Life and This Weekend

So, I had a good time this weekend, and I figured, since I hadn’t blogged about anything at all in several months now, I figured I would talk about this.

Right now, work is pretty stressful. I work in the flower industry, so as its Valentine’s Day time (yes, that’s right, it’s that time) this is one of the two busiest times of the year for us (the other being Mother’s Day). Add to this normal amount of stress just from things being three times as busy, I’ve been given a new job to perform, one that is very complex and that I just didn’t have the time to perfect doing before the peak period hit.  So, like I said, I’m pretty stressed out.

So, I was looking forward to a good weekend. And boy, did I get it.

First, I went to Games Bowl, an RPG/board/card/video game event hosted by Gam3rCon. They put on several small Games Days throughout the year, and they are just a ton of fun. Games Bowl was a kind of Super-Bowl party for game geeks, and it was scheduled for two days. I only went for one, but man, I had a total blast! I didn’t get into any RPG’s while I was there, as most of them were pretty main stream games (I tend to want to use one shot games at events like this to play something I might not otherwise play), but I did play a ton of cool card and board games.

First up was a game called Poo. It’s a card game where everyone is monkeys flinging poo at each other. Juvenile, simple, and a ton of fun. It was easy to learn, and played out in about twenty minutes, and everyone that played laughed, smiled and cheered as the game went on. This is one I’m going to look into buying to play with my wife and son.

Next, we played a board game called Tsuro. I’d played it before, but it was still a blast again. Another simple, quick game, but still, a lot of fun.

Then I had a little bit of a break as I tried to hunt down some quarters to pay the meter. When I got back, I joined into what was the biggest game I played that day… Cards Against Humanity.

If you know nothing about this game, just know that it is an adult, dark, twisted version of Apples to Apples. It’s wrong, and yet you can’t help but laugh your ass off as you play. We were all in tears, and I think we played for about an hour after I jumped in, and I joined the game already in progress. So much fun that I’ve decided I need to own it.

After leaving Cards Against Humanity, I played a game called Sentinels of the Multiverse, a kickstarter funded super-hero card game. I rather liked it, the mechanics of it gave the fell of playing a super-hero RPG more than a card game, but it was all focused on combat. It featured a cooperative play, in which everyone was members of a super-group that fought against a bad guy and tried to defeat him. It also featured an environment deck that threw twists into the combat, and I really liked how that played out. I didn’t have time to stick around and finish, which was too bad, because I was having a good time playing that. But the time on my parking meter was up, I was out of quarters, and it was time for dinner with my family.

But, there’s more!

Because as if all that great gaming wasn't enough, later that night, my wife and I went to learn something called Contra Dance. It’s kind of like Irish square dancing. Only, of course, it’s not square dancing. It’s similar, it’s obvious the two are related, but this is an older dance, and, in my opinion, a lot more fun. We learned the basics of how it worked, and just before each dance, learned the moves from the caller. Then, we danced, and mostly spent the first half of each dance trying to remember the moves and get them right.

It was a total blast dancing this way, and the best part was, I got to dance with my wife, which is not something I do often. She’s a far better dancer than I am, and honestly, I don’t often enjoy dancing. But Contra Dance? That was some good fun. So much fun, I think the wife and I are going to go back on Valentine’s Day weekend.

Sunday was also a good day, where housework was done and then time was spent watching some TV. I’ve been watching the Avengers cartoon on Netflix, which I think will be the subject of my next blog post.

All in all, a good weekend was had by me, which is a good thing, because today was super stressful at work. But at least I went into it relaxed.

Abraham and the Dragon

Abraham woke up in the empty boxcar and stretched. His back ached and his head hurt from the wine last night. He crawled outside, yawning. The rail yard was by the seashore, and that made for cool mornings, which he loved. He reached back into the car and pulled out the broadsword. He looked at the cursed thing, his albatross. He still wasn't sure where it came from, but when he pulled it from the scabbard, it glowed with an effulgent light that blinded him. Even now, it pulled at him. It was leading him somewhere, some place Abraham didn't want to be. The home of the red dragon that had forged it. Abraham knew only one thing about that place. He had dreamed about it, so he knew it would be true. The steel and concrete skyscraper the dragon lived in would be the place where Abraham would die.

150 words

@blanchardauthor

Also going for the overachiever title with the use of five prompt words. :)

Men, Women and Geek Culture

Yes, I’m throwing my two cents into this arena. I really feel like I have to. It’s a long post today, but I really have a lot to say on this topic, so bear with me.

As anyone with an internet connection and any kind of link to the geek community at large is aware of, the topic of harassment and the treatment of women has been huge recently. And, in my opinion, this is a good thing. It’s an important topic, and one that we, as geeks, need to talk about.

Before I get too deep into this, however, let me start by talking about why this is important to me, and basically what my geek credentials are.

I’ve been a geek my whole life. And when I say geek, I mean I cross over many strata of the geek spectrum. I am a fan of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, be it film, TV or books. I love comic books, from the flashy, four color world of superheroes to the darker, more serious books like Sandman and everything in between. I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, and various other RPG’s, since I was six years old. I’ve owned some form of a Nintendo home game system since I was eight, including the Game Boy, NES, N64, Game Cube and now the Wii. I’ve also owned an Atari 2600, an Intellivision and a PS2. I’ve played MMOs of some sort since Everquest, and various other PC video games since the original Zork. I was an arcade junky back in the 80’s. I have owned and wore in public Star Trek costumes, including bajorin nose make up and ear ring.

My dad probably is who started me on the road to geek culture. He gave me a good grounding in sci-fi, starting with E.E. Doc Smith and Ray Bradbury when I was a kid. He added fantasy later with the Hobbit. He expanded my instruction with the introduction of Isaac Asimov when I got older. He continued my education with TV and movies, with such classics shows as Star Trek (TOS), Lost in Space, Battlestar Galactica (the original) and movies such Forbidden Planet, the Day the Earth Stood Still and Them. He was also the one that introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, when he bought for my older brother and then we all got into playing it. My dad ran many a campaign for me and my friends over the years, and has since played in campaigns I’ve run, including one I’m doing to play test the new D&DNext.

I expanded much on my own, finding new authors I loved, finding the joy of comic books and discovering video games. My geekiness just grew and flourished, all thanks to those initial seeds planted and nurtured by my father.

Now, even back then, as a kid, I realized that geekdom was predominantly a boys club. My friends and I in high-school would lament that there just weren’t any girls with the same interests as us, and how much we would love it if women could just discover the sheer joy of geeky goodness.

That changed for me when, in high-school, I found such a girl. My first real, serious relationship was with a wonderful girl who came into my life already interested in geek related stuff. In fact, she introduced me to several things that I still love to this day, such as Anne McCraffy and the Dragonriders of Pern, and the Sandman comic series and Neil Gaiman. She even played in all of my D&D games that we ran during the time. And I realized then just what how wonderful it was to have women in the geek community. My D&D games changed for the better with the introduction of a single woman to the group. My awareness of woman authors expanded as she introduced me to the ones she loved to read. I realized, at the tender age of 17, that women only added to the geek culture, they made it better. And it would only be to the betterment of geek culture to seek out and welcome more women.

And that leads me to today. I’m sure we’ve all heard the things happening in the geek world. The stories of Anita Sarkeesian and GenevieveValentine are all over the place, and I won’t be re-hashing them here. The links will bring you to all the information you need to know.

But I will say this. I’m honestly shocked at the treatment these women have received. And here’s why.

Even back in high school, my friends and I (all male) lamented the lack of women with interest in our favorite genres, mostly role playing games, but TV shows and books too. We discussed why it was and how things could be changed to make our favorite geek things more accessible. We talked about role playing games, especially fantasy ones, penchant for chain male bikinis, and sci-fi’s insistence on skin tight space suites that get strategically torn. We weren’t really aware at the time of terms like sexualization and misogyny, but it occurred to us, even back then, that maybe these kinds of images were not attractive to women.

We weren’t sure what the answer was, but we knew that continuing to show women that were half naked while the men wore full armor with massive swords was probably not it. And so I am shocked that a woman who says she wants to investigate these very tropes in the video game industry, people get outraged. As if she is declaring she wants to take away your favorite toys or something.

And while I’ve always had crushes on women who appeared in my favorite shows, or authors of my favorite books, I never tried to make passes at them or stalk them. I admit, this was mostly out of cowardness, but I also know what my father taught me about treating women, and that included the lesson that “no means no.”

And then came the news story about someone who was angry at pretty women who claimed to be geeks, but clearly couldn’t be. Because, after all, pretty women don’t like geeky things, right? They MUST be seeking attention and to manipulate all those lonely, looser geek boys.

I particularly hate this kind of talk, because not only does it reinforce two very negative sterotypes of both sexes, but it shows a lack of awareness of modern geek cultures. Most of the male geek friends I have are married, many of them to geek women. They have children, who they are raising to be the next generation of geeks. The idea of the lonely geek boy in his parents basement is an image that needs to die and be buried with other things from the eighties that should never return, like leg warmers.

But most of all, I’m shocked at the lack of welcome that geek women are getting from geek men. For years, my friends and I lamented the lack of women in our culture. Now, I look around and see that there are thousands of geek women out there, as many, if not more, as there are men. And yet, there are a number of very vocal geek men that seem to not want them here. As if this were some kind of tree house, and the sign on the door clearly said “No Gurls Alowed!”

As if we have a choice in allowing into the geek culture who we want. As if there is a gate to be guarded. Geekdom isn’t some kind of exclusive club. Hell, it’s not even a club, it’s more a state of mind. Sports fans that love to paint themselves up in team colors and wear the jerseys of their favorite players, that memorize the stats of all the players in the league, those are geeks. People that have memorized every line of dialogue from every play written by William Shakespeare and love to not only watch his plays, but perform in them, or maybe design costumes for them, they are geeks. The guy that has every single phone that BlackBerry has ever created and keeps up with their blog, tweets, news about the latest product, how it affects his life and business and what he can do with it in the future, that’s a geek.

Being a geek isn’t about loving something obscure or being able to quote lines from episode 5 of season 2 of the original Star Trek. It’s about being passionate about what you love. It’s about expressing that passion with other people that share it. And it should be about welcoming anyone that shares that love, or that is even interested in learning about what you love. It should never, ever, be about isolation and exclusivity.

Geek culture has grown tremendously since I was a kid. Part of that is due to the inclusion of women. I’ve been starting to see it grow due to the inclusion of other cultures, and I look forward to that as well. But in the mean time… guys, seriously, knock this shit off. Women are a part of our culture. If we’re really honest with ourselves, they always have been. And this idea that there’s a gate and they’re not allowed to pass it unless the meet some kind of critiea needs to stop. And the treatment of women as if they were something other than fellow geeks, that also needs to stop. These geek girls out there, they’re not some strange, magical beast or mythical sexual conquest. They’re fellow geeks, and we need to be embracing them, as people, as we would any other person that shares our passion.

It took geeks a long time to escape (if we truly have) the stereotype that we’re all fat boys living in our parent’s basement with our funny shaped dice and video games. I would really hate to see us replace that view with one of us being a bunch of angry, woman hating losers.

So, come on guys. Stop fighting against what has already happened, and embrace the growth and enrichment of our community. Give it a try. I’ll bet you find you’ll actually like it.

The Old Beggar Woman

Wow, it's been a while since I posted, eh?

So, I like to listen to this podcast called Writing Excuses. It features some authors I really admire: Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells. It's an awesome show, if you're not listening to it, you really should be.

Anyway, at the end of each episode, they offer a writing prompt. Well, a few episodes back, they offered this prompt:

Adapt the unadaptable fairy tale Mary introduced us to (the one about the little old lady who catches on fire and dies.)

After some research, I find out that the fairy tale they are referring to is from Grimm's Fairy Tales, and it's called The Old Beggar Woman. It's incredibly short and very strange. I decided to take the challenge, and wrote the below story. Note that before you read my version, you should read the original, to get an idea of what I was going for. Then, let me know what you think of mine! ('Cause I'm self serving that way. I mean, why else have a blog if it's not to get approval from strangers?)

*****


The Old Beggar Woman



Once there was an old woman who had been driven to a life of poverty and forced to beg on the streets of San Diego. If you’ve ever been there, you’ve most likely passed her getting on the trolley, or walking through Balboa Park. Late one night, she found herself in Mission Bay, and made her way towards one of the few bonfires that were still raging. She came as close as she dared, trying to get some warmth from the fire without disturbing the young man who was tending it. When he looked up and saw her there, he smiled and offered her a place by his fire.


“My friends have all left for the night, but I just wasn’t ready to go home,” he said. “Come, share the warmth here, and I’ll make you a hot dog.”

It was the kindest thing she had heard in years, and quickly ambled over to the fire. She sat down next to the pit and warmed herself, happily eating her hot dog. After a short while, she fell asleep, not noticing that her clothing, dry and raggedy, had caught fire.

The young man noticed, and immediately pulled out his phone. But instead of calling the police, he switched it to camera mode and filmed the old woman burning.

“Man, this is going to be awesome when I post this to YouTube!” he thought.

The woman slept through the fire, but after filming for a minute, the young man could smell burning flesh. He jumped up and started screaming. He pulled out his phone again and called 911, who sent a fire truck and an ambulance. All he did afterwards was stand there and watch her burn.

When the trucks arrived, the old beggar woman was dead.

“Why didn’t you try to put out the fire?” the fireman said. “You could have thrown sand on it, or tossed one of these sodas onto it. Instead, you stood there letting her burn.”

All the young man could do was stare at his phone. He didn’t have an answer for the fireman. He just didn’t know what else to have done. Playing on his phone was the video he took of her burning. It didn’t seem so funny now.

The End

Daily Word Count

So, last week, I finished the first draft of my novel, Mythic America. It ended up being close to 94,000 words long, which was 14,000 words more than what I was aiming for. It’s also pretty bloated, too, and when I edit it, I know that there will be lots cut from it. My second draft will be leaner, and stronger for it. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I started this novel during NaNoWriMo last year. I made a great effort to finish it after NaNo was done. And during the past few months, I set myself the goal of writing every day until I was finished. Well, really, I just set the goal of writing every day. I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Anyway, I’ve tried writing every day in the past, and was never very successful at it. This time around, however, I was, and I think I figured out why.

We all hear pro and self-published authors tell newbies that the first rule of writing is that you need to write, every single day, no matter what. Rain or shine, birthday or holiday, in-laws or dirty house, in sickness and in health, till death do you in.

That’s all well and good, but almost none of them tell you how to do it. Well, I figured out the secret.

It’s all about word count.

I know that right now, you’re screaming at the monitor, “but, Chris, I’ve been told not to worry about word count and just to write!”

Well, yeah, sure, that’s true. I’m not denying that. But, what that really means is, don’t worry about the word count of your story, just write it. For example, though I had a goal of 80,000 words, I didn’t let it constrain me. I didn’t try to force my story to fit in those 80,000 words when it wouldn’t. I just wrote until the story was finished.

What I’m talking about is a daily word count goal.

See, the problem I always had in the past when trying to write every day was that I was trying to do what I did during NaNoWriMo every single day for the rest of the year. That wasn’t feasible. At least, not for me. 1,667 words a day may not seem like much when considering an 80,000 word novel, but that represents about an hour and a half, maybe two hours worth of writing. And, for me, that amount of time was difficult to pull off.

So, I would get that done for a day or two, get tired, have a day where the best I could squeeze out was 500 words, and then get frustrated that I couldn’t keep up with my goal and quite writing for about a week.

And that, my friends, is why I kept failing.

Then, I discovered this wonderful little hashtag on Twitter. It was #WIP500. And I discovered that it was an online movement, similar to NaNo, where writers would vow to write 500 words a day. 500. That’s it. That’s about a half hour of work for me, maybe forty five minutes if I’m dorking around on Twitter.

I thought, hell, I can do 500 words a day. In fact, this blog post is already just over 500 words. (for the record, I never counted blog posts as part of my daily word count, only what went into a WIP). 500 is no sweat. And the best part about it is, it’s a minimum. If I write 600, 700, or even 1,000, that’s all just bonus.

So, that’s what I started doing. 500 words a day. And I did that for around three months. Now, my novel is finished, and I’ve started writing two short stories for an anthology I’m working on with some friends. All at 500 words a day.

And it’s working out great.

I get to write every single day, which makes me feel better. I don’t have to stress about not getting time with my family on the weekend, or even during the week when they  want to watch a new movie on the TV. I have time to play a video game if I get my writing done early, and I even get some sleep at night because I’m not forcing myself to stay up late to get 1500 words written. I’m way less stressed, and in fact feel pretty good about myself when I do get some writing in.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve started putting a ‘X’ on my calendar at work for each day I write. And it looks and feels pretty damn good when I get a whole month marked.

So, the lesson I learned about writing every day is that you need to set a realistic word count goal for your self. It doesn’t matter how small or how big that is, as long as it’s something that you think you can commit to every day. 200? Fantastic! 2,000 words? You go! It doesn’t matter, because after you do it for long enough, eventually you’ll get to those sweet, sweet words: ‘The End.’

For me, the sweet spot was 500, and I owe that to a fantastic little hashtag.

That’s all I got for now. I’ll be back later with some other lessons I’ve learned from writing every single day, including that sometimes, it’s okay to NOT write. Until then, keep on writing!

Friday Picture Show Win!

Hey, check it out! This week, I participated in a little writing contest (nothing major, just a group of writers doing flash ficiton for fun), called #FridayPictureShow. And guess what? I won!

Here's the link:

http://jendauthor.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/results-fridaypictureshow-week-19/

And for your enjoyment, here's the story I told.


The World’s End resort was exactly what Cameron needed after Sarah died. Sun, beaches, an amazing view of the edge of the world, Casino’s, theaters, movies, meaningless sex with beautiful women. There was just one last thing to do before he left. He got down to the beach in his swing trunks, to the dock, and rented a Jet Ski. He smiled as the man behind the counter took the last of his money. It had all been worth it. He put on his life jacket, got on the Jet Ski, and drove at top speed straight for the edge. 

A Story Told to Me by My Son

Today, before dinner, my son told me he wanted to tell me a story. And this is what he said:

Once upon a time, there was a great big, scary monster. A young boy and his cat fought him. Now, the cat bit and scratched at the monster, but that only made it bleed. So the boy pulled out his sword and sliced it five times in the chest and stomach. And that killed it.

But then, bunches more monsters showed up! So, the boy ordered more warriors and cats, and they all fought the monsters together. The cats bit and scratched, helping the warriors kill the monsters, until eventually there were no more monsters.

But then, the daddy monster showed up. It was huge! All the warriors and cats attacked, and they had to slice and stab it twenty times before they killed the daddy monster.

And that was when the last monster showed up. It was the biggest monster of all. Bigger than you, bigger than me, even bigger than mommy! Now, the boy and the warriors could have stayed and fought it, but instead they screamed in fear and ran away.

They ran all the way through the gate of the castle, and turned on its waterproof force field. There were two force fields, one inside and one outside. The biggest monster made it through the outside force field, but couldn’t make it past the inner force field. It got stuck. And that was when they filled the space between the two force fields with water. And crocodiles! The crocodiles began biting and eating the biggest monster, and the water scratched at it like the cats did.

500 years later, the water and the crocodiles finally killed the monster!

The end