Surviving, Comparisons, and the Usual Bits About Work

Another week has come and gone with very little accomplished. I had hoped to get quite a bit finished on the Armor book, as I had last week, but I got sidetracked by yet another project.  I went through a lot of my saved disks and managed to find all the stories I wrote many years ago with the exception of the one I wrote for ‘

Chris Van Deelen is the author of the Skirmisher Publishing LLC sourcebook Creatures of the Tropical Wastes sourcebook, co-author of its Wisdom from the Wastelands game supplement and contributor to the Swords of Kos: Hekaton Anthology.

Another week has come and gone with very little accomplished. I had hoped to get quite a bit finished on the Armor book, as I had last week, but I got sidetracked by yet another project.  I went through a lot of my saved disks and managed to find all the stories I wrote many years ago with the exception of the one I wrote for "Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles"  That one seems to have disappeared and I probably will never find it again.

What a pity, I would have enjoyed going through and editing it for posting.

But I did find a novella I wrote called ‘Aliens: Redemption’. It is just a little over 40,000 words long and last week I started reading it and compiling notes. I am going to end up cutting it into four or five parts after I’ve completed the initial read through. I’m going to do a fairly extensive edit on it and re-write and as each part is completed I will post it in the fiction section.

Already I have cleaned up quite a bit of the story and I was rather disheartened to see how much my love of the old ‘Deathlands’ series influenced it. I found quite a bit of slang that was used in that particular series in this novella. I have been quite careful to remove anything like that.

I mentioned a few weeks back that my trusty old laptop, the one I purchased with the money I made from my first novel, ended up finally giving up the ghost. In the ensuing weeks since this happened I have found it very difficult to do any writing during my breaks at work. I need a fair bit of silence when I write, or I can’t concentrate. I asked one of my co-workers if I could turn the radio down for the 15 minute coffee breaks and the 30 minute lunch. He seemed ok with it but as it turned out the other guy had a problem with it. So that caused some friction.

And on top of it I had to make sure that I always vacated the computer so that they could use it for actual work, which was just fine. It was a privilege for me to use it for non-work, not a right.

So I ended up purchasing a replacement laptop a few days back and as such this will now eliminate any potential friction between me and the others. After all with the laptop I can go and work in the lunch room or sit in my delivery truck and happily type away and not be bothered by them or customers who need help.

Oh and the good news is that I will be getting Giorgio Alfonso Maesa to do the artwork for the novella. I just hope he’s up to the task of drawing an alien. I’m sure that he will do fine.

Last week I was able to catch the premier episode of a new science fiction series called ‘The 100’  The premise is that the last surviving humans inhabit a space station and have been stuck there for 97 years after a global thermonuclear war devastates the planet and renders it unfit for human habitation.

The station is dying and the only way they can save it is to reduce the population,  so they send down 100 young adult criminals to act as guinea pigs to see if the Earth is habitable or still too radiated to survive.

I’m not much for teen drama, but I was rather intrigued by the first episode and once it comes out on DVD I’ll be watching it.

Speaking of Radiation, it appears that my Wisdom from the Wastelands radiation issue will be released early this week, so look for it on probably Tuesday or so through Drivethrurpg.com. I really hope that my readers will enjoy this issue. It is extremely dangerous though. Heh, heh, heh.

Last week I was able to participate in the D-infinity live – that one player episode. It was really quite lively and I did enjoy my time with the guys. I would suggest that if you haven’t already watched it, you give it a shot. I’m sure that the many viewers will be able to relate!

Onto a different topic. I read – no, lets be honest, I LISTEN to a great deal of books. With all the writing and other activities I participate in, I don’t have the time to sit down and read an actual novel as I used to. But with audio, I can listen while I work, drive, do housework, you name it. And as such I still get a lot of reading done. Typically 6-10 books a month.

Since I started with audio books about 5 years ago, I have listened to several hundred. Out of all those books I have only returned one. I even took the time to read several reviews of this novel and most of the reviews were quite positive.

That should have been a warning sign. See, two of the reviewers compared the author to ‘Stephen King’. That should have sent up warning flags right away. Other reviews were still positive but there were a few bad ones.

I tend to ignore the bad ones because often they are written by people with personal vendettas or by pure idiots. An example is ‘I thought that this was hardcover, not paperback so I’m giving it a 1 out of 5.’

That, my friend, is an F@$king idiot.

And yes I have actually seen reviews like that before.

Anyhow, I started to listen to the book and about two hours in I stopped and began to listen to another book on my iPod. It was atrocious! Silly, un-likeable characters, even stranger undead (yes it was a zombie novel) and some of the worst dialog that I have ever heard.

The other day I happened to see a post on Authors, Agents and Aspiring Writers Facebook page, where one of the posters mentioned that the story they wrote had been compared to early Stephen King. Ok, maybe it is good, but instantly the warning flags went up. I doubt that if I ever see something like that again I’d be inclined to read it. Generally you see that and you know that it was a friend of the author who wrote the review, or the author did so all on their own, using a alias.

I could be wrong, but I certainly will not be reading that work. Who knows it could be really good but it always sets off alarms with me.

Now for something completely different. Many people believe that if something horrific ever happens, such as a nuclear war or the zombie apocalypse, they would survive and thrive. I used to be like that myself, and then I grew up.

Maybe a better word is I matured. I grew a little wiser to the ways of the world.

The reality of the situation is that a lot of those who believe that they would be survivors and not only survive, but thrive would end up dead.

Harsh? Nah, reality. See, in my case I’m smart (and oh so humble) and I have a lot of useful knowledge, and I tend to be quite lucky in certain circumstances.

But at the same time I am missing quite a few essential skills (but I could learn), and I have one major strike against me.

I’m a diabetic. At this time only a type 2, and as such I only require pills to maintain my health, but once all the medication is gone or has expired, I would eventually begin to sicken and weaken and I figure that even if I was careful and extremely lucky and had a group of other survivors to rely on, eventually I would succumb and perish.

Also just simple every day encounters and events have proven to me that I could not handle a lot of situations. Years ago I had encountered violence. Most people would think ‘yeah, I’d react and kick his ass before he knew what hit him’. Reality is that I try to avoid violence, even if I train Shaolin Kung Fu. If I was confronted with it, I probably would freeze for that critical second and it would cost me my life.

It all comes down to that critical moment, that one life or death – fight or flight, if you will, situation and what happens.

I have tended to freeze and as such it would cost me dearly.

Would I like to be that heroic survivor? Hell yeah! Would I end up being that heroic survivor, oh hell no.

But at least I’m honest and I know my limitations.

Lastly I would like to invite all my readers to check out my author page on Facebook and give me a like. The more the merrier, after all!

Anyhow, that’s all for this week. Once again I hope that wherever you are life is treating you wel and you’re enjoying a nice spring!

Until next week, peace!