Hackers

So… I was hacked.

Some­thing or some­one man­aged to get into my cpanel and change around a few nota­bles — cre­at­ing false fold­ers to launch spam emails from as the pur­pose. I had no idea until about a week ago, and hope­fully that’s when it started. Thank­fully my site itself was not com­pro­mised and no giant penises or ads for ‘HOT SEX IN YOUR AREA’ have blasted the con­tents of my blog to shit.

…unfor­tu­nately, my email was com­pro­mised and I have about 200+ mail return errors trac­ing back to Novem­ber of 2012. This wouldn’t be a big prob­lem, as most of them were spam them­selves, being sent to me only to be bounced back again. BUT, a few of them were legit­i­mate emails — pos­si­ble com­ments to the site, or replies to some free­lance work I’d be look­ing into lately (I use my more ‘pro­fes­sional’ email account for work).

Now those, well… any inter­est is likely fucked up.

So, for any emails sent to ryan (AT) ryangsanders.com, or site com­ments that got bounced with­out approval, apologies.

…this isn’t like the awe­some (aged) Jonny Lee Miller movie from the ’90’s either. They were hack­ing big com­pa­nies to mess with their cor­po­rate agenda. I’m just lit­tle old me.

::vio­lin::

A Post-Apocalyptic 2013

I know an apoc­a­lypse is tech­ni­cally only post-end of the world, but I don’t care, I like refer­ring to 2013 as post-apocalyptic. Yes, the world didn’t bang and fiz­zle into the dark­ness, but I’d like to imag­ine that this is an oppor­tu­nity for a new world to emerge from the dust and dirt (the dust and dirt in this metaphor being any­thing that seems to hold us back as a soci­ety — pol­i­tics, racism, igno­rance, hate, noisy neigh­bours etc) and see a brighter day.

So, in my own way, this is the first year after the End of Days. Naive? Shit yeah! But as well as visu­al­is­ing a more enlight­ened future, I’m also try­ing to be more pos­i­tive. Not a totally hope­less endeav­our, I might add. I usu­ally start a new year quite upbeat and only, over the course of 52 weeks, crash and burn slowly until Santa vis­its and deliv­ers me an Opti­mism Present again. Wish me luck.

I’m not entirely sure what my point was going to be when I started writ­ing this… but any­way. Comics and graphic nov­els — I’ve been read­ing a lot of them. I’ve gone through Batman’s Court of Owls, I’m cur­rently read­ing the great Death of The Fam­ily story line that’s sucked in every­one from Jason Todd and his Red Hood out­laws to Bar­bara Gor­don and the Teen Titans. I’ve also read #1 of the JSA Whis­per­ing Skull 4-part series, am catch­ing up on my Before Watch­men and am about to pol­ish off Batwoman’s Hydrol­ogy. Always read­ing Cat­woman and Talon too, just because they’re pretty pol­ished as story telling goes.

I guess a lot of this read­ing has inspired me in var­i­ous ways, com­pelling me to want to try my hand at dif­fer­ent things — which in and of itself is noth­ing new. But it always helps, right? I’m still going strong with Only Shad­ows Ahead of course after a slow begin­ning to 2012 (on Chap­ter 10 I think), but def­i­nitely want — need — to have a go at other ways of pre­sent­ing the sto­ries in my head after­wards: script writ­ing, comic writ­ing etc.

Oh, and I’ll be going to the Emer­ald City Comic-Con in March, which will blow my mind once again. CANNOT WAIT!

I think that’s good for now.

Onward and upward!

November

I wish I was like Doc­tor Who, so that I might go back in time — or for­ward — or in any direc­tion really, and redis­cover some of that time which has alluded me. I don’t know why I haven’t used this site in 5 months, I have no real rea­son. I’ve just been busy. Not too busy to play with my toys, but busy enough to ignore my aspi­ra­tions… no, my ‘com­mit­ment’ to being a writer. Things have come and gone; ideas, pos­si­bil­i­ties, dreams, but in the end I still find myself where I was in June — read­ing my sto­ries and not mak­ing any (but con­tin­u­ously want­ing too, and con­tin­u­ously fail­ing to do so).

Comics and graphic nov­els have invaded my list of hob­bies recently. I used to read them back in the 90’s, but the qual­ity dived and it became more about the art and style than any story, so I left them behind. Recently though, with Kirkman’s Walk­ing Dead and DC’s The New 52, I’ve re-found that keen interest.

I have played my games as well, and ignored the blogs I fol­lowed. I think the lat­ter is a case of my con­tin­ued issues with being that hor­ri­bly cliched ‘tor­tured artist’. I can’t do it, so I find it hard to look upon those who can. Any­way, that was in and out, up and down, that’s not my view cur­rently — hence why I’m writ­ing this (more to myself most likely, than to any­body else). I have attempted to keep up on my co-critiquing with a fel­low writer, but alas I have dropped a ball on that too. Not for a want of mov­ing for­ward, but for an issue with my own cre­ativ­ity - sti­fled, as USUAL, by myself.

…I think it may be time to break out the notepads, and the books that offer knowl­edge and begin to remem­ber what it was I have forgotten.

Keep on writing.

No News Is Good News… Right?

Sure, why not.

It is now June, halfway through 2012 and wow, that end of the world prophecy is speed­ing towards us like Y2K #2 isn’t it? Well, whether the end is nigh or not, I’ve still been crack­ing on as usual. What’s been happening…

…my daugh­ter turned 5 (I think she’s secretly 15 if the atti­tude is any­thing to go by) and we had a blast. I don’t post pic­tures of her on the t’internets, but just imag­ine a lanky, blonde, blue-eyed nut­ter toss­ing bowl­ing balls at bowl­ing pins like they did some­thing to roy­ally piss her off and you get the idea — stole her lol­lipop, tried to turn off Back­yardi­gans etc.

I’ve read two books, both by James Love­grove: Red­law and Age of Aztec. Both were fun reads, very enter­tain­ing and enjoy­able. I like James’ style, it’s very smooth and sim­ple to read, and I don’t have to give myself a headache try­ing to grip some of the imagery or ideas. As much as I love some­one like Adam Roberts, Gra­disil nearly made my head explode. I’ve started read­ing Ship Breaker by Paolo Baci­galupi, who wrote the great Wind-Up Girl (bloody hell, it’s like attack of the links around here).

No links for this para­graph, ’cause I’m tired of copy­ing and past­ing, but I saw The Grey with Liam Nee­son which was a lot deeper and thought­ful than I expected, and The Avengers, which was… well, a Mar­vel sum­mer block­buster super­hero flick. I also checked out The Girl With The Dragon Tat­too remake, and to be hon­est, I pre­ferred the original.

Oh, and I’m still writ­ing Only Shad­ows Ahead, of course. I don’t need to go into details, because well, I don’t want to :P A lot of the sto­ries I’ve watched and read have tugged and poked my imag­i­na­tion, so let’s see how it all lev­els out.

I’ll leave you with a great quote from my daugh­ter: ‘You get what you get, and you don’t get wet!’

Yeah, I’ve no idea what it means either. Cheerio!

Hi, Hey, Hello!

Howdy do, world. Yes, it’s been a while again… almost the entirety of April actu­ally, but I’ve been busy. At the end of March I cel­e­brated my seven-year anniver­sary and my birth­day in classic-nerd style, my wife and I went to the Emer­ald City Comic-Con. To sum it up, it was FANTASTIC. We spent two days wan­der­ing along in a for­est of geek-outs and nerdgasms. Bril­liant. I have since got­ten addicted to Robert Kirkman’s The Walk­ing Dead comic book series — I piled through the first com­pendium in a week and can’t wait to read-up more, and I fin­ished Mass Effect 3… which I did back at the begin­ning of April, so that’s not much of ‘news’, more ‘olds’ really.

But any­way, book! What, where? I wrapped up my Only Shad­ows Ahead pre-draft plans, details, sto­ry­line, walk­through, finger-puppet ren­di­tion — what­ever have you, and began writ­ing the actual draft a week ago. I’ve since got­ten to chap­ter two and, though I’m hav­ing to make myself remem­ber it’s OK to write dri­vel the first time, am excited and pro­gress­ing nicely. More plans on what the fin­ished arti­cle will be like later, for now I just want to write it.

I think it’s going to be a fusion of gen­res, but mainly an adven­ture. I’m try­ing to stay away from all the thriller-esqueness of some of my ear­lier work and con­cen­trate on just hav­ing fun, and above all, mak­ing it eas­ily approach­able and read­able. Too many times have I let the weird lit­tle man in my head be the bar for where my read­abil­ity sits.

Alas, I have been me, and this has been a late April update. Thanks for stop­ping by!

Voices In Your Head

I’ve don’t think… wait, let me think about it. Nope, I don’t think I’ve ever asked ques­tions of the char­ac­ters in any of my sto­ries, and it’s been some­what of a rev­e­la­tion to me I can tell you (like I am right now). Yes, I’ve done the usual: ‘Tim is about to be eaten by a giant sheep, what would he do?’ sce­nar­ios and run them through the think­i­na­tor, but I’ve never sat down with them (kind of) and asked them ques­tions, then hav­ing to answer my own queries with the voices in my head.

It’s a great way of learn­ing infor­ma­tion you could never cre­ate with­out try­ing to think of it. For some of my char­ac­ters I’ve imag­ined details of their past that hold no plot-related con­se­quence, but surely shape their views and actions. I’ve con­sid­ered the begin­ning — where they came from, who they are, what brought them to this place and so on, and their ends… won­der­ing what has changed, what dilemma has been over­come and answered what drove cer­tain events to occur.

To be hon­est, I have not had to bat­tle the logis­tics of my work in the past, but rather had it come to me with ease. Unfor­tu­nately, those logis­tics are often­times emo­tion­less and dri­ven by logic (duh) and not emo­tion, or the nat­ural tra­jec­tory of a story. The details that have revealed them­selves to me over the course of the last week or so have been so much more rea­son­able, and not in the sense of crazy vs. nor­mal, but in the idea of some­thing that would fit and look — and read — as if it were dis­cov­ered along the way, or imag­ined from the stand­point of the story and its play­ers, as opposed to details cre­ated for a rea­son, by some kind of archi­tect mov­ing walls and lev­els in a game.

Is this mak­ing any sense?

Well, aside from this won­derdif­er­ous and enlight­en­ing rev­e­la­tion (count the syl­la­bles) I should also say that I am happy with my pro­gres­sion with Only Shad­ows Ahead - shit, I was even begin­ning to hate the title, but now it actu­ally works and makes sense — and I’m look­ing for­ward to what­ever else the story has to teach me before, y’know, I start putting pen to paper and start­ing a draft.

NOT YET though… I’m not rush­ing it this time!

My Fresh Start

Dear uni­verse,

I’m done. Done with try­ing to push through a book I know is no shin­ing exam­ple of my work, done with attempt­ing to do amaz­ing things with the Eng­lish lan­guage, done with pre­tend­ing it’s all OK and that I’m a good writer who just hasn’t got­ten his arse into gear. I have to stop liv­ing in that mind­set, stop imag­in­ing I can break into suc­cess with half-attempts and wing­ing it. If I want to write — to be a writer — then I have to fess up to myself.

I’m let­ting you know, that I know, that I have been suck­ing at this writer gig. I’ve floated along for long enough now, think­ing that a cou­ple of short sto­ries (that I’ve done noth­ing with but write) are enough to sus­tain the cre­ativ­ity of what I con­sider my imag­i­na­tive mind. I need to trans­late the wob­bly words in my head into actual, read­able sen­tences — stop let­ting my sub­con­scious over­ride the sim­plic­ity of a good story with con­fus­ing descrip­tion and a truck full of filler-content. 

Hold­ing onto And The Stars Ran Red and think­ing ‘it just hasn’t been pub­lished yet’ is a joke — one I’m play­ing on myself. The book — THAT book — was merely a reflec­tion of a process, a process that taught me to not keep try­ing at a form of SF I have no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in writ­ing. Noth­ing since ‘Ran Red has been sim­i­lar, not even close. I haven’t writ­ten a space-faring SF story for years, and I won­der why… because it’s not what I ‘dig’ as SF. So, enough of all that BS. I have to put it in a draw and ignore it for­ever, or at least until I know how to write the story better.

I have unpub­lished May 5 & The Assas­sin, not as some dra­matic turn of events, but because I know it was not — and is not — ready to be a show­case for my writerly ways. It was doing me a dis­ser­vice to stick it out there, imag­in­ing it would gar­ner any fans or fel­low writer acco­lades. I was a bit stu­pid in that regard, but mostly, I was rush­ing it and again, pre­tend­ing I didn’t need an edi­tor and Beta read­ers to go over it prop­erly. I wrote it in my head, put it out for free, then thought it ready to charge for. What. A. Muppet.

Only Shad­ows Ahead is where I’m at now, and though I began the incep­tion of the notion of an idea, I’m laugh­ing if I think I actu­ally had a book in there any­where. Another joke played on me, by me. So, where does that leave me? It leaves me with start­ing again — fresh. Putting away all I had and begin­ning the process PROPERLY, as if I had the inten­tion to ACTUALLY fin­ish a book worth a damn.

…and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m start­ing anew; start­ing Only Shad­ows Ahead from the begin­ning and fol­low­ing a path laid out that will, hope­fully, lead me to fruition. I’m going to set up a plan of suc­cess, knuckle down and try my hard­est to get this damn thing writ­ten. I have the ideas, I’m still excited about the story and plot, but I need to put aside my issues with com­mit­ment and dis­ci­pline and JUST DO IT (and suck it Nike, I’m not pay­ing for that).

You lis­ten­ing, uni­verse? I’m revi­tal­ized, and ready to give my entire writer-world a new jump start. I’m send­ing out pos­i­tive vibes and encour­ag­ing thoughts. Send some good juju my way, would you? Some uni­corn smiles or rain­bow high fives, eh?

Thanks, U.

Ryan G. Sanders