Unintentional March Break

Blog No. 174

Last week we a flurry of activity coming of the super successful weekend Christian and had, everything was moving forward—until it wasn’t. I’m not sure how it happened. (I’m never quite sure how it happens). For some reason, I just stopped working. Progress was good, spirits were high, the intentions were there, then (poof) nothing. It seems to be a disturbing trend. Whenever I’m feeling good, or successful, I totally slack off and throw it all to the winds. It’s not a conscious thing, there are just a lot of video games I want to play and TV I need to watch. If I add on real responsibilities to that, nothing gets done and I have only a few thousand words to show for all that time.

Mad At Last Night Ben

Blog No. 170

            Ever since I wanted to write (even before I did anything about it) there was always a long list of stories I planned to finish. Some of them were going to be comics, or films, or both, then books, stories, novels, or television shows. Sometimes it wavered between several. The point being, I had (and still have) a bunch of stories I want to write. Magically (through the art of hard work and tons of support) I have written some of those stories. Some of them have even turned out well. It’s amazing what a little work and consistency can do. Currently my list of projects (currents and forthcoming) is short. While I want to get to everything eventually, I have to be practical. I have four projects I want to finish this year (if not more, but probably less). Two of those I am currently working on and feel like I should do some kind of an update thing. (If for no other reason than to keep myself accountable).

Another Collection Update

Blog No. 141

Hello fine folks. I’ve been talking about this darn collection with Christian for over a year now and all I’ve had for you were promises and Gorilla Dust. It’s been a long, bumpy, lazy road, with big changes and lots of letdowns, but we are finally in sight of the finish line. I decided to use this week’s post to write a short update.

When we started the collection (back in February of 2014) we had wondrous visions of a collection of short stories to go along with the quickly growing blog. We were racking up stories faster than we could post them and decided to collect the best of them and put out a book. Christian had his own collection coming out (which has done marvellously well: http://christianlaforet.com/the-space-between-houses/) but we had lots of stories in the bag and wanted to do something more with them. As it turned out, the dynamics of Adventure Worlds changed and the number of stories we each needed grew, and so did the amount of time spent working on it.

News, Contest, Companions

Blog No. 138

Hello regular readers (and to anyone just joining us). If you follow this blog, chances are you also follow Adventure Worlds. If you don’t, what the heck are you waiting for? Head over there and start reading all the stories we’ve posted there over the last three years (adventureworldsblog.com). For those who have spent time over there, you may have seen Monday’s news instead of the usual story. To repeat it here, due to the lack of regular submissions and most of the work falling to Christian and myself, we have officially gone to posting every other week. It’s a bit sad in that we were able to have a long run of weekly posts with very few gaps, but without content to post, we have to change the format. We could have probably kept the pace going, but the collection is nearing the final stages and we are both hard at work on our first novels. The collection is due out presently (think a month or two) and we still hope to have the novels out in the Holiday season (end of 2015, beginning of 2016).

Zines and Other Things

Blog No. 136

Zine number four is officially out in the wild. It, like the others before it, took longer than expected. Part of that is on my shoulders (as the guy who puts the layout together) but the major reason is that this time around we have ads. Anchor Coffee House, a favorite café of mine, and Paper Heroes, one of Christian’s regular haunts, graciously agreed to throw us a little cash to help fund the printing of the Zine. We still had to pay some out of pocket, but their contributions helped us find a local printer and spread the latest issue. The snag came with creating the ads and getting their approval. Both locations were easy to work with and very amicable, but I don’t have much experience making ads and finding the extra time to jet over to those stores and bother the owners to get their OK took time.  

How Much is too Much?

Blog No. 135

The other night, after a wedding rehearsal (not mine) and a lovely dinner with the family and friends from that event, I came home rather late and decided to catch up on a few shows. There was no reason for me to do it. It was already 10:30 (or nearly there) and I strive to get to bed before midnight. Besides, I am perpetually behind on my writing and spend far too much time watching TV shows. That evening though, I was tired and didn’t think I could muster the focus to get any work done. Along with being a lazy bum, I was down to the last one or two episodes of the shows I watch, so I was anxious, and I know other people in the house had seen them, so I wanted to avoid spoilers. One of the shows was Silicon Valley, a fun, tense show by Mike Judge, and the other was Game of Thrones, which is probably know and watched by everyone reading this blog. For the sake of those readers, I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but likely something is going to slip out, so brace yourself, or just skip this one for later.

Editing is Hard

Blog No. 123

One of the major parts of my writing day is looking at other people’s stories and giving them an edit. Often I’ll catch a couple of typos, notice some structural weak spots and grammar mistakes, and make a bunch of suggestions on how I think the story could be improved. The things I notice jump off the page (fresh from the pile of new story elements I learned about) and if the story is well written, I can be done a couple thousand words in half an hour (extrapolate for longer stores, chapters etc). Sometimes there is a lot more to point out and the task becomes an arduous task filled with long winded explanations and edits based on assumptions and what I know about the author, but usually things go smoothly. If I can avoid supplanting the writer’s voice with my own, I find I add something to the story, helping the author and learning something about my own writing in the process.

Fresh, Exciting, and New!

Blog No. 118

I have a rather full plate this year, when it comes to writing and the like. Christian and I are hard at work on the second (and a half) drafts of our collection, I have a rather long multipart story going up monthly on Adventure Worlds, I’m picking away at the novel I started last year (and restarted this year), I have edits galore, and since we have more artists working on Finders, I’ve been drumming up new ideas for the pair, plus the next zine is due. What I don’t need is another story idea burning a hole in my imagination, but that’s what I have. Saturday morning, I woke from a vivid dream, ran over to the computer, and feverishly typed an awkward opening paragraph encapsulating the fading memory of the dreamed adventure. Now it’s following me around, pulling me away from my other tasks, spinning around my head like one of those pirate ships at theme parks (but the ones that actually go all the way around.

Novel Number One, Part Two

Blog No. 112

Last year, around this time, I started my first novel. I spent the first couple of weeks either sitting at the kitchen table or zipping to a local coffee shop to get a couple of pages written every day. I don’t know if you remember last winter (now that it’s cold again, it seems the people around me have forgotten). It was a tremendous challenge to stay on track and brave the cold, but I had a goal and I was going to try. Then things got busy and I lost focus and in a month, I had four terrible chapters and no momentum. I wasn’t ready.