A (mostly) thawed out brain...and televison and writing

I am happy to announce that my brain cells were not killed off by the chilly weather, they were merely in suspended animation. I remembered what I was going to blog about.

Television and writing.

First let me start off by saying that my wife and I have a Roku. This is not a small furry animal from Japan though I can see why some would be confused by this. We have had Netflix for years, and they have movies and TV shows, thousands of them, that you can watch for free online. We never did this, watching a movie on a computer just seemed wrong, like beef gravy on chocolate(saw that on one of the wife’s cooking shows, ick).

But this summer we got a Roku, it is a tiny black box you connect to the TV and then you can watch all of the free Netflix content on your TV. It connects to the internet and downloads them right into the magical little box. It can also connect to amazon.com and you can rent nearly every movie they have on amazon. They even get some before the theatres do…It slices, it dices, it…wait..that’s something else.

I’ll stop there. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this post was not meant to be an infomercial for Roku (some of the brain cells must still be thawing out).

The point of my multi-paragh description is that my wife and I have been watching the TV show 24. We missed it when it was on TV, and we have been watching one or two episodes every night while we fall asleep in bed.

As I passed the 50,000(woot) word mark in my novel Blood Plague, I suddenly came to the realization that one of my characters had become Jack Bauer. He didn’t start off that way, he was a former member of the Royal Guard promoted to the rank of Lord General by a grateful king. In the beginning he was capable but a little unsure of his role as Lord General.

Now he can kill six men without trying, and has no problems torturing others to get what he wants. He is loyal to his king and his friends to his own determent. He hides his emotions behind a stoic face, letting few others in. He is a barely contained reservoir of violence, ready to let loose at any moment...which is really fun to write, but I may have to tone it down a bit when I do my first edit of the manuscript.

The whole thing has me wondering if I go back read some of my other stuff if I’ll be able to tell what I was watching on TV. I knew I got a few ideas from TV, Kingdom of the Dead, my zombie/fantasy hybrid novel came from watching Dawn of the Dead back to back with Lord of the Rings, but Jack Bauer crept into my writing without me having any conscious knowledge of it. I’ll have to keep an eye on this in the future.

It's cold outside...

It is cold today…I had a more interesting blog I was going to write but when I stepped out into the -14 degree weather my brain froze. These brain cells were not vital to my survival but I did enjoy having them—I lost the blog, an idea for a short story, some of my 8th grade algebra, a few dates I learned in 9th grade history and some of my fine motor skills. And now that song “Baby its cold outside” keeps playing in my head, over and over again, so I may have lost some the brain cells that control logical thinking, I’ll get back to you on that one.

Weird to think it was 60 degrees out only two days ago but that’s Nebraska for you. In a side note the record high for today is 65 degrees the record low -27, that’s a 92 degree difference. I just wish we were on the other end of the scale. Keep warm.

November

So Halloween is over, we had more trick or treaters this year than ever before. I think it was due to the weather. The 50 degree temperatures made for a balmy night for Nebraska in October. We didn’t do much, besides hand out candy. We watched the Vikings lose to the Patriots, and saw our play-off hopes dwindling, and we ate a bunch of Halloween candy.

The end of October also marks the beginning of Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month for those who do not know the acronym. I didn’t want to shelve Godswar for a month, but last night I had an idea that I can’t seem to shake.

I have two short stories both set in a world of super heroes after an alien invasion. Most of the super powered folk were killed in the first days, but there are still a few heroes (and villains) fighting off the invaders. Last night I started toying with the idea of making it a full length novel.

If I can find any time to get write this week then I might try to write this novel for nanowrimo.

Halloween

So last week we went on vacation, and now I am just trying to catch up. I had fifty submissions to read for Shadows & Light, the library book sale was this week, and I have a library “basic skills” class to complete online. Due to a slight mix up on my part, the class started during my vacation which means I have two assignments and a quiz to do by the end of the day, which of course, being the great procrastinator that I am, means that it is time for me to write a rambling blog about Halloween that doesn’t really have much of a point. Other than being my 100th post, cue the music and confetti!

Even though I am sitting in a room with every single wall decorated for Halloween what really made me think of it was that it snowed for a little bit yesterday. It wasn’t much of a snow, it was 40 degrees or about 4 degrees Celsius, and the snow only lasted for two minutes.

Why do I associate snow with Halloween? Because it snowed on every Halloween except one when I was a kid. I would spend a month agonizing over my costume and arguing with the other children over who had the “coolest costume” only to cover the whole fucking thing up with a heavy winter coat and snow boots.

Now I realize that the whole thing was just another chapter in the epic struggle of man versus nature, but as a kid it kind of pissed me off, as it did for the other children. When kids went out and played “tricks” egging houses, smashing jack-o-lanterns, and covering trees in toilet paper they had a damn good reason.

The one Halloween it didn’t snow I was probably too old to go trick or treating. I had decided not to go, but I got out of school and it was 70 degrees, so I dug through my closet till I found a cowboy hat and a toy gun. It was a pretty bad costume considering the closest thing I had to a western shirt was a button up Hawaiian print shirt, but the candy that Halloween was oh so sweet and plentiful. It was a truly magical Halloween. Every Jack-o-lantern was safe. No trees were covered in diaphanous strands of Charmin, and not a single house was covered in the yellow ichor of shattered baby chickens.

Flash forward 18 years to today. It is four days until All Hallow’s Eve. It is only 35 degrees, the sky is cloudy. I am preparing myself to have my home assaulted by children who have been frustrated and pushed to their limit by mother nature. Mother nature doesn’t care how badly they want to be a pretty fairy, or how strong they feel in their Superman costume, she just wants to ruin their good time. I feel bad for them, I have a feeling that a whole bunch of children are going to learn firsthand what a bitch mother nature can be, and by logical extrapolation what a real bitch life can be.

Half way there...

The weather is starting to change here, fall in Nebraska is always such an interesting time. The leaves are changing, and there is a chill in the air. It gets down into the 30s and 40s at night and during the day it warms up into the 70s and 80s. You can feel the change coming, I bet sometime within the next month we will have the first snow.

I have always loved fall, I hate being hot and once winter arrives it will get too cold to leave the house but for a few months the weather will be perfect. Of course I don't spend much time out in the weather, because fall is my favorite time to write.

I have never been able to figure out why the ideas seem to flow so smoothly around this time of year, but I love it and take advantage of it. Last year I wrote the end of of one novel and an entirely new novel between the months of September and December.

Fall is also a time for looking back, and as I stalked Doutrope's today (I have a story in at a pro paying market that has been waiting for 53 days, and when I click the new link on Doutrope's I see that they are sending out a bunch of 15-25 day rejections, I am hoping this is a good sign) I looked back at my writing career via the online database.

In three months I will have been writing for two years. In that time I have written 45 short stories and 3 novels. I have subbed these stories and novels 239 times and, including reprints, I have had 39 acceptances. I still have 12 stories and all three novels subbed out right now. I have put about 500,000 words to paper. I wonder how many words a day I have been writing on average?

Hmmm... That sounds like a project for next time I am super bored and have a hankerin' to do some math. (More than likely never)

But my point is that I had no idea I had written so many stories or that I had sent them to so many places. I just focus on the current project and forget about the rest. I have heard that you aren't ready to write a really good novel until you have written 1 million words, well it looks like I am half way there.

How I Spent Christmas

The day after Christmas I was going to blog about the weather, and how it effected our Christmas plans. I forgot about it, but our local radio station posted some pictures and I thought I'd share.

Here is Christmas Eve Day. It was chilly in the thirties, and we still had a little snow, from a previous storm. Everything froze over the night before and it was a pretty idylic image of winter in a small town.

Her was christmas.

This is a picture of main street, notice the drifts so high you can't see most of the buildings on the other side of the street.

This is about 1/2 block from the first picture, this is a picture of the corner at 2nd st. and main

This is a picture taken about a block from my house

So on Christmas Day no one came over and we stayed in. Jessy and I opened our presents from each other and ate a gluttonously on the prime rib that she had prepared to feed everyone. We did have Christmas later with everyone else.

All in all I have to say it was one of the most relaxing Christmas Day's I've ever had. The storm didn't bother me at all, we kept inside and kept warm.

Of course our drive way is in the alley and they don't plow those, so I couldn't get my car out until the following Tuesday and ended up walking to work Monday.

Photos were taken from http://www.chadrad.com/photogroup.cfm?id=556 if you're curious to see more you can vist thier website.