The Cthulupunk Returns

So, uh, that took a while. A long while. When last we saw our hero - that's me - I was trying to figure out how to tell stories online. I tried a whole bunch of different stuff, hit a rough patch, got distracted... and now it's more than a year later with nothing to show here, not even spam comments killed by my spam fighting software.

Well, I'm back.

I won't say that means that Jaspar & Co. are up and running again, though I've been rereading my efforts to date and would like to get back to them. I'm not quite sure how, exactly, because things as I left them were veering far too "action movie" and not nearly dark and personal enough. I'd started with some over-the-top D&D 4th Edition characters modded for the world I wanted, but I think the temptation to have superheroes jumping out of airships - which I do enjoy - may be overwhelming the sense of gothic horror that I also hoped to engender. The problem with superheroes is that it's all escalation, because power limits are essentially arbitrary once you move into that realm: even Batman does stuff that is clearly inhuman and impossible. I'm not quite sure what to do with all of that, because I do want pulp elements to come to the fore as well, and at a minimum that means characters who are top-notch in their respective fields... so, blah blah soul searching in my writing; we'll see.

Definitely my menagerie of little side projects is done for the time being - all the distractions from the main thrust of storytelling were amusing outlets, but didn't serve to actually get the job of writing a novel done.

But this space doesn't have to be only about storytelling. I love writing and I love fantasy, but there's a lot more to me than that. I'm not quite certain exactly what this is going to turn into, but I've done a lot of pondering lately on owning my digital content: making certain that stuff I post to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is mine, in a meaningful way. I don't care how good any of those services are about letting you export your data, unless you have it in a place where you can do something with it, it's not yours.

So, as ever, I'll be experimenting with owning my own content online. I don't know yet how that will shake out, but that's the part of the internet that I love: the uncertainty of novelty.  There will be plenty of stuff here that has nothing to do with steam, punks, or Cthulu (or even Cthulhu), but hopefully it'll be worth reading anyway.

Perhaps eventually in all that novelty, I'll get a novel out as well. Thanks for reading.

I'm liked!

I got my first "like" today on Chapter Seven.  Woo-hoo!  It's good to be liked! For those of you who do enjoy my work, please do click buttons.  Share, +1, like... everything you do is a boost to both my self esteem and the chances that someone else might read this stuff.  So go, now, find a button and click away!

A new (pre)dawn

For those of you who've read my previous efforts in the blogosphere, first, a heartfelt thank you. It's a tough thing to keep doing -- as my rather, um, spotty track record shows nicely -- and knowing that somebody's reading along is truly a great reward. In the past, it hasn't proven to be quite enough, though this last go-round I was doing pretty well until someone had to come along and get bornon me. Some people, I tell you.

It's taken some figuring, but here's how I'm getting it done these days: four A.M. Mostly anymore, I'm not up on baby duty, so getting up to get an hour of writing out before I head into work is something I can make happen at least a few times per week. Add to that the odd timeslot here and there -- and the fact that my TV just seems to have died on me -- and I'm confident that I can turn out at leastone good page a week.

So that's what I'm promising: one page per week, every Wednesday, starting a week from today. It'll be a page (give or take) with a concise snippet of whatever part of the world of Raiusha that I'm working on at the time, and hopefully it'll be in a good enough state by the time I'm done fiddling with it that it'll actually be an intriguing look into the world of the fiction. I hope you enjoy them!

Meanwhile, I'll also be working on the actual novel. That's probably going to be slow going, but I'll keep putting up either whole chapters or excerpts for as long as I'm still writing. And at the end of this, just maybe I'll have something worth putting on a bookshelf someday.

Four A.M... I'll see you tomorrow!