No one comes here. That's the secret of the blogging universe, you know. The one thing they don't want you to know, the one thing that the MySpace zombies can't abide.
What is that secret?
Simply put, if you don't know lots of people already and are not willing to shamelessly use said friends to pimp yourself on the Internet, your Blog will never get a visit or a comment.
No. Seriously.
The average schlub doesn't use the search function to find other people who share his interests. Why? Because he or she often doesn't have any. Of course, the most recent generations feel no shame for having no hobbies. To them, watching TV is a hobby.
But I have a hobby, and hopefully I am improving at it.
So far, the contents of this Blog detail bits from a story called 'Anniversary'. It was eventually massaged into shape, published on Battletech Universe (Battletech Universe :: Index) in the Fan Fiction section, and read by most.
The second story was something called 'Traffic', and it won First Place in the Summer '06 Fiction Contest on the same website. Pretty good, but I am told by my friend Keith Mears that it is front-loaded by the narrator, and the details should be spread through the work as expressed by the characters themselves. As he told me, "Show, don't tell".
The third story was something called 'Orbit', submitted just in time for the Winter '06 Fiction Contest. As of right now, I have no idea if it placed, but I am busily working on the printout and expect to have a cleaned-up version ready soon.
By the by, 'Orbit' originally started as a flashback sequence by the main character in another story I am writing ("The Terrance County War"). Thank the Lord I didn't go with that idea. 'Orbit' ended up consuming about twenty four pages and 20,000 words. Devoting that kind of print space to a flashback is insane.
Of course, 'TTCW' itself is going to be rather long. The outline alone is about 14,000 words (actually less, now that I have removed that flashback sequence). It will take a while, and in the meantime, my craft improves on the smaller stories. But you would not believe the sense of relief when I finally typed the last words for 'Orbit'.
I am beginning to hate writing deadlines. But I suppose this is good for self-discipline.
Regards
Steve Satak
(Centurion13)
