Pawnstorm Digital Press

Things are starting to get back to normal. I’ve managed to migrate over to my new account at FatCow Hosting, and things are looking pretty good. I still have a few things to take care of, like fixing the sidebar and updating the Soapbox page, but I hope to do those tomorrow. As for writing, I haven’t done any in a couple of weeks, but I plan on getting back on track in that department tomorrow, as well, and will probably have some new fiction this month. My projects for the month are: revising Caldera, finishing the rough draft of the new Broken Shores story, and starting work on a story idea that my cousin gave me about intelligent food hamsters. I probably won’t get back to Soapbox until early next month, however, so apologies in advance for that.

Things are starting to get back to normal. I've managed to migrate over to my new account at FatCow Hosting, and things are looking pretty good. I still have a few things to take care of, like fixing the sidebar and updating the Soapbox page, but I hope to do those tomorrow. As for ...

Due to the upcoming holiday, I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing Soapbox. Don’t worry, I won’t be slacking off completely. During that time, I plan on doing a final revision to Caldera, writing a piece of flash for the /r/fantasywriters December challenge, and writing a piece of flash for Broken Shores. I also plan on the occasional blog post. In any case, happy Snowflake Day!

Due to the upcoming holiday, I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing Soapbox. Don’t worry, I won’t be slacking off completely. During that time, I plan on doing a final revision to Caldera, writing a piece of flash for the /r/fantasywriters December challenge, and writing a piece of flash for Broken Shores. I also ...

I just finished the first revision of Caldera, and will soon send it out to some readers. If you want to read it and give feedback, let me know.

I just finished the first revision of Caldera, and will soon send it out to some readers. If you want to read it and give feedback, let me know.

I just finished writing the last bit of the rough draft for Caldera. It weighs in at about 13,000 words, but I imagine that it will gain a couple thousand words in the second draft as I fill in bits and write in better transitions for parts that were written at different times. I first had the idea for this project more than five years ago, and it has gone through several different incarnations, but I’m really happy with how it worked out (although I shouldn’t really say that until I’ve done a couple more drafts).

So what now? The story needs to sit for a bit, so that I can look at it with fresh eyes. In the meantime, I’ll probably write another Broken Shores story, and start making notes for the next Horizon story. Once I get a second draft done, I’ll send it out to readers for feedback, and once I hear back from them I’ll fix whatever is broken and put some polish on it. Then I’ll try to sell it.

Whew.

I just finished writing the last bit of the rough draft for Caldera. It weighs in at about 13,000 words, but I imagine that it will gain a couple thousand words in the second draft as I fill in bits and write in better transitions for parts that were written at different times. I ...

Only two days left in November. Whew. It’s been a busy month. I’ve gotten a lot of work done on Caldera, although it has gone slower than I would like. I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow. I’ve started a new project, Soapbox, which has been a fun experiment (and will continue to be so with any luck). Finally, I finished Trust and Vulnerability over at Broken Shores, and it has been well received.  All in all, I’ve written something like 15-20k words this month.

As for reading, I’ve been continuing to read A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine, which has continued to be rewarding. Also, I have started to make my way through Neal Stephenson’s new book, Reamde, with which I have to be careful or else it will take over my life for a few days as I do nothing but read it. Finally, I’ve read some good short stories, most notably The Things by Peter Watts, which is the story of the creature from the movie The Thing, but from the Thing’s perspective.

I’m not sure how much I’m going to get done next month, hopefully a short story and flash piece for Broken Shores, more Soapbox, and maybe a new Horizon story (Interstellar Fish Larceny FTW!), maybe I’ll even get around to revising Caldera. Also, I want to make some improvements to this site (I want classification icons for the stories here: funny, SF, fantasy, free, etc.). In any case, I have a lot of writing ahead of me today, but there will be a new Soapbox piece tomorrow and a progress update for Caldera the day after.

Only two days left in November. Whew. It's been a busy month. I've gotten a lot of work done on Caldera, although it has gone slower than I would like. I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow. I've started a new project, Soapbox, which has been a fun experiment (and will continue to be so ...

I just posted the sixth Broken Shores story, Trust and Vulnerability. I’m really happy with how it turned out, so you should go read it. That is all.

I just posted the sixth Broken Shores story, Trust and Vulnerability. I'm really happy with how it turned out, so you should go read it. That is all.

I just found a local (not that it being in Olympia has any bearing on relevance) book blog through Everyday Olympia, and you should go and check it out. You might be tempted to dismiss it because it focuses mostly on young adult and children’s books, but then again, those are some of the most interesting books being published at the moment, so you might as well be reading them. And if you’re going to read them, you might as well read the good ones. If that hasn’t convinced you, let me say this: even though I am in no way the intended audience for Beauty Queens, she made me want to go and read it anyway, which is saying something.

I just found a local (not that it being in Olympia has any bearing on relevance) book blog through Everyday Olympia, and you should go and check it out. You might be tempted to dismiss it because it focuses mostly on young adult and children's books, but then again, those are some of the ...

I just posted a sample of The Press, along with links to where you can purchase the full at Amazon or Smashwords. If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s a brief overview:

In the city that lives and breathes magic, something has gone wrong. Strange explosions have killed many, people have fallen into comas with no cause evident, and longstanding enchantments have begun to fail for no detectable reason. The authorities have no leads, and now it is up to Independent Investigator David Ramsey to discover the cause of the problems and, if he can, stop them.

The story is a lot of fun (or at least that is what I am told), think Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files but set in a fantasy city that is on the verge of a technological revolution.

In addition, I’m making the story free on Smashwords until November 11th (or about two weeks), just use the coupon code BS23J. All I ask is that you post a review after you read it. Enjoy!

I just posted a sample of The Press, along with links to where you can purchase the full at Amazon or Smashwords. If you're not familiar with the story, here's a brief overview: In the city that lives and breathes magic, something has gone wrong. Strange explosions have killed many, people have fallen into comas ...

The advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement has gotten me to thinking about a piece of flash fiction that I wrote back in early 2008, Uprising. Basically, it’s about a guy watching a massive protest over the internet, and how volatile those things can be. I had always wanted to write more in this storyline, but had never quite gotten around to it. I had all sorts of ideas: protesters using Pykrete fortifications, an activist blogger being silently replaced with a counter intelligence agent who gradually comes to sympathize with the enemy, a single air force officer in charge of a squadron of drones that are guided by GameI (using networked video games to get players to unknowingly guide drones through their actions in aggregate). But nothing ever seemed to gel.

Well, three and a half years later, it seems as though reality has leapfrogged me. The OWS movement has managed to change the conversation, and may even be the beginning of something bigger. So maybe it is time to start writing about Uprising again. Honestly, I’ve wanted to try to tell a story through flash fiction, maybe this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I do have other stuff going on, but keep an eye out (or your RSS reader tuned), I’ll have something new for you soon.

The advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement has gotten me to thinking about a piece of flash fiction that I wrote back in early 2008, Uprising. Basically, it's about a guy watching a massive protest over the internet, and how volatile those things can be. I had always wanted to write more in ...

I want to be social, I really do. The thing is, most everything that I want to say, I say here, and most of what I want to read, I get from Google Reader. My complaint about Facebook is about the same as my complaint about chat rooms a decade ago: If you put a bunch of people who don’t have anything to say in a room together, don’t count on magically getting interesting conversation out of it. This may sound a bit harsh, but I’m not trying to be insulting here, just stating that I prefer a different style of communication. Also, Facebook is a huge improvement over chat rooms. It allows me to maintain peripheral contact with people, so when I flew into Boston this summer, I posted about it and a friend who I didn’t know had moved out there got ahold of me, and it was great. In addition, I can point that same critical eye back at myself, and see that I don’t actually say a whole lot, my posting here and on Broken Shores (not to mention the social networks) is pretty sparse (although I do post stories and the occasional short essay, which counts as content in my book).

So what to do about this? First, I’m going to gradually migrate all my social networking over to Diaspora (My D* profile, and if you need an invite, give a shout in the comments), and make an effort at actually using it. Second, I’m going to try and put a Google Reader widget in the sidebar so that you can see what I’m reading. Third, and most importantly, I’m going to make an effort to post something of substance here at least once a month, hopefully more often. Oh yeah, and I’m going to be doing more writing, so keep an eye out for that, too.

I want to be social, I really do. The thing is, most everything that I want to say, I say here, and most of what I want to read, I get from Google Reader. My complaint about Facebook is about the same as my complaint about chat rooms a decade ago: If you put ...