Zen Master: Blog

The "Swarm Cycle" authors' group has a wiki, an email list, a reference file repository, and so on, to help us keep the details straight. We always want more, though.
It's a lot easier to visualize the layout of a starship or a moon base if you are looking at a drawing of it. Sure, I could do it myself if I didn't have a wife, kids, house, etc, etc, but it's time to ask for help.
I've got a good drawing of an Aurora's pod arrangement by someone named "DC Mike" but he disappeared and I don't want to publish his drawings without his permission.
Can someone look at Mike's drawings and re-produce them plus some more stuff, so that we have a set of common reference drawings? I'd need an outside email address so I could send files.

-ZM

I originally wrote Ending This Mess about 6 years ago. It hasn't been static, though. While all the Swarm Cycle authors have been using it as a reference, every time a new story comes out that is set in the same time period, we have to update ETM to account for whatever new happened in that story.
Aroslav's "Pussy Pirates" is a good example. That story forced some changes to ETM. Not much, mostly just an occasional mention here and there, but enough to warrant updates.
I just got done re-uploading the six chapters that have already been posted. Anyone who is interested can go back over it and try to find the changes. I've done my best to make them as unobtrusive as possible, so hopefully no one will notice. Nah, it's always been like that. You must have misread it the first time.
Oh, and yeah, I've had to also re-upload all of the other chapters, too, but since they haven't been posted yet the changes won't confuse anyone. Except the other Swarm Cycle authors who have been using it as a reference. Nah, it's always been like that. You must have misread it the first time.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

-ZM

As I write this, the current "blast from the past" at the top of SOL's home page is Paul Gable's "In Bondage Schoolgirl". If you read the teaser, it ends with "...even if they are forced into it by their piers." Uh, was she raised in a shipyard, that she's concerned about what a bunch of inanimate wharfs are going to do?
Sure, Paul isn't active, he hasn't posted a new story here in 14 years, but it's a fine example of how to turn prospective readers off. If you can't even get the teaser right, how can anyone expect you to write a coherent story?
Writers, please, please, please take the time to make sure that your title and teaser, at least, are interesting and advertise your skill as writers. I mean, advertise it in a good way. I don't know Paul Gable, never noticed his work before, but now I know that I'm not interested in it. Not if that's his level of writing skill. There are too many other writers here who _can_ construct a coherent sentence.
-ZM

Well, we've proven that the formatting codes that work in the 'preview' don't work when the blog entry actually comes out.
I've had "Ending This Mess" ready for posting for several years, but there were issues on a different level. Did we want it posted? It tells some of the Swarm War's history that hasn't been written up in stories yet. On the other hand, the other writers are using it as a reference, and they shouldn't treat it as 'canon' if it hasn't been posted yet.
What I finally ended up doing was writing up all the discussion _about_ the story and splitting it out into a forward and a postscript section. Note that part of THAT was pinning LJ down on exactly what-all he allowed as a separate part. Turns out that there are a whole grunch of different allowable parts, and my current writing project is to write an essay for the Authors' Resource page that explains them all. That should be out Real Soon Now.
Oh, and I was planning on posting a chapter of ETM every Monday morning, but that would drag it out into sometime in May. There's just no reason to do that, so it's currently queued up for every Monday and Thursday at 8AM. The first part didn't show up this morning until 10, but that's probably because every other writer on this site decided to post another chapter of their story on Monday morning. It takes the management some time to wade thru them all. Maybe Monday morning wasn't my best idea.

Imagine that you are driving to your local Ford dealer to buy a new car. On the way, you see a billboard that shows your chosen model. Unfortunately, it has a mis-spelled word. Would you buy a Ford Fucus?

No. They are advertising incompetence. If they can't even spell the name of their own car right, what else did they get wrong? You know that it wasn't the factory's fault, that was an advertising wage-slave that did that, not the workers in the factory, but the mistake made it all the way to the billboard.

It shows a serious lack of care about integrity, getting everything right before their name goes on it, at the corporate level. The marketing people, the advertising people, all the people who paid for the ad and all the people who set it up, none of them cared enough to check that the work was correct. With that level of 'care' at the decision-making level, you know that no one is checking the actual car, either.

Nope, I ain't buyin' that! Instead, you turn around and go to the Chevy dealer to see what they have, right?

Here on SOL, the author chooses the title. The author chooses the 'teaser', or the text that is displayed that describes what he or she wants the reader to know about their work. He is advertising his work just as much as any corporate executive does. His customers pay in time spent reading their work. There are a lot of people writing stories here. Readers have to pick and choose what they want to read. They choose based upon what they see first, the title and the teaser.

For God's sake, at least get the title right! A couple of years ago, I saw one story here on SOL with a screwed-up name in the title. I opened it up just to see....Nope, the character is named something else. The author mis-spelled the name in the title! Who would have read my last story if I'd titled it "Jasen's Tale?"

Then, the teaser. Just a couple of sentences. Take the time to make sure they make sense. They should draw the reader in, not repel him.

What Tony Tiger is trying to tell another author is that if the author can't even be arsed to get the TITLE right and the TEASER right, the two things that a prospective reader will see first before downloading or opening anything, you know what quality of work went into the actual story.

Nope, not buying that Ford Fucus. I'll go to another car lot and see what they have.

-ZM