I don't know how I feel about conspiracy theories. In a lot of ways I agree with Mr Moore, that it would be nice if the world was that clear cut and that organized. But I don't neccessarily think it is. 

Still, that little news bit up there got me thinking. Arguably if you throw enough darts at a board with your eyes closed eventually you'll hit it. And that made me think maybe for this Miscellaneous Monday we should talk about a conspiracy theory that turned out to be true. So, feast your eye-balls on:

The Counter Intelligence Program was, in a quick nutshell, was the shit-show run by the FBI wherein they looked for new and inventive ways to discredit people in the civil rights movement and make them appear militant and dangerous to national security. 

It was started and largely run, at least in the beginning years, by Hoover. And this quote in regard to Martin Luther King Jr sort of...covers the whole uncomplimentary, crappy nature of it. 

"In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech. ... We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security."

Just wow. Now I'm sure there's at least one person out there who will say something about the fact COINTELPRO also tracked and tried to disrupt less fluffy people, like the KKK. But really, just because you're looking at the obviously bad guys when trying to uphold the status quo, that doesn't make you're behavior any more laudible. 


In any case, there's your Miscellaneous Monday dose of random. Nothing like a random reminder of our less admirable cultural and governmental history. 

Come back Wednesday and see what I do for the part four of Chuck Wendig's four part fiction challenge!

I've been MIA here this week because...well. There are massive editing deadlines for multiple projects happening right now. That's my reasoning anyway.

So, this week for the TerribleMinds Flash-fic Challenge Week 3 I picked up Toni J's continuation of Adrienne's story. The parts are labelled, and those links will take you to the blogs that hold the original pieces. I called it at 996 words, which was good because I didn't have anywhere else to go.

On to Week 4!

Rays from the rising sun illuminated our target ahead. The castle was small and in a state of disrepair, but the large army behind me knew better than to consider the day already won. The old Lord had a grizzled group of men guarding his walls, but they were battle tested many times over, while those around me looked hardly older than ten. We followed our leader because he promised food and a few coins, but I wasn’t in it for the glory. No, I had a bigger prize in mind. And I knew exactly where in that castle it was.

We crowded together on a single hilltop. No one spoke while they shuffled their feet nervously. The knight in charge sat astride the only horse large enough to carry his girth, and even then the poor beast struggled under the load. Foam dripped from his mouth as they paced before the rag-tag army. The man’s worn leather clothes stretched over his chest and legs. He had once worn armor over the leather, but has since outgrown the plate. The only piece he wore was his freshly shined helmet. A huge black plume adorned the top and fluttered in the breeze. He took one last gulp from a mug he carried and tossed it aside. Turning toward the castle, he reached around his huge middle and drew his sword and, bellowing a slurred battle cry, signaled the charge.

In an instant we were running down the hillside, pushing against each other as we screamed and held our makeshift weapons in the air. A young boy raced ahead of me, his small hands making the dagger he held look more like a short sword. His bare feet slid on the wet grass and he hit the ground, leaving those behind no choice but to trample him in our race toward the castle.

Just as I leaped over the boy, an arrow slammed into the man nearest me, taking him down instantly. I immediately raised my small shield over my head and continued running as arrows rained down. As we neared the gates, I slowed my pace, letting others run ahead and begin the assault on the castle. The castle’s guards focused on the group cutting through the ancient wooden gate, loosing arrows as fast as they could, while women in rags dropped stones and pots of hot oil. Men screamed as the oil splashed down, and a pile of bodies was beginning to hinder their efforts to break through. Finally, with a loud crash, the gate splintered and crumbled to the ground, and the roaring mass surged forward, clashing violently with a line of armored soldiers. The sound of metal-on-metal combat was deafening, but I didn’t pause to take part. I made my way through the gate and pushed my way around the angry mass just beyond.

I kept my head down to avoid any confrontations with the guards. I had to get to the top of the tower, and my odds of doing so were not great if I had to defend myself against a well-trained guard with nothing more than a small shield. Looking around, I spotted a mace half buried in the mud, just outside of the warring mob. I glanced around before making a dash for the discarded weapon and retreated back to my place along the wall. Mace in hand, I slowly crept my way closer to the keep.

Back at the gate, the immense Lord finally appeared and began slashing wildly from atop his horse, not caring whether his blade met friend or foe. He advanced slowly, cutting down everyone in his path. I cursed as I watched his progression toward the keep. I needed to get inside before he did, or all my efforts would be for nothing. I breathed deep, taking in the scent of dirt and blood so thick I could taste it. I bolted towards the keep door, swinging my mace at anyone who dared stand in my way. One guard fell with a hit to the shoulder, another by a solid hit to his knees, a third when the mace slammed into the side of his head, caving his helmet inward. They fell, one by one, and I left them behind without a backwards glance. Just as I reached the door, it swung open and a pair of guards ran out expecting to join the fray. The first didn’t even see me before I swung my weapon into his stomach. I slammed my shield against the second, pinning him against the stone keep. He reached for his sword, but the shield blocked his path. Dropping the mace, I ripped his knife from his belt and planted it firmly in his side. When I stepped back to retrieve the mace, he fell forward, making me side step to avoid his fall. When I glanced back, I saw my commanding knight was no longer atop his horse, but he was still hacking his way towards me. I ran into the keep and barred the door behind me. The prize this castle held was too precious to share.

I crossed the large hall, my feet crunching the old rushes as I ran to the wooden stairs beyond. I could hear shouts from above, and as I ascended the first step, another pair of guards rounded the corner. Two swords crashed onto my shield, cracking the wood down the center. We struggled for footing on the stairs, swinging our weapons and avoiding the blows until I landed one on a thigh. The man screamed and fell forward, narrowly missing me as he tumbled down the stairs. In my effort to avoid the falling guard, I stepped right into the path of a sword thrust. Blood poured from the hole in my shoulder as I stumbled down a step, giving the guard a chance to slice into my leg. With a roar, I jumped forward and knocked him down with my broken shield and slammed my mace down onto his helmet. I could hear the injured guard’s cries as he lay at the bottom of the stairs, but I didn’t look back. I ran up the stairs and around the corner, straight onto another wooden staircase, this one winding its way upward towards the top of the tower. I met no more resistance as I ran, taking the stairs two at a time. As I reached the door at the top, I could hear the bellowing rage of the huge knight coming from below. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

The fire I lit for us to dry ourselves, from the moat, was a risk.

We’d traveled most of the afternoon, stumbling through the wooded over-growth, as far from the road as I could manage to keep us. Even still, hours later, we were still wet. My leathers and such held water much better than anyone would wish, and the princess was wearing layers as women did.

The battle hadn’t been finished yet when we ran, but I couldn’t be sure Sir Phillip would have waited to finish it, before he chased after us. He’d spent a large amount of coin and effort to capture himself a princess; arguably he wouldn’t view me as much of a threat.

I should have insisted we leave no sign of our travels, but my shoulder hurt and I was tired of wet clothes and uninterested in wet, cold clothes.

“Do you have a name?” the princess asked, spreading her golden hair out over her shoulder.

I snorted. “Most do.” I ignored her and spent a moment picking the drying moat gunk from my leathers. “I’ve brought you, where is the treasure?”

She watched me for a long minute, before looking away and shifting on the log. “When I am safe.”

“Where do you believe I should take you for that miracle?” I stood, and paced near the fire.

My plan was falling apart. I needed the stone. I needed the power to fuel the ritual or everything would fail and I would spend the rest of my woefully short life trapped in this scrawny, mortal body.  It had been ten years already. Ten years.

The smell was the hardest to handle. Not just the smell of my own body, or the smell of the other bodies constantly around me—food and waste and horrific attempts at perfume to cover all the stench that just added more layers—but even the smell of the grass in the fields was offensive. I could not turn it off and after millennia of life with the ability to control every possible aspect of one’s body, that sudden failing was infuriating.

“Your wound…do you need to treat it?” she asked sweetly, trying to garner favor.

Did I? Arguably yes. The moat had been rather filthy, and this body was not exempt from even the most paltry germ. I’d spent the year before on a pallet in the corner of a sick-house trying to vomit myself to death and there was not even a reason for that. But I didn’t have anything for it, and Stars only knew when the last time was the woman had washed herself or her clothing.

And it’d been in the moat with us in any case.

I looked her over with distaste and shook my head. “I am well.”

She cocked a brow at me but did not challenge my assertion.

But I had lost a fair amount of blood, and the movement of pacing made me nauseous, so I sat myself again and stared into the fire. It was sad that I’d been settled with this scrawny, unattractive boy. The girl I could have worked with. She was mousy and timid, but she wasn’t bad looking. There was a power in feminine beauty, among these mortals. It was tiny and generally negligible and hampered by an insane number of detractors—most of them distillable to just generally men—but I could have managed something with that. Tricked my way into the supplies I needed. It would have been more enjoyable.

Well, it would have been more interesting in any case.

“You haven’t asked my name,” the princess whispered, watching me through shining blue eyes.

“I don’t care.”

She blinked at me, surprised. Eventually she looked away, her cheeks flushing, and crossed her arms over herself.

I added another log to the fire, listening to the pop and hiss of the wet wood. I missed fire. I missed real fire. Not the small, weak thing that existed on this plane. I’d long entertained myself by imaging what these mortals would have done with real fire.

Destroyed themselves, obviously, but the lead up could have been enjoyable.

“My name is Marielle,” she offered bravely.

Miracle, a new name for the time period. French, considered fashionable by the English. So inappropriate as to be oxymoronic.

“Good for you.”

Her face pinched, and we lapsed into silence again. I looked up into the night sky, deliberately avoiding the portion of sky that contained what the mortals called Draco. Eventually, I slipped to the ground and leaned back against my log and resigned myself to what my mortal body wasted a great deal of its time doing: sleeping.

“Do you have bedding?”

I growled and rubbed my face the hand not attached to my damaged shoulder. “Of course. I hid it in my leather doublet when we leaped from the tower.”

She blinked at me, blank and confused. “Oh.”

“I apologize that escaping your imprisonment and probably forced marriage to Sir Philip is less filled with comfort than you expected—“

“I do not like you.”

He laughed, shocked by her sudden pronouncement. “Do you imagine I care?”

Her nose turned up. “I may go back on my word.”

I shrugged and pretended it hadn’t been a colossal mistake. “Then I will leave you here to die. Or be found by Sir Philip, or whichever bandit stumbles across you first.”

Her eyes filled with wetness and her lip quivered. “You are heartless.”

I smiled darkly. “Good, we understand each other.” I nodded. “I am going to sleep now, and tomorrow you will furnish me with whatever you have on your person that I can barter for binding for my shoulder for.”

She squawked, shoulders puffing up.

“And if I find you an amiable enough companion I will escort you where you wish to go and not simply kill you here in the woods and rifle your corpse for what I wish for.” 

If I survive my editing deadlines well enough to come up with a post for Friday I'll let you all know.

It's time for part two of the flash fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig's blog. You can find my part-one story here, if you're interested in picking it up and running with it. Apparently you can jump in at any time. 

I picked Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Peter MacDonald, you can find his blog here. I'm going to post the story down below though, so you can see it all in one shot. My bit starts under the next divider, next to the picture.

The snow was up to Jake’s knees and still wasn’t quite done falling. While most of the snowfall had passed, there were still a handful of wayward flakes drifting down from the heavens, belatedly joining their brothers and sisters on the ground. It was the first real snowfall of the year, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last; before the month was out, the passes leading into the mountains he called home would be completely blocked up, and he would be alone until the spring thaw.

He bent down to check the last trap on this run. It was, unsurprisingly, empty. Game had been scarce for the past week, which boded poorly. If this kept up, he would have to dig into his stores, which might mean a lean winter. With a dejected sigh, he stood up, brushed the snow off of his knees, and started down the mountain towards his home. As he walked, he began to sing out loud a poem his father had taught him:

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here 

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

He took a deep breath between stazas, and the crisp winter air chilled his lungs. The warmth of his breath had fogged up his glasses, and he took them off for a moment, cleaning them with his shirtfront. He’d been wearing the same pair for three years now, and they were starting to wear thin; one of the legs had been clumsily repaired with bailing wire two weeks ago, after he’d taken a nasty fall on some frozen ground. Hopefully, a trader would come through with a new set before the pass closed.

If any more traders came through at all. It had been more than a month since he’d seen one.

My little horse must think it queer

to stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

the darkest evening of the year.

As he finished the second stanza, a distant rumbling made him look up, and see the black stormclouds moving in from the distance, the setting sun resting behind them. It seemed he’d misjudged the snowfall; it was letting up now, but it was only a brief reprieve before a true winter storm came down upon him.

I should cut through the woods, he thought. He normally avoided the deep woods whenever possible; he’d lived around them his whole life, but he still got turned around in them sometimes. Plus, the woods were full of unfriendly animals. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally stumble into a bear’s den, or get surrounded by a pack of wolves. But he wanted to get caught by that storm even less, and taking the direct route through the woods would get him home a lot quicker than walking long way around.

The woods were dark and twisted, and as he peered through his broken spectacles to keep track of the path, he sang the next stanza to keep his spirits up:

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

of easy wind and downy…flake…

As he spoke the final words, he stepped into a clearing and stopped short at the sight in front of him. The snow - including, he slowly realized, the very snow he was standing on - was stained red, and covered in the bodies of…creatures. There was no better way to describe them, but they were unlike anything Jake had ever seen in the twenty-three years he’d lived on the mountain. They were messes of tooth and claw, amorphous masses of limbs and mouths and eyes and tendrils. There were more than a dozen of them, but no two of them were alike, except for the one thing they had in common: they were all dead, rent apart by deep gashes and still slowly oozing blood.

The smell came upon him suddenly, and he doubled over with a sudden rush of nausea. His mouth filled with the taste of iron, and he nearly threw up onto the snow. He stepped forward in a daze, compelled to investigate. The creatures’ forms sickened him, but they fascinated him as well. He had to know more. Had to see more.

There were only a few of the creatures at the clearing’s edge, but the center was a solid mass, bodies piled together and on top of each other until you could barely tell where one ended and the next began, all of them coloring the snow with their ichor. Jake approached slowly, suddenly acutely aware of the sound of his boots crunching against the snow, of the fogging of his breath, of that terrible, terrible smell. He extended a hand to touch one of them. It was still warm. It had not been dead long. Its skin was thick and rubbery.

Jake jumped backwards as he heard a groaning sound. Panic made him clumsy, and he tripped over his own feet, falling down to the bloody snow. A moment later, another, louder groan could be heard. Jake lay very still for a moment, and then slowly rose to his feet as he realized that none of the creatures were moving. They were not the source of the noise. He stepped forward again and peered over the very top of the pile.

At the center of the clearing, at the very center of the mound of flesh, lay a woman, no older than he was. Her hair, blonde, her body, slim. Her cloak was stained with blood, and he could see that her clothing had been torn by tooth and claw. Her shoulder was a horrific mess, covered in what looked like teeth marks. But she was breathing. She was alive.

“Holy shit,” he gasped, clambering over the dead to get to her. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” His mind seemed to be stuck, unable to process any more than that. He knelt over her, quickly stripping off his gloves and then doing the same for her furs, wincing at what he found beneath them. Whoever this woman was, she was badly hurt.

His eyes fell on something bright: a pendant, hanging around her neck, which seemed to glimmer in the non-existent moonlight. For a moment, her injuries were forgotten. He reached out carefully to touch it, then lifted it up to inspect it. It was made of wrought silver, and shaped into a complex spiral of loops and whorls. He lifted it higher still, captivated by its light.

A sickening noise lifted up from the other side of the clearing, shocking him out of his stupor. He dropped the pendant and sat up, looking fearfully in its direction. One of the things - almost in the shape of a wolf, but with too many arms, too many jaws, and a body of roiling tendrils - was moving. It let out another sound, a rumble which got right into his gut and churned it, and then to his horror it sloughed up off of the ground and started coming towards him. Its legs were broken, its body covered in cuts, more than one of its limbs ended in stumps - but it was coming, leaving a blood red trail on the ground as it dragged itself towards him. It made it two, maybe three paces, and then with a keening moan it slumped over and died.

Jake crouched fearfully for a moment, waiting to see if it would start moving again. When it didn't he turned back to the woman, and got to work carrying her back to his cottage.

Alright, there's my exactly 1000 words. I'm super excited to see if somebody does something with this, for week 3.

And hey, check back Friday and I'll come up with some sort of scientific tie-in for this weeks posts for Sci-Fi Friday.

You can find the full list here--spoiler alert, it's full of white guys from the United States--but in a stunning upset the top of the list of richest people ever is an African king!

If we're going to look at this logically I suspect his getting to top the list has something to do with adding up inflation over some six-hundred years. It's probably equally why some of the secondary English nobles get to top the list over, say, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Because having one-hundred thousand dollars in 1406 and having one million dollars in 1806...well. I doubt they're equal but they're probably not as far off as you'd think.

Kind of makes me wonder what you'd get if you just tallied and looked at inflation for the last hundred years. Sadly I suspect most of the list would still be white and American. 

That link up there will tell you a little about Mansa Musa I of Mali too, in case you're curious. I'm pretty sure he gets a mention in Crash Course World History too. 

Happy Middle of Black History Month. 

I was stumbling around looking for inspiration for this post tonight, and yet again I wandered over to TerribleMinds, and there was this list post--I know, I have a weakness for those--about the five things so and so learned while writing such and such book. 

I have a weakness for list posts. Particularly because I still haven't figured out what my perfect, amazing post idea was last week. So guess what that means...

Ehehe. Yeah. You're all going "wait, did I miss something?" And you didn't. A Lady of Fortune was the first book I ever wrote, beginning to end. When I talk about scribbling on pieces of receipt paper and notebooks I bought off the discount shelf at Walgreens, it's the book I'm talking about. I started plotting A Lady of Fortune in February of 2001, so this seems like a good time to stop and take stock, right? 

1) Just Keep Swimming.
Write. Just write. I started A Lady of Fortune, and then I started it. And then I started it again. I rewrote the first five chapters over and over again for nearly three years. Not consistently, sure. I worked on it at times, and then I didn't work on it. I started it in 2001, and I finished the first draft in December of 2004. I've never taken that long to finish the first draft of a book. Hopefully it will not take me that long again.

2) Beware the Dragons.
We talked about this last week. This is my second biggest learning curve, as a writer. The best way you'll learn to get better is to pay attention to what you're doing wrong and fix it.  

3) Competition is Not A Thing.
I mean it is. Cause, you know, there are only so many people in the world spending money on books. But let's be real here for a second. In the massive, karmic circle of the universe there are two ways this works. Either A) you spend your life all defensive and trying to carve out your niche as a writer and you get a reputation for that--with your street team--or B) you let it go, and you make friends and help other fledgeling writers and swallow your negative comments and maybe it doesn't make your more money than the other option but crap it sounds more pleasant. 

4) Don't Stress!
Sometimes I go...ages where I don't write a thing. And I'm not one of those writers who starts panicking about how I'm never going to write anything again. It's not gonna happen, I'll come up with something eventually. When it happens, after fourteen years of this, I've learned not to freak out about it. Let the dry times happen, let them give you charge to do something else. Pick up a new hobby, or read a book you've been thinking about, or learn to cook something fun.

5) Learn From Others.
There's a really fine line here, between learning and Schadenfreude. Because there's "This thing happened and this is how badly it went and I should totes not do that." And then there's "Hahaha did you see what so and so did? OMG." And I think probably everybody is guilty of a certain level of Schadenfreude, that's why there's a word for it, but it's probably healthier for everyone if we try and keep that to a minimum.

So that's what I've got, fourteen years after I plotted my first book. You're welcome.

Come back Friday, and we'll talk about...um...um...Valentine's is this weekend so I guess we'll talk about the science of love? 

Ehehe. Yeah. Valentine's isn't really my favorite. I'm admittedly a pretty giant romantic--I feel like most of the best cynics are--but there's something about the pressure and the cheese of V-day I'm not fond of. 

Still, most of this weeks posts have been about February, and I said on Wednesday we'd talk about the science of love today. That sounds fun, right? 

I promise I'll try to make it less about biology and more about people.

From a purely physical standpoint, humans are a mess when it comes to love. We're swimming in dual-use chemicals with a metric ton of weird effects, being drug around by our hind-brain. And that's when we're functional and healthy, with good attachment practices and coping methods.

If you ask a biologist they'll either tell you we're looking for a partner who looks like us, or they'll tell you we're looking for a partner who looks like our parents. Or they'll tell you we're looking for someone with nearly perfect symmetry because that means they have better genetics and our possible procreates-to-be will get some of that perfect genetics. 

And scientifically we seem to be pretty clear on what's happening in the later stages of falling in love.

I should probably back up and tell you what those stages are, huh? 

No, I kid. Your hypothalamus is fine. Even if you don't always appreciate it, it's doing what it's supposed to do. 

Helen Fisher is a Biological Anthropologist from Rutgers University, and she's written all kinds of books about how to fall in love and how to keep a relationship and I'm not touching any of that with a ten-foot pole. The part we're here for today is her findings from thirty years of research into human romantic behavior. 

Fisher believes humans have developed three separate biological stages for falling in love. 

Stage 1 is all about lust. It doesn't seem to be about lust for a specific person--I'm not sure how that works as part of the stages but okay--it's more about your body chemistry being a little high on testosterone and estrogen. One charming article explained it as 'being up for anything' and yeah...not touching that one either.

Stage 2 is our Attraction phase. The silly, lovesick, doodling-the-name-of-your-potential-love-over-and-over-in-everything-you-own phase. It's supposed to be relatively short-lived because:
A) if it wasn't we'd never get anything done, and 
B) as any person who's watched a friend go through this stage knows, these people are freaking obnoxious. We'd weed them all out before they got around the to babies part and that would probably be detrimental to our survival as a species.

We get some pretty kick-ass drugs in this phase, including a couple that can also make us temporarily insane: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Which just sort of explains the rest of that, doesn't it?

Stage 3 is our Attachment phase. Yay, more chemicals! These ones are supposed to help us form long-term, close bonds. Generally through sexual release, but I suppose there are worse ways to find yourself chemically chained to someone. And unless you're worried about lactating or your kidneys don't like you, Oxytocin and Vasopressin aren't all that concerning.

This is when they start comparing us to Prairie Voles.

Aren't those the cutest little shits ever?

So what's the takeaway from all the chemicals and big words and adorable rodents? 

Basically, we're ten pounds of mess in a five pound sack. Either we're all biology or we're all societal conditioning or we're some strange place in the middle. Whichever the answer is, we don't seem to be particularly qualified to be driving that bus. We're not choosing, our genetic programming is, and scientists are probably going to be disagreeing for the rest of our days--or until we manage actual genetic engineering of humans and then this all becomes redundant, right? <--That was sarcasm. I have very strong feelings that this will go badly. 

Ultimately I can't be too on board with the science of love. I don't for a second doubt all those things happen, that we get high-jacked by chemicals and then we get hooked on certain ones and the people who inspire those are the people we stick with. And hey, that opens the door on a really compelling conversation about how bad a relationship--that's gotten to stage three--has to get before you'll bale...

But working us down to chemical process and ingrained biology sells us so short of one of the better aspects of human behavior. And sure, this is the process rundown of romantic love but is that all there is?  I don't even mean the way we love our children or our pets or our family. What about our friends, or our capacity to find empathy for perfect strangers? If you're going to break us down to chemistry and genetic procreative conditioning, where does that leave all the rest of our needs? Does that mean the rest of our emotional ties aren't real, just because they're not being reinforced biologically?

And--because I'm always trying to tie this stuff into a Science Fiction mindset--what would that mean for us if we evolve past the biological part of the imperative? If romantic love is all about biology, what do we do without the biology?

I don't have answers for any of that--I never do, when we start asking questions on Sci-Fi Friday--but if you've got thoughts I'd love to hear them. Even if you'd just like to grumble about Valentine's Day.

So I'm supposed to do a February check in here. And actually, I was supposed to do it sometime last week. But whatever. We'll just pretend this is still the beginning of February and I'll tell you all about my February goals and that'll be all she wrote. 

So, about the January goals. I got all my January goals managed, except for the whole making Christmas/Yule/Whatever presents for friends. I did get every-bodies birthday presents done. And I did read a book for January, and you all saw it posted here.

Refractions, Vol 1, went out and you can get it here.

Case of the Armadillo is out, and Undiscovered Country is still looking for reviewers, but I sent out a bucket-load of requests last month. I will send out a pile more of them this month.

Now it's time to talk about February goals:

1) I've signed up for the Get Your Words Out Challenge at LiveJournal, and I utterly failed at it last month, but this month I will manage to make it if I have to drag myself across the line.

2) We're making a bunch of stuff to sell at AwesomeCon, and I need to keep on that. There will be muchness.

3) I will finish Strange Travels 2 (I keep saying that, but at some point I'm going to manage that).

4) I will read a book this month, either for review or just for me. 

Alright. 
Wednesday's post will be something appropriate for Well-Written Wednesday, and Friday will somehow, in some strange way, tie in with that.

Check out Mr Wendig's awesome challenge here, but the gist is that you write the first 1k of a story on your blog, and then link, to it in the comments on his challenge post by Feb 13th, and someone else gets to pick your story up next week, and you pick up someone else's. 

So, below you will find my little seedling. Feel free to link yours in my comments too, so I can find you :)

So. That's my bit. Someone else gets to take it from there.

Also, it's entirely possible someday I will finish my own, where I think it was going, and post that two, once the rest of this is done.

Anyway. Come on peeps. Jump in with me.

I write this post with utterly every expectation that literally as soon as I finish it lightening with rent the sky, and I will miraculously remember my perfect, cogent, amazing post. The one that's been flitting away at the corner of my brain for days. 

I do this with the understanding that if I don't just give up on it not only will it never reappear, but it will never reappear and I will have no post for Well Written Wednesday. So we're going to make hay while the sun shines, so to speak. 

The list of projects I could walk you through, that died on the vine due to my inability to take appropriate notes is just... It's staggering, honestly. I have entire books that I stopped 20k from the end of that I can't finish because I don't remember where they were going anywhere. I have projects I started and did all the world building for but didn't bother to write down the actual plot--that's the easy part, why would I write that?--that may never see the light of day. 

I mourn them. Any one of them could have been it. It could have been the book that revives The Great American Novel. The book that made me the darling of Sophomore English teachers everywhere. The book that--

You're right. That got a little out of hand. 

The point is, creative people are fucking ace at building the project that never happened into the one. I hear this from people all the time. I had the greatest book idea once, but I didn't write it down. And this isn't the part where I turn into a giant hypocrite and tell you not to do that. That it's wrong to trumpet about your lost swans of awesome. It is. And also, I promise you, annoying as shit to literally everyone else in existence. But I'm not going to tell you that. Nope nope nope.

I'm going to tell us that. 

Some things are universal to the creative experience. I suspect a certain propensity for whinging might be one of those things. Also, a certain lack of planning. But that's good. We know this. We know we don't always think ideas through all the way, and we don't always plan enough in advance. We know wherest our dragons reside, we can avoid them if we cannot outright smite them. 

Step One to Avoiding the Dragons:
When you tell yourself you don't need to write it down because it's so brilliant you will remember? You are a dirty, dirty liar who lies. Write it down. No, I don't care. Write it in lipstick on your forehead. No excuses. Avoid the Dragon.

Step Two to Avoiding the Dragons:
Carry a notebook. Get an app for your phone. Shove napkins into your pockets and steal bank pens. I personally am pretty fond of Evernote, my husband carries a moleskin and sharpie pen for his crazy inventor moments. I wrote the first three chapters of a book on bits of left over receipt paper while I was supposed to be working, once. As high tech or low tech as you want it, Step One works a lot better if you've got something handy to take a note with. 

Step Three to Avoiding the Dragons:
NO EXCUSES!  Seriously. The impetus for this post comes from the fact I was getting out of the shower and figured I'd write it down later. There is no later. I don't care how crazy you look. Do it!

Step Four to Avoiding the Dragons:
Pay attention to the quixotic, seasonal nature of your dragons. When I first started writing, my Alpha Dragon was unhealthy editing habits that meant I was never actually writing. Then my Alpha Dragon was leaving incomprehensible editing notes, because clearly I'd remember when I got there. At the moment, my Alpha Dragon is probably the ellipsis. But I know that and I'm working on it. Once that's done, I'm sure they're be something new. Probably my tendency to rehash the same themes over and over. 

Step Five to Avoid the Dragons:
Don't let The Fish Story get in the way of actual work. In all things in life, the best you can do with a failure is to learn from it. Embrace the Fish Story. Extract the bits of it that make you feel like it could have been the one (if you can remember them). And then move on. 

There you have it. Beware the Dragons.

And check back Friday, when I talk about dragons. 

So sometime last week I had the perfect idea for a blog post, and I've lost it. And given it was supposed to be  Wednesday post, it shouldn't be a big deal, right? Expect one of the things I'm trying to do more of, anymore, is to link my week's posts together. 

That's a little hard to do when I'm still convinced I'll remember my perfect post idea at some point. 

All that said, what does that mean you get for Miscellaneous Monday? 

The Fandom Universe is one of those projects we keep talking about getting off the ground, and then something always comes up. It's a vast project, for one reason. And for a very long time we were going to have the first installment be Indelible Ink (Harry Potter), but then we sat down and started looking at our spring schedule this year and...well.
AwesomeCon is in May. The new Star Wars Movie is in May. May the 4th and Revenge of the 5th...

So. Shortened schedule and all that. If you know someone who'd like to design a cover for us, or write us an essay about how Star Wars changed their life or...whatever, check it out here.