Stuff and Nonsense
The Pad has been a social whirlwind this month. Tony Santucci camped with me on Ogre Island. Myrna and Paul took good care of me.
Angry Robot just signed their first two authors from their Submissions Open Month. I’m still waiting (im)patiently to hear from AR about whether they’ll publish Channel Zilch.
Snow expected Saturday so I’m stacking the last of my firewood today.
Next week is my dogs’ least favorite time of the year: Wisconsin’s Annual War Against Deer. I’ll play lots of loud music to mask the sound of gunfire.
Angry Robot News: Scraping Myself off the Ceiling
The Angry Robot reader gave a big thumbs up to Channel Zilch:
Hi Doug,
I hope this makes your day – I will be putting Channel Zilch through to Marc and Lee [heads of Angry Robot]. It’s certainly one of the most unique styles and voices that I’ve read in a story! I do think it’s a very Marmite way of writing, so either people will love it or hate it. I loved it, the boys may not, but we can only try.
From here on in it goes into a standard submission procedure. Don’t expect to hear anything for at least 8-10 weeks, if not longer. Both Marc and Lee will read the novel and both have to give agreement before it goes in front of the Osprey/Angry Robot marketing board, who also have to give agreement. There are still many hurdles to jump but you’ve cleared the first.
Best,
[An Angry Robot reader with exquisite literary taste]
Um, !!!!!!WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Random Picture of Doug looking happy. Cap'n Jack Sparrow follows my fashion innovations slavishly.
I love her description of my writing style as Marmite: strongly flavored; you either love it or hate it.
CZ still has major hurdles as listed above, but this is another indication that it’s not complete crap ;^)
A much-needed boost! My health continues to scrape bottom. Just had to cancel a trip to Philly for my Mom’s 80th because I’m too sick right now. I doubt that I will accomplish much on Castle Rising this month.
Another small step on my arduous but inevitable journey to the Nobel Prize for Literachewer!
Next step: Write the MarmiteStyle Manifesto.
Thanks to All who Lived and Died for the Dream of Space
Goodbye Shuttle program. It was a long expensive detour on the road to space. Thanks for giving me shuttle Enterprise to star in Channel Zilch. Thanks to all who worked hard on the program. All honor to those who gave their lives in Challenger and Columbia and in accidents on the ground.
This following tribute to the heroes of space travel is a chapter from Channel Zilch that I had to cut from the book. I’ve excised some plot passages. The narrator is Mick Oolfson, ex-NASA-astronaut, who is planning to steal prototype space shuttle Enterprise and launch it with a Russian booster.
The Columbia crash nearly stops Channel Zilch before it starts.
February 1st. I hear the news. A shuttle died. How can we think to launch Enterprise now?
Seven astronauts died. I knew two of them.
They would have wanted us to keep going – a truth that keeps the whole world from grinding to a halt with grief every time one of us dies.
I’ve said and I’ll say a few unkind things about NASA in this book. Let me put things straight right here and now: NASA covered my back every second of my eighteen days in space. Show me an organization that has more dedicated, skilled, and passionate people than NASA.
It’s a miracle every time a rocket makes it into space. A million interworking components riding a howling flame. Every launch is a triumph for every one of those who makes it happen.
Over one hundred successful launches. Two lost crews. A 98+% success rate at the hardest feat on earth. Never good enough, especially to all the people on the ground who worked to get us up and back.
Thanks to those who gave their lives. Thanks to those who put their lives in peril. Thanks to those thousands who gave years of their lives to build The Dream.
#
Apollo 1 – Jan. 27, 1967
Virgil Grissom
Roger Chaffee
Edward White
Soyuz 1 – April 24, 1967
Vladimir Komarov
X-15 – November 15, 1967
Michael J. Adams
Salyut 1 – June 30, 1971
Georgi Dobrovolsky
Viktor Patsayev
Vladislav Volkov
Challenger – Jan. 28, 1986
Gregory B. Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe
Ronald E. McNair
Ellison S. Onizuka
Judith A. Resnik
Francis R. Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Columbia – Feb 1, 2003
Michael P. Anderson
David M. Brown
Kalpana Chawla
Laurel B. Clark
Rick D. Husband
William C. McCool
Ilan Ramon
#
I can’t list every person who gave their life to lift us into space. Astronauts die but risking our neck is part of the job description. Our deaths are news and millions mourn.
No one knows how many died on the ground building, maintaining, supporting, training. I’ll let these two stand for all those unsung heroes:
Columbia – March 19, 1981
John Gerald Bjornstad
Forrest Cole
They died while prepping the first space shuttle launch: Columbia’s STS-1 mission. They suffocated inside Columbia’s engine compartment.
#
Remember those who gave it all.
Work like hell to build The Dream.
The last shuttle landing. “Space shuttle Atlantis STS-135 lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida July 21, 2011.”
Big News: I Changed My Desktop Wallpaper!!!
This picture has been my laptop wallpaper for the last many years as I worked on Channel Zilch:
I am touching a space-flown Space Shuttle wheel on a shuttle replica at The Cape. I made sure that in Channel Zilch the protagonist, Mick Oolfson, touches the tire of Shuttle Enterprise when he first sees it.
That picture worked its charm and now I can retire it because I’ve finished Channel Zilch. It’s on to Castle Rising, my medieval-kids-vs.-alien-armada book, so I changed my wallpaper to inspire me with views of the homes of the four protagonists:
Upper left is Castle Rising in Norfolk, England, the home of Will the apprentice scribe. Lower left is Angkor Wat, home of Visel the reluctant martial art student. Lower Right is the Far View Site at Mesa Verde in Colorado, home of Avis the hunter. Upper right is the Hill Complex of the castles of Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, home of Shenkasi the prince.
Now to write Castle Rising!
Enterprise News Means Changes to Channel Zilch
NASA announced this month that Channel Zilch star Enterprise will go to New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum: Space Shuttle Enterprise to Land at Intrepid!.
“Intrepid is thrilled to have been chosen as the new home for Enterprise (OV-101), the first Space Shuttle Orbiter, and to help perpetuate the legacy of one of our country’s greatest technological achievements.”
Today I’m rewriting a bit of Channel Zilch to incorporate this news. It’s an easy fix – in the current storyline Enterprise is stolen by the Zilchonauts when it’s flown to the Cape for a fictional future reunion of all the decommissioned space shuttles. I’ve got about a page of rewriting to do to pull off the heist before Enterprise’s trip to New York.
I’m still waiting anxiously to hear from Angry Robot.
End of a Long Winter
This winter has been by far the longest and snowiest since I moved to The Pad 7 years ago. Last year I was canoeing by March 19th – Martel Lake is still iced tight.
It was a social winter. Casey Muratori flew out from Seattle and survived a subzero week. We had some great snowshoeing expeditions. I taught him how to make coffee and bake bread and he diagnosed my broken desktop computer (fritzed monitor) and set up an Amiga.
- Casey as the Ice Ninja
Ice Ninja stalker
Casey displays his mutant power: Growing tiny glass beads on his unibrow
We spent a couple of raucous evenings celebrating my 59th birthday with Brook and Stephanie at their lovely home.
Myrna Mae Berg came to The Pad to celebrate my birthday and to take pictures for my itsu jitsu moogy-woogy album, Boogafoo Music.
I got some great Channel Zilch news. Angry Robot Books opened for unagented submissions in March and so I sent them the first 15k words of CZ. A few days later I got email:
Dear Doug,
Thank you for submitting a sample from Channel Zilch. I enjoyed what I read, and would like to read more. Please send the full novel to XXX@angryrobotbooks.com in Word, RTF or PDF format.
WOOHOO! I spent a few days editing the manuscript and sent it to Angry Robot. Checking my email is rather thrilling as I await their response.
State of the Droog: December 2010
This month’s progress report to my patrons Jeff Roberts, Casey Muratori, and Chris Hecker:
Still no agent for Channel Zilch. I’ve queried almost every agent who reps sci-fi (not ALL, because some work at big agencies and sending multiple simultaneous queries to the same agency is a no-no.) Current query stats: 70 sent, 29 query rejections, 2 partial manuscript rejections, 39 queries unanswered so far. Some agents take many months to answer queries so I am letting 2 more months pass before starting phase 2 of Operation CZ Agent.
If I have no agent on March 1, I plan to ask Nicola Griffith, who runs Sterling Editing, to work with me on Channel Zilch. Brook and I are budgeting for her services – manuscript assessment and writer career coaching. I am a huge fan of Nicola’s writing – she won a Nebula Award for her early sci-fi work and is now writing an excellent series of crime novels. I’ve talked with Nicola a few times – she was scheduled to be one of the instructors at my 2002 session of Clarion West but discovered she had MS and had to withdraw.
I adopted Scrivener as my writing app, which lets me write and collect my research in a single writer-friendly program.
I made a solid start on my 2 projects for 2011: Palin/Cheney 2012 and Castle Rising.
PC2012 is born from the ashes of a 2008 project called Operation American Freedom. I wrote about 25k words of OAF and a lot of those words work for PC2012. I moved the old Word manuscript into Scrivener, selecting the keeper prose (15k-words) and setting up the outline of the novel. I project the book to be 75k so will try to write 10 kwords per month to hit my 7/1/2011 goal. I can do that.
I plan to write Castle Rising after PC2012 so I set up a Scrivener project to collect research. I raided the Wisconsin library system for all its books on the Great Zimbabwe, Angkor Wat, and Anasazi cultures and am having a blast learning about the 12th century.
Looking back on 2010 I feel good about finishing Channel Zilch and waging my query campaign. I’ll never get used to being slow, but considering my cognitive limitations I put in a solid year. I am confident in PC2012 and am certain that if I write the scurrilous book I visualize I can sell it.
The new crawlspace insulation means I may get through the winter without buying propane – the woodstove keeps me toasty. We’re having a deep snow winter here in Comstock – great for writing. The lakes are finally solid so the dogs and I can hike to the local beaver lodges.
My 2011 New Year’s Resolution: Keep on Writing.
Thanks,
Doug
Querying progress
I feel optimistic about finding an agent for Channel Zilch.
The leaves are gone. It looks like Winter and I’m ready for it. I’m getting back into the rhythm of feeding the woodstove.
Hauling wood and finding an agent
I’ve been a good little wannabe author, putting all my words into hunting agent. I got a major nibble from a top agent – his assistant read the whole Channel Zilch manuscript and asked for a 10-page detailed outline for the agent – who says he’ll let me know within 6-8 weeks (end of November.)
It is well and truly Autumn at The Pad and that means stacking firewood in the shelter behind the cabin. Every day I haul 10 wheelbarrowsful of oak and stack it.
Six face cords of oak firewood costs $380 ($20 delivery) in Polk County, WI this year. A Winter’s worth of warmth.
First day's stacked wood
Just finished Channel Zilch!
I started work on Channel Zilch in 1992. It was going to be a story-telling screensaver based on my Dramaton interactive narrative system. I developed the basic storyline — stealing the prototype space shuttle Enterprise – and created the cast – testosterone-surfing geek goddess Heloise Chin, cashiered astronaut Mick Oolfson, space hippy Darthy Vader, and loopy spacecaster Richard Head – within the first year of work.
When Microsoft hired me in ’93 I knew I couldn’t do software to “compete” with them and decided that the story would make a fun book. I’ve got printouts (dot-matrix on perf paper) from 1996 of some early chapters.
When I became disabled with my brainrot I went years without being able to write. But whenever I was well enough I kept scribbling on Channel Zilch.
I submitted the first chapter to Clarion West writing workshop in 2001 and got rejected. I polished it and submitted it again and got accepted in 2002. Clarion West was 6 intense weeks of writing, critiquing, camaraderie, and fierce neurological pain because my seizures were still not under control.
When I moved to my Wisconsin cabin, The Pad, in 2004, I was unable to write for the first year. When my health partially returned I threw myself back into software – GODinabox, ChipWits, Elves – but wore my brain down again.
After swearing off programming I picked up the book again and finally finished the first draft. I sent out queries and got a few nibbles from big agents but no bites. So I finished a 2nd draft and submitted it to my brilliant online writing group, Written in Blood. The group’s critiques were a graduate seminar in turning my manuscript into a living novel.
After reading their critiques I “got it”. The critiques were enthusiastic about my writing and humor and characters and story, but pointed out that I didn’t let the story flow and that I didn’t keep my characters involved in the action. I depended too much on flashy writing which stopped the action dead. After internalizing their crits I could visualize a much, much better book, and that vision has fueled me through the past 2 years.
It took me months to start writing my 3rd draft in the fall of 2008. My cognitive problems made turning my group’s critiques into edits and new prose a challenge. It took me 6 months to rewrite the first 50 pages (of an 800 page manuscript), but when I submitted those pages to my writing group and got enthusiastic critiques I knew I could do it.
I finally realized that my cognitive problem with outlining was killing my progress. Getting Brook Waalen to help me hammer out outlines in weekly face-to-face sessions broke the logjam and my page count rocketed from 10 to an average of 100 pages edited per month. Thanks, Brook!
As I worked on the 3rd draft the book grew into a monster, swelling from 145k to 180k words. When I finished the draft I got a lot of people to read it, and many of them were huge fans. A few complaints reinforced a feeling that I had to change the timeline, which gave me a chance to make the theft of Enterprise a lot more fun. So I spent a few months punching up the heist.
When I went to write my query letter my writing group once again came to my rescue. They warned me that the length of the book was a huge black mark to agents and publishers. Agents are looking for books of less than 100k words. Four of the eight writer in Written in Blood have landed agents in the last few years, so I listen to them.
Luckily, the old book was easily sliced in half. The Channel Zilch team blasts off from Baikonur near page 400 of the old 800 page manuscript, so I spent the last few months doing the surgery and new writing required to create a much shorter book. I now have 2 books: Channel Zilch and Hel’s Bet!
After 18 years of working with the same plot and cast I still get a kick out of Channel Zilch. Writing is often painful but I love my misfit crew and their crazy quest to kickstart the Singularity by stealing space shuttle Enterprise.
Now to sell it.
Clarion West Write-a-thon Goal: Finish Channel Zilch and Seek an Agent
I’m taking part in Clarion West’s Write-a-thon. Please visit my page and make a donation to sponsor me:
http://clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/DougSharp
I owe a lot to Clarion West. The six weeks I spent in the workshop in the summer of 2002 was one of the most intense stretches of my life. Six professional writers spent a week with 16 of us. We wrote a story each week and critiqued each others and listened to the pros take apart our art and talk about being professional writers. I made some great friends at CW and 3 of them are in my online writing group.
My goals for the Write-a-thon:
I will finish my novel Channel Zilch and start seeking an agent for it.
Specific goals:
It’s been a while since I blogged. I’ve been pouring all my words into the book. The biggest news since the last post is that I cut the old Hel’s Bet manuscript in half to turn it into two books. It was 190k words long, which is way too long for most agents to consider. Now I’ve got a 95k book – Channel Zilch – and am about a week away from finishing it.
The Write-a-thon started yesterday and I’ve had 2 great days of writing. I started with 41 edit notes and am down to 29 today. Once I finish I’ll write a query letter and start huntin agent!
My first publication – The Flying Squids of Zondor – comes out on July 15th from Panverse Publishing’s Eight Against Reality. Dario got the first shipment from the printer and it’s a fine-looking book:
Can’t wait to hold my copy!
Software review archeology: ChipWits with a bullet!
I am working on PR for Hel’s Bet and one of my tasks is to redo my web bio page. A subtask is to scan a bunch of reviews of my computer games ChipWits and The King of Chicago. I found a software bestseller list from December 31, 1984 which features ChipWits rising fast in the Ed software charts!
Part of the fun of writing games 25 years ago was the number of competing microcomputer systems. I coded games for about half of these:
I am still a bit ground down by finishing the book – writing is still tough – but am feeling confident I’m going to sell it.
This Old Brain
This Old Brain is a cathartic tune about Brainrot that I wrote and recorded in 1998 for Zilch Spacecasting Network’s smash hit CD “Pink Toads”. Twitch out to my inimitable Spaz Jazz stylings.
This Old Brain
This Old Brain, This Old Brain,
I’m thinkin it’s what I’m where.
This Old Brain needs some work.
Brother, you got a synapse to spare?
This Old Brain done blew a fuse,
Talk too much, my tongue confuse.
This Old Brain, grey slug of goo,
Gone bad on me. What I do to you?
This Old Brain was a powerful ride,
Horsepower to spare, real roomy inside.
This Old Brain, pop the skull top.
This Old Brain, jack it right up.
This Old Brain need a new set of plugs.
Change the oil and see if it still dougs*.
This Old Brain, gonna freeze it cold,
Hook it to a ‘puter, do the Big Upload.
This Old Brain givin me a pain,
Watch it wack, drivin me insane.
This Old Brain think a fine thought or two,
Think a few more before it’s through.
- Doug Sharp
*Verbifying my name as the action of my brain is my favorite bit of this lyric.
Margaret in the studio recording Pink Toads
The Old Zilch Spacecasting Network Studio before the fire.
Bye-Bye Brainrot!
I am healing. Last week I broke the back of my pain. I control it now and the only time I need to feel pain is when I forget that I no longer have to endure it.
I had given up hope of healing. I wished at most for reduction in pain, but in the past weeks I’ve had hours of peace within my body. I’ve felt sensations I’d forgotten existed – warm breezes that just tickle the hairs of my arms, the relaxed feeling of tired muscles after an evening ramble. I am hearing and smelling more detail in the world. I have cried many times in the last month as I’ve experienced small pleasures that I had forbidden myself to remember.
I love where I live – my cabin, Martel Lake, the woods and bogs – even more because now I can savor its subtle pleasures. I found an amazing haven to help me survive brainrot. Even in the depths of my pain it was easy to smile at a Martel Lake sunset -
I clenched my body and spirit against cruel and relentless pain for 11 1/2 years. I ignored my body and deadened myself to subtle pleasures because when I opened myself to feeling, the pain surged in unchecked.
In 2003 when I lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle I joined a yoga class, thinking it might be perfect to help me relax and keep limber. I had to quit because I couldn’t tolerate the first 5 minutes of the class. When the yoga teacher told us to relax and tune into our bodies, to listen to our bodies, I couldn’t stand what I heard. My body was screaming and by listening I amplified the pain.
It’s a luxury to enjoy my body again.
I have reestablished the healthy neural pathways between my brain and my legs and feet. I reinforce the connections by doing simple exercises with my feet.
A few quick hands of 52 pickup before sleeping.
I no longer use a laptop to write Hel's Bet. Toe cursive is rad!
I keep a box of stuff of differing sizes, textures, and shapes to manipulate with my toes.
For years I’ve done my best to shut out the false messages of pain coming from my thalamus and now I can do it.
I owe my return to health to my new pain doctor, Dr. Brendel, and to Dr. Norman Doidge and his book on neuroplasticity:
Strangely, I bought Doidge’s book last year to do research into neuroplasticity for self-brain-hacker Heloise Chin in my book Hel’s Bet. Dr. Brendel suggested we attempt to treat my pain with neuroplastic techniques and I was gung ho.
I’ve been taking lots of voice notes about my exercises and how they’ve changed my life. Grist for the Brainrot book, which will now have an unexpectedly happy ending.
My energy is amazing now that my body isn’t fighting pain every step it takes. I now take deer trail hikes with the dogs to relax. I bring a branch lopper along to clear obstructions (the deer love me!) Before this healing I hiked every day but it was always a huge push, hurt like hell, and left me exhausted for hours.
Brainrot interrupted my life twice – 1988-91 & 1997-2009. I have now learned simple techniques to stop it from ever destroying my life again.
Watch out world, Doug Sharp is back!
My beautiful but criminally insane daughter Margaret "47" Sharp made me this 47th birthday helmet.
It’s 5 below and my pipes just friz!
When you lose water in a remote cabin your level of civilization falls back about a century. I’ve got a short run of pipe going from my cabin to the pump that I have been trying to freezeproof since I bought this place. Electric heater tape and insulation added last year – 2 pipe freezes last winter – added another coil of heater tape and more insulation this fall – and it’s frozen again.
Somehow I’ve never busted a pipe. If that happens tonight I’ll be melting snow to cook with tomorrow morning. Which is lots of fun. I would not have moved to this place if I wasn’t an experienced winter camper.
The snow isn’t deep enough yet to close down my road so I may be driving to buy jugs of water tomorrow. I love this place.
I am relaxing my way back to health and productivity and hope to post deep thoughts and thrilling exploits more frequently.
I’ve benefited from a long break from programming. Coding is hard on this old brain.
My main job is to rewrite Hel’s Bet. It’s going to be a hell of a book.
Just sent an agent query letter
I am writing from Cafe Wren in Luck, Wisconsin. I just sent an agent a query letter for Hel’s Bet. Thanks to all who gave me advice.
———–
Hel’s Bet is a fast-paced alternate history of the present. The heroes of Hel’s Bet steal the prototype American space shuttle Enterprise, smuggle it into Russia, and blast into space on an embezzled Energia rocket. NASA launches a mission to hunt them down. The crew think they are launching Channel Zilch – a pirate video space station – but once in orbit the real agenda emerges: to kickstart the Singularity..
Heloise Chin is the hardware tech and brains behind the mission. Hel has engineered herself to be The Pinup Grrrl for the Geek Rapture. She dresses like a centerfold for Wired magazine, runs multiple streams of consciousness, and toys with young men’s psyches. She calls it testosterone surfing. Hel bets her life to midwife the Singularity because she loves her disabled brother.
Heloise broadcasts her singular image to hype her message, an upgraded Pascal’s Wager, Hel’s Bet: “Work for the Singularity to increase your odds of living indefinitely. Don’t bother if you have a taste for dirt.”
HB features a shootout between robots and Russian gangsters, a clandestine Singularity group called The Choir Invisible, and Merzifon Karabuk – a billionaire Turkish Trekkie. The crew’s nemesis is head of NASA security, a washed-out astronaut with a Green Beret complex and a streak of cannibalism.
I am a computer game developer currently reviving my classic game ChipWits: www.chipwits.com . I wrote the hit game King of Chicago (Cinemaware, 1987), a pioneering work of interactive narrative about which I lectured at the 1995 Stanford Symposium of the American Artificial Intelligence Society:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/interactive.html?pg=4&topic
. I was a programmer/manager in Microsoft Research’s Virtual Worlds Group. My next game is GODinabox: Desktop Digital Deities in collaboration with Bobby Henderson, creator of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: www.godinabox.com .
I’m a hardcore geek but I’ve also taught 5th grade, built and crashed a hang glider, and studied Joyce at Oxford, writing at Clarion West. I live in a cabin on a remote Wisconsin lake.
I’d love to work with you.
Doug Sharp
Cosy Feeling, Sad Anniversary, and Hel’s Bet agent letter
I just had my Winter’s supply of propane delivered – 4 100-gallon cannisters. Earlier in the week I got my Winter firewood delivered – 3 face cords. The wood truck dumps the logs in a huge pile and I’ll spend the next couple of days stacking them under my firewood shelters beside the house. I hauled and stacked 112 logs yesterday and aim to stack over 100 per day.
Feels great to have the Winter’s warmth taken care of.
We’ve been getting deluged by storm after storm. The lake is up 18 inches from its Summer low. Still have another 18 inches to go to reach last year’s level.
I waited too long to post last week’s contest so I am going to try again tonight. My Mac is crashing randomly so I haven’t been able to test the Mac build well.
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of my disability. Ten years ago I was having a blast as the demo god for Microsoft Research’s Virtual Worlds group. I worked with artists, coders, musicians, interns putting together and running demos of our cool Virtual Worlds tech. On Oct 17th, 1997 I realized that my seizures were coming back so often that I could no longer work. I remember sitting in my office going over and over again how frequently my seizures were hitting me. The real test was that I was not producing. Every time I sat down to code my seizures hit me and I shied away.
My seizures are not grand mal – I don’t pass out. They involve chest pain, confusion with language, static in my thinking, free-floating pain, and at their worst uncontrollable twitching and verbalization.
Over the last 10 years I hit some pretty low lows as the pain became overwhelming. Talking with interesting people about fun stuff became impossible. I bought my cabin as a refuge for healing and it has worked. I am rebuilding my ability to work. I am still very slow and find it impossible to hit deadlines because I still have small seizures when I work hard and have to spend many days resting. But I am on my way back! That’s the great news after 10 hard years.
And as part of my return to the Doug of yesterday I have written an agent query letter for Hel’s Bet. I’ve sent it to friends, Clarion colleagues, and Paul Park and received some great input. Paul Park has promised to get back to me this week with comments and as soon as I incorporate his input I’ll send off the query.
So on my 10th anniversary of a sad, sad day I am nearing completion of ChipWits and am just about to start hawking my completed novel. What a great feeling.
And it feels great to know I won’t freeze to death this Winter.
Channel Zilch Sellout bidding war
To my surprise and delight, my eBay auction for Clarion West is going great guns – it’s up to $36 for the naming rights to a character in Channel Zilch. Join the fun for a worthy cause:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270136201579
I had 2 1,000 word days in a row. I am going to finish that novel by the end of July.
Lots of nature news – our loons have chicks. I saw them riding on top of one of the parents. This is the first Summer I’ve seen them with chicks. Hope they make it through the Summer.
A bear has stripped most of the blueberries off Ogre Island. It left mounds of its calling card all around the island to mark its territory. I’ve been eating a few berries every time I visit the island, but the bulk of them are ripped up and riding in some black bear’s tummy.
I am slowly improving ChipWits. Having a bit of problem focusing to program because I’ve restarted a seizure med. Since I’ll be driving Margaret to Seattle and visiting friends there for 2 weeks in the middle of July I think it will be August before I hold the next contest and start the countdown to release. Slow, but I am determined. The game is looking really good, but it takes more time to accomplish programming tasks with wobbly neurons.
Doug Sells Out!
The Clarion West Write-a-thon is going swell. I’ve hit my 500 word/day target every day since Sunday. I’m going to cross the 110k word line tomorrow for total Channel Zilch word count.
I’ve got an auction at eBay going for the Write-a-thon:
“Be an Astronaut or a Hacker in the Novel Channel Zilch”
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270136201579
I’ll let you name an astronaut or singularity hacker in the book if you win the auction. I’m proud (and a bit surprised) that it has a bid from someone I don’t know. A cheap way to have your name enshrined in high-class literature – bidding has started at $10.
Time to work on ChipWits.
Clarion West Write-a-thon Begins
It’s the second day of the Write-a-thon and I did another 500 words (529), which is my daily target. It’s great motivation to be writing in the company of the other 33 Write-a-thoners. Some of us post our progress on the Clarion West forum so there is a sense of comradery and shared purpose.
Had a great Daddy’s Day yesterday. Margaret made pancakes for breakfast and then we went swimming in the lake. In the evening we worked on GODinabox’s Flying Spaghetti Monster game and our pirates are coming to life. Here’s a peek at the dandy pirate Evelyn Bonecrusher:
It’s a hoot turning the clay heads of gangsters from my 22-year old game King of Chicago into pirates. Margaret made a sweet pirate outfit for him of which we’ll be taking some photos tomorrow. I also did some painted ships and captain cabin interiors.
Last thing we did was to watch the final 3 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, an excellent animated series. Great art, filled with non-clichéd dramatic situations and characters. Highly recommended. I’m sure I’ll watch all 51 episodes again.
Off to swim in the lake and then I’ll do some ChipWits work.
Fun with Margaret and ActionScript
It was great fun teaching Margaret programming. I led her on a forced march through the Flex interface, gave a brutally quick over view of MXML (Adobe’s layout language), rushed through an intro to object-oriented programming, and finally gave a cursory glimpse at ActionScript.
M is going to develop the combat code for GODinabox. She and Ian want to implement a fairly standard combat system for their American Dream GODclub.
While I tutored M in Flex we developed this really simple combat code harness I called FightClub, which we developed to this state. Me and BadBoy are 2 MXML components of the Pugnater class:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<mx:Canvas xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” width=”100″ height=”200″
creationComplete=”init();” borderColor=”#800040″ backgroundColor=”#ffff00″>
<mx:Button x=”21″ y=”130″ label=”Attack” click=”this.attack();” />
<mx:Label x=”10″ y=”77″ text=”HP:”/>
<mx:Label x=”43″ y=”72″ text=”100″ id=”hpLbl” fontWeight=”bold” width=”47″ fontSize=”15″/>
<mx:Label x=”21″ y=”21″ text=”Name” id=”nameLbl”/>
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
private var hitPoints:Number = 100;
private var target:Pugnater;
public var attackStat:Number;
public var defenseStat:Number;
public function init():void {
this.showHP();
this.attackStat = 5;
this.defenseStat = 2;
}
private function showHP():void{
this.hpLbl.text = Math.round( this.hitPoints ).toString() ;
}
public function defense( attackPoints:int ):void {
var randVal:Number = (Math.random() * 15 + 85)/100;
attackPoints -= this.defenseStat;
this.hitPoints -= attackPoints * randVal ;
this.showHP();
}
public function setTarget( targ:Pugnater ):void {
this.target = targ;
}
public function attack():void {
this.target.defense( this.attackStat );
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
</mx:Canvas>
I have always wanted to teach Margaret programming. She is, after all, a third-generation computer game developer. Only recently have I been able to handle long, fun conversations. For 8 years a fun conversation automatically triggered a seizure. I got a little nerve-frazzled after about an hour of it, but took a rest and came back and gave a good final lesson, and talked through getting FightClub up and running. We’ll elaborate FightClub to let Margaret experiment with interesting combat coding.
We worked hard that night cleaning the cabin. We had to get it ready because prospective buyers were seeing it at 10 and at 12 on Friday. We got it looking pretty good and got a short night of sleep.
The next day we drove to Rice Lake. We did errands while the real estate agents showed The Pad. Got Margaret craft supplies for making creepy dolls.
Had lunch at an off little coffee shop called A Big Pile of Yesterdays or some such – it’s mainly an antique store with a coffee shop in the back. She gave me an overview of the American Dream GODclub. Very cool. I’m not going to give any theoludical spoilers. It’s going to be fun and pretty straightforward to make the GODinabox code provide the game-play features American Dream needs.
Later that night I decided to use the King of Chicago clay heads for the pirates in the Flying Spaghetti Monster GODclub. Margaret is going to make outrageous pirate costumes for them and we’ll stop-motion animate them. I think we may animate the FSM in real spaghetti. I plan to make the sets out of painted cardboard. I want to get back into doing visual art and this feels like a way that will work.
Lots of action on selling The Pad
Here’s the listing for The Pad. I’ve shown it to 2 people and tomorrow 2 others are taking a look. I’d say that’s a pretty good indication that it’s going to sell. Going to miss the place.
I had a great day of programming yesterday. Got the Apollo file system working. I’ll be posting a Mac version of the game next week.
I’d love to release ChipWits this month, but still am not able to schedule milestones reliably. The important thing is that I keep making progress.
Today I get Margaret into ActionScript coding. Really looking forward to it.
Had a gratifying nature adventure yesterday. A flycatcher has had a nest over our back door for the past couple of Summers. The nest came down because there were 6 fledglings weighing it down. I fixed it back with wire and a ceramic slotted bowl. As I type this I am watching the 2 parents busily ferrying bugs to their demanding brood.
Got 150 words written last night. Did some research on ion thrusters.
First 500 word day on Channel Zilch
Had a great day of writing today. I’ve been doing a lot of prep work for the writing – summarizing the final chapters, transcribing voice notes, researching, plotting – and it paid off today when I wrote 500 keeper words in about 2 hours. Felt great.
Tomorrow I start teaching Margaret ActionScript programming. She’s going to be handling parts of GODinabox – combat, special effects, and more – and we’re going to have fun getting her up to speed. I expect her to catch fire as a programmer.
Spent a good couple hours on the lake today. Windy and warm. Saw my first pumpkinseed guarding a nest today and the first tiny fish from this Springs spawns. The lake is low and the lake bottom is pitted from beaver and muskrat burrowing for lily roots and last Winter’s attempts to dig new shore burrows in the shallow flats – the low water exposed every shore burrow last Fall. I am amazed at how “farmed” the lake is by its critters.
I am jazzed by today’s progress on the book and know I’m going to finish it by the end of the Write-a-thon – July 27th. It’s only taken 15 years to finish (although it started as a story-telling screensaver, not a book, to be fair.)
I put The Pad on the market today
Sigh.
Anyone want to own their own island, a simple cabin, and 11 acres of heaven? $160k.
But it is a step toward being closer to my best friend. And that is an excellent thing.
Didn’t sleep well so my brain wasn’t trustworthy for coding. I did get some good Channel Zilch work done. The storyline for the last chapters is jelling and I am thinking about the book a lot.
Get OFF MY LAWN!