Aliens

As many of you probably know by now, I'm helping to create a new science fiction role playing game. One thing that should be different about this game as opposed to others is that, for the most part, we are trying to use plausible science in the creation of the game. Granted, we are using hyperspace, but who wants to play a game where relativity has to be taken into account? In other ways, we're trying to make it believable. Think more along the lines of Babylon 5 as opposed to Star Wars.

Most of the "encounters" that characters are going to have will be with the major species of the game, but we'd still like to include some "monsters" in this thing. With that in mind, we're wondering about vacuum based lifeforms. What do you think they would need to survive, and how would they have evolved?

Obviously, they need to be able to "breathe" in some completely new way, they need to be able to function in vacuum, they need to be able to survive the extreme temperature fluctuations, they obviously can't have blood like we have...

...what else do you think we need to take into account when we create these critters?

Regime Change

Here in the US today we had our peaceful transition of power. Out with the old (and it's about time), and in with the new. Anyone who has read my more political postings on this blog has to know that I was never a big Bush supporter. My personal feeling is that he was the worst thing to happen to this country in my lifetime...and maybe ever. So, seeing him get on that helicopter today really felt good.

I'm glad to see Obama in office. I think he will make a much better president (but then so would my cat), but I don't hold the overwhelming optimism of so many Americans. First off, he's a politician, and it's very difficult to trust politicians in this day and age. Secondly, he's shown several times that he's willing to compromise what he says are his beliefs in order to gain favor (like most politicians.) Still, I don't think he will do anywhere near as much harm as Dubya did.

I watched his speech, and I thought he had some good things to say, but like most speeches, it was filled with ideas but no real plans. We'll have to see how he plans to make those ideas a reality in the coming months. I was very put off by the amount of times god and religion were mentioned...although it was nice to hear him say non-believers. Not sure if I've ever heard a president comment on what is a growing percentage of the population...and it was also nice to hear him say that he wants to put more emphasis back on science...something that has suffered horribly under the Bush regime. It was also nice to hear an American president that can actually use the English language. I haven't yet heard Obama say nuclear, but I'm willing to bet that he will get the pronunciation right.

The best part of this day was the fact that there is now a non-white male running this country. We're way behind many other countries, but that at least gives me hope. I can now point out to my kids that, like them, he's mixed, and even they could be president...although we still have to elect a woman.

I will say that I am cautiously optimistic about the future of this country under Obama's leadership, but I think his supporters are setting him up to fail. There is no way in the American political system that he can bring about all of the Change that he is talking about...but he will do better than Bush.

Goodbye George! I won't miss you even in the slightest.

And Good Luck Barack!

My site

I've been able to get my domain name back, so jalanerwine.com is back up.

The date

In my year in review blog I mentioned that one of the biggest things I'd be doing this year is planning our wedding. Turns out it won't be as much work as I'd thought. After looking over our finances and realizing just how expensive a wedding and honeymoon would be, we quickly became aware that we had limited options.

Our original plan was to get married this May, but we wouldn't be able to afford the wedding...so we were going to postpone it to August. By doing that, we'd be able to afford the wedding, but not the honeymoon. So, we were faced with the option of pushing the wedding back to May of 2010. At that point, we both realized that it was more important that we get married...ceremony or not.

So, we will be having a courthouse wedding on May 21st of this year. After that, we will be honeymooning in Taos. This is also easier on us because we were already planning on having the kids spend part of their summer with their grandma.

For our first anniversary, we're thinking about having a second ceremony, which would be more like a traditional wedding...including all of the guests...

Preditors & Editors

This is an annual poll that has had some major problems in the past. It looks like they might have everything going right this year, so if you're interested in voting for me, I've been nominated in the following categories:

Author
Science Fiction Short Story: The Magenta Equations
Zine Editor

Also, please feel free to vote for any Sam's Dot Publishing or Nomadic Delirium Press listings that you might see...

And The Genre Mall is up for bookstore...

http://critters.org/predpoll

Lost domain

Apparently my domain name expired, and nobody bothered to tell me it was going to...so I've lost my website.

I'm working on rectifying the situation, but it might take a while...

The Year in Review

On a personal level, this year, like every other year, had its ups and downs, but the ups far outweighed the downs. Rebecca and I got engaged, which was a huge up...we moved in together, and I suddenly found myself the father of two great girls...all ups.

The biggest downs for the year would be that my friend Joe lost his battle with cancer early in the year, and my three year old niece was diagnosed with leukemia just before Christmas.

The "real" job news was also both up and down. I finally got away from the job that I've been hating for years, but then it took me months to find a new gig, and then that place went into liquidation one month after I started. So, even though I'm still working, I might not have a job much longer.

In writing news, I've mostly been focusing on longer works, so I haven't written much short fiction. I did finish the drafts on two novellas, and did quite a bit of writing for the Ephemeris RPG, but no major victories on any of these. I've already sold (or permanently retired) much of the short fiction I've written, so I only had two publications in 2008. One with Tales of the Talisman and one with Allegory. Overall, I didn't write as much as I'd like, but I imagine that is because of adjusting to the new family and spending so much time trying to find "real" work.

In 2009, the biggest thing I'm working on will be the wedding. Planning for that is going to take up a lot of time, and obviously I have to find a new job. I'm hoping to write more, with the emphasis still on longer fiction, and I'm really hoping we will finally finish Ephemeris and get it out on the market...

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

Help Ed Bryant

I got this from Jason Sizemore's LiveJournal, but I don't think he'll mind that I'm stealing it.

His message:

It has come to my attention that noted writer and critic Ed Bryant needs our help. Due to financial complications surrounding recent heart bypass surgery, a limited income, and some assholes who took advantage of his kindness, he has been struggling to buy the insulin needed to keep him alive (Ed is a Type I diabetic) and nearly lost his home to foreclosure.

To that end, a third party trust fund has been set up for Ed at the Colorado Fund for People with Disabilities. The PayPal donation button below goes to an account administered by the Colorado Fund. Please consider helping Ed by donating funds to the third party trust using this button.

More information can be found at http://www.friendsofed.org.

My message:

I've known Ed for years. He's a major force in the speculative fiction culture here in Colorado, and a major force worldwide. Ed and I went to the Henry Rollins show many years ago, and he's always been a very nice guy. He's always offered advice to up and coming writers and does a lot of workshopping here in Colorado...so it would be nice if we could all help him out...

The Martian Wave

Some of you may know that for years I've edited an on-line zine called The Martian Wave. In 2009 we're turning The Martian Wave into a biannual print zine and I've just posted the guidelines over at the Sam's Dot website. The zine is a science fiction zine, with an emphasis on stories about the exploration and colonization of space.

If you think you might be interested in submitting, please go to http://samsdotpublishing.com/tmw/guidelines.htm.

The Solar Sea

I don't often plug other books on this blog, but I wanted to let my readers know about a book that will be coming out soon. The book is The Solar Sea, and the author is David Lee Summers. I had the opportunity to be one of the early readers of this book, and I even wrote a blurb for it, which reads as follows:

"In The Solar Sea, David Lee Summers creates a page-turning yarn with some of the most dramatic characters I've read in years. You won't want to put it down, and when you're done, you'll only want more." J Alan Erwine, author of The Opium of the People.

So, if you're looking for a great book to read, I'd recommend pre-ordering the book now. You can find it at http://thesolarsea.com. Plus, I'll also add that I really like the site they've set up for the book...

Happy Holidays

Whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, I hope it has been...or will be a very happy one.

Tonight we drove the girls around to look at lights, and they loved it. On the last street we were going down, there were three houses packed together that looked like they were having some kind of contest to see who could be the most dramatic. One of the houses was a clear winner. They had all kinds of lights, and decorations. It was a lot of stuff, but it wasn't really tacky. We drove to the end of the street and then turned around because Rebecca wanted to get a picture from her side of the car. As she was readying to take the picture, she noticed someone walking in front of the house...and who was it? None other than Santa Clause himself. Both of the girls were very excited, and the guy actually walked down to the sidewalk, laughing a "Ho Ho Ho," and calling over "Merry Christmas." I think this made the girls night. We let them believe it was the real thing (still not sure how I feel about the whole lying to kids).

Now it's time to wrap the last of the presents, and since I started a new tradition last year of posting a tasteless video, I leave you with this...

A review of Harvest of Debts

Like a lot of authors, I use Google Alerts to keep me informed about what people might be saying about my work. Today I got a review of Harvest of Debts, a short story I wrote a long time ago. The review was posted at Anthology Builder. For those of you who are new to this blog, Anthology Builder is a site that allows readers to put together their own anthology with a variety of stories from the site.

This was actually a five star review, and I don't even know who the reviewer is. If you'd like to read the review, you can find it at http://www.anthologybuilder.com/view_all_ratings.php?story_id=769.

An open question entry

Since adding the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook, I've added quite a few new readers, so I thought I would open up this blog to some questions and answers.

So, this is your chance to get to know me better as a writer and editor...

...ask whatever you'd like...

It was one year ago today...

...that Seedlings on the Solar Winds was released. Overall, sales haven't been quite what I'd hoped for, but I think most writers would say that about their books...unless, of course, they're Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. Still, this little book has made its way into a lot of hands, and overall, the response has been quite good from the people who have read it.

Interestingly enough, and maybe this is true for a lot of small press titles, sales through the publisher have been significantly stronger than sales through Amazon and other on-line sources.

I'm still very pleased with this book, although a lower cover price probably would have been a good idea, but small publishers just don't have the same resources that larger publishers have...

A blog about writing...believe it or not

Other than the people who personally know me, I think most of the visitors to my blogs are interested in my posts about writing...either because they've read my work, or because they're considering reading my work. For those people, the last several entries probably weren't that interesting...so now I'm going to talk about writing.

The idea for the next novel (it better be at least 80,000 words) is formulating itself in my mind. It's going to be a space opera, with hyperspace, traders, and maybe even a war thrown in. Not exactly pure science fiction, but the ideas coming to me sound like they'll be fun to write...and hopefully fun to read. In some ways, the book seems like it would fit well with Ephemeris, the RPG I'm currently working on. I don't know if I'll write it as an Ephemeris novel, or as a more general novel. Once I start doing some outlining, I'll probably have a better idea.

I have a small press publisher who might be interested in my long novella, Red Moon Rising. I say might because they want some changes made to it. The changes, however, are stylistic in nature, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to make them, since it might change my "voice" in the story. Something for me to think about...

A sale at NDP

Nomadic Delirium Press is having a holiday sale. This is a chance to get several of my books at a pretty good discount, so check it out soon...

http://www.nomadicdeliriumpress.com/holiday.htm

The weather outside is frightful

Current temp is zero and we have light snow. The snow I can deal with, but I've never really liked the BITTER cold...

Thought I'd post a few more pics...especially since someone mentioned that the cats weren't in the last batch.

The girls with the tree:









Rebecca decided to get a shot of the falling snow and the lights on our balcony. The lights didn't show up very well, but she got a cool flash effect off of the snow:





KJ wonders why there's a tree in his house:




Mosi says get the &%@* out of her face:

Some Xmas stuff

Wednesday night Rebecca's dad came over, and he and the girls decorated the tree while Rebecca and I went shopping for Xmas presents. This was the first time the girls had ever had a real tree, so they were pretty excited about it. We didn't want to do anything extravagant, so we went with a small tree...although I think we could have used a few more ornaments.

Here are some pics...

The tree before:





The family with the tree:





The tree after:





The next night there was a gorgeous sunset, so I had to go on to our balcony and get a shot of it:

Why is the universe trying to crap on my Xmas?

I thought it was a bad thing when I found out that I might be losing my job after the holidays. Very Scroogish of my employers...but I just got off the phone with my mom, and she told me that my three and a half year old niece has been diagnosed with leukemia. Kind of put things in perspective for me...

For a young child to have to suffer like that seems pretty cruel of the universe, but for it to happen to a family less than two weeks before Christmas seems completely unfair...but then I've never thought the universe was a fair place.

Rebecca's brother battled leukemia when they were both teenagers...unfortunately, he lost his battle. We're all thinking positive thoughts for my niece, and we're hoping she gets a diagnosis of one of the forms that is easier to treat.

I'd appreciate it if you could all think positive thoughts for her as well.

Damn jobs

Anyone who reads here frequently knows that I had one hell of a hard time finding a job when we moved here. Most likely it was because of my availability, but I spent close to three months looking before I got my current job. I've now been there for close to a month, and today we were all told that the store was closing and that we are going into liquidation.

That means that in the next 6-12 weeks, I will once again be out of a job. I might be able to get a transfer, but there are no guarantees. It does give me time to look, but it's not easy to find something at holiday time...so to say that the timing of this sucked would be quite the understatement. This is one of the main reasons why I don't like "real" jobs, but unfortunately, writing and editing is still very hit and miss on money for me.

Since I like to report on nature sightings I have, I'll mention that while I was standing out in the cold waiting for our oldest to get out of school, a large bird flew over me. I was expecting it to be a goose, since there are so many of them near her school, but I didn't hear any noise. When I looked up, I realized that it was a bald eagle. That's about the only good news I have from the day...