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Well, I wondered how long it would be before these fuckers got caught. I've been tele-spammed via my office phone, my company cell phone, my personal cell phone, and home phone. It's enough to make me want to block calls from an entire freakin' area code. Bastards. ALL SPAMMERS MUST DIE!

The narrator of my story canvas has a new song available for free perusal. This is good sci-fi folk (yes, in the tradition of Coulton) tune. I highly recommend you check out his work.

Cheers.

After reading idiotprogrammer's post, I went ahead and attempted to use calibre on an OpenOffice formatted document versus the same story in my .txt format. The OpenOffice conversion yielded inconsistent tab stops as well as some rather strange spacing in places. Needless to say, I was not impressed.

What it did do, however, was rasterize the quadrat font I use. That was rather helpful, all things considered. In handling the font problem for me, it keeps me from actually creating the title of the story into an image. In addition, it auto-filled quite a few of the metadata tags for the epub format.

Now, onto the text conversion. Calibre flawlessly converted the .txt version of the file, adding the correct tab stops. What it didn't do? Well, so much. The title of the story was not included in the document although it showed up in the metadata. This conversion was quite well done and would be sufficient except for the fact that I now have to manually edit the data to get the title into the document.

So what to do? Even if I were to use Calibre for the grunt work of converting the text into epub format, I'd still need a script to unzip the format, and insert the appropriate metadata. This seems like a huge waste of time. Instead, I still think it makes more sense to actually construct the document from the text. By writing my own converter, I can easily use a simple ruby class to hold the base meta-information that will be used across all my writing, and then insert arguments via the command line to properly fill out the rest of the meta-tags.

Styling of the document (inserting the Shadow Publications logo for instance and the rasterized Title of the story) can then also be generated. This is where things can get very complex. The problem with trying to create a single style for all my epub books is trying to think of all the possible ways I may want it to look. That can be a major problem.

So again, start simple. I'm going to try and finish the converter this week and at least get my original short fiction properly done. And then after that, I can worry about making it more complex and useful. Of course, until I add some kind of UI to help a normal user fill out the metadata, such a utility will only be useful to me.

C'est la vie.

Cheers.

All right. I'm a geek. I have great powers of technical expertise at my fingertips. However, sometimes I am stymied by vendor applications. What is a vendor application? It is a "package" that is turn key, meaning you just have to install and it "works." The problem with most of these off-the-shelf applications is that they rarely allow any REAL customization. Furthermore, these application are usually good for people who need training wheels for a particular technology. But once you get past the common problems of getting things together, you can quickly outgrow the limited number of options. Case in point--I've been using GoDaddy's QuickBlogcast application since I started. However, I've now more or less abandoned it in favor of running a more customizable and manageable drupal site. But now, I'm caught in hell. The RSS feeds that iTunes uses (and many of you that are already subscribed to via FireFox or some other "podcatcher) are out there and I can't rein them back in. To further complicate matters, the drupal application has its own RSS feeds. ARGH! So what I need to do is somehow make a convergence between the two feeds in order to ensure I don't confuse the hell out of everyone including myself. However, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this right now. Sadly, I'm stuck between the two worlds and trying desperately to get all this sorted before the podcast "relaunch" for DragonCon. But It's going to take research. Which means I spend less time writing and more time fucking around. And, of course my subscriptions are up in August. Which means, of course, I have to come up with a final solution before I end up paying MORE money for something I don't really need and that is confusing for the audience. Sigh. Enough of this bitching. I'll go back to spending the evening with the wife now. Later...

I've never used heroin or cocaine. I've never injected myself with golden, liquid poison. But I've read enough William Burroughs to at least get some inkling of the incredible rush. Reading Matt Wallace's The Next Fix must be like that first time-- heady, electric.

As a devoted listener of Variant Frequencies, I've heard Wallace's work before, including the fantastically written and produced The Failed Cities Monologues. In fact, quite a few of the stories in The Next Fix appeared in Variant Frequencies as podcast stories. So I knew what I was in for. But what I didn't understand at the time, is how the written word conveys so much more than a voice ever could.

The first story, Absolution Insured is a favorite of mine from the podcasts. Wallace has constructed an urban fantasy world locked in the horror of guaranteed consequence. Everyone is a sinner, and each sin is paid for at a terrible price. I don't want to ruin the story, obviously, but suffice it to say that any person on the planet can get justice from those who wrong them. It's the ultimate horror. People wish for ultimate justice, as a rule, but Wallace seems intent on reminding the reader that justice is truly blind and can search for any wrong, no matter how slight. In other words, look to your own sins first.

The book continues extremely strong, smashing the reader with a sci-fi screamer called Delve. I was transfixed by the story, shocked to hell and gone by the ending. The complete dystopial disconnection of the narrator to his own world is both unsettling and satisfying. I wanted so badly for the narrator to find that connection. But perhaps Wallace's point is that there was no connection to really be found. At least not with a humanity we recognize. According to Wallace's site, Delve is being made into a film. I can't wait to catch this one.

The Losting Corridor was a little confusing for me at first, until I just decided to let the story happen. Some writers work very hard to give you the same sense of confusion their characters feel. This story gave me exactly that. It's an almost narrative vertigo as you struggle to decide what it is the character is doing as well as where he is.

No World For Warriors is by far one of my favorite tales. The narrator is both disgusted with the new world as well as pining for the old days. Wallace blends and contrasts the history of warfare, finally judging modern warfare as impersonal, without glory.

The other stories in the collection are quite good, although these first ones are by far my favorites. The book ends with The End Of Flesh, which is a smoking hot urban horror noir novella. I first heard this story on Variant Frequencies. But as with the rest of his work, the written word bounces around your skull, lighting your mind on fire, and is so much more powerful than listening. Wallace has created a character walking through a societal graveyard, a place where mores and morals have died the modern death.

The character is not so much trying to hold back the tide of decay and dissolution, so much as realizing it's the only place in the world he truly has. The fight to keep the world from crashing down upon him is the only thing that makes him who he is. And what he finally discovers is the fact that he'd rather trade some of his own morals for his own empty, fractured existence.

I have to say that all the stories here more than held my attention. Wallace blends contemporary american fiction, science-fiction and horror all together to create a rather unique concoction. His use of metaphor, the voice of his narrators and characters, stays with you long after the story has finished stabbing you with its last word.

You can find Matt at matt-wallace.com, his podio fiction at Variant Frequencies. Order The Next Fix from Amazon, or Barnes and Noble or anywhere. You want this in your collection. Even if you've heard his work on Variant Frequencies or Pseudopod, I highly recommend you try reading it. The words are not to be forgotten and impossible to ignore. Just as with any addict, I look forward to my next fix, courtesy of Wallace, the pusher.