January Sweeps - Day 360

Okay, follow-up time.

So, I got up insanely early today (seriously, I would not have believed myself a year ago if I'd told me) so I could get stuff done today and still go to the library and my cousin's, and when I checked . . . the sick turtle was dead.  Guess we didn't need to go to the pet store after all.

I found this silly Turtle Grim Reaper picture, and I figured I'd use it twice.

Topic Two: Well, Big listened to my story "Bad Trip" and damned it with faint praise.  Well, actually, he told me I could run it (on my podcast), that he thought it was fun.  He did wonder how I could stretch what was essentially a one sentence joke into a twenty-eight minute story, but that's neither here nor there (or, as Big would say it, "Neither here nor there").

So, I guess I ought to go on a little drive and do a "Bad Trip" episode.

Except for now I'm worried that I was dumb to ever want to do it as a show.  We'll see.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 3009

Topic Three: I'm more than halfway through editing "Never Let Him Go," the story I complained about yesterday (admitting that it's just character development with absolutely no plot), and I have to say that I really like it.  The character of Constance Bice, the owner of the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast, is one of the vilest, most repugnant characters I've ever written about.  She was partly based on the nasty, amoral producer I was briefly an assistant to in Los Angeles, but mostly inspired by the boss I had at my last job, who had been keeping a list of infractions I had committed (drinking a Pepsi at my desk was one of them) until she had enough ammunition to trot it out and fire me.*  I tried to keep my sense of humor in check around her because it was obvious she didn't like me, but whenever I said anything to her, she would say "Ha ha, funny," as though I'd been trying to make inappropriate jokes.

The turnover was pretty high at that job, and the HR lady would make an exit interview call to ask why employees were leaving, and quite often, the boss's name came up as the reason.  My mom met the boss a couple of times and remarked to me, "Wow, she's just not a very nice person, is she?"  The head of the HR department was an ally in my corner, and not long after I got the boot, she cleaned out her office on an afternoon the boss wasn't in, and left her keys on her desk without a word, without giving the boss a chance to look for a replacement, without an opportunity for a confrontation, and as a big eff-you to the woman.

Unfortunately, I named her Constance after a squat old lady I met who was coarse and sour and grouchy all the time and had called me "a damned fool" once (honestly, I didn't think people used that phrase in the 21st Century), but in the years since has become a lot more friendly with me, even asking me to give her car a jump-start one afternoon last spring.  The real Connie just has a rough exterior, whereas the Constance Bice in the stories is a truly awful person . . . and may be revealed to be a murderer before long.**

But hey, we all have our faults.  You know where mine is.

Push-ups Today: 127
Push-ups In January: 2286

Topic Four: So, Gino got me what appears to be the final cover for my short story "podcatcher."  This was the mock-up I sent him:

And this is what his final version looks like:

I can't say enough that he would do so much for me, and in such detail.  It looks pretty much like it did in my mind, except with light and shadow I wouldn't be capable of. 

I did go back and add a couple of details to the story, describing what the creature was wearing (in my mind, it was always naked, as most of my monsters are, but when I did the drawing for Gino, I decided to have him dress like MacGruff the Crime Dog.  Oh, is that too dated a reference?  I meant Sam Spade).  

I will try to get the story on Amazon before February.  And I'll probably run it on the Outcast in March or so.

Words Today: 1552
Words In January: 18,910

*We live in one of those Right To Work states, so she could've fired me for any reason, really.  Not sure why she didn't just do it on the Pepsi day.

**My plan for these stories, way back in 2015, was for me to write the first one, about Judson Kavedra (?) discovering the place, setting up the universe . . . and I would write the final story, which was going to be about Constance Bice, and what befalls her on the second of July.  It was my intention, even then, to reveal her true nature and have her get her comeuppance to close out the anthology.  And it's kind of fun, knowing I can still do that, even though the series has changed dramatically in those five years.