John Kusters Jr.

Welcome to my Writing Adventure

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The Come From Away Experience

2024-11-24 /

This Thursday, I experienced Come From Away again. I’ve experienced it twice in theatres, a couple of times on Apple TV+, and countless times streaming the music. And I very explicitly and deliberately use the word “experience” instead of “watching” and/or “listening.” Of all of the theatre I’ve seen, Come From Away is the one that full pulls me in and makes me feel ALL of the feelings. Knowing that every actor on stage is portraying actual people who lived through the event, and are often speaking in the actual words of the affected people, turns my empathy up to 11 or more.

I understand and deeply feel the terror, the fear, the agony, the relief, the fascination of exploring new identities, and how the experience ultimately changed them. I want to believe I would act like the people of Gander with incredible grace on such short notice. I want to believe I’d be open to new experiences like lumberjack Kevin, I’d like to believe in new love found in horrible situations, I wish I would be clever enough to figure out how to communicate with fearful people and tell them they have no need to be anxious.

I feel my guts wrench when the pilot, Beverly, realizes that the thing that has brought her the most joy in her entire life was just used to kill hundreds and thousands of people. And Hannah, desperate to get news about her son, and then the heart-wrenching resolution. I am literally on the edge of tears throughout most of the 90 minutes, and there are several times I’m entirely overwhelmed. Even listening to the cast recording will bring the tears (as it’s doing at this moment as I’m typing this).

They often say theatre can take you away, allow you to live other people’s experiences. For me, Come From Away is the epitome of that maxim.

An Ill-Informed Election

2024-11-23 /

I’m seeing commentary, both in mainstream media and on social media, that expresses incredulity that people knew what Project 2025 and Agenda 47 were all about and yet a plurality of voters chose it anyways. The problem is, I’m not convinced the majority did know about this. In this election, the majority of voters did not get their news from reliable sources. They either got all their news from right-wing sources (Fox, NewsMax, ONN, etc.) or from algorithm-based social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, etc.) where the algorithm was feeding them an endless supply of highly biased information. Now that the election is over, and proponents of Project 2025 are exultant and not trying to obfuscate it anymore, a lot of Trump voters are hearing about it for the first time and are shocked. Sadly, truth-based news reporting failed to penetrate the right-wing “news” bubble.

I expect many of those voters will be outraged when parts of that agenda take effect. And I’m partly empathic, but equally partly scornful. Like, I’m sorry they’ll feel the consequences of tariffs, destruction of healthcare, immigrant detention camps, higher prices on everything, denaturalization, and dozens of other consequences of their vote along with the rest of us who tried to warn them, but I’m also angry about how easily they were duped, how they eagerly consumed a steady diet of lies and obfuscation from the right-wing propaganda machine, and showed disinterest in (or lack of capacity to) engage critical thinking skills.

Sadly I really don’t know how to address this disparity in veracity of sources of information. How do we get people who are dependent on a steady diet of fear and manufactured outrage to step outside of that ecosystem and let some facts into their worldview? Telling them “I told you so” will only increase resistance to deradicalization.

It’s infuriating how mainstream media, including those generally considered on the liberal end of the political spectrum, are currently attacking Bluesky for giving progressive people safe harbor, accusing us of building an echo chamber, while completely ignoring the right-wing echo chamber that radicalized and stupefied a little under 50% of this year’s voters.

Where Have I Been?

2024-07-16 /

The past few months have been a whirlwind, keeping me away from my writing desk more often than I’d like. Family health crises, travel commitments, and a relentless heatwave conspired against my creative pursuits. However, the cooler weather and inspiring panels at BayCon have reignited my passion for the craft.

While my main projects took a backseat, I wasn’t entirely idle. I’ve penned nearly 20,000 words on a cozy mystery—a delightful side project that’s been a welcome distraction. But now, it’s time to refocus on honing my short story skills.

The writing journey is rarely smooth, and as anticipated, my latest round of submissions met with rejections. Currently, my submission queue stands empty, save for one urban fantasy piece. This noir-tinged tale of a detective uncovering the truth about vampires straddles the line between fantasy and horror, leaving me uncertain about its ideal market. Moreover, it’s not quite the genre I want to lead with, and it still needs to undergo the rigorous workshop and critique process.

Famous Science Fiction, 1967
Image copyright John Keogh, 2006. Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 2.0)

So, I find myself back at the drawing board, flexing those neglected brainstorming muscles. I’ll admit, my sci-fi idea generation muscles have grown a bit atrophied, but I’m determined to build them back up. Armed with my trusty notebook and a new Pilot “Vanishing Point” fountain pen (a birthday gift to myself which glides across the page like a dream), I’m ready to tackle this creative challenge head-on.

As I embark on this renewed journey, I’m curious: do you have any go-to sources for writing prompts, especially those tailored for science fiction? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below. Let’s spark some interstellar inspiration together!

Long Time No Update

2024-05-13 /
antique typewriter on stool
Photo by Arturo A on Pexels.com

Well, yeah, time flies? Sorry, I haven’t updated in quite some time. I fell out of the habit, and life occasionally got interesting.

I did finish NaNoWriMo 2023, with over 50K words written in a fantasy novel. After I hit the 50K, I set it aside. It needs a lot of work to get it to a place where I’d be interested in completing it. It was supposed to be a swashbuckling adventure which takes place in a setting that combined ancient magic, newly emergent steam-powered technology, inscrutable gods, and a ton of Dumas-inspired musketeer action. I might have hit some of the notes of that last bit, but other than that, the city never really came alive in my writing. It just felt like a bog-generic fantasy city. BORING! So, into the incubator it goes and maybe in a couple of years it’ll come back out with new life and energy.

In the mean time I’ve started and stopped a number of projects, from Space Opera to low-stakes fantasy, to MM romance. Currently on the needles, as my knitter husband would say, is a cozy murder mystery with a gay male sleuth. I’m enjoying writing it, taking a lot of inspiration from “How to Write a Cozy Mystery: Step by Step: A Proven System to Create Reader-Favorite Cozies” by Natasha C. Sass. Of course, I targeted a cool 60K novel, but just four chapters in, I’m having to reset my target to 75K. I am not a brief writer.

Anyway, I’ll try to get back in to the habit of updating this blog.

If you stumble across this and read this update, thank you!

New Submission

2023-07-24 /

I’ve submitted the story F&SF kindly rejected to another magazine, this one with a much shorter response time, specifically Clarksworld. Again, my expectations are very low, just hoping to eventually snag a personalized response.

On LLM “Artificial Intelligence”

2023-05-29 /

As I toddle off to bed, I’m pondering why we are calling LLM tools “artificial intelligence”. They don’t really show any kind of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. All they do is put millions of texts into a blender, hit the “frappe” button, then pour the slurry back out and feed it to you. There’s no verification of presented data, no discernment between fact and fiction, just stochastically stringing words together in a way that resembles other text it has seen. The appearance of coherence is merely a factor of how much data it has consumed. The coherence is an illusion. And yet we have people out there that are convinced systems like ChatGPT are some kind of oracle, infallible and wise. That’s truly frightening.

Thoughts on a Polite Society

2023-04-20 /

An armed society is a polite one!

Ralph Yarl shot in the head after mistakenly ringing the doorbell at the wrong house.

An armed society is a polite one!

Kaylin Gillis killed after pulling into the wrong driveway by mistake.

An armed society is a polite one!

Two Texas cheerleaders shot after one mistakenly got into the wrong car.

As the number of guns in our society skyrocket, I just have to ask: When the FUCK do we get to the POLITE part of the aphorism frequently quoted by gun lovers? When did making simple mistakes, mistakes all of us make at one or more points in our lives, become a crime punishable by being shot at or even killed?

Doing The Scary Thing

2023-03-24 /

I have done the scary thing. I have submitted my first story for publication, namely to the biggest name out there, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

While I certainly hope the story will fit what they are looking for at the moment, my expectation is a rejection letter. But this is the first step at becoming a published author. Every traditionally published author has stepped through this gateway. And now I have done the same.

And if they do pass on the story, there are many other magazines and web sites out there to submit to. And if any of them give me editorial comments, I’ll definitly incorporate them before re-submitting. But I’m proud of myself for taking this first step. I’ve been hesitant to take this step for too long.

Yay me!

A Writing Experiment

2023-01-03 /

As I consider retiring from my Tech career early and trying to make a go of writing professionally, I thought this holiday break (two full weeks plus an additional day) might be a good time to try an experiment: spend the typical working days of those weeks in a manner consistent with my new career ambition. This means spending at least 6 hours each day focused on creative writing work. I set up a writing schedule and planned to stick to it and see how much I could get done. I even set up a macOS/iOS Focus mode for my writing and employed using a Pomodoro Technique timer to help out (Be Focused Pro).

Schedule:
7:30 AM: Write for 1 hour
8:30 AM: Shower, dress, eat breakfast
9:30 AM: Write for 3 hours
12:30 PM: Lunch and Reading/Facebook
1:30 PM: Write for 2 hours

The results? Well, I didn’t write on every day I planned to, I did take a few days off. I was being kind to myself since it can be difficult to make such an intense transition. Also, I did not keep to my schedule as much as I hoped. Often the 3 hour block and the 2 hour block were swapped. I also re-learned that word count is not a particularly useful metric to determine daily success since a good chunk of the time was spent brainstorming and planning. I did discover than when my hyper-focus kicks in, I can produce 6000 words in one day. Overall, I do feel I was generally successful in my attempt. I think were I to make the jump, I could be serious about it. And honestly, it felt good, a feeling I haven’t had in my tech career in a long while.

Numbers:

  • 8 solid writing days out of 11
  • Around 12,000 words typed in first drafts of two short stories
  • Around 10,000 words typed on detailed character backstories on a murder mystery novel
  • Around 1,000 words typed brainstorming a M/M Space Opera novel
  • Around 10 pages of a 8″ by 6″ writing journal hand-written doing brainstorming and idea germination (I’m not sure what that amounts to in words)
  • Averaging 2875 typed words typed per day (and an unknown number of hand-written words)

What will I do with this information? I’m not sure yet. We are still in discussion with financial advisors about whether it makes financial sense to even consider retiring early. Our planning assumes no income from my writing (if I did sell anything, that would be a nice bit of extra income). But given how good it felt, how happy it made me, and how my stress levels dropped quite a lot, I have to pay attention to it and give it serious consideration.

I’ve had a dream of being a professional genre writter since before High School, at least 40 years ago. But I was raised with the strong belief, probably mistaken, that it was more important to be financially self-sufficient than to follow my dreams. However, if we can be financially secure while I’m exploring a new writing career? Is there a reason not to?

Another Beginning

2021-10-02 /

Working on concepts, themes, and worldviews for a new novel. For some reason, my brainstorming always works best at the speed of pen on paper.

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