Counting Sheep

Last weekend, I had trouble sleeping. I tried counting sheep, thinking that was supposed to help people fall asleep. After a few sheep wandered across the imaginary field in my mind, my thoughts drifted to a story about counting sheep. I wound up spending way too much time working on the story in my head, and hardly slept as a result. Such is the life of a writer. On the other hand, I have a story that I can share with all of you. It's only about 1,000 words long, so it won't take long to read. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my insomnia!

Note: You can also find this story and others on my Wattpad page.

Counting Sheep

The shift leader brings me into a room with a desk pressed against one wall. A monitor and a keyboard are the only objects occupying the desk. Their cables disappear through holes in the wall so that I can't see what they're connected to. An old leather chair sits next to the desk. There is nothing else in the room.

"This is where you'll be working," he says.

He taps on the keyboard, and the screen lights up. It shows an image of an empty field. Green grass fills every pixel except for a layer of sky at the top.

The shift leader points to a button on the keyboard labeled START.

"When you're ready to begin, just hit this. Then keep your eye on the monitor. Occasionally, you'll see a sheep cross the screen. If it travels from right to left, add one to the total. If it travels from left to right, subtract one."

"So I'm... counting sheep?"

"Yes."

"Aren't you afraid I'll fall asleep?" I chuckle, but he doesn't laugh.

"Your profile indicates that you will not fall asleep during the task."

I've never read the information that the State has collected about me. I have no idea how they know that I won't fall asleep while counting sheep when that's exactly what you're supposed to do in order to fall asleep.

"Are you sure this is the job for me? I understand that all Citizens are supposed to work when they turn eighteen, but I think there'd be a better fit. I did well in my math classes."

"Counting is math," the shift leader says.

"It's math that a four-year-old can do."

"There are quite a lot of sheep."

"OK, maybe a five-year-old."

"We're certain this is the right job for you to start with."

Start with? Does that mean this won't be a permanent assignment? "What happened to the last person who had this job?"

"She was promoted."

"Oh, this job leads to promotions? What does she do now?"

"She works in Accounting."

"That's nice. I think I'd like Accounting. I can use my math skills."

"We'll see." He points to the START button again. "Are you ready to begin?"

"I guess so." My finger hovers over the button. "Just press it?"

"Yes, whenever you're ready."

I hit the button.

Nothing appears on the screen. I see only the empty field.

"Nothing's happening. Are you sure it's working?" I ask.

"Give it some time. The sheep aren't going to start moving just because you hit the button."

Which is exactly what I thought would happen. "How long does it take?"

"A few seconds. Maybe minutes. Assuming they move at all."

"Why exactly would they be moving? What did the START button do?"

"It releases a pheromone at the other end of the field."

"A sheep pheromone?"

"Yes, that's what we're testing. We want to see how many sheep are attracted to various sheep pheromones and how quickly they respond."

"Why are we testing sheep pheromones?"

"To determine which ones are most effective."

"And why do we need effective sheep pheromones?"

He stares at me like the answer should be obvious. "It's obvious. The State thinks it's important."

I want to ask why the State thinks effective sheep pheromones are important, but I keep my mouth shut.

A sheep suddenly appears on the right side of the screen. "There's a sheep!" I say. It moves at a leisurely pace across the field to the left border of the screen before disappearing from view. "It went from right to left. Add one?"

"Correct."

I enter 1 on the keyboard.

The screen resumes its empty-field state again for a few more seconds. Then a second sheep crosses from right to left. I add another 1 to the total.

Every few seconds, one more animal traverses the length of the screen. They all move from right to left. None travel in the opposite direction. The section of the field that the monitor shows doesn't let me see where the sheep are coming from or where they're going.

I ask the shift leader, "How do I know it's not the same sheep over and over?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if, after a sheep leaves the left edge of the screen, someone picks it up and carries it back to the right side?"

"We'd see them if that was the case."

"Not if they walked behind the camera."

"Why would they do that?"

"How should I know? I'm just a lowly sheep counter."

"No one's carrying the sheep back. Besides, the sheep all look different."

"They look the same to me."

"They're different. Trust me." A sheep appears on the right edge of the screen. "See, that one is larger than the one we saw before."

"That's because it's closer to the camera."

"No, it's larger."

I don't argue. We watch in silence as the sheep crosses the screen. I add one to the total. Shortly thereafter, another sheep comes into view.

"This one looks just like the last one, and the one before that," I say.

"No, it's smaller."

"Because it's farther away from the camera."

"No, really, it's smaller."

I close my eyes. There's no point in arguing with him.

My eyes open when he says, "You forgot to increment the count."

I tap the key to add to the tally. "What happens if I miss one? What if I enter the wrong number or if I doze off?"

"That's OK, they'll do a count of the number of sheep on the left side at the end of the trial."

"What? Why am I here then? Wouldn't it be easier if they just counted the total number of sheep themselves?"

The shift leader scratches his chin. "Well, maybe. But then you wouldn't have a job, and it's important for all Citizens to have a job after they turn eighteen."

"Is this just busy work? Do I serve a meaningful purpose to the State by being here?"

He glances at his watch. "Oh, look at the time. Your shift is up. See you tomorrow."

I can't have been in the room for more than ten minutes. "Are you sure?"

"Of course, I'm the shift leader. It's my job to keep track of such things."

"If you say so. See you tomorrow."

He waits for me to leave, but he stays inside the room. I wave goodbye. He waves back. I have a feeling I'll have a new shift leader tomorrow.

 

The classics are not for me

 

In January, I embarked on a new reading challenge to make my way through the classics I haven’t read yet. I’m on my fifth book now, and so far, I admit that I’m not enjoying this reading challenge.

The classics are not for me. They remind me of books I had to read in high school English classes, probably the only time in my life that I didn’t enjoy reading fiction. Part of it is the writing style and language. English has evolved since the 1700s (the earliest publish date of the books I've read as part of the challenge), and the way authors write has also changed in the past 300 years. However, I didn’t enjoy books written in the 20th century either. Perhaps some of the classics I’ll read later in the year will be more to my taste, but I’m not optimistic about the prospects.

On a brighter note, I’m also reading books that were finalists for last year’s Goodreads Choice Awards winners, and I like them much better. Some will surely wind up on my list of favorite reads of 2023. It’s good to know that I can turn to one source of recommendations for books I’ll enjoy!

 

Finally done with first draft of After Z-Day Book 3

I'm over three months late, but I finally finished the first draft of Book 3 in the After Z-Day series. My initial goal was to complete the first draft by the end of 2022 so that I can release the book around the middle of 2023. Since the first draft is so late, I'm now targeting a late-summer or early-fall release.

There were two key reasons for the delay in finishing the first draft. The most obvious is that my day job has been crazy busy for the past year. It's been busy for years now, but the level of busyness reached new heights in the second half of 2022. It's been hard to find a consistent writing rhythm when I'm often working mornings before breakfast, evenings after dinner, and weekends, so I'm proud of the fact that I still managed to write the first draft, even if it took longer than expected. 

More so than any first draft that I can remember, this book also went through a lot of changes as I wrote it. I ordinarily make a big deviation from my initial outline about a third of the way through a first draft, and then another pivot two-thirds of the way into the story. With this draft, I was constantly changing things as I wrote the back half of the book. I think each change made the story better (or I wouldn't have changed it), but I'm curious to see how coherently everything flows once I start editing.

I'm planning to take a short break from the manuscript to reset my brain, then start the revision process with what I hope will be a new set of eyes. I hope the revisions won't take longer than planned so that you all will get to read this book in a few months.

Why ChatGPT won't be writing my books

ChatGPT is all the rage these days. In a nutshell, it is an AI chatbot that has been trained and can be trained on any library of existing text. As a result, it learns how humans write and can imitate that writing. Since its introduction, we've seen a growing number of books written by ChatGPT or through the aid of ChatGPT. In some cases, the situation has gotten so out of hand that magazines such as Clarkesworld have stopped accepting new submissions due to the deluge of ChatGPT-written stories.

I won't dive into the moral and ethical ramifications of books written by AI. Instead, I want to let my readers know that none of my books will be written by ChatGPT. The reason for me is simple, and it's based on why I write in the first place. I don't write to make a lot of money (although I certainly won't complain if that ever comes to pass), nor do I write to see my name on book retailer shelves. I started writing and continue to write because I have stories I want to tell. They are my stories, and I want to tell them. That is what brings joy to my writing. If ChatGPT wrote a story for me, the story would be its story, not mine. I also won't get to derive the joy from writing it, which defeats the purpose of writing in the first place.

One day, writing may stop being fun for me, or I'll run out of stories I want to tell. If that should happen, I'd most likely stop completely rather than turn to an AI to write on my behalf. In the meantime, I'll continue to write my own stories because that's what brings me joy.

When you won't read a book because the cover is too scary

When I published the first two books in the After Z-Day series, one of my considerations was how the book covers should look. I wanted to convey the genre of the series (zombie apocalypse) in an immediate and obvious way, but I also didn't want covers that were too scary for someone who isn't a fan of zombies to be afraid to pick them up. 

The reason why that's important to me is that there are books I won't read because I'm too scared of the cover. For example, one of upcoming books that I'm seeing a lot of hype for is She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran. Something about the flowers coming out of the woman's mouth creeps me out, and I can't imagine wanting to hold that book or see the cover lying around the house. Other books that I won't read because of scary faces on the cover include Horrid by Katrina Leno and What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo. It's a shame because, based on the descriptions of these books, I might like them.

Even worse for me than creepy faces are insects and spiders. I have an irrational fear of them in real life, so I won't touch a book with them on the cover. This is unfortunate because John Dies at the End by David Wong is a book I really liked, but the second book in the series is called This Book is Full of Spiders with spiders on the cover. There are now four books published in the series, and while I can skip the second book, it's more likely that I won't read beyond book 1.

There are cases when I can tolerate an insect on the cover. For example, the cover of The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid was fine with me. Maybe because I find butterflies to be less scary unless I look too closely at them, or maybe it's because it's not a lifelike picture of a butterfly.

Which brings me back to my first point. I hope my covers for the After Z-Day series aren't too scary for readers. Moreover, the covers of the remaining books in the series will look similar. Hopefully, I manage to convey the genre effectively without scaring off potential readers.

 

2023 reading challenge - books to read before I die

 

I read a lot of great books in 2021 and 2022 as part of my Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge, and I plan to continue reading finalists from last year's Goodreads Choice Awards. However, for 2023, I'm going to change the formal reading challenge that I track. 

As I get older, I'm thinking more and more about bucket lists. When it comes to reading, there are lots of lists of books to read before you die, and 2023 seems like as good a year as any to start plowing through the classics. The question is: which of the many lists to choose from?

I started with Peter Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. This appears to be the most referenced source when I searched for bucket list books. Not all books on the list are novels, and there are quite a few I've already read. That said, it still leaves a lot of books. 

Then I found this handy list, which categorizes the 1,001 books by time period. It helped me organize the reading challenge because what I've decided to do is to read one book a month from the list, using the following criteria:

• 1 book from the 2000s
• 5 books from the 1900s
• 4 books from the 1800s
• 1 book from the 1700s
• 1 book from pre-1700s

Next, I looked through some other lists of books to read before you die, namely this, this, this, and this. My plan is to cross-reference Peter Boxall's list with other lists and select ones that appear multiple times. I already know that I'll read these three books because they appear on all of the lists:

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

(That's right, I haven't read any of these books. Please don't judge.)

Given the number of books on the list, and that I'm only reading twelve of them in 2023, this sounds like a reading challenge I'll continue for many years to come, even if I don't formally track and report my progress.

 

Favorite reads of 2022

Happy 2023, everyone! Before 2022 recedes too far in the rearview mirror, I want to share my favorite reads from last year. Without further ado, here are my top ten:

1. Warbreaker - Brandon Sanderson 

My Brandon Sanderson journey continues into 2022, and it shouldn't come as a big surprise that one of his books--albeit an older one--landed at the top of my list of favorite reads. (By the way, this is the second year in a row where my favorite read was by Brandon Sanderson.) Not only does Warbreaker contain fantastic world-building and magic systems that are a trademark of his books, but it has possibly my favorite Brandon Sanderson character of all time in Lightsong. As an added bonus, Warbreaker is a standalone novel (so far), so anyone who wants to be exposed to Sanderson's awesomeness can read it without committing to a series.

2. One Step Too Far - Lisa Gardner 

I've mentioned before that Lisa Gardner is one of my favorite authors, and her latest novel is further proof of her writing greatness. I admit that I wasn't too thrilled when I found out that her new release was a continuation of the Frankie Elkin series instead of returning to D.D. Warren (nothing against Frankie Elkin, but I miss D.D.), so I was pleasantly surprised when One Step Too Far invoked many of the joyous feelings from reading her best D.D. Warren books. There wasn't a dull moment in the novel, and while most of the story took place in the wilderness, she nailed the suspense associated with the remote location. I recommend this and several of her other books to any reader, whether or not you're a fan of thrillers.

3. The Inheritance Games - Jennifer Lynn Barnes 

This first book in the Inheritance Games series was fast-moving and fun to read. The best part of the book for me was following Avery as she tried to piece together the clues left behind by Tobias Hawthorne. I enjoyed the mystery, and I didn't figure it out until the book revealed the answer at the end. The Hawthorne boys were a bit too much like caricatures, but I liked Avery's character and rooted for her throughout.

4. The Hawthorne Legacy - Jennifer Lynn Barnes 

It was hard to choose whether to rank The Inheritance Games or The Hawthorne Legacy higher, so let's call it 3a and 3b. The second book in the Inheritance Games series, and also a nominee for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards for Young Adult Fiction, was just as good as the first. Once again, I was drawn in by the mystery, most of which I didn't figure out until they were revealed. I can't wait to read the third book in this series.

5. Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson 

Arcanum Unbounded was a gem that I didn't know existed until I came across the book in the library. This is a collection of shorter works by Brandon Sanderson that take place across the Cosmere. My favorite was "Mistborn: Secret History", which tells the story of the Mistborn series after Kelsier's death from a different point of view. It made me want to re-read the series to see how it all fits together. I recommend Arcanum Unbounded to any Brandon Sanderson fan.

6. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid 

Despite the accolades, I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did because I'm not the type of person who enjoys reading about celebrities or memoirs. But Taylor Jenkins Reid wove such an intriguing story about the life of Evelyn Hugo that I was completely absorbed by everything that happened to her. The book took me on an emotional roller coaster, and I had to keep reminding myself that this was a work of fiction, not the biography of a real person. 

7. My Imaginary Mary - Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows 

One series that has yet to let me down are the YA novels by the Lady Janies, and My Imaginary Mary carries on the tradition of awesomeness.  With Mary Shelley and Ada Lovelace as the protagonists, this book actually featured historical characters I knew something about, but as with all Lady Janies books, actual events are changed, leading to hilarious and happier results as compared to real life. Like the previous books, there were also many subtle, funny references in this one, and I wonder how many more I missed. I highly recommend My Imaginary Mary and all of the Lady Janies books.

8. The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi 

This was such a fun book to read that I breezed through it in a weekend. An action-packed Godzilla-meets-Jurassic-Park story, The Kaiju Preservation Society resonated with the boy inside me who watched too many Godzilla and Gamera movies as a kid. There was also a good amount of humor and deeper questions to ponder, so you don't have to be a kaiju fan to enjoy it.

9. The Rose Code - Kate Quinn 

This Goodreads Choice Award finalist for Historical Fiction was a great blend of intriguing plotlines and interesting characters within a setting that I've wanted to learn more about (thanks to "The Imitation Game"). The author did a great job creating distinct but well-developed protagonists, all of whom I could relate to and root for. I also appreciated learning more about the events that occurred during World War II that don't appear in textbooks, and it was interesting to read about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip before Elizabeth became the queen. I'd never thought of her that way!

10. Come With Me - Ronald Malfi 

A finalist in the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Horror category, Come With Me is a murder mystery and even a love story as much as it is horror. While the hunt for a serial killer was enough to keep me enthralled, the injection of elements of horror as well as the ways in which the protagonist reflects on his life with his wife put this book at the top of the list among the 2021 Horror category finalists I read.