It's Well Written Wednesday today, and even though I should be doing my goals post--it's September and aside from jumping for joy that summer's over, I'm up to my neck in goals...--I'm going to talk about something else. Something writing related. 

I briefly, with what felt like utterly no success at all to me, tried the Three Day Novel challenge this holiday weekend. And I looked at my calendar for the next couple of weeks. And then I decided to spend a couple of hours just messing about on the internet. Because. 

Shush you. 

Anyway, I stumbled on this post on Mental Floss, about the best parents in fiction. With full understanding that clicking on something on Mental Floss is about like falling into the pit that is TV Tropes, I read it anyway. Parents in literature are definitely a soft spot for me. I deeply identified with Elizabeth Bennett as a young woman for a whole lot of reasons I'm sure my lovely parents would rather I not admit to. I loved books about orphans, and children who strike off and go their own direction. 

I have parental issues. I was writing in something approaching a professional way for about five years before I realized I was worse than Disney. My characters almost never have parents. Generally, they've been dead quite a while. They were utterly unfit, they didn't care, I could keep going but you get the point. I realized if I ever got published I was probably going to have something to explain there. My dad's an avid reader, and my mother's been a psychiatric nurse since almost before that was actually a thing. 

Here's the thing. I was a difficult child, for all of us I think. Oh, I didn't run off and drink or do drugs. I didn't get suspended from school or pick fights. I was shy, and withdrawn even with them. I don't think I ever actually liked to be touched, and I have trust issues that exist in my head so far back I'm not sure it's possible for them to be anybodies fault, even if those always worked that way. Which they don't. 

I seriously doubt anyone who tells me they have a perfect relationship with their parents. How can you? We're not little seed-podlings. It's no different than roommates assigned by a computer. If your parents have done their jobs right you should disagree on all kinds of things, because you should have learned to think for yourself. And in doing that, since you didn't have their experiences growing up, all kinds of things have to change. If you're any age between 12 and 40 and you can't tell me one thing about your parents that drives you absolutely insane you're lying to someone. For your sake I hope it's just me.

So that list I linked to, of all the great parents in literature. It's a little idyllic for my taste. I like Mr Bennet, who is so engrossed in his books he misses things he really shouldn't and makes crappy decisions because they mean he gets peace. I even like Mrs Bennet, despite her drama and hysterical tendencies--in small doses. I like Narcissa Malfoy because let's all agree, without her Draco Malfoy would have turned out even more screwed up than he did. 

Parents are people too, outside of their job as parents. They should be in fiction too.

ppssst. Come back Friday. We're talking about TIME TRAVEL. 

So here on my normal blog, I talk about Science-Fiction on Fridays and originally at the start of the week I was going to do that on the Art of Procrastination too this Friday. Maybe find something interesting to talk about in regard to what it takes to get into the SFWA, or something else that tied it to publishing.

But midnight starts the annual 3-day Novel Challenge. I'm taking the weekend off from being a publisher. Until midnight on Monday I'm just a writer. I like to talk about writing. And cheese. And occasionally sheep.

Someday on here I'll go into the whole story of why we're called Golden Fleece Press. Or maybe Kate will. One of us will happily drag you into the fabled land of crazy with us eventually, don't worry. When we do, why I've mentioned sheep when I'm going to talk about World Builder's Disease will suddenly, miraculously, make sense. You're welcome.

I have fully realized, type A, un-treatable World Builders Disease. Like it needs a national day of recognition, it's so bad. So I should understand the impetus to draw a map of your fantasy kingdom, or tell me the full five-generational family tree of your main character. I should have gobbled up those pages of genetic coding in Jurassic Park, instead of skimming past them to get back to the swimming T-Rex.

But I don't, and I didn't. I lose patience incredibly quickly with information I don't need.

You think the next thing I say is going to be that you shouldn't do all that, don't you?

Not in a million years. Because that highly-detailed, rich background world hiding in your notebook will leak onto the page in a million other places. In places I want it, because it keeps your world and your characters from being weak card-board cut-outs. So watercolor a full topographical map of your kingdom. Figure out the exact science of gene-splicing your frog-bat. Determine exactly how Frank Idiot the Third is directly related to the Holy Roman Emperor.

Just only tell me the stuff I actually need to know.

This super short post is brought to you by the fact it is 11:28 and I'm already itching to dive into creating a pin-board of visual inspiration I shouldn't have time to look at this weekend.

While we were on vacation this week, near Lake Anna, we experienced a test of the Nuclear Emergency Preparedness system. There's a nuke plant, that provides a decent sized chunk of the power consumption for the southern half of the Washington DC area there. 

I honestly can't explain what that it feels like, being on a beach enjoying the day when the nuke sirens start up. It was a bit like being in one of those 1980's cold-war disaster movies. And as surreal as that was, I promise it was for the best. Obviously it's for the best that they test them, but also that we were in public when they went off. 

My small scientific replica is nervous about things like alarms and emergency signals. And vehicles, and...lets just say there's a family history of nervousness I had a fairly good indication was coming before he was born. We deal, generally positively and without a lot of drama. 

There were probably sixty or so people on that beach with us, and other than the initial jump, none of them cared about the siren. The beach isn't much of a tourist area, it was at Lake Anna State Park, which I seriously recommend, if you ever happen to be in the area (I have literally no clue why you would be). So being surrounded by locals meant the parental units stayed calm about the insanely loud, jarring, faintly terrifying siren when it started. Being calm yourself makes it much easier to keep small people-like things calm too. 

Apparently this is a test they do the third Wednesday of every month at 12pm. Another good thing to know, if you're ever in the area. If the sirens go off times other than that, as my dear-husband and I said on the day, don't get your shit, just get out. 

Fun bit of trivia? I found this newspaper article that talks about a series of false alarms this particular system had, back in the 1980's. Apparently, once in a while, they just went off. Hehe. Cause that's totally not a problem, taking the time to call the radio station to see if you should be evacuating away from the nuclear power plant...

This aren't the exact kind of sirens used at Lake Anna, but I suspect they sound very similar.

Well-Written Wednesday and Sci-Fi Friday will happen over on The Art of Procrastination this week, in deference to the whole just back from vacation thing.

You would think the pretty little diagram would make it easier to understand, but obviously not.

Off the coast of the island of Antikythera in 1901, while excavating a ship-wreck, a group of archaeologists and divers pulled up a hunk of rock, along with a whole host of other minutia thought to come from the isle of Rhodes, during the time of Julius Caesar. The hunk of rock wasn't particularly interesting, so it went into storage. 

Until about a year later when an archaeologist noticed a gear, embedded in the rock. He believed it to be some kind of astrological clock. But given it's complexity, and their understanding of the other things taken from the site, it fell back into storage. Until someone else picked up the trail in 1951, but even with interest it was still 1971 until they took x-ray and gamma-ray images of the 82 fragments. 

Hundreds, nearly thousands of years in the silt at the bottom of the ocean, and the nearly another hundred in a lab, and still the best we can guess, the Antikythera Mechanism was being taken back to Caesar as a spoil of war. We don't know how many tries it took to create the thing, or who, or how. We're not even entirely sure what it's supposed to do--though totally check out the theories, if you're up for the science content. 

Things like this in science always make my psuedo-science brain buzz (for a fun time, check out Mischa Collins in Stonehenge, Apocalypse, which I'm almost positive mentions this little beauty and even if I'm wrong, it's still worth a watch). There are so many things about the ancient world we don't really understand yet, and I'm not an 'alien assistance' kind of girl, but I always wonder when we're going to fill those holes.

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.

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.

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.

I finished my first, official edits this week. Well. I say 'finished.' I never actually feel finished, but it was deadline (I had a whole hour and thirteen minutes to spare, it was fine). 
Which has left me staring at the calendar, determinedly not thinking about the few days of freedom I have left until the summer starts. 
And wondering what to do now. 
So, in deference to that, this is all you're getting for Well Written Wednesday this week, and I'm going to go do something fun. I suggest you do the same.

And dear god, don't fall into your 'old projects' folder, whatever you do. 

I have a fever alright? And it was grocery shopping day, and then my husband wanted to go out for a date and...

Do you need more excuses, or does that cover it? Can I talk about Malefecent now?

I know technically it's not Sci-fi, and even if it were it wod be better suited to Wednesday... It's 10:28 on a Friday and I'm an I'll person. Take what you can get.

Which isn't going to be much. There's no adequate way for me to tell you about this movie without a seriously epic amount of spoilage. Just go see it, it's worth the ticket price. 

So...um...tie in. Right. 

Somewhere back a ways I talked about the "boo-hiss-man evil" trope in science fiction. Apparently I forgot it was a thing in Fantasy too. Or I think maybe I internalized it in fantasy. So much of that revolves around how precious the earth is I don't notice the correlations so much. Which makes me wonder if there's a more nuanced accounting in Sci-fi and I just havent found it yet. Any suggestions?

Okay, the sicky is going to bedfordshire now. Leave your comments/suggestions/fever dreams down in the thingy.