Monday, January 28, 2019
Writing While Holding a Job
In LA, when someone asks what you do, you either tell them about the job you do to pay the rent, or the job you do as your passion.
I love writing. That's my job. Unfortunately, it's not the job that pays the rent. I guess that makes it my "passion job." There are some people who pay their rent with their writing work. Most of them write things they don't care as much about; that's why they're able to make a living at it. They're more malleable because it doesn't mean much to them, so they're able to do the work that needs to be done. There are others who get to make money writing what they really love. Those people are called the luckiest people on Earth.
The rest of us need to find some sort of work that pays the rent, allows us to live a life, and doesn't get too much in the way of our writing. For me that's been transcribing.
The main thing about transcribing that gives me the freedom to write is that I can do it at home. I get up, go to my computer, transcribe, then I switch over to my writing without much effort. No hour-long commute, and I don't get so exhausted at work that I can't write. Also, I can travel and still work from wherever I am; so when I want to write in another area where I'll get more inspired for the specific story I'm writing, I can do that. I'll be writing a very personal story this August in Nebraska this year. I don't believe I could write this story anywhere but Nebraska. Having my transcription job allows me to continue doing my day job while I do my passion job where I need to do it.
The down side is that, as a transcriber, I'm at the mercy of the industry. sometimes it slows down and we have no work. At the time of this writing, for instance, we've hardly had any work for seven weeks. Without my girlfriend supporting us right now, I'm not sure how I'd pay rent, let alone take care of other bills. However, had I planned better during the months when it was busy, I could have done more work and made more money. So it can pay off if you do a better job than I have planning.
Plus, while a lot of my books don't do great, some of them make a little bit of money. So I often let their profits pile up on their bank account until these desperate times in which I withdraw them to carry me through these rough patches.
Thus the life of a writer.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Relic Worlds: Lancaster James & the Shattered Remains of Antiquity is Available
The latest Relic Worlds book is finished and now available! I released parts of it throughout the year in serialized form; now the entire thing is available as one complete book.
In this third Relic Worlds installment, Lancaster is searching for three parts of an artifact that is supposed to reveal how to defend against the Siguerans, a dangerous alien race that is supposed to kill all life, as it has three times before. This is the most straightforward treasure hunt of all the stories; the one that is most like what I intended Relic Worlds to be. In some ways, I sort of wish I had started Relic Worlds with this as it creates the feel of what I always meant Relic Worlds to be as a series.
After this, the series is going to be less episodic and more of a continuing saga, so this is the end of the sort of intro to Relic Worlds.
If you'd like to buy a copy of The Shattered Remains of Antiquity, click the image below or this link: https://amzn.to/2HjgYIA
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
The Great Dungeons & Dragons Scare of the 1980s
One of the most absurd and even comical scares in history was that over Dungeons & Dragons in the early '80s. The game had been released a few years before, and many kids of my generation were fascinated by the imaginative nature of it.
I remember first walking into my cousin's bedroom to find a bunch of pencils and paper and strange looking dice around the floor. I asked where the game was and they said that was it. I didn't get it until about halfway through the game when I started picturing everything in my mind. Our whole party got killed, (that often happened in first edition,) but I was blown away by the possibilities.
Of course, since it became popular, the parents all had to panic over it, especially the religious ones, which was the community my family lived among. I even went to a religious school, and there were outcries for the books to be burned or buried and for kids to stay away from the evil. God forbid any of them should actually do any research and learn what D&D actually was.
There was even a TV movie made about it starring Tom Hanks in his very first ever role where he loses his mind to the game. I was excited to watch it thinking it was going to be a D&D story made into a movie. You know, something productive. But instead it warned about a danger that didn't exist. News specials followed, and warnings to parents. Of course, none of them actually did any research into what was going on.
Even 60 Minutes fell for the hype, doing a whole special where they described kids who had been "hooked" to the game that killed themselves. In every instance the kids had other problems, such as substance abuse or child abuse problems, or sometimes poverty or something like that. But no, it's the game that's the problem.
I didn't realize until recently how much of this was a generational gap issue. It took me a long time to accept the fact that the Baby Boomer generation is simply the laziest and most judgmental in a long time. They are absolutely the type of generation that would see something unusual and, rather than learn about it, they just pass judgment on it. Far from the social change generation they pretend to be, they were the generation that expected conformity, and adjusted the change worse than anyone.
The '70s and '80s were a period of fearing the unknown. The Cold War was winding down. Terrorism and the ambiguous war in Vietnam left people uncertain who and what to trust. That mixed with the strong religious ties that generation had made for a mixture of manufactured fears. Additionally, being a pre-internet time, learning the truth, or countering rumors took effort that was hard for anyone to do, especially a generation of entitled people who didn't want to do any research.
And thus, the fear mongering of D&D took hold, giving it the Satanic reputation it had. This video below gives an even better in-depth description of this fear, and of the generation gap that caused it.
I remember first walking into my cousin's bedroom to find a bunch of pencils and paper and strange looking dice around the floor. I asked where the game was and they said that was it. I didn't get it until about halfway through the game when I started picturing everything in my mind. Our whole party got killed, (that often happened in first edition,) but I was blown away by the possibilities.
Of course, since it became popular, the parents all had to panic over it, especially the religious ones, which was the community my family lived among. I even went to a religious school, and there were outcries for the books to be burned or buried and for kids to stay away from the evil. God forbid any of them should actually do any research and learn what D&D actually was.
There was even a TV movie made about it starring Tom Hanks in his very first ever role where he loses his mind to the game. I was excited to watch it thinking it was going to be a D&D story made into a movie. You know, something productive. But instead it warned about a danger that didn't exist. News specials followed, and warnings to parents. Of course, none of them actually did any research into what was going on.
Even 60 Minutes fell for the hype, doing a whole special where they described kids who had been "hooked" to the game that killed themselves. In every instance the kids had other problems, such as substance abuse or child abuse problems, or sometimes poverty or something like that. But no, it's the game that's the problem.
I didn't realize until recently how much of this was a generational gap issue. It took me a long time to accept the fact that the Baby Boomer generation is simply the laziest and most judgmental in a long time. They are absolutely the type of generation that would see something unusual and, rather than learn about it, they just pass judgment on it. Far from the social change generation they pretend to be, they were the generation that expected conformity, and adjusted the change worse than anyone.
The '70s and '80s were a period of fearing the unknown. The Cold War was winding down. Terrorism and the ambiguous war in Vietnam left people uncertain who and what to trust. That mixed with the strong religious ties that generation had made for a mixture of manufactured fears. Additionally, being a pre-internet time, learning the truth, or countering rumors took effort that was hard for anyone to do, especially a generation of entitled people who didn't want to do any research.
And thus, the fear mongering of D&D took hold, giving it the Satanic reputation it had. This video below gives an even better in-depth description of this fear, and of the generation gap that caused it.
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