Chace Randolph

Hello, and happy Halloween! It’s a new month, and that means a new edition of tight beam. I’ll keep this to the same 3 part format I have accidentally come upon, and share with you, what I have accomplished since the last edition of tight beam, my plan for the coming month, and then finish it off with one of my shorter writings.

I have recorded eight chapters for the audio book and completely edited the first two of those chapters. Spoiler alert, there are twenty-two chapters in total, so I’m about one third of the way through the audio book, and with the close, literally shoulder to shoulder work from one of my Beta readers have identified a lot of sentence fragments and other sentence structure errors that were not caught or covered by the freelance editor I contracted. I am not pleased with this interaction, I feel like I pair a premium price, per industry standard, and yet, what I received, was incomplete, or at least not up to par, as this was supposed to be a final line edit before going to publication, and it took three times longer than it should have on top of that. So I am combing through the manuscript again, still literally shoulder to shoulder with my beta reader to clear up these sentence fragments. So that’s what I have accomplished… I’m still working on it, because now, I have to do it myself, because I want it done right. If I could get my money back, I would. Anyway…. On to brighter topics, my plan of action between now, and the next issue of tight beam.

Let me start with a little bit of context. I was married in 2020, and because of covid I never got to take my honey moon. There goes covid again, getting in the way, taking my honeymoon and my publisher from me. So now, I am going on my honeymoon, yes, four years later, for my anniversary, some time in the month of October. That’s it, that’s the plan.

I have a “write a book per year” quota that I have maintained since 2017, and my beta readers are expectant. For the duration of October, before and after the trip, I will be working on writing the next book in the series, as well as using that in this year’s “NaNoWriMo” also known as National Novel Writing Month, Which takes place every November. So my plan is to write book seven in The Descendant Saga series, and have a complete, coherent draft I can pass off to my beta readers for Christmas, as I have every year since 2018. Which, this focus, much to my consternation, means I will not be finishing Altar of Scales and publishing it this year. While I desperately want to, with the trip, the holidays, and all the other problems life has been throwing at me this year, I don’t want to force the issue and publish a sub par book. I will take my time, and edit it, finish the audio book, and publish some time early in 2025. I am doing this myself, and even if it is slower than I would like, I am going to make sure it is done right.

Originally, I had set the goal of publishing one book every 4 months, or three books a year. I’m still aiming for that goal, I have simply moved the time line from September 2024 to January 2025. I don’t like it, I don’t want sci-fi fans and potential readers to give up on me, thinking I’ll never get it done, or lose interest, but I feel this is best, both for the quality of the content I will be publishing, and for my blood pressure as I try to deal with all the problems life has been throwing at me, what with working 40-50 hours a week, owning a home, and multiple 80s trucks that sorta run, while also writing, editing and doing all the social media marketing, art, design, YouTube channel uploads everything etc that I have been doing, for The Descendant Saga. I’m sorry for the delay, but with the focus on my yearly quota of new books, it will keep my beta readers happy and working with me, and just expand that back log from seven, to eight books in my “to be published” list. Thanks for scanning my words and visiting my news letter. Now for the treat at the end, another bit of my old writing. I don’t remember where this came from. It might be one of my magazine submissions that didn’t get published, or just something I sat down and wrote one day because I was thinking too much. It is saved on my computer as “Wonder II” so I figured it would be an excellent follow up to the Wonder I published in the previous edition of tight beam, but upon opening the document, it’s given the heading Consciousness…

Consciousness

She crossed her ankles as they rested on the windowsill, staving off the chill trying to creep in with the autumn’s breeze. Her mind wandered down the long path of introspection. Why were humans the only beings cursed with consciousness? Why did humanity get burdened with this thing, this slippery, undefinable, impossibly heavy and complex thing? Nothing else had grown this unnecessary complication. This ability to predict, to look forward into the future, to see the unimaginable, the not yet real, the different potentialities.

It caused stress, it raised the blood pressure, it needlessly burned more calories, it took up more time better spent on other things. There was no way to know if it solved as many problems as is created. Why was thinking a thing, how had it come to be, to what end did it exist, why had man been saddled with the responsibility of knowing, and not knowing? Sentenced to this strangeness, not a soul knows what it was, but all know that the others were burdened with it too. Yet despite this sameness, it was a vastly different, personal and impossible to duplicate. Still, it served no purpose, the fish, the mouse, the hawk, the snake. They all lived and yet were not burdened the way man is. Why had man developed such an affliction? What were its origins, why did it persist, why was it allowed to continue when it inflicted so much pain upon the human condition and would man not be better off without it? Would it be better off without man?