Sorry for my absence. My health is okay, I got hacked HARDCORE yesterday: my phone wouldn't work. Talia called it and some guy speaking a foreign language (not Spanish is all we could figure out) answered. They cloned my sim card and then started branching out from there. Ordered 3 iPhones and a bunch of crap from eBay. He's shut down now, and I didn't lose anything. Still, I was on the phone nearly all day tracking all the activity, and I'm still not sure we found everything.

Grr.

Gotta make up for lost time. A coffee and a cookie would rock!

Happy birthday Larry! Hope this finds you well! Enjoy the day!

Quote by Ping

Introduced the boy to John Wick. I’m surprised how much this series of movies has grown on me.

Also watched Robot Ron or something stupid like that. Bubble Bots. The trappings of social media. Likes. Friends. Peer pressure. Addiction. So very current. Felt too much like a rip off of Big Hero Six, but it was entertaining. As we say in our home, it’s not a true Disney or Disney-wannabe movie unless something or someone dies.

Everyone in my writing group loves those John Wick moviesI tried and couldn’t get into it. Plus, Keanu may be a really nice guy, but he isn’t a very good actor.

Yes, please tell Vanessa I said hi, if anyone talks to her. Miss her.

Still sick. This is annoying. Talia still hasn’t gotten test results back yet. We may go look for over the counter kits today. And by we, I mean her, as I lay in bed.

Still. Getting better. My daughter finally got an apartment (no easy feat with a non-existent credit score), and since she was living at my OLD house, I am now free to paint and carpet and landscape. So it’s nice to see forward motion. Lotsa work though.

I am reading tonight on that YouTube reading thing I do. I was planning on reading a newer story, but with this stupid sickness, I will probably read an older flash.

Coffee and a cookie please!

Still sick, but I think the worst is over. T should get test results back today, but if she has it I am just gonna assume I have it too.

The cold symptoms aren’t bad, it was the puking and feeling cold that was messing up me. A cough and sneezing I can handle. Still hard to sleep - I watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 until the wee hours (Gamers vs, Guirion of course!)

Critique group dug the coyote story. What a good group. I am gonna try to write for the first time since Friday today.

Erg.

A coffee and a Gamers shaped cookie please.

I couldn’t sleep and watched this crazy stupid mid 70s sci-fi movie about space ants taking over the world called Phase Four. It was PERFECT.

Sorry to hear about all the loss, Aaron and WG and Anna and Gill. I’ve watched three people go through the hospice journey and as heartbreaking as it is, those people are spectacularly good at their job. I hope you all find solace to guide you through the pain.

Psyched you are writing again, Larry.

I’ve been sick as a very sick dog these past few days. Pretty sure it’s Covid - Talia’s results should come back today. I haven’t been tested yet.

Short fiction critique tonight. I have a patient on the table, so to speak. The story about the coyotes!

Anyway. Time to do the Wordle. A coffee and a word shaped cookie please.

Finished The Silent Sea on N-Flix. Good solid sci-fi, without too much stupid crap.

About to finish season two of Succession. HOLLY FRIKKIN HUNTER! Love her. Serious crush.

Cold and windy here, and a little snow in the mix. AND Talia is awaiting results from her Covid test, but confirms she lost her sense of smell. AANNDD, I overslept for a full hour, which implies to me I might be coming down with something.

So, that's life here at Casa Kaiju. Other than that, things are fine. I suspect we might spend the three day weekend recovering from bugs. Oh well. Everything's pretty much shut down anyway (I HAVE been trying to get T to go see the new Scream). Seems like everyone is sick.

What's up with Raylan? A new Detroit-based adventure for him? That would rock. Elmore Leonard set a TON of his books in Detroit, before he moved his locale to Florida. I've heard nothing of this, and assume Ping got into a bad batch of Limoncello.

A coffee and a phlegm shaped cookie please.

Quote by DenimAngel
the WEBB telescope,rockets, space stations,planets (all them including Pluto), stars and moons

PLUTO IS NOT A PLANET!!! Pluto is a cartoon dog.

No more No Talia Wednesdays for the foreseeable future. Everything is shutting down as cases soar. It really does feel a little apocalyptic out there, though part of that is my normal frame of mind. I'm disconcerted. Stay safe everyone. Masks and vaccines, even if you don't believe in them. And bury all your money in a hole in the back yard. And keep a gun close by the door. And a flashlight on the roof to signal the aliens.

Sara, I think I attached a pic of the Webb Space Telescope. The round gold thing at the top is the part that would make an excellent cookie.

House bullsh@t went fine yesterday, and I got a lot done though I will be back doing more soon. Still, today I can write.

Seriously, stay safe all. It's a weird world out there.

Larry, sorry about Covid hitting your world so hard. It does seem to be a time of perfect storms. Here there be monsters!

It's like Groundhogs Day here - another cold and sunny day of not being able to write because I have to do a bunch of boring adult crap. I JUST WANNA WRITE! Of course, selling the house will enable to do just that, write with a roof over my head and enough food to eat, so I can't complain. And yet I am.

A coffee and a JWST shaped cookie please.

Morning all!

I have a bunch of boring crap to do today, so no writing (I might get a little editing in toward the end of the day). Making me irritable.

Talia is doing much better, though she still has that Kathleen Turner huskiness thing going on. Fine with me!

Not much else going on. I'm thankful the James Webb Space Telescope unfurled without a hitch. That was kinda cool.

A coffee and a cookie-shaped cookie please!

Quote by gillianleeza

For Succession, I didn't see the ending coming in Season one. In Season two, I did see it. Season three was a surprise. It did have some funny moments, mostly with Roman's storyline and his "dysfunctional" issues and Dad's medical problems.

I was happy to see that the third season of After Life is coming. I'm looking forward to the last season of Ozark. Hopefully, it will have the ending such a great show deserves.

I started The Lost Daughter on Netflix. It is Maggie Gylenahll's directorial debut. It stars Olivia Coleman, whom I adore. Not sure if I like it or not yet and have no idea where it is going.

Finished the fourth and final season of The Sinner (on the USA Network). It has a recurring character return each season, Bill Pullman as a retired detective. Each season has a different storyline, mostly a murder mystery. I liked it.

I'm about to finish season two of Succession. Such a strong show. I'm slowing down because I don't want to be all caught up and waiting.

Watched a pretty good Chinese sci-fi on Netflix, The Silent Sea. We also watched The Lost Daughter and enjoyed it greatly.

We watched some Bob Newhart last night. I'd love to go to a costume party as Bob and Emily. I wish the second Newhart show was streaming somewhere.

Back to the salt mines. <insert excellent James Bond moment here>

Writing and dealing with the house today, which will be my tagline for the next couple months. Arg.

Talia has a cold, and has most of the weekend. She's working today, and talking in a husky sexy voice, only slightly betrayed by her hacking up big old chunks of mucus when coughing between statements. (I overstate.)

I am recovering nicely from long fiction critique day. They were tough but supportive. Short fiction critique is next week - that old coyote story is up for review like a pinata hanging on a string. Raise your bats everyone! There's candy inside my story!

I'd love a coffee and an airplane cookie.

Quote by WriterGirl
Good luck to everyone and I will sincerely be happy no matter who takes home the big prize. I sincerely mean that. I am putting together a book of my fav scribbles for my son to keep and just happy to have this one to add to it.

Great idea, and a great attitude to have toward the comps!

You may feel free to bring your family down to live with us, Scott, but please know that, as annoying as I can be on a text-only writing site, my powers of annoyance increase a thousand fold in real life. Talia tolerates me only after years of practice. And the kids tolerate me because I taught hem this is normal behavior.

I survived critique group again. They tore me a new @sshole, but none of their observations were off-base, and they seem to really like the general direction of the Damned Thing. So I'll keep going.

Cold and cloudy here. We are working in the yard, followed by grocery shopping. Two of my favorite activities!

Coffee and a cookie as big as the world!

Good morning all.

Another sunny cold day, with all day to face the page.

Next week, selling my old house begins in earnest, which means a LOT of work. And money. But I'll be paid back at the end, so I'll happily spend now. It's a really good seller's market here. So, unless North Korea bombs Ping's house, housing prices should remain high.

Lunch is ready - I'd love a coffee to go with it, and a cookie for afterward!

Quote by Ping

Quote by JamesPBear

Hey there, everybody? Anyone got a spare idea for the competition?

So far, my mind is a blank. But then again, that's pretty well normal for me.

Here’s a fun albeit monotonous exercise for sourcing an idea:

Using a thesaurus and/or dictionary and/or some Wikipedia-type platform, investigate key words from the comp post. For example, research the phrase, Reboot, one of the competition’s must-use key words. You’ll start clicking on links to interesting things related and not. If you allow yourself to get lost down that cyber research rabbit hole, you’ll find an idea (or several). The more you personalize this, the more success you may have. I find it’s best to go into this exercise with an open mind as to not bias or cloud one’s judgment, and a drink or several to help keep that mind open. There ya go! I gave you a fun reason to drink.

This exercise isn’t guaranteed to work, but if you give it a go, it may, and I hope, it helps.

I do a version of this: I look up a LOT of synonyms, and I click on the weirder words, and I end up following definitions down the rabbit hole. It's fun and informative. Looking forward to reading the comp entries, though i don't know if I'll be entering. I do have a ghost of an idea.

Slow writing day, and still don't feel confident about what I'm writing. Sigh. Still making my word count though, if barely 1000 a day.

Back to it.

Coffee and a cookie!

EDIT: Just hit 50,000 words on the novel!!! Pour me something highly illegal.

No Talia Wednesday. Cold and sunny here. Should be a fine winter day.

I'm not confident about the section I'm currently writing, but I refuse to get bogged down. I'm gonna write it, if it sucks, I'm gonna delete it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Went to the doctor yesterday for a regular checkup. Apparently I'm healthy. I read in the waiting room for an hour, got looked at for 5 minutes, went back home. My only complaint was pain in my foot, and they didn't even take off my shoe. Ah, American health care.

Time to get to it. A coffee and a leftover birthday cookie please.

Quote by Mendalla

Quote by verbal
I must remember to SHOW, not TELL, with this section.

Telling has its place, though. Sometimes things just can't be easily shown. I think I have come to the conclusion that it is not so much "Show, don't tell" as "Do what works best but if both are options, err on the side of showing". I also try to do the exposition through dialogue or other means that are more engaging than just an infodump.

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid the infodump, which is what I really want to do, just vomit it all up for the reader. But I'm denying my worst impulses, writing specific situations and trying to let the details just leak out. It ain't easy.

Yeah, the play we saw a few weeks back shut down early due to Covid. Glad we got it in while we did.

Got no writing done yesterday, family emergencies and a doctor visit. Emergencies are solved, and the doc says I'm doing fine, so back to business today. It's "flashbacks and exposition" day! I must remember to SHOW, not TELL, with this section.

Sunny but cold today. I'm liking the vibe of the new year so far.

Coffee and a birthday cookie from Sara!

Quote by DenimAngel

Hi peeps

A large hot chocolate with a double handful of mini marshmallows would be great.

Moving the old cookies to the emergency cookie tins behind the counter and filling the cookie jars with fresh cookies

Today's offerings are BIRTHDAY CAKE cookies

Ugh it's so cold outside No snow but cold as all get out.

Giving the adorable critters fresh water and treats

Not much going on today .

I have decided this year I'll try to write on a more consistent basis.

Looking forward to going out to lunch.

Stay safe everyone

Happy birthday Sara!!! Thanks for all the cookies! And the friendship! And that cute lil monkey Scamp!

Quote by Mendalla

Here is the latest from the government of New Brunswick.

https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/ocmoh/cdc/neuro_cluster.html

Creepy detail: some report hallucinations where the world looks like TV static.

Glitch in the matrix.

Morning all.

So, a big chunk of plot fell into my lap this weekend, due to strange happenings in Canada: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/mystery-brain-disorder-baffles-canadian-medicine

Anybody know anything about this? It is specific to the Acadia peninsula, and there’s a Reddit thread involving blue algae causing dementia and ALS type symptoms. Creepy, scary stuff.

This is the way the world ends.

What a cheery thought to ring in the new year with.

Good thing we caught that play of Cinderella a few weeks back - Covid has shut down that production, and all others in town. Sigh.

Time to get to it. A coffee and one of Sara’s tasty cookies!

Quote by Mendalla

Quote by verbal

Well, my first contribution is a piece of advice. I was complaining to my writing group about how difficult outlining and plotting a novel was. Someone in my group said this: Let the first draft be your outline. Their point, I think, was not to slow your forward motion too much. Tell yourself the story in the first draft. Learn how to tell it to the reader in the second draft. Anyway, it's freed me up quite a bit.

This works great for short stories, I think, but a novel-length work, especially one requiring a lot of world-building, seems to me to require some advanced preparation. If you want the world to be consistently developed and coherent, I don't think making it all up as you go makes sense. For instance, you can certainly make up magic spells and effects on the go, but you want the underlying magic system worked out or you end up with inconsistencies in power level or capability and sf/f readers are great at picking up on that sort of inconsistency (sf moreso than fantasy, I suppose).

Oh, it's certainly not "make it up as you go along," you need to know the rules of the world, and the direction things are going. I'm talking more about a chapter level outline, where you know in advance what happens in every chapter. Right now I know the world and generally where everything goes, but I'm outlining 10-ish chapter at a time, since I'm not good enough to see any further ahead. When I'm done, I'll tighten and cut and polish that draft, with a full outline in hand for my second try.

Here's a new tool, though I haven't tried these yet. It a list of sentence rewriters, useful mostly to avoid the passive voice, in my experience. Just shows you various options on playing with the structure of a sentence. https://www.jarvis.ai/blog/sentence-rewriter?fbclid=IwAR2kS8pygQOa6-8RCXx41r_NPabWurMxnk_jmstOnRVQh7k6HT3w4lNTljA

Sounds like a number of us have had experiences with dementia. What a cruel fucking disease (pardon the language). It can go through a person, and a family, like a buzzsaw. My heart is with you Ping, and you too, Writergirl and Red.

WriterGirl, I used to look into my wife's eyes, at the tail end of things, and try to discern what was left of her personality from those beautiful brilliant blue eyes. Like looking into another universe.

So, yeah, I'll follow Voltaire's dictum and tend to my own garden. Today, I am outlining the next twelve chapters of the book, so I will know how I am beginning the new year. We'll have a little champagne, a little smoke, and settle quietly into 2022.

Peace everyone. And let's hope for a 2022 that isn't quite as terrifying as the last two years.

A coffee and a peace-shaped cookie please.

Quote by gillianleeza

I watched Matrix Resurrections on HBO Max. It was entertaining, but a lot of it was just rehashed from the original movie. I'm still confused about many things in all the Matrix movies. A large portion of the film was devoted to extended fight scenes. They get too repetitive and don't add a lot to the movie. They could have cut out at least twenty minutes, in my opinion.

They could have cut an HOUR of fighting from that movie. Jeez. It's endless. I respect how original the original was, but this was the same old ideas and the same old fight scenes.

Station Eleven is next on my watch list. Talia rarely does sci-fi, so I'm on my own for this one.

Quote by gillianleeza

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope it was a good one. Had everyone over for Christmas Eve. It was lovely until the next morning when my mother informed me my dad had a "cold." Long story, but six members, including myself, so far, of my family, have tested positive for Covid. Thankfully everyone is vaccinated, and symptoms appear to be mild so far. It has messed up New Year's plans for all the younger family members. Sigh, I am so sick of this virus. At least quarantine is not as long. I've had time to binge Succession. Not sure why. Every character in that show is an awful person. Thanks, Ping.

Here's hoping the New Year will be better.

Sorry for the Covid explosion at your house, though I am at least glad it was mild. We had a stomach bug pass through right after Christmas, but it bypassed Talia and me.

I finished the new Matrix last night. Eh. It has some moments, and I LOVED the first one. But the ideas aren't really that new anymore. The most intriguing ides in it is that the whole thing is a metaphor for the trans-gender experience.

About to start season two of Succession. Yes, Gill, everyone is unlikeable. Although Shiv has my sympathy, so far. God, I love that character name.

Anyway. Three day weekend begins at 5!

Coffee and a 2022-shaped cookie please!

I like seeing the Ghost of Bill haunting us from the title! Hi Bill!

No Talia Wednesday, when the men are men and the cats are scared.

Sorry, channeling an old joke involving sheep there.

Same ol, same ol. Write, exercise, eat, chill, sleep, repeat. I can't complain. We're deep in the Christmas/New Year's haze. Another three day weekend looms, as does a Spaulding Gray marathon (Swimming to Cambodia/Monster in a Box). We have absolutely no plans for New Years, but we never do. Glug some champagne, celebrate quietly. :)

And hey, speaking of one man Broadway shows, Eric Bogosian in on Succession now! I saw him in Drinking in America, back in the day. Brilliant guy.

A coffee, a Pim's and a candy cane cookie please.