For all at the convention in Milwaukee, I have arrived, gone through registration and opening ceremonies, and am now relaxing in room 379.

FurSquared has begun and I've already run into a few friends whom I didn't know would be here. Very nice!

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

Well, time to hit the road. I'm heading to a brand-new furry con in Milwaukee this weekend called "Fur Squared". I donated some money to them a year-or-two ago to help with start-up funds so, now, I get to attend as a "Super Sponsor". I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend with friends and friends-I-haven't-met-yet!

Yours,
Sylvan

Upon waking up, I was hit by something I’ve not experienced (to this fullness) in quite a while. I was sad: completely, to my core, sad. It arose from a cluster of news reports I’d gone to bed with: a young boy who had been bullied to the point of attempting suicide, continued work by the wealthy to control everything at the expense of the ordinary, the general state of those in poor health. This sadness would be normal in most circumstances. But waking up to it, feeling it hold you down in bed to the point where you can’t get up for more than an hour and a half, that’s depression.

Depression isn’t feeling sad. That emotion accompanies depression. Being depressed is feeling overwhelmed, burdened, trapped, stymied, helpless, frustrated, and unable to change or even influence your circumstances. Whether or not you really are that much behind-the-eightball is irrelevant. Depression is the state of mind that insists that you are that mired in hopelessness and very little within you can pull you out.

Kindly, physical touch is often a solution as can be getting out of your immediate environs to break away from the images that reinforce those underlying feelings. But the long-term solutions depend on the nature of the depression. Diet helps. Uplifting words help. Changing your circumstances, fundamentally, definitely helps. But in the long term, the thing that carries a depressed person up from the depths most often is when someone reaches out, takes their hand, and asks them to just hang out and be friends.

Yours,
Sylvan

Okay, I have the day off but after a few hours of working on some gaming stuff (and fixing something in the kitchen), I find that I don't want to watch TV, see a movie, clean house, read, or write. What's wrong with me? I have a whole day off! Why can't I use it?

Yours,
Sylvan

I've now watched all of Dexter. I've seen every episode, in order, during some binge-watching on Netflix. I have to say, it was excellent. I'm not entirely sure what everyone's problem with the ending is.

I mean, yeah, I can see room for improvement.

In the last episode, I'd have cut the last 2 minutes; just leave it with the single scenes of the phone call at Miami Metro and the other scene with the newspaper article. That would have been stronger.

But the existence of those last 2 minutes doesn't make the story any less good. Rather, I think that season 8 made up for some of the jumbled mess that was season 7. And y'know what? Even if season 7 was the worst of them from a story-telling perspective, it led the story in a fascinating direction allowing the resolutions (happy or sad, fulfilling or not) in season 8.

The best season was season 4 with Trinity. A close second were seasons 2 and 6 (with Doakes and Doomsday, respectively) tied at that position. These were the seasons with the most interesting, nuanced characters as well as the most interesting crimes and circumstances that Dexter found himself in.

Yes, there were plenty of tropes that made me wince in a few seasons and several egregious instances of Deus Ex Machina that bothered me (when it seemed like the writers were just aiming for titillation or thrills over comprehensibility and story) but those faded into the background to near non-existence during the good seasons. And season 8 was one of those.

The "Jump the Shark" moment? The moment when the show would never, again, reach the same heights due to something stupid or contrary to the rules of the show as set forth, previously, with inadequate explanation as to how it could be justified? For me, that had to be the "snow globe room" with Hannah in Season 7.

...And that's about all I can say without doing any spoilers. Those who know the show will understand where I am coming from while those who have not seen it, will still have plenty of surprises to come. Since I view the statute of limitations on spoilers to be about 1 year, the only spoilers I've specifically alluded to came 2 years ago.

Deal with it.

"Dexter" was a great show, one I will always treasure, and showed how "dark" can be very entertaining.

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

I've been told that in some programs the .rtf file that I uploaded earlier today for my short story, "The Duelists of Menagerie: Puzzles" (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12651269/), has some odd line errors in it. The thing is, I don't see it on my end. I don't see it in Google Drive nor in Microsoft Word.

Has anyone seen this in any of my other stories?

Does anyone know what causes this?

Yours,
Sylvan

So, what do you eat for The Big Game?

And why does "The Big Game" sound like something macrophiles should take notice of?

What food do you serve for, as Stephen Colbert would put it, "The Superb Owl"?

I'm fond of wings, chili, tacos, sausages with peppers & onions ...

What are your traditions (whether or not you like Owls)?

Inquisitively Yours,
Sylvan

Just weighed in after a solid week of diligently watching my food intake. No snacking at work, sticking to my regimen, eating only 1,900 calories per day, at most. I logged a 7.8 pound loss.

This is odd.

My last three weigh-ins have been curious. Yes, I gained a lot of weight from Hallowe'en through the holidays and only just got back into it, this past January. My weights were:

January 5th ... 297.2 lbs
January 12th ... 287.8 lbs (loss of ~10 pounds)
January 19th ... 291.4 lbs (gain of ~3.5 pounds)
January 26th ... 283.6 lbs (loss of ~7.5 pounds)

But I think I've figured out why.

It's a bit disgusting (but also real): I think I've been full of shit.

Basically, when you diet, you stop producing solid bowel movements as much as you would if you were eating more. That's my theory, at least. And since I've been weighing in on Sunday mornings, regularly, sometimes I've not relieved myself in a few days. Yesterday, around Noon, I did. Today, my weight comes in as it does. So perhaps last week, I was full of it (and reading artificially high) while today, I'm normal and reading rather low.

I think that's the answer. It does mean that if I weigh in at the same time each week but don't have that weigh-in sync up with my trips to the toilet, my weight will appear to fluctuate much more wildly.

Food for thought, I guess.

At least my total net loss, so far, is 13.6 lbs. That's worth celebrating!

Yours,
Sylvan

The other day, I posted a journal in which I criticized Weasyl. I did so based off of my early attempts to upload my stories, there, without having to deal with the frustration of unsupported file formats, lost formatting, and ease-of-use of their tools. I feel I should have been a bit more clear. I also should have tried it, again, since previous to my posting things may have changed.

I did try again, since, and found that while one thing changed, most others had not.

Fandom is diverse, both in the content of its membership and its choice of forums for sharing art, writing, music, and other creative creations. And while this flexibility in options is great for those consuming the art, those who produce it have to spend an increasingly long time with each submission making sure that it meets the unique needs and formatting of the target site. If a creator wants to expose their work to the widest possible audience, they must now post to at least five different sites. This is, in and of itself, not a bad thing. But it is cumbersome.

Weasyl, for instance, used to accept text submissions only in .txt and .pdf format. The former is a problem because it does not preserve bolding, italics, tabbed indents, or other elements crucial to storytelling. It’s fine for simple role-play texts and one-off bits of un-emphasized text (like emails or forum posts) but for a writer, it’s pretty useless. The latter, PDF, is more of a difficult beast. It fixes widths and tries to carry everything with it in one, big block. It is not easily converted to an HTML format and, as far as I can tell, Weasyl (like Deviant Art) does not do any conversion. It just throws up the link onto the site.

What I am looking for is:

1. My stories to be uploaded and displayable on a responsive-design site so that it can be read via desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device,
2. My formatting to be preserved,
3. Simple indexing options whether that be folder-classification or keywords (and phrases),
4. The ability to attach “cover art” in a common image format (GIF, JPG, and PNG are the most common),
5. A space to provide author’s notes, a forward, an afterward, etc., and
6. A way to rate or classify it based upon content (such as “adult”, “extreme”, etc…).

Not all sites offer these options. Those that do, offer them differently from each other.

And this is fine.

I’ve been in Web development long enough to appreciate that each site should not be the same. Each site should reflect the understanding that the site’s owner(s) and maintainer(s) has of their members’ needs and usage habits. In short, Weasyl has an idea of how Weasyl members use (and want to use) their site. This will differ from Deviant Art, SoFurry, InkBunny, Fur Affinity, and every other art sharing site out there. This is how it should be.

But my problem comes in the proliferation of sites to use. With so many members moving back and forth, creating new sites, adopting new standards, it is creating moving targets for creators to hit.

I cannot spend so many hours each day participating on each site, answering questions, posting Journals, uploading/maintaining my creations, “faving” work, and providing feedback. An artist, of any type, needs to do these things if they are serious about their art. They need to engage the audience, these days. But with so many portals for engagement the ability to do so quickly requires the artist to either be spending a massive amount of time on such updates or deciding not to be serious about their art reaching their target audience.

Weasyl, to use as an example since so many folk have been talking about it of late, now also accepts Google Drive submissions. This sounds good but presents some serious questions. First, they tell you to use the share link in the upload process. Since I keep all my work on Google Drive locked-down save for those few people I (momentarily) allow to see it, I do not use those links except under rare circumstances. Usually this happens when I’m seeking a review. But the instructions on Weasyl do not say whether or not the story will be imported or if they’ll just link to it like they would with a PDF that they’ve uploaded (just providing a link). I will never want this to happen with my stories. Second, when you manually update and try to format writing, the tools that are provided do not work in a normal, proscribed way. For example, say you want to create a numbered list. The standard icon for this, in use on social media sites around the world, usually works by selecting whatever lines you want formatted and then clicking the button. The whole lines, found by where they begin and ranging until the next line break, are automatically formatted into shape. Weasyl does not do this. Rather, it inserts pseudo-code into the exact places selected. This would be fine if it were that way in the rest of the world.

In short, there are idiosyncrasies to Weasyl that hamper my ability to quickly and easily upload and share my work. There are questions as to whether or not there are privacy concerns since I do not like opening up my Google Drive to anyone for very long.

These are my problems with the site.

I have similar problems with InkBunny, Fur Affinity, and Deviant Art. I do not hate Weasyl but it was the last of these I joined and, so, from my perspective it is the site asking me to change how I do things to suit their system.

The only site that truly offers what I need is SoFurry. A simple cut-n-paste from an open Word or Google Drive document preserves all my formatting. They have auto-complete for their tagging suggestions and allow both large-size cover art as well as separate thumbnail art.

But even if all of the sites worked in the same way, the problem would still exist that it takes hours to update each of them. A single short story, given away for free, would take quite a bit of my time. I know. I’ve tried. And with the different formats, it takes hours.

I cannot keep up with the fandom as it goes through its periodic diaspora. (Look the word up; it’s cool.)

So, I propose this: a centralized, no-frills site, app, or browser add-on for the creators. We need something that will allow us to fill in a form, once, and get our work distributed across all sites to which we belong. Until this exists, the growing dilution and spread of our fandom membership will, likewise, fracture our artists. For visual artists, maybe it is easier. I do not know for sure. I do know that formatting text in multiple files for multiple sites is time-consuming and a pain in the ass.

Can this be done? I know it would probably be a huge project. Could I help? Maybe: but I’m not a coder of API scripts. How can we find people willing to do this and, further, keep up with API or site changes/additions going forward? I wish I knew.

But that’s my problem. I have all these people I want to keep up with and the only way to do so is to spend hours, daily, trying just to run in place. For people who are members of these sites, who want to just choose one and enjoy what it has to offer, the problem is not so great. But for creators, for the artists and writers, the hill is getting steeper and the time commitment to supplying free art is getting longer.

I hope a solution can be found. Until then, I’m not sure how I can keep pace with the diaspora. (There’s that word, again.)

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

Calling all coders...

Is anyone aware of an app or browser extension that can allow cross-posting to FurAffinity, Deviant Art, Weasyl, Ink Bunny, and So Furry all with one click? I'm really tired of spending hours uploading just 1 file to so many sites, each with their own requirements and limitations.

If no one knows of one, has anyone (with more API/coding experience than I) thought of creating something like this?

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

Say, guys, I have a Weasyl account but -honestly- it's not for me. It isn't good for uploading and formatting text files. Honestly? SoFurry is the best for that. They have excellent, easy-to-use editors that have me done in no time at all.

I'm not leaving FA; not even considering it.

But if you want to know the biggest reason I'm not really on Weasyl that much? Their text tools are very poor. I hope that will change.

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

I'm afraid things are a bit worse (although perhaps a bit better) for my friend whom I just went to visit in the hospital. It appears that, last Sunday, he did suffer two "mild" strokes that sent him to the E.R. And while we were originally told that they had ruled them out, the third, full stroke he had today was irrefutable.

Luckily, he hasn't had any damage to his motor cortex (or whatever it's called) and his physical body is fine. He has trouble speaking without slurring his words and has a bit of trouble understanding what people say to him, now and then.

Three friends and I drove out to see him (during rush hour in falling snow ... it took me 2.5 hours from when I left work 'til we got to the hospital, with brief stops on my part to pick up flowers and friends) and when we arrived, he was getting a CT-scan. When he was done, they told us we would only have a few minutes. So we chatted, lifted his spirits as much as we could, and then headed home.

They told him he'll need speech therapy and the cause was probably his diabetes. He's been unable to afford his medication for some time, now, and diet alone is not sufficient for controlling it.

While I'd offered him a place to stay while his wife is out of town it's pretty clear that if this is as bad as they say, I don't think I'll be able to care for him should bad things happen.

Still, he was very glad to see us despite how tired he was getting towards the end.

The gaming group, this coming weekend, will feel especially scant and empty without him there.

Yours,
Sylvan

Just got a call from a good friend's wife. It seems that he has been in the hospital since Sunday. Although they say he didn't have a stroke, he's suffering stroke-like symptoms: he is finding it hard to understand speech and cannot speak without slurring his words.

His wife is an overland trucker and is currently several states away and not due back until Saturday. Tomorrow I'll be heading out to the hospital to see how he's doing.

It's a bit stunning to have a close friend suddenly suffer from an unknown ailment like this. He's what they call a "delicate diabetic" and this probably resulted from that. We'll see. They're doing a CT scan, soon. How soon is "soon"? I don't know. We'll find out more, tomorrow.

Yours,
Sylvan

I spent Saturday morning doing baking that should last me a couple of weeks. I made 20 whole wheat English muffins (1 for breakfast and left-overs for bread pudding on weekends), 2 whole wheat loaves of bread, and 5 sandwich rolls. I also finally pulled the corned beef out of its brine and boiled it on Sunday. Now I have 2 weeks' worth of corned beef hash to make. :)

Yours,
Sylvan

I've been having trouble with my diet. I put on weight between Hallowe'en and the New Year. Basically: cravings. I get them every evening. And while I can stick to my diet on some days, all it takes is 1 binge to kill all my gains.

I'm going to try to mix it up. Perhaps stagnation is my biggest flaw. I've eaten the same meals for breakfast and lunch (and often, dinner) for over a year.

I'll try to come up with a list of recipes I can make in advance or prepare quickly for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. I'm also going to try to slow myself down by making all my food from scratch. For the remainder of January I'm going to give that a shot. This weekend, my intent will be to create whole wheat English muffins and some whole wheat bread. We'll see how that goes.

Yours,
Sylvan

I was writing, today, in between doing work. What came out was a bit odd. I like it, even though I'm not sure I'm going to ever do anything with it. So I guess I'll leave this here.

The character's name is Ramstel Dane but beyond that, I know nothing about him.

This is his introduction.

Months like this went beyond “terrible”, verging from the “catastrophic” into “apocalyptic”. The droning hum that filled the trees wasn’t from a helicopter, plane, new form of military hardware, or even a hobbyist’s toy jet. No technology seemed to exist anymore. As Ramstel dodged by moonlight between the gnarled boles of ancient, vine-hung trees and leaped across pools of algae-filed, stagnant water, he risked upwards glances at the giant hornets pursuing his shaggy form.

He wasn’t used to the expanded world his nose and ears revealed. And while navigating by moonlight was far easier in the blue-tinted landscape of his lupine vision, he still didn’t fully recognize his color-shifted world. Myths about dogs only seeing in black-and-white notwithstanding, had trouble adjusting. Having to do so as he fled the murderous insects only made matters worse.

His fur was damp: soaked with wetlands muck and, to a lesser extent, blood and ichor. The blood was his own. The ichor was not. The latter came from the first of the insects that had dive-bombed him. His claws may have been small but a seven-foot-tall werewolf could rip through the exoskeleton of any bug … even one the size of a German shepherd. But the sting of those wasps was like a sword. His right arm and shoulder each bore throbbing wounds that reminded him not to let the beasts get to close again. All he could do was keep running.

I had this image in my head of a world converted by the magic-like science of people from the far future, intending on "restoring" a sense of wonder in their past. They are temporal engineers and engaged in an undertaking to put humanity back on a path that would prevent or alter their sterile version of the universe from coming to be. And so while there is no magic, they have created things that simulate curses, spells, magic, and other such stuff while actively removing technological items.

Ramstel, in my mind, had been one of the people of the present when everything suddenly went haywire and the future-folk started their experiment. He survived an attack by a person converted by an artificial virus into a werewolf and contracted the disease, himself. Now, a month later, he's exhibiting his first change.

Why he's running, why he's fleeing giant hornets, where he's going, and what his motivation may be, are unknown to me.

It could be anything.

But for now, I'm just sharing this bit of whimsy with you.

Enjoy.

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

Hello, World,

This has been one roller-coaster of a year. It’s difficult to truly believe, to grasp to its core, all the things that have happened in my life, let alone to the world at large. At times 2013 seemed to be “just another year”. At others, it got low. But, for the most part, it was amazing.

And I have the pictures to prove it: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDrP243

What started with a gathering with friends in the middle of the cold and the snow went on to see me write a ton of short stories and make my first sales on Smashwords. I continued my series, “Shadows of NeverEarth”, and self-published two tales for sale: “Nightlights” and “In the Shadow of Titans”. The former, a horror story, was mostly an experiment in seeing how online self-publishing could work in my favor while the latter was a celebration of “giant monsters stomping cities”.

It was a year of a landmarks.

The election of 2012 had been impressive: Minnesotans turned back, for the first time in the country, a ballot measure aimed at enshrining homophobia in our state constitution by denying gays and lesbians the right to marry. We beat that horrific law and, the year following, finally got what we’d been fighting for: marriage equality. In May, the Minnesota State House and Senate both passed laws allowing people to marry for love, regardless of gender. Our governor, Mark Dayton, signed the bill on the capitol steps. I was there to see it and celebrate with all the rest. It was amazing! Then, on August 1st, the law became official: Minnesota became the latest in the states finally recognizing that gay and lesbian folk should be accorded the same rights as everyone else. I haven’t been so happy in years! I’ve been fighting for this most of my adult life. You have no idea how good and hopeful it makes you feel … how it counters the depression of years-gone-by when you were a second-class citizen. And, now—despite moments when I’d nearly given up—the battle is won!

Back on August 5th, 1988, I began running a tabletop role-playing game called “Vanguards of the Future”. It was a setting inspired by Marvel Comics’ “New Universe” series about “realistic” people with superpowers. It was set, ostensibly, in a world very much like our own but after an event that gave a small percentage of the population strange abilities. My own creation was similar but, since I’m a gamer, manifested in role-playing. Over the years, I even wrote stories about the world. It became semi-famous in local circles. This year was the 25th anniversary and concluded a year-long campaign that consolidated everything I had done before: all the games, all the stories, all the creativity of the “Vanguard” universe. On August 5th, 2013, I took a photo with several of my players on the spot in Roseville where the idea for the game had occurred to me, near my childhood home.

During the year, I also continued to work on my weight. I have gone up a bit towards the end of 2013 but the net loss from last year has been about 80 pounds. It’s a stunning accomplishment made all the more amazing by the fact that it happened so gradually, that I hadn’t really noticed. My pants size went down but that was so slow that at times it felt as if my diet was accomplishing nothing. But on August 15th, I celebrated 1 year on my diet and vowed to continue.

There were changes at work: employees were laid off in two rounds of departures and I got promoted to Senior Web Developer. I am now, through hard work and attrition, the person on my team with the longest time at the company. We only have one other team member with my span of time at Digital River … and he joined the company only six months before me in 2005.

There were all sorts of things happening: my annual conventions CONvergence and Midwest FurFest, a trip up to the North Shore to decompress, family birthdays, growing a beard again, keeping my hair long, visiting a start-up Renaissance Festival in Wisconsin, gaming, playing in a tabletop RPG rather than refereeing it, seeing over 20 plays at the Fringe Festival, exploring the food truck scene in the Twin Cities, discovering “Welcome to Night Vale”, baking a pumpkin pie in a pumpkin shell … lots of stuff!

I started seeing a guy, long distance, and am not sure where it’ll go but am happy to find out. James lives in Copenhagen and our relationship began with us trading emails over one of the stories I wrote. He, too, is an artist and we became very close through our correspondences. It has been one of the true highlights of this past year.

Then, in November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month again, completing the fourth in a series of books I began writing in 2005 (and had first conceived-of back in 2000). The use of NaNoWriMo to spur my writing has been just what I needed. I don’t think I would have ever been forced to produce so many words, to produce so many mistakes, without it. By participating all these years, I’ve honed my skills to the point where I now feel rather proud of what I can create. I’ve started editing the four books and once that’s done I’ll see if I can sell them, professionally. We’ll see how that goes.

The spring came late, with snow covering everything until April 23rd and bitter cold temperatures and falling white showed up by November’s end. It was, by and large, a cold year but one full of the warmth of friends and family. Writing this, documenting all the things I’ve seen and done, has been revelatory.

You go through life, day by day, not really noticing all the things that have happened. You see them, sure, but you don’t really appreciate them. Visiting a military plane and vehicle museum in Wisconsin, celebrating my birthday in Des Moines with zombie-themed burgers, discovering “Epic Rap Battles of History”, catching an old-school ghost story as a play in October, cooking up new dishes and savoring the classics, reading “A Game of Thrones”, hosting a Mardi Gras party, watching the 50th anniversary of my favorite show “Doctor Who” with an entire world of fans, being a guest on a podcast—twice—as an amateur writer, growing a crop of heirloom tomatoes in my garden, having the bathroom tub re-tiled to fix a leak, migrating an entire array of gaming computers down a hallway during a busy convention after the air conditioning went out and made machines start to overheat, pickling my favorite roasted beets, boating on Lake Minnetonka for the first time: these things, as important or trivial as they can be, may slip by when you aren’t watching. You experience them but don’t really pay attention until you look back.

I’m glad I looked back. I had a lot of stress during the year, mostly stemming from my job and clients, but everything else was fantastic. Looking forward, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds. Whatever it is, I’m certain that I’ll take steps to sculpt it. And, once those events pass me by, I’m going to have to look back on them to remind myself just how amazing life can be.

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

I wrote quite a bit this year. I'm amazed, looking back on it, just how much I did. Five of these were commissioned works, three were bits of micro-fiction, and one was a rough draft of a novel. Not bad.

"Depths of the Jungle" (short story)
"Heroes of Ampsburgh" (short story)
"Outskirts" (micro-fiction)
"Ironwolf" (short story)
"Indelible" (short story)
"Ant-Coon" (short story)
"Werewolf in Another World" (micro-fiction)
"Impact" (micro-fiction)
"A Little Group Action" (short story)
"In the Shadow of Titans" (short story)
"Nightlights" (short story)
"fen" (NaNoWriMo rough novel)
"Colony at Cat's Paw" (short story)
"The Dog Who Has Everything" (short story)
"Hypoxia and Edema" (short story)
"Malgrave Wolves" (short story)

15 short stories with 3 of them being micro-fiction (which, in my mind, equals 1 standard-length short story). This means I wrote the equivalent of 13 short stories and 1 novel. My goal, that I set down last year, was to write 12 short stories and 1 novel. They covered virtually every genre: science fiction, fantasy, horror, real-life drama ... everything I enjoy writing.

While I didn't always appreciate it at the time, I now look back on 2013 on a very productive year.

Let's see if I can do it again in 2014.

Yours,
Sylvan

I just spent the last 2 weeks binge-watching every episode (seasons 1-4) of the Showtime series, "Dexter". I have to wonder if the dark, unrelenting tone of deception in this series has managed to get under my skin. Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed it. I loved the writing. And, as people had promised, Season 4 was the best, I think.

But it also depresses me. It's so very dark that I think I need a break from darkness for a while. I need to indulge in something bright and happy. When subsequent seasons become available on Netflix, I may not watch them. Not only have I heard that the series goes downhill from here but, really: expose myself to further dismay all in the pursuit of good writing and compelling characters?

Why do it to myself in the first place?

I write this, now, because it's fresh in my mind. The fourth season just ended and John Lithgow's portrayal of the Trinity Killer is still bobbing in my mind's eye. What an amazing actor!

But while I enjoy darkness, while I enjoy these elements of a story, there is such a thing as too much in a short period of time. While I generally find stories to be better without commercial interruptions, without week-long or month-long breaks between episodes, there is another side-effect: concentration. Everything gets concentrated.

Right now, as great as it has been, I think I'm done for now.

I think I need to finish my one, outstanding writing commission, focus on writing something happy, and enjoy the coming New Year.

Sound good?

Yeah: to me, too.

Yours,
Sylvan

And as I leave for my mother's place in Roseville, I leave you with this lovely (funny) furry thing from YouTube:

https://youtu.be/Qota928VTXw

Have a roly-poly Christmas!

Yours,
Sylvan

Every year, I go over to Mom's place n Christmas Eve, go to church with her (I'm Wiccan, these days, but I love spending time with Mom and reliving this part of my childhood), and then go back to her house where I make us a special dinner.

This is our menu, this year:

Yuletide 2013
Christmas Eve Dinner

Appetizer

Stuffed Olives
Cantonese Shrimp Toast

Soup

Roast Garlic and Mushroom Soup

Salad

Yule Salad
(Pomegranate, Shrimp, and Tomato Salad)

Entrée

Grilled and Butter-Poached Chilean Sea Bass
beneath a Macadamia-Bacon Crumble
over a Shredded Parsnip Cake with Hollandaise

Sides

Bacon-Wrapped Asparagus

Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Cauliflower


Dessert

Ris á l'amande


I wish you and yours the best of holidays, good food, and great family!

Yours,
Sylvan

The Titans and Colossi are here!

On November 27th, 2013, the 50th issue of MEGAMorphics, an APA I have been a member of for many years, was released. My story, "In the Shadow of Titans" was published there for the first time. Since it is a private publication that we contributors support, we can always re-publish our work, elsewhere. That is what I've done.

I put the artwork which I commissioned from  Wom-Bat, here, on Fur Affinity and have uploaded the 17,000-word novelette (or really, really long short story) to Smashwords.

Cover Art | Interior Art #1 | Interior Art #2

I am selling it for only .99 and would love it if you would purchase a copy, read it, and let me know what you think. I figure that a short story's price should be about a buck and that more folk will give it a try for that amount. I'm hoping to handle my writing a bit more professionally this way and start trying to sell it, digitally. Please let me know what you think of my efforts.

Again, you can find "In the Shadow of Titans" at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/383503 .

Enjoy!

Yours,
Sylvan Scott

This is a call to any and all greymuzzles who follow my account.

I think I may be going through a bit of mid-life crisis. Maybe it's something else. But I'd like to talk to you about this. I'd like to know what you think ... what you've gone through ... what your doubts and fears are as well as what, perhaps, we can do about them.

I think that I am not alone in how I'm feeling so I'm doing the geek thing: reaching out to those who are in my circle of acquaintances via the Internet.

So, what is a greymuzzle? Hard to say. So many say it's just a state of mind. Some say it is a weight of experiences. Some say it's anyone over 35 in the fandom.

However you define it, let me know.

Drop me a note.

Yours,
Sylvan

ADDENDUM FOLLOWING INITIAL COMMENTS:

Thank you, guys, for your offering to chew through a few things. There have been several issues over the past couple weeks that I've been wrestling with and I suspect they are age-related. My shrink is out of town and I'm not entirely certain I could articulate this to him in a way that would garner actionable results like I might get from others within the fandom. Hence, that's why I'm adding this, here, rather than on other social media outlets. I may take this to LiveJournal (it has a much better interface for conversation) but, for now, I'll keep it within my beloved furry community.

1. Weight Gain/Loss and Health

I've been losing weight for about 16 months. In that time, I have gone down as low as having lost 80-100 pounds. My peak was 354 pounds and, when I started my diet, I was in the 340s. At my lowest point (weight-wise), I was down to 255 pounds. The problem is I've been gaining again, mostly due to emotional eating.

I get stressed, I eat. I get bored, I eat. There's food around, I eat ... sometimes for no reason other than I want to have a flavor in my mouth and feel something in my throat. I was so good on my diet for so long (and have gotten such wonderful praise from those who've seen my progress) that I don't know why I can't control it, now. Even when I know better, I'll eat stuff that I should not.

Part of this is because I'm getting to the age where I don't think I can change. I fantasize about attaining impossible, 20-something standards of beauty. I wasn't a very sexual person in my 20s and I live with regret over not having gotten out, having a lot of fun and experimental sex, and having a great body.

I've met guys who like fat men. I've indulged them. I've felt good when they indulge me in return. But I end up hating myself, afterwards (even if I never admit it to them ... this, in fact, may be the first time I've ever said this in public.)

So, I want to be healthy. I want to be fit. I want to look like a super-model. I'm in my late 40s. These seem to run contrary to one another and are an unhealthy set of goals and expectations. But I can't seem to shake them. And it's making me unhappy.

Have any of you felt this way as you get older? How do you address these issues?

2. Attraction to Guys

My attractions have not changed very much over the years. It may surprise some of you to learn that I am technically bisexual. I say "technically" because while I was once attracted equally to both genders, that has shifted over the last 15 years. Throughout my 30s and into my 40s, I found myself still able to appreciate beauty in the female form but not be aroused by it ... not be attracted to it. At the same time, I'm as attracted to the men I've always been attracted to: slender and twinkish, toned and muscular, ordinary (maybe a little pudgy) and geeky.

These attractions haven't changed as I have and I worry that's a problem. In short, I'm still attracted to guys without regard for their age. In this fandom, as it seems to get younger, I still laugh and play and flirt with guys I find appealing. But now I'm seeing that they're still in their 20s. I'm starting to feel like I'm a creepy stalker guy.

Yes: I know that age shouldn't matter with regards to physical attraction.

Yes: I don't know if I could really relate to someone in the long-term without their personality jibing with mine.

I'm concerned that my physical attractions make me seem disturbed and wrong. I feel ashamed for liking what I like, now. I have started thinking "just how old is he" now rather than, "he's cute". And I hate that about myself.

How do you deal with age and attraction as you get older? How do you not feel like some creepy guy in the stories when, clearly, you know in your heart that you're "not that guy" but, rather, are just someone who is looking for love, companionship, and physical satisfaction? How does age impact these and how should a person respond as they get older?

3. Fulfillment with Work

They say, "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life".

I work every day.

I love fixing things, sure, but I fell into the industry where I find my career. I chose the path that would give me the optimal amount of income for my skill-set so I could buy a house. My whole goal in life has been to own a house so that, when I get older and retire, I'll have a place to live and not be on the streets. Back in the 80s, as a teenager, this was a huge thing: elderly people ending up homeless ... that was on the news every night.

I made a plan, back then, to get a house with a 30-year mortgage as soon as I could so that, by age 60, I could be reasonably safe that I could make the lower tax payments and not end up on the street.

So I took what jobs I could, pushed forward, and got some okay pay.

But I don't feel fulfilled. I work so hard, all the time, that I get home and cannot do the things that do fulfill me. The games and refereeing that I adore, that keeps me going, are getting harder and harder to script and run. They're getting harder to plan and fulfill.

My writing is getting slower and slower even as it gets better and better (finally).

But can I shift? Could I find another career or are my expectations, my goals, just unrealistic? I have been wondering, of late, about ditching it all, getting a tiny apartment, and just doing something smaller. But in this economy? In this job market? Starting over with lowered expectations?

Those all seem like really bad ideas. But are they only seeming "bad" because they run contrary to my goal of owning a home as a safe space to grow old in?

How do you balance your life goals with your career? How does one do what one loves and still make a living?

4. Status/Respect

This one is a good problem to have, in some regards. I'm finally getting noticed for my writing. I may be slow, but I'm producing more and producing better work. I'm getting more followers on the various media sites where I share my writing. I'm not selling anything, yet, but I'm getting more positive feedback and that, later, will translate into sales.

But I'm also frustrated that I've wasted my time getting this far.

As I've aged, I've looked back on the path it took me to get here and I see a lot of the skills and support I've acquired has come at the expense of long spans of unproductive time. I've gotten here but it should have been earlier. Now I worry that I'll never truly achieve the recognition I would like.

Do I want fame? Hell, no. Famous people become slaves to their fame. I want to be recognized and have my work liked. I want this just enough so I can afford to do it as my living (see number 3, above).

But I'm constantly worried that my regrets are killing me.

How do you deal with this? Do you feel bad about not having gotten the things you want out of life or, if they are coming, feel badly about how long its taken you to get here as opposed to the expectations you had for what it would take?

This past weekend, at the Macro/Micro party that  rexxwolfe and  bigdcstile threw at Midwest FurFest, I was given a cocktail that I actually loved. I don't drink, not for any ethical or moral reasons, but because I don't like alcohol in strong concentrations. It tastes ... medicinal. I use alcohol all the time in my cooking but hate it, straight-up. The flavor is too strong on its own (like some cheeses or pickles). It's good when it compliments other things or can be watered-down a bit. I have tried (and enjoyed) some lagers (the non-bitter types) and even enjoy things like hard cider, electric lemonaide, and Lambic ale (the fruitier, the better). Two years ago at FurFest, I even discovered that I enjoy Long Island Iced Teas ... as long as they are made with plenty of pop (I'm not fond of traditional versions with iced tea for the color).

But, overall, I do not enjoy alcohol. At most I'll try a drink once every two-to-three months.

That said --surprise-of-all-surprises-- at this year's Macro/Micro party, the guys found me something I like. It was basically a screwdriver with extra O.J. and some grenadine added for good measure. Now all I have to do is reverse-engineer it and give it a name.

Doing my research like a good, little geek, I found that the standard screwdriver is 6 ounces of orange juice to 1.5 ounces of vodka. I'm going to try that, first, and then adjust the proportions accordingly. I think my first test will be 6 ounces of orange juice to 1 ounce vodka with 1 ounce grenadine (just to see how that tastes). I believe that it was shaken with ice before serving, so I'll try that, too.

As for naming it, since Rexx (the wolf) suggested the drink and Big D (the hyena) mixed it during the Friday-night party, I'm thinking along the lines of "Rexx's Friday-Night Hyena".

Stay tuned!

Yours,
Sylvan