Ossua.com’s blog is now one year old!

In a recent trend of life-hacking I’ve figured out how to microwave a packet (not a cup) of Ramen, which seems like a good thing. I never liked cup of noodle because it was more broth and less actual food. So having a brick of Ramen noodle available via the microwave in the breakroom is a wonderful thing. Mmmm. Pork Ramen.

So, here I am on day number three hundred sixty-five of my blog. Hooray!

It’s been a long year. I’ve managed to do a lot in this time. I think this year I managed to accomplish more creative goals than ever before – even more than I did when I was in college studying my visual craft. My time in the visual arts was mostly mediocre work, punctuated by shining moments of competence, so working in something where I feel a greater emotional return for the time invested in the craft is kind of a nice bonus. Not that I’d have done anything different, but I finally found out who I was creatively speaking this year. I’m a storyteller. Always have been. I just needed to find the medium that came naturally.

As it turns out, I think I’m a writer. Not that I’ll ever really stop being an artist or a game master. But, I think I found what I want to focus on after all this time.

With any luck, it’s another year of creativity coming up on the blog. With many more to follow.

My bookshelves talk to me.

Not in a creepy schizophrenic way. They don’t give me commands or tell me about the secret enemy’s movements. The news is usually good for that, so long as it isn’t Fox News. Fair and balanced my ass.

But, I digress.

It usually happens when I go to my fan, which is used every day regardless of season or indoors temperature save for when I leave the house. It rests near the window, which is right by the corner-curving shelves that contain the collections of my favored books. Some have been read many times. Some are even just display copies; the books by Stephen King that are too heavy to carry, that I have duplicates of in paperback. Some go unread, having drawn my eye before on some other shelf either from the many small and used retailers I frequent or from the big chain stores when the deals are too good to ignore or when the small places don’t cater to the need. I am fairly certain that software books and management/sales manuals would not have an industry were it not for the chains. No bibliophile truly wants them.

These tomes by both window and fan are the books that come to live with me. Sometimes they are hastily devoured, then shelved. Some simmer for a time before I can reach them. Others gain dust, either there as a reminder of why I shouldn’t impulse buy or simply because time or circumstance has caused me to put them on the back burner. At least one book had two chapters read but was shelved after reading them because I didn’t know if I had the stomach to follow through so grim and ghastly were those chapters. I do not know how I stomach that author sometimes, though he is one of my favorites. I wonder what is wrong with him frequently, and then ask myself why it is I continue to return to his well.

And as I pass these volumes, old and new alike, they whisper to me and draw my eyes. And soon I find a friend or companion for a time.

From there, we go everywhere together. The books jump from shelf to bag and we have our time in the sun. Sometimes I can’t help but carry more than one. As a reader I’ll admit to much capriciousness, and I sometimes do not know what I shall be in the mood for, so I carry backups. Sometimes I retreat to my e-reader which I reserve for books that I know I’ll never meet the author of or that I simply could not acquire through other means. Sometimes I know that ‘today is the day’ and that I will complete a book and simply must have a new book on hand when that one comes to its conclusion.

I refuse to be bored when such myriad options are available to entertain and inform me.

But, the recommendations almost always come from those shelves. Every book there I can tell you where I was when I came by it and why I picked it up. I know which are bargain books, which were rare finds, which ones were bequeathed, lent or gifted. Receipts in these books serve as bookmarks or confirmations of my own recollections. Books are the only items I have in my home to which eidetic memories are in place and my recollections are almost infallible in this respect.

And as I go to cycle the air with the fan, I take heed to the whispers. These are not the whispers of conspirators or malefactors, and if it is schizophrenia it is the most charitable and noble imaginary illness that keeps me informed and entertained in equal measure. I gladly submit myself to the rotting carcass of my brain if it be madness, and I will revel in insanity.

But I cannot bring myself to believe such a thing as a malady of the mind. Poe, King, Gibson, Tolkien, Rushkoff, Lao Tzu and Sanderson cannot be made to serve as villains.

I encourage others of a similar bent to consider these words and to listen for their own whispers. Even the tiniest shelf can speak to you, and the largest shelves have more refined chances to murmur and tempt your hands into perusing their contents.

Take the time to listen. You shan’t be disappointed.

Wow. Almost a year I’ve been working on this thing. Dec. 20th will mark the official anniversary of the blogging efforts. Christ, I’m wordy.

So, there was a grand experiment held back in October. A group of friends all decided that we were to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo event. NaNoWriMo in itself has its own goal: write a complete novel in the month of November, no less than fifty thousand words. If you’ve ever written anything, you know that this is some heavy shit to draw down on. Especially if you have kids, a job, hobbies, friends, dogs, or any other thing that can distract you from the task. It is by no means something to take lightly if you’re serious about it because disappointment is almost certainly a plausible result.

However, me and mine are usually not up for just any challenge. No, dear reader. Why wuss out when you could make it more interesting?

We wanted to have randomly assigned topics and requirements.

The methodology was simple. Three bowls would be generated, each populated with slips of paper. Upon these scraps were written words and phrases. These slips would be divided into topics, themes and settings. We would then begin the draw. There was to be no trading. There was to be no whining. There was to be no peeking. And, with that said, we drew our lots.

We got some interesting draws. ‘A creepy, cloistered nun’ was one. ‘Tragic samurai in seventeenth century France’ was another. We even got a ‘Victorian England mobster sitcom.’

I drew ‘Pirates coming of age in Washington D.C.’

My inner ninja bristled. As you may well know, ninjas and pirates do NOT get along. So, I must admit to some disappointment in my draw.

The next stipulation was that we were only allowed to ponder and brainstorm on our idea until November 1st. We were not to put pen to paper, to begin writing outlines or notes. Just brainstorming. We had four days before November would begin. I held a brainstorming night between myself and a few other friends in which we used my living room whiteboard to straighten up possibilities. I mused on it in my downtime – which I had a lot of given I was, at that time, on vacation.

On November 1st, 12:00 AM, I began The Pirates of the DeeCee Beltway, a novel set in a dystopian future in the aftermath of a great second civil war in North America. As of today, November 11th, I am at eight hundred words shy of forty thousand words.

Admittedly, having a week worth of vacation time to write gave me a considerable edge. The fact that I have completed a novel’s first draft also helped. The fact that I am not married, do not have a significant other, have no children or pets also helped. For once, some of the things I was lacking were actually helping me out. And, I surprisingly embraced an inner pirate I did not know I had (if you tell any ninjas, my ghost will haunt you in the wake of my shiruken filled demise).

There are definitely pirates. There is definitely a loss of childhood for the protagonist. DeeCee is something I really need to play up better. The story opens in the skies above it (because, these are sky pirates) but after that goes to Eastern Tennessee, then Central Pennsylvania. I have it figured that the denouement is going to happen in DeeCee both on the ground and in the air. I’ll figure something out. I still have nineteen days left.

So, my challenge now isn’t ‘can I get 50K in words?’, it’s ‘how much can I do in the time given?’ 50K has proven not to be the destination… it’s the minimum required for success.

I’m going to kick November’s ass.

The Man of Steel is reborn!

Kryptonian Easter occurred sometime last month with the arrival of the New 52, DC’s relaunch of the entirety of the DC Universe. Much has been changed for some lines, others remain virtually untouched. I was skeptical at first when I heard that Superman would be changing. They didn’t really change Batman at all. Why fix what isn’t broken, right? In my opinion I thought Supes didn’t really need any fixing. I liked him just the way he was.

Well, maybe.

You see, the big reason DC was looking for a reboot was that the sales were flagging. Call me cynical, but it’s always about the money. It’s the only reason anything ever changes. Follow the money. Find out who benefits. The folks at DC need more money in the coffers and reboots are a great way to get that influx. It’s risky, but it’s been done many times before in the comic industry, and not just by DC. Eventually, the life expectancy on every comic line drops to zero to paraphrase Mr. Durden.

So, to be blunt, Supes needed changing because people weren’t reading him anymore. Not that I particularly like hearing that, but as pointed out by one of my friends over at NonTraditionalPocketPasser.com, if no one is reading it, the only way to keep the franchise alive is by changing the formula. Give the line a chance to get a new cash influx at the hand of new blood being infused into it. Sure, it pisses off the die hards. But the die hards weren’t buying. Not enough to keep the franchise alive.

It’s a conundrum.

One way or the other, Superman is a large part of my own identity. And, the funny thing is, the Supes that I grew up and loved is not the original Superman, either. I was raised with a stand in Superman myself. To get the original, I’d have to have grown up in the Great Depression. That reboot brought me, new blood, into the mix in the eighties with every trip to Captain Blue Hen’s Comics. So I can’t really knock it. The original Superman was actually a one-off villain, a mentalist miscreant who bore more similarity to Lex Luthor than Clark Kent. The next, and long lasting incarnation was quite the bully, fond of tossing people about in fashions that guaranteed paralysis if not straight-up death. The supes I grew up was all truth, justice and the American Way. I grew up on propaganda Superman.

And, I still love it. But, its time is over. In an age where blind patriotism is a polarizing subject, where ‘edgy’ beats out ‘moral’, and in which the Man of Tomorrow has too few weaknesses, DC took advantage of their need for cashflow and made some changes. So, my Superman goes in the trash. And for a while, I was kind of angry about that.

I suppose if I liked him so damned much, I’d have been buying the comics. But… coup scored. I wasn’t. I’ve been reading edgy books since I got my first copy of Preacher.

So, I’m behind it right now and I got issue two last night and read it. Between Action Comics (which handles the nascent Superman) and the Superman title itself (handling current Superman adventures) they’ve found a mixture between the Supes I grew up and idolized and the rough and tumble Superman of the thirties. They’ve kept most of the tropes that my generation would remember: Kryptonian origins, the bookish alter-ego, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen). But, they have also added in elements of costume change (And seriously, underwear on the outside? C’mon Supes. Good change.), attitude and methodology. Things that might have given my Superman pause do not always get in the way. The first Action Comics issue harkened straight from the early superman. Kal-El has got a mobster dangling off a rooftop to work a confession out of him. Not because Supes caught him red-handed. Oh no. This guy was having dinner and Superman just rolled in and regulated on him until he got what he wanted. The police surround him while the guy gushes an obviously coerced confession. Good luck getting that to stick in court Supes. That’s a little more morally grey in my own terms. But you know what? Read a few of the original Superman comics. Go ahead. They’re online. Superman to start was kind of a thug. He didn’t have time for ‘due process’ or civility. Supes just busts down fucking doors until he gets what he wants, much akin to the honey badger.

As much as I want my Superman to be the paradigm, he clearly isn’t. And so, we get the new blood.

It’s not bad. But it’s a risky gamble. We’ll see if the new Supes is up to the task and if he’s still culturally relevant. I’m hoping that he is. Because having Batman replace him would suck.