2023

Blog Post No. 526

Welcome to the end of 2022. As is tradition, I’ll write a nice long post looking back on the year when I get to the year-end of the blog in mid January. This post is all about looking to the future. The distant future of 2023, to be exact. Will there finally be flying cars and food in pill form? I have no idea, but I kind of hope not. I’ll settle for better healthcare and cheaper groceries. I’d also really like to finally get out of the house more and specifically start attending events again. I’ve been writing these looking ahead posts since the early days of the website and so far my predictions have been unreliable at best. That doesn’t mean I’m not sincere when I state my goals (also, it’s mostly fun to look to the future and dream). Also, the lock-downs have reminded us that the world doesn’t care about what plans you’ve made.

On fire

Blog Post No. 471

Being on fire is a weird metaphor. (Though not any weirder than all the other cliché metaphors). It can mean good, like in NBA Jam when your player literally catches on fire when you play well (or I guess in every day life when a normal person is doing well in consecutive tasks). On the other hand, fire is bad. Things on fire burn and turn to ash. Right now I’m kind of feeling both meanings of the phrase.

Searching for a Topic

Blog Post No. 435

With all hands on deck working to finish Break/Interrupt by next week, there it’s anything else going on for me to talk about. Since I’m still hiding at home, I don’t even have the day job to complain about or regular excursions around the city on which to muse. I’m always excited to get to the end of a project, but I seem extra eager for this one. Since time in the pandemic is so weird, it’s felt like I’ve been writing and editing this thing for a year and not the eight months it’s really been. Wow, it’s only been eight months. Also strange to think about.

The Future

Blog No. 188

Back in 2012, at the start of Adventure Worlds, I talked a lot to the other members (too much as I’m know to do) about the future of the endeavour. I imagined everything from a fully functioning web magazine to lucrative careers as authors, and even something about publishing. As time went by, my main focus was finishing stories. Having spent as many years as I did talking, I had to prove to myself that I could actually write. Adventure Worlds was a responsibility. I had to put content on the site and I had to get better because everything I was writing was going up to be read. It served as exactly what we initially wanted. The blog was a place for us to post our stories, challenge each other to improve, and hopefully find an audience. It was a brand we could develop and use to help us all.

New Year Updates

Blog No. 165

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably noticed the new layout. I didn’t set out (in the beginning) to do a New Year refresh, but that’s how it worked out, and a fresh look about once a year seems like it works. It’s not too jarring and things don’t get too boring. It’s just about right. For me at least, and since I’m the number one viewer of the site, I want to keep myself happy. It’s not a big change (which is something I prefer) but it’s enough to keep things interesting.

Some Random Updates

Blog No. 147

Things are moving quickly in the Adventure Worlds sphere. (adventureworldsblog.com) From the outside it sometimes seems like everything is at a crawl, but there is a lot going on under the surface that is keeping everyone busy.

No Light Tomorrow (the collection) is still in progress. We are up to our elbows in plans, communications, and searches. It is in the hands of an editor at the moment, so we are in a holding pattern. This will be the first time I work with a professional editor and the first time Christian works with an independent editor, so that’s very exciting, but a bit nerve-wracking. We have been working on the collection since last year, changing it, editing it, shaping the stories. The thought that someone I haven’t met could point out things that will make us do major rewrites is daunting. For now we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the shoe to drop. In the mean time we’ve been planning a big release event with some very special people, hunting for a printer (one who could possibly achieve the outcome we want without too much cost or stress), and brainstorming things that have grown well beyond the scope of the one small collection. We are even thinking about future or regular events for not only No Light, but everything we do and with the other local artists we work with.

Leaving things behind

Blog No. 130

I love the format of a short story. There is artistry in writing a really good story that fits in a small space, but feels larger than it is. All of my humble beginnings in reading and writing began with short stories, even the genre I am most drawn to, SciFi if you haven’t guessed, was proliferated through the short stories published in the magazines in the 40s and 50s (and even earlier). I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go into too much depth, but I think, even with novels being the major way to make a living as a writer, I will still find time to write short stories for the rest of my life. It’s the same with this blog, almost. I have no idea what the future of this blog, or the format that it currently is in, will be.

Dinner in another Country

Blog No. 94

A couple days ago I was driving to work after a long hiatus. I had some time off to finish the basement (as in put up drywall in one room at one end of the still unfinished basement) and go to Toronto for a wedding with my brother. The work was difficult and the wedding was fun (but tiring) and it felt like I had hardly been away from my job at all. As it were, something peculiar was happening on my drive to work. The normally fast moving thoroughfare I take was backed up, moving slowly, and plagued with dead stops. I knew there was a lot of construction and power line maintenance over the summer, but nothing like what I was suffering though.