Starting Over from Scratch

Black Owl metrics

I think I'm almost over my cold.

Words today: 512

Total words:  18429

Tyop du jour:  ocdensation

Favorite line: Gravel crunched under my tires as I pulled into the parking lot, the cicadas picking up their song again after I shut my engine off.  The sun beat mercilessly on the dusty gravel, brown weeds poking through where the rocks had worn thin.  In the distance, I could hear the blaring horn of a train, but the tracks that ran in front of the building stood empty.  Beyond the tracks, the waters of the French Broad River rippled in the sunlight.

Writing again

I got sick the day before Halloween, sick enough that I was sleeping most of the day, when I wasn't sneezing, sniffling or coughing up a lung.  Today was the first day I've felt well enough to write, which I hope is excuse enough for the low word count.

Words today: 336

Total words:  17085

Tyop du jour:  my own tee feet

Favorite line: Damnation Valley was the section of Otherworld populated by vampires, when they weren’t in our world sucking blood and tending bar.

Spooks (just a little late)

I got sick just before Halloween, so excuse the late holiday posting.  Yesterday I downloaded a Ghost Radar app for my iPhone and spent last night playing with it.  According to the website, the radar analyzes the "quantum flux," and occasionally translates these readings into English words. 

This is what the quanta have been saying to me:

remember origin must party musical 

and today:

Ellen gas Mary

It's unfortunate to learn that Ellen or Mary has gas.  Or maybe Ellen is gassing Mary, which is even more unfortunate.

The quanta really dig Handel, because when he's playing, blips litter the radar screen.  Not so much with Bach's cello concertos, at least as performed by Yo Yo Ma.  And just as I was typing that sentence, blips started popping up and the quanta said, "Stiff riding."  So there you go.

Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween!

Long time, no blog

When my blogging goes down, my production goes down as well.  I haven't been writing as much as I should, and it's been ages since I've done a crit on OWW.  If I owe you one, I promise I'll get to it this week.

Black Owl metrics

Words today: 559

Total words:  16689

Tyop du jour:  none

Favorite line: The hipsters just swayed to the trance beat, bottles of PBR clasped in their lily-white hands.

In the still of the night

Sleep is a luxury these days. I woke at 4:50 and after lying there for twenty minutes, decided to get up and get writing.

Words today: 535

Total words:  15521

Tyop du jour:  none

Favorite line: His "wound."  He made it sound so slight.  He’d had his heart torn out.

Thank you, Al Franken

Now I know, with both Sen. McConnell and Sen. Bunning voting "nay," that I live in a pro-rape state.

Black Owl metrics

Words today: 544

Total words:  14986

Tyop du jour:  "onter the foll moon"

Favorite line: none

Black Owl metrics

It was like pulling teeth today.

Words today: 571

Total words:  14193

Tyop du jour:  none

Favorite line: “Is there any way you can suggest I meet Watling?”

“Have a car wreck,” he said.  “File a malpractice claim against a doctor.  Or just sit on the back bumper of an ambulance.  He’ll catch up with you.”

Onward with the bourbon story

Words today:  704

Total words: 2162

Tyop du jour: none

Favorite line:  I like people, and not just for their nutritional value.

Tom & the Oenophile

I put aside the novel today to work on my bourbon short story, as titled above.  Yes, I know.  Anyway, I've got up to 1400 words on it.  There's a dead body in the bathroom, bashed over the skull with the brass toilet paper dispenser.  Now all I have to do is figure out whodunnit.

Words today:  805

Total words: 1464

Tyop du jour: none

Favorite line:   “Perhaps you’ve tried some of my wine,” he said.  He put out his hand.  “I’m Robin Surlowe, proprietor of Guist Lake Winery.”

I raised my eyebrows and, “Oh,” was the politest response I could come up with.  I shook his hand, despite the fact that I’d tried his wine once.