Author: MTBade

Amateur author of speculative fiction, and a dedicated stamp non-collector.

Status Update: April 2022

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It’s alive!

It is kind of crazy to think that the last time I posted here was back before The Pandemic, but here we are. I have never really gotten the hang of using a blog properly, especially with Twitter available for sporadic and short updates. A lot of stuff has happened in the last two years, but nothing that I really feel like talking about in detail. A quick rundown:

  • I graduated and got my bachelor’s degree in physics. I still don’t understand quantum mechanics.
  • I started law school. This was probably inevitable.
  • After almost a full year of not publishing or posting anything, I posted a LOT of stuff to the SCP wiki in a handful of months.
  • I have been working on Newshound, slowly but steadily. It has taken a lot longer than I would have liked, but the manuscript is up to 80,000 words now and I have about one-and-a-half chapters left to write. I’m hoping to secure an agent and start shopping it around to publishers sometime within the next year. Fingers crossed.
  • I have worked on and abandoned a bunch of different short stories, and finished one which I’m not happy with and will probably end up revising before I try submitting it to anybody. Even though the bulk of my work on the SCP Wiki is basically short stories, I have a really hard time writing them outside the Wiki for some reason.

Anyways, that’s the big picture bullet points. Obviously, other stuff has happened in the last two years, but nothing that warrants going into this update. I might make more detailed posts in the future about things like the road trip I took with my dad. Or I might not.

I really would like to get into the habit of making more frequent updates here, but I’m not going to make any promises.

General Status Update — March 2020

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I continue to be really bad about regularly posting here.

In actual news, I have finally finished A Thorne Is Born, the ninth and final installment in The Phoenix, The Nightingale, and The Magpies. That was posted last week. I’ve got a bunch of different SCP things in progress or planned, none of which I will commit to right now because I have learned my damn lesson.

I also have a podcast now! Myself and several of my friends and frequent collaborators have gotten together to do a role-playing campaign set in Three Portlands, which I’ve been recording, editing, and posting as an actual play podcast. Because we all needed another one of those. This is almost entirely a trick I’m playing on my own brain to force myself into accountability, but it is also occasionally funny, so feel free to check it out. You can follow it on our hub on the SCP Wiki (here) or on our page over at our hosting provider RedCircle (here). Or on whatever app you get your podcasts on, most likely.

Work on Newshound continues in fits and starts, but the overall manuscript is up to about 20,000 words and I’ve finished the first section. It’s difficult to gauge my progress because it’s something that I don’t keep as a constant focus — if I dedicated myself to writing at least 1000 words a week, I could absolutely do it, but it would come at the expense of something else. Right now, I have a bunch of senior-level physics courses occupying a good chunk of my time, so long-term projects like a novel are getting less of my attention.

The New Newshound

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It’s been a while. I’m really bad at using this blog. (Don’t ask about the football thing.)

Some of y’all might remember Newshound, that web serial I was working on a couple years ago now. I took an extended hiatus from it because I wasn’t satisfied with where the story was going and I decided that I didn’t want to finish it as a web serial because I’d rather like to get paid for writing stuff someday. So I let it fester at the back of my mind while I did other stuff, and gradually, a new, arguably better version began to take shape.

So, if you’re unfamiliar with the original serial or just want to know what’s changed, here’s the conceit for Newshound now: In the year 1982 in a world not quite unlike ours, Heather Stone is a werewolf journalist working for the Phoenix Sentinel. The A-plot is nominally about Heather covering the upcoming Arizona gubernatorial election, but this is interwoven with various threads about her conflict with the local werewolf pack, her relationship with her girlfriend, and her ongoing struggle to deal with her own lycanthropy. Spliced in-between the narrative chapters are excerpts from various in-universe documents to provide Stand On Zanzibar style context worldbuilding.

Anyways, with the full novel completely outlined at this point and the first 10,000 words or so done, I’ve reached a point where I want to start looking for more beta readers. I have a couple people who’ve been looking at drafts and been looped in on my brainstorming sessions for a while now, but what I really need is fresh eyeballs who haven’t been privy to every single one of my thoughts and plans for the direction of this story.

A couple things to note:

  • These are going to be extremely rough drafts for a while. I don’t have an exact idea for how long this is going to run, but it’ll probably be at least 60,000 words, and I’ll be revising the whole time.
  • I will intentionally be trying to keep you in the dark about my plans because I want to get feedback on the text itself. I might present drafts with a list of questions that I want specific feedback on, but I’ll typically be looking for general impressions.
  • One specific piece of feedback I’m always looking for is whether specific plot points or world details are clearly and properly explained. If there’s something you have a question about, I want to know. It might be that it’s something that needs to be clarified further in-text.
  • I do not have any fixed writing schedule and no real deadline for when this is gonna be done. I write when I can and new drafts will be made available when I feel like it.
  • This should hopefully not need to be said, but just in case it does: Don’t share drafts. If I share a draft with you for review, I expect it to stay with you.

Anyways, if you’re interested in being a beta reader, leave a comment down below or on Twitter. I’ll mainly be distributing drafts by email or by Twitter DM — if you have a different way you’d like to receive drafts, indicate so in your comment. Do note that just because you indicate interest in being a beta reader does not mean you’ll be one; existing online acquaintances and people who followed the original Newshound serial are more likely to be chosen.

Fantastic Football: They Might Be Giants (Week 5)

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Welcome back to Fantastic Football, my ongoing Let’s Play of Madden NFL 2002 on the PlayStation 2. After taking a break last week for finals, we’re back with the Vandals as they head to New Jersey to face off against the New York Giants. You know, I just finished final exams for quantum mechanics and linear algebra, and I’d rather do that again than go to New Jersey. Sorry New Jersey, but your entire state is basically a single giant Superfund site.

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(The image quality on this one, and the next few ones, is probably going to be even worse, because I’ve moved locations and am using a different TV, and the lighting is really bad for some reason. Sorry!)

Our Vandals are favored over the Giants by Madden, although I’m not so certain. Look at the rating on those defensive backs. 99! That’s not going to be good news for Peyton and his receiving corps. We might be relying on Alstott and Garner to pickup yards this time around, and that’s not good, because I am terrible at controlling running backs. I don’t know why, but any time I try to sprint or juke or basically do anything but move the analog stick, the runner just comes to a dead stop. No idea why, if anybody knows what’s wrong with this seventeen year old game, let me know.

Anyways, hopefully the Vandals will be able to pull through despite my control issues. Let’s find out!

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Fantastic Football: The Kansas City Shuffle (Week 4)

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Welcome back to Fantastic Football, my ongoing Let’s Play of Madden NFL 2002 on the PlayStation 2. Last time, I helped the Las Vegas Vandals do a terrible thing to the Green Bay Packers, and witnessed what may have been an on-field assassination attempt. This week, the Vandals return to Sin City to face down the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs, in order to make them not-undefeated… that is to say, defeated.

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Looking at how Madden rates this matchup, I would say the Vandals are in for a much easier time, although I said that last week about the Packers and look what happened. Unlike the Packers, however, the Chiefs do not appear to have much in the way of offense — certainly nothing like star running back Curtis Martin. And a few more trades and tweaks to the Vandals roster after week 3 have increased the strength of the defense a little bit more, although it doesn’t appear to have shown up in Madden’s assessment.

The Chiefs have had a good run, but they’re about to learn they’re not in Kansas anymore.

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Fantastic Football: The Assassination of the Green Bay Packers by the Coward Las Vegas Vandals (Week 3)

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Welcome back to Fantastic Football, my ongoing Let’s Play of Madden NFL 2002 on the PlayStation 2. Last time, the Las Vegas Vandals won a football game for the very first time, despite stiff resistance from the Arizona Cardinals. Having proven the worth of their new defense, the Vandals now travel north to face the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.

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Madden heavily favors the Vandals for this game, which is something that suits me just fine. After week 1’s frantic offensive race against the Chargers and last week’s brutal slugging match with the Cardinals, an easy game is exactly what the Vandals need right now. That said, I know better than to count the Packers out before the game even begins. Madden rates their running backs highly, and the Vandals have had difficulties keeping strong rushing offenses contained, even with their defensive overhaul.

Let’s see how well they do against Green Bay.

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Fantastic Football: Getting Good in Goodman Field (Week 2)

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Welcome back to Fantastic Football, my ongoing Let’s Play of Madden NFL 2002 on the PlayStation 2. As we learned last time, the football is, in fact, not that fantastic, because the Las Vegas Vandals suck. Specifically, their defense sucks. They suck so much that despite the Vandals scoring 70 points in their first game, they still lost. So I spent some time after the last game making some trades, signing a free agent or two, adjusting the depth chart, and in general tweaking the roster to try and improve things a bit. Hopefully, it will pay off when the Vandals play the Cardinals in their Week 2 game.

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According to Madden, it should. It looks like my roster changes have massively improved the rating of my defense, and my depth chart tweaks have managed to increase the strength of my offense slightly. What’s most surprising to me here is that, despite only reordering the special teams depth chart a little bit, Madden now believes that my special teams unit is 37 points better than it did last week.

Overall, my defense is still weaker than my offense (and weaker than the Cardinal’s defense), but this match-up is looking a lot more favorable than it would have been a week ago. Let’s hope Madden’s assessment proves correct.

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Fantastic Football: Corey Dillon is Unstoppable (Week 1)

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Welcome back to Fantastic Football, my ongoing Let’s Play of Madden NFL 2002 on the PlayStation 2. Last time, we dissolved the Washington football team in acid and used the resulting slop to create the Las Vegas Vandals, the most yellow football team in America. This week, they play their first game against the San Diego Chargers.

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Madden believes that the Chargers and the Vandals are pretty much evenly matched, with the Chargers having the better defense and the Vandals having the better offense. I’m betting that Madden’s probably right on all counts here. Will Peyton Manning and Tony Gonzalez be able overcome the Chargers’ defense and lead the Vandals to victory in their first ever football game?

Let’s find out.

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