Saint Sithney's Dog House

25,399 words on the Schuleroman and it's still the first week of term! ⚉

Three of the guys are wearing pink shirts until I get the plotting done. I only plan to thwack one of them. ♟

My friends over at the aviation Community tell me I need more than one flight instructor at the school. We have so far only seen Embry Fishawk, (I do get grief from my critique group about character names.) He is a retired Marine chopper pilot who has seen combat, and may seem a bit curmudgeonly to a sixteen-y.o. girl. Another reason for more instructors.

So, Schyler Riddle, affectionately known as Captain Skyhook to the girls. He's a certified instructor, saving his pennies for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. He spends summers dragging advertising banners up and down costal beaches. 1:1 instruction = tutor = teaching aid in pedagogical parlance, so the school doesn't have to pay him a full teacher's salary, nor would he need a state teaching certificate.

Third, an as-yet-unnamed forty-ish lady, understanding but firm. She's been an instructor most of her life, but she hates doing ground school. She is the preferred instructor for the serious girl students.

I figure maybe two-hour classes for the whole school, for junior and senior students. That way, the lessons can alternate with academic classes. Two-lesson weeks alternate with three-lesson weeks, and also for the academic classes.

Four, two-hour classes is a long day for high-school students, but might allow an extra-curricular block, now and then.

Sound good?

And now, dear reader, I think the time has come for a pause to consider the path of our story: where it has been, where it is, and where it is going, leading me on in such a way that I have chosen to execute this pause in the telling in the old Victorian manor--not the ancient house with the great feasts, distraught characters with baroque strings at their balls, the ghosts of murders of most fowl moaning at passersby through stained-glass windows, and which contains an O, but rather the one which contains an E and two Ns, and refers to custom, thus using the term in the Bulwer-Lyttonesque sense to partially vent my frustration of the lack of market for us aspiring Writers of the Purple Page.
( The fulcrum of my distress  )
And so begins my adventure in POV switching.


☂

Some writers swing from POV to POV like Tarzan on his grapevines. That's not me. I wrote The Princess in a tight third. First person really, but with "she" replacing "I."

The Talisman starts the same way, In Karen's POV. But Karen and Amaranth are juniors, now, and The Talisman revolves around two freshmen girls, Kelly O'Banyon and Holds-Two-Moons Cody. I find I have to finagle to have Karen in various scenes where she, a junior, would not be expected to be around freshmen. Her only function in the scene is to hold the camera.

So, I need to use Cody and/or Kelly for POV. And I would still need to switch back to Karen now and then, to explain things.

When replacing the flush handle on a toilet:

The nut isn't rightie tightie, it's the other way.




:\

A Brief History of Usania
Backstory of Tease-Coyotes
and Holds-Two-Moons

Urumang left her mother and aunts in the camp and continued up the well-worn path toward the top of the mountain. She would sleep there, and Mother Ogmandru would give her the Wisdom of Women. Then she could marry, have her own household, perhaps someday serve on the Counsel of Mothers. She laid out her blanket in some soft sand and settled down.

She awoke surrounded by strange beings. Surely one must be Mother Ogmandru, but which? And who were the others?

( She was taken to a wholesale slave market on Hotzuma.  )

One-line Synopsis: McGuffin must be delivered to its rightful owner or Bad Things® will happen.
__The rightful owner is trying to steal it, not knowing she is the rightful owner.
__Holds-Two-Moons was asked to give it to somebody on Earth, but not told to whom.
Bad Guys (BGs) are also after it.

Sub plot 1: Native American boys being abducted by aliens.
__Different objective of the same bunch of BGs, looking for info about the McGuffin. (They don't know what it is. The girl has already stolen Holds-Two-Moon's 20-buck piece that she got for her fourteenth birthday , not realizing it's just a Usanian coin.(It's artificial diamond with a holographic inscription))

Sub-plot 2: Redemption of Lester (Hands) Moriarty, the campus looser.
__Flatal Faw in his loserhood causes fall into heroism.

sub-plot 3 ... sub-plot n: Romances
__Holds-Two-Moons + Moriarty (stormy relationship due to hand's habits)
__Kelly + UFO freak Tark Bynum (Walking in Wide Circles--He's guessing, but Kelly can't tell him anything.)
__Lucinda torn between Stewart, the chap she met in Scotland, and Holds-Two_Moon's brother, Teases-Coyotes.
___Hint: Stewart is located in Scotland vs. TC working at St Sithney's, in Maine--a bit closer and he has an airplane.

What I don't have is a time line.

In my WIP, the galactic society's equivalent to the WWW is what they call the Brane. There are hidden WWW servers here on Earth, if you know the URL; conventional Earth-level computers but for quantum modems cleverly disguised as USB memory sticks. Of course, our computers can't handle a Brane document; it would be like trying to browse Google.com with Netscape 4.0. But the Brane has virtual servers that take a Brane document and dumb it down to a Web page a modern Earth computer can handle. You don't get the full benefit. You get a flat, two-dimensional picture instead of a total-immersion holographic projection. But you can get an idea of what something looks like.

Then, I start to think about my old Classic Mac. Even with Netscape 7, it chokes on a lot of fancy Web pages. Remember the terminal emulators, back before Graphical Interfaces? I start to wonder if somebody were to write some mouse-able emulators, that would connect with a modern computer and deliver screenshots of web pages, and allow you to mouse and click on the representations of the links. It would have to be an eleemosynary project, but it would help a lot of people.

I'm in bud_webster's writing group here in Richmond. He wants a synopsis of my novel, which I don't quite understand. He knows I haven't finished writing it yet; how am I supposed to do a synopsis?

Okay, here goes.

One-line Synopsis: McGuffin must be delivered to its rightful owner or Bad Things® will happen.

Sub plot 1: Native American boys being abducted by aliens.

Sub-plot 2: Redemption of campus looser.

sub-plot 3 ... sub-plot n: Romances

Do you you know who I mean? He perches on your shoulder in late-night writing sessions whispering, sometimes screeching, “Fade to black! Fade to black!”

Well, I don’t want to.

I have reasons for my characters--most anyway, certainly the main ones--to graduate summa cum intacta. My target audience is MG/YA (No comments about the slash, please), And I don’t want to scare editors.

I don’t want to sound noble, here. I can write erotica and I do. I just don’t intend it to see the light of day. (Except perhaps for my grandson in a few years--anything to get him reading) It’s just that, in this arc, I don’t have time for it. The Nookie Monster is most persistent when something is about to blow up. We’ve read stuff like that, haven’t we? A forest fire bears down on the logging camp from the west, swamp daemons from the south, the New Russian Confederation invading from the north with nuclear hand grenades, Miskatonic University alumni from the east. And our hero is in the bunk with the camp’s social director. The nookie monster delays the story, unless the whole story is about the nookie.

Besides, POV is sixteen and her main squeeze is older. They need to wait until she’s “legal.” right?

But mainly, I don’t have much nookie because the story doesn’t need it. The story isn't about nookie. The story is about a lost token that needs to be placed in the hands of its proper owner, or Bad Stuff© is going to happen.

Oh, yes, they are teens; banter there must be. Mainly, I just want to show sex in a proper perspective, and not as something to keep the story moving through the slow parts, any more than I'd want my teen readers going through life depending on sex to get them through the slow parts of their existence.

Saw the latest Harry Potter movie. D-dore had to drink all this magical water, in order to get the horcrux. Thinking about it later, I wonder if Rowling had just prepped for a colonoscopy when she wrote that. It looked like about the right amount of liquid...

Got FIOS. You may not understand what this means to somebody who's been on dial-up since the 70's

She frowned and called him Mr.
When by chance he Kr.
And though he knew it Pr.
He went on and Kr. Sr.

I have no idea who wrote this.

I have intermittent noise on my phone line. So my dial-up is foober, most of the time. Verizon says maybe Friday.

See y'all then.

I've been considering posting author-character dialog, but I'm not sure I can bring it off. But I thought I'd try. suzannemcleod gives us a fine example over on fangs_fur_fey.


( So, here's Paisley: )

...........................................................

( And Lester  )

Got a personal reject from an agent. Yes, I could see plainly what he was objecting to; a matter of how strangers react to each other in a strange situation; the nonchalance of a "normal" person running into magical space people, as well as the space people seeming quite indiscreet in their conversations around a new person.

Yeah, I can fix that.

I'm thinking though, this is a kid book. Kids probably wouldn't have such a reaction to the situation. While this particular objection may be legitimate, and of course you need adult beta readers, I wonder if a book targeted for kids shouldn't have at least one kid beta.

Opinions?

Okay, I'm on FaceBook. Jan's cousin put up some pix, which you supposedly couldn't get to unless you were a member. So I got an account, and I still can't get to the pix.

However, it found somebody in my High school class (Channelview, TX '58) Who had set up a web site for the class of '58. Spen half a day reading about people I haven't seen in fifty years.

Anybody else around here on FaceBook? It's supposed to be a great writers' thing, but haven't found an writers yet.

I've heard there are but four story plots. OTOH, I've heard there are sixteen. Or more. And all between. In fact there is but one: He went there, he did that, he got the t-shirt. The writer's job is to keep the reader wondering if he's going to get there, if he will succeed in doing that, and whether he will get the t-shirt, after all.

In a boy-gets-girl story, he may win the girl by getting the t-shirt, or if you have a damsel in distress, she may be the t-shirt.

... Because it's been seven weeks since I posted anything.

Well, this morning the dishwasher dumped on the floor. Now bailing it out, in a meaning different from banks. Looks like maybe its drain stopped up. The sink drains okay, so I doubt it's a house problem. Gotta call the Sears dude.

In other news, I got an Asus for Father's day. (Named it Hay-SUS, of course, because what else?) It's LINUX. Anybody know how to establish a LAN between a LINUX and a MAC(PPC G4, OS 10.4.11)? The house is on dial-up, and Hay-SUS doesn't have a dial-up modem. Been visiting Starbux and the local library a lot, lately, for their wii-fii.

Jan's gone to the beach with her old teaching buddies.

Still looking for an agent for the Princess. Hard to find anybody looking for teen-agers in a boarding school dealing with aliens and magic but no vampires, werewolves, or zombies.

But, I'm getting into the second book. Looks like Lester (Hands) Moriarty is going to get a bigger part than I'd planned. He's the campus loser, but a flatal faw may cause a lapse in his loserhood.

I've also started messing around with a fantasy-quest kinda thing. It may have a dragon. But the protag's name is Perry Green, so it has to have a falcon in it, somewhere.

Then, there's that Bomb that resulted from NaNoWriMo. YA SciFi nookie monster.

But Jan wants me to write the Great Southren Novel. I may do that for NaNoWriMo, this year.

Hay-SUS has Freemind, a sort of idea mapping thingie. It's buggy, and not compliant with anything, but I gotta get organized some way. I'm trying to use it to develop the fantasy and the Great Southren Novel. The Princesses stays on the MAC.

Science is tentative. You’re supposed to know that. People don’t. If you say it, the science deniers are all over you. They say evolution is “only” a theory. It isn’t, of course; it’s a bunch of observations. There are theories about the evolution we observe. But evolution itself is there to see. It’s the same as gravity.

I have questions about a couple of theories. But if I say that, the deniers will say I admit evolution is wrong. Some of them know better; they’re lying to the others for their own purposes. But here I go anyway.

Natural selection is one problem. It isn’t natural selection; it’s natural rejection. Generally, mutation causes either loss of the organism or its descendants, or it’s innocuous, having no effect on the organism’s survival. But a collection of such mutations sometimes combine to give the organism some advantage in a possibly new environment. That is, the environment doesn’t cause the evolution; the evolution happens before the environmental change. Granted, that is natural selection in a sense, but it’s secondary.

But that question is less interesting to me than the idea that we’re all cousins; that we’re all descended from a common ancestor--that I’m eating cousins whenever I eat a hamburger, not just the cow, but the lettuce, the pickle, and the mustard. All are family. That is, of all the primal organisms that must have evolved given that one did, all the others and their descendants have become extinct.

Now the notion is plausible; it’s a cell-eat-cell biosphere. Or maybe the first organism to become alive beat all the others, like the single sperm racing to get ahead of you. Indeed, the most convincing evidence is in the DNA. We all have the same parts of DNA. That would seem to indicate relation.

We also have viruses. Viruses incorporate DNA from a host. Probably that has to do with defeating an organism’s defenses against the virus. Then they go to other hosts, and pick up DNA from them. H1M1 has pig and bird DNA. Viruses monkey with DNA. They reproduce by making the new host make more viruses. They cause mutations in the host. They insinuate their DNA into that of the host.

Which means DNA can transfer between species. So it’s understandable. We all do share DNA. We get it through viruses, by all the ways we pick up viruses. You don’t cook your food, you get viruses from whatever infested the food. “You are what you eat” gets a whole new meaning.

Like those strange people in isolated rural areas--maybe the strangeness doesn’t come from inbreeding. Maybe it comes from eating possum.

Obama cut government funding for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle development.

More than You Probably Want to Know

Well, the White House has a point. Funding for hydrogen fuel cells is continuing, just not for cars. So, if the time comes, we can just drop the fuel cells into the cars then. They'll be ready.

The problem with hydrogen cars isn't the fuel cells; it's the hydrogen--both the production and distribution.

For production, there's electrolysis, but that's expensive, unless electricity gets cheap. That's another energy issue. Another way is to use superheated steam and coal or petroleum to produce CO2 (which is another problem) and the desired hydrogen.

Then, you have to get the hydrogen to the cars. Developing the whole network of trucks and pipelines replicating the present system for gasoline is another headache. It took most of a century to evolve the gasoline distribution system.

However, cheap electricity, making electrolysis feasible, would solve that. Electrolysis can take place at the filling stations, using electricity and tap water. No trucks, no pipelines. Also, local production allows High-pressure electrolysis, so you don't have to compress the hydrogen; just electrolyze it at storage tank pressure. You might even have an electrolyzer at home. Or if you have one aboard the vehicle, you can use the public chargers built into parking meters for electric or plug-hybrid cars. So, most filling station visits would be on long trips, or during a very busy driving day.

But all that depends on cheap electricity, which is a whole 'nother topic.

Working on a steampunk story. It involves a dodo bird, so I needed to be sure they existed at the time of the story. One of the Google hits said, "BEST PRICES ON DODO BIRDS".

Curious, I clicked on the link and found them offering two for five dollars, so I ordered two. They sent me six, with a letter that said I was the only one who had ordered any and they were closing out their inventory, so they sent me all they had rather than to drown them.

Now, what I need to know is, what do they eat? I don't have a Tambalacoque Tree.

Painter's in, now. Almost got the house back.Some History

Replaced one rafter, one interior wall was buckled, lots of cracks in the drywall. The tree took a bite out of the (brick) gable of the house. Took out the rail on the brick porch, along with some bricks from the steps.

Wrote 452 words on the restart of Book II. I think I can salvage some of the 400+ words from the false start. It has some of Mark's backstory.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Evolution and manners
Humans share most behaviors with animals. That's because such behaviors developed in our ancestors before we ever were humans. Thus we see in the actions even of flatworms the beginnings of human behavior.

Now, there have been some recent flame wars on LJ. Indeed, they happen all the time on the Internet. Our flatworm cousins may have the explanation.

Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, and Teen Girls' Boyfriends
Why are these critters so popular? I'm thinking it's because they reflect teen girls' experience with boys.

Zombies:
They're dead--cold and stiff. They don't smell good. And just when you need them most, they fall apart.
Vampires:
Another dead boyfriend. They live on your essence, sucking out your very being. And they make you what they are. Boy bites girl bites boy, until the whole high school is a student body of life-suckers. Moreover, the term, "to lay a vampire," now means something entirely different from what Stoker had in mind.
Werewolves:
These at least don't have to be dead. But like Vampires, they bite. And like some boys, they can alternate between lovely human beings and monsters--again, a too frequent experience for the teen-age girl of today. I will leave to others to decide if or not this situation is timeless.

To me, the bites are more a matter of recruitment than of reproduction. Of Werewolf reproduction, I only know of Harry Potter's friend Lupin, Who fathered a child by another friend Tonks. That was Harry's Godchild, whom Harry ended up raising. (Note to fantasy characters: Never ask a person marked for death by an evil super-wizard to be your child's Godparent.)

Still got a bit of tummy-rumbles, but I'm getting around better. Did the usual three-mile walk with decent times both ways. Make that dang good times. I think it has a lot to do with temperature.
The Tale to Now
Book II has morphed. It's not about Holds-Two-Moons, although she and Kelly O'Banyon will both be there. But it's about Tark. Tark is the working title of Book II, for now.

It starts in a different place, later, which means Kevin already knows about Amaranth's origins. Karen, Amaranth, and Miss Farnsworth meet Holds-Two-Moons at the Memphis airport in the middle of the night. She arrives aboard a UFO mimicking an airplane. (I have to find out how much lighting the place has. It's a Usanian Stingray, and looks nothing like an airplane in decent light.)

Writers, have you ever been asked if one of your characters was really you? Well, parts of me are in all of them, of course. Of the boys, I see myself in Kevin, some even in Moriarty.

But Tark is the UFO phrique that defined me throughout my teens. He also doesn't read people well, especially not girls his age. He's not as religious as I was; that part is in Kevin. But he has some interest in the paranormal. So, while he generally can't tell if a girl has an interest in him or not, he will at least approach her if she's into the paranormal, as was Lucinda, or, like Karen, had seen or been involved with a UFO. And Kelly O'Banyon was abducted and rescued. She has a lot to talk about to Tark.

Tark doesn't know Amaranth is from another world, nor that Karen has actually piloted a UFO in a dogfight. He knows nothing about the galactic civilization, or about the Pontarium. But he does make some uncomfortably accurate wild guesses. I don't know yet if he will learn the truth in this book, nor how he and Kelly will get on. But I do see an opportunity for fireworks.

Autobiographical? No, Tark's story is not mine:
I've never seen a UFO;
I hope I never see one;
but this is what I'd have you know:
I'd rather see than be in one!

Carpenters and Brick Masons And Roofers and Plasteurs, Oh, My!
Dudes are working on the house. Gonna be noisy.

A Forum Phrique enters the Chat Room
Got in a chat last night. I don't do chats that much. need to stop or do more, to stay in practice. It's hard to figure out the threads--who is responding to what. Well, I guess that's what makes it a like a conversation. m_stiefvater's chats are always interesting. I think I was by far the oldest one there.

YA: Barriers to romance, Parents, and Other Thunks.
Either the conversation got onto barriers to YA love or something that made me think of it. I went back and tried to find the string, but it was gone.

I have a character, Tark Bynum, who may be mildly Asperger's, or something. He's polite and smart. He obsesses on UFOs and the paranormal, especially paranormal UFOs and their alien occupants.

He doesn't read people well. He can't read a girl's interest in him. He would like to ask a girl out, and sometimes manages to do so. But he never has any idea about the girl's true feeling. When he asks a girl out, usually it's because the girl has seen a UFO and he wants to talk to her about that.

And now, there's Kelly O'Banyon, entering the freshman class. She got abducted when she snuck out of the eighth grade dance for a smoke. She got rescued, and now here she is at Bible Grove Christian Academy. And She recognizes Miss Farnsworth from the shoot-out leading to her rescue. She's stressed. And can't smoke.

An ideal situation for our Tark. Yes, he will listen. If there's a UFO involved, he will listen. But he's not supposed to know about the galactic civilization, the Pontarium, or anything else. He may find out about it in Book II. Will he and Kelly get together? Maybe Brother Bob can help.

But Lester (Hands) Moriarty also listens. He knows listening is a fast way to a girl's heart. He listened to Paisley, telling him she was going to go to a magic school on a distant world. How much he believed, we don't know. Will he believe Kelly? Can Amaranth and the other Pontarium kids keep her quiet? I was mean to Hands in Book I. I almost got him killed, then shipped his girlfriend off to another planet. (He doesn't know where she went; Belize, officially.)

And then we have Cody Holds-Two-Moons, from Usania. Not a princess, exactly, but her dad's loaded. Will she be part of a triangle? And all this has nothing to do with the conspiracy of the bad guys to use her to influence American politics. I think.

Maybe I should have a talk with them all.

Parent and other authority characters in YA, I'll have to think about some more. Karen's mom is pretty cardboard, I'm afraid, but we don't see a lot of her. We don't see Amaranth's mother at all. But see reads romance novels from Earth. How cliche' can that be?

Well, some stuff was about current events they might not remember, but I probably wouldn't either. Then there are a lot of ruminations.

No, at present, it makes no more sense to me than it would to them.

Say friend, did you know that the US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.
So, just what does this have to do with the exploration of space?

Okay, burger_eater, Here's your flying car!

I'm still waiting. This one has to convert from one mode to the other because the wings are too long for the road.

Yes. In real life, I walk around, do chores, go places, etc. Online, I just wait for the next screen to load.

I'm starting to get what burger_eater and some others are doing when they do "X Things Make a Post" Posts. A few thoughts on a few things rather than trying to flocculate related thoughts into a single topic. Sounds worth a try.

So, without further expectorations:

1) The Coming Evangelical Collapse v.1.4:
The Story Thus Far:

No, I don't expect evangelicalism to collapse. I expect reformation. Evangelicals need to remember that evangelical does not = conservative. That's an illusion cultivated by politicians in and outside the churches who had their own witches to grind. jesus was so far to the left of his culture and society that the religious right got him crucified.

The atrocities of the religious right is more visible to us when we see them in in other countries where most people are other than Christian. Back home we don't see it so clearly, because A) it's of a kind we're used to seeing, B) We have a secular society that enforces freedom of faith and protects us more than happens elsewhere, and C) So far, most of us can see it for what it is, and it isn't evangelism. It's bullying and extortion.

That's not to say evangelism (Yes, I understand that word is normally used to refer to marketing activity.) will look like what it does today. But it will still be the Good News.

2) The Fourth Wall

Just "got back" from flycon2009. There was a workshop on the "Fourth Wall." I left unsure what the Fourth Wall was, and with no idea what the other three walls are, but some of what got talked about was conducting interviews with one's characters in chat or on a blog. We discussed what to cover in the interviews, in order to be intriguing and attracting readers to the book, while not releasing too many entities of the feline persuasion from their flexible containers.

While unpacking after returning home, I realized: This is the perfect place to dump all the backstory you can't put in the book!

Huzzah! Be looking for the Constitution of Balmoral in a blog near you!

The Tale to Here

We don't need no stinkin' collapse. I don't expect fewer evangelicals in the future than now. What I expect is the exit of some hypocrites (in the sense Jesus used the word) who were only into it for political reasons and to make business contacts. At the same time, there will be those returning from exile; those who went into hiding when the politicians stole their churches.

That will put evangelicals in a much stronger position--a much more credible position--to witness and to lead.

.


The Story Thus Far:


This guy is good. I don't share all his concerns, but he points out what i think is going on in America. I need to read more of his blog

Now he didn't say all of what I think needs said. He's concerned about the demise of evnagelicism.

What I want to add is that I think evangelical Christianity is not in that much trouble. Evangelical Christians need to get away from the Religious Right, which isn't really evangelical, just opportunistic.

The religious right, however, may be about to diminish. That's because the religious, "Christian" establishment in America has abandoned Biblical prophecy and sold out to commercial, and political,and foreign interests that want cheap labor, an ignorant electorate, license to commit fraud and rape the environment, and a non-competitive America.

For what to do about that, Ii need to think some more.



.

Not bad news, not good news. Just depends on what we do about it. I'll say moron this after I've read and thought some more.

But this guy is interesting.

The Coming Evangelical Collapse


More from this dude

Still got brain sludge. Got where I can't read though my friends page, let alone write. I mean I have trouble writing even what I have planned out in rough outline. I can get words to say almost what I mean; but I can't be satisfied. So what you read here isn't true, it's just as close as I can get.

The intestinal whoopies don't help.

'Nuff whining. Gonna go look at breakfast options.

Got an agent reject.

Rejects are pretty quick. This one was just over a week.


I note in passing there is, or hopefully was, a concours de pisser going on. From the third-hand bloggage, I gather it's a contest among people to see who can be the most politically correct, versus among others to see who can be the most politically incorrect.

It's like two car races in opposite directions, on the same track.

Flame wars in a venerable game on the internet, for longer than there has been an internet.

It's a game. Don't take it personally.

Or maybe two.

Judging from one interview from Bristol vs. several fiascos from Sarah, Bristol seems to have far more common sense than her mom.

Obama should find her a job, maybe in Health and Human Services, maybe in the prevention of teen pregnancy office. Should be more than intern level because she needs money to feed her kid.

Give her a couple years' experience, then run her as a Democrat for the Alaska legislature. She already has name recognition.

The big logs are gone. Tree Dude plans to gather the branches tomorrow. Insurance Dude was here and cut a check. Also, tomorrow, the contractor. And, of all times, the Orkin Dude also comes tomorrow.

83 words on Princes II. Mark's backstory. Amaranth in a funk after telling Kevin who she really is. Now, Mark is filling him in. kevin will meet aliens tonight. He needs to be ready.

Took Jan to dentist. Ate lunch out. Went to dinner with the Honorable Eating Society (HES) Got nuthin done as to the Princess II.

Still disoriented over the tree on the house, I guess. Insurance dude coming tomorrow.

Amaranth has confessed to Karen about telling Kevin. karen is relieved, but can't tell Amaranth so. Kevin now getting further orientation from Mark, who has dealt with this before.

Maybe I should get this in phosphors before I go to bed?

Nah, I'll remember.

G'nite.

Nothing done yesterday, obviously, just house stuff. Photographing shade tree mechanics at work. The tree is off the house but still all over the yard. Hole is tarped over. Insurance guy is waiting for the roads to open.



Realized we had been up since 4:30 a.m. Went to bed early. Somnambulating by 2:30. Wrote 135 words on Princess II. Big words. Amaranth has told Kevin where she is from. Which saves Mark and Karen having to do it, but still.

House caught a tree.



Looking closer:

Been messing with Photobucket



Shot into the dark snowy sky with flash.

Well, I did get a query off. And did 271 words on Book II.

Ok, I did 119 words before I launched the browser.

It's a start, no?

Haven't written much other than comments to f-list.

No fiction. No posts to my own blog. No agent queries. This has gotta stop. So, I'm doing nothing else blog-wise until I've done something productive. No more hesitation, no more procrastination.

Starting tomorrow.

I was wondering about the Osprey

I think there are Web-borne viruses. I mentioned that half my f-list had some kind of health complaint. Then I got Toucan flu.

Now My f-list is complaining of blahs--from "Deep, dark depression, excessive misery," to "Meh."

What I've got is underclocking; brain cycling at about five percent of normal. Aside from some dizziness and nausea, I feel fine. I can still come up with beastly puns and the like. It just takes a long time to figure something out. I stop and stare between familiar steps in a task.

Got some balance problems, too. Likely inner-ear issues. Maybe all inner-ear issues.

zzz...

From brashley46- from mmegaera-

"You're on my friends list! I wanna know you. I want to know 33 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, talk every day or already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine. I just want to know you."

1. Can you cook?
2. What was your dream growing up?
3. What talent do you wish you had?
4. Favorite place?
5. Favorite vegetable?
6. What was the last book you read?
7. What zodiac sign are you ?
8. Any Tattoos and/or Piercings?
9. Worst Habit?
10. Do we know each other outside of lj?
11. What is your favorite sport?
12. Negative or Optimistic attitude?
13. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14. Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15. Tell me one weird fact about you:
16. Do you have any pets?
17. Do you know how to do the macarena?
18. What time is it where you are now?
19. Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20. If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21. Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22. What color eyes do you have?
23. Ever been arrested?
24. Bottle or Draft?
25. If you won $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it?
26. What kind of bubble gum do you prefer to chew?
27. What 's your favorite bar to hang at?
28. Do you believe in ghosts?
29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30. Do you swear a lot?
31. Biggest pet peeve?
32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?
33. Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

Writers get into conversations with their characters. Some more than others. I don’t, very much, because my imaginary friends don’t like it. Mostly such conversations are one-way, complaints about what I’m making them do. What they tell me is usually what I know I need to do, but am in denial. Paisley, for instance, kept whining about how little face time I was giving her throughout the book, since she is pivotal to the story. So, I let her make snide remarks to and about Amaranth and Karen, and let her develop into a severe air-head. I gave her a boyfriend. In fact, I gave her two, one at school and then one on Balmoral. I guess the lesson here for my characters is to speak up.

While my characters don’t talk to me much, they are willful. They go where I don’t send them. That makes me have to scramble to fix the plot to accommodate them. So, do I think my characters are real people? Well, no, I know I made them up.

But there is a sense of personhood about them. By that I mean there is a feeling of somebody there. This is the same sentiment by which I and all of us, I think, recognize real people, including some animals as persons. I do that less seriously with inanimate objects, or there would be no point cussing at the computer.

So, there is that part of all of as humans that assigns personhood to what would otherwise be mere objects in our surroundings: complexly-behaving objects, to be sure, but only objects. So, talking to imaginary people is only human. We only need to be carefull to remember that’s what we’re doing, when we do it.

Got a very quick reject--less than 25 hours.

Okay, that's five. Some agents want to know how you found them. That puts a new writer in a delicate spot. Most usual honest answer: "Well, I was going down this list and your name was next." Didn't want to say that. Didn't want to do do it that way. It doesn't really make sense.

So I've been prowling LJ for agents. Find a writer and snoop for agents on their f-lists. Find agent blogs. Slower, but I just feels more personal. I look at what they've sold. Gives an idea about the market, too. But my goal of sending off one query a day is getting behind.

The answer to asakiyume's questions about the time machine have become worth its own post.

The discussion thus far



About the only repeat business I have is the Time Police, always after perpetrators of time crime. I was on a first-name basis with some of them.

A trip is a once-in-a-lifetime deal for most, though. A typical trip involves whole libraries of paperwork; chrono-environmental impact studies and the like, so you don't step on an ancestor or Historical Person.

But the guy I bought the clock from said the first he heard about the Kennedy assassination was when about a dozen guys came storming out of the clock, waving strange=looking guns, and yelling, "We have to stop Jack Ruby from shooting President Oswald!" I guess they succeeded, sort of.

The most surprising thing about the future is that it's not very surprising. There was plenty of warning about the quake. They just moved their VR tanks into tents and inflatable structures and preserved the remaining pre-twentieth-century buildings by placing magilantic lifters under their foundations.

After the mid-2200's, almost everybody except some Ludites spent their entire lives in VR tanks. The Ludites were in great demand to maintain the tanks. Basically no history after that.