Here is a novel idea

I'll admit it. I don't care anything about the Olympics. Watching the Olympics, to me, is about as exciting as watching water freeze.

I don't care for the opening ceremonies, either. I just don't like spectacle. I get bored.

When I mention this to people their reaction always seems to be, "So, you think we shouldn't have the Olympics? Or they shouldn't be shown on TV?"

To which I have to say, "No, I didn't say that. I said I don't care for them." Which means I don't watch them. There's plenty of other stuff on TV to watch. If you want to watch them, enjoy!

But that reaction baffles me. It seems, these days, that people automatically assume because they may not like something then it should be illegal. Because they wouldn't make a particular choice, then that choice should not be available to anyone.

I don't understand where this comes from. Time was people were allowed to make their own choices, and other people just minded their own business. Now, though, we want everyone to think and do and like all the same things.

So, let's try this for a while: if you don't like a particular TV show, or type of music, or movie, or whatever, then just don't watch/listen to/whatever it. If someone else digs it, be glad they have found something that they can get into, and leave them alone about it, and find something you can enjoy.

Maybe then you can extend that philosophy to other areas of your life, beyond entertainment. You'll be amazed when you tolerate a little diversity in the people you associate with how much richer your life will become.

Post-dentist randomcity

I don't know if dentists are more skilled these days or if there have been dramatic advances in the field but the last couple of times I've had dental work done--including today--I didn't have any pain or anything. I mean, I didn't feel anything, not even the tugging and pulling the dentist and his assistant did. It's starting to ache a little bit now, several hours later, but I don't think it's going to be all that bad.

This contasts to previous dental visits from years past where I could feel the drilling and all that, even if it didn't hurt.

I'm maybe halfway through the first chapter of this novel thing (still untitled). So far it's okay--it's going to require some extensive rewriting, I can tell. I'm just not going to worry about that at this point--right now the object is to get the story out there. I can chisel and shape and sand and whatever later.

Which reminds me, I'll be rewriting Seer II this weekend. Maybe by then it'll be long enough since I finished the first draft for me to have some perspective and know what needs to be changed.

It's funny, what a lot of nonwriters think when they find out I am a writer. Here's how they think the process works:

1. Write the novel
2. Send it out to publishers
3. Publishers knife fight each other to publish it.
4. Winner sends a check for several hundred thousand dollars.

In reality it's more like this:

1. Write the novel
2. Send it out to publishers
3. Publishers send it back, unread, with a form letter saying "Thanks but no thanks."

Another funny thing--say you have a friend or acquaintance who loves novels about serial killers. I mean, he or she has a wall full of them, and has read them all. This person finds out that you write novels about serial killers. From that point on this person will think it's the weirdest thing in the world that you do that, and that you are probably a serial killer yourself. Sure, other people write them, too, but those people are writers, not you.

I hope all that made sense. Remember, I went to the dentist today.

Messing around on my iPod I found an old reminder for a vet appointment for Atari. I could feel my heart breaking all over again. I don't know why--I look at pictures and videos of him all the time and feel the loss but it's not as devastating as this was. Sheesh, I'm such a basket case.

Reaching endings and mini-vacation randomocity

I have finished the first draft to Seer II.

Actually  I finished it twice but the first time the ending was bloody awful. I'm much happier with it now.

It's funny but I could re-read what I'd written the first time and I could just kinda feel where it went off the rails, right in the middle of a scene. I deleted everything after that point and rewrote it. As I said, much better now.

So, I need to let that sort of marinate a little while now. I'll probably start the rewrite after a couple of days.

In the mean time I'm going to start plotting out this novel project I'm tackling next. I've had some ideas for it--it's going to be scifi/horror and I think I have a pretty interesting and scary monster. Just have some details to work out. And, oddly enough, I need to re-read Shakespeare's The Tempest as part of the research I need to do for it.

I'm taking a couple of days off from work, mostly to work on this stuff, but to get a few other things done, too. Gotta get my truck emissions tested, for the first time ever. Had to get some groceries.

And I had to order another iPod. Dammit. Mine died last night--or, rather, the menu button did. It's pretty useless without that menu button and as far as I know there's no way to fix it. So, I'm getting a new one. Which will be just like the old one, really. Except on this one the menu button will work. Hopefully. I do have to say, though, that I certainly got my money's worth out of the old one. Other than the menu button thing it's worked like a champ since I got it.

Anyways, I'm feeling a bit sad, coming to the end of this stage of the writing of this little film project. Don't ask me why. Most writers would probably be happy to be at this point. Anyways, this was the hard part for me, really. Now that I have it all down it's just a matter of going through and polishing. There are some spots that need the application of an emery board--a couple places need a sandblaster--but overall I think it works and it'll result in a picture people will want to see.

And the storms I've been complaining about are still happening. Should have some more in a little while. Dammit. Again.

Well, that's all I have for now.

It's silly, I know . . ..

Sometime this weekend I'm going to kill off a major character in Seer II.

This is a character I've sort of lived with for a while now so it's actually kind of traumatic to me, really. Especially the way it happens.

Isn't it silly, that I feel sort of sad about this? This person doesn't actually exist anywhere except in my head.

Still, it has to be done. The entire point of the Seer series is death and it's aftermath, about grieving and moving on. Maybe I'm trying to tell myself something with this whole thing, my subconcious sending me a message. In any case, I think it makes for a good story, and one people will want to see.

Weather randomocity--according to www.weather.com there's a cold front that has stalled to the north of us, which is creating a steady stream of storms. We need the rain but the lighting--especially when it trips the breakers in my apartment--is getting a bit old. And at this point--according to the same source--there's nothing out there to get this frakkin' cold front moving again. So, storms every day for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, I'm talking about the weather. I've learned the hard way what happens when one ignores the weather. One tends to get blindsided by torrential rains and continuous lightning.

Which, really, would be a really good atmosphere for writing what I'm writing. Provided the power stays on.

Progress report - Seer II and other things

I'm about to close out Act II of Seer II (nope, still don't have a better title). So far I'm right on the schedule I made out for myself . I'm coming up on a scene that'll be pretty hard for me to write. Don't get me wrong, it'll be a great scene, but it's going to be kind of traumatic. A character makes a choice--it turns out to be the right choice, but it's pretty final. If that makes any sense. Anyways, I like this character, specifically because he is the kind of guy who would do something like this, but still . . . anyway, it's something I've been planning to do all along and it'll be great. If I can pull it off.

As far as the new song cycle I wrote about previously, A Distant Sun, I still may do a few tunes in that, but ideas have been coming to me about it and I may actually write it as a novel. I want to finish Seer II first, but once the first draft is done it won't take me all that long to polish it up and rewrite that into something sort of coherent. Leaving me free to get started on this next thing.

And I'm not really crazy about the title of A Distant Sun either--maybe I can come up with something a little better. It's going to be scifi/horror--or maybe, more properly, horror with science fictional elements--so maybe something will occur to me in the next little while. In the mean time I'm getting all sorts of ideas for the plot, characters, setting, all that, so my subconcious is apparently a bit obsessed with this idea. Hopefully it'll stay obsessed long enough for me to write the damned thing.

We'll see. I think, if I manage to get this thing written, that it'll be pretty good. Hopefully it'll be pretty scary. That's the goal, anyway--how long is it been since you've read something that you found truly scary? I mean fiction, not the news or anything. And I mean scary, not grossed out or horrified. People seem to have forgotten what that's like--most horror movies these days seem to go for the gross out or the startle, not for the growing sense of fear and identification with the characters that is necesary for something to be really scary. Not that I blame the folks who write these things--that's very hard to do. Next to humor, horror is one of the hardest things to write effectively.

Anyways, if you care, that's where I am right now with all this.

A distant sun

The time is a couple hundred years into the future.

Mankind has found a way to travel faster than light, but intersteller voyages can still take years, even decades, to complete. Still, we are reaching the stars, establishing colonies, finding resources to send back to the depleted earth.

We've colonized a dozen worlds. We've begun to explore a dozen more. Still, other than a few single-celled organisms, and even fewer multi-cellular organisms, we have encountered nothing else like ourselves. No sapients, no other civilizations, nothing.

There are those who find this unlikely. There has to be other life out there, complex life with the capability to form civilizations and explore worlds like us. Still for decades, there was nothing.

Then, one day, on an airless rock orbiting a distant star, ruins were found. An outpost, deserted hundreds of thousands of years, and nearly gone due to the ravages of time. Someone else was here. Someone not us.

As we expanded outwards we started finding more of these, though all had been deserted for thousands of years. Traces of traces. Nothing to indicate much about them, other than they were here and they built things and then they cleaned up after themselves and left.

Who were they? Where did they go?

Computers and scientists extrapolated from the sites of their known outposts, drawing a line to an area of our galaxy, one that we had yet to explore. A search of radio frequencies turned up nothing of a possible intelligent origin. Still, in our desperate loneliness to discover that Other, we sent a mission to that area, a highly advanced ship with the latest, most sensative sensors and scanners to look for them. The ship's crew consisted of the most exceptional men and women from the thousands of volunteers, on a voyage that could take over a century.

The ship's odds of finding anything, considering the unimaginable gulf they had to search? Not good.  Still, there was no harm in trying, it was thought.

What they find answers the question--what happened to the ancient ones? But it raises another question--will they survive long enough to let anyone know? For the ancient ones were fighting a terrible threat, one that eventually destroyed them. And it's still out there, waiting . . .

(Stay tuned for a track list.)