Hiddennode

Oh I have a busy weekend coming up. There’s going to be family, friends, and social gatherings to attend to that all fall between Saturday and Sunday. Creative projects are coming to a head. Plus I get to spend more time connecting to my community. Busy but it’s going to be fun.

First, we’re gathering for early Christmas setup and not doing gifts this year in our normal fashion. Instead, we’re having a baking party. From the email my wife sent to the attendees, I’ve been listed as an official tester, a role I intend to shine in. It will be good fun seeing my sister-in-law and some of her children and their children and significant others. Besides… Raven is going out of her way to make my favorite peanut butter cookies.

Second, myself, Dakota, and Andrew will be recording episode one of Trans-Dimensional Cafe. We’ve already recorded two other “non-public” episodes to get into the swing. Some hiccups with recording the last two episodes, but we’re staying on track with getting episode one created. I’ll be posting whenever a new one comes up, until folks get tired of it.

What is Trans-Dimensional Cafe? Well, to sum it up in a sentence: It’s a casual conversation about gaming, writing, TV, movies, and other entertaining and constructive projects. Why the name? I don’t know, but it sounds cool. Are we going to make some sort of theme around it? Maybe, but not so much at first. Being entertaining on our own merit is more important in the long run.

The final spark of the weekend is on Sunday, when I have my book club meeting. It’s our second meeting, so I’m excited to see how it goes. I’m still working on reading Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, but for a genre I don’t normally read I’m really enjoying the book. I’ll give a review after this Sunday I think. Again, I’m looking forward to meeting my neighbors more at these meetings. The last batch of three really were fun to chat with. Between the four of us, we’ve had a pretty diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. I have a feeling I’m going to gain a lot from them in the coming months.

My weekend is pretty full from these events. That said I still have a few smaller things I need to take care of. I’ve got some Second Life work to manage, I need to find a new theme for this blog, I need to craft an entry for the jsamueldiehl.com site, and a few more minor details I’ll take care of in the second half of the week.

So, this post’s question: Continuing the holiday theme, what are your plans for getting ready for the end of the month? Are you buying or have you bought already? Did you plan out a nice trip for family or friends? Are you treating celebrating Christmas the American holiday or are you celebrating Christmas the spiritual holiday? Always happy to hear from you.

nulloperations

Things the last few weeks have been interesting. There’s been a lot of good change in my life in the last few months with most of them focused on the last three weeks. Between my new attitude about my domestic life, my creative and inventive projects, and my desire to just get things done, I really feel like my life has moved into another slot in the wheel and grinded forward a dozen steps.

In the past quarter, I’ve managed to start a new job with an old company, begun working on projects I’ve dreamt of for years, and lay out plans for domestic projects that both needed to be done and wanted to be done.

Domestically speaking, there are a couple of projects I’ve started that I’m proud of. I’m making moves every Sunday evening to clear out some of the boxes left over from the move four years ago. This mostly involves purging items in the garage and organizing what’s left behind. It’s cost some money to buy the shelving but it’s really worked out. I’ve been at this three weeks in a row and I’ve found the simple pleasure of working with my hands.

Additionally, I’ve ordered parts for a project I’ve been planning for years. A friend pointed me to monoprice.com, an inexpensive site for computer, A/V, and network wiring. For under $50.00 I’ll be able to hook up the old media PC to my TV and Stereo in the living room. I’ll be able to sign up for things like Netflix or make purchases on iTunes and watch them on the much larger screen. Not to mention Hulu and my music I’ve bought. Parts should be in by this Monday or Tuesday (they were on their way to Jacksonville around 12:06 AM Friday).

Day job professionally speaking, the new job I started in September is going great. I’m with a company I used to work for a year ago. It feels great being back and the work, while challenging, is enjoyable. I enjoy my coworkers and I think they enjoy being around me.  Generally speaking, being a permanent employee at a company that acknowledges me for my achievements is a great change of pace. Hoping this time the job lasts longer than a year.

Night job professionally speaking, I am lacking in the book production mindset. I’ve been writing but I haven’t been doing as much as I intended. I did start NaNoWriMo this year, but starting is just about all I did. A million excuses but basically I’ve been lazy about it. I am slowly getting back on the horse but it’s not as fast as I’d like it to be.

Speaking of creative measures, after three years of listening to podcasts and wishing to start one, things have come to pass. My friend Dakota, myself, and Andrew, a new friend who has audio engineering experience with podcasts are starting up a weekly or bi-weekly project. The name is tentative until episode one goes up in December, but so far we’re happy with Trans-Dimensional Cafe. The show is going to be a forum for discussion about geeky interests, writing, gaming, and lifestyle. We’re recording several episode zeroes to get into the swing of a format as well as raising out comfort level with speaking into the recording stream. I believe by mid December we’ll do fine with recording and releasing episode one. Episode 0-2 was recorded tonight and compared to how the first recording went, we were great. Thirty minutes to record with most of the audio actually useable. I’m very pleased.

Finally, tech speaking, I’ve reformatted my computer for the first time in two years. It’s about time frankly, but it’s come at a cost. Namely, I’ve lost all my contact details in terms of email addresses as well as archived mail items. Ugh. If you are someone who’s had email correspondence with me, please email me at jdiehl AT hiddennode.com so I can get your latest contact address.

The reformat has fixed a number of annoying bugs, and I have nearly all of my old programs reinstalled. I’ve limited the number of games I have installed, as well as the number of programs I can have installed at once. Basically I’ve formatted my drive into two partitions and only allocated about 50gb’s to my XP installation. When I do install 7 sometime next year, I’ll probably just buy a new drive to put it on.

That’s my current life activities in a nut shell. Future plans include the entertainment project, writing more, and Dragon*Con next year (more on that later). For now, I’m getting in gear.

What about you? Are you keeping busy? How goes your projects? Let me know if the busy bug has bitten you too.

Take care all,

nulloperations

Just a quickie.

I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Going to use the drive of NaNo to kick start the reboot of my novel. Work will start this evening once Trish and I are home from our outing. I need to finish up draft one of the outline then get to work on chapter 1.

If anyone is interested in becoming writer buddies with me, my profile is here.

For those who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, here’s a description from their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

For a full description, click here.

Okay, that said, I’m off.

nulloperations

The last two weeks have been… fun. Spent time with 1) the flu, 2) bronchitis, 3) a bruised rib. This all started as soon as I begun an exercise walking schedule. Going to restart that in November once the rib is healed. In the midst of this, I’ve been trying to kick start my writing again.

I’m (obviously) started to blog again, looking at focusing on thegreyfedora.com site again, and I’m trying to focus more on my novel. I actually printed up the 30K words this weekend in order to read it and kick start my interest. There’s a lot of

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> source login information: ENCRYPTED

> message begins

the post you are now reading is designed to dull your senses to THE TRUTH.  do not live the life of the worker bee, the cog, the well-oiled piston in the MACHINE OF DECEIT!

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human cloning isn’t NEAR. it’s already HERE. discover the truth at http://JCHutchins.net

you are being DECEIVED. break free from the cogs, flee the hive, become A PROPHET OF THE TRUTH!

kilroy2. was here … kilroy2.0 is everywhere

>>> [ CONTENT OVERRIDE CEASES ::: DATABASE STATUS: RECOVERING ] <<<

work to do actually. It starts in the wrong spot, the focus isn’t on the right character, and generally I need to recreate the foundation. What I’ve written so far isn’t wasted, but it’s also not fully useful in its current format.

Let me put it into simple terms. I’m effectively reseting again but using what I’ve written as the new writer’s bible. At this rate, this being reset three on this novel, I’ll reach 60K words before reseting again. And then, after reset four, I’ll reach 120k words, effectively letting me finish the novel. Yay?

Okay, so post’s over for now. I’m going to try to do this weekly again.

Yeah I know, I say that every time.

Jdiehl

A week later and I’m ready to start spreading some more love to the stories I’ve enjoyed: This week featuring two more of the founding fathers of podcast novels, Tee Morris and JC Hutchins.

Tee Morris

http://teemorris.com/

Stories I’ve Enjoyed:

Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword

The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery

Tee’s not only one of the founding fathers, he’s the ground breaker when he comes top podcasted novel length fiction. Tee’s fiction has a sense of playfulness mixed with fun stories. I’ve also listened to a number of his podcast projects such as his work on The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy and the work he does helping other podcasters get their groove on. Besides what I’ve read and listened to, he also has the novel Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana and the sequel Legacy of Morevi. Sorry to say I haven’t listened to or read these books yet, but given that the Billibub Baddings book are so awesomely win, I’m betting the Morevi series are just as strong. Personally though I’m looking forward to the next Billi story. I’ve loved the first two so far and I really want to know what happens next.

Get Tee’s books if you like a great action story mixed with loveable smartasses guiding you through the adventures. Ah the joy of a fantasy universe dwarf running around 1920’s Chicago.

JC Hutchins

http://jchutchins.net/

Stories I’ve Enjoyed:

The 7^th Son Trilogy

Personal Effects: Dark Art

JC Hutchins is a powerhouse in podcast advertising. My exposure to him came from the barrage of suggests from almost every podcast I listened to in 2007 when I really started to listen to podcasts. I jumped aboard the 7^th son ride and didn’t let go for 3 days as I mainstreamed the series. I’ve looking forward to the published versions coming out later this year. Recently, the novel Personal Effects: Dark Arts came out and forced itself into the mold for a new way to give a story. Augmented realty games and other projects have been out before, but PE:DA wraps this idea into the book and spreads it online.

If you enjoy thrillers that not only keep you guessing but also have familiar feeling characters, go with JC Hutchins’s books.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Both of these authors have really cemented in my love of what podcast authors can bring. They each appear to be on the verge of releasing even more great stories and books in the future. Check them out, buy their books, and spread the love.

nulloperations

I’ve learned a few things over the past few years that I’ve been writing such as the desire of creating, the impulse to write, and what helps spark the two of them. One of the greatest fuels for this spark has been reading. It seems, to my own style, that the more I read the more I write. In the last two years I have become exposed to a new crop of writers that I’ve come to enjoy to help spark my writing fuel. These authors vary in genre and style but all are wonderful reads.

Since I’ve added a number of them to the Amazon merry-go-round, I’m only going to list 2 today. In the coming month, I’ll take the time to do a post about the rest on the wheel.

So this month we look at the writers Scott Sigler and Mur Lafferty.



Mur Lafferty

http://murverse.com/

Stories I’ve enjoyed:

Heaven: Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Playing For Keeps

Various Escape Pod Pieces

Various Micro Projects

I think Mur was the first podcaster I listened to after listening to my first podcasts on NPR. I heard about Pseduopod and from there heard about more of her stuff and more podcasts. I’d eventually find her audio series, Heaven, on Podiobooks and just love them as the first novel or novella (depending if you consider the first two seasons two separate novellas or a single novel) I listened to in podcast format. It’s been an interesting series as it’s slowly grown organically. I look forward to when they are put into the trilogy of books (if they get combined season 1+2, season 3+4, and season 5 as a standalone). Season 5 is actually going on now as of the time of this post so it’s a really good time to jump into the series. The first four seasons go pretty quickly so don’t be intimidated by the number of seasons. Mur’s published novel, Playing for Keeps, is also a great read. There’s been a number of super hero fiction stories later coming into the published world and Playing For Keeps is a good example of the genre. The audio book, like all of Mur works, is available for download.

I recommend Mur’s works if you like a bit of urban fantasy mixed with comedy. There always seems to be a smile behind the character’s faces in Mur’s stories even when the action is rolling.



Scott Sigler

http://www.scottsigler.com/

Stories I’ve enjoyed:

Ancestor

Infected

Contagious

The Rookie

I really enjoy Scott’s works. His science is great, his characters are quirky, and his stories are spooky. I first heard about him from various podcasts from far point media and took the plunge with listening to Ancestor. I seriously loved the listen. I didn’t grab a copy of it at the time of the listen, but it did inspire me to continue listening. The Rookie was the next book I listened to by Scott. Never thought I’d like a book about football, but the way it was presented (and not just because it was a sci fi story) actually made it really interested. Still not into the sport, but now I understand it and the fascination more. I would next try to listen to Infected but as the hard cover was coming out; I bought that instead and read the rest of the story. Just my preference. I like Scott’s readings but I always prefer to read my novel length fiction. When Contagious hit this year, I grabbed it on both Hard Cover and kindle version. Those two books are a wonderful series (if you couldn’t tell, one is the sequel to the other). Again great story, great read, and great characters.

If you like horror with a bit of realty mixed in with Sci-Fi, I recommend Scott Sigler’s works. Listen to his podcasts, buy his books, and get hooked.



There you have it; two great authors from the podcasting world that are just getting better and better as time passes. In the coming weeks, I’ll be looking at a few other podcast authors I’ve enjoyed and maybe along the way I’ll take the time to expose myself to some more.

nulloperations

So a year or so ago, back when this blog originally saw the light of day, I had wanted to take the time to post about some things I enjoyed. I wanted to post about podcasts, software, games, books, everything I was enjoying I wanted to share. I did manage a few back then. Looking at the old locked up archive posts, I see I posted about just those things. Did a decent job of reviewing them (at least that’s what I’ll claim and you’ll never know without breaking into my admin panel). Quickly though, they subsided as I just got tired of posting daily too quickly. A while after that, I just gave up, slapped together a rather poorly generated podcasts page and dropped it at the top of the website and said screw it. Occasionally I dropped a game review every now and then, but mostly I just let it slide.

Well, it’s time to bring back that good old spirit of writing about the things I enjoy; Only this time, I’m not going to be so heavy handed in getting posts out daily. I’ll just create them as they come to me, and as they come to exist, I’ll also add them to the Interests Page at the top of this blog. Even better, I’ll have the interests page link the brief descriptions I post there back to the big descriptions that appear in the blog.

Good idea right?

Okay, I admit, it’ll take some extra work and that might put me off, but hear me out. I think it’ll actually work for keeping me doing that sharing the love thing for things I enjoy. Trust me. It’ll come to pass. You’ll see.

jdiehl

So after a month of feeling sick, I’ve finally reached a point of feeling okay. My teeth are reasonably well (mind you, the tooth still hurts where I had my surgery but not as much as it did prior to the removal), I don’t feel as achy as I had for the past two-three weeks, and I dare say I’m okay with the weather. April is starting to look good health-wise.

In writing news… Okay, I’ve changed some things. A number of things actually. I had reached over 10,000 words on the Novel but I’ve come to a conclusion: I’ve scrapped those chapters, found what I loved from it, and got rid of what was boring me to tears. A few characters are either toast or now secondary characters at best, and our protagonist has changed, but she’s just so darn cool I’m very happy with the change. Still the same world, a bit though it’s more developed. Maybe this will be my pattern with writing a novel. I get several chapters in, realize where I’m going, what I like, scrap what I have and get rolling from the beginning with a deeper understanding of everything I have and where I want to go. It’s not a bad idea so long as I don’t get much further than 10,000 words. Anything more and I’m now really wasting time.

Oh yeah, the goal of the end of summer is still in effect. Meaning I have about 21 weeks to write 90-120,000 words. That’s still between 5-7,500 words a week, which so far is easily doable. So here’s the plan: Write around 5-7,500 a week for the next 21 weeks. Complete the Novel by August 31st, 2009. Take September off from writing that novel (and start developing the next novel). Start editing the first novel once October rolls around and be finished with the first full edit of the novel by 2010. Once that happens, I’ll be trying to shop around with the novel, both for an editor/publisher and an Agent. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting to work on the next novel.

One key note is that I’m not going to work on two novels at once. It’s a bad idea for me, as I’ll tend to favor one over the other that will eventually lead to one of the novels being abandoned. I can plan out other novels, but I don’t want to start another novel until I’m done at least writing the first one. I’m not sure if I can write one while editing another one. I haven’t tried yet so I guess I’ll find out at the end of this year. I’m excited though, to think I’m actually going to finish a novel. I’ve crafted so many interesting worlds, to actually have a story in one would be a dream come true.

Other news… City of Heroes Issue 14 came out today and I’m already eager to play it tonight. Only 7 more hours to go! Gah!

jdiehl

PS. Stackpole is right. Align Full/Justify is soooo much nicer on the eyes, even on this blog.

So in working on the story I’ve hit a kinda SNAFU… Basically I shared the story with a few folks and got some early feedback. In hindsight, I shouldn’t of done that. Should have finished it then shared it, but ah well, things happen. But I did get good feedback and I realize now not only do I have to redo all the chapters I’ve done already, but that to be where I am right now, I’d probably be closer to chapter 7 or 8 rather than 5. With that in mind, I’m debating what I should do. Should I just restart writing it (meaning I wasted a bunch of time writing), or should I just keep going as if I already wrote those other chapters and then come back to them later? I’m not positive, but I’m thinking the latter. I think I’m going to ask the writer who wrote the book I’ve been following for writing advice about what he thinks, if he’s got some time for a quick question. I think he’ll confirm that it’ll be the latter but it would be nice to just get some advice real fast.

I like that fact, by the way. The fact I know the writer’s SL name and can get writing advice (within reason). I’m not going to make it a habit to bug him daily or even weekly, but just popping a quick IM question shouldn’t be too farfetched. The fact I can be so connected to my interests. For example, besides having one of the writers I enjoy reading as a friend in SL, I also have him and several others writers I like followed on Twitter. I follow the tweets of one of the developers of the Shadowrun RPG and hear neat stuff about some of the gaming industry. I can know when there’s a live feed for a show I like, and it’s cool when I can be aware of what’s happening in my interests.

Honestly, I don’t know how many people read this blog, but if you do and you’re not on twitter, you should be. Even if you don’t tweet much (which I don’t, although my blog tweets for me sometimes), it’s nice to be able to connect to your interests and such. Heck, even if you just follow me you’ll at least get the posts when I update here. Funny is that not only do I have my own twitter feed, but the Dynamic IP super group has one too. I believe I mentioned that at one point in a previous post.

Huh… don’t know where that Twitter Advertising Rant came from…

jdiehl

This is a reupload of a post that was, well, breaking things.

So the writing is going on strong. I haven’t reached to target of 10 000 total words that’s required by the end of this week, but I’m pretty close. I just put the final touch on the rough draft of Chapter four, and I know where I’m going with Chapters five and six. After that the first quarter of the book will start to reach a very climatic point soon, before settling down into the middle plot line. A few people have gotten to see the first three chapters but that’s it as far as sharing the work before it’s done. Once I’m complete with the rough draft, I’ll share it with a few pre-readers. Then, after I leave it down for a month or so, I’ll come back to it and start the first series of edits. Target goal right now? Have the rough draft ready by the fall (two weeks in already, at least 20 total weeks to write at 5 000 words a week), then have the edits complete by the New Year.

Beyond writing, things are going slow in other areas of production. Expansion of the Dynamic IP SG is going slow, which I should have come to of expected considering the fact we don’t have too many high level characters that are on often. For that matter, none of the leaders are over level 30 yet. I think I’m going to try to push to have Nathan and Dakota each get a 50 on Victory. After that, whatever alts they want to play is their business, but if we’re going to have the group keep growing, the leadership needs to appear more like leadership. It shouldn’t take either of them beyond a month or two to get characters to 50 anyway, since both are out of work, although Nathan does have that whole school thing.

For now though, I’m happy that I’m writing. This is the furthest I’ve been when it comes to writing a real novel. Granted, I did and won NaNoWriMo last year, I hated every minute of it and mostly wrote horrible gibberish. This time, I’m at least 7000 words in and I’m loving the story. There are things that I need to adjust, that I know I need to edit, but I’m getting it done.

I wonder though, if I’m ever going to get back to working on the game project I had started. I’d like to, but I have a feeling if I start on that, I’m going to lose time with the writing. In fact, I’m certain I will because I have that habit of losing interest in the old if I start something new. Maybe that’s why I’ve stuck with City Of Heroes for so long. Because I’m not letting myself be too distracted by other games.

For those you who are interested, I’d like to invite you to come to the community website I’m hosting. www.dipsg.com is the main website of the super group, but it’s able to be much more than that. To speak the truth, I’ve been considering retooling it better to support a community outside of City of Heroes We’ll still be hosting the super group, especially while I’m still in charge, but I’d like to provide for it to be so much more in terms of gaming, interactions, and gathering. I’d like to also use it as the launching board for my writing too, to get people interested in my works involved with me and mine.

We’ll see.

jdiehl