Motherboard+A Few Career Changes

First off.

Sci-fi and speculative fiction writers--check out Terraform if you haven't already. It's a subsection of Motherboard, Vice's science and technology culture vertical 'site. A beautiful place to trawl for ideas or submit your work. They do have a budget for writers/journalists of all stripes, and Matthew Braga (Motherboard's editor) is a great guy. Just do some recon first, and seriously consider whether your work fits their style. If so, I know they want to learn more about it (and you). I'm working on a few things at the moment that may, with enough thrust, achieve escape velocity from their slush pile...

Secondly, career changes. I quit my staff reporter gig. I'm going to be retraining as a video journalist, and I'll be picking up a new job as city editor of a Toronto-based website by the end of the summer. Video should keep me from slogging home and sitting in front of a screen with a word count hovering around zero, wondering why I don't have the energy to finish a sentence after pounding out 3-4 articles a week at my other gig. As for the city editor thing, it's for a reboot of an older site (courtesy of an editor I used to work for), so we're all going to be learning the ropes as we go.

The point is, I'll be around a bit more in the next few weeks than I have in a while. Radio silence may ensue around the end of August/early September. Nothing you haven't read (or not read) before.

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<work> "Tools (wt)", "arachnae.we", "Paragons"
<words> "The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"--Neal Stephenson/"Equal Rites"--Terry Pratchett
<noise> "Cornucopia"--Serj Tankian
 <screens> N/A
<levels> N/A
 <food+drink> Strong coffee
<quotes> "I loved you in the sunshine/You chase the moon with a spear"--Serj Tankian

Genre and Style, Revisted

I write anything but poetry.  And even then, my aim is to tension prose to hum without the need for stanzas or verse or a mic stand in a basement somewhere.  I prefer longer work--novels, feature-length films--but I mainly write in the short-story to novella length.  I've been trying my hand at games, tabletop scenarios, audio drama, even a few experimental forms.  If it's a medium, I'll try it.

I don't have a preferred genre.  Bending genres appeals more than filling out a niche.  Most of my work would fall into the following genres, styles, or topics:  cyberpunk, trans-humanist sci-fi, horror, noir, punk, historical fiction, low fantasy, contemporary, splatterpunk, xeno-fiction, military fiction (of all ages and calibres).  I tinker, fuse, and pick apart the above whenever possible.

Regular inspiration includes anything on my feeds, Toronto, transit systems, post-apocalyptic art, the book in my bag, odd turns of phrase, a TV show late at night.  Specific inspiration-of-choice includes work from Elizabeth Bear, Dan Abnett, S. M Stirling, Chuck Wendig, Neal Stephenson, Karen Lord, Chuck Palahniuk, Tony Burgess, the Gaslight Anthem, The Menzingers, Long Distance Calling, Agrifex.  Plenty of others exist.

A Bio, Reiterated

Glance at the top left-hand bar for the short version.  I'm a writer based out of Toronto.  I'm unrepresented, unpaid, and (currently) unpublished in print.  Web content is a different bucket of fish.  Temp jobs are my current source of paid bills and food.  Won't bore you with the details.

I'm currently studying journalism.  It's landed me a few jobs blogging or inside campus papers, but that's all.  The more I learn, the deeper I dig into the gargantuan morass of systems and cultures and laws and morals and characters that simmer together and become the world we live in.   The more I learn, the less time I have to write.  It might become my nine-to-five, or just a folder of clippings in a desk.  Good practice either way.

I've lived in or around Toronto my whole life.

I'm a humanist.  There's a bit of socialist, anarchist, (cyber) direct-democrat, and punk thought thrown in as well.  Tend to lean left, until I start hitting champagne socialists and uncritical bloggers.

I was a withdrawn kid.  Didn't start writing seriously until I began hanging out with the best friends of a friend I'd met playing in a military band.  All of them were incredibly talented kids.  Still are.  All of them were animators/illustrators, most doubled as writers, and a few tripled as musicians.  One designed games.  One danced.  This group has fragmented and been added to, but they remain an inspiration, a support, and a network that's done more for my work than ever.  Writing is my art thanks to them.

You get the drill.

A Re-Introduction of Sorts

This is now my third fourth attempt at a blog.  The other three fell through as a combination of shitty Internet, utter incompetence with Blogspot (or Wordpress), and a general lack of any self-expressive habits whatsoever.  All of them are fizzling out in obscure corners of the blogosphere, or suffered a delete-folder saturation bombing.

I figured I still needed my own space for new projects, updates, talking shop with artists and creatives of all shapes, stripes, and colours, and picking apart the world in general.  A new found interest in the anonymity and power of the seemingly archaic world of blogging in the day of mobile-tethered social media is going to keep me here.  I hope. 

If you're interested, pay attention.  If you aren't, move along.  Feedback wouldn't hurt either way.