Category: OCF

Mid-Summer Mumblings

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Here we are in the last week of July.  Wow.  The days fly by when you’re too busy with annoying drudgery.  So that’s a strange way of looking at it.  While engaged in the drudgery it’s crawling along.  But when I finally escape, the day is already wasted away.  And what’s left flies down the gravity drain into the past in the blink of an eye.  So, I’m just annoyed at the present situation.  And it’s only gonna get worse in August and so I’m terribly disgruntled.  But until I figure a way out of the trap I’m in, it’s gonna be status quo.  Enough.  Well, at least I have the weekend off so I’m going to enjoy the next two days as much as is humanly possible.  So, stop complaining!

We’re five episodes into the first season of “Landman” and it’s a very odd experience.  The main story of Billy Bob Thornton’s character trying to manage a chaotic mix of oil field accidental mayhem, narcotraficante related mayhem and roughneck related mayhem is interesting but the subplot involving his terminally self-absorbed ex-wife is extremely annoying.  The other themes associated with his son and daughter are pretty good and his son’s story is expanding into a larger role.  Camera Girl and I are enjoying the experience of having a show that we can both watch with at least some degree of interest.  There was one scene that I found particularly funny.  Tommy Norris’s ex-wife is trying to stage a “family” dinner with herself, Tommy, their two kids and the two oil company guys who are staying at the company “house.”  She insists that they all join hands around the table for a prayer and after it’s over the two outsiders are talking about it and one guy says, “Well, that was the first dinner prayer I can remember that was explicitly blasphemous.”

Friday, Saturday and Sunday’s weather is supposed to be beautiful.  The kids came over to use the pool today and they said the temperature was perfect.  And the butterfly bush is finally in full flower and monarchs and swallowtails (tiger and pipevine) are increasingly present as photographic subjects.  And the raspberry canes are starting to produce a bumper crop of berries.  So, this is peak mid-summer experience and if I wasn’t committed to an annoying task I would be in seventh heaven.  Well, I guess it’s not that bad if I can take the time to complain this much about it.

One of our neighbors put out a bit of video from her bird feeder.  It was of a black bear’s nose stuck up against the camera.  The bear’s claws were fairly impressive and a good reminder that even a black bear is not a Disney character that you can approach with impunity.  We have a bunch of blueberry bushes that are just about ripe so we may be getting a visit from Yogi and company at any time.  I have a game camera mounted but I didn’t return the memory stick last time I downloaded the files.  I probably should.

Well, that’s enough for now.  Just regular stuff going on.  Enjoy July.

29MAY2026 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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So, I’m a week in on the Kindle Unlimited program and I’ve got about a thousand pages sold.  Now that’s like five books worth.  Which is not much but the curve has been increasing for the last five days so I’ll keep an eye on this for a few weeks to see if it goes anywhere.  If any of you guys currently uses Kindle Unlimited explain how it works.  Do you read it on the website one page at a time or how does it work?  It seems kind of clunky to me.

So, Camera Girl and I went to the Dunwich Spring Middle School Concert which includes both band and chorus sections at both the upper and lower levels.  This is a remarkable experience because the range of accomplishment varies from fairly good to nonexistent.  But realizing that the teacher has managed to get these children to even organize into an orchestra is almost inconceivable.  The choral songs aren’t mostly to my taste.  They tend to try to introduce a foreign language song that doesn’t translate to an American audience.  One exception was Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).  The Tokens version is a favorite of mine so I was excited.  But something went wrong with the arrangement.  As is typical in these school choruses the ratio of girls to boys is seven to one.  So, the deeper voices are always practically missing in the song.  But Wimoweh famously has a towering falsetto section and of course all those girls should have been able to translate it into a powerful soprano part.  But instead, they had the three boys with their barely audible tenor voices whispering through this part.  Oh, the pain.

But the highlight of the evening was the band giving their rendition of the theme to “Jurassic Park.”  And the kids did a serviceable job of John Williams’ Fanfare for the Common Dinosaur.  But the funniest thing was a kid sitting behind me.  He must have been three years old and he started exclaiming loudly, “Giraffic Park, Giraffic Park!!!” at the top of his lungs and all the parents in the front rows started laughing.  But the Conductor/Music Teacher never missed a beat and her band performed the miracle of producing a recognizable version of the popular melody.

I’ve started reading “Project Hail Mary.”  My oldest grandson has loaned me his copy and I’m treating it with kid gloves since I remember what it was like when I had a mint hardback copy of an sf favorite.  I’m a hundred pages in and it’s interesting.  It’s definitely a millennial book.  There’s a difference in the voice.  It’s a kindler, gentler voice.  There’s much more emotion.  Now the protagonist is a Middle School teacher so you can say this is just the consequence of this particular character.  But the choice of the character is part of this younger generation of readers and writers.  Well, the book is good so far.  It’s inventive and well-paced and has an interesting manner of unfolding the story.  It starts in the middle and flashes back to the beginning but one flash at a time.  Weir has come up with an interesting twist on an interstellar drive.  It dovetails with the crisis that is forcing the need for a trip to Tau Ceti.  Now I don’t think it’s a particularly plausible mechanism but it is entertaining for sure.

Well, that’s enough.

I, Robot Author

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I was just reading about the second serious scandal concerning AI generated fiction being published by experts in the world of publishing.  In the last scandal Hatchette bought a self-published book because the author managed to attract a very large number of readers on her own.  After they republished the book, it was discovered that there was a lot of very obvious AI generated content in it.

In the present scandal a prestigious contest that accepts fiction from amateurs living in the countries of the British Commonwealth had three of the five winners flagged by readers as being AI generated by a capable software used for this function.

Here’s a sample of the text:

“Wilfred’s rum-shop leaned into the road like a rotten tooth. Inside, boards blackened by smoke and sweat, the air sweet with cane and forgetting. Coins meant for rice or kerosene slid across the counter and came back white rum hot as apology. One drink opened the chest, two turned fear into courage’s cheap cousin, three steadied the hand enough to write the future in invisible ink.”

Okay, what the hell does “white rum hot as apology” mean?  It doesn’t mean anything.  It’s AI slop that it thinks sounds “poetic.”

Now five “Experts” picked this gibberish and declared it worthy of a prestigious award.  Why?  Well, the only thing I notice that both scandals include are woke publishing “experts” selecting the work of minority writers without bothering to see if it’s any good or even written by human beings.

The most hilarious aspect of the latest scandal is that the contest judges refuse to admit that they’ve been made to look like fools and the stories are still up on their site as the winners.

I watched a YouTube video by a young woman who considers herself a seasoned editor and although she agrees that the text is extremely unlikely not to be AI slop she does add the obligatory warning that we should remember that minority writers must not be singled out as more highly suspect just because they always seem to be the ones whose work slips through the editors who are afraid of being called racists if they look too closely at their work and find it’s not very good.

I guess it’s not enough that the publishing world gives precedence to any writer who isn’t a straight white man.  Now they add robots as long as they’re not straight white male robots or at least not working under one of their names.  Well, be that as it may, today I officially began work on the sequel to my book.  I began the outline by writing out a bunch of plot lines to choose between.

Plot Threads

  • Update on Bogey and his life
  • Update on Grace and her boys
  • President Chastain’s crises
    1. Constitutional Convention
    2. Seceding States
    3. Potential Military Insurrection
    4. Personal Problems (health)
    5. Relations with Connors’ Group
  • Connors’ crises
    1. Disaffected Groups with His Organization
    2. Relations with federal and state officials
    3. Connors’ indecision and doubts
    4. Disagreements with Cutter and others
    5. Personal Problems (Grace, Bogey)
  • America’s Crisis of Instability
  • World’s Crisis of Instability
  • Technical Instability

So that’s a lot of stuff.  I’m not sure all of these will be included but it’s always best to start with the kitchen sink and pare it back.  Well, take that Chat GPT.

Movies, Taxes and World-Building

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Well, what’s to say today?  I was talking to some family and we were discussing this and that and I said that I wanted to see “Project Hail Mary.”  And some knew about it and some had heard a little bit.  Well, I think I talked them into getting together and going to see it.  Now I plan to see it this week with Camera Girl.  She’s not the biggest sff fan by any stretch of the imagination.  When I brough her to see the original Star Wars film she was not particularly impressed.  And come to think of it, she’s never been impressed by any sci fi or fantasy movie (or book) I ever gave her.  Well, I take that back.  She read “The Hobbit” back in 1975 and liked it.  But that was it.  When I told her to read the “Lord of the Rings,” she laughed in my face.  So, she may not be the most willing audience for this movie.  But since one of the characters is a puppet I’m guessing there may be an appeal there to her love of animals.  So, I’m going to see the same movie in the theater twice?  I think this may be the first time I’ve ever done that.  Well, I’m sure it won’t kill me.

The other thing I’m doing next week is go see an accountant about how to pay my taxes on the royalties from my book.  I have an inordinate fear of the Infernal Revenue Service.  I think they’re a malevolent force causing pain and suffering for ordinary people at every turn.  So, I’m going to find out what the process is for this kind of capital gain.  I don’t think I have to pay quarterly but you never know so I’m not taking any chances.  Also, I think there is a way to write off expenses like advertising and marketing so if I can find out whether it’s worth it I may even break even on this whole experiment (maybe!!!).

A friend was asking me about the sequel to the “The Sniper.”  He had particular questions about the back story for some of the characters like Connors and Cutter.  I said I’d love to tell him some of the details of their back stories but I still haven’t made them up yet.  I think he was a little shocked that these important facts didn’t actually exist yet.  Maybe even betrayed for investing in a story that was sort of a Potemkin Village.  But I feel justified in pushing out the corners of my little universe as the spirit moves me.  Although I will admit I’ve decided to do some outlining of the world, at least from a 35,000-foot height.  I need to decide what stories will grow out of the eucatastrophe I set off in the first book.  I mean, you don’t sink the White House, Capitol and Pentagon into the Earth’s crust without taking advantage of the elbow room that provides for political and social upheaval on a grand scale.

Book Writing and Blogging

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Writing “The Sniper” was a massive learning experience for me.  Not only does it take up a lot of time but it also makes it much harder to do other things at the same time.  And vice versa!  Working, blogging and taking care of my other responsibilities really slowed down my book writing performance drastically.  And the time has come to begin writing the sequel.

So, something is going to have to give.  My decision is to cut back on the blogging.  Believe it or not even knocking out five hundred words has been taking a couple of hours.  And when I’m doing it at ten or eleven at night the quality has been way down.  The old brain just doesn’t click like it used to at that hour.

So, what I see happening is the posts will be hit and miss.  I’ll be able to keep the photos and quotes going without much strain.  But if I find myself scrambling for a theme, I’ll let it slide until I’ve got one that makes sense.  Quality over quantity.  It makes sense.

So, my apologies for my laziness but I am a man with definite limits.

Pass the Paschal Lamb

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Well, Easter has arrived and Camera Girl is killing the fatted calf (well, she’s serving beef anyway).  She’s going all out and in addition to the roast beast there will be lamb and a pasta course with the requisite meatballs and sausage, and various other paschal delicacies like stuffed mushrooms, rice balls and so forth.  So that means we’ll be stuffed to the gills by the time dessert is served.  She’s serving four different homemade cakes and various ice cream flavors along with Klondike Bars which are an especial favorite of several individuals (including me!).

All of this food will incapacitate some of the attendees (including me!).  Probably the girls will avoid the worst ravages as they are more moderate in their grazing and sluicing habits.  Whereas all three generations of men will be fighting over possession of the recliners in the living room to better accommodate their bulging stomachs and comatose brains.  I don’t assume there will be any great demand for movies from this tranquilized crowd but just in case I’m trying to decide what classic cinema I should have queued up for their viewing pleasure.  I think when I was a kid the choices were “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben Hur” or “The Wizard of Oz.”  Now “Ben Hur” is easily lined up with Easter.  “The Ten Commandments” also is linked since the Last Supper occurred on Passover and the movie chronicles the occasion of the first Passover.

But exactly what is the link between Easter and “The Wizard of Oz?”  I guess back in the 1960s the television networks must have had to pay top dollar to air that children’s favorite and they must have thought it would seem even more special if it happened when families gathered for a holiday.  I guess I can continue the tradition this year.  Well, unless the kids stage an insurrection and demand some vapid modern show.

Of course I could go another direction altogether.  A double feature of mid-century science fiction (let’s say “Them!” and “The Thing from Another World”) or W. C. Fields’ “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  Both of these options would provide entertainment that greatly exceeds what would typically be found on the cable channels today.

But maybe what we should do instead is even more revolutionary.  Maybe we should sit around and talk.  After all, how often does the family all get together in one place and find out how we’re all doing?  There’s a lot going on in the family.  Businesses are being started, students are entering the work force.  There’s even a romance that will be represented at the table I believe.  That’s a lot to discuss.  Maybe that’s what we should do.  After all, pretty soon those finishing school will start dispersing far and wide and since I’m getting up there who knows how many more times, we’ll meet face to face.  So, I should take the opportunity to spend some time talking to them while I can.  I think that’s what I’ll do.  Let’s see how that works out.

Time to Make the Donuts

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So, I’m busy, busy, busy with my giveaway on BookFunnel (here’s the link).  I’m also seeing if I can put part or all of it up on a site called Royal Road.  And I’m posting links on my X feed to try to connect with the wider world.  And if any of you want a free copy or have any friends who might like the story, please pass the link along to them.

Well, in addition to all this I’ve been drafted into a publicity campaign for the Dunwich Republicans.  I’ve got to awaken a “sleeping giant.”  But it’s more like a geriatric midget in a coma.  So even if I can drum up new blood, I’m afraid they’ll just show up, hear there’s work to be done and say, “Looks like you’re doing a great job.  CARRY ON!!!

But one must do the best one can.  As old TR used to remind us it’s “The Man in the Arena” that counts.  Unfortunately, I feel more like the Christian being fed to the lions in that arena.

Well, the weather is just as uncertain as ever with one day being seventy degrees and the next day featuring snow flurries but we’ve definitely turned a corner and the Great Southern Ice Sheet is barely a foot thick and receding rapidly.  All the spring flowers are budding and the turtles are sitting on the dead log in the swamp.  The mallards must be awaiting the hatching of their eggs and even the local pair of hawks seem to be hyperactive, probably getting food for their nest.

Listening to Andy Weir talk to the Critical Drinker about his book “The Martian” was kind of exciting.  I think anyone who writes a book secretly desires to be that guy who hits the jackpot and has the world beat a path to his door.  I mean, I know it’s ridiculously unlikely for a number of reasons for my book to be a big seller.  It’s in a very restricted corner of the marketplace based on politics and demographics and trying to get advertising is like pulling teeth.  But I confess I not-so-secretly dream of the book going viral and selling tons and tons of copies.  I guess when the dust settles, I’ll probably be in a funk for a while but I think it was still a good experience to try my hand at something I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager.

And I’ll say that I don’t think that writing a good book is beyond my talents.  But self-publishing and self-marketing is not for the faint of heart.  It takes money and a lot of hard work to promote a book in the current marketplace.  And that’s the part I don’t enjoy at all.  Playing cat and mouse with the Amazon algorithm isn’t my idea of a fun occupation.  It’s more like going to the dentist’s office than something associated with creativity.

Ah well.  Whine, whine, whine.  Time to make the donuts.  Onward and upward.  Excelsior!

Book Funnel Sniper Giveaway

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That’s right get your free pdf copy of “The Sniper.” All that’s needed is to provide your e-mail address and view my harrangue at the end of the book to leave a review on Amazon. What’s fairer than that? Don’t answer that! It’s a rhetorical question as part of my sales pitch.  Let me know if there are any problems with the download.  This is my first attempt to use BookFunnel.

 

Click Here for Link to Sniper Giveaway

 

 

The American Path

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I was thinking about some of the comments on yesterday’s post “Persistence of Memory.”  It was about detachment, “… it’s the consequence of the rootless existence that has evolved to be the American path.”

And I replied, “You are correct about the path. We’ve atomized our existence. We’ve monetized our lives to such an extent that we almost don’t exist except as consumers. We’re just cogs in the machine. It’s inhuman.”  And that stuck in my mind.

And today I got a call from a friend whom I knew from high school.  He lives in Hawaii and only comes home to Brooklyn once a year at Christmas.  And we talked about meeting up next Christmas.  Now I haven’t seen him in thirty years.  I wonder if he would even recognize me.  And we’ve managed to speak on the phone every Christmas but we haven’t interacted other than that.  Well, I sent him a copy of my book and he called me up today and it was like a time machine.  He was laughing and saying how he always thought one day I’d write a science fiction story.  He was very complimentary and said he really liked the story and of course that was very gratifying.  But in the back of my mind, I was thinking what a strange world we live in.  Here was one of my best friends in the world and I hadn’t seen him for almost half a lifetime.

And so that conversation reinforced the statement, “… it’s the consequence of the rootless existence that has evolved to be the American path.”  Our way of life is somewhat related to the nomadic existence of herders.  They move to follow the grazing grounds of their herds.  There is no one home.  But our way is even worse.  Because the herders live in tribes or at least extended families that move together from place to place.  But we separate into at most nuclear families and often just single individuals, moving from job to job and city to city without anyone permanently included in their “tribe.”

I’m pretty sure that none of this is sustainable.  And maybe that’s why corporate America is backing a policy of wholesale immigration to provide a steady supply of new workers that Americans are no longer providing from their own descendants.  After all, how do you produce a family when all you are is a nomad living from job to job without a family to prop you up and give you help when things get tough or you need the resources to get married or buy a house or pay for expenses associated with children?

And this gave me an idea for my next book after “The Sniper.”  It should have to do with the smartest and richest guy in the world trying to fix “the American path.”  If someone powerful enough wanted to restore our country to viability, what would he think to do?  Maybe he’d redefine the partnership between communities and corporations.  Would it be a feudal system or a socialism?  Or neither.  I haven’t figured out what my “utopia” will be based on.  Maybe I’ll wave “artificial intelligence” around as my deus ex machina.  But I do want to think about it a little.  How do you go about fixing the world?

Various Public Relations

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So, Tuesday I have a meeting with my marketer to see how I can achieve more of my goals for the launch.  The book seems to be sustaining sales but I’m not satisfied with the visibility with respect to reviews and general profile.  As I’ve mentioned I’m going to find out just how large a giveaway I can expect to perform.  Now, I have no idea whether this makes any sense at all.  After all, as a tactic giving something away for free seems to be defeating the purpose of sales.  But my whole reason for writing this book, is to get other people to read it too.  And if you’re competing with literally millions of other books and some of them have multi-billion-dollar companies marketing them then it may take extreme methods to break out of obscurity and catch the public’s eye.  And then again, I may just be kidding myself.  But I think I’m very close to making a decision on the path forward.

And there’s not much time left before I’ll be overtaken by other responsibilities and projects.  First Selectman Cthulhu has selected me as his personal spokesman with responsibilities for communicating his agenda to both the human population of Dunwich and also the trans-dimensional realm of the Great Old Ones.  That’s right I’ll be updating his LinkedIn and TikTok pages.  Currently he’s asked me to edit out the use of words like crush, dismember, maim and devour in his recent communications.  He’s up for re-election and he needs to finesse his image quite a bit.  I’ve suggested he watch several of the recent Godzilla movies and figure out how to mimic the joie de vivre of that radioactive reptile who has managed to cultivate a laid back and avuncular style in the last few years.  I told him he might want to think about a facelift.  But then he reminded me that technically he really doesn’t have a face.  It’s more of a foot with eyes, mouth and tentacles.  Well, a rose by any other name.

On the home front, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard have returned to dismal puddle and seemed very satisfied with whatever slop has run into the swamp.  Also, a pair of wood ducks have also appeared but I notice they are much more skittish than the mallards.  Well, it takes all kinds.  So far, we haven’t seen any ducklings.  Time will tell.

And I’ve cut down all of the raspberry canes and put about five pounds of 10-10-10 fertilizer on the bed in anticipation of a bumper crop this year.  I’m hoping it will expand significantly beyond the current patch and eventually triple into the whole garden.  This is a matter of turning necessity into a virtue since nothing else seems to flourish besides raspberries in that soggy area.

The southern ice sheet has retreated back to the massive driveway pile which is now only three feet high.  At the current rate of retreat, I calculate it will disappear completely by Memorial Day.  At which point the last of it will end up in my drink cooler for that barbecue event.

Well, things are moving apace.  Excelsior!