Lacey / Rainey Update

So the Lacey & Rainey story is coming along nicely, got a bunchaton more written early this morning. I'm not uploading snippets anymore, and I'm not really bothering to upload to the Nano site (since it's reeeeeeeally slow) though I might do one more upload to up the numbers tomorrow or the next day.

So why am I posting if I don't have anything new to GIVE you FREE? :) I dunno. Figured I should say "Yeah, I'm still writing. Yeah, they're still alive. Nope, not gonna tell you what happens."

Just kidding. Well, not about them still being alive. For now, anyway.

I'll probably comment here or there, excerpt good stuff, maybe excerpt the ongoing Tuckerizations. Both Sean Gartlan and Richard Hartman are fleshing out in the scene I'm on right now. I'm tempted to share it with you guys, but...

Problem is this, right where I cut off the snippets--or in the scene immediately following, which is WHY I cut off the snippets where I did--there is a major plot spoiler, a major plot twist, I guess. I didn't want to snerker that for ya (or me).

So I'm torn between wanting to wax on about these folks and not wanting to spoiler the whole book--or I could have just kept on snippeting!! Geez. I can say this much 'cause it's already posted on the Bar. I posted in John Lambshead's I Love Lucy conference a thread about Erbistock Hall (very funny turn there, apparently although it exists in real life, it doesn't really...or no one seems to know about this 300 year old estate. It's part of the Historic National Parks system in Wales now. I think). Some good brainstorming and ideas came out of that (though nearly as much confusion, as well). You can go read Mr. Lambshead's conference (which you should anyway 'cause there are always good things popping up in there! Great pics forex) to see what was brainstormed there.

Suffice to say, Lacey will hire a fishing boat captain and take a day and a half (about 16 hrs) "cruise" across the Channel and up into Wales...hopefully not making a wrong turn and ending up in Ireland (like Rosslar or gawwwwd forbid, Dublin!! really not where she wants to be)

There's definitely a little bit of a mind game going on with Lacey's spotter for the Erbistock job. Oh, and the plot finally thickens and meets up with Roger Townsend, the fiend! The Evil Villian fiend! And naturally, Joe Buckley starts making his two-timing, double-dipping face known, so that's bound to be fun.

But how to share all this with you and not spoiler it all? Hmmm...gonna take some thought. And it's past my bedtime.

G'night!

NaNoWriMo 2006 - I'm a "Winner" oohh...ahhhh...

So this is pretty funny, I took a break to get something to eat and just out of curiosity, checked my wordcount. Oh, lookee there! I won. {small voice}Woo-hoo.{end small voice}

Yeah, I'm not seeing it as something huge here, folks. See, I got a LOT more satisfaction out of the two days I went up and down from 49.1k to 48k back up, back down, etc. etc. until I ended up at 49.7k but was NOWHERE near where I'd started IMO.

In my read-through and editing, I did far more than "net" 600 words. I'd completely gone through the story and fixed numerous things. I'd FIXED 49,100 of the wrong words so they were now 49,700 of the right words. That's far more important, if you ask me. But I really like the little bar chart. Isn't it pretty?

So off to finish my Red Baron Pizza (Yum!) and listen in on Rainey and Tony's little chat in the Marble Den of Sybaritic Sinfulness (uhh, the master bath at the Bristol)

Oh, but wait!! There's more! And this is hilarious!! See, it's like this :) I keep whining that the NanoBots are doing funky weird (read: totally fucked) arithmetic. So right now, with my word count over the required number, they say:

NaNoWriMo Progress for -sry
Current word count: 51075 (100.00 %) with 14 days left, with current pace, expected to finish in 1 day.

hahahahahaha...is that too funny or what? Can you believe this progress report (pictured left)??? Too funny. Just too funny.

So I guess I haven't really finished if you exist in the NanoUniverse where 1 + 1 = 3.1415926 (a little joke there, my apologies to mathematicians everywhere)

NaNoWriMo - Snippeting is Over

Yes, all the fun and games are over. Sorry. I'm at 49.7k, going to sleep for a few hours and then get up and "pass the finish line" on the 17th, just as I'd estimated I would. I'll keep writing until I get to the 55k mark and then hold while I read and research (and deal with real-life), but I have "won" the NaNoWriMo 2006 contest. It was a lot of fun. Might even do this again next year.

If you've been reading the snippets, not to fear. I said I'd be emptying out all of the TXT files at the end of NaNoWriMo and guess what? I'm good for my word--they're all gone now--but the Snippet Hole has a surprise for you. Drop down and see what it is.

Enjoy!

Nano Prologue - Take 2

I think I have it now...or nearly. How's this Prologue segment?

Autumn, 2000
Somewhere in England

Dead. How can they all be dead?

Dean was dead, and the target, and the...

Lacey couldn't think of it. She couldn't stop thinking of it. She was the only one alive here in her little world gone mad. Lacey and the police, of course. They'd already arrived and were smothering the scene in front of her. They'd see her if she moved, but she wouldn't move, wasn't even thinking of moving.

Lacey Townsend lay absolutely still in her cocoon of leaves and bugs and cold, worm-ridden soil, just trying to breathe and take it all in. She was safe here, wasn't she? Physically safe, of course, so long as she didn't move, give her position away. She just had to hold still. She could see that tiny hand moving, though. How could she hold still with that hand moving back and forth?

Would that image ever fade from her mind? Worse, if the memory of it did fade from her mind, what sort of woman did that say Lacey Townsend had become? How could such a thing ever be brushed aside from a person's thoughts? Wouldn't that make her less than human, to simply brush aside the death of a tiny child like that? She just had to hold on until the police left, until she could move again, then she could do something. But not now, not yet. Just wait and it will be all right.

Lacey hardly noticed the passage of time as she lay there, frozen in fear, in fury, in shock. Although her eyes registered the Bobbies and flashing lights of an ambulance, all she saw was that little girl's tiny hand reaching up to wave across the rear passenger window. That tiny hand waving behind the splatter of her daddy. That tiny hand dropping as the little girl herself was--

The image was frozen in her mind's eye, playing itself over and over again. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't watch it anymore. The little girl began waving now, waving to her daddy just as Dean's first bullet struck the man, just as Lacey had called off the shot. She could hear herself calling to Dean to wait, don't take the shot.

Dean must have heard her. Lacey was the spotter. She was supposed to call off the shot if something unexpected happened. Dean was supposed to listen to her. Dean Gestner didn't listen, that was it. Dean was in the wrong. She'd been right to kill him. He'd been wrong to shoot an innocent child. That little girl hadn't seen a thing. Lacey hoped the child hadn't seen her father shot right in front of her, splashed before her eyes.

Oh, God, please don't let that have been the child's last sight on this Earth.

Lacey lay shaking in the cold Earth, not even feeling the cold. She didn't notice that she was moving until her shivering and shuddering made the leaves rustle so much, she'd heard her own commotion.

Get a hold of yourself. It's not over yet. You still have to get up and walk away. Just walk away. You have a right to walk away. You called off the shot. You called it. He didn't listen.

NaNoWriMo - DOWNsizing

Yes, I know, that's the wrong direction but I had all this "stuff" in the end of the file outlining all my Joe Buckley ideas and really, I'm not there yet, so I've cut it out. I just killed nearly 2000 words (not dead, saved off in a separate file) so I could "test" my file with the scrambled upload dongle at NaNoWriMo and see where I am. I'm at 47,126 words. Still only 3000 away from the 50k goal so I'm good.

The Joe Buckley Tuckerization (and redshirting) is actually just slapping Joe's name onto a previously-existing minor character (Tommy the Aussie) so it's good I had that all written down somewhere (from the Tavern posts) but really not necessary to have cluttering the mss file. I'm halfway through (finished Snippet 10 and loving this story! I hadn't recalled how much fun this story was--or how much "story" was packed into it already) Will probably reading most of today and get back to cranking those last 3000 words out tomorrow.

The snippets (TXT files) are not going to be updated. I said this before, just repeating it for those of you who are hard of hearing. No major changes have really occurred, existing stuff is just "strengthened" or "reinforced" with motivations inserted earlier on. The basic plot points are exactly the same as I wrote them the first time. Honest.

Go read some comics, seriously. Or not seriously, lighten up :)

ADMIN note from the Blogger Staff

FYI to my "afternoon / evening" readers:

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

We’ll be doing planned maintenance on the new version of Blogger in beta tomorrow (Thursday). This will require two small outages, one at 12:30PM PST and the other at 4PM PST. Neither outage should last more than 10 minutes. beta.blogger.com and Blog*Spot blogs on the new version of Blogger will be unavailable during the outages. We apologize for these interruptions.

I'll probably be logging off then anyway, so I won't notice. It pays to work weird hours, huh? :)

NaNoWriMo - midday update

Update @ 0740 CST: I've read through Snippet #10, done a lot of updating, correcting and tweaking--enough that I'm up to 49k words--but I'm not going to continuing updating the TXT files in the Snippet Hole. Too much hassle / distraction and the corrections aren't anything any of you would notice anyway. At least, I hope not.

It's just little things, like making sure it's noted when they come back from dinner and Rainey is ruminating over how insulting it was for Roger to suggest Lacey to Rainey as a "fucking bribe offering" - it's necessary to establish more clearly that Rainey and Roger had known each other back then. Based on what sorts of things come out 10 snippets later (in #20 & #21), isn't it? I think so and that's the sort of stuff that has pushed the word count up to 49k, so I'm not complaining about it either. Just saying. More to read; maybe another status update later today.

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Hey, for me, it's the middle of the day. Been up since 2330--yeah, I got up yesterday, maybe when you went to sleep.

I've now read through Snippets #1-4. In the first 3, I realized, I had a pretty solid setup of Rainey's motivation, but I never quite followed up on it, never went ahead and gave his reaction to how things went at dinner. I'll be reading Snippet #5 next, where Lacey reflects on it, and probably infuse her interpretation of his reaction into it, just to cover that base. I inserted some of the notes (forex "Le Berkeley" replaced instances of "[restaurant on Champs-Elysées]" ) and I caught some internal discrepancies, but nothing major. The storyline is remaining as developed, just a few bumps smoothed out. You may want to re-read from the beginning again at some point.

In reading Snippet #4, well, it's the single-most hilarious snippet so far. I just love this one. ROTFLMAO. Or is it just me, laughing at my own jokes? Uhhh, no I think no. No one could help but laugh at that scene in the Jag and Oh my God! Charlie! moment, unless you have absolutely no sense of humor. In that case, you won't enjoy the sex either so don't bother reading this one. Personally, I could read it ten times and still laugh. Lisa and Steffan are just too cute.

And it just gets better when Steffan actually disentangles himself--erm, his Johnson--from the steering wheel and starts in on Charlie's buttons. Rainford, the fiend put buttons on the poor, helpless Jag!

In reading all 4 of these snippets, another thing has become clear: the opener. I definitely will be doing the Lacey POV scene of the kill she went on with Gestner back in 2000 as a "Prologue" (yeah, I know, Prologues are bad--not in the Romance genres they're not) and then add 500-1000 words before Snippet #1 to "introduce" the reader to Charles Rainford and maybe stage the setting. I place the story in Paris quickly enough (in Snippet #1) but it would be good to give a feel of the setting before he enters the apartment. Maybe open with him on the plane, heading out of Strasbourg towards Paris, not on the phone with Lacey but maybe just finished his phone call with her...reflecting. You know how Rainey loves his introspection. Whatta guy.

And if I do this, well, ya' gotta have a hook even if you have a Prologue. So I need two hooks for this story (one for the Prologue and one for Ch 1). Rainey reflecting on having "cleaned up the mess after Strasbourg" would do well for a hook, lead into Lacey, transit to her apartment and voila, we're in Snippet #1.

I believe Snippets 1-3 will comprise Chapter 1 of the finished work. Ch 2 will pick up with Lisa's POV. Change in POV, change in pace and big change from Rainey's intensity to the ensuing madcap humor of the series of coitus interruptus scenes.

All told, the past 3 or 4 hours of reading have done me some good, construction-wise. I've also tweaked all 4 of the snippets, uploaded new versions and all of my tweaking has added a few hundred words (now at 48.3k) so it wasn't a total "loss" of time.

Another update after I eat and read Snippets 5 and 6. I just hope there were no more "spew-worthy" moments in 5 or 6 that I've forgotten. My computer screen's still recovering from Snippet 4's "beverage alert" content.

NaNaWriMo Day 16

Starting WAY earlier than I'd intended. Yep, I'm up about 2 hours "too early" if such a thing can be said for waking up in the middle of the night when one should be going to sleep instead. But apparently, I can still type so.....off to read my snippets and get started (knowing this will be a "short" day)

NaNoWriMo - Plan for Day 16 (the end is not so near)

Since I have "all this time left" to reach 50k and I'm at 48k now, I'm actually ruminating on the possibility of doing my first read-through before doing any writing tomorrow morning. In English (rather than WriterSpeak) that means, I think I might sit down at 0200 and read, from Snippet #1 straight through without stopping to Snippet #21 and then dig into 22, the "NanoCrashing" snippet. Why the hesitation? I'm torn with 3 directions in which I can go for the next POV. I need to reorient a bit.Usually, I do a read-through every 10-15k words. Haven't done a read-through at all for this story. Just been cranking it out "as is" everyday in the middle of the freakin' night.

I feel lost. Help! Help! :-)

No, seriously, since I have no outline to which I can refer, I need to do this as a responsible AuthorGod. Otherwise the entire universe might come crashing in on itself.

Besides already having introduced Joe Buckley, Brent Roeder and Jason Long, I have only a vague recollection in my mind of what other things I "planted" or "set up" early on...but I know there were at least two other plants in there. Maybe gardenias. Could have been orange blossoms. Not sure. Have to go back and read to see for myself so I can properly fertilize them as the story's action/pace picks up now.

This is just a warning...for you addicts out there. Go read some comics while you're waiting. Maybe Sequential Art will have a new one by tomorrow. Or go find me some new comics to stir up the funny bone, and post to the comment thread, 'kay? Good.

G'night.

NaNoWriMo - Snippet #21 Updated

Added another 500 or 600 words and did a bunchaton of tweaking to "fix" technical difficulties (like sorting out that an unloaded weapon--even a SMAW--won't explode; only the ammo does...and boy how those rockets have a red glare when you light them on fire! Hoo-wah!) Snippet #21, as amended, pushes my total word count to 48k (plus or minus) so tomorrow I'll be crashing past the 50k mark, even if I tie one hand behind my back :) Looking forward to it. See ya' in about 10 hours.

Bye.

NaNoWriMo - Day 15 - One Snippet Away

I've just uploaded the "unfiltered" Snippet #21 into the Snippet Hole. This brings my total word count up to 47,300 words. The NaNoWriMo site has a nifty little Flash dongle in my profile, showing this bar chart for my daily word counts--but unless you register for Nano and sign in, you can't see it - haha. Still, I'm finding the little bars interesting to see and cannot wait to see what happens when I reach and pass the 50k word mark. I guess then it just does a series of "full" bars across the balance of November, huh? We'll all find out together tomorrow or the next day.

Yep, another 2700 words and I'm "done" according to NaNoWriMo. Not done with writing 'cause the story's not gonna be done at a meager 50,000 words but that's the NaNoWriMo "end mark." My gut feel for the final length is still 110-120k but my Firefox plug-in dongle claims a mere 99k now...it's cause I took a whole day off day before yesterday. It's totally screwing up the math :)

Will definitely be re-reading and tweaking on #21 later today and may write a little more but probably not gonna upload more today after I do the #21 tweaking. I have to go out to run errands. Yuck. And it's cold and raining out. Double yuck.

Seeya.

Don't Trifle with this Truffle

This is to taunt you, Francis, nyah-nyah :) May your fungus dreams be haunted with inadequcay issues! This is out of your league...but at least you're not alone in the obsession. The bidding was wild, fierce and unrelenting, but in the end...the Chinaman did it.

Hong Kong Tycoon Pays $160,406 for Italian Truffle

Gordon Wu and his wife outbid connoisseurs from France and Italy to win the 3.3 pounds Alba white truffle from an international auction on Sunday, a spokeswoman for the Ritz-Carlton hotel, which hosted the Hong Kong part of the auction, said Tuesday.

It was the second time Hong Kong bidders won a pricey fungus at the annual auction, held in Grizane, Italy and satellite-linked with Paris and Hong Kong.

[read the whole story at FOXnews]

Lacey's Run

Or How I Spent the 14th Day of NaNoWriMo.

Although I did a little more writing today (topped the 45k mark and that was enough for me to be happy), after "killing John Hardesty" and "meeting" Ed Stalker and blowing up Hangar 22 in a "spectacular blaze," I didn't really work on much more new generation.

Instead, I indulged in some research, that necessary evil. I've got a cunning plan :) In fact, you can see the cunning plan - I herewith provide the "visual aid" for you reading pleasure. Not much to read, it's research material but hey, gotta give you somethin' to tide you over, right?

Lacey's Run is captured in a Word document, complete with links to web sites and GoogleMaps embedded - there's even a Pin in the Map in there!! So yeah, the file is huge with all those graphics. Gotta love MicroSloth's "efficiency" at file compression. Go click every single link in that file and you won't even notice that you didn't get to read more today.

Back to Snippet #20 in the morning. Rainey is finally coming back and Boy! is his mouth gettin' foul now--erm, when he finds out Lacey is gone, that is. And she left her cell phone in Tony's loving hands so that "Rainey will know exactly where it is."

She can be a really evil and spiteful woman, can't she? But you have to love her anyway. She's a Goddess - more importantly, she's a lethal, killing machine Goddess.

I've Lived a Very Sheltered Life

I simply cannot reach any other conclusion. And I've done some pretty "out there" things in my day, but....clearly, I've lived a very sheltered life. See, it's like this :)

While investigating resources (hopefully in Paris, France) from which Lacey can purchase disguise-making supplies--like, oh, liquid latex out of which to cast prosthetics--several people in totally different forums have referred me to so-called "sex shops." I've read this and scratched my head, rolled my eyes, though back on the sex shops I've frequented over the years, where all sorts and manner of fun and interesting "toys" are sold but uhhh, nope, never saw liquid latex for sale. Obviously, I was struck temporarily blind having walked into such an establishment.

Here's an example. The ad starts out "For those fun-loving folks into the latex scene..." Latex scene? There's a scene? Huh. Lookee there. A liquid latex culture and I never actually stumbled onto it before. Interesting.

Or this one, aptly named "Deviant Liquid Latex." Wow, deviants? I really have been missing something here. When did all this deviance happen and I wasn't there to witness it?

Well, I wasn't *ahem* tied to liquid latex, but I'm gettin' pretty well and thoroughly convinced it'd be easy enough to get a hold of this in Paris.

The other option, of course, was foam latex, which is more traditional for makeup/prosthetics (not sure why, though maybe it's the wild colors the liquid stuff sells so much of, huh?) and GM Foam (no, a different GM, silly) has three distributors right in Paris, France, so that option is open, too.

But that liquid latex "scene" really needs further investigation. Excuse me. I'll be back sometime in uhhh...yeah, later.

NaNoWriMo - Day 14

Updated at 0915 Added another 750 or so words to Snippet #19 that are just too precious...If you'd already read Snippet #19, you'll want to re-read it because there's another screen or two of good humor there now. New segment at the end told in newly-Tuckerized voice of Barfly Ed Stalker. See also related post (Quotable Quotes From Lacey / Rainey Story)

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John Hardesty - bang, you're dead :-) Merci, monsieur! Yes, Snippet #19 has gone down the Snippet Hole and my word count is at 43,500 words with its completion. I'm torn between continuing with Lacey vs. switching back to Rainey's POV. I actually miss the foul-mouthed sonnovabitch, can you believe it? Let's see what happens.

Oh, and the next redshirt/Tuckerization on the "first come, first serve" list are Jason Parnell Long and Brent Michael Roeder, both of whom were mentioned by name two or three snippets ago (Rainey told Lacey they'd been sent off w/Lisa to deal with Roger, remember?) They'll die soon, but not sure where/when to insert that scene or in whose POV to tell it, probably in Roger's so it won't be the next snippet I write. Sorry for the delay in your demise, fellas :)

Quotable Quotes from Lacey/Rainey Story

I'm still of the opinion that my single-most favorite one-liner moment thus far is in Snippet #4 when Lisa exclaims at an *ahem* untimely moment "Oh my God! Charlie! *hehe*

But the last 750 words I've just written have a gem. Will probably tack them onto Snippet #19 later today. We'll see. Here's the funny, out of context, hopefully still chuckle-worthy. Watching the hangar / warehouse going up in glorious flames, our next Tuckerized Barfly (Ed Stalker in whose POV this is told) muses:

The materials Charlie stored there were mostly electronics, some weapons, but nearly all inflammables. Well, except for the rocket launcher. Almost on queue, at that thought, the north side of the building burgeoned into fiery oblivion. And there goes the rocket launcher.

LAW vs SMAW

I really can't decide what to do about this. Got inputs from two "helpers" and incorporated it "messily" into the dialog and then got corrected and then got dissatisfied. Artistically.

There's no way, no how that Lacey would pick up and walk off with a SMAW. It's too big, too bulky, too cumbersome to just stick under coat or something. Then again, the LAW is a one-up deal and she wouldn't waste her time on it either. Reuse or don't bother. Then there's the M203 that Strategy Page advises is the best of all worlds--and reusable. Not so sure I agree, since the M203 ain't gonna go piercing any tanks, right? Or is it? I don't think so.

So what's a girl to do? I need something small and light like the M72 LAW (66mm) doo-hickey but reusable and actually "packing" like the MK153 SMAW (83mm) doo-dad. Being that I'm an Israeli-American, I suppose I ought to do some homage to my Israeli half and consider the B300 (not that Wiki is the place to look for these things, but it was a page with a picture...oooooh, purty pictures...shiny grenades....ahhhhh) Yeah, gettin' punchy here today.

Need rocket launchers, need f/x prosthetics, need to move a whole frickin' island AND name it, need to do too much for this little story.

But I'm having fun. Right? I am having fun, aren't I? Hmmm.... let me think on that a sec. NaNoWriMo sucks. NoNo time for luxuries like research.

NaNoWriMo - Snippet 18 is...

...drafted and in the Snippet Hole - you addicts. Go read some comics, would ya'?

NaNoWriMo Day 12 End

Update 13 Nov 2006: Gotten a couple of emails from people who apparently cannot click links and also don't know who "Dick Smith" is or why they should know his name. Ugh. Peasants.

My single-most-favorite "Dick Smith" masterpiece is the aging of the then 30ish (or just under) David Bowie through decades to about age 90 (or 150 depending on what you believe about vampires).

"The Hunger" by Whitley Streiber was and still is the only chiller-thriller book I have ever read. I only watched the movie because of how much I loved the book (and hey, Catherine DeNeuve, Susan Sarandon--in a lesbian kiss, no less!--plus David Bowie, well, how can I pass that up?)

The book was 20 times better. As expected. But the movie had great music for its day and age. And of course, the AMAZING special f/x a la Dick Smith, the Master Makeup Artiste of the 20th (and 21st) Century. You, too, can learn Dick Smith's secrets. No, seriously, he offers a correspondence course and many of your favorite makeup artists (like the Almost Human folks who did the makeup on Buffy, Angel and Firefly) learned from Dick Smith's course!

You just don't get much better or more-experienced than Dick Smith. Now you know. And now, back to my needs 'cause it's all about me, Me, ME. Or at least about my story. Still need a good source in Paris, France for supplies for "Dick Smith" style makeup / disguises. Use the comment thread if you know of one. Comment. Thread. :) I'm still gonna get email instead, aren't I? *sigh*

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Only got to 41,000 today but got to 41,000 today.

I'm currently lost in the world of special f/x makeup artists (Dick Smith, Almost Human) and looking for suppliers (like Steve Biggs' little SES shop in Utah--but MUCH bigger and) in Paris, France.

Anyone? Anyone out there in Paris, France and can refer me to a supplier of stuff like liquid latex, foam latex (many art supply stores have moulding clay and costumers have fake hair, etc.) plus all the water non-soluble adhesives that do not destroy skin (that's like a whole market unto itself, folks, but the same places that sell the latex will sell the glues).

Argggh...too many details, not enough days in November. For a good laugh, read Steve Biggs' alter ego, Igor's (as in Dr. Frankenstein's assistant) little "letter to mom." He's a character, all right. Must'a been sniffing too much of that glue, huh?

Jim, You There? Over.

It's strange, but I haven't thought about Jim Baen for more than two months. Actually, not one thought. That's scary, really. I'm on Jim Baen's Bar everyday.

Then today, for no apparent reason, I had this urge to...I dunno, read one of his posts, try to "hear" his voice. I was suddenly and sharply aware, with every fiber of my being, that he was absent from the Bar. I felt silly, the man died several months ago (June 29, 2006) and I never even met him, not really. So why did I suddenly find a little river of liquid seeping out of my eye and down my cheek when I sat there click-clacking away at the search tool on the Web Board, desperately trying to find some post of Jim's, some little joke he'd made, some impatient remark he'd whipped out, some...Jim gems?

And then the bone-deep realization, there aren't ever going to be anymore of them, are there? He's just gone, isn't he?

I thought I already went through this in July. Am I just morbid? Overly sentimental? Easily distracted? All of the above? I can't seem to stop crying again. It was like this in early July--that was when this Rainey/Lacey story started keeping me up at night. I know there's no logical reason to think there's any connection. I never even said one word to anyone about Rainey and Lacey until what, August, later in the summer? After Labor Day even? And to be honest, I don't think I could have designed a story more not Baen Books if I'd set out to do so. This story is just not right for that market...so why do I keep thinking of Jim Baen? Why is this story, why are these characters voices just connecting in my head with him?

I had to laugh at myself as I went to go click the user profile and look, half-expecting to find someone had been logging in with his user or something. Am I insane? As though anyone at Baen Books would let someone log into his account. I'm just spooked. That's all it is. Right? (looks over shoulder) Yeah, okay, maybe getting a little too spooky here :-)

Tony Benner, You Gouche Dweeb

I am really having too much fun with the Tuckerizations. Barfly Derek (middle name Anthony) Benner is the next one on stage and apparently, the fictional Derek--excuse me, Tony--has quite the little attitude and no manners. Nor any appreciation whatsoever for the finer things in life. Here's an excerpt from Snippet 18 (coming tonight or early tomorow) where he first hits the stage:

Derek Anthony Benner stepped onto the marble floor at the entrance to the Presidential Suite and decided for the fourth time in three hours, this was not going to work. Charlie's out of his freakin' mind. A five-star hotel. What the hell is he planning to get done in a five-star hotel? I bet they don't even have a backup generator for the suite. Tony looked around and shook his head at the useless luxury of the place. There was no way to work here.

The bell hop with the luggage rack full of computer equipment cleared his throat and Tony stepped to the side to let him pass. "So, this is it, right? I mean this" Tony waved both arms, fluttering his fingers like birds in flight, "this is all there is to the suite? No little office or study or useful little conference room tucked away somewhere?"

The bell hop clearly was uncertain how to answer, but Tony felt certain from the look on the guy's face, no handy-dandy static-free environment was going to pop out of the guy's pocket.

"The two bedrooms and master bath are through--"

"No, no." Tony cut him off. "I don't give a shit about the bedrooms, though good to know where the john is, thanks. I mean, is there somewhere else...some hidden door to a--" He snapped his fingers. The bell hop winced. "How about a conference room on this floor? Is there a place you got for meetings and business stuff? You know, executive suites or something?"

"There are the business suites down on the third floor. I'm sure Mr. Rainford could--"

"Oh yeah? You got a whole floor of business suites? Can we close it off? I mean, what'll it take to rent the whole third floor for the rest of today?"

"I really couldn't say, sir. I don't know if that's possible on such short notice."

Tony rubbed his chin and hummed. Nope, definitely not gonna work. "Oh-kaay. You can just leave those right where they are. I'll take it from here." He waved a hundred euro note towards the doorway.

The bell hop appeared put off enough, he hesitated before taking the tip and then bowed curtly and added, "If there's anything else you need, sir, just--"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll call. Thanks!"

After the door closed, Tony took a quick-paced tour around the L-shaped main area of the suite, nodding at the locations of electrical outlets, frowning at how few and far between they were. He stopped and sat against the edge of the glass dining room table, shoved his hands into his pockets. "Yep. This is gonna suck. Thanks, Charlie. Just shoot me now."

NaNoWriMo - 39,100 words

Well, I'm getting there. Just finished Snippet #17, uploaded to the Snippet Hole, and am holding at 39,100 words. After I finish the next snippet, obviously, I'll have broken the 40k mark. Woo-hoo. That's a pretty weak sounding "woo-hoo"," trust me. I'm beat.

The whole tension and depression and cracking on the edge stuff with Lacey is draining all my smiles and abilities to "woo-hoo" properly. Yes, there is a proper way to do a "woo-hoo," and trust me, with a period after it is not how it's done.

Okay, haven't completely lost my silly streak but close. Gonna have to go read some Sequential Art or Sexy Losers comics. Agggghhhh, I'm addicted! Hi, I'm Sarah, and I'm a comic addict.

Bye.

NaNoWriMo - Day 12 Begins Not with a Bang, but....

....with fixing yesterday's mistake. My deepest apologies to any of you who were eager to read Snippet #16 but found it was a big, blank white page when you clicked on the link in the Snippet Hole. Apparently, I uploaded an RTF file instead of a TXT file and....you do the math.

All set now. I just looked!! I swear, it works :) Don't believe me? Here, see?