Creeping Forward

Trivia:  Tamales.  Tamales.  We're having tamales for supper tonight.  Good ones that are half meat, thanks to the farmer's market.

That reminds me of the opening lines (at least in the beginning) of Black Orpheous:  Cebolas.  Cebolas. --  which reminds me that I need to buy beef broth to make onion soup.

(With a mind that skips like that -- I think I can be a published writer?)

Comments:  Americans are getting a new taste of corporate might in their wallets -- debit cards. 

Now, I've never allowed a debit card in my wallet for fear of not keeping my check register straight.  But, my suspicious urban-peasant radar was working overtime without me knowing.  A recent New York Times (9 Sept 09) alerted me to why.

A lot of people, in the past, used debit cards because they thought they offered less problems than credit cards.  That was before the banks latched onto debit cards as a new profit center.  With computer systems that logged purchases to their advantage, banks started gathering all sorts of new fees, fees that cost the consumer more than a 25% interest credit card.  

Nothing's better for the old bottom line than arranging the flow of charges so someone gets an overdraft fee of $50.00 on a $6.00 overdraft.  Anyone care to calculate the interest rate on that?  Then, if you don't pay the statement balance in total, you get to pay interest on the fee.  Great racket?  

I can't believe how many people think corporate-america has the consumers interest at heart.  Or, those lobbyists-in-waiting in Congress.


Reading:  We went to Barnes & Nobel for coffee and a scone.  Yeah, we bought more books to decorate the house with -- mainly another Louise Penny for me.  (The old man bought Grimories (sp) and some goofy compilation of practical jokes.  Both of which I'll probably read.)   I need more books to read like another five pounds on my hips

I'm finally reading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series.  Nice to have a whole new set of monsters than the usual vampires and werewolves ... and demons.  Too bad more writers don't mine Greek (and their Roman imitators) mythology.  Can you imagine a minotaur pining from unrequited love and going all moonie?  Or is that mooie?



Writing:  My fantasy-reading son (who is one of my early [only?] readers) keeps holding Riordan as an example.  To paraphrase:  "Action.  Action.  Action.  Your characters sit around and talk a lot."  

Whatever, after finishing the third book, I get what he was saying.  Riordan gives some great case studies for structuring a books with lots of action and fast moving chapters, even though the books are fairly long.  I have a suspicion that's one of the secrets to writing for boys.  After all, boys don't sit around and talk a lot.

Can't Win for Losing?

Trivia:   The recycling's done for this month!  We have to lug it to a station with eight truck-sized bins lined up in a row, each taking their own blend of garbage.  Plastics.  Newspapers.  Glass.  Cardboard and the stuff in between.  I wonder how much "improper stuff" is dumped in each bin.  Whatever, the place is in constant motions, like ants.  As soon as one car leaves, another takes its place.

Comments:   The Republicans are having another hizzy-fit over Obama's address to the school kids.  Both the sainted Reagan and Papa Bush did the same, but I guess only the righteous right has the privilege of "indoctrinating" the kids to do well in school.  --  Again, I wonder when the conservatives will wake up and address the real question facing our society and offer some workable solutions instead of grandstanding.

Wanna bet the lumpin-politik will forget the corporate fascists are responsible for getting rid of the regulations that allowed the current economic mess to happen?  A fifth grader should know:  if it's possible to milk the system, someone will line their pockets at others' expense until someone makes them stop.  Madoff, anyone?  At least, no one talks about privatizing social security anymore.


Reading:   Finished Patricia Brigg's Hunting Ground.  A satisfying read which I did in two days.  Liked the Seattle locale since I knew the environment from before the "freeway" disrupted everything.  The last time we were there I hardly knew the Pike's Street market with all the spendistas hogging all the parking spaces.

Can't wait for Brigg's new Mercy Thompson book to come out in mass paperback.  My kids would giggle over me being a cheapskate ... if they knew.  My lack of bookshelf space is the real reason for me not reading it yet.  I have two bookshelves (badly in need of pruning) to contain all my books.  I won't mention the books under my bed.

The library?  After a day, I can't find them under the piles of owned books scattered around the house.  Fines accumulate fast around here.

Kindle?  I don't wear a purse.


Writing:   Do I even want to talk about my lack of progress?  Actually, I am writing and accumulating copy.  Just not as much as I wish.  I'll be sticking out the slowness of Emma's journey into Faery and ignore the other ideas churning in my head.

I indulged in another vice beside solitaire to avoid writing last night -- watching the trailers about Christine Feehan's Dark series on YouTube.  Liked her comments, quoted from Romantic Times, I think, about writing slow but steady.  See?  I have an excuse for doing what I'm doing.  

Waddling Along ...

Trivia:  Thanks to Whole Foods' storage facilities, we ate the last of the cherries today.  In September!!  The cherries came from Washington state so there's the little matter of eating local, buying local, small carbon footprints, whatever. 

Comment:  Quite a dilemma, being ecologically sound.  I'm a cheapskate so I figure that takes care of my ecological quota since I don't buy much coming all the way from China.  I do draw the line at giving up my coffee which comes from all over the world -- though usually fair trade.  Frankly, I can't remember life being so complicated for my parents, but that was another world ago.

Reading:  Finished L. L. Foster's: Servant; The Kindred.  From the feel of the ending, I guess this is only a trilogy rather than an "unending-everlasting".  Appreciated the urban fantasy without creepy-crawlies, just a paladin with light references to god and the church (Catholic).  Also, liked the size of the books.  Very little padding, or should I say wallowing around in the MC's emotions?

Writing:  Is there any way to disable the Solitare button?

On the Half-Elven front.  I'm working at cutting down the size of Tangled Maze.  Also, looking for a beta-reader relationship(s), knowing it will take awhile.  Got one great critique from Angel who nailed me for being wordy.  Me?

Kloken - Still, slogging away, but they found Glenda.

Oh, got a critique back from my lackadaisical crit group saying the ending of my short story (emotional vampires sort of) was too abrupt.  So I added two sentences.

Another Day, Another Blog

Trivia -- The grey cat has finished his morning lap time.  I've had time to think of what I'd write here -- once he stopped wiggling.  For some reason, we named him Wiggles when he was a kitten.  After five years, he hasn't calmed down much.

Comment --  A friend's now living in a nursing home -- probably for the long, painful slide out the door.  The place has signs all over saying they want the visitors, but not the flu.  (We want you, but not the flu.) -- Yet, the staff goes from room to room without washing their hands between people.  It probably doesn't make as much difference in a nursing home as a hospital, but still ...

Reading --   A friend gave me one of Louise Penny's Three Pines mysteries.  I had read a couple of them in the past, but wasn't as impressed as with the Charlene Harris' Lucy Bard books so never bothered to acquire the entire series.  --  I'm impressed with the way Penny handles the shifting viewpoints of the town's main characters and keeps a linear plot development going.  Quite a contrast from Elisabeth George's Careless in Red,  which I finished even though I found the beginning heavy slogging.  Some might call it head hopping, but I like knowing what else is going on while the mystery is being solved.  Guess my anthropological entanglements with village life are poking through.


Writing --  More like what I'm not writing.  After Colleen Lindsay offered her Backspace contest, I decided to rewrite the second book (Tangled in the Maze) in my Austel's Idiot trilogy?  series?.  Not that I really expect to win.  I think I did it because I was getting desparate because the Emma Klocken draft is not progressing.  It's still advancing in fits and starts -- at the pace of about 1000 words a week (instead of a day).