Oh, yeah, One Post Wonder still exists.

I've been writing more or less consistently since the end of August, which still kind of surprises me.  After an initial spurt where I tried using 4thewords.com to gamify it, I gave up on that but still kept writing.  Daily writing has slid back to bidaily writing to occasionally every three days, but it hasn't stopped yet.  And, most impressively, this is a second draft, revision of a novel I wrote in two NaNoWriMos in the previous decade.

It did kind of divide up nicely into two pieces, but they're both too close to 50,000 words to be complete novels, so I'm trying to do it as a single novel for now.  I am adding some words, mostly because when I wrote the second half I gave a secondary character her own viewpoint chapters, and I'm trying to add them back in to the first half.  Maybe strict alternation is not going to work completely, since Janine may not have as much happening with her as Philip does, but I'm trying it anyway.  I'm still not quite up to the end of the first part, since I am being very forgiving with my quota.  Especially when I'm writing new words and not just tweaking old scenes, I'm settling for less than 500 words at a sitting, and generally that's less than half an hour.  But it is NOT ZERO and I am NOT STOPPING YET.

This comes after a few long stretches of not feeling like any of my games, so perhaps it hasn't been as drastic a change as that.  If I'd gone from four hours of Skyrim or Sims 2 every night to wedging in writing, it might have been too much.  I do sometimes think wistfully of playing more games, but I think it's really more reasonable in any case.  Though I have close to six columns of computer game icons on my desktop, and more that aren't even on there (ones that my kids bought on Steam and I never installed, or that I bought on GOG.com and never installed).

I haven't quite settled on a title for the book yet--when I wrote it, the two parts were "Bleen" and "Grue", and the overall title was "Many Worlds".  But I find myself calling it "Bleen & Grue" more often than I do "Many Worlds", so who knows.  If this thing should ever end up getting published by someone other than me, then they'll get the final decision on the title anyway, so no point in my stressing over it.

At the rate I'm going, it may take a full year to get through the revision, though I keep hoping that the second half will end up requiring less revision.  A lot of what I've done so far has just been taking the random flailing from early in the book, before I found the plot and settled on the way the world works, and making it more consistent, adding the viewpoints I mentioned above, and bringing in a few more characters to flesh out the characters' somewhat sparse personal lives.  Oh, and keeping Janine and Philip's relationship from being too firmly settled from the beginning.  
The initial idea I'd had for it was just to have somebody flipping randomly between parallel worlds, and I threw in a whimsical alien at the beginning just to be interesting.  Zombies turned up later because I was reading Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide at the time.  As has happened before, my vague wanderings acquired a plot eventually, and so I've had to try to bring the vague wanderings into line with the plot.  In particular, when the main character, Philip, was being randomly swapped into another world by an alternate self, I had to figure out why this was happening.  I've almost considered writing up an outline, but I haven't managed to follow through on it.  I wrote my first draft in vim (as I'm writing this right now), but I've been trying to use Scrivener for my second draft.  I'm sure I'm not using most of the features, but it has been nice a few times to be able to drag-and-drop scenes from one place to another.

What keeps tapping at my brain is an idea for a big huge fantasy series type thing, based on the Lorenai pbem game I played back in the late 90's.  When the game came to an end, the game data was all made available, and I've whiled away many hours poring over it since then.  Looking at it recently has made me want to convert it into something more novelish, and I swear I've probably come up with about half a dozen novels by now.  It'll be interesting to turn it from a somewhat dry email game based heavily on Middle Earth (my faction operated out of Minas Tirith, for instance) into something with a life of its own, but I've got plenty of ideas.  In my own fashion, I'm planning to just take place and character names, run them through rot13 and then massage them into something pronounceable.  For instance, "Minas Tirith" would become "Zvanf Gvevgu", which has morphed into "Zon Vivica".  I'm resisting trying to make up an entire conlang for the series along with everything else.  Anyway, I've promised myself that I'll try to at least start on this next after I finish "Many Worlds".  I may even outline this time, just to see if I can make it work.

I should dig out a few short stories sometime, too, and see if I can work those into something publishable.  A lot of the ones I've posted online already, I'm not sure if I could interest an editor in, but I do have a handful that I never did...

A mammoth of an eerily silent great horned owl swooped down in front of us while driving down a small winding road towards my house the other night. It was a ghost of a creature floating in front of us for a few seconds, giant and mysterious, until it angled up effortlessly to the top of a nearby pine tree.

I could not tell you for the life of me what either of us had been nattering on about when we saw it, but it stopped our noise in its tracks. Even now, thinking about it, I can see its eye as it turned its head slightly, just to catch us by the corner, before it looked away again.  I can feel the dead quiet awe that came over me, bringing a veil of calm.

Today in history, the Forty-Seven Rōnin, under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenged the death of their daimyō, Asano Naganori. Asano had been compelled to perform seppuku for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka.

After they lost their positions as samurai, the forty-seven made themselves appear to have lost all honor by posing as drunkards and thieves. After waiting and planning for a year, the rōnin avenged their master's honor by killing Kira. In turn, they were themselves obliged to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder. 

Their story has been fictionalized several times, but always at the expense of the actual story.

Howdy!

We're in the throes of tech week/hell week for our "Hot Breakfast and Friends Presents: Another Very Dorky Christmas Show" happening this Saturday, December 15th at 8 (doors open at 7:15).  We did this half-play/half-concert Christmas show in 2016 and it was a sellout, and we couldn't find a suitable venue in 2017, but we're doing it again this year at the 2016 venue (The Queen, on Market St. in Wilmington). However, the venue has changed ownership from an independently-owned performance space affiliated with the NPR show World Cafe Live, to it's current LiveNation... and it's a *tooooootally* different thing now, even though the space looks mostly the same. What used to be a welcoming venue is now layers and layers of bureaucracy and contracts and this one doesn't know what that one's doing and who do I talk to for this simple thing and blaaaah.  But as of this morning we've sorted out most of the logistical stuff, and since the show is gonna be over 48-ish hours from now, I can't be worried anymore. It'll be fine. We're working with super-talented musicians on stage whom we trust entirely, we got some friends to lend a hand to handle backstage and front-of-house stuff, and we got Matt's cousin to make cookies (she's the head executive pastrychef at the Hotel duPont, Delaware's only zillion-star hotel).  The audience would be just as happy I'm sure if we just had musicians playing Christmas and/or Hanukkah songs, but the fact that we make it into a play and give these musicians scenarios to improv-act in, it makes it a fun, silly, and festive night. 

We're excited. 

I'm looking forward to December 17, which is the day I officially have nothing to do. It'll be sweeeeeet. 

The chronic pain is really getting to me today.

Did you ever notice that life increasingly becomes filled with in-jokes and other inside references? I have friends who I can have coded conversations with. We wont speak pig latin or any foreign language, but in english our conversation can be indecipherable to anyone listening in who lacks our context. 

I suppose any subset of humaity is like that. I am not a Christian, Muslim or Jewish, so many of the reference members of those faiths might make, to each other, could be obscure to me. 

I am a larper.  I Have been for more than 20 years.  If I talk about a stick jock, a backpack healer, or jumpy stones then my larper pals will know what I am talking about.  I am pretty sure no one else will without an internet search. 

I find myself wondering if in my 60's or 70's I will be so indecipherable that it will be like that Star Trek The Next Generation episode with the race that communicates with context.
"At Arinth, with the Irregulars, when the Emperor fell."

I bought this "signed and numbered" print in 1998. The art was completed in 1989 and the print was made in 1990. When I moved into my house in 2000 I had it in a crappy poster frame. The frame broke during the move. So the backing cardboard with the print reversed  and covered by the backer paper went on a closet shelf. Where, due to my mad procrastination skillz, it languished for 18 years.

A friend who knew about the print gave me a 60% off custom framing coupon to a local cafting store with orders to "Get Betty off the shelf", which I dutifully did before Thanksgiving. 60% off of nearly a thousand dollars, since I obviously wanted acid-free paper and museum glass to preserve the valuable (hopefully, someday) artwork.

I made note of the artist and Googled him after I paid for the framing. Seems like this fellow has about a dozen original pieces of Betty Page art, all done comic book style. And he's run 1000 signed and numbered pieces of each piece of artwork and sold for around $20. Each and every year.

So, the "valuable" "signed and numbered " print of original artwork is worth about $20. Plus $340 in framing means the whole shebang is worth about $360.

I guess the value is in the eye of the beholder.

With the nonsense going on over at Tumblr, and the new guidelines that dissallow all innuendo, flirty talk etc at FB, it looks like it is time to give this another run. I have a couple of ideas to start with. See you in the morning!

I'm writing this with my eyes half closed; I apologize for any typos or half-finished sentences.

Sunday mornings are usually spent getting brunch with Matt's folks. I really like Matt's folks so I genuinely look forward to it each week. Matt's dad (Steve) will never let us pay, which I find amusing. We keep telling him that he doesn't have to bribe us with food, and that we'd come out anyway... but he still pays. He won't even let us get the tip. 

This recent Sunday Matt went to a Giants game with his bro Nick. Nick has season tickets and really goes all in-- he leaves Delaware at 7:30am to arrive for a 1pm game by 9:30am so he can tailgate for a few hours. Matt went with him and I admit I was worried he'd have a panic attack at the game and wouldn't have any safe, private place to melt down for a few hours... but thankfully(??) the day before he had two AWFUL panic attacks, and he often has a good day after an especially awful day. So I'm happy that worked out. 

Matt's folks asked me if we were gonna do brunch and I told them Matt wouldn't be home so I figured they'd cancel, but instead they said "Let's go anyway, just the three of us!"  We had a really lovely, easy, relaxed time since this was the first time I've ever spent time with them sans Matt (not that I was worried-- we get along really well). After brunch they asked me to come back to their house to help Steve fix his computer, which I did in 5 minutes, and they were thrilled. (Not only am I vaguely personable, I'm useful, too! Wow! What a catch!)

I don't know why, but I always get super-happy when my boyfriend's parents like me. 

Anyhoo, Matt got home from the game around 6:45pm and we hopped in the car and headed to Philly, where I'm teaching at UPenn all week.  Class is from 8:30-4:30, and I arrive to my classroom around 8, and I try to get people outta there by 4:05 at the latest, mostly because I can tell by 2:45pm I could be talking about elephant spackle* and they'd be writing it down... the lunch coma is a very real thing.  (*I do not know what elephant spackle is or why my brain just typed it.)

My hotel is quite literally directly across the street from my classroom building, which is AWESOME.  No commute, just a few steps... so I can roll outta bed at 7:30am and be there at 8:00 with no problem. I love that.  

Matt is with me in the hotel, so I usually go back to the hotel for lunch just to relax a bit. After ll the class ends, I make my way back to the hotel by 4:45 or so by the time I straighten the classroom up... and then I immediately change into my PJs and flop into bed.  I'm usually sleepy by 8pm because I'm 90. But tonight I had a big ol' project that's due for my colleague in the Netherlands, so I had to knock that out because he's 6 hours ahead of me. It took me a few hours to finish and I just finished it up now... and right now it's almost 10pm and my body is like "HEY STUPID! WHY AREN'T YOU ASLEEP?"  

I keep falling asleep while I'm writing this and then waking up 15-20 minutes later.

 Other news, and I'll be quick here because it's super-late now... I forget if I told you that my mom lost 25 pounds on the NutriSystem plan we bought her so she could get her blood-sugar under control.  I'm SOOOOO damn proud of her. She said the food is meh and just basically TV dinners, but that's kinda what she normally eats anyway.

Ok, I'm going to sleep. Love you all ok bye.

Happy Hanukkah to those tho celebrate! 

So I just watched a preview for S2 of Runaways. It's a Hulu Originals series based on comic book characters in the Marvel Universe.

I (of course) devoured the first season in the blink of an eye.

S2 is being released Dec. 21st. Which made me think: Are they releasing it right at the holidays in order to slow peoples' consumption of the episodes? I imagine that's a real problem these days. Companies dump all this money, time, and effort into a season of shows and then the consumers go through it in a very short span of time.

That would mean that the buzz / hype / social media blitz that they (the companies involved) might be looking for would last an equally short span of time. Sure, there will be outliers who will talk about the show in 3 months, but they will be just that - outliers.

THAT, in turn, got me thinking - how could you combat that problem? How could you get a longer 'bang' from your buck with a series like this?

The thought that occured to me was that you could build in game design elements. Puzzles (or puzzle clues) within the show that would mean nothing at the time, but then you (the company) could release something pointing people to those clues over time. A Time Released Alternate Reality Game of sorts.

Then, if you make the prize something really worthwhile - say a guest spot in an episode of the following season (which people wouldn't know until after the prize was won, of course) the hype you could get from such an event would be five fold: 1 at the airing of the show 2 during the hunt / release of the puzzle clues 3 when the fan wins the game 4 during the following season and 5 when media reports come out following the guest appearance in the subsequent season.

Sometimes, my ADHD is kinda cool.