Category: Personal

Roughing it

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Tomorrow I pack up the camper, the truck, and the SUV (new acquisition, already been pummeled from behind…different story) to go sit in a state park and sweat.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy camping, but the going part of it is always miserable.  My wife and I will fight as we pack, our daughter will whine, and I’ll expend more energy in a day than I normally expend in a month.  On top of that, I’m fatter than I’ve ever been and it’s too hot for me to be wearing a walrus outdoors.  Lots of fun

Okay, I’m being a bigger whiner than my daughter.  The camper is air conditioned.  My in-laws will be there to help with the rugrat (more a good thing than a bad thing…70/30).  Most importantly, I should get lots of writing done.  I always finish a story when I camp.  I have some good ideas floating around my head about my novel.  Unfortunately they’re all rewriting ideas.  I may be starting over.  That could be good since I’ve lost almost all enthusiasm for this project recently. A reboot may do the trick.

This will likely be the last update for a week or so.  Not that a week is so long between updates, but I’ll be mostly off the grid.  I’ll be able to get email when we go into town (usually a daily occurrence) since every McDonalds is supposed to have free WiFi, but I don’t intend to have prolonged service available.  I can get email on my cell phone, but I don’t.  So if you need me, be patient.  I’m not needed by people outside my family often, but it could happen.

On my way

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I’m getting ready to leave for my parents’ place in SC.  Tomorrow it’ll be off to Charlotte and ConCarolinas.  Wheee!  But first, a 4.5 hour car ride with my 3-year-old.  Wheee?

I’ll have my laptop so I won’t be off the grid, but my grid time will likely be limited.  I’ll blog about the Con in small doses, then a big dose when I get back.

Down the Drain

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Did you know that a sonnet has 14 syllables per line?  I didn’t…because they have ten.  Even a first grader can count syllables.  But the Cliff’s Notes Praxis II study guide says it’s 14, as in the number of dollars I spent on the book.

It’s in the answers to the practice test that itt comes up.  It also states that said sonnet is written in iambic pentameter (which they are) but provides an answer that denies this.  Arraagh!!

So what?  One little mistake isn’t that bad, is it?  No, not if it’s one.  Upon reading the Amazon reviews of this book I realized that there is a lot of misinformation in the book, both the study notes and the practice test.  And excuse me for not knowing whether Graymalkin was the cat or the toad in Macbeth.  Really, that’s the type of thing the Praxis will ask.  I hope not.

So I will take my practice test grade with a grain of salt and check my wrong answers with other sources.  Then I’ll double-check the ones I got right but wasn’t sure about.  And somewhere in there I’ll make sure I’m ready for my Pedagogy test.

Are there laws protecting people like me from bad information?  If I fail the Praxis due to answers from this book’s faulty information, can I sue Cliff’s Notes for my eighty bucks (cost of the test)?  Hopefully I won’t have to find out.

Things other than Communism that sound better on paper

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I was going to try to kick my way-overboard caffeine habit this weekend. I made it 30 hours.

I got hit with the obligatory debilitating headache around 4 AM Saturday (still Friday night to me) after avoiding the big C all that day.  I woke up miserable but intending to fight through it.  Then my wife pointed out my schedule for the next few weeks.  I drove to the nearest market for a two liter Mountain Dew.

Let’s break the schedule down.  Next Saturday is the much-blogged-about Praxis tests that will determine whether I will teach a creative writing class or not.  I need to be to the campus, registered, and seated by 7:30 that morning.  (Is that possible without caffeine?)  Between now and then I have to be sure I am ready for said test, which means cramming like I haven’t crammed since I was an undergrad over a decade ago.  (More caffeine.) Oh, and I am teaching my Algebra students to use the graphing calculators we JUST got…and they need to be proficient by May 3rd if they’re going to be worth the effort at all.  (Caffeine may not be strong enough to help clean those stables….no charge for the random Hercules reference.)

I could have navigated this weekend with the hangover-from-hell style headache, but it would have sucked, and I ran the risk of scarring my daughter for life in reaction to her very natural tantrums.  (Worst case scenario, but you get the picture.)

On top of all that, I’m trying to write a novel (ha!), teaching regular classes, raising a three-year-old, enduring feuds, scrimping to save money to afford the new car we bought (Kia Sorento, quite nice)…I even mowed the lawn today.  So I have much going on.  I need not add caffeine withdrawl to the mix, so I won’t.  We’ll save that for the future.

Full disclosure: I have been caffeinated most of my life, but the few times I was able to wean myself, I really had a lot more energy.  Unfortunately, even though the headaches dry up after a couple days, the energy boost takes a week or three to really kick in.  So yes, I intend to get there eventually and try to stick with it when I do, but it’s a tough bridge to cross.

Evil, thy name is telemarketer!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 6 Comments

Phone rings.  Stare at the caller id.  Unknown,  000-000-0000.  Heart leaps to throat.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“He–”

“I’m calling for something you don’t care about.  Did you know…”

Hang up the phone.  Cuss incessantly.  Wonder about sanity and direction of life.

Another Monday

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 6 Comments

As if Mondays aren’t ad enough, here I face a “spring forward” Monday with Clarion West anticipation hanging thick in the air, midterms at the end of the week, and the knowledge that there is no spring break following said midterms (stupid snow days).  Top that off with inexplicable lower back pain and I have a recipe for a day I don’t want to deal with.  I don’t even want to go to bed because I know that Monday is on the other side.  And I’m not usually much of a Monday hater; it’s just a day, right?

So what part of it has the most influence?  I’d say 1) Clarion, 2) back pain, 3) DST, and the rest of the pack stumbling together at the rear.

So what am I going to do about it?  Not much.  I’ll keep sloughing through the days until stuff starts to give.  The CW anticipation will end eventually.  The back pain will go away or I’ll go to the doctor about it.  I’ll adjust to the time change soon enough.  Midterms will come and go like they always do, with rotten grades.  Monday gives way to Tuesday and it’ll hit Friday before long and I can complain about the next week next Sunday.

I may avoid further writing until I hear about CW.  (“What?” ” You heretic!” “Burn the witch!”)  I have noticed, unfortunately, that when I write on my computer, I am that much closer to the internet.  I need to focus on some “real life” stuff for a little while for my distractions.  Grade that pile of papers, wash all those dishes, make that overdue run to the dump, clean a bathroom…  My back (sure wish I had a clue what I did to it) is going to get in the way of some of that, but not all.  Writing is going to have to wait until I can actually focus on writing.  The writing I’ve been doing has been glacial at best, anyway.  The stories will still be there after the call (or email).

Bearmoticons

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

To bring a little Oso back into my site (I miss him), I’ve added Bearmoticons to my sidebar. I had some extra time while working in detention and started to play with an old bear face. Mostly it’ll be a way to tell if I’ve heard any new news about stories or Clarion because the face will go from to  or .

Reasonable but irrational fears

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I just got back in from playing in the snow with my daughter.  It”s always fun playing with her (okay, usually fun), but the snow is too powdery and cold to enjoy properly. Won’t hold a snowball, can’t sled on it, and wow did my fingers get cold fast.

Before we tried to play in it, I tried to make a quick drive through it.  It’s only a couple inches, but I couldn’t get up the hill to get off my street.  I probably could have made it if I’d built up some speed.  Or driven something better equipped than my truck (rear wheel drive).  Even my wife’s Kia was probably a better call.  But the trip wasn’t very important.

Oh yeah, and I’m terrified of driving in the snow.

It happened about three years ago.  It had been raining for hours and was turning to snow about the time the school busses were starting to roll.  The Director of Schools postponed school for an hour or two but did not cancel.  Apparently the snow hadn’t reached her end of the county.  The snow was coming down in flakes the size of dust bunnies.

I was going down a slight hill when I lost traction.  It was a gentle slide toward the side of the road.  I couldn’t recover.  I went rumbling over the white-blanketed grass.  I saw the gas line sticking out of the ground in front of me, but the truck was bouncing and slipping; there was no avoiding it. I smashed over it and kept going.  The fence and tree loomed ahead of my unresponsive vehicle.  I wanted so hard to do something — anything — I honked the horn.  The tree did not move out of the way.

I was okay.  The plastic bumber had prevented any sparking from contact with the gas line.  It was a small line and put up no resistance.  It hissed a lot but was closed down and repaired quickly.  The next car to come by was a coworker who took me back home.  Things could have been a lot worse than they were.  But the experience really rattled me.

I am obsessed with traction now.  Hate driving in snow, prefer not to drive in the rain.  I can do it (the latter always, the former as long as it doesn’t stop me from crawling down the road, like this snowfall did) if I must.  It just seems irrational to risk driving through poor conditions for frivolous reasons.

What’s my point?  That fear is a subtly powerful emotion, a force that makes decisions for me in my life.  That is the kind of feeling I want to be able to sew into my characters when I write, things that seem reasonable to the character despite seeming almost paralyzingly neurotic to others.  And I want to be able to play against those feelings.  For instance, I could get up that hill if I needed to take my daughter to the hospital, but the hill might influence my opinion of what needs to be taken to the hospital.  Push a character to do something against their normal urges.  That’s conflict.

How did I get here? (And where am I?)

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

There are a lot of factors that led me to being a writer of speculative fiction.  The foremost is probably being a reader of speculative fiction.  I look at my daugter and wonder what I can do to foster that same love of genre in her that I have in me.  So I’m tracing my footsteps through life to figure out how to get my little girl to be a geek like me.

I’ve loved reading as long as I can remember.  The first SF author I probably read was Dr. Seuss: Wocket in my Pocket and The Grich and the conservationally mined Lorax.  I read some of that to my girl now.  Of course all the reading I can do with her will help turn her into a reader.  Seeing Daddy read can’t hurt either.

When I started reading chapter books, my favorite was Encyclopedia Brown, really more collected short stories than chapters.  The thinking was great for me, I suspect.  I always loved the ones where he helped his dad with real crimes.  I also read my share of Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume.  These days, Harry Potter would just about fit that level, maybe a step above.

The local library had a summer reading program that we took part in annually, attempts to get our paperdoll hot air balloon higher than other people’s.  I always took pride in reading books at or above my level while other kids would read the kiddy stuff and take credit for it…but I digress.  It kept me reading through summers and my mother placed priority on that.  I hope to do something similar when my girl gets old enough (a year or two).

Next came the Choose Your Own Adventure books.  Remember those?  Theyprobably did a lot to guide me into writerdom.  Start at page one, then if you go to the spooky hotel you turn to page 47, if you stay with your weird Aunt Velma and her snoring cats you turn to page 111.  They were good to read over and over without being the same and really turned out to be more short story than they were novel, based on the pages you read.  I had a ton of them and checked out a ton more from the library.  Space opera, high fantasy, straight mystery, you name the genre, I read a CYOA from it.  It helped me find my taste.  I bet I could still find a bunch on ebay…

I think the book that made me a fantasy fan was either The Riddle and the Rune by Grace Chetwin or Castle Roogna, the third Xanth novel by Piers Anthony.  The latter was a gift from my grandmother who heard that was what kids my age were reading.  I still own the first 12 Xanth novels and several scattered others.  I visit Piers Anthony’s website often though I haven’t read any of his books in a few years.  He was my favorite author for many years, funny and a little out there.  There is no doubt he inspired me.  I wrote to him when my first novel was “accepted” by Publish America.  Thankfully he warned me away from them as a scam vanity publisher…but I’ve gotten off topic.

As for Chetwin’s book, I’m not sure where I got it.  It was a great read for a kid, very Harry Potter but more in the linear quest format.  There were three other books in the series (one before, two after) which weren’t quite as good, but good enough.  She also responded to a query I sent her about publishing, since she now publishes her fantasy novels and a few other books by herself.  But again…focus, Oso.

As for science fiction, I recall the Tripod Trilogy being a milestone in my reading.  I may go back and reread those since I’m trying to write a YA sci-fi novel…  Still, I think I ran with fantasy for a long time before discovering Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, of course.  I may have been in college by then.  In fact, I think I was out of college!  Late bloomer.

There were other things.  I subscribed to Analog for several years, but many of those stories were over my head in high school.  Television and movies kept my sci-fi spark alive while I wasn’t reading it.  I read Fahrenheit 451 in for a high school book report, and Piers Anthony’s novelization of Total Recall for another.  I read Narnia books out of order, which made them a little complex to swallow but I still read them.  Of course Lord of the Rings.

But it was when I read the Harry Potter books that I started to think “I can do this.”  I was in college at the time and my mom gave the first three books to me for Christmas.  My girlfriend (now wife) worked in a bookstore (okay, a store that sold a few books) and told me they were kids’ books.  I eventually poked my nose in the first one and was sucked into the world.  By the time Harry was at Hogwarts, I was hooked.  By the time he was in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, I was a writer.

I keep a lot of these books around so my daughter can experience them herself.  Will there be others that get her there instead?  Probably.  Thankfully the Twilight craze should be gone by the time she’s old enough to get into it.  Maybe I’ll be publishing the next craze.  (Wishful thinking.) I just wanted to share books from my journey in case other people need some guidance on their own (or their children’s) journey to speculative fiction geekdom.  You have to start young.

Oh wait!  I can’t conclude a post about speculative literature for kids/young adults without mentioning the magazine Beyond Centauri, specifically because their new issue has my story “Brother Goo” inside.  That’s right folks, Beyond Centauri issue 27.  Go buy a dozen copies.  Or one’s fine, too.

[More links forthcoming]