When people treat me like dirt, it's because they're jerks, not because I'm actually dirt.

-The Gneech

Mine's easy:

STORE IN A COOL, DRY PLACE.

-The Gneech

Some old press clippings
my uncle's notes
a bas-relief made of clay...
the horrors that these convey
have given me much dismay
I think I'm starting to go ... insane...
strange nightmare images haunt my brain...

o/`
I'm dreaming of a dead city
where Deep Ones swim in depths of night
where Cthulhu's sleeping
while stars go creeping
until the time when they are right

I'm dreaming of a dead city
with angles Euclid wouldn't know
that was built strange eons ago
and will soon come up
from down below

(whistling)

I'm dreaming of a dead city
where Deep Ones swim in depths of night
where Cthulhu's sleeping
while stars go creeping
until the time when they are right

I'm dreaming of a dark future
ruled by that three-lobed burning eye
when the Old Ones' coming is nigh
and you'll find that death itself may die
o/`

-The Gneech

(See also Freddy the Red-Brained Mi-Go, Es Y'Golonac!, and of course the one that started it all, Carol of the Old Ones.)

In excelsis Deo, bay-bee!

-The Gneech

For the next 24 hours, you can ask any question, no matter how personal, and I will evade, obfuscate, or out-right lie about it. Only one question per person!

-The Gneech

A common piece of advice for would-be writers is that they should read a lot. I won't go over the reasoning here, that's easy enough to find elsewhere, but I will say that it's certainly true, with one caveat: you can't just skim the surface of the story, say "I read!" and be done. What is meant by this advice is that you have to study the work of other writers and figure out both what they've done and why they've done it. The same way artists should look at a lot of art, and musicians should listen to a lot of music.

For myself, I hardly consider myself well-read, although it's probably true that I read more than the average 40-year-old American male. I tend to do a lot of binge-reading ... in the past two weeks I've read three Rex Stout books for instance. I read the entire library of Hercule Poirot novels by Agatha Christie — except Curtain because I didn't want Poirot to be "over" in my mind. (By the same token, I've never read Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, the last Jeeves and Wooster story, and probably never will.)

The thing of it is, I don't generally read a lot of "what's current," and I especially don't read what few short fiction magazines there are any more. It's not that I haven't tried, I have! Just about every time I've started working seriously on a new book I've gone on a genre-buying splurge, but then what happens is that the magazines sit in a pile next to my bed or down in the den, and never get read.

Part of it is that it's such a crapshoot; fiction magazines are traditionally where up-and-comers are learning their chops (although this is less true than it used to be), so the overall quality is very hit-or-miss to begin with. Add into that mix my own peculiar habit of having binary tastes (I either love something or hate it, with little room in between), and a fierce and unrelenting impatience with anything that feels like a waste of time, and you can readily see how I find myself doing a lot of skip-to-the-ending, which is exactly what not to do in that situation.

This puts me in a strange place when it comes to writing for such publications. You see, I'd like to start writing a lot more than I've been doing. I'm working on a novel now, yes, but I also want to write some short stories of various types, and I'd like to do so aiming for a paying venue. [1] But frankly ... I don't know what those are. And I don't even know how I'd go about finding out. What do people read? Seriously?

Barnes & Noble has the usual Asimov's, Ellery Queen, et al.; I imagine somebody must read those, as they stay in print, but I've never actually seen anyone doing it or spoken to anyone who's admitted to it. A look in Writer's Market suggests that there are others out there, but I've never heard of or seen most of them. Where do people find these things? And who reads them? Can I honestly write for publications that I don't read? And is there any chance of getting in if I do?

These are the kinds of topics I'm going to have to tackle to go pro.

-The Gneech

[1] Not because I need the money, although of course that's always nice. But because pay venues are both a tougher market, and more likely to gain you actual readers. Jim Hines discusses that here. Also, well, I've done the "create just for the fun of it" thing. I was a webcartoonist for 10 years!

I spent today playing LotRO, watching the snow fall, folding laundry, and nothing else.

I HAVE NO REGRETS! YARR!

Today (as in later, after I sleep; call it tomorrow if you like) I plan to do a boatload of writing, whether it be actual words on page, or ancillary stuff such as background research. But now, I sleep.

-The Gneech

Normally, when I get the urge to play D&D, I prefer to be either the tactical leader type, or the axe-wielding barbarian. The former, because it's closer to my native personality, and the latter because I generally get the urge when I need to blow off steam.

For some reason, I'm currently assailed by the desire to play a halfling rogue. I could fire up LotRO and try a hobbit burglar, I suppose, that's not what I want. LotRO can be a fun diversion, but it's not real gaming and never will be ... besides which a) I've done the Shire twice now and don't think I could bring myself to do it again any time soon, and b) I'm looking for more of a D&D-type experience than a Middle Earth experience. (And I don't mean a 4E "move your mini around the map using at-wills, encounters, and dailies, and every encounter is perfectly balanced" experience, either. But I won't get into that rant here. I think what I want would be best served by an old-school game, like Tunnels and Trolls or the original RuneQuest, although a 3E or Saga Edition game would work.)

Having said all that, the next gaming on the schedule is for me to run the second half of the current Star Wars adventure tomorrow night anyway, unless it gets snowed out, which is a distinct possibility, or I decide I just don't have it in me after the past week, which is also a distinct possibility. Suffering from some burnout and lack of sleep, here.

Maybe I'll hit Game Parlor on the way home just for the fun of it, and try to get to bed early.

-The Gneech

Greg, lying back on the couch with his feet splayed out into the room, said, "What a night. The drama llama and the fail whale rode a roflcopter over to the lolrus's house."

"This," said Alex, slouching next to him in a very similar pose.

Brigid, slumped down into a nearby easy chair with a glass of spent ice, just looked over at them through narrow slits for eyes and said, "Fail."

"Irascible Brigid is irascible," said Greg.

"Quote for truth," said Alex.

-The Gneech

<-- previous B&G

From SitePoint...

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

IT R TROOF

-teh gNeeCH

bigtig seems to think one of these would suit me...



I'm a bit dubious about the ski mask part, but it's true that I have been considering changing my whiskers a bit. What do you think, brain trust ... would a handlebar mustache suit?

-The Gneech

Hokay, so here's how it seems to roll after all that testing:

If I update my LJ, there will be a notice on Facebook, but nothing on Twitter.

If I tweet, there will be a notice on Facebook, but nothing on LJ.

If I update Facebook normally, it will only appear on Facebook, BUT...

If I update LiveJournal via BlogIt (which is from SixApart, interestingly enough) on Facebook, it will appear on LJ, Facebook, and Twitter, BUT I can't automatically add tags or use any userpic other than the default (although I could go back and edit those manually on LJ).

Oy!

It'll be interesting to see how whatever CMS/blogging software I set up on www.gneech.com plays into all this. Thanks for your patience, all!

-The Gneech

Does -this- Blog It entry appear on LJ?

-The Gneech

Testing LiveJournal/Facebook connection. Did it work?

-The Gneech

Well, I found a little Facebook application that automatically sends my tweets to FB as a status update. Now all I have to do is figure out how to connect it all to LiveJournal and I'll be good to go.

Honestly, the current state of social media makes me itch. I don't like chasing down "the shiny new toy" just because that's where the people are, especially when the shiny new toy isn't significantly better than the "perfectly good existing toy" I've already got set up and is actually better anyway. (Facebook vs. LiveJournal, I'm looking at you here.) If there are going to be dozens of these sites, like there are dozens of IM programs, then I want an aggregator, just like there's Trillian for chat. The technology already exists — ever heard of RSS for cryin' out loud, you shtoopid websites? The whole point of the web is to be sharing information, not trying to hoard it.

Pfeh. The idea of being an old-guard web grognard hurts my brain.

-The Gneech

Still training downtown. The Scientologists next door have been busy grooming and prepping the front lawn in their oh-so-crisp black suits with their little golden badges. It's quite obvious they're sprucing up for a visit by VIPs ... perhaps The Cruise is coming to purge the negative vibes caused by all these I.T. geeks hanging out next door?

In mostly-unrelated news, got some photo reference for my latest novel while we were walking back from Starbucks. I would have gone for more, but it's raining out there and I wasn't sure how much time we still had to spend. Going to have to come down here on a weekend and do some location scouting or something.

-The Gneech

http://www.facebook.com/The.Gneech ... not much there at the moment but that may change once I figure out what it's for.

-The Gneech

Downtown getting up to speed on the various improvements made to ColdFusion since I first learned it back in 2003. While I always like learning new things, I'm less than happy with the commute required to get to and from DuPont Circle from home. And once we get here, although there are breaks, it's pretty much Full Speed Ahead covering the course material, so I don't have much time or attention span to turn to side issues, including the fact that my new car randomly rolls down its own windows, work won't stop e-mailing with stupid stuff that they should all know how to do themselves ('cause I've told them how often enough), and that on the whole I'd rather be writing. In fact, I wanted to do some writing last night but thanks to traffic we didn't get home until 7:00, and once home we had to deal with dinner and work stuff, and by the time that was all done I had been eaten by a computer game instead.

I've warned my job before about this recurring desire to take over my life: I'll not tolerate it. My job has two functions: 1) pay my expenses, and 2) stay out of my way. Right now it's just covering #1 and failing miserably at #2. I shall have to have strong words with it, and if that fails, I shall be forced to sterner discipline. I have a bamboo stick already picked out.

-The Gneech

Nissan Murano, within a certain range of VIN numbers, has a little problem where crossed circuitry causes the computer to think you're holding down the "unlock" button on the keyfob.

What does the keyfob do when you hold down the "unlock" button? It rolls down both front windows.

Net result: at 2 a.m., when condensation starts to form, the circuits go "bzzt" and your front windows go down.

Kind of a disturbing surprise to come out to the next morning. So far we've been lucky that it hasn't happened when it was pouring rain. But it's just a matter of time.

Le sigh! To the nearest Nissan dealer we go.

-The Gneech

I've been working on the mental transition between "web cartoonist" to "writer" over the past week or two, with varying degrees of success. Some of it has been getting my tools up to speed -- clicky keyboard, updated version of WordPerfect[1], that kind of thing. The rest of it has been trying to train my mind to get back in the habit of thinking in terms of long-format fiction.

The Fictionlets have been a lot of fun and great use for keeping my prose muscles loose and active, but they are by their nature very different from working on a novel. Granted, if you string enough of them together, they'd be novel length, but 80,000 words of 500-word micro-stories is a very different beast from a single 80,000-word story.

So as I've been bending my mind towards writing as a more primary part of my life, I've been trying to come up with ideas large enough to sustain a novel -- and I don't mind telling you, it's hard! I've come up with a couple dozen premises that would be great for short stories (and writing them down, I never throw a good idea away), but a novel requires a much deeper framework than "cellphone found embedded in 5,000-year-old volcanic rock." You need a cast, a setting, two or three meaty subplots and a theme -- and you need a plot with enough actual plot in it to fill a book.

And it's that last part is the tricky bit, for me. Sometimes I can sit down and just start banging out something and a plot will unfold in my mind, but more often than not, after having established character and setting, I then go "Uh ... then what?" and get stuck. I'm pretty solid on writing entertaining-to-read prose, but that's just the icing. I need to come up with a proper cake to put under it, and that's where the hard part of writing is, for me.

-The Gneech

[1] Yes, OpenOffice is free, and so is that one from Google; but whether it's because WordPerfect is what I got my start in, or it's just a superior product, I'll leave for others to debate. I need to be working in WordPerfect to work comfortably, so Corel gets a bit more money from me. Le sigh!