Category: The Ramble (page 256 of 478)

Well, well, well.

HAPPY NERDTIVITY AND SWEET GEEKMAS TO ALL.

So, Kevin and I? We picked our favorite. So many good options but this one was like a meteorite of pure awesome striking us each in our manly mega-beards.

That up there, that’s #4 in the list, and it’s our favorite of the bunch.

Of our winning entry, Kevin says:

There is so much to love in this scene, but what makes it tops for me is the stuff in the background. The Dark Lord of the Sith is an ominous portent but he’s completely destroyed by the friendly Abominable Snowman cannonballing out of the sky. Vader’s red phallic symbol, usually held like an aggressive Viagra boner, is at half mast in deference to the joy of the Snowman. The Force is strong with him, and with so much else in this entry. Bravo!

I, too, am a huge fan of the cannonballing Bumble. Also: Xenomorph! Rocket! Jack! Slimer.

I want to live inside that Nativity. LET ME LIVE THERE.

So: Tiffany and Eric? Congratulations!

And now, it’s your turn to vote.

Here’s how this works.

You will click this link and gaze in awe at the Nerdtivity 2014 gallery.

You will choose your single favorite Nerdtivity and you will post the number of that photo (note: each photo is numbered!) in the comments below. DO NOT CHOOSE NUMBER FOUR because, duh, Kevin and I already picked that one, nyah nyah nyah. (Inevitably, one of you will vote for #4 anyway, and your vote will be disqualified because you did not read carefully enough.)

You have till Sunday night (12/21), 11:59PM EST to vote.

Then, next week, I’ll tally the votes and we’ll pick the top two winners and pick a random two winners (and those folks will win the prizes dictated in the original Nerdtivity rules post).

You can vote one time only.

And I think that’s that.

So: get to voting, nerds.

(I’ll preface this by saying: I wrote this post once, WordPress logged me out right at the end, then wouldn’t save and erased the whole bloody thing. Ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha, please excuse my loud and egregious sobbing. Now I will rewrite the entire post from memory, and given that I have a memory like mouse-eaten underwear, it will probably look nothing like I originally intended.)

The holidays are fucking hard. Fuuu-huuu-huuuu-king hard.

Here’s the deal with the holidays:

All the things you have to normally do in your life? Work, kids, pets, family, bills, grocery shopping, regular shopping, chores, cleaning, repairs, masturbation, whatever — you still have to do all that, and you get the same amount of time to complete those tasks. Except now? Now you’ve got a mad-eyed elf hunkered down on your shoulder, and he’s got a holly jolly handgun pressed to your temple, and he’s like, “Oh, hey! Now you’ve also got to shop, and bake, and cook, and decorate, and don’t forget about those holiday parties, and those friends you never see, and the family you don’t like, and nope, you won’t get any more hours in your day JUST MAKE IT WORK or I’ll kill that baby reindeer over there and blame it on you.”

It’s a tectonic stress test. Your ground shakes. Your schedule shudders and buckles.

Not to mention all the other issues that come into play.

Got food issues? Ha ha ha, sucker. Enjoy not being able to eat 78% of the things on every table that you encounter. “ENJOY YOUR GLUTEN-FREE, SUGAR-FREE, NUT-FREE PROCESSED KALE SLURRY, YOU MUTANT,” your relatives cry as they eat cheesecake stuffed with a smaller cheesecake stuffed with a core of pure molten gluten. (“Mölten Glüten” is the name of my Scandinavian foodie metal band, by the way.)

Got weight issues? Oh, man, yeah, sorry. Here, just eat this tub of SUGARFAT ELF BUTTER, you’ll surely feel better, at least until you look in the mirror and all the body issues you’ve ever had will haunt you like the ghosts that terrorized Ebeneezer Scrooge — and it’s a problem that replicates itself, too, because you feel shitty about the way you look so you eat food that makes you look worse and then you go to see friends or family where inevitably someone says something totally inappropriately horrible (“OH YOU’RE LOOKING NICE AND CHUNKY THIS YEAR — NO, NO, I MEAN YOU LOOK HEALTHY, LIKE A GIRTHY, WELL-FED BEEFALO”), and then you just wanna go and bury your entire face in pie for the remainder of your days.

Got money issues? You poor fucker. We’re bombarded with deals like it’s war-time and sale flyers are propaganda papers dropped on our bombed-out mental cities with the singular goal of destroying our very will so that we buy more silly shit, and yet people can’t afford said silly shit and so like with the weight issue it’s a replicating cycle, isn’t it? Your credit card starts burning a hole in your pants like the One Ring in a hobbit’s pocket. Your credit card is a shovel and you dig yourself into a deeper hole and you can’t get yourself out of the hole because ha ha ha debt is fine, don’t worry about it, surely Santa will pay it off OH WAIT SANTA ISN’T FUCKING REAL.

Got grief? Of course you do. Everyone does. (Especially Charlie Brown!) We have relationships that have failed us. We have friendships that crumbled like a weeks-old scone. We’ve lost loved ones — hell, my father died in 2007 just days before Christmas. That gives the holidays an added, fucked-up dimension — like we’re all looking through a wintry window, except the window isn’t frosted over with snow and ice, but rather, slicked over with a faint sheen of crystallized grief. No time of the year is this grief more keenly felt — it distorts everything, just slightly.

What’s my point?

I guess it’s this: cut folks a little slack. You don’t know what they’re going through. We all have this secret, sub rosa frequency of stress and sadness and it’s a song you hear more strongly during the holidays — just be aware of that. The holidays can be a hard row to hoe for those of us in the best of circumstances, so: ease off the throttle a bit and as they say in that song: let it go. (Sidenote: I think I am the last person in North America to not have seen Frozen. I’m like the Omega Man, but of wintry Disney musical cartoons.)

This also means you have to cut yourself a little slack, too. Do your best and just let the holidays wash over you. It’s very easy to say — “Don’t fret!” — but seriously? Give yourself a break. Things aren’t going to be perfect. That house won’t be clean as you want it. Your work might take a hit. You don’t have to bake a thousand cookies and those cookies you do bake don’t have to be perfect.

And I recognize this is way easier said than done, but it’s worth a look at the holidays. Find the things you love about the holidays and also look at those things that stress you right the fuck out, and then try to cut out the stressful stuff while cleaving to the awesome stuff. Even cutting out a few stressors can make a huge, huge difference.

Just be nice. Be nice to yourself and to everyone else. It’s a happy time of year, but it can be a hellish one, too. Let’s all get through it together. Now: join with me as we go on the annual NOG-SODDEN ELF HUNT. Because this elf is a right bastard. Now mount up and let’s roll.

It’s that time.

That time where I want you to dig deep, grit your teeth, and pick your absolute FAVORITE THINGS OF THE YEAR. In each, you will pick one favorite thing — not three, not two. I want you to imagine that someone is dangling you over a pit, and in the pit is this goose. This goose will hurt you if you do not play by the rules. He’ll hurt you, your family, your friends. This is not a nice goose.

So: play by the rules.

Here, then, are the questions. Answer ’em in the comments as you see fit.

1) Favorite novel of the year?

2) Favorite non-fiction book of the year?

3) Favorite short story of the year?

4) Favorite movie of the year?

5) Favorite TV show of the year?

6) Favorite song of the year?

7) Favorite album?

8) Favorite video game?

9) Favorite app?

10) Favorite [something else] of the year?

(Number ten is deliberately vague. Favorite toy? YouTube video? Movie trailer? Favorite meal? Friend? Sexual experience? Favorite planet, dog, tree, serial killer, time-traveling robot — ?! Your choice.)

Ahem.

A few flares shot up in the darkness, here —

Two new anthologies have landed, each containing a short story of mine.

First up: Dangerous Games, from Solaris, a SFF anthology about playing games. Features my story, “Big Man.” (A story about road rage, highway races, and the expectations of masculinity.) Features stories by Hilary Monahan, Pat Cadigan, Lavie Tidhar, Nik Vincent, and more. (Particularly exciting being in an anthology with Pat Cadigan — really, she was my introduction to cyberpunk way back when, so sharing pages with her? So cool.) Edited by Jon Oliver.

Second up: Trouble in the Heartland, an anthology of crime stories, each with a title based on a Bruce Springsteen song. Features my story, “Queen of the Supermarket.” (A story about a man’s obsession with a supermarket checkout girl.) Features some of my favorite crime writers: Hilary Davidson, Chris Holm, Todd Robinson, and oh, holy shit, Dennis Lehane. Note that some of the proceeds for this anthology go toward the Bob Woodruff Foundation, helping injured veterans. (Note: not related to my own Heartland young adult series.) Edited by Joe Clifford.

Dangerous Games: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

Trouble in the Heartland: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

(Also a good time to remind you that both of my Heartland books — Under the Empyrean Sky and Blightborn are both two bucks a piece for your Kindle till the end of December.)

Last week’s challenge: Holiday Horror!

I love the random title challenge.

I love it so much I wanna hug it.

I wanna hug it so much it explodes.

Anyway.

Way it works is this: you pick one from the two columns of 20 either by using a d20 die or a random number generator, and smooshing the word from Column One with the word from Column Two gets you a title. (You can modify that title slightly by putting “The” in front of it or making the title plural or possessive in some way.) You write the story — we’ll say 1500 words max this time around. Then you post it at your online space and drop a link here so we can all read it. Due by next Friday, noon EST.

Get it? Got it? Great.

Column One

1. Skyborn
2. Murderer’s
3. Cocktail
4. Night
5. Dead
6. Obliterated
7. Heaven’s
8. Thirteenth
9. White
10. Armored
11. Wrong
12. Daniel’s
13. A Song For
14. Screaming
15. The Oathkeeper’s
16. The Day of the
17. Bleeding
18. God’s Own
19. Ghostly
20. Endless

Column Two

1. Inkwell
2. Treasure
3. Waitress
4. Keeper
5. Bird
6. Corps
7. Traveler
8. Padlock
9. Comet
10. Elf
11. Starfish
12. Medallion
13. Absinthe
14. Rats
15. Reason
16. Crusade
17. Nebula
18. Screwdriver
19. Snowflake
20. Forge

One minute Danny was running from the cops, and the next, he jolted awake in an unfamiliar body—his own, but different. Somehow, he’s crossed into a parallel universe. Now his friends are his enemies, his parents are long dead, and studious Eevee is not the mysterious femme fatale he once kissed back home. Then again, this Eevee—a girl who’d rather land an internship at NASA than a date to the prom—may be his only hope of getting home. 

Eevee tells herself she’s only helping him in the name of quantum physics, but there’s something undeniably fascinating about this boy from another dimension . . . a boy who makes her question who she is, and who she might be in another place and time. 

SOMETIMES WRITING LOOKS A LOT LIKE STARING AT THE WALL

I used to do contract work in writing, graphic design, web design, you-name-it, and again and again I ran into this quandary: should I count the time I spend thinking about a project as billable hours? Because it isn’t like you just sit down at the computer, press some keys and poof! Here’s a website! Or poof! Here’s a new company logo! No. The reality is, there’s all this time where you’re just sitting there, staring at the wall. Sometimes you might doodle on a legal pad or sticky note or the back of a pizza box, but mostly, you’re just thinking. All the hard work is happening up in your head.

It’s the same when it comes to writing stories. There’s a lot of staring at the wall, or off into space. Your children or your partner walk in and see the far-off look in your eye and think you’ve gone catatonic…and in a way you have, except really you’re up there in your brain, hacking through the thorny brambles of character arcs and plot twists. While it looks highly unproductive to others—particularly that client that doesn’t want to pay much for his website—staring into space is an essential part of the creative process. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the most difficult parts, too. Often front-loaded at the beginning of a project, it can feel a lot like procrastination. Like, you have this novel to revise on a deadline, and the first whole day or so, you’re just sitting there, staring out the window. But here’s what I’ve learned: it’s okay. Stare out the window until your eyes dry out and shrivel up like raisins if that’s what it takes to find the story.

SOMETIMES REVISIONS WILL TURN YOU INTO A FERAL, FOUL-SMELLING CREATURE OF THE NIGHT

It was around the time I got to the line edits stage of Now That You’re Here that I just resigned myself to the fact that for the next month I would be holed up in my writing cave, staring at the walls (see item above) and mumbling unintelligibly to myself while my family and friends—heck, the world—carried on without me. I had a story to rewrite. Bye-bye, social life! My real friends will be there when I’m done. Food? I’ll just survive on the crumbs in the bottom of the Dorito bag that’s been sitting on my desk since forever. Hygiene? No one will see me, squirreled away in this cave anyway. Sleep? Who has time for sleep when there are deadlines to be met?! When I heard the children’s voices outside the door asking, “What’s that smell?” I decided maybe I could spare a little time to shower. I’M KIDDING. It wasn’t that bad. (Almost.) But seriously, going through revisions can be utterly transformative. Maybe I just had super tight turnaround times and bad time management skills, but I found that in order to get revisions done without losing my mind, I had to lose myself to the work. I learned how to eat, sleep, and breathe revisions until revisions were done. Then I emerged from my writing cave, bleary-eyed and babbling, held the finished manuscript aloft and declared, “It is done!” My family gathered around me, weeping tears of joy (or perhaps crying in reaction to my stench) and asked me to never, ever write a novel again.

SOMETIMES YOU WANT TO THROW THE WHOLE THING IN THE TRASH

I’m convinced there’s a point in every creative project where everything looks like a big pile of dog doo and all you’re doing is poking it with a stick. I call this the Ugly Phase. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing a novel or sculpting a statue from clay, there’s a point where you decide (sometimes out loud, for everyone to hear) that this is the worst thing you’ve ever made and it should be burned with fire. This isn’t right, you think. The vision you had for this story was so much prettier than the dreck you’re now spewing onto the page. In fact, you’re this close to calling up the Big Publishing Company and telling them they can have their advance back because obviously you’re a fraud who can’t really create anything except ugly piles of poo. My husband always laughs at me when I reach the Ugly Phase. He reminds me how I always hate what I’m creating while I’m creating it, and that before long I will stand back and declare, ‘Look! I’ve made a swan!’ (He always says that part in a high-pitched Monty Python-esque voice while flouncing his hands around. I interpret this as the signal to punch him.) But the thing is, he’s right. I do always say the thing I’m creating is garbage because in that moment—for me—it is garbage, and as such it should be carried out unceremoniously and tossed into a bin. Except…

SOMETIMES YOU GET THAT ONE IDEA THAT TURNS EVERYTHING INTO KITTENS AND RAINBOWS

Just when you think you can’t poke the stinking pile of poo with your little stick anymore, kablam! Your head explodes with the perfect idea that catapults you through revisions, right across the finish line. Your fingers fly over the keys, trying to keep up with the words buzzing through your brain. It’s as if you’ve plugged right into the source of all the mysteries of the universe and every word gracing the page is made of the stuff of stars. Honest-to-goodness star-stuff, shooting right out of your brain through your fingertips to the page. It’s magical. It’s kittens and rainbows. You begin to hear the voices of your agent, your editor, your mother, telling you that this is the best thing ever and you deserve to eat all of the chocolate in the world.

SOMETIMES YOU’LL WONDER IF IT’S WORTH IT

There were times when I was working on Now That You’re Here that I wondered if it was worth it. Spending time away from friends and family. Living a sort of dual existence, with one foot in the real world and the other in my fictional one. Wracking my brain for ideas. Wringing out my heart for every drop of emotion. All the while, trying to keep the fear of failure at bay. It was grueling. Far more grueling than I ever imagined. But I learned that I’m stronger than I imagined, too. It turns out I was up to the task, even though I doubted myself along the way.

I know there are some reading this who are hoping to be published, and you’re gobbling up all the writing stories and advice you can find because there’s something about imagining it that makes it feel a little bit closer, a little more possible. I’ve been there, and I know there are a lot of voices telling you how hard the journey can be (including my own voice in this post). But if you hear nothing else, please hear this: it’s worth it. It’s worth the solitude and the effort and the long nights. It’s worth the lack of showering and living off Doritos and missing coffee with your friends. And when you emerge from your writing cave, hold your manuscript aloft and declare, “It is done!”, you’re going to find you’re strong enough to make the journey, too.

* * *

Amy K. Nichols lives on the edge of the Phoenix desert with her husband and children. In the evenings, she enjoys sitting outside, counting bats and naming stars. Sometimes she names the bats. NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE is her first novel. Visit her online at amyknichols.com.

Amy K. Nichols: Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr

Now That You’re Here: Amazon | Indiebound | B&N | Goodreads