Facebook Status Updates, Part III

Since I will be doing nano in November and likely posting nothing of note here (save for nano status updatates), some more facebook bits. All the Boy and Fox bits end up not being used in the actual story.

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And, having been given the Spear of Destiny in the mail via FedEx, Joe-Bob held it aloft and wondered how fast he would be arrested for carrying it about in public.

If you build it, they will come." It came to me in a dream, but the waking world was zoning laws and permits and city regulations and neighbour complaints and, eventually, I had another dream and burned it down for the insurance money.

None of the children could think of Narnia in the same way after they found the porn in the wardrobe.

There was a drunken djinn once, genie in the common tongue, who never had a limit on the wishes she gave. And yet, no one sought her out, for who would dare to gain everything they desire?

It was shortly after finding out she could turn flesh into stone that Medusa decided to become a sculptor.

Your TV only shows new episodes of cancelled tv shows.

Story idea: The day in the life of a Production Assistant at a Hollywood TV show where the real secret is that the actors aren't actors. It's really doctors, serial killers etc. hired for maximum realism.

After biting the hand that fed him, Rex knew he had gone far beyond being a Bad Dog. He was a terrorist now, and The Pound was the only place they'd put him.

Cath-22: Yossarian's catheter in the nursing home.

"Of course," the wizard said slyly, "you can only understand others as far as you understand yourself. And in all of them, everything you see will be reflections of your true self."

I think it would be fun to show up at a talent show. "I can saw a woman in half."
And then, as you're being dragged away by the police, brandish the bloody saw. "I never said I was a magician! I did the act!"

An African fable:
When she woke, the first thing she said to her doctor was: "My children, what happened to my children?" She was told: "Madonna took them." And she was very, very confused.

Whenever you wake up, the bed always has the impression of someone else having slept beside you, but no one is ever there.

The artist giggled. "You shouldn't be asking me why, Director. You cut my funding, so I am going to cut you. Every year the arts lose ground to the sciences and the world loses a little more wonder. I am merely addressing the departmental budget ... and proving, one cut at a time, that art is not science. Art is passion."

From notes for nanowrimo: "But a prison with no hope for release neglects the virus -- and ultimate despair -- that is hope."

“Asking a dragon why they did not eat you is unwise,” the dragon rumbled. “Much like looking a gift horse in the mouth, except a dragon can burn your head off.”

My second nanowrimo is going to be weird and fun. It includes a football player turned mad scientist, an artist whose parents sell encyclopedias door to door for a living (in 2010...) and a park uplifted to sentience by aliens.

"Ah, yes. Your poem is quite beautiful, but don't you know that the more beautiful something seems the less likely it is to be true?"

"But is their anything you want to ask us?" Oprah said.
"I find your religion of McDonald's rather disturbing; could you explain it to me?" the alien said.

“If – if foundations aren't shaken, people forget that they are there or what made them strong. Traditions, too; sometimes they're just things people do because people have done them.” He raised his head and met her gaze. “Sometimes, some things need to be broken.”

According to the laws of chronal physics, upon receiving a time machine (from your future self, naturally) the first thing one does -- knowingly or not - is invent the platypus.

I think of happiness as a false positive.

“I didn't think anyone would answer me,” Boy snapped “That's why I prayed.”

Love is when you tell someone you really, really like them and they do not issue a restraining order in response.

The Ghostbusters looked at each other, then at the entity in the containment unit. No one said anything, but they all knew that capturing the Holy Ghost changed things.

nanowrimo research ...

In terms of books read, that is.

How To Defeat Your Own Clone & Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody
Both bought in HMV as fun science books and proof cool titles work: people wanted to borrow both. Some useful and fun science primers on odd things and people.

The Case For God & Letters To A Christian Nation
Variant books on religion to give me some ideas for the one aliens in the second nano.

Prisons We Choose To Live Inside
A very interesting examination of freedom and war.

Karma Wrapped In Bacon Dipped In Chocolate
A book by a zen practitioner about practical applications of zen during a very bad year.

Curtains & The Dead Beat
A book on working as a mortician and one about the obit pages of papers; I doubt the latter will prove useful for either novel but it has been a fun read.

War Before Civilization & Beyond UfOs
The densest books (next to The Case For God) that will likely be skimmed more than read due to a lack of time.

A lot of it involves death, aliens and religion, and most of it is research for the second nano more than the first. I also have a couple of books on small towns and some other religious ones I'll probably not get around to reading until after nano, so they'll likely just inform the next draft of said works.

Just because...

$10 - donation.
$20 - tote bag.
$250 - netbook.
$30 - cover for.
$150 - groceries, so far.

plotting....

Work on Dogs of War goes well, relatively speaking. The aliens have been developed and become akin to buddhists peddling enlightenment. As one reader of the file of them commented, "it feels overall like an interesting critique of the love of science as a new agey culture thing", which I found interesting. I need to do some research on deaf culture for one character still and flesh out other secondary characters but things are coming together.

Regarding The Empty Book, I have notes on the major characters and a vague plot outline in my head: by nano standers, it's more a pantster than a plotter. (Dogs of War, naturally, has to be plotted out since it's a planned trilogy kind of deal. Or just the three sections as one volume, depending on how long it works out to be.) The Empty Book is going to be easier to write, I think, because there are fewer characters. But only time, and November 1st, will tell.

The FBI and Lennon's fingerprints ...

FBI seizes John Lennon fingerprints before auction

Peter Siegel, co-founder of GOTTA HAVE IT!, the shop selling the fingerprint card, said he was bewildered by the FBI action and interest during the week also by Homeland Security.

"This great icon has been deceased for 30 years," he said. "This is not a national threat."

The card was consigned to the shop by a well-known promoter who bought it about 20 years ago, Siegel said.

In a week-long discovery, Siegel said the FBI, "with a sense of urgency," was concerned with whether the card had been part of Lennon's file and was lost or missing.

"We're investigating how the item came to be in a private collection," FBI spokesman James Margolin said. "It is apparently a government document and would not normally be in the commercial stream."

Begin conspiracy theories on why the FBI wouldn't want anyone having access to Lennon's fingerprints in 3 .. 2 .. 1....

Mine are either the banal
a) he died
or the fun
b) because the clones they made of him would have his fingerprints.

nanowrimo - titles!

Nanowrimo #1 is now going to be called The Empty Book. It's a horror story about a man named Brodie who learns the true nature of the world following an attempt at suicide and gets involved with the wars of magicians, angels, demons entirely against his will. It is emphatically not a feel-good book in my head.

Nanowrimo #2 is an urban sci-fi story involving a small town in northern Ontario and alien invasion of earth. The plan is for a trilogy called Dogs of War. The first book will be Contact and be about three high school students and their encounters with aliens, being altered by (other) aliens. It's going to be about war and religion and the sacrifices made on all sides. It will, however, have more humour than the first nano.

Word-wise, I am hoping to do two 80K nanoes this year.

nanowrimo #2 chosen :p

And doing Dogs of Wars as Nano #2. To summarize: "Aliens arrive to convert humanity; another alien species alters 3 humans (and a park) to fight them."

nanowrimo #2 ....

As my goal for this year is to write two 80K nanos, I'm having to give some thought to the second one. I know the first is horror, and going to be damn dark, so the second will need humour to lighten things a little. I know it's not going to be period-fantasy, since that would take hella amounts of research -- and, as much as I like it, cost me money in the process.

I *think* I'm going to actually work on a novel idea I had years ago that never made it past a couple of pages in all drafts of it involving alien invasion. Alien invasions are always fun, after all.

hula hoop craze

Hula Hoops were the first insane fad (via a link). Demand that appeared and vanished during 1958, causing Wham-O to lose money despite the popularity of the trend. So how/why did the trend die out? What was it meant to do?

nano summary

From a thread asking us to summarize our nano in 20 words or less:

A man discovers the world is a prison made by 'god', kills himself in response.