I’d really hoped that one line would carry me on into something drastically interesting. I’ve even sort of saved it for a time when I could capture the outpouring that would certainly follow.

But it chokes me.

I get hung up on that fact that I don’t know the least bit about German engineers (nor Japanese scientists–who briefly held that creatorial slot while I was down on the Germans). Also, I kept using ‘recourse’ in my head as I was working the phrasing out. After a couple passes I couldn’t remember if recourse was even a word. Just now I typed ‘choice’ then edited it to ‘course’ and all seemed well. Or, at least, weller.

I was having trouble tying the knot between their realization that they’d been built and who might have built them, but then ‘accept’ just flowed right in so I was good. Which leaves me still sorting out the damn Germans.

Assuming this phrase of mine would lock down the first sentence of a longer work it loses all it’s heft when you make up an entity to replace the Germans. As readers, we all know what a German engineer stands for: quality, excellence, capability, and reality. We know that German engineers can’t build anything sentient–since no one can–but if they did that sentience would be premium grade. So the twist is in the conflict between reality and what I’m writing. As soon as I replace them with elven mages, dwarven smiths, or Atlantean crafters the soup thins to broth.

So now I’ve got to learn enough about German engineers to make this worth following up on or find a way to make the Germans less crucial.

300 words on day 492

Lets just say I spent more of my writing time investigating things than I should have. I’ve been considering running this blog through Posterous. Which means I first wanted to make sure that I was truly dissatisfied with the native email to WP functionality. Sadly, even the straight text I do here suffers just a bit when I try the email thing since it doesn’t handle HTML and since either have to click a special link or embed some code to do it for me or run a CHRON job. Sure I can do all these things but I’d lose tags and the minor bit of formatting I do with the day and word counts.

Also, no plugins for email to post? WTF? They’ve got WP plugins that’ll fuck my cat each time I post, but nothing for converting HTML email and attachments into a post?

So I guess Posterous is more groundbreaking than I thought. It’s just not clear what the deal is for importing an existing blog then whipping it back around into a owned domain. Subdomain. I’ll have to check, but I’m pretty sure the A record is for the whole enchilada. Not just the cheese.

In other news, I’ve also been trying to look for information about short URL sites. I found some roll-your-ownish tutorials that look to be better than the crap apps I’ve found for this. Not to rile up the Bit.ly pro folks, but who’s a guy gotta blow to get a slot in the beta? If you’re gonna be free be free. If you want me to pay then cobble me up a PayPal button. Don’t be free, but stingy and leave me no choice but to make your brand my brand.

294 words

The few authors I follow write more than I think they do. By that I mean they write things that don’t get published or don’t get published in the main thread of their work. They cobble up a short story for a charity thing or a novella for an off beat press. They write short bits that never end up leaving their hard drives or even whole novels that no editor buys…yet.

Other folks, those who write and hope, those who may frequent coffee shops and critigue groups more than they send out query letters, those folks seem to nurse their only child through infancy and well into toddlerhood.

Which means that one quality of successful writers is the ability recognize non-stories. Like a gardener on her knees, these working authors pluck the weeds and prune their words. [I'll try not to overstretch more than that].

All this is to note there must be a kind of ruthless apathy in these authors.

166 words

I’ll be riffing from last night’s characture piece as best I can today…

The cherry evening shaded into a frog-croaking night like the day had held a honey of a sun. Garna sat cross-legged in a rocking chair on her veranda. Her feet hadn’t touched the voluptuously over-sized Cypress planking for an hour or more. The rocker blades ended in ferny curls: both segmented and green. A full jar of home-brewed stout sweated next to two empties. Jimlly would need to get here soon or the fourth jar would turn Garna’s enthusiastic welcome home into something that would require a hose were they dogs.

At the top of her next sip or the next or the one after that Garna presently spied a coach on the road. The coach’s lit lantern jaggled and frounced at the end of a what might be a fishing pole hook set to the side of the cabin. Her drunken heart thrilled to the sight of it and she stood woozy grasping the viney rail not at first realizing it drove out of the West. Jimlly would be out of the East.

The coach dipped down into the creekbed dribble at the bottom of the hill it crested and out of sight. During that stretched out time Garna’s beery frame showed no change. No alteration from excited drunk to disappointed drunk. But she had come to the conclusion this coach would not hold her husband.

Then. The coach popped fly-in-the-eye to the top of the yard like plum oxen didn’t walk but miragically appeared from starts to finishes as needed by their driver. This coach weren’t overly typical but it weren’t underly so neither. The toy ball shaped and sized lantern turned out to be hanging from a fishing pole after all. But it jounced and fraggled more than it jaggled and frounced. It was red.

315 words

That I’m writing this at all in the evening counts as near miraculous. If I’d written on Saturday as id planned and hoped but not dreamed it would have been fully miraculous. So save your Papal emails for later.

The cherry evening shaded into a frog croaking night like the day had been a honey of a sun. Garna sat cross-legged in a rocking chair on her veranda. The rocker blades ended in ferny curls: both segmented and green. Her feet hadn’t touched the voluptuously over-sized Cypress planking for an hour or more. A full jar of home-brewed stout sweated next to two empties. Jimlly would need to get here soon or the fourth jar would turn Garna’s enthusiastic welcome home into something that would require a hose were they dogs.

135 words

I think I said all I need to regarding steampunk kittens yesterday. Now that’s covered. I can move on.

“Dammit.” John’s head sunk to his hand, “Every time. Every single time.” He clamped his hand tighter over his face and ground at his temples.

His copilot, Varsha Smith, regretted not waiting one more minute before entering the cockpit. John was blustering and she’d not yet tread this ground successfully. If she didn’t end up listening to him whine for an hour she’d ended up getting yelled at for the same length of time. It was a pattern she recognized; she wondered if he did too.

“Wall or sponge?” Varsha asked.

He met her eyes and neither looked away, but John’s attention was elsewhere, like he was solving a quadratic equation in his head: first, outer, inner, last… She decided to help him get to the solution faster.

“Do you want me to be a wall to punch or a sponge for you to cry into?” Harsh, but real.

His face hybridded between a boy caught lying to his mother and one getting a bike for Christmas. Finally, she’d slotted through. A spark of fear dropped in lap like a hotly ashed cigarette. What hell lay in wait in their relationship now?

215 words

I’d expected maybe that I’d have the kinks of this new era worked out somewhat this week. That I’d have an alarm pleasantly waking me just after dawn, breakfast for me and my brood, and a Honey hug-and-kiss before an invigorating and blank paged welcomed me to my abtoir. I don’t. Not exactly.

Though I had figured on a worthless housekeeping post before the week was up so: job well done!

…and now I have four minutes in my tattered hour to cover my intended topic: steampunk kittens.

“Of course they purr,” Reichenold exasperated.

96 words

Today’s entry is needfully short rather than functionally so.

Morning’s moisture skimmed the yesterday-mown grass. Sunlight blazed through that dew in haphazard splotches and streaked over the drier foot path. The child insisted she was to be seated next to her Father–but not that close.

She extended her fisted hands. “Which one?”

He taps the left–his left. “This one.”

She opens it empty.

He taps the other. “That one.”

She opens it empty and laughs.

“You got me!”

The little girl grabs his hands formed them into fists as best she can, “You do now?”

99 words

Jacard sat among the small pieces of his life looking at the larger ones. He and they were crusted with grit and soaked in rain.

He cupped a photograph of a woman gently by its edges.

He felt like he ought to be frantic. Ought to fling debris from the carcass of his home calling out her name or run toward the road while a verteran-eyed emergency worker held him back. But the truth, that Melanie was driving home from Halton and was probably fine, kept extinguishing that fear. Phones were down. Cell towers out. She was undoubtedly on her way home now. The most he could do was wait…and not get put on television.

119 words

I’ve been reading more lately. When I’m not writing, reading feels like a suitable replacement activity. Consuming a book feels more honorable than consuming a television program despite each having the same tangiable result: me consuming time; producing nothing.

I can recommend the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld, though he doesn’t need my word of mouth to keep that ball rolling. Garth Nix’s Sabriel, Lireal, and Abhorson books can be reread regularly–I expect to dive into his other works to see if those can as well. I’m four chapters into Boneshaker by Cherie Priest and am confident that will end up on my recommend list when I’ve completed it. Paulo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl gathers dust on a nearby half-read shelf with Ian McDonald’s The River of Gods and Gene Wolfe’s The Knight.

These last three are all good books. Well written, interesting, different. What they aren’t are ‘daddy candy’: books I can swiftly read without engaging my worn out father brain as I close the day. I fight between staying awake to read and just giving in to the comfort of a pillow. When a book can be a bit of a chore choosing the pillow comes easy.

The hiatus I hope I’m closing out with this entry ran longer than I’d expected. You may recall I announced it back in March or April. The new activities that nesscitated this gap haven’t ceased. I’ve habituated them to the point where I can bring daily morning writing back to the schedule. Though writing on the 5th of July–a holiday–is no real test of that schedule. If I’m here tomorrow then you know I’m squared away.

279 words