11-2-06
One of the WriMoers who attended the Kick Off Party is a professional clown. She twisted up lots of balloon animals while she was partying.
This collection of balloon Plot Bunnies decided to attack the Evil Ent in fron to the Word Board (and on top of the hedgie cage – the hedgie slept through the attack).
NaNo swag was freely handed out and we had lots of fun.
And as if this morning, I had 291 words written towards this year’s NaNo.
11-1-06
The Kick-Off Party went well – we had a balloon sculptor who made balloon Plot Bunnies, lots of food, NaNo Swag, and fun. I took pictures and posted on the NaNo Boards in the Oklahoma Region. And yes! I had enough chairs for everyone, although folks liked hanging out in the kitchen because my kitchen is awesomely larger than the livingroom. Someday, I will knock down the wall between the two rooms and convert them into one huge room. Since everyone prefers hanging out in the kitchen, might as well make it so we can be comfortable as we do so.
If I do that, my house will consist of the laundry room, Library, the Meeting Room, the Craft Room, my bedroom, and the essential bathroom.
I didn’t stay up until midnight to start writing at the end of the midnight stroke. I got up at my usual time to go to work and started then.
I had a few extra hours there, because my car is still in the shop (since September 22!), and I have to wait on my ride to work, taking a vacation hour so I’m not late.
It’s weird to see daylight before I go to work. Even in the summer, the sun is only just rising as I wend my way to work.
Even though it’s only 7:30 a.m., I feel as if I have wasted half my day already.
I wrote 300 words on my NaNovel, washed the party dishes, fed all the critters, and now, I’m wasting time waiting for my ride, who will be here in half an hour.
My copy of the Addams Family TV series, volume 1, is on it’s way. I can hardly wait. It should be here Monday or Tuesday.
And NaNo is well under way.
My youngest daughter volunteered my house as the place for the NaNo Kick-Off Party.
I could kill her for that because she knows that with her entire household of things and with Beaners’ things still stacked up around here until he finished his MOS in the Army, the house is a clutter-nightmare.
I hope the weather is good that night because we will have to spill out into the yard, especially if all 35 or so people show up.
On the plus side, decorating will be easy. I have a magnetic chalkboard with several magnetic poetry sets on it fastened to one wall of the living room. I can put up another chalkboard with chalk. We have the huge cauldron to use as a Plot Pot, and with a printer and the internet, can fill it with many, many plot ideas and little stuffed bunnies. A smaller cauldron will be filled with the usual Halloween candy. I have lots of little blank notebooks and blank paper we hang place around along with large inflatable pencils and pens with no ink in htem (I’ve been collecting empty pens at work for a while), and other assorted writer’s nightmares. And, I happen to have several computers that I can set to show the Blue Screen of Death and the dreaded “File not Found” message. It is Halloween, even if it is a NaNo Kick-Off party.
I’m planning on making a Haunted Forest relish tray with a Swamp Dip for snacking on. Broccoli trees, egg ghosts with black olive cut outs for eyes and mouth, raisin and almond flies, pepper slice monsters, gherkin snakes, cherry tomato and olive eyeballs, radish goblins, and pea pod pixies, surrounding three sides of a swamp with “body parts and bones” rising from it. Spooky yummies. That makes me happy.
It’s just a relish tray, but it’s all in the presentation.
I plan to have the camera battery fully charged before the Kick-Off party so I can take pictures.
And Itzl will be dressed as a Writer’s Muse.
And I finally have a clue what I’ll be writing.
I’ll be using my Vox Blog to chronicle the world building for it – noddy.vox.com.
I may, from time to time, mention something here, but for the most part, all of that will be at Vox.
On anotehr note, I learned that Itzl can make friends with small dogs as well as larger ones. It’s very hard to find other dogs of his size around here, where people tend to prefer the larger terriers, hounds, German Shephards, wolf hybrids, Dobermans, Great Danes, bulldogs of assorted types, Labradors, and Australian Shephards. Even the puppies of most of these dogs are bigger than Itzl.
But this weekend, he got to meet and play with a miniature dachshund puppy. She was still bigger than he is by a pound or two, but at least they were close in size. Itzl was taller with his long legs, and she was sturdier and longer.
She’s also a yappy little thing, something that displeased my anal retentive Hall Monitor type dog. It took Itzl most of a day to acclimate to Pepper – a solid black mini dachsie. He would run from her when she started barking at first, and give her his eveil eye froma distance – usually from the top of the sofa as he stared down at her. This tactic seemed to establish his dominance over her, though, because when he deigned to descend to the ground, she would grovel before him. For the first time in his life, he was the Big Dog (forget that he has a big dog laid back attitude most of the time – he never forgets that he’s little). It wasn’t until he started to treat her like a kitten that he finally learned how to play with her.
By the time she left, he still hated her yappiness, but he has a new confidence now.
And he discovered two store bought doggie treats he really likes – little gingerbread men doggie snacks and some chicken breasts dried like beef jerky without the seasonings. He also really likes hte training treats suggested by the next level of training he’s about to embark on: microwaved to crispness hotdogs and vienna sausages. One vienna sausage or half a hot dog provides enough treats for 3 training sessions.
8-21-06
I sold another article.
Non-fiction, of course.
I can sell non-fiction easy-peasy, but no one wants my fiction.
When I do get any kind of personal response, it’s always along the lines of “Nice, but doesn’t quite fit our criteria/not suitable for our readers.”
I write science fiction. Mostly. It has space ships and new planets and alien botany and alien relationships and politics and shiny techie toys and aliens and relationships with aliens and lots of new worlds and even the occassional weapon. There’s lots of adversity with dealing with aliens and technological breakdowns and robotics and AIs and nanotech and futuristic computers and nifty winged vehicles that run on mini-reactors. I toss in fantasy references and include comments on the latest entertainments. My best SF stories are character-driven, fully supported by tech. There’s culture clashes and gender clashes and truly evil intelligent villains and sometimes, the villain is the hero.
But write a 2,000 word article on the language of herbs, and snap, it’s sold. Write a 3,000 word article on the hybridization of the basil family and boom, I have three editors pantng to publish it.
Write a 1,500 word short story on a pair of post-apocalyptic children finding the wreck of an airplane with a working black box, and :::crickets chirping::::.
Try the horror field and write a 1,700 word short story on vampires and sunflowers with death and a new vampire trap, and :::crickets chirping:::.
Dabble in the erotic SF field, and write a lovely 2,000 word story on a woman searching for romance with her alien partner and a military captain chasing her, and :::crickets chirping:::.
Whip out a 2,500 word article on melomels and metheglyns and sell it in three days to five markets (with minor modifications.
I have 11 novels all completed, and not a single acceptance on a one of them. It’s true I finally have one editor who might possibly be interested in one, but I’ve had editors express interest before, and :::crickets chirping:::.
Still, I suppose as long as I can keep up the sales in the non-fic fields, I’m not doing too badly.
Once upon a time in a far away world, there lived a kindly old woman who baked cookies. She would trade these cookies for tales of woe and sorrow, and use those tales to fuel her fires and keep her warm. The stale cookies were used to build her lovely little home and to make repairs as the forest creatures fed off the cookie bits.
By her house was a small and lush pond, inhabited by talkative koi and friendly frogs with long and shining blue hair. The koi and the frogs would gossip over dinners of flies and gnats and waterskimmers, often joined by the kindly old woman, who would supplement their dinners with cookie crumbs.
These small things were enough to please the kindly old woman, until one day, a pair of fat young children appeared at her house and began to nibble the eaves and shutters.
This annoyed the kindly old woman since her cookies were so popular it took her a long time to collect enough stale cookies to repair her house. Out of consideration for the old woman, the field mice and songbirds nibbled the house delicately and never in the same place so it lasted longer between repairs. Not so these greedy children, who, in such a short time, had eaten three whole shutters, a full quarter of the under-eaves, and the sill of one window.
So the kindly old cookie woman burst out of the door with a plate of fresh-from-the-oven gingerbread cookies and invited the children inside.
There, over the cookies, the children told her of their woes, how their wicked step mother cast them into the woods to starve and die all alone. They were so famished when they came upon her tiny house they couldn’t help eating the sweet parts of it.
The kindly old woman said she’d speak the word and see if she could find people who wanted a little boy and girl; if the children would watch her ovens for her while she made arrangements for them. The children eagerly agreed to her terms.
The search for new parents wasn’t easy, for the wicked stepmother had spread the word about the greed and laziness of these children, and no one wanted to be burdened with children who could not be good team members. The kindly old woman promised she would work with the children and teach them how to do the work a family required: cleaning and cooking and gardening and basic carpentry and other necessary tasks.
So she returned to her home, crowded now with the children, and told them they would have to prove themselves before she could find them a new home. The little girl sighed and agreed they’d mend their lazy ways.
For weeks, the kindly old woman worked with the children, teaching them the skills of hearth and home, prodding them to work harder and harder, setting stricter tasks each day. Yet all the children wanted to do was eat her cookies and mourn the loss of their cushy home. Their father and loving mother once doted upon them and gave them everything their hearts desired, but their new mother demanded they behave and do tasks.
Even their loving father came to see how he’d turned them into lazy and selfish children. They were not very lovable children. He sided with their new mother, knowing they would have a hard lesson to learn. Instead of learning it, they’d run away.
Twice, they were taken in by kindly people who wanted children and each time the families demanded the children work for their keep. So they ran away again and again until they finally reached the kindly old cookie woman’s hard-baked house deep in the Enchanted Forest.
Each evening, when the kindly woman returned home from searching for new parents for the greedy little children, all the cookies she’d set to bake would be eaten and the tasks, while mostly done, were done so poorly the old woman would spend the night redoing them. The children could never stay awake long enough to see how the tasks were supposed to be done and so the old woman worked twice as hard as ever.
When the old rooster stopped crowing, the kindly old woman made him into a tasty stew, but the children had grown so accustomed to the delicious cookies they turned their noses up at her simple stew. This drove the poor old woman to desperation, for she couldn’t hunt for new parents for them, do all the chores, and teach them how to do the chores by herself. So she took the drastic step of locking the little boy up in the rooster’s old cage. Then, she told the little girl her brother would eat only after all the tasks set them each day were done.
She expected the children to have some heart left, of only for one another. And maybe, by appealing to that heart with a small hardship, she could make it grow.
The next morning, she set the little girl some simple tasks, and restrained herself from making the cookie dough for her famous Enchanted Forest Cookies, leaving the children with nothing to eat while she was gone. Then she went to her lush pond, and sat among the reeds, gossiping the day away with the hairy frogs and talkative koi. She reluctantly left their friendly chatter to return to the children, and tasks she feared would be poorly finished.
Her best frog friend, Hye-yo, jumped into her apron, hoping to snag a fresh baked cookie instead of the crumbs the old woman would bring for them.
When the old woman entered her home, she was amazed – the place was a dreadful mess, as if some burglar had entered and torn it apart looking for treasure she didn’t have. Worried about the children, she turned to look for them.
As she passed the hot oven, never wondering why it was hot when there’d been no cookies to bake, she paused to close the door. A rattle behind her startled her and she fell against the oven, knocking Hye-yo out of her pocket. As she struggled to get up, the children rushed her again and pushed her into the oven and slammed the door shut.
Then the children gathered up the bundles they’d made during the day and left the old woman’s house – but not before breaking off a few roof tiles and shutters to take as snacks.
Hye-yo was alarmed and frightened for the kindly old woman, and leaped on top of the stove, searching for a way to open the door or turn it off. His frantic efforts finally pushed the door open, and he helped pull the old woman to safety, catching his own lovely blue fur on fire.
As she gasped for breath, he hopped to the window and croaked as loud as he could. The other frogs came hopping up to see what was wrong. In the window, they saw the smoldering Hye-yo, and scattered to get help.
The woodcutter was home and came running to help when a songbird told him of the disaster at the cookie woman’s house. There, he tended to the burned old woman and the frog.
I’m glad to tell you the old woman lived and became close friends with the woodcutter, who moved his hut closer to keep a protective eye out for her – and for fresh cookies.
The children were last seen approaching Baba Yaga’s hut on the far side of the forest, following the bone fence only after the last of the stolen shutters were eaten.
The Cookie Woman knew Baba Yaga would straighten these children out, or eat them. And either fate was just fine with her.
And the frog?
His hair burned off and never grew back, so the kindly old woman knotted him a wig made of her own pale hair, and that, Dear Ones, is why the bald frog wears a wig.
ConEstoga generated a number of story ideas. Cons usually do.
I have to shelve most of them until I have time to get to them, because I already have too many Works In Progress. Unless I can turn them into subplots in a WIP or write it up as a short story, they will languish on 3×5 cards.
I’ve finished several novels that desperately need me to pay attention to them and whip them into a potentially publishable state.
These novels are: The Sphere of Misty DOOOM, half way through it’s rewrite. The computer keeps hanging on Chapters Five and Eight, which annoys me. The rest are waiting their turn in the editorial queue: Anamee, which is about a Lost Colony that doesn’t get found or rejoin humans from other planets; A Thousand Days to Freedom, about a woman from a marginalized forced space colony that suddenly has Importance in the Hegemony who uses the culture of the Turpenii to gain her escape from the planet and eventually her freedom; Wudjum Woman, about a woman obsessed with the Wudjum, and the price she pays for that obsession – her career, her friends, her family; Blood Bond, about a treacherous Dowager Queen, a Priest-in-Training, an ancient sage, a passive-aggressive rapacious race of insectoids, the best ship and crew in the United Peoples Republic, and a galactic war; Alliances; about an orphan, mysterious events that keep forcing her and the ship upon which she’s an officer to search for her people until eventually, the Captain petitions the Command for permission to actively engage in the search – and the results of that search; Ballad of Rainey Downes, my only Western, about a true hermaphrodite cowboy and his partner through cattle drives and buying a cattle ranch together; When Trees Take Flight, about a retired anthropologist who gets drawn into a political battle between a world-walking botanist and her murdering brother; Pizza Boy, about a young man who just wants to deliver the best pizzas ever to the miners of the Asteroid Belt, and instead finds himself saving Earth, then the Solar System, and then the whole universe – finding True Love and new pizza toppings along the way; Riddle Me Dee, about an epic historian and some of her more memorable adventures throughout the galaxy; and Better than Unicorns, a pseudo-Regency SF novel about time travel, dryads, mad scientists, the New American Continent, politics, cattle raids, pagan picnics, auto racing, and nary a unicorn in sight.
The two children’s books still need a few extra chapters each because they are a bit sparse: The Adventures of Audine about a Venusian mermaid and her “seahorse” Willi and the adventures they have on Venus; and Meretta Markley: Teen Space Colonist, about her life on a colony ship and all the attendant hazards she and her peers face because their parents chose to seek a new planet.
OK, so the copies of the Sphere of Misty Doom (formerly known as “ConKin” and “A Con in Time”) are ready to send to my critiquers. One of them got a head start by receiving his copy yesterday – before I got the distribution copies today. I don’t want to know by what methods he managed that.
OK. Yes I do. I want to emulate them.
Anyway, between the time I sent the book to the copier and the time the copies were done, I have already decided on several changes I want to make.
The rest of this post is for my critiquing crew, so you can read it and laugh or ignore it as you will.
It’s a rough draft, really rough draft, being as it’s raw NaNoWriMo, unedited by me at all at this point. I already know a variety of places I’ll be making changes and tweaks. Some of the stuff was put in there as filler and has no apparent purpose, which I can change easily enough with a sentence here and there and the ending is weak, weak, weak – I have a much better one where it’s the GhuGhuists who gain the glory – ’cause I’m partial to the GhuGhuists, although, I may have the St. Fantony folk do more than the walk-on they got.
I also want to make the frog bite more critical and demonstrate that more – the bite is an essential plot point to bring the two MCs together and reveal the alien involvement. Daeson needs to be weirder, more naive, and more of a fanboy over Tamar.
There’s that vacant shopping center that I left just sitting out there, and I had plans for that and Andy and just blew it off in a rush to get to the 50,000 word mark for NaNoWriMo. It was meant to provide some mysteries and a the key to the GhuGhuist’s final triumph (the frog is hiding out there, for starters).
Kupachem is my “Mary Sue” character. Just so you know. Be gentle with him. I always wanted to be big and strong and a security guard at a Con, and got stuck being all girly instead. He is the unsung hero of the novel, the glue that binds it all together. No, the frog is just a convenient plot point. Kupachem makes it all happen.
I know you’ll probably think Tamar is the Mary Sue, because I drew a bunch of stuff from my life and gave it all to her. But I did that because those pieces were improbable enough to fit her character. You’re never going to catch me doing some of the stuff she does – and it’s stupid stuff at that. I am so much smarter than Tamar is (better be – I’m the author!), but I need her to be stupid in those ways as plot devices.
I like Loren being weak. I need to emphasize that more. He’s a geek/nerd in way over his head, and just macho enough to not want to admit it. He’s a bit resentful of Tamar sweeping in and taking the glory from him, and yet grateful that she credits him with much of the resolution.
I think Mooneagle needs a bigger part to play, and I’m not sure how to do that. She was just a tag-along that got caught up in the drama. If you have any ideas on what to do with her, or if I should write her out of the plot, just say the word. I think she may be in there just because I wanted a “magnificent seven” reference – and that may be enough to keep her around.
I don’t want this grim, so I’m not going to delve too deeply into the aspects of being ripped into a pocket universe. Pushing the con into the pocket universe was a plot device to extend the con and have the purple hairy frog. It’s supposed to be light, with huge doses of nostalgia and “wow, I want to be at a Con like that”.
If you keep these additions in mind as you read the rough draft, we’ll be on the same page in the edits.
This poor rough draft could use help on so many other levels, too – be on the look-out for my inability to match tenses, the inevitable grammar errors, plot holes big enough to shove a supernova through, and any cringing atrocities.
The dog who may or may not be an Irish Setter stays.
I wrote this for a Bad Poetry Night in March of ’94.
Is your God dead?
That’s OK – don’t cry – there’s more!
All the Old Gods and Goddesses
Wait in the wings for remembrance.
Burn some incense, light a candle,
Try a new one on for size.
Bypass the big Gods – Zeus, Cerridwen, Baldur,
Demeter, Yemaya, et al – they have many worshippers.
Seek instead the lesser Gods –
They’re ever so much more grateful!
Pesesht fades for lack of followers.
Sesh Sonou and Lance Toolsmith,
Iris, and Mergantia of the Violet Eyes
Would do most anything for even minor offerings.
Tired of your landlord? Invoke a Kami.
Want a new job? Call on Atomika.
Paperwork bogging you down? Sacrifice to Beauro.
You needn’t live Godless and free –
Shackle yourself to a new God – or three –
A new one every month!
In camp, Rainey had Zeke drag a good buttlog under the tarp, then sweet talked Doughboy out of coffee and sourdough, which he shared with Zeke.
“You really been shot?” Zeke asked, wide eyed.
“Yep.” Rainey touched his chest anxiously, relaxed when his fingers came away clean.
“Is this your first drive, too?”
“Nope. You a city boy, ain’t you?”
“Yeah. I grew up in San Antone.”
“Why ride trail? It ain’t easy and it don’t pay well.”
Zeke’s eyes glowed. “But it’ll make a man of you. It’s adventurous. I read stories about it. Cowboy songs, pretty girls, bright stars.”
“Dead men, stampedes, cold rain,” Rainey countered.
Shoulders slumping, Zeke sighed. “Yeah. I never seed a dead man afore.”
“You ride trail, you’ll see more.” He looked off towards the supply wagon, hoping the boy would take the hint that he was tired and wanted a nap.
“So why you riding’ trail?”
“Beats working a hardscrabble farm.”
“You was a farmer? Mebbe you can tell me what this is?” Zeke poked around in his pocket, pulling out some scraggly pitiful plant, dried up and falling apart.
Battered as it was, Rainey recognized it. He’d pulled enough on the farm, and he’d seen firsthand the effects it had on beeves and men. “Don’t you let Mr. Biscoe see you with that – that’s locoweed. Kills cattle and men.” As Zeke started to brush it off his hands, Rainey exclaimed, “Don’t you throw that here! Get rid of it when there ain’t no one around to see it.”
“Mr. Torres said it was good for saddlesores on horses.”
“I ain’t sure ‘bout that, but it ain’t good for beeves or men.”
“Well, you’re the farmer.” Zeke looked doubtfully at the handful, then stuffed it back in his pocket. “Well, was, anyway. How long you been ridin trail?”
“Four years.” Rainey relaxed once the weed was out of sight. Then yawned prodigiously and levered himself up. If Zeke wasn’t going to take the hint, he’d just have to be rude and go lie down anyway. He was feeling as battered as the weed in Zeke’s pocket.
“Nu-uh! You’re younger than me!”
Rainey stared at Zeke in disbelief. This snot nosed little greenhorn just called him a liar. It wasn’t fair. All he wanted was a nap, and now he had to deal with this. He couldn’t just ignore it, not with Doughboy, Oney, Red, Slim, and Porter looking on.
Porter and Red began to back slowly off to the side to be out of target range when the shooting began.
Heaving as deep a sigh as his bandages allowed, Rainey said sadly, “Boy. Be glad you said that to me today. Iff’n you said it tomorrow, I’d have to shoot your arse. I’m getting me some shut-eye. Don’t. Wake. Me.”
Doughboy stared after Rainey, then expelled his breath noisily. “You are one lucky kid!” He exclaimed before returning with exaggerated care to finish cooking supper. He swopped Oney once for making too much noise. “Quiet! Don’t wake Rainey!”
With equal care to be silent, Slim and Red finished putting up the tarps, just as it commenced to rain. Porter rode out to the herd, and spread the word of what happened. One by one, the other cowboys came by to swap out for fresh horses and stare at Zeke. Each one made sure they entered and left camp as quiet as possible. For a while, the tale of Zeke’s lucky escape took their attention off the ridge riders that so spooked them. By suppertime, Zeke was known as “Lucky”.
Ebonypearl 