Hey everyone, Ahh, September. Do you remember? The glorious time when kids go back to school and schedules go back to their regular, more predictable pattern. It's also the time that my choir starts up again for the fall season. This season I'm again singing in the chamber choir, which is a smaller group. Unlike the international trend of not enough tenors, we have too many of us (tenors), and not enough basses or altos. Being the kind of guy I am (the kind who likes a challenge), I volunteered to sing up as a contratenor, which means I'm singing mostly in head voice as an alto 1. Hoo boy, some of those notes are pretty high. I can only hit them after a lot of warming up. If you want to see some contratenors in action, here's the all men's choir, Chanticleer, singing a Queen song. This season, we're singing early opera pieces in Italian, English, French, and German. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me. Here's our playlist for the season. Speaking of having my work cut out for me, I managed to make progress on my animation journey. This month, I focused on practicing figure drawing, testing different animation techniques, and finding the art style I want for the video. I haven't found my style just yet, but here's a pinterest board with a bunch of inspiration. Here's a stab at Tor, the main character. I'm inspired a lot by Edward Gorey, and clearly have a long way to go. Beginner artist sketch of Tor, my main character. Animation wise, I'm trying two different methods. The first is more traditional, where you draw all the key frames and then create in between frames as needed to make it flow. That's a lot of drawing and editing. But here's a test animation I made of a stick figure swinging a sword. Next, I tried a method that uses a "skeleton", and the parts of the character are attached to the various bones. Then, for each keyframe, you pose the bones how you want, and the body parts follow. You can change position quicker that way, and the animation program, Blender, can automatically move the bones from one pose to the next, creating more fluid motion (if that's what you want). I built my skeleton, also known as a "rig", and shapes for the body parts over the stick figure and had it follow the same key frames. That's the progress. Not much to show, but learning all the methods and trying them out took a while. I think the rig method will be faster to produce an animation that looks decent, but I'll still need to do the hand-drawn keyframes as I storyboard the whole video, so I can't get away with not improving my figure drawing skills. I've always wanted to be able to draw well, so I'm glad to have a project that's forcing me to practice. Until next time, Todd

Hey everyone, I made a ton of progress on the animated version of Choosing Fate. I'm doing a test run with the opening scenes to refine my workflow and to give me a chance to choose an art style. There's a lot to tell, so strap in! First, I polished up the dialog in the script and recorded myself and the kids doing the lines. It was fun directing them: "That was great, but lets do it again with more pompous tech bro attitude." Then, I put in a lot of effort in Audacity, my audio editing tool of choice, to get the ghost voice effect, adjust timing, pick the version of each line, etc. No time to get into it now! Gotta move on. But if you really care, let me know and I can get into the details later. Once I had my "audio play" of the opening scenes, with the key sound effects and dialog, I imported that into Blender, my tool of choice for 3D modeling, video editing, and now 2D animation. I started a course on 2D animating in Blender so I could achieve my vision, and here's a little taste of my artistic talent: Once I mastered 2D animation, I redid some of the figure drawing courses I took a while back so I could create storyboards and plan out all the key shots that I'll need to animate. I strung them all together and exported a video so you can get a feel for what I'm creating. Be forewarned that it is in no way finished or polished. It's to help me see how it's coming together so I know what I need to do next. Here it is, enjoy! What did you think? Rough, yeah, but I'm super excited about it. Layering on the voice acting and images on top of the writing really lets me bring my original vision to light. A ton of work, to be sure, but I'm having fun. Looking back at this newsletter, I realize it's not that much detail. I guess I was just so excited to share my progress. I could write a whole piece on any one part of it, but maybe I'll do that at the end once I have my workflow down. It'll be good for posterity. Instead, I'll leave you with one more video. This one is by a YouTube content creator who makes videos about retro handheld game devices and games. This video though, is about why he makes his videos and does his other projects. It really resonated with me about why I choose to spend my time making art. Anyway, time to practice figure drawing and finish my animation course so I can make version 2 of my storyboard. Best, Todd

Hi, I hope your summer is going well. My last newsletter was a few weeks late, so not much time has passed since then, but life is screaming along full speed. I'm still clinging to the fond memories of our trip to Mongolia, and wowing my coworkers with great Teams backgrounds for our video calls. On the singing front, I've been learning to sing opera with _Caro Mio Ben_. Here's not me singing it: Opera singing is fun in a very technical way. It's forcing me to finally learn how to sing well in a quiet voice. I also have to sustain a vibrato through the song. That's where your pitch wiggles up and down ever so slightly. I can do it, but it's not always something I have fine control over, and it's much harder at higher pitches. Opera is different from singing rock, choir, or musical numbers, so it's keeping me out of trouble. Not much writing this month, but I have been hard at work on my animation for Choosing Fate. I read the script aloud a few times and improved the dialog until I was happy. Now I'm going to do a test animation of the first 5 pages. First I recorded my part (narrator). Then I recorded my eldest child playing the part of Tor and the ghost. Still need to pin down my youngest child to record Anne, the other character. I updated that character from the short in order to give both kids parts to play. I'm also using audio software to creepify the ghost lines. But once that's all done, I'll arrange the audio and get the timing set. Once the timing is set, I can start roughing out the animation. So, hopefully I'll have a short video clip to share next month. But that's the general process. Record the spoken parts and do any adjustment in the audio editor, then once the lines are set, finalize the timing of the whole thing. Then I can figure out camera angles, transitions, and the rough blocking of each shot. At that point I should have something rough but enough to tell me if I need to go back and redo any of the earlier parts. Until next month, stay cool and share my newsletter with someone! Todd

Hey everyone, Sorry for the late June newsletter. My family and I were on vacation to Mongolia with a brief stop in Beijing on the way back. It was an amazing trip, and I plan to write more about it. For now, I'll keep this brief since it's halfway through July already! In Beijing, we got a behind-the-scenes-tour of a Peking Opera company, including some face painting and a chance to learn how to perform some of the Monkey King scenes. I had a lot of fun and even made the children crack a smile with my Monkey Dad antics. 😄 I did manage to sneak in some writing time on the trip and have now completed the animation script for Choosing Fate as well as the one-act play script for Adrift. I've shared them with my beta readers and await feedback. I also need to look for opportunities in San Francisco to connect with other playwrights. I'm not sure what the next steps are to get a play out into the world, but that's on the to do list as well. Still, progress was made. Script writing continues to keep me interested, and my jet-lagged brain has been making good use of the 3 AM wake ups to come up with more ideas. Until next time, Todd

Hey everyone, For those with kids or in education, happy end of the school year! Another one down. For me, it also means the end of another choir season. Our spring concert blew everyone away as my skill and confidence continue to improve. My favorite piece was Agnus Dei, which you'll recognize from Platoon and many other movies where something bad happens in slow motion. Here's another choir's version. I'll share ours when the video gets posted. In other news, I'm finishing up my 3D modeling course. The goblin head at the top is one of the final projects in the course. I was following along with the instructions, but I got my own touches in there. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, though trying to go for that very high resolution and detailed look stressed me out. It did force me to learn and practice skills that will help with a future animation project. With summer here, I'm finalizing what project I want to do. On the business side, I need to republish the updated version of A Clockwork Murder, and also break it up into individual chapters to post here and on other sites as a serial. I'm also reviving an old effort to turn Choosing Fate into a script. When I first started that effort, my friend who made short films thought it would make a great script. He's since moved, so I considered doing it as a comic. Now that I've built more modeling and animation skills, I'm going that route. Scripts have long intrigued me. When creating the Nerni books, I realized the pictures were as important as the words and the total story was more than the sum of the parts. Or could be. Not sure I achieved that greatness. So I spent time reading scripts and have worked on a few that never went anywhere. I did write a script for a Star Trek story featuring an original ship and crew, which I was proud of. You can read it. See the link just above for the post about it. It became the basis for my first animation, though there's no speaking parts and the story is very different. The music was the main focus for that effort, and I was limited to 1 minute. I am proud of it and have longed for another project to hit me. More about the video in this post. I like big projects and I cannot lie. Currently I'm editing the short into a script, and then I'll hire voice actors to record the dialog. Fortunately my kids are big into theater, so I have access to labor that will work for boba tea and pizza. 😼 On the reading front, I finished Maeve Fly by CJ Leede. Great characters and story. Well written, but I found it disturbing and intense. I enjoyed it, but needed a break, so I'm now reading The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Next on the Horror Pile is I Died Too, But They Haven't Buried Me Yet by Ross Jeffrey. And as I mentioned last time, maybe a summer reread of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun epic. That should keep me out of trouble. Happy start of the summer! Todd

Hello again, April was another busy month at work for me, but I did manage to read more from my horror book collection. I finished The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher and now I'm reading Maeve Fly by CJ Leede. So far it's my favorite. I think I'm starting to get a little bit about what makes horror different from other writing genres. I also thought a lot about the central problem I have as a writer: "Which project should I push?" You see, from all I hear, to publish successfully, you need to find your pigeon hole and stick to it. If you publish a fantasy, you then focus your attention on writing more fantasy and build an audience, write more sequels perhaps, and build enough momentum to sustain a career. Switching genres is a big gamble and basically can mean starting over. Here's a parallel story. When I was a professor early in my career, the way you were supposed to be successful was to study a particular scientific niche and publish papers about your findings. You build your reputation as the premier expert on [insert niche subject], write grants to do deeper research on that subject, and repeat. Your past work in the area makes it easier to get money to do more similar research. I, however, wasn't interested in any one area of science enough to want to make it my life. There were too many other interesting areas to learn about. I didn't want to miss out on them. So, I left academics and found ways to be a part of Science while maintaining the flexibility to continue expanding the breadth of my knowledge. I'm the quintessential jack-of-all-trades. Back to writing, and more broadly, making art. I enjoy writing fantasy, science fiction, thriller, mystery, and now I'm dabbling in horror. And like in my science career, I also like blending genres. To top it off, I've done children's books where I wrote and made the pictures. I've also done 3D modeling and animation (see some of my old posts if you are curious for more). My art career seems to be following the same trajectory as my science career. I don't want to box myself in. I want to pursue whatever direction my art takes me. My central problem, I realized, isn't "Which project should I push?" Because if I push one, I risk having to drop the others. Really, the problem is "Why am I making art?" The answer, I think, is that it's fun. It helps keep me sane. And, frankly, it gets the stories out of my head. They keep coming and if I don't get them out, my brain gets full. I enjoy the act of creation, but I don't enjoy trying to create something that will sell. When I wasn't trying to get published, I had the most fun. When I focused on trying to get published, it sapped the fun. I have a successful career, and I don't want to make my hobby a second career. That was my big realization this month. However, I do want others to enjoy the art I create. I've never wanted a huge audience of people who just sort of like my work. I'd rather write what I love, and find the probably small niche of similar weirdos who also love it. My new plan is to re-release the updated version of _A Clockwork Murder_ on the self-publishing sites (Amazon, draft2digital, etc.). I'm also going to publish it serially on a web novel site (or maybe more than one). I'm considering Scribble Hub and Royal Road, but let me know if you have experience with any of them. My goal is simple: to find readers who click with my writing. I don't care about likes or shares (other than the fact that they help get it in front of more people). My measure of success will be how many folks enjoy my writing enough to go sign up for my newsletter. I want to find my peeps. People who sign up so they can track my progress on the next book and be excited when it drops. Hopefully more news about all that next month. In the meantime, here's the original and new book covers for _A Clockwork Murder_. Classic ACM coverModern ACM cover Similar vibes, but hopefully more eye-catching. In the original, I was going for a '80s LA murder mystery style book cover. Now I'm trying to lean more into the fantasy, but keep the murder vibes. And for those that care, here's what it looks like in Blender, the 3D modeling software I use. The gear and blood are 3D objects, and the background is just a flat image from unsplash. I added lights and textures, and set up the camera and angles so it all work out. Anyway, time to get the kids ready for school and me ready for work. Sorry I missed my newsletter deadline again, but I was away last week for work. I did still get it out in April though. 😼 Until next month, Todd

Hello everyone, San Francisco enjoyed an unseasonably warm March this year, which included an earlier than normal start of allergy season. Allergies are probably the least of our problems though. In fact, my worries around climate change are what prompted me to dream up Under the Diamond Moon, so I thought about that plot a lot this month. I listen to a few climate-related podcasts/videos/newsletters, and if you're interested in learning more, check out: * Heated * Drilled * Chase Cain Heated had a great episode recently about how the fossil fuel company ads have changed over the years to manipulate public sentiment. You won't be surprised to learn that they put a lot of money towards that. It's frustrating to see people working hard to prevent people from making the changes needed to set the world on a better course, but it keeps me motivated writing and working hard at my day job. We're still pushing science forward to help bring about the changes we need. Speaking of the day job, I traveled to meetings two weeks this month where I presented multiple times and ran a few sessions. Surviving March drained my energy reserves. I didn't have enough left over to put words on paper or edit, but I did discover and read some horror books. I think I have a good set now to help me understand what's what in horror today. Stack of books: "Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke" by Eric LaRocca, "The Remaking" by Chapman, "Nos4A2" by Joe Hill, "Red Rabbit" by Alex Grecian, "The Hollow Places" by T. Kingfisher, "Killer on the Road" by Stephen Graham Jones, and "I Died Too, But They Haven't Buried Me Yet" by Ross Jeffery Being creative does help me relax though, so I got back to 3D modeling and animation. It's been the change of pace that did the trick. I don't have any animation projects going, so I just messed around and had fun. I did manage to model a train, and my big accomplishment was figuring out how to get the bogies (the wheel assemblies) to rotate properly and follow a path while the body of the train stays rigid. I also got the wheels to rotate properly as it moves. With that working, I can now make tracks on the path, more train cars, scenery, and, oops, I guess I have another project. Oh well, it keeps me sane. With that, I'll leave you to enjoy my fun little train. Check out those bogies and wheels! Best, Todd

Hello! I haven't sorted out my magic fusion problem...yet. R _ecord Scratch_ I bet you're wondering how I got here. Last month, I had great intentions to focus on editing and sorting out the technical issue around how magic works and how it interacts with the plot and fusion in _Under the Diamond Moon_. Until I sort that out, I'm not able to progress with my editing. No sense polishing pages that might have to be ripped out later. Well, the uptick in day job work I mentioned last month has only increased, and I had to travel to several conferences. Great fun and very helpful for the day job, but it really drained my energy (if only I had magic-powered fusion). When it came time to write, the option of drafting my ghost story beat out the editing challenge. In some ways, sorting out sticky technical issues in my story was too much like all the sorting out of sticky technical issues that I do in my day job. The ghost story is a nice way to escape reality and let my brain rest. However, I'm not just vomiting words onto the page like I've done in the past... _cough_ NaNoWriMo. For this story, I'm striving for more interesting prose from the get go. It's a short story, so there are no side plots to manage, and I know what happens. There's no rush to commit the ideas to paper before they dissipate like fog in the morning sun. To help me improve my writing, I've added more challenging books to my reading queue. The big one being _The Book of the New Sun_ series by Gene Wolfe, a.k.a. "The Final Boss of Sci-Fi" I've read the series a few times, and I learn more each time. Yet I still don't feel like I really get it. But in a good way. March promises to be another busy work travel month, so I'm keeping my expectations realistic. Focusing on reading and researching, but continuing work on my ghost story. Maybe being stuck in a hotel for a week here and a week there will give me the time and scrap paper to finally sort out the magic fusion issue. Wish me luck! Todd

<p>Hello again,</p><p>I hope everyone had a wonderful start to the new year, or at least is managing to get through it. It's unseasonably warm here in San Francisco, with the cherry blossoms already blooming. I understand other parts of the country are getting hit with heavy winter storms, so be careful, and stay safe if there's ice in your area.</p><p>My day job has continued to ramp up, largely because some of my big projects have come to fruition, and now other folks are realizing how important those projects were. With the recent announcement of the DoE Genesis Mission, I'm all of a sudden at the center of a flurry of efforts. It's great to be wanted, but at the same time, it's taking a lot of my energy to keep up with creating and giving presentations while also being pulled into many planning sessions for future work. </p><p>But I digress.</p><p>We were talking about horror last month, and me dipping my toes in it. I've enjoyed several short stories and novellas, though I wish I had more time to read. I've also dabbled in the online horror game, <em>Once Human</em>. It's got some novel ideas and has gotten me with a few jump scares. I also restarted season one of Stranger Things, since I only ever saw the first season, and it's been a while. The more I poke around in horror, the more I like it.</p><p>And funny thing, the more I look at horror, the less I'm interested in the other genres I've always read. I look at descriptions of new Fantasy and Thriller novels, and they all just sound the same.</p><p>What does that mean for <em>Under the Diamond Moon</em>? I'm not sure. I'm still early in the editing phase, so it could go anywhere. It's still a solid base to build on, but I really do need to sit down and sort out one technical bit about how the magic interacts with fusion reactor design. It's kinda key to the plot, so until I get that sorted, and then propagate any resulting changes through the rest of the story, there's no point cleaning up other parts. </p><p>Now that I'm past my initial plunge into horror, I'm back to editing <em>Diamond Moon</em>. Mark my words, come the February newsletter, I'll have that magic/fusion reactor issues sorted out.</p><p>Until next time,<br />Todd</p>

If you've read the short stories on my site, you might have noticed a horrific bent to them.

This page is a place where I can gather and share resources

So what about my experience? Had I been wrong all those years?

I was the crazy first book they ignored

Would I rather be the fantasy author who has unique mystery plots? Or would I rather be the thriller writer with unique tech and settings?

ABQ - Always Be Querying.