So... What *is* Next, Anyway? - This Blog, and Other Projects To Help Me Not Starve.

I've been thinking a lot about the question posed by the title of this blog... What's Next? For anyone who hasn't been with me from the beginning, I started this project not really expecting anyone besides me would ever read it. I wanted to sharpen my writing through daily practice and cope with losing a job that had meant a lot to me. The URL “Getting My Head On Straight”, referred to my original first post, the text-heavy biographical introduction in those days before I learned how to include images and links. Don't worry, this article won't be me whining about my situation in a desperate play for sympathy. I'm happy with where I am, but I posed a question to myself about where I'm going... and that one isn't quite answered yet, so bear with me as I talk about upcoming possible projects, the future of this blog, and I'll be back to writing about specific bits of geek culture tomorrow.

Traditional wisdom says not to blog about yourself very often, as you aren't the most interesting
person to the average person in your audience, they are.  I do this rarely, so here's a picture of the man behind the blog, and the wife behind that man... smushing my face into an unusual shape.

When traffic and readership started to grow quickly (I've only really been doing this since late February, though it feels like longer) a question I was asked quite a bit was “So how long can you keep this up?” and the corollary “That's neat, but what are you going to do with it?” I've got plenty of ideas left in me for articles, I don't see that becoming an issue anytime soon. If I got a traditional job tomorrow, I'd no longer be "The Unemployed Geek", so what would happen to this site? Someone suggested that my new career could be “blogger”, and I joked that if this became my job, I'd no longer be unemployed, so I'd put myself out of work... Then I'd be eligible to start again in a never-ending recursive cycle.

I plan to keep this blog going indefinitely, regardless of what my situation is. I might post less frequently if I had less free time, but I'd like to believe that I have the discipline to continue regardless at near my current pace. As for making a living writing for my own site five times a week... it is a pleasant dream, but one that I'll only believe in once I have evidence that it is possible. Once daily traffic gets to a certain point, I'm not above adding a PayPal donation box, but until I'm satisfied that I provide sufficient value to a large enough audience to justify it, I'm holding off on that. If I bring in a few dollars here and there from this someday, that'd be nice, but it really isn't about the money.

Credit to Blaugh.com on this comic, hits close to home(less.)

So... What is next, then? I have a few projects that I've been kicking around, and the last time I wrote something like this, (about being unemployed) I talked about non-traditional methods of income. I suspect that if I can finish one (or more) of these ongoing projects, I might be able to carve out something resembling an income before I've run out of unemployment benefits. Here's what is currently on my plate:

No fewer than three longer form writing projects, one a collaborative effort with my wife. In no particular order, they are:

• A fantasy novel told from the perspective of an elite squad of investigators called in by royalty to handle crimes that the typical City Watch strategy of holding a torch aloft and yelling “Who goes there?” can't solve. (Think: modern investigative crime show a la CSI meets Lord of the Rings.)
• A horror/fantasy novel set in a world with industrial/steampunk elements (though most of the technology runs on toxic fuels with nasty side effects) featuring an agent of the Council Government who specializes in dealing with religious cults who stumbles down a path that has already claimed the lives of thirteen individuals trying to stop an ancient horror before him.
• A tongue-in-cheek semi-autobiographical work talking about how, when I was a single man, I learned to talk to and attract members of the opposite sex using ideas similar to those “pick up artists” use, only translated into gaming concepts and a lot less sleazy. (Think: Neil Strauss' The Game meets World of Warcraft.)

When any of these are finished, I'd like to release them as e-books for the Kindle store, taking advantage of generous royalty options. I figure talking about my ideas publicly gains me more in gauging which ones are legitimately interesting, over the typical new author's fears that letting the ideas out subjects them to possible theft. I'd be disappointed to learn someone stole one of my ideas and made a fortune off of it, but I have confidence in myself to continue to come up with and develop creative concepts.

I also have a three-quarters finished design for a board game where each player hires a team of mercenaries and equips them, and competes to be the first team to establish a base of operations and take down a Warlord in a Banana Republic. I'd need to start a Kickstart project for funding to complete this one, at least to get it to the prototype stage, with rewards for supporters including naming a Merc after someone who donates a certain amount. The concept is most like “Jagged Alliance meets Arkham Horror.”

One of my favorite games of all time, and I think hiring mercenaries in a "Questing"
style boardgame is one I'd like to play, so I'll have to make it.

Regardless of what I pursue to completion, I'll also be quietly working on a redesign for this site, as I have enough articles that people keep coming back for to justify a magazine-style layout someday, maybe making the jump to a custom domain name at the same time. Anyone find one of the things I'm working on to be of particular interest? Someone think I made a horrible mistake by putting unfinished concepts out there where someone could steal them? This is one I'll be eagerly watching the comments on. If there is enough interest in one or more of these projects, I could post status updates here, or in a second blog expressly for that purpose. Your input, please.

Oneword

One is the loneliest number.  Actually, wouldn't zero be the loneliest, seeing as it has no company at all, not even itself?

Right, so, one is a fine number, especially when it comes to writing.  I like word association games.  The simplest of these games is to pick one word, at random, and write about what it connects with in your head.  Play pinball with the word.  Brainball.  Whatever.

It's a good ole' exercise that is seeing a revival on the interwebs.  A clean, friendly site by the name of oneword allows you to play this game in a social network setting.  You get one word a day to write about, and 60 seconds to do the deed, with no later editing allowed.  It's a practice in just letting your subconscious plop out without thinking.  There's no time to think.  Once a day is perfect for this too, as it allows you time to reflect on the word and your thoughts later, without you cycling through words like your favorite new addiction.  Quite Zen, I guess.  For me, it's another great way to get a writing workout.  Like working out your body, it is a good idea to mix up the input/output each day.

Here are 5 of my 60-second word barfs:

Cards

Cards like Birds in the high winds, they blew from some tourist stall down at the wharf, now they fly as beautifully for a moment as green parrots. Who would they have gone to otherwise? Better the wind and the bay than great aunts and cousins who would throw them away.





Sage

The sage on the butternut squash ravioli looked crisp and delicious. It reminded him of the sage he should burn in the closet, to cleanse whatever spirits had moved in. It was just last night that he was woken three times by bursts of light and the laughter of children behind the closed door.




Bench

A park bench with white clothes strewn over it in winter. No sign of anyone or any tracks leading to or from it, and no fresh snow for days. The clothes are folded and clean, a full set, entirely white. The wind whispers by.

Barber

Barber sounds like something found on the Spanish coast. When I was young I thought I might end up on the Spanish coast, as a pirate washed up, or a rich lord gazing at his villa. I ended up on the Jersey coast, combing, cutting, and listening. I’m happier than any pirate or lord I’ve ever known.



Tables

Tables form the main buildings, chairs are towers. We push them together and throw blankets over the top. Cushions are walls, and inside a king and a queen discuss their subjects. We rule!

First Post - Veni.

This kind of feels like shouting to an empty room right now, so I'll keep it brief.  This is my first post, and I'd like it to set a precedent.  I'll be using this blog as a way to get my writing out in the world, to get some interested fans perhaps, and hopefully some good critics as well.  I'll often be posting story fragments, to see if there is interest, and to gauge where my direction should be.

For my first post though, I choose... why, the first short story I ever wrote.  It may not be the best way to say hello to the intertubes, but it seems like a logical starting point.

Enjoy.

The Lastborn

     Droi sat in the rain with the mountain.  Neither spoke.  Droi squinted to avoid the big drops handed down by the branches above him and kept his eyes focused on the summit.  He drank from a stream that chattered busily about its business of carrying fish and glinting bits of mountain.

     They waited this way while the clouds moved off to rumble closer to the horizon; mountains have no cause to talk to anyone; they only do what mountains should, geologically speaking.

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     A brief explanation:  Denver huddles below the Rockies, about twenty years ago.  The winter sky was blue-grey, then pink, then orange and black with night and lights.  A man and woman meet at a bar, and free with drinks, move across the street.  They run between waves of headlights, pour in the hotel door, slosh through the musty lobby, and wake up in the morning with headaches and dry-heaves.  He leaves while she is in the bathroom.  Nine months later is The End.

     The End is Droi.  It could not be simpler, but hearing about The End before The End bears explaining, and capitalization:  Big T, big E.  The Earth said “Enough.” And it was.

     A late summer thunderstorm crashed outside the hospital the night Droi was born. He was delivered into darkness, with the booming of nature above, and everyone followed him there.

     All cars stopped.  Some crashed, more where it was night, but most coasted to a confused stop.  Every bit of technology quit.  Some people were trapped in awkward places –- elevators, submarines, planes, trains -- and most were allowed to surface or ground before those things stopped forever.

Waterwheels sluiced and firewood crackled -- the pinnacle of technology thereafter.

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     Nineteen years the world spun, as the mountains moved about and tried to make it right again.  Cities were the worst place to be.  There was a caring brand of wrath visited on the scared masses of people in cities. Many cities are in the shadow of a mountain, and every city disappeared quickly.

Over a quiet Los Angeles, quiet because guns stopped working, and because things that should explode or burn refused to do so, Mount Whitney stood up with nothing like the form of a human and everything like the form of a mountain that just stood up, and spoke to the people.  It said, in tones of gentle earthquakes (because it could, and it was careful) that they should seek homes elsewhere, in places that could take their presence and feel no harm for it.  No one was deafened by the words, but a mountain spoke, the air and earth graciously moved, and the command passed to every single human.

Mount Whitney sighed with relief as it began to push out over the nearly endless housing developments, industrial complexes, and the worst –- the deepest scars –- the freeways.  All mountains took more time and crushed with greater might as they cleared the tangle of roads and cars spider-webbing the world. 

      The Worcestershire Beacon, a particularly nice and talkative mountain in Western England, small enough to hear people shout, gave the mountain’s point of view on The End.  In the intervening years between then and now it passed to Droi’s ears, and he thought of it as he waited.

The Earth and the entire Universe in general acts as a whole because the parts listen.  Most parts, being parts, have no choice, and that extends to every scrap of life except humans.  The Earth tried to say without speaking that humans were ruining themselves and everything around them at an alarming rate.  Things that could never be recovered were being destroyed, and things that should never be thought of were being created and distributed en-masse.  From extinction to deforestation, from cars to nuclear weapons, humans were blindly playing leapfrog with disaster, and disaster was up next, aiming to jump low.

Unknown to us though, the law of conservation of energy is not the only one concerning conservation, and all the laws work together.  While a few billion cubic miles of dark matter drifting in a very lonely part of space disappeared, the Earth stopped everything humans were doing beyond technology using natural occurrences (this could be argued, but for lack of a complete definition, The End covered anything that was causing a problem, including the production of humans), while mountains got up, spoke to people in real voices, and moved around crushing and burying the wounds.  No one was born after Droi, the seven-billionth, the last.

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