zoe_w

Yeah, I know, I've been bad about updating here lately. I don't mean to neglect this place, but being my personal journal, there's not much that I feel a need to discuss here that I can't cover on my Wordpress blog. I've also got the video blogging to keep up on, and I'm socializing more through Facebook, at the same time moving away from MySpace. Oh, and then there's my new found habit for tweeting. Yes, I joined Twitter, and I love it. ^_^

I had planned to continue to post links to my articles and stories here, like I do on MySpace, but somehow, updating this site always slips my mind. I do have a lot of sites to try and keep track of these days, so something is bound to slip.

Well, let's see...a brief update. It looks like I'm soon going to become a regular reviewer for a publisher, which is very cool. I have lots of material for the serial stories lined up, and there's a couple of editors sending me strong "maybes" on certain projects that I shan't mention yet. There's so much good news, it's almost possible to forget that my health is poop right now.

I'm not longer sure what prupose this journal serves, so I might let it go. I guess I'll ponder that some more another time. I'm feeling really tied, and I think I'm going to crash early tonight.

Later...

But I didn't really plan on getting anything done. I still managed to edit about four pages from a novella, and I hung out on a forum most of the day, talking shotguns with some guys who really know their gun-fu. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't making the story unrealistic by arming Wendy with a Mossberg shotgun in the next book.

But in explaining how she intends to use it, I found that the Mossberg 500 Bantam may be the best bet after all. Anything low bore is going to break her arm. The Bantam is a gun made for so she's going with a 20 gauge model, with a sling strap and a Knoxx SpecOps Folder stock handgrip. Hehe, oh yeah, the next rounds of stories are going to have a few hints of gun porn. ^_^ As I said on the forum, i might write at the amateur level, but that's no reason not to do basic research.

Of course, I still have for the brain drain to wear off to do any writing to enter this information into the second draft revisions of A Perfectly Empty Vessel. And before I can get to that, I still have to finish writing Changeling. And if this post seems to make me seem not so scatter-brained, I should mention that it took my four hours to write this. 0.o

The thing is, normally I get REALLY bitchy and cranky when I get brain drain. But this time, I'm just mildly cranky. Okay, I can't write, right now. But it's just fatigue, and not a lack of idea that's keeping me away from the blank page. Well...except for here...and the forums...and my other blog.

Okay, I think I'm heading to bed. I'm just babbling now. ^_^

Last night, I was cranking out stuff just fine. I finished up the edits on part two of Touched, and I finished edits on part 7 of Erick's Journey. I ate dinner and sat down to work on Changeling...and nothing.

My attempts to coax the writing process were awful, and out of desperation, I randomly tossed a vampire into a mall scene, just because I couldn't think of anything else to do. But I know that's awful, so I erased everything up to the point where the block began. I'll come back to it in a day or two, but I think I'll take today off and do some reading of other people's stuff.

It's not like I haven't done a lot recently. In addition to writing and editing my stories, I've been working on non-fiction and doing some research for my articles. YES! Actual research that involves finding stuff out instead of making it up.

I just wanted to post an update to explain what I'm up to. Hopefully, I'll get around this writers block fast. I truly hate it when the muse wanders away in the middle of a story. It always makes me worry that she won't come back to it. -_-

But anywho, I'm off to read.

Later...

I did make dinner tonight, a really interesting gourmet Tex-Mex version of pizza.

I also worked on revising some scenes, but I'm working through this slowly. I had to spend a lot of today researching the living arrangements of a bit character. No, really. I now know that he lives in Ravenna, Ohio. I even "drove" past his aprtment complex thanks to Google. (And seriously, is there anything about Google that isn't a writer's best friend when it comes to reserach? If google doesn't have it, you can bet Wiki probably does.)

Anywho, this new guy is a bit character like Gavin, in that later on his importance in the story becomes greater. Still, in the first scenes that John had in the stories, he was a very blank character, and he just felt like "filler" if I didn't give him more details.

This was also the case with Davis Briggs. I knew that he had a larger role in the series, but in the rough drafts, he was never described. He was just supposed to be "cop-like," I guess. Like I said in my last post, the rough drafts aren't always pretty.

But now like Davis and Gavin, John has a back story and a basic physical description, and chapter one of the rough draft is now completely revised. Yay! And tomorrow, I will finish working on his history in the other book. Then I'll attempt to tackle the first half of chapter two in the rough draft.

And on a final side note, John's age was chosen arbitrarily. I worried that I'd guessed wrong, and I stated going over his history to check his age. And it turns out, I was right on, he is supposed to by 52. There's no other way that he could have been a lt. colonel in 1978. (when he was 33) And since the story takes place in 1996, I'm all good and squared away, mathematically speaking. ^_^

Okay, rambling...must go to bed. 0.o

Later...

I'm looking over chapter one of a rough draft. I knew the story would need to be fixed up, but some of the problems in this story are really worthy of major cringing. I am so glad that no one gets to see my stuff until much later in the production process. Because sometimes, my rough drafts blow and suck at the same time.

I know that eventually, I'll get the errors worked out, but there's some problems with this story that an editor might not know to fix. As an example, a whole page of dialogue that reads well is all very wrong, because the character asking the question to start the conversation is psychic. She should already know the answer, even if the reader doesn't.

The introduction of the bit character's back story had to be completely reworded to become an internal musing of the psychic character instead of a long conversation. I shaved off a half a page in the process, but I would describe most of the dialogue in the book as being in serious need of similar repairs. It's not just that the dialogue runs long. Many times, the dialogue simply starts out wrong for a simple reason like the above example.

I had similar problems with my other stories, so I know it not supposed to be a big deal. Still, I feel annoyed, because in my rough drafts, it doesn't look like I've learned anything at all. I'm still making a lot of the same structural mistakes repeatedly, and my main flaws are always there, no matter how hard I try to write differently. Of course in the revisions, I know about these mistakes,, so I know what to look for and change. But you'd think after this many stories, I might just NOT make those mistakes in the rough drafts anymore. And instead, I'm still writing the same way.

So yeah, I reiterate. I'm so glad that no one reads my rough drafts. -.-

Later...

1) I am working on Berserker, which I think is around 50% finished right now. The bad guy just showed up and got scratched, and there's two weeks to the next lunar cycle before he makes his transformation. Of course, some of that time, he's going to dedicate to hunting and some slightly related plotting. As bad guys go, I think he's one of the more likable villains I've ever made.

This story should give me a chance to set down some ground rules for my werekin, and it also allows me to put together the first werekin pack on Earth. And it has an orc and a black elf too, so it's...it's different. Obviously, I'm liking it so far.

2) I have not had a cigarette in three days. I'm having bad withdraw symptoms, and I have thoughts every few minutes of rolling a smoke. After a few times, I have to look down to make sure I'm not really rolling anything. So far, I'm not.

Okay, I'm ready to drop on the couch for a nap.

Later...

Okay, so we got our Kirby vacuum cleaner in yesterday, and today, Rosa came over to clean up the apartment. We looked like kids fighting over a new toy. ^_^ Both of us took turns cleaning up around the place, and while I feel very proud of my manual labor, I am now REALLY sore.

Today, I continued in my efforts to revise Trail of Madness. I'm updating the formatting to match the style in Redemption Lost, and I've been fleshing out details in both the scenes and the character descriptions. I started all the way at the beginning, and I made it back into part two, where I was working before. Once I finish part two, I'll move over to part three from The Lesser of Two Evils.

The basic plan is, once I finish these revisions, I'm going to have Sam read all three books in chronological order. And if this works out, I'll begin working on making the updated files for the first two books.

I know I have to pay for one more round of revisions on the Lulu books. This is unavoidable, as the books will still be the only print versions available for the next six to seven months. I can't close production on them without killing sales on Redemption Lost, and I might also kill sales by not providing a cleaner edit on both books.

The e-books matter is now solved. The Lulu books will be using their same ISBN number, and I'll use two separate ISBN numbers to make the e-book versions of the first two parts. Once I publish the fully edited versions, I can retire the Lulu editions and the e-books, instead using a unified release under new numbers. This means losing two numbers from my initial block, but if I don't do it this way, there won't be a method of selling the first two e-books in the major distribution channels. And again, only having out book three in a trilogy is likely to make for poor sales.

I'm going to bed early tonight, because I have to head to Cormano tomorrow to discuss a potential job as a web-editor of sorts. If this pays as much as hubby says, I might have a way to pay for the editing on both of my books this month. Which would rock, because then I could start saving up money, and ATP can make a call for submissions. So, I have my fingers crossed.

Later...

I canceled another live reading today. My voice is just not working for a reading at this point. I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to record a new podcast soon, but if I can't get the voices right, I may just fake it to put out another episode.

In the meantime, I went through Shadow Walker and updated it with a new revision. I put it into a justified format with indents for the HTML version, and I've made e-book versions of the file as well. You can go to www.zoewhitten.com/content/stories.html to pick up the file in your preferred format, (Shadow Walker is near the bottom of the list) or you can check out the story on the web site with the improved formatting.

After that, I imported a copy of Redemption Lost over to the Palm eReader format (PDB) and uploaded that to Lightning Source. I still need help from them on unlocking the book to proof their version, but the unlocked version on my computer looks good.

The funny thing is, the program for the Palm conversion is set to simulate a 160X160 resolution screen. Hard page breaks can be formatted in, and the rest of the lines are "soft breaks" which don't really show up in the file. So, for instance, the chapters can be forced to go to new pages. The file is resolution independent, so on the PC reader, the pages are great. They literally look just like the print version. There's even a table of contents with links to the parts. I'm drifting...the point is, on the editor, the book is OVER 2500 PAGES. 0.o Each page contains roughly one sentence. So, if you're going to read this on your iPhone, it might take a while. ^_^

So...once I finish this project up, that will make FOUR file formats that the new book can be found in. I may also start making up PDB versions of the free stories. I figure, the more formats I have, the more chances I have of snagging new readers.

The next projects on tap, besides the attempts at podcasting, is to run through the first two books of the Campaign trilogy, alternating in each book between chapters.

I should mention a new ally in my editing efforts, Sam...that's Microsoft's default reader voice. Sam consistently reads like shit. He mispronounces many words badly. Like crotch comes out "crows nest." No, seriously. If I write, "No." then Sam says, "Number." Sam is a bastard retard, BUT Sam reads all of the words, and he catches all of my errors. Something is repetitive? I notice it when Sam talks. Got a misspelled or misused word? Sam will find it. And his flat, slow pace makes sorting out where natural pauses should go easier.

The plan is, I'll whip through a chapter, and then have Sam read it. Then I'll make changes until it sounds decent. These will be the files that I send to my editor for the new and improved ISBN releases, but I'll also take this version and make up some new e-books. I think I mentioned this before, so I'll move on to my next item, a mini-rant.

So, Harriet asks me for the links to my books on Amazon. I go searching for my books, and as I'm copying the link, I notice that The Lesser of Two Evils is now $12...NOW it's $12. Holy shit, I changed the price something like 8 months ago, and only now is the price change going into effect. Now, when this particular incarnation of the book has all of four to six months left in its life cycle...sigh, of course it would. When else should it happen, if it doesn't happen late? @.@

All right, that's just about all of the news. I do want to mention that I've seen issue 4 of Necrotic Tissue...and Alpha Male is the FIRST story in the magazine! It's a special double-issue for Halloween, and I'm the first in the book... for HALLOWEEN! You really can't beat that. ^_^ I've been over the story, and it's laid out well. But, perhaps even cooler is the illustration. Someone drew a man stabbing a werewolf in the eye with a dagger, and that actually happens in the story. Granted, the picture isn't entirely accurate. I don't recall when my protagonist lost his shirt in his flight from the house, and I don't know how he retained his gun harness despite losing his shirt. Still, it is an AWESOME illustration. I can see the man in the drawing being Paul Blake, given the description I'd made, and I was really impressed with the way it fits into the story at just the right point. So, if you want to check out this free PDF magazine, you should head over to www.necrotictissue.com and subscribe.

Okay, I'll get off the ballyhoo wagon and go to bed now. ^_^

Later...

I'm going through the third proof now. After I finish this round, I'll be going though the finished files one last time. And then, the uploading begins. I believe that I will be able to do this so that the release date of the book will be November 18. Plenty of time for Christmas shopping, in theory.

But, this release date is not just for a print edition. Because of my rather diligent efforts, "Redemption Lost" will be available as an e-book in PDF, PDB, PRC, and LIT. And you really cannot get much better than that for a release from a micro-publisher. Four e-book formats, and a print edition.

I learned from my dad today that one of his coworkers Googled me. She has also read my first book. She passed it to another coworker, who is a retired librarian. The second coworker liked it so much, she read the second book. My dad asked the first coworker if she wanted to read the second book yet. She said that she is going to wait for the third book to come out and buy the full set. So, YAAAAAAY! ^_^ Sure, it's only a few minor victories, but picking up new readers has been a serious challenge for me, and I suspect it will remain one of those things I struggle with for some time.

Okay, bed time...

Later...

I was getting ready to do my live reading today, and just started feeling like crap. I couldn't make myself do the reading, and once I logged out, I realized I was running a fever. So I took some aspirin and had a lie down. Then I worked a very small amount on fixing a chapter in a book, and I went over an editing job.

About the editing. It seems that in spite of me being an utter bitch last year and turning down the job offer to run two magazines without training, the glass company has come back with a counter offer. Now they only want me to edit and format a few press releases at a time, and I get paid a fairly decent rate for what is mostly easy proofing work. So yeah, if they're offering it as steady work, I'll probably take it. Right now it's supposedly only a "few extra articles." But that still works out to almost €300 for me, and that's almost another payment to my editor, depending on which book I send to her. I'm thinking it will be the shorter one, and since I'm cutting some fluff from the third chapter, it will arrive to her in an even shorter state.

I still don't get credit for this editing job, and in that respect, it bugs me. Okay, I'm something like an assistant editor, and I don't do that much. But at present, it's still not something I can include on a resume. "Occasionally edits for various sources."

I suppose if I start working for regular pay again, I'll have to stop calling myself retired. Which would be fitting. I never could get a job working as a computer animator. No, instead I became a computer technician. So, wouldn't it just be fitting if I can't sell a book to a publisher, and I end up becoming an editor instead? Oy.

Oh, and obviously, I didn't get a podcast reading done. I don't mean to procrastinate on it, really! I sat down this morning and opened a word document to type up the show intro script, and I just blanked out. I didn't recover my head until hubby got home, and once he's home, it's flat out impossible to record a podcast. I'll try and recover from whatever has hit me this time, and hopefully, I'll still be able to get a podcast out this week instead of next week. Double oy.

And on a lighter note, I've now hit 1,000 posts at the horror forum. For some of the heavy posters, that's probably nothing. But for me, it's a big deal that I can stay ANYWHERE long enough to make 1,000 posts. I usually end up wandering at some point, and I always come back to this place. Either for advice, or just to take a break and lurk, it's been a good place to visit. So for my 1,000th post, I said thanks. It felt fitting. I TOTALLY was planning to explode and have a sarcastic rant, but I just couldn't find any inspiration for it. Oh well, maybe at 2,000. ^_^

All right, beddy time, for me.

Later...

Formatting your hard drive sucks...finding out you've formatted your drive for no good reason is even worse.

Later...

Just a couple of updates. First, I don't know what I have, but I am feeling cruddy. I have packed sinuses, a cough, and fatigue. Last night, I couldn't eat dinner. I took two bites and started barfing. So I had to make do with only having milk, ice cream, and snack cakes. Everything tasted weird, so I'm not sure if I have a cold or if my MS is acting up again. Every time it acts up, I stop being able to taste things properly.

In writing news, I've started another story, this one continuing the progress of Jobe and Gavin. This is going well, and I know how most of this story will play out, in theory. The problem is, I may have just thrown a wrench into my own machine.

For a while now, I've been pondering the fate of a character. I've had to ask myself whether or not I should just kill them and move on, or whether I should later resurrect them using the trusty unreliable narrator method. This was the original plan, and changing it would have major implications for the the rest of the outline. But lately, I've had doubts about bringing this character back, because there's already someone else who dies and will come back. I'm planning stuff to happen over a lot of novels, and over a very big cast. But it seems to me like I should only try to go to that cliché one time in the entire series.

I went over to the horror forum, which is becoming the place I usually go first for writing advice. One writer offered a short question as their answer: which serves the story best? This led me to believe that it really was for the best to stick with the original plan.

However, a few other writers tried offering suggestions to make sure the character can be dead, but still a part or the overall plot. Obviously, a ghost angle might be possible, but there's logistics issues that need to be worked out.

Which brings me back to the story about Jobe and Gavin. If I accept that the other character died, then I can create an "Intermission," or a series of breaks in the main story to move another character into the time line. Previously, this person was a bit character, and I never was sure what to do with her. She'd remain something of a bit character in this next story, but the general idea would be to push her into a more prominent role in the overall series.

And so I'm temporarily stuck, because both ideas sound equally good. The original plan would continue the development of a major villain. The alternative is passing the role off to the character's half-sister. And since I needed to do something with her, this would be a fantastic chance to help her grow from her lowly origins into a character of real substance. Almost all of the character's issues and abilities are shared by their half sister, so a lot of the original outline can remain intact, with only minor tweaking here and there.

So...what to do? I must ponder this more.

Later..

Well I suppose it wasn't a bad day. But hubby and I had a minor spat over something goofy, and after that, I never really was able to recover my creative streak.

I did read through this one scene in "Blood Relations," and it felt wrong. So I ran the idea by hubby and went online to the horror forum to solicit opinions there too. And it turns out the scene was historically inaccurate for some of the bit characters being armed with guns. Not in Scotland in 1939, which is when the scene has to take place in order to maintain historical accuracy with what Vicky's said in other stories. So I've written up a new version of the scene without the guns, but I'm not quite happy with it yet. I'll have to come back to it in yet another revision.

I did work some on the fantasy story, but this is a lot harder than anything else I've done, and despite me reading a lot of straight fantasy, I'm struggling to make this story work. The two places it feels weakest to me are in physical descriptions, and in world building. There's no sense of scenery in many cases, it's just a brief cap of the location, and then the situation is laid out, or the dialogue is given. Even if the team is a bit unconventional, the story itself feel like a formula that I'm just plugging numbers into. It's looking like: Character X requires Y item to complete their quest. Character E has bonding moment with side character A. Fight scene. Character E has bonding moment with Character B. Bit character #2 bites the dust. Magic scene. Fan-service lesbian-elf-sex scene. Heh, okay, that last part would be hard, since there's only one female elf on the team. And if she's playing with herself, that would be masturbation, not lesbian sex. It's entertaining, to be sure, but...but probably not really needed to advance the story.

Where was I going with this? Oh, right. The thing is, I try to think of something which isn't so formulaic, and I think I have it. But then I write an idea down, and the editor in my head reminds me that it's still part of the same kind of formula. So even if I can figure out how to get this story to a rough draft stage, I suspect it's going to need a lot of work to make it something more than just standard fantasy fare. It doesn't matter if the story is canon to the rest of my series. If I can't make it exciting, no one will want to read it. But no matter what basic idea I come up with, it feel like the end result builds up tension, only to drain it away too early. And that's not good.

So...meh. I'll head off to bed and ponder how the heck I'm supposed to fix this. I have a hunch that what I need to do is finish this out, and then do a complete rewrite. Then I can know what to keep, and what to toss in favor of something more exiting. Or, that's one possible theory...we'll see what happens.

Later...

Last night, just before I went to sleep, I started going over "Blood Relations in my head, and I realized I hadn't mentioned Amber's age. It's only mildly important to establish this detail, I suppose, but my thoughts before bed became a mantra, "add Amber's age." Yeah, kind of alliterated, I know.

Well, I got up, and hubby took off for a gaming tournament at Casa Dei Giochi. So I realized it was probably my best time to attempt to record a new podcast episode. I got to work, and many, many hours later, I finally uploaded the new episode.

Then we went out to dinner at Pastarito, and I have Cavatappi with some kind of "Messicanna" seasoning. They can claim it's Mexican by just putting in beans, I guess, but I had to dump a lot of red pepper on mine to make it less bland. And yeah, my stomach is just trilled with me, believe me. -_-

I got back home and sat down, and I thought, "What did I forget? Oh yeah, Amber's age." (She's twenty-four, if you're wondering) I edited it in at two places, which also helped me to add in more of an explanation for Amber's motivations in the story.

I guess what I'm trying to aim for with these revisions is to make the story more emotional. I want people to feel creeped out in the right places, and scared in others. That's really, REALLY hard with a vampire story, I know. It doesn't help that the focus is pretty much on the plight of the blood drinkers, taking away some of the reader's ability to relate to the protagonists.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled by the way may vampires are amoral about feeding. They're not turned humans, so they were born needing blood to sustain themselves. On the other hand, hubby has pointed out how this book is kinda harsh to humans, who end up being cattle more than characters. But then, I think that was kind of what I was aiming for. I wanted to make a vampire book where the focus was on the vampires, and for once, their sense of self-loathing had nothing to do with them hating their existence.

Most of the vampires don't suffer from self-loathing. It's just Vicky having problems. She's developed recent self-esteem issues in the aftermath of "Redemption Lost," which are in turn compounded by her distant past. But she's got no problems killing a random human for food, and she doesn't care if they're good or bad. That feels appropriate for a vampire, in my humble opinion.

Tomorrow is probably going to be a half-day off for me. I'll still work on the corrections and revisions for two of my stories, though not with as much intensity as I've been using most of this week.

Next week, perhaps I might take out the fantasy story and see if I can bridge the gap from my current point to the "big twist." If I can make it to the twist, the rest should play itself out pretty quickly to the end, in theory.

Anyway, I'm babbling, so I'll go to bed.

Later...

Okay, I'm just not having the best of luck recording a new podcast. I AM making recordings, but each one has horrid flaws. Yesterday, I couldn't get my accents right, and today, there's a lawnmower and a weed-eater working the property next to ours, and even being on the top floor in out building, my microphone is picking them both up as a low rumble. The noise canceling on the microphone doesn't seem to be able to stop this, and noise removal makes the sample sound like I'm talking into a tin can.

So, I'll try again tomorrow. Today is truly a lost cause, even thought it's only 3:30. See, the trains are returning to the station behind me, and they of course all have to blare warning horns every few seconds. By the time the landscapers finish, hubby will be coming home, and recording with him at home has not once worked out. About the best time I could record is late at night, and I can't, since this place has no soundproofing, and it would wake hubby up. Whimper.

Well anyway, I can get back to doing corrections and worry about the podcast tomorrow...lord, I hope I can record it tomorrow. -_-

Later...

Okay, first I put together the photo slideshow for the Amsterdam trip:
(avoid day two entirely if you don't want to know about the Torture museum)

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Days 4, 5, and 6

After this, I went back to work on merging the editor's changes, and I've completed the prologue and the first two parts. I think it's safe to say that I'm happy with my editor's work, and I wouldn't mind working with her on future projects.

At this pace, I'll be able to start working on the page layouts soon. But tomorrow, I have to post up the last part of "Wake Up With the Kimellians," and if I'm feeling up to it, I need to record a podcast.

But for now, bed time. -_-

This sums up my feelings perfectly right now, but then I know why it is. I finished writing a story, and I'm cranky because I have nothing in me right now. Since there is no one source for this frustration, the emotion wanders, trying to look for targets. Most often, I won't let it settle on anything, so I spend most of the day making pathetic little sighs of discontentment.

However, I'm not really unhappy. I've been told the business tax forms were mailed off to finish registering the publishing label with Lightning Source on Monday, so I'm expecting word back soon with the confirmation of the account.

I've got "Redemption Lost" back from my editor, and last night I paid her and asked her to provide a basic critique. And yeah, there are some problems. I'm just not sure how to fix them yet. My editor and I came to terms over the term magi, and so that will end up staying, even if it is technically wrong. *shrug* I just think magi sounds nicer than mages. According to the Firefox dictionary, neither are words. ^_^

I guess this funk isn't so bad though. The day before yesterday, the cat ruined one of my USB keys by chewing the connection. This key was the secondary backup of all my work files. Instead of shouting at the cat, I was checking his teeth to see if he was having plaque problems on his back teeth. Then I went to the store the next day to pick up another key. Meh, I still had another backup, and now I have two again. So, no harm done. I wouldn't be quite so proud of myself over this, but I'm in a pissy mood, and I didn't shout at the cat. That's a new level of calm for me. ^_^

So, moving to writing news again, obviously this next few weeks will be dedicated to going over my editor's recommendations and merging her changes into the final draft. I think this will end up being my main project for the next few weeks, though I plan on getting back to recording podcasts too, and I'm going to start live readings of "Trail of Madness" in SL.

Finally, in non writing news. I'm going to start editing the photos from the Amsterdam trip. It's just that there's 2700 pictures, and out of those, I'll only select 100 or so for the tour. And once I've selected them, I'll take them into Photoshop to clean them up. THEN I can upload them to Photobucket and torture people with my boring vacation pictures. ^_^

And that's the news for now. I'll get to work on those piccies now.

Later...

I didn't get much done today because we went to Fnac, and then out to see The Dark Knight. Fucking MEH. I could rant a lot more, but I'll just say this. While several performances were stellar, the script was shit. Good acting cannot save bad writing. Flashing explosions and cool fight scenes cannot save it either. And this movie had a LOT of lousy writing. Like four baboons bashing on a typewriter bad. You can't tell me the Gotham police are so stupid to leave the Joker uncuffed and alone in an unlocked room with only one guard? No, no cop is that stupid, and this is only one example of the gaping logic holes in this movie.

I say again, fucking MEH.

Okay, so once I got home, I didn't start writing. Instead, I read over what I'd written and made some minor corrections. Then I wrote one and a half chapters. Which sounds great, but one of those chapters is only two pages.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and I'm definitely not running out of creative steam for this story yet. I just got distracted, is all. =^P

Later...

We just back home and settled in, which of course means we are both in front of our computers less than ten minutes after getting home. Both of us did very good not to think about random surfing much...much. I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, let me warn you, this is going to be a long post. I'm discussing 6 days of activities, so yeah, it's going to be much longer than normal.

Okay, the flight to Amsterdam was good as far as smoothness of the flight was concerned. However, upon our arrival, we were told that we had to pay an extra fee for our suitcase. The lady at the ticket counter flat out lied and said it was an option we hadn't checked on the web site. That is pure bullshit, because I had hubby go over the form with me, and we'd even gone so far as to select our meals for the flight.

And that turned out to be another lie. Partway through the flight, the crew served cold sandwiches AND charged us for it. My sandwich was so crappy it tore up my stomach with the first few bites, so during the flight, hubby and I were both grumbling that we'd be looking at a different airline for future trips to Amsterdam.

But the flight itself was smooth, and we arrived at the Central Dam Station about a half an hour sooner than Luche was thinking. We got a map from a snack shop, and after consulting it, we started walking. Despite not being to the city in three years, I found it easy to get back to our hotel, the Quentin England.

Once we arrived and dropped our bags off, we turned around to head out for a bar first, where I sucked down a half a Guinness before my stomach said, "What, are you fucking kidding me?" So we left and went a block down the street to a coffeeshop. I picked up a pre-rolled joint to puff and get my appetite back. Then we went to a kabab shop for dinner and pigged out. We returned to our room, and while hubby read House of Houses, I switched back and forth between three different books until I was tired enough to sleep.

For day one of our stay, we decided to head out to search first for a bookstore Luche had noticed on the way to our hotel. Only we couldn't find it, and instead we went to another bookstore. I tried to avoid picking up anything at first, but then Luche pointed out the store was having a sale on two books about magic, one titled Defense Against the Dark Arts. Well of course I need that for research purposes, so I picked those up.

We spent most of the day walking around without coming to a decision on where to go until after the museums were close to closing time. Well, most of them, anyway. While wandering around randomly, we stumbled across the Torture Museum, and we toured it before going to another coffeeshop.

At each place we stopped at, I picked up a pre-rolled joint and puffed about half. By the time we got back to the hotel, I had two half joints on me, plus another half in the room.

Oh, but before we went back, we wandered in search of the bookstore again, and we tried to visit the Pink Floyd, which it turns out is no longer in business. This was very sad for me, but we went to the Popeye instead, where I picked up a gram of pot which was called Bubblegum. The flavor was just about right, and it was a nice mellow smoke.


We finished out the day by napping and reading, and then we went out to dinner at a "pancake house" which also served spare ribs as an all you can eat deal. I had those, though I was only able to eat the first two racks on my plate. Hubby had a steak and a baked potato, and it was pretty good, all told. We both had more beer. Yay!

Then we went to another coffeeshop, and I picked up another joint. We puffed that and returned to the hotel, and hubby passed out pretty quickly while I stayed up and finished reading Twilight, another few chapters of Tarzan, and another few chapters of Heart-Shaped Box.

Day two saw both of us devoted to the idea of making the rounds in the museums, so we walked out early and went for breakfast to another pancake house. I got a chocolate pancake, and hubby's pancake was apple. Then after taking some pictures around the area, we walked to Anne Frank's house.

I cannot tell you how weird that was for me. Maybe it was just that one group we went in with, but I didn't get the feeling that anyone really gave much thought to being trapped inside this cramped set of rooms, nor did it really seem to affect anyone when the museum showed a video of Anne's father, who concludes his short segment by saying, "Even with as close as I was to my daughter, I didn't know her. And because of that, I don't think any parent knows their children."

That affected me, and I had to watch the sequence over. But everyone else in both showings just shuffled on to the next part of the tour. I heard someone point out a set of height markers on the wall. I'd noticed them and felt sad, because those kids never got to finish growing up. And yet, not a minute later, I heard someone say "Oh Look, height markers! Isn't that neat?" Another side comment that irked me: "Oh look, this is Peter! You know, Anne had a crush on him."

I dunno, maybe I'm a cynic, but I got the impression that a lot of people took Anne's house as just another attraction to tour and view something from the past. I don't get the feeling that many people spent much time thinking about Anne's fate. I suppose it's best not to dwell on such things, and I admit my own melancholy didn't last that long. But while I was there at the house, I felt the gloomy past of the house deserved a somber attitude, and it felt odd to see how many people didn't.

After this, we went to another coffeeshop, and I got the munchies, so we found a frites shop and picked up chips. I had barbecue sauce on mine, and hubby had chili cheese.

Then we walked to Rijksmueseum and rented the audio tour headphones. I haven't been to an art museum since I was eight, and that was the Dallas Museum of Art. I was just blown away by everything I saw there. The Rembrandt paintings alone were worth the price of admission, but there were lots of other displays that blew me away, like the two huge dollhouses, and the marble sculpture of John the Baptist's head.

We returned to the hotel, and while hubby napped, I read and smoked, keeping my eye on the growing pile of half smoked joints. Somewhere around then, I started thinking "I should stop buying pot and finish what I have." Heh.

For dinner, we went to De Blonde Hollander, and I had a sausage with mashed potatoes and kraut. Hubby had beef stew with potatoes and carrots. Now what was fucked up was, in both cases, this kind of food has been a regular part of my diet since I was a kid. I never knew how much of my folks' cooking could be described as Dutch, but eating "exotic" instead turned into eating comfort foods for me. Not that I'm complaining. That was good sausage and kraut. We both had beer again. You'll notice I don't list brands. This is because I can't spell half of what I ordered. =^P

We returned to the hotel room and I read and smoke a LOT. So this may explain why I bought a box of 4 pre-rolled joints from another coffeeshop the next morning. Hehe. Our plans were to go with a light breakfast, since the days of gorging left both hubby and I feeling a bit bloated and uncomfortable. Then after eating, we would go to the Van Gogh museum.

And here again, I reached a point of feeling weird. Van Gogh was not a master painter, and his studies in various styles are often copies of prints which he made variations on. Fan-fiction, in writing terms. The audio tour also made it clear how little of his work sold in his time. People were somewhat unimpressed with him, and he ended up killing himself because he saw himself as a failure and a burden to his brother.

Later on during the night, I started thinking about how much of Van Gogh's work influenced later generations, and I felt a sort of kinship to him. In writing, I'm largely self taught, and like VanGogh, I don't see myself as a genius. Rather, I see myself as studying the tools used by other creators, and I try to create a form of art that uses the same tools according to my own darker and slower style. And maybe that might never work. Maybe someday, I'll come to see myself as a failure in writing and give up. The inkling of this thought was nagging at me in the museum, and I guess that's why it felt so weird for me.

Day four was going to be another day of tours, starting first with Begijnhof. But before we got there, I spotted the hidden logo for the American Book Store, and at last I understood how we kept missing it during daylight hours. The outside of the building was covered in scaffolding and dust clothes, so the logo was hard to see in daylight. We saw the lighted sign at night, and didn't register the coverings at all.

The bookstore was huge, and it put every book store in Italy to shame with the selection they had available. Hubby went nuts and bought a whole bunch of books, but I was good and only picked up Duma Key during that visit. But we would end up returning again later, and I wasn't so good the second time around. I'll get to that later.

We wandered around and hit another coffeeshop, where I accidentally ordered a gram of Nepal hash. Honestly, I didn't think I was going for hash, but once the lady set it down, I couldn't asked her to take it back.

Then the fatigue I'd been trying to ignore for the last two days knocked me down, and I dropped in the hotel for a nap. This messed up my stomach, which was a shame, because we went out for Mexican, and the chicken enchilada was awesome. But I ate about half and couldn't touch anything else.

Well, you'd think after all of this, I'd have been done with drugs, but on the way back to the hotel, I picked up mushrooms. I was exhausted when I took them, and so what happened was I spent most of the night laying awake with my eyes closed, tripping out on different dark halucinations while my mind rattled on and on about the emptiness of human beings.

The overall logic of the trip worked like this: humans are always left feeling hollow and unaccepted in some way. For some of us, we try to fill that void with addictions, while others try to fill that hollowness with faith or religion. Others try to fill it with money, or with words. But at the end of the day, we're still empty, and still not quite satiated. And it's the need to fill that void which both causes humans to strive for greater things, and to sink to their lowest levels.

This drug fueled thought began to kick over story ideas which I filed away and will hopefully be able to recall them when I'm looking for inspiration in my next writing session. But when the shrooms finally left my system I wasn't tired despite not sleeping all night. Or so I thought. Once we got out for the day, I needed to rest a lot more frequently.

After eating a very light breakfast at the hotel, we made an attempt to visit the Amsterdam historic museum, but the air conditioning in the place drove me outside, which frankly wasn't much better. So we wandered around to the bookstore again, and I went nuts. I picked up five books and hubby picked up four. So once again, our biggest expense on vacation was books. I really would have thought my pot smoking would win out, but the books did by about five euros. We wnt back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit. Then we went out to the pancake house again, where I had fish and chips, and hubby took a turn ordering the spare ribs.

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed back toward the station, and only then did I remember that I had to ditch the remaining pot. We went to the Doors coffeeshop and smoked two half joints before I called over the guy behind the bar.

I said, "We have a small problem. See, we're about to leave, and I need to get rid of this pot."

He asked where we were going and when I said Italy, he grinned from ear to ear and said, "Take it with you." When I gave him an incredulous look, he burst into laughter and said, "Don't worry, just put it in your bag. That's such a small amount the dogs can't smell it. If they do, they would laugh at you!" He then proceeded to demonstrate a dog braying laughter at me. And then he wandered around the shop to repeat the joke again for the benefit of the other smokers. I'd be annoyed, but I was still laughing over the line, and I told hubby "That's going in a book somewhere." Then I got serious and said, "But if I end up detained at the airport, it's his fault."

But we weren't detained. In fact, the flight home and trip back to the house was smooth and very relaxed.

So that is my road report for the holiday in Amsterdam. I'm already missing the place, and I'm looking forward to visiting again. I lost count of the number of times I talked about wanting to live there, but I would have to be selling a LOT of books to afford the cost of living there. Still, it is a nice pipe dream.

And so with this report done, I think I'm ready to get back to work...I know, sad, isn't it?

Later...

Okay, to be fair, that isn't entirely true. First, we went out today to do some shopping. I picked up a few new t-back shirts, which have become my favored clothing over cami tops. I picked up a long sleeve hoodie with grey and white stripes, as well as a pair of black suspenders...I'm not even sure why on that last item. I haven't worn suspenders since I was 7, and I've kind of associated them as a "boy's item." Yet there they were in a girl's only clothing shop, (because of my size, I have always shopped in junior petites shops for my clothes. The alternative is to swim in yards of extra fabric.) and I thought, "Okay, so it's cool to wear them again." So I got them, and only later realized I don't have the right kind of shirt to wear them. Hehe, I'm finally learning to accessorize. Took me long enough. @_@

On a long side note, I've decided my style of dress can best be described as punk. I like black, but I could never pull off being a goth. I'd always just be a poser in black clothing. I adore goths, and I think most every form of gothic dress is hot. I just can't wear it myself without feeling like a fraud.

So, I wear mostly jeans and t-back tops with black vinyl boots. My favorite "armor" is a torn orange sweatshirt with is now two years old and looking in need of a third set of repairs. Every pair of jeans I own are naturally scruffy, and suggestions that I need new clothes are met with bitter resistance.

Hubby still wants me to dress in skirts and dresses, and on special occasions, I don't suppose I mind getting fancied up for him. But for everyday life, I prefer jeans and a shirt. I keep trying to explain to him, "Lover, you can take the redneck out of Texas..." ^_^ Let's get back to our story. (I just figured I'd take the time describe myself, since lately, all I seem to do is talk about writing or reading in this blog. That's dull even for me to go back over. I digress.)

Leaving the Pimkie, we headed a block up the street to Fnac, and I finally replaced my Logitech Revolution mouse with a Microsoft Habu. If you don't know about this, the Logitech Revolution has abysmal accuracy, so much so that I had trouble selecting sections of text in Word. It's even more useless in Photoshop, and don't even get me stared on 3d applications. Fantastic laser tracking, my ass.

In addition to the mouse, I also picked up an SD memory card for my Cybook, so I now have 2 GB of space for books, or room for...well, for a fuckload of books, really. I doubt I'll need a new card any time soon, even with my recent uptick in reading. (Long time readers of my blogs will surely have noticed how I'm mentioning more book titles from other people these days.)

I got a micro SD card for my new Nokia Cell phone, and I've already tossed few MP3s on it as test files and ring tones, which rocks. The Nokia 5200 I picked up on Thursday had no sample files. Nothing, not even a spare ring tone. Even worse, I can't hear the default ring tone with the phone set at max volume. Now that that problem is solved, I'm much happier with the phone. Pity there aren't that many people who call me, because I've got The Fratellis song Chelsea Dagger as my default ring tone, and I need to hear that song more often. But anywho... ^_^

Also on the shopping list was a new headset microphone with noise canceling capabilities. This, I hope will eliminate roughly 75% of the hissing present in my first "season" of podcasts. The new microphone has an amazing response, and unlike my old headset, it allows me to speak in a normal voice. I've had to speak up to get proper results with the old headset, and then I was still having to amplify the results. I doubt that will be a problem when I start doing new episodes in August. My test recordings today sounded fantastic even with low volume or with me dropping to a whisper. So this will hopefully mean a major improvement in the readings for Part 2 and up.

Somewhere early during the trip, I got something in my eye. I'm not sure what it was, because every time I went to a mirror to look, I found nothing. There wasn't even any redness in the area of the eyelids which felt irritated. So we made a side trip to a pharmacy for eye drops. This didn't work until after I got home, so for most of the day, I was winking and digging at my eye, whining like a little girl because it hurt so bad. Well...actually, on the bus ride home, whatever was in my eye jabbed in hard, and I growled. I made a few heads swivel doing that, because it was a low, angry snarl that put a lot more bass in my voice than I'd intended. So yeah, that was a tad awkward. I finally washed my eye out with the drops, but I never did figure out what was hurting so bad.

We got off the bus, and then hubby remembered that he wanted to look for sandals and buy a new suitcase in preparation for our trip to Amsterdam from the 1st to the 6th of next month. We got the suitcase, but no one had sandals in hubby's size. I ended up getting a new set, and shock of shocks, I've gone down from a 42 to a 40. This is the same brand of sandal I bought last year, and even the same type. I got it from the same shop. So the shoes didn't get bigger, you see. Somehow, I'm still shrinking. I'm not sure what to make of that, but I don't suppose I can complain. It isn't just my feet either. I've love a couple of inches in height, and I'm now walking off the heel of one of my pairs of jeans. Losing weight, I could understand, but losing height? Yeah, that's still confusing me.

So we finally got home, but before I could think about writing, I had to move in all of my new computer goodies and swap out the old stuff. Hubby took the Logitech for his older Mac, and so far he hasn't complained too much. We'll see if that changes when he has to work in one of his graphic apps any time soon.

Then after I got everything sorted out, we went to a new Greek place that opened around the corner. Their grand opening was generous, to say the least; everything was free. Yeah, no shit. I stuffed myself on cold cuts, fried eggplant, stuffed crab cakes, meatballs wrapped in olives, crochette, pizette, and fresh fruit. They served a fantastic citrus punch with lots of fresh fruit and ice tossed in, and when we went to the bar for coffee, we didn't need to order or pay. They just set out cups and walked away. This is a very classy way to open a place for business, and the whole neighborhood turned out to sample the food. And no matter how much people packed down, they just brought more food from the back. I reiterate, very classy.

So, I got home, fully intending to get back to writing. But I ran across a food blog called Il Forno (The Oven) which was all about different Italian foods. And I was trapped like a rat for close to three hours until I read EVERY SINGLE ENTRY. I know I've got a food addiction, but this is ridiculous. I bookmarked the site halfway through, and not even that could convince me to leave and get back to work.

So, I'm sipping an imported English Ale right now, puffing a ciggie while I finally contemplate getting back to work. That will require another entry after I get done, but I wanted to post about my awesome adventure outside today. Okay, now I'm ready to get to work.

Later...