Was the black eye worth it?

I think I minded my black eye much less than other people minded it really. It was only annoying when it was all swollen and I had to ice it into submission. It never really hurt all that much. Well, except when my sister's dog went in for a closer look and clubbed her face into my eye. That hurt. Otherwise I was fine.

The question that normally followed "what the fuck is up with your eye?", following my explanation of Kung Fu test was, "did you pass the test?". Yes. Yes I did. Not only did I pass the test, apparently I had the highest score in the entire school. I neither noticed this or really would have cared about it, but a couple of other students made mention of it, so I thought that was cool. I now have a red belt. That's either really cool (as I like red) or prophetic implying that I'll be bleeding a lot with this belt. Blood's not so bad, though I do prefer it when it's not my own. Oh well, I learn snake now, and as far as I'm concerned that's worth a little blood.

Fun with user defined dictionaries

Well, I've more or less finished with all my work on books one and two of my modern fantasy series. Both are about as ready for publishing as they're gonna be, so I am going to leave them alone and not so much as look at them until I hear something more about publishing them. Since a fairly vital part of my fourth book is an interview with an old boss of mine, who is failing to get back to me quickly, I can't do any more planning or outlining of that book. As such, I've turned back to my high fantasy book, and actually made serious progress in it.

For some reason, I hadn't been able to get past one point in the book for something like six months. I'd keep trying, write three sentences, hate them, and give up for a while. I did that several times before I figured out a way to actually write that chapter. And now, even though I did something interesting in the chapter, I still don't like the chapter. So I decided to say fuck it, rammed some crappy shit on the end of the chapter and moved on to the next one. That chapter is already turning out to be much more interesting, so good for me, I made it past the stupid writers block!

One of the things that's annoyed me about dealing with OpenOffice is that sometimes their dictionary is missing things or just bloody wrong. This is in a very tiny percentage of cases, but it can be annoying. The other irritant is that writing high fantasy means coming up with names that are definitely either new or just not something you'd ever see in any dictionary anywhere. Why is this fun? Because on of the neat things about OO.org is that you can create user defined dictionaries, thus putting all your new words in a named dictionary. I named mine ThoseWhoHuntDictionaries. I am easily amused. :)

I got a shiner

Kung Fu Test this evening. Not my favorite thing ever, but I got through it. The only really interesting part about it is that when the sparring section of my test came up, I got me a nice shiner. Yeah, real nice shiner. Don't you worry, I got him back. Boy did I get him back. And I didn't leave marks. :)

Anyway, I got beat up and stuff, so I'm probably gonna use this as a lovely excuse to not go to work for a day. Been using cold packs to try to keep the swelling down and that's as much of a joy as you can imagine.

If you're gonna do something...

If you're going to ask someone to marry you, there are better and worse ways. This way is better.

More book news

Here's an interesting piece of news: my personal editor, that being my favorite bookstore owner in the world, is not only my personal editor, but also appears to be becoming an editor for the publisher I am currently wooing with my writing. That's very good for me in that FBO is already doing everything he can to pimp me out to this publisher. Actually working for the guy in an official fashion can only help me.

On top of that, there's some thinking that perhaps my book will be the first of an illustrated novel. Not like every page, but having say an illustrated new chapter page. I personally see that as being potentially awesome so long as the artist is someone that I enjoy his stuff. Some artist whom I don't really connect with wouldn't exactly sit well with me. Hell, I could just comission my sister to draw some shit. It's not really her thing, but at least I could work with her to get things going. Who knows what some anonymous artist who don't know me who I don't know would do if I didn't already know and like his work?

Anyway, the actual book news is that all the Jerry Bruckhiemering has been completed, printed, and turned over for editing along with my third book. Lots is getting done in the realm of editing and stuff, some of that being my first novel, so hopefully I get the ok from FBO about the new stuff soon! It's months yet before I'll hear about my short story, but I have an upcoming interview with my old boss' boss' boss for my fourth book, so between that and a tiny bit of writers block in my high fantasy book, I've got lots to work on. Good thing I'm really busy at work. Ha!

book update

Book update and short story update! I have met my hopefully soon to be publisher at a book signing at my favorite bookstore. I met him and one of my favorite authors to boot, so it was kinda cool. My total lack of ability to shmooze was something of a problem, but I did give the short story to the guy and after just glancing at it he said "this is just what I was looking for", which I took to be a good sign. Hopefully I will have more good signs or even good news soon!

The book is being worked on. I am putting in my Jerry Bruckheimer Style changes, and while they are actually fun to write, they are forcing me to very carefully parse everything else I wrote to find all the places where I have to adjust things to keep to continuity. I also had to cut like a thousands words here and there, but I think, in the end, it will all be worth it. The publisher guy sounded, dare I say, somewhat excited to read my book after I get my changes done, so I'm definitely going to try to get those completed this week and into the right hands.

After working this long and ahrd for what might have been nothing but fun for myself it is, I have to admit, both fascinating and nerve-wracking. It both fills me with a nervous dread, and an excitement that this might actually go somewhere interesting! I've always said if I make as much as $50 off the first book I'd be happy, but at this rate I might make almost eight times that amount off the short story alone. I can't help but think that's cool.

So I'm excited. I doubt anyone will blame me.

Dragonforce + Guitar Hero = Hilarity

Just watch this video to see what I'm talking about. HILARITY!

Color me shocked. I think that's yellow.

So everyone seems to like my short story. I really wasn't expecting that, but hey, I'll take what I can get. Even FBO said that nothing needed to change in the story other than my atrocious grammar and spastic comma use. I basically just have to polish the mistakes my editors were kind enough to point out and then it's ready to submit! Which is apparantly next weekend. There's gonna be a signing and, on top of getting some books signed, I also intend to meet my hopefully soon to be publisher and get some points of some kind. I may even get to submit my story right then and there. Should be an interesting weekend!

Don Hertzfeldt is a sick fuck

You may know of him, but I suggest you Google him or check out his videos on YouTube anyway. If you like this it's worth it: REJECTED