Zen Master: Blog

(This should have been posted in April, 2013. At this point I was positive that I should have started a blog earlier. This stuff would have been a lot easier.)

There is too much story-series background, what we call the "Swarm Cycle Canon", that is unknown for me to finish this story right now. When I ask the author's group about something, I often get a useful reply that I can put to work, and I move on.
Unfortunately, this is not always true. More and more, when I ask how something works or _should_ work, I get three different answers, any one of which is usable, and the discussion devolves into an argument. Every viewpoint is supported by previously-published stories. No matter what I write, I will violate something said in a previous story.
Not that the reader cares what my problem is, you just want to know when chapter 4 is coming out. The straight answer is "I don't know. I am putting IC on hold while we figure out what is going to be canon."

Did anyone notice that my previous blog entry said 2012 instead of 2013? I have this stuff written, I'm just trying to figure out a way to post it all on a continuing blog without looking like an idiot for not doing it when I should have.

(This should have been posted in March, 2012, when I realized that IC was going to have to be re-written, and could not be completely published yet. This was about the time that I realized that I had been wrong about the usefulness of an author's blog, and started seriously writing down what I should have been putting in it.)

I'm having problems with the Swarm author's group. Not their fault, as every one of them should rightfully be proud of their accomplishments and I'm the new guy. The underlying problem is that the owner, Thinking Horndog, originally envisioned this as a short series that allowed him to get some stress out as he went through some unpleasant times in his personal life. Apparently his series touched a nerve, and became popular enough that other authors started asking permission to play in his sandbox. He gave permission, moved on to other projects, and by his own admission sat back to enjoy reading Swarm stories that he didn't have to write.
The problem is that there was never any well-thought out background and historical outline that the various authors had to abide by. Each author wrote what he (or she) wanted to, and whenever the story called for it, something got invented. Of course the other authors would jump on the new stuff.
Time went on, and things started to get awkward. Joe can't write about the invention of (X) because Sally wrote about (X) being in use already in story (Y), and her version -already published, accepted, and thus 'canon'- doesn't do what he needs for his story. The authors don't just pass their writing around for help, they NEED to, to avoid inconsistencies.
And writing stuff that doesn't violate anything in any of the stories is getting harder. To my loyal readers, if there are any, I hereby apologize for how long this is taking.

(This should have been posted in December, 2012, when I started posting Independent Command)

I'm writing a story set in Thinking Horndog's shared "Swarm Cycle". I think I'm far enough along to start publishing it. No, it's not complete yet, but I should be able to finish it soon. I can't do the ending until I get more familiar with the Swarm universe, to make sure I don't say anything that doesn't fit. The original ending I had planned back when the it was HonorVerse fanfic will clearly not do.
I am sending each chapter through the Swarm Author's list to make sure everything I write is, if not exactly what they expect, is at least plausible and acceptable. While they are extremely helpful, they are all just as touchy as I am, and they all know that their individual view is the only correct one. This may take a while.

(This should have been an update to the previous post)
I just checked cmsix's page, and he has a new blog entry! He ain't dead yet! He's just stuck in a nursing home with no internet access. No private access, at least. So, he probably can't do much writing and posting, and he probably can't even surf for porn in peace. We need to spring him from the pokey!

(Please try to think of this as having been posted in early December, 2012)
Continuing from before: Problem was, I also checked up on some of my favorite authors. cmsix is clearly gone, as I had suspected before I went off-line in 2007 or 08. As usual, I had sent his last couple of chapters back to him with grammar, spelling, and punctuation _corrections_ and word usage, anachronism, and plot _suggestions_, but he never posted them when we were passing emails. He never replied to my last emails, either. He had admitted to some serious medical problems that needed help he couldn't pay for. It didn't do him in right away, though. It looks like he came back for awhile in 2010 and did some more noodling around, starting a few more stories, and even took Depression, the story I had been helping him with, far beyond where we had been.
Since I started posting here again, a couple of his fans have asked me about him -since I was listed as a proofreader on some of his chapters- and I did some digging. He had told me his real name once, in a weak moment. Now, I can't prove he's gone, but he's certainly not with us any more. Some people I'm pretty sure are his sister and daughter are still alive, but I'm not sure I want to hassle them about their brother/father's unpublished porn files. Who would gain enough to compensate for the trouble I would give them? As he would put it, that dog might be willing to hunt, but he's asleep right now. We'll let that sleeping dog lie.

Pele and DStar seem to be inactive, too. Their website occasionally changes, but no new content in several years, so they too apparently are still alive but no longer producing. That's a shame, because they used to say they had millions of bytes _written_, but it all needed to be edited before it could be posted. Or something like that, I can't find it now with a quick scan. I emailed them a couple of times to offer help editing, but that was always firmly refused. Okay, it's their stories and we do it their way. We wait. Now their website is up again at http://playground.playground.pele.cx/ after a couple of moves, but not even an updated note for over a year, and it's been more than three since an update to any of my three favorite serials (Prudence, Sonuachara, and New Age Dawning).

Thinking Horndog, on the other hand, is still active. Awesome! I _love_ his work. And, for a while there, I was emailing him annually about when Pact 6 was coming out. Apparently never, as he has moved on to other projects. His "Swarm Cycle" shared-universe is doing well, with a whole passel of authors adding stories almost daily. I started thinking....
I can do this! While I'm not as good a writer as some in his stable, I, in my humble opinion, am better than some others. And, I have some experience in the field of play (an interstellar war is merely a world war writ large, right?) while many of his authors clearly do not. They are smart, some of them clearly a good deal smarter than me, but many of them are just as clearly completely inexperienced in the field of organized murder.
Of course, several of his authors are veterans. It's not hard to tell which are which. Just, it appears that all of his veterans are ground-pounders. None of them appear to have meaningful exposure to the warship environment. Frankly, some of them appear to have never even been on a ferry, much less spent a miserable month cooped up on a defenseless troopship that may or may not survive long enough to let them get off so they can actually shooot at an enemy before they die.
Of course, I can't knock their writing. I've never been in their shoes. I spent my career inside huge ships where I could take a hot shower before I went to my clean bunk.
Still, they need the naval point of view. There's a lot going on outside their berthing compartment. There's a whole task force out there that is sacrificing manned warships in a probably futile attempt to get the grunt's boots muddy before they die. It's all ugly, every bit of it, but that's war. Taking the other guy's territory, no matter how much it costs, is the only way to keep him from invading _our_ territory. Because, by the game's rules, we aren't allowed to just nuke them and be done with it. We have to do it the hard way. If we can.
So, I've started converting an HonorVerse fanfic novel I was writing for my own amusement to the Swarm Cycle. It is not by any means my longest work, but it will be far longer than anything else I have published. Problems: I never finished the original, I have to convert what I had written, and I want to pass my opus past the other Swarm authors to see if it fits their universe. All three problems will take significant time, but, hey, I'm retired!