Robert Heinlein has five famous rules for writers.
They're all valuable, but today, I just want to talk about rule two. I've really been working on rule one this year. Every day I write. That wouldn't be as useful, however, if I didn't keep rule two.
Well, today I achieved another victory in the fulfillment of rule two.
Yessir, that's my baby! No sir, don't mean maybe. I started a story called "Digital Wizards" on the 30th of March. I expected it to be a relatively short story, but it didn't cooperate with me. Yesterday morning, I typed "the end," and checked the word count. The story ended up at 36,235 words. That's even a titch longer than my last overly long novella "The Elephant in the Room" that I wrote in January.
That's pretty exciting. It's always exciting to reach the end of a story. Unfortunately, it's a constant process. It doesn't work like this:
Instead, it's like this:
So, tomorrow, I'll have to go back to Heinlein's rule number one, and write another thousand words. I'm a little nervous about that, as always. Will I be able to? I think I'm going to go back to the book that I began when Marshal did his "Journey Into Journey" contest. He gave me the song, "Still They Ride" for my inspiration. I came up with an idea that was basically The Lone Ranger in space. I started it, got about 5,000 words in, then realized that it was going to be a novel and not just a short story, and I needed something else. So, I quit...or shelved it anyway...and wrote a cheesy Star Wars story about some old imperial biker scouts after the empire has fallen who love the rush of riding speeder bikes so much that they'll risk it all to go out and zip around on them from time to time.
I had an idea about how to make the original Lone Ranger idea work this month, and I guess I'm going to see if I can't put that into practice, and write the original book from beginning to end. If that works, it'll be the second story that Marshal got me started on that I finish in this writing every day process. Thanks, Marshal. The book is going to be called "Still They Ride: A Lazerfist Story" or something like that. Lazerfist is the main character...The Lone Ranger. If it goes well, maybe I'll do more tales about him in the future. Who knows?
In 2019, we were at a Buc-ee's, and I saw a shirt there that I liked enough to buy for myself. It had an image of Sasquatch with the words "Into the Woods We Go" over the top of it. I love camping and hiking, and a sasquatch is kind of an avatar of the woods, so I thought it would make a fine shirt to wear around, so I bought it.
Later that year, after I lost a bunch of weight, I even bought a new, smaller version of the shirt that I could fit at that size. I regained the weight, and the shirt remained in pristine condition with no use until now that I have relost the weight. It has remained one of my favorite shirts through all that time, and owning it in two different sizes meant that I was able to wear it continueally even through my covid-depression induced weight gain and my determined second weight loss.
Well, the other day, and I blogged about this one though I don't usually talk about clothes on here, I found another shirt with Bigfoot on it. This time, it was a shirt with Sasquatch and the words "Believe in Yourself, Even If Nobody Else Does." It reminded me a lot of the days when The Anklecast was all about inspirational quotes and music to get myself to write (of course, none of that worked, and I almost never wrote, but still...). With Bigfoot and an inspirational quote like that, I had to grab it.
So, fast forward about a week, and I go into work yesterday. I'm even wearing that white Bigfoot shirt you see above. My friend, Murray, comes in and tells me that he was at Marshall's and he saw the coolest shirt ever. He had to have it. He looked everywhere for one in his size, but they just didn't have it, and he was bummed. The did have a size large, however, and he thought, "Big Anklevich would love this shirt too."
He pulls it out and hands it to me. He bought me a shirt just because. He's like that. He's a really cool and very generous guy. I look at the shirt and can't help but laugh.
It's another Sasquatch. Another camping Sasquatch at that. He's out int he woods sitting in a camp chair with a water bottle and his phone, a VW Bus in the background, chillin'. It is a pretty great shirt. And now, it looks like I'm starting to build a collection of Bigfoot shirts. I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened organically. Maybe I need to make a Sasquatch BDA logo shirt. Something like this:
Eh? What do you think? That would look cool on a shirt, right? I think I could have my daughter whip one up in a minute. She has a vinyl T-shirt making machine. She made me a straight BDA logo shirt already. This one could be pretty rad, huh? I mean, since it's turned out to be my thing...
I made an appearance on the Rish Outcast that is now available for all to download, listen to, and enjoy. It's a discussion about the process of making covers for publication. Rish and I have been frantically publishing away recently, which is a process that requires a cover image. Those can be daunting (especially for Rish) and we talk about it and how we've managed to make it work.
Make sure you go to the blog post HERE to see the images that go along with what we're talking about.
You can find the episode on the Rish Outcast feed or you can follow this link over to Rish's blog to see his post. You can download the show by right-clicking HERE. Or, possibly simplest of all, you can just click the play button below and give it a listen now.
I'm a hair's breadth from One-derland. This week I stuck with my plan
and clamped down firmly on it. How did it work for me? Did I lose some
more? Is One-derland within my grasp?
The Witcher is an interesting book series. It began as a bunch of short stories, and eventually blossomed into a five book series (a quintology? No, internet says pentology) that then ended and was followed up by a standalone novel that was set back in the midst of the short stories.
I was talking to Rish about that the other day, saying that Lara & the Witch could be that if he wanted it to. He's written a bunch of short stories in the world and at least one novel as well. Compile that shit together and you might have something just as impressive.
Well, I listened to the audiobooks of the whole Witcher series in late 2022 and early 2023, and I put the books on my list to acquire. I have recently managed to achieve that goal. So, here's that series. First is Blood of Elves.
Followed by The Time of Contempt:
Next is Baptism of Fire:
Then The Tower of Swallows:
And the last book in the Pentology is The Lady of the Lake:
Then, just yesterday, I acquired the last book, the prequel tale Season of Storms:
The art on all of these covers is really magnificent. It reminds me of when I was a child, and I got various Piers Anthony books and would sit and stare at the amazing things depicted on their covers. It was an easy sell to get me to read the stories within with art like that, and these Witcher books are no different.
The interiors are nothing special, just standard book stuff, but they look good together on my bookshelf.
Sadly, a quirk of my shelves leaves them split up on either side of the Lego Scout Walker.
As I add books and sometimes subtract them as well, though, things shift, so they might be reunited someday. Who knows?
Anyway, I recommend reading those books if you are in the least interested. They were a great series. The TV show was okay, but I didn't even watch past the first season. I'm mostly a fan of the books.
On Friday, I talked about my Dune book, and showed off its lovely features. I don't have many books like that. Most of them are used books that I got as cheap as possible. I do have a few, however, so I think I'll hightlight a couple more of them today.
Back in 2022, my nephew was sharing his Audible password with me, and allowing me to listen to all the books he had on his account. He had a job where he drove around all day every day, and so he had a great deal of time to listen to audiobooks if he wanted to. So, his collection was pretty vast. He decided to listen to the Witcher series, I suppose because the Netflix show had made them into household names, and I was happy to hear it. I had attempted to check out the first Witcher book on audio from the library, and the wait was something like six months, so if I actually wanted to listen to these books, this was a much more likely way to make it happen.
Well, I friggin' binged the hell out of those books. I loved them. I listened through them so fast that smoke was rising off my phone by the time I was done. It hadn't taken long for me to decide that I wanted to add them to my shelves...oh, that's how I usually do my book collecting, by the way. I listen to the audio from the library or Audible or wherever I can get my hands on it, and then if I like it enough, I put it on my list to acquire for the shelves.
This Christmas, I put the Witcher books on my list, and my daughter bought me one of them...not the first one, though. It was the most expensive one. She bought me the second one instead. It was a really nice fancy one as well. Here it is:
The Sword of Destiny, the Illustrated Edition. That second part is what made it so expensive. It wasn't just a book, it was a picture book. Not a complete picture book like, say, those Harry Potter editions are, but it had a lot of fancy stuff, like the Dune book I mentioned on Friday. The inner covers were printed with colorful designs.
That main blue color is used throughout the book, on every single page, which surely costs more to print, I assume.
The start of each story got a fancy title page.
And there were several images printed in those colors throughout the pages of the book as well.
I started saving up money to get the rest of the books, and before too long, I got book one, The Last Wish, Illustrated Edition.
This one was the perfect companion. As well it should be, since the second book was made to compliment this first one. It had all the same stuff, only done with a different accent color. Red for this one. The interior cover was the same.
The book was printed with the two colors.
And the illustrations were placed throughout.
They're great books. I'll have to go back and read them again and again over the years to make it all worth it. The stories were good enough, that in a few years, I could see myself doing just that.
I have also recently acquired the rest of the series, though those aren't fancy illustrated editions. I guess maybe I'll talk about them tomorrow.
Yesterday, I started doing posts about my book collection. You should start a collection of these books, which are available in paperback and hardcover on Amazon.
The most recent of which to arrive on the shelves is A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. The paperback and hardcover versions of that book just went live this week. I slaved away on them last week until I had it all done, then put them in Amazon's hands. They took a day or so, and then they were live. I'm pretty excited about it. This is the full front/spine/back cover of the book.
I made sure to have it match the first volume in the series as close as possible, but one thing that I added was the volume number up in the top of the spine. I liked it so much, that I redid the cover of Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One and added that little bit in.
Now, when people buy them, they'll match perfectly on their shelf. I love it...particularly because I'll have copies of them on my own shelf. Hey, I'm a book collector too, right? I can't skip my own books.
Anyway, if you're like me, and you like collecting books, feel free to head over to Amazon and grab a copy of my three short story collections that are now available.
I guess, since I showed the full cover of the other two, I'll throw the full cover of Christmas Creatures on here as well.
This week, I've been slaving away at getting Rish Outfield's new collection ready for paperback and hardcover publishing. So, pretty soon, you'll be able to start collecting books of his as well. I'm doing it for free, although I did request an author signed hardcover copy as my payment for the work of making the book exist. I mean, come on, I'm not going to let my shelves be devoid of Rish Outfield books. So, watch for Female Protagonist: A Short Story Collection to become available soon.
Also, I have my third installment in the short fiction collection coming soon. I've already decided what stories will be in it. I just gotta get some of the audio versions of those previous books finished before I move on. So, I guess, watch for that too.
Okay, as per my post a few days ago, I've decided to talk a little about the books I have on my shelf as well as the toys I have up there, especially considering that there are probably more book nerds who read my blog than toy nerds.
I figured I'd start with Dune since it's pretty topical these days.
I first read Dune back in the nineties, and was totally blown away by how complete the world felt, how imaginative and immersive it was. I wanted to get my own copy, for I had already begun collecting books even then. I had almost no money, however, so I made all my book purchases from used book stores or on the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble. Dune wasn't making an appearance on either of those shelves in those days. I could buy the full price book or nothing, and my circumstances dictated that my choice would have to be nothing.
Here and there over the years, I've checked to see if there was a good edition that I could pick up, but I never bit. Just a few years ago, not long after the first Timothy Chalumet movie came out, I looked on Amazon, and they had a really fancy edition that was available for $25...well, if it were still the nineties, I would have had to walk away, but these days, I have to pay similar prices for action figures, so adjusted for inflation, it would have been $10 in the nineties.
I grabbed it, and when it came, I was really impressed. The book is beautiful. The cover is striking, and check out the color on the edges of the pages:
Neat, huh? Not only that, but there's a load of great art included in interesting ways. There's full color pictures on the inside covers of the front and back.
And even on the inside of the dust jacket. It's printed on both sides.
The book itself has stuff indented into the cover, which is pretty rad.
I must not fear.
And there's a whole bunch of appendices at the end of the book to read.
I just finished listening to the book on audio today. It's only the second time I've read the book. I really ought to do it more often. At least once every ten years, eh? Anyway, those appendices weren't a part of the audio, so I think I'm going to read them now, and see just what they have in there for me.
It looks like you can still get your hands on this edition of Dune over on Amazon for just slightly less than what I paid, so if you've always wanted a beautiful copy of Dune and you can spare $25, head over and grab it while you still can. Maybe I ought to get one of those Amazon partner accounts or whatever they are, where they give you money if people follow your link over and buy something. Although, most of my books came from used book stores, so I probably won't talk Amazon on many more of these posts in the future. Oh well.
Oh, and for the record, the book Dune had nothing to do with the name of the podcast. Just a coincidence.
I had to get an oil change at Walmart for my wife's car the other day. Since I was stuck in the store for a while, I wandered around and looked at just about everything. One of the things that caught my eye was this shirt. I couldn't think of a shirt that was more apt for Big Anklevich.
It really reminded me of my old intro to the Anklecast where I used a bunch of motivational phrases in an attempt to inspire myself and possibly others. In case you can't see it (because the picture is pretty hard to read) it says, "Believe in yourself even if nobody else does." That's pretty good. On top of that, it's a picture of Bigfoot, which makes it humorous.
My wife didn't get it. She asked me who the guy in the picture was. I was confused.
"Is it some kind of character that's well known?" she asked.
"It's Bigfoot," I said.
"Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought it was just some gorilla or something. That makes it a little more funny."
It is halfway through the month of April now. I thought I'd let my reports slack off a little so that I could spend more time writing on stories rather than writing about writing on stories. Maybe I shouldn't have waited though, because, for the first time since I started all of this, I fell short of my goal...twice.
On April second I suffered from a brain fart. I was certain that I'd hit my goal that day, but on the third, when I went to enter my word count in, I realized that I hadn't ever entered the word count for the day before. When I checked, I saw that I hadn't even made it to 1,000 words on the second. I don't know why. I thought I'd finished my writing on my lunchbreak the day before, but apparently I had not, and I'd forgotten to finish it up. Whoops!
Then it got worse, because a week later, we went west to the Texas Hill Country to watch the solar eclipse. I'd meant to write my words in the morning before we left, but instead I spent all my time packing and getting things ready, and the thought never crossed my mind. I groaned when I realized what I'd done while driving north. Now I was going to have to write my words on my phone. I could do that, and have done that many times.
While on our cruise, I took my wireless keyboard with me, and it was as easy as writing at home. I hadn't brought my wireless keyboard with me this time, though. I was going to have to type on the phone's onscreen keyboard as if I were texting someone. That's a hard way to write 1,333 words, but it was doable. I'd written more than 1,000 words in less than an hour that way already during this process, so I knew it could be done.
Then, that night, when all was dark, we were in our sleeping bags and drifting off for the night, my eyes popped open in panic. I hadn't written still. I'd completely forgotten, and now I was in bed. Should I get out and go tap away at my phone screen for an hour or so to put in my time? I decided against it, and just went to sleep. Everybody messes up sometimes. I've been virtually perfect so far, I could cut myself a break once in a while.
So, I'm about 2,000 words short on my total this month. I should be closer to 21,000 words, but I'm only at 19,000. I'm a little behind on my progress toward the goal. At half the month, I've only got 48.33% of my words written. I bet I'll still get there, though. I'll keep closing that gap, and by month's end, I'll have outpaced the meter and managed 100%.
19329 / 39990 (48.33%)
So, that was the month. How is the year coming along. Well, here is the charts for the entire time I've been at this. We're now into three images to make it all fit.
I'm officially over the 200,000 word mark. That's pretty sweet. I still haven't quite made it to the halfway mark for the year, I think that is April 27th, but I'm past the 2/3rds mark toward the goal. As you can see from this meter below:
207903 / 304475 (68.28%)
So, the train rolls on, as far as that goes.
But those aren't my only goals for the month. As I said at the start of the month, I don't want to raise my word count yet, because there are other things that I want to be working on along with writing. I've been adding in non-writing goals like publishing stories on Amazon and the like for the last few months, and I did it again for April.
My first goal was to do story craft research by watching some of these Tyler Mowery videos as working them into the outline for my story idea called, "Skeleton Crew."
I did a little of that, but precious little. I need to step it up, too, because I'm sliding into home plate with "Digital Wizards." That story is going to be done soon, and I'll have to start something else. Will I be ready when that time comes? Not if I don't get with it.
I've been letting myself get distracted with other things...they're also writing-related things, but they weren't the goals I made at the start of the month. For example, I put together and published a second collection of my short stories this past week. This past few days, I've been struggling to remember how to go about formatting the book for its paperback edition. I'm almost done, and then I'll have that available for purchase as well.
On top of that, I've been helping Rish Outfield get covers made for his stories so that he can publish them. I've also been going through and redoing all of his really shitty old covers so that they match with the new style and don't suck so bad that people will click away rather than buy. There are still about twenty more of those covers to finish, but for now I'm focusing on the paperback manuscript. When Rish catches up, getting all the stories I've given him covers for republished, then I'll see about making some more.
I also plan on helping Rish get paperback and hardcover versions of some of the things he's published. He's putting out a few story collections right now as well, and I'm in the zone as far as manuscript formatting goes, so I could pop them out really quickly, I'm sure.
So, I'm getting a little distracted, but I'm doing things that are really worthwhile, at least.
My other goal for April was to get the audio for Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies published. I haven't been slacking on that one. I recorded and edited one of the two stories that was missing, as well as formatting and uploading all of the files that I already have. Now, I just have to get the title story, "Kingdom of Flies" recorded and edited, and I'll be totally done with that. I think I'll probably make it, though I'll be competing with my Anklecast episode for editing time.
Things are still humming along really well, and you can look forward to a lot of stuff coming at you from old Big Anklevich. Once I finish with this collection, I'll get the last collection out. Then I'll get going on the novels that I have already written. Then...well, by the time I'm done with that, it'll probably be 2025 and I'll have several more novels to publish. I guess it'll be a constant race from here on out trying to publish what I write. Should be interesting. Maybe if some people actually start buying stuff, I might even be able to get somebody to help me and win that race, but I'm not expecting it.
We ended up last week and began this week with our trip to see the solar
eclipse as it passed through Texas. During that particular road trip, I
indulged a little too much. It left me in a pretty bad place to start
the week. Could I fix it? Was it possible to turn things around before
the week came to an end and I'd gained weight again? Watch and see
whether I pulled it off or not.
Yesterday, a package came for me in the mail. I saw the light on our Alexa, and asked it what my notifications were.
"A shipment has arrived, including Blood of Elves."
I couldn't help but laugh. That made it sound like a much more ghoulish shipment than it actually was. It might be a lot neater if it really was something like that. I might be a much more interesting person in that case. Instead, it was referring to this:
Yup, I listened to the audiobooks of those books back in 2023, and I've been meaning to amass the books on my shelves. Now I've managed to get most of them. Just one more left, Season of Storms...the post-finale prequel book.
Maybe I ought to do that on my blog as well. I talk about all the new toys I get in my collection, but I suspect there are more book nerds that see my blog than toy nerds. Maybe I ought to start talking about the books on my shelves too. There's way more of them than there is toys, I think. What do you think? Should I try it? We can discuss the books if you'd like...
Okay, after last month's frenzied publish fest for all my short stories, the time has now arrived to get the collections of those stories out. Phase one of that process is the publishing the eBook version of A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two.
I put it together over the last little while and just published it yesterday afternoon. You can find it on Amazon and get seventeen of my stories for the price of...well, not one. It's about what it something like two of them would cost on their own.
Next up will be to make the paperback and hardcover versions. Lastly, I'll get the audiobook done. Some of the stories are already recorded for the audiobook, but only about five or six. That's a pretty low percentage of seventeen, so I've got plenty of work to do on that. Of course, the audiobook version of this book will have to wait until I've finished the audiobook version of Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One. Shouldn't be that bad. I only have to record the audio for "Kingdom of Flies" to finish up that one. So, things are rolling along.
So, if you are interested, pick up a copy of A Battalion of Ideas: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. Also, when you read it, give the book a review or at least a rating. It doesn't take much, but it makes a big difference on how visible my books are to people. Unreviewed and unrated books might as well not exist on Amazon.
Oh, and I have one more question. When I came up with the idea for the title of the collection, it was a play on the story "The Battle of the Ideas," which we did on the Dunesteef years ago. That story was about a writer whose story ideas had grown tired of being trapped inside his head, and threatened to kill their creator in an attempt to escape and land in some other creator's head that would actually write the stories. So, there's nothing about a battalion of space marines marching down a road in a futuristic city that pertains to that story, nor is there anything like that in any other story in the collection.
So, my question is, do I need to change my cover or is it okay? The cover refers to the title, and not to any particular story in the book. Is it misleading? Might people buy the book expecting sci-fi space warrior stories and grow angry when they don't get them? I'm just curious what y'all's opinion of that is.
...but I missed my chance to get this published when the time was right back in November. It was my goal to get my first audiobook published back then, but I effed around for too long and found out that it just wasn't possible. I've straightened up since then, and managed to get all the stories for Christmas Creatures: A Twisted Christmas Story Collection recorded and edited, and I got an email from ACX the other day to tell me that the audiobook is now available on Audible, which is Amazon.
This is the square version of the cover, because it's audio, and that means...a CD? A record album?
It's exciting for me. I've published my first audiobook ever, now. Surprising to consider, since I made my name (what little name I have) doing an audio podcast. I probably should have had audiobooks up ages ago, but it's better late than never, I guess.
So, if you are one of those who wanted the book, but only wanted it if it was in audio...and there was at least one person who specifically requested that...then you can pick it up now...or you can wait until November when the time is right, I'd definitely understand if you did that.
Algar Van Cluth suggested that I should wait until clearance for the Vintage Scarlett from the GI Joe Classified line. I had to ignore that advice, because I'd already pre-ordered the figure.
Maybe I still could have, but truthfully, I didn't want to. This is the Scarlett figure that I've wanted ever since they announced this six-inch line. This figure is the third version of Scarlett that I've bought. When the line first began, I bought every figure they offered, including the updated-for-modern-audiences version of Scarlett.
I guess Hasbro didn't believe that modern collectors would like a Scarlett that wore the same old tan bathing suit-looking outfit that she wore back in the eighties, so they gussied her up with a bunch of extra colors and highlights and a goofy new face and hair color.
I tried a few things to make Scarlett more like the one I'd loved as a kid, and considered a full-on custom version. I'd seen some really good repaints of the figure, but I suspected that, like the Baroness that I built for myself, as soon as I finished the custom repaint, they'd announce their own classic version of Scarlett that I could have gotten without putting in all the effort and still coming up with something that was only "pretty good."
So, even though I gad the origninal release and the movie release of Scarlett...
I waited, and lo and behold, they announced that classic vintage look Scarlett. Now she's hitting stores, and I've got her in my grubby little mitts.
I have to say that I absolutely love the figures. It's exactly what I always wanted. It comes with a literal crap ton of accessories, including two different pony tails, so you can give her a more action-packed hairstyle if you'd like.
When you compare it to the old Scarlett that I had, which I'd enhanced by giving it the head from my Black Widow to make it closer to the character I wanted it to be, it towers above.
Although that might have been poor phrasing, because in the picture the old one looks a lot taller. I think they're basically the same size as far as that goes, though. The new one looks shorter because she's crouching a lot more.
Now, I can give Black Widow her long hair back. I've been using the short-haired-version on that shelf for a while, but I definitely prefer the long hair.
And Scarlett can join her compadres on the Joe shelf.
With Scarlett and Gung Ho made vintage, the only non-vintage looking guy there is Duke. He's still got the stupid golden shin guards and futuristic gun in his hand. The vintage Duke was released in the same wave as Scarlett. I didn't pre-order it, but I saw it in the store the other day, and I'm sorely tempted to buy it. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will very likely be able to get it at clearance in a few months, but will I have the fortitude to wait? Probably not, to be honest. I'm sure I'll have a post about adding him to the bunch in just a week or two. See you then.
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