After relaunching A Heaven for Toasters, complete with new cover, I promised to publish it here in installments. If you’d rather not wait, I will leave the book at $0.99 for a few more days, then I’ll raise the price back to $2.99.
Note: You can find a link to all published chapters at the end of this post or read more parts on Wattpad.
A Heaven for Toasters
Detective Mika Pensive has a new partner. He’s hot. Smart. Funny. And an android.
Set in the near future, A Heaven for Toasters is more than a sci-fi crime adventure with plenty of romance and wit. It’s the book that will make you look at your toaster in a whole new way.
CHAPTER 3: Exhibitions
Sunday, April 18, 2117, 12:02 p.m.
“A little trick of mine,” a woman’s nasally voice said next to my ear.
There’s no quirky hidden meaning there. I’ve been doing jigsaw puzzles whenever I have time and am too exhausted to write. That’s happened a lot because of my schedule and emotional state. Just can’t force it and getting only 30 minutes late at night with my mind still racing isn’t a good author mindset. So, here are the puzzles I finished since I don’t really have anything else to post about today:
This one is going to be framed and put in my son’s room. Problem is that it’s really hard to find an 18 x 18 frame. Need to make one and that requires time.
The angle is because this puzzle came out very glossy after the glue. So, a direct shot had too much glare. It’s a map of Hyrule from ‘Legend of Zelda’, but not from a specific game. I have another one that’s from Majora’s Mask. Really wish I could find maps from my favorites ‘Ocarina of Time’ and ‘Link to the Past’.
You’re going to see a lot of Star Wars because that’s the most common non-nature/Thomas Kinkade puzzle I can find. This one was kind of a pain because there wasn’t much color variety. I couldn’t sort through for ‘green’ and get a section done, so there was a lot of trial and error.
Same problem as the last one because of the stars and Millennium Falcon. I finished the character section in the bottom left in one night. After that, it was a few weeks of slowly working on it. I will admit that it was a little easier than the last one because I was able to discern sections that I could sort pieces out for.
This is of the Johto region in Pokemon. I didn’t really want this one, but I was at a convention and I had already bought the other 3 that the stall had. Figured there wasn’t a reason not to since I’m just doing this to relax. Unfortunately, I can’t claim to be the one who finished this. During one of my training nights, my dad was getting my son ready for bed and that requires waiting for the little guy to finish his shower. My dad saw I only had 10 pieces left to go and put them in place. Apparently, people didn’t realize I was using the puzzles as a relaxation aide considering all of the chaos. It did fall apart when I was putting paper underneath and preparing it for gluing though.
This is the one I just finished and it got me through the training and proctoring weeks. It was rough because it didn’t have a little poster for me to work off of. The front picture on the box didn’t have the whole thing on there. A picture on the back is all I had and it wasn’t that big or clear. It’s layered pictures with repeated figures, so I needed to see between the front ones to see about the piece I was holding. Glad to have this one done and I’ll be gluing it between writing sessions today.
I have 7 puzzles still on the docket and I’m always looking for more. Got a box with 4 Star Wars puzzles, a classic Legend of Zelda one, and that Majora’s Mask map. Oh, that’s only 6. The 7th is this 1,000 piece one by Thomas Kinkade, which I’m saving for last:
He has a few DC Heroes puzzles that I plan on getting my hands on. My son claimed this for his room though. He was a little upset when he saw the front because Catwoman was missing, but then we saw her on the back.
I grew up in a less than privileged family in Los Angeles, went to UC Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, and then worked my way through Berkeley Law School. After a year at a civil firm, where I was conscripted as a soldier into an endless paper war. It soon became clear to me that I had neither the inclination, nor talent, to be a civil lawyer. The one facet of the practice of law that appealed to me was trial work. I joined the LA Public Defenders Office, the largest criminal defense organization in the country, where the work consisted primarily of jury trials.
There is no more intense trial experience than when another person’s fate is at stake. I found criminal trials exhilarating, extremely stressful and at times heart breaking. But, it seemed I had a knack for it. After a few years I was selected to join…
This is a week of beginnings and endings . . . with no break between them. I finished the school year and am already excited about September. My plan is to put in for Teaching Assistant Level III over the summer, which will get me a step closer to going for teaching certification in September. If I’m lucky, my time in Florida as a sub and the program I finished will get me somewhere. If not then I have to find a college that allows for online courses and add that to my hefty schedule. After thinking about it, I want to get my graduate degree in literacy. That would match up really well with my English Writing Arts undergrad work. Anyway, that’s the long plan. Right now, I have to figure out what to do about the summer.
My camp job began on Thursday, so I was running back and forth for a bit. Finished the training yesterday and my first full day is Monday. Things haven’t gone exactly as I had planned. Some of the equipment I expected isn’t there and the video games gain most of the attention. They got a Super Nes mini and a NES classic mini, which has led to some interesting encounters. Mostly, I’m kind of surprised how much trouble people are having with the old games. Have video games gotten so much easier that things like Super Mario World and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out are insane levels of difficulty? I understood that there would be some problems, but a few attempts left me scratching my head. Almost wondering if I could do a classic game lesson, but most only care about the Nintendo Switch.
I’m left with another challenge because my plan was to do tournaments every week. I saw that the campers were either doing their own or didn’t really show much excitement when they won a game. So, I’m redirecting my energy to coming up with fun gimmicks that I bring up every now and then. We’ll see how it goes since I might get some push back when I attempt to mess with the simple ‘sit and play’ habits. I only have a handful of ideas though because I have to build things from scratch. Some revolve around the Nintendo Switch while others will be using the other room equipment. I have to move between 3 rooms with two next to each other and the other downstairs, so I’m going to be moving around a lot. Going to leave me pretty tired by the end of the day, which means nights will be puzzles and TV.
That means I need to figure out how to finish War of Nytefall: Eradication. As we remember from last weekend, I’m not having any luck getting to this project. 3 chapters to go and I haven’t touched them in a month. I have this weekend to tackle it, but I can already see signs of distractions. Whenever my son isn’t around, some people turn up to consume my time because nobody wants me to be left alone. This actually stresses me out more and I need to go hermit, which isn’t possibly once I get hungry and thirsty. If I can get even 1.5 chapters done then that leaves me the rest to do during the 4 day July 4th break when my son will be with his mother. Maybe I can gain a little luck and pull that one off. I really don’t want this project left unfinished through the summer because it’s hard enough regaining my place after a month. As it stands, I might lose tomorrow morning to reviewing what I already did and figuring out how to do the characters again. I dread the editing run because it could be a mess. If I have to do full rewrites then I might as well junk it all and leave the books alone until I’m on my deathbed. With my level of planning, it doesn’t make any sense for me to screw up the first draft so horribly.
I need to finish the September blog posts as well. This clears more time during the summer when I can rest and collect my energy. I have 5 posts left, but two of them are complicated poems that I want to try. Got a bunch written while I was acting as a backup proctor, which is good. These two require a lot of quiet and concentration. Surprised I was able to write about ‘fictional perverts’ while I was there, but it was analytical with tame pictures of manga characters. I have 3 nights to tackle these 5 if I want to get them done before the 4th. It would be nice to lock it down since I have a dental appointment that morning, so I might lose the holiday to whatever happens there.
Do I have hope that I will get both projects done before the end of the week? I really don’t want to get my hopes up. Every time I do, I get crushed. People don’t like me saying that I’m done being positive and hopeful. I’ve gotten a lot of complaints and platitudes, but I’m being honest. Quite a few people have looked at me this week and admitted that I’ve had a horrible year. The fact that I’m still standing and haven’t crawled into a bottle shows I have some strength. Yet, I’m so tired of focusing on the light only to find that its another fire barreling towards me. All I’m going to do is what I can and expect things to fall apart regardless of my efforts. Oddly enough, this makes me feel better about smiling and pushing forward. Any victories will be pleasant surprises while failures will be fully expected. Not a pretty way to continue on, but it should get me through some of the lingering chaos.
Well, that’s really it. What are the goals?
Pay bills . . . Ouch.
Finally have a full day of summer camp.
Work on September blog posts.
Work on War of Nytefall: Eradication
Dentist
TV and puzzles
Work a bit on the fantasy writing book.
Come up with fun gimmick days for camp
Start ball rolling for TA Level III (This might not be until after the holiday though.)
Well, I should be in my summer job by now. Can’t be sure because I’m writing this in late May and haven’t put in for the last two days of my school job off. There’s a bit of overlap, which is slightly frustrating. Nothing I can do about it and my school job takes the top priority.
So, what am I doing? I’m working as the game room director for a camp. My hours are full day with some overtime when I can grab it. Goes until mid/late August, so I’m going to be running ahead. Should be a lot of fun since it’s going to be doing a lot with kids and games. I get to make up various tournaments and events. I’ve been tinkering with that a lot over the last few months. Fingers crossed that my ideas work and I help make some summer memories.
The ‘downside’ is that I won’t be able to use my cellphone for most of the day. That means no tweets, blog comments, emails, or anything else outside of early morning and the evening. So, I won’t be reacting to a lot of stuff as quickly as I usually do. It’s going to feel weird since I use my phone as a watch, so I’ll see things building up. I might get to do a quick check during lunch, but that will only be emails and blog. Twitter is going to be getting pushed back a bit more. Not that I was getting anything out of it. I haven’t sold much and the free page reads are nearly dead. So, I don’t really feel like I have anything to salvage outside of the blog.
It’s going to be really hard to carve out writing time. I’m hoping to schedule most of the posts for July and August by the end of June, which clears that up. Beyond that, I’ll have a few weekends for writing, but that isn’t much if I’m exhausted and having to do other things. Maybe I can get in a bunch of parts for the ‘fantasy writing’ book, but fiction novels are definitely out. Hard to justify carving out writing time when I can’t even give books away. Just burnt out on trying to figure out what to do since I lack the money to do an expensive marketing campaign and the time to do anything big. Guess I’m back to the life of working and wishing someone would discover me because I sure as hell don’t have the skills to shout loud enough.
This is becoming a downer. I’m excited about the summer job, but I’ll admit that there is a part of me who misses writing. It took me 6 months to finish a 16 chapter book when it used to take me 1.5 months. I can’t get any outlining/writing done at either job because I’m always doing something. The other stuff going on in my life isn’t helping since that sucks my time at home. For anyone about to say I will find time, I want to point out that I have about 100 books outlined. I come from a generation that doesn’t believe retirement is in our future too, so time will be scarce for most of my life.
Anyway, enjoy your summer. I’m going to be here as often as I can and keep the ball rolling with posts. ‘Derailing Bedlam’ is still going and I might turn Teaser Tuesday into something else for the summer. No idea what. Feel free to make a suggestion if there’s something you want to see on the blog. Always curious to see what people want to see on this thing.
As usual, here is your warning that this story has cursing, sex (not graphic), innuendo, and violence. It’s my Rated-R action adventure called Derailing Bedlam. This is the fourth outing (third official) for Cassidy and Lloyd, so feel free to click on one of the two covers to see how it started. Each one is 99 cents!
I’ve touched on a lot of different heroes over the years, so I’m surprised I never thought about this one before. I mean, they’ve slipped into a few categories at times, but I never really locked onto the ‘experiment’ origin. It was when I was watching ‘The Defenders’ that it came to me. You had heroes who got powers from training or accidents, but then there was Luke Cage. He got his abilities from an experiment, which got me thinking about Captain America. In the MCU, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are experiments as well. You have robotic types like Robocop and Cyborg too. So, what constitutes an experimental hero?
First of all, you need to have an experiment being done. Now, I feel that this requires the intention of augmenting the subjects even if the results aren’t what was expected. This means Hulk, The Flash, and Spider-Man don’t count. They got their powers through science, but it was an accident with no intention of making a superhero. Luke Cage and Captain America were intentional. One got the results that were expected and the other, at least in the TV show, was accidental even though powers were the goal. You don’t have to do a lot of jargon either because you’re pushing the idea that the creators are doing something never attempted before.
Now, once you establish that they got their powers from this experiment, you pretty much have the category locked down. This is a fairly simplistic origin in terms of straightforwardness because it’s right to the point. You get into a grey area when it comes to the willingness of the test subject. That’s where a lot of the fun comes from when you work on characterization. A willing participant will be happy to get the powers as long as they aren’t driven mad or ostracized from humanity. Someone who is experimented on as a prisoner or unwitting participant will be much less excited. You can get a lot of angst and bitterness here, which makes for a good anti-hero. Maybe they don’t want to use their powers and go out of their way to avoid it, but events force their hand. This means every use brings a small change in persona that can build up.
Oh yeah, Deadpool would be an experiment too. This brings me to a subcategory of experiment heroes, which is augmenting those who already have abilities. Deadpool isn’t one of these. He was a human with cancer who joined the Weapon X program to be given an enhanced version of Wolverine’s healing factor. At least, that’s what it was when I was reading comics in the 90’s and early 2000’s. So, it’s actually Wolverine and Sabretooth who fall into this subcategory. Both of them are mutants, but they were put into the Weapon X program for experimentation. This is where Wolverine got the adamantium claws and skeleton. It is an important aspect of the character and shows that you can use the experiment origin as a rebuilding/alteration of a hero too. It can really throw a twist into a storyline if the hero is suddenly faced with having a new set of powers to learn and master.
I haven’t tried this type of her yet because it hasn’t worked for the story. There are a few characters in War of Nytefall that gained powers through experimentation. It’s self-inflicted so far, so I don’t know how to run with that. They’re also supporting cast and vampires. I can’t really call it an experiment either because the one I’m thinking of did it for survival more than alteration. This is something I want to try down the road and probably will if I ever get to my superhero series. At least for a hero because War of Nytefall may have an experiment-based villain turning up at some point. That should be fun since those types can go over the top if you want. They aren’t working with their original limits anymore, which is great. Villains are more inclined than heroes to operate at their highest level. Be nice to get to that book next year. That would be another category under my belt.
So, what do you think of experiment heroes? Ever write one before? How much science should be put in there for it to work?
Here’s another excerpt from The Life & Times of Ichabod Brooks and it’s pretty lengthy. The reason is because it’s an underwater scene, which means I had to work with no dialogue. I’ve found that I’ve been attempting these a lot lately. I depend a lot on dialogue and action when telling a story, so removing one of my two most common author weapons presents a challenge. It also means it’s tough to find a good breaking point for spoilers, but I can just give you the whole thing. People seem to really like Ichabod Brooks, so it shouldn’t be an issue. Enjoy!
This is a guest post by Iona Caldwell, druid, mother, author, and wife, who has written the British Occult Fiction, Beneath London’s Fog.
How I Wrote A Novella in a Month as a Stay At Home Mom
“Mom!!” How many times have you heard this when you try to sit down to write? Isn’t it funny how you ask them if they need anything and they promise up and down they’re good? It happens again: the fighting, fussing and questions wondering why you have to work since they’re out for the summer.
Worry not, parents, this is not a unique thing.
Let’s face it, we love our kids but it’s hard to sit down and write when you have to play referee. I’ve heard stories of parents who had to wait to write their books until their kids grew and left the house.
After relaunching A Heaven for Toasters, complete with new cover, I promised to publish it here in installments. If you’d rather not wait, I will leave the book at $0.99 for a few more days, then I’ll raise the price back to $2.99.
I grew up in a less than privileged family in Los Angeles, went to UC Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, and then worked my way through Berkeley Law School. After a year at a civil firm, where I was conscripted as a soldier into an endless paper war. It soon became clear to me that I had neither the inclination, nor talent, to be a civil lawyer. The one facet of the practice of law that appealed to me was trial work. I joined the LA Public Defenders Office, the largest criminal defense organization in the country, where the work consisted primarily of jury trials. 
Legends of Windemere 