Guns & Magic

 

The Experiment by John Darnton.

 

The Best American Short Stories 2005 was largely disappointing. A few stories stood out, but none of them were particularly satisfying. The best one, IMO, was “Until Gwen” by Dennis Lehane. But I just have to know: Why in Hell would anyone write a second person, present tense story??? I think that without that “literary gimmick” the story would have been much, much better.

 

-David

 

The Best American Short Stories 2005.

 

I finished My Name is Aram by William Saroyan in the middle of last week. I enjoyed the light-hearted short stories. In style, the stories are very much like Saroyan’s Fresno Stories, which I read right before My Name is Aram.

 

The rest of the week, I spent re-reading Iron Kingdoms material in preparation for my new D&D campaign, which starts in a couple weeks.

 

-David

 

Horse Girl – 1003 words (chapter 8 total: 4796)

 

I will get this chapter done. And then I’ll get the next one done. And eventually I’ll have this book finished.

 

Really.

 

Middles for me are where a book always starts feeling like work. Where the ending seems the farthest away. Where I look at the story and wonder the most what made me start this project in the first place.

 

But you can’t reach the end without going through the middle.

 

And I’ll be out of the middle soon. So long as just keep on writing.

 

-David

 

Horse Girl – 941 words (chapter 8 total: 3793)

 

I have a suspicion this chapter will be long-ish. And then I’ll edit it and chop it back down to about average.

 

-David

 

Lack of sleep makes me grouchy–and non-productive as a writer. I had big plans for last week, and got off to what I thought was a good start on Monday.

 

And then … ?

 

Crickets. Loud, hungry crickets, sweeping across the landscape like a plague of … loud, hungry crickets.

 

So I got damn near nothing done last week. Certainly nothing I had planned to do before the week started.

 

I don’t know if it was daylight savings (jet lag?) or allergies or what. But I got slammed by insomnia last week starting Monday night. By Thursday, having slept damn little, I was quite bastard-like. Irritable, snappish. Very much the barely awake, bitter, annoying person with no patience and big teeth.

 

I’m better now. <twitches> Mostly.

 

No, really. I’ll be fine.

 

But the whole concept of me having insomnia is … weird. I never have trouble sleeping. “Now I lay me down to–zzz  …”

 

But I had insomnia last week. And it sucked.

 

I wonder if this is another of those “approaching 40″ things?

 

I’m trying not to feel guilty about it. Because I need to get this Horse Girl novel done. I had thought to have it finished by now, so I could work on other writing projects. And here we are, only halfway-ish.

 

No help for it, I guess. Sometimes life gets in the way.

 

I won’t feel guilty. But I can’t help but feel behind.

 

Well, let’s try it again this week.

 

Brace for impact!

 

-David

 

My Name is Aram by William Saroyan.

 

Fresno Stories, also by William Saroyan, was entertaining. Light-hearted stories about life in small-ish-town America in the early years of the 20th century. The narrator and the stories come from the immigrant experience, but they’re so human that the stories still resonate.

 

-David

 

Horse Girl – 1036 words (chapter 8 total: 2852)

 

I lost Friday to an internet outage. Not that I need the internet to write (though it’s invaluable for “just in time” research). Just that a) it’s lack is a distraction I can’t ignore, because b) that’s how I make my living. You take away my internet connection, even temporarily, and you add all sorts of stress to my life.

 

So the time during the day Friday when I would’ve been writing was spent going out to somewhere where I could access the internet and taking care of business. Then, still distracted, I went and shot some pictures under the I-44 bridge along Riverside Drive. Then I went out again later in the evening. So at least I was somewhat creative. I just didn’t write much.

 

-David

 

Fresno Stories by William Saroyan. My friend the William Saroyan fan loaned me this one, and another one.

 

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore is damn funny. I liked it a lot.

 

I have only 2 small quibbles with A Dirty Job. Well, one tiny quibble, and one “the hell?” that seems rather glaring. So they average out to “small”.

 

The tiny quibble is the overuse of the word “fuck”, especially in the first half of the book. Based on my own writing, and my outspoken vocabulary, bringing this up will probably shock people who know me. And it’s kinda shocking me too, right now. But I stand by it. When goth-chic Lily called people “fuck tard”, it never bothered me. But when Charlie said “what the fuck” and its variations, it never seemed to work. Not necessarily out of character, or even out  of place (there’s some weird shit going on, a WTF is definitely in order), but it just never really fit.

 

The more glaring issue was the introduction of the Audrey character late into the book. By itself, that’s no big deal. But combine her late introduction with a) her sudden importance to the storyline, and b) her page-after-page of dictated life history … She seemed tacked on and/or shoehorned in. Looking at it like an editor, I would have preferred to have her storyline interwoven from the beginning instead of dumped in like that, so close to the end.

 

Anyway, it’s a great book. Funny and dark and darkly funny. I’ll dig up some of Moore’s other books later on in the year, assuming the library has ‘em.

 

-David

 

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.

 

I was a bit surprised to find that I had gone through the entire Elliott Erwitt Snaps last night. I love the photos in that book. They represent a style of photography that I want to master: the inspired snapshot, an eye for the unusual combined with anticipatory timing and skill with the equipment and lighting available.

 

I also finished Five Fingers: Port of Deceit from Privateer Press. I’ve done all the reading I plan to do to prepare for my new D&D campaign. Now I have to create the nuts and bolts of the campaign, preparing interesting things for the player characters to do–and preparing for them to ignore my preparations and do their own thing…

 

-David

 

Horse Girl – 1032 words (chapter 8 total: 1816)

 

I’ve decided, for now, to stick with the 1000-word daily quota. It seems to fit my day better, currently. Maybe I’ll step it up again when I get to the last few chapters.

 

-David