The Many Faces of the Lernaean Hydra

Do you know what I’ve done? I’ve UNCHANGED MY MIND. By this I mean that chapter 3 is back up in its original form, chapter 4 has been added to keep the angry hordes from throwing my body from the castle carapace, and this is once again a six chapter story. Links have already been fixed in any previous posts and pages, but here they both are anyways, for your convenience:

3. In Which a Boy Almost Has a Talk with his Dad

4. In Which a Boy Breaks Up with his Off-Again-Off-Again Girlfriend for the Last Time

The fact is I’m still right – this would be a much tighter story if I merged chapters 3 and 4. However, I found that I could not bear to un-write what has already been written. While I could inject all the important bits of the almost-talk with his dad into this (an even more uncomfortable conversation with his girlfriend), I would lose too many things that I’m proud of: Teddy being an absolute pill to his big brother in front of his friends, the quiet way that Jeremiah and his dad interact, Jeff’s unstated mother-henning since he missed the chance to have children of his own; basically, all the background noise that lives in the subtleties of chapter three.

Also, I can’t stand moving backwards. The thought of taking two steps back just to take one step forward rankles.

And finally, a shout out to the Great and Powerful Oz, who didn’t believe that I would have this up today like I promised. Mind you, I understand. I promised I’d have it up by last week. It should’ve been up a month ago. I have many excuses, some of them quite excellent, but if we get down to brass tacks it’s laziness with a heavy dose of perfectionism.*


*A great excuse to lament over a single sentence for hours, which only leads to more crying later when I wonder why I never finish anything.

** In other news (and don’t look for the sentence this footnote is attached to; there isn’t one), “sunk into the love seat cushions” sounds dirtier than it ought to. Enjoy reading.

Rhymes with Idiot

Shmidiot.

Can anyone explain to me why Microsoft Word’s thesaurus doesn’t contain any synonyms for put-downs? Nothing for idiot, moron, or even dork, though “nerd” (drip/bore/geek/weed, in that order) makes the cut. “Jerk” also qualifies, but only as a verb. Interestingly enough, so does “dipstick,” which I’d forgotten was another term for a measuring stick. This is unfortunate for someone who depends on her thesaurus for insult-rich vocab, but less so when I remember that I carry a pocket thesaurus with me at all times. However (and unfortunately), it too has no entry for “butthead.”

Still, you know it’s a good day when you scan over the tabs open above your browsing window and “Moron Synonyms, Moro…” is the third tab to the right.

It gets better when you find a great quote like this one, attributed to Albert Einstein (but also possibly not):

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Regardless, it’s an excellent quote, one of many extremely random things I find in the course of my absurd need to research the minutiae of my characters. But sometimes only the minutiae. For example, that little gem was found while researching football positions and the breakdown of the skill-sets needed, because I wanted to figure out what Jeremiah would like to play – for a line I may end up cutting. On the other hand, crap like “where is Teddy’s power source?” will get a pass. I’m not even going to try and scrape the surface of the mountain of research done into robotic engineering, because it’ll only tell me I’m wrong. Comic Book science it is.

(Why is that man a Supervillain, Mommy? Because he fell into a vat of toxic waste, dear.)

(Obviously.)

This is my overly convoluted way of saying that I’ve finally uploaded “Small Town Super Nobody” Chapter 3: In Which a Boy Almost Has a Talk with His Dad.

3. In Which a Boy Almost Has a Talk with his Dad

And, to fully immerse yourself in Chapter 3, here is an equally pertinent link:

As to the rest, I should be done with the last three chapters in about six months.