Somewhat productive

I got two more units of lecture notes finished. I didn't trim as much as one would hope. I'm trying to get through this beginning stuff faster. Every year it takes longer. Go figure.

kiramaru7 used my poison gardener character, Tenaldi in a story and you can find it here. Tell her what you think. I enjoyed it very much and I am always thrilled when someone wants to play in my universes. I am definitely not one of those authors who gets all pissy screaming 'don't fanfic my baby!' Go nuts.

Kanda was acting oddly today. He greeted me when I got up at dawn to pee but by the time I actually got up he was under the futon where he remained for 7 hours. He seems fine. Scratched my leg to hell when someone knocked on the door and he was on my lap. Also I sliced open one toe on the broken bar of the futon which he must have kicked out from underneath just a little and I didn't notice.

I am going to have to quit dicking around and make an appointment for my stomach and start planning surgery for next summer. I woke up yesterday with my cheek ulcerated from acid running up in my sleep and last night I coughed acid into my lungs so today it's felt like an elephant is on my chest and my voice sounds like I'm sick. It's a good way to get a) pneumonia again b) bleeding ulcers c) cancer so yeah I need to get serious.

It would help if I was about 95% certain I tore out my meniscus again in my bad knee. It keeps locking and hurting but it's the OTHER knee/calf that is so swollen mom was asking what I had done. I have an appointment on tuesday with my regular doc, probably about the breast lumps but I'm asking about this, my neck and back which also are having serious issues and I see the ob/gyn about the breast on thursday. I'm also considering making an appt up at the James in Columbus just to be sure if either doc is concerned about the breast.

Today was a good writing day. But I'm finding out my memory isn't what it was. I hate this. Seriously. I ran out of time to look at this today but it might be good for my Simmer story so I'm parking it here.

Watch on YouTube

Also for Simmer I am looking thru something mom found in grandma's cookbooks (and she managed to give away the books I selected for ME and gave me the ones I told her to give away) It's a family reunion cook book from 1982. I'm going to pick a recipe from here too.

Writerly Ways

I wanted to talk a little bit about balancing the dark with some light. Lately I have been seeing so completely unrelenting dark fiction/television. Maybe it's my age but there are reasons dystopias don't resonate with me well. I don't mind dark fic. You know I write it. But man there has to be something to balance it. Let me just point to this summer's Sci-Fi offerings since I tried to watch several of them because man someone has to support SF right?

So I watched (or tried to) Extant, Killjoys, Defiance & Dark Matter and they were all dark and only one of them even tried to balance their darkness with some light. Extant and Defiance grew progressively darker with the season to the point I could care less if I ever see another episode. I never did make it through Dark Matter (which was also boring IMO).

I was left with Killjoys which had good banter especially between John and well almost everyone. It even balance the darkness of the scarred priests and their masochist religion with the light of hope they inspired. Towards the end we started to lose the light and I started having issues with the show. Also it didn't help that by the end it was so obvious that the company ran everything and everyone right down to housing and that was WAY too much like how my family's life was just a generation ago. Both grandparents homes were company houses, my granddad ran a company store and everyone was paid in company script. Nope, sorry, cuts a little too close to the bone for me. But I could have handled it if some of the earlier humor held out.

I suppose it's a matter of taste. Maybe there are people out there hungering for the darkness. I mean dystopias rule YA literature. But again with so much darkness I find the stories too depressing to want to continue with.

How about you? Are you in my camp wanting a little light? Do you crave the pure dark? I'm curious to see how people feel about this.

Also you can see all Jana's news plus the freebie Las Vegas wedding story which no one seemed to have read. sigh. See it all here

Yearly Word Count -

66030 / 110000
(60.03%)

Blood Red Roulette -

93778 / 110000
(85.25%)

Simmer -

3069 / 10000
(30.69%)

Notice I haven't edited jack? SIGH