Bellydance Day!

ARG! Today it was discovered that we need to replace the entire heating/cooling system at home. As you can imagine, I'm stressed about this. It's not horribly surprising, as the indoor part of the system was installed when the townhouse was built. I need to ask them company why they didn't notice the coils rusting/leaking when they did maintenance - I thought that was part of the point of having them maintain it. Regardless, we'll be opening windows and running fans while we research the HVAC options. That persistent painful whimpering you hear over the weekend - that'll be my wallet.

In better news, tonight I return to bellydance class! I will probably do a lot of the class sitting down, since my back still gets to hurting so easily, and I'm okay with that. This is where my body is right now; I'll keep gently stretching, and strengthening and enjoy whatever level of movement feels good. Heck, that was the case when I was in good shape a few years ago :)

Gratitude List:
~switching to a phone handset with a shoulder prop
~Bellydance class tonight!
~cooler weather for the next few days
~living in a place that's well shaded
~Seriously, check out the trees near my place:

Question of the Day: Any suggestions or helpful hints on replacing the HVAC in my townhouse?

Back to Blogging!

This whole not-writing-regularly thing is making my brain itch. So, since I have this handy-dandy blog, I'm going to use it for low-pressure writing :) I still haven't decided if I'm going to blog on a particular schedule or not. I'll probably post book reviews from time to time, pictures I happen to take, and whatever fiction and/or poetry I manage to move from idea to text, along with gratitude lists, Questions of the Days, and burbling about my elderly doggie :)

Gratitude List:
~doing back-pain relieving stretches more days than I don't
~waking up feeling rested (this will never get old!)
~having an automatic CPAP machine, which adjusts to what I need as my needs change
~remembering to treat myself at least as well as my CPAP machine does :)
~rooting spider plants from cuttings (these three didn't so much set roots as zoom them! I only put them in water on Friday)

~My doggie is in great shape for being at least 17 years old

Question of the Day: What blogs do you read?

Review: The Devil in the White City Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The Devil in the White City Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



What did I just read? I picked it up expecting a true crime story that happened at the World's Fair in Chicago. That story is there, but is just a small part of this rambling work. I enjoyed the lush, engaging writing. The narration was beautiful, just perfect for the text.

The text though... I now know a whole lot about the architects involved in the fair, the building of the fair, the lives of some of the people involved in the fair, and a bit about the late Victorian politics of Chicago. I've learned a lot about late 19th century police investigations. Mr. Larson has done a lot of excellent primary source research and presented the information remarkably well. The book has citations to his sources, a feature that always endears me to an author.

I've also learned that an author, at least this author, can get away with constructing a whole lot of artificial cliff hangers. It's one thing to end a chapter at a tense point in the action. It's quite another to leave a gaping hole in the information presented for no reason beyond making the reader keep going to find the missing piece.

From the author's afterward it seems that Mr. Larson sees some kind of cohesion in this book. I cannot tell you what that is. I hesitate to even refer to this book as a "narrative". While there is excellent storytelling, the stories sometimes have very tenuous connections. Facts are arranged prettily, often (but not always) chronologically, but I have no idea what this book is really about. The architects were not the only creative force at work in making the fair happen - why focus on them? If the serial killer was the center of the book, why did the minutia of building the fair get so much more page time?

I want to like this work more than I actually do - it has so much going for it. I can't get past the lack of narrative or thematic through-line.



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Sialea-lea

I'm playing a Navajo Shaman in a Deadlands game. here's the start of her character background :)

My name means Little Bird in English. So far away from the People, passing as a white woman, my name and my medicine bundle are the only Navajo things I have. I'm dressed like a white woman, carrying the things a travelling white person would carry. There are moments the distance from home floods my heart like an arroyo after the male rains. Just as quickly, though, the despair drains away. I am still one of the People, even when far away. I can still speak to the Spirits, and my Spirit Guide is still with me. White people have driven me from home, but they cannot truly take me away from the People.

CTC29 writing sprint weekend day 1

This is both my writing from today, and the campaign log for a Mutants and Masterminds game I'm in. The words are all mine, but the story is stolen :)

It's 2054. Every hero who had ever tried to help others gathered to fight this threat. Only the four of them survived. They'd faced an army, and won through. Together, they raced to the Time Button - only this could save the world from certain destruction. She'd known these heroes back when they were all young and just starting out. If only they had started out working together, they might have prevented this. Miraculously, they got there, one of them slammed the button. There was a flash of white light...

Zoe jerked awake, confused to be in the bed from her old apartment. Wait, no, this is her apartment. She sat up, turned on the lamp, and took long, deep breaths to clear her head. She was at home, in her very nice not at all old bed, in her own apartment, in 2014. She was 28 years old, although if the dream was to be believed she aged pretty well. She still preferred her current age, thank you very much.

Parts of the dream were already fading. The sense of urgent danger stayed with her, as did the thought that having teamed up with other heroes could have prevented this danger, or stopped it sooner. Maybe this was her subconscious's way of suggesting a direction for her to go? The dream, if it was a dream, felt much more real than her dreams normally felt. What if, in some fashion, this really was some kind of communication from 40 years in the future? Was that really any more impossible than suddenly developing the ability to teleport? The more she thought about it, the more she thought this had to be some kind of real communication. This vision was important. She got out of bed, feeling more like herself than she had in weeks. She had to to put together a superhero team. She even knew who to call to get it started. Her team could be the inspiration for others. Whatever the coming threat turned out to be, she was going to make sure they were ready for it.

There was more to the session, of course. I'll write that part out tomorrow. I rather like this stopping point, and I really do need to get some sleep. Can't wait for tomorrow's writing time!

CTC29 day 27 Theme

Well, this didn't come out as I had planned - but I do like how it came out. It needs work, but I'm quite pleased with this as a first draft :)

Jason should have been in class. Instead he was on the roof of the high school, taking off the elastic bandages he'd used to tie down his wings. It's not like he asked to be a mutant. That class in 5th grade talked about acne, hormones, and growing body hair. He'd gotten all of that, plus a pair of wings. Try as he might, he couldn't hide them. He stretched, working the stiffness out of his joints. He got angry all over again remembering trying to apply for a job. One look at his humped back, and out the door he was sent. Everyone was very nice, no one said, "we don't hire mutants" but it's what they meant.

He crouched on the edge of the roof, watching students and staff on the basketball courts. No one bothered to look up. On the roof, he was as good as invisible. "Fuck it," he said aloud, then tumbled forward off the roof. He heard screams as he plummeted downward, then couldn't hear anything but his wings as he snapped them open, swooping up and away. He'd probably catch hell for that stunt, but he couldn't be bothered by that now. While in the air, he loved having wings. Up here he only had to worry about birds and aircraft - both easy to avoid. The air felt like home.

Daily News: The City's #1 Newspaper
5/9/XXXX
Staff Reporter: The mutant mugger has struck again! There have now been over a dozen incidents of a flying mutant stealing purses outside the city's most popular night spots. The suspect is a young African-American male, with wings. City police say that are working hard to identify the thief and bring him to justice.

The prompt was to write a story on a specific theme. I use Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

#CTC29 day 26 Dialogue without words

I'm fudging today's prompt. The actual instructions are to go somewhere you can watch a conversation, but not hear it. The idea is to pay attention to the "stage direction" of the conversation, rather than the words. Then, after about 10 minutes of "eaves-watching" to write the observed scene, dialogue and all. Between work, exhaustion, and an evening obligation, I don't have the energy to go out people watching. I do plan to do this exercise properly some other time :)

Chelsea tapped away at her laptop between sips of latte. The smells and sounds of the coffee shop blurred into a soothing background, more pleasant than her cubicle but more productive than her apartment. That her boyfriend often stopped in this particular shop, so close to his office, cemented her decision to work here. A familiar movement across the shop caught her eye - her friend Leah tossing her hair. Chelsea was about to call out to her, when she realized Leah wasn't alone. She couldn't see her companion, but could tell from Leah's slightly nervous slightly giddy laugh that it had to be some man. Chelsea smiled, remembering the signs of nascent romance. She'd laughed like that when she met her boyfriend here, almost 10 months ago. She hoped the good luck she'd had would work for Leah, too.

She glanced up at Leah from time to time, smiling more and more as Leah relaxed and laughed. Things seemed to be going well. Checking the time, she saw Leah going well past her usual hour lunch break. She remembered doing the same herself, when she really liked a new guy. She noticed Leah kept one hand on the table, stretched out enough for her companion to touch her hand, but not so much so as to look like she expected it. Leah and Chelsea had actually talked about that particular maneuver once, after several glasses of wine. Chelsea saw Leah's smile brighten as a strong man's hand covered hers on the table. Chelsea's smile vanished. For a horrible moment she thought it was her boyfriend's hand. But no - that couldn't be right! Just as she decided to put the thought out of her head, Leah's companion moved to the seat next to Leah. The man was, without a doubt, Chelsea's boyfriend.

I really did intend to write dialogue tonight. Honest! Then Chelsea's horrible coffee shop experience dropped into my brain. It seemed ungrateful not to use the story idea that came to me so readily.