Post 14

Good morning!

Welcome to another survived week in our individual corporate servitude roles. Did everyone drink their cool-ade and contemplate their place in the universe today?

I survived. It was a close call, at points, but I made it through.

In this week’s reading list, I attempted to get through Overstory, a Pulitzer Prize winner for literary (eco) fiction. Fiction with an environmental message. I’m sorry to say that I hated it. I liked the tree parts, but the people parts were just too brutal. Too cold. The words were all right. They all flowed together in beautiful ways. Lots of complex writing tools going on. Great manipulation of imagery and metaphor, but it left my heart wanting more. No love. Same for the Calculating Stars and the Three-Body Problem. All beautifully crafted, yet the characters made me put the book down. I suppose years of reading BL and romances have now ruined me for everything that doesn’t have deep character development and tortured souls. I guess that was the real problem. The plot devices were good, but there was almost no character change. Well, there was character change to move the plot, but it didn’t feel organic to the people themselves. I know we aren’t supposed to like emotion or feel the need to resonate with characters in literary fiction. It’s supposed to be works of art like Anna Karenina and such, where the characters are conflicted, not very nice, tormented, etc. and ultimately do terribly contrived things to make an overall point about society or gender or whatever. But I have to admit, I really enjoy the slice-of-life genre. The small stories where you can see people growing and changing slowly and naturally. Like watching a flower bloom. It’s very relate-able.

Now, I say this with full knowledge that my favorite thing to write is Science Fiction, where you aren’t really allowed to do that, and you do need to make contrived choices to move plot and too much effort put into the characters means that you have a three hundred page book about nothing, with just some flying saucers to loosely tie you back to the perception of Sci-Fi.

But I like those stories anyway.

I have started a new story, speaking of which. I’m hoping to submit part of it to a contest at the end of October. I’ll need to put up a few more pages before that’s possible. It’s about a girl who ends up becoming a Stationmaster. A virtually omnipotent shadow-ruler of the last sanctuaries for humanity after a distraught Earth finally becomes uninhabitable. Her parents get devoured by a new form of energy that increases in frequency and power until finally, the new phenomena threatens all the Stations and forces humanity to find a solution or risk destruction.

Beta Reader number one seems entertained, for the moment, so that’s a good sign. We have already nicknamed one of the characters ‘fuck-boy’ due to his charm and willingness to spread love and happiness wherever he goes. Along with some legal problems, a bit of selfishness, and a lot of bard tendencies (for any of you with a D&D background…you know what I’m saying there). I just finished the scene where he and the main character meet for the first time. I thought it was charming. We’ll see what Beta Reader 1 has to say.

My potential textbook is still in academic review. It is possible I would get a contract as early as next week, however, I’m trying to not be too excited for that. I also may have an opportunity to develop another couple articles on emerging contaminants and radiation management for a couple journals, which is very exciting. Have a call with our bossman next week to see if that’s in the cards. Please wish me luck!

Yay! Not fired yet!