Market Theocracy

For all intents and purposes, I am back — with stories to tell.

I’ve been working on a long essay about my three month adventure on the raggedy edge, but have been having trouble wrapping the damn thing up. I wanted to re-start the blog with a bang, but I miss posting daily enough that I’ll have to be satisfied with a rousing Pop!

In the next few days I plan on posting the aforementioned essay, a prequel to Tessellation called Broke Circle, and another long essay on primitivism vs. progressionism that owes a debt of inspiration to William Gillis of the superb blog Human Iterations (linked handily on the sidebar there!) I’ll also be plugging my book Symbols Flow currently on sale.

Along with that will be my usual meandering thoughts on thisn’that, news both bad and good, book and movie reviews and all matter of other unseemly foofaral.

Glad to be back.

Hope you’re glad to see me.

-G.

Expect sparse posts for a little while, folks. I’m pretty consumed with the process of moving. Consider the story situation ‘on hold’. Bill — you might want to remove the sticky from the top of ETWOF for now. Sorry, man — but I promise to get back to it ASAP.

I’ll keep you all updated on my trip. When I get to K-Port I’ll be non-stop job hunting. I’ll be staying at The Salvation Army for the first month unless I luck out and get a killer job straight out of the gate. The SA might be near enough to a WiFi spot to let me get online, but I doubt I’m that lucky.

Until I get a place/connection of my own I’ll keep in touch by getting my morning coffee at Mickey D’s.

Anyway — very excited and a little nervous. Mostly excited though. Here I com, road. I’ve missed ya.

This is probably my favorite month, for entirely weather related and aesthetic reasons. I like the nice cold nights (just pulling out my quilt is a happy day for me) and the pleasantly warm-to comfortably cool days.

I also like the look of foliage when it’s getting ready for winter. Not the oft-admired ‘changing colors’ so much as the actual look of the skeleton trees. Very cool.

Still packing, cleaning and doing the other hundred and one things necessary to move. It’s a good thing I’m travelling light. A heavy trip would drive me insane.

Will try to have some writing up tomorrow. Hope all is well amongst the readerfolk.

Spent the day packing, cleaning and otherwise preparing for my move on Oct. 8th. As today was the day I officially bought my ticket, I figured it was symbolically a good day to get this shit over with.

The bulk of the work was actually transferring everything from my desktop computer to my laptop, then formatting the desktop. My dad is going to use it as the base for his ‘new’ system: a dual core thingy with some fancy-schmancy video card. Eh. As long as a computer will log onto the internet, run my freeware word processors and has enough ass to play Neverwinter Nights and Fate, I’m happy. It must also be able to run a Super Nintendo emulator as that’s where I get most of my entertainment from these days. That and Spider Solitaire, which I am strangely addicted to.

But Dad is bopping around like a kid on Xmas eve, talking about the cool new toys he’ll be ordering and how kickass his system will be when it’s all ready to go. My Dad does need power: he’s a game junkie who simply has to play the newest and best.

Whatever makes you happy, says I. And I’ll take melodramatic Japanese RPG’s with hilarious dialouge and big headed characters any day.

Having some ‘net difficulties folks. Hope to have them sorted out by tomorrow. Bear with me.

Odd but productive day of writing today. In keeping with my thoughts on direction that I posted yesterday, I managed to knock out about 6k words on three seperate stories — two rough drafts and half of another. I don’t know if this is merely enthusiasm for trying something new or evidence that I may have at last found my niche. What is obvious is that framing the stories in the way I talked about has allowed me to proceed on a long blocked story and actually do something with a couple of ideas that have been floating around in my brain for years.

What’s even more exciting is that all three stories have a good chance of appealing to the current SF/Fantasy market.

And, if I do say so myself, are pretty cool.

I’ll talk a bit more about the stories themselves tomorrow. I’m gonna go write some more.

Had a bunch of company show up out of the blue today, which means I didn’t get to polish Part 3 of Coyote. I’ll try to get it posted by tomorrow night.

I’ve been doing some thinking about writing lately. I’m conciously attempting to avoid all mytho-folklore tropes in the fantasy work I’m doing now. This is beastly, bitchily hard considering that the very structure of storytelling is bound up with those tropes.

It can be done, though. LeGuin’s mid 70’s and early 80’s short work, Jeff Ford’s entire career. Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan and Steph Swainston also labor in this particular garden.

My…hmm, direction may be the best term…at the moment is a sort of focused use of the unexplained as both a reflection of and map through various human conditions, which are then distilled through the individual characteristics of normalized characters. The responses of everyday folk faced with ‘reality unmasked; naked and with no excuse’ to quote a work-in-progress (Meeting The Last Man On Earth, For Coffee: A Raincheck) functions as a form of hyperactive allegory. The metaphor rests not in the description, but in the interpretation of events and facts that fit no previous dataset.

Why? Because, to be honest, I’m bored with reading about vampires, werewolves, ghosts, elves, fairies and the like. The idea of writing about them holds even less appeal since it’s so much more work.

Another reason is the simple fact that a framework like the above is far more amenable to inserting my pro-individualism ideals on a subconcious level. The idea that the universe is a funhouse mirror construct that requires subjective interpretation makes a case for individualism in a basic, brass tacks sense. Objectivism and the like then becomes a mindset (or toolset) to strive for rather than the ultimate truth of existence.

Or, as I said to a guy on a debate forum years ago, I have no idea if there are objective truths to life or not, but I see no reason in not behaving as if there were. You have to ground your actions in some form of value. I choose to ground mine in a respect for life, compassion for others, preference for beauty and a goal for finding joy in the days that I have been alloted.

Trying to get my whacked-out sleep schedule back on some rational track. Sorta fuzzy at the moment.

Tommorow I start packing, something I usually leave until the last minute, which means I hurry things and forget stuff. I’m gonna try to avoid that this time.

Claire Wolfe is saying goodbye to blogging and active participation in online political rabblerousing:

Now it’s also time to put Wolfesblog into suspended animation — with thanks and fond farewells to my fellow blogistas, Debra, Ian, Penguinscareme, Silver, and Thunder.

But I’ve changed. After a whole lifetime of being “political,” I’m just not anymore — as I think has been apparent for quite a while.

I’ll miss her pithy, often sarcastic, always well observed posts on Wolfesblog. Many were the moments when a just-timed-right glance at that blog could cheer me up or put me in the mood to do something other than sit and be mopey.

But I’m happy that Claire is placing her attention where it truly belongs: on her good individual self. The only proper ‘Freedom Movement’, I’ve long maintained, is the movement of individuals away from the mindless masses. Away from group think and group feel. Into their own interests and wants and needs.

Claire has meant alot to me since the day we officially ‘met’ several years ago: she has been a supportive fellow writer, an example of a fellow writer who made a living from words without compromising her principles, and an unabashed champion of my own writing. She was, in fact, the first professional to ever tell me I had the stuff to make it in this madhouse of a vocation. She kindly wrote a flattering and interesting introduction to a collection of mine that will be released soon.

More importantly, she was there when I needed personal advice and plain, old fashion cheering up. She never failed to be my ‘Sister in liberty’, as she put it once.

I haven’t heard from Claire since I left TCF, but that’s not such a big thing. We were never daily chat pals or anything. But she knows where I am and how to get in touch. She also knows that if she needs anything, I’ll be there. And, soon, I hope to give her a hug and talk to her face to face.

Take care and keep in touch, Claire. Here’s a word from my favorite poet, to make the trail a little lighter:

THE ROAD AND THE END

Shall touch my hands and face.

— Carl Sandburg

I love you, sis.