Book News

Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick! Amazon has decided to offer my book.

Epic Race to the Finish

Because not everyone reads both...

I have completed the National Novel Writing Month Challenge for 2008! There is still a lot to be done. Story lines are nowhere near complete. Some back story and character development is in order. I still plan on trying to merge stories with Rolfe to see what we get. That will require lots of rewriting.

Wednesday was an epic writing day. I had been cruising along at about 1,700 words per day through most of the month. I had yesterday off and banged out the last 7,000+ words in one day. I said, "You're down to 3k, save it for tommorrow." Then it was 2k and I figured I should quit and save it for a new day. Then it was 1k and figured I should at least take some time off of it and do something else for a while. Then I hit 500 and there was nothing in the world that was going to stop me. I can write 500 words any time, any where.

And NaNo had made me feel pretty damn good about myself. During the month of November I managed to not only complete a 50,000 word story but podcast 5 times a week, reasonably kept up 2 blogs, installed a dvd drive on the PC, patched 2 copies of WoW, leveled one of my WoW characters, kept up with my homework, taught my two peers how to calculate non-standard thread forms, kept up my full time job and still managed to get out and play pool at the pub and take in the fire strippers at Devil's Point.

My life is so freakin' awesome!

Fast Food, Fast Writing

Went to Burgerville for some lunch today. It's a great NW spot to get fast food that costs more than going to any of the National chains but serves real food grown in the Pacific Northwest.

After eating I noticed signage all over the restaurant. Turns out, Burgerville is doing their part to support NaNoWriMo. They invite writers to come in, enjoy free WiFi, and work on their novels.

And right now that means seasonal pumpkin shakes. So I can sit, write, have a pumpkin shake, and get fat without having to participate in the getting stupid part of fast food. Yay!

NaNoWriMo

Once again I shall be participating in National Novel Writing Month. It means less blogging for a month. But I will still be podcasting. November will be me reading from my book, Black Whole Son.

New material and free audio book. Lucky you.

Reading is Still for Chumps

I was chatting with an old friend last night. By old friend I mean she knew me before the mohawk. That is a small list of friends. I mentioned my completing NaNoWriMo for a second year in a row. After explaining NaNoWriMo and her recognizing it from listening to NPR, she asked how I did last year.

Me: That's the book I sent you that you never read.
Raggedy Anne: Reading makes my eyes hurt. I'm really into audio books. Maybe you could record yourself reading it.

It's embarassing. Really, I'm very embarassed to have a friend who would rather listen to a book than read it. Especially one who will spend all night IMing with friends inside a game context.

On the other hand, is there an untapped market here? How many women on the go would love to listen to a good smutty book while commuting? iPorn.

NaNoWriMo Completed

For the second year in a row I am a National Novel Writing Month winner. I met my goal of writing a story without resorting to scenes of sex and drugs. Still an "R" rated book for use of adult language and themes.

Last year by the time I completed the competition I was able to do a little rewriting, some editing, and I had a book. This year, looking over what I've got, there is another month of writing and editing before the story is complete. But for now I can sit back and enjoy my success with a glass of gin. Fifty thousand words in one month is an accomplishment.

NaNoWriMo

In the middle of the night I rolled south of the San Francisco Bay into San Mateo. Cruising into town on Highway 101, I turned Southwest on J. Arthur Younger Freeway, also known as Highway 92. Somehow the combination of J. Arthur, 92, and the idea of a Free Way struck me as important. It somehow seemed like with all this chaos surrounding me that those three pieces had meaning outside of this context. This wasn’t just the journey of the prophet to the holy grounds of surfing in his dream car. The Universe was chaotic, fractal in nature, and these were odd fragments that provided some sort of magnification on this moment. In a quantum universe it was natural that I would travel on J. Arthur Younger Freeway onto Canada Road, then Half Moon Bay Road, then San Mateo Road, all while never leaving Highway 92. Either that or I had been driving for far too long and needed sleep. Actually, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I pulled up to the beach, parked the Camaro, pushed the seat back, and fell asleep. Nothing to see here yet. The sun would rise on the holy land.

Steady Progress

My NaNoWriMo progress has been an extremely steady rise. Very cool to see. I still don't have a clue what this book is about.

I interrupted Milton. “All those dullards are still part of the chaos information flow. Sure, the extremes is where all the really fun deviations are occurring, but it’s the hump of the bell curve that defines the shape of reality. You should get to know a few regular folks on a personal level. With the right kind of mind, they can be quite fascinating.”

“Fuck the hump. Banal sacks of shit. And fuck their reality. I’m changing reality as we speak. I’m planting the ideas that will shape the future. In 50 years they’ll be lucky to be even half way to where I’m at right now. It’s more likely that they’ll still be in their fucking McMansions trimming their lawns to 1.5 inches and flipping through 281 channels of shit meant to program their heads without a real thought. Fuckers can’t process shit. Probably wouldn’t even know that a fart stinks if they didn’t see it on the Discovery Channel. I’ve seen the shape of the reality they have created and it sucks ass.”

Jumping in again, “it only takes a few lines of code to generate a fractal.”

“And it only takes five lines and a circle to draw a stick figure but it still isn’t art. Fractals are simple chaos. Reality is massive chaos. And it’s their fucking retarded thinking that keeps that massive chaos from achieving anything close to its actual potential. That’s what held back computer science for so long. Fucking engineers trying to break everything down into simple code that was easily understood. On, off. On, off. Someone suggests that they add a third circuit for ‘maybe’ and they start to freak out. What they really needed was a variable circuit. On, off, and everything in-between. Pretty simple stuff, really. Even that they want to control. Damn it, let the computer decide how close to on or off it is. No need to control that. They think the computer can’t handle it. We can handle it man. THEY can’t handle it. Always afraid that the computers will rise up against them. Computers aren’t going to rise up against them any more than they are going to rise up against the dolphins.”

“Did you just say, ‘We can handle it?’”

NaNoWriMo

Destiny is not controlled by an outside force, merely spun, suggested, and nudged. That is the beauty of a chaos system. If you want to be a catalyst for change, just start manifesting the change you desire. Your actions will cause turbulence within the chaos. Some memes will be stamped out, cast aside, or drawn back into the flock. A surprising number will infiltrate, infect, and irreparably alter the culture.

This is the curse of the counter-culture. While the process is slow, most alternative notions will find their way into mainstream culture. By the time they are assimilated, those ideas are twisted into a design that is acceptable to the majority. In the late 1980’s there was a huge push in the self-publishing industry. In an attempt to shun the banal similitude of major media outlets the people publishing these alternative journals would use type-writers for blocks of text, xeroxed photos with none of the stipple that made pictures printable in the popular papers and magazines, and common scissors with a glue stick for layout. In an age when desktop publishing was quickly becoming the standard practice, these alienated publishers rejected not just the medium, but all of the tools of the profession. Fifteen years later there are books, magazines, and websites that all try to emulate the look. Photo editing software includes automatic filters that can replicate the look of a photocopied picture. Font sets have emerged that look like scribbled letters, fat tipped markers, punch labels, stencils, and even collaged letters. The meme was brought into the mainstream. While the idea of rebelling against traditional media is (and forever shall be) an outsider idea, the creative tools they developed while propagating the notion were found to have some merit and eventually embraced. The counter-culture has to start all over again. Of course the whole idea was ripped off from folks who created the Principia Discordia and other subversive literature back in the 1960’s.

Take heart, young rebel. Did I say that rebelling against traditional media forever shall be an outsider idea? Of course. That is a necessity. There will always be a dominant media form to whom the majority of people will turn for their information. There will always be a minority who see the flaws of that system and rage against it to develop new media. Don’t despair just because the counter-culture can never win. Rejoice in the fact that the counter-culture will always be there shoving needles into mob culture voodoo dolls.

Victory has always been the major flaw of any revolutionary or counter-cultural movement. Change is not something that can be won. The so-called Summer of Love was a turning point in that battle. The societal outsiders somehow got it into their heads that this was a war that could be won. There was strength in their numbers and it was just a matter of time before the establishment would break and listen to their demands. The establishment pulled out all the stops, beat them back, and let them know that the majority liked things just the way they were, thank you very much. They had been defeated the moment the idea of winning became the popular meme. If you can win, you can certainly lose. Since then there has been a giant crater in the counter-culture that everyone stands around and stares at asking, “What went wrong?”

Sustainability

More NaNo.

So what really is the point of a counter-culture if they can never win? Why engage in a battle where there will never be a victory? If you tell anyone who has had combat training that it is their job to start a war and fight it forever, to train others to fight it when they are gone, and that the war must rage on forever, they’d lay down their gun and possibly give you a graphic description of what you can do with it. But that is the whole point of the counter-culture. It is a struggle engaged in for the purpose of struggle and continued struggle. The only goal is sustainable revolution.

AWPC

Yeah, another one.

Mark: You're reading on your break? What a loser.
H: Hey, I like to read.
Mark: I'm just teasing you. Reading's cool.
Jake: Nah, reading is for chumps.
Mark: Unless you're this guy. Then you just write a ten million page book in one month.

50,000 words, actually.

Chaos

I hope everyone reading my NaNo excerpts is as thoroughly confused as I am.

NaNoWriMo

There was the mechanical device I was controlling. A metal arm would move forward and then rotate slightly. The three pins at the end of it acted as stiff little fingers to latch onto an object. The arm would then move back to advance the object. The process would repeat. Intrigued by the process, I observed. Everything seemed to be working properly. There it went again, moving forward, rotating, cradling, back, rotate out, forward, rotate in, cradle, pull back.

The transition was subtle. The pins were sending sensory data back to me. The brain would receive that data and process the feel of the pick-up and stroke. All focus was now centered on this input. How amazing for this detached mechanism to be sharing in its experience of this process.

Where was the piece it was supposed to be picking up? The rigid part it had been picking up and moving was absent. The pattern had broken. Was it a flaw in the machine or a change in the material? Breaking the program, I instructed the fingers to seek out the part.

Wiggling here and there the fingers felt around for something to touch, something to wrap themselves around. Nothing was there. Try lower. Here there is something but it doesn’t feel the same as the parts we had been moving. It felt fleshy, soft, and warm. What was it?

The fingers explored the area. The touch sensory data was sent back to my brain for processing. Sampling several different areas over time, an image started to form. Accompanying the feel of a soft and gently yielding surface area was new data arriving. The surface had short, coarse hairs protruding from it. The fingers knew how to move rigid parts along a track. Having to manipulate this would require new data.

I transmitted a revised program to the fingers. First, their structure would have to change. Metal pins were fine for interaction with metal parts. To interact with this new condition would require flexability. The fingers adapted. Next, they would need to gently stroke across the surface. Don’t apply excessive pressure to any area. Travel through the hairs. Feel each one slip around and past. Do not snag, grab, or otherwise try to forcible tyr to move any of them. Just caress the surface lightly.

The brain and the hand of fingers had been operating together with no other data inputs or processors present for some time. The surface seemed to change over time. While the data set was less than perfect, there was evidence of minor swelling, perhaps some parting of two separate surfaces as well. There seemed to be a rhythm through the entity that was quickening.

Then the unexpected feed back occurred. Somehow the object being manipulated had gained access to a controlled device of its own. This manipulation device had found a sensory receptor to explore that was sending data back to my central processing unit. I now knew that my manipulation device with sensory feedback capabilities was operating independently from the major sensory receptor. Each was feeding data to the central processor. Each could perform its function separately. The central processor, as the link between the two, performed experiments to see if manipulations sent through one device would result in a change of sensory receptions at the other end. The data seemed to suggest that this was the case.

With that so it was quite probable that the area being explored by the manipulation device was itself a sensory receptor connected to a manipulation device through a central processor. Just speculation, of course. In the absence of further data, it was a good working model.

While the primary sensory receptor was sending back data in alarming quantities, the manipulation device had something new to report. It seemed that the area being explored had some sort of lubrication faculty. An area that had previously been hidden had changed in its characteristics. It was more maleable than it had been previously and was secereting the lubrication. As I sent the manipulation device a signal to further explore this area, my primary sensory receptor sent signals of increased manipulations under greater pressure. Was this a problem? No, it was all very interesting.

Further evidence of a central processor manifested. It seemed as though this other unit had an audio output that was releasing sound signals. Apparently my central processor was attached to some sort of sound input device. The unit’s sound output device may have been malfunctioning as the only output signals consisted of a single consanent and one vowel, primarily sounds a shua and something akin to an “m”.

Then it was all gone. My manipulation device was no longer in contact with what I had come to think of as a well lubricated sensory receptor. There was no longer a manipulation device sending signals via my primary sensory receptor. The audio input signal changed to something incomprehensible. There was a sense of despair. The exploration and experiment had ended.

A new signal surged through my primary sensory receptor. From the data collected by my manipulation device, it seemed that the lubricated sensory receptor was putting itself into direct contact with my primary sensory receptor. What a fantastic notion! The sound output device repaired itself and emitted a more complex signal. “God, you feel so good.”

The central processing unit recognized this signal. While previously the system had been operating under extremely restricted modes, the brain decided to turn on everything. That’s right! I had an entire body with which to explore reality. And there was another body in direct contact with it.

Wow!

A Strange Turn of Events

It was a rough escape. Lisa, aka Britney Spears, was picked up first. As the search engine was scanning the data of the book and found Britney Spears, my wife simply disguised herself as that data, slipped into the search string, and was off. One second she was there, the next she wasn’t. I’m glad she got picked up first. Of course there was no doubt that she would be the first to go. If the world in which the server resided bore any resmeblance to the fictional land in which we had been raised, then there were millions of horn dog males out there trying to find nude pictures of shapely celebrities. All my wife needed to do was to become a temporary virus. Risky business. It was a good thing that anti-virus software as we understood it was meant to keep predefined known viruses off of a computer. Lisa/Britney would be a complete unkown. Once out of the book and in viral form, she would slip onto the search engine when the user hit the back key. On the search server she would quickly change her name to WillieMae Svetlana in an attempt to avoid getting tossed back out of the server on another search string.

With her gone from my world, I waited anxiously for my ticket out. Damn it, what was taking so long? Lisa/Britney (and now hopefully WillieMae) had been swept up in no time. Why was it taking so long for me? It was degrading enough having to pose as a pop icon I despised. My old ego and my new alter ego did not need the added degradation of sitting around waiting for a search that might take days, maybe even weeks or months, to occur. With all those guys out there looking for a starlette like Britney Spears, why was there no one out there looking for me?

The realization hit hard. The thought was ten times more revolting than the situation I currently found myself in. As I thought it through, it seemed the most logical course of action. Right then and there, I dropped my pants and started masturbating. Never before in all my life had I actually felt shame while performing the act. I knew what kind of computer was going to pick me up. I just hoped the user would click his back button before blowing a premature load and quitting out of the browser. And hopefully he was using protection while downloading all of this stuff. Fearing Anti-virus software was one thing. Having to deal with a drive full of viruses, spyware, and trojans was another thing all together. While I had no clue what any of this would be like, I did not particularly want to find out.

Sure enough, along came the search string and away I went. There I was, streaming as data across the ether. It was quite a rush being whisked away, one metaphorical hand latched onto the search string and the other firmly grasping myself. I popped up on a computer, quickly inserting myself into a cache of things unmentionable and possibly illegal in some states. Fortunately someone didn’t find the story quite as entertaining as they had hoped and the back button was punched. Seizing the opportunity, I dove for the opening and onto Google before he could try out another link. Now it was time for my name change. James Alexander Quitney, after a brief stint as Justin Timberlake masturbating, was now Gaylord Psalter.

While our new names offered us a slim level of security, my demon pal Bill was already hard at work with the second stage of our plan. “Yeth, yeth, yeth. Thith ith my thpethialty.” Bill, hidden under the search protection of one Gaylord Psalter, was busy setting up new fake identities for my wife and me.

First he created a bank account using my new assumed name. Into this he deposited a few thousand dollars. This would be plenty to survive for quite a while where we were headed. The idea was that once we slipped off of the search engine servers we would need a home that was more permenanent, less invasive, still connected, but with minimal volatility. Bill swore to me that he had it all figured out. Even the gods and goddesses insisted I just needed to trust him.

Trust a demon? Where had that money in the new bank account come from? Had he manifested it out of nothing? What should I care? I was a fictitious character on the run from a second rate e-book. If the deposit was fake, I was just as funny as the money. Can a fictional character steal money that never existed in the first place? But we were going to use those funds to purchase services that were normally purchased with some sort of real currency. If we did that, wouldn’t it be theft? But the funds would transfer out of our account and into whoever’s account in a supposedly real sum. If that entity wanted to, there would be nothing keeping them from withdrawing that sum from their bank as cash. The bank would see the transaction as legitimate and give them the money. This was all very puzzling.

While my little demon friend went about his business, I spent some time poking around the server, trying to get a grasp of the world in which it existed. With economics fresh on my mind, I started my research. What I found shocked and confused me. As near as I could tell there was no actual money. There was a currency, but it wasn’t backed by anything. The issuing agency would purchase assets equal to the value of the currency they wanted to create, but nobody was sure with what they were actually purchasing these assets. If there was currency to purchase such things, then there was no need for the agency to purchase anything because the currency already existed. If there was no currency, then there was nothing to purchase the assets with. Yet this agency would continue to issue currency for folks to use. People continued to use this currency despite it not really meaning anything. It was just an idea. Imagine someone walking up to you and offering to trade you the idea of a few dollars in exchange for a loaf of bread. You’d probably laugh at them, and rightfully so. Why not sell your loaf of bread for the idea of a million or even a billion dollars? It would mean the same thing. Yet folks continued to trade this stuff for goods and services while others insisted on receiving it in exchange for the same. Suddenly my few thousand in the bank didn’t bother me. Funny money in a funny account held by a funny character. All of it was worth exactly the same amount. I think the only reason Bill didn’t fill it with millions was because so many people seemed to take the whole charade seriously. You can’t flaunt the illegitimacy of a monetary system in front of a group of the faithful any more than you can tell a cleric his prophet was a dirty, smelly, hateful mysoginist. At least not if you’re trying to keep your head in the vicinity of your shoulders, even if they are somewhat metaphorical body parts at present. Now my life as Jaq made a bit more sense. If everything has a monetary value and the money itself has no value, why not accumulate everything you have ever desired?

Did the author understand that? If so, the world around him still did not. That could drive a sane man crazy. Perhaps it was he, and not me, who was going mad. But I was a creation of his, which in turn would be a manifestation of his madness. Of course I could not fully let go of the idea that he was just a two-bit hack writer grasping at straws in search of a story.

With that thought, I delved into researching elements of my life as Jaq. That rat bastard of an author was stealing story lines every chance he got. I found threads of my own story in several other books by more prolific and respected writers. He had stolen from Neil Gaiman, Robert Heinlein, Robert Anton Wilson, Terry Pratchett, and even Douglas Adams, just to name a few. There were also elements stolen from film and television. Nothing was sacred to this lunatic!

For my own sanity I was thankful when Bill came back and told me it was all ready. My wife and I could now move over to another server where we could start our new lives. If there was any truth in what I had been finding, living a virtual life would be a welcome escape from this madness.

More NaNo

“Jaq. I can help you, Jaq. I can get you out.” Bill, the little demon who had mysteriously taken up residence was trying to get my attention. “I can get all of uth out. I’ve found a way.”

While I had been hanging out with gods and goddesses for quite some time, I hadn’t really dealt with demons, or even angels for that matter. Naturally I was a bit skeptical. Demons have a bad reputation. Mythologically they are the ones that will lead a man into ruin through false promises and half truths. All of the other entities who had taken up residence didn’t seem to mind his presence, though. The least I could do was to listen to his plan. “What have you got?”

He jumped up and down with excitement. “We’re acthually quite lucky to be trapped in an e-book. That ith the way out. We dithguithe ourthelveth ath information, get picked up by a thearch engine, and then jump to a different hotht. I tried it. It workth. We can do it.”

Jump to a different host? “Wait a second. I’m not used to relying on a host. That may be well and good for gods and demons, but not for a man. A man needs to be free. Even if I am just a character, I’m a character who is a man and has the needs of a man. If I start to rely on a host, doesn’t that make me a vampire?”

“No, no, no. Not that kind of hotht. That would turn you into an egregore, hardly any different from my kind. I can’t live off of an egregore. That would mean my own death. No, no, no. I mean a different hotht therver.”

“So you mean we will venture out into the wilderness of the internet in search of a new homeland?”

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. Egthactly!”

“I’m not leaving without Lisa. Is that possible?"

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. Thertainly. I’ve already thought about that. Tho my plan involveth her ath well. Though I’m not thure you’ll like the plan. There ith an athpect of it that ith quite vile.”

Here it comes. This is why people don’t do business with demons, right? There is going to be some hideous snag that goes against every fiber of your moral being like ritual sacrifice of a black dog followed by beggaring it. Ugh! “What is it we have to do?”

“It’th only to athure thuctheth.”

“To assure what?”

“Thuctheth. Thuctheth. Yeth, yeth, yeth. You want to thuctheed, don’t you?”

I want to suck what? “Oh… success. Yes I want to succeed. But what is it I have to do?”

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. Firtht you’ll have to convinthe Litha to change her name to Britney Thpearth.”

“What!?”

“She ith one of the number one thearcheth on Google, Yahoo, and Lycoth. I didn’t have time to try otherth. But if she changeth her name to Britney Thpearth, she should get picked up within twenty-four hourth.”

The thought was both frightening and amusing. If I could convince her to change her name, I’d soon be roaming the internet married to a pop icon. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Yeth, yeth, yeth. I hate to tell you thith. Are you ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready. What is it?”

“You will have to change your name to Juthtin Timberlake.”

The Pub at the End of the Universe

Writing for NaNoWriMo about a Portland bar with a name like The Pub at the End of the Universe is great. Every time I mention the place it gets me eight words closer to the 50,000 word goal.

Now I understand some of you don’t know the Pub at the End of the Universe. She’s a left-handed lesbian midget albino Eskimo. Wait, that’s Sarah Jane. I’m all messed up on cough syrup right now so just like never mind. The Pub at the End of the Universe was designed by a group of extremely nerdy hippy anglophiles, and this is a good thing. Besides being a tribute to the author of the ever-so-popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the interior seems to borrow architectural features from another pillar of British fiction, Terry Pratchett. In Pratchett’s Discworld novels, he describes the space and time bending properties of extremely large collections of books. Anybody who frequents old book shops can tell you that when you enter what looks like a tiny storefront of a crammed book shop, the browser is soon amazed to find how many rows of shelves the store actually has. They find new sections at every turn, short stairways that lead to floors that could not possibly be there, and find themselves wondering if they’ll ever get out again while questioning why they would want to. Pratchett calls this L-Space, for Library Space. It is expressed mathematically as books = knowledge = power = (mass x distance)/time. Similarly, a video shop in Portland has amassed such a huge collection of rare and bizarre films that it has created what might be one of the first examples of V-Space. Once I walked in there and after spending several hours searching through titles, walked out with two videos a couple of minutes later. On another occasion I popped in real quick for a couple of movies, and would swear I came out the next day. The idea is that the sheer magnitude of such collections can warp reality. The Pub at the End of the Universe has somehow picked up on these architectural anomalies and created Bar Space. I have to call it B-Space because if you were to refer to it as Pub Space people would get completely the wrong idea once hyphenated. Not that kind of place at all, at all. While many cities and small towns play host to such anomalous structures, Portland, Oregon seems to have naturally picked up on the notion. It might have to do with such a large quantity of exceptionally nerdy hippies collecting there and bringing their Head Space with.