Been A While

What can I say? Haven't had much to report. Work was bringing me down, but I'm over it...for now.
Took a mini-vacation. Basically, I had a week and a half off work, and I put it to good use. I rested, I played guitar, went out with friends, and got the last 160 pages of my novel into the computer. Draft 2, here I come.
I even wrote a short script, and finished getting a short story into the computer. It's kind of a good feeling. On the one hand, I feel rested, and on the other, I feel like I've accomplished a lot.
I haven't been reading as much as I'd like, so it's time to step that up. Still enjoying "Improbable" and then it's gonna be back to scifi books. Got "The Skinner" and "Cowl" by Neal Asher, and I can't wait to get into them, cause I know I won't be able to put them down. I’ll fly through those books like I did "Gridlinked" and "The Line of Polity". If only "Brass Man" would come out in this country of mine.
I'm probably gonna stray from my reading list for a little while. I need to stay in a sci fi frame of mind to get through the 2nd draft of my novel. I know there's a lot of sci fi on the list to begin with, but I need a particular brand(s) of SF. Neal Asher fits into that, as well as, in a way, China Mieville. But I also need to get into, (I think) "Live without a Net", an anthology edited by Lou Anders. And this Mundane SF Manifesto has me realizing that I need to get caught up on SF and address a few things in my novel.

Not that I believe everything they're saying. The thing with Manifesto’s and Hard SF vs Soft is, well, to sound lame...it takes the fun out of reading a good story. I like stories with great characters. And I like SF because in between the lines is a "What if?" People have encouraged me to not stress over loading my stories with science that explain how plausible my "what if's" are. This is because I am not trying to write Hard SF. I guess it's more adventure SF, but always (in my attempts, anyway) with a sociological SF slant. So I guess my stories aren't so much about "What if this tech were possible?" but closer to "How would ORDINARY people be affected by it?" I’m not being very clear. This is tough. I guess I’m thinking more about consequences. Less “the guy who builds a killer robot and how” and more “the girl who read about the killer robot and how it reminds her of her of her father and makes her go insane and kills people”
LOL

Okay, that was a pathetic example. I’m tired and gotta think about this some more. More proof that I need a life.

Now that I think of it, I never did finish Clarke’s RAMA series. I gotta do that, cause I never said I didn’t like Hard SF. Not when it’s written well. And is fun.