Snow

Yep.  It's here.  First snow of the season.

If I had to guess, I'd say this area averages around one snowfall per year.  Some years it doesn't snow, but most years it does.  And sometimes it snows more than once a year.

We even had a white Christmas one year.  It was in 2010, I think.

Another year, it snowed in May.  It was just flurries, and they didn't stick, of course, but it was actual frozen water falling in the middle of spring.  That was a crazy one.

Snow is rare enough so that it's kind of neat, I guess, but I still prefer summer.  When the temperature is 90 or more, and the humidity is thick enough to cut with a knife, and the air is alive with the sound of cicadas... yeah.  Those are the days when you just want to sit outside in the shade, turn on a radio, and dream up new worlds to write about.

Going wide again

I let Buddy's KU enrollment run out in December.  I'm putting it out wide again--direct at Nook and Kobo, and D2D for the other places.  Once it's live, I'll update the sidebar links.

This should be the last time I move these short stories around.

Beta read is done

Back to my own stuff now.

R.I.P., Alan Rickman

Farewell to a great actor.  :(

Setting

As an author, I believe my strengths are plotting, dialog, and action.  I believe my primary weakness is setting description.  I outline all the stuff that I want to happen, but I don't include any color in that outline.  It reads like a news report.  The result is that I have to go back and add some color to the story after the fact.

A master of setting, of course, was Tolkien.  Consider this selection from Lord of the Rings:

“The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien, there was no stain.”

I hope I can write like that some day.

Outline is done

I've finally finished the Mars outline.  I may make some changes, but the important thing is that, at the moment, it has no holes.  There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I think I've covered all the phases of the Hero's Journey.  It's a complete story.

I decided to work on it after several hours of beta reading.  I can only do that stuff for so long before I have to do something different.  Tearing apart another author's work is tough, not just mentally, but emotionally.  I don't like being the bearer of bad news.  But that's part of the process.  If you don't take your medicine, you won't get better.  And sometimes that medicine makes you gag and cry.  I just hate being the medicine-bearer.

I'm looking forward to getting the whole trilogy done and moving on to something else.  It may be a while before I attempt any more hard SF.  The soft stuff is easier.  And often more fun anyway.

Intermission

I'm taking a break from revising Mercury in order to do some beta reading.  I anticipate getting back to my own stuff in another week or so.

In the meantime, you're probably wondering which rifle--the AK-47 or the AR-15--is the best.  So here's the definitive answer.  (Warning: bad language)