Mike Resnick and Catastrophe Baker on The Dunesteef

I'm sure that the Dunesteef site and especially the podcast feed reaches way more people that my piddly little blog does, but I'm going to announce this episode here anyway, in case anybody missed that it had come out.

Today, we have the honor to release another Catastrophe Baker story that Mike Resnick sent to us to produce on the show several years ago. He passed away from cancer on January 9th, and we could think of no better way to pay tribute to his memory than putting out another one of his wonderful creations for his fans to experience.

(EDIT: Now that the feed is gone, the only way to hear the show is over on the Dunesteef Podcast YouTube page, which I am embedding below).

February Sweeps, Day 13

I was determined to get started on my actual version of my story for Marshal Latham's Journey Into Journey writing contest today. I believe I mentioned last week that I wrote a little 2,000 word flash fiction piece about an Imperial Biker Scout trying to make his way after the empire has fallen. He's hiding in a podunk outer rim moon, kind of like Nazis that fled to Argentina to escape punishment. Anyway, that one's not my official entry...or at least I don't think it will be.

On my drive home from work today, I turned on my Voice Memo app, and recorded myself as I drove. Recording myself seems to be necessary to keep me on task in brainstorming a story. Even if I know I'll never listen to the file later, I still manage to stay on task when I'm recording. Maybe it comes from long years of podcasting. Maybe I feel an obligation to entertain the audience by continuing what I'm supposed to do rather than just drifting off into my own thoughts. All I know is that it really helps. I keep trying until I get some planning done.

My story is going to be called Still They Ride. It's this Journey song:



I'm going to make it into a space western, with a cowboy who is called back to his hometown to help out an old friend who is in jail for a crime that he swears he didn't commit. I think I've got a lot of really cool elements, and while I didn't get the entire story planned out yet, I'm well on my way. The main character is one that I've had in the back of my mind for years named Simon Lazerfist. I was going to make a goofy movie, a kind of fake trailer, with my then four-year-old kid playing the main character several years ago. I even made a logo for Simon Lazerfist:

He was going to be fighting another guy I'd invented who went by the name Bluestar. This was the rest of the movie title:

I don't know if Bluestar will ever make an appearance in a Simon Lazerfist story, because the character has evolved substantially since I first came up with that stuff back in 2016. I do know, however, that there will be many other Lazerfist stories before I'm done. This one is just the first...though not the first in chronological order.

Anyway, I'm afraid Lazerfist may turn out to be quite a long story, considering all the elements I came up with on my way home tonight. So, I fear that the finished product may turn out to be too long for Marshal's contest, where only 7,000 words or less are allowed. So, I guess it's good that I did that biker scout story. I can use it as my entry after all if I need to.

Anyhow, today I got 1,049 words in. Some on Sunny & Gray 2, but most on Still They Ride (Lazerfist Version).

That puts my picometer at:

EDIT:
New progress meter.

14890 / 30000 (49.63%)

49% of the way there. Damn. If I'd written 110 more words I'd have been at exactly fifty. Oh well. Tomorrow is the halfway mark, after all, so I'm doing just fine.

February Sweeps, Day 12

I wasn't feeling it today, but I still plugged away and managed to get my words written right around 1:00 AM. Today I got 1,176 words.

They say that you won't be able to tell a year from now which words you wrote when you were inspired, and which ones when you were just pecking away to fulfill an obligation, so I should be okay. Rish almost got 3,000 words today, so I feel a little insignificant, but I made my goal either way. I don't have to have the most, I just have to write 1,000 every day. My picometer says:

EDIT:
New progress meter.

13841 / 30000 (46.14%)

46% of the way there. Maybe I can get to fifty tomorrow, which is one day shy of the 14th, the traditional midway point in February. Though, since we have an extra day this year, I'll really be kicking butt.

Clearance

My wife saw this a while ago, and texted it to me.

What a deal, right? Wow! I've been waiting for this thing to go on clearance, and now that it has, I'm buying it immediately before everyone else snaps them up, getting that substantial savings.

February Sweeps, Day 11

Today was a crappy day. Something that I'm not going to get into angered me immensely, and the rest of the day I was really unable to keep my mind on anything, including writing. Didn't matter, though, did it? 1,000 words a day means 1,000 words a day. Time doesn't stop passing whether you're upset or happy. It goes on at the same rate inexorably. So, if I was going to live up to my promise, I had to get to writing, or I just had to admit defeat, and give up.

I tried. After my lunch break came to an end, I only had 557 words. Maybe, if I worked real hard, I might be able to sneak a few moments here and there where I could add to that. I tried, but whenever I went back, I just plain wasn't inspired. The words came in fits and starts. I checked the word count after each sentence, and it went up extremely slowly.

As my workday came to an end, I was still only at 901. I was going to have to finish up when I got home. Instead, though, I just kept sitting at my desk after having shut everything down, and plugged away. Still checking the word count after every sentence. All of a sudden, I found that I had it in me to write a big paragraph. It was time to reveal an idea that I'd been saving, and I blew through it. Next thing you know, I checked my word count and it was:

1,067 words.

I made it, despite my foul mood and lack of inspiration. That's nice. Working through adversity builds strength, right? What doesn't kill me makes me tougher? Something like that.

Anyway, my picometer says:

EDIT:
New progress meter.

12665 / 30000 (42.22%)

42% is about halfway there...which I suppose makes sense, since the month is almost halfway over.

Canada Man

I thought I had to share this with y'all. My daughter is an artist, and this year for Christmas, she did a special drawing for my youngest son.

When he was very little, he and his sister created a superhero character they called Canada Guy.

Little had always liked dressing up as Captain America, and running around the house with a frisbee that he pretended was his shield. He liked to hold it on his back, storing it there like the real Captain America did.

I eventually got him a real Captain America frisbee to make his pretend fun a little more real to him.

At last, I got him a costume so he could complete the ensemble, and really take his Captain America fun to the max.

So, it was only natural that they went to the Canada well, and created Canada Guy as another character for him to dress up as.

We went to Canada to visit Grandma and Grandpa, and while we were there, we bought a Canadian flag at the dollar store. As you might expect, the flag turned out to be tiny. Two feet by three feet, I think. What did you expect from the dollar store?

There was little use for such a tiny flag, but the kids discovered that it was the perfect size to be a cape for the little guy. So, they dressed him up in all his Canada themed clothes, from sweatshirts to mittens, put the flag on his back, and called him Canada Guy. He ran around the house, saving the great white north from...I don't know the evil Jack Frost or something.

Over the years, he has pulled out that old flag, and used it as a cape again and again. He got in an argument with his sister, because he insisted that Canada Guy needed to actually be named Canada Man. His costume has changed as he's grown out of his Canada sweatshirt and changed it over to a T-shirt, then to a different sweatshirt.

This Christmas, my artist daughter thought it would be nice to give him a poster of Canada Man to put on his wall. So, she spent several hours designing and drawing this poster, printed it out at the local Walgreens, and presented it to him on Christmas day.

Cool, huh? I meant to share it with y'all earlier, but I forgot to, and it slipped my mind until now. But here you go, The Extraordinary Canada Man.

The kids have been expanding his mythos since Christmas day. Canada Man may soon have a sidekick. They can't seem to decide whether the sidekick is a girl that can turn into a grizzly bear, or just a grizzly bear who thinks and talks like a human, but a grizzly bear is definitely in the offing. You may get a new picture with the bear as well soon.

February Sweeps, Day 10

1,191 words today.

I was going to be recording with Rish later tonight, as soon as I got home from work, so I really wanted to make sure I got all 1,000 words during my lunch break. Otherwise, I'd be recording late into the wee hours of the morning, and then having to finish writing after that. Luckily, that didn't happen. I finished in time, and was able to record our bit without any sleep lost.

I'm still plugging away on Sunny & Gray book two, and getting close to the beginning of the final act. I guess I better figure out where I'm going with that final act, eh? I ought to do a little brainstorming and planning on my drives to work, but I've got this damned endless Brandon Sanderson book that I'm trying to get through. I'm 43 hours in, but there's still 12 hours left to go! And it's a library audiobook, so I keep running out of time and having to return it, then re-check it out. So, I can't very well not listen to the book when going to work, or I'll have to check it out for a sixth time.

Anyway, my picometer says:

EDIT:
New progress meter.

11598 / 30000 (38.66%)

38% is pretty good for ten days. I haven't missed a day, and hit my goal every one of them. That is good work, if I say so myself.