WRITING CONTENT MOVED!

As of today, all new writing content on http://blog.dawnsrise.com has moved to The WriteRunner (http://blog.writerunner.com).

Please update your links and subscriptions accordingly!

I’ll still post links to new content here for a while.

Not sure what I’m going to do with this blog, but I’ll probably post things dealing with workouts, the Mariners, skiing (or the lack thereof), family, political opinion (if I’m brave enough), and life in general.

Thank you so much for your patronage of this site, your feedback and involvement has been invaluable!

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to re-do the layout of this site into a new format.

Bad Girl Blogfest – Amelia

Bad Girl Blogfest – Amelia

BIO – Amelia

• Name: Amelia (surname unknown)
• Novel: The Immortals
• Role: Supporting Character
• Created: 2009
• Setting: America 2400 to the year ~5300
• Aliases or Nicknames: The Sky Goddess, Amy, Ames, Sky
• Nationality: Originally American
• Position: Sky Goddess, one of the Twelve Immortals created by Death Angel
• Age: yes (she doesn’t age…hence the “Immortal” tag)
• Synopsis: REDACTED

Excerpt

CONTENT REDACTED

Sorry folks, this is a current WIP and I didn’t want to leave it up. Thanks for your interest!

What do I Want?

What do I Want?

I’ve been checking out a writing discussion on Gather.com. Last night’s topic was “what do your characters want?” I posted some things down about my characters from Dawn’s Rise, which go me thinking.

What do I want? What do I, as a person, but also a character in my own life, want? It’s not a question I ask myself very often. I know for starters I want to be a novelist. I’ve wanted to be a novelist probably since high school. I didn’t write much back then, but I loved reading Science Fiction (now Speculative Fiction…probably because there’s so little science involved anymore). I divided SF into two classes: Pre-moon landing and post-moon landing. The reason was that after 1969 it seemed that SF went from the realm of the purely speculative into the realm of the possible, and authors adjusted their writings accordingly. That was one of the best times for SF.

I then discovered a new class of authors, the ones who wrote far back in the 1920’s like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and HG Wells. Despite their lack of any kind of modern scientific knowledge, they still created wonderfully crafted works that still hold their value today. As I grew older, I started having a bit of distaste for Fantasy. I thought it was too easy just to make up stuff. Swords and Dragons and Vampires…boring. What interests me isn’t what someone can fantasize about, but some that might actually happen someday. If mankind is ever able to travel among the stars, that opens up just huge potential for the human race. However, given what we know about Cosmology, it seems like we may never achieve this goal. No transporters, no phasers, just communicators for now.

So now I feel a bit disillusioned. (See my 20 year old quote about disillusionment). Whereas scientifically and technologically we’ve achieved far greater than anyone could have predicted (although the books I wrote in the late 80’s predicted the Internet and iPhones), some of the glorious tenets of Speculative Fiction still remain well rooted in the realm of Fantasy. There’s no interstellar travel. There are no orbiting colonies. There are no flying cars even. Yes, I can get a talking kitchen (see picture above). Whoopdeedoo. The fact that this 3lb laptop has more computing power than all the machines combined at school the year I graduated is amazing, but we’re still flying the same damn space shuttle we had the year I graduated. And this laptop has more computing power than that hunk of junk too.

So now we’re left with authors regurgitating the same old stuff or turning to vampire romances. Have we lost the creativity? What are we missing? Have all the promises of SF gone unkept for so long that we now no longer care? Where have you gone Isaac Asimov? Sure, there are still great stories to tell. After all, writing isn’t really about new invention and ideas. It’s about the characters, their personal challenges, and how they cope with an ever changing world that’s unpredictable and cruel. The greatest idea in the world is useless in the hands of an inept author. This is why Wells and Verne and Burroughs stay so readable, because they made their characters come alive, no matter how ridiculous we find their inventions in the light of modern technology.

What’s left? It looks like all roads lead back to Fantasy, where you have complete creative control to write anything without any limits except the own “world rules” that you set up. Which of course you can change with a word from Wesley Crusher. Fantasy still tells us a lot about who we are, and what we’re capable of. I don’t believe in vamps or ghosts or whatever, and I have no interest in writing about them. So I came up with a Fantasy idea: what if hi-tech objects possessed magical properties? What would a magical MP3 player do that a regular one can’t? That’s the inspiration for The Immortals. So what I want is to create or join a new SF/F crossover genre of high tech/magic. Sort of like futuristic steam punk fantasy. Or maybe it’s been done and I’m just kidding myself. Who knows. If I just focus on the characters I should be fine.

So now I’m heading into the dreaded Fantasy world. Wish me luck.

St. Pat’s Race Report

St. Pat’s Race Report

So nothing published yet. Not making progress on hardly anything, but here’s the quick summary:

• Organized my home office desk…still have a table full of mail to go through.
• Ran a race (details below)
• Started working on taxes
• Started a new chapter of The Immortals
• Took the boy to a swimming lesson…but today he’s home sick.
• So far on my diet: gained one pound.
• Installed this “Windows Live” suite which includes a blog editor…giving it a try for this post…I’ll create a separate blog post about it if it works out well.
• Created an account on gather.com which is a social site with a lot of writers.

Race Report:
Yesterday I ran the “Henry Weinhard’s St. Patrick’s Day Dash”. I Woke up yesterday at 6:30 am, looked outside and saw snow falling. This is very rare this time of year, but it’s been that kind of winter. It took me a while to get out of the house, and of course as usual there was a huge backup getting off the highway to Seattle Center. I had my normal race-morning “issue” and I never made it to the parking lot. I had to pull off into a McDonalds which fortunately had no line at the men’s room (and about 20 women waiting for their restroom). I decided just to parking somewhere illegally since it was only a couple minutes to gun time.

I ran from the McDonalds all the way to the start line, may half a mile. I had to run through throngs of people milling about all over the place, while snow cascaded down from the sky. I literally got into the gate about one minute before gun time. Last year I arrived to this race so late that I missed the first and the second wave and pushed my way through the start of the third. I was really glad to make the start this year.

I haven’t trained very well since last summer when my ankle gave out. I’ve been trying to nurse my tendonitis, and I’ve barely got my weekly mileage up to 20, where it should be 25-30. This year they changed the course. Instead of running over the Alaska Way Viaduct from Seattle Center to Qwest Field, we ran up and back along Hwy 99 along the side of Queen Anne Hill. Not much scenery, especially with the driving snow, which didn’t stick but got me all cold and wet.

I thought that the course was supposed to be 5K (3.1 miles). My first mile went fine, mostly downhill. The second mile ran up along the hill, gaining 112 feet or so. About half way up the hill, the fatigue began setting in. I haven’t done much speed work so my body isn’t used to this level of effort. My the time I turned around, I was pretty dead, and it was only half way. By the time came close to the finish, I had nothing left.

Here are the totals:
3.88 miles
time: 40:00 (although I swear my watch said 38 something)
Pace: 10:18. Not bad, although that translates into a 32:00 5K which is pretty poor for me. Last year’s race I ran at at 10:10 pace, although it had a net downhill of 80 feet compared to this year’s no net change.

Diet Tip of the Day:

The most tried-and-true method of losing weight is to cut calories. Unfortunately this has the side effect of making you hungry. You can fight this by eating a diet low in empty calories such as sodas and increasing protein and “healthy” fats.

Tomorrow’s post: A writing discussion (I promise)

Started a New Project

Started a New Project

I'm not going to go into details quite yet, since I'm still working things out. The working title is "The Immortals" which is the epic story of twelve people who were given god-like powers. The story spans about 3000 years from the time they acquire these powers until the time when their powers have faded and disappeared. It's what I call "Speculative Fantasy" which is kind of a mix between Fantasy and SF. The characters and settings have some Fantasy-type abilities, but there's a real science behind it...although that science kind of borders on the theological. There will be questions about the nature of the Universe, and what mankind's true role is.

 

It's my first real foray into Fantasy, but I can't just throw off the shackles of SF. I'm also tired of the staid Fantasy elements such as rings and swords and unicorns and dragons. My magical items are going to be everyday objects like cell phones and laptops and plastic water bottles and helicopters. No gnomes, elves, sprites, or fairies. And especially no vampires or werewolves. No mystical lands or alternate universes, just plain old North America...but in the far future. I'm hoping that it will be a fun but thought-provoking work.

I've changed my word count bar for this story. I'm not giving up on Dawn's Rise II yet, I've just set it aside for now. It took me 4 years to write Dawn's Rise so I'm not that concerned about it. I'll pick it up when the time is right. Also I'm probably not going to do any more work on 30 Days until next NaNoWriMo in November, although depending on where I am on The Immortals, I might try Script Frenzy in April. 

I set my word count goal at 100,000 but I have a feeling that The Immortals will wind up in the 200-250K range before it's all said and done. It's just a bigger story than Dawn's Rise and it's really multiple stories woven together. I have no idea where it's even going at this point but that's the beauty of creativity. I know how the story starts, I know how it ends, I just have no idea what happens in the middle. That's where all the fun is.