Guest Blogging Today at A Dribble of Ink

Well, not really. Aidan asked if he could repost my violence in fantasy articles. He took two of the posts and spliced them together excellently.

Cheers to people understanding what you were trying to get at.

A Dribble of Ink: "Has Fantasy Forgotten the Consequences of Violence?"

iPad: One Week On

I finally got a full-sized tablet, and that tablet is an iPad. Truthfully, it was an easy decision. I love Android, but the only full-sized Android tablet I would even consider is the Nexus 10. However, most Android apps are made for smartphones or small tablets, and scalability to the pixel powerhouse that is the Nexus 10 is sketchy at best. I also wanted a tablet that would be somewhat future proof, and there didn't seem to be much talk of a new iPad anytime soon. So I got one.

It. Is. Amazing.

Jumping from the seven inch, first generation Kindle Fire, to the monster iPad 4 is akin to upgrading from a Tercel to the Starship Enterprise. I had no idea the utility of a tablet until I made the jump to the full-sized arena. I can type comfortably on the iPad's touchscreen; something I never thought I would say about any touchscreen ever. The apps are gorgeous and responsive. Load times seem to be nonexistent. The m***********g thing can run the Unreal 3 Engine like its Unity.

Without a doubt, the iPad 4 has more raw power than my laptop. Of course, this isn't saying much as the laptop is a loaner from my sister and over three years old. Still, I have never had this sort of intuitive experience with technology before.

This iPad marks my second Apple purchase. Eight years ago, I bought a 60 gig iPod. It was innovative, amazing, but also prone to crashing, dying, and being unreliable. I went through four hard drives and two bodies with that iPod. The iPad has redeemed Apple products in my eyes.

Now, I know no one out there is saying, "But what about the Surface RT?" I didn't even consider Microsoft because I can't stand the direction they're going. Windows 8 is foreign enough that I decided to learn Ubuntu instead. Their Surface tablets may be technologically impressive, but pretty poor in real world conditions. And I think this whole Xbox One thing they're trying to peddle is an all around terrible idea (it pains me to say this as I remember the promise of the original Xbox). In other words, I'm jumping ship and looking for a new ecosystem to inhabit.

And, as weird as it sounds to me, I think Apple may be the best option for a writer like me.

I will have many more posts on the iPad in the future including posts on games, writing apps, cloud apps, and the usual iPad spiels. For now though, these are my recs:

Games
True Skate (still trying to do a 900)
The Room (beat it in two obsessive, eldritch days)
Kingdom Rush (Tower Defense ftw)

Apps
Tweetbot (clean and responsive)
Hangouts (for chatting)
GMail (for email)
Google Drive (for writing)
Evernote (for writing)
Chrome (for browsing)
Feedly (it's okay for now, but I may be jumping ship to a new RSS app)

I still need suggestions for the best Outlining apps and good, non-biased News apps. Also, if you have recommendations for any good apps, please comment. I'm new to this whole Apple thing.

Readers' Choice!

Between working full time and writing fiction, I've had very little time to blog. When I do sit down to blog, I spend most of the time thinking of what to blog about. So, in the spirit of laziness and increased reliability of content, I'm asking you readers what you want to see on this blog.

Sample Topics

More short story reviews
Ray Bradbury Read-a-Longs
Interviews
Grinder's Guides
Game reviews
Updates on my writing

Please leave a comment with what you'd like to see more of. Your participation is greatly appreciated and will be noted during the next round of viral purges.

Learning to Balance Writing and Life...Again

After five months of unemployment, I am fully and gainfully employed again. It's doing customer service/office work for a local lawn care company. I've been pleasantly surprised at how good I am at it, and at how much I don't hate it. Although I'm manning phones, it's completely different than call center work for a large health care company (my last job). For one, our "call center" team consists of three people instead of two thousand (in one building). For two, I have to pick up the phone to answer a call. No auto-in for me anymore! Nor is my activity tracked and I'm threatened with unemployment every few weeks because I'm answering calls to fast or too slow. So even though I'm taking just as many calls and doing much more work, I no longer dread going to work. In fact I sorta look forward to it.

Our offices are above a candy store, the Duluth Coffee Company (I get a discount), and a Coney Island. It smells like caramel corn all the time. We get free Coke products (Smart Water FTW). Someone within the building blares German Opera. Our offices are brand new and look over Superior Street, which is the closest the Twin Ports have to a "city street." Half a block away is a walk-in sauna that has been busted multiple times for prostitution. A writer couldn't ask for a better environment.

Oh, and my boss said that when it slows down, I can write all I want in the downtime.

Even though I don't get paid as much as I used to at the old call center job, nor do I get benefits, nor does it utilize my degree, it feels like my first real job and I am happy.

However, going from writing six hours a day to trying to find a third of that is a big jump and I'm still figuring my way around the working life again.

Thinking back over the past year and a half of my writing life, I'm finding some bizarre trends. It seems the happier I become in my private life, the less I write. Also, the happier I become in my private life, the less fantastic my writing becomes. I used writing to escape from my last job, to the point where I was writing in every down second, putting 4, 5, 6000 words in a day. My ideas became wilder; the worlds more bizarre and unlike our own world.

Since unemployment and the new job, my ideas are trending towards the mundane, as is my reading. My worlds are primary, twisted just a bit. The protagonists more relatable. I'm also writing less.

My next goal is to figure out how to hybridize my ultra-bizarre and my more mundane. To use the need to tell stories to fuel my writing instead of a need to escape.

It's the next stage in my writing journey, and I'm ready to start.

Future Schedule

So I got a full-time job at a local company. I won't be able to do daily blog posts anymore, but I'm going to try and get in at least three a week (every other day): Grinder's Guide, Op-Ed, and a third thing. Stay tuned for future updates.

Short Story Review: The Finite Canvas by Brit Mandelo

This story goes beyond love and loss. In fact, it's more like a flywheel with "love" and "loss" painted across from each other, and they spin past you at a thousand miles per hour until you can't take it anymore and just need a hug.

The Finite Canvas was a Nebula nominees this year, and it's easy to see why. For a novelette -- that bizarre length between short story and novella -- Mandelo crams an incredible amount of character into this story. Jada, a syndicate assassin, comes to the acid-desert wasteland that is Earth to get a scar. Everytime she assassinates someone, she gets her body scarified to commemorate the event. However, where Jada lands does not have a scarificator; they only have a doctor. Molly was exiled from the stationcity above Earth for interfering with the syndicate's pharmaceutical business. She scrapes out an existence on an Earth that has become less than ideal, to put it mildly. However, when Jada offers her thousands for the scarification, Molly can't refuse. She found a breast lump and with that kind of cash, she could afford the gene therapy needed to prolong her life.

As Molly sets to work cutting flowers into Jada's arm, Jada tells her the story of this assassination. Details emerge and Molly finds it as difficult to listen to the story as it is to flay the flesh from Jada's arm. The two women grow close during the few days they are together, until Jada's face turns up on a wanted poster with reward that exceeds the scarification fee by a considerable amount.

This story is the best sort of near future science fiction. In deft strokes, Mandelo paints a plausible future of space cities and a post-Scarcity Earth where only the most poor or desperate live. The description is straight forward and minimal, allowing you to fill in the non-essential details. It's a style that I love: subtle yet clear. It leaves Mandelo plenty of space to explore these two fascinating characters -- Jada and Molly -- who in turn, explore other interesting characters that have crossed their lives. Seeing Jada and Molly grow close is bitter-sweat: Molly, alone since her exile, longs for the closeness and body heat of another human, especially one as attractive as Jada. Jada, though, is a shell thanks to her most recent assassination and can't do much more than provide that body heat. These are characters with more humanity and depth than you're likely to see in most novels. Jada sees herself as almost sociopathic, but it becomes apparent that she is much more complicated than that and has the ability to love just as fiercely as someone who doesn't kill others for a living. Molly has been drifting through life since her exile, eeking out a small existence as a village doctor, but little more. She doesn't interact with anyone on more than a professional level. Jada, though, enters her life and Molly starts to wake up. In the end, she makes a decision that changes both of them forever.

I can not recommend this story highly enough. It's a prime example of the type of science fiction we need to keep the genre relevant. It's near future, well-thought out, and encompasses that oft-bandied but rarely-true style: character-driven. I urge you to go read it for free. Now. Go.

"The Finite Canvas"
Brit Mandelo
Tor.com
Science Fiction
Recommended

Birthday Post

Today I turn 24, which officially puts me in my mid-Twenties. I don't know how to feel about this, but it's my birthday, and there are various cakes to eat, so you probably won't find me at my usual haunts. In my place, please enjoy this GIF.