Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Into the fourth revision I go. The novel flows more smoothly and the story so far feels complete and true. That’s a big reach when only fifteen percent has been done in this round but I hold onto any sign of progress and completion that’s found.
Meanwhile, I’ve started writing another novel, of course, because stories stir restlessly in the mind’s wings, eager to for their moment to be explored and told.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday –
It goes round and round with stifling tedium.
We travelers through time and space have landed on Monday. It’s May 1, 2023. As we expected. As ‘they’ planned it. Not sure if ‘they’ are Gods, Fates, machines, or some alien life form.
It’s cold today here. Our warm spell of sprummer has petered out. The autosystem has switched us to spring mode. 47 F now, the weather predictors tell us look for clouds. Check, got clouds. Ain’t no sunshine out there. High in the mid sixties Fahrenheit, and rain. We’ll wait and see, but they seem to have it right.
Finally got the new cable modem activated today. Called them up, read customer care the MAC and then waited for the cycle.
We live in the small town of Ashlandia in southern Oregon and use the local Internet provider. Town owns it and we’re trying to support the town. That means the minor sacrifice of not having a 24/7 response team. Shrug. How it goes. We went old school for the weekend, well, quasi old school, sneaking off to find public nets and use them to check email, post, catch up on news and games, lol. We also read, cleaned house, talked, and – gasp – watched over-the-air television.
Watching television was a hoot. We’ve been streaming over a decade. Turn on local channels for weather and local news, which is thinly and poorly reported. Just not enough money in it for the traditional local TV revenue stream. Change, right? There are whole channels dedicated to television shows from the day of yore. There’s a block of ‘war’ shows – Rat Patrol, Twelve O’Clock High, Black Sheep, Combat, etc. Another block is about westerns with Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, The Bounty Hunter, Wagon Train. It’s a true hoot visiting these blocks. Sometimes I wince at what I used to watch. Production values have improved, but they entertained me when I was young. Naturally, we also watched an episode of the original Star Trek.
For music, I have “Take it to the Limit” by the Eagles from 1975 in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons put it in the morning mental music stream while I was hustled through the house for the bathroom this morning. I don’t want to connect any dots there, though.
I’ve had coffee and brekkie. Getting ready to head to the coffee shop and begin round four of editing and revising The Light of Memories. You have a good one and try to stay pos. I’ll do the same. Here’s the Eagles.
Cheers
I finished the third round of revision and editing for The Light of Memories. Don’t think the title is ever mentioned in the book BTW. When I read the last chapter, a short but sturdy creature, I cried. Not sure if the crying was for the character, ending, or being done with the process again. There I was at the coffee shop, a few years short of seventy, looking at my laptop and struggling against tears. Fortunately, I don’t think anyone noticed because I’m a man a few years short of seventy at a coffee shop.
I saved the doc and closed it, and then resumed writing another novel. I don’t know if time waits for anyone but I do know that when the muses say jump, I jump and then ask, “How high?”
The final hundred pages were attacked. He brooded. My god, this was boring writing, wasn’t it? Did it advance the story? Not to his mind today. Slash, cut.
After tough decisions on two chapters, the rest went with stunning, engrossing speed. Fifty pages were read and edited in the next two hours.
Just fifty pages remained, for this go-around. Then there’d be another. Because he needed to ensure the book made sense with the cuts made. That he hadn’t inadvertently destroyed continuity and coherence.
But for today and now, he felt pretty damn good about it.
Michael Seidel, writer 