Shameless Plug - My New Novel
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
It's good to figure this out now, while I'm still wrapping up the second novel and outlining the original series, so I don't have to risk major inconsistency.
Working title: The Lampshade of Waverly
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@boomzilla said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
It's good to figure this out now, while I'm still wrapping up the second novel and outlining the original series, so I don't have to risk major inconsistency.
Working title: The Lampshade of Waverly
Too bad the title has been public knowledge for some months now, so I shouldn't really change it.
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@blakeyrat said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
All the stuff in the alpha quandrant, well ok, despite the opening narration Star Trek ships rarely talk to aliens they've never talked to before, so it makes sense.
Darmok and Jalad would beg to differ...
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Too bad the title has been public knowledge for some months now, so I shouldn't really change it.
Wait... you've got an alien world called "Alion"?
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I did enjoy the DS9 episode where the Ferengi accidentally time-travel and cause the Area 51 incident, and they fry their UT on the way. But that was the only one.
I liked the Farscape where they went to Earth and the aliens were all speaking their own language and John was the only one who could understand them because nobody else on Earth had translator microbes.
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@masonwheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Darmok and Jalad would beg to differ...
The Federation had spoken to that race before. The ship that did just kind of gave up and left.
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@masonwheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Wait... you've got an alien world called "Alion"?
And Khajiit from Elder Scrolls come from Elsweyr, give him a break.
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@blakeyrat It just stood out to me, because I wrote something a while back and one of my friends who I showed it to razzed me on that very same thing. "Did you seriously make an alien named Alean?" So I 'd and changed the character's name.
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@masonwheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Too bad the title has been public knowledge for some months now, so I shouldn't really change it.
Wait... you've got an alien world called "Alion"?
Nope. There are no aliens in my universe, and it's Ailon, not Alion.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
One of the things that bugged me the most about Star Trek was the Universal Translator. I thought the explanation was far worse than simply pretending the problem didn't exist.
In a universe where 95% of the races are all descendants of one master race and are closely enough related genetically to interbreed, I don't think that a device that's able to read their brainwaves & translate is a huge leap.
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Okay, now that I mentioned this, I know someone's going to ask. Originally, some of the initial difficulties with the stolen cryogenic hyperdrive were a result of bad software code. Specifically, the misuse of poorly-named global variables getting modified at runtime by other threads which thought the variable was for something else. It was almost a mini-TDWTF article, and I cut it because it was out-of-place and would have sailed right over the heads of 99% of science fiction readers.
As someone whose favorite Charles Stross books are probably the first 2-3 Laundry books, which are loaded with stuff like that, I would have loved it. That said, it probably isn't quite as off-putting to muggles when it's omnipresent flavor instead of a one-off infodump.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@masonwheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Too bad the title has been public knowledge for some months now, so I shouldn't really change it.
Wait... you've got an alien world called "Alion"?
Nope. There are no aliens in my universe, and it's Ailon, not Alion.
Ugh. Read that too fast. :(
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@masonwheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Too bad the title has been public knowledge for some months now, so I shouldn't really change it.
Wait... you've got an alien world called "Alion"?
Nope. There are no aliens in my universe, and it's Ailon, not Alion.
That's a shame because you could have had Awitch and Awardrobe.
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@boomzilla Paging @Groaner!
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
As someone whose favorite Charles Stross books are probably the first 2-3 Laundry books, which are loaded with stuff like that, I would have loved it. That said, it probably isn't quite as off-putting to muggles when it's omnipresent flavor instead of a one-off infodump.
I obviously enjoyed that part else I'd not have written it, but part of my editing process involved removing a few things that seemed like inside jokes to me, as well as cutting explanatory sections that failed to drive the story forward or provide necessary background information. Nobody really cares if it was a bad global variable or a miscalibrated sensor and neither explanation really affected the story one way or another, so I chose the explanation that was shorter and easier for the masses to understand.
I had one review somewhere (I forget where, because that stuff's scattered all over the Internet already) that they liked how my science/tech descriptions were brief and didn't get too deep, and that although it's hard science fiction, it never gets bogged down by trying to explain things which really aren't that relevant to the storyline. Which wasn't my original goal, but it makes sense and I intend to continue that trend. Originally, I just wanted to avoid technobabble in the interest of sounding plausible, because I roll my eyes when stuff gets into totally unnecessary explanations that involve vaguely science-y phrases that don't really make any sense.
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
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@boomzilla Speaking of Awitch, was there some mod witchery going on here? Your reply totally didn't exist when I posted my last one, then I came back and somehow you and @HardwareGeek had posts from nowhere that predated it.
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@cabrito said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 from .ar shows as
This screenshot was taken a month ago but it looks like it's from the 1990s.
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@ben_lubar said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@cabrito said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 from .ar shows as
This screenshot was taken a month ago but it looks like it's from the 1990s.
Needs more blink and marquee tags!
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
was there some mod witchery going on here?
I don't think there were any mod shenanigans, just failing to stream updates, as usual.
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@HardwareGeek said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
just failing to stream updates, as usual.
I guess so. I saw this, navigated away, and then I got the notification.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@boomzilla Speaking of Awitch, was there some mod witchery going on here? Your reply totally didn't exist when I posted my last one, then I came back and somehow you and @HardwareGeek had posts from nowhere that predated it.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@ben_lubar said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@cabrito said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 from .ar shows as
This screenshot was taken a month ago but it looks like it's from the 1990s.
Needs more blink and marquee tags!
I teach an introductory HTML/CSS class, and a couple students discovered the marquee tag and use it everywhere.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@ben_lubar said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@cabrito said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 from .ar shows as
This screenshot was taken a month ago but it looks like it's from the 1990s.
Needs more blink and marquee tags!
I teach an introductory HTML/CSS class, and a couple students discovered the marquee tag and use it everywhere.
My buds and I used to play a web-based MUD from the late 90's that had terrible input validation. It was far worse than Community Server and Signature Guy. More than once, we got into trouble with the game mods for posting public chat messages that injected things onto other player's pages. Unclosed blink or marquee tags were popular among the uninitiated, causing everyone else's screens to blink or scroll for everything after the offending chat message. The more technically-astute players quickly moved on to injecting fake chat messages or improbable descriptive actions for NPCs and other players.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
You never know. David Weber's made a career out of that.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
You never know. David Weber's made a career out of that.
Somehow, I never read any David Weber. I did once have a roommate named David Weber though. Obviously not the same guy.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Nobody really cares if it was a bad global variable or a miscalibrated sensor
I thought it was funny that someone tried to blame the issue on the software and it turned out to be a hardware problem instead. It's a more easily understood solution to the problem that still manages to have an inside joke of sorts in it.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
I remember that part. I just looked it up, it's 3 pages long.
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@nerd4sale said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
I remember that part. I just looked it up, it's 3 pages long.
Wow, your pages are a lot smaller than @mott555's
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@Placeholder said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Nobody really cares if it was a bad global variable or a miscalibrated sensor
I thought it was funny that someone tried to blame the issue on the software and it turned out to be a hardware problem instead. It's a more easily understood solution to the problem that still manages to have an inside joke of sorts in it.
Huh, that's an inside joke that even I missed then...
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@ben_lubar said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@cabrito said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 from .ar shows as
This screenshot was taken a month ago but it looks like it's from the 1990s.
Needs more blink and marquee tags!
I teach an introductory HTML/CSS class, and a couple students discovered the marquee tag and use it everywhere.
It's an easy way to get something "fancy." I understand the impulse when you're a beginner and you discover something like that.
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@nerd4sale Welcome back!
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@Jaloopa said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@nerd4sale said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
I remember that part. I just looked it up, it's 3 pages long.
Wow, your pages are a lot smaller than @mott555's
Your math seems off, or you were thinking of font size.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Okay, now that I mentioned this, I know someone's going to ask. Originally, some of the initial difficulties with the stolen cryogenic hyperdrive were a result of bad software code. Specifically, the misuse of poorly-named global variables getting modified at runtime by other threads which thought the variable was for something else. It was almost a mini-TDWTF article, and I cut it because it was out-of-place and would have sailed right over the heads of 99% of science fiction readers.
0x10c?
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@JBert said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@Jaloopa said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@nerd4sale said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I read a lot of Tom Clancy in high school, and there was one novel that had something like 20 or 30 pages in a row which blandly described the manufacture of a car's gas tank. Knowing him, I'm sure it was highly researched and extremely accurate, but damn, nobody except Tom Clancy wanted to read an entire chapter about rivet patterns and metallurgical defects. Just get on with the story!
I remember that part. I just looked it up, it's 3 pages long.
Wow, your pages are a lot smaller than @mott555's
Your math seems off, or you were thinking of font size.
Or, and this is highly unlikely because I'm always right, but maybe my memory is a bit off after 15 years. Nah, can't be that.
Carry on.
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So I kind of wrote a word processor during my work on this stuff. Thought I'd write about it in case any of you yahoos found it interesting. (I know, I know, Side Bar WTF and CodeSOD are )
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It grew very organically and I’d be a bit embarrassed by it if I was releasing this as a product. It’s not even checked into source control! Yes my code is bad and I should feel bad.)
Do you also have
wpfapp1_old
,wpfapp1_old2
,wpfapp1_old_fastest
?
Filed under: This might rather belong in the "Programmer confessions" thread
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It was already like this before I got here, and I've got better things to do than check what these have:
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@JBert said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
It grew very organically and I’d be a bit embarrassed by it if I was releasing this as a product. It’s not even checked into source control! Yes my code is bad and I should feel bad.)
Do you also have
wpfapp1_old
,wpfapp1_old2
,wpfapp1_old_fastest
?
Filed under: This might rather belong in the "Programmer confessions" thread
No, but I have multiple old copies of the XML file it saves, so I could revert if some schema/structure changes didn't work out right.
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@Zecc said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
It was already like this before I got here, and I've got better things to do than check what these have:
Most of mine are ConsoleApplication1, ConsoleApplication2, ConsoleApplication3...
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At a previous job, there was someone who was working on automating a monthly process. As an interim measure he had to run a tool he'd made every month to get the data to the point where the automated processes could deal with it.
So for about 6 months, a major part of our department's responsibility rested on a guy remembering to run ConsoleApp21, which was undocumented, not in source control, and IIRC he had to modify something and recompile it every month
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I'm in the home stretch on my second novel. Finally got something resembling a complete manuscript and I've made one complete editing pass through it so far. As much as I hated to do so, I ended up cutting out the end of the story and moving it to the beginning of the third novel so things flow better, the original ending seemed tacked-on and out-of-place plus it ended abruptly.
I also moved an entire subplot out, shifting it to Book 3 as well, to control length. And despite that, the paperback edition is going to be right at 500 pages! It's much longer than the first one, but it's also got a lot more action scenes in it, and still seems pretty fast-paced when I read through it. (Ebook format will be
random(235, 10^400)
pages long depending on which Amazon report page I look at.)I got in touch with my artist and he's doing a cover for me now. Meanwhile, I'll make a few more editing passes and start dealing with formatting issues, and everything ought to go live on January 1st.
There's a lot of format wrangling for the paperback version. I tried to fix some of that up in the exporter for my custom word processor, but I'm using Xceed Words .NET and 98% of that library is completely broken and doesn't do what it's supposed to.
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@mott555 And here's my summary/synopsis for anyone who's interested but too lazy to visit my website:
Ailon is a low-population world in the Independent Regions, not far from the Norma Empire’s southern border. Once a former colony of the nearby Avennia system, Ailon lost its war of independence several years ago after Thaddeus Marcell pirated a convoy of badly-needed weapons and matériel that was en-route to the rebels of Ailon. Now, it’s an oppressed and enslaved world, its population forced to work under deadly conditions for their Avennian overlords.
Still reeling from the wounds he sustained at Cadria Minor during his disastrous mission to Waverly, Thaddeus travels undercover to Ailon to see the fruits of his own evils firsthand. There, he volunteers for an organization that ostensibly works to provide medical care to the enslaved population, only to discover a brand-new secret rebellion, one that’s poised to start another war to try to free their world. But this new rebellion is naive, ill-equipped, and poorly-trained, sure to lose any battle they begin. Thaddeus, struggling with his new-found sense of guilt, must face a difficult and dangerous choice: Does he get involved and try to set things right? Because if the new Ailon Rebels discover who he is, they just might choose to kill him…
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Once a former colony of the nearby Avennia system, Ailon lost its war of independence several years ago
Is it just me or is that a very confusing statement? Was it independent then lost a second independence war, did they declare independence and then lose?
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@Jaloopa Not to mention 'once a former'.
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@lolwhat It could be Galactic South.
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@pie_flavor said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@Jaloopa Not to mention 'once a former'.
That was a large part of the confusion, yeah
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@Jaloopa My take from reading it again:
Colony
Declared independence (former colony), but lost the war
No longer independent nor colony, but conquered and enslaved
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
So I kind of wrote a word processor during my work on this stuff. Thought I'd write about it in case any of you yahoos found it interesting. (I know, I know, Side Bar WTF and CodeSOD are )
I'm interested in seeing if you converge on a solution similar to yWriter....
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@pie_flavor said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@Jaloopa Not to mention 'once a former'.
It was a former coluny, but now it is no longer one? Because it lost a war to keep its independence?
That's how I read it.