What you should REALLY ask when meeting someone new

by benmweilertNo Comments
Has this ever happened to you? You’ve just been introduced to someone you’ve never met before and, after almost instantaneously forgetting their name, you ask, “So, what do you do for a living?” This question, along with a few other antiquated ones like “Are you married?” or “Have any kids?” don’t really provide any insight into the life of the person you’ve just met. They only touch on the surface of their life, and sometimes that surface may be uncomfortable for them to answer. They may have just been fired from their job, are going on their 6th month of unemployment, are frustrated with being single, have just gotten divorced, or are having fertility issues with their spouse. As you can see, these questions will often receive lies for answers because they can probe a little too deep for a new acquaintance. I’d almost equate them with the three “no-no’s” of small talk: money, religion, and politics. Even if everything is going...
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1890: A San Francisco Steampunk Treat

by benmweilertNo Comments
One of the genres I have not had a lot of experience writing is that of steampunk. However, when I was given a lead to a short story anthology with the theme of “steampunk heroes”, an idea immediately came to mind. Of course, with this genre being new to my repertoire, I had quite a bit of research to do in order to meet the theme and genre requirements. For those who are unaware, the steampunk genre has many interpretations, but in general it focuses on advanced technologies brought about by the industrial revolution in the Victorian era. What this boils down to is a lot of gears, brass, corsets, top hats, steam, and the color brown infused into the story’s setting and accouterments. Many consider steampunk to be a sub-set of historical fiction because of its known timeframe (the aforementioned Victorian era). Consequently, historical accuracy can help to make the story believable, even if it has certain technological advances well...
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Which Hunter

by benmweilertNo Comments
Being concise is one of the standards of superior writing. Unfortunately, when you're writing the first draft of your novel in a month, your mind might insert a lot of "filler" words. I've had this problem for years, but recently have come across a simple solution to help my manuscripts "cut the fluff" during the editing phase. For some background, one of my beta readers for The Third Degree noticed the word "that" popping up more often than it should. My solution at the time was to replace most of the "that" with "which." I had always heard the advice "don't use that," so instead of eliminating the word from my writing, I merely shifted it to a different word. Now that I've received notes back on The Constellation Tournament it appears I've been found out. A completely different beta reader was distracted by the enormous amount of times I used "which." Recognizing the problem, I set about trying to find a...
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Hometown Prophets

by benmweilertNo Comments
A few weeks ago, I was perusing some forums and came across a thread that essentially boiled down to this: “I’m pouring all of my energy into my art and my family and friends don’t care and don’t want to support me.” To be honest, this struck a bit of a chord with me as well. When you pick up a book in a store, do you know how long it took the author to write? Do you know how many revisions were needed to polish it into a publishable work? Do you know how much work it takes to get the word out? Granted, if it was sold in a store, there was probably a publisher helping the author to get to that point, but this just highlights the issue that independent and self-published artists face. Mainly, how do we build a base of people who would want to read what we’ve written? Of course, the first thought is that...
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Nuclear Pasta

by benmweilertNo Comments
As a writer who tries to be "surreptitiously educational," one of the tenets of my fictional works is that the science in them is at least somewhat realistic to how things work in the real world. Granted, they are still works of fiction, but I want there to be just enough of a scientific reality to them that my readers' interest would be piqued enough that they might learn these scientific concepts are at play in our universe. Consequently, I don't mind using Wikipedia as one of my sole sources for research. One of the problems with using Wikipedia for my writing research is the tangential research that ends up being added to the singular topic I wanted to learn about. This, in turn, leads to me wanting to include more and more interesting scientific concepts in my writing. In my first set of books, The Fluxion Trilogy, I tried to cram too many references into each one of them, a...
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The Paper Anniversary

by benmweilertNo Comments
As a newlywed, the first anniversary kind of sneaks up on you. Everything leading up to your marriage is scheduled out because there's a big production to put on: your wedding. Meeting with caterers, florists, and venue owners makes the time go by quickly, but there's a specific end-date that's being worked toward. Once the honeymoon is over and you've both returned to your new life together, there's not that much to "look forward to" in terms of big events. Time passes as you both get to know each other better and before you know it, your first anniversary is upon you. Traditionally (depending on which tradition you're following), the gift for a first anniversary is paper. This is a vague enough item that could be construed in many different ways. As an author, I felt obligated to write something. To be honest, I almost forgot that my anniversary was coming up. The holidays were so busy that I hadn't realized they...
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