Cyberpunk Blues – Part 2
Been a rough week. Hard for me to keep justifying this over and over, but I cannot stress enough that life is creating a rough situation for me to have any sort of creative energy. I’m mostly just silently stressing out as I sit at my computer, trying to will myself to do anything and everything else. I have so much that I need to do, so much that I need to accomplish. And I just can’t get over myself to get it done.
So I sit, and gnaw at myself, and feel guilty for not doing anything, then gnaw at myself more. Etc, etc. It’s something of a vicious cycle. I wish it would end, I wish I could realize some of my desires, to at least ease the numb sense of hopelessness I drag myself through day to day. I know I will, intellectually. Emotionally? I feel like I’m worthless, will continue to be worthless, and may as well quit because I will never amount to anything.
Again, I know that’s not true, and my continued efforts both here, with Temple, and with my own book in progress tells me that I’m not about to quit anytime soon. Professional authors are those who refuse to admit defeat, and keep advancing in the face of their struggles. I don’t know if I can call myself a pro quite yet, but I refuse to back down.
In a way, I’m already starting at the bottom. My first release, Temple in the Stars Part 1 has sold exactly one unit (to a family friend), has yet to be read on Kindle Unlimited, and is basically a dud. Part two comes out today. I literally and figuratively have nowhere to go but up. Seriously? What’s the worst that can happen? No one reads it again? Yawn.
I think this scenario is why I delayed so long in publishing my work. Precisely because deep down I knew I didn’t have enough signal strength to generate readers or money. I get more readers here on a daily basis than I generated with a release (that I attempted to promote with amazon services) on a multi-billion dollar platform. In my head I always had it as a windfall, which would bring in a stable income. Not so much.
It’s honestly okay, and I will keep on pressing on until I reach a point where it does become fiscally viable. As to how long that could take? Your guess is honestly as good as mine. It could be today. It could be four years from now. Who knows. As it stands, I’m going to keep going until I die. The only thing that’ll change is if I have to squeeze in writing sessions around work or if I can craft my own schedule in the fashion I wish so desperately to do. I want, more than anything, to report to myself and only myself. That’s the dream.
So for now, let’s head into Cyberpunk Blues. I’m trying to branch out from my normal serious third-person style. I want a lighter, quip filled first person experience. I have some ideas for the book that revolve around this particular scenario. So it’s just a matter of trying to figure out just how this will work for me, as I’ve never really tried to stretch these particular writing muscles. Time to go ahead and dive in, because sink or swim might not work in real life, but it works just fine in writing.
Without further delay…
Cyberpunk Blues – Part 2
When your recharge station defies the laws of physics and tries to kill you, there are exactly two explanations. First: The government is trying to off you. I had ruled that one out as soon as I woke up. If the government wanted to ice you, you’d be iced. Further, they had no reason to axe one of their rumblers without good cause. And finally, if you got geeked by the Man, they made a point of letting everyone know it via their signature calling card: a bullet to the dome.
No, that left the second option. One of the many, many enemies I had made in my ten year career roughing up the more violent parts of the Syndicate. It wasn’t for nothing that I lived in a small apartment, under an assumed name, with a completely false (and government generated) identification known to exactly three people in this entire sector of the Wheel. Good goons are both expensive and hard to find. Bosses in the Syndicate tend to frown hard on rumblers willing to rob them of their most precious resource.
If I brought this up to my erstwhile employers, they would simply wash their hands of me and go about their business. They could always find some other promising young recruit to do their dirty work, especially with two billion people crowding the Wheel. As always, that thought made me shudder, and completely side-tracked my train of thought. The Wheel was only designed for half that. It also explained the three hundred square feet of my apartment.
“Betty, what’s the headcount up to as of today?” I asked, with the subject now coursing along my thoughts like a run-away loading synth. As I shoved hard on the outside door to our apartment to get it to close, Betty scoured her most recent data dump. “As of this morning it was 2.8432 billion Chase. Looks like it’s up another 10%.”
I sighed. I suppose it was inevitable that people would cheat on procreation ban, but it still made me twitchy. Earth was a ravaged husk half of the Sol System away. The second Wheel in Sol was just as crowded as we were. And we don’t have enough resources to build another Genesis ship, now do we? It was a minor miracle that humanity hadn’t consumed itself to extinction before opening up the heavens.
None of this, however, was solving her problem. She shook her head, slapped her cheeks, ignored Betty and her chirrup of protest at the self abuse, and finally gave in to what she was avoiding: She would have to go see her dad. A normal person would celebrate that moment. A normal person also wouldn’t have been forced to become her fathers caretaker at the tender age of six when mom had finally had enough. A normal persons father also wouldn’t be the most corrupt, devious, crooked cop in the whole galaxy. You’ve never been normal Chase, face it. You punch bad guys for a living!
To be continued….
Rumblefully,
Justin
