Friday, July 25, 2014

Summer is almost over

Fun read!
Ok, not the season, but the break from school is. Especially for me. It’s been nice, since this is the first break of more than a week I have had from school since I started my Master’s program. The downside is, because of the break, my school has not reported to Sallie Mae that I am enrolled in the next term, so they are already harassing me about making student loan payments. Uh, no? Blood from a turnip and all that.

Anyways, I start back up a week from Monday, with my final History class (Renaissance and Reformation). Also, if my transfer credits come through from my single semester at Capella, this will actually be my last full class. After that it’s the comprehensive exam and that’s (hopefully) it!

I’ve also looked into what I’m doing after that. One of the local college campuses has a WI Teacher Certification program that is only 18 months long. I’ve started the paperwork for that, just in case that’s the direction I decide to go. Part of that process will probably be to see if I can shadow a local History teacher or two, just to get an idea of whether being a high school teacher is a good fit. I’ll try to do that a few days this coming fall.

My next read.
The biggest plus to this summer has been that I have gotten to read a lot more. After a few false starts with books that didn’t “grab” me, I managed to finish a few paperbacks in the last couple of months (that’s pretty good for my pace). Just yesterday I finished Another Fine Myth by Robert Aspirin. I had picked up the entire series for a pittance a while back, and decided I could go for some lite-hearted fantasy. It delivered in spades. Very fun and quick. Today I started Redliners by David Drake, which has been languishing on my Kindle for several months.

I’ve also determined that I am going to start taking in more historical non-fiction in my leisure reading time. Going to compile a list of “essential” works that I need to read, and just start digging in. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears. I’m mostly focusing on ancient cultures. But I would like to read more about American history as well. For now I will probably start with A History of the Vikings, by T.D. Kendrick. Mainly because I already own a copy. It was a good source for my research on the Varangian Guard.

On the writing front, a bit of movement here and there. I have a sci-fi story I’m shopping around. I have the Gorus story about ¾ done. And I was picking at the orc mercenary book yesterday. I figure I’ll be ready to be a “professional” writer in about 10 years or so.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Conditioned

I think I’m too conditioned to be Eurocentric in my reading tastes. I’m reading the first Horseclans book, and while I am enjoying it, I have to admit that the Hispanic vernacular, names, titles, and everything kind of throws me off a bit. It almost feels like Adams took a basic Medieval European-style world, and threw a 19th century Mexico skin over it. All of the names and titles bring images of Zorro into my head. It’s taking some getting used too.

In the meantime, I picked up a recently acquired copy of Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria the other day, and casually started reading it. Before I knew it, I was hooked into it, and it has become my primary reading now. I had never read any Thongor before, but in my quest to get at least a little experience with all of the “Clonans” of the 60’s and 70’s, I decided I need to give it a go. Pretty cool so far. Lin Carter wasn’t an extraordinary writer, nor was he all that original, but he did weave a fun yarn.

On a side note, I have the edition pictured above. Obviously the cover artist was working from a basic description, because the “flying boat” in the scene depicted isn’t supposed to look anything like a spacecraft, the way that one does. I saw it more like the flying ships in the Barsoom novels. Basically, a flying boat, but with a sail.

Anyways, with the long weekend (I took Monday off too), I hope to have some reading time. Maybe even some writing time, though I’m not holding my breath.

Speaking of writing, struggle as I might, I don’t think I am going to be able to get that Gorus story up to 17k+ like I’d hoped. The story is just too simple, and would require way more fluff than I’m comfortable with at this point. The downside is that, as it stands now, it will probably still be about 12-13k once completed. That’s too short for a novella, but too long for most short story markets. So, the plan is back to finishing this one, and then write another story of similar length, with a bridge story in between, thus creating a (short) novel-length narrative.