Emergent intelligence and misinformation

Sometimes I see strong parallels between my own writing, and either events in the real world, or in other stories that I read. Once in a while the spooky sensation is made all the stronger when multiple parallels crop up in a short space of time.

I’ve recently finished reading Watch, a story about an intelligence that emerges spontaneously in the vast flow of information across the Internet. The fundamental basis (spontaneous emergence, and the struggle to make sense of a wider world from a perspective inside the network) is the same as in my own novel, Tiamat’s Nest.

Of course, Watch is a vastly different story from Tiamat’s Nest. In Watch, Webmind is curious, benevolent, and wants to interact with people. Tiamat, on the other hand, is secretive and malignant - if that word even applies to an intelligence that has no concept of right or wrong, only of self-preservation. Webmind actively avoids altering content on the web and works to reveal truth where it would do most good, while Tiamat’s approach is to actively manipulate information to steer public opinion and policy to her advantage.

It’s this latter aspect that brought in the other coincidental strand of thought through several news reports over a short period of time.

Despite my efforts to resist, I find myself ghoulishly drawn to news stories about Trump’s latest behavior, and to the comments sections. It’s a bit like slowing down on the highway as you pass a multi-car pile-up on the other side.

And I can’t help noticing the active misinformation that is repeated time and again, despite it being so easily debunked with the simplest of research.

While I was reading Watch, in response to reports of Trump awarding Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an angry commenter stated that Obama gave the same medal to Bill Cosby. Setting aside the usual refusal of Trump supporters to engage the actual issue and instead deflect with “what abouts”, the claim is absurdly false! Bill Cosby was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W Bush in 2002.

The following day, again in response to criticism of Trump ordering the assassination of Iranian general Soleimani on Iraqi soil without involving Congress, trolls compared this to the action of Obama bringing down bin Laden. Obama did it, so it’s OK for Trump. Again, this ignored the checkable fact that Obama acted under a formal declaration by Congress authorizing the president to act against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. This was passed in 2001, again under GWB, but was still ongoing in Obama’s time.

On a lighter note, the day after that I saw a BBC video debunking a long list of cooking hacks that look amazing but which simply don’t work. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make tempting videos of recipes that are useless in practice.

The scary thing is, outright and obvious falsehoods simply won’t die!

But of course, truth isn’t the point. The point in politics is to discredit opponents by repeating the same lie over and over until people start to believe it. That’s effectively how Tiamat in my novel steered the world into catastrophic climate change, and made people’s survival dependent on increasingly sophisticated computation to plan everyday activities around accurate predictions of extreme weather events. The point of the more mundane lies is simply to garner clicks for profit. But they are still putting out things that are not true that will nevertheless take on a life of their own.

As we head into another US election, people keep talking about voter ID and election fraud. But that is missing the point. The real war is already being fought in the news feeds and social media, framing people’s views before they even reach the ballot box.

Campaigns of misinformation are no longer mere inconveniences, they have real world and long-lasting consequences on public policy, on justice, on health and safety, and on elections. In an era when events are shaped by the loudest, most strident, best funded voices, what chance does truth have?

Books on sale

It’s that time of year again ... time to wish our American friends south of the border a peaceful and stress-free Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, if anyone you know is interested in picking up a bargain (maybe to wind down when all the family festivities get a bit too much) both Tiamat’s Nest and Ghosts of Innocence e-books are on sale for the rest of November.

Down from $3.99 to $0.99 (US).

Links to Amazon and other markets are in the sidebar >>>

Inadvertent writing research

I visited the optician this evening for a two-yearly check up. As I suspected, my near vision is steadily going downhill (along with most of my physique). It’s that little thing called age.

On the plus side, my eyes - apart from the overall loss of shape - are in very good health. So I have an extremely healthy pair of eyes that can’t see a lot. Oh well.

But I digress.

Reaching that conclusion involved eye drops to dilate the pupils, and a lengthy examination staring into bright lights.

Very bright lights.

Painfully bright, in fact.

To distract myself from this torture, during which I completely forgot which was left and which was right when it came to following instructions, I thought about the technology in Tiamat’s Nest, and in particular the kind of nasty tricks hackers play on each other in that world.

This not-too-distant-future story includes implants that delivery fully immersive virtual reality through direct stimulation of visual and auditory centres. The implants are equipped with safety limits that stop any damaging stimuli, but hackers can override the implants and over-stimulate nerves to the point of inflicting permanent damage.

Several times in the story, there are examples of painful attacks of sound and vision, but I’ve always worried that they come across as a bit tame. After all, it’s only loud sounds and bright lights, right?

But picture staring into something as bright as the sun, and not being able to shut it out! Closing your eyes or turning your head does nothing because the sensations are being fed straight into your brain.

My experience this evening persuaded me that even safe exposures can be painful, so maybe it isn’t so wimpy after all.

Have you ever managed to conduct some writing research without even realizing it?

Emerging local authors

Now into its third year, the Greater Victoria Public Library is again celebrating emerging local authors with a special collection.

On Thursday evening I attended the launch of this year’s collection, showcasing over 100 local authors who are recently published, either independently or through a small press.

The library courtyard was crowded with authors and guests. It’s only when you see people and books assembled like this that you realize what a thriving occupation writing is.

Yes, Tiamat’s Nest is one of the books in this year’s collection. See here for more details about the GVPL Emerging Local Authors program.

The pace of change

I’m an IT director in our provincial government, and last week my ministry organized a two-day conference to explore themes and trends in technology.

One of the biggest messages I took from those two days - reinforced by one speaker after another - was the pace of change in the technology world.

It’s scary!

No, I mean really scary, as in ten years from now will anyone who’s an adult today even understand the world any more?

Ideas that were pure science fiction ten years ago are reality today. And the scariest part is that the pace of change is exponential. That means that in five years time we’ll be living with technology that is speculative and far-fetched today. And the same will be true a mere two years after that. Then a year after that.

Will we be able to recognize the world a generation from now?

Regardless of the real world, this poses serious problems for sci-fi writers. We all know how novels from the 1950s feel dated today because of the changes in technology, but they still enjoyed a few decades’ shelf life first.

Ten years ago I was writing a novel (which I never finished) that involved computers worn as jewelry, gesture recognition, direct neural stimulation to provide sensory input, and an exclusively virtual interface. That all seemed safely far-fetched back then, but ten years on all those elements are here today in some form or another.

When I wrote Tiamat’s Nest, autonomous self-driving cars still seemed safely a few decades away because computers as a whole were still too prone to stupid errors and failures to be entrusted with the task. But this year we have them on the streets in some cities. That frightens me because no matter how well they perform when things are going well, computers are still dangerously error-prone. Not to mention prone to malware, and how about the prospect of being kidnapped by your own car - the ultimate in ransomware?

So, to all member of Homo Sapiens V1.0 out there, how do you cope with the accelerating pace of change in the real world. And to sci-fi writers, how do you stay speculative when the most way-out ideas you have might become reality before your book is even published?

Yes, the SIA Free and Bargain Books event is on!

See all the details on the event website.

Among the large number of bargain books on offer, Ghosts of Innocence and Tiamat's Nest are down to $0.99.

Escape the News with some free and bargain books

I saw the results of the Brexit vote last week, and a part of me wanted to cheer and say “At last!” (and not just because something finally gained more headlines than the US presidential race!) while a part of me looks to the future with some anxiety.

Living in Britain through the formation of the Common Market, its evolution into the European Union and the birth of the Euro, the whole EU thing often left me feeling more frustrated than anything.

Yes, being in the Union gave people the freedom to live and work where they pleased. The single currency presumably gave people and businesses in member states a lot easier time of managing their money. But I would say that Britain’s heart was never really in it. I think the writing’s been on the wall for years now since Britain chose to stay out of the Euro.

Any plus sides to the arrangement were probably felt more by politicians, big business, and the City than by ordinary folk in Britain. On the downsides, new stories popped up regularly of the latest bureaucratic nonsense to emerge from Brussels. We were drowning in floods of news rules of breathtaking absurdity from regulating the permitted curvature of bananas to the recycling of teabags. And bureaucrats were being paid outlandish salaries on an obscene gravy train to come up with this nonsense.

And while the British instinctively believe in “playing fair” some countries always seemed happy to flout the rules while grabbing as much as they could from the Union. Dang it all, that’s just not cricket old chap, what?

I honestly don’t know if, given the choice, I’d have voted Remain or Leave. The frustration was clearly boiling over, but the effects of the vote will be far-reaching. Trouble is, there’s a lot of noise and speculation out there but precious little useful information.

I’m not going to make any predictions. Leaving the EU may be good for Britain, it may be disastrous. The UK may stay whole, it may fragment. The same goes for the EU. The knock-on effects around the world are incalculable.

All we can do is hang on for the ride.

And what better way to distract yourself than with a good book? The Goodreads group Support for Indie Authors is holding another “Free and Bargain Books” event this weekend, from July 1 through to July 4. Lots of authors and e-books of all genres to enjoy, either for free or priced at 99 cents.

I’ve already discounted Ghosts of Innocence and Tiamat’s Nest to 99 cents ahead of the event to give time for the reduced price to filter its way to all the outlets.

Giveaway reminder

Five days left for a chance to win a free paperback of Tiamat's Nest.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tiamat's Nest

by Ian S. Bott

Giveaway ends September 30, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Also, Ghosts of Innocence e-book is available at all outlets for US $0.99 up to the end of the month, then it reverts back to full price.

A mention, a giveaway, and more bureaucracy vanquished!

Today, Tiamat’s Nest is featured over at Unicorn Bell. Please drop over and say “Hi.”

I’m also running a giveaway on Goodreads, with the chance to win a free paperback.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tiamat's Nest

by Ian S. Bott

Giveaway ends September 30, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Speaking of paperbacks, I’m waiting for a shipment from CreateSpace so I can sell direct to friends and colleagues locally. Yesterday I got an email from DHL Canada requesting some details from me before the shipment can clear customs. When I looked at the form they sent me, everything looked easy except the last line where they ask me for my Business Registration Number with the note that my company must be registered as an importer in order to get a release.

Holy fees and forms, Batman! I started to panic. I felt like my small box of books was being held hostage by kidnappers, and fully expected the cost of releasing it to far outweigh the value of the package. However, I decided long ago to treat this writing lark properly as a business, so I gritted my teeth and prepared to do battle once more with the bureaucracy involved.

When I decided to self-publish, I chose to make things official. Not that I ever expect to make enough to buy anything more than a cup of coffee, but, ya know, just in case... So here is a quick summary for anyone else thinking of doing the same in Canada.

Because I’m operating under my own name as a sole proprietor I don’t need to register my business in BC, but I do have a business license to operate in my municipality. This is what I regard as making me “official.”

Being “official” brings benefits. I get to claim legitimate expenses against tax, and as a sole proprietorship the process is easy in Canada, just an additional form to submit along with my personal tax return. I was also able to get an Employer Identification Number with the US IRS - an easy thing to do over the phone rather than the horrendous process to get an Individual Tax Identification Number - so I don’t get dinged US tax at source.

In BC, businesses have two sales taxes to deal with. Luckily books are exempt from BC’s Provincial Sales Tax, and I’d love to have the kind of turnover that would require me to account for the Goods & Services Tax, so I never expected to have to deal with the Canada Revenue Agency.

All that changed last night, because CRA is the body that issues Business Registration Numbers.

I did some research and found to my relief that the process is fairly painless, and free! Having already laid the groundwork, I was able to go to the CRA website and say “Yes, I’m a business.” They asked lots of questions about name and contact details several times over, which was irksome but not difficult. A little while later, I had my Business Number, which is a nine-digit number that uniquely identifies businesses in Canada. You then ask for relevant “Program Accounts” depending on what activities you need to have associated with your business. Most often, businesses will need an account for GST, but in this case I needed to register an account as an importer of goods. And that was it! I am now officially an importer, and I had the information I needed to finish off DHL’s form.

Now, hopefully, I can get my grubby mitts on my books. After all, the package has only been sitting in DHL’s warehouse for 11 days before they deigned to contact me!

Have any of you had to deal with officialdom just to get supposedly easy things done? How did things work for you?

Release update and spooky coincidences

-----

In the awkward silence that followed, Joseph glanced over her shoulder and his blood froze. “Exit.” The word came out as a hoarse whisper.

There was something wrong with the willowy avatar sashaying towards them across the hall. The customization was phenomenal, but porcelain skin didn’t quite hide the hint of golden scales. He stood, transfixed by dead black eyes.

“What?”

Joseph snapped back to reality. “Exit! Now!”

“I don’t—”

“Just exit, while you still can.” Without waiting to see if Serena was obeying, Joseph pushed past her and ran at the menacing apparition. He hoped this zone enforced physical rules about cohabiting space. He should be able to block the approaching danger while Serena escaped.

It seemed as if his eyes couldn’t quite focus, or as if two avatars were occupying the same space. The tall and curvy blonde in a red kimono had initially caught his eye, but scales and fangs were coming into sharper focus. Claw-tipped fingers reached for him. Ghostly wings enfolded him.

-----

Tiamat’s Nest is on schedule for official release August 29. Although everything is ready and waiting, and in principle I could release it for sale anytime now, I’m sticking with the schedule as previously announced. It also means you still have a chance to get the e-book at the pre-order offer price of $0.99 until the end of the month.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but be slightly spooked by a post on Chuck Wendig’s blog yesterday.

Chuck is launching his new book, Zer0es, this month. It’s a man-versus-machine end-of-the-world thriller. At that 40,000-foot level it has themes in common with Tiamat’s Nest, though of course the actual stories are entirely different. But what caught my eye was that Zer0es features a computer program called Typhon. Tiamat’s Nest features a computer program called Typhoon. Spooky, huh?

OK, back on planet Earth, the paperback version of Tiamat’s Nest is now available on Amazon, and speaking of offers, I have reduced the price of Ghosts of Innocence to $0.99 through to the end of September.

Tiamat's Nest

Weather forecasting is a life-or-death profession, and hard sciences and technology are all that keep people alive and fed. Anthropologists, soft and useless, rank slightly below politicians and telemarketers on the social scale. This sucks for Charles Hawthorne, Professor of Anthropology.

Worse yet, his research into human behavior has discovered how human history ended up on its current miserable course, and the perpetrator is hell-bent on keeping it hidden.

Worst of all, with everything mechanical under computer control, the most innocuous device is a potential murder weapon to a well-connected villain.

After a series of deadly near-misses Charles flees to the wilds of Greenland where the global network has yet to reach. But to deal with the threat, to save himself and his family, Charles has to confront technology full on and enter the even more hostile world online.

Freeing humanity from a lifetime of slavery comes as an added bonus.

# # # # #

Release date: August 30
Price: $2.99 after release, or pre-order now for $0.99 
at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo.

I appreciate any help to spread the word. If you mention Tiamat’s Nest on your blog please drop a link in the comments here with instructions on how to contact you, and I’ll get you a free e-copy once the book is on general release.

If you’d like to do a pre-release review (on your blog, or on Amazon or Goodreads) please let me know. I’ll get you a PDF of the text ahead of time, and a free e-copy of the official version once it’s released.

Many thanks to those of you who’ve already offered mentions and guest posts. I’ll be in touch next month when I return from vacation.

Phew! It’s getting hot!

It’s been a glorious spring in this part of BC, and summer is kicking into high gear this weekend. Don’t know how long it will last, these spells of 30+ tend to last only a week or two each year around Victoria, but for now it’s barbecues and salads alfresco.

With one thing and another, my plans to get everything finalized this month to release Tiamat’s Nest early July took a hit. Seeing as we’ve also got some summer camping planned I’ve now settled on a release date at the end of August.

If anyone would like to help spread the word, I’ll be posting more details as soon as the final cover is ready. Meanwhile, the e-book is now available for pre-order on Smashwords at an introductory price of $0.99.

So, how’s your summer going? And do you have any unique or adventurous vacation plans?

Memory lane

Things have been quiet on the blog recently for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm letting life settle back to normality after a week-long trip to my old home in Guernsey, UK. This is only the second time I've been back since moving to Canada, and the last trip was six years ago. This will probably tell you that this is not a journey I choose to make for my own pleasure. Both times were to celebrate significant family anniversaries.

I was not looking forward to the traveling. It's long, tiring, and we are regularly regaled with stories of how airlines treat their paying passengers as nothing more than cattle to be herded into the smallest possible space, so I had visions of traveling conditions deteriorating even further over the last six years.

In the end, things weren't nearly as bad as I'd feared, and the trip as a whole was a good experience. The downsides were the inevitable fatigue of so much traveling for such a short spell - barely over jet lag one way before it's time to turn around and head home - and endless waits in airport lounges, shuffling in line at check-ins, security, passport control, baggage reclaim...

On the plus side, I was pleasantly surprised by the Air Transat flight. Although airline seats are not designed to fall asleep in, at least I didn't feel like my knees were pressed into my chest the whole way. And we were served relatively decent food, with a complimentary glass of wine - something I really didn't expect in cattle class!

It was good to reconnect with family and some old friends, and to revisit a few places. Things haven't changed much over the years, apart from a bit more development squeezing out the last few open spaces. The big change has been in my own perceptions. Having grown used to open spaces, few crowds, and courteous drivers, getting around the island was intimidating to say the least.

As an added bonus, I was able to meet sci-fi artist Chris Foss, who has a home and a studio in Guernsey. Chris's cover art for Azimov and E.E. "Doc" Smith books, amongst others, has had a big influence on my own work.

The second reason for staying offline (I did say there were a couple) - I'm busy finalizing Tiamat's Nest for publication. After a few back-and-forths with the book designer I think we're very close on the cover design, and I'm working through a final round of edits on the text. I'm hoping to release the e-book next month, with the paperback to follow shortly after. More information to follow in due course...

Does music help you work?

Some people swear by music, to help them work, to help them write and create.

For writing, I generally find music more distracting than helpful. Maybe writing - actually stringing together coherent sentences - just doesn't come so naturally to me so I need to really focus to get anything done.

But I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy music playing while I paint. For me, painting makes less of a mental demand but it's surprisingly physical, so the right kind of music helps keep the brush moving.

On this gorgeous spring day I've taken a spur-of-the-moment day's vacation. A "me" day. Just because.

With no particular pressure to do any of the usual weekend non-fun stuff, it's been pleasingly productive. I've almost finished the background artwork for Tiamat's Nest. I need to sharpen up a few details here and there, but it's pretty much ready to hand over to my designer.

This is intended as a full cover spread - both back and front covers for the paperback. The front cover will just be the right-hand half of the image, and there are a couple of other visual elements to be overlaid on top by the designer.

The last sections of the foreground were painted this morning to the strains of Tangerine Dream.

Do you find music helps or hinders you? A must-have or a no-no?

Is it safe to come out yet?

*Peers cautiously out from under rock*

I might give the A to Z challenge a go another year, but it is a big time commitment and I chose to spend it on things other than blogging. Even not taking part, the sheer volume of posts flooding my dashboard in April was overwhelming, so I visited a bit but mostly stayed out of the way.

Work is hectic and intense - not unmanageable, but certainly draining. Life outside of work brings the usual Spring activities getting things straightened out after the Winter months. In between the two, the logistics of after-school activities seem to get more challenging with each passing term.

Fortunately, I've still found time for artwork. The cover art for Tiamat's Nest is progressing well and I think I'm on the home stretch.

How was your April? Did you survive the A to Z?

Snowmobiles on water

At one point in Tiamat's Nest, Charles is on the run and his friend takes them across country on a ski-doo, or snowmobile. Along the way, they use it to cross a river a hundred meters wide.

One critiquer wondered if such a thing is possible. Yes it is!

I remember first seeing this trick years ago on a Top Gear program set in Iceland, before Jeremy Clarkson started getting in trouble with the BBC, and the memory returned when I was looking for obstacles to throw in Charles's path.

I thought maybe that this would be rare anomaly, but when I researched the possibilities in earnest I discovered that the feat is very well known and has even been turned into a sport!

So I am confident that what I wrote is a manageable, if rather dangerous, stunt.

Progress

After a furious burst of activity in February, Tiamat's Nest has finished its latest round of revisions and is now out to beta-readers.

No time for relaxing, though. I need to start work on ideas and drafts for cover art if I'm to get this puppy out there this summer as planned.

I've also been pottering around with iDraw. There's lots of capability there, and lots of things are very easy to accomplish that I'd have a harder time managing in Visio, but the software still shows some baffling and frustrating behavior even doing the simplest tasks. I clearly still have a lot to learn.

Emergent behavior

Another line of research...

Emergent behavior is at the heart of Tiamat's Nest on two distinct levels. Charles studies collective human behavior, where large groups act in ways that bear no resemblance to how individuals behave. And the complexity of the global network hides a nasty surprise.

So what is emergence?

It's what often happens when lots of things interact, usually following very simple rules. Things start happening on the collective level that were not designed into the individual units or the rules by which they act. Entirely unexpected behaviors and properties emerge, as if by magic.

This is best illustrated with a few examples

Temperature and pressure of a gas are properties of the gas as a whole, not of any one molecule. They are macro properties that emerge from lots of freely-moving molecules bouncing around. The most remarkable thing about the ideal gas law is that the same equation relates temperature and pressure to the amount of gas in a given volume regardless of what the gas is made up of.

The whole inexhaustible science of chemistry emerges from comparatively simple quantum-mechanical laws governing how electrons, protons, and neutrons interact. So do such diverse real-world effects as the conductivity of metals, the blue of the midday sky, the violence of nitroglycerin, and the beauty of snowflakes. None of these could easily be predicted just from looking at how subatomic particles behave.

These are all physical examples, but have you ever been part of a large group of people where you've felt swept along by events that don't seem to be wanted by any individual you speak to, but which take place relentlessly nonetheless? Mob behavior is notoriously and dangerously unpredictable. "The tragedy of the commons" is a self-destructive property of pretty much any group with a scarce resource. Stock market booms and busts are more complex behaviors of the market that are in nobody's interest, but which emerge from lots of simpler financial interactions.

Pretty much anywhere you have sufficiently large collections of units interacting in some way, you can expect some unexpected properties and behaviors to emerge.

Charles studies the emergent behaviors of large groups of people, but where does Tiamat come into the equation?

Have you ever been driving down the highway when you met a line of slow moving traffic? After a mile or two of crawling along, things speed up again with no obvious explanation for the hold-up. You've just been part of a pressure wave, very similar to a sound wave in air.

Waves, whether in molecules in air, atoms in a crystal, or cars in traffic, arise from the molecules, atoms, or cars following a very simple rule: don't get too close to your neighbor.

This illustrates another typical feature of emergence - properties emerge from the interactions, the rules, regardless of what the individual units consist of. One name for this is substrate independence.

This principle is important because some theories of the mind reckon that consciousness and intelligence are emergent properties of certain types of information processing networks. If that's true, then there should be nothing special about neurons themselves. They are simply the substrate enacting the rules. Another substrate, say a complex enough computer network that happens to embody the right kinds of rules, should therefore exhibit the same properties - whether we designed it or not.

Now that's scary!

Call for beta readers

Would anyone out there care to read Tiamat's Nest to help me steer it through the final editing stages?

=====

In a world where weather forecasting has become a life-or-death profession, hard sciences and technology are the only things keeping people alive and fed. Anthropologists, soft and useless, rank slightly below politicians and telemarketers on the social scale. This sucks for Charles Hawthorne, Professor of Anthropology.

Worse yet, his research into human behavior has got dangerously close to revealing how human history ended up on its current miserable course, and the perpetrator is hell-bent on keeping it hidden.

Worst of all, with everything mechanical under computer control the most innocuous device is a potential murder weapon to a well-connected villain. After a series of deadly near-misses Charles flees to the wilds of Greenland where the global network has yet to reach. But to deal with the threat, to save himself and his family, Charles has to confront technology full on and enter the even more hostile world online.

Saving humanity from a lifetime of slavery comes as an added bonus.

=====

I'm nearing the end of my current round of revisions, and I'm looking for a small handful of beta readers to provide feedback into the next stage. The latest version will be ready for circulation later this month, and I'm looking for people who can commit to a (maximum) two-month turnaround.

I'm aiming for publication this summer, so timing is important. Only respond if you're confident you can read and provide comments before the end of April. At the same time, please let me know what you would like in return, e.g. a read of your own novel.

You can respond in the comments on this blog with instructions on how to contact you. If you are not comfortable showing your email address here (and I can understand that, I choose not to publicize my email address) then drop me a note via my website's contact form.

Thanks in advance...

Simple goals

This will just be a short post, but this time of year everyone is posting about goals and resolutions and I didn't want to feel left out.

I don't do resolutions, but I do set myself goals from time to time, not necessarily at the New Year. I also believe it's important not just to set goals, but to review them, see how well I'm doing to achieve them, and make course corrections as needed.

Goals for 2014...

• Publish Ghosts of Innocence - CHECK! Including my goals of seeing my own artwork on a book cover, and holding a copy in my hands.
• Edit Tiamat's Nest - not quite, but half-way there.

Goals for 2015 are pretty simple:

• Finish editing and publish Tiamat's Nest.
• Finish and publish The Critique Survival Guide.
• Have more fun!

The last few weeks, taking a time out from writing, have reminded me how much fun I have with the visual arts, and I don't want to lose touch with that. I've finished the plans of the Implacable-class cruiser Merciless, and posted them to my web site, along with a bit of background on the ship.