One Thousand And One Parsecs

Desert Stars 4.0 is finished!

And just in time; I start another job tomorrow. So anyhow, here are the stats:

words: 99,000
chapters: 22
ms pages: 465
start date: 3 Oct 2011
end date: 25 Oct 2011

And the word splash:

Can you tell who the main characters are? 🙂

This might sound kind of cheesy, but this book has a very special place in my heart. I started it immediately after the 2008 BYU Jordan study abroad program, though it took me until the summer of 2010 to finish it. Even though it’s shorter than Bringing Stella Home, I think it’s much more immersive, with the world itself playing a much larger role as one of the characters.

I’m very satisfied with this draft. I say this with everything I write, but I honestly believe that this is my best work to date. It’s surprising to see just how much my writing has changed between drafts. It seems to be getting better, though, so that’s very encouraging.

I haven’t launched the kickstarter campaign yet, but I hope to do that by the first of next month, so be sure to look out for that. In the meantime, I thought it might be fun to share the prologue, to give you an idea of what the story is about. Enjoy!

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Prologue

The boy felt scared, more scared than he had ever yet been in his young life. It was because of the strange noises in the bulkheads and the way the walls and floor shook, but mostly because everyone around him, even his parents, were scared, and he didn’t know why.

The lights in the hallway flickered as he wandered out of his cabin, and the whine of the engine rose higher and higher. It wasn’t especially loud, but didn’t sound right; the boy knew that much at least. On the other side of the ship, a door hissed as it slid open. The boy turned and saw his uncle and three of his cousins come running out of the bridge, eyes wide with fear.

“She’s gonna blow,” shouted his uncle. “Let’s move!”

The boy stood rooted to the spot, his legs frozen in terror. He watched as his cousins ran to the emergency escape chutes–the ones his parents had adamantly told him never to play in–and dove through.

A groaning noise came through the bulkheads–the terrible sound of metal on metal. He closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands, and the floor itself dropped out from under him. For a frighteningly disorienting moment, gravity vanished, leaving him floating weightless in the corridor. The taste of vomit filled his mouth and he screamed in fright, but without gravity he could only kick his legs uselessly beneath him.

The moment passed, and he fell to the hard tile floor. Tears of terror clouded his vision, and his arms and legs shook so bad he hardly noticed that the floor was shaking. The ship lurched, sending him sprawling on his hands and knees.

Hands grabbed him underneath his arms, lifting him up and carrying him away. He glanced up and recognized the face of his mother, pulling him towards the escape chutes.

“Mommy,” he cried, “I’m scared.”

“I know, dear,” she told him. “Mommy needs you to be extra brave right now.”

The boy nodded. Though his mother tried to sooth him, he could tell that she was just as frightened as he was. That terrified him more than even the loss of gravity.

“Come on!” the boy’s father shouted, further down the corridor. “Any minute now, and–”

The lights flickered again, and an explosion sounded from deep within the bulkheads of the ship. A low hiss sounded behind them, and not from a door opening.

“Oh God,” the boy’s mother cried. “Is that–”

As if in answer, a mighty wind howled throughout the ship, filling the boy’s ears with its roar. It whipped at his hair and tugged at his clothes, sucking him away like a monster from the bottom of a giant drain. Somehow, he knew that in only a few moments, they would all be dead.

Hands grabbed him, lifting him up toward the escape chute. He screamed, but the roar of the wind was so loud he could barely hear his own voice. His mother slipped something around his neck, and suddenly he was falling through the chute, into darkness.

He came to a stop in a snug little space, closed in on all sides like a glove for his body. A holoscreen lay in front of his face, with a pair of flight sticks and a miniature control board. The boy gripped the flight sticks with his hands and stared dumbly at the screen, barely able to process anything that was happening.

A distant puffing noise sounded through the ultra-soft walls, and then he was falling again–only this time, he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was locked into position, cushioned on all sides and only able to use his hands.

Fighting back panic, he watched as the holoscreen flickered and came to life. It showed an image of space, the stars spinning wildly as noiseless flashes of light burst into being before fading into after-image amid the blackness of space. He squeezed the dual flight sticks and moved them like he was playing a computer game, but it was no use–he couldn’t equalize.

Mommy, the boy cried inwardly. Panic swept over him, and his hands and arms began to shake. He screamed, but in the tightly enclosed space, there was no one to hear him.

The glowing orb of a planet came into view, filling the screen with its brilliant light. The boy squinted as the display adjusted, showing a brown and yellow landscape framed by a curved horizon. It danced with the spinning stars, moving so quickly that everything was a blur.

A red light started blinking in the corner of the screen, and words flashed across the display. The boy didn’t know how to read, but he knew it was something bad. He tried again with the flight sticks, but that only sent him spinning in a new direction.

Without warning, the screen switched off, and the entire capsule filled with thick, pink foam. The boy gasped and tried to shield himself with his hands, but before he could cover his face it hardened around his body, freezing him into position.

The foam covered his mouth and face, but was just porous enough to allow him to breath–in short bursts, however, because his stomach was severely pinched. The spinning grew worse, until he wanted to throw up. As if from a great distance, he heard a muffled roar through the bulkheads. Everything around him grew increasingly warm, until he began to sweat. He tried to open his mouth to cry out, but his jaw was locked too tightly in place–he couldn’t move anything, not even a finger.

Mommy! he mentally screamed. Where are you?

As if in answer, something popped behind him. Inertia threw him forward, but the foam held him in place, so that all he felt was a tremor through his body. Gravity returned, so that he felt as if he were dangling upside down from his feet. Blood rushed to his head, and he swooned, redness clouding his vision.

Then, like a punch to his face, the shock of impact hit him, causing his bones to shudder. He spun even faster than before, but the foam still held him. It felt as if someone had turned him inside out, though–as if his stomach had swollen and turned to mush.

As the spinning gradually came to a stop, tears streamed from the boy’s eyes. The roaring had died down, leaving him encased in near-absolute silence. That frightened him almost more than the noise.

A sharp hiss filled his ears as the foam grew sticky and porous all around him. He thrashed against it, pulling his hands and arms free as it turned into a sticky, foul-smelling soup. Behind him, a hatch opened, and he struggled toward it, spitting to get the nasty taste out of his mouth.

He crawled out and rose to his feet, blinking in the harsh light of a foreign sun. The hot wind bit him as it blew in his face, stinging his face with sand. He raised a hand to his eye and looked around him at the alien landscape.

A lonely, rust-red desert extended in all directions, with nothing but sand and rock and distant craggy peaks to meet his eye. The sky shone a hazy yellow, completely unlike the clean white light of his family’s ship. A new fear passed through the boy–the fear of being alone.

As he stared at the land around him, he reached down to see what his mother had slipped around his neck. It was a pendant with a little black case at the end. He felt it between his fingers and knew somehow that he would never see her again.

Tears clouded his eyes, and he screamed and wailed for someone, anyone–but in the harsh desert waste, there was none to hear him.

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Good stuff. I can hardly wait to get it published!

Trope Tuesday: Pet the Dog

The basic principle behind this trope is that when you want your readers to feel some kind of sympathy toward a character, have them pet a puppy / puppy equivalent. Often used to show who the good guy is, but can also be used to add depth to a villain.

I first learned about this trope in Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class, where he taught it as a way to build immediate sympathy when introducing a major character. A good example from his own work is Mistborn, where Kelsier’s first scene shows him giving the manor lord’s food to the skaa. From that moment on, there’s never really any doubt that Kelsier is the good guy.

Although often used to introduce a good guy, this trope can also be used quite effectively in the middle of the story, especially in a gray and black world where it seems that everyone’s a bad guy. A good example of this is Shadow from American Gods, who flips a coin with a hitchhiker to see who pays for dinner. Even though he’s a thief and an ex-convict, he rigs the coin toss so that he can pay for her. Through little gestures like this, Gaiman maintains rooting interest in his protagonist, even though everyone else in the novel is basically a jerk.

Another good example from a darker work is Angelo Osic from On My Way to Paradise. On the very first page, a fugitive shows up at his pharmacy booth, asking him to grow her a new hand. Even though he knows it’s dangerous, he takes her in and does what he can to help her. Later on, this same character rips out a man’s testicles and guts him like a fish. As repulsive as that is, however, I still keep rooting for him because I know that at his heart, he’s a good person.

Of course, when used most effectively, the pet-a-puppy moment has to grow naturally out of a person’s character. Even though Shadow is an ex-con, he served his time and feels genuinely sorry for what he did. Angelo Osic is a doctor, so it’s natural for him to try to help others; whenever he commits an act of violence, a part of his humanity dies, which becomes a major driving conflict throughout the book.

Finally, though this trope is often used to create rooting interest in a protagonist, it can also be used to add depth to a villain. A prime example for this is Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The first moment happens when he rescues the main characters after their ship sinks, but it happens many more times too, such as when Arronax finds him weeping over a picture of his family. At the end of the book, even though we know that Nemo is the bad guy, we can’t help but feel a little sorry for him after he’s gone.

Puppy image courtesy Wikimedia. Cat image taken by me.

Should I keep it free?

My first three ebooks have been available for free for several months, and I’m happy for all the attention they’ve received, but I’ve got mixed feelings now about keeping them free indefinitely. Downloads have more or less bottomed out, and they aren’t really driving any interest in my other work, so part of me wonders if I shouldn’t just raise the price to $.99.

If I could, I would love to give away all my work for free. However, I also want to make a living as a writer, so that isn’t really practical. Granted, I don’t expect to make much selling these stories at $.99, but from a business side of things, I need to get at least some kind of recompense for my work.

What I really want to do is have the readers set the price for these stories, so that you can pay what you feel is fair. If finances are tight or you just want to try me out, you can download them for free and that’s great. If you’ve enjoyed my other work and want to support me, that’s great too.

Right now, Smashwords is the only place I know of that has that option. If there aren’t any strident objections, I’m going to do that and make these stories $.99 at every other outlet. I’ll keep them available for free at least until November, though, so if you haven’t already picked them up, feel free to do so now.

I also want to do this for the experiment: how does raising the price from free to $.99 affect sales? I think the “free train” has more or less run its course, so it will be interesting and useful to see where the new equilibrium ends up.

Random late night thoughts

I’ve been going on a lot of late night walks lately, just wandering restlessly around Provo. Tonight I had some interesting thoughts about how much I’ve changed in the last year. Surprisingly, I’ve grown a lot.

Last year at this time, I was all geared up for World Fantasy Convention. I had just finished Bringing Stella Home, and I my thoughts went something like this: “if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find an agent, and they’ll like my pitch enough to see it, and after they read it they’ll want to represent me, and then they’ll sell my book somewhere, so that maybe, just maybe, I can make a living as a writer in ten years.”

Now, I don’t want to get into the whole indie vs. traditional debate, because I think it’s ultimately a false dichotomy. However, now that I’ve gone ahead and published my own work independently, I feel like I’ve taken charge of my career in a way that I hadn’t before. I’m no longer waiting on someone else to make my hopes and dreams come true, I’m going out and pursuing them myself.

That’s the big thing that I think has changed in the past year: I’ve gained a lot more confidence. A year ago today, I was working a temp job in a costume company warehouse, fretting and worrying over how to make ends meet and where to find a stable job. I had considered freelancing as a translator and teaching English in another country, but hadn’t actively pursued those options because frankly they terrified me. And as for writing, that was the impossible dream that might come true someday, but not today.

Now, writing is still the impossible dream, but at least I’m on a path that doesn’t involve lottery thinking like the old one. None of my books have really taken off yet, but at least I have them published and available for readers to discover, so when I do start to get some traction I’ll be in a much better position to succeed. And either way, I’ve taken charge of my own career.

So yeah, I can say I’ve grown a lot in the past year–which is surprising, considering all I did was stay in my old college town and work odd jobs. At least I didn’t move back in with my parents–which makes me part of an elite 15%. But now, I think I’ve just about reached the limit of how much I can grow here in Provo. If something doesn’t change, I worry that I’m going to start stagnating.

So in a year, where will I be? Who knows, but if I’ve grown as much as I have since October 2010, I’ll count that as a success.

Decisions suck, writing is awesome

Whew! I just finished revising through almost 9k words in Desert Stars. I’ve only got three more chapters and an epilogue to go, and man, I am so excited about this story! I have no doubt it’s my best work yet.

Of course, I might be biased. 😉

Star Wanderers is also coming along very well. I’ve only got a few more scenes to write/revise before it’s ready to send off to the next round of first readers. Part of me wants to send it off to Writers of the Future right now (and according to Dean’s sage advice, that’s probably what I should do), but I want to get some feedback first just to make sure there isn’t something I’ve missed that would make it better. If all goes well, I’ll probably send it off by the end of the month.

This is the best part of writing process: finishing up a project that you know is good. This is one reason why I love rewriting so much. If I could do this all day, every day, and get paid enough for my work to make ends meet, I’d be living the dream.

Until then, however, I’ve got to figure out another way to make ends meet. One option I’m considering very seriously is selling my contract and driving across the country this Thanksgiving to spend a month or two with my parents before going overseas. My mom was the one who suggested it, and I have to admit it makes a lot of sense; if I’m going to go abroad to teach English anyways, why not spend some time back home?

If this is something I need to do, I’m going to have to make the decision very soon, possibly before the end of next week–and if you know me, you know that I’m terrible at making decisions. However, I have been thinking about it enough to make a couple of lists, and this is what I’ve come up with so far:

Reasons to go to abroad:

To start a new career.
To have adventures.
To experience another culture.
To gain TEFL experience.
To support myself as I write.
To have a change.
To see the world.
To have something to write about.

Reasons to stay in Utah:

To get married.
To focus on writing.
To pursue a graduate degree.
To stay in a predominantly Mormon community.

I decided to list only the positive reasons for making either decision, and not to consider any of the creeping doubts or fears (and there are many!). So let’s break it down:

To start a new career: This seems prudent, especially if it takes a while for my books to really take off. Specifically, a TEFL career seems like something I could juggle with my writing career, and it would certainly offer a lot more satisfaction than a grunt day job.

To have adventures: Perhaps not the most responsible reason, but hey, you’ve got to remember to have fun.

To experience another culture: One of the perks of traveling, for sure. It would probably improve my writing considerably as well, though culture shock and distance from family would certainly pose a challenge.

To gain TEFL experience: In other words, to find out if teaching English as a foreign language is something I want to build a career around, or whether I’m just not suited for it. This is why I’d want to do the TLG program first, before heading off somewhere like Cairo or Amman. And if it doesn’t work out…well, at least I’d know. Right now, I don’t.

To support myself as I write: This is huge. I hear that most TEFL jobs only take up about 20 hours per week, and that if you’re living in a local apartment, it’s not hard to make time to write. In the past two years, I haven’t had any success balancing writing with full-time work, and working part time probably wouldn’t earn me enough to support myself here in the states.

To have a change: Not quite as tangible a reason, but important nonetheless. I can’t quite explain it, but if I stay where I am now, in my current life situation…it’s just not going to work out.

To see the world: I could probably lump this under “to have adventures.”

To have something to write about: Also huge. My experiences in Jordan and the Middle East were a huge inspiration for Desert Stars, and if I’d never gone over there, the novel wouldn’t be nearly as rich. Who knows what else my imagination would produce if I spent some time traveling the world?

Now, for the other side:

To get married: Honestly, this is more of a negative reason than a positive reason. I’ve already decided that I’m only going to marry someone who’s a practicing Mormon, and since Utah is predominantly Mormon, I’m worried that if I leave Utah, I won’t be able to find someone.

Trouble is…I’ve been here for almost six years, and still haven’t found anyone. I could probably put more effort into dating, but the truth is probably that finding a marriage partner is more about your mindset than where you physically live.

Besides, I could always spend a year or two abroad and come back. I’d be pushing thirty and well beyond “menace to society” status, but at least I wouldn’t be a loser who spent all his twenties in Utah.

To focus on writing: This was why I decided last year not to go teach English in Korea. The ebook revolution was just getting started, and I felt that I needed to stay in the states to learn how the market was changing and focus on building my indie writing career.

Now, however, I feel like I’m high enough on the learning curve that I can afford to work on other things. Besides, with the current state of the economy, I don’t think I’m going to find balance if I stay in the states.

To pursue a graduate degree: I’ve largely ruled this one out. I don’t see how an English degree would help me at this point, and I don’t currently have any career aspirations that would justify pursuing an advanced degree. The only reason I’d go back to school is to postpone facing the real world, and that’s probably the worst reason I could possibly have.

To stay in a predominantly Mormon community: Kind of the opposite of “see the world” and “experience another culture,” and it gets at the very heart of the matter. Would it be better to establish myself among people who are more like me and share my values, or should I venture out of the “bubble” and see what else is out there? I have a much stronger support group here in Utah than I’d probably have as a global nomad, but do I really need it? Am I independent enough to strike out and bloom wherever I’m planted?

I don’t know. My thinking is so muddled with doubts and second thoughts that this whole exercise has probably been futile. If I had to make a decision RIGHT THIS SECOND, however, I’d probably choose to go.

If nothing else, it would give me a good two months of writing time. 🙂

Goddesses by Linda Nagata

From the book description:

Michael Fielding is the newly appointed site director of the Four Villages project in rural India, tasked with guiding the economic development of the region. But a chance encounter with an ailing, homeless, and very young widow plunges him into the maze of an ossified and violent traditional culture, while putting his own career at risk.

On the other side of the world, Cody Graham’s hazardous waste cleanup company, Green Stomp, has earned a reputation for tackling the toughest, dirtiest jobs around. The harder the challenge, the more Cody likes it. But when chance—and the polluted ground water of Four Villages—brings Michael back into Cody’s life, both are forced to question their shared past, their values, and what it means to do good in the world.

This book was a change of pace for me. It’s science fiction, but takes place on a near-future Earth much like our own. In fact, the two driving elements of the story (infertility and economic development) are such contemporary issues that at points, I felt I was reading a piece of mainstream literature.

The writing is quite good, both on a technical and an artistic level. The storytelling is a little slower, but the character development is very well done, especially for Rajban, the native Indian girl whom Michael takes in and rescues. The parts from her point of view made me think a bit about my friends who did micro-finance after graduation; I think they would like her story a lot.

As a writer, one thing that interested me was how Nagata started off with a whole bunch of flashbacks and actually pulled it off. They tell you never to do this, but she made it work by grounding those scenes with clear action and a relatable conflict (childbirth, for example), all in the first couple of paragraphs. There were a couple of parts that confused me, but overall I think she handled it very well.

The ending was a bit ambiguous, which was dissatisfying in some ways but in other ways fit the story much better than a clean wrap-up. The story raises some very thought provoking questions about tradition and modernity, and a more definitive ending would probably have ruined a lot of that. But still, I wish I knew what happened to some of the characters after the end.

Overall, I’d give this book four stars. If you enjoy science fiction but you’d rather read something grounded in the real world, you’ll probably enjoy this book. If you’re interested in the developing world at all, I’d highly recommend it.

Trope Tuesday: The Call Knows Where You Live

I have a confession to make: I’m a tvtropes addict. Fortunately, it’s only about as bad as vicodin, which means that doses which would knock other people out do nothing to me–but still, I’ve wasted many, many hours on that site.

So anyhow, I thought it would be fun to do a weekly series where I pick out a trope and discuss it. After a lot of deliberation (and much clicking), I decided to start with:

The Call Knows Where You Live

This trope stems from one of the stages of the archetypal Hero’s Journey. The hero usually starts out in some sort of familiar setting, so that the reader gets a sense of who he is and where he’s coming from. To get the story started, someone or something from the realm of the unfamiliar calls him to leave on an adventure.

Most of the time (but not always), the hero turns down the call at first, not wanting to leave his comfort zone. This is called the Refusal of the Call, and it happens a lot. In The Matrix, Neo refuses to climb outside the window to escape the agents. In Ender’s Game, Ender Wiggin doesn’t actually want to go to Battle School, he just wants to be a normal kid and stay with his sister Valentine. In Star Wars IV, Luke tells Obi-Wan that he can’t go to Alderaan because he’s needed on the farm.

Unfortunately, the Call is not so easily evaded.

vlcsnap-2011-10-18-19h38m31s174 — Uncle Owen? Aunt Beru?

Sometimes, the best way to send a character off on an adventure is to have him lose everything right at the very beginning. With nothing to hold him back, the hero is free to go off and do something truly reckless.

I still remember how I felt when I first saw the burning homestead scene in Star Wars IV. The sinking feeling when I saw the smoke billowing from Luke’s house, the wide-eyed gasp at the mangled bodies of Luke’s aunt and uncle (I was so young, I had to close my eyes for that part). All of a sudden, the conflict felt a lot more real–and a lot more inevitable.

Of course, this trope only works for a certain kind of story. If the hero’s family is dead before he even leaves his home, there had better be some serious action later on. Also, the villain had better be the real thing–if nothing else in the story lives up to the depravity at the very beginning, a major promise has been left unfulfilled.

Alternately, I suppose you could have the hero’s family killed off by a natural event, or an unintentional accident–something where he has no one to blame and no face to put to the tragedy. I can’t think of any examples of this off the top of my head, but it seems a plausible motivation for, say, a scientist who wants to find a cure for some disease, or the source of some magnificent and dangerous anomaly.

Now, if I were an overlord, I would avoid this trope altogether by cozying up to the hero’s parents, perhaps even sending them Christmas cards. I might consider imprisoning them alive as collateral, but that would give the hero too much of an incentive to storm my castle. And of course, when slaughtering villages, I would make absolutely certain that everyone in the village is dead.

So what do you guys think of this trope? Any other cool examples you can think of, or interesting ways to subvert it? Let me know!

Let the job hunt begin!

Job-Hunting-on-Social-Network-Sites — Pull!

All right, I just updated my resume to account for the last year or so, and I’m ready to start looking aggressively for work. Given the state of the economy, I’m not optimistic that it will lead anywhere, but hey might as well give it a shot.

The ideal job would be something part time that allows me to write on the side while teaching me useful skills like book selling or copywriting. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to have interesting coworkers (especially female coworkers) and a fun work environment, too.

I’ve got to be honest, though; there aren’t very many jobs here in Utah Valley that are awesome enough to keep me here. In September, I finally got my TEFL certification, which means that I could probably land a decent job teaching English abroad if I were to look for one. In fact, if I showed up in Cairo or Amman with $500 USD in my pocket, I’ll bet I could establish myself.

So while there are a few jobs here in Utah that would make me decide to stay, if I can’t find anything satisfactory in the next few weeks, I’m probably going to go with teaching English abroad. My friends who have done it say that it gives you tons of free time to write, though generally more if you have a private apartment than if you’re living in a homestay. Even so, I think I’ll try out the Teach and Learn with Georgia program first for a few months, just to test the waters and see if this is something I actually want to do for a career.

That’s the tentative plan anyways. Things that could derail it include:

Finding an awesome job here in Utah.
Getting signed with my band.
Selling a bazillion ebooks.
Falling in love.

But either way, something’s gotta change.

New upload and thoughts on ebooks

Yesterday, I reformatted Genesis Earth and uploaded the new version to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Basically, I took everything I’ve learned about ebook formatting in the last few months and brought it up to date.

Here’s the complete list of changes:

Revised author’s note to include Facebook and Goodreads links, mention of newsletter, etc.
Added teasers for BSH and Desert Stars.
Credited my editor on copyright page.
Put table of contents on one screen.
Added nav points using KindleGen.

If you’ve got the old version, the book itself is pretty much the same; basically, I just uploaded a cleaner version, with links to my other works. Genesis Earth continues to sell better than Bringing Stella Home and Sholpan, so I figured it would be good to update it.

As for how sales of my ebooks have been going, to be honest they’ve dropped off quite a bit. At Amazon, my free short stories have more or less equalized at 20-80 downloads per week, and they’re starting to get some traction on the new Amazon FR store, but the paid stuff has slowed down quite a lot.

What this tells me is that I haven’t yet built up enough of a reader base to be self sustaining. It’s not enough just to upload your work to Amazon and the other ebook retailers (though that’s certainly important); you’ve got to find ways to reach new readers and get your name out there.

I’m not too worried; I figure the most important thing right now is to build my list. After all, if you want to get discovered, the most important thing is to have something that people can discover.

Beyond that, though, I’m going to try a variety of strategies, including submitting work to more traditional markets (especially short stories). The biggest breakthrough would probably come from Writers of the Future, so I plan to put a lot more effort into that contest.

I’ll also focus a lot on the email newsletter, since that’s the best direct connection I have with my readers. For those of you who have already signed up, expect to see a lot more free and exclusive content. And for those of you who haven’t–what are you waiting for?? Check out the sidebar and sign up!

In the meantime, I’m going to keep writing novels and indie publishing them. It’s definitely worth it, even if sales are initially slow. Like Howard Tayler says, the first step to making grizzly bear soup is killing the grizzly bear–everything after that is just making soup.

Some awesome blogs you should follow

So a bunch of blogs I follow have been doing this blogfest called “Pay it Forward,” organzied by Alex J. Cavanaugh. The idea is to bring attention to some well deserving yet lesser known blogs, and that’s something I’m all for supporting.

The rules are simple: list, describe and link to three blogs that you follow, and check out some of the ones that others are recommending. So without any further ado, here are mine:

سفيرات أنثون — Don’t let the Arabic intimidate you. This is the travel blog of an old college friend of mine, Anthon Jackson. Since graduating in 2009, Anthon has been to just about every continent except Antarctica, taking some amazing pictures in the process. He’s the kind of guy who believes that life should be lived in the present, to the absolute fullest, and his blog reflects that.

Recently, he just got back from an Oxford sponsored expedition to the Danakil people of remote western Ethiopia. Other places he’s visited include Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, the Hindu Kush, western China, Italy, Norway, Korea, Morocco, the Sahel, etc. He posts rather sporadically, but whenever he does, it’s a real treat. So check him out!

God, Witches, Space & Stars — Laura is an old friend from Brandon’s writing class. She’s a great writer and insightful blogger, who takes a very thoughtful approach to everything she blogs about. She’s also an avid Kindle user with a lot of interesting thoughts on ebooks. So check her out!

Ben Godby — Ben Godby writes “mysteriously thrilling pseudo scientific weird western adventure fantasy tales.” He’s got a hilariously sarcastic writing style, and he’s not afraid to tackle controversial subjects on his blog. Whether or not you agree with him, he’s always entertaining to read. So check him out!