Recasting "A Far Sun"

I've been working madly on my story. I haven't made as much progress forward as I'd anticipated, but working with my wife I have made some very important progress.

First, I started reading it aloud to her. It's practice for when/if I podcast the story, and the reading helps me find and fix all the places where the prose is awkward or stilted. If I can't read it smoothly with all the right inflection, then there's something wrong that needs to be fixed.

There are a few reasons why I'm reading it to her. First is that it helps me. That I've covered, above. Secondly, she is an English Literature major, and therefore "an expert." Believe me, she snags a lot of problem areas I miss, and the story keeps getting better. Less fluff, more stuff. Thirdly, she suggested I convert the story into YA--Young Adult. Because of the premise and the characters, that is turning out to be a really good idea. The only problems I've run into are the few spots where adult things were handled in an "adult" manner. A little too much graphic detail, even though I had practically no graphic detail at all. With her cogent suggestions I've been fixing the adult interactions to be a little less literal.

The final motive for my reading the story is so she can help me work out the last ten to fifteen chapters. As a critic of fiction she's quite good, and I am very lucky to have her "on board" helping me. Makes my decision to marry her a couple years ago look pretty smart. But I digress.

So, we've read up to page 450, or so, out of about 750 pages of manuscript. So far. I hate to estimate how much is remaining because of my dismal abilities to predict the length. I always think it's going to be shorter than it ends up being. I might hope it will be only ten chapters more, but in reality it will probably be more like twenty. At 3K per chapter, that's 60K words on top of 143K.

She has suggested ending the first "book" when my heroes get to the village. It's really not an ending, but it is at the 39K word point, which would be a good length. And it would definitely spur the reader to get the next book in the series. For grins I've looked at other points throughout that could become "endings." I suppose I could break this thing down into 40K "chunks," but really the stuff set up in the very beginning doesn't get resolved until the 200K word point. For YA this would be a very large book, but I think getting it written is probably more important than worrying about the length, right now. Besides, my wife is quite interested in the story, and really wants to see (hear?) how it comes out.

Stay tuned.

Memories of Influenza

I think I've had the flu badly only twice in my life. I think. My mother tells about the time I was sick as an 18-month-old child and they had to hospitalize me in isolation. I don't remember anything about it, but I think it rather significantly traumatized me. Today I think they would allow your mother to be with you. That's the part she talks about, because that's the part she would be most traumatized about. I've only come away with abandonment issues and a strange affinity for women in uniform. Heh.

In 1980 when I was 25 I got the flu. I remember that episode quite well. I was really sick for a good two weeks. If it weren't for liquid Sudafed and a bottle of port I had stashed under the sink, I'm not sure how I would have gotten by. The Sudafed helped me breathe, and the alcohol helped me sleep.

Actually, my girlfriend had gotten sick with it, first. I remember going out to buy a humidifier and medicine about four hours before I came down with it. I'm sure I spread my bugs to the people I came into contact with, but what could I do?

I think when I was sick at Christmas in 1996 was also a flu bug, but since we (my girlfriend of the time) were only sick about a week, I don't count that among the bad ones. Yeah, it was no fun being stuck sick in a dreary apartment in Atlanta. No tree, only a few presents, and both of us hacking and coughing.

I didn't say my memories were fond. Influenza can suck out loud. It can kill you, too. I'm just lucky I was young and pretty healthy in 1980, because that one was pretty damn bad. I googled for references to a 1980 flu outbreak, but found nothing. There was a swine flu scare in 1976, but it's hard to say what strain the bug in 1980 was.

Well, I don't know where I'm going with this post. I just thought I'd write about what's going on in the "influenza epidemic/pandemic" news, these days. Just in case I get sick and can't write about it, later.

Murder "works" too, but we still don't allow it

I'm not surprised to hear supreme wingnut Rush Limbaugh trying to justify the U.S.'s illegal torture of prisoners, by trying to "prove" that it works. That, of course, is completely beside the point. There have to be higher standards than the ones our "enemies" have. Otherwise, we're no different from them, and deserve no better. Maybe that's true, but I'd like to think it isn't. If we're just as evil as those who oppose us, then who's to say who should win?

Of course, if you're not doing anything wrong ...

The wingnuts are upset the government is monitoring them as if they were terrorists. Gosh.

Don't worry, wingnut extremists. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. After all, that's what y'all told us when you approved of warrantless wiretapping.

Yeah. Suck it.

What we suspected all along ...

Homophobe = secretly gay.

Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli.

Makes sense, though. Why else would gay men upset them so much? Now we know.

*Snort!*

First, let me say that this is a joke. (click the image for the full-size version) A very funny joke if you're a techie.

It's that day again

I know, I know. I'm no fun.

Today is the day when the signal-to-noise ratio of Teh Internetz radically shifts to "noise." Ah, but it's clever noise masquerading as signal. I want my jokes to be funny, and not some cleverly-disguised form of irony or satire. Those would mean I have to think, and let's face it: Thinkings be hard. Besides, I broke my incredimeter and now everything looks all WTF-y.

*sigh*

As I said: I'm no fun.