Contemplating the nature of our fallen world is a pastime, stipulated.

That said: I have a smile on my face for at least a couple of reasons this week.

One: N. K. Jemisin tweeted a rewatch of the original Highlander movie over the weekend; Clancy Brown dropped in a couple times... this is a moment of joy.

Two: The Mouse House appears set to allow us the honor of hearing Queen Latifah sing Poor Unfortunate Souls. This too is a moment of joy.

I think I said before that my current story surprised me. By showing up sooner than I'd anticipated, mostly.

The broad idea I've had in my head for a few years now. So maybe this story was like a gumbo, or a roast, taking its time in a slow fire. Getting to just right.

Or I could be deluded. Writer's privilege either way.

And the story surprised me again today. I finished it, in one big long fell swoop. I knew the ending was coming up, and then once I started working on it, the real meat of the thing came into my head. And there was no stopping after that.

So that's done.

And then I said to myself, oh, there's on more line I need to add. And I went back to where I thought I should add that line.

Turns out, I needed to remove a line or two, not add. And then it really is finished. Edits and so on to go, but that's that.

Which is a good feeling, indeed.

Book Journal, cont'd

Another of my recent reads, Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport. Em Devenport, let me say thank you, first, this one was entertaining, I enjoyed it immensely. I'm down on the list to find out what happens next, with the Medusas and their counterparts, and the mess they've found themselves in after crawling out of darkness.

Let's see, brief reminder to self: generation ship story with a main character whose selected herself, or been selected, as guardian/avenging angel? of those who make the ship work. There's a lot packed into this, so where Oichi ends up at the end of this is staring into a brand new abyss.

What did I learn? Don't be afraid of tearing into a scar; don't hold back when your character tells you something about themselves that should make the strong quake and the fearful hide in the shadows. I've questions, of course. But they're the good questions, what ifs? and how's that work? that wait for the sequels to answer.

Book journal stuff. These aren't reviews per se, and they are all books I've either purchased or checked out from a library.

Basically, instead of keeping notes in a paper book, I'll take a swing at doing some notes online. Trying to keep the ideas and impressions and things I've learned from a given story in mind.

Ok, enough with the throat clearing: F.T. Lukens' The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths And Magic is an absolute hoot. I had an absolute blast reading this first book in a series, and I say thank you, F.T., because I enjoyed the hell out of my time with this little crew.

What'd I learn? Go for it. Dive in and go for it, once the story gets rolling don't get in the way of it.

Yeah, it's a high school with magic setting and so what if this is all things a reader, as they say, "familiar in the art" can guess where we're headed.

But then, with a good roller-coaster, you can see everything you're getting into. Does it matter when you've got your hands in the air climbing up to the drop? Oh, hell no it doesn't.

I've questions, of course. There are pretty big bows tied up on some aspects of the story, where others are set up beautifully. I want to know how all these things are going to work out.

And, just how F.T. is going to untie the bows that wrapped up the happy ending stuff. Or whether this will be necessary at all (see above about just going for it. F.T. can go along just fine, I suspect.) Either way, I look forward to finding out what happens with the Monster of the Week...

It is a truth I suspect often observed, and, on occasion, written of: get a good day's words in, in fact a good week's worth, and then you'll have a couple of days that make the thought of crawling, exhausted, sweaty, cramping, to the keyboard, an effort beyond human ken.

At the moment, my hamstrings hate me, and I've got that phantom space surrounding my head that warns me of what a fool's game it is to be working outside in the August heat. We have well and truly hit the beastly days, the days where walking outside around 3pm is akin to hitting the pavement with your face.

I have evidence of this in one way. It's the height of wasp season, so an idiot (i.e. your humble correspondent) with a can of spray and a train of geckos following along behind for the easy stunned prey on offing cleared our porch two days past. Something of an easy chore after the good day's writing, and a time to chalk it up as a moment of fun and games and terror.

The geckos do a good job, but there are places and particular breeds of wasp that get the best of them in this heat. I feel for the upset stomach at least one of the brave little beasties is facing: the red wasp struggled, stunned, and the lizard king's get sprang on him in his last efforts...

And then yesterday was devoured by marching band duties. Our daughter's band is busy every year; this year's a big travel year, so we've a few more efforts than normal. The morning we devoted to building props needed for the show. Which was brutal enough, but then the evening was a fundraiser. Pasta night.

This is the second time I've cooked this year, the first one was hamburgers and hot dogs in the spring concert season. We had two pits going, mine was my charcoal pit, and if you've ever cooked a hundred hamburgers or more on charcoal, you know the flame-grilled madness I was surrounded by.

It didn't get out of control, I knew what I had coming and so could stay ahead of it. But every batch on the grill had that special moment, where I'd lift the lid and bow to the inferno a'raging.

Last night was similar. Pasta for three hundred plus, sauce and meatballs and all the rest.

It's been a while since I fought the forge-fire volcanoes of a commercial range. We reached one point where we had three big pots of water plus a big pot of sauce on. Where the three pots met, the flame arose in blistering aspect.

It took me a few passes before I noticed that I'd burnt the hair from my right arm. Fortunately, the left hand pass was over the griddle, so that part of my mind that knew better switched my act to left-hand stirring.

After I went and scrubbed my arms. No one needed my burnt stubble in their food. Good habits come back, eventually...

I need to remember to look for an easy-to-stop at blood center. I was spoiled, for years, I need only pass a blood donation bus at begging time. Or, at a different job, all I had to do was walk a block or so to the permanent location.

It's harder to do certain things when you don't see them every day. Donating blood is like that. When it's easy, of course. When I have to think about it, the months pass, the jobs take more time. And then I look up and realize how long it's been.

So I have to do a little homework now and look for a place that's easy to get to. Same thing as with my gym membership. I had to carve out the time, experiment with it, until I found something that I could more or less consistently.

And forgive myself when I don't get to it as often as I'd like to. At least I'm going.

It's been a good couple of days for me. I've put in words on the current work in progress; given the schedule I anticipated, I ended up well more than I would have bet on. Set the small goals when you see the whirlpool ahead, and then when you're on the other side of it, downstream and drifting again, it all looks a bit better.

But then I look ahead and see another whirlpool. Which is about normal, I guess, for this funny old world.

I pass by comments and outrageousness and weird things. There's a hundred and one billion things that float up, it's a noisy old world these days. There are always significant things going on, but which ones?

Where I am at the moment: observe, feel the emotional response, and then store it away. Remember event and response, because they go together into tomorrow's story. Or maybe the one after that, who knows? Objectivity ain't in it, but then again... yeah.

One of the other things I'm up to is reading more. I've a few recent books that I need to talk about here. As a reminder to self, of both good books and good writers, and of what I picked up, learned from these works they've wrought.

Of course time has its judgment, so we'll see how soon "soon" is on that front.

I didn't write anything here yesterday; today is for Toni Morrison. She left us yesterday.

I can't remember not having a Toni Morrison book in my house, my mother's house, growing up. She was there, as much as King or Straub or Oates or the rest of that particular generation. A constant.

Beloved, when she sent that out to the world, came at a time when I was moving on. Because of school, to "literature", and at that particular point, Toni's work wasn't quite yet "literature". That came later.

Then, she was an itinerant professor, a woman of letters. But not yet the Nobel Prize Winner. That too would come later. Mom bought Beloved as soon as she saw the trade paper edition. I came to it later, after Toni's Prize, when I wanted to discover where an old friend had gone to in my absence.

I haven't kept up with Toni's work after Beloved, other than her occasional letters to us the broader public. But she was always there, just as she always had been. Always will be, oh this magic we do.

I believe Toni Morrison read herself into existence. Yes, writer, yes editor, yes dreams sent to Heaven. But in her work I see most of all: a fellow reader. Engaged, terrified by, lost in, awed in the fact of the words, the story, the stories.

Before I wrote this, I went and dug up something I'd remembered as being fairly short, a quick read from Toni. She wrote an introduction to Huck Finn, once upon a time. I remembered learning something from Toni in that piece. Of how a writer tangles with another's work.

How she tangles with it, again and again. From fear, to understanding. And then dives into it all again. Because what was and what is and what may yet be are not the same; she tangled with Huck Finn, and learned something.

Taught me: of reading, and worrying over it. And then sitting down, so that the words should come and hold these things together. I don't know what tomorrow will be, not having Toni there.

But I am glad that there are words from her that I have yet to read.

And my third job begins in earnest today.

Third job, if you haven't seen me discuss it, in this case refers to our daughter's marching band season. First job the day gig, second job writing, third job band season.

So, as for the past two years, my hours are starting to get slim. The writing part, the fiction writing, I'm comfortable I've a handle on. The past two years have been a lot more productive on that front than I'd feared.

The blog part on the other hand, and the publishing part, are the ones I know will end up being chaotic. Mostly, I know that's on me to figure out the fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there. They add up, those little pieces, ten minutes to do some edits, or write a letter to an editor, put together a submission, this that and the other thing that go into the side of things others see.

Frankly, I've fallen behind on that front. I've a queue of finished work; that said, they're waiting for me as I get there.

The current work in progress, well. That's a book I didn't expect to write; no. I've known for most of the past six years or so that this book has been waiting for me.

I just didn't quite have it in my head, yet. Except, now that I think about it, I'd sketched out roadmap, and would you know it, this book is coming in right about where that roadmap said it would.

I finished the previous book I was working on sometime in June. Wrote a few shorter stories, and then a couple weeks ago, I realized it was time. Sat down, put in a title, and off I've gone. When I sit down, the words come.

Which is one hell of a feeling.

I'm one project at a time at the moment though; I have another roadmap in my head, so there are other projects in that map, but for right this moment, it's the story that's my writing world. A few more weeks, I think, and then we'll see where I am.