“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings,” Barenaked Ladies featuring Sarah McLachlan, 2004
From the holiday album “Barenaked for the Holidays,” this mash-up of two holiday standards combined with the wonderfully up-tempo performance makes for a refreshing change of pace.
“Someday at Christmas,” Stevie Wonder, 1967″
Another song borne of the turbulent 1960s, Stevie Wonder is very direct about his displeasure about men ‘playing with bombs like kids play with toys,’ but the song takes an optimistic turn in its hope for a better world, even though ‘maybe not be in time for you and me.’
I remember reading an interview with an actor that was on a popular TV show many years ago. In the interview, he mentioned that he had never seen the show that he worked on and went on to say that he didn’t watch much television at all, for that matter. This struck me as a little odd, because at the time, I thought that seeing yourself on TV would be the Coolest Thing Ever.
I have noticed that something interesting has happened as I have started to use my creativity more these past few years. I now spend more time writing and working on podcasts and not only have less time to watch TV and play games, but less desire to do so. I’m creating more and watching and playing less. While I suppose it is good to be making things, part of me wonders if it has to come at the cost of consuming it.
Sure, the tramautic few months I spent working for a cable company helped kill my desire to watch television, but that’s neither here nor there.
I consider myself an entertainer, and I write partially out of the hope of bringing a brief moment of happiness into someone’s life. If I can put a smile on someone’s face, then I consider that a win. Unfortunately, since the overwhelming majority of what I do is online, and I’m just getting started, feedback can be hard to come by and so I never get to see those chuckles, smiles, or groans (at the puns, I hope). I suppose it’s one of the downsides of publishing in the digital world, though I am working on attending more conventions so I can “press the flesh,” as it were.
Thus, when feedback does come along, I feel good because it means someone is reading, even if they didn’t like what they read. If I get positive feedback, then I have a ‘YOU LIKE ME YOU REALLY LIKE ME’ moment. While I do know that people are buying my work based on sales reports, actually hearing from readers always give me the warm fuzzies.
Writing makes me feel good, which makes others feel good, who tell me, which makes me feel gooder and want to write more! Its a happy cycle! 😀
San Japan is this weekend, 
and I’m really not sure what I’m going to do. Granted, I know what I have to do, and that’s assist with two panels for originalgamer.com as well as host my own “How To Publish E-Books” panel, but outside of ‘working’ at those panels, I don’t have anything planned.
I’ve joked in the past about how one either works at a convention or has fun, but can’t do both. Its been so long since I’ve had significant free time at San Japan that I’m not sure I remember how to have fun there. I don’t cosplay, I don’t care much about the guests (sorry) or the dances or the cosplay contest or watch many of the popular shows, which doesn’t really leave much left to do.
Thus, I’ll probably spend most of San Japan hanging out with friends. I know people that help out with the event, sell in the dealer room or artists area, wear costumes, or, much like myself, just happen to be there.
And truthfully, how much more fun do I need than that?
I’ve written in the past about swearing in my short stories, which I avoid, but in real life, I have a bit of a potty mouth. It wasn’t always that way; friends and family members used to be genuinely shocked whenever I cussed. It wasn’t until my early 30’s that I starting using “colorful metaphors,” to borrow a phrase from Mister Spock.
What happened? I started dealing with the general public. Indeed, the last time I can remember having an “I’ve never heard you swear” moment was when I worked at an electronics store in the late 2000’s. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely linguistically remorseless, I will hold my tongue around youngn’s and (somewhat less successfully) around my parents and family members.
In recent days, however, I have come to the realization that being full of piss and vinegar all the time (as opposed to just at work) is not the best thing for me, and so I am taking small steps to be just a little bit nicer and a lot less of a sourpuss. One such small step is cut down on the cussing. I’m being realistic, mind you, I don’t think I can stop doing so completely, but I could save the f-bombs for special occasions, it’ll be a step forward.
The question then becomes: What should I say instead? Things like ‘shoot’ and ‘fudge’ sound childish to me. I do like almost-swear words like ‘fartknocker’ and ‘frak’ and borrowed a page from Asimov (again) by using words like ‘space’ or even ‘craters’ in place of expletives. Two new ones I have become enamored with have been ‘fuzz’ and ‘bleep.’ I actually used ‘fuzzing’ as a semi-swear word in a yet-to be released story and ‘bleep’ is used as a cuss word by robots in the new “Magnus: Robot Fighter” comics.
I don’t expect my chronic cussing to go away anytime soon, but instead of sounding like a jerk I’ll instead sound like a weirdo that’s read too many comic books and watched too many cartoons, which is what I am, so it works for me!
I have two projects that I haven’t been looking forward to working on, but carry on I must. The first is a fiction story that involves the death of a character and the second is the follow-up to “The Rules of Tech Support.”
The reason I haven’t been looking forward to working on those projects is that working on stories that hit a little too close to home or that are sad can have an effect on me. It may have happened before without my noticing it, but while working on a short story named “The Best Job In The World” for “Nine To Five Lives,” I noticed that I began feeling increasingly angsty at work. I was even more angry and bitter than usual and it wasn’t until I finished the first draft of the story that I got over it.
I talked to a psychologist friend about it after the fact. I asked him: if reading fiction affects people in some way, wouldn’t writing it have an effect on those that write it as well? He agreed, saying that something similar had happened to him when he was writing.
In all honesty, I think I am going to have a harder time writing the second tech support book. While I can easily disconnect myself from a fictional character, I live tech support forty hours a week, which means I can probably look forward to being full of piss and vinegar for the next few weeks. I could stop writing about work, but the insanity that the general public brings to the table is too rich of a vein of material to ignore. I guess I’m stuck!
A real stinker
As a creator, you never know how your works are going to be received. Things done on just a whim can become your Next Big Thing while your Magnum Opus sits next to it unloved despite all of the blood, sweat and tears that have been (metaphorically, I hope) poured into it. You release your art into the wild and it’s up to John and Jane Q. Public to sort it all out.
In the same way that ‘stories write themselves,’ characters can take on a life of their own. “Chris the Watchfur” was intended to be a one-off character in a conbook story titled “The Tell-Tale Tie,” which can be found in the upcoming Con Fluff 2. The story and character were inspired by my friend Chris Holm, who took it upon himself to draw the character. A friend also drew the Watchfur as part of an artist Secret Santa, and when I later needed a villain for another conbook story, he made yet another appearance, this time as a supervillian with time-based superpowers. Oddly enough, other characters I have written for the explicit purpose of writing a series of stories with them have not managed to escape the confines of their first story.
Not bad for a one-off character, and a crook, no less!
Free Comic Book Day was today, and like many of us, I got excited and headed out to my friendly neighborhood comic shop to score some loot. The line at Heroes and Fantasies was crazy long and stretched all the way to the back of the building that houses the store. I stood in line for a while and jawed with some fellow readers. After about fifteen minutes, a woman came around to announce that the line was for the free comics only and if we wanted to shop we could just go inside.
At that point, I figured that I didn’t really need the freebies and headed inside to do a little shopping and see Zip Alegria and Eric Matos, two friends that have recently signed on with Guardian Knight Comics, a new publisher that recently sprung up in San Antonio. I wanted to see just what they were up to and to wish them good luck in their new venture. Along the way, I ran into some other friends, including comic artists Alfredo “Freddy” Lopez and David Hutchison. I hadn’t seen a few of those folks in quite some time, and it was good to see what they were up to and shoot the breeze for a bit. There were also lots of cool cosplayers dressed up as various characters and I had a lot of fun talking shop and seeing everyone have a good time.
While I suppose I could have snuck around and snagged a few books, I decided not to. I already read comics, so Free Comic Book Day is ‘preaching to the choir’ as far as I’m concerned; those books are better off going to potential new readers. While I went home empty-handed in terms of comics, I had a fun time, and isn’t fun what its all about?
Enjoy this year’s Christmas story! A pair of I.T. workers think they may have found “Evidence” that Santa is real!
Scroll down for this year’s count-up of musical Christmas cheer, or listen to them all on YouTube!
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Eduardo Soliz 