So the Kepler Telescope found another earth this week. That's exciting news, right? Party Blowers all around!

I might possibly have been watching an awful lot of Crash Course this week, so if I seem stranger than normal you can blame that on John Green.

Anyway, they found a planet out spinning in the Goldilocks zone. Cause for celebration, right? I mean, it's far away. Like properly, properly far away. 1400 light years. That means when we look at it (depending on how far away Kepler is, and I'm way too lazy to look) whatever we see on the surface is 1400 years behind us. Sort of. 

Science is complicated.

Also, to the best of our knowledge there's no atmosphere, so unless we come up with something to do about that, we might want to hold off on our travel plans. And not that I don't love you all dearly, I get tired of people after a day. I'm not sure how I'd handle being stuck on a ship floating through space for the entire rest of my life. It's entirely possible it would end in a pretty seriously amount of bloodshed. I'm quiet, never underestimate the number of you I could get through before anybody noticed.

And hey, like always, if you have suggestions for next weeks topics pop them in the box down there!

I'm going to just blather about deadlines here for a minute, because I'm up against a few of them and I should be doing blog posts and I'm really not. 

July is invariably my worst month of the year. I've got a slew of birthdays, and family visits, and I try my hardest to keep professional obligations out of July. I just don't have time, and then I'm left scrambling at the end of the month trying to come up with whatever it is I've said I'd do. 

I thought maybe this year would be different, but it's really not. 

And I could whinge about my deadlines and the truly sick amount of work I should be doing right now, but we've all got better things to do with our time. So instead I'm going to share some thoughts about what it's like to be an author in this new horizon where nobody pays me for anything on the front end and there's nobody to hold my hand. 

I feel like I should caveat this with I didn't expect any of those things before we got here. I should also caveat it with the fact that a lot of my universe as a writer comes from a company I co-run. We'll talk a little about how that makes things different and how it doesn't here in a minute. 

So what do I call an Independent Entity?
It's complicated, right? Because we call people who self publish "Indy" authors, and people who publish with small-press are sometimes "Indy" and sometimes "Non-traditional" authors, and generally speaking people who publish with "real" publishers (I seriously hate that differentiation but that's a barrel of onions for another day) are just considered lucky. 

So here's the thing, for my purposes an Independent Entity is any author who's going more than one direction at once. We don't have all our eggs in the same basket. I'll use myself as an example. I currently have three books in print (it'll be five by the end of the year). Several of those books are through a press I co-run, and that's not exactly self-pubbing, but it's close enough if someone else used the label I wouldn't get upset about it. One of them is published through a small press publisher I'd very much like to work with again if I can ever figure out a plot that fits the book that's already on the shelf. 

When people have the 'self-pub' debate I generally shut up because I have opinions that are pretty unpopular in all directions and...well...I've got horses all over the place in this game, but I'm not in the place where I feel like I need to proselytize. The most I'll say is just like no two people are the same, no two writers are the same. Everyone should figure out what works for them. And maybe be a little careful about who they listen to while they're working on that. 

So what's it like being an Independent Entity?
Right, so you woke up this morning and opened your eyes to find yourself magically standing at the bottom of the rockiest, thorniest, most annoying mountain you've ever seen. This mountain represents the writing work you're supposed to do today. But it's fine, right? There's a path, and you sort of know where you're going. You have a goal--the top of that mountain, and you have the day to get there. It's fine. 

Go ahead, start. Right, so you see those angry buzzards circling in the sky? Those are your emails. They aren't all writing related, some of them are other business. Some of them are that volunteer thing you still haven't squiggled out from under. Some of them are family. Your challenge is to figure out how many you can answer without losing your footing. 

Oh, and watch out for the weird animal hiding in that bush. It's the Facebook argument you should really be a part of, but you know better. And right after it is the pitfall on the path that'll send you back about half-way. That's the moment you realize you have a plot hole you could drive a spaceship through, at the exact moment your child asks where the pink highlighter is.

Now, add to that the weird crest thingy at the top that's some person who wanted you to do a project with them really not understanding that you actually have other things to do. They're hanging out in your inbox. Oh, and then you have to go check your contracts and see when you were supposed to get paid because nobody remembers that stuff off the top of their heads. 

Does that sound like a pleasant day? 

Here's the reality. I will, most likely, utterly never actually make minimum wage at this. If I'm really really lucky I'll make a living, but I'll never get paid equal to the amount of work I do. I'll probably never even get close. 

I'm still strapping spikes to my shoes tomorrow. Who's with me? 

In an unrelated note, until the 27th you can vote for my story here, and come back Friday and we'll talk about something sciency. 

Because I'm on deadline freaking everywhere, and it's summer so I've got about zero time, and it's also my birthday, and my kids birthday, and my parents are visiting and...yeah. I'm phoning it in today. Feel free to leave your own list in the comments. 

1) Writing prompts are almost universally unhelpful.
Sure, If I'm itching to sit down and pound away some cracky fanfic or something the travelling shovel of doom might be helpful. When I need to actually write something for publication it's like everyone expects me to have my own ideas. Sheesh.

2) My Search History is terrifying.
Like someone said you can't buy a confederate battle flag on Amazon anymore, but you can buy an I.S.I.L flag and I really really want to know, but I'm not stupid enough to type I.S.I.L. flag into Amazon with the rest of my search history. Hello whole new crop of government watch-lists I just found. *waves to the feebs* This is a thing you think about as a writer. No one prepares you for that fact before you're there.

3) Twitter is almost as unhelpful as writing prompts.
Because when I tweet things about writing or questions people have this weird hang up where they will share said tweet but they will not actually answer it. I will dedicate myself to being better about this, but I will probably fail. Sorry, Universe.

4) My keyboard looks like I tape sandpaper to my fingers before I type.
Some of this is because I have fingernails and I type fast and hard, but I feel like someone would make a keyboard that could handle a fictional life without steadily wearing through the first three layers of plastic on my spacebar. Don't ask about E, D, and N. There are actual nail marks in S. 

5) The Five-Thing list is the Yoga Pants of blogging.
Not that I don't like Yoga Pants. We're all allowed to have lazy days. Am I the only one leaning on this particular thing a little hard? Yeah? OKay. I'll work on it.

Alright. That's all for today, come back Friday where we'll talk about the 5 strangest Science Fiction Cliches!

Heh. I'm joking. I have actual content for Friday, and it's about one of my favorite things ever. Mosquito Dinosaurs!

Also, check out my short story here, and give it a vote if you like it. :)

Okay, so we're finally at the end of The Neverending Contest of Awesome. Which was supposed to end Friday, but a) I haven't managed to be on time yet, why start now and b) Friday was the start of the holiday weekend here in the states and I kind of figured we all had better things to do.

So, what am I giving away today? I'm glad you asked! Today I'm giving away a print copy of Undiscovered Country, and e-copies of literally everything I can get my hands on in the format of your choice. Everything I've got in print in one easy place, as well as some things that aren't technically in print but hey, who doesn't love free stories? If you win this one and you want a special kind of story I might even take requests (although that's dependent on deadlines and requests and blah blah blah). As with the others, you either need to live in the contiguous 48 or be willing to pay shipping yourself.

Alright, are we clear on what you're winning? Good. So how do you win? Another fabulous question.

I want you to share with me the strangest picture you can find. There are only two rules. 
1) It has to be appropriate for all audiences. No "nudity", no excessive violence.
2) It has to be Creative Commons or Public Domain. Most places you can search by those terms (Flickr is good at this). 

So there you go. Give me the strangest picture you can muster, and I'll give one lucky person all the stuffs. That seems like a good trade.