Ending this blog

I don't think I can combine the posts from this blog into my regular one, so just ending this blog. I don't post enough to either to justify having two. All nano, attempts as humour etc. posts will just be part of the normal blog.

storms

"Danny may not make hurricane strength: forecasters"

His parents will be very sad.That is all I have to say about that.

On dreams

I don't normally recall dreams, and those I do seldom make all that much sense. Last night's was just fun since I "woke" in an alternate version of my apartment and other places I've lived (as well as a kitchen I've never had*. I had a shower in the dream, figuring that would wake me up, and -- when that failed, and things got even stranger** -- logging on to a 4" compute in a sewing room. Which ran DOS 5.0. I still managed to contact people, one of ehich said: "Go outside" before the computer stopped working.

Which was the neat part: I'd been all "this is a dream, I can access the net and modern programs even if it is on DOS" all the while knowing I shouldn't be able to. Which led to the dream 'realizing' that and locking me out. Eventually I went outside to run into someone who had apparently made fun of me when I was six, and I now knew what he looked like so I could ask for an apology. Without, you know, getting his name or any idea what he did.

* The kitchen was all stainless steel appliances, counter tops etc and was "serial killer clean"
** My father as 50 lb overweight, coming in to fix the linen closet and casually noting a bees nest in it along with the a solid arm (and voice) of someone named Myra.

Here is a map of it, too:

nanowrimo 2009

There were plans this year for it. I have forgotten what they were. (One of them turned into an abortive novel in several drafts.) What it shall be now is thanks to a prompt on a writing forum I'm a member of: YA fantasy dealing with separation & divorce. Which led me to think about Thomas The Rhymer, his missing seven years from the world and what that would do to his wife and kids left behind -- along with the fae child he fathers in his 3 nights in Elfland.

I don't know much about it yet -- I have no clue who the antagonist shall be (I'm half-certain there won't be one per se), but I have the cosmology done and 5 characters named in 2 days.

Janet & Thomas were easy, sine I lifted them from the poem. The demon girl Roh came about in the shower this morning and Pam, an older daughter of Janet's, popped into my head yesterday. Roh is odd, not a female name and simple, basic. Like demons in a lot of ways: she is one thing, a single note of a song. Pam can be short for Pamela and struck me as a very sensible name, which will be at odds with what she has done.

For the two male MCs, I knew one has to be Irish-ish (the fae) and be able to have a nickname. Thomas's son, no nickname and preferably English. Beyond that I went for the low end of the alphabet, random letters to start the names and emerged with Declan and Harris. Both work, so shall work on setting and plot at some point too...

On marriage in archie comics...

Just came across this bit of news today, and I'm still terribly amused by it. You see, Archie Comics did this fun mockery of Marvel's Civil War with their own 'Civil Chores' . All I can think now is that this is their version of the marriage between Spidey and MJ, and it will end with Archie making a deal with the devil to annul his marriage.

... Is there a reason you're looking at me like that?

Ah, characters ...

It's always interesting to be part way through a draft and have your own understanding of a character do a complete 180. And also to realize that novel is probably going to be a duology - with a third in potentia - assuming I get around to it.

Short on sleep this morning

Headline was "Faced with mortal threat, Pakistan chooses denial", which I read as: "Faced with mortal threat, Pokemon chooses denial"

And then it seemed perfectly sane and logical to wonder, if Pakistan is Pokemon, what is Israel.

Another mythology ramble

I'm currently poking at a novel involving angels, demons, and exorcism. The one mentioned in the previous post, really. It brought to mind my other issue with mythology in novels/tv series/etcs.

Generally, you tend to get All The Stories Are True. Or at least there's some basis for them. And guess what? The characters learn The Truth(tm) and things end however they end. But in the real world, no one myth is inherently superior to any other. And, in the real world, no one finds out they are Right.

So no one will in this novel. The MC had the working hypothesis of his parents to go by, others will be added as the novel goes along, but which -- if any -- contain a grain of truth, and what that grain is, will remain unknown. It won't stop Aiden from deciding one theory IS the right one, just not ensure that he is actually correct.

Mythology and novels

Several years ago (in the wilds of 2005) I turned a poem into the start of a novel. The result was Waking The Dead, which was about the dead waking, gods, mythology, and other things. One of the reasons I began it was to make use of a mythology -- in this case a blend of Sumerian and Haitian -- that wasn't common in modern urban fantasy. Generally without exception the cosmology is either:
A) Christian
B) Native American
C) Ireland/Fae/what have you
D) Japanese of late

And it bugged me that some of those were taken as flat out 'this is the order of things'. So I did Waking The Dead, and decided to avoid making use of any Big/Trendy mythology as the way of things in any future novel.

That was then. This, however, is now. And 20K into one novel, the plot of another -- one involving angels, demons, and a passage from Genesis -- is saying hello and refusing to shut up. Mind you, my take on all of it is decidedly somewhere left of normal, but it is still a very odd thing. And shall be interesting to see what comes of it.

35 pages...

And so far the final(?) novel in the Shuck Cycle is shaping up interestingly. Clyde makes for an interesting viewpoint character and the plot is proceeding along nicely at 20K. I know roughly where the larger plot is going, and have some ideas how to work in other things that need to be tied together. Both Jared and Cassie surprise me, which is a good thing.

Shuck, of course, remains Shuck.

"What are you?"
"A dog. Shuck. Old Shuck, in some human legends that are grossly inaccurate, mind."
"And you don't have a head because --?"
"I lost it."