Author of Aeon 14: Sentience Wars and Galactic Law
You’ve found the intermittent signal for science fiction author James S. Aaron, (also James Stegall) author of Aeon 14: Sentience Wars and Galactic Law.
You can follow this blog through RSS at jamesaaron.net/rss or on Mastodon by following https://mementomori.social/@james
Email is james at jamesaaron.net.
Happy Valentines Day!
2024 was a rough year, but things are getting back on track with 2025.
Editing Lyssa’s Revenge (which may become Lyssa’s Control). Currently at 72,000 words but I expect to add another 20,000 words through editing.
Signed a contract with Aethon Books for a Grimm’s War Spin-off novel due by June 2025.
Grimm’s War: Retreat Hell. I’m 25,000 words into this project.
I’m still caring for my mom, and her dementia seems to have leveled for the time being. She had some big drops in awareness across last year, but now she’s generally happy and enjoys putzing around her cottage. We found a great caregiver that she likes, and I’m able to focus on other things during the day.
While I’m still not able to get long writing sessions in, I’m focused on more short bursts of work during breaks, in the morning before work and after work.
The biggest recent change has been cutting off social media during the day completely. I’ve moved to a dumb phone for most of my communication, and the iPhone has basically become an iPod. I can download media to it when I’m on wi-fi, but otherwise it’s a camera with podcast/MP3 player whenever I’m out of the house. This has been a huge improvement for my general focus.
However, I still can’t believe we’re in the middle of February already. I’m trying to stay focused on the things I can control, the people I love, and creating work I’m proud of. Onward and upward.
— #updatebysms
— #updatebysms
:: #sms, #fieldnote
Condition: Used
Seller Note: “Complete With Box, Wires, SD Cards & Inserts. Tested & Works!”
Features: Nightmare Before Christmas
UPC: 0805931028044
Brand: Palm
Screen Size: 2.4 in
Network: Sprint
Color: Black
Model: LG Spirit
Memory Card Type: MicroSD
MPN: PTR690HKB, CENTROONYXBLKSPT
Storage Capacity: 64 MB
Palm Centro gives you voice, text, IM, email and web, all in a phone that’s a lot smaller than you think. It even has a touchscreen and a full keyboard, so you can say L8R to those tricky keys on your cell phone. Carry names and numbers, shoot photos and video, and meet up with friends.
Just saving an interesting early PDA I found on ebay. #retrotech, #handheld, #cyberdeck
These posts led to the question:
A heterotopia is a concept introduced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe real-world places that function as “other spaces,” existing simultaneously within and outside of the usual norms and structures of society. These spaces are characterized by their ability to juxtapose or connect several different spaces, times, or meanings, creating a unique environment that challenges or reflects on the dominant social order.
Continue reading “What is a heterotopia?”
A list of the software and websites I use to accomplish various projects:
Continue reading “Software”
One of my goals going forward is to take more video of our lives.
When I spent a whole days going through photo books from my mom’s flooded house, I was surprised to see how much the photos shifted in quality. The older photos were actually better. Brownie photos from the fifties and sixties had better color with sharper focus. The seventies were generally out of focus and sepia-brown. This might have been a byproduct of the cellophane photo books my mom used, but the clarity of the pre-seventies never returned.
All these weird posts showing up in the feed are part of a project I’m working on to organize all my various projects into a single part of the site. It’s also incorporating updates to Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads. I would include Facebook but it’s not as easy to auto-post to a personal Facebook page and I haven’t had time to set that up.
For now, I’m focused on actually making the parts of the site, not futzing with automations that may or may not work. I want to make it relatively easy to capture this stuff in one place, and I’m doing it on the website since I can keep it all in one place, and update it from anywhere.
This is tied to the whole process of organizing my mom’s stuff this year, and beyond that, my stuff, but that’s going to be explained in a later post once I have it figured out for myself.
A big part of this was spending 8 hours one Sunday emptying family photo books to make the photos easier to scan and store… only to wonder who would ultimately care and what was the point. I do think there’s a point, but it’s easier to find when things are organized.
Thanks for humoring me as I figure this stuff out. It will relate to my other work, I promise.