NaNoWriMo 2017: Announcing My Science Fiction Story

I'm proud to reveal the cover and synopsis for my upcoming National Novel Writing Month science fiction story, Adrift!

Synopsis:

Hurtling through vast, empty space as it flees from a slaughter, the small interplanetary vessel called Spero is barely keeping its six crew members alive. With the engine badly damaged, the navigation, scanning, communication, and weapons systems – all but the vital life support systems are inoperable, leaving the ship unable to stop or change course. It's only a matter of time before it collides with an asteroid, encounters a fully-operational enemy ship, or completely runs out of power, leaving its inhabitants to suffocate and freeze to death. The only thing standing between a chance for survival and certain death is the crew, as long as they don't succumb to clashing ideals, shifting loyalty, and the knowledge that they may already be standing in their very own coffin.

Until then, everything is adrift.

I've dabbled with sci-fi in short story form, and one of my previous years' NaNoWriMo stories could maybe technically be called sci-fi, but this is going to be my first full-length full-fledged science fiction story and I couldn't be more excited to try and do this genre half as well as I've experienced it done by others!

Revisiting My Childhood Comic Book Collection 13 Years Later

After 13 years, I've started collecting comic books again.

How I First Got Into Comic Books

Sometime around the year 2000, I played a demo of the Spider-Man video game on a Playstation Underground Jampack disc. Prior to this, I had little to no knowledge of the world of comic books or the super heroes that populated them, and I just assumed such were the things that "lame nerds" were into. Little did I realize at the time that I was a lame nerd who had been avoiding my destiny.

I immediately fell in love with the demo, and more importantly, with Spider-Man. I had no idea that a super hero could be so fun, and playing as one tickled a part of my brain that made me yearn to be something more spectacular and amazing than I ever could be – I wanted to be Spider-Man. I wanted to shoot webbing at foes, jump thirty feet in the air, sling across the city, and climb walls with ease.

I bought the game (under the pretense of it being a birthday gift for my brother - but I swear it was on his wishlist!) and played it often. Not only was the gameplay top-notch for the time, but the story and characters really resonated with me. I needed more Spider-Man, and eventually I figured out how to get it.

After presumably hearing me talk endlessly about how cool Spider-Man was, my dad helped me to locate and dust off the phone book and find if there were any comic stores in the area. As fortune would have it, there was one called Collector's Edge Comics that was within driving distance. He took me there, where I bought my first ever comic book.

I'm fairly certain that comic book was Ultimate Spider-Man volume 1 issue 12, which featured a new and badass-looking version of Electro on the cover.

Ultimate Spider-Man issue #12 (2001)

I didn't realize until later how lucky I was to have picked that issue up at random, because it's pretty much the first issue of the Ultimate Spider-Man series in which Peter gets to really be Spider-Man in all his glory. He fights bad guys, he makes jokes, and he saves the day.

Later, the first Spider-Man movie came out. I postponed my birthday party several months in order to spend it taking my friends to go see the movie on the first Saturday of its release. The movie was amazing (and shattered records and expectations at the time). My birthday cake was Spider-Man themed. I was gifted two Spider-Man tee shirts and several other Spider-Man related gifts.

By this time, I had already purchased a Spider-Man encyclopedia so I could learn everything possible about the wall-crawler, because Wikipedia was barely a thing yet.

I went on purchasing new issues at random, until I eventually found another comic book store in the area called Lost World of Wonders, which had huge bins full of older issues. (I later realized that the other, smaller comic book store had old issues as well, but they were less-invitingly kept hidden in shut boxes behind the counter.) I couldn't believe how many there were, and having learned more about the history of Spider-Man from the encyclopedia, I became obsessed with the idea of finding and collecting issues from storylines that I'd read about.

That's when I really became a collector. I was obsessed. I told my friends about the comic book stores and my latest purchases, and we'd talk about comics and our favorite heroes endlessly, eventually writing and drawing our own comic books to share with each other.

But then something changed, and I wasn't thinking about and collecting comic books as much, until I eventually stopped almost entirely. Puberty has a way of making you reprioritize your childhood obsessions.

A lot has changed since then. I've finished school, gotten married, bought a house, have a full-time job with benefits, and I stress about all that fun grown-up stuff like money and not having enough of it. Throughout everything, I hadn't really thought about comic books much. Honestly, I actively tried to distance myself from the nerds in high school because I desperately didn't want to be associated with that label. I avoided the very things that I would later realize defined who I was.

Revisiting My Childhood

Only recently, I've realized that it's stupid for me to avoid that part of my personality. I've realized that it's possible to be a huge nerd and be cool at the same time. I've realized that life is too short to deny myself the things I love.

Admittedly, it helps that nerdy things are cool now, too.

So I dug up my old collection of comic books and made a spreadsheet to document every single one, with columns for publisher, starring character(s), series, issue, year of publication, and any significant notes. Because it turns out I also love organizing things and making spreadsheets. Yup. I'm a huge nerd. No turning back now.

Here's the resulting data organized into neat little graphs:

As you can see, my three most collected characters are Spider-Man, Venom, and Spawn. If you know the basics of those three characters you'll think that's kind of funny, because Venom is basically a more badass and evil (most of the time) version of Spider-Man, and Spawn is basically Venom if he was a demon from hell. Each one is a mere stepping stone away from the last.

Although it seems like I collected a lot of comic books in 2003 and suddenly stopped, I most likely collected new issues in that year and then moved on to old issues in 2004, eventually stopping collecting altogether sometime late 2004 or early 2005.

This last one is pretty self-explanatory. I had a heavy bias toward Marvel, mostly because of my obsession with Spider-Man, including buying "What If?" issues featuring him, as well as my collection of Venom comics. Interestingly, most of my DC comics were ones I simply grabbed on various Free Comic Book Days because they were free, though I have a Superman issue that I bought simply because I was really curious how such a "perfect" character could be written interestingly at all. If I were to go back in time I'd probably tell my younger self to check out Batman in particular, but it should be noted that the movie Batman Begins didn't come out and make Batman cool again until 2005 so my younger self would probably laugh at my current self for suggesting something so absurd.

I Take Pride in My Collection

Even now, I don't feel like any of the time or money I spent on comic books could be considered a waste. I'm actually really proud of myself for some of the issues I managed to get my hands on. I especially had an affinity for grabbing first issues of some cool series, including:

• Biker Mice From Mars issue #1
• Predator issue #1
• Spawn #1
• Spider-Man (1990) issue #1
• Spider-Man 2099 issue #1
• Web of Spider-Man issue #1

And more. Though I need to draw special attention to the issue #1 I'm most proud of, because it happens to be the first issue of one of my favorite series, features my favorite character, and is the oldest comic book I own:

What If? issue #1 (1977)

That thing originally sold for 50 cents to some lucky kid, and I had to spend $15 to get it 27 years later. I remember the purchase fondly, because my dad took my friend and I to a miniature comic book convention/pop-up market in town with only $20 in my pocket to spend. I wandered off to check out some vendors on my own and came back with this beauty and almost none of my money left. My dad was confused why I had spent almost all my money on a single issue instead of trying to get a couple different ones for less, and I explained to him that this was the holy grail for me. What If? issue #1, which happened to feature Spider-Man, from 1977. Wow.

I've only ever opened and read it once.

The Start of Another Era

As you can probably expect, revisiting my childhood passion also reignited my passion for it. This is in part because comic books are just cool, but also because there are some holes in my collection that my organization-loving brain desperately needs to fill.

To celebrate my golden birthday, my parents took me out to eat at a restaurant in Bay View, which is an area of Wisconsin that I have very little familiarity with. On the walk to the restaurant, I noticed that there was a little comic book shop just down the block called, you guessed it, Collector's Edge Comics. It was one of their three locations that I hadn't been to yet because the one I grew up going to was much closer. Well, after dinner I mentioned it a few times and how cool it would be to go in and "just look around."

Folks, comic books have changed since I was 14 years old. There's just so many of them, and so many versions of each one. I walked into Collector's Edge and my head started spinning.

My wife had previously expressed an interest in comic books, so I focused on looking for something for her first, since that seemed like a more focused task than looking for any of the dozens of things I would want to find for myself. I decided to look for a strong female hero that odds were she would enjoy, so naturally I looked for Gwenpool and Spider-Gwen, because I knew for a fact she would like Gwenpool's Deadpool-like humor and that she could relate to Spider-Gwen. My wife really wanted to start at the beginning (duh) and the store didn't have a copy of Gwenpool issue #1 in stock, but they did have Spider-Gwen issue #1, so I suggested that to her, and she held onto it.

Now it was time to look for something for myself. Where oh where could I start? I desperately needed to find issue #4 of the 1995 comic Venom: Separation Anxiety, because I own issues #1-3 and it's a 4-part series. The only problem was I couldn't remember if it was that series I needed or Venom: Lethal Protector (of which I later remembered I own issue #1 but not #2-6), and I was having trouble finding those anyway. So I checked out the crate full of Spider-Man comics, and that's where I found issue #1 of the 2016 ongoing series Spider-Man/Deadpool.

Spider-Man/Deadpool issue #1 & Spider-Gwen issue #1

And so officially begins my second era of collecting comic books, as well as my wife's first.

Final Thought: Why couldn't all this nerdy stuff have been cool when I was a teenager?

Tips for Effective Blogging and Getting Hits and Stuff

Introduction

A while ago I wrote up a lengthy email to one of my coworkers with tips on effective blogging. Now, I know it may seem like I'm not an expert in getting lots of hits based on this very blog, but keep in mind that this blog is not currently designed to get lots of hits - it's literally just a place for me to shout out into the void whatever's on my mind, regardless of who cares. However, the few times that I have put these tips into practice on my blog, they have been proven to be effective in getting more hits. So I figured I'd share them with you guys, the void, as well.

Okie dokie, here are your lessons:

Blog About Something

Firstly, figure out what you want to blog about. What do you have expertise or interest in that other people will be genuinely interested to read about? This is where I failed, because I created this blog before thinking it through and figured I'd just write whatever came to my mind. Look where that's gotten me. Nobody cares about most of my posts after they're a month old because most of my blog posts are updates on my life and writing progress - things only my family and friends on Facebook really care to read about - but the ones that are most popular are the ones that offer the most amount of people with the most amount of value.

My all-time most read blog post is an advertising critique. Not only did I fill it with keywords to attract web searches, but it combines several topics that people are interested in reading; critique, advertising, smoking, and I may have mentioned the Superbowl at least once, which doesn't hurt my traffic either. My second highest is another ad critique, and my third is a review of the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie. There's a clear pattern here. People love reviews and critiques. They love when somebody is talking to them like friends used to face-to-face before the internet came along and changed the very fabric of social interaction. For a while my largest traffic came from Germans who really, really wanted to read about RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Not sure why Germans, specifically, but the point is that clearly people were feeling pretty nostalgic (and some game company has since taken advantage of that nostalgia and released a competitor game in the same style) and were looking to read about an old video game.

So, unless you're really, really, really good or already famous, don't write about yourself; pick a topic that is interesting to others. It can be broad (ex: "I review books") or narrow (ex: "I review every vampire book ever published") but it must be interesting to others. Bonus points if you pick a super specific niche and put yourself through agony for others' entertainment, like the aforementioned example of reading and reviewing every vampire book ever.

Utilize Your Metadata

Most of us don't want to spend money on advertising. That's why you'll want to work on your metadata. Metadata is the stuff that search engines (Google, GoDuckGo, and that other one) see and use to categorize your site. IE: use keywords. For example, my current meta description for my blog is "a blog about stuff" which is absolutely terrible, unhelpful, and I can't believe I got this far into lecturing you about how much I know about blogging and SEO when clearly I'm an idiot.

To reiterate, my blog is not currently designed to get hits. Do as I say, not as I do.

Ugh. Anyway. You want to change that to something descriptive and full of relevant keywords like, using the previous example, "books," "vampires," "fantasy," "review," and "reading." These are subjects that you intend to fill most of your blogging with, so that when someone googles "what's the worst vampire book ever written" your website has a better chance of showing up in the results. It will probably show up very low in the results at first, but write good content (more on that in a paragraph) for a while and give it some time. If you don't know where to find your metadata on your site/wordpress itself, put the URL of your blog into any one of those search engine spider simulators that you can find all over the web to find out what it currently is, then search around for how to change it on your domain.

Content is King, or Key, or Crucial, or Whatever

This goes back to what I was just saying above about selecting your topic. If you have something even as specific as "I review books" then you can skip this lesson because you have a good grasp on what you're going to write. Just write really, really good reviews.

If your topic is, despite my advice, less obviously valuable to others - like you want to blog about writing vampire stories - you may be wondering how you can possibly get people to care about little ol' you.

For that, I prescribe that you check out this post I wrote as an example. The post is designed to be like some sort of tutorial for people who are struggling to write the second draft of their novel, except it's really not that at all. That post, like so many others of mine, is just me rambling about the things I'm slowly figuring out in my own writing life. I just tweaked the concept from "here's what I learned" to "here's what you should know" - in doing so, I shift focus from me to you. People Google stuff like "help with second draft" all the time, so when they get to that page they're not reading about someone else struggling with the same problem, but someone who has a solution for theirs. (TWIST: I didn't know what the hell I was doing.)

So the lesson here is that even if you're blogging about you, don't make it about you. Figure out how you can turn your stories and experiences into something that can benefit others, because nobody is going to care about your struggles until you're famous for something and they want to read your detailed backstory so they can flesh out your Wikipedia page.

Oh yeah, and stick to a regular posting schedule so your readers can turn reading your blog into a habit. Be consistent. You want them to return regularly.

Keywords are also Key ... Words

Keywords are super important when writing. You want to include every possible thing that someone interested in your blog post might search for, so use a "related keywords" tool like http://keywordtool.io to find them. For example, if you want to blog about being a fantasy story writer; when I put "fantasy" into that site, I get "fantasy baseball," "fantasy baseball rankings," and "fantasy island" as the top three results, so make sure you don't use the word "fantasy" in your blogging without also including "novel" or "fiction" immediately after it. Specificity will lead to better results because you don't want to get your content mixed up with someone betting on their fantasy league.

Type in "fantasy fiction" into that site, scroll around, and you start to see some better results like "how to write a fantasy fiction novel." Although the actual statistics in these tools are typically locked behind a paywall, it's pretty safe to assume that that's a fairly common internet search by people who you want to visit your blog. Use that to your advantage. Include that phrase and others like it when you can without forcing it (ex: "when I first started learning how to write a fantasy fiction novel...") or just straight up write a blog post titled "how to write a fantasy fiction novel" and make it a really, really good post. Do you catch my drift?

Google is also a great tool for the same thing. Type "fantasy fiction" into Google and either don't press enter so you see the next suggested words or press enter and scroll to the bottom where you'll see:

Searches related to fantasy fiction:
fantasy fiction podcast
fantasy fiction books for adults
fantastic fiction books
fantasy fiction authors
fantasy fiction reddit
fantasy fiction youtube
fantasy fiction online
fantasy fiction podcast wiki

Which gives you a really good idea for what people are looking for when they search for "fantasy fiction" because those are Google's updated popular relevant searches - these are super valuable in telling you what people are looking for right now that you could be providing them with. Use those words and talk about those things whenever you can without sounding forced - rule number one is thou shalt not pander to the Google overlords, so don't just throw keywords into your post if they don't belong. Search engines will actually punish your site for trying to trick them like that.

Do More Research

It absolutely cannot be overstated that everything I'm saying here is really, really basic stuff and doesn't even cover all the rest of the basic stuff. If you really want to be a good blogger, go out and do some more research. Become an expert in your topic and in blogging itself. Maybe team up with some like-minded people to blog as a group so you share the burden and can utilize each other's talents.

Okay, I think that's all I've got for now. Hopefully this wasn't too boring, but I guess that's another lesson; DON'T BE BORING! Even if the subject is kind of dry, spice it up with your personality and photos you took of cute animals!

Best of luck to you!
-Ryan