Endgame Viable Reads Old Writing

Reading Old Writing S1 E7 - Moving Day (2014)

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 19:05:28 -0400

This is a reading from my 2014 draft, a horror-ish short story called Moving Day.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

Now that I think back on this, I believe I wrote this as part of a Camp NaNoWriMo event in July of 2014. (This was during a time when I seriously considered the possibility of writing books as a retirement plan, so I was writing a lot.)

I place it in the horror genre by default. It’s not particularly horrifying, but a lot of abnormal stories that don’t really belong anywhere else tend to get shoehorned into the horror genre, a la so many Stephen King books, so that’s where this goes.

It’s about a strange event that happens while someone is moving to a new house.

By the way, I didn’t make this clear in the audio, but this is only the beginning of the story. :)

Reading Old Writing S1 E6 - Tel (2012)

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 21:00:00 -0400

This is a reading from my ~2012 draft, a medieval fantasy drama called The Sovereign of Tel.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

I don’t precisely remember when I wrote this (I’m reading from a backup draft that doesn’t have an origination date on it), but I know it was between NaNoWriMos, and I’m pretty sure it was after Airworld.

It began when I had a bleakly weird idea to see what a society looked like if it treated lower classes of people the same way we treat show dogs. (Suprisingly unpleasant, it turns out.) It seemed like the kind of idea you might see in an old 60s Star Trek or Twilight Zone episode.

The story didn’t turn out anything like I thought it would, and instead of a scathing societal commentary, over time it morphed into a fairly mundane kingdom management drama in the vein of a Game of Thrones. Probably for the best.

Reading Old Writing S1 E5 - Airworld (2012)

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 15:38:19 -0400

This is a reading from my NaNoWriMo 2012 draft, a high fantasy called Airworld.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

A small backgrounder on this story:

Naobi is a young Sister of the Order in a small backwater town in a world of floating islands in the sky. For reasons, she needs to make a journey to a place far away to help the town, and she books passage on a sothbarge, which is a large gondola structure hanging from the belly of a massive flying domsticated whale-like creature (a soth) that is used for navigation between islands. This passage is Naobi’s first flight away from home.

I really liked the setting of this one, only later did I find out the flying whale thing is kind of an anime trope. I never hit on a decent story to go with the setting and characters, but I did manage to complete and win NaNoWriMo that year.

In recent years, I’ve wondered about turning this into a D&D homebrew campaign setting. I think the Ebberon setting has flying ships and stuff already, so maybe it could fit in there.

Onward and upward! You know, on a sothbarge!

P.S. Yes I did, in fact, pronounce Motiva two different ways, because cold-reading 12-year-old writing on a catastrophically low-energy day is hard. Why do you ask?

Reading Old Writing S1 E4 - Kubak Outpost (2011)

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 18:22:07 -0400

This is a reading from my NaNoWriMo 2011 draft, a fantasy war drama called Kubak Outpost.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

I chose a passage from somewhere in the middle of the draft, so here’s a little background context:

Kubak Outpost is a fortress on the border of the lands where a mysterious race of beligerant magical creatures called the khaanfar live. The story revolves around a group of new recruits arriving at Kubak Outpost to begin their military service.

The idea was loosely based on the classic tropes of a war drama following an ensemble of new recruits into battle, but in a fantasy setting.

This particular chapter follows Fen and his comrades returning to the outpost from a patrol through the woods, when they get lost in a supernatural fog.

I was super into this story in 2011, but when I look back on it now, it seems rather juvenile and cartoonish. Ah well. That’s why we write drafts.

Reading Old Writing S1 E3 - Neofuel (2010)

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 15:23:34 -0400

This is a reading from my NaNoWriMo 2010 draft, a corporate espionage thriller called Neofuel.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

I’m pleased with this draft because it was actually finished. Story-wise, at least. It’s far from finished in terms of readiness for publication, though I think I’ve done at least two revisions.

I also remember liking it because it’s a genre I don’t normally spend much time in. But I haven’t read it in a long time and I don’t know what I’d think of it now.

Reading Old Writing S1 E2 - 2029 AG 7 Pt 2

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 18:49:00 -0400

This is another reading from my NaNoWriMo 2009 draft, an unfinished near-future science fiction story with the easy-to-remember title 2029 AG 7.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

These bits finally get to the reason the story was called 2029 AG 7. If memory serves, I read somewhere that this is how NASA designates astronomical objects. Something like the year it’s discovered, followed by some letter code, and then the sequential number of how many had been discovered that year. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but that’s my memory of how I came up with that obscure code for the title.

The story goes on from here to … fall flat on its face and die a horrible death. It turns out I don’t have the capacity to create a complex scientific and geopolitical narrative. Live and learn. I don’t have a word count on the document but it’s probably somewhere around 10-15,000 words.

Incidentally, I’m not very happy with the production quality on these things yet. I’m getting a bit more distortion and off-axis rolloff from the mic than I’d like. Because I have the gain fairly low to avoid room noise, I have to be super careful not to move much when I’m reading.

Reading Old Writing S1 E1 - 2029 AG 7 (1)

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 18:30:00 -0400

To kick off this experiment, we’ll start with a bit of writing from NaNoWriMo 2009. It’s an unfinished near-future science fiction with the easy-to-remember title 2029 AG 7.

Click the play button that should be somewhere in the vicinity of this text, or add this feed to your favorite podcast app.

This was the first NaNoWriMo I attempted, and I did not do particularly well with it.

I haven’t read this in forever, and I have little or no memory of writing it, what it was about, or what I might have been inspired by. In fact, when I glanced over the first few of chapters, it wasn’t anything like what I thought it was about. A different person might as well have written it.

After re-reading the first three chapters, I was left more puzzled than ever.

Until next time, goodbye and remain indoors!

Reading Old Writing S0 E2 - Margway

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 20:00:00 -0400

Last time, I tested the technical method of distributing audio files through an RSS feed on the blog. This time, I’m testing the concept for the “show” and the workflow required to produce it. Add this feed to your podcatcher of choice to listen and/or click the “play” button that should theoretically be somewhere in the vicinity of this text.

This is a reading from a 2012 short story I wrote called Margway, which is a spin-off of sorts from my NaNoWriMo 2011 project. The character of Margway was a side character and did not feature much in the novel draft, but I thought it was an interesting character in and of itself. In re-reading this today, I was surprised how much of an impact it had on me, and I remembered why I liked it in the first place.

P.S. You might be wondering why I don’t just copy and paste the text of the writing into a blog post like a normal person. The reason is simple: While there may be some seeds of good ideas here and there, the writing isn’t that great, and still requires a lot of editing. This one is a third draft from 2012, and I still noted numerous places that still needs polishing before I would even consider submitting it for publishing or self-publishing. Posting these as writing would require a significantly higher time investment to bring them up to the standards of quality writing, and that simply isn’t possible at a rate of one per day. This writing matters–to me, at least–unlike the average throw-away blog post.

But when I read them out loud, it’s a different story. Something I’ve noticed from listening to audiobooks: Performing a work out loud can smooth over and hide the rougher areas of grammar that’s dull or otherwise full of glaring errors. So, I read them. Better for me, better for the production, better for keeping things moving along.

Reading Old Writing S0 E1 - The first technical experiment

endgameviable@gmail.com (Endgame Viable) — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 22:32:47 -0400

Hello, this is a technical experiment to see if there is any chance of this working. I’m adding a new experimental section to the blog for Blaugust 2024.