Requiem for a Happy Cat

Once upon a time, there was a little black cat with a white spot on his chest who lived outside. There were many houses around, but none of them were his. There were many people around, but none of them were his. He was all alone.

One day, he found a bowl of food outside a house. No one seemed to mind, so he helped himself. The next day, the bowl was refilled, so he helped himself again. Again and again, the food kept coming back, and eventually, a woman began to join him. He let her pet him, but he was too scared to let her pick him up. But she was nice and brought him food, so he kept coming back.

After a while, the food was in a box. How strange! But he was hungry, so he went inside. BANG! The box slammed shut behind him, and the woman came and took him somewhere where he saw a doctor who cut off the tip of his ear. Ow! Then the women took him back and put him in a dark, scary garage. But a man came out and opened the door, and the cat bolted out!

The woman was afraid she'd never see the cat again, but after a week, he was hungry, so he came back, meowing for food and attention.

It got cold outside, very cold, and one night when colorful lights were exploding is the sky, the cat came back for food. This time, the woman grabbed him and before he could fight her, brought him inside her house which was nice and warm and quiet. She stayed with him all night while the lights exploded outside. There were other cats, and eventually they liked him, and there were other people, but he liked the woman best, and there was always food and a warm lap and pets.

He had a house and it was his. He had a person and she was his. And he lived happily ever after to the end of his days.

RIP Brumus. You had 13 wonderful years as the happiest cat I'll ever know. What better life could a cat have asked for?

Moments of the Week(s): Crickets and Creepy Places

Hey everyone! Been a few weeks, I know. I haven't really had much to say. My Discworld reading is progressing (29/41) and I have no idea what I'll be working on come NaNo in a few months. I'm sure I'll panic as soon as I'm done reading. For now, here are the moments I've managed to scrounge up.

• If you need to drive a character batty in an innocent way, I've discovered that a hidden indoor cricket or other mysterious noise does the trick a charm. There's nothing like storming through your house only for the sound to stop, start, step, stop, restart, step, etc. After a day of this, I caught the culprit hiding in our laundry room: a large cricket that was very happy to be let outside, and two homeowners happy for some peace and quiet. He was a fascinating little critter, with a body the length of a quarter and legs twice that. He also seemed to have his own kind of gravity, because after I'd caught him in a glass with a paper towel over the top, he hung around at the bottom for a minute, his front legs up on the side. Then he tipped over backwards and as soon as he hit the ground bounced up onto the paper towel. I never saw him flip over. It was just as if he'd decided Up was Down. He hung around there until I let him go.

• I've talked before about my friend who invites us to her house in the woods for a writer's day every few weekends. This past Sunday, we took her dogs for a walk down to the small main road in front of her neighborhood. Out on the main road, we passed a pair of ivy-covered cement markers with a sign that declared the inside to be an arboretum. Sadly, my friend informed us, pointing out a newer Do Not Enter sign, it is now private property and entering would be trespassing. A block down the road, there were two other ivy-covered concrete columns. Atop each one was a large, detailed gargoyle, watching and daring anyone to enter. Shortly inside, the driveway ended in a small pile of rocks, making the path impassable. In the middle of the day, it was a lovely sight, but at night, by the light of a low moon, I'm sure the statues have scared many a roadside traveler.

Not much, I know, but I couldn't leave everyone hanging another week. I'm hopefully going to finish the remaining books in the next two weeks and then I'll be back to my writing and panicking. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Moments of the Week: Recollections

Another slow few weeks with not much in the way of inspiration. I've been reading and editing, mostly keeping my head down and buried in words. 20/41 for the Discworld reading frenzy. Halfway there! Ish. I guess halfway'll be when I'm halfway through the next one.

Although I don't have any current moments, I didn't want to leave you all for another week, so I've dredged up a few memories, recollections of times past that stood out as setting or characters.

• Last year, there was a little old man outside my office, hobbling along with a walking stick in one hand and dragging an oxygen tank with the other. I expected him to head for the car in the handicapped spot, but he passed it by and turned at a spot with a scooter. At least, he rode it like a scooter, with his cane and oxygen tank tucked into an alcove by his feet. It LOOKED like a motorcycle, and when he started it, it sounded like a motorcycle. Time and age, it seemed, would not separate him from "cool."
• Back in June, if you looked up the night sky, you may have noticed Jupiter, Venus, and the moon moving in close proximity of each other. In many stories, certain things happen when stars or planets align. On June 20th, the two bright planets and a crescent moon made a nearly perfect triangle, and if that's not a sign of some novel premonition, then I don't know what is.

I've got a few other recollections saved up, so in the event of uneventfulness, I'll have something to share. As always, I hope these moments can help inspire something in your stories, and if you encounter any yourself, please feel free to share in the comments. Have a lovely weekend!

Moments of the week: Red Runners

Hello everyone! It's been a rather uneventful few weeks these past two. I've been mostly buried in Discworld books. Two weeks and a bit in, and I'm at 12 books down after finishing Witches Abroad at 1AM this morning. It's fun to see the progression of character growth and the world around them. There are lines in one book that come into play a dozen more down the line. The depth of the Disc is unbelievable, and why I love it so much. But it's also so very stressful, because I'm a mathematical person. Not in great depth, but I'm the kind of person who will count heads in a room to know how many people there are, and then make assumptions based off that, like how long crit group will run if we have 3 15 minute readings and X# 1 minute crits where X is the number of attendees. I like to know X.

I like to know timelines, too. And ages. And let me tell you, trying to wrangle a timeline out of the Disc is not an easy task. There are almost enough events explicitly set or subtle asides to make a semblance of one. But it is VERY not easy.

Until Wednesday, it's been a slow time for moments. So I've only got one, but there's a story in it for sure.

• The woman in front of me wasn't paying attention. The light had changed, the decent line ahead of us had all gone, but she just sat there, distracted by something, not moving. Just before I honked, she started to roll forward, slowly, then up to speed. But as we approached, the light changed to yellow. "Ugh, we could've made that," I grumbled. Would've been easy. At least she was slowing down. Her distraction had cost her the light as well. But as she approached the light, instead of stopping, she sped up, and as it went to red, she cut through. From the other direction, someone who must have just gotten there made a left turn after the light, hitting it just before the change. He just barely passed in front of the red runner as she sped across the road. The person trying to make a left on his tail didn't notice her. She was going too fast to stop. 
  
  Brakes squealed. Hoods crumpled. Glass and plastic flew.
  
  And in the back of the car that had been in front of me, a Baby on Board sign glared out.

I don't know what happened after that. I don't know if the distracted woman actually had her child with her, or if anyone was hurt or what. I do know a cop turned onto the road heading in their direction less than 30 seconds later and the accident was within walking distance of a fire station and two minutes driving from a hospital. If anyone was hurt, they were in a place to get treatment fast, whatever kind of treatment they needed.

I've never seen a crash happen before. My mind's absolutely boggled that someone who might have a child with them would be so careless and drive so dangerously. Or even just a child waiting at home or daycare. I'll never know what was so important that she decided to risk it instead of waiting one minute for the safety of the light. But I hope they're all okay.

Moments of the Week: Auto Shops and Traffic Stops

Happy Friday, everyone! Am I ever glad this week's over. It's been a long one. Plenty of work, plenty of running around, not much time to relax. But the only thing planned this weekend is a viewing of Ant-Man with a bunch of friends, so I can do whatever I want. Which will probably be "read." You see, on Friday and Saturday, the friends over wanted to watch our copy of The Color of Magic with David Jason, Sean Astin, and Tim Curry (with the late legend Christopher Lee as the voice of Death). Not the most faithful reproduction, but good enough for a short miniseries made out of two books. Then, Monday, with the desire to reread The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic already planted, I realized it was exactly one month until the release of The Shepherd's Crown, the very last Discworld book.

So I decided to do what any reasonable obsessive fan would do when faced with the end of her favorite series.

I decided to read them all.

It's only 41 books. Shouldn't take TOO long, right?

But what a way it'll be to say goodbye.

Moments!

• It was time for an oil change. Well, my car was also making some unnatural noises, so first thing in the morning, I rolled into my usual auto shop and found myself looking down at an ambulance and a police car idling in the parking lot. Clearly, they were here on different business than vehicle work. I skirted the ambulance, parked, and headed inside to ask about the work and what in the world was going on. I'm nosy like that. Luckily, the men at the counter were happy enough to provide the story. A man had recently been released from the hospital. Or had walked out, as they said something about him still having a bag or IV. Either way, he'd just recently had bypass surgery and was ambling down the road probably a several mile walk from the hospital. Smoking a cigarette. He came down the hill the auto shop, finished his smoke while leaning against the building, then came in and said, "Call 911, I think I'm having a heart attack."

• On the way into work, I was thinking how I hadn't seen much for moments this week. Aside from the oil change story, there wasn't much to see out and about. And then the light I sat at turned green and, with a number of other drivers, we crested the hill in front of us to a view of a veritable sea of flashing red and blue lights. The entire road was closed off by emergency vehicles, and as one, every single one of us U-turned as one solid swarm of "Nope." Despite looking it up when I got to work, I couldn't find a single report on what happened. It was as if there was no problem at all.

So that's it for this week! Hope you all had a good one, have a great weekend, and keep an eye out for your own moments.

Okay, This Looks Bad.

I've been reading a lot of trade paperback comics lately, particularly Hawkeye stuff. Mostly Matt Fraction's. I have a shameless girl-crush on Kate Bishop. I mean, just look at this chick.

She's a great character and Fraction just writes her fantastically. But this isn't about Kate and awesome female characters, although I certainly could write a whole blog post on Marvel's recent leading ladies and how people can take notes as writers.

This is about things looking bad.

I've got three of the trades, a dozen issues combined, and mostly, they have one thing in common: at some point, sometimes at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, the Hawkeye who is the POV will say "This looks bad." It's the first line in the series (pictured to the right, here.)

Midway through the third trade, L.A. Woman, and playing a few more games of "Spot the 'This Looks Bad,'" I realized something.

"This looks bad" is practically the mantra of a story.

At some point, whether it's the beginning, middle, or at the peak of the climax, there should be at least one moment where everything just looks bad. The hero falls towards the ground from far above survivable. The heroine finds the bloody knife in her bedroom. The couple's bridge of trust is seconds from collapsing. The walls of the trash compactor are getting closer. The bomb has a minute left.

It's that moment of seeming hopelessness. When the actions of the next few seconds or minutes make or break the entire rest of the story. And it doesn't have to be the climax, although that is the moment we tend to associate with things being just that bad. At the beginning, it's a hook. It draws you in and makes you wonder how the characters are going to get out of this. In the middle, it's a promise of trouble to come, keeping the reader moving. And at the climax, well, it's the climax. Everything we've been working towards is about to come together or fall apart

It's got to look bad. Where's the fun if it doesn't? Where's the tension?

Take a look at your works in progress. Where are your moments when the leads can pause the moment, look around and think, "Okay, this looks bad"? If you can't find one, why not? It might be that that's what's missing to bring the whole tale together. Find your "this looks bad" moments, and if you can't find 'em, add 'em, cause if things look bad, it's probably gonna be good.

Moments of the Week: Tires and Spiders

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you all have had a good week. I'm still in "wish I were still on vacation" mode. It takes a few weeks to get back into the swing of things.

I spy a lot of moments in the car, I realize. It makes sense. If I'm not in my car, 90% of the time, I'm at work or at home. Life goes on usually where I'm not. Luckily, my route and my area are filled with eclectic people doing unique things and living unique lives.

This week's moments:

• If you've been in a car, you've probably noticed other people's license plates, and if you've noticed license plates, you've probably noticed how hard it is to tell the difference between 0 and D, 1 and I, or 8 and B in the font they use. You may have even seen this comic:
  
  

  

  XKCD 

   

   

  Would someone actually do that, though? Make a purposefully impossible to read license plate? Answer: yes, they would and yes, they have. Somewhere in my town there is a red two-seater sportscar with the license plate BB8B888B. or something like that. It was kinda hard to read. 

• Another encounter at the public school football stadium and track: At one side of the football field, a large, muscular black man was training with a giant tractor tire. It had to be almost as big as he was when it was standing. He started with the tire flat on the ground, then lifted it up onto its edge and let it fall forward. Then he'd lift and repeat, all the way down the field, I assume.
  Halfway across the field from him was a little girl, dressed in pink, girly clothes, her hair in two round pigtails, lifting and rolling a tire her own size, just like Daddy.

This week we've got a contribution from my friend Agent at God of Ephemera.

• Says Agent: I was walking into my house when I saw what looked like a curl of smoke frozen in mid air between the wall and overhang.
  It was a huge goddamn spider web. And in the center was a giant black spider with big orange spots.
  You would have loved it, creeped the fuck outta me. (What can I say? She knows me.)
  A little bit of research into spiders in her area, and it sounds like she had an encounter with a Argiope aurantia, also known as a garden spider or, humorously, a writing spider.

That's it for this week! Remember to keep an eye out for your own moments, and as always, feel free to share. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.