Catching Up

I feel like I've been off my game for a few weeks.  I've had my head buried in revisions, which are kicking my ass.

OCCUPY WALL STREET - I wasn't sure how I felt about this until I read this article.  I'm all for capitalism.  I believe that people should work hard and be rewarded for their work.  I don't believe in unfairly taxing the rich.  I do believe we have an obligation to help those who have fallen on hard times.  I have no sympathy for people who try to game the system.  What bugs me about the opponents of OWS is that they claim the OWS protesters are a bunch of lazy bums who just want to ride the coattails of the more prosperous in our society.  Maybe there are some people like that, but for the most part, I think people are simply fed up.  Just as I'm against lazy people gaming the system, I'm against the super rich using their wealth and influence to unfairly rewrite the rules for their continued benefit.  I don't expect the government to tax me 30% and tax the super rich 50%.  That's unfair.  But I do expect that if I'm being taxed 30%, that the super rich are paying their 30% as well.  Sadly, that's not the case.  Special interest groups run our country.  Public money is being used to bail out private enterprises because we deregulated to such a degree that we allowed these banks and investment houses to hold our economy hostage.

So, while I may not necessarily agree with all the sentiments of the protesters, I do think it's time for a serious change in this country.  I'm most reminded of the book FEED by MT Anderson when I think of how bad we've become.

HOLIDAYS - Seriously.  It's not even Thanksgiving.  Do I really need to see all this Christmas crap?

GREAT BOOKS - EVERYONE SEES THE ANTS, READY GAMER ONE, THE SECRET WAR.  I've been having trouble reading lately, but these three books have really been great.  EVERYONE SEES THE ANTS is the latest from AS King.  I was interested from the day I heard about it, and it didn't disappoint.  There's an emotional distance in King's writing that always keeps me from completely embracing her characters, but I think it's me and not her, because her writing is brilliant.  READY GAMER ONE was just amazing.  Fun and energetic and well written. THE SECRET WAR is the second Jack Blank book by Matt Myklusch.  Second books of trilogies are always tough to pull off, but I actually think I liked it better than the first.  With the heavy lifting done in book 1, Matt really got to launch the story in a fantastic direction.  Can't wait for book three.

WRITING - I have stuffs in the works.  I'm working on finishing revisions for my second book.  I've got some other stuff going on that I can't really talk about, also because I'm a tease.  But one thing I can talk about is publishing and the internet.

I've decided to conduct an experiment.  I'm not sure just how well it's going to work, but I'm committed to trying it.  I'll write up a much more detailed post in the coming days, but the gist is that over 2012, I'll be writing a book on-line.  Two chapters a month minimum.  I'm going to offer each chapter free on my website.  In every format I can think of.  I'll publish it under the Creative Commons license so that others may also convert it into various formats.  I'll also put it up for sale for the Kindle, Nook, on Smashwords, and all those other e-books places.  I haven't decided how I'll do that yet, since I don't think it would be fair to charge Kindle users .99 for every chapter.  So I may publish it in chunks, as novellas.

But beyond that, I'm going to attempt to make it interactive.  I have the story I want to tell pretty much mapped out.  But I'm going to open the world up and see if anyone else wants to play in it.  Readers will be encouraged to add to the world, and create characters in the world, which might be incorporated into the story I'm telling.

Truthfully, I have a lot of stuff to figure out, and this might fail miserably.  I want to see how the internet can be used to tell stories.  I don't expect to make money, but I'd like to see if it's possible to do so by using the Radiohead method...offer people something worthwhile without asking for anything in return and see what happens.

Anyway, I'll be posting more details in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for it.

VACATION - I gets one!  Sort of.  Visiting my brother in Seattle in a couple of weeks, so I'm psyched about that.  If anyone is near seattle and wants to meet up, let me know :)

And that's it.  Hope everyone is doing well!