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Feathering the prop

Feathering a prop means turning the blades sideways, parallel to the direction of travel. This minimizes air resistance. It is typically done on modern gliders, but in theory may be done on any human-controled variable pitch propellor. I bet there are exceptions. Some company has to make electric or mechanical nannies that interfere.

Note that gliders may be planes that are intended to glide and may be propellor driven. They become motorized gliders or self-launching gliders, not planes. The licensing is different.

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Goblins 1

The average adult goblin is eight to nine feet tall, 2.4-2.7m, and weighs between one hundred and seventy and three hundred pounds, 77-136kg. There is little to no significant difference in height or weight between males and females. While female goblins do have slightly more developed pelvic areas, this is small compared to individual morphological variance.

In coloring the typical goblin has dark, muted skin without bright pigmentation. Gray, blue, and brown are common, and individuals are rarely monochromatic. Exceptions are often due to albinism or melanism. Skin colors do not vary based on morphological position, except as dictated by exposure, injury, and growth. Like humans goblins tan, and outdoor goblins will frequently have darker coloring on their heads, shoulders, and arms. Blue pigmentation often turns blackish-gray as it darkens, but gray and brown both remain.

Albino goblins are typically killed in infancy. This does not seem to be related to mythological or religious reasons. Goblins exhibiting melanism are often indistinguishable from dark-pigmented goblins save by professional inspection, an infrequent phenomena.

Goblins possess two arms and two legs. Legs and arms are slightly longer than proportional human limbs by ten to twenty percent. Some clans (Throathurters primarily and lineages) have elongated fingers as much as three times human lengths and fifty to one hundred percent longer proportionally. The Throathurter clan combines this with augmented grip strength due to sexual preferences. Grip strength is considered attractive to the point of being a primary sexual differentiator. Other clans usually do not, and suffering from reduced manual leverage have weaker hands than humans. Goblin feet are large and flat. Stonefoots do not have especially hard feet but often have thicker sole-skin.

The goblin head is a large organ. Eyes are deep-set and dark colored with large pupils. Ears are slightly lower than human normal, increased in size, but limp. Goblins are not known for being particularly aural, with typical variance between individuals comparable to humanity. The tusks or fangs are six large teeth similar to human canines. Two primary pairs of teeth, one pair top jaw, one pair bottom, mesh outside the incisors and protrude between the lips. These fangs do not serve predatory purposes typically. Their function is to maintain a parting of the lips to allow breathing. Smaller fangs on the bottom jaw may partially interface outside the upper fangs. The layout is small bottom-jaw fang 1, large upper-jaw fang 2, large bottom-jaw fang 3, incisors top and bottom jaws, large bottom-jaw fang 4, large upper-jaw fang 5, small bottom-jaw fang 6. The ‘clicking’ of the fangs is an inherent part of goblin language. It is sometimes written as a click, and often a part of how goblins pronounce the human sound T.

The goblin nose is located in the center of the roof of the mouth. It has two nostrils, though they meet in the nasal cavity only a quarter inch, <1cm, from the mouth cavity. They are separated by an intrusion of the palate.

Goblins are fully capable of taste but have reduced smell compared to humans. Function is similar, though the morphological constraint of the nostrils being internal should not be underestimated. (The common superstition that goblins smell as well as canines does not seem to be supported at all, and author speculates it is caused by the sound of sniffing created when a goblin attempts to use scent identification. Audible sniffing may imply great capability in this field. Author reiterates this is speculation, but included due to frequent appearance in human culture.)

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Publishing

A while ago I helped my father move a desk. It was a ponderous old thing, built like a cube of solid wood. It had to weigh a hundred pounds. But it wasn’t that hard to move for the same reason: it was built like a cube of solid wood. I could grab it anywhere. The top had a lip, and being a plank, I could carry it by that lip. The legs were thick posts bolted to the body and ran straight to the top where it was screw together. Any possible orientation of the desk had big, beautiful hand-holds.

Comparatively, when I moved in Maryland last, I had one of those light, particle board desks that was a bear to move. It was trivially light, about thirty pounds, and between two people it was lighter than a moderate backpack. It was nothing. But it was made of nothing, and you couldn’t hold it any which way because it would break. It crumbled under finger pressure.

The light desk was vastly more challenging to move through hallways and doors than the heavy one because every movement was a calculation. We couldn’t just shove the little one. Dad’s heavy desk cared not. It cared nothing for walls, because the walls were going to break before that thing. Orientation was no concerned because every angle had a great hold. The little one was almost impossible, and I wound up throwing the light thing away so I wouldn’t have to deal with it any more.

Publishing is moving the light desk. Nothing is really hard. Writing the book is hard, but publishing it isn’t. I’ve worked with several freelance editors, and the lead content editor on Bloodharvest, September C Fawkes, was a delight to work with. She did all the heavy lifting on that project. But I used to write in LibreOffice, so I had to convert files. Then in Word I reformatted them, and formatted them again when Augustin of Wordy did brave battle with atrocious grammar. Bowker is the reason monopolistic behavior requires regulation.

Here’s the kicker. None of that was more than an annoyance. None of it was hard, certainly not compared to writing the stupid thing. What was a problem was that every step was a calculation, and I never really knew what the next step was. At no point was step C clear from B, and I was rarely confident that step A had been completed to perfection. It was just anomalous difficulty.

Where I’m going with all this is that Bloodharvest is now in the Amazon Kindle store here.

I wanted it done, so I could approach Bedtime Stories with some idea of how to publish. I wanted a road map, and in self publishing, I had to make my own. It’s done now.

What do you  think? Is it reasonable or not? Are there typos? Is the price respectable? You can read it free in a few places by clicking on theArchives tab. If any of the readers want real, live input on a published novella, now’s your opportunity.

As I look now, the cover preview doesn’t appear. I need to fix that, and I don’t know how. I really want to know how the table of contents works on other devices.

How do I feel about it? I don’t know. I’m elated it’s out there and worried because of the same. I’m resolved. Bedtime Stories and Death Mountain are coming, and I don’t have any fear now that I won’t be able to self publish them. But I also don’t know how I will. It’s not a cheap endeavor.

I’m relieved. It’s done. It’s like my first 5k. A 5k may be nothing, and there are pro authors who drop novels and novellas like it’s nothing, but they’re not me. I don’t have to beat them. I have to beat the guy I was yesterday, and as of this writing, me of 24hrs ago didn’t have a book on Amazon.

Bedtime Stories to editing by Jan 1st, 2019. Death Mountain, full length, 1st draft written by Feb 1st 2019. The timelines of the goals are flexible. Accomplishing them isn’t.

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Advertising

There’s a billboard on Colfax, just past the Rodolfo Gonzalez library going west, that says something to the effect of ‘Ditch your side hustle. There’s easier ways to make money.’ It has a picture of a tired lady with a half dozen dogs on leashes.

The problem is that side hustle looks amazing. They’re so fluffy! I want half a dozen dogs, and if that was what I did for cash, I’d be all for it. There are dog walking services with WAITLINES. She’s in! She got it. The dogs are even still for the the photograph, so she’s got a half dozen big, fluffy, well-behaved dogs. The billboard does not make me want to ditch my side hustle.

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Krat

Casual murder wasn’t against Krat. If you saw someone and had a disagreement with them, that was fine. Krat said if you ganged up to kill someone you had to fight sequentially, and if you challenged them and they submitted, you had to accept that. Let’s say just one goblin decided to rob another. If the first ran up behind the second and strangled him, she hadn’t violated Krat. More local rules and laws on robbery and murder reigned. But if the robber demanded money and the other goblin gave it to her, then she couldn’t strangle him in Krat.

The system worked, such as it did, because goblins attached huge importance to talking to each other. Acts of discussion were noteworthy. Mere killings weren’t. But if one goblin spoke to another, than that talking had rules, and those rules had to be obeyed.

It’s hard for humans to understand because we talk all the time and attach more importance to things like murder than whether or not two individuals talked first. Goblins saw it the exact other way. Murders happen all the time and aren’t noteworthy. Killing won’t change the future. It only leads to more killing, which is already the status quo. Conversation causes change, so talking mattered.

A truly weird bit of Krat was that lying wasn’t an issue. If you were lied to and believed it, that was your own fault for being stupid. Stupid is weak, and Krat defied weakness. But lying is also weak, so anyone could take your words as fact if they were stronger. What kept it in check was all the allowed murder.

Goblin society had lived and died by Krat since the fall of Whitehall, and lived it so well they’d never recovered as one people.

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Current Work

I finally found a cover-designer for Bloodharvest. Third time’s the charm, right? With a little luck that will be ready to go soon. An ebook is first in line, and a POD physical book is right behind that.

Otherwise, I’ve shifted Bedtime Stories to my main tasking, pushing DM back. I’ve got a problem I don’t know how to solve short of everybody dying. _I’m_ okay with everybody dying, but I don’t think anyone else is. Meanwhile I realized I had an ending to BS, and I think it works. After the second draft is done I’ll submit that to my editors. I’m aiming for another double release in early 2019.

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Harley Davidson

I feel sorry for Harley Davidson. They’re on the way down and out but so insular they won’t admit it. I think it’s a shame because for a while they made good motorcycles.

I had one in Banff, and that put me off ever riding the shield and bar again. It just wasn’t that great. The rallying cry of ‘not as terrible as they use to be’ doesn’t do a whole lot for me, and from their position, HD has do well. There’s a lot of Cadillac in them. They have a lot of brand and not too much content, a lot of history that makes me think I would get one if I was a retired dentist. They have potential. Like the ATS-V, some of their bikes are legitimately good. The problem is something else is better, cheaper, and there’s no reason to buy a Harley over the better, cheaper bike.

The Livewire concept is an electric bike that HD is using to connect with the yout’s. It could be great. I’m about dead center of their target mark and looking at that bike, I just don’t want one.

The first company in electric transportation to realize people live in apartment buildings is going to clean house. It won’t be Harley.

Homeownership in the US is skewing older. HD’s target market, young people with a little money to blow, is trending towards apartments. What’s more, with the rise of mobility solutions and transportation alternatives, practicality isn’t the absolute it used to be. I can Uber when it rains, get a Car2Go to grocery shop, and everybody and their brother is coming up with mobility solutions for when I need a pickup. Motorcycle insurance is cheap. Maintenance is inexpensive, and would be even cheaper for an electric bike. I have opinions about the environment, and would throw money into making my commutes and library runs on an EV. The Livewire sounds like it is right up my alley.

Except, and listen close, I live in an apartment. I do not have a garage. I don’t really know when I’m going to get one. An electric bike is utterly worthless if I can’t plug it in, and I can’t plug it in.

But that’s something any reasonably forward thinking motorcycle company could fix. Zero motorcycles makes batteries I can remove, take inside, charge in my living room, and plug back in. They don’t have the range or production experience yet, but this is something Harley could do. But Harley won’t. They’ll make fat bertha motorcycles that only baby boomers ride, and that market is dying.

Make me a three or four pack electric motorcycle. Make one I can charge inside, and carry a battery out and drop into my bike. Make a cruiser. Slap the motors on the rear wheel, no chain, no drive, and get rid of half of maintenance. Make something completely useful and unlike what’s in the world today. Make something us kids want.

With the interest these days in history, tradition, and authenticity, HD could slam this out of the park. If they want to.

I don’t know if people want a Harley.

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The Scheduling

I’d like to get Bedtime Stories to editing by the end of November, but I’ve got nothing as to plot. A couple snippets of jokes are running through my head, but they don’t go anywhere.

It’s time to do Barr Trail again, perhaps a few miles past the camp. Perhaps Bottomless pit.