Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Game of Sevens

Teralyn Rose Pilgrim recently tagged me as part of the Game of Sevens meme.  For those of you in the dark, like I was up until a few minutes ago, the rules are as follows:
The Rules:

  1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP.
  2. Go to line 7.
  3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written. No cheating.
  4. Tag 7 authors.
  5. Let them know.
I'm sharing an except of Bullets Don't Blink, my NaNo 2011 crime novel.

"Did you learn anything from the stuff we took out of there?"
"Eileen's doctor was Kurt Jones. I'm going to try to catch him at the Anvil tomorrow evening after work. And I'm ninety percent sure Eileen was in that BMW when it was wrecked."
"You've been busy. I just went to bed early last night. I don't know why but I was exhausted."
"Did you hear from the insurance company?"
"My little car is totaled. Big surprise."
"When are you supposed to get a check?"

I'm breaking the fourth rule and thereby incurring the wrath of the karma gods.  My reasoning is that I've been a bad blog reader the last few months but I always make time for these four.  My four victims authors:
  1. Sarah Ahiers
  2. Krista McLaughlin
  3. Trisha
  4. The Great and Powerful Hildred Billings
Congratulations if you are a victim winner.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Daniel Goes to Camp!


Sorry, couldn't resist the Ernest Goes to Camp image.

Camp NaNoWriMo is being held in June and August this year and I'm planning on attempting both, as well as the grand daddy of them all, NaNoWriMo 2012 in November.  I had a good experience during the July camp last year but was beyond drained for the August Camp and didn't manage to finish.  Since I'll have a month off in between this year, I think this will be the year of three novels.

"Great," you say.  "We already know all that.  What are you going to write about?"

Well, I'll tell you, Blanche.  I don't really know quite yet.  Here are the ideas I'm kicking around:
  1. as of yet untitled detective novel - this would be my first attempt at writing first person noir ala Raymond Chandler.  I do have the bare bones of a plot but nothing else
  2. The Kickoff (or The Gravedigger's Gamble) - sequel to Bullets Don't Blink where Garvin agrees to one last heist in order to pay off a debt and deals with the repercussions of the previous book.  I've got a pretty good idea of how this one is going to go and even have a few pages of notes.
  3. The Branchrunner - A fantasy story structured like one of Richard Stark's Parker novels.  A lot of the background comes from what I'd worked out for The Big Red Ragnarok, the project I was going to do last NaNoWriMo before I chucked it in favor of Bullets Don't Blink, as well as the abandoned 80k NaNo 2010 novel fragment, Wandering the Web of Worlds.  I have some character names and the recycled material from BRR but it's still pretty light on plot.
That's all I have so far.  While I think The Kickoff would be the easiest to do, I'm leaning toward 1 or 3.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

You're paying me how much?

As longtime blog readers know, I'm known to indulge in photography from time to time, and by "from time to time," I actually mean "every damn day."  About two months ago, one of my co-workers asked about getting a print of one of my water droplet pictures.  I said sure and forgot about it.

Two weeks ago, I made some postcards on Snapfish to send to a lovely lady and I couldn't get it to let me check out no matter what.  I decided to try to trick it and added an 8x10 of the water droplet picture to my cart.  Sure enough, it worked.

This morning, I dropped the envelope containing the print on my co-worker's desk. 
She said "How much?"
I said "Five bucks to print."
"How much for your artistic effort?"
"I don't care."
"Ok," she said.
I got up to get coffee and I came back to find 45 bucks on my desk!  I guess this is my first sale as a photographer.