So, I finally decide about 11 p.m. that I’m going to go to bed early so I can get up first thing in the morning and perhaps exercise outside before it gets too hot. I spend about a half hour talking over something with my room mate and go to the bedroom to sleep. Then I wind up scribbling away in a notebook until 12:30 a.m.

Thank you muse! It better be good is all I can say because it meant that I didn’t wake up until almost 9 a.m. by which point it’s already too hot to be outside for more than a few minutes :p Florida while I’m at it!

It’s doubly funny because we were over at a friends house over the weekend and Kore and I were both talking about the writing that we do. Kore’s actually taking several writing workshops in summer school, and I was saying that I’m not having much luck with the whole novel thing at the moment, and she said that she had been meaning to suggest writing short stories for a while to me, and that she was going to do some of that herself, because she knows that she doesn’t have enough time to get something done consistently and I have even less time on a day than she tends to.

So, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not sure if I’m going to be working on the werewolf story or “Too Deep” for the time being; but I will be doing the little snippets. Right now it should in theory be a little easier to work on the werewolf story because I’m working on a short game based off that “universe” which has things narrowed down a bit better once more; but at the same time vignettes come more easily to the “Too Deep” story because of the way I’m writing it, as an interview.

Mesothelioma is a very difficult to combat form of cancer, as both kinds attack the protective sac around some of the body’s internal organs, either pleural, around the lungs or peritoneal which attacks the areas around the abdominal cavity. Many mesothelioma patients, and survivors credit this book with giving them invaluable tools to find the best doctors and treatments to help them, including when unfortunately necessary the appropriate Mesothelioma Attorney.

I wish that we’d had a book like this when we found out my mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. We spent great deal of time running into dead ends with treatment possibilities, and facilities that we would hear about that just weren’t feasible for a variety of reasons.

While our situation wasn’t tempered with threats of law suits as many mesothelioma patients are because the only known causes of mesothelioma is asbestos exposure. It makes me wonder about when my grandfather was dying of a mysterious illness that was causing his lungs to fill with fluid, if that was mesothelioma given he worked in the asbestos mines in Asbestos, Canada; but you can go crazy with wondering, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be a good idea to look into a Mesothelioma Lawyer now.

However, if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself wondering about your own health due to this disease I think you could do far worse than to get yourself a copy of the book, because it sure helps when going down a long road like that one to have a guide.

He said he had wondered based on certain descriptions of the character, particularly the joke about them not having hair anywhere except their head and the fact that they’d never use prototype 37c on themselves, and the lack of hangovers they experienced despite the amount of drinking that they did.

I said it makes a lot of other things make sense, but that while they had these genny traits they would have experienced them through their bloodline given they weren’t specifically engineered, they were born, but their family would have been gennies, either one or both parents.

These are those things that characters tell you though. I had started out the story, and the various iterations I had no idea that this character was a genny though the traits were there, always, in his character. I was as much a revelation to me as it will be to him in the story.

It’s also tricky working out how psychic visions and memories are going to work as far as translating them to text. I mean as far as I’ve experienced psychic phenomena are very hazy. You get very vague impressions and very little in the way of pictures. Mostly just ideas. I’ve experienced a few more detailed dreams. However that doesn’t translate very well to words. It’s hard to engage a reader if you don’t have something to describe clearly for them to really relate to the scene.

I have to wonder if rapid detox would be common place, and if it would be a viable thing. Part of what I thought might happen is that while they’re treating him in the hospital they would replace his liver and kidneys and anything else, but then logically if they can just do that, why stop drinking? They could just do it again. He’d have to get to the route of what the alcohol does for him and what could be done instead of just numbing and drinking. I don’t see that happening if he’s just dried out and has his organs replaced. It would be so easy to just go back to filling the void when no work has been done to heal the cause of the abuse.

There’s also the fact that this future has the uber drug “Juice” which I consider to be at least 5x worse than meth in terms of addictive nature, but at least slightly better on your health, given they want their workers to actually be able to work while on it. How do you wean someone off of that? These are all things I’ll have to think about.

House’s set up is…well it’s like Zenith to Nadir compared to Chambers in some ways. Everything is neat and orderly and buried and sealed. I can walk four times as far from one side to the other than we could with Chambers, but at the same time it sucks. I keep hoping for some way to get shot of here which doesn’t involve actually getting shot, because twice now and it doesn’t get any more fun.
We go under House’s office and up into the main area, where the infirmary is and the coffee lounge and the Sunday come to meeting house. I about pissed myself when I realized all those damn times they made us tromp over to church to sing praises and make nice we were actually doing all that while Chambers networked with his contacts and traded info back and forth.
Mr. G. to his credit cottons on pretty quick that it’s in his best interests to put on the clothes that I’m offering him. To the opposite of that he is not good to look at without his clothes on. At least I have a new thing to think on when I’m trying to de-horn.
“I’m not sure what House told you about me,” I tell him, “but here’s some rules that you need to remember good, okay?”
He nods.
I turn away toward the clothes racks so I don’t have to look at him, “Okay, good ’cause if you want to come back with your delicate supplies you have to follow to the letter.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding exasperated.
“You stay close. You don’t look around and gawk at everything like you never seen it before. That makes you a mark. You don’t ask for directions. I know anywhere you could possibly want to go. If I make this with my hands,” I sign back and forwards with two fingers, “we’re going that way because there’s at least three people we don’t want to tangle with. I’m not saying I can’t tangle, but can you?”
“I’ve defended myself before,” he says, tying the cord his pants came with.
“Tuck that inside,” I tell him, “Hm, you’ve defended yourself from a gang of twikes hopped up on juice?”
He swallows, “Can’t say I have no.”
“Well, then you move when I say. If we see people wandering they might not be deadly but you can’t tell. We just keep talking normal we don’t move fast. If I say something about ‘rabbits’ or ‘beaks’ then we move. I’ll signal somehow which way or you just follow me best you can. If someone asks you if you’re thirsty before we get to the market ignore ‘em or say ‘no thanks’ don’t make eye contact, if someone asks if you want juice or have juice ignore ‘em we’ll get out fast. If someone comes crying up to you saying they’re hurt or got robbed or mugged or whatever ignore ‘em.”
He looks at me at that point.
“No, I’m serious. If you get mugged over there you don’t get left alive. Reapers don’t play that, they’re not called the Robbers. They either trade you at the mine or they just do you and go. If someone’s pulling that shit they want to do you.”
“Okay,” he says, slowly. He picks up the gun he had taken off while he was changing, “am I allowed to carry this?” he asks.
“So long as you don’t show it off,” I tell him, “People show their guns they’re trying to prove something. Good way to get–”
“I get it.”
“Do you?” I ask him. I look him up and down. He’s getting on, I suppose, probably a bit older than House is or Chambers…was…definitely an Earther from the way he moves, “I mean, I figure you know more on it than someone fresh off the port given you’re in with these guys, but still…you don’t show what you’ve got. I mean, look at me, do you see any tech on me?” I turn around, give him the full view.
“You’ve got something strapped to your arm,” he says, “and you have to have something on your back there.”
I move the jacket slightly down, “Just my hair, but was the arm a guess or do I have to adjust something?” I look down at my wrist.
“It just made sense,” he says.
“I have knives, sure,” I tell him, “and that’s mostly all I carry, shitton of knives and some picks. Shoes, legs, arms, sides, hair,” I point, “but you gotta be careful with that. You got something you could just be giving your opposition something. Wise man taught me there’s all kindsa shit you can throw at someone or do to someone. Mother Nadir is fulla weapons and shit. So, maybe best if we get ‘bushed you duck and cover and I do for them.”
He sighs, “You don’t want to take me.”
“House says you need this stuff. Must be damned important to our plans for mayhem. I’m gonna take you. I just don’t like it.”
“Noted,” he says, checking his gun several times and then hiding it under his shirt and then under the big heavy reinforced jacket we’ve given him, “I’ll do my best to survive.”
“Hm,” I say, “Let’s get going.”

I’m very interested to track down their books and see what sort of things they write, but as of now I’m working my way through “World War Z” so it’ll be a while before I take on any other books. I can’t keep up with reading more than one at a time any more.

Back on twitter I remember a few years back I was all “twitter is not worth the fuss” but that’s because I was mis-using it. I was updating random things and not looking for connections, or marketing or anything like that. Now I understand more what you should and shouldn’t share, though I’m sure I do still write some inane things at times. I’ve linked it to my facebook account so that I can remember to update both; and I’m more apt to do so on a semi-regular basis. I don’t tweet when I’m out of the house unless something insanely funny happens; mostly because I’m a paranoid sort who doesn’t like the idea of someone realizing I’m out of the house and doing something untoward.

#amwriting is very fun though, there’s a lot of mutual encouragement and commiseration from people I’ve found through it, and we’ll joke back and forth about characters doing certain things, share very small snippets or funny lines, and muse on word usage and definitions. It’s very geeky in a lot of respects; but then using twitter itself is kinda geeky.

I remember when I realized I’d actually been writing fanfiction. When I first started writing I flipped between writing about two sisters who had found an otter, this was after I first saw “Ring of Bright Water” and about the Tracy boys from “Thunderbirds” discovering they had a sister called Cassiopeia. I would write this dross in notebooks between classes. It entertained me greatly for a little while. I even branched out trying to speculate on the origin story of Superman and Supergirl. I named them Lyte and Darke–so creative and tried to understand where they came from. Then I actually saw the original Superman movie and the Supergirl movie and well, I was extremely disappointed in the latter, but enthralled by the former.

Then I began finding inspiration for my own stories based on the plot holes of others. There were a great many nitpicks I had with some television shows and stories that I was seeing and I started to write my own stories that were similar. I worked out planets and races and started on time lines. Originally I was writing out plot lines in the fashion of episodes, but then I was twelve. I had a lot to learn about writing. I continued off and on with my own work in between school and things like that. When I got to college I met several people who wrote fanfiction avidly. We would speculate about things that characters would do in certain situations and would write. I do get a charge when someone tells me, “OMG it’s like you envisioned X perfectly,” or something of that nature, but as I’ve gotten older I feel a bit more guilty about the idea of writing in someone else’s universe. I know that I would not be seeking money from it, but I suppose it’s the differing perspective that comes with age, and the fact that I’m much more focused on my own goals of one day getting published and have a better ability to see things in someone else’s shoes. I wonder, how would I feel if someone ‘toyed’ with my characters? Would I be happy? flattered? disgusted?

I admit there are several times I’ve seen descriptions of fanfiction and I’m going “by the Gods that’s vile.” a lot of it is drivel, much as my early ten year old work, whether fanfiction or not was utter drivel. As you get older your skills at many things improve. When I was ten I could barely scramble eggs and now I can prepare a four course meal, provided I have the spoons.

There’ve been times when I have still dabbled in fanfiction as a way to detox and do things mindlessly and I…I just don’t know any more. I recently changed the intro to my fanfiction.net account saying that I felt that I could no longer in good conscience write fanfiction because I feel so guilty.

My commentary sparked an interesting debate within our house because the idea was postulated that once you publish a book it becomes “public domain” and the whole “this is why there are disclaimers on fanfiction” and I’m thinking well that’s true but for the thousand honest fans who just want to express their love by writing about your characters, it just takes one douchebag to in that sense “ruin it” for everyone else; to take what you’ve written and rip it off. While from some of the less flame-tastic comments I’ve been reading on various blog articles speak of the fact that most communities have strict rules about who they can and cannot take fanfiction works about and how many communities will troll, roast and oust those who “break the rules” and demand payment for fanfiction or try to take credit for things they cannot.

I suppose it is personal taste. There’s so much of me in characters I write in a variety of ways that I feel that I would take great exception to finding my characters in the compromising and heinous situations that I’ve seen many characters put in and through. However at the same time it’s finding the healthy balance between being an evil ogre and being a poor sap. I’ve been run over so many times in my life, that I wouldn’t want to shoot myself in the foot in either score.

Still, most of this is purely speculative in the sense that I’m taking liberties even assuming I might ever get published. I may be getting better with writing but I still have a ways to go before any of the nuggets going through my brain become anything resembling publishable; but I don’t want it to be something I think about too little or remember too late. From what I’m reading there are many authors out there who aren’t even aware that there is fan fiction and yet there are others who know of it and condone and encourage it: Joss Whedon and J.K. Rowling are two of those from what I understand. I have to wonder how they make it work.

There are so many different things going on in various places of the universe; with the government and the Martians and the people on the Lunar colony. It’s weird that the players bring up the most nitpicky things some times. There’ll be one of them asking me how they have to do credit card processing on the moon versus the Earth, the amount of internet access that they have in various places, and even on this mission there’s debates about what kind of animal noises a remote control hand might make and if a small remote controlled sports car could be rigged for it to drive.