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On Tuesday, we had another rain stormy kind of morning. I was talking with a co-worker when I noticed this odd shape in the steam on our window (above our printers). I told her to look and she said 'what at those two lung like things'. I said, 'yeah, but I was thinking it looked more like a martian-face thing.' I showed it to other people, they thought it was kinda cool and weird too. I know I was mocked when I took some pictures of it. Me, I am going to allow myself to live with the delusion that a martian was holding his face against our window during the night to see what was going on in our office.


Meanwhile, I read at my writing group last night to fairly positive response. There were some good questions brought up. I love it that a couple of people are so good at finding repetitive words close together. Some of what they were discussing and suggesting was for more information that I am sure I want to give at this point. Truth be told, I am not even sure this is going into the book. I originally wrote it to give birth to the sociopath, but the more I develop the novel, the less I think this will fit in (however it is a good beginning for a prequel).

Top 20 Fears

This recent occurrence at the PRIDE festivities got me to thinking how cautious I have become as I have become older – less uninhibited. I had planned on counting down, but the reality is that I don’t know that there is a specific order for things that scare me. I wondered what are the things of which I am I am truly fearful? So I sat to figure it out – this is the list I came up with:

1. Being lonely (not alone – I need alone time often)
2. Losing one of my nieces and nephews
3. Losing a sibling
4. Something reaching up and biting my junk when sitting in an outhouse
5. Disappearing
6. Another 9/11
7. Walking alone in unsafe areas
8. Being violently beaten
9. Losing my ability to hear, see or speak
10. Spiders
11. Feeling helpless
12. Gangs
13. Finding someone in my home
14. Angry ghosts
15. Elvis’ passing (my dog)
16. Being attacked in my sleep
17. Dying unintentionally for a cause
18. Losing hope
19. Having my heart broken
20. Losing a close friend

What are your top fears?

PRIDE - from Celebration to Fear

Omaha PRIDE was this weekend. It truly was a celebration down at Lewis and Clark Landing in Omaha, NE. I went down on Saturday evening and would have brought my camera – but it was raining when I left and since I didn’t know how long it would be raining – I decided against bringing it.

People of all sorts were down there. It’s been a few years since I was able to attend and since I am not a big fan of crowds, I really liked the amount of space we had to celebrate. There was a couple of musical acts (okay), some talking and some drinking. After hanging out for about 2ish hours, I decided that my knee was hurting enough to sit down and luckily my friend Pat O and his band was performing at Rick’s Boatyard – so I went up to sit and enjoy for a bit. It was fun watching the crowd leave as the PRIDE celebration died down – some heard Pat and his band and joined us up on the deck to listen and dance (I wasn’t dancing, lol).

Watching the people leave I realized how far away my car was, where I was parked and how dark it was. Initially I had every intention of staying to listen to Pat’s band until about midnight when I planned on heading home and fairly quickly I became a little nervous. I was in a downtown, close to a park heavily populated with all types and interests and I was leaving a gay celebration. There has been such a focus this year on the violent crimes against gays in this day and age. I decided I didn’t want to be one and waited for a large crowd to leave the PRIDE celebration and walked behind them to my car, with my keys poking out defensively in my left hand and my phone in my right with 911 typed in and ready to push send if anything happened. Funny, no, I take that back, Sad how a celebration can turn dark so quickly.

New Additions...

TO THE FAMILY - Please meet SUNNY AND SHARE (aren't they beautiful). They joined our little family or menagerie yesterday.

I have to say on a brief note, whatever happened that camping trip - I love the creativity it has caused. So far I have written the basics of 3, count them, 3 new short stories. Maybe a little get away to doing nothing is going to be needed more often.

Worth It - Waste It

This weekend I didn't get to watch as many movies as I usually do, but I did get a lot of reading and writing done.

Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star - this is the second in the Fablehaven series. If you have not started to read the series yet, I recommend it. I believe it to be a very creative idea for a stories. The characters are enjoyable even when evil. This one does a good job of making you not totally aware of who is fighting for good and evil until it is absolutely necessary to find out. Kendra is now blessed with new powers which she continues to learn throughout the story and since no one is able to compare what happened to her in the first story - there continue to be surprises which I am sure will surface in future stories. Thankfully the third in the series is out Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague but the fourth in the series doesn't come out until April 2009. I have also picked up his new book and it is the next I am starting on - The Candy Shop War. Brandon Mull could easily become one of my favorite writers.

I made quite a bit of work towards finishing Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. I started the book several years ago and got about halfway through. An old classmate of mine has re-perked the interest for me to finish it. I am enjoying it, but there is so much sarcasm and Biff basically claims to have invented just about everything (I think he just discovered matches, lol). For some reason it is a lot to take in - I think it will become one of my car books to read when I am on the road and possibly waiting for friends and/or appointments.

Now I have not been on a good run of movies lately - in fact, have been more than a little irritated about them. I recently watched The Sasquatch Gang and while I realize that I only have myself to blame - they are promoting it as made by the same people who make Napoleon Dynamite, so I had some hope of enjoying it. I didn't.

Last night I considered going to see The Happening as I love M Night Shyamalan's stuff and Mark Wahlberg - so it was win, win, right? Well, I made the mistake of looking at the yahoo critiques/users ratings and saw that it is getting a C by the critique and the Yahoo users are giving it a C-. Well, that and some article on Yahoo's home page saying 'nothing happens in The Happening,' swayed me to reconsider.

So I stuck in movie which I have been wanting to see called Breakfast With Scot. It's a gay themed movie which is absolutely delightful. The story is great, the actors are spectacular. The message is wonderful and the feeling I got from finishing that movie was very happy and peaceful. This one is a movie I highly recommend and give 5 stars to as well.

On Writing

Initially, this weekend I was struggling - getting re-aquanted with old friends and lots of reading. I was struggling where to pick up in my writing - what I wanted to work on. Thursday night was spent getting re-aquainted. Friday we spent much of the day at the different sites in Nebraska City. Saturday - I finished reading my book and opted out of doing more site seeing.

After finishing the book, I decided it was time to really focus on some writing - the weather was on our side and just encouraged free thought and peace. So I was looking through my notebooks and found, not one but two chapters of different books I had written. My book about the the group of friends which centers around a tree house - and another story that I know how it is going to go, what happens in it and how it ends, but have not really been able to get it on paper - I haven't found the voice.

For the tree house story - I found a chapter that points me in the direction I was hoping the story would go. I just had been stuck. I was able to pick up the pen to paper and start writing again - I think I finished another two chapters - I have to get it transferred to Word to see really how much I wrote, but I did good. I have even figured out how I am going to go from the part of the book I am currently writing to the next and I feel good about it. It's nice to have direction.

The other story (I am not sure how long it is going to be if it is a novella, novel or short story.) It was actually an idea that I had developed for a screeplay, but that is such a different style of writing - I was spending so much time on learning to write screenplays that I didn't write as much. I also had always pictured the main character as a young me (I am not sure how many others do this in there story, but the stories are all going to be me in one way or another). Anyhow, I knew that when this story actually translated to script - the main character is going to have to be female for it to sell - so I thought, why not just write it like that. I had forgotten that I had a good start on the story, but found it all when looking for paper and pen. So I believe I once again ow C&M a thank you.

And We're On -

The weekend was wonderful - I went camping with a friend and his partner. This friend is one of my grade shool friends whom I haven't seen since I left Montana after 5th grade. I recently found him through the use of the internet and learned he lived fairly close to me. He and his partner go camping about once a month and made it work, so that I could join them. After the weather on Wednesday, we were blessed with beautiful weather for the next 3 days. C&M have a fantastic camper which is much more spacious than the living area I had when I lived in the basement several years ago. They were perfect hosts, but did not allow me to help enough (I mean if someone is cooking all your meals, it would be nice to at least be able to pay them back a little by washing dishes). I have to admit that I loved how easy they made it for me to relax.

We were camping at Victorian Acres outside of Nebraska City, NE. The campground was nice (the campsites were way too close together, but we did have a nice site due to a tree being between the sites). On Friday we went and walked around some of the land around the Lied Lodge - which was beautiful. We were all a little disappointment with going to the Arbor Day Farm Tree Adventure. It was not all it was cracked up to be - for the $6.50 we were told we got to not only experience the Treehouse and surrounding trails but would get a dessert at the Lied Lodge and to pick out a free tree. Now after C&M paid she handed over the coupon commenting that the dessert was free with paid meal. Had I been alone, I probably would have insisted on a refund as I felt it was very deceptive. Not only was the coupon with a a meal - it was a dinner and the resturant was closed from 2-5. We did get our free tree though - I believe it is a blue spruce.

We then found this cute little schizophrenic dinner in town. The resturant had several decors going on as did the menu. We were extremely disappointed with the meal we chose - I won't go into it here, it just did not live up to it's advertising at all.

At the campground, however, I ate like a king - the meals were very big and very healthy. I couldn't have asked for two nicer hosts. C&M thank you for making this weekend so wonderful.

Worth It - Waste It

Recently I have not been so into movies to watch. I am having a hard time finding ones I want to spend the time watching. So I have been catching up on my tv throughout the year (I tend to tape so many shows, I play catch up throughout the summer). Although this year, it appears I will be all caught up before the new fall season starts.

I did recently catch a few flicks:

Waste of Time or I want those hours back:
Semi-Pro (normally I can find a funny seen or two in his films - I think he's great, but can tend to overact) This film was horrible
10,000 B.C. - uhm... they spoke English and had fully functional cities? Need I say more?

Worth it:
Step Up 2 - gotta admit that it's not as good as the first one (and I know there is probably a select group of people who would even agree that the first on was worth it, but I liked it).
Meet the Spartans - I know this will also only appeal to a select few - oiled, muscle men, slapstick humor, I personally don't think there was any way for them to go wrong?

I LOOKED GOOD!

So at the reunion - it was funny seeing this 8x10 black and white of my senior pic hanging up on the wall. I had one friend who kept laughing about how different I looked (and he was definitely not one to talk himself - he had a lot of hair gone to nothing himself, lol). As we were joking around, about how good we all looked back then (although, lol hairstyles for some were a little questionable). I made the comment that 'I would have done me,' which caused a few to laugh, though I am not sure why - I would have - although I don't think I was hot by any means back then, but looking back, hmmm...

We also had a psychic there who - our visit didn't exactly start out right when she told me that 'I had a nice talk with your wife earlier.'
'No you didn't'
'Yes, I did.'
'No you didn't.'
'Are you sure.'
'Yes, I am sure.'
'Let me ask you this, are you sleeping with anyone in this room.'
I laugh, 'No.'
'Well someone here wants to.' Now, I know that I should have asked, but I didn't - I was caught off guard by the whole argument about my 'wife.' That I didn't ask the obvious question of 'who?' or 'could you point him out?'

She then moved on to ask me who Jacob is - 'I don't know a Jacob.'
'Yes, you do.'
'No, I don't.'
'You don't know any Jacobs?'
'Oh I have a nephew Jacob.'
'No this is someone who will be come very important to you in the next 5 months. Soon you are going to receive a phone call from someone in your past who is going to start asking you a lot of questions.'
'Is this someone I know?'
'Yes, but the questions are going to make you very uneasy and you need to hang up.'
'I need to hang the phone up?'
'Yes. A change is going to happen with management at your work - you are going to be very upset about it, but it is going to be a very good thing for you.'
There was something about a bunch of money from somewhere that I cannot remember because she started telling me things like 'do you want to hear about money, tell me yes.'
'yes.'
'you are going to come into a big amount,' now the note she wrote looks like it says something about insurance 'freestill.' I cannot read her writing very well. 'You need to buy new underwear, ask me why.'
'Why.'
'Because you are going to lose a lot of weight this year, and if you keep trying to wear the pair you are wearing, they will be tangled up around your feet. Who is Bob.'
'I don't know,'
'Yes you do.' Here we go again.
'No I don't, or wait, I have a brother in law named Bob.'
'No I don't think that is it. Bob is going to become a very important confidant to you in the next 30 days. Have you ever heard of the foot detox patch.'
'Yes I have tried them.'
'Did they work?'
'I don't think so, they kind of hurt my foot and just left a really salty smell.'
'They would be very good for you, you should get more or the Tahitian Noni - both would do you very well. Thank you and send the next one over.'

Now I don't have it all perfect I believe due to the few margaritas that I had and her handwriting is worse than most of the doctors I have read in the past. But is was fun, and looks to be a good year for me.

Nostalgia

I am a nostalgic person. I love my history, family history and memories. I love the pictures, stories and feelings associated with my past memories. I glorify the past and tend to focus on remembering the good things. I love maintaining old friendships, renewing lost relationships and just checking in with people from my past. I know that I tend to glorify the past - it is seldom that I remember the bad memories associated with a time or person from my past - and instead will turn it into a story or get try to get some humor out of the questionable memories. I do this with the people I care about or who meant something to me in the past. Don't get me wrong, there are those who are associated with bad memories and I want pretty much nothing to do with them (of course, it takes a sort of ptsd that their name brings to my response system to make that list).

From high school there are only a couple who cause that kind of panic for me and since it is 25 years since high school - I am sure that with that person, they don't even remember making me feel less than a person or 'hurting my feelings' for lack of a better phrase. I had my 25th Reunion this weekend and I had a really good time. I was kind of fearful of going to it for several reasons - one being, at the last reunion I felt like I was back in high school - people still hung in their groups (and I was one of them) - we know who makes us comfortable and who doesn't. I was much more shy than I typically am and I didn't like how I felt or the box I put myself in. I even went so far to ignore a guy from my class who was calling me over when I was on the way to the bathroom. Not because I am stuck up, but because I don't think we ever talked in high school - we ran in completely different crowds and I think I allowed my self-esteem to interfere and wonder 'he doesn't really want to talk with me.' Truth be told, he probably just wanted to ask someones name who I was talking with. But I was so embarrassed that I allowed myself to be such an ass as to 'pretend I didn't know they were calling me over.' That's not who I am. I think another reason was my being out. I didn't attend the 15 because I was at a point where I was coming out to more and more people and didn't really want to be the 'gay classmate' who came to the reunion (plus the way the 15 was set up, it really appeared as if you needed to be a couple to attend and I wasn't at that point).

At the 20 I have to admit that I am sure that was some of my discomfort. I was comfortably out, but this was my high school classmates who hadn't all seen how I had evolved and how 'comfortable' I was with myself. I know that the baggage I brought from the past was my own, I own that. So here we are at the 25th and I worried that I would turn back into the same fool who had attended the 20th. I was worried about not having anyone to talk with or just hanging with the same crowd and becoming all 'shy' again. I do know that I have several classmates who are gay as well and have partners, but I am also aware that I appear to be the 'token gay' when it comes to the reunions. I don't know that any attend besides myself (well, at least any who are out).

I thoroughly enjoyed myself this weekend. I got to talk and catch up with some people who meant a lot to me in the past, I got to socialize with people from the past, that while I probably didn't back then, it was nice to check in and get re-acquainted. I had fun, I ate, drank, played volleyball and just had a really good time. One of the nice things for me, is that I have this group who is doing this weight loss challenge - several are from my high school past in one form or another - it was fun for me to see how we tended to hang around together at times at this event. There is a real sense of security in those friendships. It's nice how true friends from our past can become very good friends of our present.

Write One Thing 2

I did well the other night after writing my post. I started a new story, I do no know the direction it is going, but I believe it to be a type of ghost story (which I don't think I have every really done before). It always feels good and exciting for me to start something new. I have to admit that is is falling out of my pattern though - I have a tendency to start write a chapter of one of my novels and then fall into writing a short. I don't know if that is good or not, but it is my pattern.

I have been thinking of putting some of my shorts together in a collection. They all have a type of theme that they go with, but I am not sure it is a theme that others would be interested in - I know story-wise, the stories and the idea are good. We will have to see.

I am setting a goal for this month to write a page a day towards one of the novels. My writing group is great at encouraging me to read - I feel very supported in this group. I know many read in order of what they are writing. I am not sure I will be doing that. Sometimes I wonder if it is the actual story that is being critiqued or the writing - I know that we have to address both in a writer's group because if the story doesn't grab the reader they can help me with the direction and the interest. Now I can't say that has honestly ever been a critique I have received (the dreaded 'I just didn't care, aaarrrrggghhhh!!! that would be horrible). But I have hard some that this was my thought.

Sometimes I have read part of one of my short stories - I sometimes feel bad because I can only read half of it (we are only supposed to read about 5 double-spaced pages each critique) and because there were too many holes or it fixed what I was looking for, I don't necessarily go back and read the rest of the story. Only a couple of times have I heard disappointment in not hearing more. I have one story I wrote several years ago that I really see eventually being turned into a script - I read a portion of it to my group and even though I think the response would have been differently if they had been privy to the whole story, there was still a lot of attention given to the things that either bothered or did not work for them. I haven't gone back to the story for it's edit since that read, but it has been calling me and I believe that often after a critique like that and time, the story only comes out better once I adjust it.

Yesterday I did not meet my goal (as I just made it up today, lol). I did however, edit one of my stories to read last night (although I didn't end up reading yesterday). I felt good about the changes. Even the fact that I pretty much cut off the end of the story - we will have to see how it actually works into the novel this way. It's supposed to be the prologue, but it might be a little too long. Speaking of too long...

WRITE ONE THING TODAY

I was reviewing some of the blogs that I read and came across this one Write To Done - it had some fantastically educational posts on it. But one caught my eye and I didn't want to forget it, so I decided to post it here to remind me:

"Write one thing today, and write it well." I love that thought - it was posted on the February 28th, 2008 posting. I'm going to see if doing that helps me in developing my routine of writing daily.

Reading and Watching

I am about 3/4's the way through the second Fablehaven story by Brandon Mull (and loving it). I tend to read it over my lunch hour. I was planning on finishing it last week, but got sidetracked when the new Odd Thomas - Odd Hours came out. I love that character. I actually had it as a book on tape. I have to admit that the first and second books are still my favorite, and while I enjoyed it, it was not one of my favorites. However, I did love the end. I won't spoil it, but I loved the end. I want to finish the second Fablehaven book, to get to the third which I also have - seriously good books people. I also picked up some new books to read - and tried reading the new Stephanie Meyers book, The Host. I am having a hard time getting into it. I think I thought it was going to be another vampire book, that was written specifically for adults and it isn't. I think I know the direction it is going, but am still unsure. I am not enjoying it as much, so I have put it off for now. I have several others I could be reading that I will focus on at this time instead.

I have been catching up on some of my shows that I tape throughout the year to catch up on during down time. No movies have been grabbing me that I have to see them right this minute - there is still a couple of tear jerkers which I haven't had the heart to watch yet, but I will. And I have also enjoyed a new show that I have never watched before - Step Up and Dance - on Bravo. I love it (if I am honest I probably watched it more for the two straight guys which I have true crushes on), but I am enjoying the show. I can't stop listening to Rhianna's Umbrella ever since they had the challenged to learn part of the background dancers' steps. I am thinking that those kind of things would be a great wieght-loss program (don't you) practicing the dances from musicals and music videos? I have said it before, but have never tried it.

My weight-loss group met last night and I was the biggest loser for the last 6 weeks - we are doing another 6 week challenge, so I have to up my game, maybe creating my own exercise program with some of these dvd's is the way to go (I have always wanted to move my hips like Shakira in Hips Don't Lie - now's my chance!!!)

Writing Competition

This last week was a little distracting for me - I had a person I thought was a friend of mine really lie and then tried to minimize it and make it out to be my fault. It's over and I have moved on, it's still hard (who likes being manipulated like that)and being a person who thinks he is a pretty good judge of character, it really threw me off. Oh well, somehow I will be able to apply it to my writing at some point.

Yesterday, I did a final edit on my short story, It Was A Dark And Stormy Night. I really am pretty proud of this story. I wrote it basically one afternoon when I was at this terrible seminar for work. It started out as one of those fun pieces - you know - you write a sentence and pass it on to the next person, but I never passed it on. I turned it into a writing activity for myself. I had been critiqued at my group as someone who often writes in the first person (and I do), so I took that as a challenge. Hindsight, I don't think she meant it as something I needed to change, as much as a way to identify my writing. I have since learned from others in my writing group, that they wish they had that ability and see it as a strength. For me, it's often that I become the character in my writing, it's the one my tools. So I actually enjoyed working on this piece because it took me out of my element.

I started with the 3rd person omission, and then I played with some simple 3rd person as well. One of the things I love about this writing group, is that I have really learned to pay attention to some of these things. I will write, edit and present and even though I think I have caught every opportunity for someone to go 'how does he know this, who's perspective are we in,' but they find them. I even find it in my writing published works now and think, how did this get published. (Then reality kicks in and I realize that they are published and overall I am not.)

Anyhow, I missed the initial deadline for submitting this story to the Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competition, so I had to get it done to be able to enter it yesterday. It is now entered and I am not even looking at the story because I am sure I will find things and go, 'oh, how did I miss that.' I did find a whole lot of 'had's' in the story, and didn't realize how much I write and talk that way. I will continue to work on it.

This morning, I started writing another story, looks to be fun. I still have stuff to edit before reading tomorrow on one of my novels, but sometimes the muse just takes over, doesn't she.