This evening as I was finishing up my dinner, I saw a large bumble bee, about the diameter or perhaps a nickel or a quarter, flying about my kitchen. I was startled by it, but tried to coax it out of the door, because, while it was very dangerous, it was also quite beautiful. However, since it was a bumble bee and slow in mental facilities, it did not go out of the door at all and instead landed in my bookshelf.

I grabbed a fan from the desk a cup from the cupboard and pursued it over to the bookshelf where I found it sitting on my Concordia study bible. I could not surely get the bee on my fan and under the cup safely, so I decided to take the bible out and bring it outside. So, speaking softly to the bee, I walked outside with it and told it to go.

I shook the bible. It would not go.

I shook it again and it would not go.

So, I cried, �Now get off the bible!� and smacked the bible on the front step at which point the bumble bee flew off into the distance.

And that is the story of the bible and the bee.

The crisis had now been averted. I left the bible out for a bit because I remembered that I had to read it for a bible study anyway. I read Ruth and Esther.

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These are some drawing that I did of a Carrion Crow (which I figured out is what we have)


In pencil


In Watercolor (black)

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This is the second in a trilogy (soon to be saga) about a set of non-blood drinking vampires, American Indian werewolves, and the supernatural loving girl between them.

Pros

Interesting characters - I liked the characters. I think I like Alice best right now because she�s the only one who has not been an idiot lately... and I like her name, but when it comes down to it, Meyer creates a good picture of these people in your mind, she knows how to develop characters.

Good Problems - These characters are dealing with problems that not only can float a story, but also are problems that bring out a lot of different sides of them and allow them to work through some interesting issues. Again, it goes back to character development, you have to have good problems to be able to understand good characters. It really is the reason why I am writing a supernatural book, because of the implicit problems in facing oneself being a monster. It is something that I think a lot of people can identify with.

Cons

Problems with Rising Action - The book is just a little disorganized. The story is dealing with a lot of different plot lines that really are not speaking to each other. Because of this, it often feels like the story is not going anywhere.

The characters talk too much about their feelings - This actually� was one of its biggest faults to the big horror writers in the nanowrimo forums. It was too touchy feely, they said, vampires and werewolves are monsters, they�ve got to be tough. I think that vampires and werewolves can have complex emotions, but I also think that there is more than one way to characterize emotion. Instead of saying, �I am really pissed off at you right now.� A character could throw a chair across the room. Instead of saying, �I am upset about how things are working out. I imagined that we could still be friends with the feelings I had for you, but I am beginning to think that I really care about you too much and it might be better off if we didn�t see each other.� you could say, �You know what� I just.. can�t do this right now.� or �I HATE YOU!� What can I say, it�s more authentic.

If I were to rate this on a scale from one to ten, one being "very poorly crafted and I don't know how it got published" and ten being "OMG I can't believe its over, I want to read it again and again", I would give this a 6. It's good, but there are still a couple of things that would take it from good to great.

(6 out of 10)
Coming soon: Review of Thud

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Yesterday, I went to speak with my sponsor. She said a lot of things. This, she said, would be an exploratory summer, that I should try out different things, find my own style, work and rework and, of course, do this all regularly. I thought to myself, this is what I had planned as well... the only thing I did not plan though was this: how in the world was I going to get a plot?!

Now, I am no stranger to plots, I have about five in my head that will one day work themselves into beautiful novels, but, what I did not have a plethora of was children's book plots. It was...panic worthy.

So this afternoon, I decided that I was going to go and do some research.

I lumbered out of the front door and opened the door to my car. I pulled out my camera and started the five minute walk to my studio. I saw birds, lots of bird. The birds saw me, too, though, so I only managed to get a couple shots as I walked by, we'll see if you can even see the bird in the pictures.

I swung by my studio to grab a notebook and then went up the way to the education building to find the education library... which was harder to find than I thought. I started in the office, where she told me to go around the back of the building and I would find it there. "You can't miss it" she said. Well I did. In fact I 'missed' the darn thing after asking three or four more people. All the while, I felt a little like I didn't belong there. One lady on the top floor looked at me like she was not so sure if she should direct me to the library at all, until I explained my project. About then, I wished I had one of those corny badges that said, "VISITOR" with my name Sharpied in.



I found the library. I spent the next four or five hours milling through the stacks and reading children's books. I wrote down the number of pages, how many words were on each page, how many words there were in the book, what sort of organizational structure they had, etc. They were about a lot of things: arrogant animals, demanding animals, vain animals, angry animals. I thought to myself: where are all the shy animals. All of these animals seem so... forward, but the truth was that most of the little animals I saw walking around (childfolk and birdfolk mostly) were actually not very forward at all, but painfully shy! Piccolo seemed more likely to be shy. I wrote a little about Piccolo.

Just as the day was ending a young boy walked in. He talked to the janitor, called him by name. That alone caused him to remind me of someone I knew VERY well. He told the janitor that it was this birthday this weekend. The janitor told him that he should have fun and the boy said that he was sure he would. I thought back to all my birthdays. I thought about the agony it was to ask all those people, about how I cut down the number of people as I grew older and more cautious. Piccolo was much for shy than me. I wrote, "Piccolo did not even send out invitations because he thought no one would come."

For now, I had a story.

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So, I finally got back up to school to start my children's book. I got up fairly early, piled all my stuff into my car and then set off on the three hour drive to school. I think I realized halfway there that I forgot the folding chair, I realized that I forgot the seafood I bought when I pulled into the drive and I realized that I forgot all of my shower stuff halfway through unpacking. But you have to realize that that sort of thing is not particularly unusual for me. Unpacking I realized that half of the stuff that I put in the house should have been at home, just like half of the stuff I had just brought home really need to be in the house and there was another fourth that I couldn't decided whether or not it should go in my studio.

It was this last fourth that brought me down the street a little ways in my car to the lab school parking lot: the place where my small adventure was about to begin. I have learned from past encounters with... directions, that when you are moving in someplace you've never been before to 1. walk and 2. leave anything heavy behind. There is nothing like carrying large boxes when your lost. So I dropped the car there and began to walk down the slope to where I guess the agricultural building to be. I walked around it and into the front door. I saw a woman working in her office as I walked by, so I poked my head in and said:

"Excuse me, do you know where [my studio] is?"

She said, "I think that's in the old building in the back." and pointed me down the hallway where I was to find two double doors and then instructed me to go past there, between the [my studio]nd engineering building. I found the places just as she told me... with one exception. The Agricultural building was made up of two sections, the first half was the newer university facade that made it look like it was built in the eighteenth century while in truth it all the buildings were recently renovated with matching stone from a quarry not too far from the university. Behind that was the older section of it, a sort of white stone area that looked like it was part of an office building, not campus. I wondered if this was what she meant or was she referring to the old powerhouse that one dark and wintry night, I had the mishap to mistake for the new powerhouse. The old powerhouse, while a reasonably decent workspace, was creepy.

So, I saw another woman walking by and I walked over to her and asked, "Hi, do YOU know where [my studio] is?"

She was perplexed. She did not know where [my studio] was, but she said that she'd take me to a person who did know. As we talked, she said that she was very curious about it herself. We went in and talked to the dean who, like most deans was very... upfront. She said that it was definitely back behind the building we were in and pointed vaguely out the window. The lady I had come up with pointed out a window at a little building. "Do you see? It's the one with the little pink door." It was a building that had once adjoined to the old powerhouse, but I hoped for the best as I jogged down the stairs and went out to meet my studio. I knew that the studio had a lock and that is how I found the door, just a little ways below on the landing there was a door with a padlock on it. I got out the key and went inside.

I knew from the moment I stepped in that it was the right place. Like so many places, it felt like some queer post apocalyptic film where all the people had just got up and left all there stuff, right where it was. There work littered the floor space and desk space... but it had not always been a studio. I could have guessed it by the name, but it was much stranger once you got inside. The first real clue (which was a little hard to miss, I'll admit) was the giant meat locker at the far end of the room. While the metal doors were no longer the entrances to chilled meat and instead had been converted into two private studios and a closet, I had to admit that I was having flashbacks of mob movies and frozen corpses as I walked cautiously in them to inspect the space. A note on a large chalkboard just inside told me that this was... not the space that I was looking for.

All in all, it seemed like I had no head start on anyone at all. The more that I searched and discovered, the more I found that this place had already been claimed by the six or nine other people I was going to share it with in the next fall. There was some comfort though: two empty shelves at the bottom of a bookshelf, power, internet and a sure confidence that I was pretty much the only person that was going to be here for the next three months. So that is where I am now! Sitting, quite well in the butterfly chair Zanzi gave me those two years ago thinking about tomorrow...

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I am packing now. Packing is a strange mix between the physical and spiritual actions. It is this time every year that I think, "I should really live a Zen life, get rid of everything." Then I look through my stuff and I fear I may miss them. Pens and pencils, paper, hairbrush, comb, face lotion, hand lotion, shampoo, conditioner and books... Oh dear I have too many books. That I could work on. I am addicted to BUYING books, to HAVING books. I can imagine that it will be nice someday, though. Someday, when I have a library that walls the entire room with my desk in the center, I will not have enough books to fill it!

I guess that is the truth behind it. If the things I had was measured by how much I carried on my back, then I should have nothing. If, on the other hand, my things were measured by mass alone, then I should have far more. So which am I? Probably, I will always be somewhere in between.

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