Ok, next post up is a story, one I've finished first thing this morning.

I thought about where it might be best to send it. Then I turned it around in my head and asked who I wanted to have read it. And here I am posting it.

A little different process. The stories and poems I've posted here before were written step by step and published in the heat of the moment. This one is similar, except that rather than doing it piecewise, I'm putting it up complete in one go.

So, here's a little melancholy recall, one I hope is a Fall intro suitable for an evening fire and a cup of tea ahead of the first good cold front...

I wonder how those moments in any story come. Writers, you know the ones. The simple statement maybe, the paragraphs.

And then the tears. Or the wicked smile, chuckle. The grimace, those too, maybe it was a little too on the nose?

The little moment, the one that makes you wonder if you're writing the rest of the story to get to this place. Not ever that the rest of the story is about this place, or that this moment is the Theme, no. These aren't facades and set dressing we're talking about here.

Ninety percent of the time these moments maybe don't actually have anything to do with the rest of the story at all. Throwaway comments a reader (including the writer, always) might never even notice.

But for me at least there's always still that moment. The one that sticks out and trips me up, puts a smile on my face or sends me somewhere else.

And then I think, how many of those moments do I build, accidentally on purpose, for others?

And then I go back to the well. Because I know that other writers can yank me that way, so maybe I owe it to a reader or two, somewhere down the line, to pass them a little of that magic.

Ok, every long term coder has their own personal language, when they're at their computer.

libraries of code, it's how we talk to the computer. Bits and pieces of many (many, many...) different languages we've picked up over the years. Tools to do this and that. And a million different other tools that are a variation on a theme because it's awful easy to forget that you've already written it, or why that particular iteration doesn't work on this particular problem...

That said, when you start leaving yourself comments in StephenKing-DarkTower language (thankee sai) it's either been a really long day... or maybe I need to think some, ponder a bit, on Blaine the Mono and how he got built...

Yeah, that's better now. And I know that's an awfully personal note to leave the blog on.

Fortunately, I've had story on my mind. I had two options with my keyboard time, and fiction won out.

Certainly, for my personal peace of mind, I'm happy with that balance.

Now I just need to figure out what my schedule looks like over the next few weeks. I'm likely to be disrupted mightily, mid-October and the first part of November, just because of life events on the calendar. Weekends will be hit or miss, and weeknights too. I concentrate on the fiction progress, so I'm likely to be really hit or miss on any publishing activities over the next couple months.

No, let me re-phrase that. Getting to the publishing part of the work is necessary. Realistic assessment suggests that I'll be unlikely to schedule anything realistically, so stick to publishing activities that don't require hard time lines and can be done in nice small steps, as discrete elements.

Ok, I can handle that. Considering I've got a pile of stories that need to be put up, sent out, and everything between, I'm gonna have to...

Apparently, I'm halfway to my destiny as an old fart, and now I get lessons in how getting old ain't for the faint of heart.

Just when I can breathe safe again, the ribs healed up nice, sneezes don't terrify me any more and I can blow my nose safely again.... and I bruise my tailbone somehow.

It's been a pretty miserable couple days. And yes, I spend all day at the keyboard, fiction or the day gig. So I'm both sore as hell and tearing my hair out ready to get back to the work.

And we've got a marching performance that happens to have a football team warming up the crowd for us on Saturday. This ought to be a fun weekend...

For my friends on the East Coast of the U.S., good luck over the next week or so, Florence is about to make a mess of your lives for a while.

Similar, though milder on the front end, looks to be headed in on the Gulf Coast, though it's a lot more uncertain at the moment.

A good time to work on your weather eye, it's the height of hurricane season and it looks like an awful lot of energy's suddenly come together in interesting ways, for weather guru values of "interesting". Stay safe out there.

I'd peer out through the glass and take a good look around, except for the part where the lightning dances through the parking lot.

Ok, maybe not the parking lot. Maybe it's only a few miles off. Lingering. Shining. Just enough. Wanna come out and play?

Please. I cut my teeth on walking across miles of parking lots, with great metal spikes of lights sticking up and embracing the electrons.

I am not so readily tempted to come out into the field of fire...

Not today, anyhow. Perhaps next time, there may yet be a day of frustration that leads me astray.

"Maybe it was time for Gina to forget"

Last line of the story just finished. And not at all what I was expecting when I started at the top.

Not big twists. I throw up the lines, watch them scroll by under my fingers, and go through certain expectations. Weigh this, listen to that. Feel the course of the story and where it might go.

Push and pull and try this, did that work? Ok, work or not, what just happened?

Oh. That's what happened. And, if so, then what? Why, ok a little but not too much, why's a big question with breadcrumbs for the unwary, let's just focus on the what for now...

It's a hell of a way to run a railroad. But it's fun as all get out. Reading/writing a story simultaneously. Always the question of what has me caught up here?

The current story is going well. I thought yesterday that I was going to need to come back and change something significant about the main character.

Then, last night, I realized he was telling me I was missing details about what he was involved in. How he'd come to it.

What he was chasing.

Now I get to find out just why. And what he's going to do to the person who's stolen it from its current home.

Not rightful home. No, that's long gone, dust. He'll settle for current.

What's he ready to do to make sure it gets back to where it needs to go?

The Labor Day weekend got away from me, as far as keyboard time. We've got a busy time going on, getting the kids ready for the competition part of marching season, and the gang running things for the parents' side wanted to take advantage of the time off.

Problem being, the weather decided not to cooperate. Well, ok, let me say instead that the weather grudgingly allowed us just enough time between the rains to get a few things done, not enough to ever really finish anything.

Such is life, sometimes, now that we've entered the fall rains hereabouts.