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the online home of nathaniel payne

Well, it appears as though the dust has finally settled on the Amazon/MacMillan fight this past weekend. I’m not even going to begin to attempt to summarize what happened. You can follow the Google search link I embedded into that first sentence, or check out some blog posts below from some authors whose opinions I greatly respect.

If I’ve learned anything from this inane battle it’s that Amazon has a ridiculous monopoly over an absurd amount of content, and I’m no longer going to contribute to the continuance of their control. I’m boycotting Amazon. Entirely.

Now, I understand that I’m a fairly insignificant drop in an insanely large bucket of water, and that what few purchases I made every year won’t go missing from Amazon’s books when it comes time to report financials. But I’m taking a stand. Amazon has proven that they are the Wal-Mart of online ventures (another place I refuse to shop), and this was their first real attempt at flexing their muscles in a space where they sought to exude some power over something they really had no business controlling. I can guarantee that this will not be the last time they try something like this. But it definitely will be the last time they get to wield any sort of power while holding onto money that I willingly gave them.

And as much as I absolutely adore

One month of Ficly storiesJanuary 31

I honestly don’t mean for this to become the Ficly blog. I swear. There’s already one of those, and I don’t need that kind of pressure.

I just felt the need to point out that I am now approximately 1/12th of the way through the Ficly 365 challenge. Upon completion and posting of today’s story, “Ginger Goes to Hollywood“, I have now crafted 31 extremely short tales, one for every day of January 2010.

I’m not only proud of my accomplishment, and my ability to force myself to write every day, but I’m also very encouraged by the excellent company I’ve been keeping over at Ficly. The community there is fantastic, and I’m discovering more wonderful new people every day. I’ve been attempting to try and read and comment on other people’s stories, as well, since so many people have been so kind as to comment on my own. But that’s dreadfully difficult to do. I’m hoping that’s something I can get better at over time.

In any case, the full breadth of my literary prowess is on display over on my Ficly author page (or, alternatively, here on Nerdflood, once I get it up to date). I’ve had some stories I’ve been especially proud of, such as That Which God Did Not Create, Cann

Ficly 365 progressJanuary 8

Well, it’s only been a week, but it’s been a successful one! In conjunction with my new goals for 2010, I’ve created a new Ficly story so far for each of the 7 days of January. It’s been a great experience so far. I feel like I’ve been stretching some muscles I haven’t had a chance to stretch in a long time. I’ve also made a few new friends on Ficly, which is great. The site has a fantastic, involved community that I haven’t really had a chance to tap into yet. Hopefully this challenge will allow me to get to know some great fellow writers and have some fun sharing a great hobby.

I’ve also got some fellow writers that have joined in the challenge! Fellow Colonist Jeffool has been writing stories right alongside me, though he has been momentarily sidelined by a wisdom tooth extraction. To him I say: LOSER! I wrote my very first Ficly365 story the day after I got all four of my wisdom teeth removed! But I digress. Just today I learned that someone else has also joined the fun. He’s a little late to the party, but he’s working to get caught up. It will be entertaining to do this with others and compare notes on the whole process.

I’ve got an 8th

Good-bye two-thousand nine, hello twenty-tenDecember 29 2009

Is it the reflective time of year already? My how time flies when you only manage to craft one blog post a month for an entire year. Of course, it should be noted that that is completely intentional.

2009 was a pretty good year overall, with the one exception of the current month of December, which has left some deep, ugly grooves in my soul. You see, December 2009 will forever be remembered as the month I lost my mother. After a long and resilient battle with lupus, my mom passed away just a couple of weeks ago. The past couple of weeks been packed with an exceptional amount of things we don’t ordinarily do. Spending an extraordinary amount of time with my father, my siblings, and their children. Sharing memories, laughing, allowing each other to be comfortable with crying around one another, that sort of thing. With Christmas thrown in there somewhere, December 2009 has been fairly bittersweet. But it has strengthened our combined families more than I ever thought possible. And I suppose for that, I should probably thank December 2009. I guess I’ll take that under consideration.

But ultimately, 2009 as a whole was a pretty exceptional year given the fact that it brought us our third beautiful child. Harlyn was born just five scant months ago, and it feels like she’s been with us forever. I suppose I’m thankful that mom was able to spend enough time on Earth to meet her eighth gran

Obsessively over-analyzing the word “grey” (or “gray”)November 18 2009

Someone on Twitter that I follow mentioned the allegedly “British” spelling of the word “grey”. I love discussing the word “grey” because it’s one of those beautifully awkward words that has morphed its way through our meat grinder of a language, and one of the few words where I have a specific personal set of guidelines that I follow for its usage.

In Old English, “grey” was actually written grǣg, using the terribly underutilized grapheme “æ“, which essentially amounts to a short “a” sound (as in “bat”). Over time, as the æ fell out of fashion due to typesetters breaking their machines attempting to set both the a and e so close in proximity to each other (I just made that up — it’s not actually true, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were?), most of the æ sounds came to be spelled with an “e” in British English, and alternatively, an “a” in the other non-English Germanic language origin variants.

Today, you could poll a thousand Americans and the divergence between using “grey” versus “gray” would likely be nearly 50/50. We have no real attachment to either spelling, and the “ay” and “ey” endings for any short word have very little variation (for instance: day, play, and stay all rhyme with whey, hey, and convey). So, for all intents and purposes, there really is no �