Scalzi Book Give Away for Your Best LOLCreation Museum

John Scalzi is holding a contest to win Ghost Brigades. A special edition, no less.

I think this is the only newer Scalzi Book I don't have (read it from the library). And as you know, I'm a Whatever for free books.

Story Bone

Semi-frequent commentator, author in his retired life, and all around cool guy Jim Wright, sends us this Bone. (cool guy = Alaskan resident, get it! Ha! Oh man, do I have to go to bed, I'm so tired)

It seems Jim and his son sat down to watch "Night at theMuseum" (which, BTW, I happen to recommend, practically the only Ben Stiller movie I own, but hey, Mikey Rooney as a crotchety old man in a gang with Dick Van Dyke and Bill Cobbs, that right there should be enough to watch it but there's also Robin Williams, forget the logical fallicies of "okay, it works for flesh, but how does that make the train go and the catapults work?") and has been joining in the fray over at the Whatever and John Scalzi's trip to the Creation Museum and thinks they're two great tastes that would taste great together.

Adam and the T-Rex go out for coconut mixed-drinks ala the Skipper and Gilligan. They play with the lambs and the lions and then go romp with the pocket-sized dinos that fit on Noah's Arc. Professor Brand(tm) Coconut Radios in a week, I say. I mean, "NatM" had some stinky ol' Egyptian tablet, heck, Yahweh's got Two Tablets. Just like Alka-Seltzer for the soul (can you tell I've been worked up by the discussions over at the Whatever, and I'm a little tired). Now, of course, when I see Charlton "Cold Dead Hands" Heston come off the mountain in that Easter Perennial, Cecil B. Demille's "The Ten Commandments", I'm going to be singing in my head, "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what-a belief it is."

edit Sorry about the double post last night, was having connection issues.

Story Bone

Can you trust a guy who eats his pizza with a fork?

Another Writer Podcast

I'm not all that into podcasting, really, but from time to time I check some out.

This is one I've been listening to lately, and she seems to be pretty good. I Should Be Writing is something you might want to check out. Mur Lafferty, our host there, does a pretty good job of it.

The description from her blog says, "The podcast for wanna-be fiction writers, by a wanna-be fiction writer. Freelance writer Mur Lafferty discusses rejection, cover letters and getting the oomph to keep going." And that seems to be about it.

Write-tober is over

Just finished all the Write-tober events tonight with the conclusion of the meeting of my writers group. It's been an event filled month that didn't see a whole lotta words getting down on paper, but every weekend had something going on with writing. I'll be glad to get some time back to actually write. One thing I have learned this month is that broadband is something I should avoid if I want to get words down. There is too much cool stuff that requires broadband to go look at. So I guess I'm saved with mostly having only dial-up access when I'm writing. Where sometimes it taked whole minutes for webpages to finish loading. And video? Forgettaboutit.

Now that we're in the middle of NaNoWriMo, some people's Write-tobers continue. I'm not on that track, but I wish all of you a merry good time (Todd, Leafy, and everybody else).

Also just realized it's time to synch my links at work with my links at home. I know there's two more people who have commented here about NaNoWriMo, but their RSS feed links are at work.

Doggie in the Window

We've found the puppy a good home and she's off to that home. She really will be on a farm with at least one other dog to play with. The person who picked her up was very nice and knew her way around dogs. She will be giving the little puppy, whom she called "Lucky" some training and structure, which dogs need.

The positive end of this is that the puppy has a good home and will get the attention she wants. We've also found out that if we do get a dog, it can't be a big dog. Lucky was a little too much for us. Although I liked that she got us out an moving (okay, mostly my wife). We've not received any calls about Lucky, and nobody we asked had ever seen her.

Good luck, Lucky.

Weekend Roundup

Camille continues to sell stories like clockwork. This new one to antho "Desolate Spaces."

Todd Wheeler is cruising along with his NaNoWriMo project.

And the rest of the world continues to spin along. Write-tober is coming to a close this weekend with my writers group meeting tomorrow. I still have to read a short story, a novel segment, and a synopsis for critique tomorrow. I also still have that novel I need to continue to critique for a friend. Things have just been going crazy lately.

Puppy update: We still have her, she's calming down a little, but she doesn't get along with cats. That was the big determining factor. We're still looking for a good home. She likes people, doesn't get playing fetch (yet), is good being outdoors, needs a good home. We're working through her worm medicine to make sure she doesn't have any.

Story Bone

"Looks like the house settled," the handyman said, looking from the crack in the wall to me. "Houses do that."

I wasn't sure if he was talking about the gash in the plaster or about my own home improvement skills.


If I had time to write this, I would call the story, "Crack in the Wall." As I've said before, I really suck at short story titles. I already have some story ideas for this, and I might eventually write it, but this felt like it needed to be released, so I'm betting one of you needs it as well. Have at.

Get thee to a Museary

This is why you should get a Muse. Blam-o, right out of the sky while I was ::cough:: indisposed of one day at work.

"Her hair was a coppery red and her eyes the color of purple twilight. the fragrance of midnight shade in an apple orchard surrounded her. After he had been successful, he purchased an orchard to work his retirement away in sweet cider-press bliss. When she brushed past him, just the hairs on their arms reached out for each other like their bodies were filled with electricity that needed to pass to the other and he thought of the foxtail clip again...

"She didn't say that she would marry him, but that they had already been married (scene of him making a twisted dew-grass ring) and she was just waiting for him to realize that."

Okay, the second paragraph is more like story notes than actual text. There were also notes about the foxtail clip and how the touch of the moon was just like that. The text above is about the main character's childhood girlfriend that he ends up marrying. She's also a "substitute/analog/daughter of" the moon. The story has transformation and growth of the character. The "conflict" is mostly between him and his Dad, but I'm not sure that's enough. Does that make for a good story? I don't know.

Things That Make Me Smile

Via Rick Klaw filling in for Jeff VanderMeer, the Onion has and article titled Third-Person Limited Omniscient Narrator Blown Away By Surprise Ending.

Hi-larious.

Yippie! Another Sale (for someone else)!

Ken McConnell made a sale to Space Westerns that will come out in March. You better give us a link when it's posted, Ken, so we can all go and experience the writing. You rock, Ken. Congrats. This makes #2, right?

Everybody else should go over and tell Ken he's doing great. He posted this last Friday, so I'm late to the party. Still catching up on the blogeroll.

The thing about internet submissions...

is that you don't get a pysical paper rejection letter. Kind of hard to send a SASE through email.

OSC Intergalactic Medicine Show bounced Running of the Deer. The rejection email reads the same as my rejection for Changelings, so I'm going to go with that it's their form rejection. It was there a good long while. I have to update my submission files to see where I need to send it next.