpack.chipin.com/support-the-grailpack

The EP Legal Fund needs your help.

BrandG — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:06:47 +0000

Help Protect a Pirate Ninja.

Click here to help!

In 2007, Allison Duncan’s husband drained all of the bank accounts and kicked her out of the house, telling her “You are not welcome in my home.” Less than a month later, his mistress moved in with him. This move left Allison homeless, penniless, and caring for a four-year-old child. Allison and her daughter were taken in by close friends in South Carolina until she could get on her feet.

Her husband wanted Allison to give up all rightful claims to a fair split in the divorce, and he was incensed to find out that evicting her did not drive her to submit to his demands. He ambushed her with legal proceedings and surprise hearings. He was outraged when a judge agreed with Allison, and required him to pay child support. Since that time, he has sporadically refused to pay child support, leaving him almost ten thousand dollars behind.

Seeing custody as the only way to get out of these child-support payments, Allison’s husband concocted an elaborate ruse, including giving up visitations then holding surprise hearings claiming Allison had denied his court ordered visitation. He went on to fabricate evidence in support of his groundless charges that the child was abused. I was evicted from my home, pending a Child Protective Services investigation. More travelling, doctor’s visits, a 730 evaluation. In the end, the evaluating doctor announced what we all knew was true; Allison had never abused her child and could never abuse her child. The whole mess only served to delay his payments and cost us thousands more in defense costs.

For years we have been fighting to keep this child in a safe environment with her mother. If you are here, you know us. You know that Allison is the finest mother anyone could hope to have. You know what a bright and bubbly, friendly and brilliant child the EP is. But the hatred and bile that encompasses Allison’s ex blinds him to the needs of the child. He has already stated that, if he gets custody, “You will never see [EP] again.”

We will fight. We must fight. But the fight is taking its toll. We are now thousands of dollars into debt. Recently, we reached a watershed moment. The marriage has been ended, and Allison’s ex-husband has already married his mistress. The property portion of the divorce is nearing settlement. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But it has come at a huge cost. We just got a bill from the lawyer that was almost as much as I make in a paycheck, and that comes while we’re pinching to save every dollar in paying down our debt. We desperately need help.

This past year, I’ve been putting a little aside every month for Christmas. Yesterday, in order to pay the latest legal bill, I had to drain the Christmas account. I hope to be able to build it up again, but it’s October already, and Winter is coming.

I tell you this, not as some cheezy pull on the heartstrings, but rather as an example of how much we truly need and appreciate your help.

Thank you Gifts

As a personal thank-you, I would like to offer you my most valuable virtual asset and a gift that cannot be found anywhere else. For every donation, I will send a copy of my unreleased short story “Worse than the Disease”, which has only ever been read at Balticon and at DragonCant. To date, no digital version of this story exists in the wild.

For every donation over five dollars, I will send a PDF of “Worse than the Disease”, and a PDF version of my novel, “Tumbler”. It has been my most successful creative venture to date, and is my most valuable virtual asset.

***
Update: Flying Island Press has offered to give a text version of their first issue of Flagship Magazine (where I wrote my first published fiction) to anyone who will make a donation of $5 or more. So, if it weren’t enough to protect the Elf Princess, you can now get a copy of Tumbler as well as issue #1 of Flagship.

You should stop by and look at their other issues, and thank them for reaching out to help the EP through promotion and donation. http://flyingislandpress.com/
***

For every donation over twenty dollars, I will send a PDF of “Worse than the Disease”, a PDF version of my novel, “Tumbler”, and a mini-Cthulhu plush. The mini-plush is made by Toy Vault, the same makers who create the hand puppet used in “Calls For Cthulhu”.

In addition to all this, you will get one more thing, possibly worth more than all the thank-you gifts we could offer. You will know that you have made a difference in the life of this wonderful little girl.

Thank you.

Click here to help!

No related posts.

Because I wanted to play with a story.

BrandG — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:24:17 +0000

Sometimes, when you’re writing the same story for a long time, you like to take a break and play with a short, meaningless story. While at lunch today, I wrote an extremely short story. Hope you like it.

Dana stretched her arms out as far as she could, cupping the air in her hands like sails. Her wrists turned ever so slightly, making her whole body spin as the air pushed against her.

Flight was like a thick, woolen coat. It stifled her, compressing all around her, buffetting and pulling at the same time. When she was a child, she would sometimes curl up in bed, pulling the blankets over her head and under her to make herself an egg. She would lie in the warm darkness until the air got thick and tasted wrong. The heavy blankets pushed down on her whole body, making her feel her chest expand with every breath.

She would never feel the safety of that warmth again, but the buffeting winds provided some of that solace. The sound of rushing wind could be ignored, while still pushing out all other sounds. It was quiet, lonely, peaceful, and safe in the air. Clouds covered the Earth below, and blanketed the night sky above. Even the cold sting of the wind on her face couldn’t touch that peace.

But something felt wrong behind her. She couldn’t feel it the way she felt the air, and certainly couldn’t hear anything past the blasting, screaching wind. All the same, she felt something from below, the way you feel someone walk up behind you silently. A change in the wind, perhaps.

She looked back, down toward the Earth, and let her hands fall to her sides. A small black dot poked through the cloud cover, cutting a white trail of condensation as it headed for her. As it grew closer, she saw the mottled covering of the missile, saw it’s clothes billowing and rippling as it closed on her. Almost too late, she saw it’s outstretched arms and expressionless face as it came for her.

Dana dodged the missile, dropping lower, then corkscrewing off to the right. The monstrosity opened it’s arms wide, letting the parachute sewn into it’s fatigues catch the wind and carry him closer to her. The dead eyes of the trooper homed in on her, and even through the rushing air, she could hear his moaning.

“So father is desperate now,” she thought as she continued her evasion. He had run out of munitions, and had started reviving his soldiers, just so that he could throw something else at her. It glided past her, swiping it’s arms in the empty air as she dropped again.

So many years she had fought, just to get free. Father had burned up everything he had, all the money, all the land, all of their people, in a desperate attempt to destroy his own creation. From deep down inside her, she could feel the rushing torrent of emotion boiling over, held back only by her desperate need to remain whole.

The creature passed again, and dropped it’s arms to dive faster, catching her off-guard. They rolled in the air, falling instead of flying. The undead soldier held one forearm around her throat, and pulled his mouth closer to her shoulder as it rode her back. The fear consumed her and broke through her resistance. Her body shuddered as the power ran through her, tearing through her body as it released in a blinding flash around her.

The creature screamed and flailed, burned and dropped away. Dana could feel the pain of her self being eaten away, even as she felt the power flood through her and scorch the air around her. She stopped in the air, looking back toward the ground.

Ten more dots appeared through the cloud cover, closing on her position. Tears boiled off her cheeks as she scowled down at them, “I’m sorry, Mother. I tried.”

Dana put both hands in front of her, joining the power flowing through each fist into a bright light of searing energy, as she flew down to meet the attackers. This would be the last time. No more battles. Live or die, she would end this war.

No related posts.

First scene from the Hidden Institute

BrandG — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:20:18 +0000

Everybody says the first part is key. They say you have to hook the reader in your first sentence, your first paragraph, the first ten pages, the first chapter. . . So I want to share the first scene from my current work-in-progress with you. It’s a novel called “The Hidden Institute” (working title). Tell me what you think. Would this grab you? Would you keep reading? If not, why not?

Note: This excerpt has violence and some profanity.

—

Lord Wheylan Simmons was not in attendance when his valet was murdered. If one were to ask him whether he aught to have been there, he would smile kindly and change the subject.

Given that it was a violent and unexpected death, it follows that the event was unscheduled. As such, no gentleman could be expected to keep the appointment with any certainty. As strange as it may seem, this information would please Lord Wheylan Simmons. He was always one for proper actions, in their proper time.

On that night, Lord Simmons was engaged in several proper small things, all supporting an inherent secret vice. He was visiting the town of McFarland, under the Madison fiefdom in a lower realm of West Lake Michigan. He was there to negotiate the release of dairy production rights, seized by a young man who was counting upon his politically illicit background to keep people from publicly recognizing his exploits. While it was a negotiation requiring delicacy, there were any number of subordinates who could have handled it. Lord Simmons chose to handle this himself primarily because of the location.

While negotiating the settlement, Lord Simmons stayed in the manse of a political friend, which is to say that it helped the friend politically for the Lord to visit him, even as it gave the Lord an opportunity for later favors to be recalled. Most important to Lord Simmons, though, it gave him an opportunity to visit a brothel under political cover. The local barony, engaged as he was in improving his social standing by hosting the Lord, would be glad to provide political cover, protecting Lord Simmons from embarrassment. Everything about the trip was carefully planned and efficiently executed without incident, prior to that night.

The valet in question, Sebastian, was also one for proper actions, moreso than his master. On the evening of his sudden termination, he stood in the doorway outside the “Handmaid’s Tail”. He fidgited, gripping his master’s silken gloves tightly behind his back as he stood ramrod straight. Sebastian’s cap was clean and bright, perched at the perfect angle. Every button on his tartan vest shined with the splendor of deliberate attention. The lines of his perfect gray jacket merged seamlessly with those of his perfect gray slacks, making him look more like a granite statue of a man. The shine on Sebastian’s shoes, the glint of his buttons, and the perfect lines in his suit worked to show that this was not a man to be disturbed, but rather a force to be avoided if possible.

He glowered at the street, willing it to ignore him. The grubby street was home to more than just the brothel his master had brought them to. There was a vacant, nameless bar across the narrow alley, windows smashed and boarded up. At one end of the alley, a brightly-lit liquor store did listless trade, the digital single-tone ring playing whenever a customer entered or left. In the other direction, a market storefront had closed in upon itself for the night, dropping a metal mesh cocoon around the door and display windows. The cobbles of the alleyway were slick with fish oil and the evening’s rain. Streetlights cast dim rainbows on the oily road, and flickered as they slowly gave the last ergs of their lives in luminescence.

It was quiet in the alley, save for the dripping of leaky gutters, and the occasional scuttling of a cat on the hunt. It was just as Sebastian wanted it. If they had to come to this den of iniquity, he wanted to be seen by as few people as possible. So it bothered him to see the young toughs leaving the liquor store, and stumble as they saw him.

The largest one put his hands up to his face, running them back through his cyan hair on either side, “Dizzy!”. It was a pompous move, and Sebastian knew it was intended to insult him.

They all snickered and, following the blue-haired leader, shuffled closer to Sebastian. As they neared, Sebastian could see them more clearly. The leader was a thin, wiry teen, who nonetheless outmassed his brethren due to his sheer height. His bright blue hair stood out in shocks all about his head, like an explosion of daylight. Beside him, a younger boy sneered, his face stretching to accomodate the evil leer, “Somebody’s stepped outta place, SkyBo.”

The leader nodded, holding Sebastian’s attention, “Say, boy! Whas’ da AllGood? You droppa bad left turn?”

Sebastian did not respond, but glared directly into the eyes of the leader. As they neared, he widened his relaxed stance, tucking his master’s gloves into a jacket pocket.

SkyBo’s bloodshot eyes narrowed, “Now looka that better-than. Treat a body like he too low to hear. Ain’t polite. Put a lily skin in a nice suit, suddenly he can’t hear a body.”

Sebastian growled, “What do you want me to say?”

SkyBo grinned, “See? Thass all I’m askin’ for! Bitta the common curtesy, right?” As they neared, SkyBo’s followers began breaking off. They slowly flanked the valet, as he crouched slightly and brought his hands up to his waist, open at his sides.

Sebastian nodded, “Then you have what you were looking for. Glad to be of service. I expect you’ll be wanting to attend to other business.”

“You tryin’ to get shut of me, boy?” SkyBo slid closer to Sebastian, grinning, “And here, we was just gettin’ to know to know each other. Now you pull that ‘attend to other business’ chatter, giving me tha brush-off.” His crew laughed maliciously at SkyBo’s insulting impersonation of Sebastian.

The valet’s eyes cast over the group of leering jackals, down the alley to see if there were any witnesses. SkyBo followed his gaze, “Whatcha scannin’ for, boy? Expectin’ your peeps to come spring you?” He stepped up to Sebastian, and took a loose stance, similar to the valet’s. He pulled out a wicked-looking, thin knife, and licked the edge of it, laughing at Sebastian, “Ain’t nobody comin’. Howzis? How bout you gimmie that sweet lid of yours, and maybe I don’t hurt you takin’ it?”

One of the others piped in from behind Sebastian, “An them shoes!”

Another laughed, “An’ your wallet.”

Sebastian lunged, his open left hand reaching for SkyBo’s right. He grabbed the knife hand upside down, twisting it as he pulled SkyBo in, and forcing the boy to wrench himself sideways as Sebastian’s other hand came down in a tight fist across the boy’s temple.

SkyBo cried out and fell back as the others watched. Sebastian waited for them to realize that his skills far outmatched theirs. He knew he could take any of them in single combat. He made eye contact with each of them in turn, to convince them of the fact.

SkyBo dropped to one knee, holding his knife arm tight to his side. He growled, “Get tha fucker!” and they all lunged as one.

Sebastian was at the top of his class in self-defense, excelling in Torat-Shav. He could defeat any man standing, with minimal warning. He even did well in paired sparring, where two opponents would try to attack simultaneously. However, he was completely unprepared for a pack of armed men, all striking out at once.

They had no organization, they did not leap for different parts of his body. They all lunged for his head and torso, stabbing first. One of the boys actually cut another of his gang in the initial thrust causing both to cry out in pain and alarm.

Sebastian grabbed the weapon hand of one attacker while parrying an attack by another, but was overwhelmed instantly by the remaining combatants. Before he even noticed the others, he was stabbed twice in his back and once in the stomach. One of the boys struck his spine and the knife buried itself in the bone, sticking there. Sebastian screamed as they struck, then wheeled around to face them all, stumbling as he did. They attacked and retreated like an ocean wave, full force jumping forward, then receding all at once. Bloodied and feral, they stepped back and watched him, waiting to see if the staggering man would live.

Sebastian looked down at the gouts of blood pouring easily out of his stomach, and put his hands over the wound. He tried to put pressure on the wound, but the strength had ebbed from his arms. A moment later, he was too weak to stand and dropped to his knees. He raised his head to call out, but tumbled forward onto his face and died.

SkyBo walked over to him and snatched the cap off his head, where it had remained perfectly placed throughout the whole fight. He spat on the man as one of the others crouched next to him and grabbed for his wallet.

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Final update on the 4-hour challenge

BrandG — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:25:16 +0000

Blast! With only a half-hour left to go, after doing noise removal and normalization, the audio is still too low quality to edit. This is probably due to the fact that I was trying a new configuration for the recording apparatus, which put the microphone slightly further from my head, and has apparently altered the audio enough to make it untenable.

As a professional, I know I have to scrap it and start over. I’ve had to do it in the past, but it’s never fun. Worse still today, because I’ve put so much work into getting the whole thing done in just four hours.

Drat.

9:47 1884 4-hour Episode Challenge Update

BrandG — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:53:39 +0000

Just got to 9:47. All the audio is recorded now, and I’m ready to start editing. The plan was to get two hours of editing, starting at 9:00, so I’m pretty far behind now. Still, if I can get 30 minutes of audio edited in one hour-thirteen then I can celebrate this victory with an ice-cream sandwich and an episode of Doc Martin (cause I live in the fast lane).

8:30 4-Hour Challenge Update

BrandG — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:35:26 +0000

Well, it’s 8:30PM EST, and I’m finished with the two chapters. This puts me about half an hour late, due to the time spent on dinner. Not planning for dinner will cost me, but I hope I can make up the time.

But no! Calamity! I can’t jump immediately into recording, because now the little one is taking her shower! And, sadly, my recording studio is right next to the little one’s bathroom. I’ll have to pause, and get a jump on the next episode’s editing.

If I fail this challenge, it will be because of a failure to plan for external influences. . .

Another 4-Hour Challenge Update

BrandG — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:04:31 +0000

Here we are, coming up on 8PM EST, and I’ve only done one of the two chapters. I’m pretty far behind, and I’ll have to hustle to catch up. I have one hour to record, and some of that will have to go to editing the second chapter. This kind of underestimation may just cost me the race, but we’ll have to see.

Four hour challenge update

BrandG — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:17:28 +0000

Hit my first stumbling block. Dinner. Pizza just got here, so I’m scarfing it down and hoping it doesn’t slow my progress too much. I think I’m about halfway through the first of two chapters. 7:16PM . . . 45 minutes remaining.

My Four Hour challenge

My Four Hour challenge

BrandG — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 22:25:39 +0000

So here was my idea. I’ve made a lot of podcast episodes (still in the double digits, I think, but definitely high double digits), so I know the process. Working on 1884, the process worked something like this:

One hour for editing the text. I’ve already written the book, so editing the text is basically just going through two chapters and trying to eliminate bad writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll likely make another pass or two through it before it goes to print, but I’m podcasting the version that I have on hand. So, the least I can do is make sure the grammar is good, the pacing is solid, I don’t use the same word twice in a sentence, etc.

One hour for recording. Each episode runs 25-30 minutes in length, so it normally takes about 30-40 minutes to record. Nonetheless, I’m taking no chances, and assuming that I’ll use the whole hour.

Two hours for editing. On the one hand, this sounds like over-estimation. After all, spending two minutes to edit a one-minute segment should be plenty, right? But the way I edit, I try to keep pacing between the paragraphs better than I do when I record (taking out all the pauses for breath, taking out the multiples, and such). So, it often ends up taking more than two minutes per minute of content. For that reason, I’m doubling my estimate (see the Scotty Principle for more on that).

So, based on my estimates, I should be able to do one episode of 1884 every four hours. I’m going to test that theory by giving myself from 7PM EST to 11PM EST to do one episode of 1884. In fact, I’m going to make it a little more challenging, by doing the laundry while everything else is going on (cause I’m just hardcore like that).

Wish me luck. It is 6:21PM EST now. I will hold off editing the text until 7PM. I’ll send updates throughout the night, for those who are interested.

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Rejected “Owner’s Share” Endings

BrandG — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:39:38 +0000

I hang out with Nathan Lowell pretty often on the interwebs, and as he closes in on the end of the last book in his “Solar Clipper” series, we chat about different directions the story could take (he always keeps me in the dark about his choices, so I’ll make a good alpha reader).

So recently, I started coming up with potential fake endings for “Owner’s Share”. We’ve had a good laugh with it so far, but this one’s my favorite:

As the bulbous, pulpy thing shuddered around the ship, I heard the seals crack, and the hiss of air escaping joined the blare of warning sirens. The red and yellow lights spun madly, throwing crazy shadows across the leathery tentacles that surrounded us. I looked into the mouth opening and closing as it covered the armorglass plating. Over the intercom, I heard it again, “Your crew is dead, your people are dead. You will not survive. Who could face death like this without the madness and fear of a frightened child?”
I wiped sweat and blood out of my eyes, pulled back the release on the anchorshot missile, and smiled, “Call me Ishmael.”

Have you got a suggestion? Throw it into the comments!

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Happy Birthday H.P. Lovecraft

BrandG — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:07:14 +0000

In honor of Lovecraft’s 120th Birthday, I put together a special episode of Calls For Cthulhu. Hope you like it:

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Monday Book Giveaway

BrandG — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:41:59 +0000

If you’d like to win a free copy of Tumbler, just tweet something about the book, with the hashtag #TumblerGiveaway. I’ll take everyone on the list at the end of the day, and ship a free copy of the book to a randomly-selected winner.

Update: The free copy of Tumbler went to Jeffrey Hite, of the “Great Hites” website, and assistant editor for Flying Island Press. Congratulations, Jeffrey!

We’ll have another giveaway next week. keep watching for it. And if you can’t wait, you can read the first few chapters, or even buy the book here.

My Spider Robinson Joke

BrandG — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:10:44 +0000

After reading the Callahan Chronicles, I got it into my head to write a shaggy dog pun good enough for Spider Robinson. This was a challenge, as the man has been telling horrible puns for most of my life, and has refined the skill to an art.

When I had the chance to meet him at the Heinlein Centennial celebration, I had the honor of telling him my joke, and seeing him groan with appreciative pain. He told me later that he could not promise not to steal it. And now I share that joke with you.

It seems there was a man who, while visiting Africa, decided he wanted to go on safari. But he told his guide, “I don’t want to go on one of those ‘look at the giraffe’ safaris. I want to go out and hunt something. Something big!”

The guide said, “All right, I can take you deep into the savanna. But if I do so, you must promise me this. No matter what happens, do not shoot at the Monster Boar.”

The tourist asked him about it, and the guide said, “There is a creature out there, twice as tall as a man, but shaped like a pig, with breath that will burn, and tusks that will tear the doors off a jeep. You cannot possibly kill it, you can only make it angry. So, if you see this boar, you must promise me that you will not engage it.”

The tourist promised, and the next day they drove off into the savanna. For the entire day, they saw nothing larger than a rabbit. They pitched camp and went out on foot the next day. But again, there were no animals to be found. Frustrated, the tourist said, “If we don’t see anything tomorrow, I’m going home.”

That night, the tourist felt the call of nature, and climbed out of his tent to do his business. He grabbed his gun (just in case) and walked a little way out of the camp. After doing what needed to be done, he looked up and saw, in the distance, an immense boar silhouetted against the moon. It was facing away from him, and clearly hadn’t seen him.

Knowing this was his only opportunity, and frustrated by the lack of targets, he knelt down and took aim with his rifle. He lined up the perfect shot in the beasts flank, and fired.

The shot rang true, and the bullet buried itself within the thick hide of the beast. But the creature’s hide was so thick that the bullet failed to penetrate, and the beast whipped it’s head around to glare balefully at the tourist, wide red eyes blazing.

In a moment he was off and running. He ran for the camp as fast as his legs could carry him, with the creature running behind him, bellowing in fury. It got so close to him, it managed to reach forward and bite him on the ass, which only served to further drive him on. He ran as fast as he could until he got to the camp, where the creature left off the chase.

The tourist limped back to his tent and saw to the wound on his backside before going to sleep.

The next morning, as they prepared for the day, he told them of his midnight adventure, and they all had a good laugh, wagging their fingers at him and saying, “We told you so.” They packed up and headed back to town in the jeep.

As they crested a hill, the group saw the most singular thing ahead of them. It was a gathering of all the animals in the area. A huge croud of animals, all gathered and looking toward the center. In the middle of the group was the Monster Boar, laughing and talking to the other animals.

“- so then I turn around, and I shout at him, and you should have seen how big his eyes got! I mean, I had trouble not falling down laughing right then. I went running after him, and the guy took off like mad. He was pretty quick too. I barely got so much as a bite on him, before he’d run all the way back to his camp.”

As the group in the jeep stood agape, the Monster Boar turned and said, “There’s the guy now. Hey, killer, did you learn your lesson? You heading home? Or do you want to try it again? I bet you can’t. I’d bet you don’t dare pick up a gun and try that again. In fact, I dare you to do it! Get a gun, and try that again. I’ll give you the first shot.”

The guide handed a rifle to the tourist, who looked at him, amazed, “What are you doing? I thought you said to never shoot at the boar!”

The guide replied :

“After a hard night out, you need to take the dare of the hog that bit you.”

My 100-year old joke.

My 100-year old joke.

BrandG — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:22:14 +0000

No lie, this joke is 100 years old. It refers to the Mann Act of 1910. At the time, this law was summarized by the phrase “Transporting girls across the state line for immoral purposes.” It was a landmark, though vaguely phrased, law intending to curtail slavery and prostitution. So, anyway, here’s the joke:

Once, there was a scientist who discovered the secret to immortality. His formula required the bile duct of a seagull, which made reproducing the formula very difficult. As he was testing on mice and cats, he had to go out and get more and more seagulls. Finally, he had worked his way up to dolphins, which required more of the formula than any other animal. In order to prepare the formula, the scientist had to drive all the way out to the seaside to find as many seagulls as he could.

It so happened that, while he was away, an old, toothless lion from the nearby State Zoo had finally bored of captivity, and broken out. He ran as far as he could through the city, but being an old and toothless lion, needed his rest. So he lay down on the porch which happened to belong to the scientist.

So along comes the scientist, arms full of seagulls, when he sees this lion on his front porch. Not able to go around it, or put down his cargo, he attempts to very carefully step over the lion, and is immediately arrested.

What was the charge?

(I’ll warn you, it’s pretty bad)

Transporting gulls across a state lion for immortal porpoises.

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My Short Story “Snake Skin” is now published!

BrandG — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:48:10 +0000

Flying Island Press has chosen my short story for their first issue. As this is the first time I’ve ever been paid for my fiction, it’s a big day for me. Here’s the press release from Flying Island:

Flying Island Press
Press Contact – Scott Roche
sroche@flyingislandpress.com
(336) 462-9676

Enjoy Your Sci-fi and Fantasy How and Where You Want

Beginning July 4th, science fiction and fantasy fans will be given a
new place where they can discover authors and stories they’ll be able
to enjoy wherever they go. Flagship, the new e-zine by publisher
Flying Island Press, will soon be releasing short stories every other
month in formats for the Kindle, the iPad and iPhone, and other
electronic readers.

Flying Island Press also recognizes the increasing popularity of
podcasts and other forms of audio fiction. So, in addition to the
e-zine, an audio version will be available to listen to on any MP3
player. Stories they release will be available both in text and in
audio, allowing the consumer to choose their preferred version.

Zach Ricks, managing editor for Flagship, had this to say. “I wanted
to hearken back to what some have called the Golden Age of Science
Fiction.” It’s his hope that “FlagShip will be a place for
optimistic, entertaining fiction.”

Each issue will cost $1.99 for the text version or the audio version
or get both for just $2.99.

Issues will be available starting July 4th, 2010 at
http://flyingislandpress.com/flagship

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NYT Bestseller Gail Carriger talks about C4C!

BrandG — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:26:50 +0000

It’s not often that I cross the radar of a NYT bestselling author. But at Balticon last week, I had a chance to meet the new steampunk star, Gail Carriger, and sit on a panel about YA books with her. Later, she blogged about it, calling C4C “genius”, and embedded C4C Episode 1 on her post. How cool is that?

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The 2010 BrandStuff Contest

BrandG — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:59:17 +0000

Here’s your chance to win some really great stuff from the BrandG library. All it takes is a few minutes, and you could win real big C4C and Tumbler prizes!

This is what you do:

Write a review of Tumbler (60 words or more). If you have already done so, you may submit that review.
Post the review somewhere (Amazon, iTunes, GoodReads, podiobooks.com, B&N ).
Get a link to your review (or instructions on how one can call it up).
Post the link on Twitter, with the hashtag #BrandStuff
E-mail me the link at BrandG@GMail.com with the title “BrandStuff”. Include the best way of contacting you.

On June 18th, 2010, I will collect all of the responses, assign each a number, and then use a random number generator to select the winners. The first number selected gets the first prize, the second number selected gets second prize, and so on.

This is what you can win:

First Prize: An invite to the micropayments system Flattr and a signed Calls For Cthulhu puppet.

Second Prize: An invite to the micropayments system Flattr and a signed Calls For Cthulhu DVD.

Third Prize: A signed copy of my new novel Tumbler.

Fourth Prize: A “peeping Cthulhu” doll and an e-book version of Tumbler.

Fifth Prize: An e-book version of my unpublished zombie short story “Worse than the Disease”, featured in my reading at Balticon 44

The contest will run until June 18th. Multiple submissions are encouraged (if you leave reviews in multiple places).

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Where Am I?

BrandG — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:00:23 +0000

If you’re at Balticon this year, and would like to buy some Calls for Cthulhu Merch, get a signed copy of Tumbler, or just hang out, this is where you can find us (the ones with asterisks are guaranteed, the others are just our plan at the moment):

Friday:

4:00PM Patrick McLean reading – Chase room

5:00PM Introduction to 2nd Life – Derby Room

6:00PM Social Media for the Midlist Author – Chsapeake

7:00PM * Are you sure you want to go there – Derby Room

8:00PM Opening Ceremonies

9:00PM * Being a parent in . . . – Derby Room

10:00PM 2nd life. Be the you you want to be – Derby Room

Saturday:

12:00PM * From New Media to Old – Derby Room

1:00PM Is there room in the fridge, hon? – Derby Room

3:00PM NaNoWriMo for Noobs – Chesapeake Suite

4:00PM Podcasting Science – Derby Room

7:00PM * Online Spec Fic – Derby Room

8:00PM * Why to Blog – Derby Room

9:00PM Baltimore Fan Culture – Derby Room

Sunday:

9:00AM How to use your Words – Derby Room

11:00AM Dinosaur

11:00AM StoryTelling – Derby Room

12:00PM * Lovecraft Mythos CageFight – Derby Room

12:00PM Walk like a Dinosaur

2:00PM The Truth about the Universe – Chesapeake

3:00PM Astronomy Cast Live! – Chesapeake

4:00PM The Heinlein Panel – Belmont Room

6:00PM * Pitch Workshop – Derby Room

7:00PM * Young Adult Fantasy – How to get adults to read it. – Salon B

8:00PM 2nd life. – Derby Room

9:00PM Grow up New Media – Derby Room

10:00PM * Brand Gamblin Reading – Pimlico Room

Monday:

10:00AM * Allison Duncan Reading – Pimlico

12:00PM Pros and cons of self publishing – Derby Room

For signings, the best time is either Sunday at 10PM or Monday at 10AM. I’ll be on Twitter, saying where we are as the day goes on. Feel free to DM me if you want to get together. Hope to see you there!

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I’m too sexy for this blog

BrandG — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:38:59 +0000

You guys remember a few months ago, when OkCupid posted an analysis on what the best pick-up lines were, based on statistics from it’s dating website? At the time, I thought that was pretty cool, because it showed that a dating site was actually paying attention to statistics surrounding human interaction.

It was actually more interesting to me because I used to use OkCupid back in the day, before I met Allison. I haven’t been there in about three years, but all the same, I was sent this e-mail:

BrandG:

We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid’s most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you’d like to know.

How can we say this with confidence? We’ve tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people’s reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.

. . .
Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:

You will now see more attractive people in your match results.
This new status won’t affect your actual match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match’s answers. But the people we recommend will be more attractive. Also! You’ll be shown to more attractive people in their match results.

. . .
Suddenly, the world is your oyster. Login now and reap the rewards. And, no, we didn’t just send this email to everyone on OkCupid. Go ask an ugly friend and see.

So, okay, let’s get the ego out of the way. Thank you, OkCupid. That’s very kind of you to say.

Now, with that out of the way, What the Hell? This website has actually decided that they can tell how attractive I am by clickthrus? What if my avatar pic showed me leaning up against an expensive car, in a tailored suit, holding fists full of Franklins? That would certainly affect my clickthru count, but does nothing for my attractiveness. That seems like such an easy system to foil, it’s barely worth trying.

But even weirder is the eugenics angle. Suddenly I will be shut out from people who are deemed less attractive, missing out on the possibility of finding someone who truly thinks and believes the way I do, just because of our bone structure or hair color.

I think it’s pretty obvious why they say that they don’t send this e-mail to everyone. They don’t want the ugly people leaving in droves, and they are counting on the pretty people to demure politely, out of respect for the poor unfortunates that didn’t make it.

Well, as someone who probably only squeaked in at the 50.01% anyway, as someone who’s already in a committed relationship, as someone who believes in fair play and honesty, I’m the perfect guy to tell the world this is seriously messed up. OkCupid found a way to force people into lowering their expectations.

OkCupid just went “No Fatties.”

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Don’t support me by buying my book.

BrandG — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:46:54 +0000

A week or so ago, a friend and author said, “When I started writing, I wanted to support all my friends by buying all their books. Then I did the math, and with all of my creative friends, and all of their projects, there’s just no way I could afford it.” He said it with a begrudging shrug, and everyone in the group agreed. For some reason, though, it stuck in my mind. I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since.

I just want to say, if any of my friends deal with that same concern, let me help you put that aside. Let’s do the other side of that math. Let’s say I have a hundred friends in the New Media sphere (I haven’t bothered to count). If each of them bought a copy of my book off of Amazon, that would net me roughly $200. And while that is nice, it only pays a third of one month’s grocery bill. It’s nice, but it’s not a huge deal.

Consider, however, if each of those 100 friends used their own skills and contacts to promote the book once. If they left reviews on iTunes and Amazon, tweeted about the book, mentioned it in their podcasts. If they reached, say, 20 people each who were endeared enough to buy a book, then that would net me $4000. That kind of money could pay for six months of our legal bills. It would get us half the price of a used car. It would make a significant difference to the life of my family.

Am I asking you to run out and do my promotion work for me? No. But I am saying that, given the choice between you buying my book to promote me, or you telling people about it, I’d have you keep your money every time.

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A Moments Pause

BrandG — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:43:00 +0000

I posted a swords and sorcery short story to Smashwords recently called “A Moments Pause.” It’s basically the story of the four greatest heroes who have finally cornered the five greatest evil-doers in the world, and what they do in the face of sudden retirement.

The story’s only a buck, and you can find it here: LINK. Hope you like it.

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Instantaneously

BrandG — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:55:30 +0000

Okay, I don’t go “Grammar Nazi” in general, because I believe people should be able to write whatever they want, and use whatever words fit the situation. However, I’ve seen this same issue come up in three different podcast fiction stories, from three different professional authors, and I gotta find closure on this.

I hate the word “instantaneously”. Let’s put aside the general writing advice that says, “Kill all the adverbs”. If you want to say that something suddenly happened, it seems like “suddenly” isn’t good enough anymore. “Instantly” is better than “suddenly” because it means something happened even faster. But “instantaneously” is even better than “instantly” because it’s even faster-er!!

This is bad writing, because it’s being used as a cheap trick to make something seem hyperbolically amazing. The thing that really bugs me is that it’s not just bad, it’s wrong.

When you say “instantaneous” you’re talking about the time between two events. Specifically, you’re talking about zero time between events. You can say that the sun instantly blew up, but you can’t say that it instantaneously blew up. That’s one event, untethered by time to another event, indicating that zero time elapsed between the sun blowing up and . . . no other event. It doesn’t make any sense.

You could say “The cannon fired and the sun instantaneously blew up,” but even that is bad, because it couldn’t happen that way. Once the cannon fired, the bullet (cannonball, plasma shot, whatever) had to leave the barrel, traverse that distance to the sun, penetrate it’s circumference, start an explosion (implosion, whatever), and shrink or dissipate the sun. . . However you do it, there is more than zero time between events. That’s just physics.

So, yes, I am being “Grammar Nazi” and I know I’ve made bigger mistakes in my writing, but seriously. When I read about something happening “instantaneously”, it takes me out of the narrative and leaves me with one thought. There’s a writer who doesn’t think their story can stand on it’s own without illogically inflated adverbs.

Now, get into the comments, and tell me why I’m wrong. Go cut and paste definitions, and tell me why I’m priggish and stuffy. Do it now, instantaneously.

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Tumbler Available on Amazon!

BrandG — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:43:47 +0000

This morning, Amazon posted Brand’s novella “Tumbler” at this link. I can’t tell you how amazingly cool this is.

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My Lost Phone – Addendum

BrandG — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:54:51 +0000

So, about a month ago, as we were getting on a plane to go to California, I misplaced my phone. Someone called the contact number to tell us that he left it at the “Lost and Found” at BWI. So, cool. I went to the L&F desk, and was told that there are actually six different L&F places in BWI alone. One for the terminals, one for security, one for the ticketing, one for international ticketing, one for the parking lots, one for the buses that service the parking lots . . . you get the idea.

So, after a long time spent calling L&F’s and leaving my name, description of the phone, contact info, and all that, I determined that he just didn’t turn it in. Many of the people I contacted told me that sometimes thieves call the contact number just to make sure the phone is active, and the victim doesn’t know who they are.

So there I was, I had no phone going into Cali, and it was a weekend where I really needed a phone (whole family was out there for 730 Evaluation stuff . . . tough weekend). As soon as we touched ground, I went to the T-Mobile store to get a Nexus instead. That’s where I was told that the Nexus can only be bought online. If I wanted a new phone right then, I’d have to pay full price for the previous generation.

I put my account on hold, and headed out, trying to figure out what I could do temporarily. As it turns out, there was an AT&T right next to the T-Mobile . . . and the 3GS had just come in . . . and I was starting to do some iPhone Development . . .

So, long story short, I’ve had an iPhone for the last few weeks. Got no complaints on that score. It’s not the same as my old phone, but it has esoteric benefits of it’s own.

Anyway, I finally get a phone call from the TSA. Turns out that the TSA has their own Lost & Found, separate from all the other six. After sitting on the phone for a month, they were just about to throw it in the “sell on e-bay” pile, when they got the bright idea to turn it on.

I gotta hand it to Android. Any phone that can keep a charge for a month is pretty freaking impressive. When it powered up, and they saw the contact info, they let me know that it was ready whenever I wanted to go pick it up.

So, now I’ve got an extra, defunct, G1. It runs apps (if you manually install them), it works through WiFi. . . it just doesn’t make calls. . . So, if you had something cool and powerful, and useless like that, what would you do?

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