Memories, Sweet Memories

I just put up the first two Lex and Lia posts that I wrote this morning. I was looking for the original posts that belonged to a separate, ancient blog, but I couldn't find them, so this is based on what I remember.

I'm sure Ashley remembers the Madrid scene, although I know this one is different. I remember the first one that I wrote being better, but obviously I can't remember it well enough to duplicate it. I do know that Alex wandered around longer, but I don't remember why that was.

Just in case anyone is wondering, Madrid really does have a Saloon, a Soda fountain, and a boxcar shop. Only the motel is fictional. It's an unusual place, and since I've been there it seems like the perfect place for vampires and other creatures of the night to visit during the middle of the night.

Also, as a reminder to myself, the date in the story December 21. The vamps are celebrating the Winter Solstice. That means Christmas is just around the corner for Lex and Lia. I'll have to remember that for next week.

What else is going on in my non-life. . . ?

Well, I finished the first Anita Blake book yesterday, and I finished the second one this morning. It's true, they're like fantasy mystery novels, and they're darned easy reading. I'm glad I picked up the whole set at that book fair. The whole "Voting rights for Vampires" thing is an interesting twist on the whole world of the undead. It's something that I wasn't expecting, and so it's a nice touch.

I also found a letter from a friend buried in an old email account yesterday. It's odd, I don't check my email like an addict, although I have an addictive personality. I tend to let my addresses multiply and then slowly wither and die under an inconceivable amount of spam. I love the gmail filter, which has so far proven 99% efficient.

The old letter was in my school account, which I access with Thunderbird from Mozilla. You'd think that it would be a decent program for email considering how good Firefox is, but at times it hangs and leaves my entire computer waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting. . . . Also, it doesn't have preset guidelines for spam, so everything gets through, which is sickening. Shouldn't it at least have some basic guidelines before "learning" from me? I don't have time to go through the 700+ emails in there now to train it.

Of course, there's my Yahoo account, which has 500+, but that's just because I have a few daily subscriptions. Still, I dread having to slog through that to find the things that I need.

Right, anyway, that old letter was from that friend that I was worried about because he's down South and I haven't heard from him. So, I at least know that as of a month ago he was okay and alive, which is great news.

My sabbatical is going okay as well. I'm obviously not yet doing the work on my novel that absolutely must get done, but I've been thinking about it, and I've been writing every day, which is a good sign. The reason that I'm avoiding it is because I have to do more rewriting, which is something that I hate. Yuck. This is the 5th draft on some of these chapters, and that is annoying as all get out. I'm just glad that I don't have to redo the whole book start to finish.

I also need to spend more time on art. I'm getting near completion of my first color work, and it's going to be a bitch to frame because it's such an odd size. Still, I think it looks just the way I wanted it to look. I'll post one of those blurry pictures of it from a distance when I'm done.

I want to do some more complex stuff after this, but it's going to hurt because complex means a whole lot of time. Also, my neck is only so-so. I think all of the reading that I've been doing has been hurting it, so I can't spend a lot of time trying to bend over a piece of paper.

Oh right, final thing. While I was looking through Tad William's previous interviews I found the blog "Pat's Fantasy Hotlist." If you're a fantasy buff like I am, this looks like a phenomenal blog. It's got interviews, releases, and it's also got contests where they send you books.

Yeah, it's like a fantasy or something.

Anyway, I added it to the Worlds & Time sidebar, along with the blog of a writer who I've never before heard of before, Hal Duncan, but who wrote this amazingly cool blog entry. I love the anger, the power, and the absolute righteousness of it. So he gets an automatic spot on the list. And I'm going to buy one of his books, when I get around to it.

Now, I think I should do some work. So once again, until next time, space cowboys.

Update: Yarg, the Myspace blog isn't working. I'll have to post this over there later. See, this is why I keep the blog in two places.