Don't Ask

I worked Saturday, and I'm still dealing with lung crud, so I was tired when I returned home.

I sat on the couch and closed my eyes--"just for a minute"--and woke up hours later. In this extended nap, I had a whacked-out dream about the silly, bizarre games monsters and Greco-Roman gods play when they're on a camping trip. (Friends don't let werewolves hunt drunk.)

Then, in the middle of all this strangeness, I freaked out because I'd forgotten to talk about a group of gods in Dragon's Bane--

"Wait. These guys aren't part of the story," and I went back to sleep.

Yeah.

However, I did dream up some cool dialogue for a vampire story.

More Elmer Fudd Afoot

I've been looking around the internet for agents' websites, doing a little research in the wee hours of the morning. Many agencies accept only established authors or those referred to them by other agents or established authors.

Not very encouraging.

But I'll keep sneaking through the forest in search of wabbits.

Life on Mars

ABC's crime show, Life on Mars, is back. Whoo hoo!

Watch it online (available tomorrow), and find out why "I am Spartacus" is a punchline.

Elmer Fudd Afoot

Okay. (typing with more resolve than I'll probably feel tomorrow) I'm going on an agent hunt.

Other than rejection of one's manuscript, the only threat in such an endeavor is to one's wallet, due to the cost of ink, paper, and postage. Well, there's also the chance of paper cuts, but most writers are inured to such dangers.

As for capturing my prey, even a double-barreled shotgun wasn't much help to Elmer Fudd in his search for wascally wabbits, so maybe I'll just use a lure: cheese-flavored paper stacked on an innocuous-looking trap, with a few SASEs tossed on top as a garnish.

Cabin Fever

Dealing once more with lung crud, and stranded by poor weather, I've been home since returning from work Saturday afternoon, and am just about to go cabin-crazy.

While finishing up Episode 6 for Thieves' Honor (just sent in to the editors), I've been watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, an homage to old-fashioned science fiction cartoons and films of the 1930s and 40s. If I have a complaint about the movie, it's the whole "Good boy, Dex" routine that Joe (Sky Captain) does with his sidekick. Other than that, I sit back and enjoy the almost mindless fun.

I've also been reading Ted Dekker's The Circle Trilogy (Black, Red, White) in an omnibus edition given to me for Christmas from my brother and his wife. I finished Black on Monday morning, and have started Red. Bubba's been a Dekker fan for years, but I'm a latecomer to the club. My first Dekker attempt was Skin, a fast and tense read, so I was game for more. I'm liking the intercutting between two worlds in this current set of books, but--as with Sky Captain--there's an annoying tick in the story: all that winking. What's with the winking? Everybody, or at least all the "good guys", likes to wink at one another.

Perhaps I'm making a huge deal out of details because I've been in this house and on this couch for too long. It must be a sign that I'm either really, really sick, or that I've been cooped up too long, if going back to work looks like fun.

Or maybe I need to move to a warmer, drier climate.

Ah, That Wacky Winter Weather

Freezin' rain's a'comin'. Monday through Wednesday, my area of Arkansas may experience that dreaded winter enemy that downs power lines, mucks up highways, and breaks tree limbs, not to mention freezes the water supplies of entire towns, as it did mine several years ago.

I know employers and schools can't predict weather's exact behavior, but when there's a high chance (70% on Monday, 100% on Tuesday) that the roads will become solid sheets of sparkly, deadly ice, I'd think the smart thing to do would be to cancel anything requiring employees and kids to be out on those same roads.

But that's just me.

Tortoise-Like Progress

So, Episode 6 of my science fiction serial, Thieves' Honor, has started trundling along again, after being stalled over Christmas and the first part of January.

The series isn't meant to be too deep--not what might be called serious literature--which is a switch for me. There's more banter and more witticisms in this effort than in my other writing, the stuff where I try too hard, beat my head against multiple walls in an effort to push the story forward. That happens sometimes with Thieves' Honor--the fourth and fifth episodes, for instance--but for some reason I'm more relaxed about this story than anything else I've written. This story, on display to the world, whether or not the writing's any good, whether or not the plot has holes or the characters are interesting.

It's kinda goofy, too. For the readers who are geeky enough to catch the references, I make allusions to other science fiction, written or filmed, and even included a couple nods to Veggie Tales in Episode 4.

In this episode (still in search of a title), the crew of the Martina Vega first contend with the constabulary searching the cargo hold, then--before the law is finished--Governor Bat'Alon arrives with his men and demands to know where his daughter is (being a passenger, she's been gone for hours); and then, interrupting the governor's threats, the extraction team arrives, guns drawn, to collect the Vega crew and the rest of the bounty offered by the woman who put out the contract on Finney, the pilot, whom the team has already captured. Across the city, Captain Zoltana, an ordinarily intelligent officer of the law, is about to do something really stupid with her career.

Now I just have to choreograph what happens next. Problem is, I have no idea what happens next.

As for other fiction, a friend is still reading the incomplete manuscript for my second fantasy novel, and sending along her comments. There are some chapters coming up that dive off into territory that makes me nervous, but nervous might be good. It might signal that I'm finally tapping into reality, or it might mean that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.