Shenanigan Report - Going Live Tonight!

"In hundreds of different ways, the world will ask you: Why bother creating? And, you may find yourself leaning into the negative of that question. Yeah, why bother? You'll follow it with a bunch of justifications as to why you should do other things rather than create. Here's the thing... create because your life and spirit will be better for it. Even if you reach no one else, you reach yourself. Your life will be changed for the better." - Gallowglas

"To practice any art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut

“Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso

Failte, a lucht leanúna na scéalta!
Welcome, story lovers!

This time you get three quotes, mostly because I'm in a funk and needed an extra one.

TONIGHT!!! The return of Gallowclass! This time on YouTube! 7pm pacific.

I'm starting with this one because it's a little time sensitive. My writing livestreams are back. However, we're changing things up and switching to my YouTube channel. This choice comes from several different perspectives. 1) I feel like Twitch has a glass ceiling just on the nature of the site. 2) I think the eventual reach, and later the potential income will be greater on YouTube. 3) The videos will stay up longer, as in... forever. So... my streams are back, 7pm Pacific time on Tuesdays. Come nerd out about writing and creativity with me.

Here's the rest of our upcoming schedule:
https://mtoddgallowglas.com/schedule/

Sept 8, 7pm - Season Premier of Gallowclass on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@MToddGallowglas
Hey!!! THIS IS TODAY!!!
Sept 19, 7:30am - Writing Workshop
$35 - FREE for Gallowclass Community members
Sept 26 & 27th - Folsom Renaissance Faire
(Tentative. Not 100% Confirmed.)
Oct 3 & 4 - Hanford Renaissance Faire
Oct 17, 7:30am - Writing Workshop
$35 - FREE for Gallowclass Community members

For those paying attention, it looks like I might be performing at the Folsom Renaissance Faire. However, this is tentative.

The Gallowclass writing community is live. If you're interested in rediscovering your writing, email or message me, and I'll help you decide if Gallowclass is right for you.

Gallowfacts - Writing
- I wrote the first words of fiction I ever got paid for at DeVere's Irish Pub. I miss that place.
- Dragon Bone Flute was my first published story.
- Dead Weight was my first award winner. (Two Pickpockets and The Half-Faced Man were honorable mentions.)
- Daedalus Remains was my first published poem.
- I've never had an "official" book launch party.

Life of a Literary Underdog

Here's a brief, behind-the-scenes update on where things are going with my creative life.

The World Science Fiction Convention was a grand time, but not all great. My dealers' room booth might have been in the worst possible location. Very little flow of traffic, with most lines of sight blocked off. Some people looked for me multiple days in a row and couldn't find me. Sigh... That's the way these things go. Still, I made to best of it. Welcome to all the new people who signed up.

The Gallowglas Army party room was off the chains! We had a great time. Heard from multiple sources that we consistently had the best bar throughout the con. This pleases me. The Genre Underground poetry night was a blast, and we got a couple people to read for the first time. Thanks to everyone who came to my room parties and making World Con so memorable to me. Next stop, LosCon. Though... I am considering bringing Genre Underground to after hours at Renaissance Faire

I'm almost done editing Jaludin's Journey. As I said last month, just like Jaludin's Voyage is a different kind of story than Jaludin's Road, his third adventure a different kind of story. It's also longer than the previous two stories, clocking in at over 20,000 words.

Still working on Dragon Bone Flute 3, Tears of Rage 5, The Three Story Problem, The TV show, The Wyrd Frontier, and other projects.

The newest thing taking up my imagination is a potential LitRPG series. Yes. Dungeon Crawler Carl seems to have infected me. The twist on this project is that I'm considering posting my entire creative process as I work on it. I've got like a dozen pages of notes, and the posts would be a mix of text, pictures, and videos. My biggest current issue is that, while I'm creating an interesting world, I can't seem to come up with any characters. Who knows... maybe this will just turn out to be another interesting creative thought experiment.

Media Consumption

• Dungeon Crawler Carl - I'm up to book 4, and this series keeps growing on me. I'm forcing myself NOT to binge the whole series at once. Honestly, I'm surprised by how engaging it is. It's good enough to inspire me to want to do my own take on
• He Who Fights with Monsters - This one came recommended as a LitRPG for me to look at while in the beginning steps of my own project. I'm listening to an audio edition. It's not catching me. The prose is so pedestrian, and the story is just insert Earth person into game with no context. I'm about an hour in to a twenty-wight hour books, and all of the relationships are fleeting and superficial. Probably giving up.
• Someone to Build a Nest In - I enjoyed this book a lot. It was absolutely deserving of a Nebula Award. Definitely worth a read. My only nitpicks on it are the romance angle felt rushed and some 4th Language violations.
• Erik by Sir Terry Pratchett - This was meh. The best past about it was its brevity. Well, that and seeing that even after he really hit his stride as a brilliant author, Pratchett could still write something meh.
• Moving Pictures by Sir Terry Pratchett - Only at the very beginning of this, but already more interesting than Erik and He Who Fights with Monsters. Starting with a conversation with Death is always a good way to go for a Discworld book.
• Red Shirts by John Scalzi - This one grew on me more and more as it went on. Even got teary-eyed at the end.
• WWE, it's my thing.
• Reacher season 4 - Started strong. Now it feels like it's floundering.
• Lanterns - This show is awesome!

Storytime

Here's the opening of Jaludin's Journey.

The proverbs of the Lands of Endless Summer are as vast as the sands and dunes. I considered many of them to give me a sliver of hope while I shook the last of my three skins, listened to the sloshing of perhaps half a dozen remaining swallows, and considered one of the furthest-reaching of those proverbs. An unhelpful saying came to mind. You can always turn home from the flock or the field, but sometimes you travel too far to return to the well.

The desert had been relatively kind to me for nearly a month since I demanded Captain Jabulani send me a shore so I could make my way across the sands with my own two feet carrying me across what I thought was solid ground. Foolish me. Sometimes the sands and dunes can be as fickle and shifting as the waves. Thinking back, I can not fault myself for the poor choice of not caring where they sat me ashore. In the years between then and now, I’ve accepted the failings and shortcomings of my youthful impulsiveness and lack of patience. I said relatively kind because three days before I sat at the top of a massive dune contemplating my dwindling water, a sandstorm blew with such fury that the winds might as well have carried me leagues and miles in any direction.

I dug and crawled my way out of the sands, climbed to the top of that dune, and nothing looked the same. Yes, with the sun, I could eventually make out the compass points, but nothing more. I had been following one of the Old Empire roads, but now it lay under any number of tons of sand. Yes, the ancient enchantment would uncover the road... eventually. However, given the fury of the storm, I doubted my water would last that long.

Again, I shook the last of my water. Still, I estimated six swallows. If I traveled at night, which was still hours away, I might make those swallows last three days. Might. If I traveled more carefully than I ever had since leaving home years before, and if the sands, winds, and skies continue to be kind. Well, those and the gods, and I’d never known the gods to ever be kind, especially to me.

The sun blazed above me. Hot winds flew across my face and whipped my hair. I turned around in a slow circle. One direction might as well have been another. With the sun directly above me, I could not tell which direction was which. My throat longed for water, but I denied it for the moment. Drinking before sunset might offer a momentary reprieve from the thirst and heat, but it would be only that—a momentary reprieve. It better serve my throat, body, and dwindling water supply by waiting until after sunset.

I descended the dune with the sun at my back, settled into a sliver of shade at the lowest point between two dunes, and gave the longing sigh of a man wondering if six swallows of water might see him beyond three nights of traveling. In truth, I’d never known that sound before, but the sound of an echoing off the dunes and around me sometimes still comes to me from the shadow of my memories.

Hours later, sunset gave me the four compass points, and I headed roughly south.

I decided that I would not drink next until I walked five hundred paces. It took me three tries before I’d managed to count all the way to five hundred. Counting forced me to concentrate on keeping a steady pace up and down the dunes. I’ve heard some of the desert nomads claimed they grow used to traveling the sands for days at a time without their legs burning and aching from the effort. Of course, I do not believe them. Bravado among men permeates every culture I’ve ever known.

The water was still warm from the day’s heat and tasted a bit of old leather, but my tongue, throat, and stomach accepted it greedily. Had I moisture to spare in my body, I might have shed a tear when I pulled the skin from my lips and stopped it with a cork. My next swallow could wait until I stopped to sleep through the hottest part of the day.

Partway through the night, I considered keeping to the low points between the dunes, but if I did, I might not see far off campfires of desert nomads or moonlight shining off signal mirrors of a village or town. Granted, I didn’t expect to see either, but I definitely would not if I remained at the low points.

Somewhere around midnight, the trilling yip yip yip of desert hyenas echoed across the dunes. That likely meant the hyenas had found some kind of carrion or something that would soon be carrion. For a few brief heartbeats, my guts grew colder than the desert night. Then, I reconsidered my worry. The hyenas weren’t close enough to be following me. However, their presence and hunting cry offered the slim chance that their prey might have come from some source of water. If I could find the hyenas’ meal, I might follow their tracks back toward water, or at least close enough to find it. Perhaps the hyenas might be so fixated on their prey that they wouldn’t notice me. Unlikely, but perhaps in this instance, the gods would choose to show me kindness, for once.