Kickstarter approved

I received word yesterday that Kickstarter has approved The Battle for Turtle Island: Buffalo Wars.  This means that we will now be able to try to raise funds to produce the game.  I've been debating when I wanted to kick off the fund raising...I'd thought about doing it immediately, but Rebecca and I are both taking some time off from work this week to take a little mini-vacation.  I'm not sure what we're going to be doing, but I probably won't be on-line as much as I usually am, so I wouldn't be able to send out annoying posts asking people to donate...so I will probably have it go active on Tuesday, which is when I have to go back to the "real"job.....................

The Martian Wave 2012 - The e-book

The e-book version of the 2012 issue of The Martian Wave is now available.  You can find it in a wide variety of formats at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/180655.

The Martian Wave 2012 - a tease

I thought I'd give you a little tease of what you're missing if you haven't ordered your copy of the 2012 issue of The Martian Wave.  To order your copy, go to http://sdpbookstore.com/tmw.htm.

Here are the first paragraphs from each of the stories in this issue:

Absence of Evidence

By Robert J. Mendenhall

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." -  Dr. Carl Sagan

The storm chased them across the rock-strewn Martian surface. Relentlessly, as if to avenge some unprosecuted crime. This was the most powerful weather system Mars had experienced in nearly two centuries. It tore the rusty sand from the ground, marshaled it into an angry mass of iron oxide particles, then accelerated that mass to an insane velocity. And it was about to engulf them.

Newton's Window

By Scott Virtes

            "Welcome to the Newton Parts Exchange.  What's your pleasure?"

Moontide

By GC Rosenquist

Captain Gerald Hatcher stood alone in the darkness of the clear plasteel dome, high above the rest of Moonbase Alpha, staring into the dark sky above the crater lip…waiting.

The Blue Marble Signal

by Phil M. Berger

            Adrift amidst interstellar dust.  Seeking harbor across time incomprehensible.  Hope slowly withering.  Until...

The Geysers of Enceladus

By Glen R. Stripling

            Frank Cooper touched his finger to the heater on the cold steel wall of his office.  Frigid methane deep from the heart of the moon instantly ignited as it rushed in front of him, bathing his pale wrinkled face with warmth and light.  Enceladus was eternally subject to the combined gravities of Saturn, Mimas and Dione, which squeezed the moon like a sponge, crushing and heating the frozen gasses deep underground.  The pressurized slurry belched out of the moon at 1200 miles per hour, up to 500 kilometers and reflecting the powerful lamps of the mining camp.  Their beauty reminded him of the tall white columns of renovated southern mansions back home.  He looked over his shoulder at Nathan Ward who just walked in the room.  “Have you heard anything from Mars about the injunction?”

Last Word from Kismet

By Ross Gresham

Thom lifted his head from the pillow and regarded his new body with distaste. The chest and stomach were a washboard of carefully-shaped little muscles, which, in the grip of transfer nausea, resembled nothing so much as a field of tumors.

 

A Hole

By Robert N. Stephenson

I’m back… I’m back and there’s nothing I can do…

The first words of Captain Abrams Hanzer

on leaving the Long-Jump IV

The return of the fourth ship to head out to the edge of the galaxy was meant to be a celebration of two decades of achievement, but like the three previous ships to make the journey the return was not the joyous success the international space program had expected. The General had read all the brief during the construction of the ship, he didn’t understand the science but accepted the expert’s positions on the hyper drive and the gravity engine, he had signed off on the final test after all systems were passed, he had even congratulated each crew member personally before they departed. Now before him was the mess of failure. He’d written his resignation that morning and was ready to deliver it by hand to the President should he not find an answer to what had happened. All members of the crew were unconscious and the data on the ship’s computer systems was fast degrading.

Sparks

By H. David Blalock

The Seastorm was still over 400 million miles out of Titan when the life support unit began to sputter.

The Battle for Turtle Island: Buffalo Wars cover

As promised, here is the cover art for the new game, The Battle for Turtle Island: Buffalo Wars...

June recap

The Martian Wave Volume 3
To politic, or not to politic
An important message for writers
We've lost another one
Charlie Chases Crows
Book signing
A June update on the game
It's a secret
Some people really suck
I love three day weekends
The rough draft is done
Cover art

Cover art

It looks like there is now a cover for The Battle for Turtle Island, and it is AWESOME!  Hopefully you'll all get to see it some time next month...

The rough draft is done

I just completed the writing of the rough draft of the new game, which will be titled The Battle for Turtle Island: Buffalo Wars.  The first part of the title is the actual name of the game, while this edition will feature rules for the Buffalo Wars supplement.  Sounds confusing...it's not.

The initial draft has come in at just over 40,000 words, and I know it will grow dramatically when I revise it, as there needs to be more detail added in several sections, and I left the pricing of the goods section basically blank, since I haven't figured out such things as how much a tent cost in the mid to late 19th century.

I actually started writing the game on April 10th, and it's now June 24th.  So, in about two and a half months, I managed to crank out over 40,000 words...and it is over that because I erased a big chunk and then re-did it.  That's not a bad bit of productivity considering that I couldn't work on the game every day.

Just imagine what I might accomplish if I didn't have to have a "real" job.

Now I'm going to let it sit for about a week, and then it will be into the revisions.

I love three day weekends

For each of the last two weekends, I've had Monday off as well as Saturday and Sunday.  Last week it was because of Rebecca's birthday, and this week it was because of how I was scheduled.

And I'd have to say that I absolutely love having three day weekends.  It's amazing how much work I can get done with some extra rest, and some extra time away from the "real" job.  Each of the last two weekends, I've put almost 10,000 words into the game.  With productivity like that, I wonder what I could accomplish if I didn't have to have the day job.

Oh, to dream to dream....

Some people really suck

We've been trying to track down our tax refund for a while now, and we just got word yesterday that someone had cashed our refund check.  The IRS sent us a bunch of documents to fill out, and with those documents was a copy of the check with the "signatures."  The thing is, however, that whoever stole the check actually printed our names on the back of the check, and it was painfully obvious that the same person wrote both names.

First of all, to steal someone's tax refund is beyond a crappy thing to do to someone.  That's money that we actually need, and we earned from our hard work.  As Rebecca said, this is the second time she's been robbed this year, and it's really pissing her off!

Second of all, since when is it considered legal to not sign a check?  Who the hell cashed this check?  Our guess is that they went through a check cashing agency, or something similar, but why would they cash a check that wasn't signed?  And for that matter, aren't people supposed to supply identification of some kind?

It almost sounds like whoever stole the check knew someone that would cash it for them, but I've got news for them, we've filed everything we need the government, and they will be coming after your ass!!!

It's a secret

When I got home from work today, I found an invitation in my e-mail to write a story for what sounds like a really cool anthology.  But, it's not something I can really talk about...so forget I said anything...

A June update on the game

The game is coming along quite nicely now.  I'm just a few hundred words short of 30,000 now.  I'm expecting the initial draft to be around 50,000 words, so this is good progress.  The final game will certainly be much longer, as there is still a lot of historical stuff that I have to go back and put in, but I'm hoping to have the initial draft done in the next couple of months.

After it's done, it will be time to rework it some, and then send it off to play-testers, who will hopefully help fine tune it.  Hoping for a December 1st release, but we'll see.  And as many of you might expect, Laura Givens will be doing the cover art.

Once it's closer to being ready, we'll be setting up a kickstarter for it, so there will be a chance that you can get some stuff at a good price...once it's done.

Stay tuned to this blog for more info as it becomes available.

Book signing

It was a pretty successful book signing. Although I'm absolutely sure that the majority of the people were there to see Warren Hammond, close to half of the attendees walked out with a copy of my book, so I certainly can't complain about that! My thanks to everyone who showed up, and I hope you all enjoy the book! And of course thanks to Ron and Nina of The Broadway Book Mall for always supporting local authors.

Charlie Chases Crows

My publisher recently sent me a new review of Red Moon Rising (I'll post a link when I have it.) In the review, the reader really liked the book, but what he liked most was the character Charlie Chases Crows. Pretty much every review or comment I've seen on this book has included some mention of how much the reader liked Charlie, and how they'd like to read more about him. This doesn't really surprise me, because Charlie is, in my humble opinion, the best character I've ever created...so maybe I should think about doing more with him. At least that's what the readers seem to want. And on a completely hypothetical note, if a movie is ever made out of the book, I want Graham Greene to play Charlie. I think he'd do a great job in the roll. I'm just saying...

We've lost another one

I went to lunch today at the dreaded "real" job, and was quite surprised to read the news that Ray Bradbury had passed away. Just about every speculative fiction author out there is writing about this in their blog today, so I don't know what I can really add...but I'll try any way. The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 are two of my favorite books ever. Fahrenheit is of course a classic dystopic novel, and I'm sure it had a big influence on my writing of The Opium of the People. I've read The Martian Chronicles a few different times, and I remember last year I was watching the cheesy 80's mini-series based on the book, and it gave me an idea for a series of short stories that I'd love to write. I, of course, haven't had time to write them yet...but I will...one of these years. Ray Bradbury will definitely be missed. He was one of the giants of speculative fiction, and his voice will be heard forever.

An important message for writers

When you're submitting your precious manuscript to an editor, be sure to read the guidelines first. If you've written a horror story or a detective story, and you're submitting it to a science fiction magazine, and the story has zero sf in it, then it's a good bet that the story will be rejected. Considering that response times for a lot of magazines can run into the months, why not take a couple of minutes and save yourself and the editor a lot of time. Rant over...

To politic, or not to politic...

...that is the question. Years ago, I used to talk about politics a lot on this blog, and I've noticed that at that time, I got a lot more comments and a lot more hits. It's also important to note that I did a lot more posting to, so that might have something to do with it. The main reason I stopped posting so much about politics was because I was worried about what it might do to my writing "career." My views are often outside of what is considered acceptable among certain parts of American society, and I certainly don't want to alienate any potential readers by having them judge me based off of my blog writing as opposed to my fiction writing. More established writers have lost readers because of their political views, and that seems like a bad thing to me. Granted, anyone who has read The Opium of the People or Red Moon Rising can pretty much guess what my political views are. Hell, they might even be able to figure them out based off of the titles and covers of those books. Still, I wonder if I've seen a decline in readership because of a lack of posting, or because of a lack of posting anything controversial. Obviously I'm trying to post more lately, so maybe we'll figure out which it is in the coming months.

The Martian Wave Vol. 3

The 2012 issue of The Martian Wave is now available for purchase. It will probably ship in about two weeks. This is the third print edition of the zine, which used to be a quarterly on-line zine. This year's issue features some great work, so make sure you pick up a copy at http://sdpbookstore.com/tmw.htm. Here's what you'll find in it... What lies beneath the sands of Mars? What will happen to humanity when a possible extraterrestrial signal is received? What can explorers do to save themselves when they discover a completely alien lifeform? These are just some of the questions asked and answered in the 2012 issue of The Martian Wave. With fiction from Robert J. Mendenhall, Scott Virtes, GC Rosenquist, Phil M. Berger, Glen R. Stripling, Ross Gresham, Robert N. Stephenson, and H. David Blalock, you will explore worlds you never expected, and encounter characters you could never imagine. This issue is seasoned with relevant poetry from G. O. Clark, Kurt MacPhearson, Marge Simon, Shelly Bryant, Terrie Leigh Relf, WC Roberts, and Janette Sullivan. Stories Robert J. Mendenhall: Absence Or Evidence Scott Virtes: Newton's Window GC Rosenquist: Moontide Phil M. Berger: The Blue Marble Signal Glen R. Stripling: The Geysers Of Enceladus Ross Gresham: Last Word From Kismet Robert N. Stephenson: A Hole H. David Blalock: Sparks Poems G. O. Clark: Last Chance Kurt MacPhearson & Marge Simon: Entry Center Shelly Bryant: The Distant Planet Terrie Leigh Relf: A Child's Prayer To Raise NASA Funding WC Roberts: New World Matisse @ Spaceport America Janette Sullivan: constantly

May recap

A better month of blogging. Hope to be doing more and more in the months to come. Surprise, surprise May madness The Martian Wave has been delayed A May update on the game Translation has been Nooked May madness has almost come to an end The second chapter If you're coming to my book signing

If you're coming to my book signing...

...and you'd like to pick up a copy of A Problem in Translation before the signing, here are a few places you can get it... The Sam's Dot Publishing Bookstore Barnes & Noble Amazon And if you'd just like to read the e-book, you can pick it up at, among other places, Smashwords.

The second chapter

For a very brief period of time, you can read the second chapter of my new novel A Problem in Translation on my website at http://www.jalanerwine.com/translationch2.htm The first chapter is also available for those of you who haven't had a chance to read it. You can find that at http://www.jalanerwine.com/translation.htm.