So John Scalzi is hosting a fan-fiction contest, which you can read about over on his well-known and book-spawning blog, called Whatever. The gist of it is this: Write a bit of fanfic to go with a painting that Scalzi commissioned from artist Jeff Zugale. Let me be more clear: Write a bit of fanfic to go with a totally eye-blastingly awesome painting Scalzi commissioned depicting Scalzi as an orc and my friend Wil Wheaton, wearing his clown sweater, astride a kitten/hippogriff/unicorn thing against a backdrop of exploding volcanoes, all painted by artist Jeff Zugale.

The winning entry becomes part of a chapbook from Subterranean Press, which goes on sale as a benefit for the Lupus Foundation of America.

I don’t expect that this will be in the actual running, on account of I probably won’t submit it, but I gave myself 45 minutes or so to riff on the painting, and this is what I came up with. (And since I’ve been working in screenplay format a lot these past few months, it’s where my head’s at.) If nothing else, I hope this amuses you.

Today, perhaps as some sort of birthday present, my friend Wil Wheaton debuted the cover of his upcoming book, Memories of the Future, which I designed. The book comes out before too long (we’re still in the proofing phase), but the cover’s pretty much a lock, which feels pretty great. I did quite a few sketches before we arrived at this one, which I like not just as a cover, but as the start of a series. Lots of room to grow here.

What I’m especially curious to see, though, is if people notice now or later that the cover makes a few shout-outs to Star Trek costumes of the era. We’ll see, I guess. In the meantime, here’s a miniature version of the cover. Head over to Wil’s post to see it larger and read some of my notes on the design.

I am convinced that the “Try Again” button offered to me when my computer fails to connect to a wireless network… does nothing. It has never worked. It is almost certainly connected to a timer. When the time is up, the button is offered again.Repeat. Ad, nauseam and infinitum, etc.

I hope there is an easter egg, somewhere deep in the loop, that finally tells me to just give up. “You’re not getting on the AirPort network,” it tells me. It offers me two options: “Give Up” and “OK?”

Push “Give Up” and the timer repeats again. Because it knows I didn’t really mean it.

It’s been a year already. I know it’s hard to believe. If you’re one of the lucky ones, and your powers developed safely that day, then you’ve been bulletproof for 365 days now. You’ve been flying to Paris or Tokyo whenever you like. You’ve been catching falling helicopters and pulling people out of burning buildings. You’re a hero several times over, I bet — draped in medals and wrapped several layers deep in flags. You’re a star.

Some of you have asked, and I think I’ve been slow to answer, but since this is the anniversary day, that means I’ve been dodging the question, not stopping it like it was just a hot wad of supersonic lead, for a year now too. (By the way, Freudian typo: at first I typed “dodging the quest,” which is about right, too.)

Yes, I got powers in the radiation event.

No, I haven’t been to Paris or foiled a bank heist or pulled off a bank heist. We’re not sure if I got a weak dose or if my system’s fucked up chemistry reacted wrong or what, but my powers are pretty weak. I’m no superhero.

Sure, yes, I can fly. My airspeed is pathetic, though, and it turns out to be scary as all hell to be balanced in nothingness, suspended only by your own belief that you can fly. Doubts turns out to be heavy as fuck. If not for the ocean, I could drive to Paris faster than I could fly there, and I wouldn’t be terrified and freezing when I arrived.

My strength is better than it was, but there are ordinary people stronger than me and all supers are out of my class, for sure. People with real doses of the space rays stop bullets like their flesh was made out of solid iron. Mine cracks and dents and flakes and oozes blood. Better than nothing, but a gunshot is still pretty debilitating. I’d probably survive a bank robber’s panicky gunplay, but I’d be in the hospital for a week after.

The one time I tried, not only did a bunch of real supers beat me there, but I ended up rolling around in the vault, oozing blood, with hundred-dollar bills stuck to my wounds.

A photographer got a shot of me, but this nice super-guy who’d flown in from Midtown smashed his camera, just so the pictures wouldn’t get out. He caught the last of the robbers, too. Nice guy.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been writing about the superheroic escapades much since last summer. These guys get plenty of coverage already, and I figure you don’t need me lamenting over my weak shit. There are plenty of superheroes with blogs out there already, and I’ve always felt like blogs should be more about your day to day, anyway. I mean, sure, I rescued a few people and helped stop a falling satellite from landing on Midtown, but this is Tumblr. I figure you’d rather see a picture of a cat riding a bicycle than hear about the runaway train I helped save.

I mean, how do you blog about that anyway without coming off as a huge ass? “Oh! I saved a train!” Nobody wants to read about how awesome I think I am. (Or, I bet, how awesome I think I’m not, but you asked.)

The truth is that, even with all the cosmic rays, nothing much has changed. I’m okay at what I do, but I’m not great. I’m certainly not the best. The people who are better than me are still better than me, and I still admire and envy them. I tweet at Captain Fantastic the same as you do, hoping to get a reply one time. Everything’s just faster, louder, tougher. The competition got dialed up, but now that the scale goes not just to 11 but to 14 or 15, being a 9 or a 10 isn’t so hot. There’s always somebody better.

Part of the My Super First Day writing event and cross-posted at the tumblelog.

[Written in response to Chuck Wendig's argument against the phrase "there is," this entry is from the comments section of a still-unrevealed new site, soon to debut.]

I’ve received writer’s guidelines that make this same point [that the phrase "there is" is a lazy construction], but with the more pointed argument that the construction’s no good when used figuratively — unless the thing you’re talking about occupies physical space, unless you can point to it, don’t say “there is.” Fair enough.

But here’s why the argument against “there is” smells bad: it made my writing worse. It’s one thing to aim high, but rules like this don’t encourage us as much as scare us off. I tried to avoid it out of fear that an editor would think I was a bad writer, and that’s a shitty way to write.

“There is” is valueless, but that’s not to say it is bad. It gets out of the way. It is the casual camera pan that reveals something — something normal, something we didn’t expect because of the mundane setup, something mysterious, anything — instead of the zooming steadicam antics necessary to avoid a “lazy” shot. “There is” disappears, like the indicative equivalent of “he said.” It has its purpose.

If “there is” sucks, consider also “this is,” the word “is” at all, and the awkward gait of any sentence that uses “exists” in place of “is” — it’s like the guy who power-walks everywhere because walking is lazy. There are viable reasons for using “there is,” though like all such lug nuts it should be used by choice, not just because it was on top of the pile where you left it. When I know a writer uses clauses by design, and they didn’t just fall out of his pen, “there is” is fine.

(You know what’s funny? I usually try to avoid the phrase “nothing wrong with” unless I actually mean the object is completely without wrong, which is almost never how the phrase is used; yet there it is in the title to this post. Writing is hard.)

F Twitter from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

Got this from Wil, of course. It’s scary because it’s true.

Click to fight Hurtmerchant the First.

My Brute is a simple online fighting game from Motion Twin, the self-described “leading provider of online games for the French-speaking public.” Being neither French-speaking nor public, I had never heard of them before Chuck Wendig waggled his Monkeyfinger in front of my face. That’s the name of his brute character in the game.

Mine is Hurtmerchant. Or Hurt-Merchant. I had trouble logging back in as the first guy (be sure to put a password on the brute you make), so I made the second, and then the first started working again. So now I have two pain peddlers around to serve you. All of my teller windows are open, except instead of bank tellers, they are staffed with dudes with knives. Or staves. (Seriously, go look.)

Click to fight Hurt-Merchant.

To play, you must click on one of my brutes’ links and type in a name. That’s it. The fighting is automatic, and you can fight a couple or so times per day. All free, all free of benefit or consequence. You’ll gain experience for every fight won or lost, and I’ll apparently gain bennies of some sort if you join by clicking on my links here and becoming my pupil. So do that, if that sounds like fun to you. Or even if it doesn’t, I guess, as long as your cartoon combatant becomes my pupil and I earn the experience points necessary to beat Monkeyfinger just one time.

Hurtmerchant getting absolutely pwned.

This was cross-posted in a different form at Gameplaywright.

Of course I look myself up on the Internet sometimes. You know why I do it? Because I’m a mortal human being. A few weeks ago, though, my search at Wikipedia turned up this darling entry:

I like it. As of this writing, it’s still there.

This occurred to me while I was doing cover sketches for an upcoming book and watching some damn thing on Hulu, so I did it up this weekend as a bit of a geeky exercise. I figure it was only a matter of time until someone did the Hulu/Cthulhu joke. Might as well do it myself so I can slip in shout-outs to some of my favorite Cthulhu-related things and people.

Click it and it gets bigger.

Read more »

Swears. I dig them. Nothing political, editorial, artistic, or high-falutin’ about it. I just loves me some cussing. When I’m feeling snobbish, I chalk it up to some fancy appreciation of language or the vernacular or some such bullshit, but whatever.

To me, a simple bleeped instance of a good bad word will always be a delight.

You know who else knows the value of a good bleeped fuck? The Daily Show. I estimate fully 45% of their comedic revenue comes from bleeps.