Today, I'll have to leave the cabin--the one time I got to be here for three days instead of two. I woke up when the sun was still low in the sky, but laid there for a few minutes trying to go back to sleep. The fire had gone out (indeed, I never really got it burning last night--I kept having to re-light it and put more kindling on--perhaps these logs [the cursed ones] are just too fresh), but it wasn't at all cold in the cabin. In fact, after the fire from the night before went out yesterday, I kept waiting for the temperature to drop, and even brought in more wood, but it never did. Even at nine or ten o'clock at night, the temperature in here stayed the same, while it got colder and colder outside. I can't explain that, since the stove had gone cool again. Maybe it was a Chanukah miracle.
Now I sit here, typing, and the sun is just rising over the top of the mountain. All is quiet outside--with no construction equipment, big trucks roaring in the distance, or little four-wheelers making their wasp-like buzzing. Last night, I heard a car alarm go off (albeit briefly), and wondered just what use setting your alarm would be out here.*
Of course, I imagined Bigfoots or bears or monsters disturbing somebody's truck so the owners would come out and investigate. The delicious owners. And I thought about the monster in Shyamalan's THE VILLAGE. It wasn't a great film--the end of his streak of excellent films, I suppose--but the monster in that was truly terrifying, and an excellent design. As I sat on the back deck, reading my book, the family of deer that always congregate next door were sitting in the weeds, basking in the setting sun . . . and I imagined looking over at them, and finding a family of those VILLAGE monsters.
It wasn't a scary thought--after all, it was still daylight--but I thought that was a pretty great visual for a movie or a story. You know there are people or dogs or animals about, and when you look again, they have been replaced by something else.
I spoke too soon about the temperature in here. Somehow, it dropped eight degrees in here since the sun came up, which shouldn't really be possible. My hands were getting so cold I couldn't type properly. I went over to the stove and cleaned off all the ash from atop and around it, then burned all the paper towels, just sticking my hands over them until they were too hot to stand it. Now I can type again, but I'm sure the fire is going to go out again in a minute.
I ran out of stuff to edit, if you can believe it, so I grabbed my story for the Christmas podcast and wasted twenty minutes getting it down to the allotted ten minute runtime. Big Anklevich, who loves to criticize me when I do this, would have told me just to read the story over, much faster this time, and yes, that would have been a lot easier than taking out breaths and deciding which lines were expendable or not. Somehow, I got an eighteen minute story down to ten, and now that I saved it, I'll probably forget to submit it for the show. You know me.
I grabbed an episode I just recorded last week and edited it through to the end, so it looks like I've got three more episodes ready to go. That's nice. You know, I keep thinking about all my daily writing, and that when I finally miss a day, it'll be a relief because I'll focus on publishing, putting out "Dead & Breakfast" stories and publishing "My Friend of Misery" and "A Sidekick's Errand," and "Underdecorated" and "Podcatcher" and "Hatchling" and "That's the Spirit!"
But just now, I couldn't help but think of the next Will Choner story, and how I wanted to start it, with him getting a phone call while he's at his fat buddy's house, and she's only ever called him once before (and that was to find her cousin's engagement ring), but she's at a party and a guy started getting hot and heavy with her and she had a panic attack and went in the bathroom, and called Will to come and get her. This will reintroduce Beth Vance back into the story, and lead in to her convincing him to help her help people that need to find things they've lost--she does it as a form of therapy, and he does it because he'd do anything she says.
I am very tempted to just sit and start writing that right now, despite being super close to finishing the "Lara and the Witch" story, because the muse is kind of like the bowels: when you gotta go . . .
Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups In October: 3076
I went out on the back deck and felt the sun on my face, and it was nice--even though it's cool outside and the wind can be positively chilling--and thought, "This might be it. The last time I get to do this this year."
I feel sorry for myself quite a bit, as you know. Or maybe you don't know. Maybe I don't mention it every single day because, hey, my family has a cabin that's only an hour away that I can use for free, and nobody ever uses it. I brought the giant Walmart t-Rex over here a month ago, thinking it would be fun to paint it green instead of orange, and I could've just set up all my paints on the table and left it as a work-in-progress, and nobody would've touched it, complained about it, or even seen it but me. Here's a photo of how it looks so far (I think one more trip down and it'll be done):
Push-ups Today: 71
Push-ups In October: 1138 (hey, the same as that awful George Lucas movie!)
I fell asleep for just a couple of minutes (might have been ten), and worried that I got a sunburn, and that too is kind of remarkable. It's nearly time to pack everything up and try to make sure this place is tidy for . . . well, the nobody who will come to visit it between now and the next time I'm here (I might even be back on Wednesday, if I can push myself to sit down and record a bunch of new chapters and give myself plenty to edit), and that always feels sad, like the last days of summer vacation as a boy.
I am lucky to have this place, and if I had friends, I'd be happy to bring them here or let them take it for a weekend or two (I always try to get my cousin to come out, even if it's just one night, where we could stay up watching "Seinfeld" DVDs or play boardgames or something, but he hates it literally as much as I love it up here, and neither of us have ever been able to convince the other he's right).
I watched the BBC remake of THE 39 STEPS as my movie last night, and it was pretty good. It's set right before World War I, set in the UK, and had a female spy set up for the British Secret Service, which seems wildly anachronistic considering they didn't even have the vote yet, but I know virtually nothing about WWI, so there may have been loads of them.**
I ended up writing the first few paragraphs of that Will Choner story (I'm tempted to call them "Lost & Found" stories, but Orson Scott Card's book ruined that for me, and I just now discovered that "The Case of the Missing Turtle" was actually titled "The Case of the Runaway Turtle." Whoops), and I could go on, just start writing it and seeing where it goes (I excel at writing boys-in-love-with-girls-out-of-their-league stories, for some mysterious reason), but I think I'll get everything cleaned up and go, before it gets too late in the day. I haven't stayed here three days in a row this year, and I don't know what to expect when I get home (if there's no work for me to do, that's a relief, but if there's no work, there's no money coming in either).
Words Today: 1130
Words In October: 15,077
*Of course they did it out of habit, just like I always lock my car out of habit, whether I'm in a city, at the post office, or out here in the middle of nowhere. My mom's car (she has a Toyota Camry) locks on its own, which has infuriated me before when I've gone out to help her unload groceries or retreive a book from the back seat. A car that locks all by itself--at the most inopportune moment--is great Horror movie fodder as well.
**At one point, the news arrives that Germany has invaded Belgium, and that England will declare war, and I wondered, Oh, is that how it happened?
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