Synova

Pleading the fifth... or something like that. I've had the worst time getting any writing done at all. I'm making forward progress though. I'm still really excited about this story. My son is ahead of my on word count. :-)

Because I am sooooo behind. Well, I better get to it!

August started to rise but a small hand pulled him down again. "Why are your eyes like that?" He glanced up at Lady Kirikyan who simply raised one arched brow. What harm in answering, then? "I had my eyes replaced. My new ones can see in the dark." They could also see infrared and in wavelengths beyond the visual. "They're supposed to look natural so that people aren't made nervous by them." Lark wrinkled his nose and peered very closely at one eye and then the other. "They look silvery," he announced. "They don't make me nervous. Seeing in the dark is fun." "He's got a pair of toy goggles," his mother explained. "Time to let the Enforcer go back to work, Lark."

Ava threw herself behind the rotted dumpster, pressed her back up against the slimy prefab extruded surface and tried to suck air into her lungs. She couldn't get enough oxygen, the pounding of her heart filled the spaces that were supposed to bring in air. It throbbed in her neck, her wrists, her gut. It was all she could hear. It fought in her brain with the need to run farther, to get away. Or hide. She reached up to wipe a drip that was making it's way down her chin but her sleeve was worse than her face, she glanced down at her arm and a sob pushed its way past her beating heart. She was soaked, not with blood, but with everything. Everything that had been her guardian and teacher, everything that had been Maklun Burr. His skin, his flesh, his bones. His brain... she thought his brain had gone the other direction. Yet somehow it was almost easier to look at what was, now, to focus on it, the bit of cloth stuck in the goo, the part that was a fragment of...

It's an hour or so until midnight and I wonder if I should stay up and write... following the rules of course! Got to wait until Nov. 1. I had a wee bit too much caffeine today so I may be up if I want to be or not. I need to get my stuff organized, open a new file to start fresh, and that's about it. The project seems to want to be multi-book, though I will definitely need each to be complete in itself including the first one. I really hate books that don't have a satisfying ending and then you're supposed to wait a year or more for the next one! Ugh! Yuck! The villain for the first part had been eluding me and I realized today who it probably needs to be. The problem now is that I know that these people are not the ultimate villain at all, but will become the "good guys" later on. So how do I keep that fresh and not let on that they aren't bad? I mean, they *are* bad by a whole lot of standards... but what I know happens later might co...

And I'm going to do it again. :-) Last year I went with the "give yourself permission to write total crap" theory of circumventing the internal editor. It worked like a dream until I got to 20K words (the month long goal is 50K), looked at the story I had and thought, "Hey, this isn't half bad." I didn't write another word. This time I have a plan and most of a novel length plot, including the end. I expect it to be a first draft, but decent, and intend to finish and *market* this book. Sure, it will be my first ever time getting to the end of even a first draft of a novel, but that's what the participation in NaNo is about. The average novel in science fiction is generally between 80 and 100K words, so 50K isn't very long, really. If I have to I'll write summaries of what happens with the intent of going back and fleshing it out later. I'm really excited about this story. I'm shooting for a planet hopping shoot'...

I had the worst time with the auto-focus trying to take these pictures. They're in scale to the D&D miniatures we use... about an inch tall. I made the kobolds for my son. The blue goblins were a gift for my game DM. If I make any more I'll put a smidge of orange in the blue to dull it. I think the scraps of salvaged chain mail came out fabulous.

At least... I think that's what kind it was. We found this right under my daughter's window next to the house. At first glance I thought it was a gopher snake... at second glance I knew better. It was obviously a rattle snake. It didn't rattle, though, until after I'd got it all the way into a bucket. Where was the warning rattle? That was more nervous making than anything. Would a young snake like this rattle before striking? The picture was taken after we released it in the park.

(What is it about bald men?) In the Name of the King Bad and good, in odd ways, I think. Some good acting some bad, some good cinematic choices, some dire... my husband and I both cracked up toward the end when "Farmer" and the others who were going to sneak into the evil fortress walked through one grand landscape after another, after another, after another... but while I don't think anyone would argue it was a *good* movie, there were elements of the plot that were refreshing to see. Not everyone we expected to die, did. Some of the explaining about why to fight, and the King explaining that he was very like a farmer... that was very nice. The various people not waiting around helplessly, even when helpless, that was nice, too. It suffered from trying to get too many sub-plots in, from trying to make too many of the secondary characters have their own stories and character growth. But mostly it suffered from the evil magus's Larry the Lounge Lizard hair. That...

I'm rather new to good old D&D and new to the classic classifications of good/neutral/evil and lawful/neutral/chaotic and I've been impressed from day one. "That makes so much sense!" Because I've always separated in my mind, morality from legality. This may be because of my Christian upbringing and admonitions to be apart from the world as well as out and out statements that not every thing permissible is profitable. Something legal, either in the civil code *or* Christian morality, may still be wrong. The passages about causing your brother to stumble because you've done something you're *allowed* to do (eat meat sacrificed to idols is the example) are probably why I do not conceptually equate legality with right and never have. So... long story... I was visiting with a nice lady the other day... an interesting lady... it was an enjoyable conversation. But you know what? I think she's lawful evil. I will socialize with her but ...

Aboard the USS Merrill, June 1991, taking part in Operation Fiery Vigil .

Just a reminder that I'm blogging at A Second Hand Conjecture .

Oh, Rapturous Joy! Fixed link?

This is an extension of the commentary from this post from MichaelW. Have you heard the truism that a person is smart, but people are dumb? On the one hand it's profoundly true. On the other hand we fail to understand that the opposite is also profoundly true. A person is dumb, but people are smart. Dumb people, making sub-optimal individual decisions, somehow manage to combine in aggregate into communities that most often are remarkably robust and remarkably effective. It works with a market, where individuals make poor decisions about what to produce and what to buy. Somehow, with all those individual mistakes the result is highly effective and highly responsive. Compare that flawed mish-mash of poor decisions to what happens when there is directed organization and decision making, usually by experts, and the unwashed masses directing their own lives come out on top. Waaaay on top. It would also work in education, given a chance. Do I trust my fundie neighbor to do the b...

Or: What I Learned About the World from Reading Historical Romances. I learned that sometimes people get *more* uptight over time rather than less. Victorians, according to custom and any number of novels, were concerned with propriety above all. Certain things were not spoken of and certainly the rougher aspects of life were hidden from young ladies. They were prudes. Read enough novels and eventually a consumer of these delightful escapes will come across one that isn’t Victorian at all, but set in the Georgian era or earlier, or at the very least has a foul mouthed old grandmother who insists on wearing her wig and powder and scandalizing her adult children with accounts of her wild youth. What brought this to mind (in a rather random fashion, which is typical for my brain) was this post of mine and what Joshua said about History. Deeply partisan divide using fear is nothing new… hell, we could take a page from the 19th century if we want to feel better about how bad it really...

Here.