All across the world, living in conditions that are scarcely imaginable, suffering emotional hardships that no human being should be asked to endure, are millions of writers who could use your help.  Act now: For less than a dollar a day, you could sponsor a struggling author through the HopeWriter Initiative. Think of it. For about the cost of a used paperback at a library rummage sale, you could offer a ray of hope to one of the millions of scribes living in wretched apartments with five roommates or down in the cold, dusty basements of their parents’ houses.

Your generous donation can provide them such things as:

• Printer paper
• Top Ramen
• Toner Cartridges
• Gift cards to Goodwill
• Subscriptions to Writer’s Digest
• Crisis intervention with distraught parents and/or marriage counseling
• Personal hygiene kits

As a HopeWriter sponsor, you are connected to one special writer who will know your name and be warmed by the thought that they have at least one dedicated reader in the world.

In return for your kindness, you will receive monthly, well-written emails from your sponsored writer, including snippets from their works in progress, as well as the occasional photo of them sitting at a computer.

You are also encouraged to correspond with your writer, and your letter, email, or Facebook post will offer these wordy souls a moment of hope in their daily struggle against a brutal, heartless regime that threatens to crush their spirits. In the end, your generosity might make the difference between a life of obscurity and bestsellerdom. You could be the answer to a writer’s prayers. Act now.

One of the many writers you could sponsor . . . 

Scott William Carter from Oregon

Gender: Still married male
Grade: Some post grad
Country: United States
Health: Very pale due to lack of sun exposure
Word Processor: Microsoft Word

Just made the day’s to-do list. I put ‘make a to-do list’ at the top and checked it off.  Now I can say I accomplished half my list!  Reminder: pick up beer for tonight.

Note to self:  don’t joke to burly cable guy about needing your Desperate Housewives fix.  He might just be a fan.

“The Bear Who Sang Opera” has appeared in the July/August issue of Analog.  The story itself was a lot of fun to write — a sort of Travis McGee in space.  (And if you haven’t read any of John D. MacDonald’s excellent Travis McGee books, you really should).  I’d been wanting to create a series character for some time and it took me a couple attempts to finally get it right.  In fact, I just finished another story featuring Dexter Duff, my intrepid interstellar investigator, so we’ll see if Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, likes that one too.

For those of you who have read some of my other science fiction stories, it’s set in the “Unity Worlds” universe, which I’ve used for a number of tales.  Each one stands completely on its own, but some of the shared details give the stories a little extra flavor.  Maybe I’ll put all of these stories into a collection one day, who knows.

Here’s the first page of the story . . .

The Bear Who Sang Opera
by Scott William Carter

The bear wanted his voice back. That’s what I thought he said, and I asked him to repeat it. The cochlear implant in my left ear had been acting up a lot lately — I blamed it on Targal’s frequent lightning storms — and I assumed he must have said something else.

“My voice,” he said. “I think someone’s stolen it.”

I took my boots down from the desk and leaned a little closer. “Your voice?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But you’re speaking right now.”

“Yes.” He bobbed his big furry head. “Oh. No, I see the problem. Not my voice. My singing voice. I need your help getting it back. You do help people find things, don’t you? That’s what I heard.”

His voice was deep and gruff, but he sounded sincere. Of course, I was no expert on bears, so how would I know? Maybe bears were good at lying . . .

If you’re interested in subsribing to Analog, you can do so here.

I sold my collaboration with Ray Vukcevich, “A Stray,” to Fantasy Magazine, a story about a man going blind and his relationship with a rather unusual cat.  This was only my third collaboration with another professional writer and two of them sold (the other one that sold was “The Man Who Swallowed Mirrors” with Jay Lake).  I’m also a big fan of Ray’s work (find out more about him here), so it gives me an extra thrill to appear in print with him (or technically online, I guess).  His collection, Meet Me in the Moon Room, is pure genius.  I’ll have more about the story down the road when it appears.

If you haven’t looked into Fantasy Magazine, you should check them out.  They’re doing great work — both with fiction and nonfiction.  Everything’s free to read.  There’s been a lot of folks trying to do online magazines, but from what I can tell, these guys are doing it right. I love the fact that they have a broad focus, everything from fantasy in popular culture to obscure slipstream.

I enjoy collaborating and will probably do it again — selectively.  Contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t take less time to collaborate; it usually takes more, since you’re trying to combine two styles into one, and depending on the method of collaboration, there can be lots of back and forth involved.  Plus, in most cases, you’re splitting anything you make 50/50.  But it’s fun and the main reason to do it is to learn.  In a way, it gives you an opportunity to crawl inside the head of another writer for a while.  That, in turn, can make you look at your own writing in a new way, and allow you to incorporate techniques you may not have tried before.  And of course, the best collaborations produce something that neither of you could have produced on your own.  I think that’s what Ray and I managed to accomplish.  Of course, we’ll let the readers judge.

If you’re into Twitter, I broke down and finally created an account.  You can find me at http://www.twitter.com/scottwcarter.  With my crazy life, I’m not sure how much I’ll be on there, but I figured I should at least try it.  I also found a nifty Wordpress tool (the open source software I use to update my website and my blog) that I can use in conjunction with with Ping.fm that will automatically send my blog posts (truncated appropriately) to all the social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.  So if you want up-to-the-minute news on my writing, or you want occasional musing from my over-caffeinated mind, now you have your choice.

My website and blog:  http://www.scottwilliamcarter.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/people/Scott-William-Carter/600351984

Myspace:  http://www.myspace.com/scottwilliamcarter

I’ve been experimenting with posting a little more, though I’ll never be one of those people who blogs about what he had for breakfast.  The key, for me, is to do it in a way where the cost doesn’t outweigh the benefit.  I find the Internet in general very addictive, and since I have so little time for my fiction what with the day job, two kids, and everything else, I have to go to great pains to make sure I don’t spend an excessive amount of time sitting in front of a computer not writing fiction.  That said, I find the social networking sites to be a fun way to connect with both good friends and casual acquaintances, as well as to network with people in which you have a common interest — like writing!

Speaking of writing, my productivity is back where I want it to be, which took me a long time to achieve after my son was born.  Most of this had more to do with me finding the right approach, since the “write in the evening” method was no longer working.  Now I just squeeze it in whenever I can, withholding all those guilty pleasures I love so much (like the Internet) until I’ve met my daily word count.  It’s not ideal, but it’s getting me to write (translate:  practice) as much I as I need to, and that’s what matters.

About two-thirds the way through a mystery, with a character I wouldn’t mind writing a while slew of novels about.  After that, I have to finish the YA book that would be a good follow-up to Water Balloon Boys; I’d already written the first 50 pages and a proposal, so that one’s well on its way.  I just mailed off another short story featuring a character that’s appearing in Analog next month — a sort of Travis McGee in space named Dexter Duff.  It’s the first time I’ve written a short story with the same character and I really enjoyed it.  I’ve also committed to writing one short story a month.  I’d been focusing a lot more on novels the last two years, writing only a handful of short stories, thinking this was necessary because of the demands on my time, but I was cranky from not writing them.  Plus I can experiment and stretch in ways that are easier.  There are lots of benefits; I just have to maintain the balance between the two.

And, on the personal front, our house remodel is nearly finished.  It’s been a crazy couple of months living with my mother (I never thought that would happen again), but we’re a week away from moving back in, and it’s going to be a great house to raise our family in.  There’s a long list of projects waiting for us even after we move in, but that’s all right.  It’ll be nice sleeping in our own beds again.

What else?  Kat just turned six.  Can you believe?  She’s almost in first grade.  Calvin’s three and growing up fast.  Me, I realized I’m now twice the age of the kids graduating from high school.  Ouch.

What if you really do have two left feet? Maybe you got a foot transplant and the doctors screwed up. We must be careful with our insults.

Me: Happy Birthday, Kat! You’re six! You know what this means, don’t you? It means you have to get a job.
Kat: Oh.
Me: You have to start earning your keep. What are you going to do?
Kat: I guess . . . I guess I could have a lemonade stand.
Me: Good idea. You have to sell a lot of lemonade, though.
Kat: Or I could own a hotel.
Me: Hmm . . . How old are you again?