Friends

While attempting to take pictures of my knitted gauntlets to show off, I noticed the camera was color-correcting. The camera seemed to be removing the red from the image, making the lovely violet shade appear to be a bright blue instead.

( Pictures - with and without red )

Dark Water Blues


1660+ words. Not a bad little run. Now to get some housework and job hunting done, assuming the cat ever gets off of my lap.

Story of my life, lately.

:: laughs ruefully ::

Well, quality of life just went way the hell up.  Willa Catheter is no more.  And I love you guys so much that as a token of my respect and affection, I am not posting relevant photos.

Yet

Wet read came back on the path report.  Clean margins, clean lymph nodes.  I'll be around to bother you guys for quite some time come.

I'm going to live.

... do it here.

Jessical Faust of Bookends has thrown her blog wide open. Go and leave you anon comment and get it off your chest.

First, the good news. I e-mailed "Red's Tale," my counterstory for the CatsCurious Faery Taile Project, to the editor over the weekend. Last night I got an e-mail back from her. She may have a few comments for me, but described the story as "brilliant," so I think I'm okay. At 9000 words, I think this is the longest story I've written that isn't a novel. Looking forward to seeing what the artist comes up with for the covers. (That's right, this little project gets two covers: one for me, and one for ckastens).

That's the good news, and pretty much clears my writing desk of everything except getting The Mermaid's Madness done by my August 1 deadline.

This is where we start the swearing. I realized a little while back that the rewrite of this book still had serious problems. So I stepped back and did yet another outline. I've eliminated one character, completely changed a second, and given a third an actual role in the book. (Before, she stayed off the page twiddling her thumbs for 95% of the story.) Two of these changes should go a long way toward adding a sense of fun, which is something the book desperately needed.

I've also added more explosions* to the ending, changed the sequence of events in several places, and ... well, let's just say there are a lot of scribbles and scrawls on my original outline.

So now I have a choice. I can either rewrite the damn thing a third time, incorporating all of these new changes and elements, or I can finish the 75% completed rewrite I've already got, then go back and try to fix things up. I want to finish this rewrite, but I also know I'll do a much better job of cleaning up the first 3/4 of the book if I start from scratch. Again.

Sometimes I hate my process.

Looking at the calendar, if I do 1250 words every single day, including weekends, I should be able to completely rewrite the whole book by the deadline (79 days). Assuming no more plotbunny ambushes. Scary? A little bit. On the other hand, some parts I can almost copy and paste from the current draft. I'm not changing every single detail, after all. I can also ask my family to give me a few writing days -- my current record is 10,000 words in one day, when I was writing Goblin Quest. I know I can do this.

But I'm still stressing about it, and I'm still a bit scared. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get the story right on the very first attempt?

-----
*Figuratively speaking ... sort of.

I'm off the IVs, as you can see here: Walker Cam
The real reason for the walker isn't balance — I'm ok with that. The real reason is to manage Willa Catheter. Her bag just doesn't accessorize well with anything I'm carrying. I've been walking more distance every day. The epidural was taken out yesterday and I'm on pain control by oral medication, but I lost bowel function during the Great Pain Crash, so I'm not being sprung until that stuff restarts correctly. In other news, I am feeling a lot more normal, as evidenced by my dreams. Last night I dreamt that this same team had operated on my Dad, then our daily care had been outsourced to a university dorm. radconbob was the ward doctor, and was taking great pleasure in explaining to me the joys of a low-bid menu. Back to bed for a while to surf the Dilaudid some more.  I'll try to be on later to read email and comments.

You should all attend this one.

Convention info here.

pameladean talks about it here.

Bear and Mole are going. And so should you.

lydy gives you the scoop here and here.

I told the programming coordinator that I'd be willing to be on panels, but looking at all the super-brilliant folks attending the Con has me wondering if I won't be a bit outclassed.

So, all of you are coming, right?

Amazon currently has A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT listed as an "Import" -- I've sent in a correction to them; we'll see if it does any good.

Wow. Just wow. It's a dance routine with a difference.

Absolutely delightful Everlasting Gobstopper for the eyes. 

God could have created aliens too: Vatican http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/14/2244056.htm

There has to be a short story or maybe a book in that somewhere!

4.) Sixty Days and Counting, Kim Stanley Robinson.

Okay, I've finished the trilogy (I read Forty Signs of Rain a while ago; I just needed to come off of writing the book to have some reading time). What do I think?

First of all, I think Fifty Degrees Below was the strongest of the three. This trilogy is one of those extended volume books. While you could read the others as stand-alones, there
s pretty much one set of storylines carried through three books.

And now that I'm done with it? I liked reading the trilogy but I don't know that I'd reread it. Too much blogging in this book, and the tone just didn't read right for a blog. The engineering got pretty fantastic and I'm not certain I completely bought into it.

What I do find interesting is that this set is definitely a strong character/relationship trilogy with a backdrop of hard science--in this one, climate change. Integrating the themes of the politically and then environmentally displaced Khambalung with high-stakes political black conspiracy games and high-end science came up with an interesting mix. Certainly a big, big story with a number of storylines unfolding besides the high-concept global warming--Frank's musings about sociobiology (if you're interested in it, it's fascinating, if not--well, you aren't), Charlie and Anna's attempts to raise a family in a non-traditional mold, and Frank's adventures with Caroline--I'd have to go back and compare it to the Mars trilogy (or I would if I were a book reviewer or a college prof instead of a middle school special ed teacher) to see what sort of growth we might have going here...

Or not. The trilogy as a whole is well-worth reading once; I'm too close to it right now to decide on a second read.

Meanwhile, I'm off to reread Steinbeck. Haven't decided yet if it will be Working Days (the journal of the writing of The Grapes of Wrath) or Journal of a Novel (the journal of East of Eden). Or both. Whichever it is, I plan to reread the book the journal is about afterwards, with an eye toward craft.

Still unwinding from Pledges, and feeling some pressure to work on Freeriders. And thinking that this is a good summer to be thinking about craft--not just for myself but for the group of students I will be teaching next fall.

But it feels like it sometimes. Apparently the plan for the length of my coworker's maternity leave is to operate in crisis mode, which means I work overtime for six weeks, and this is not okay, but it's apparently my life for now. It means that while I open lj, I don't end up reading and I'm behind in the news, and in the lives of you folks I've become somehow close to in this weird distal way.

I have only trivial news about me and mine -- but I do have a livingroom! I have shoveled out the stuff that we piled into it during the endless library project and we have even sat around with Moher and watched TV and stuff.

Other than that, well, there's some bicycle politics happening, but I'll report on that when I can breathe.

 I can't say I'm back   because I never left.  So.  In case you read this Jay.  I resisted the urge to make 137 alien probing jokes.  I counted them each one and then said to my self, "Nope, wouldn't be prudent."  

But, I'm in full planning for "Camp Con"   You're all invited if you want.  It is the same weekend as Jay Con.  Note that I"m leaving the Camp to go see the gang.  Then I'm returning to Camp Con to eat things cooked on a fire.

I'm now down to 4 chickens.  I've planted grass seed.  Depending on how the chickens stay clear of it, I may hold even at 4 or we might be having chicken soup at Camp Con.

Maybe see some of you there.

Bob B

What the hell was that?



I went for a very brief walk by the side of the Windrush the other day. Or rather, there's this car park by the roadside and I was curious to see what was so attractive about the woods on the other side. Any road, there's a footpath and it was a nice day, so I spent a few minutes walking.

And had just come out of the woods, had already unpacked my camera, and saw something swimming away hastily. On the plus side, camera was unpacked, on the negative side, I had the wrong lens on it and half a second before it would vanish in the floating mess of twigs and be invisible.

So this is the best I could do.

I would also like to draw your and my attention to OWLS - the Oxfordshire Wildlife and Landscape Study

Many hours will be happily spent... and all of that.

It occurs to me that whatever I've seen is probably rare enough that _someone_, _somewhere_ would like to have a record of it.

Unexpected

(thanks to anghara)

Dropped off completely yesterday as a result of some new adventures in pain management.  Let's just say the IPO failed on that venture.  I am better now but it made for quite an overnight.

Meanwhile, my extracted bit of colon tissue has made an appearance.  I am pleased to see my insides so directly

May be home Thursday, but still on very low energy/highly reduced schedule mode for a week after that point.

Doctor soon.  Later days!