When Halloween falls on a weekend, it lasts three days instead of one. I love that. Today I went to a party all dressed up. It ended early (because it involved children) and I had to run an errand - so I headed to Target in full regalia. The best part was that there were at least four other people in there at the same time also dressed to the nines. Halloween is every day baby.

PS. Of course I took pictures at the party!

Okay, so I'm a week late on this news. It's still cool:

A team of neuroscientists have successfully implanted a chip into the brain of a quadriplegic man, allowing him to control a computer.

Lunar Eclipse!!! And yes, that absolutely deserves three exclamation points.
I love celestial events.

I took some pictures. They're pretty funny. Maybe I'll get them online sometime soon.

Books: Went to my writing group tonight. I think I've mentioned that it's a broad, varried audience. The chapter of mine they were reading tonight included the word "cyberpunks" along with a description. My favorite comment of the night was, "Cyberpunks? We used to call them beatnicks." How right she is.

Books: Chapter 2 is now 9 pages long! And 1500 words! Of course, I make no guarantees for its quality, but they do say the first step is to get something down you can work with. Also, I'm nearly past the sticky part. I didn't drop it - I remembered the reason I had decided it needed to be there. A good way to illustrate something for readers. I did change the general subject though to something with more conflict and less silliness. So far it's working for me. Slowly, but still.

Isn't there a lunar eclipse this week? Isn't that spooky?

Books: Denied. Rejected. Doh. The short story was not-so-much what the magazine was looking for. Too much exposition, they said. So I go back to studying more about the method of writing short stories, and will figure out some other way of inflicting this particular item on the public.

Watched Memento tonight. It's a really interesting way of building a narrative. I saw most of the plot twists coming (because that's what you'd do in this kind of a movie) but I've decided I don't think I could make a movie (or write a story) like it. I'm not sure I could get my head around constructing a story in reverse.

Books: Three more sentences! At this rate, the chapter will be done by Christmas.

So I've been feeling blah all day. So blah, in fact, that I didn't make it into town to run my errands. It wasn't until just now that the words of my accupuncturist came back to me. "You'll be fine," she said. "Just as long as you remember to take your herbs. You come back tomorrow when the new shipment comes in and get a new bottle since you just ran out."

Guess what one of my errands was supposed to be?

Apparently those ground sticks and leaves in pellet form actually do make a difference for me. Who woulda thunk?

Books: I wrote three sentences! Well, five if you count the ones I rewrote from the paragraph before.

So, one of the things I really enjoy about living in Montana is that the noise out my office window is usually the sound of horses walking down the dirt road. For some reason, that's one of my favorite sounds. I don't intend to ever own a horse. I enjoy riding now and then, but I'm not really a "horse person." Yet - love that sound.

Anyway, as I was walking out to get the paper the other day (it doesn't exactly land on the doorstep here) I saw the horses across the road were quite excited. They were running, chattering, pounding the ground. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was until I noticed behind the noise they were making - the clop clop clop on the road. These two horses were thrilled to see a third. The rider took it over to the fence to let them ... have a conversation? I don't know. Anyway, it got me thinking about how lonely these two animals must be. They have enough space to run around in, another like-animal to hang out with, but still... a third horse is something to run and jump around about. I bet I'd react the same way if I only got to interact with one person for most of my life.

Books: War in the middle east, shortages of flu vaccine, typhoons in Japan, hurricanes in Florida, mine explosions in China. It's the end of the world, who needs to finish a book?

Added some more pictures to my pictures section. The sunset and fall galleries are expanded. Also there's a new "winter" gallery, as we've already had our first snow (not just counting the snow in the tops of the mountains).

Books: No progress to report. Sorry.

Books: Chapter 2 has hit its slow going point. I'm not even convincing myself with this little bit of action, so I don't have high hopes for convincing the reading audience. I'm pondering just skipping the tough, unimportant stage direction and just getting on with the action. I have to look hard at this. I mean, sure, this is how it happens in my head, but that doesn't mean it has to happen this way on paper.

I watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers last night. I'd never seen it before, but I had heard it was one of the best sci-fi films ever. I can't say I quite agree with that sentiment. Sure, I enjoyed the show. And for the time period it was created in - it was awesome. But there were a few plot holes, the beginning was too slow for my taste, and the end involved a silly chase scene.

But many of them (except the plot hole) were products of their time, I think. I kind of liked the "optimistic" ending. It was clever. (Even if it was obviously tacked on so the movie wasn't entirely depressing.)

Overheard at "my office" today:

* Two men comparing ugly divorces.
* An elderly couple having a low-key argument.
* a small child (3 maybe?) looking through a book (hopefully about birds) saying loudly "peacock, peacock, peacock, peacock."
* the cafe guy bragging that he made lates for the CEOs of Borders and they said they were the best lates they ever had.

Books: must..... forge.... ahead.....

I've been researching eco-friendly building methods for a construction project I'm contemplating. At the moment I'm in love with straw bale construction.

The whole point of building something from the ground up is to do it your way the right way. As far as I'm concerned that includes being kind to mother nature.

Books: I've been doing some editing. I know, it's still just a few pages long but I can't help it. Especially when readers point out my habit of using passive sentence structure. Plus, I came to a point where I need something cool to happen and I want to make sure it really is cool, not just cool to me.

My parents went to visit my grandfather for the weekend. He recently turned 87. My mother came home with a bunch of pictures for me to make copies. You can see a few on my pictures page.

Books: almost half way through chapter 2.

Spent the afternoon at "my office" (Borders Cafe w/wireless access) because if I stayed home I was going to fall asleep. So far the trick has worked. No totally annoying table neighbors, no school field trips, only one crying baby at the very beginning. I even got 5 pages written.

Books: I'm between projects right now, and I'm really feeling like I need to take advantage of this "down time" by working on my own projects. If I don't do it now I'll just resent the other projects when they do come along. Basically, I'll be working along madly on someone else's deadline and being mad that here I am with motivation to get things done and it's all being used up on un-fun stuff. Sadly, I think the reality has a lot more to do with money than motivation. And I'm more motivated by immediate money than money "someday, if I can sell it."

Talked to a contact today about writing a couple of application user manuals - it's not glamorous, but it does come with a contract and pay.

Added some pictures to my pictures page. Finally getting a little bit caught up on that.

Books: Last night I finished off that chapter I've been whining about. I'll give it a few days, then re-read it to see if it's any good. Chapter one is about 16 pages long. If all the chapters are about that length I figured out it will be about 45,000 words long. That's... considerably shorter than my other novel. In fact, I'm a little worried that it's too short. (A FAQ on the SFWA site says so, but it was written ten years ago, so who knows?)

Something I learned today...

One of the major companies involved in the non-government space race is Bigelow Aerospace which owes its silly name to its owner Mr. Bigelow, who also happens to own Budget Suites of America. That's right, their focus is on privately-owned "space stations."

I have just one word for that.

Suite.

Books: I submitted the story to a weekly online "speculative fiction" magazine. It doesn't pay much, but it does pay. That would be nice.

I went with my mother to visit an elderly neighbor today. She's great, I love her. And the conversations are quite interesting. For instance, she was talking today about being at that point in her life where she really doesn't want more things.

Looking around, she has a beautiful house, beautifully decorated. She has enough clothes for the various occasions and she's old enough that nobody expects her to dress in anything approaching modern fashion.

Her son-in-law brought her a computer she promised to try. She said she has vowed to do three things on it per day (today she checked her email, which had no new messages, read the front page of the newspaper in her old hometown and she couldn't remember the third thing she had done, it hadn't been all that exciting). She says she's giving it three more weeks and then she's calling her son-in-law and asking him to come take it away. She doesn't want it.

I don't know if I will ever get to that stage in life. It seems like I will always want the next new gadget. I think I'll be showing up at video game stores (or what passes for them in 40 years) and demanding the best equipment they have.

I guess I need a really good retirement plan.

Books: I sent Sarah the story. So far no response. However, I think she wasn't feeling well today and thus gets some slack cut for her. I want her to know for sure if it's the bad writing bringing on the nausea.

Books: Holy cow, I wrote a short story today. And nobody even died in it. (Most of the rejections I've gotten have been about the magazines not accepting horror, and it took me until today to realize maybe my stories were being classified that way because of my fondness for tragic deaths. Thus I set myself a challenge to write a story where nobody died. And I did it! They just _talk_ about tragic deaths.... Hrm.)

Went for an explore with my parents last night. We were ostensibly looking for some land that was for sale, but really we were just having fun following mysterious dirt roads out into the mountains. At least, my dad and I were. My mother was in the back seat and seemed a little less enthused about the more adventuresome bits.

We found a great road that had wonderful, surreal views (or would have if it hadn't been nearly dark). I'm going to have to go back in daylight sometime and take pictures. It might have to wait until next August, though. The road wouldn't be fun after recent rain or inclement weather of any kind. Then it would just be an exercise in terror and probably death. There's a friendly warning saying nobody has responsibility for you if you go beyond a certain point where the road is "unmaintained." But my car did just fine - on bone-dry dirt, rocks and weeds.

It's about 40 minutes from my parents' house. Just far enough away that I'm not sure I want to buy anything out there. I'm so picky.

Books: I'm feeling vaguely motivated to write a short story. They don't pay much, but it's something.

Found on the web today:

Anne Rice answers critics on Amazon.com who wrote negative reviews about her last book. Here's a link to roughly the right page of reader-reviews. If the link doesn't work, look for "Blood Canticle" and skim through the reviews till you find a long one that says it's by Anne Obrien Rice from New Orleans.

Amazingly enough, her official website confirms that it really is her who wrote it. Here's a link to the confirmation so you can see I'm not making it up.

I woke up from a dream laughing last night - possibly laughed in my sleep for the rest of the night. That hasn't happened to me in like... ever.

What was so funny? Well, I dreamed that I was in charge of a live televised tribute to Barbara Walters - which is funny enough in itself. It was a series of profiles of great journalists or something, I don't know. The point is that someone on my staff thought it would be a great idea to not just have a line of pictures of the profiled people along the top of the set - they thought it would add "dimension" if we put life-sized mannequins of them up there. I was unsure, so they said they would show me how great it would be. There was much scurrying. Another staff member (I can't blame this on the same person - and it certainly wasn't me who came up with the ideas - the funny part was being presented with these ideas one after another, minutes before the live broadcast began)anyway, another staff member thought - since this was supposed to be a solemn tribute we should have some candles on the set to give it that soft, warm glow. And wouldn't it be even better if they had candles - shaped like Barbara Walters herself! Umm...

So they brought the candles on to show me and they hoisted the mannequins up by ropes around their necks. They lit the candles and discovered that something had gone horribly wrong in the manufacture. I thought it would be bad enough to be melting down her hair and face, but somehow the whole candle took fire. Here was this little wax image of Barbara Walters - ugly enough to begin with, but now with skirt - hair - shoes - all aflame. And a bunch of people standing around with open mouths staring.

That's when Barbara walked onto the set. Right when we were hanging her in effigy and burning her in effigy simultaneously. That's about where I woke up from laughing so hard. The whole thing still makes me giggle. But I don't know - maybe you had to be there to really appreciate it.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't find that very amusing on a sit-com. I guess you really have to feel the sense of responsibility for the whole shebang before the absurdity can really set in.

Books: This book intimidates me.

This is encouraging:

"You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're on." - Gene Wolf

(Taken from Neil Gaiman's website)

There's this amazing sunset tonight. Usually we don't get a sunset like this without a forest fire. I wonder if it's because of Mt. St. Helens.

In the big eruption lo these many years ago we had a light dusting of ash - maybe an inch. It looked like snow. Stuck to everything, especially when it rained.

Books: yeah, I'm working on it.