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Feeling alright

Despite the Republican insistence on going total ‘dirka dirka jihad‘ as an approach to governance, I am having a pretty decent week.

I’ve had some insights into a secondary character in my novel that I think brings out a more fully realized character and provides a nice bit of motivation for why she does what she does. She also surprised me by being married to another woman. I’ve heard author talk before about that their characters tell them whats what, but that’s not really how I operate. In this case I had started considering the spousal relations for Katarina and I know I did not want the usual power-couple you find in politics. Once i had the broad outlines of the kind of person for her spouse, I let my mind wander through scenes with different spouses and different bits of dialog.  Again and again I kept coming back to the same, off-world Scandinavian blonde. If that’s where my thoughts keep ending up, like some sort of orbit, then that where I need to be.

Also things look up on the job prospect. Right now I am a  temp but I’ve been told that my bosses are very pleased with my work and so I think when the probationary period ends it is likely that I will transition to a full time regular and unionized employee.

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Happy Holidays

Well the holidays are truly here. Today is Christmas eve and the phone at work are as dead as Romney’s political ambitions.

I wish each and everyone one of you the merriest holliday, whatever holiday it is you celebrate. I don;t get hung up on which one myself, it’s good enough to have a day off to spend with my sweetie-wife and think good thoughts.

(Except about the writing where I think bad thoughts for the villian.)

 

 

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A Turbulent Week

Oh, nothing life threatening to me and anyone I know, but this has been a week of highs and lows.

The lows were a couple of things. On Tuesday night I got a flat rejection from Writer of the Future for my 4th Quarter entry. Not Even an Hm. *le sigh* My arthritis has been acting up and today, thursday, it was particularly bad. No evening writing for me, just letting my fingers rest.

The highs have been fairly nice. Mainly in that my novel, ‘Command and Control’ is less than fifty pages from completion, and I have been very productive. (9 pages on Monday, 8 Tuesday, 8 Wednesday, and today the day of pain 5. That’s a total of 30 pages and my weekly goal is by sunday nights having 29 finished, so I am ahead of quota.)

My idea for a new SF short story is coming along nicely and I know exactly how it ends. That is critical to my writing process. Unless I have a clear ending in mind, I cannot write the story.

Best of all, Saturday morning, 10 am, my sweetie-wife and I are going out to see The Hobbit. yes!

 

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Happy 4th of July

Today we celebrate an action of congress. Today is the celebration of our declaration of Independence, when the thirteen British colonies on North America announced their divorce from their mother country and proclaimed themselves a new nation.

This nation was not created perfect, it was created under the taint of slavery and without a concept of equality as widely applied as today, but it did proclaim the principles that have set the course for ever increasing freedom and equality for mankind.

I am immensely proud the be an American. I am passionately devoted to equality, and while perfection can never be achieved by mortal man, in my opinion no nation has done more for the betterment of humanity, ethically or materially than the United States of America.

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Adventures with Scriveners

For this week I have been working with a new piece of software as I work on my new novel, Command and Control. This software package, Scriveners has been developed as a tool for writers, particularly of novels. It is much more than just a word processing program, but it is a tool for collating and organizing the data that you can generate when writing your tome. Continue reading

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Book Review: Soulless

SOULLESS by Gail Carriger

Published in 2009 to great reviews and tremendous sales Gail Carriger’s Soulless, is a whimsical steam punk paranormal romance with Vampires, Werewolves, and Parasols (please, never umbrellas.) It is the first of the Parasol Protectorate series, which concludes this March with the publication of Timeless.

The book’s protagonist is Alexia Tarabotti, who lives life under a number of difficult conditions. She is soulless, though that is a guarded secret from most of the world, her father, with whom she shares a complexion, was Italian, an ancestry hardly praised  in Victorian London, and she’s a spinster, her marriage prospects considered to be non-existent as totters on in the advanced age of twenty-something.

Alexia’s London is not our Victorian setting, but one where the werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and other unworldly creatures of the night have become part of English Society, influencing fashion, politics, and colonialism.

Alexia’s comfortable if somewhat boring life is disrupted when an unknown, hiveless vampire attacks her and she is forced to dispatch the creature. Being soulless, a trait the unfortunate vampire seemed terminally ignorant about; Alexia’s touch negates all supernatural abilities. QueenVictoriadispatches an investigator, the Scottish werewolf Lord Canall Maccon whom harbors ill feeling towards Alexia over ‘the hedgehog incident’. not only to probe into the unlawful destruction of this vampire, but into his mysterious origins as a hiveless vampire is the best knowledge, impossible as all vampire are products of the a hive queen.

Alexia is quickly drawn into a adventure of mysterious appearing vampire and mysteriously disappearing werewolves while dealing with the infuriating Lord Maccon and bothersome American scientists.

Soulless is a fun read, wonderfully free of angst and best described as whimsical. The book is a light, fast read that promotes giggling and isn’t afraid to look silly. Escapism gets a bad rap in entertainment, but there is a place and a need for escapist fare. One cannot dine happily upon staid state dinners every evening, the occasional good times, good drink, and good food with friends are also good dining and Soulless is to books what these fun diner days are to posh restaurants. The characters are well drawn and distinctive, each bringing a set of traits that promotes comedic effect rather than having comedy forced upon them. The plot moves quickly and yet takes the time to hint, display, and illuminate Gail’s marvelous world building. While her vampires are inspired from the same traditions of Dracula and her werewolves are clearly derived from, as are nearly everyone’s these days, Sidomak’s Wolf-Man, she adds more than enough to make each fresh and her own.

The most memorable misstep in the novel was that Gail explained the ‘hedgehog incident,’ an event that should have forever remained unknown and therefore of limitless possibilities in her fans’ minds, but really that is a very small flaw in my opinion.

This is a book I would have not read had I not known the author personally, and I would have been poorer for that loss.

 

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