The Diamond Island

Going over my posterboard supply, I notice that other than the piece I’ve set aside for my book cover project, I don’t have any small pieces left. That award I worked on used up the last of my free range board slices. Grumble, that stuff doesn’t come cheap, and I hate to have to do the cutting. I really need to get a good surface. Maybe when I win the lottery and get that multi-circuited workstation complete with trusty robot sidekick and icebox buddy complete with Polecat beer.

Hand in hand with the posterboard are my PH Martin Radiant watercolors, now down to “why bother?” levels. I keep telling myself I will revive my collection. I just haven’t been doing the poster board art scene for my personal advancement enough in that area. I’m going to have to if I’m going to get that book cover of mine ready for consideration.

Speaking of the book in the oven, I’m still in a heavy editing phase. I’ve been collecting a list of revisions, mostly consistency corrections that I’ll have to phase into my latest draft. The feedback I received gave me a few ideas that I’m going to want to develop further. I need to describe and develop certain points that may be unclear to readers. That’ll take some time. Finally, I’ve got some ideas that have percolated on their own that I’d like to adjust or change in certain scenes.

What this means is more redlines in my future. That is, more work. I’m pleased with my progress, and should I get this taken care of to my satisfaction, I can focus entirely on the grammar and spelling. That aspect might be a major stumbling block. At this point, I’m 90% confident in my content, but my style may need a lot of work. I’ll have to make some choices, as some of it might only improve with long practice.  And I need to get this stuff out!

Scenes from the next book are already crowding my brain. I’ve had dreams showing exactly how to compose certain scenes. It’s driving me crazy. I might have to just start writing the second book and get it out of my head. Actually, that’s not a bad idea.

Thanks to the deficit spending of our glorious leader, I ordered some new CDs for inspiration. Some Lustmord classics – Heresy, Where the Black Stars Hang, and Purifying Fire, which should round out my collection (yes, I’ve been saving the best for last), along with Erotikon by Deutsch Nepal for a little ambient differentiation. I’m looking forward to using the fresh life support to give me the energy I need to get through my editing challenges.

I also used the influx of funds to get some more role-playing games. I ambled over to Indy Press Revolution and got me a copy of Capes and Shock. Service was quick and easy, and prices not too shabby, considering that I won’t have to buy a dozen supplements to play. The future of gaming really is independent publishing, it’s great.

Shock is a science fiction game where you create a world based around a “shock”, or science fiction concept such as “Some people are androids” or “Mind transfer is commercially available”. The players create characters that struggle with one another in the context of the world’s “shock”, and explore the social issues that are revealed through play. My friend Lossefalme might find the concept interesting.

Capes is a superhero game where players compete with one another for control of a story involving their own characters and the minor non-player characters of the story. The premise is that superpowers (like flight, or weather control) are fun and you should use them, but do you deserve them? I think my current game group might like this one, because of the dynamic resource management and ability to come up with anything at all within the constraints of the rules. You can do anything, but can you achieve your goals?

K and I have used a 19-inch TV since we moved in together, and it’s done us well all this time. My dad’s neighbor was getting rid of his old television set for a new-fangled plasma, and my dad pestered us about it until we caved and took it. It’s a 26-inch, so it’s much larger, but it has some quirks that I’m not psyched about.

The remote is buggy, the sound has a low level buzz that you can hear in moments of silence during a show, and the section of the tube gun that handles the color blue seems to be lining the screen at times. This dinosaur might keel over soon. If it does, maybe this is a sign we need to upgrade to a larger screen. I refuse to go plasma or HD just yet, just because I’m against the concept of “better visual quality” when so much of TV is absolute junk.

I ambled over to the local bookstore chain and picked up some classic books – The Secret Garden by Frances Burnett, Emma by Jane Austen, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I want to study some of the classics and see how they are written, so I can compare my own style and content against theirs. I’m also looking to see how complex social interactions and stories of personal relationships are built and played out by these authors. Finally, I’m hoping to have an enjoyable read.

I looked at the SciFi and Fantasy section of the bookstore and all I saw were names I’ve already read and can’t stand, franchises based on popular culture staples, and books based on roleplaying games done to death. It’s depressing and makes me want to state that this small niche is dead and rotting. Meanwhile, the teen and manga sections had tons of new material taking chances and having fun. It overwhelmed me.

I’ve also been hitting the local library. It seems like my reading this last year has increased many times over what I usually amount to. I’m hungry for good material, or in other words, Mars needs women! There are about a dozen books next to the couch where I read. It is as if I’ve stopped watching my movie/TV collection and find my nourishment in literature instead of visual participationism.

Yup, I’m gathering goodies to myself for molecular reconversion.

Oh boy, oh boy.  I’m more about the Chinese New Year and the lunar cycle, or the Celtic New Year myself.  But I’m happy to observe the psychological affirmation of the superzapper recharge that is winter new year reboot in many people’s minds.  K has been reading, watching and playing with her new goodies, while I have been reading the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo and Treasure Island.  My mind is on the adventure, you might say.  Despite consuming mass quantities in the Conehead manner of speaking, I am ready for round two.  I’m just pleased we made it this far.  Who knows what unspeakable horrors and breathtaking splendors await us in 2008?  Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel.

Talk about doomsville city at the garden. We had a frost finally in late October, after having a record hot month. The majority of plants left all seem to have taken a major blow. Even the weeds are getting nervous. The bees are gone, and the general insect population seems to have cleared out. The birds are still around, but not to the degree they were a month ago. K and I were busy scavenging up what we could in the way of herbs, but hoo boy it was brutal out there in the trenches.

Tomatoes go bye-bye. The only thing left is the lettuce, which we harvested gratefully and had a small salad with our dinner, hooray! Pretty soon it’ll be time to dig up the horseradish, I can’t wait! Unfortunately, half my seeds haven’t dried out right, and have grown horrible molds. Still, not bad for my first try. I harvested the last of the basil, and some oregano for a Pizza of Doom I’m making for work. But it looks like the garden goodies have hit the bed and are passing out of time and space until next time folks.

Since it’s Halloweenie, I need my costume. I dug into my enormous bookshelf of tricks and pulled out a 1976 copy of Make-Up Monsters by Marcia Lynn Cox. Oh, I gots ideas galore thanks to this book. Hopefully, with the make-up stuff I have acquired, things will come out neat. Some of these, I haven’t tried out since I went trick or treating with my cousins or my elementary school friends. Oh yes, and I scored a pumpkin, though I’m guessing I’ll be my usual unskilled self and create a rather mundane jack-o-lantern. I don’t know. I just haven’t got the right touch for doing a pumpkin right. Maybe I need a kung fu master to show me what I’m missing. And of course the bowl is filled with candy for the screaming brats. Hopefully K won’t eat all the Mr. Goodbars.

My friend, Dr. C, called me up the other day and we rapped about what he’s been up to. I’m totally psyched for him to be doing what he’s doing. He’s been busting his buns through med school and his residency, and now he’s finally at the point where the powering up starts. Basically, he’s getting to write his own ticket for the hospital he’s going to be working at, and he’ll be living in a fabulous area for his family (and dog). I’m very happy for him, because there were some times where his life was pretty bleak and I was very worried for him.

That brings up another old friend from way back, someone whom I haven’t spoken with in a long time and only hear of through the astrosending, but I was thinking about a lot in the last week. Mainly in the terms of some spiritual connections we made back in the day, which still resonate with me now. Looks like she’ll be getting a website soon, which I’ll shamelessly plug here, but it’s not up yet. So get kraken, Xtine!

Going even further in the wayback machine on YouTube, I found someone posted a copy of The Frog Prince, with Kermit the Frog and Robin the Brave, plus Sweetums the Ogre before he was made safe for work consumption. Oh, wow, this takes me back a ways. I had this on vinyl, along with many other records, and played it often as a kid. But now it’s unavailable on DVD, and only rarely can you catch it on cable (when I was still mooching off my folks). That’s a shame, because the musical numbers are fantastic, and the story itself is both charming and wholesome. I still have the record, but it’s in rough shape. I’d love to get my paws on this one. Still, to see it on YouTube brings me to a deep place inside full of happy feelings and warm thoughts.

This weekend Lush came out with some new products, so K hinted that we ought to go to the nearest store and check them out. Since I was out of bath bombs and shampoo bars, I thought today is the day we replenish our ammunition or perish. Pricey luxury stuff, but its on my top list of bath goodies so we had to go. I stocked up on my usual array of nice things and she got herself some hair treatment prizes. K then proceeded to cut her hair, change it into a nice cerise color, and pamper it with wonderful hair-treatment goodness. Me, I’m set for the next alchemical treatment. I started using a new flavor of shampoo bar and so far its got good value. I was getting annoyed with the generic soup du jour of shampoo you can get at any supermarket, anywhere in crumbsville.

And I worked on my book. I finally decided on a teaser page to show you all. One that doesn’t reveal too much, but gives some good thoughts on what I’m about. I just have to turn it into a PDF and post it, which given the Halloweenie whackiness, might be a few days. I’m 70% through the revisions, so I’m getting closer to my current goal. I’ve accumulated a list of things that will have to be addressed in the polish stage, but I think most of it is minor work. It may be that my work will have only just begun after I finish my revisions, but it’s a major goal just the same. I’m still considering my cover. What color it will be, what the picture and text will consist of, and the spine. I’m not satisfied with my notes, so I predict I’ll have to spend more time on this when I’m not distracted.

I hung out with my gamer friends, and it was a blast. We watched the unimaginably horrible Universal Soldier: The Return and had a lot of fun mocking it. The game we played was a nice little gem called Arkham Horror, which is based on the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. In a nutshell, it’s the 1930s, and alien horrors are coming into the town of Arkham as precursors to the outright monster apocalypse of a randomly generated Elder God of Evil. Players take the part of archetypes from the era (Flapper, Gangster, Archaeologist, etc.) and try to gain the knowledge and power to kill the monsters and defeat the ultimate bad monster before the town is destroyed.

It’s one of those games with tokens for every single thing in the game, and it’s a long game, but the mechanics seemed solid and the setting was hard not to get into. Everyone cooperates to stop the monsters instead of competing against each other. And the artwork and production values are very high. It was a blast walking around with my researcher and checking out all the various spooky places for clues and fighting off ghouls and alien fungi with my pistols.

I’ve been trying to record my dreams this October, but something about them has not wanted to be put down on paper. The messages from the unconscious haven’t wanted any photographs taken at their press conference, I suppose. As the Celtic New Year draws to a close, I’ve got a lot to ruminate on from this last year. A lot has happened, both in the external world and the internal.

The garden continues to wither away. Each time K and I come over, we have to pull some poor plant up by the roots and deliver it unto the compost pile. K has planted some lettuce for the autumn, so this year’s garden is not quite through yet. But the end is definitely in sight, I’m afraid. Today, we actually needed to buy tomatoes from the store. That’s how bad things have gotten. The potato harvest we took hold of in early August is nearly spent. I’m making a beef-vegetable stew right now that puts us one charge from empty. The herbs are looking lean and crummy now too. I have to do a harvest soon to save most of them for winter. The sage, lemon verbena and sweet basil need to be stored stat!

It’s a communal garden we labor in, so one of my garden neighbors comes over and asks me if I’ve had some tomatoes stolen. Yup, I says. A half dozen beefstake level goodies ready to be plucked the next day, and when I show up the next day, they gone. I tell the guy everybody wants their cut – the bugs take their cut, the birds and gophers take their cut, and now the hungry people take theirs. What can you do? I can’t complain though, I says. I got 2 or 3 bushels of bounty, and that’s not considering the non-tomato cut I got. The guy laughs and gives me four Juliets, tomatoes to keep for seeds, since we’re talking about getting seeds ready for next year. We talk shop a little, and he takes off. I feel like I got the level up, it’s cool.

I finally got the pictures developed from the demolition derby of Big Blue I mentioned earlier. As you can see, Big Blue has had all windows removed and chains run through the doors to keep them from bursting open. The front hood has a hole cut into it to allow the fire department ample access to put out any engine fires that may develop. I’m sniffing, as I know Big Blue looked so good for the debut, it’s a crying shame that the glory was denied my loyal automobile.

During my book revisions, I’ve been studying numerous editing articles on the internets. I want my book to conform to grammatical standards of some kind. I don’t think I’ve found my writing “special sauce” formula, exactly, but I’m learning everything I can get my hands on and doing what I can to craft my book into a finished piece that I’m satisfied with. As a result, I’m taking out books at random from my shelves, and when I encounter them in public, to study the composition.

At the grocery store I picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’m not a fan of the books, but I figured this would be a good example to pick up and examine. Late in the series, the author should have everything about their special sauce figured out.  All the things I read about not doing are there. Passive voice, check. Heavy reliance on –ing verbs and –ly adverbs, check. Excessive use of “was” to be verb tense, check. Crumbs! This book violates just about every standard of editorial checking you could think of. Now, I’m not saying I’m any better – my own writing has needed some tough work to beat into shape. But it just goes toward proving my point that your success as a writer has much to do with luck, and little to do with standards of writing, talent, or what you write.

And, on a final note, I’ve been compiling a wish list for music to get a listen on. I’m still short two Lustmord albums, there’s that Skids album by the lead singer of Big Country, before he was the lead singer of Big Country, I’m hankering to get a hold of The Ocean Blue’s Cerulean, Concrete Blonde’s Walking In London, The Verve’s A Storm In Heaven, and of course Sia’s new album, whatever it’s called. I’m gathering soundtrack for book number 2, which will be digging deep into the ground for rocks and minerals to play with.

My aunt gave me a hardcover copy of A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle way back around 1979, give or take a year. The one with the amazing cover by Leo and Diane Dillon. It’s been sitting in my massive spellbook collection for all this time. In the last ten years, it’s slowly made it’s way into my prime collection of must-haves, and I’ve been meaning to read it for a while. I picked it up and placed it in my read-pile, which meant at last its time had come! Then, a few days later, Madeleine L’Engle passes on and I say to myself, “Dang if that isn’t some kind of synchronicity.” So now I have to create a sacred space around me with no distractions and really read the mother-scratcher!

Spoilers follow, so if you aren’t ready to know the big secrets, best to scroll down before I tell you what goes down in the book. I’ve never read any other book by ML, so I’m going on what I read in the book without reference to any of her other works.

The plot is as follows: A mad South American dictator is threatening to launch atomic missiles at the united states, and all prospects for peace look bleak. It’s looking like atomic armageddon is about to take place and no one can do anything. Who will save us? Enter a family of good old American scientists having a nice white thanksgiving (the pivotal Native Americans in the book have been wiped out or assimilated in the soon-to-be-revealed past). The only characters you really have to remember are Charles and his older sister Meg. Meg is pregnant with her husband’s child, who is away on some conference having to do with science. Meg’s father is some super duper scientist who advises The President on science matters. In fact the supreme executive calls the guy up just to let him know The End is about to come unless Superma … sorry, unless something can be done. He doesn’t ask for advice on science, he just, you know, calls to chat during a national crisis because Meg’s father is that awesome.

The crummy old Mother-In-Law, who turns out to be the good-hat-masquerading-as-the-bad-hat makes some ridiculous magical jibber-jabber out of the blue and Charles decides he’s going to head on out into the freezing rain/snow to go to some rock to “listen” to the earth or whatever. Everyone is cool with this, because, you know, they are rational scientists who understand that things like cold and wetness can be overcome by repetitive arguments based on a hunch. Meg and Charles can communicate with each other by means of a special form of extra-sensory-perception known as “kything”, and so we get two stories at once – what Meg sees and does, and what Charles sees and does. Talk about multiple personality viewpoints!

Charles meets a unicorn with wings called Gaudior, who takes him on a journey through time and space to learn what pivotal moment led to the current threat of atomic annihilation, and hopefully change it. The bulk of the story is Charles going from place to place through time to learn the major players of the drama that has created this potential catastrophe. The “bad guys” are a bunch of spirits called the Echthroi who try to jack Charles and Gaudior’s efforts, either by separating them, or trapping them in alternate realities called “Projections”. See, the United Federation of Planets, err, Unicorns are concerned because if the Earth’s surface is covered in atomic radiation then the entire universe will be destroyed because the human race, especially the white part of humanity, are so important that all of creation will fall if Poindexter Q. Antwerp doesn’t buy his SUV the next day.

Okay, you can tell I wasn’t very impressed by the book, and am pretty much putting it down. I expected better and found the book a real letdown. Either that, or my friend Liephus has taught me too much critical thinking for my own good. There were some good things in the book, and those aspects I did enjoy very much. The part where Charles visits the planet of the unicorns is probably the highlight for me. Unicorns consuming moonlight and starlight, and Charles rolling in the snow and eating icky icicles to heal were just downright awesome. That’s what I’m down with. I thought that the “kything” idea was neat. The way that was portrayed really made me buy it, that Meg and Charles had this rapport transcending time and space. Totally cool. And the conversations between Gaudior and Charles about how time and space work were all fascinating to me. I love that kind of wordplay, it messes with your mind in a good way.

But, I got to say there were a lot more things that really annoyed me and shot the story down to the point where I was extremely bored. The main source of conflict, the unambiguous mad dictator from South America threatening the spotless and pure United States just galls me. It’s presented as a one-sided, stereotypical conflict just to ramp up fear, rather than the complicated mess it would be in real life. It’s just a McGuffin to provide an impetus for the hero/heroine to act. I think it was a mistake. Any one of the horrible things that happened in the past would have been preferable, simply because human everyday conflict is much more immediate and recognizable than an impersonal and contrived “world conflict”. That scene where “Chuck” gets his head bashed in had ten times more pathos than “nuclear doom part #286”.

Another thing that gets my goat is the “travel back in time to prevent Hitler” trope that’s been done to death. Traveling back in time to change the past so the future turns out the way you want is morally wrong, no matter how you slice it. Yes, Charles is saving the “planet”, but who gave him the right to make that decision? Starfleet? The Masters of the Universe? It’s easy to think about the millions of people who won’t die because history was changed, but what about the millions of people whose life Charles just erased because they never got to exist? Do those people not get a say now? It’s inhuman monstrosity of the worst order. Charles changes history so that the South American country is offering peace instead of war. Nothing is said of the consequences of that act. We never find out if the United States is now the one threatening war or what happened to all those people whose lives have now been rendered meaningless by tampering with time. Disgusting.

Then there’s the beef I have with the unicorns. Gaudior is a poor example of intergalactic mercy. He’s dense, impatient, and not particularly cooperative. I didn’t feel too good knowing that the Universe Nations sent a unicorn that wasn’t a paragon of intelligence and acuity for so vital a mission. I expected more from an “official” out of galactic central. I don’t know what to make of the multiple mentions of Gaudior’s “dangerous teeth”. I took that as hints that Gaudior was evil. This is the best the good guys could cough up? Give me Klaatu from The Day The Earth Stood Still, any day, please.

The Echthroi are “bad”, but I don’t see how. All they “do” is try to stop Charles and Gaudior from changing history, which to me is a “good” thing. We only have Gaudior’s word that these spirits are evil. For all we know the unicorns are the bad guys using Charles as their proxy to change history into a destructive endgame. It’s a problem that gets on my nerves, and it ruined the book for me. At the end, I felt that same gut-wrenching dread I felt at the end of the movie Back To The Future. Marty has preserved the present, but instead of maintaining the balance he has ended up with a timeline that serves only his crass desires. He has more “work” to do.

There are many fables and folklores about traveling through time. The message is always the same: Do it at your own risk. You may end up in a Qix Death Spiral, with the “spark” following you to a dead end of oblivion, while life continues on in a mainline time stream towards greater consciousness. Total respect to ML and her work, but I take this book as further proof we, as an experiment of nature, are not ready to travel through time wisely.