B.J. Baye's Blog

My Life

Most of the people reading this already know about my illness last year, and how it basically screwed up my entire year. So, it’s probably no surprise that I got little to no writing down all last year.

Right now, I’m not planning to return to writing immediately. It wasn’t just the illness that kept me from writing last year, as it didn’t even hit until summer. The problem really is, I can’t get into the flow. Dictating is how I have to write now, but that means always having to say ‘correct that’ on a regular basis.

I’d learned to write my first drafts on instinct. Leave the typos and grammar mistakes until later. But sometimes, often in fact, the mistakes Dragon makes are so outrageous that if I leave them for later, I likely won’t have a clue what the heck I meant in the first place. For example, in one of my online role-playing games,

I almost posed giving someone ‘theme porn’. I don’t member what I said, but it certainly wasn’t that.

So, for the time being I’m taking a break from writing. I want to get used to Dragon a little more, used to correcting mistakes as I go without losing the flow.

Instead, I’m pursuing other interests for the time being. There’s my photography, though I can’t do that as often as I would like. It is also my 3-D art, which I love doing. Most recently, is programming.

When I was a teenager, in the days of MS-DOS, I loved computers. There was nothing I enjoyed more. I’m a problem solver by nature, and in those days using a computer involved a lot of problem-solving. As things got easier, I lost the love. Computers became a tool, a way to access the Internet and play games. I honestly didn’t even realize it was happening. I thought I was just growing up.

I thought a few times in my life about learning programming. I did take some classes in high school and college, and had enjoyed it, but I never really dove in. So, late last year, after my near-death experience that pneumonia brought me so close to, I decided I needed to do something, to learn something more and do something more with my life. (The same feeling that led me to writing after the last time I was incredibly sick.)

So, I decided to sign up for a computer science course online on EdX. CS50, a famous course from Harvard (and recently, Yale) seemed to be just what I was looking for. I knew I would enjoy it, but I had not expected that would bring back that feeling. That joy of using a computer that I felt so often in high school. I find myself, every day, eagerly looking forward to the next lecture or the next problem set.

I have to dictate character by character, so I don’t foresee this turning into a job. I just wouldn’t be able to keep up with a professional schedule. But, that doesn’t stop me from working on my own projects. And continuing to learn. I’ve already signed up for my next class, a course in C# and Unity. It will still be a few weeks before I’m done this one, but it was on sale so I snatched it up. There is no time limit, so I can take it whenever I want.

The Blog

I pay a lot for my web hosting, as when I originally signed up I expected to be producing a lot more fiction and thought I would need top-of-the-line features (or, at least, top-of-the-line in shared hosting). That turned out not to be the case. Worse, the Canadian dollar has gone down the drain, making the expensive hosting even more expensive. Heck, I can get a VPS for cheaper than what I’m paying for now. I would just downgrade my service, but I’m not happy with my host lately and want to switch providers.

So, I’ll be looking for new hosting soon. I hope to have a new site up by March 1. Of course, it will likely take longer than that to build. I’m not doing a transfer, as my theme has updated with a new page builder that requires rebuilding my pages if I want to use it. So, if I’m going to have to rebuild anyway, I might as well save myself the work of transferring the database and start from scratch. This will allow me to update my design anyway, and maybe start with a better organizational structure.

The post Life Update and the Future appeared first on B.J. Baye.

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates. I know it has been months, but I was getting frustrated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which left me with a real lack of will to write. This not only affected by fiction writing, but, obviously, my blogging as well. I was still using Dragon for my online role-playing games, but that was it.

Yesterday, I installed Windows 10 Technical Preview and found that Dragon was incompatible with it. So, if I wanted to keep typing at all, I had to switch to Windows Speech Recognition. Surprisingly, I’m finding it easier to work with than Dragon. It isn’t as accurate, so I have to spend more time correcting mistakes, but I find that those mistakes don’t often happen again. It is learning my voice much faster than Dragon ever did. The correction box pops up faster as well, and overall I’m finding it much more pleasant experience. So, to see if this lasts well I try to write something longer than a paragraph, I thought it was time to finally update this blog.

Of course, I am a creative person. While I have not been writing, I needed a creative outlet. In addition to my 3 D art, I rediscovered a love of photography that I once had in college. Back then, I was afraid to take many pictures because I was using a film camera. Film was expensive to buy and develop, so I hesitated in taking any pictures because I did not want to waste the money. This got so bad that I never took a picture, and I eventually forgot the joy of getting a good shot.

That all changed last summer, while looking at some Google plus posts by a friend who is also an amateur photographer. I commented that I wish I could take shots that were as good as hers, and she replied that all it took was practice. I knew that a point and shoot camera would ever be enough for me, as I wanted to be able to control depth of field even if I couldn’t remember exactly how to go about that. So, I went on to Ebay and found an incredible deal on an Olympus PEN E-PL2 mirrorless camera. Mirrorless cameras are a new technology, relatively speaking, and this was an early model of that technology, but it was in my price range of “not very much at all”. By the time the camera arrived, I had spent enough time on YouTube to refresh myself on how to work a camera and some basics of photographic composition.

Later, I picked up a book that would – and still is – teach me a lot: Stunning Digital Photography by Tony Northrup. It refreshed me on what I knew already, but also helped me understand things that I’ve always struggled with, and taught me things I’ve never known. I still have a lot to learn, and being stuck indoors most of the time I don’t get to take pictures as often as I would like, but like my digital art it’s a hobby I enjoy enough to not mind spending money on it.

That brings me to the site updates. First of all, I’ve updated my portfolio to function as sliders, rather than the small pictures and text that was there before. I’ve also added a new portfolio for my photography. Finally, I’ve rearranged the menus to give the site a more professional feel. This also meant changing the landing page. It did not seem very professional to have my landing page be the blog. I’m not sure I’ll keep it this way, but I want to try it out for a while.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m not sure I will get back into writing yet, but I hope to. In any case, I will try to update the blog more often.

“Olympus PEN E-PL2 with OM Zuiko 50mm 1.8″ by Amakuha – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...

I have officially been published by someone who is not myself!

This will be a quick post today, just announcing that I have been published in Aurora Wolf. You can find my story here!

Today I’m going to talk about something to completely unrelated to my own writing. Well, I suppose not completely unrelated. The Star Wars novels were part of what got me interested in reading as a teenager, and interested in writing. The first author I ever met in person was Timothy Zahn, author of Heir to the Empire, which is also coincidentally the first Star Wars novel I ever read.

Today there was an announcement, one most of us knew was coming, that the stories told the expanded universe were not meant to be considered canon for the new movies, and future fiction would not fall in the original expanded universe. People are in an uproar over this.

I don’t understand why, however. The time I met Timothy Zahn was at a convention, and on a panel at that convention he gave us an analogy. The Star Wars universe was a sandbox that he was allowed to play in, with the understanding that George could come along and knock down everything he built at a moment’s notice.

This was seen in the prequel trilogy many times. While they used some elements, like Coruscant, other things in the expanded universe were trampled on. For example, the expanded universe originally had that the clone wars happened as a war between the Republic and Mandalorians. It also described insane clones fighting the Republic, and that Bobo Fett was already a grown man fighting in that war. All of this, and a lot of other things, were wiped out when the prequel trilogy was made.

So, why are people upset now? Probably because we won’t be getting any further story set in the expanded universe. However, what we’re getting instead is a truly expanded universe. From now on, all comics, novels, TV shows, and so on will be considered canon.

This means, that while we can still enjoy those old books for the alternate universe they already were, we no longer have to think that way about new books. If they give us the origins of a character, that will be the official origin, and it won’t be erased with the next movie comes out.

To me, this seems like a good thing. They aren’t “taking away our novels”, like I’ve seen some people say. Those books will always be there. They’ve always been an alternate universe, and now Lucasfilm is just being a little clearer on that fact. We can always go back and read them again, and they’ll always be just as enjoyable.

A few months ago, I promised a redesigned site. Here it is! At least, stage one of the redesign. I still have a lot more I want to add to this site, but most of that has to wait for the time being.

The biggest thing I still want to add is ecommerce. I want to be able to sell copies of my ebooks directly, and perhaps even offer my services doing 3D art for book covers. I’d also like to add in a subscription service, to sell serial novel subscriptions, but I’m not even ready to start working on such a novel yet so that will be some time coming. 

Enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. Check out the new portfolio section! From now on, I’ll be posting much of the art I post at Deviantart here as well, so you’ll no longer have to venture off to another page to find my artwork.

I’ve also added a Newsletter Sign-up Page. The form will still be on the side-bar as well, but this should make it easy to find if you’re looking at one of my non-blog pages. Please, if you haven’t yet, sign up for this newsletter. I won’t send emails very often, but it’ll be the quickest way to hear important news as it comes up.

Please feel free to comment on the redesign. My goal was to create a more professional-looking site around the more personal blog. Let me know what you think!

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Around me, among those who, like me, have no children, I have seen a distinct lack of Christmas cheer. It seems most have forgotten what Christmas used to mean to them, thinking of it as a child’s holiday. However, I still wake up early on Christmas morning like I used to as a child. As an adult, I may not show it as much, but I’m still as excited by Christmas as when I was a child.

Why? Because, I know Santa and Mrs. Claus are real. No, I don’t believe Santa is a jolly fat man that rides around the world in a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer. Instead, my Santa is a man who spent his life as a brick and block layer, working hard to support his family. These days, he likes relaxing in his living room, watching Modern Family and Big Bang Theory. Mrs. Claus is a woman who spent my whole life looking after me, first as a disabled child and now as a disabled adult. She like sewing and knitting, and keeping up with her emails and Facebook.

Christmas never lost its appeal to me, because even when I found out Santa’s real identity, I knew enough to make the connection. All those years, it was them who made Christmas special for me, not some man in a red coat.

When I was a child, Christmas was exciting because of the presents I would get. These days, it is more about returning the favour. It is far more exciting for me, now, to give my parents presents that will make them as happy as the toys they once gave me.

I saw someone I very much respect say, the other day, that all humans are lazy. I, honestly, don’t think anybody is born lazy. Brain-chemistry issues like depression and ADHD aside, I think most people just keep trying to force themselves into doing work they don’t enjoy, and their minds resist.

My dad was lucky enough to find work he loved doing (brick laying and carpentry), and he never hesitated. Ask him to clean up around the house, however, and he seems incredibly lazy. (Given the state of my room, I can say for certain even if I was physically capable of doing a lot of cleanup, I’d be the exact same way.)

For me, this is most recently noticeable in my writing and art. When I’m able to relax and just work on my writing or art, I push my muscles and mind to the limit. I don’t look for the easy way out like I do with other work, or the quick way, but I work and work and work until I can’t anymore. I have to fight distraction, I get more easily distracted than a hyper dog, but for my writing and art I do so.

Earlier this year, I started to lose the joy of writing, as I tried too hard to be good. I focused so much on the skills, the character archetypes and the five senses and everything, that I lost the part of writing I enjoy most: blind creation. Losing that, I haven’t been able to bring myself to finish one story since January.

The following video made me realize that I need to find the joy in my work again. What I learned about story structure and character depth will start coming out in my work as I gain practice. I don’t need to force it.

Of course, the real world economy means that sometimes you do have to do things you don’t enjoy, for the money. That’s just unavoidable, which is why everybody seems to be lazy on the surface. I do, however, think that far too many people take it too far, focusing on getting rich instead of enjoying their lives. We only have one life, we should always at least be striving to spend it doing things we enjoy.

When I was young, I would hear adults talking about how they would always remember where they were when certain things happened. For some, it might be the moon landing, for others it might be JFK’s assassination. I never really understood that concept, however, until 9/11. Oh, I had lived through some momentous or tragic events, like the Challenger disaster, or the fall of the Berlin wall, but these didn’t stick in my memory. Maybe I was just too young, but these events just didn’t sink in.

9/11, however, was totally different. I can still remember the whole morning clearly, at least up until the point I turned on the news. I was in college, my last year there. While I had been allowed to complete a postgraduate program already, I had failed in my term paper portion of my original program and was going back to finish it off. One class, the rest of the week free, and that first class started at 8:30am on the morning of 9/11, coincidentally just minutes before the first tower was hit.

I remember getting out of class and waiting for the wheelchair bus that would take me home. While I was waiting, I heard other students in the hall talking about airlines being grounded continent wide, hijackings, and war. At the time, I remember thinking that I must have missed the premier of some really awesome new TV series or movie, or even videogame, that everybody was talking about. So, I was quite shocked when the bus driver told me that the United States had been attacked.

He didn’t know much, I don’t think anybody did at that time, but he sold me a plane had crashed into a building in New York. He might have even said it was the World Trade Center, I can’t remember for sure. I got home a few minutes later, and turned on CNN just in time to see a replay of the first tower falling. I believe the second tower fell a few minutes later. I spent the rest of the day with my parents, and a good friend that lived in our building, watching CNN.

Since then, only Hurricane Katrina has hit me like that. I hope never to experience such a moment again, since they only seem to come with great tragedy these days.

 

I know it’s been months since I’ve written anything. There’s a reason for that, but it’s not really good excuse. With the lower quality headset that came with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I had serious problems adapting to using dictation to write. After nearly three decades of typing, getting used to the slow pace and errors that Dragon gave me frustrated me a lot. With my shoulders getting worse, I admit I kind of gave up. It wasn’t a conscious decision, just instinct to type when I could dictate, and not to type when I was in pain.

This month, I bought myself a quality USB headset, one that was recommended for use with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It works fantastically, mostly only giving errors when I mumble or talk too quietly or fast. Still, when I could be using it in chats or role-play online, or writing out messageboard comments, I still found myself typing.

The other day, I found out about a device (called SmartNAV) that would let me control the mouse with my head. It uses the same technology, and is made by the same people, as the Track IR system used by flight simulation enthusiasts to transfer head motion into the game. This would help me so much, allowing me to do my art, to browse the web, and to play games again like I was once able to.

As I was thinking about this device (which I’m in the process of trying to get funding for), I realized it would be frustrating at first. I am so used to using a mouse in the traditional way, it’ll be like learning from scratch. It was then I realized that I was having the same problem with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I could type 90 words per minute twenty years ago, I’ve been typing for most of my life. So, I realized, what I need is willpower.

If I can once again find the willpower that let me learn to type with no fingers in first place, the willpower that let me keep up with my classes despite being extremely prone to distraction, the willpower that let me never accept when other people told me I couldn’t do things, I’ll be able to do this. I haven’t touched that willpower in years now, having fallen too far into my comfort zone, but I’m hoping it’s still there.

I’m going to be focusing on getting used to using it, before I start working on my next story. Writing every day takes willpower too, but mainly my writing is better when I don’t think about the process of actually typing, or in this case, dictating. I won’t take long, however. I have about a month and a half to the next Writers of the Future deadline, I want something done by then.

Anyway, in other news, I didn’t get one sale in the attempt help Ben Wolverton. In fact, I haven’t had a sale in months. I think I still have a lot to learn as far as promotions go.

Oh, I know I said months ago that I was going to update this site. I still plan that. I just haven’t found a theme yet that I like. (Also, I may wait until I get the SmartNAV, so I don’t add stress to my shoulders.)

For those that haven’t heard, author Dave Wolverton’s son Ben was severely injured in a longboarding accident a little over a month ago.  A number of indie-authors have decided to donate all sales from the month of May to help with his expenses.

I haven’t yet gotten many sales at all, but I’ve decided to join in on this. I know there’s only about 3 weeks left in May but if you were interested in buying my book (in ebook or print), please do so now to help contribute.

You can also contribute directly or buy any of the books linked below.

 

The following is copy/pasted from the original blog promoting this idea.

 

Help young Ben Wolverton recover from a bad skateboarding accident by buying books from these authors, who have pledged that all profits from their sales in May, 2013, will go to Ben’s recovery fund:

Nightingale, (sci-fi) by David Farland.  David is Ben’s dad, with two books to buy.  Nightingale, a speculative fiction book about a young man raised in foster care who learns he can sing and affect evil, and Million Dollar Outlines, a nonfiction book to help writers learn to write better outlines.  The books start at $6.99 in pretty much every format.

To buy either of these books, CLICK THIS LINK.

 

The Lost Road Chronicles 

(ya/speculative fiction) by J. Leigh Bralick, The “Lost Road” Chronicles begin with “Down a Lost Road,” in which a 16-year old uncovers family secrets and gets swept into Earth’s mystical past.)

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF J. LEIGH BRALICK’S BOOKS ON AMAZON.

Books by Briane Pagel.  Pagel is the indie author of books like

Eclipse, a harrowing sci-fi story about an astronaut who wanted nothing more than to reach the stars, and did so — but it took murder to get there.  Or did it?

the After: Saoirse’s life didn’t begin until she died in a plane crash. But with everything perfect in the After, why is she so unhappy? With the help of a possibly-unfriendly William Howard Taft, Saoirse looks for, in her afterlife, the meaning she never had in her life.

The Scariest Things, You CAN’T Imagine: short horror stories that will leave you lying awake at night wishing you’d stuck with something lighter.  Try “The Grave-Robbers,” in which New Sam learns that there have been a lot of prior Sams born to Mom and Dad.  And they’re all down in the catacombs…

All these books and more, just $0.99 on your Kindle.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF BRIANE’S BOOKS FROM AMAZON.

BOOKS BY RUSTY CARL:

Rusty is a master artist and the author of several books:

A Dead God’s Wrath (spec fic/novella): A mysterious stranger shows up to help avenge a brutal murder, unlocking magic of the best, and worst, kind in a sleepy 1895 western town.

War Angel: Like your romance with a bit of adventure and history? In this story, a young man learns of his grandmother’s remarkable escape from Nazi Germany with the help of a dashing stranger.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO HELP BEN BY BUYING ONE OR MORE OF RUSTY’S BOOKS FROM AMAZON.