It's Summer

You can tell because my patio looks like a jungle.  what parking lot?  i've got a jungle outside my apartment, bitches.

And also because all the epiphanies are blooming.  smack dab in the middle of my walk jamming out to... gosh i don't even remember... was it Jimmy Eat World?  i know i started out the walk with Supertramp.  a good way to start out a walk.

Bam, it hits me.  one of those obnoxious "road under construction" signs is pulled aside and i'm finally allowed to travel down new road.  it hadn't been a full-on writer's block.  just a writer's construction sign...

I've been reading and between writing stories lately.  that's been nice but i think we're on our way back.  To The Guide once again.

i need to get paid to do this so i can focus on doing this.

The Traveler and Sherlock Holmes

Let's start with Sherlock.  I recently watched the final episode of House and in the retrospective i learned that he was based a lot on Holmes.  I realized that i know so little about Sherlock that i never saw any of the links.  not even something so small as House and Holmes having the same house number.  I felt incomplete and lacking.

This past weekend the husband and i watched the first Sherlock Holmes movie and then last night we watched the new one.  we'd seen the first one before, i liked it better the second time around.  The husband was asking me questions about Holmes and, again, i knew not enough!

I don't know exactly how long ago it was that i bought a book of Holmes stories but i decided finally to take it to work and read them already.  I'm bad with short stories, as i've said before, so i'm just gonna read them one per day until i'm done.  there's 22 stories in the book so there's 30 some that i have to find elsewhere.  but maybe i'll be done with the whole thing after i finish this book... we'll have to see.

And unlike the morons on Goodreads who judge Dracula by the merits of Twilight i will not be judging Sherlock by the merits of Robert Downy Jr. (or Gregory House for that matter...)

in related events, i have yet to find my next book in my Meryl Streepathon... it's mostly becuase i keep forgetting to put the list of books in my wallet so i have it with me when i go book shopping.  I did see a Michael Cunningham book when i went to the book store today but i didn't know if it was the right one.  (though i did get Little Women and Werewolves.  i loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and was iffy on Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters... but i figured why not?  i love werewolves.  I also got another F. Scott Fitzgerald book, which is ridiculous.  i didn't like The Great Gatsby and i'm still only a quarter of the way through This Side of Paradise which is just a sliver of a book... ah well...)

And on to The Traveler.  oh, there's this whole big story about this book, how i bought it and why, what i was expecting from it and what i got instead... But it's just crazy.  and the fact that the author, John Twelve Hawks, is a pseudonym and he has NEVER REVEALED HIS TRUE IDENTITY.  he lives off the grid.  he speaks to his editor through email and on a satellite phone with a voice modifier.  What the hell!?  it almost makes me think that this story he's telling, about living off the grid and all the stuff that's going on under the radar of the drones and the citizens (that's us) is ACTUALLY HAPPENING!  i want to google about travelers and harlequins but i'm afraid that the brethren are actually watching and there's computer viruses loaded into those websites to keep us away...

The Meryl Streep-athon

I don't know if it can really be called an "-athon" but that's what i'm calling it.  i made the list of all of her movies that came from books.  here's the list:

Kramer vs. Kramer - Avery Corman
The French Lieutenant's Wife - John Fowles
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
Ironweed - William Kennedy
Evil Angels - John Bryson
Postcards From the Edge - Carrie Fischer
One True Thing -Anna Quindlen
The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean
The Hours - Michael Cunningham (ha! that's my cousin, sort of)
The Manchurian Candidate - Richard Condon

That list does not include Julie and Julia and The Bridges of Madison County (both of which i've read but not seen) and The Devil Wears Prada, which i've both read and seen.  Sophie's Choice i've seen but not read.

So, now i have to track down all those books.  i don't know which one to do first... but i should probably start carrying the list around with me so when i go to the book store i can find the books.  i couldn't remember all those authors' names if it was my life depending upon it.

In other news, Smashwords!!  The Third Bed is almost completely reformatted to be uploaded.  wait, scratch that.  it's completely converted and ready to go, except for the cover photo.  i'm hoping my cousin (not the sort of cousin from above, the other one) will do me a cover page, and that will be awesome.

I like that i started with something simple like The Third Bed because i just had to do the formatting and i also managed to learn some stuff about my new Word program that i didn't know before.  because everything got changed and moved and i couldn't find jack shit.  But since it's a short story and there was no italics or chapter breaks or font changes or anything crazy like that to deal with it was a quick conversion.  Shade and Shadow is five chapter with breaks within the chapters.  all that shift-shimmer shit is gonna drive me crazy.

but i have a background with which to start and not pull all my hair out... at least not immediately.

So I Lied

I did manage to both work and do some writing over this long, long week off.  I typed up the rest of the bits that i'd written for The Guide.

I also read through The Third Bed.  I so very much want to get that up on smashwords and considering that i only changed maybe a dozen words on this read through i think it's ready.  I just have to format it and that's where i lose focus.  there's so many steps!

maybe i need to go to the coffee place and sit down and do it.

and then i can do it to Shade and Shadow, cuz that's the other one i want to put up there.

but now i have to work some more.  and i have to go back to the real job tomorrow so i have to figure out what i'm going to work on or what i'm going to read...

Making His Move

I tell him, at the hotel the night before the wedding, that he could've gone to play with the boys.  i don't mind working in our room with the TV on in the background alone.

"Yeah, but I didn't want to take a shot, i could have said 'no' but i want to go to bed soon," he tells me as he crosses to the window.

"We're old.  We're one of those old married couples," I sigh.

"Yeah.  A kid does that," he agrees.  A pause, "Aw, look at that old married couple sitting on the bench."

"Really?"

"Yeah, come see."

And i do.

"He's making his move," he tells me.