Quality Koosh

By | | ,
2 Comments

My brother-in-law sent this to me via my Facebook page the other day:

And, well, frankly:

The computer in question looks blank, but that’s either a fault of the lighting or the way cell cameras take photos of screens. In point of fact there are two Word documents open in that shot, both of which belong to Pine & Meyer. One is the entire novella under the working title “Splintered House” (specifically page 29, about 1,850 words into chapter 4 because I have made progress, all evidence to the contrary) and the other is “Splintered_chapter breakdown,” which is how I’m keeping track of my rewrite notes.

However, the prosecution would like to point out that, though I made some pretty significant headway on Sunday night, I actually had this morning off of work and yet somehow do not have more to show for it. The best-laid plans so often fail in the follow-through. I meant to use the unexpected leisure time for writing, but, naturally, spent it watching episodes of Voyager instead.

I don’t even like Voyager that much. However, I was able to confirm that, yes, I still have the last remaining shreds of a TV-crush on the pilot. Time well wasted, as it were.

The ensuing day has been a strange one, especially once I got off of work. Apparently I’m wearing my weed-dealing outfit today (as seen above), because a young man came up to me while I was eating a sandwich to ask for a joint. Or to offer me one. I’m not entirely certain; he mimed the action, then apologized at the slightly appalled, “Uh…no,” I answered him with.

Mind you, I was sitting in the back corner of a Subway at the time, hidden behind a large display rack for chips because I always pick the power position in the room (line-of-sight to the door and no way for anyone to sneak up behind you). So it probably wasn’t entirely the outfit’s fault.

Afterwards (very shortly afterwards — I decided I had spent just about enough time in that particular Subway for one evening), I went for a walk in Shoaff Park, a forested trail that runs along the St. Joe River. Though “trail” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s paved and, as I found out, a highly favored route between 6 and 7 p.m. Half a mile down the path I was deluged by about a hundred bicyclists — and I’m pretty certain I’m not exaggerating that number — who hailed me (and each other) with shouts of “Walker!” “Walker on the right!” and “On your left!” which felt more than a little excessive after about the thirtieth time. I couldn’t decide if I was an exhibition at the zoo, or hadn’t made it through the Zombie apocalypse. Rick Grime’s band of humans seems to be thriving.

As to my plans for the rest of the evening, they look a little something like this:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

By | | ,
4 Comments

Have I mentioned how much I hate rewrites? Because I hate rewrites. This is why it takes me forever to write anything. I spend years carefully planning every nook, cranny, twist, turn, and character in a story, because there is nothing that will kill my momentum like realizing I have to scrap large pieces of a scene that are interwoven with the threads that I need to keep as I re-weave the scene into something better. “On the Corner of Pine and Meyer” will be all the better for it, but because I hate to redo what I feel has already been done, I am very, very good at coming up with other things to do rather than sit-down-and-write. Work provided a decent excuse, considering the hours I had to put in last week and the week before, but since then I’ve just been putting off what I don’t want to do.

Because I feel guilty, here’s a piece of something I am not currently working on, written like three years ago now because I have no focus. A story about space welders, which I’ll be tackling sometime in the next three years.

Data packets came every two weeks, when The Voltron made the trip to the outskirts of the farside. They received videos from home, missives from the company, and, in this last transmission, their six-month evaluations. Yancey had thought little of his (a five-page packet filled with inane questions like “What can we do to improve your experience?” as though he were on vacation or something), right up until he realized that he was the only one who’d received that particular form. Everyone else’s was a frank criticism of everything they were doing wrong, some rather pointed insinuations regarding their abilities, and an edict to pick up the pace or else. When they’d started grumbling about it (“Or else what? They’ll send us to the other side of the moon?”), Vladski had only laughed.

“Just wait until the year mark. That’s when they get really mean. Anyways, what you really don’t want is one of the happy packets.”

Someone had, like Vladski clearly intended, asked what those were. He’d proceeded to describe the exact form Yancey had received.

“If you get one of those,” he’d explained, “your psych evals aren’t exactly coming up roses. You might complete your contract, but you’ll never be back. Sort of the One Stop Shop guarantee.”

Yancey had sat on his hands and said nothing. He needed another contract if he wanted to keep his promise to his grandfather.

 

In other news, I found this quote on a YouTube video, which gives me a good laugh every time I read it:

my prince is not riding in on a white horse he must be riding a turtle

 

Grammar is true to form (or [sic], as the bracketed indication of correct quotation of an original goes). I couldn’t even tell you what the context for this was at this point. I had it copied and pasted it into the middle of Chapter 4 of Pine & Meyer so that I wouldn’t forget.

Finally, FYI: I just installed a spam blocker on my WordPress. I was getting absolutely pounded with this crap, so much so that I was starting to dread checking my website – which is not how I’m supposed to feel about TheStoryFolder. Please let me know if you have any problems leaving comments or if you run into any other issues.

I managed to work Colonel Klink into this one

By | |
12 Comments

Col. Wilhelm Klink: General Burkhalter, what an unexpected pleasure to see you again sir!

General der Infanterie Albert Burkhalter: Unexpected, yes. Pleasure, no.

…………………..

Chapter 3 of “On the Corner of Pine and Meyer” is now up, live, and possibly kicking.

Chapter 3

I’ve got nearly 10,000 words still left to post (9,986 to be exact), but this officially marks the end of my intact chapters. As we move deeper into the draft my edits will cut ever deeper, until I’m almost entirely rewriting the end. Still shooting for weekly updates on Wednesdays, even if I did only manage to squeak this one in right under the wire. Go to bed, everyone!

Plodding Onwards

By | |
2 Comments

Two hundred and ninety spam comments in my inbox when I finally stopped putting off editing and posting chapter 2 of “On the Corner of Pine and Meyer.” Speaking of which:

Chapter 2

And, for the record, I’ve received three more spam messages since getting on TheStoryFolder in order to both post chapter 2 and reformat the tab layout so that I can properly break up the story into chapters.

In other news, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.

Metaphysical Schizophrenia

By | |
4 Comments

On the Corner of Pine and Meyer

Chapter 1 of a who-knows-how-long, long, short story. This started life as a creative writing final project in my last semester at University. The first couple of sections are solidly written, but it careens out of control by the end, though in a surprisingly boring way. I see what I was trying to do with it, though trying to spot where exactly I lay the tracks that eventually lead off the rails is a difficult game in and of itself. They creep in, like noxious weeds. Not to mention my deep and abiding hatred for massive rewrites, the main reason this story has lived in my DISCARD folder for the past nine years.

I’ve already done some work, beginning with the opening, though I’m not going to tell you where: better for you to assume all the crappy bits are what I haven’t changed.

However, what I find of personal, historical interest, are all the threads you can see in this project that eventually wove their way into some of my newer stories. There’s the big sister/little brother dynamic of “Ten Seconds to Now” (Dylan, now that I read him again, is basically Tuesday), and here’s where I first used the hopelessly confusing book-within-a-book concept that made an appearance in “For You, Game Changer.” Don’t you love realizing you’re a one-trick pony?

I’ll be shooting for weekly updates, though this may just end up being a poorly-executed experiment into my rewriting process. Either way you’ll have consistent updates again, at least for awhile. I’ve been looking at my blog post archives from the past year, and I’m already well behind in quantity. I’d claim quality, except that I’m pretty clearly just lazy.

PANTS-EYE

By | | ,
5 Comments

It’s odd, the things that stick with you. I walked past a poster the other day about an event going on in Mississippi, and my head immediately went to the elementary school chant that still informs the way I spell this state. “Em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-peepeeinmypantsEYE!”

THESE ARE THE JOKES. I still have the cadence down in my head, which is a fast but military-perfect rhythm right up until you get to the p’s, at which point you say “in my pants” as quickly as possible, like if you fit it into the half-second beat of silence that should exist between the last two letters of the word you’ll slip it past the censors. I also still have the spelling of the word “aardvark” drilled into my brain, but I can absolutely blame Arthur for that:

That one’s for you, Boonder.

But this; good heavens this:

This one’s for all three of the von Schultz family singers when we were children, because we had this ear worm of a refrain burrowing into our skulls for weeks. Every time one of us thought we’d finally gotten rid of it, one or the other two would come into the room going “Aaaaalphabet JUUUNgle…duh-dundundun, duh-dundundun” (I have no idea now why we added the drum noises, but we did) and the agony would rinse, recycle, and repeat.

And remember kids, the temptation to sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is always just a whim away a whim away a whim away a whim away.

So now that I’ve taken a sharp right turn off the port bow, let’s get back to the original point: things that stick in your craw.  At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I actually had summer homework (blech) to turn in on the very first day of class for all of my AP courses. Our English teacher, when she returned our papers to us a week later, complained that many of us had forgotten how to use quotation marks correctly. About half of the class had used apostrophes around our citations, rather than actual quotation marks. STOP THAT, she told us.

It was odd that we had lost our minds en masse. I actually remember writing that paper, and hesitating over whether it was single or double marks (and thus properly mortified later by the fact that I had picked the wrong one). What stuck with me — bothered me, even — was the fact that I wasn’t the only one. You can’t brush that off as a collective brain fart. None of us were cheats, besides the fact that there hadn’t been much of a chance to pass off bad habits to one another over the long summer months. There was, presumably, no reason for it.

Apparently it haunted me. Because a couple of days ago, sitting in my glider as I read a romance novel from England, I finally figured it out. We’d picked up British style quotations.* And why would a bunch of American kids suddenly and inexplicably start using the British style, without even knowing that’s what we were doing? Because we’d had to read a bunch of books for both AP English and AP History, half of which had been written by Brits.

Boring mystery solved. Only 14 years after the fact.

That still makes me feel accomplished.

Per thepunctuationguide.com: British style uses single quotes (‘) for initial quotations, then double quotes (“) for quotations within the initial quotation.

Sharing in delicious

By | | ,
3 Comments

I know, I know. It’s been over two weeks since I’ve posted anything. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been busy, and while that’s technically true, it has nothing to do with producing creative content for either my website or my portfolio. I designed a layout that I don’t like for my next picture book project, but other than that I’ve played my way through eight or nine Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure mysteries in my spare time. Yes, I’m still on that kick. Fortunately, I ran out of Nancy Drew games last night, which means I might have the time to start working on my novel. Again.

The one consistent duty I perform for my website is daily spam-trashing. Despite my radio silence I keep on receiving comment notices from the seventeen thousand spambots that have not yet figured out that I will never approve their comments for public consumption. Still, If I didn’t have 70+ comments to delete every day, then I would never have received this gem:

Wonderful site. Plenty of useful information here. I’m sending it to a few buddies ans additionally sharing in delicious. And certainly, thanks in your sweat!

 

In honor of this rousing endorsement, here’s some of my delicious sweat, first perspired out sometime during either my sophomore or junior year in college:

“He’s not…connected right.”

The man looked over at Yola sharply.  She was sitting calmly on the couch, no sort of chains or ropes in sight, though he knew she was bound with several of the strongest seals in the world.  Any other person (besides her two older siblings) and the binders themselves would have killed her.  He shuddered.   Unnecessary or not, he’d still feel better if they’d tied her to the chair.

“Not connected right?” he said with a frown, ignoring his orders not to speak with her.  What could she do?  “You mean he’s crazy.”

“No!” she said angrily.  “Well, yes.  But no!  What I mean is…well.” She huffed to herself, trying to get the right words to come.  “Okay,” she finally said.  “You’ve heard that I have the most power, right?” He nodded. “Good,” she stated with a nod.  “And that I also have the least control?”

He nodded again. It made sense.  The girl wasn’t even a teenager yet.  She had little experience.  But her conversation was obviously leading him somewhere else… “You mean I’d be wrong?”

“No,” she said.  He saw her neck muscles strain for a second, the only sign that she was trying to break free. “You’d be right. And completely wrong too.”

He frowned, willing her to go on.

“I have the most usable power, but I screw up because I don’t quite know how to control it all.  It’s hard,” she added defensively, as though he had admonished her. He had done nothing of the kind, and would thank her to remember it. “Like holding electricity in your palms and trying not to let it escape while at the same time you’re using it to light a light bulb.  Sometimes you put too much in and the light bulb just blows up.”

He eyed her nervously, remembering suddenly what she was and wishing, again, that they had at least tied her up, if only for his peace of mind. She grinned suddenly and he got the feeling that Yola knew exactly what was on his mind.

“You’re really dumb,” she said cheerfully, “if you think blowing up a light bulb is the same as being able to escape the Flamish binds.”

“Anyways,” Yola continued, and he missed the way her fingers twitched because some idiot, she thought with an amused crinkling of her nose, had bound her with her hands behind her back where they couldn’t see what she was doing with them, “it’s…it’s hard to explain properly. It’s like he has it, but no access to it.  Like, he has more power than me and Bethla combined, but he can’t use it like me and Bethla because…well, because he’s not connected right.”

The man frowned.  Again with this “not connected right” business.  Was he loony or not? That’s what he wanted to know.

“Just…don’t push my brother.” For the first time she looked afraid, and that freaked him out.

“What?” he demanded, with all the false bravado he could muster. How long ago had he lost the lead in this conversation? “You’re afraid he’ll kill me?  Kill my boss?”

“Oh no,” she said, her face calmly serious. “I’ll kill you myself as soon as I have the chance.”

Mouth dry, he tried not to step backwards, though it would do him no good.

“Funny.” She smiled and bared her teeth at him, suddenly amused again.  “You guys always forget that we’re not really human.  Kael tried his best,” she continued with a mock frown that didn’t reach her eyes, “but you can’t teach someone to care about a species that isn’t your own.  Funny thing is, he cares the most out of all of us.” She made a small movement with her head, indicating “loose connections,” which she should not have been able to do, but the man didn’t think such a small movement really mattered.  Yola smiled, glad her small slip had gone unnoticed.  Stupid.  Who put a guy who obviously had no experience with strong elemental binds in charge of guarding her?  They were so dumb.

The smile slid from her face. “No,” she said again, eyes darkly serious.  “I’m saying that if you push my brother, he’ll kill us all.”

*GASP*

By | |
2 Comments

I am officially into my thirties. For those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook (i.e. everyone I’m related to by blood; I can count on a few likes from the in-laws, so at least my newer siblings know how to fake interest), I’ve been busy all day posting about the fact that I’m 31. Happy birthday to me!

That’s right. I am using my blog to talk about my personal life because I have nothing more substantial to post. Hopefully, the obfuscation will keep anyone from noticing that I haven’t produced any creative content lately. I’ve done story-boards for my picture book (coming out this Spring, and, yes, that is purposefully vague), but otherwise spent the last three weeks playing Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure games. I’m pretty much the world’s best detective at this point.

This was my other Facebook upload for the day:

If nothing else, at least I have my dignity.

A Rare Steak in a Stark Blog

By | |
5 Comments

I have the most amazing series of spam messages in my website inbox. I’ve only deleted about 70 such comments in the last three days, but I couldn’t quite bear to trash these along with the rest of them yet. They are, in order:

I’m not sure what FIREFOX is – probably a browser. Is it similar to Netscape and Internet Explorer? What are its good features and its bad features?.

This one feels eerily human-generated, and the plea for information is itself in pretty good grammatical shape if you ignore the two punctuation points at the end. However, it’s written by someone with the unlikely name of “Borislava Gorbatova” in their email address. I smell a nefarious Russian plot to sell me a child bride. I think I’ll go ahead and just leave that one alone.

Sorry for off-topic, I am thinking about making an enlightening web-site for kids. May probably commence with publishing interesting facts such as “Banging you head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.”

While this sounds purposefully hilarious, Joe from farmaciapancino.it confuses what I thought were comedic intentions by immediately tacking on an additional request at the end: “Please let me know if you know where I can find some related information like here” (and yes, sans period). Uh. The last time I purposefully exercised was with my mother’s Zumba starter kit. On the other hand, I am curious about how long you have to bang your head against a wall to burn 150 calories. Not to mention how you go about measuring that sort of thing in a scientifically consistent manner.

If you’re interest in winning millions, then I’m here to help!

This was actually just an advertisement for a Casino website (¡Hacer giros para ganar millones!), but there’s something delightful about being welcomed into my inbox every day with an offer of millions. I feel better about myself each time I sort through my unmarked spam.

I am glad to be a visitant of this stark blog, thanks for this rare info!

Either nellOrex misplaced her compliment (and yes, that would be the same spambot that told me I was mistaken about my last blog; I’m understandably suspicious of her tonal change), or she’s onto the fact that my updates are rare. On my stark blog.

I’m putting that in as my new sub-header:

The Story Folder.
A stark blog.

Of mostly ramblings.

In fact, I have nothing to say

By | |
7 Comments

I have a reason for neglecting my blog for nearly two weeks, and it is a good one: as soon as I posted again I knew it meant I had to get back on track with my weekly updates. Perish the thought. However, when nellOrex contacted me today to let me know, “I consider, that you are mistaken. Let’s discuss. Write to me in PM, we will communicate,” it was time. That sort of impertinence has to be answered.

I’m also turning into a mildly insane cat lady. Harper emerged from the light pouring through the blinds like a deranged angel out of heaven, and I took a picture and posted it on Facebook. There are probably more interesting things I could put on my social media page, but this is also the only one that demands food at six in the morning by batting my face. At that point you have to make an active decision to love or hate. I love, therefore I post.

I actually have more to talk about than my cat, if you can believe it. In fact, this is officially an art update. For Christmas I bought my entire immediate family the same present, and then had to cover that fact by including a drawing of each of their family units. Behold:

With the most people, Mom and Dad’s picture (top) is also the cartooniest. For years I’ve gifted them with a drawing of the family in front of the fireplace in their house in Havre (not every Christmas; only those years when we add another face to the crowd), but since they only just moved into their new house this summer, I still haven’t figured out where the new normal family pose shot is going to be. I had to feature the house instead, conveniently saving me time on drawing. I also drew my brother-in-law too tall, forgetting that my own brother is the tallest in the family. Sorry, IT Guy.

You’ll also notice that magically shrinking and growing children showed up in both my sister and my brother’s pictures. Like the Grinch’s heart, Miss AB in the striped shirt is two sizes too small, while Fairview, holding a picture of her little sister, looks like a third grader instead of a three-year-old. That is, however, the best picture I’ve ever drawn of my sister-in-law. I wish I could bottle that sort of effortless skill. I’m starting on a new project (more on that later), and I could sure use it.

Finally, this was the last present I drew for Christmas. This family has essentially adopted me here in Fort Wayne. They’ve fed me, run me through tabletop Zombie campaigns, binge-watched “Stranger Things” season 1 at least twice just so I could catch up, helped me escape an evil AI, and given me my first (and probably only) hockey puck. Go Komets!