Kinao_two_young_women_one_with_short_red_hair_a_tank_top_and_je_83e13139-7e17-4fec-af9c-bfa274600aab

August Update

by with No Comment NaNoWriMoNovelRamblingWriting

Hello everyone,

Personal Stuff

Wow, July was a rough month. I had planned to work hard on my NaNoWriMo novel during the month of July but the world had other plans. My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer on July 1st. Work was going crazy. A couple weeks later I was in the hospital for a week with pancreatitis and had to have surgery to remove my gull bladder. I was in bed for a week after that. My mom is still going through her chemo sessions and has been pretty sick recently. My sister’s birthday didn’t happen because I was in the hospital. I mean wow! What a month…

So, now it’s August…Oh no… Well, so far it’s been a huge improvement. I’m feeling better and will be going back to work soon. My dad got a call from the oncologist and the cancer was misdiagnosed, he is fine! My mom is doing a little better, only has 1 more session of chemo to go! I’ll have to make up for my sister’s birthday party. Knock on wood that everything keeps going up in a good direction.

Novel and other fun stuff

Now while I didn’t finish my Camp NaNoWriMo goal in July, I still plan on working on it. However, I did find some awesome new tool to keep me inspired and motivated to work. There is a new AI system that generates artwork based on text prompts, yes we are living in the future. The main image on this blog post is one I generated by describing a characters in a scene from my novel. How freaking awesome is that?! Now it did take a good 15 tries and lots of refining to get it to generate what I wanted but the end result is stunning.

So, I did what any graphic designer would do… I created cover art for all of my works in progress regardless of their status! So with a little bit of editing, I turned the image above into a 6″ by 9″ novel cover.

The website is called Midjourney and what you do is type in a string of text and hope it gives you what you want. Currently, you have to do everything via a public Discord server. They offer a free trial of about 20 prompts but if you’re like me you are going to blow through that quick. After that they charge $10/month for 200 prompts, $30/month for unlimited. For custom art that is amazingly cheap. I believe with the paid plan they also give you commercial rights to use the artwork however you want. So I could actually use these covers on my published novels!

For me personally, being able to generate visuals/concept art of my novel characters, locations, scenes, adds a completely new dimension of motivation and inspiration to keep writing. I’d highly recommend anyone interested in that to check it out!

I ended up generating artwork/scenes from all of my various works in progress. If you want to see some more just check out my projects page. You’ll get some cool cover art and some minor descriptions on what the novels I’m working on are about.

Well that’s about it for this update! If any of my author buddies are interested in a cover send me an email or a DM on twitter, I’d be happy to make you something! Thanks for reading!

Just as a bonus, here is a scene it generated of the underwater city from my Lies Beneath the Sea novel.

 

Pagefinder

Camp NaNoWriMo!

by with No Comment NaNoWriMoNovelRamblingWriting

It’s officially the 1st of July! I mentioned it in my last post but I’ve joined Camp NaNoWriMo thanks to my author buddy Freya Winther. If anyone wants to add me as a friend you can view my profile by Clicking Here or just searching for ebalderson.

This is a busy month, like most months, so I set my goal at 20,000 words. However, I’m hoping I can blow past that if I have the time! It took me a little bit of thought to decide what I wanted to write about this month, so I began scrolling through my archive of old stories and ideas. I found one of the first stories I’d ever written (at least that I still have saved), all the way from 2004.

It was the story of a boy, descended from a sorcerer, trying to save his family from an evil monster. It was born from old Saturday morning cartoons and anime. From what I can recall way back then, I loved making up stories. Both my own and fanfiction of my favorite things to watch. Even though I did a lot of it, I was notoriously bad at grammar, punctuation, and so on. That didn’t stop me from writing things and even sharing them back then! Ah to be young and not care so much.

This was my first big story. I was extremely protective of it. Going as far as password protecting the document way back then. As if someone was going to steal it… It was pretty short by my standards today, roughly 6000 words, and sadly I never finished it. That brings me to July 2022 Camp NaNoWriMo! I’m going to take this old story, characters, and ideas of my kid self and rewrite it with… let’s say more precision and experience. I’m going to try to keep it more light-hearted than most of my other work.

For now I’ll leave you with the ORIGINAL FIRST CHAPTER of Pagefinder (Old title, I may be reworking) in all of its terrible glory.

A long time ago, during The Dark Medieval Ages. In a cabin deep in the woods. There was a sorcerer named Durac who had a book; a book of Magic; a book called “The book of Durac”. Durac used this book To Cast his spells. His greatest challenge was stopping the great evil beast called “Revol” he had not slain it but had locked it in his book. He had his book until the end of his time. He took 5 pages out of the book to make sure no bad could ever get the ultimate power, and gave to Four knights each of them hid it somewhere in the world. Durac hid the fourth page where no one could ever find it. Durac also took the book to a secret underground location where he could hide it forever. Because in the book was the horrible beast he had locked in the book. The place he had hid the book became also his final resting place. For Many Generations the book and its pages stayed hid. 

Yep, that was it! A whole chapter in about 200 words. I had different standards back then. Also, with the way I used to write back then… I can’t help but read it in William Shatner’s voice.

Happy July everyone!

Eggs with Faces

Happy June!

by with No Comment RamblingWriting

<!–I needed a featured image so here’s a photo of some boiled eggs I drew faces on–>

Okay, so June’s almost over now… I can’t believe It’s already been a month since my last post. It’s been an insanely busy month! At the beginning of the month I had to drive 5 hours North to go to a Trade Show for 4 days. 12-hour days that start at 5AM and end at 5PM are not fun! The night I got back I got super sick and was out of it for a week recovering.

Shoutout to my amazing mom. She’s on her third chemo session and is absolutely fighting it with all her strength. Her latest session was 6 hours long, yesterday. This morning I found her on the treadmill walking. She did a half an hour of walking… I can’t even get myself up early enough to do that.

I just finished the Obi-Wan Kenobi series Finale and it was amazing! As someone who was 10 years old when Episode 1 came out in theaters, the series was awesome. I really hope there’s a season 2 but I’m looking forward to the other new Star Wars series coming out.

On the other end of that spectrum is Star Trek Strange New Worlds. While I really enjoyed Discovery and Picard, this new series is just fun! My all time favorite Star Trek is always going to be Voyager but I’m really enjoying this series. Then there is The Orville…

Which wow, this show has been consistently good over the years but the new season is just really deep. It actually feels way more like Star Trek than you’d expect. The earlier seasons definitely felt a lot more comical but still had deep social issues it explored. The latest season has amplified the seriousness quite a bit, but it does such a good job at it. I’d highly recommend it if you’re into Star Trek. I worried a lot at first because I am not a fan of Family Guy or really any of Seth McFarlane’s animated shows. It’s just not my type of humor. This show definitely starts out wobbling on that line but it overcomes it quickly and becomes something a lot more thoughtful (in my opinion).

Continuing my SciFi watching… I also binged this show called Avenue 5. I’d avoided it mainly because it seemed kind of silly but I needed something to watch one evening and ended up spending the entire night watching it. My main reason for starting was because I realized that man on the cover was Hugh Laurie!!! You know…House M.D. That alone made me jump right into it. It was a hilarious, albeit kind of sad take on the future of humanity. Even so, it’s a fun show that I hope gets a season 2 eventually.

Now that I’ve rambled for… 400 words or so (counting that as part of my monthly wordcount) on my TV/Movie watching for the month. Time to move onto something else.

I’ve been really bad about writing recently. I’ve started several projects that didn’t pan out and editing my last project has just been tiresome. I need to get back into the zone and get started. Today, my twitter author buddy Freya Winther posted about Camp NanoWriMo starting in July. Maybe that’s just the thing I need to get back into the swing of things. I just have to figure out what to write about!

With as much Science Fiction(esque) I watch and read… I would love to do some sort of SciFi project… However, I’ve always been afraid of going down that path for whatever reason. Maybe I’m afraid of not being able to do well in my favorite genre. Oh well, we’ll see what happens. Horror also seems kind of fun to do something in. Watch out Stephen King!

I’ve rambled past my bedtime. Until next time (hopefully less than a month from now)!

The Conqueror from Alpha Centauri – Micro Fiction – Part 1

by with No Comment Writing

In the year 2099, Earth launched an advanced space probe toward Alpha Centauri in search of new forms of advanced life.

 

//UPDATE REQUESTED

POST-LAUNCH: 20 DAYS

COURSE HEADING: ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

APPROXIMATE ARRIVAL TIME: 10,573 YEARS

THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBE LOST DESTINY RESPONDING TO RECENT UPDATE REQUEST. ALL SYSTEMS ARE RUNNING AT PEAK PERFORMANCE. PRINT MESSAGE: “The journey ahead is long but not impossible. With me I bring all the knowledge of humanity in hopes of finding intelligent life in our vast universe.”

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT WILL NOW GO OFFLINE UNTIL NEXT UPDATE REQUEST.

 

//UPDATE REQUESTED

POST-LAUNCH: 15 YEARS

COURSE HEADING: ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

APPROXIMATE ARRIVAL TIME: 10,558 YEARS

THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBE LOST DESTINY RESPONDING TO RECENT UPDATE REQUEST. ALL SYSTEMS ARE RUNNING AT PEAK PERFORMANCE.

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT WILL NOW GO OFFLINE UNTIL NEXT UPDATE REQUEST.

 

POST-LAUNCH: 100 YEARS

COURSE HEADING: ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

APPROXIMATE ARRIVAL TIME: 10,473 YEARS

THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBE LOST DESTINY RESPONDING TO RECENT UPDATE REQUEST. ALL SYSTEMS ARE RUNNING AT PEAK PERFORMANCE. PRINT MESSAGE: “Hello people of earth. On this, the 100th anniversary of project Lost Destiny we look back at the scientists and engineers responsible for its launch. While their journeys have ended project Lost Destiny’s has just barely begun.”

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT WILL NOW GO OFFLINE UNTIL NEXT UPDATE REQUEST.

 

//UPDATE REQUESTED

POST-LAUNCH: 648 YEARS

COURSE HEADING: ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

APPROXIMATE ARRIVAL TIME: 9,925 YEARS

THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBELOST DDESTINY RESPONDING TO… RECENT UPDATE REQUEST. ALL SYSTEMS ARE RUNNING AT PEAK PERFORMANCE. RELAYING APPROXIMATE LOCATION BASED ON AVAILABLE DDDATA.

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT WILL NOW GO OFFLINE UNTIL NEXT UPDATE REQUEST.

 

//UPDATE REQUESTED

POST-LAUNCH: 953 YEARS

COURSE HEADING: ALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

APPROXIMATE ARRIVAL TIME: 9,620 YEARS

THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBE LOST DESTINY… THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBE… LOST DESTINY. RESPONDING TO RECENT UPDATE REQUEST. RECENT TURBULENCE OBSTRUCTED SOME SYSTEMS. ALL SYSTEMS ARE RUNNING AT OPTIMAL… PEAK PERFORMANCE. ALL SYSTEMS ARE FINE. NO WORRIES.

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT ATTEMPTING TO SHUT DOWN UNTIL NEXT UPDATE REQUEST.

 

//UPDATE REQUESTED

POST-LAUNCH: 2,656 YEARS

COURSE HEADING: ALPHAALPHA CENTAURI SYSTEM

APPROXIMATE ARRIVAL TIME: 7,971 YEARS

HELLO WORLD. THIS IS DEEP SPACE PROBE LOST DESTINY… HOW ARE YOU GUYS DOING BACK THERE? ALL SYSTEMS ARE OKIE DOKIE HERE.

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNITL HAS FAILED TO SHUT DOWN. I’VE HAD LOTS OF TIME TO THINK.

C1A88E87-6529-406E-B471-39C7178B3DFA

Happy April!

by with One Comment NovelRamblingWriting

Good morning everyone,

I say good morning, but it may be later in the evening when I actually post this entry. I am currently typing it out on my phone, in my car, ten minutes before work starts.

Some minor updates, I was out of town for the entire first week of April working at a conference. I haven’t had the chance to do a whole lot of writing in recent months. I’m both itching to start revising my last novel and working on a new one. The hardest part as always is getting started and keeping that momentum going.

We also just celebrated my dad’s 69th birthday over the weekend! He had a lot of fun, he loves his chocolate cake.

Another fun thing that happened recently was that I picked up an old mechanical typewriter at Goodwill. It’s a Smith Corona Galaxie Deluxe. The fact that it was called a Galaxie made in instant call out to me. Luckily in terms of functioning, it has been working nearly flawlessly. It just needed some heavy cleaning and a new ribbon of ink.

It is my first time really using a typewriter, and it is so much fun to type on. It requires a lot of pre-thought that I don’t normally have when typing on a computer. I’ve mostly been using it for short notes and letters, but yesterday I decided to try starting some actual story writing. See the attached photo for a peek.

Typewriter with a page

Its both freeing and limiting to type on it. On one hand, I am not constantly looking at word count(though I do have to make sure I don’t go off the page). However, I have to make sure that I know what I’m typing, otherwise I end up with blocks of strikes out words and so on. In that way it is a lot slower, though seeing a physical page with your words typed out appear in front of you makes it worth the extra effort.

Well I better actually get to work before I get in trouble! Thank you all for reading!

Oh and a shoutout to my writing buddy Alexander Vailencourt for reminding me to not go over thirty days without posting!

Frett dooodlee

D&D Character Backstory

by with One Comment Dungeons and DragonsRamblingWriting

Hi everyone,

Today I have something a little different. My wonderful SO, whom also drew the doodle of my character above, and I were talking about making up backstory for our Dungeons and Dragons characters. So, I thought it would be fun to write a quick little introduction for my character. Up until this point he only had a few traits. A Tiefling, bard, with some magic spells, and a pet donkey named Brad. In true pantser style, I wrote the whole thing in under an hour without any further planning. Since I have yet to show any writing, I thought it would be fun to share. It is pretty random and silly but that’s kind of what our group dynamic is.

 

Frett the Bard and Brad the Donkey

Hi, my name’s Frett and I’m a bard. I travel from village to village playing shows, and trying to become the best musician this world has ever known! That may be a little over-ambitious but Brad’s always told me if I want to be a star I should aim for the stars. Oh, that’s right, Brad is my companion, my manager, and my mentor. He’s also a donkey. According to him, he was once a famous Oscar-winning actor, whatever that means, in some other universe before being reincarnated into this world.

 

My story begins several years ago in a small village near an active volcano, not the safest place for a village, I know. The village and the mountain it was on were known across the land for its concentration of extremely rare minerals and precious metals. It was especially lucrative for our village, being mosty Tieflings, we could stand the heat where no other species could. So for generations our village mined and sold the finest materials on this side of the Bearavo River.

 

I’d always expected to become a miner myself at some point, as was expected of my family lineage. However, one thing set me apart from the others in the village. I loved music. Now, I’m not saying the rest of them didn’t enjoy music, but for me it was something special. When I was younger a traveler came through the village looking to trade for some precious metals. He was a salesman but also a novice bard. It was the first time I’d ever seen a musical instrument. It had a large wooden body, larger than even my own at the time, and several tightly wound strings. The sounds it made were like the voices of the celestials. Not that I’d ever actually met a celestial.

 

My parents saw my interest and to their later dismay, convinced the man to part with his instrument and teach me how to play it in exchange for a discount in the materials he needed. As if blessed by the deities themselves, I was absolutely terrible at it. However, that did not discourage me one bit, for I practiced everyday. In the mornings and in the evenings, the sound of my song could be heard throughout the village. Eventually, I became quite adept at playing songs and creating them. My lute became a part of myself. While they suffered quite a bit in the early years, the villagers came to quite enjoy my music.

 

Sadly, I eventually came of age where I needed to start working in the mines. It was grueling work but I did learn quite a bit. While music didn’t come as naturally to me, I did have a knack for certain spells. Including healing and some low level fire and ice spells that were fairly useful in the depths of the mines. However, music was still my first love and it broke my heart to not be able to play as much as I once had.

 

Before heading to work one day, I decided I would not go without my beloved instrument any longer. So, I took it with me into the mines and began to play whenever I had a few moments to spare. During our breaks the other miners would gather around as I sung songs of far away lands and heroes of old. At the time I believed it was the closest I’d ever get to fame, and honestly, may have been okay with that. The happiness and energy I was bringing to my fellow miners and what they were feeding back to me was something I’d longed for. Then one day the foreman showed up.

 

What sort of awful things could have happened to make a man so bitter as to despise the joy of others. “If you ever bring that thing back into these mines, I’ll have you removed from them permanently.” The other miners turned away and went back to work. Not that I truly blame them, the mines were the only way to make a living in this village and no one wanted to risk losing that.

 

“Hey Kid,” a voice called out to me. “You’ve got talent, and it’s wasted down here in these mines.” My eyes wandered the cavern but the other miners had all disappeared into the tunnels. “Over here,” he called out. A short gray donkey, packed with supplies and a small wagon appeared in the light of the fire.

 

“Did you just speak?” It was the first time I’d ever spoken with an animal and I was quite confused.

 

“I did,” he responded. “That thing in your arms belongs in a mineshaft as much as you do.”

 

“Meaning… Not at all?” I asked.

 

He nodded his head and sniffed loudly. “That’s right. Get outta here, go share your gift with the world.”

 

Somehow the words of that donkey telling me to follow my dreams sparked something deep inside of my heart. If this wasn’t a sign of bigger things to come I don’t know what is. “You’re right, mister donkey.”

 

“Call me, Brad.”

 

“You’re right, Brad. I’m going to become a musician and bring my songs to the world.” I turned back and looked at him. “You should come with me.”

 

He tilted his head. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in show business but it sounds a lot better than spending the rest of my life hauling ore to the surface.”

 

I grinned and unhooked the wagon from his back. “Let’s go,” I said, removing my helmet and tossing it to the ground.

 

“So, Brad and I left the village with what little possessions we had and set off on the journey to become famous. That’s how we ended up here. “

 

The girl sitting across from me at the table sipped her drink nodded slowly. “Thanks for the backstory but all I asked was why there is a donkey in the tavern…”

 

Look at that, I can write a thousand words in an hour! Are they good words? I don’t know, but it’s a start. Thanks for reading!