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Time for Texas Furry Fiesta!

The 4 3/8th Doctor

Another year, another Furry Fiesta! Texas Furry Fiesta 2013: The Time Traveller’s Ball is happening this weekend, and I’ll be there with ~~bells~~ ears on! Unlike last year where I went for funsies, this year I’m going to be ‘working’ this time as part of my efforts to get word out about my ebooks.

On Friday at 4PM, I’ll be hosting a panel called “How To Publish Your Own E-Books” where I will discuss the technical challenges involved with taking your literary masterpiece digital. With 5 e-books under my belt so far, I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things and am ready to share some knowledge! On Saturday, I should be in the Artist’s Alley selling paper copies of my berks, handing out flyers and chatting up anyone willing to listen, and Sunday will be the drive home…aww.

Books, BUSINESS, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, The Rules of Tech Support, WHATS GOING ON, Writing

Off To Binary Heaven

square cover

I have been on a bit of a ‘simplify things’ kick lately, as evidenced by the fact that I am no longer a video game website editor, a drummer in a band, or involved in any conventions outside of being an attendee or panelist. I cut back on my side projects and decided to devote the majority of my time to writing and getting the word out about my e-books.

Case in point: therulesoftechsupport.com (don’t bother, the site is kaputski and I still own the domain). It was intended to be a ‘companion’ to my second e-book, Things being what they are, I didn’t get around to updating it as much as I could have, partially due to the aforementioned side projects, and also because of all the other writing I do.

So its no wonder that there weren’t very many visitors to the site. The year of hosting I had prepaid for was coming due, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pay for a site that I didn’t have the time to keep up with and that wasn’t being visited. So I shut down the site.

While I took the liberty of grabbing all of the articles and pictures from the site prior to shutting it down, I feel a little sad over pulling the plug. Granted, I’ve had other websites that have gone off to binary heaven for one reason or another, but for what its worth, this one was mine.

COMICS, CREATIVE, FURRY, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WORDS, Writing

The Laws of the Furry Webcomic Jungle

One of the awesome things about the Internet is that you can find a webcomic that deals with pretty much any subject you can think of. As many furries are artistically inclined, there are naturally a number of furry comics out there on the tubes. Since ‘anything goes’ on the Web, there are a few that allow the predator/prey relationship to exist even though they otherwise take place in a ‘civilized world.’ I’ll be talking about two in particular that take contrasting approaches to their ‘dog eat dog’ worlds.

“Kevin and Kell” by Bill Holbrook is a comedy strip that takes place in a furry world and focuses on the mixed marriage of the title characters (a rabbit and wolf) and their family. “Doc Rat” by Jenner is a furry humor strip about a rat physician who has a clinic in what could be called furry Australia. If the two strips were movies, Kevin and Kell would be given a ‘G’ rating compared to Doc Rat’s ‘PG.’

Both comics take place in worlds that are similar to our present-day one, but for the fact that the “civilized world” is populated by anthropomorphic animals instead of humans. While on the surface that is nothing new, the fact that predators can devour prey makes for some interesting reading. Holbrook and Jenner handle the relationship in different ways, which makes sense given that the different tones that their respective strips possess.

“Kevin and Kell” April 23, 1997

Kevin and Kell is a comedy strip which takes place in a world where social classes are defined by whether a person is a carnivore, herbivore, nocturnal, avian and so on and so forth. Despite this, many, if not all of the lead characters in the strip defy their roles. Kevin is a rabbit. While lurking in a carnivore forum, he meets Kell and falls in love with her. Unbeknownst to him, Kell is a wolf. Of course, love conquers all, and so they are married despite the fact that their relationship is not the norm in their world. Even more iconoclasts are introduced into the cast as it progresses, and one would be hard-pressed to find many ‘normal’ characters.

In Kevin and Kell, the predator/prey relationship is mostly played for laughs. Indeed, many of the jokes in the strip involve animals. An early running gag involved Kell’s brother Ralph (and Kevin’s brother-in-law) constantly trying to eat Kevin. As Kevin is an usually large rabbit, he is able to easily repulse Ralph’s attempts. While one-off characters are constantly eaten for laughs, members of the main cast that are prey species have occasionally come under attack from predators. Like any good sitcom, though, everything ends up being okay in the end, and life goes on. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, predation really isn’t that a big of a deal.

“Doc Rat” March 8, 2011

Doc Rat is also a humor strip, but it has a more serious tone than Kevin and Kell, and so its treatment of the predator/prey relationship is also more serious. In the world of Doc Rat, predators can eat prey, but there are limits. In instances where this has happened, the characters will often speak about the kill ‘being legal’ and in one instance the eating of prey species is referred to as ‘cultural tradition.’ Incidentally, a wolf and a rabbit are also married in Doc Rat (curiously enough, the roles are reversed in that strip) but the topic of the predator having to eat meat is treated in a more sober manner.

SPOILER ALERT

In a recent story arc (that begins with this strip) a venomous snake bites someone with the intent of eating them, but the victim gets away to the hospital. The victim has a sixty-hour window to (I presume) ‘get away’ before the predator comes to claim the ‘wild meat’ as he is now referred to. The legalese is little tricky for me, because the author’s experience is with the Australian legal system as opposed to the USA’s. As near as I can figure out, once a predator decides to hunt, they file paperwork of some sort and can then begin to hunt their intended prey. Children are also not protected either, as happened in this arc.

END SPOILER

For all the talk of legality, the ‘law of the jungle’ is a part of life in the world of Doc Rat, prey characters refer to victims of predators as ‘being taken’ or ‘becoming meat.’ The titular character’s role as a doctor also exposes him to aspects of predation that most members of their society probably don’t have to deal with. In one strip, the lead character and a fellow doctor muse over having to prepare a patient to be eaten: “Not the most fun part of being a doctor, mate.” Unlike Kevin and Kell, predation in Doc Rat is a very serious matter and has impacted the lives of some of the characters.

Kevin and Kell and Doc Rat take markedly different approaches to predation in their furry worlds, and they both work because they match the tone used in their respective strips: Kevin and Kell plays it up for laughs whereas Doc Rat treats it in a more serious manner. Indeed, both comics are highly enjoyable reads whether you are looking for sitcom-esque laughs or the story of a doctor and his patients…who just happen to be animals.

Books, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, WORDS, Writing

When Do I Start?

A question I often have to ask myself when writing a short story is just when do I start the story. “Well, at the beginning, DUH,” you’re probably thinking to yourself, but things often aren’t that simple.

Since I often have a word limit that I can’t go over, that often doesn’t leave me with enough space to set things up, so the story ends up starting somewhere after the characters, setting, situation, etc, have been established. Oftentimes, though, those details are not all important to the point I’m trying to make in the story, so that’s okay.

Whenever I’m doing a ‘gag’ story, which is fairly often, I really can’t start at ‘the beginning’ (wherever that may be) because starting near the end makes it easier to hide information that is critical to the punch line. The challenge there is making sure that I give the reader enough information so that they understand what is going on.

Start at the beginning? If it were only always that simple!

Books, BUSINESS, CAMPING, Con Talk, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, JUST SAYING, NeRiMa, Oklacon, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, Podcasting, PODCASTS, RANDOM REVIEW, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Tablets, TECH SUPPORT, Wreck-It Ralph, Writing

RANDOM REVIEW: 2012

2012 was an interesting year for me. I got into my first car accident, purchased a new vehicle, and started going camping again. Needless to say, ‘interesting’ doesn’t always mean ‘good.’

After a year of experimenting with e-publishing my first e-book: “One Sheet Stories.” I finally completed “The Rules of Tech Support.” It has been doing fairly well. I have also published “Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories” and “Con Fluff 1” since then, so things are coming along nicely on the writing front. Curiously enough, I am now moving from the digital realm to the physical one: 2013 will see me showing up at conventions to sell paper copies of my books and hand out business cards and flyers to get the word out about my writing. In all honesty, I’m looking forward to going out and talking to people, pressing some flesh, and then reaching for the hand sanitizer. 🙂

In February, I went to Furry Fiesta to see what the whole ‘furry’ thing was about. There, I discovered a bunch of cool creative people and decided to venture further down the rabbit hole (ba-doom, tissh) when I got back. I went to some local meets, made some friends, and even went to a second furcon, Oklacon, in October. While Oklacon wasn’t quite as knock-my-socks-off as Furry Fiesta was, I still had a good time. In addition, furry conventions have provided me with a plethora of themes to write for, culminating in my first furry e-book: “Con Fluff.”

Somewhere around August, I got the feeling that my ‘side projects’ were getting in the way of my own. Being the drummer in a band, the editor for a video game website and helping out with a new convention that was starting up in town was just taking up too much of my time, so I quit everything. Indeed, as the last few hours of 2012 tick away and 2013 approaches, I am now just a writer of stories, podcasts and blogs.

I’m looking forward to 2013, it should be a fun year full of conventions, stories, new people to meet and of course, furries!

Happy New Year, y’all!

Some of my favorite posts from 2012:

“I am a furry”

“You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don’t bring human art to a furry con.”

“This reminds me of an episode of My Little Pony!”

“There’s just something about seeing your name on paper.”

“I think Dust has restored some of my faith in gaming.”

“I know darn well there’s no signal, but I keep checking my phone. I may have a problem.”

This one is from Dec. 2011, but its too good to not revist: ‘and then came the fishnets’

CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

A “Special Delivery”

I constantly see artist friends posting their art up on various places out on the tubes, and every so often I’ll just browse a friend’s DeviantArt or Furaffinity account to pass the time and to be amazed by their abilities. As can be evidenced by my book covers, I have ZERO design sense when it comes to anything visual.

I happened to be looking at Amanda Coronado’s artwork on DeviantArt and came across a picture titled “Birds of Hermes.” To me, the picture showed two brothers having a cute moment; the younger not wanting to go somewhere or do something his elder was making him do. The smaller one just has that ‘do we HAVE to’ look about him. As the youngest of three brothers, I could easily see myself in that spot.

Of course, a ‘moment’ does not make a story, so the tale begins just before the picture. The two brothers have their moment, but also have a task to accomplish, and from then on it becomes ‘my’ story, which means that hilarity ensues. I titled the story “Special Delivery” and you can read it here.

It just goes to show that you never know where inspiration where come from. I guess I need to go fishing for inspiration in my friends’ artwork a little more often.

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Headlines and Butterflies

Must be a country music fan…

I don’t have a family of my own as of yet, so I spend Thanksgiving with my parents. I drive down to my hometown, catch up with friends, bake a pie or two, eat lots of Mom’s good food, watch football and maybe do a little shopping. I also make it a point to read the town newspaper. I saw the article pictured at right and chuckled to myself, thinking: ‘yeah, its amateur night.’ It also made me think about the time I had applied for a job at that same newspaper years ago.

I didn’t get the gig because I didn’t have any writing samples on me at the time. I remember being irritated about that after the fact because I have two college degrees and this wasn’t exactly The Washington Post I was applying to. “How hard is it to write about honor rolls, City Council meetings and the occasional tractor accident?” I probably thought to myself at the time.

I got over it, life went on and I would eventually go on to write other things: short stories, video game reviews, podcasts and this blog. I never again thought about the snub until I saw that poorly written headline. As people are oft to do, I started to think about ‘what might have been.’ I quickly dismissed those thoughts to the back recesses of my mind, because I had better things for it to do, like get to work on the two short stories I need to have done by the end of next week.

Among other things, I subscribe to what is called the “Butterfly Effect.” Simply put, it states that a small change can ultimately have a much larger impact at a later point in time. “Does the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas,” and all that. You see the theory mentioned a lot in science fiction, especially where time travel is concerned, and it is also the title of a movie that I’ve never bothered to see.

Thus, I believe that if you are truly happy in your current situation, you cannot have any regrets at all. Even the smallest decision or event from years ago may have significantly altered your destiny. So don’t waste your time wistfully thinking about ‘what might have been.’ If you are not happy with your situation, do something about it, even if it is a small step. Small steps can eventually lead to something bigger and doing something is always better than doing nothing. On the other hand:

If you are content with your life…

Be happy,

Be thankful,

but most of all, be you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Books, BUSINESS, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

Holstee and Me

Or at least, watch less.

“If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV,” the saying goes. The phrase comes from the Holstee Manifesto, which in itself is a pretty good read. I don’t quite agree with it completely, but that’s a discussion for another time. At first, I thought: ‘Well, that phrase could also apply to video games these days.’ I got wound up and prepared to write a blog post about how people need to turn off their consoles, unsubscribe from whatever MMORPG they had become addicted to, get off their duffs, and start doing something.

The more I thought about it, the more heavy-handed I knew it was going to be. Before I could start writing, though, I thought about the phrase just a little more, particularly in relation to my own creative life.

I had cut back on watching television several years ago; it was one of the consequences of having worked the phones at a cable company listening to TV addicts wail and gnash their teeth for 40 hours a week. My television watching had been reduced to news, weather and sports.

A few years after that, I joined a couple of other San Antonio folks in starting what came to be known as First Storm Manga. I also started writing fiction; I had long wanted to write a book about my experiences in technical support, but had never attempted to write fiction before. I liked it, and eventually decided to try my hand at self-publishing my stories in ebook format.

Unfortunately, I also ended up taking on various ‘side projects.’ I joined a band, became editor of a video game website, and First Storm began to take up more of my time. At the same time, I was trying to keep up a blog, podcast, and work on my writing. I eventually found myself spending more time on other people’s projects and less time pursuing my own.

A few months ago, I decided to cut back on those “side projects.” I had already left First Storm, so I quit the band, left a group that was putting an event together, and reduced my role at the game website. My focus would be on my own writing, and that would be it.

I will be stepping down as editor of Original-Gamer.com at the end of November, and I wish OG and the crew nothing but success as I pursue my goal of being a writer full-time.

Back to the saying. I thought it over, and felt it would be a bit hypocritical of me to say ‘stop playing videogames’ when I still play them myself. I also still watch television, just not as much. Then it came to me:

It isn’t a matter of “stop watching TV” or “stop playing video games.”

It’s a matter of “Stop letting other things get in the way of your dreams.”

Now get off your duff! 🙂

BUSINESS, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, JUST SAYING, Podcasting, PODCASTS, WORDS, Writing

Oh-De-Lay-Lee

I abandoned trying to keep up a regular schedule with anything creative awhile back. I had originally planned on doing an episode of my “300 Seconds” podcast once a week, but that didn’t even last a month. Likewise, I try to post to this blog once a week. As I’m sure you may have noticed, Dear Reader, that doesn’t happen, either. The only deadlines I can seem to keep are story deadlines for conbooks, and even then, I had a close call not too long ago.

Granted, I don’t have very many readers or listeners or what-have-yous (yet!) but I still feel bad whenever I get behind like this. It also could explain why I don’t have many readers or listeners or what-have-yous. I have cut down on the number of side projects that I have been involved with, but I need to double-down and get cracking so I don’t keep my audience (or potential audience) waiting. I’m just like everyone else: I, too, get annoyed whenever some person on the tubes doesn’t update on a regular basis, and I should strive to not be That Guy.

So to the ten of you reading this, I’m working on it! 🙂

Books, Computers, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, TECH, Writing

Mac Musings

Buy me now!

I own a 24-inch iMac. I bought it when I had some extra money on my hands and I wanted to see how ‘the other half’ lived. I’d also had a Gateway crap out on me after just three years. The iMac came with Leopard, which I obediently upgraded to Snow Leopard, and I haven’t upgraded OS X since. Yeah, I know, I’m a terrible iPerson for not shelling out the cash for Lion or Mountain Lion or Griffin or Hydra or whatever their next update is going to be called, but I have no desire to. I appreciate that OS X is probably wonderful for people that ‘aren’t into computers,’ but I am not one of those people.

In addition to Snow Leopard, my iMac boots into Windows 7. To further add insult to injury, I keep a Windows XP virtual machine handy in OS X for when I need to do ‘real’ computer work, because OS X just doesn’t do it for me.

I cut my teeth on MS-DOS 3.1 and remember futzing around with AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS in order to play Wing Commander. I remember making a 3.5” bootable floppy with a batch file I wrote called Kenny on it for those inevitable times when I would have to reformat my PC after poking at Windows 98 too many times with a sharp stick. Plug n’ Play started out as Plug and Pray and we all wondered why we had to reboot our machines after changing the lousy screen resolution. The Unix lab at the University was for Computer Science majors only and the servers had monitors that were as big as my TV set back home. I remember the sysadmin telling us to clean out our core dumps when the drives filled up, and one guy being labeled “The JPEG King” because his directory was full of megabytes (yes, MEGABYTES) of porn, which was promptly deleted by the sysadmin.

Good times, and yes, I mean that seriously. For folks like me, part of the fun of owning a computer is goofing around with it and watching what happens. I don’t do that much anymore, partially because Windows 7 is pretty darn good, and partially because I’d rather be putting words together instead of spending hours under the virtual hood of my PC.

I completed the final text draft of my next e-book “Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories” a few days ago, and all that remained for me to do was take those words, squash them into an e-book, and upload it to the iBookstore for all to see and buy. Of course, uploading it into the iBookstore would mean I would have to boot into OS X and send the .epub file to them using Apples super-special uploader program (iTunes Producer) because it, of course, its OS X only.

The first time I had tried to do so for “The Rules of Tech Support,” I encountered a problem with the .epub file I was trying to send. The file worked just fine in Kindle, worked just fine on Nook and even passed ePub validation, but it just wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Luckily, Apple technical support helped me make my file Apple-friendly and all was well. I was a little miffed to find out that the problem was that one line was missing from a specific file. This time, I knew that I had to add that one line before trying to send the file to Apple. I added the line, recreated the file, and waited for the upload to complete so I could start waiting for someone at Apple to bless it and put it up for sale.

The second time, for “One Sheet Stories” the process went without a hitch, so I was baffled, because this time I got a different error. Crap.

I sent an error report to Apple, but I knew from previous experience that I was going to have to wait until at least until the next day to get a response. To Apple’s credit, I always get a response within 24 hours whenever I send error reports, but I wanted my book uploaded now. On a hunch, I fired up the aforementioned Windows XP virtual machine, did the exact same thing I did in OS X. I resent the file and was rewarded with success.

While I was happy to have accomplished my goal, I was irked that OS X had failed me where Windows had handled the task with aplomb. Sadly, if I wish to continue publishing e-books onto the iBookstore, I will need to keep the iMac, but like any good geek, I will always have a backup Windows machine handy.

Eduardo Soliz

IT Guy, short story author, podcaster, and furry!

Category Archives: CREATIVE