Zen Master: Blog

The US military has a phrase for when you get caught up in something and the world passes you by, making your efforts meaningless and obsolete. That phrase is "Overtaken By Events". The Titanic's room service may have been first rate, but it was OBE. TH just sent me an email saying that the whole thing was good. Why wait until Monday to start posting it? I've sent the first two parts to the submission queue. I'll automate the rest of them if I can figure out how.

Have I mentioned before that there is one person in the Swarm author's group who can tell me it's garbage, throw it out and start over again, even at this late date? Right, The Thinking Horndog, the guy who created the Swarm Cycle's shared universe. And, he's reviewing it now. Crap. I HAVE to listen to him if he says there's a problem. Keep your fingers crossed. Short of him pushing the Abort button, TFC will start to get posted on Monday.

-ZM

It's no big deal when your proofreaders notice some mis-spelled words, or a place you screwed up the grammar or punctuation. However, when they point out some plot holes you have to stop and think about it.
Okay, that's long enough. I've fixed everything they said and we'll try again.

SOL has a new story "My Concrete Spaceship" by a new author "Pi". Now, it turns out to be a lot better than I expected from the title, history, and the teaser, but there _are_ a few things that he could use some help with. He needs a proofreader, to start with. I know several.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he has any feedback method set up. Maybe he can reply to this.

-ZM

Somewhere in the Bible, don't remember where, there's an instruction to not piss off those who help you. The King James version has it as "Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread your grain", meaning that if you have oxen driving your gristmill, don't cover their mouths to keep them from eating any of your grain. They really don't eat that much compared to how much grain you can grind in a mill that's large enough to need two oxen to run it, and you will get a lot more work done with less hassle if they think of your gristmill as a good place to go walk around for awhile.
Those managers who cheat their employees at every possible chance will eventually only have employees who are okay with being cheated. Because, you know, they are even better at cheating the company than their boss is. It's better to have happy employees who will do whatever they can to make their boss look good.
What am I talking about here? Well, my proofreader, who shows me every time he looks at my work that I'm not quite as good a writer as I think I am. If you see my stuff here on SOL and like it, a large part of that is just because I'm such a wonderful writer, right?
I wouldn't look anywhere near as good if I didn't have a really good proofreader backing me up. Tomken rips my work apart even better than I do to the other authors on the Swarm Cycle author's list. So, since I was in such a hurry to post "Fat Chicks" once I had worked through his errata list that I didn't even stop to tip my hat to him at the end of the file, I have to publicly admit here that I'm a jerk who doesn't give credit where credit is due.
Until I get back to that with an update that thanks him for his services, please just imagine that "Fat Chicks" ends with a thank-you note to my proofreader TomKen.

-ZM