bookmark_borderThe Fun of Being Me

Remember just a few days ago when I said I needed organization? And how after 20 minutes of work I was already done for the day?

I hurt my left shoulder some how. Could be just coincidence. It could be something is up with my pillow. It could be the arm of my chair is too low. Or it could be the hour or so of sitting in a new chair (demo) while they arranged and tested out and measured. Or it could be the fact my shoulder is attached to me. It is usually the right shoulder that gives me grief so maybe the left got jealous.

I’ve got a towel under my elbow to lift it up a little higher which is helping slightly. I’ve got my way cool split keyboard and I can put left half under my left hand wherever it needs to be. However, I can only type for a few minutes at a time. Just the tension of the forearm and the slight movement of the shoulder starts spasms from the bicep up to the back of my head. It’s too damn hot for the heating pad. And ice is not what it needs. Sometimes I just get tired of all the adaptions and arranging of stuff I gotta do just to exist.

All sorts of other stuff are going on, too. My chair cushion and backrest are well past their expiration date and I’m sure that’s not helping any.

I’m in a bad mood. I’m on the brink of depression. Someone in the neighborhood likes to burn stuff (mostly trash) between 9pm and 11pm nearly every night so the office smells like smoke. The joy just continues.

However I have over 94K written in the next novel.

bookmark_borderAsheville in the News

Yay! We made the Wall Street Journal!

Is it good or bad, though?

Asheville, N.C. Debates: How Weird is Too Weird?
Topless Rally Raises Eyebrows, Questions

This city has made a name for itself as a tourist and retirement haven, known for its arts festivals, spiritual retreats and welcoming culture.

But a topless rally here Sunday prompted even locals who want to “Keep Asheville Weird” to question if weird is a sustainable economic model, especially in a downturn.

“Being strange is one of the things we have in our favor, that people feel comfortable here,” said Patti Best, who sells her paintings in downtown galleries. But Ms. Best said she worries about blurring the line between being accepting and being offensive. “Asheville has a lot of attraction for families, and they aren’t going to come to a place that’s veering so far out of the mainstream,” she said.

(…)

sheville was among a number of cities hosting Go Topless Day rallies on Sunday, the anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution’s 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. The Go Topless Day event was founded in 2007 by the Raelian spiritual movement, which believes human beings were created perfect by extraterrestrial scientists. Their slogan: “Free your breasts, free your mind.” Still, most of the woman participating here and in other places across the country are not adherents of the Raelian movement.

(…)

David Roat shrugged as they passed by the busy corner where he was writing custom limericks. “Look,” he said, pointing. “You’ve got a cat over there who’s juggling a pipe wrench, a bowling ball and a knife. There’s a guy in a nun’s suit riding around on a tall bike. That’s Asheville.”

(bolding is mine)

source: Wall Street Journal

comic about the rally: Mountain XPress comic
Photos of the participants: NSFW!! Photos of GoTopless
Another rally being held at the same time: A Different Kind of Protest

We moved here in 1990. That year we attended Bele Chere, a cool event downtown. We went with Lorna’s parents and got separated from them. We decided to just sit and watch the people go by for a while. And boy howdee did we see some people. If there has ever been a fashion fad, it walked by (bell bottoms; plaid pants; spiked, colored hair…). If there was ever a kink that can be displayed in public, it went by (woman wearing leather shorts so small they were molded to her butt, with leather boots higher than her knees, a leather vest with nothing underneath, was ‘walking’ a man wearing a a leash attached to his leather spiked collar, leather pants molded to his genitalia, and boots up to his knees). It was strange. And we fell in love with this place.

bookmark_borderWriting Organically

Also known as no outline aka going with the flow aka what the heckaroni am I doing?

I am over 86K words into the sequel to To Sleep. And I have no clue where it is going. Usually I know by now. There’s this goal in the distance, I can kinda see it, so I plod along until the clouds clear and there it is. But not with this book. I like the book. I like the beginning. Then somewhere around, oh, 40K, I just start rambling with no real direction.

That means I edit drastically when done. But that’s the price one pays for organic goods. Organic vegetables and fruit are always so ugly, aren’t they? Yet they taste better and are better for you. Thusly, so are my books. (No, don’t eat it!)

Anyway, there’s a general direction the book (tentatively called The Awakening) is going but I’m not at all sure where it will take me. I realized a major plot hole tonight and am thinking my way around it. I may just leave a big {FIX THIS!!} and move on. Perhaps if I discover the end, I’ll know the rest. Right? Maybe?

I think the problem is the details of what the characters are doing. I feel the need to explain every meeting they are having but that makes yet more details I have to keep track of. Then there’s the Humans. They are following along so easily.

Meanwhile, I think I have a character who is trying to get my attention. I’ve never had that happen before. I keep seeing Harri from Butch Girls. She’s in a corner of my brain, tapping her booted foot, arms crossed, wearing a blue muscle tee, well worn blue jeans, short buzz cut hair covered by a denim baseball cap. And she’s scowling. I created this chick so why is she scowling at me? I am considering setting The Awakening aside and drift back to Harri’s book. Harri kinda scares me a little. Not sure I want her loose in my head without supervision.

bookmark_borderCurrent Project

I am working on the sequel to To Sleep which is called The Awakening. The main document is almost 44K but the second document where I tried out a plot line, is 14.5K. Doing the maths means it is about 58K, more than halfway to the goal. I like the direction the plot line is going so I’m going back over the main one to fit it in at some point.

The good news is it is going well. Very well. The even gooder news is this book will have sex scenes in it. To Sleep had none because it wasn’t needed. But this book will need it because it is part of the plot line. The book starts about two years after To Sleep ends. It will still be in first person. I considered using another person for it but I kinda got attached to Karen. She has such a sarcastic mind, it was fun to write using it.

I’ll be introducing some new characters. Some are cool, like Denise and Cass who I made main characters (MCs). Others I thought would be more MCs but I didn’t like them that much.

She leaned into me and hugged my side. “You made the right decision, you know.”

“Did I? I gave her an ultimatum, one or the other I said.”

“And she chose the path she was the most comfortable with.”

“Or less frightened by.”

“Same thing. Stop worrying about it or you’ll get an ulcer.”

No, I wouldn’t. The nanites would take care of it at my yearly checkup. “You know we advanced Denise’s genetics, right?”

“Yes, and she’s still working through her new skills.”

“You can do the same thing. We’ll be offering it to all the descendants.”

“Become one of you? With telepathy and stuff?”

I almost told her she had to, else in fifty years I would lose her to old age while I never aged a bit. But that was for later, after she made her decision. “With telepathy and stuff.”

“And orgies?”

I had to laugh. “And orgies, if that’s what you want.”

(…)

After we had put them on, I hugged her close. “This is going to feel funny. It kinda tickles sometimes.” I then pictured the beach front property in New Zealand we had bought. I pictured the little cottage and the stone patio. Then we were there.

“What the hell?” She looked around in awe. It had been fall in Pennsylvania but it was spring here. The air was a little nippy but not too bad.

“You are in New Zealand.” I held her hand and we walked toward the water.

“How did we…without a teleport pad?”

“One of my skills is teleportation.”

She briefly looked like she was going to run screaming into the morning sunrise. Then she slowly smiled. “That’s a cool skill.”

“Frankie’s a little better at it.”

“You always do that. Say that someone is better. But I know, just from listening in, that you are the best in every skill you have.”

“Not electrokinesis. Julie’s by far better than me.” We sat on a bench near the water’s edge. “And certainly not empathy.”

“And I disagree. I think you purposely don’t train or exercise or whatever you do to make a skill stronger. I think you do it on purpose so that they are stronger than you are.”

“Your skill will be lie detection.”

She laughed then stopped. “Please tell me that’s not one of them.”

bookmark_borderOrganization Part Do

See the pun I made?

Anyway, I worked for a grand total of 24 minutes before my back and hip was hurting to the point I could no longer bend over or lift.

Let’s see how long it takes me to recover so I can work some more.

And the problem with cleaning house is I usually make more of a mess than the one I was cleaning up. I now have several piles.

– To BestBuy (they recycle electronics for free)
– To Look Through (WTF is this for?)
– Stuff to Keep (Ah! That’s where that went! WTF is it for?)
– Magazines (do I really need that 2007 Diabetes Cooking magazine? The subscription we cancelled after just two issues?)
– Cardboard (everything is in boxes that is haphazardly stacked)
– Trash Can One (stuff that can be thrown away directly)
– Trash Pile Two (stuff that needs to be dealt with. Like the box with a huge mouse nest made out of two years worth of QST magazine. Why didn’t they use the Diabetes Cooking one?!)
– And a little pile of “Lorna Stuff”. Mostly stuff from pre-2000 that can safely be thrown away now. Right?

bookmark_borderOrganization

If anyone knows me, they will know I am not organized. I’m a complete mess. I am kinda a hoarder, too. I keep everything with full intentions of filing it. Someday. I have old computers that I kept for parts and to ‘some day’ build one for my ham shack. And speaking of ham shack, all of my ham stuff is unused, on a shelf, waiting for ‘some day’ to come along and me set up a space for my ham stuff.

Sometimes, my disorganization bites me in the butt. Like the reason for this post. I cannot find my contract I signed with RCE way back in 2006. I can’t find any of my RCE stuff prior to mid 2010. Where the hell did I put all of it? All of my royalty statements and receipts are missing.

Our dryer goes unfixed because I cannot find the receipt to prove we have a warranty. A dead car is in our driveway because I can’t find the title so we can donate it to some charity.

I am a digital hoarder as well. My WIP file (that’s Works In Progress) is huge. I save every version, even if I it is basically identical to another I also have.

I am really, really into writing right now. But I can’t because I really gotta clean house. I have a shredder. And I have three boxes of “Stuff to be Shredded”. I bet when I finally get around to it, I’ll have three boxes of shreds. Mulch, yes, but I then have to remember to use it. We don’t have closets and have very little shelving. So a ‘place for everything and everything in its place’ doesn’t work since not much as a place to be placed in. On. Whatever.

It is like last night. I went to the kitchen to get a drink. On my way, I saw the laundry basket in the Cat Room (room between rest of house and the kitchen) that needed to go back to the bedroom. So I did. Along the way, I realized it had gotten dark and I ought to turn on the hall light. Then I remembered I needed to turn on the kitchen light, too. Which reminded me of my drink. So back to the kitchen I went. As soon as I got there, I realized I was hungry so I made a sandwich and left the room. Partway through the Cat Room on my way to the Rose Room (office), I remembered the light so I went back to turn it on. Then I realized I didn’t have a plate for my sandwich so I turned around and went back to the Cat Room to get it. I am almost back to the office when I remembered my drink so I went back to the kitchen. I got the drink but stumbled over stuff in the Cat Room because, you guessed it, I’d still not turned on the light.

Meanwhile, Mike had been following me. At some point, he just sat down in the Cat Room to watch me go back and forth. Sometimes I wish I knew what was in their heads but at that moment, I was glad I did not.

bookmark_borderHiatus Over

My family (bro, sis-in-law, their two kids and a cousin) had been here for two weeks. They went home this morning. I did a little bit of writing most nights as I tried to unwind from the day but it wasn’t much.

Today I jumped back in, hoping I would push the depression away.

I am working on The Awakening, the sequel to To Sleep. It is rather rambling at this point since I am not exactly sure where it is going. It is amazing sometimes what appears on the screen when I just write, letting it all hang out.

I am also working on Harri’s story, Butch Girls and Stereotypes, but it is sluggish. I know where it is going (where most Romance novels go) but I’m not happy with how it is getting there.

I poke around on Nikki’s story (it has no title yet) sometimes but feel that Harri’s need to be told first. But sometimes when I am writing Harri’s, I feel that Nikki’s needs to go first. (insert dramatic sigh)

While in Minneapolis, I started writing Kaye and Annette’s story but I need to do some research for that one.

And, bless my heart, I am also seriously considering Simple Sarah again. I know, I know. Write it or shut up.

Anything else active-ish? Nope, not really. I am always open to ideas, though!