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I've moved my blog to my website at: http://shannonryan.net/blog/.

You should be redirected there.

Otherwise, you know the drill.

Sometimes, you just have to put it down.

After a disappointing critique last Thursday, I decided to take a little break form my Solomon's Heist re-write. I feel like what I need to do more than anything to make it a better manuscript is to become a better writer, and that just takes time.

Still, I feel like this is the right thing to do. I am going to return to my book Fangs for Nothing, which I enjoy more, and should be much simpler to write. I may even have enough skill to write it this time.

To the Moon Alice

Excuse me, while I kiss this guy.
--Jimi Hendrix

Today, I was perusing comments about Obama’s latest reductions to NASA. Like most geeks, I believe the future is in space. However, I don’t think space is going anywhere, and we have plenty of problems to solve down here before we go out and pollute the rest of the Universe—but that’s another story.

Someone in the comment section suggested that ending the drug war would find us more than enough money to go to the moon. Now that’s an idea I can really get behind.

We wouldn’t even need rockets.

We could just fly there.

Yesterday was a Good Day

Even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp
And it read Ice Cube's a pimp
Drunk as hell but no throwing up
Half way home and my pager still blowing up
Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.
I got to say it was a good day.

--Ice Cube, It Was a Good Day

Yesterday was one of those days that remind me why I write. I find Sunday is a good creativity day for me. My day job saps a great deal of my creativity, and by Sunday, I’ve gained a little back.

After some light editing in the morning, I went to Roasters coffee shop and worked on a re-write of Fangs For Nothing. The coffee was good and the words flowed smooth. My voice was strong and ideas flowed easily.

After drinking that excellent coffee, I came home and sat on the deck. It was 80 degrees in the shade, and I drank some fine wine and read Catherine Schaff-Stump’s new book Hulk Hercules, Professional Wrestler.

Around 6, I made myself some angel hair pasta and experimental sauce, which turned out quite nice, and enjoyed a classic episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I went back to Catherine’s book until it got too dark to read, and then I came in and watched a really good movie.

Futurism: GIGO and Instant Gratification

This article is more a question than a hypothesis.

I recently attended in interesting talk about privacy, and one of the panelists worked for one of those massively multi-player computer game companies. He said something that sounded interesting at the time: Some of the most popular games on the internet, even free facebook games have mission-command-style data centers where people monitor users in real time and attempt to make the game a more interesting experience.

At first, I thought this was a fun idea, but then I got to thinking about the long term implications. Basically, they are using Skinner-esqe psychology to affect the way game players brains are wired.

There are families where two parents work 50+ hours a week, and now we have these super-conditioning computer games available with 24/7 instant gratification feedback. Thus it could be said those children are getting 24/7 supervision not from their parents, but from a for-profit corporation.

So just to speculate, is our culture headed for a perfect storm of child development disaster? Are we producing instant-gratification sociopaths?

The Prologue. A Love Story.

A poll at Nathan Bransford's blog on the subject of prologues scared the hell out of me. I was a little shocked at the results, but I was dumbfounded by the comments.

The results show a slight bias against comments. I found slightly surprising but not so much. I know that many editors and agents now advise against the dreaded prologue.

What I found disturbing, shocking, perhaps loosing-my-faith-in-humanity-ing was the number of people who claimed they SKIPPED THE PROLOGUE and sallied forth blindly into Chapter One with no feel for the text contained there and no knowledge of what came before.

Maybe I'm just cheap, but to me skipping the prologue seems like paying for a five course meal and skipping the salad. The salad might be good. I'm not a salad lover, but I've had a good one from time to time. Of course, if I'd never tried them, I would never know that.

Plus, call me crazy, but if I pick up a book, I trust the author to know what they're doing. If they think I need a 20 page prologue, I read the sucker or I throw away the book. If they keep my interest for 20 pages, then they were worthy of my faith. If I don't keep my interest over the prologue, then why would I want to read the book?

I just don't get it, you've decided to give up a few hours of your life to a novel, and you can't give a half hour to the part of the book the author probably devoted the most time to, and through you needed to know. Without reading one word of text, you seriously think there's nothing important in there? Seriously, what did a prologue ever do to you?

I love a good prologue. I cherish a good prologue. I hold it close to me on cold winter nights. Does it let me down from time to time? Sure. But it is better to have prologued and lost than to never have prologued at all.

Not Blogging is good news

I haven't been writing here lately.

Not blogging means I working on my stories and novels.

Not blogging means I am reading.

Not blogging when I have nothing to say means not wasting the time of anyone who cares to read.

I'll return when I have something to say.