the castle in the clouds

For the last week or so, the big Google flap on the net has been about how they announced they were ditching Reader and introducing Keep practically in the same press release. Of the several Keep reviews I've read, almost all the feedback boils down to "It's not Evernote" and "How can you trust them if they discontinue everything in three to five years?"

The answer to the first question is, meaning it in the nicest possible way, "So what?". If Evernote is better for you, then use it. It has an excellent track record and I know a lot of people who use it and love it. Go for it.

Personally, I've never started using it, because they don't have a Linux version. I could use it on my phone, but the whole "notes in the cloud" advantage would be mostly lost on me.

The answer to the second question is, "Who keeps notes for three to five years?". As much as discontinuing Reader (and Note, and other apps) sucks, at least Google gives you ample warning. Besides, they do have decent methods to export all of your data from all of their services.

For the novel I'm writing now, I needed a way to get between my phone and my laptop without it being too cumbersome. I do not trust the cloud as a permanent or solo work/storage space, but I acknowledge it does have its advantages, especially if you're using more than one device for a single project.

The spreadsheet and word processing files are primarily worked on in Google Drive (more on that in next week's post), but I needed an easy way to get my note jottings from one place to another easily. Most of my notes are taken on my phone, but the spreadsheet and word processing work is being done on a couple of different devices. I needed a way to jot something down and then delete it quickly when I was done with it.

Google Note is available as a free app for phones, but on a regular computer you can access it via a web site (Google says eventually they'll integrate it with Drive). So on my phone, my current Keep page looks like this:

But on the web it looks like this:

Notice the blue note called Scene Post-Its is blank. That's because I'm just using it as a clipboard between devices — anything that gets written up in S Note on my phone is most easily transferred by pasting it into a Keep note.

Right, S Note, Samsung's native note-taking app. If I've got Keep, then why am I using S Note at all? Two reasons:

1. I spend a lot of time in mobile data dead zones, like subways and underground places. That might sound strange, but if you know Toronto, you'll know a lot of the city is underground — one way of mitigating Canadian winters and Toronto traffic snarls. There's some mobile support, but it depends on who your provider is and where you physically are. Keep doesn't work offline.
2. If I'm in a public situation where people might be looking over my shoulder, I will write my note in the Elder Futhark rather than get shoulder-surfed. Why? Because I spend a lot of time amongst people who think writing fiction is weird (even though they know I do it), and I don't want to get quizzed and/or concern trolled every time I realise the antagonist ought to be doing such-and-such in a given scene. Even if people can read runes, it's slower to digest than a regular alphabet because everything is always in the equivalent of all caps. I can type it out in standard English text once I get somewhere private.

Having said all that, one of the nice things about the Keep app is that it comes with a widget. I've set things up so that the Keep launcher is right under the widget:

 The widget only lets you create new lists, so this seemed like the best configuration.

Overall I like Keep. It does what it does and nothing else. I know there's a heap of features people are complaining it doesn't have and that Evernote does have, but since I've never used Evernote I don't miss them. For ephemeral notes it does just fine.

#fridayflash: good neighbours

I want to post this just in case. I don't mean to accuse anyone of anything, and I don't wish anyone ill.

I like living in this building. It's quiet. The first time I ever said more than a "Hello, how are you?" to any of my neighbours is when I had a dinner party two years after moving in. I decided to make chicken in a sherry garlic sauce. The party was a bit of a bust anyhow (that was the night Sara and Jeremy broke up), and the next evening Mrs. Renaldi knocked on my door and said the cooking smell had bothered her and her husband.

Don't get me wrong — she was so sweet about it and so apologetic about even mentioning. She explained that both of them had grown up on traditional garlicky Italian foods, but they just couldn't digest them anymore, and the smell made them queasy. She gave me a recipe for chicken in red wine and herbs to make instead. I've made it; it's good.

I work from home during the day, three days a week. Somehow the members of the condo board found out — I guess I mentioned it to Mrs. Renaldi — and they asked if I could let in repair people. It's a small condo building, and it seems like I'm the only one around during the day, so I said I would.

I only have to handle a repair call once every other month or so. I let them into the unit with the master key, wait for them while they do their work, sign off on the invoice, and then lock up again. No big deal.

My neighbours' apartments always make me self-conscious about my housekeeping. Those kitchens look like they've never been cooked in. Sometimes an old book will be left on the coffee table, but that's the only sign anyone even lives there.

The board meetings are held every March. I never went, because it's been my experience in other buildings that newer owners never get listened to, but Mrs. Renaldi met me in the hall one night and asked me especially to attend this year.

It turns out all the other owners bought me a gift card at this really nice Spanish restaurant as a thank-you for dealing with the repair people. I felt like a total idiot, because I was just in a sweater and slacks and everyone else was dressed up. Mrs. Renaldi apologised and said it was her fault for not telling me it was semi-formal attire. The other owners were very friendly, asked how I liked living in the building, asked about my work. After the meeting glasses of wine were handed out. Mr. Dentscu, the condo board president, handed me my glass with a little old-fashioned flourish. Drinking wine always makes me flush, and Mr. Redbaum said, "Miss Apple, it's very tempting to take a bite out of those rosy cheeks."

Mrs. Renaldi gasped, and Mr. Dentscu reprimanded him for being inappropriate. I said I knew he was only joking, but they took it very seriously and wouldn't let him near me the rest of the evening. Mr. Dentscu even walked me back to my unit. I saw through the peep-hole that he stayed outside until he heard the door lock.

The following week, I went out to the Spanish restaurant with a friend from work, and we went and saw a movie after. On the way home I cut through the back alley. Normally I wouldn't at night, but I guess the drinks from dinner made me reckless.

A man was lying on the ground, and another man was kneeling over him. I was stupid. I ran forward and asked if I could help, and the kneeling man turned his head and hissed at me, like a cat. A giant, angry, interrupted cat.

It was Mr. Redbaum, and I could see his... fangs.

Someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me into the shadows. I tried to scream, but they'd pressed one hand very tightly over my mouth.

"It's all right dear, it's only me," said Mrs. Renaldi's voice, and I realised she was the one holding me. I would never have guessed she was that strong. "Why don't we go sit in the lobby together, yes? I'm sure the sight of this is upsetting to you."

Somehow I made my body relax, and Mrs. Renaldi led me to the back door and our lobby.

"I'm going to have to report him," she said. "It's against the rules to hunt so close by. He'll get evicted, I'm sure, but it's got to be on the security cameras so there's no point hiding it." She patted my hand. "You poor thing. You must be terrified."

"Are you... I mean, you must be..."

"Oh yes, you're completely right, we are." She smiled at me with her just her eyes, I guess to hide her teeth. "Everyone in the building is except for you."

"I have to get out of here," I choked out.

"Do you want me to help you get upstairs?" said Mrs. Renaldi.

"But then I'll be trapped," I said, and I guess saying something that stupid made the shock wear off a bit, because I stood up and headed for the front exit doors. Mrs. Renaldi was standing in front of the door, blocking my way. The stories are true — they can move really fast.

"Miss Apple," she said, "no owner will ever attack you so long as you live here. Mr. Dentscu has strictly forbidden it."

"He has?"

Mrs. Renaldi reached out and patted me on the hand again. "Oh my dear," she said. "We really do appreciate all the help you give us during the daytime. It's so difficult for us to be available during regular working hours."

"Appreciate?"

"Oh yes. You're such a good neighbour."

writing a novel with spreadsheets

I've successfully participated in three NaNoWriMos. The conventional wisdom is that after writing 50,000 words in a month, one should spend about three months editing those 50,000 words, but I've found that I've never got to that point. Why? Because I had 50,000 words of uneditable crap, that's why.

In conversation, this is the part where people usually give the "oh, editing is hard but you have to stick with it" speech. Nyuh-uh, in this case that's crap too. I edit all the time for work. I've done some rather icky, tedious, horrible editing slogs for work. When I say "uneditable crap", I'm speaking with a modicum of authority.

So what happened? I know NaNoWriMo has a book called No Plot, No Problem! I own a copy. It's a decent book. My problem was that at the end of 50,000 words, I still didn't have anything approaching a plot. Not even a semblance of a plot. Nada, zip, zero.

And that's a problem, especially when you wind up like that with three different stories.

In the last year I've been really working out why this was. The ever-openminded Cathy Cheshin pointed out there were some classic books out there that also had no plots, but my counter to that was that even something like Mrs. Dalloway has more things happening in it than my NaNo attempts. The ever-analytical J-A got closer to the crux when she pointed out that when I do NaNoWriMo, I just write a 50,000 word story — or, rather, it would be a story if I trimmed it down by about 47,000 words.

For the day job I know how to tackle the input file transmission section as a separate task from the data manipulation section. So I snagged a copy of The Plot Whisperer and tried to see if I could figure out how to block things out. I've been reading novels since I was eight years old — there had to be a way to latch onto how these things were put together.

The Plot Whisperer has helped a lot, although it weirdly skims over things I would think need explanations. For example, while the purpose of scenes is discussed at length, what a chapter actually is from a writer's point of view is never described. As the book defines things, apparently scenes are subsections of chapters. That's interesting, because in various literature classes I've heard chapters described as building scenes. It might depend on how micro or macro the author decides to go with their timeline. I'm still not sure.

It's rather disconcerting to discover one has a four-year English degree (Dean's Honour List for the last two years of it, no less), but still not a good grasp of how these things get put together. Then again, we always studied literature as if they were insects found embedded in amber.

Right now I'm working on a novel, a new one, one to draft while Tilly is fermenting in the cool room (think sauerkraut). I have part of the first chapter written out already, but since that initial burst I've been using spreadsheets.

First off, I made a spreadsheet breaking down typical full word counts into chapters. Debut novels are supposed to be in the 60,000-80,000 range, typically. I calculated 60,000-100,000, and then broke that down into sections using the 25%-50%-25% proportions from The Plot Whisperer. The chapter lengths come from some word counts authors I follow on Twitter have mentioned.

Once I had the chapter length matrix done, things started to make more sense. They also started to look more feasible, which was good. I made some Character Plot Profiles from the Plot Whisperer template, and made a scene tracker template, also found in the same book. Either there's something wonky about the scene tracker, or else I'm not using it right. Basically, I have a chapter on each spreadsheet page, and then several "movements" describing the different action bits going on. That means that I'm not using the entire top part of the template — just the column headings.

Oh well, it seems to be working. Today I got to the "end of the beginning" bit, and am starting to figure out how the middle is going to work. It's tempting to start turning these early outlines into chapters, but I think for now I'm better off pushing on to the middle section. Like a lot of reforming pantsers, I have a hard time with middles, and it seems more prudent to figure that out right now.

One surprising thing: this outlining stuff is kind of fun — like getting to tell the story without the work of showing everything or worrying about continuity issues.

There just might be a plot to this one after all.

#fridayflash: thrive

#top
if temperature > too cold and < too hot then
     if moisture > too dry and < too wet then
          if living medium > minimum then
               feed
               if size > viable maximum then
                    split
                    go to #top
               end if
          else
               move
          end if
     else
          start hibernation
          if hibernation == successful then
               hibernate
          else
               ...
          end if
     end if
else
     start hibernation
     if hibernation == successful then
          hibernate
     else
          ...
     end if
end if

Find a host with fur to grab onto and blood to feed on.

Is the host alive? Then attach to it, feed from it. Otherwise, keep finding.

Is there a mate? Then mate, make new ones. Otherwise, keep feeding.

Is a new host nearby, and no mate for a long time? Jump to the new host, feed, find a mate. Otherwise, keep feeding.

Are the babies safe? The babies are safe, and the babies will need milk, and one is the milk provider, and one needs food to make milk for the babies, because the babies must have milk. Hide the babies and go out and smell for food. The food is most accessible when the large ones dump it outside their dens. Sometimes the food is too bad to eat, but check check check with smells and little tastes and looking, and there will be good food to eat, to make the milk, to feed the babies, because the babies must be fed.

ITCHY! Scratch scratch scratch behind the ear with back claws, then back to smelling for food. Large ones about on two legs and four, careful careful, must stay safe because one must have milk for the babies, smell of good food there, there is a little bit too open to be safe but once in the pile of food it will be safe and there will be food to eat, to make milk for the babies. Run now, scurry scurry scur  —

"Got it!" Peter squealed, not a nice sound in a mature lad of eight years old already. He groaned. "It's still moving."

"Well go on then." Arthur gave him a little push. "The knife's pinned it to the ground, pull it out and finish it off. Can't have rats around here."

Peter inched out into the downpour, wincing at the cold rain soaking through his smock and cap. Arthur stood under the eaves of their house and watched his son pull the knife out of the rat — the knife must have sliced through the backbone, because it didn't seem able to move its back legs anymore. Peter stabbed it twice more, looking Arthur's way for approval now that the rat was well and truly dead.

"Now hold that knife up to the rain and get that rat filth off it," said Arthur. "You're going to have to eat your sop and trencher with it tonight, get it good and clean now."

Peter grinned and held the blade up to the deluge. It was, Arthur reflected, the first time the boy had smiled since his mother had died. He watched Peter rinse off the knife and wipe it down with his kerchief. Arthur stared out at the rain, now making little rivers in the street gutters. God willing it would rinse away the plague.

sprint vs. marathon

One thing I have learned through working in project-based environments is that humans are absolute crap at estimating their own endurance levels. We're also crap at remembering other people are humans too.

Loads of times there's a situation where a higher-up screams, "but it has to get done!", as if the laws of physics will bend to their will if they say it emphatically enough. So people (sometimes including me) wind up pulling all-nighters attempting a last-ditch effort. Usually we get something completed; it's just not completed very well. By Hour Ten we're starting to lose the plot. By Hour Fourteen one team member winds up in charge of Remembering What the Hell Task We're On Right Now.

Then morning comes, and the code gets run, and (surprise!) there are mistakes in it, and we wind up fixing them over the course of a day or two. Typically it takes about a week to get things in good shape. Coincidentally, the number of days to fix everything often matches the number of days of work the team estimated in the first place, before heroic measures were invoked. 

What's going on here? And what does it have to do with writing?

Writing a text like a novel is projectised work. There's a kickoff (an idea!), a construction phase (a word count!), and a refinement phase (edits!). Eventually, you might even get to publish (deployment!).

And yes, having deadlines and pushing yourself and sticking to your work are all ways to get there. Deadlines are good.

Having unachievable deadlines is bad.

If you're assuming you'll be as fresh on the sixth straight hour as you were in the first, you're setting yourself up to fail. If you decide on a word count goal that can only be achieved by living on so little sleep you're not awake enough to drive safely, you're setting yourself up to fail.

Now, I'm not against a little writerly boundaries-pushing. I've had some amazing ideas about half an hour after I should have gone to bed. At that point, I'm so tired that the characters just come out and talk to me as if they're sitting in the living room with me. Likely I'm so wiped out I'm half-dreaming them already. That's all fine and well for first inspirations, or having some fun with automatic writing.

But for the long haul, you have to keep your strength up, because if you don't, the writer's block is going to come down like a hunk of granite, if some other aspect of your health doesn't fail first.

Writers have to watch this especially because we are both the project executor and the hands-off manager. Unless we're actually under contract to a publisher, we're the ones calling the shots on ourselves. We have to remember that while our taskmaster self may want the next five chapters edited and done by next Wednesday, our writer-self may only be able to pull off two before burning out. On the other hand, if things aren't moving forward at a certain rate, inertia will overcome momentum.

Right now, I'm trying something that's new(ish) to me — doing a book breakdown before I get too far into the words themselves. It's an interesting approach because it's closer to what I do for my day job on software projects. Next week I want to walk through the series of spreadsheets (yes, spreadsheets) I've been filling out.

the dishwasher as an assistive writing device

Larry Kollar blogged recently about getting writing done using a phone and a Bluetooth keyboard, and it got me to thinking.

Aspiring writers often ask, "how do I find time to write?" and the answers that come back range from the practical (always have a notepad or equivalent on you) to the metaphysical (if you truly want to write, you will find the time). A lot of the advice comes down to beating up the questioner, as in, "You don't really want to be a writer, because if you did, you'd already have found the time! You're just a loser! A poser! If you want to write, kick yourself in the ass and write! I just kicked your ass pre-emptively! Now kick it some more!!!"

Errrrrm, yeah. That's why I liked the phone-and-Bluetooth-keyboard post. It acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, the writer was already legitimately busy (day jobs and families will certainly make you busy), so it's not so much about finding the time, but rather being ready for the time when the time does come up.

My take is, if you want to write, and you're not writing, it's time to do a root cause analysis. Start with "not writing" and then work your way back. The root cause may be nowhere near the will to write. It may be nowhere near the act of writing at all.

Truth: I absolutely despise doing the dishes. There have been too many times where the dishes have been meted out as punishment instead of just an ordinary chore, too many times where I've been told I was "incompetent at life" (and that's a quote) because I missed a crumb on the underside of a dinner plate. The time that I was sick in bed all day, finally dragged myself down to the kitchen at four in the afternoon to make myself a tea, and then got yelled at for not doing the dishes before dinner-time comes to mind. Attitudes are malleable and associations can be re-tuned, sure, but seriously, washing the dishes sucks.

At the same time, I've had it drilled into me that the dishes must be done or else I can't have my fun (writing, anything) time. So I would wash them, resentfully, in that single sink with the never-enough-hot-water faucet, and slouch off to do writing or whatever else feeling thoroughly awful.

Now I live in an apartment with a dishwasher. The dishwasher keeps me from getting dishpan hands, it cleans the dishes far better than I ever could, but it does more than that. It helps. It doesn't criticise. I can't be punished — washing the dishes is the function of a machine. If a crumb of food gets stuck to a plate, the machine did it. Machines can't have moral issues.

Now I stack the dishwasher last thing before I go to bed, and then run it the following evening when I get home from work. I get a lot of writing done with the hum of the dishwasher in the background. A lot of writing done. I get clean dishes, a word count, and a clear conscience. And that makes me happy, which not only makes me want to write more, but encourages me to keep up with the dishes too.

Now, maybe doing the dishes isn't a root cause for you. Maybe you even like doing the dishes, because it gives you a chance to mull over story ideas while you're cleaning. I'll respect your preferences.

Where's the root cause, then? What's keeping you from writing? What would you like to:

• automate or
• delegate?

Make a list, and then work on finding a way out or through. Depending on what's on your list, some things that might help are:

• Spend one weekend every month making soups and stews, and then freezing them in single-meal portions, ready to heat and eat the nights you have set aside for writing.
• Learn how to emulate Jane Austen, and write while simultaneously spending time with your family. It can be done.
• Practise saying, "I'm really busy this year, can someone else be in charge and I'll just be a regular volunteer?" in the mirror until you convince yourself. Then use it.
• Get a Bluetooth keyboard.
• Get a dishwasher.

One final thought: I was once introduced to someone at a book launch event, then led away from the person by the host after we'd only exchanged a few words. Once we were out of earshot, the host explained that the person I'd been introduced to had a lingering, debilitating illness, and it was rare for him to attend an event like this, where once he had been a fixture. "Poor guy," the host said. "He hardly ever gets out, and there's no point in calling him because he's always got his phone off. When he does manage to stay awake, he's too busy keeping up with the basics to return your call."

Six months later the unhealthy person of mystery had a debut novel released which became a bestseller. He now has several published novels and other writings. I'm not in contact, but all appearances indicate no lingering symptoms.

Ahem. I know people who genuinely have chronic health problems are rightfully sensitive about accusations of shamming, but this one has never passed the smell test for me. Seems like the root cause for not writing was the social circuit, and the "illness" was an attempt to bow out and get some work done without hurting any feelings.

Find the root cause. Solve it. Then write.

#fridayflash: melt

Tim and Derek and Frannie are in detention hall today. The teachers caught Derek and Frannie beating up Tim, but Tim's here too because even after Mrs. McAllister broke it up, Tim flung himself at Frannie and started whaling on her. Mrs. McAllister said Frannie couldn't defend herself as well because she was wearing a dress and the boys had corduroys on, but she's also a head taller than either Tim or Derek, and stronger, too. So that's crap, and now they're all here in the hall with George. George is always in detention hall for something, because he's too dumb to know how school works.

And it's stupid anyhow, because Mrs. McAllister gave Derek and Frannie an extra half-hour tomorrow in detention hall for "picking on" Tim. Nobody was picking on anybody. Just Tim said that maybe this year they should come up with a story about going exploring in the woods behind the back field, and tell. Like they didn't know what had happened before, two autumns ago. And Derek and Frannie think it would be too hard to keep the story straight, and they didn't want Tim to tell. Then Tim said he'd do it himself and keep them out of it, but they still didn't think he'd keep the story straight, so the beating up part was just to show they really meant it.

Now Mr. O'Hare's got called out into the hallway. George is sitting half-asleep at his desk — sitting still until he's told to get up and go is the one thing at school he doesn't screw up. Tim's sitting behind Frannie and Derek, and he whispers to them, "Lotta snow this year. The drifts are six feet high. My dad says it's a record."

"SHHHH," says Frannie, but she only turns around halfway because they can still see Mr. O'Hare in the doorway, and that means he can see them too if he wants to.

"See," Tim whispers, "that means there's gonna be a lot of melt."

"You're going to get more detention time," Derek whispers back.

"A lot of melt. And that means that creek bank is going to overflow, and it'll erode out all the mud we dug up, and then...."

"Stop it," Frannie says, almost at a normal voice.

Mr. O'Hare takes one step back into the room and fixes them all with a look.

"Children," he says, sounding like he were giving an example for Public Speaking Day, "this is Detention Hall. That means No Speaking. This is not a Place to Socialise. You are Being Punished." They can all hear the capital letters on the words when he talks, and he says "punished" like it's "pun is shed."

Mr. O'Hare fixes them all another look, then he steps out in the hall again, and this time he takes a step or two from the door. Whatever it is, it must be important, because Mr. O'Hare never leaves detention hall.

Frannie makes a point of ignoring Tim, makes a point of banishing the memory of helping Derek dig the hole. They got as far as two feet deep, and big enough that Tim and Frannie could lie down curled up inside it and still not touch each other.

Then they pushed Ian's body in, shovelled the dirt over top, then threw dead leaves on it and jumped and ran over it until it sank a little, then shovelled more dirt and did the same again, until the claylike mud was packed down and the spot where the hole had been was level with the rest of the creek bank and plastered down with dead leaves.

Frannie banishes that, and banishes Derek grabbing Ian's asthma inhaler and not letting him have it back until he promises not to tell about Tim stealing the bag of cookies from the corner store... it's a lot to banish, and when Frannie's head is finally clear again Mr. O'Hare is thanking the person he's been talking to in the hallway, and he's doing it loudly, and Frannie finally sees who he's talking to and it's a cop in an OPP uniform.

Tim and Derek and Frannie sit absolutely still and quiet as Mr. O'Hare comes back into the room. Mr. O'Hare erases the date written on the top right corner of the blackboard and writes tomorrow's date in its place.

"That was Officer Keaton," he says. "He's going to come in next week and talk to you about safety. The melt is going to be big this year, and they're expecting some flooding. It'll be dangerous to play around ponds and streams."

George starts to laugh, a long, loping, honking laugh that you can hear bounce off the cinderblock walls, signifying nothing.

Mr. O'Hare looks up and fixes him a look, but the look is distracted by the clock at the back of the classroom.

"My apologies," he says. "I've kept you five minutes longer than necessary. Time to go home. Run along now, or you'll miss the late bus."

Frannie, Tim, and Derek bolt from the desks as if they've touched an electric fence with a blade of grass and sprint for the door. They don't speak until they turn the corner and check they're alone.

"We should tell," says Tim. "His mom's still all broken up about it."

"Say what you want," says Derek. "You were the one that caused it."

"How?" says Tim. "You took the medicine from him."

"Did not," says Derek. "You did."

"You did," says Frannie.

"You took it from him," Tim says to Derek. "I just held it."

"If you just found him, it doesn't matter," says Derek.

They watch the late bus meandering up the sideroad to the school. They can tell from the way it's moving that the driver is worried about black ice. On the other side of the school driveway, George lopes off home, ignoring the bus, ignoring the cold, only wearing a flannel shirt over a t-shirt and jeans, no mitts or hat.

"Do you think they'll find anything?" says Tim. "About us."

"Like on those TV shows? I dunno," says Derek.

"Mr. O'Hare's going to come out and talk to the bus driver," says Frannie. "He always does."

"Maybe I won't," says Tim.

The bus gets stuck in a pile of slush, weaves a little, then grinds up to the school entrance.

tilly with the others the after party

Tilly with the Others started exactly a year ago last week. The plan was to run it for 50 episodes (at which point I had to provide a reasonably plausible ending), or let it die a natural death when I ran out of ideas, whichever came first. The structure came from NaNoWriMo and its famous 50,000 word goal. The idea came from a Simon & Garfunkel song, and from an article I read which advised writers to come up with the elevator speech first, then write to that. Tilly's is "A modern retelling of The Stone Angel, but with space aliens."

There were a lot of things missing, and a lot of them still are — it would be nice to find a title that doesn't sound like a 1950s pop group, for example — but it's the closest I've ever got to a long work that has something of a plotline. Plot was and is my biggest stumbling-block, but having to write in episodes helped a lot, because it's generally expected that something happens each episode. Not every episode does have something happen, in point of fact, but enough of them do that the plan now is to let all these words sit and cure for three months, then pull them out and turn them into a more traditional novel.

Writing ficiton for blog posts, like writing fiction in general, comes with lots of contradictory advice. The two dictums (dicta?) that I've come across the most are "write like no-one else will ever read it" and "remember your audience." I honestly didn't think that anyone would stick around for all fifty episodes, and was surprised that the posts averaged 20-30 visits per episode. That's not exactly mass appeal, but it's also way too many for them all just to be spambots.

Of course, the visit count wouldn't even have been that high without the Tuesday Serial collector to list each episode with. There's an amazing breadth of genres and styles being posted each week — a great resource for any reader who wants to check out web fiction.

In particular I want to thank Larry Kollar, Peter Newman, and Helen Howell for commenting on virtually every episode. All of the feedback was very much appreciated, and will be consulted in detail in three months' time. Both Larry and Helen have recently released novels created from web serials: Larry just launched The Accidental Sorcerers, and Helen published I Know You Know. Peter has a novel-in-progress.

I also want to thank my in-real-life friends Jackie McGuinness, Cathy Cheshin, J-A, and Suzanne Lau for reading ("you go on my blog? seriously? you don't have to — wait, you actually read something?") and providing feedback along the way over the phone and/or bevvies.

Finally, a big thank-you goes to Howard Tessler and Rhonda Sussman. Howard and I were both part of the (sadly unfinished) collaborative novel-writing project where Tilly first appeared, and was the first person to tell me she should appear in a story of her own. Rhonda has the networking and communications analysis know-how to get how this web stuff really works. Tilly would never had made it this far without them.

I decided I'm not going to start another Tuesday Serial right away, but I do want to post a bit about writing and other non-fiction topics on Tuesdays for the next while. In the meantime, while Tilly is "resting," I'm going to try to get a first draft of another novel done.

Stay tuned...

#fridayflash: rotation

Cheryl startled awake, jostling the bed. Beside her, Mark lifted his head off the pillow and raised his eyebrows.

"Sorry," she said. "I thought it was Monday for a second."

"Not yet," Mark said, wrapping an arm over her. "Twenty more minutes."

"So long as the baby doesn't wake up."

"Sh."

"Where are you going tomorrow, anyhow?"

"Um..... Monday... Monday is Sydney."

"Ooooh, nice, bring some sunshine back for me."

Mark kissed her shoulder. A thin wail rose from the nursery.

"So much for twenty more minutes," said Cheryl, sliding off the bed and pushing her feet into her slippers.

"I'll start breakfast," said Mark, sitting up.

Five minutes later, Cheryl entered the kitchen with baby Jeremy on one hip. Mark had set the table and was pushing pieces of bacon around the frying pan.

"Look at that sunset," said Cheryl. "I thought with the shift last night that we'd be right into evening now."

"Not yet," said Mark. "The days are getting longer too, lucky for us. I wouldn't want to be in South America right now. Going to be a while before they see the sun again. Mind if I turn on the radio?"

"I'll get it," said Cheryl, stretching out an arm to turn the kitchen set on.

"And at the chime, it's 7:30 in the morning, all over the world," said the announcer. "Remember folks, we're on global time now. Hope you all set your clocks back twenty minutes before you went to bed last night."

Mark snorted. "Right, like anyone has a manually-set clock anymore. It's like my grandfather always said, 'there's an app for that.'"

"What is an app, anyhow?"

"Short for appliance, I think. You know. A package."

"Ah. How's Jeremy's pablum doing?"

"Almost ready."

Cheryl kept the baby distracted playing peek-a-boo until the food was ready. The radio announcer mentioned global time every time he came on the air.

"Ugh," said Cheryl, pretending to steal Jeremy's nose. "It's been six months already. Surely everyone's used to moving their clocks ahead twenty minutes every Saturday night."

"Anyone who works is," said Mark, putting the food on the table and handing Cheryl a bowl of pablum. "I bet there's still a lot of retired stiffs out there who are calling this Saturday night. Or whatever day we'd be on using the old multiple time zones. We just need to get groceries today, right?"

"Right. I was thinking of 'porting to Seattle, shop the Pike Place market. They'll still get three or four hours of sunlight there. Then we can come back here for lunch and it'll be dark here, so Jeremy'll go down for his nap better."

"Makes sense," said Mark, taking a bite of toast. "So long as the place isn't completely choked with people."

"Why don't we go as soon as we're done eating, and leave the dishes 'til we get back?"

"Might work."

Cheryl added milk and sugar to her coffee and took a sip. "Before I forget again... your Mum called yesterday while you were at Frank's. She wants us to go there for dinner."

"What, tonight? I know you're still on mat leave, but I have to work tomorrow."

"It's this big local festival. The first bottles of wine are ready from last autumn's harvest or something."

"Seattle and Provence in one day — is Jeremy going to be up to all that travelling?"

"If he gets his nap in between we should be all right. Global time, five PM is five PM no matter where you are."

"So long as we don't stay too late."

"Well, some of us have to get to bed early," said Cheryl, steering a spoonful of pablum into Jeremy's mouth. "Don't we?" The baby laughed. "You didn't have any other plans, did you?"

Mark shrugged. "Just house stuff. Don't need a lunch tomorrow, they're bringing in sandwiches." He splashed some hot sauce on his eggs. "Okay, Seattle, then back here, then France. Sounds like a nice Sunday."

#fridayflash: another day at the office

The reanimation phase was always the worst part. The nausea was always like nothing she had ever experienced from illness: an overwhelming urge to be emptied of every single thing she had been stupid enough to ingest. She would have vomited up every meal of her life if it would have stopped her head from feeling like this.

Practice had become instinct enough that she knew to turn her head to the left side. Right on target — Ben had left the stainless steel bowl in exactly the usual place.

She ended with a few spits, trying to clear the old blood out of her mouth, then shifted to lying flat on her back, panting.

"That all of it?"

"Yeah," she gasped.

"Here, let me wipe your mouth out." The shadow that resolved to Ben leaned over her, and he pushed the end of a handkerchief into her mouth, wiping down her teeth and under her tongue. "I think that got all of it. Rest a bit, and when you're ready we'll go back to HQ so you can have a restorative. This is a good location, and I threw enough charms over it that we're relatively safe."

Now that her stomach and throat were empty, her head was starting to clear. "What happened?"

"C'mon Lisa, you know you shouldn't be talking." She heard the rhythmic hiss and click of Ben's knitting needles. "The good news is, it's disabled, and it didn't look like it was going to get up again. The bad news is, 'giant robot' may not be the best term. More like giant magically animated... I don't know, suit of armour for a monster not of this reality. Something like that. Even after you lopped off all its limbs, it kept coming at us. No sparks, no hydraulic fluid leaks, so I really don't think it's mechanical." There was a final click and a pause, and then the knitting sounds started again, as if Ben had got to the end of a needle and started the next one.

"You really ought to switch to Magic Loop. All you ever make is socks."

"You're not supposed to be talking. And besides, I like double-pointed needles. They feel better to me. And I like the traditionalism."

"What did I..." Lisa rolled her head to try to see into the stainless steel bowl, but Ben's handkerchief covered most of the contents.

Ben gave an exasperated sigh and pulled the bowl towards himself. "Looks like your hyoid bone broke in three pieces. At least, you barfed up two pieces during the regeneration, so I guess the biggest chunk stayed in and reformed itself. If that hadn't got you, your lungs were filling up with blood pretty bad." He whistled. "Looks like your lungs got cut or burned too. Unless you had red velvet cake for breakfast?"

Lisa heard him push the bowl back towards her. She thought he would start knitting again, but instead he got up and walked to the other side of whatever it was she was lying on.

"We're in an abandoned warehouse," he said, as if reading her thoughts. "You're on an old table." She heard him walk back to his original spot near the bowl. "Do me a favour when you're well enough to move?"

She felt too crappy to try talking again, so she just tried to make an acquiescing expression with her eyebrows.

"When we get back to HQ, give me time to clear out before Susan shows up. Don't insist we both be there, like last time."

"Why?" she managed to choke out.

"Why? Because I don't want your spouse freaking out and accusing me of not taking better care of my work partner while we're in the field, then turning around and saying I'm sexist if I remind her of it when you're not recently dead."

"Don't."

She heard Ben knit a few stitches, then swear under his breath. "All right, I'm sorry for laying this on you when you can't talk. But seriously, work-life separation, okay? I know the coven's supposed to be one big happy family and all, but it isn't in real life. And also..."

"What?"

"I owe you a pack of ninja throwing star stitch markers. This Fair Isle pattern is seriously messing with my head."

Lisa took a deep breath. It didn't hurt too badly, so she tried a few more.

"You need to find a girlfriend." Her voice had sounded normal for the first few syllables. Good, because even if Ben said this location was relatively safe, they needed to get back to HQ sooner rather than later.

"Waste your breath telling me something I don't know. Ten more minutes and you want to try sitting up?"

She managed a small nod.

"'Kay. Sit tight, stop straining yourself. Besides, I could use the quiet time to figure out this goddamned instep pattern."

Far away there was a deep rumble, like a hundred thunderclaps sounding at once. Lisa felt the table vibrate. The stainless steel bowl rattled.

"Don't try to move yet," said Ben. "I'm going to check the perimeter and see if I can figure out what that was. If you need to sound an alarm, knock the bowl off the table. Okay?"

"'Kay."

"But not unless it's a real alarm, because you know how Olga is about us not leaving anything that could be used for curses..."

"Yeah."

"I'll be right back."

Lisa concentrated on the pattern of half-rotted beams spanning the ceiling. She listened for any unusual sounds, but all she could hear was Ben's retreating footsteps.

Another rumble, this one louder, closer, or both. It made her teeth rattle.

If they didn't get back to HQ soon she was going to be in for a really shitty night.

#fridayflash: age of miracles

"Ugh." Tala hit the "ignore" button on her device. "Why is she so freaked out about those stupid pills, anyhow? It's just cancer. It's not like it's life-threatening."

"I think it used to be," Manda said. "My great-grandmother — like, my dad's grandmother? — she died when she was super young, like, eighty, and I think that's what it was."

"Yeah, well, people used to die of AIDS too. It's not a big deal anymore. She only has to take the pills for a week."

 "So let's go and pick them up for her and be done with. She's your grandmother, and she's sick. Why isn't that good enough?"

"I just mean..." Tala stopped, not sure what she meant. "We need to go this way."

"Aren't you going to tell me about going over to Mark's place for dinner? That would be a lot more interesting than fretting about those stupid pills."

"They're weird. They're like these back-to-nature types. They don't even have a printer in the kitchen."

"No way! How do they make stuff to eat?"

"Ugh, it's like something from those interactive museums they used to make us go to when we were in school. Get this: Mark's dad had to chop up the greens to make the salad. Then he cooked the main meal on this big cubey thing, what do they call them, stoves? Who knows how old it is or where they got it from. It took forever, like half an hour or something."

"How was the food?"

"I guess it was okay. It tasted good, but all the textures were different. Like there was crunchy bits and soft bits all put together. Pasta primavera they called it. It had pretty colours. Mark was so embarrassed when he found out I'd never had unprinted food before. He said he would have explained things to me better. He's so sweet. Oh! and for dessert, we had an apple crisp. That took an hour to cook. But it was good, though, and the texture was more consistent."

They reached the pharmacy counter. Tala flashed the prescription notice at the scanner and waited for the pills to be dispensed.

"How's the new job going, anyhow?" she said to Manda.

"It's great," said Manda. "It's hard to stay organised, but I'll figure it out. Tomorrow we're going on a floor tour."

"Floor tour?"

"Yeah, actually see the tablet components being printed and assembled. Sounds cool."

Tala rolled her eyes. "For that you went to university for four years?"

Manda flinched. "Well, I might be able to forecast design trends better if I actually understood the material limitations."

"Ugh. Makes me glad I'm majoring in business. I'm hungry. Let's go find a print vendor."

Manda shrugged and followed her.

#fridayflash micromanagement

Rachel slid back the cover on the door camera. The indicator light was green! She immediately backed away a few steps, quickly looking down to make sure she was standing on the marks Jay had painted on their front hall floor.

She heard the camera motion servo whirl up, and stood still while the scanner painted her body in harsh white light. She tried not to tremble.

A flat, toneless voice emitted from the door speaker. "Where do you want to work?"

"Where there is work I can do today. All day."

The camera clicked and corkscrewed outwards from the door, angling slightly to catch the image of Rachel's face.

"Why do you want to work?"

"Because it is my purpose to. Because I want to be compensated."

"Biologicals always want to be compensated."

Rachel pressed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth to keep her face expressionless. The door hadn't said "no", but a feedback message like that meant she was risking not getting a job today.

"How do you want to work?"

"Productively. Efficiently." The questions were always the same, assuming you were on file as having skills required for the day. The problem was that same answers rarely worked two day in a row.

"Please wait," the voice said.

Rachel watched the camera retreat back into the door.

The ceiling speaker made a chiming sound. "You have been.... approved.... for work. Please be at... 157 Baker St., Zone... E in... seventy-five... minutes. These details have been saved to your personal device." The ceiling chimed again, and the indicator light above the door camera finally went out. There was a small sound of metal scraping against metal, ending with a louder click — the machines had unlocked their door.

Rachel leapt at the door, slid the cover back into the "privacy" position, and ran into the bedroom. The "bedroom" wasn't the actual designated bedroom of the apartment — rather, it was a small room just off the front hall, barely big enough to hold the mattress she and Jay slept on. But they agreed it was probably safer. If a cleaning machine ever did show up before they were actually dead, it would have to turn around in their living room before it could angle itself into the bedroom, and that would give them time to escape through the air vents in the ceiling.

"Jay, wake up! I got one! I'm working today." Rachel grabbed her device off the floor and thumbed to the job details page to check what she needed to bring with her. "Jay! They say bring three bags for groceries!"

Jay coughed and rolled onto his side. "That's great, honey. Get some ginger if they have optionals?"

"For sure. We've got to get you better." Jay had had the flu for a week, and hadn't been able to work. Rachel's skill set as a factory maintenance engineer was in demand, but she also faced stiffer competition and didn't make the cut every day.

"Try and drag yourself out of bed to make some tea at least." They'd run out of food the day before.

"I will. How long do you have?"

"Seventy-one minutes. I'll have to walk fast..." Rachel squealed. "They sent a transport chit!"

"They must be desperate for a meat worker. What's the brief?"

"Three broken 4C79s, unknown causes... and some minor stuff around the plant. Looks like it's definitely a full day. Hey, if things go really well, maybe we can get some soap or hand cream or something."

"Don't get your hopes up too high." Jay reached over and touched Rachel's arm. "I'm really proud of you."

She flashed him a smile. "We're going to have a real feast tonight. Chicken soup. Real chicken and everything."

Jay snorted. "Were chickens ever real?"

"My grandmother said so."

"They look so weird in the wikis. I think they're made up, like dragons and horses."

Rachel gave him a kiss on the forehead and stood up. "Get well. Make sure your heart rate stays strong. Get up and move around every once in a while." As near as anyone could tell, the cleaning machines seemed to react to weak or erratic heartbeat readings.

"I will. Watch out for the machines on the street."

Rachel grabbed some grocery bags from the front hall closet on her way out, the door automatically locking behind her. She double-checked the positions of the security cameras in the corridor while she waited for the elevator. She always felt so exposed in the elevator lobby — but trying to take the stairs would set the fire alarms off and attract a whole platoon of cleaning machines. About halfway down the corridor, the opposite side from their apartment, she could hear someone whimpering. She shuddered. Sometimes people got trapped inside without a job for so long that they ran out of food and starved to death — or else committed suicide before the machines got to them.

The elevator finally arrived... with a cleaning machine in it. Rachel jumped out of the way and pressed herself against the wall with the elevator button in it. The machine rolled out of the elevator slowly, waving its detector arms around it. One arm brushed against Rachel and the machine paused. It used the end of the arm to trace up Rachel's body from her chest to her neck, where it found her pulse and pressed firmly into the side of her throat.

Rachel fought the natural impulse to hold her breath. There were stories of healthy people doing this and being mistakenly detected as dead.

Satisfied she was sufficiently alive, the machine rolled down the hall towards the whimpering.

Rachel ran into the elevator just before the door started to close and held her personal device against the scanner. The Ground Floor light came on and the elevator started to move.

Rachel took a deep breath and smiled at the elevator's security camera. She reminded herself that she knew 4C79s like no-one else did, and that the brief had said to bring three grocery bags. If they cooked carefully and didn't eat too much at once, they would easily last until Jay was better, even if she wasn't able to snag any more jobs.

She ran out the building doors and headed for the nearest transit stop, dodging the detector arms of a couple of cleaning machines drifting down the street.

Finally. Things were looking up.

#fridayflash: voice

In the dream the warm rain changed to pelting slivers of hail, and he was running, running, but there was no shelter anywhere and the hail was embedding itself into the skin on his hands and arms...

He woke, but not "up" — more a sinking into consciousness, like a drowning man sinks into the water one last time. His alarm clock was jangling off hard little pellets of sound, and he flinched as he swung one long, bloodless arm from under the warm duvet into the cold air, turning the clock off without having to look. In the ensuing silence he noticed another sound and grimaced. Gusts of wind were throwing sleet against his bedroom window.

He counted in his head, and determined it had been eight months, one week, and four days since the last time he had booked off sick. He was entitled to five days a year without a doctor's note. But it was month end, and his co-workers would resent his absence for weeks. He threw the covers off and got out of bed in one motion, then stumbled to the washroom.

Since the morning commute was bound to be longer in this weather, he poured the timer-brewed coffee into a travel mug, pulled his lunch bag from the fridge, and headed to the car.

He pushed a CD of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony into the car stereo and trundled onto the highway. Sure enough, traffic was slow, every car a separate little bubble of existence, drifting through the weather on a path that felt like it was preordained by a greater force, like gravity or thermodynamics, than by something as arbitrary as lines painted on asphalt.

He didn't recognise anyone in the elevator from the parking garage to his office. Two floors before his, the doors opened to let someone else out and he recognised a co-worker waiting for an elevator going down. There was just enough time to nod and smile the equivalent of a "good morning" before the doors shut and he continued his ascent.

Although his position was relatively lowly, his work required a high degree of confidentiality, so much so that a previous manager had had the bright idea of not labelling the office doors with surnames. His door simply said "Gill" in accordance with this old and forgotten policy.

His work was waiting in a locked cabinet — long columns of numbers cascading down the balance sheet. He retrieved his pencil, adding machine, and fountain pen from a drawer and set to completing the monthly report.

He worked through lunch, half a sandwich in one hand, pencil in the other. So did all his colleagues. It was normal at month end.

By going-home time the sleet had turned to heavy rain. His car skidded a few feet once or twice as he stopped for red lights. He'd chosen more Beethoven for the commute, Symphony No. 2 this time, and the skidding synched disconcertingly with the tempo of the first movement.

Normally he turned on the TV and watched the news as soon as he got home, but this evening he was very tired. He undressed and went straight to bed.

In the dream he was sitting in his car in a traffic jam. Thousands of cars filled the roads, all of them at a standstill. It was cold, very cold, and the sleet was rat-a-tat-tattling on the other side of the driver-side window.

The Second Symphony was playing over the car stereo, but it was distorted, as if whales were singing it. His feet felt colder than the rest of him, and he looked down with abstracted curiosity to see that his car was slowly filling with water.

The sides of his neck were itchy, and when he reached up to scratch them he discovered his skin was splitting open to expose gills. He considered panicking, but chose not to. The water was around his chest now, and he would get to adapt soon enough.

It was only when the water reached his chin that it occurred to him that a human voice wasn't made to work properly underwater, and that he'd squandered his time in the air.

He hadn't spoken aloud at all the entire day.

#fridayflash: landing the eagle

"We can walk down to the beach house and introduce you to the astronaut team later. Why don't I show you to your office so you can settle in?"

"Sounds great, Col. Phillips. It's an honour to be here... I'm so glad this project didn't die with the Kennedy assassination."

Col. Phillips didn't reply, but his right eye twitched. Dr. Gallagher noticed, but chose not to rock the boat on his first day at NASA.

They reached the administrative area. Col. Phillips introduced Dr. Gallagher to Patty Smith, the secretary for the team Gallagher would be working with. He led Gallagher into an office a few steps away from Smith's desk.

"Let's talk about what you should start with tomorrow," Phillips said in a voice that was clearly more for the secretary to hear than Gallagher. Phillips closed the door and flicked a metal toggle switch located beside the thermostat.

"We call that the 'cone of silence', from that TV show," said Phillips. "It turns a red light on at Smith's desk so she knows you're not to be interrupted, and it causes a high-frequency sound to be emitted throughout the secretarial and lobby area. It messes up any remote listening equipment someone may have planted here, so you can't be recorded. We don't keep it on all the time because even though the frequency is too high for humans to hear, it makes them jumpy. Besides, the damn electronics burn out if they're left on for more than two hours."

"Good to know, sir."

"It's your office. You may as well sit behind the desk." Gallagher squeezed past the oversized metal desk and sat in the swivel chair positioned behind it. Phillips chose the visitor's chair furthest from the door.

"So," said Phillips, "putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."

"It will be a remarkable achievement, sir. It'll go down in history."

Phillips snorted. "It'll go down in Hollywood. Do you know the risks of even trying to attempt such a thing? I mean really understand the risks?"

Gallagher frowned. "I was hired to help design the life support systems..."

"Listen up Gallagher, and listen well. You were hired to create the casings for life support systems. We need something that is small enough to look good on television, heavy enough to feel like there's working gear inside if any damn reporter picks one up, and documented well enough that we can show the brass a nice impressive wall of binders when they do their rounds. Fill in that bookshelf behind me first thing, will you?"

Gallagher crumpled into his chair. "So if I'm understanding you, I'm making... what, TV prop life support cases? Who makes the real ones?"

Phillips rolled his eyes. "Those are the real ones. What, did you think we were acting something out from Astounding Stories? You're a fan of that Asimov guy?"

"More into Heinlein if you really want to know, but seriously?"

"Seriously." Phillips stood up. "It's the goddamn moon, Gallagher. We can barely make it across the Pacific without getting goddamned lost, and that's with radio towers. Now spend some time thinking about how to make this place look like a proper engineer's office."

"I am a proper engineer."

"Then it shouldn't be too difficult for you." Phillips crossed to the door, flicking off the "cone of silence" as he exited. "Smith," Gallagher heard him say, "there's not a single ashtray in that office. Get him some, will you? At least the little clear glass ones they have at diners. Hell, steal a couple next time you and the girls go out for sandwiches."

"I'll make a note, sir."

Gallagher slowly pushed himself out of his chair as he heard Phillips' hard-soled shoes clack down the corridor. He made it as far as the door to his office and slumped against the doorframe for support.

Smith turned and flashed him a smile. "Col. Phillips asked me to get you some ashtrays."

"I gave up smoking," said Gallagher. "I spend too much time with oxygen tanks for smoking to be a relaxing habit."

"Well, one for when people stop by your office, anyhow. Speaking of visitors, there goes Marty Schwartz, he wanted to meet you right away.... Marty!"

Gallagher saw a man stop dead in the middle of the corridor, turn around, and head back to the office pod. Schwartz was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt with a thin dark tie. His breast pocket sported a white plastic pocket protector and a handful of pens, and his crew-cut hair made no enhancement of either his horn-rimmed glasses or his pale, trim-but-pasty face. He and Gallagher may as well have been twins.

Patty introduced them, and mentioned Col. Phillips had already shown Dr. Gallagher around.

"I design valve controllers," said Schwartz, shaking Gallagher's hand. "So we'll be working together a lot. Want to have a quick chat in your office, and then head out for lunch, say?"

"That would be swell," said Gallagher, wondering if Schwartz actually knew his stuff, or was just a glorified Hollywood prop guy.

"Did Phillips use this?" said Schwartz, flicking the "cone of silence" switch.

Gallagher nodded as he took his seat behind the desk.

Schwartz shrugged and left it on. "The light still turns on, but we disconnected the speaker months ago. It gives Patty migraines." He threw himself into the nearest visitor's chair. "Phillips tell you this is all fake?"

"More or less."

"Did he tell you why?"

"He said going to the moon was impossible. Science fiction."

Schwartz gave a short laugh. "Sixty years ago, Phillips' grandfather was calling the Wright Brothers lunatics. With NASA, it's a budget concern. The brass think faking it might fool the Soviets but be... cheaper."

"I see."

"You sound disappointed."

"It's not exactly the resume line I was hoping for."

"Ah, but here's the thing." Schwartz leaned forward, tapping his finger on the desk to emphasise his words. "This stuff has to all look good, really good. Good enough to fool foreign scientists. Good enough to fool journalists — most of them are idiots, but the ones that aren't know their stuff cold. So what's the best way to make it all good enough to fool them?" He leaned back in his chair and held out his arms.

Gallagher blinked a few times, then coughed and rolled his eyes. "Best way to fool them all is do it for real. Okay, gotcha on the new guy. You and Phillips really had me going there."

"No gull," said Schwartz. "Not on you. Just Phillips."

"Phillips thinks we're making fake equipment for a fake moon launch."

"Yes."

"But really we're making real equipment for a real moon launch."

"Yes!"

"But why..."

"We tell him it's all fake. It keeps him happy, and it keeps us amused." Schwartz reached over the desk and slapped Gallagher on the shoulder. "Welcome to NASA. Come on, let's grab lunch. I'll drive; you're gonna want a couple of beers. Don't forget to turn off the 'cone of silence' on the way out; the damn thing burns out if you leave it on for a couple of hours."

liebster award

Steve Green at The Twisted Quill won the Liebster Award recently, and very well-deserved too! Steve is a brilliant writer who always seems to package big vistas of meaning into small packages of flash fiction.

The Liebster is an award that's meant to be passed on, and Steve was kind enough to include me in his list. So now it's my turn.

I know some of the people in my list have already received it recently, but if that's the case for you, please consider yourself re-awarded — and please use the comments here to link to your award post if you feel so inclined (don't blame you if you don't want to re-do the lists — there's a certain amount of writing with these things!).

There are rules to accepting the award:
1. You post 11 random facts about yourself.
2. You need to answer the 11 questions your presenter gave you.
3. You pass the award on to 11 other bloggers.
4. You compose 11 new questions for your recipients.

Here goes:

Eleven Random Facts About Me

TV
I have never paid a cable TV bill in my life, mostly because I've never had cable TV. My parents had it, but by the time they got more than just basic service, I wasn't really watching TV anymore except for the odd film or music video show. I didn't have a TV set at all between the ages of 18 and 30. Although I somehow wound up owning a VCR, DVD player, and TV set, they are all gifts and/or hand-me-downs from various family members. I do like some shows, but I tend to watch them in either short (YouTube clips) or long (DVD) sessions. Now that I've not been a regular watcher for enough years, I can see and hear the "invisible conventions" very distinctly. TV seems to assume you're already a TV watcher, which I guess makes sense, but also makes it a very strange experience to watch if you're not.

Knitting
Okay, I have a DIY blog, so it's not terribly random that I knit. The random part is that I'm a past member of the organisation team for the TTC Knit-A-Long, a car-free event that promotes DIY attitude and encourages people to think outside the (big) box (store). We go from yarn shop to yarn shop throughout Toronto, all on public transit and all very publicly knitting. One person knitting on a streetcar is one thing. Forty people sitting together and knitting on a streetcar is something else again.

Cake
I really, really, really hate chocolate cake. This has gotten awkward more than once when someone buys me some for my birthday and is all proud of themselves for giving me a treat.

Coffee
Now that I'm writing random facts about food... I'm allergic to coffee. Not caffeine, but coffee. Even if I buy one for a friend and get some drips on my hand while I'm carrying it to them, I can have a reaction -- the skin the coffee touches will get tingly and will stay that way long after I soap it off. This only started in my early 30s, and has led me to have a lot of sympathy for people with more deadly food reactions. People will say things like, "Oh no worries, we have decaf" or "Just have some to be polite, will you?". Sigh. Okay, no more about food.

The colour black
I almost always wear black clothing, but my apartment is decorated in bright colours. I even buy deliberately mismatched bath towels so that all the towels set out at any given time are all different hues. Sometimes when people see my apartment for the first time I get told I should dress like I decorate, but I don't think I'll be wearing bull's-eye polka dots in primaries any time soon.

The circus
When I was a kid we lived in the country, and our neighbours "two doors" up ("two doors" being something like a kilometre because all the properties were larger than in town) owned a circus. I waited for the school bus with their youngest son. He didn't talk about the family business very much -- everyone in the area knew about it, so it wasn't that big a deal -- but one morning he mentioned his father was tending a sick lion at the house. He explained they had locked pens for keeping ill animals in, because his father insisted on caring for them himself -- he was proud of the circus's standards for the welfare of their animals. We listened, and sure enough we could hear the lion roaring. He said it always roared in the morning before his father fed it.

Museums and art galleries
Museums and art galleries are my favourite places to hang out on vacations and on weekends. Most of the photos from my recent trip to New York City were taken inside MoMA and the Met. When I went to Amsterdam by myself a few years ago, I picked my hotel according to how close to Museumplein it was.

Ciphers and alphabets
I like learning about secret codes and different alphabets. I write my grocery lists out in the Elder Futhark to keep in practice.

Photography
Everyone in my family likes taking photographs; my favourites to take are still lifes and landscapes. Some of my father's photos are in the Canadian National Exhibition archive.

Cheshin!
Photography, right! I've known my friend Cathy Cheshin since we took drama class together in university. She's an art photographer, musician, Hallowe'en enthusiast, and maker of things both wonderful and strange -- like miniature, poisonous cakes. She doesn't have a blog, which is why I'm mentioning her on this list instead of the blog roll, but she is on Twitter. I blogged about her debut photo exhibit.

Music
As I'm writing this last entry, I'm listening to Tom Waits' Mule Variations. Probably I will listen to The Pale Fountains' Pacific Street after that, or maybe Ghost Sonata by Tuxedomoon. So now you know.

Answers to Steve's Eleven Questions

If you could come back in another life as an animal, which one would you choose to be?
One of my friends' cats.

Have you ever owned one of those cars that whatever “Could” go wrong with it, “Did” go wrong?
I only got my first car when I was 32, but that first one would fit that description. My "favourite" breakdown was when it quit in the middle of a very rainy morning rush hour while I was taking it to the garage for service. The tow truck drive was less than two kilometres.

Do you believe in other world life forms?
Absolutely. The universe is too big for this particular kind of chemical process to happen just once.

If you had to spend a year on a desert island with just one celebrity for company, who would you choose?
Um, one that knew about surviving on desert islands, which narrows it down quite a bit. How much research did Tom Hanks do for Castaway? Let's say Dieter Dengler, the man who survived a POW camp in Kampuchea. Werner Herzog made two films about him: the documentary Little Dieter Wants to Fly, and the fictional retelling Rescue Dawn, which stars Christian Bale. I believe Dengler's passed away since the films came out, but hey, it's a hypothetical.

Which band or entertainer would you most like to see in a live performance?
Either Laurie Anderson or Sigur Rós.

If you could alter just one physical aspect of yourself, what would it be?
I'd like to be the weight I was before I started dieting. That may sound backwards, but I'm living proof diets make you gain weight.

I have been told I am a Jack Russell, which breed of dog would you say you share characteristics with?
Definitely a German Shepherd.

If you could choose any make or model of car to own for free, which model would you have?
Lit Motors' C-1, which is sort of in between a car and a motorcycle -- it has two wheels, but the driver sits in an enclosed space with car-like doors. It's a gyro-stabilised, electrically-powered vehicle that has stayed upright even in crash tests where pickup trucks have hit it sideways.

Which do you prefer, the quiet of the countryside, or the hustle-bustle of the city?
I prefer a quiet corner of a city. I live in a neighbourhood that is less than ten kilometres from downtown, but has its own high street and has a small-town feel. We also have several big parks and a bird sanctuary, so one doesn't have to go far to experience some "countryside".

Do you have a favourite colour and number? And do you know why?
My favourite colour is purple, which is good because it suits me. I love orange too, but have a hard time finding shades I can wear. My favourite number is probably 12, because it's a very convenient number for knitter's math. It has a lot of factors, which makes it easy to form patterns with, and it just happens to often be the difference between one size and the next when making socks and sweaters.

What is your favourite film and book?
Eeesh... that changes by the day. There is so much good stuff out there! Today probably Local Hero or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are my favourite films. The Night Circus is probably my favourite book du jour.

The nominees!

These are in no particular order. Thanks to everyone in the list for the chance to read what you write.

• Jake at Junk Boat Travels 
• Tara at Artemis and Friends 
• Cathy Oliffe-Webster at Life on the Muskoka 
• Larry Kollar at The FAR Manor 
• Marc Nash at Sulci Collective 
• Peter Newman at Run, Pete, Write! 
• John Wiswell at The Bathroom Monologues 
• Icy Sedgwick at Icy's Blunt Pencil 
• Helen Howell at Helen Scribbles 
• Sylvia van Bruggen at Playful Creative 
• Avery Tingle at Avery K. Tingle's Road Home

The questions

I tried to aim for "random." Unfortunately, I think I may have succeeded.

1. Chocolate or vanilla?
2. Tea or coffee?
3. What colour is Thursday (and why)?
4. What's the first thing you remember?
5. If a stranger were to open your fridge door and look in right now, what would be the first thing they noticed?
6. What made you decide to start writing a blog? 
7. If your home got featured in a house & home sort of magazine, how would you describe your decorating style?
8. What was the last book you read that you recommended to other people, and why?
9. What's your idea of the perfect Sunday?
10. Socks or barefoot?
11. What's next?

#fridayflash: always the quiet ones

One thing that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone: the news coverage was a joke. The first person they interviewed was Tony Showalter. Tony said Richard Grimley had always been quiet, studious, never one to get into trouble. A geek. Kept to himself, spent all his after-school time doing homework, working his part-time job at the local library, or working in the shed behind his parents' house.

What Showalter left out was that he himself was the leader of five boys who bullied Grimley from elementary school right through to halfway through high school. "You know why he goes by 'Richard'?" they'd bray. "Because you can't call someone 'Dick' if they don't have one." They'd sweep by Grimley's locker, howling and trumpeting, and the crap they dished out was so repetitive even the teachers stopped paying attention to it.

Grimley would just smile. Sometimes he'd say, "It's okay. I know where you live." The boys never bothered physically beating him up, although he got shoved into his locker regularly, so in the end neither the school administration nor the parents did anything about it.

Things cooled off during his years at Northwestern, although one can hardly say he found friends. Dr. Ian Amberwell, Grimley's thesis advisor, called a press conference after the initial events, before network television and radio went dark. Before anyone knew network television and radio were going to go dark.

The footage tells you everything you need to know about the mass media, and nothing you need to know about Grimley. Reporters keep asking things like, "Did his thesis indicate he was planning anything like this?" and "Did he ever steal anything from the labs?", with Dr. Amberwell looking more and more frustrated, until finally he explodes. "I'm a goddamned math professor," he shouts. "Grimley wasn't studying engineering or chemistry, he was a goddamned math major. Anyone who doesn't have a basic idea of what applied math is, go fucking Google it and come back in half an hour with some relevant goddamned questions. No, I mean it. Half an hour." Everyone files out except for a woman wearing a press badge with a Boing Boing logo on it.

Grimley's parents put a notice on their Facebook page which was very vague, but more or less stated that, under the circumstances, they felt it wasn't right for them to comment either way. Facebook went down about half an hour after everything started, so few people saw it. The rest of the internet followed soon afterwards.

After graduating from Northwestern, Richard Grimley worked full-time at the library he'd stacked books at for an after-school job. Mary-Lou Schaefer, his co-worker throughout all the time he spent there, said he was wonderful to work with, quiet but friendly, and always brought in doughnuts on Fridays. If anyone had a question about science or math, Mary-Lou would recommend they talk to Richard. She said he had the whole collection memorised.

Schaefer also said that whenever there was a mass shooting in the news and the library staff discussed it during break-time, Grimley would get so upset he would have tears in his eyes. "He was always a softy," said Schaefer. "He hated hearing about innocent people getting killed."

There's a two-year gap between Grimley's last day working at the library and the events of last Wednesday. One rumour has it that he was living off an inheritance he received, although since both his parents are alive it's not certain who he would have inherited the money from. Another rumour is that he won the Powerball lottery, but the people who used to staff the lottery offices say no-one by the name has ever won.

The international press tried to pick up the slack. Both the CBC and the BBC arranged to fly helicopters from Detroit to Washington DC, trying to get some aerial footage and report on what was happening.

The helicopters never made it back, but they did report during the flyover that the giant robots are still circling the Pentagon and the White House.

No-one is quite sure where Richard Grimley is, or how he is controlling them.

#fridayflash: natural behaviour

This one came from here, 'cos I needed a prompt:

It’s one of the better-designed ones, as shopping malls go. Both the car traffic and the public transit get swirled through to big, airy entrances. That’s where the cleverness really starts, because the shops have been arranged so that there’s no such thing as “pick something up quickly on the way home.” The smaller places along the perimeter are specialty shops that take a lot of browsing and discussions with clerks to get the right thing; the big department stores only have checkouts by the inside exits, leading shoppers further into the mall. Any idiot consumer herd-beast who thought he was just dropping by The Bay to pick up three pairs of plain navy socks will find himself overwhelmed by additional foraging options. He’ll be half a kilometre away from escape before he even knows what hit him.

The inner corridors offer further delights. Really, the principle is similar to an ant trap: the silly cattle may wander inside from curiosity or a need for something very specific, but once inside, in that deceptively open yet confined space, they’re prey to the smells wafted at them. Yes, smell. Not sight or sound — those factor in differently. That’s why the gourmet popcorn stands and the coffee shops and the places that sell cookies made with chunks of chocolate bars are placed around the inner edge of the trap interior. The scent hits their poor dumb noses as soon as they finish paying for their thin, badly-sized socks.

They count the hours since their last “treat” of sugar and starch, and they either decide it’s been long enough that they can afford an indulgence, or else they’ve strayed so recently that another hit won’t change the equation. As they’re led by the nose, they’re distracted by lots of shiny, blinking things, and by enough random loud sounds to overwhelm their natural fight-or-flight instinct. Upright apes are damned skittish when you get down to it — they’re the descendants of the ones who didn’t get caught by the sabre-toothed tigers way back when on the savannah. But if you mix in the good stimulus of sugar snacks with the bad stimulus of big noises, they run away from the annoyance... towards the temptation. And now their back brain is figuring they deserve a reward for avoiding the electronic successors of those sabre-toothed tigers.

What they don’t realise is that the corridors are designed so that the same air currents promising coated corn and sweetened caffeine will be delivering newer, tastier smells by the time they get to where they thought they were going. The thing about the popcorn stands is that there’s nowhere to sit, nowhere to put the garbage. But by the time you’re at the popcorn stand, you’re within sight (and scent) of the central food court.

These ape-cattle have been taught from infancy that they’re not allowed to have their dessert before they finish their meal. This is a shopping mall. It’s always close to meal-time in a shopping mall.

So off they go, to choose from an array of options that all come down to a small amount of protein served on a starch delivery medium, with just enough veg added for colour. It doesn’t matter if they get the meatball sub, or the pepperoni pizza, or the cheeseburger, or the souvlaki, or the beef with broccoli on a bed of fried rice. Same stuff dressed up different ways. The imitation of variety.

They’ll plunk themselves down with their tray, carefully stowing their shopping bag, and tuck in. They’ll have picked the cleanest table that they think is the safest. The whole thing is designed to make them want to come, but not stay: they have to sit in the centre, where there aren’t any walls to put their back against, where the echos converge to create a theatre of noise. They’ll scarf down their food on high alert and waddle back to the treat stands that led them here in the first place, and even if they’re stuffed they’ll want to opiate themselves with carbs.

And that’s when we get to move in on the ones marked to cut out of the herd. One of us can walk up, wearing a security guard’s uniform, and say, “Sir, The Bay requested we find you, there was an anomaly on your credit card transaction and they asked us to contact you right away.” Or there’s always, “Sir! Good, we found you. The security hub issued your photo, and we’ve been trying to spot you. You left the lights on in your car.” Or something. By this point, we’ve got enough footage of them on the security cameras that it’s not difficult to come up with a ruse.

They follow us through the heavy steel doors and down the sterile, fluorescent-lit side corridors like helpful little dogs. We take them to the security room and show them footage of themselves, to make them feel important. Like we’re serving them instead of the other way ‘round.

We offer to lead them through a staff-only shortcut so they can get to where-ever we told them they were going faster.

All those generations of fight-or-flight bred into them, and not a one has ever noticed there are no security cameras in the side corridors.

It’s easy to clean up. The video footage doesn’t need erasing, just obscuring. If they did have a car, we get rid of it. Often the police don’t even know they were at the mall. If they ask, we show them the requested videos, but in black-and-white and low-res, it’s hard to tell them apart.

We average nearly five litres of blood per harvest. We only need to harvest three or four times a year. Meanwhile, we have an entire mall to get income from.

Predatory is profitable.

The writing prompt:

"Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found... That's out of three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year.... Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators."

— Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

tilly with the others: still on hiatus

Looks like the Collector is being left closed again this week, it being a holiday and all, so I'll wait another week before continuing with Tilly. Only eight more episodes to go...

In the meantime, have a happy new year!

fridayflash happy brave new year

This is the first time I've included an audio narration with a Friday Flash — just click the Play button above to listen. To be honest, I am less than thrilled with the quality, but this was the best take out of about ten — hope it works for you. If anyone has any tips & tricks they want to share, I'd appreciate them! Should the player not work for you (it's been changed to HTML5, so in theory it should work on all current-ish platforms), and you really want to check out the narration, the mp3 file is available here.  

 "So here we are: we, the people of Earth, on the first day of 2047. We have much to be proud of in the past, and nothing to be despondent about in the future.

"One hundred years ago, our world was recovering from the greatest conflict ever seen on this planet. Though the costs were high, the technology created by the scientists and engineers involved set in place the greatest shift in the lives of ordinary people since the start of the Industrial Revolution. More automation, more mechanisation, more leisure time. Personal computing was born in the summer of 1945; the first instance of the World Wide Web fifty years later. We reap the benefits of that pioneering innovation today, and endeavour to carry forward that same desire for greater knowledge, for better ways of doing everything.

"Greater automation and increased efficiencies came not without costs, costs our ancestors burdened bravely and solved admirably. The factory worker was replaced by robotics. Bank tellers were replaced with kiosks. Any boring, tedious, or dangerous task — driving, cooking, housecleaning, personal grooming — has been given to the machines.

"Humanity has been liberated to think, to dream, to achieve our full potential. No longer are we required for menial, trivial work. It took brave measures to succeed in this, and fortunately for us, succeed we did. Today marks the tenth anniversary of the ninety-eight per cent reduction in surplus population. We, the grateful survivors, the representatives of Earth's global culture, have committed to ensuring we never again exceed our current count of one hundred and fifty million individuals alive at any given time.

"Those that gave their lives to ensure the future of the planet have been freed, freed from watching their lives of servitude and menial labour become outsourced to machines. They have been saved from pain and embarrassment, freed from responsibility. That responsibility rests with us, the living, to ensure their legacy is not sullied. The time for grieving and rebuilding is over; the time for planning ahead has begun.

"It is time to look forward to the world of tomorrow: a greater world. A better world. With our hearts and minds we will create a peaceful, sustainable way of life, a society for the ages.

"One hundred years ago, our ancestors heard an address much like this one, huddled around their wireless sets, listening to their leaders ask them to make peace with the past and look towards the future. I have every confidence that, one hundred years from now, when my sucessor takes the podium and addresses the people of the good Earth, he or she will reflect back on this time as the turning point. This, friends and fellow citizens, is the year when the dreams of the past will be turned into present reality.

"Thank you for your time, and best wishes in the new year."

#BestReads2012

John Wiswell asked people to make lists of their favourite reads from 2012 and provide the link (or the list itself) on his blog. I wrote mine up early so I wouldn't forget, and posted it as a page on this blog.

It's been a lot of fun reading people's lists. My only regret is that now I have yet more books to read.