Where exactly have I been?

Talk about starting the year off with a bang.

The wife and I took our son out of public school, for the record half day kindergarten is an educational abomination. He is now in a private school and is learning more than the 1st graders in the public schools. The adjustment took some time and helping him catch up took a lot of time; but it has been worth it.

Add to that a pair of herniated discs with a touch of spinal stenous, which manifested in a nearly complete loss of feeling in my right hand, one could say “life has interrupted me”.

So where have I been? Dealing with life.

What does all of this mean? Well in April, I will be seeing a neurosurgeon and will be going under the knife. Following that 4-6 weeks of recovery where I will most likely not be sitting in front of my computer for hours on end attempting to catch up with my writing schedule… and podcasting is surely out as well.

For those that have been listen to the Kingdom Crisis podcast, I am really sorry about the delay in new stories and I can assure you that the podcast is NOT dead, simply hibernating while the podcaster is repaired.

I have a few blog topics that I am going to attempt to get out before I “go dark”.

Thanks for sticking around and I will try to keep the blog updated with statuses.

Happy New Year

As I learned in 2009 goals are good things and even if you don’t meet every single one it is the process that makes it worth while. So, rather than call them resolutions I will call them my 2010 goals:

• I will lose 40 lbs. (Gym bag is packed for Monday morning)
• I will finish my novel.
• I will finish 4 short stories.
• I will submit 1 story to something.
• I will spend better time with my family.
• I will get back on track with the podcast

On Snow

Snow. It is a seemingly innocent 4 letter word describing the crystalline formation of super cooled molecules of water. Each crystalline form, or flake, is largely unique, though popular culture likes to say that each flake is completely unique, whether or not that is true is irrelevant to my discussion.

What I find interesting is how people see snow. For example the Inuit language of the Eskimos is said to have many different words to describe snow, I would say that this hints at ones perception of thing influencing how a thing is defined.

I have recently seen differing and conflicting perceptions of snow illustrated within my own home. As context I am referring to this past weekend where through a combination of cold air and large amounts of water close to 2 feet of snow was dropped on my home. The dynamics of society reacted quickly when the local meteorologist declared that this weather event was on the verge of transpiring, people flocked to hardware stores to purchase shovels and sacks of ice melt, they also crowded the aisles of the local grocery stores stocking up on milk, bread and eggs. I have to admit that my family was also swept along in this pre-snow fall ritual.

Now we come to the interesting part. My son upon hearing about the snow became excited because he was going to go play in the pure and unspoiled aftermath, visions of snow balls, snowmen and snow angels dominated his mind. My wife on the other hand saw herself sitting on the couch looking out the window watching the snow falling from the dark sky into the eerie silence that seems to accompany night time snow storms. She was absorbed in the beauty and peacefulness. My daughter being only two just ran around the house saying “Snow, Snow, Snow” and looking out the windows.

I had a different view of the impending accumulation. A shiver ran down my spine as I felt the cold damp of socks that would grow wet as I stood in the knee high piles of snow, a steady ache in my lower back would grow more prominent seemingly aware that soon I would be hunched over armed with a shovel moving and clearing collections of the crystalline molecules of frozen water. To me snow means work. Two feet of snow equates to about 2 hours of physical labor.

Now something to keep in mind; I was born in Texas and spent my foundation years there only relocating to the North East when I was on the verge of adulthood. Even after 20 years snow is still foreign to me, I really don’t perceive the loveliness or the joy that my family does. I see work, thankless, unpleasant work.

It’s going to be a long winter.

Funny Story

This past Tuesday, the new Star Trek movie was release on blu-ray. Normally this close to Christmas, I am not allowed, by my wife, to purchase things for myself; however, after a quick call to the wife the transaction was approved. So I checked around and noticed that a popular store (name withheld for CYA reasons) was advertising online that they had it for 19.99 which is a really good price for a blu-ray. This store has both brick-n-mortar and Internet storefronts; I figured that the price would be the same at both so Tuesday on the way to Physical Therapy I stopped and bought the movie.

Now I was in a rush and not paying too close attention, bad on me, but that night when I produced the movie from the bag I noticed that I was charged 23.99. I went back online and confirmed that the price was 19.99. At this point it was late Tuesday night and not worth the phone call, I would deal with it Wednesday.

Wednesday, I call the store and was told, after I explained that THEIR own website had the movie at $4 less, that they would not price match webstores. I pointed out that THEIR webstore allowed for instore pick up and was told that they did not match webstores.

So, at this point I really wanted to save that $4. I went onto the website, added the movie to the cart, confirmed the price of 19.99, selected pick up at store for the shipping option and completed the transaction. I get a wash of emails saying that my item was ready to be picked up and please bring the order number, etc, etc…

After work on Wednesday I stop again at the store and make my way over to Customer Service. I notice that the girl working the desk was very new and still in training, Holiday Help I assume. I waited in line and when finally called I stepped up and informed the girl that I had a return and a pickup. I handed over the reciept for the 23.99 movie and was given my money back… Now for the fun bit. I handed her the email order and off she went to the cage where the “pick-up” items were kept. She came back to me carrying the movie with a very confused look on her face.

She picked up the orginal movie and compared it to the web-bought one. After a moment of comparison she addressed me. “Sir, do you realize that these are the same movie.”

“Yep,” I replied.

“You just returned this one,” she said waving the 23.99 movie at me.

“Yep,” I replied.

“I don’t understand?” She turned to her trainer who was also becoming confused. With a smile on my face I explained.

“The difference is, the movie I returned was 23.99 and the movie I am picking up is 19.99.”

“But you bought the movie from us…” she started to saying something before she took up the receipts and showed them to her trainer.

The two custmer service employees looked at the receipts, verified that I was not up to any funny business and handed me my 19.99 and sent me on my way.

Let me tell you, that was way more complicated than it had to be. Aw well, I got my movie at 19.99.

– Brian

The Storm of Life and Other Distractions

Well as last indicated I have suffered a back injury it seems that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to what life was going to throw at me.

Physical Therapy determined that I had several vertebrae rotated out of alignment, neck and middle of my back. So I have been going a few times a week for muscle work and adjustments and the pain is fading.

Now for the curve ball, my son last week contracted H1N1 at 5 years old and an asthmatic my wife and I were incredibly concerned and the struggles to get him to take his medicine resulted in some moments of panic for us. The good news is he has gotten through the worst of it and is back to his normal 5 year old self.

So with my own injury and my son’s illness I have been remiss in my writing schedule and my podcast schedule. As this storm clears I am trying to get things back to normal.

What does this mean?

It means that progress on Life Everlasting has fallen behind my self imposed schedule, which I suppose will not effect the podcast at the moment (we will see how things shake out in February). I am still on track for releasing part three of Thief’s Folly on November 22^nd.

The podcast schedule to follow:

December: Solider and His Queen

January: A Father’s Tears/The Wailing Stone

February: Conclusion of The Wailing Stone

A brief Announcement

Apparently having two children pouncing on your neck is hazardous to your health. I have learned this the hard way. Just over a week ago I was pounced on while being Daddy-Jungle-Gym and since then have been in a significant amount of pain.
After a week of “pain management” I am on the verge of starting physical therapy and praying that I don’t need more invasive procedures to make the pain stop.
So what does that mean for my writing and my podcasting? Well the writing is continuing, albeit at a slower pace my novella/novel Life Everlasting is moving forward and the prologue about halfway complete. The podcast is the one thing that is hitting a bit of a speed bump.
It pains me, no pun intended, it announce that the conclusion of Thief’s Folly will be delayed until November 22nd. This will give me three weeks to get my body back into working order and perhaps get ahead of the podcast schedule. The episode contains some extra editing/fx and recording that needs to be done and I cannot physically sit at the computer for the hours it takes me to prepare an episode… my newness shows here.
I will attempt to keep the blog updated with the latest happenings and should the date for episode 5 changes here will be the first place folks can read about it. I am praying that I am just being overly cautious and that I can release the episode before the 22nd, but we’ll see.
Thank you for understanding and thank you for listening to my podcast.

– Brian

Statistics are Fun

The podcast is officially a month old with three whole episodes released and I thought it would be fun to share some numbers.

All numbers have been adjusted to remove hits/listens/downloads by family members.

Subscribers: 19

Interesting fact 13 of my subscribers are in England!

Total (non subscriber listens): 157 (episode 0 – 3)

I am surprised and thrilled that I seem to be finding an audience. To all my listeners, thank you! You have all made my month.

As a side note I think it is interesting that I appear to be more popular in England than in my own country.

State of Writer

I am currently recovering from some sort of super crud that my son’s kindergarten class cooked up. As a result I am behind in my writing and my recording.

At the moment I don’t think it will impact the release of the next episode.

However, my writing schedule has fallen off more significantly. I was expecting to have The Solider and his Queen completed at this point and midway through edits for The Wailing Stone. Well the story is not only not done, it is turning out to be about 1500 words longer than I originally thought.

The reason why this is causing me stress is that I had hoped to have October cleared to work on outlining and planing for NaNoWrMo.  Best laid plans. So October will be for finishing the current story and editing Wailing Stone, which needs more work than I expected.

– Brian

Checking the Pulse

Welcome to September 1st 2009!

In a mere 12 days I will be posting the first episode of my podcast, which will be the first half of Duty Calls. I have been flipping and flopping about releasing it as one episode, which would be more than an hour of content, or breaking it into two. It really changes everyday; right now it will be two episodes mostly because it fits my release schedule better.

Thief’s Folly is in edits right now and is schedule for podcasting in October, which gives me plenty of time for the last couple of rounds of edits. This one is longer and looks like it will be broken into three bits, but that could change after the edits are done.

Wailing Stones is coming along nicely, for a first draft anyway. I had been thinking of following it up with Leap of Faith, a story about a religious scholar experiencing a crisis of faith; however, I have this little ghost story, very short and very fun that I have been playing with and it might bump itself up in the queue. It is funny, as soon as I finish one story (or get close to finishing) the order of writing changes all around. Ah well, since I am the boss I get to decide, right?

So I am now interrupting this me blog to plug a couple of other author/podcasters.

First — Phillippa Ballantine

I just finished listening to her latest podcast novel Weather Child , a super natural thriller set in a post World War I, New Zealand. The story was captivating and unique there were times where I would stop what I was doing and just say “Wow, that’s so cool!” The writing painted the perfect picture without wasting words, I could only dream to write so well. The podcast itself is just wonderful, I could listen to Pip read just about anything and it would entertain me. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to the feed (there are links on her site or you can subscribe through iTunes) it is a story well worth your time.

Second — J Daniel Sawyer

The current novel Down from Ten which has been describe as The Shinning meets “Clue” is a great story and the cast is doing an outstanding job. Warning – it is an in-flight podcast so when you catch up with the episodes you will be dealing with “cliffhangers”!

Though it is his other podcast novel I really wanted to mention, The Antithesis Progression: Predestination and Other Games of Chance, first the title is just plain awesome, I am aware that for the sake of “selling” the novel the title will be tweaked to be more approachable, which is only sensible; however, the Lit geek in me states firmly that the title is perfect and should be left alone. Okay, that said the title isn’t the only awesome thing here. The story is fantastic, driven by a cast of characters with powerful agendas that makes this space – spy – political – thriller come to life unlike any other podcast novel I have listened to. Take the time to check it out.

Something to keep in mind both novels are definitely for adults, not kid or office safe content.

Lastly –

Yesterday, I receive my copy of Scott Sigler’s The Rookie, think Star Wars meets the Godfather during Any Given Sunday and it sort of scratches the surface. If you are at all interested in football or sci/fi you owe it to yourself to go over to www.scottsigler.com and order a copy. It is not going to be on the shelf at the local Barnes and Noble, his publisher is trying to build a different brand for him so Scott published the book on his own. This not a vanity press product, I promise you that this book looks as good, if not better than any hard cover best seller. Buy it, read it and tell a friend, you can’t go wrong with the FDO!

Remember Sept 13th the stories start!

– Brian Clay

What’s Happening — quick update

Things have been busy and hectic lately. I have been so focused on writing, recording and editing that I have been remiss in making a blog update. Here is the plus side of the radio silence.

1. Episode 000 of the podcast is recorded and mastered (a slight tweek in volume levels and it should be considered in the can).

2. Episode 001 & 002 are currently being recorded. By launch I should have 001-004 in the can.

3. Edits on Thief’s Folly are progressing and it is ready for a new draft.

4. The current draft of Wailing Stones has taken a detour but not a wrong turn. It has become a different story than I intended to write, but I am pleased with the direction.

5. The next story Leap of Faith is outlined and I am really excited about it.

I am really excited about launching the podcast and I am looking forward to hearing what people think of my stories.

– Brian Clay