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Tech news and reviews.

Six Straight Roads, a new short story by Adam Bender

I have a new short story out! It’s called “Six Straight Roads,” and here’s the short description:

Matt tries to be the hero at his friend’s annual Capture the Flag birthday tournament in this coming-of-age short story set in the Philly suburbs. Sweating and covered with sap, Matt learns who his true friends are beneath the shade of a 20-foot-tall pine tree. In the tradition of fellow sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, Adam Bender reflects on his childhood experiences and the innocence of youth.

You can read it for free through Smashwords!

It’s fair to say that “Six Straight Roads” has been a long time coming. I began writing the short story back in 2016. I was trying to come up with ideas, and my wife suggested I should write a short story based on a random title.

“Okay, so what’s the title?” I asked nervously.

She thought for a moment and said, “Six Straight Roads.”

I was stupefied more than inspired. What story could I possibly write with such a mundane yet cryptic title?

But then, as I kept running the title through my mind, I started thinking about the games of Capture the Flag my friends and I used to play in our suburban neighborhood in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The various pleasantly named streets formed a kind of grid that we used to set the boundaries and midpoint of the game’s map. It occurred to me that “six straight roads” could form just such a grid.

So, yeah, even though I’m allegedly a sci-fi author (and a dystopian one at that), I began writing a short story inspired by my childhood adventures in suburbia. But hey, if Ray Bradbury could do it, then so could I!

I quickly wrote the first draft of “Six Straight Roads.” However, I guess it never quite felt finished, because I didn’t release it in 2016. Then I guess I forgot about it for a few years, had a child in 2019 (Happy Father’s Day!), and got caught up in writing Utopia PR. It wasn’t until summer of (gasp) 2021 that I gave it another look.

I had just joined a Philly writers’ meetup group and was looking for something to submit for the group to read. I realized this would be a great opportunity to polish up my rough draft of “Six Straight Roads.” I ended up getting a really encouraging critique from a bunch of great writers. They liked the story and had a bunch of great ideas to make it even better. I took many notes, excited to finally finish the damn thing.

And then I put it off for another year. Okay, but in December 2022, I stopped clicking snooze on my to-do list, sat down, and got to work implementing my fellow writers’ suggestions. I finally whipped the thing into shape!

But then of course I dilly dallied on releasing it … until today! I really hope you enjoy it. It’s been on my mind for forever. Please leave a review on Smashwords or let me know what you think in the comments below.

By the way, there’s something pretty cool about the cover. Can you guess what it is? (The answer is below!)

Cover of “Six Straight Roads” by Adam Bender

Yes, I created the drawing with AI! Like probably all of you, I’ve been pretty flummoxed and frightened by the whole AI craze, but I thought one good use might be to help design a quick cover for a free short story. I’ll still hire real people to design my novels but I can’t afford to do that for every little piece I write.

I used DALL-E through the Microsoft Bing AI chatbot. At first I was thinking more literally about the title and tried to get an image of suburban streets from above, but it was kind of boring.

An AI generated suburban neighborhood. Credit: DALL-E/Bing

My other idea was to focus on the story’s main characters hiding out beneath a pine tree. At first I got some really f-ed up looking children, but specifying a cartoon style helped fix that. I still got a weird one with blank eyes….

Not bad but what’s with that kid’s eyes? Credit: DALL-E/Bing

But then I got the one I ended up using. I was intrigued by how the one kid looked kind of melancholy. It looks like there’s a story there!

Ah, that’s better. Credit: DALL-E/Bing

Oh yeah, those kids really do have a story! It’s called “Six Straight Roads.” Hope you like it!

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Democratization Can Be Dark… And Other Lessons from WordCamp US

Among other things, I am a blogger. This thing that you’re reading right now is in fact a blog post…on a real-life blog! Mind blown, right?

To create this mind-blowing blog, I use WordPress, free and easy-to-use software that powers about a quarter of the websites online. WordPress has a great community that gets together all over the world. Last year, I attended and wrote about their first annual U.S. conference, WordCamp US, in my hometown of Philadelphia. WordCamp US was back in Philly this year, attracting about 1,800 attendees and a gang of dinosaurs to the party.

#WCUS Party Crasher Rex
#WCUS Party Crasher Rex at the wordcamp after party

WordCamp was a blast, obviously. I only got to attend the second day (Day 1 was Friday and would have interfered with my day job), but I listened to a few great talks.

Dennis Hong did a hilarious and yet scary (hil-scare-ious?) talk on the dark side of democratization. The idea is that while the internet has enabled anyone to publish, this may not always be a good thing. The sheer amount of content now produced promotes skimming over thoughtful reading, he said. Also, thoughtful, well-reasoned analysis often loses out to cat pictures and emotion-based pieces that get us all riled up — and may not even be true.

While there are no easy answers, Dennis had some advice to make the internet a more friendly place. When something online angers you, take a deep breath before you share it to your friends. Be stoic like Yoda, he said, and decide if it’s worth sharing — because all you’re doing is helping the video go viral. If someone is being ridiculous online, don’t engage in a shouting match. It’s better to be patient, empathetic and take the conversation offline. If you’re creating content, it’s okay to grab a reader’s attention with a flashy headline, but make sure the content that follows is thoughtful and accurate. You can read more about all this on Dennis’s website.

I also learned a bunch of interesting facts from Maile Ohye from Google. Did you know that 65% of India — or about 864 million people — are not yet online? That’s a lot of people still to join the internet! Not only that, but 60% of the world’s traffic is still 2G. It’s important to keep these facts in mind when building a website, Maile said. Also, here’s something to look forward to next year — she said Google will be demoting mobile website that display pop-up ads blocking your view of the content! Woo! Those sites are way annoying!

Which brings me to another fun fact from Maile — 53% of visitors abandon mobile sites that take more than three seconds to load. Sounds a little impatient, but thinking about my own behavior I probably do this as well. I guess with all that democratization of content, we just don’t have time to wait around.

For more possible dark directions for society, read my novels We, The Watched and Divided We Fall.

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Video: What does the 2016 election mean for telecom?

That was some election, huh? Last week at the NARUC annual meeting in La Quinta, California, I attempted to break down what President-elect Donald Trump means for telecom and broadband issues, at least from my perspective as as a reporter for Communications Daily. Spoiler alert: there’s still a lot of uncertainty!

Special thanks to my Comm Daily colleagues, who put together an excellent election issue… from which I stole liberally for the purposes of this panel! Also, thanks to Montana PSC Commissioner Travis Kavulla for skillful moderating and to my fellow panelists Ray Gifford, Bill Ritter and Devin Hartman for the great insights about what Trump means for energy issues.

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A journey through India with Project Fi (and other recent clips)

I’ve been blogging a lot about my creative writing lately, so I thought it was time to highlight a few recent news and feature articles I’ve had published since moving to Philadelphia. I’ve been contributing to Technical.ly Philly, Generocity.org, ASTM Standardization News, among other freelance projects.


Full bars but 2G speeds in an auto-rickshaw in Bangalore.
Full bars but 2G speeds in an auto-rickshaw in Bangalore.

Here’s a neat story I wrote for Technical.ly about staying connected during a recent trip to India. I was looking for a way to use my cellphone while abroad — without breaking the bank — so I signed up for the new Google wireless service, Project Fi.

While I had to contend with India’s 2G networks, the service worked well and saved me a lot of cash. The article also includes my impressions after testing Project Fi back home in Philadelphia.


Credit: ASTM

The science of weights and measurements might sound like a dry topic at first, but I actually learned quite a lot speaking with Canada Chief Metrologist Alan Steele for this article in ASTM Standardization News.

For example, did you know that the kilogram is about to be redefined so that it will no longer be based on a small cylinder of platinum iridium metal? Did you even know it was based on a small cylinder of platinum iridium metal? These and other exciting facts inside!


WordCamp 2015 in Philly
WordCamp 2015 in Philly

Well, this is a WordPress blog, so I should probably include this one. In December, I attended the first national WordCamp US conference at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Not only did I enjoy the sessions, but I got to interview the organizers for this article in Technical.ly.

The conference was such a hit that City Council declared December 5 as WordPress Day!


Well, that was fun, but it’s just a sampling. For more, check out a selection of recent journalism clips on Evernote!

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Book publishing to be ‘more mainstream than ever’ in 2016?

Indie publishing gurus gaze into their crystal balls.

Happy new year, everyone! As the proud indie author of two self-published books, I thought it’d be fun to see what people closely involved in supporting and promoting indie publishing predict for book publishing industry in 2016.

Here’s what they had to say!

Emmanual Nataf, co-founder of Reedsy

Photo of Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf
Credit: about.me/emmanuelnataf

“Most forms of publishing have dramatically changed in the past few years: it’s become incredibly easy to publish photos (Instagram), song tracks (Soundcloud), videos (YouTube), blog posts (WordPress), etc. In 2016, it’s book publishing that will become more mainstream than ever. Through books, more people will express who they are and communicate their vision of the world with others. With 2016 set to break all records with hundreds of thousands of titles pushed to the market, authors need to have a clear idea of what they can expect from publishing a book. In most cases, it will be a gratifying and enriching experience; but only those willing to work hard will find it lucrative.”


Jeffrey Bruner, founder of The Fussy LibrarianJeffrey Bruner, founder of The Fussy Librarian

“I predict that Barnes & Noble’s eBook division will either be sold or auctioned off through bankruptcy proceedings and acquired by a tech startup that will reinvigorate B&N’s website and database and create a little more competition for Amazon.”


Miral Sattar, CEO of Bibliocrunch

miral-sattar_headshot“Now that there are more and more quality books being published a day, largely due to self-publishing, you’ll see a rise of companies that provide marketing tools or services to help the best ones reach the top and get discovered.”

 


Meanwhile, Smashwords founder Mark Coker wrote an excellent post on his own 2016 predictions. I’ve quoted a few of his predictions below, but definitely read the full article!

Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords

Photo of Mark Coker, Smashwords

  1. Indie eBook authors will gain market share at expense of large publishers”
  2. “The overall market for ebooks will shrink in dollar terms, but unit volume will increase”
  3. Kindle Unlimited will gut single-copy sales and drive greater eBook commoditization”
  4. Print will remain steady, though those sales are the sole domain for authors of traditional publishers”
  5. Wattpad will be acquired

What are your predictions for 2016? Sound off in the comments below!

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