Mental Blog Vampires of Dawn writing status as of 9/04/02 Started: 8/13/02 Pages: 20 Length: 6367 Words Status: Prologue done Read it: First draft in progress

2002.09.26
Congratulations on your new CD!

2002.09.23
Ghost Walk
Selena was walking along a forest path. The land flowed down to her from the left, and dropped away on the right as she followed the pathway slowly upwards to the mountain peak. The bright moon above illuminated the path in front of her. A crisp cool breeze wafted across her, raising goosebumps on her arms and legs.

She wrapped the dreamcloak closer around her, feeling it tickling her where the feathers brushed against her bare skin. She was wearing a short skirt and a sleeveless vest made of rabbitskin in addition to the brightly colored feather cloak. A headband, decorated with beads and an eagle feather confined her long black hair to draping down her back.

Her gray eyes, silver in the moonlight, darted around, watching the path and the surrounding forest carefully. Her moccasin-clad feet made no noise as she followed the path up the mountain. Each step up the path of the mountain symbolized the journey of her spirit through her dream into the spirit world.

Every fiber of her being felt alive, tingling as she breathed in the air, feeling herself expand and become one with the world. The breeze on her skin, the smell of pine in her nostrals, the soft earth under her feet. All were as real to her here as the land felt under a bright summer sun.

She was excited tonight more than usual tonight. She always enjoyed her visits to the spirit world, but tonight was special. Tonight she was to seek her vision quest that would allow her to complete her final step in becoming a tiwét. Her grandfather taught her all that he knew. Tonight she would become a shamaness.

Her pace brought her quickly to the peak of the mountain, bare and forlorn. Selena looked all around, at the tall mountains and deep twisting valleys of the land around her. It was similar to the land of Northeastern Oregon, yet different. The Bright moon was full, giving the dark bowl of the sky above a deep indigo glow. Countless stars in constellations she did not recognize filled the bowl with the twinkle of thier minute lights.

The wind was stronger and colder up here than it was below. Stronger and faster than it had been on her previous visits. There was a tenseness in the air that made her worry, and a cold chill ran down her spine. The spirit world was not pleased tonight.

"You're here."

Selena spun around, startled by the voice. Coyote was there, sitting on the mountain top.

To be continued...

2002.09.22
Genesis of a character
I have been invited to join a Call of Cthulhu role playing game. The GM required two characters for each player that are related in some fashion so that when one eventually becomes insane from dealing with the otherworldliness of the monsters, or is killed, the other can take over. Call of Cthulhu is like that. While most games the goal is to improve and have the character grow in power and abilities, when dealing with the mysteries of the Lovecraft universe, it becomes a case of simply surviving without being committed to an insane asylum.

The game is traditionally set in the 1920's to '30s, with variations set in 1890's (Gaslight) and modern settings. This particular campaign is set in 1880's with a twist of Jules Verne for flavor. The adventure is set in England, centered around London.

Being a technical person, I had the urge to have a technical character. So the concept of a Locomotive Engineer came to mind, experienced with metalworking, steam engines, and so forth. To rationalize being in England, The GM made the suggestion that the character inherited a small railroad, and sold it. He is now in England touring the railroads with the idea that he might start a company making railroad cars; Sleepers, Diners, and Observation cars in a European style. Henry Wheeler in his early 40's. Father and mother died. Mother was from an English family of some means, to provide another hook for being in England if needed.

Now I needed a secondary character. At this point, a character that I had developed many many years ago (at least fifteen) for a 1920's superhero campaign woke up and decided to be heard. Coincidentally, this was the same character that first inspired me to begin actually writing things. The universe that this character existed in became one that I wrote my first two novels in, though without the superhero influences. This character was not in the stories I wrote, but rather became part of the back story for the novels. (The books were Cash on Delivery and Star Princess. None have been published yet, however. Cash on Delivery is going to be re-written, and Star Princess is making the rounds of the publishers.)

I've wanted to redesign this character for a non-supers universe, but just hadn't gotten around to it. The opportunity of this 1880's game has given me the chance to redefine the character. First, we need the basics. Name: Selena DeVille. Daughter of a French trapper and a Nez Perce tribeswoman, who in turn was the daughter of a Shaman. She is young and attractive, and naive in aspects of the Western world. Her parents died when she was young, and she has been raised by her shaman grandfather on the edge of a town in Northeastern Oregon.

I decided that she has inherited her grandfather's shaman talents, and has been trained by him to use her talents. Now the next issue was to explain her presence and connection to Henry Wheeler. Henry would be out west, testing one of his locomotives. At the time of getting involved with Selena, he doesn't know he is about to travel to England, but Selena's ability has caused her to have dreams that involve him, and the both of them going overseas. Selena would have dreams of great evil, and that it was her destiny to confront it.

I hit up Google to learn more about the Nez Perce native Americans, specifically shamanism. Turns out, and I find it mildly spooky, that the shaman talents lay in dreams. The Shaman learned from and interacted with the spirit world and spirit guides through dreaming. Very convenient.

Nez Perce was the name given to the tribe by French Trappers about 1804. Selena, like her people, refer to themselves by their original name, the Nimiipuu (The People), and their native language is a Sahaptin Dialect. I found a few tales and legends regarding their religion as well. One last side note, Chief Joseph rebelled and surrendered in 1877, just a few years before we pick up Selena's story.

To add a little more mystical backstory to Selena, through her dreams, she has learned that white man's magic is powerful, and threatens the continued existence of the Nimiipuu way. She has been given the task of learning the white man's magic ways in hopes of discovering ways to prevent the Nimiipuu from becoming extinct.

So, how does a young woman with mystical dreams convince a hard-working, pragmatic engineer that not only is he going to England, but that he should take her with him. Sounds like a cue for a story. We shall have to see what develops...

2002.09.21
Characters
Once characters are in my head, I find they stay there, consuming mental thought cycles. The only way I can describe it other than seeming to be schizophrenic, is that once the character's personality is formed, it tends to run on by itself, and in my head they play out scenes with each other. Like once a computer program is running, it's off doing it's own thing.

It seems that there are two ways for me to stop thinking about a character is either to get distracted by a different character, or to commit the character and the related scenes to text. Then the character becomes quiescent and moves into the background until an event or thought triggers off another scene.

Sometimes these characters wake up on their own, and haunt me. Not an active disturbance, but more like an annoying background hum, demanding some action or visibility. I wonder often if other writers go though the same thing.

2002.09.20
Inspiration...
Where does it come from? I can only answer for myself on this. As a player of role-playing games continuously now for over twenty years, I would have to say that most of my inspiration comes from creating characters for various role playing games. AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, Palladium, and a host of others. Working in a science fiction book store that carried about every type of RPG back in the early 80's, there are very few that I don't have at least some passing knowledge of.

Fortunately, I was, and am, lucky enough to be involved in groups that really like to roleplay their characters. Not to the extent of actually dressing up and running around out in the woods or something, but players that see their characters as more than just a collection of numbers on their sheet. They want to know how the character relates to the world and to the other players. Well, at least I did.

With role-playing games, characters are thrust together to form a party to seek/protect/hunt/loot whatever. Generally, the excuses for a group to be together are rather flimsy and contrived. They are just a means to explain why the group is together to participate in whatever adventure the gamemaster is running. This tended to result in unusual companionships.

This has lead me to explore those odd relationships in my mind, eventually leading me to begin writing them out. While these ideas float around in my head, my mind turns the characters around and seeing where they fit together. Trying to figure out the dynamics of the group. Analyzing the characters to see what would drive them to work together. I learn more about the character this way. Then I write it down. As I write down the scenes that play out in my head, they become more concrete. Sometimes these vignettes spawn story ideas, and occasionally a book.

However, one side effect of so much introspection of a character tends to have the character begin to take on a life of their own. I'll cover that tomorrow.

2002.09.14
I think I'm addicted to news. It started last year on 9/11, and wanting to know every detail of what was happening haunted me. Now with the war on Iraq looming, I find I'm constantly looking for news and updates again. However, only so much can occur in one day. I've fallen victim to the media, and need to relax and take a few deep breaths. Hopefully I will get the writing started again soon.

Things that drew my attention today:
Various articles and logs from denbeste.nu (USS Clueless)
Paper Airplanes
Three Stooges sound bites

2002.09.12
I just want to thank the U.S. Armed Forces for keeping the Freedom and allowing me the opportunity to continue to write my literary equivilants of black velvet paintings of sad, wide-eyed animals.

2002.09.11
I have nothing I can say that others haven't already said, much more competently than I could.

I feel one of the best things to read that highlights the events and our reactions to them of this week was said by Dave Barry this week. Go read "On hallowed ground".

2002.09.08
Where are we going?
The hard part of trying to write science fiction, that is, fiction set in a reasonable expectation of the future, is that it is hard to know what the future will bring. Before the development of the transistor, a lot of early SF took the reasonable idea that things wouldn't change, except just get bigger. The alien power room in Forbidden Planet, for example. "Doc" Smith in his Lensman series scales up his power in likewise proportions. Mechanical systems rule.

Now I grew up watching the Moon landings, and was saddened when the Apollo program fell victim to the realities of budgets. I became excited as the Shuttle program took off, and mourned Challenger. I cheered as Reagan promised us a space station, but grew disillusioned as the long years passed between design and implementation. The DC X looked promising as the next generation launch system, but it too fell to the budget axe.

Rockets, catapults, and flying wings as boosters always seemed to have the promise of Near-future affordable space access, and with all the reading I did as a youth, it seemed a natural progression. Cheap rockets to a Space station, jumping off to a Moonbase, followed by bigger and better stations built with Lunar materials, then we reach out to Mars and the asteroids.

Then there were the far-out theories. Like an elevator to space. This one, popularized best by Arthur C. Clarke, was dependent on materials that we couldn't conceive of to work. There wasn't even an inkling about where that technology would come from. However, it is hard to see what the world will offer just 30 years out now. One thing that the last 30 years have taught us, is that the world can change much faster than we used to think it could.

Advances in nanotechnology have given us the nanotube, which is a very real candidate for building a cable that can support the fantastic stress of extending from Earth to over 90,000 kilometers into space. While more research and development needs to be done, we now possess all the key materials needed to make a space elevator a reality, within a budget and time frame that can make rockets obsolete as a means of departing planetary masses within two decades.

The Space Elevator has a real promise of providing cheap space travel and opening space to Humanity. This would allow humans to access the Moon and asteroids for energy and raw materials, easier and possibly as cheap or cheaper than mining on Earth. This has the potential of a real revolution in how humanity will live.

Anyway, five years ago, the earliest I thought we'd see a space elevator would be in at least 50 to 75 years. Now, however, it appears that we can have one running in under 25 years, for about the same cost as what we will probably be spending on the International space station. The point of all of this, is that it dramatically changes how I was viewing our progress in the near future. Now, when you view genetics, biology, and other fields of research hitting the same progress curve, and well, the future is looking much closer than it used to be. Trying to project how our society will live becomes quite challenging.

When my Grandfather was growing up, horse and buggies were the main means of transportation, yet he held a position as an aircraft mechanic in W.W.I. My father got to see the transition from props to jets, and the beginning of liquid fueled rockets. When I was growing up, the big deal was moving from black and white television to color, watching Man walking on the moon, and trying to figure out how to borrow my father's four function LED calculator to do my math homework. Pong on the Atari was just showing up as I started college. My children grew up with movies on demand with video tape and DVD's, a home computer network, as well as least three different game consoles for video games. Imagine what their children will see...

A cheap railroad into orbit. Rosie-type robots for household maintenance. Truly immersive Virtual reality games. Immunities from diseases, genetic reprogramming to remove unwanted traits. Most crime will be traced to behavioral deficiencies that can be cured with genetic therapies. These are just a few things that I'm pretty sure will come about, and I'm sure I'm being conservative. Computer, genetics, and nanotechnology will be so pervasive, it will appear magical. Which was Clarke's point when he declared that any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. To me, what the surprise is, I suppose, is how fast its coming towards us. Our grandchildren's world will be farther from us than we are from our grandfathers. Once you hit "Magic", where does a race go after that? What will be the world our great-grandchildren will grow up in?

No answer here, yet these thoughts occupy my mind during my commute to and from work. The Forums are open for discussion of the future.

The Space Elevator Home Page
FuturePundit
The Fourth Civilization
World Future Society

2002.09.07
Well, I didn't get any writing done today. Got hooked on a web site that just sucked all the time out of the day. www.lileks.com. Got me so distracted I missed tonight's episode of Inuyasha on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

James Lileks writes a daily blog that is timely, sharp and witty. In addition, his site is full of early and mid 20th-century memorabilia, which he makes witty comments on as you tour the collections of Americana.

Other weblogs on the 'net that are worth checking out are:
USS Clueless, which is anything but;
Instapundit, which is the place to start to get into the world of blogging, where it is discovered that the media giants do not have the last word in what News and information we should hear and how we should feel about upon hearing them; and
scalzi.com, where John Scalzi has a semi-regular weblog and a science fiction book available for downloading and reading. It's shareware, so you only need to pay him if you like it.

2002.09.01
Yes! And more writing!
Taking longer than I thought to get back into the swing of it, but I think I'm starting to manage.

2002.08.28
Yes! I am writing!

2002.08.23
I'm having flashbacks to SPACE: 1999 upon reading this news story.

While I'm unbiased towards other cultures, stories like this make me think that the differences between good and evil may not be so gray after all.

And while we should raise and teach our children to be sensitive to other cultures, this goes a bit too far. Fortunately, we still have teachers that know their craft.

I would like to thank The Drudge Report and Spoons for the pointers to the above stories.

I'm starting a vacation and the kids are starting school this coming week as well, though they would rather not be reminded of that. It will be quiet around the house, so I will be focusing on getting the book underway. (Finally!)

2002.08.18
Welcome Martin Ralph to the Blakslee.com contributors. He is starting a page with his own comic strip, Zorgin, and information about digimon virtual pets. Check it out!

2002.08.17
As one can see, I have been playing with the site design today, when I should be writing. Based on my experience of writing three other books, the first 50 pages of a new book is always the hardest to get through, getting myself into the swing of typing the words one after the other, more or less in the right order.
Once I hit the 100th page, I know I will be able to finish it. I'm expecting Vampires of Dawn to land in the 320-340 page range. Vampires of Dawn will be my fourth book.
None have been published yet, but the manuscripts are in circulation.

I added Ed Laprade, GM of the World of Aerith message-based Role-Playing Game in the forum to the fine print.

2002.08.13
Actual writing as begun at last!

2002.08.08
Inspiration has struck, so work on Vampires of Dawn is proceeding.

The Village of Dawn, nestled deep within the mountains that form the western border of the kingdom of Taselon, is plagued by vampires.

A pair of magi, Kohana and Barika, are dispatched by the Academy of Arcane Sciences to deal with the evil undead, but is there something more sinister rising in Dawn?

2002.07.30
I finally got tired of the of the pop-ups and flash-animated ads, so the forums are now ad-free. I upgraded to EZboard's gold service. I also made them easier on the eyes.

2002.07.08
I am back to playing a little Dark Age of Camelot. It's nice to meet up with old friends, and to meet new ones. Here is some information on my characters, and pictures from the game.

2002.06.29
Well, Microsoft has decided that it wants to control what you do with your computer. That is, protect the interests of Big Business and the Entertainment industry. At least when the Government dictates what you can and cannot do, its' usually with the pretense of being for the public well-being. It's like Big Brother with an IPO.

My next and all future computers will host a Linux version of an OS, I'm sure. Walmart has some great prices. I'll still be able to write and play games, and email and browsing is not a problem.

2002.06.26
Mind is blank, still recharging from the sprint in writing City of Shadows in 7 weeks. The manuscript is now searching for a publisher. Time to wait and do affirmations.

Thought I would do a bit of occasional writing here as a way to keep fresh. Sort of a RalphBlog... The connotations of that word scares me a little. I was not aware of the connotations of my last name until I moved to the big city (Worcester in this case) as a young college student. Then there is Blog. Short for weblog, which is turning into the Internet's cleansing paper for dribbling opinions.