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Octoberfast

Thomas Keaten

October 8, 2023

Quite moaning about fate and change // Stand up on your feet and rise // With every fall you get the pain, you get the less // Start now, open your eyes // … When you change yourself, you change the world.
Gojira, Silvera

A toast – to welcome fall and the shitshow that is planet Earth in this, the year of our Lord 2023.

Every so often you take a break from things happening around the world, then come back at just the right moment to feel a little like Jeff Goldbloom in Independence Day, stumbling drunk and throwing things around the office in hopes we can screw up bad enough that whatever vile forces seem Hell-bent on destroying us just give up and move on. This seems to be one of those times, but instead of following that thread into the abyss, I figure I’d step back and focus on the positive.

What, you thought globally? Nah, we’re on a journey of personal growth around here. Time to get a little selfish with it. Place the oxygen mask on our own face before assisting others sort of deal.

September was a pretty miserable month on the personal goal front and I’ve got a mind to make up for it this time around. The list is large but so is the motivation, and I’ve somehow managed to turn the most ridiculous thing into a guide. When I put this month’s goal list together, I made a special category called “Don’t be a bitch.” Crass, yes, but that’s where I housed all of my negative goals. The places where I know I’m dropping the ball – namely, health. Snacking a ton at work, not tracking my food, not really paying attention to what I’m eating, etc. I’m old enough that nothing I do in the exercise world with the time I can give is going to counteract bad eating, so this stuff is important. I’ve got things to achieve out here.

Anyway, I made that category as a joke, at least in name. I was… shall we say upset at the scale on the last day of September and knew I needed to make a change, so there it was.

Work – the wonderful, caring place it is – has people bring in cookies and such all the time. We’ve got permanently stacked snack closets, a cake is bought for the office on birthdays, and every Thursday is donut day. September me was a BIG OL’ FAN. Come October 2nd, I went back to the office with a mission. No eating any snacks from the office. Originally, the goal was to only eat what I bring, but we’ve got some team lunches or later work nights where the boss gets us a meal and I’m not going to be that guy, so I compromised a bit. Either way, when a random bag of cookies showed up in the kitchen on Wednesday, I walked by, looked in, paused, and chided myself. Don’t be a bitch, I said, I left.

Every time I walked by. And again, on Thursday, with donuts. And when I was hungry but hadn’t hit the time I was allowing myself to eat. And, and, and.

It worked. I’m as surprised as you are, but it did. By not allowing a single instance of breaking, I could withstand the desire to give in. I’ve found that if I give in at all, even once, it’s pretty much over for the day. Food is my kryptonite for sure, so if this works, I’m all in.

Now I just need to work on my home habits.

As for the rest of the goals, well, fall seems to finally be blessing us with some decent weather. I’ve got a garage to clean and get into shape for starting up woodworking plans, something I’m deeply excited about, and a bunch of home improvement work to be done. Plus a few nerd goals. I’m in a competitive mood this month and improvement isn’t going to come on its own, what can I say? And, of course, writing. Residuum edits are back on the menu, and I’m doing my best to not do my usual thing where my small changes become entire new stories. It’s going alright thus far, and I think I’m about ready to get to chiseling some finer details into part 1.

It’s funny, I’ve done enough that I look at my goal list and worry that time’s running out for the rest, only to realize I’m just starting the 2nd week. Still a lot left to handle, but there’s a lot of time left to handle it in. Things are looking up, just as long as I keep looking in my area of influence. It’s better there, overall. I’d recommend it.

Curating the Memory Hole

Thomas Keaten

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October 1, 2023

By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering … an iron curtain between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, Totalitarian Propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.
– Aldous Huxley

Retard – [ ri-tahrd, for 1-3; ree-tahrd for 4 ]

verb: to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede.
verb: to be delayed.
noun: a slowing down, diminution, or hindrance, as in a machine.
slang (Diparaging and Offensive): a contemptuous term used to refer to a person who is cognitively impaired. A person who is stupid, obtuse, or ineffective in some way.

One of the great-yet-ultimately-annoying outgrowths of the shift in technology is the change in how we communicate with friends. Being the age I am, I fall into that rather unique subcategory of people who grew up in a childhood without internet but was young enough as it came into the limelight to fully adapt it as I came out of my adolescence. I remember wanting to hang out with friends and calling their houses to get permission from parents or just walking over and ringing the doorbell and waiting to see if anyone showed up. If no one was there, well, I’d just have to figure out something to do on my own. Then, we got chat rooms, lobbies, eventually cell phones and texting, and our connectivity increased by leaps and bounds until we eventually arrived where we are now. Fully connected all the time. Which, again, that certainly has its benefits. I love that I can chat with people whenever and hear back from them when they get a spare moment.

That said, now we have approximately a hundred and fifty trillion methods of communication and everyone seems to be on something else. Texting, Messenger, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Google Chat – you name it, everyone seems to have their go-to. I’ve been on a bit of a quest to get things consolidated with my friends but it’s a crap shoot. I’ve settled on Discord for a few reasons. One, it’s clean. Easy to understand, easy to use. It’s also where I’ve entered a few communities of strangers who’re topic focused – I’m in a few writing servers and fighting game servers. Finding a place for shared interest groups that also serves as direct communication is great. Big fan.

So, what the hell is the point of all this? What do the name of this post, the quote from Huxley, and the leading definition, have to do with anything in those first two paragraphs?

The way we talk to friends tends to be different than the way we talk to the world. Friends understand us, we have a rapport, we get the jokes. We talk a lot of shit. Good times, do recommend.

One of the ways we do that is through gifs. I love gifs. Love ’em. Ask my friends, ask my co-workers, they’ll probably say it’s annoying the amount I use. There’s a part of my brain that religiously holds on to movie quotes and can find one for pretty much every situation. That’s not restricted to gif use, either – a few of my friends and I bat around movie quotes all the time in person. Either way, the gifs let me bring that random quoting to people who might not be as familiar with the source and need the visual as well. Could I just talk like a normal person? Sure, but we all have our ticks.

I can’t remember the first time I noticed this because it was a while ago, and I don’t know what we were talking about (probably something to do with politics or some fighting game takes), but I felt the need for a “You never go full retard” from Tropic Thunder. So I pulled up the handy gif tool in Discord and searched for it. Discord gif search is… I don’t know the name for it, but as you’re typing it’s constantly updating the search, so I see things filter, quickly narrowing down to Tropic Thunder until I get part way through the word “retard.”

And then, everything disappears.

I back up a little and look at what was there before. Yeah, I thought so – gifs from that exact scene, but with different phrases. “Never go full Rockstar.” “Never go full Kamala.” “You went full degenerate.” Literally none of these are the line, obviously. This bore investigating, so I backed out and just typed “retard.”

Nothing.

In fact, it stops giving you any result at “reta.” And, no, before you ask I’m not including the period in the search, that’s just being properly grammatical and it annoys me in this case. Retard, it turns out, is essentially a banned word in Discord’s gif search. Verboten. You’re not allowed to reference it. A word with real meaning, with actual definitions that are useful, because it’s commonly used as an insult and is considered mean.

This bothered me quite a bit, but it was what it was and I moved on. Wasn’t going to make a huff about it because, well, whatever. There are other ways to find the things I want to find and send them. Life goes on.

And then.

The funny thing about banning words is that it’ll never stop at one. Or even at a word. The idea, I would assume, is to prevent people from using “bad” things. To prevent “bad” thought. So, recently, when this same friend and I were chatting (ironically about fighting games and not politics) and he was sending me off to the gulag with a gif of Stalin, I, of course, had to get into a dictator-off and send him a Hitler.

But wouldn’t you know it? He’s not there.

Salin? You bet. In fact, the first couple you get are airbrushed and photoshopped, hair blowing in the wind, making a heart with his hands. Good ol’ Stalin, the benevolent dictator who clearly did nothing wrong.

And, despite knowing deep in my being, I had to check. Yes, my good Dwellers, Mao is also there. Everyone’s favorite chairman with gif after gif of happy, kind, granpappy Mao.

I try not to swear often, both in person and here. But I gotta be real with you guys, I lost my ever-loving shit. What – who – has the fucking temerity to look at three of the modern age’s greatest monsters and declare one of them shoved down the memory hole while allowing / actively idealizing the others? Are we so ignorant – so retarded – that we think Hitler was the only bad person? Or we think bad people can’t be referenced? Committing the Holocaust gets you erased from reference. Willingly starving / working / beating to death forty-five million of your own people earns some happy fun time memes. Sure. Brilliant.

That led me to gearing up for a rant against Giphy, as I assumed that’s what Discord uses. It’s not, though. As far as I can tell they use Tenor. Tenor, which is owned by Google. Actively memory holing words. Actively memory holing history. All by their own direction, by their own definition of what should and should not be allowed.

Giphy is owned by Meta, so that was my point of confusion. I knew I’d seen them somewhere on one of my chat applications, I’m sure they’re not doing the exact same thin-

Well, it’s not the exact same. Looks like Giphy has banned ALL of the dictators mentioned. Yes, Meta, more censorship is the answer. Bad ideas can’t form if we can’t think about bad things in the past. That’s how humanity works. Curate us more, Zuck.

These people are curating the memory hole to fit their whims, and it’s only going to get worse as we lurch forward under an industrial-era government with no clue how technology functions. They’re attempting to banish things they see as negative from the world, as though making us forget about the horrors humanity is capable of is an answer to anything when, in the end, it can only do one thing.

Retard us.

So Long, September

Thomas Keaten

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September 24, 2023

What hath night to do with sleep?
John Milton, Paradise Lost

It’s been… quite a month. And this, as the final weekend of it, was the ultimate encapsulation. Pretty much the first time I’ve been home, so I’m going to slap out a quick few words here then settle in for the night with the missus and pass out.

Turns out, everybody in our families / friends was born in September. Celebrations for days. Which is great, glad all these people are in our lives, love ’em all to death, but my goodness I’m ready for some cool down time. The worst part (with regards to this site) is that I had a plan for writing about something that royally ticked me off the other day when talking to a friend of mine, but I guess that can wait ’til next weekend. Not like that stupidity is going anywhere.

Anyway, hopefully everyone’s been doing well this past week and enjoying the approaching end of the month. We’re almost to spookytime, which seems to be a favorite of a lot of my circle. Good vibes there.

I… want to write more, but I gotta be honest, I’m dying on the vine here. My attempts to catch up on sleep have been generally unsuccessful. A quick show or two, then bed & book time is calling.

I’ll catch you lovelies next week. Send September off with your best.

My Own Personal Cult of the New

Thomas Keaten

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September 17, 2023

People crave the familiar yet seek the novel.
Allen Gannett, The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea at the Right Time

It seems like every week I make some new discovery about my writing processes that is equal parts worthwhile and frustrating. This time around, it’s about how hopelessly drawn to new ideas I am.

For those uninitiated to the phrase “Cult of the New,” it references people’s tendency to favor new things over old. This most generally applies to entertainment media – new games are better than old, new movies better than old, etc. – but I don’t really want to get into the problems of all that here. All I’m doing is stealing the phrase to apply to my writing. You see, in doing all this outlining of Residuum, I’ve managed to spend a great deal of that time inventing new ideas whole cloth.

On one hand, great. I’ve actually been a little worried that my creative well has dried up as I’ve gotten older, and with nothing real to show for it that’s been a frightening prospect, but I guess I can shelve that worry. On the other… that’s not the point of doing this review. I’m supposed to be making what exists better so that it’s marketable, not continually placing it on the back burner in order to chase something new and flashy.

But, at least it’s giving me something to think through here. I’d imagine this isn’t an isolated phenomenon. Were I to guess, a lot of creatives likely suffer from this same thing. I know there are whole societies of creatives who adore the refinement process that comes from editing and reworking their drafts, and good on them. I’m jealous of that, in fact. That’s not me. Combing over an existing story to pluck out the bad and engineer the good is about as fun as getting teeth pulled at the moment. Pass after pass on one scene at a time to get it tightened up and conveying the exact emotional beat is just… merciless. It’d be easier – and more enjoyable, certainly – to just go chasing one of these myriad new and exciting ideas.

Easier and more enjoyable. Man, how many worthwhile pursuits are shelved by running after those two things? What a fantastic way to make sure I never get anything done with any kind of marketability.

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m doing my best to banish that devil on my shoulder. It’s hard, but necessary. While I do that, I’m continuing to learn more about how I work on these things. Outlining a new story is certainly difficult – especially when it comes to something like Catalyst, which is the first story of a series – but I can easily find the enjoyment there. Outlining changes to an existing story is much harder to get invested in. I don’t have a good handle on the reasons why, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true for me. Sitting down in the wee hours of the morning and trying to get my brain to churn through what exists, compare that to what I’m trying to do, determine how that might affect later existing story, and then figuring out how best to tweak things… it’s starting to feel a bit untenable, and that’s led me to other options.

For instance, I’ve got a throughline that I’m trying to strengthen regarding Delen’s father figures and how they sculpt his view of the world. Due to some circumstances early in the novel, one side of that sculpting is left hanging and seems to meander or simply fall flat. So, in going through places that need more general updates, I’m trying to see if threads like this can be slotted in. That way I’m killing two birds with one stone – adding more to a lacking scene by adding more to a lacking plot point.

In the end, each scene needs to be conveying at least one important aspect of the plot. Whether it’s building character, building the world, or advancing the story overall, the story needs to be doing things. It’s not like I’m lacking in things to do, either. There’s a lot of density in this plot. I can’t let things meander.

Which is why I’m debating doing rewrites as I’m in the middle of plotting these throughlines. Yes, sure, I need to know every step of each line, but that’s not to say my opening paragraph, which needs a hook, can’t be redone now. Not all these lines are going to need to be injected right up front, after all.

Basically, this shit is hard and I’m learning that all my time writing has just been the tip of the iceberg. The easy part, if I dare to label it as such. Now, I’m in the thick of it. But, eventually, it’ll all come out better on the other side. I just need to keep pushing.

The Year Runs Downhill

Thomas Keaten

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September 10, 2023

No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

September. Another year finds itself in its sunset and I can’t help but question where all the time has gone. So much planning, so many goals and wants, and it’s all come and gone in a flash. I’m now that much closer to having my first child in high school, that much closer to him making his way in the world. Cliché, sure, but it really is a bittersweet thing. I’m glad of who these three are growing to be and blessed to have the impact I have in steering them as best I can. I know, I’m getting ahead of myself. There are still a few years left. Understood. But, when I think back to the time that’s passed since covid hit, I don’t know about you, but it all seems like a blur. That’s pretty much the same amount of time as what we’ve got left. I don’t want these next years to have that same hazy film.

And, so, this is a little shorty post. My parents and nephew were in town for the weekend helping to deliver some goods for a fund raiser next week, as well as just spending some time together. It’s been nice and, frankly, I don’t want to just vanish off into our separate hovels to let the time slide by. There’s more I want to do with these kiddos now that my parents are gone, so that’s what I’m going to do. Build us some memories.

Yes, there’s a near infinite number of things left to do. But, there always will be. Ambitions can be limitless, but time isn’t. All we can do is make it count where it matters most.

I hope you’ve all had a blessed week, Dwellers, and continue to have another next time. With any luck, discipline, and grace, next week we can have a little chat about the new and improved direction of Residuum. Until then – may your time bring joy and memories to those around you.

When Your Outline Outlines an Outline

Thomas Keaten

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September 3, 2023

Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses.
Jason Fried, Rework

No matter how many times you do something, there’s always more to discover. Take, for instance, writing a novel. You can be the kind of person that takes years to complete a draft only to throw it out and start over, then move on to another story altogether and finish that, and then throw that one out and start over again, finish that, and realize it needs a pretty sizeable overhaul. Who could that be about? Anyway, say you’re this mythical individual and say you’re still trying to figure out your style of the craft. Are you an outliner / plotter, or are you the type that builds the story as you go / planner? Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle, and in doing this exploration you decided to build an outline for your current work which was instrumental in getting that through to completion. Nice, a point in the outline’s favor. Great.

Well, here I am, that outline and draft in hand, thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that it meant I had things at least marginally figured out. Now I’m looking at the notes of my review and realizing that I’m going to need another outline for this new draft. But, this one’s going to be different. I have the story already. I have its throughlines and major beats and, for the most part, none of these bones are going to change. They work, and I’d rather not make things more difficult for myself than they need be. It’s the connective tissue that needs restitching.

Honestly, I’m a bit at a loss on this style of outline. Obviously, I know the basics, but should I be considering only what I’ve identified as those permanent bones and building that connective structure without considering my existing work at all? Should I be taking the current work and trying to stretch it to fill the gaps I’ve discovered? Or is this something different altogether, where I should pull out each individual scene that leads us from bone to bone and build each out individually? Like most things, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle of those options – the Venn diagram of story repair.

All this being a long-winded version of saying, in the end, there’s good news and bad news on the Residuum front. Yes, I’ve opted to push forward with revisions. They’re certainly needed and I can’t in good conscience put forth a story to agents that I don’t feel represents something near my best. However, it’s not like everything is a mess. It’s got the direction it needs and a lot of what it needs to do it’s already doing. The changes it does need, however, are going to be fairly substantial. A tonal shift in the second quarter to prevent reader whiplash, a more vibrant, lived-in world, more salient relationships, and a more sensical time table.

It’s a lot of work, certainly, but it all has to start somewhere, and that’s this outline. I’m giving myself a week, maybe two, to get that done so that I can spend the rest of the year if necessary (It likely is) revising the manuscript to be ready for a second wave of beta readers. I’ve got a lot of rust to chip off, so there’s no time like the present to get to work. I need to get the creative muscle back in shape. This flabbiness is unbecoming.

As for the rest of you Dwellers, I hope you enjoy / have enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. I’ll be back next week with a progress report.

Making Perfect the Enemy of Good

Thomas Keaten

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August 27, 2023

Every artists knows you don’t make the things you make, you submit to the things you make.
Andrew Klavan

Took me a while to get here, but I’ve finished my preliminary review of Residuum. Ever since I got it into my thick skull that I needed to facilitate a return to focusing on my creative works and fostering talks about them, it’s been easier to focus on the task at hand. Imagine that, playing to my known strengths / needs. Who would have thought?

Anyway, I planned to go over the whole thing with a broad brush. The plan was to stay at a high level, see the story as a whole, see the character’s motivations and arcs, and find the flaws that needed fixing. I knew there’d be some – nothing is perfect – but I was hoping the story as a whole had strong enough bones to keep its structure under scrutiny. And, well, I think that’s true… largely depending on your definition of bones, I suppose.

Something had been nagging at me while I read through the first half of the novel and I couldn’t quite place my finger on it. Until, that is, I hit that midpoint, and that unscratchable itch came to the forefront. Once I saw the problem, there was really no un-seeing it, which got me thinking of what my next steps should be and, ultimately, about whether the problem in all this is me.

Those who have been a part of my writing journey from near it’s beginning can attest to a glaring problem I have – I always allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. This isn’t limited to my writing, either, it’s in all sorts of places in my life. When I pick something up, I want it to come out the best it can possibly be. When it ultimately doesn’t, because nothing is perfect, I either get frustrated with it and move on or head back to the drawing board. That, along with my ever-present fear of failure, is what’s kept me from finishing so many projects.

And now, here I am once again, staring that problem in the face. The worst thing about it is that the critiques themselves are perfectly valid. I’m not making up the things that need fixing, of that I’m certain. The fixes seem right as well. However, they’re a lot. Grand, sweeping changes that address motive and mindset early on and will change whole events and milestones later. All that leads me to asking myself a very familiar question – am I doing this because it’s required, or because I found another excuse to not be done?

No creative work is ever finished, after all. Nothing’s ever truly done. There are always tweaks, always polish that could be applied wherever we look. We, as creators, simply decide that it’s at a place acceptable to our standard and let it out into the world to be scrutinized and hopefully accepted. It’s a treadmill, and we’re the only ones who can decide when it’s time to step off and move on. But how do we do that, when the flaws in our work our so apparent to us? Judgment calls, nothing more. It’s terrifying to understand that. There are no hard answers in creative works. Only whims.

So, what do I do? Do I accept where things are, make polishing edits, and try to find agents? Or, do I take out the next fresh notebook, let the emptiness of the page grab hold of me, and outline what these new ideas will do to this story?

I think, in the end, I’ve been trying to talk myself out of doing what I know needs to be done. Trying to tell myself that my overbearing focus on perfection is getting in the way of being done, and that the story as it stands isn’t broken enough to need this much of a fix. Because I want to be done. I really, truly want to be done. I want, at last, to send off a story that I think is publish-worthy. Something that an agent will pick up, love, and help me bring to the world.

And that’s just it… this isn’t there. Not yet. Delen’s journey doesn’t yet ring true, and it must. It will. I’ll make certain of that.

Once more unto the breach, Dwellers.

Learning from the Greats

Thomas Keaten

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August 20, 2023

In short, we can only learn from our “betters.”
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

With the first week of school in the books and a weekend of family time at a close, I’m running up on the clock here so I guess it’s time for another quick one. Quick, yes, but – at least for me – important.

Going on a trail from last week, part of my getting back in the swing of things has been to take stock of what I’m doing, what I need to do, and how best to do those things. Personal inventory and whatnot, you know the drill. Been around the block a few times here. Anyway, my need to get talking about stories is leading me to need to ingest more stories. And, while I have a bunch of things I can re-read or re-watch, I’m only one person. My sphere of knowledge is limited. That is, once again, where you lot come in.

I’m wanting to build a list of things to read, watch, and maybe even play. I don’t care if I’ve already consumed it, toss me ideas. Sci-fi, fantasy, fiction, non-fiction, whatever – I just want things that are top in their class. I want to see what makes them tick, take them apart, analyze them. I want to get to the essence of stories, no matter where they reside, and learn.

So, Dwellers – lay it on me. Give me some of your bests. Let’s have us a little shared experience of greatness, shall we?

A Question for the Readers

Thomas Keaten

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August 13, 2023

You have as many options as you give yourself.
Kasie West, The Distance Between Us

Greetings, Dwellers. Today has provided a bit of a challenge in discerning a topic. Some of you may remember I had an outline of weekly topics for the entire year, and while yes, that’s still true, sometimes I lack the time or desire to really hit anything from that list so I have to sit around and figure out what, exactly, is calling me. Turns out, there’s been something on my mind for a while now and I just haven’t been able to give it the time necessary to think it through. So, like so many other things I mull over, I come to others for some advice. That’s where you come in.

This year has been pretty terrible for my creative output. Most of my projects have been flushed if they were even started at all, and there’s just been a general malaise around anything I try to get going. It’s been disheartening, to say the least. I’ve taken some time to reflect on this during the last week and put some ideas together that I think will get me back on track, but that’s all stuff that’s on me. “Fix your shit” types of deals, you know the drill.

During those sessions, though, I was reminded how momentum-based I am. I have a built in positive feedback loop that I continue to neglect, and that all came swinging back into focus when I thought about all the times I used to be hyped up and giddy to talk about story ideas, outlines, scenes, etc. Some of you will certainly be able to attest to this, and you’ll also be the first to note that those have been few and far between of late. And by “of late,” I mean for years. You see, when I talk about things, it gets me more invested in them and makes me more apt to work on them. And, of course, working on things makes me more likely to want to talk them over with people. Thus, the loop. A more negative person could look at that and say, uh oh, if it’s self-referential than how can we ever get it running? Not working on things gives nothing to talk about, which makes you less likely to work, etc., etc. And, well, I can’t deny that. Seems to have been proven out over this past doldrum, but what it really means is that I just need to pick one and do it.

Thanks to you all, and this site, the talking-about part has become that much easier, so that’s what I’m going to do. Not about specific stories – not yet at least – but about the processes themselves. This all started as a window to writing, after all, so the fact that it’s drifted elsewhere doesn’t mean it has to stay that way all the time.

So, Dwellers – of the lot of you that are readers, avid or not, I’ve got some questions. Most of these have only surfaced of late as I’ve tried to expand my work into areas beyond just large novels. I’ve never been much for other sorts of reading, so my experience is narrow. If you have a spare minute, please either reach out to me directly, on my FB, or in the comments here with your thoughts.

Are you interested in reading novels, novellas, and short stories?
When grabbing short stories, do you look for one-offs from known authors or will you pick up collections that include multiple authors?
When searching for new stories, do you stick to traditionally published work or do you also check out indy published?
If you do read indy, how do you find those? Do you look through Amazon’s top lists, or do you have some specific sites you check out?
Do you have any experience with web-based publishing? Sites like Royal Road or Substack, etc.? How do you feel these affect your experience with the stories themselves?

Again, I don’t have any plans to stop pursuing traditional publishing for my larger novels. Absurd a motive as it may be, I want that shelf space. This is more geared toward my smaller work that I’m using to chip off the rust. Short stories, tangent ideas, some wackier concepts that might end up being huge wastes of time if I don’t get community buy in. That sort of stuff. In the end, it’s all in the same creative pursuit, but I do want to know where my efforts might yield the best result. As much as I love the craft and the very aspect of creation, it’s nice to know I’m on the path of something at least marginally viable, you know?

Ah, who am I kidding. Even if it’s not, it isn’t like I’m going to stop. So, things might fire into the void. Who among us hasn’t failed along the path?

Damn, it’s nice to talk about writing again. What have I been doing, not chasing this all the time? Until next week, my friends. I expect there will be words under my belt then, at last. Probably terrible ones, but it’s a step.

The Best of the Best

Thomas Keaten

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August 6, 2023

This is justice!
IFCYipeS

The Evolution Championship Series 2023 is/was/will be in full swing this weekend, and it’s been an absolute treat so far. For the uninitiated, this is the biggest fighting game tournament on the planet, now owned by Sony, and it takes place in the Mandalay Bay in Vegas. The whole weekend is filled to the brim with clutch matches, announcements, and general great times.

All this to say – I’m not writing much here, this has been my weekend and I’m headed out to a friend’s place to watch the finals of several games here in a few minutes. It’s been a glorious weekend so far of watching fights, putting up ceiling fans, and playing games with the kiddos. And with some of the best overall matches I’ve ever seen? Too good. 10/10, would do again. One of these days, I really want to save up to front the trip to something like this…

So, until next week my Dwellers. I hope you all have something you enjoy pouring time into like I have this. It’s fantastic to just put the world on pause for a bit every once in a while. Cheers. Get out there and compete!