During most of 2008, I was engaged in the creation of a new world. Along with my co-creators Reesa Brown and Steven Brust, we began the Continuous Coast project, a Creative Commons-licensed, open-content shared world. Although the project is still in the final phases of its beta or prologue phase, there has been regular content for the last few months on Voices from Port Outreach and the Mediators twitter feed.
In honor of the new year, we just published our first short stories from the world. You can read my contribution, a Zayzan bedtime story called “Pol’s Tale,” and the stories by Reesa and Steve on our Continuous Coast preview.
Happy New Year to everyone! I had a delightful one celebrating the first urban ‘burn’ — the Resolution Clock burn at First Night Austin. It was glorious to watch such a beautiful effigy burn in the heart of my favorite city, surrounded by loved ones and heartfamily. We also listened to Arc Attack and then spent the night chilling and partying at Neal & Summer’s house.
2008 was a difficult year. I am looking forward to 2009 as a year for beginnings, and for change.
Today I penned my first blurb for a book, at the request of M. Christian. It should appear on an upcoming book of his science fiction and horror. While I was of course very flattered to be asked, it is also a little bit surreal — a bit like being recognized from my blogging on Words Words Words, which has also happened a few times now at conventions.
I’ve been hard at work lately on the Continuous Coast project. I’m learning drupal in order to build more of the web environment that our fans are using to inteact with the denizens of Mother. It’s slow going and a bit frustrating, but fortunately I have the consulting help of Nathan Eliot of t9productions. With the help of one of our project crew, I also penned a 2,500 word introduction to the world to help bring new contributors up to speed on the world and the philosophy behind the project. I think it will help bring new writers and artists on board.
A lot of my life feels transitional right now. Things are changing. I don’t always know where they are going, and sometimes that’s been stressful. I’m also suffering a bit from the cold — our house is drafty, and cold weather makes me slow and sore. I’m glad we broke out the space heater today.
Today, Reesa, Steve and I spent nearly all of our productive hours creating a map of a city on another world. It was a fairly grueling 12+ hour process, even with breaks to take in an episode of Dexter and eat. The first draft results are impressive, and preliminary photos have been shared with our collaborators. This is a huge step toward the creation of a major goodie for our fans as well as countless other future creations in the Continuous Coast Project. Along the way we mostly decimated three medium pizzas and a lot of snacks.
In honor of the completion of 12 hours of labor, I baked some brownies. I actually used the tollhouse cookie recipe in the pan cookie variation, except I used slightly less chocolate chips (1 and a half cups) and added a generous 3 tablespoons of Dutch Cocoa powder (from the Spice House in Old Town Chicago), as well as a tablespoon of oil to compensate for the cocoa powder. As you can see from the photo, we were happy with the results — of the brownies, but especially of the map!
Since the cocoa bean was first cultivated on Mother, I guess I’ll call them Elms Gate Brownies.
My poem “Dessert” has been published by the erotic webzine, Oysters and Chocolate. You can read it here.
I’ve spent the week in Chicago, where my mom lives. We celebrated a nice thanksgiving yesterday, which I wrote about a little on Words Words Words. We’ve also been shopping for spices and specialty cooking oils. Tonight we’re attending Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. I’m also looking forward to meeting with several collaborators from Continuous Labs on Saturday. With Amul, I’ll be attending Repo: The Genetic Opera Saturday night. Chicago is fun, but cold.
In the latest part of our artist business models series, I discuss the question of whether to outsource or roll-your-own. We’re regularly adding new entries to the series so watch this space, read Words Words Words, or join the mailing list on Continuous Labs to hear about the latest.
The last few days have been ones of intense immersion in the ongoing creative project. I’ve been working on it in one form or another almost continuously, whether it’s working with artists, recruiting webtalent, or developing websites. We’ve had some exciting developments recently: although I think few of our readers have noticed, we just launched our first significant story arc; one of our artists gave me an early draft tonight of their depiction of one of the world’s major features; and it looks like I might not have to build the project’s entire web presence on my own, after all.
There’s a lot of other stuff on my mind, not all of it happy, but I’m glad to be creating, to have housemates to create with, and to have a working hot tub to soak in.
Inversion Effect played last night at the Luf. It sounds like it was a fantastic show and I really wish I hadn’t missed it. I ended up staying home for Halloween, working on the brain-eating never-ending project of awesome, and chasing demons around inside my own head instead of out in the world.
Speaking of the project, we placed an open call for web geeks to aid Continuous Labs on the Continuous Coast project.
Finally, you should check out Part 12 of the Artist Business Models series on Words Words Words.
My dear friends Tea Kerr and Thoricatha are part of an upcoming gallery show: “Sacred & Profane” which runs from October 31st through mid-December at Celtic Dragon Gallery, 1503A Chartres, Houston, Texas. Both Tea and Thoricatha are involved in the Continuous Coast project.
Tea’s charcoal art (which she draws under then name Cat Khemia) will be on display, along with her sculptures which she creates with collaborator Joshua Meadows (some of which can be seen here). Thoricatha’s art can be seen on his home page. If you are going to be in the Houston area, be sure to check it out!