I'm taking a break from staring with baited breath at the kickstarter --do you see what I did there? Yes, I know I'm shameless--to manage a Well Written Wednesday post about books.

Well, a specific book. 

I've long been a big fan of Midsomer Murders. I'm not quite the fan my mother is--but then few people are. Still, somewhere ages ago I realized the show was based off a series of books written by Caroline Graham and I set about trying to get my hands on one. I don't know if any of you have ever fallen in love with a British writer or series, but the distance between the US and the UK never seems to be worse than when you want a book that's apparently not in print here. (someday I will likely go on a nearly vulgar rant about Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency)

My parent's managed it long before I did, and suddenly this week, to spite the ridiculous pile of things I should be reading, I started Death of a Hollow Man. 

So. Early reactions. Caroline Graham's command of language makes me feel vaguely bereft. The way she manages the detail through all the different character's eye is wonderful. And while I have an eerie feeling at this point that it might get tiresome later on, for now I still find it invigorating. 

And my strange thought is entirely wrapped up in constantly wondering if it's going to happen exactly the same way as the tv show. And if all the interweavings of the characters are going to stay the same.

Hopefully, again to spite the epic level of other reading I should be doing, I'll have an answer for you next week.

Holy Crackers! I have a theme!

I know, right? That’s super unusual.

Anyway. Earlier this week I blogged about legos washing ashore along Cornwall and Devon. And it’s probably no coincidence the BBC also did a piece on what those islands of plastic are up to in our oceans. I’m sure they have just as much fun searching for content as I do.

Could you tell that was facetious?

Anyway. The standard saying is that we know more about space than we know about what happens at the bottom of our own oceans. I don’t know if that’s true. I think it might be, humans have an incontrovertible attentiveness to what’s happening up there in the sky over us, and we’re generally just–probably rightfully—afraid of deep water.

But, along with the random lego octopi, and a travelling hoard of rubber ducks, and the kind of plastic that’s working its way into the geologic record, we get things like a message in a bottle sent in 1914 that just found its way to someone. Think about that. Someone wrote a message to his family, in the early days of WW1, and it’s spent the last hundred years doing cheese knows what in the ocean.

And reading that, I can’t imagine what else is floating around down there, waiting for us to find it.

I'm trying my hardest not to turn Well Written Wednesday into "This is everything that's wrong with the slush pile."

Because seriously, there is so much wrong with the slush pile.

Anyway. We're going to talk about Oath-breakers.  Yeah, alright, I get nobody likes a liar, but that's not precisely what I mean. I mean oath-breakers in fiction. When you sit down and write, when you tell me a story, you're making a promise. Maybe it's not blood on the dotted line, but it's still a promise. 

"Hey, you. This thing I'm telling/showing/sketching out for you, it'll have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It'll have a purpose as a story--maybe not a higher one, but whatevs, it'll still be a purpose--and it'll do all the things it's promising to do before you get to the end. We cool?"

Because when it doesn't do those things? There are whole lands of failure devoted to stories who fall down on those. The kind you need a sixteen-mule-team and a magical compass to navigate. Stay away from magical failure land, storytellers. Stay far far away. 

It's not hard, just actually freaking finish your story. Finish it the way it should finish, after you've begun. Finish it like it's the last story you're ever going to tell, and it should hold up to the light of the ages, eligible for reprint in the Ancient Gazette when we're winging our way toward Andromeda Prime in a thousand year's time. 

Today's Miscellaneous Monday is a collection of links. Because I came across this and thought I would share it all with you. It seems suitably random.

In 1997 a container ship called the Tokio Express lost a collection of containers when it was hit by a wave. Now, there's not generally any bright side to accidentally spilling twenty containers worth of stuff into the ocean. 

Except maybe a little when it's twenty containers of nautical themed Legos. 

I won't bore you with the details, the BBC did a much better job of it than I would have. You can find the article here.

I'd class that much better than the dead jellyfish I usually find along the beach. 

Lego Lost at Sea -- The Facebook, so you can track the phenomenon. As time wasters go, it's probably one of the better ones I've found lately. 

I feel like this Sci-Fi Friday needs to be audience participation. Given the amount of content I've managed this week, I'm allowed to be a little lazy.

So, write me a tagline for the picture. Make it as silly or as serious as you like.

Unclear on what a tagline is, look at some of these. Even if you know what a tagline is, go look. Just trust me.

One of the joys of the internet is the fact I can be in two places at once.

Hopefully not so much in the creepy way displayed in the painting there.

For a few months now, on this blog I've been trying a rotation of theme days. Miscellaneous Monday, Well Written Wednesday, and Sci-Fi Friday. I fail about as often as I succeed. Ask any newspaper columnist ever about how not-simple repetitive content is.

But this week my themes line up, between this blog and The Art of Procrastination, so I'm cross posting. They will be as ships that pass in the night. Seriously, stop looking for ice-bergs, it'll be fine.

Yes, alright. I'm being lazy and trying to write four blog posts this week instead of  five. So what? Were you--amorphous internet people you--going to offer to write one of those for me?

Didn't think so.



Anyway, it's Wednesday and that means we talk about things that are well-written. Or not, as the case may be.

There's been a sudden increase of slush pile in my life lately. And I know what writers think and say about the dreaded Slush. Let me tell you about the Slush from the other side.

Golden Fleece Press isn't by any means my first experience with a slush-pile. I've had plenty of occasion in my life to read things that should never have seen the light of day. I once reviewed a romance novel that has forever become my yard-stick for fail on a level I can barely articulate. It was long, and awful, and shaped about eighty percent of my views on the usefulness of historical accuracy in entertainment.

There was another one that involved badly conceived time-travel and characters even biblical-level plague would have been too good an end for.

I once rather stupidly, in the annals of my life squiring writers, offered online assistance to literally anyone who wanted help with their novel plot. What followed was three hours of incomprehensible, werewolf-themed shenanigans I will never get back and I feel their absence keenly.

These are the worst cases. The hyperbole--great spaghetti monster in the sky do I wish it was--infused funnies. The truly bad. But we all have ideas that die on the vine, or that should die on the vine. Apparently there's a knack for learning which ones those are. I can sympathize with that, even if I'm doing it backwards and sideways over my rolled eyes because just why.

What I can't get, I refuse to get, are the misplaced submissions. Why would you relegate yourself to the slush needlessly? And also we said it was a journal for children. Have you met children? They're the little things we used to be before life taught us there were worse things than spinach and math homework. We wanted Bunnicula, not Pet Cemetery.

Alright. Rant over. Maybe later I'll spill into all the ways YA is the deadest vibrant market I've ever beheld.

Fingers crossed next week's round of slush will be from people who once held an affinity for celery-desiccating bunnies.

Because I'm being an over-achiever today. 

Random Fact #5385
The Armadillo is a primary carrier of Leprosy. Once, before European entrance into the new world, both the Armadillo's and the people were free of leprosy. 
This means...
Somewhere in the annals of history a Spaniard touched an Armadillo and it all went down-hill from there. 

Random Fact #5386
One of the most common ways for people to contract Leprosy? Eating Armadillo. If I could draw there would totally be a 'battle armored-pig' comic below this one. Cause it still gets you after it's dead.

Random Fact #5327
When startled, the nine-banded armadillo jumps three to four feet straight up. Get that image out of your head.

Random Fact #5390
The Nine-Banded Armadillo is the only mammal to have fully polyembryonic reproduction. This means every single time the girl Armadillo get's pregenant--and that's a set of facts for another time--she has four genetically identical offspring, all formed from the same egg but growing their own placenta and embryonic sack (do you call it an embryonic sack in mammals, or is that just chickens?). She will do this once a year for her entire adult life span. 

Is it any wonder they're slowly crawling their way north? 

And lastly...Behold, the Pink Fairy Armadillo.
What the heck.

And more miscellaneous than ever!  

Shhh, I know it's still Sunday.

Today's random bit of randomness is that dude up there. His name was Bernd Rosemeyer. And despite how strange his car looks (it looks backwards, doesn't it?) he was notable for being a Nazi, a Racing super-star, and having a ridiculous nickname. 

Alright, Miscellaneous Monday can wave goodbye to the Neiblemeister--I don't know what that means in German and I don't want to--and maybe we'll wave hello to his flying ace wife, Elly Beinhorn next week. 

I have utterly no clue what I said I was going to do this month. I think it was said with the full understanding that if I hadn't mentioned Golden Fleece Press yet, it was already hovering in my work folder and therefor whatever I thought was going to happen was more or less slated for failure.

It's hard to say I failed last month, when I sit back and look at everything I actually did. Did I do the stuff I said I was going to do? Well...no. I'm pretty sure I did nearly none of it. 

Whatevs. It's a new month full of new beginnings. I opened a publishing company last week! Arguably with a crap-ton of help and the coolest business partner in the universe, but I digress.  So. Goals for this new month.

• Ignore the faintly horrifying number of blogs I am responsible for upkeep on and ACTUALLY DO THEM. I know, this one might be a little difficult. Still, moonbeams and stardust and all that jazz.
• Edits. For the thing that's my placeholder in this whirlwind snowball of doom. I have months, but given everything else I need months so...
• I am doing Camp Nano. Because you all know I am crazy and I said I wouldn't, but you all knew that was a lie. You did, come on, admit it. I'm writing content for projects to be announced later and I know for a fact at least one of them is going to be utterly unhelpful in the way that means a 25k word project decides to be ten books. So. I've got that to look forward to. 
• Plan out a blog tour. Because my professional life isn't full to the gills already.

Right. So. There's my July, mixed in with my birthday and my kid's birthday and two visits from my parents and one national holiday and...

I wonder if there's a floor on my attic. That seems like a legitimate place to hide.