So, if you’ve been following the Sophie story, some of us got a little nuts and started an offshoot story over here.

Why? Possibly because we’re completely nuts. But mostly because it’s a lot of fun. Feel free to join in–just write fast!

To heck with you all not-Sophie haters! I’m starting a not-Sophie fan club!

Anyone want to join?

Not-Sophie has many wonderful qualities that everyone seems to be ignoring. She’s brave. She hates injustice. She looks out for those who are weaker than she is.

She’s also complex.

And lots of fun at parties, what with the whole telekinesis thing.

ADDENDUM the First:

Sits in the corner scribbling not-Sophie/Blink fan fic.

Not-Sophie stood over Farthum’s quivering corpse, viscous yellow plasma dripping off the edge of her sword.

“Oh Not-Sophie!” cried Blink, “You SAVED me!” His pseudo-pods quivered as she looked deep into his eye.

As you were previously warned…

Part 1 – Nathan
Part 2 – Shawn
Part 3 – MWT
Part 4 – Eric
Part 5 – Matt
Part 6 – Jeri
Part 7 – Saqib
Part 8 – Me
Part 9 – Vince
Part 10 – Kimberly Ann
Part 11 – Tom
Part 12 – Kate
Part 13 – Justin Ryan
Part 14 – Bryan
Part 15 – Tania
Part 16 – C
Part 17 – Nathan
Part 18 – Shawn
Part 19 – MWT
Part 20 – Eric
Part 21 – Matt
Part 22 – Jeri
Part 23 – Saqib
Part 24 – Me
Part 25 – Vince
Part 26 – Kimberly Ann
Part 27 – Tom
Part 28 – Kate
Part 29 – Bryan
Part 30 – C
Part 31 – Justin Ryan
Part 32 – Tania

(more…)

So…. I’ve signed up for a writing game with the Whateverettes et al. And YOU are invited to participate.

Rules and list of participants are here.

If you’d like the play along, make a comment on Nathan’s blog before noon (EST) on Sunday.

It’s most likely going to be silly, so don’t be afraid to jump in even if you’re unsure of your writing skills. Hell, you’ve seen my writing and I’m playing, so jump in.

Whenever it gets to me, I’ll have a link to the previous portion of the story, and to portion that comes after me.

Although rumor has it there may be portions involving the digestive tracks of dinosaurs, we’ll just have to see.

Is this:

Daisy (not her real name) plopped down and stretched out.

“Really,” she said, “it’s just a job. I got tired of givin’ it away for free, y’know? They’re always buzzing in and out, and it’s always take, take take. Well I’ve had it with all that bullshit. I decided that this time I’d get something back. I’ve already got a bit stashed away as you can see, so I figure I’m gonna spend the entire summer relaxing. Eat, drink and be merry and all that.”

“No, I’m not worried about anything. My mum’s long gone–don’t even know where she is anymore, so who cares? Yeah, I’ll probably end up with kids, but isn’t that what all the girls want? Really? They may protest, but you see ’em standing there, so proud, with their offspring crowded around them, but you know they’re going to come to no better end than than their mother–and will she be looking on as proudly then?”

“Hey, it’s a short brutal life–we’re living on the edge and have to take what we can get. I have no apologies for my life. You don’t like it, then just turn your eyes when you walk on by.”

Based upon this from S. (Go ahead, it’s safe. I promise.)

the reunion band that Hendrix plays in headlines in venues neither you nor I nor anyone else on earth can reach

That comment on Nathan’s site dropped an idea in my head. Since I have nothing else for you today, here’s the result:

Vince pulled aside the curtains and stepped into the darkened room, dragging a large wheeled suitcase behind him. “Come on,” he said and waved to the person behind him.

Jeri peered uncertainly into the room. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

A soft voice sounded from the inky shadows of the room. “Of course it’s not a good idea dearie. It’s never a good idea to disturb the spirits on the other side.” A short thin woman dressed in elastic waist jeans and some sort of draped Hawiian print shirt stepped forward. Her hair was curly and gray and went halfway down her back. “But you’re going to do it anyway, because he’s piqued your interest, hasn’t he?”

“Well,” said Jeri uncertainly, “I guess he has.”

While Jeri and the woman were talking, Vince had started pulling equipment out of the suitcase and setting it up on the table. He’d obviously done this before, as it took very little time to get everything assembled.

Jeri looked uncertainly at the table. In the dim light the assembly looked like little more than black boxes and tiny satellite dishes, all strung together with network cables.

“Almost all set up,” said Vince. He turned to look at the tiny woman. “You ready for us?”

“Of course I am,” she replied. “Why don’t we all sit down?”

The small woman sat down at the table, with her back towards the wall, facing the door that Jeri and Vince had entered. Vince sat on her left, Jeri on her right. Vince handed Jeri and the woman earphones.

“Bose?” asked Jeri. “They’re awfully pricey aren’t they?”

“Trust me, you want quality for this,” replied Vince, as Jeri settled the earphones on her head. With that she heard nothing else. “Wow, he even got the noise canceling ones,” she thought.

With that, the woman placed her hands face down on the largest black box and closed her eyes. Her face relaxed almost immediately.

Suddenly, a sound like nothing she had ever heard started to come softly through the earphones. It quickly grew louder, and within a minute tears were streaming down Jeri’s face as she listened to a music like none she had ever heard before.

After what seemed like mere moments, but Jeri later discovered had been three hours, the music ended. She opened her eyes, and saw Vince and the woman taking of their headphones.

When she could finally speak, she asked, “What was that?”

“That,” said the woman, “was Mozart and Jimi Hendrix playing the latest piece composed by Wagner.”

“It was incredible,” said Vince. “Even better than Steve Ray’s playing of Beethoven last week.”

“Stevie Ray Vaughan and Beethoven?” asked Jeri. “Who else have you heard?”

“Why just about everyone,” replied the woman. “The bopper, Vivaldi–why last month we even heard some of Shakespeare’s new sonnets set to music by Aaron Copland and performed by Ethyl Merman.”

“No Elvis?” Jeri asked.

The woman looked disdainfully at her. “Of course not!” she replied. “He plays evenings at the local bar down the street. I don’t expect he’ll be joining for another ten years or so.”

Of course I’m an exclamation point. Was there ever any doubt?

(more…)

Is there a word for something like writer’s block when you know what you need to write but don’t want to?

Got up this morning to write (last week I’d strained a muscle in my back, and so skipped sitting in the cold basement, and yesterday I slept through the alarm) knowing what I had to write, but was simply unable to do so, because as an outside observer, I don’t want the scene that follows to happen, even though it pretty much has to. It takes the story in what I (finally) realized is the correct direction–but I don’t want to do what needs to be done!

Of course I could be blocked simply because 30 minutes in the morning isn’t enough time to write a difficult scene.

While I was exercising today, I mentally created a story to explain the sofa guy of the previous entry.

Unfortunately, I waited too long to write it down.

But here’s the idea:

He came back to town early only to discover that his apartment was cordoned off with police tape. One of his neighbors had been found dead in her apartment–discovered only after her body began to smell. Unfortunately for him, his cheap bastard of a landlord put him up in the skankiest fleabag motel in town, where gravel trucks roared past his window all day and all night.

And then Michael showed up and so the story abruptly stopped there. Which is too bad, because I was hoping to learn how the neighbor had died, and if the apartment would be condemed.

It was a lot better in my brain when he was rubbing the week old stubble on his chin and regretting returning to town a week early.

As my vacation winds down, I’m going to try to read as much as possible this weekend. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get to Red Seas Under Red Skies but perhaps sometime later this year, when I feel up to dealing with a hardback book and am in the mood for high fantasy.

Which is strange, actually. For years and years I was hard pressed to read much besides high fantasy, but recently I simply have no been in the mood for it at all. Possibly because I re-read Rhapsody last year, and my stomach still hasn’t settled down quite yet. (I still think that if you ignore most of the Rhapsody bits, there’s still a fascinating story about Achmed and Grunthor. It just doesn’t take up enough of the book.)

I’m also going to try to get back onto a better sleep schedule this weekend. Staying up past 1am is not going to be good when I try to get back to waking up at 6AM to write before work.

So book reviews will appear in the side panel as I write them, otherwise, enjoy your weekend.

I’ve been having strange dreams recently. Well, that’s nothing unusual, since between my imagination and the anti-depressants, I’m used to strange dreams.

What I mean is that I’ve been having strange dreams for me.

For the past week I have been having unusually violent dreams, where the protagonist (sometimes me, but not always–about half my dreams seem to be third person) gets beat up or tortured.

On one hand, the meaning seems rather obvious. Considering that part of my depression has stemmed from beating myself up over infractions both real and imagined, this seems pretty straightforward. Except for the fact that these dreams started just recently, as I have become more adept at recognizing self-blame for what it is, and refusing to blame myself for the problems of others. In other words, as my depression has retreated and I have become better at dealing with the things and people who caused me problems, my subconscious seems to have decided to make the whole “beating myself up” thing quite literal–at least in my dreams.

Is it a problem? Not really. I’ve been fascinated by dreams since I was in college, and how the most vivid ones tend to your self-consciousness sending you a message. What I’m confused about now is whether my subconscious is getting in it’s last kicks as I learn to ignore inappropriate guilt, or whether it’s trying to tell me that I’m not doing as well as I think I’m doing, and I still have lots of work ahead of me.

Or perhaps it’s simply trying to get me to finish my current WIP so I can move into a new story seeded by one of my freaky dreams.

Except that it’s really going to have to cut back on the sadism if it expects me to find anything useful.

My idea of what I was going to do this morning:
Get up
Eat Breakfast
Take Michael to work
Write
Do some laundry
Start a fire
Read a book

What actually happened this morning:
Get up
Take Michael to work
Run by my office to pick up power supply for PDA that I forgot to take home last night
Eat breakfast
Get kitchen ready for new dishwasher after being told installer would be here between 9 and 10
Start fire
Start laundry
Flatten pile o’ boxes to be recycled while waiting for fire to take off
87 phone calls about whether or not the dishwasher is in stock, is available
Read one chapter of book
More phone calls about dishwasher situation
More laundry
Waiting for dishwasher

I sometimes wonder why I even bother to make plans, since things never ever work according to plan.

However, I’m not at work, so WHO CARES?

WHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry you all have been getting mostly single paragraph updates recently. There have been happenings around here. Nothing good, but nothing that really affected me directly. Just things that suck up huge amounts of time. On a positive note, my mood has been good enough right now that I was able to handle the issues that came up without stressing out or getting extremely upset. This is excellent news, because it means I may have my depression under control–at least for not.

Still not ready to go off my meds though. My mood hasn’t been stable long enough.

Additionally, I’ve been writing every weekday morning. I’m up to chapter 18 (page 49 of 85) so I’m at about the halfway point till I can start writing new material. (It’s been long enough that I desperately needed this editing fest because I’ve forgotten many details. Bonus: coherency is good.)

I’ve also been reading. Once my grandmother comes back, we’ll be watching DVDs most nights, so I’m enjoying the last of my quiet evenings. Of course I also can’t wait to get back to the first season of Heroes. We told her we wouldn’t watch anymore till she came back, and I’m more than ready to find out what happened.

As far as books, if you like mysteries, I highly recommend C.S. Harris‘ Sebastian St Cyr series. And if you like fantasy with your mysteries, I also am enjoying Tamara Siler Jones‘ Dubric series.

And I’m getting ready for Grandmom’s party this weekend. So far: apple pie in the freezer and the cookie part of the oreos are done. Tomorrow: carrot cake cupcakes. Friday: Bake pie, fill cookies, frost cupcakes. And somehow resist eating any of these baked delights.

But mostly, I’m happy and content, and just haven’t wanted to spend time outside of work on the computer.

So sorry bout the lack of updates. But not really.

So the database is coming along nicely, though I don’t think writing code counts towards my November writing goals.

As of now, the database has all the administrative functions I wanted to add. Although it could use a few tweaks, it does everything I wanted: I can search by author, title, series, genre, or year. I can enter new books, edit existing books, and delete books.

Last function to be added is going to require a lot of grunt work, and that will be linking individual book reviews to the database.

I got up early this morning and wrote for about 20 minutes before work. Revised through chapter two one. I’m going to try and get out of bed a little earlier each morning, so I can write for a few minutes longer each morning. I figure this will be easier after daylight savings time ends.

Additionally, we had our traditional number of trick-or-treaters last night: 0. At least we save every year on candy.

ADDENDUM the First:
It’s interesting, the revisions I’m doing. Since I just wrote without thinking, coming back after more than a year, it’s pretty easy to see the problems in the text. So far, the biggest issue is that I had very few details: I hadn’t actually described any of the characters, so they were simply amorphous beings without height, weight, or (for the most part) style. Easy enough to fix though.