It's the end of October, which means that the holiday season is just around the corner and the gift-buying frenzy of Christmas is already getting started. During the next couple months many, many Amazon Kindles will be sold and many, many more Kindle eBooks will be consumed. It's a very exciting time for KDP writers. All those Kindles flying off the shelves means more and more people getting access to Amazon's massive eBook library and to the books that we write!
If you happen to be one of those lucky new Kindle owners, or maybe you're just going to be catching up on some reading during the holidays, I'd like to give you a nudge to leave reviews on all the books you read. It's super easy to review a Kindle book (you don't even have to write anything, and you don't need to attach any of your own personal information to the review), and reviews are priceless to authors! Not only do reviews help us with feedback about our work, reviews also play a vital role in how our books are displayed on Amazon. The more reviews, the better. Especially 5-star reviews. And since we are entering into the holiday season, you can definitely think of your reviews as presents to the authors that you enjoy reading.
So feel free to spread holiday cheer this season and leave reviews for every Kindle eBook that you read. Your reviews will make KDP authors very, very happy and keep them writing all those wonderful books that you love to read.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Friday, October 20, 2017
Short Story SmackDown Part 6!
Published this a couple weeks ago and forgot to mention it here. This one got me through to the next round. Follow me on Wattpad or Twitter, or just keep reading this blog, for my next submission.
Monday, October 9, 2017
I3
Another entry in the Short Story SmackDown.
Jan's fingers danced across the keyboard, transferring data from the array of collectors that dotted the ship's hull into the ship's main database. The work was boring, but it had to be done and since Jan was the ship's data officer, he was the one that had to do it. Everything about Jan's existence was boring. His life revolved around boredom. Tedious, monotonous, uninteresting, repetitious, mind-numbing boredom
Jan's daily cycle spanned twenty-four standard hours and was designed to mimic a twenty-four hour day back on Earth. For every ten hours that Jan spent entering data and performing analytics, he would spend eight hours sleeping and six hours performing maintenance on the ship, exercising, and pursuing his own interests. This was Jan's schedule and it never varied. There were no weekends. There were no holidays. Jan didn't get sick days and there was never any variation or excitement. To date, Jan had been through the cycle twelve thousand five hundred and eighty-seven times.
He pressed his thumbs into temples and worked them in tight circles in a vain attempt at alleviating the fatigue headache that he could feel coming on. Boredom gave Jan the most wretched of headaches.
As he dug his thumbs into his skull, the hatch to the data pod hissed open. Jan didn't bother looking over his shoulder to see who was coming in. There was only one other person on the crew of this ship.
"Hello, Dean," Jan said mechanically. Dean was the pilot of the ship. His cycle was offset to Jan's so that there was always someone awake to mind the ship, even though the ship was set to run itself with no human interaction. In fact, there was little that Jan nor Dean could do to interfere with the autonomy of the ship even if they wanted to.
"Jan," Dean grunted. The two men had lived in such close proximity to each other for so long that they had long ago said everything that needed to be said. Exchanges comprised of more than a dozen syllables were rare.
Dean plugged a diagnostics drive into the instrument panel near Jan, waited for a confirmation relay, then unplugged the drive and left.
Jan stopped massaging his head and went back to work. His fingers danced across the keyboard, transferring data from the array of collectors that dotted the ship's hull into the ship's main database. The work was tedious, but the work had to be done and it was Jan's job to do it. He glanced down at his analog watch. His work sub-cycle was ending soon. He finished his final entries and ran an audit to verify the accuracy of his input, then pushed himself away from his console and yawned. The audit wrapped up just as his work sub-cycle finished.
Jan glanced out the portal near his station, peering into the vast nothingness of space that the ship was rocketing through. The scenery hadn't changed in almost three standard decades. There was nothing to see but endless blackness dotted by twinkling dots of light. Jan sighed heavily. The boredom was crushing.
After he locked down his workstation, Jan retreated to his living-pod. The small cylindrical space doubled as his bedroom and, in the worst case scenario, an escape pod. The space outside the pod was a common area filled with books, board games, and two black and white terminals that accessed the ship's computer system. The common area was the largest habitable area of the ship. Even though the ship was massive, most of its volume was dedicated to hauling freight. The area in which Jan and Dead lived and worked would be considered a barely liveable shoebox apartment back on Earth.
In his living-pod, Jan changed into his recreational clothing. Changing clothing for each new sub-cycle was mandatory. When the mission had first started, Jan had thought the necessity of changing for each sub-cycle had seemed superfluous. But now, he understood the wisdom of forcing the crew to change. Changing clothes helped mediate the paralyzing fatigue of perpetual boredom.
Once Jan was dressed, the floated from the pod back into the common area. He floated through a maze of dog-eared books. When Jan had first seen the common area, he had been amazed at how well endowed its library was. But after a few thousand cycles, the library had quickly started to seem smaller and smaller. By now, Jan had read every book in the collection several dozen times. He could recite most of them by rote memory though he couldn't remember the last time he had actually taken one out and read it. After so many cycles, the books were no longer a source of entertainment. Now, they were simply a painful taunting reminder of the life that he and Dean had foolishly left behind.
He floated to a dark corner of the common area and pulled himself up to one of the two terminals. These terminals were connected to a part of the ship's system that allowed the crew an innocuous access to the ship's resources without the possibility of harming the ship's vital systems. Jan's fingers danced across the keyboard as he logged into the terminal and then typed in the same command that he had typed in tens of thousands of times before: python Minesweeper.py.
The black terminal screen flickered and then was filled with a matrix of lines with an open and closed bracket in the middle of the screen to indicate Jan's starting location.
Life on the ship was suffocatingly boring. The unrelenting monotony of each cycle and the repetitive, drone-like nature of Jan's work was soul crushing. Jan's only escape was this simple game. It was the only game on the ship's computer and for reasons that Jan couldn't quite understand, it was the only activity that kept him from ending it all by popping an airlock and letting himself be sucked out into the cold dead vacuum of space.
When Jan had enlisted to serve on the crew of an Icebreaker, he had been too young and naive to understand just what he was signing up for. The pitch sounded enticing enough; get off planet and have an adventure in space, help quench the system's ever-growing thirst, and be given a massive pension when the ship returned. Jan never could have imagined how excruciatingly boring life aboard an Icebreaker would turn out to be.
Jan's ship, the I3, was part of the initial fleet of Icebreakers that had been sent out in all directions to harvest the Oort Cloud. In the standard years since the I3 had set out, there had been dramatic advances in technology. Modern ships could haul loads fifty times as large as what the I3 could manage and didn't even need a crew. But the part that made Jan grind his teeth at night was the fact that a modern ship could make the trip to the Oort Cloud and back in a small fraction of the time that it had taken the I3 to make it as far as it had. Jan and Dean knew this because they received infrequent updates from relay stations and other ships that they crossed paths with. Their own ship lacked manual control, a measure taken by the designers to prevent crews from giving up before the mission had been completed and returning home. It also lacked the ability to dock with other ships and many other modern conveniences that had become common in the newer Icebreaker fleet. Jan and Dean were on an obsolete mission with no way to abort and go back home.
Jan shook his head. It was what it was. It was no good doting on all that. He and Dean had spent countless cycles trying to hack into the ship's navigation system to turn it back toward home and had never had any success. All they could do now was complete the mission, get back home, and enjoy their fat pension with all the conveniences of a world that by all appearances had changed almost beyond recognition.
He turned his mind back toward the terminal. "This is dangerous," Jan muttered to himself. The first move in Minesweeper was always a total crapshoot. There was no way to predict where there might be a bomb. The first step was a leap of faith. Jan felt his pulse increase. The anticipation and uncertainty of the first move was thrilling in a way that made Jan forget the boredom that had normally had a stranglehold on his mind. He took a deep breath and pressed the up arrow.
The screen flickered, revealing the number of bombs in the spaces around Jan's position. He let out a sigh of relief, then took in the information and analyzed it. Jan had spent tens of thousands of hours performing analytics on data. Analyzing data had become second nature to him, like breathing. Jan could open his mind and navigate data without getting shell-shocked the way someone else without a data background might. Jan had watched Dean play Minesweeper and it was pathetic. Data wasn't Dean's strong suit. The numbers made Dean's head rock. Jan chuckled to himself, recalling how poorly Dean played. For the uninitiated, Minesweeper was a dangerous game.
As Jan played, the minutes and hours melted away. Boredom, headaches, bitterness; it all faded into the background. Jan was in the zone, his mind as sharply honed as a scalpel. He moved quickly and decisively, navigating the minefield like a dancer pirouetting across a stage.
"Hello, Jan," Dean said, floating past the terminal where Jan was playing. The greeting shattered Jan's zen-like state. Jan pushed the left arrow key and stepped on a mine. His game was over.
"Dean," Jan said, grinding his teeth. He tore his eyes away from the screen and peered down at his watch. His recreation cycle was almost over. He terminated his session and pushed himself away from the terminal with an almost mechanical detachment. He floated slowly toward his living-pod, unbuttoning his recreation suit as he drifted through the common area. He needed to change into the appropriate suit for the next sub-cycle. It was time to sleep.
Jan's fingers danced across the keyboard, transferring data from the array of collectors that dotted the ship's hull into the ship's main database. The work was boring, but it had to be done and since Jan was the ship's data officer, he was the one that had to do it. Everything about Jan's existence was boring. His life revolved around boredom. Tedious, monotonous, uninteresting, repetitious, mind-numbing boredom
Jan's daily cycle spanned twenty-four standard hours and was designed to mimic a twenty-four hour day back on Earth. For every ten hours that Jan spent entering data and performing analytics, he would spend eight hours sleeping and six hours performing maintenance on the ship, exercising, and pursuing his own interests. This was Jan's schedule and it never varied. There were no weekends. There were no holidays. Jan didn't get sick days and there was never any variation or excitement. To date, Jan had been through the cycle twelve thousand five hundred and eighty-seven times.
He pressed his thumbs into temples and worked them in tight circles in a vain attempt at alleviating the fatigue headache that he could feel coming on. Boredom gave Jan the most wretched of headaches.
As he dug his thumbs into his skull, the hatch to the data pod hissed open. Jan didn't bother looking over his shoulder to see who was coming in. There was only one other person on the crew of this ship.
"Hello, Dean," Jan said mechanically. Dean was the pilot of the ship. His cycle was offset to Jan's so that there was always someone awake to mind the ship, even though the ship was set to run itself with no human interaction. In fact, there was little that Jan nor Dean could do to interfere with the autonomy of the ship even if they wanted to.
"Jan," Dean grunted. The two men had lived in such close proximity to each other for so long that they had long ago said everything that needed to be said. Exchanges comprised of more than a dozen syllables were rare.
Dean plugged a diagnostics drive into the instrument panel near Jan, waited for a confirmation relay, then unplugged the drive and left.
Jan stopped massaging his head and went back to work. His fingers danced across the keyboard, transferring data from the array of collectors that dotted the ship's hull into the ship's main database. The work was tedious, but the work had to be done and it was Jan's job to do it. He glanced down at his analog watch. His work sub-cycle was ending soon. He finished his final entries and ran an audit to verify the accuracy of his input, then pushed himself away from his console and yawned. The audit wrapped up just as his work sub-cycle finished.
Jan glanced out the portal near his station, peering into the vast nothingness of space that the ship was rocketing through. The scenery hadn't changed in almost three standard decades. There was nothing to see but endless blackness dotted by twinkling dots of light. Jan sighed heavily. The boredom was crushing.
After he locked down his workstation, Jan retreated to his living-pod. The small cylindrical space doubled as his bedroom and, in the worst case scenario, an escape pod. The space outside the pod was a common area filled with books, board games, and two black and white terminals that accessed the ship's computer system. The common area was the largest habitable area of the ship. Even though the ship was massive, most of its volume was dedicated to hauling freight. The area in which Jan and Dead lived and worked would be considered a barely liveable shoebox apartment back on Earth.
In his living-pod, Jan changed into his recreational clothing. Changing clothing for each new sub-cycle was mandatory. When the mission had first started, Jan had thought the necessity of changing for each sub-cycle had seemed superfluous. But now, he understood the wisdom of forcing the crew to change. Changing clothes helped mediate the paralyzing fatigue of perpetual boredom.
Once Jan was dressed, the floated from the pod back into the common area. He floated through a maze of dog-eared books. When Jan had first seen the common area, he had been amazed at how well endowed its library was. But after a few thousand cycles, the library had quickly started to seem smaller and smaller. By now, Jan had read every book in the collection several dozen times. He could recite most of them by rote memory though he couldn't remember the last time he had actually taken one out and read it. After so many cycles, the books were no longer a source of entertainment. Now, they were simply a painful taunting reminder of the life that he and Dean had foolishly left behind.
He floated to a dark corner of the common area and pulled himself up to one of the two terminals. These terminals were connected to a part of the ship's system that allowed the crew an innocuous access to the ship's resources without the possibility of harming the ship's vital systems. Jan's fingers danced across the keyboard as he logged into the terminal and then typed in the same command that he had typed in tens of thousands of times before: python Minesweeper.py.
The black terminal screen flickered and then was filled with a matrix of lines with an open and closed bracket in the middle of the screen to indicate Jan's starting location.
Life on the ship was suffocatingly boring. The unrelenting monotony of each cycle and the repetitive, drone-like nature of Jan's work was soul crushing. Jan's only escape was this simple game. It was the only game on the ship's computer and for reasons that Jan couldn't quite understand, it was the only activity that kept him from ending it all by popping an airlock and letting himself be sucked out into the cold dead vacuum of space.
When Jan had enlisted to serve on the crew of an Icebreaker, he had been too young and naive to understand just what he was signing up for. The pitch sounded enticing enough; get off planet and have an adventure in space, help quench the system's ever-growing thirst, and be given a massive pension when the ship returned. Jan never could have imagined how excruciatingly boring life aboard an Icebreaker would turn out to be.
Jan's ship, the I3, was part of the initial fleet of Icebreakers that had been sent out in all directions to harvest the Oort Cloud. In the standard years since the I3 had set out, there had been dramatic advances in technology. Modern ships could haul loads fifty times as large as what the I3 could manage and didn't even need a crew. But the part that made Jan grind his teeth at night was the fact that a modern ship could make the trip to the Oort Cloud and back in a small fraction of the time that it had taken the I3 to make it as far as it had. Jan and Dean knew this because they received infrequent updates from relay stations and other ships that they crossed paths with. Their own ship lacked manual control, a measure taken by the designers to prevent crews from giving up before the mission had been completed and returning home. It also lacked the ability to dock with other ships and many other modern conveniences that had become common in the newer Icebreaker fleet. Jan and Dean were on an obsolete mission with no way to abort and go back home.
Jan shook his head. It was what it was. It was no good doting on all that. He and Dean had spent countless cycles trying to hack into the ship's navigation system to turn it back toward home and had never had any success. All they could do now was complete the mission, get back home, and enjoy their fat pension with all the conveniences of a world that by all appearances had changed almost beyond recognition.
He turned his mind back toward the terminal. "This is dangerous," Jan muttered to himself. The first move in Minesweeper was always a total crapshoot. There was no way to predict where there might be a bomb. The first step was a leap of faith. Jan felt his pulse increase. The anticipation and uncertainty of the first move was thrilling in a way that made Jan forget the boredom that had normally had a stranglehold on his mind. He took a deep breath and pressed the up arrow.
The screen flickered, revealing the number of bombs in the spaces around Jan's position. He let out a sigh of relief, then took in the information and analyzed it. Jan had spent tens of thousands of hours performing analytics on data. Analyzing data had become second nature to him, like breathing. Jan could open his mind and navigate data without getting shell-shocked the way someone else without a data background might. Jan had watched Dean play Minesweeper and it was pathetic. Data wasn't Dean's strong suit. The numbers made Dean's head rock. Jan chuckled to himself, recalling how poorly Dean played. For the uninitiated, Minesweeper was a dangerous game.
As Jan played, the minutes and hours melted away. Boredom, headaches, bitterness; it all faded into the background. Jan was in the zone, his mind as sharply honed as a scalpel. He moved quickly and decisively, navigating the minefield like a dancer pirouetting across a stage.
"Hello, Jan," Dean said, floating past the terminal where Jan was playing. The greeting shattered Jan's zen-like state. Jan pushed the left arrow key and stepped on a mine. His game was over.
"Dean," Jan said, grinding his teeth. He tore his eyes away from the screen and peered down at his watch. His recreation cycle was almost over. He terminated his session and pushed himself away from the terminal with an almost mechanical detachment. He floated slowly toward his living-pod, unbuttoning his recreation suit as he drifted through the common area. He needed to change into the appropriate suit for the next sub-cycle. It was time to sleep.
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