Weekly Blog 3/28

3/22

I took my nephew to his volleyball game tonight, but my sister called to say that she'd pick him up, so I didn't have to stay to watch it.  I had planned on finishing my library book ("The Hidden Palace" by Helene Wecker) from the uncomfortable bleachers, but instead, I went to the library, finished the book in comfort (hey, it's only seven days overdue), and blogged and surfed Wikipedia.

I met a squat, plain-faced woman with bad teeth this morning, who nonetheless struck me as pleasant and inherently good.  I tried to imagine a scenario in which she gets a curse placed on her wherein she would become beautiful and charming . . . one day a month. 

It's similar, I'll admit, to ideas I've had in the past, but I was pretty energized by the idea throughout the day, even going as far as to come up with a scenario in which the woman is a nurse who is kind to Lara Demming when she is injured, and Old Widow Holcomb decides to reward her (much in the same way she "rewarded" Tali Murray [was that her name?] is the "Remember The Future" story I wrote back in 2016).

What would it be like to become beautiful and popular, but only on the thirtieth of each month?  How would your life change?  How would you rearrange your schedule in preparation for it?  And how much would February suck (more than it already does, I mean)?  Thood for fought.

Now that I am sitting at a library cubicle and jotting down the idea, of course, it doesn't strike me as particularly good or unique, and that's too bad.  But I think I'll do what Big Anklevich always does, and put the idea in a mental drawer.*  If it keeps jumping out at me in the future, coming back into my head and recapturing my imagination, then I'll know I have something.  We'll see.

3/23

Really, this should be a continuation of yesterday's post, but ah well.  Yesterday, I also got an idea for a story for a comic book issue or a short vignette where Clark Kent is eight years old, and his parents are trying to teach him how to pass as human.  Jonathan and Martha decide that Tuesday will be Clark's human day, when he must do everything as though he's one of us, even though it will mean his chores will take hours and he has to be careful not to get burned or injured by things that couldn't possibly burn or injure him.  

Clark tries, but there's a lot to keep track of.  I really love the idea of Jonathan putting something heavy in a bag and when Clark carries it out to the pickup truck with one hand, he reveals that even a grown man would struggle with that, and his secret would be revealed if somebody else saw it.  The boy is frustrated, but he learns that by creating this Clark Kent persona, he gains empathy for how vulnerable and weak the human beings around him are.  It's not fair, but it helps mold him into the man that he'll become.

In audio news, I was asked to perform a short story for a podcast, and it was one by Edith Nesbit, who wrote "John Charrington's Wedding," the last Podcast That Dares episode I finished.  I read through the story (before recording), and the characters are obviously European rather than American (at one point, my character speculates, "Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw," whatever that means), and I wasn't sure what to do.  So, I started recording it with an English accent, but ten seconds later, I decided that if they had wanted an English accent, they would've sent the story to a Brit, not me.  

So I started again, voicing the narrator as an old man, and after about two minutes, I changed my mind again.

This time, I decided on a more gravely version of my own voice for the narration, but did a much younger voice for the dialogue.  Unfortunately, doing that particular character so effed up my voice that I started coughing so hard I nearly threw up.  That had never happened before (I've got the audio, if you think I should include it).  I stopped and got a drink, meaning to take a short break and then finish, and never came back to the story.  Whoops.

3/24

I took my nephew to his volleyball game tonight, knowing it would mean I wouldn't make it to the library.  But I didn't mind.  His team was just awful, and even though he wasn't the worst player on the team, he was pretty bad.  In the past, he's always seemed to know what he was doing in sports, but none of these kids seemed to know how to set up a ball so someone else could spike it.  At least they seemed to be having a bit of fun playing the game.  And my nephew is athletic--maybe he'll get way better in the coming weeks.

My buddy Jeff, who watches more television than anyone in the northern hemisphere, got a thirty-three disc boxed set of the "Columbo" TV series.  He was telling me about it, do I did a search, and discovered the series is streamable on Peacock.  I sat down to watch the first episode (directed by an incredibly young Steven Spielberg), and was vexed to discover that, just like the Eighties revival series that I watched on ABC, "Columbo" spends the first few minutes of each episode showing how the murder is committed (and by whom), thereby stealing every moment of mystery from the rest of the show.  I was saddened by this, but audiences must've been fine with it, because "Columbo" aired into the Nineties.

3/25

I emailed myself the "Balms & Sears" file (last used in February of 2021) so I could open it and look it over.  It's a story I've wanted to finish for five or more years now.  It's one of my resolutions for 2022 (and last year too).  I had planned to start at the beginning, reading through it and adding details, so that when I get to the end (of the previous writing), I'll be in the right mindset to finish it up.  But it looks like it's in terrible shape, with a lot of blanks for character names and clustery paragraphs with sketched-out sections.

So I took a scene I had roughed and turned it into a real scene, from beginning to end.  It was something I hadn't remembered writing, but I was easily able to get into the head of Alec ___ (I forget his last name), since I've thought about him for so long--a boy even more sensitive than I was.  It's funny how, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, this story has stuck in my craw all these years, whereas the thousand other ideas I've had had fallen by the wayside.

I had done a barely-adequate amount of writing, but I made myself run the full 1.6 miles before I would reward myself by finishing the "Columbo" episode I'd started the night before.

Unfortunately, while I was making myself some soup to watch with, my nephew and his mouthy friend came in, pulled out the hide-a-bed there, and turned on their show: they were having a sleepover.  If I had known that, I would have watched "Columbo" first, and then went on my run when the kids came in.  Ah well.

3/26

I'm back at the library, though I only have a few minutes before it closes (I have never asked why they would close three hours early on the one day of the week students don't have school or church, but I'm sure--in fact, I'll put it in all caps, I'M SURE--that the answer would infuriate me).

I opened the "Balms & Sears" file and started from the beginning.  By the time I reached the third page, I discovered that on Page 1, I Alec's grandfather's name was Nathaniel Besser, but on Page 3, it was  Arthur Brownwood.**   I didn't want to waste a lot of time deciding which it should be (I like Nathaniel better than Arthur, and Brownwood better than Besser), but figured I'd do a count, and see which one is used more.

And that was a waste of time, because even though Arthur was used once and Nathaniel was used twice, I just kept Arthur Brownwood anyway.

Actually, a great deal of the things I do are a waste of time.  And not just writing.

I looked through a scene, just like yesterday, and before I was done, they made the "Get the hell out, we got places to be" announcement.  I typed this bit, and now I'm on my way.

I did get to "Columbo" today, but each episode is so long, I'll never catch up with Jeff.

3/27

Oscar night is always special for me (although last year's show was pretty miserable, I'll admit), and I looked forward to it all day long.  Unfortunately, I had a lot of work to get done, so I DVRed it and put it off for as late as I could so I could get my end-of-the-month work in (still didn't manage 100%, but ah well).

Then, it turned out the DVR only recorded a little over half of the show, which I realized as soon as I turned it on (my mind said, "Well, maybe it's running late and the thing is still recording . . . but I remembered living in Los Angeles and the Oscars started at some crazy hour like four pm there so the East Coast could show it in Prime Time).  But ah well.

I won't belabor the point much except to say four things:

1.  The highpoint of the night was when Troy Kostur won Best Supporting Actor.  It was everything the Academy Awards mean to me, and I felt proud to be a human being for that entire segment, from the Japanese presenter worried about mispronouncing the names of the nominees to the sign language translator next to him.

2.  I would've predicted the lowpoint was when they did the big production number for "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and completely ruined the song.  Who would've guessed that changing the lyrics (to be about Oscar) and bringing in Megan Thee Stallion to rap would harm that song more than my nephew listening to it hundreds of times on repeat?  It was the worst of what people who make fun of the Oscars say about the awards epitomized.  But I would've been wrong about it being the lowpoint.

3.  The evening went so late into the night that I totally ran out of time to do my run, even though I changed into my sweats and planned to go out and jog around the block when my recording ran out.  So that means that, for the first time this month, I missed both writing and exercising in a single day.  Sorry.

4.  The Will Smith/Chris Rock thing sharted over all the goodwill (no pun intended) and good feelings of the entire night.  I, like many folks, squinted and tried to figure out if it was a gag that was happening, and rewound it to try to read lips (there were uncensored versions out there that I watched, as people kept sending them to me***, and those were even uglier), and then let it sink in that it was completely serious.  And everybody's got an opinion about it, sure, but seeing Rock try to continue on with the presentation and stumble over his words was one of those moments where my heart just went out to the television screen.

The recording ended, and I went online to find that the whole show had pretty much been uploaded to YouTube (it's probably down now, though I dunno how these things work), and I was able to watch the rest of the show.  I thought of Gino when Jane Campion won, because she is his aunt, but it's weird, all of the rest of the show was tainted due to the earlier outburst (although I commend Amy Schumer's jokes immediately after to try to lighten the mood).

Because I spent so darn long on the Oscars, I failed to either write or exercise today.  It was the first day this month, darn it.

Oh, Campion's not really Gino's aunt.  It's a joke about how small New Zealand is, and how . . . uh oh, Gino's gotten up from his seat and is walking toward me.

3/28

I got an email yesterday that made me pretty upset, and it makes me wonder why I am so easily rattled.  Just this week, I was recording a chapter of Abigail Hilton's new book, and my mom called, and she made this little offhand remark criticizing me, and I'll admit, it threw off my whole game.  I was seriously upset, and had to take a break from the recording to try and get back to where I had been (in my head) before.  I said into the microphone, "It amazes me that in a few short words she can make me this furious.  I should have grown out of this by now."

I transferred that file over and started editing it today, and sure enough, when I got to that part, I now feel a bit embarrassed (you couldn't hear what she said, but you could hear me tightly saying, "Yeah, thanks, see ya," before hanging up).  It made me wonder if everybody else has a relationship in their family that does that to them...

...and reminded me of my father and how incensed I could become with that man, and how, even though he's been gone since 2016, all I have to do is think about his reaction when I was recounting the Jimmy Smits enchilada sketch and I become fighting mad once again (works every time, Bosskdammit).  And I promise you that, were the man not dead, he would have no memory of that conflict from a decade or more ago.  It's only me that gets upset about it, and with no signs of slowing down.

There was a moment at the end of last year when I saw that same instant rage rise up in my brother, and it shocked me, because it seemed so unfounded.  But later, once he was gone and I could re-examine it passionlessly, I recognized a slightly beefier version of my own bad temper in that.  And it's strange that it's only certain people who can bring it out of me.  Big Anklevich, for example, has never made me nearly as mad in all the years of us knowing each other, as my mom can by making a trivial comparison between me and a homeless person.

Huh.

Okay, so I'm back at the library, and pardon my Spanglish, but I'm going to write the miercoles out of the book next few minutes.

I did work on "Balms & Sears" for a half hour or so.  There are several scenes, maybe a dozen, maybe more, in two different documents, written over a period of years, and no particular order to put them in.  It would take Christopher Tolkien going through my stuff to organize it into a coherent narrative. 

Basically, Alec moves into a new town in Colorado with his grandfather, starts going to school, makes friends with an unpopular fat kid, makes friends with a popular athlete, and makes friends with a girl with a secret just like his.  In between all these scenes, Alec interacts with his grandfather, who is not really his grandfather.  The stuff between the old man and the boy are my favorite bits, and it's obvious, looking over it now, that I'm writing Gramps as though he was my own grandfather, who, instead of dying in 1994, was still alive today, just well over a hundred years old.

I've been passionate about this story for years, so long that I don't remember the character names or which scenes I've written and which ones I haven't (there are a couple of pages in my notebook from the book, probably written in 2018 or so, including a bit where Gramps refers to Kellogg's Frosted Flakes as the cereal made in a mental institution.  I am absolutely sure that is based on something, a bit of trivia I have since forgotten, but I haven't bothered to look it up).  At this rate, I'll have the book finished sometime around August or September . . . and I can live with that.

Going back to the email at the beginning and the conversation with my mother: I wish I were a bit more unflappable than I am.  When I was a kid, my buddy Dennis's dad was one of those guys who (seemingly) never got upset about anything, and could weather a ton of verbal abuse from Dennis's mom, and it seemed to just roll off him like the duck's back saying.  I am not sure if that is an inborn characteristic or something that you learn, all I know is that, growing up, Dennis was easy-going and restrained, and his brother was hot-headed and quick to anger.  And it sometimes bothered me that I could see that I wasn't like Dennis at all, that I was prone to tantrums way more than he was, and even though I recognized that, it didn't mean I could do something about it.  I suppose I'll be working on that for the rest of my life.

*And did Stephen King suggest the same thing?  I honestly can't remember, so I'll credit B.D. Anklevich alone.

**You can see why I would've confused the two, since they're so darn close to one another, right?

***Okay, it was only two people, but I saw it so many times (and replayed and reframed and memes made of it) that it felt like something I was being bombarded by from all directions.

Rish Outcast 218: Writers Conference Report 2022

Rish does his annual re-cap of the writers conference he attended.  But this time, he drags Marshal Latham along.

If you care to download the show, Right-Click HERE.

If you care to help Rish on Patreon, Left-Click HERE.

If you care, the logo was by Gino "Wrongers Conference" Moretto.

2022 Goals - March Update

I know I'm falling behind, but let's look at my goals for the year and how I'm doing.

1.  Go on one hike a month.
Well, I went on one in January.

2.  Insert "Joanie Loves Chachi" reference into at least two stories.
I did put on in my Outpost novel.  I had a character shout "Joanie Loves Chachi!" in the way New Yorkers say, "Jesus H. Christ!"  Well, it's funny to me.

3.  Start up "Twilight Groan" again with Cathexis, at least four episodes.
Hasn't happened yet.  I bring it up every month or so.

4.  Plot out and start writing the third "Calling" story (and finish it?).
Nothing.

5.  Finish recording and publish "Hatchling."  
I did finish the recording and I did publish the text version.  Still working on the audio (about one chapter a week, sadly).

6.  Put out Christmas collection I was supposed to put out in 2020.
Yes Virginia, that's never going to happen.

7.   Put out Audio collection I was supposed to put out in 2019.
I very nearly published the text version of that yesterday.  I even logged into Amazon to do it.  Then I didn't.  Sorry.

8.  Buy no more Transformers.
So far, so good.  Although I did tell Big I would buy a Walmart Starscream if I found one.  Not sure if that counts (if I even can--you know how it is, when you're not looking for something you see it all the time, but when you're looking for it...).

9.  Finish "Balms & Sears" . . . in first quarter of 2022.
First quarter is done soon, right?  Dammit.

10.  Put out 10-12 Podcasts That Dare Not Speak Their Name.
Three so far.

11.  Get Marvel Universe figures out of storage and get rid of them.
Oh, this was priceless.  I went through the damn storage unit and they weren't there anymore.  Guess I found them already and forgot about it.

12.  Put out "Dead & Breakfast" collection 1.
Probably won't happen.  We'll see.

13.  Run on treadmill once a week
Oh, shit.  Well, in January, I definitely did.  
By February, I no longer bothered.  I have been running outside in March, though.  I know it's not the same thing, but I'd rather run outside than inside on the treadmill.

14.  Put out "Caller I.D." on the Outcast . . . birthday week?
July's a way off.  Remains to be seen.

15.  Finish Outpost Outbreak novel.
That ain't gonna happen.

16.  Read another really great book.
Just one?

Weekly Update 3/21

 3/15
I did sit-ups for, like, four minutes.  It shouldn't count as exercise, but I'm counting it.
I also got my recorder out to podcast for the first time in a couple of weeks, and discovered that I'd left the microphone on, like I always do.  But this time, the battery had actually run out.  I had to buy a new one, and they don't seem to sell them individually anymore, but in overpriced three packs.  That's how they get you.

3/16
I did some writing tonight!  And heck, I'm gonna go for a run.

Wow, I did some sit-ups and my run.  This week may be better than last.

When I was a kid, HBO would occasionally have a free preview weekend, where the channel was available to everybody, and they'd pack it with the most exciting movies and specials, in the hopes of gaining new subscribers (who'd think the channel was usually this chock full of treasures).  Well, it turned out that Apple+ has done the same thing this week, and you can watch either all or a sampling of their programming for free, in the hopes that you'll sign on permanently.

Because of this, I was given the chance to see Ron Moore's "For All Mankind," an alternate history Space Race series I'd heard about for years.  I put on the first episode . . . and was utterly confused.  It took place in the middle of the action, with a ton of in-process storylines going, but without ever stopping to explain what is going on, who the characters are, and what their relationships to each other are.

I was utterly baffled, and stopped the show to make sure I was on the first episode.  It claimed that I was ("Red Moon"), so I continued, but I just got more upset as it went along.  How were we supposed to follow this action if we didn't know who people were?  How was I supposed to care about people seeing their loved ones again if I didn't know who knew each other and how?  How could I follow the action if I didn't know what any of it meant?

At one point, I turned on the subtitles, because I couldn't keep anything straight in my head . . . and the subtitles didn't match what was going on onscreen.*  So I turned them off again and continued the show, focusing as hard as I could to figure out who was married to whom, who was in charge (apparently, Ted Kennedy was president), how they got to be there, and what the situation in the world was.  Hell, I didn't really even know what year it was supposed to take place in . . . because the show didn't tell me.

I became very angry.  I consider myself a savvy filmgoer, and have more than a rudimentary understanding of storytelling, but I had never seen this before.  I was confused, and frustrated, and if I was confused and frustrated, how in the green hell is the regular, more casual viewer supposed to enjoy what he or she was seeing?

I stopped it again, just to make sure this was the first episode.  Yes, this was Season 1, Episode 1, "Red Moon," but goodness, I was tempted to turn it off, especially when a new group of characters was introduced about forty minutes in, that we've never seen before, but are not told who we're looking at.

Ron Moore was the greatest writer of "Star Trek," and because of that, I followed him through the various shows he did afterward (like "Carnivale," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Roswell**"), but this was asking too much of its audience, like if you watched MEMENTO but Nolan never clued you in that it's happening in reverse.  It broke my heart a little because it made me feel stupid, and I have worried over the past six months that I have gotten dumber (around eighteen IQ points).

I started to watch the second episode, which takes place in 1969 (years earlier than the previous one), and didn't include a "Previously on..." to clue me in.  And that episode actually took pains to tell you who people are and what is going on in the world.  Before turning it off, I remembered how FOX didn't like the pilot episode of "Firefly," wherein everybody meets and goes off in space together, and commissioned a second episode where the characters have a typical adventure (which they aired first) . . . but even that introduced the characters and worked as a stand-alone episode (which this shit did not).  It breaks my heart a little to type all this.

3/17
So, following up on yesterday's post: I went back to the TV to continue the second episode of "For All Mankind," and was again baffled that the second one worked so much better as a pilot than the first one did, and I thought, "You know, I think I'm going to go online (instead of continuing to watch) to see if anybody else felt as upset about it as I did.

So I went online, and to my horror, the description for the first episode, "Red Moon," did not match ANYTHING that I had seen the night before.  The description was of an episode that did what a first episode of a television series is supposed to do: set the stage and the characters so that the audience can understand and root for its protagonists.

I kept reading.  To my further horror, the episode I watched last night appeared to be Episode 10, the season finale of the first year of the show.  Again, I hung my head, convinced that I was an idiot.

I went back to the television to double-check: According to it, I had already viewed the first episode, and twelve minutes of the second.  The tenth episode was unwatched.

I no longer blame myself or Ron Moore.  And not really even you, to be honest.***

Now I'm at the library again, where I chose to write this rather than write fiction.  But ah well, I can do both.

3/18

I did check again last night to see if, maybe, the first episode had been fixed, but no, it was still the tenth.  And I tried watching the tenth, just in case they were switched (it's the sort of mistake I would make), but it was also the tenth episode.  So I just went ahead and finished watching the second episode, then went on to the third.  And I really, really like it.  The Soviets beat America to the moon, and so the Space Race continues, and at the end of the second episodes, Russia puts a female cosmonaut on the moon, and suddenly, America needs to put their own women (including blacks, lesbians, and be-otches) into space as well.

There's really no way I'll be able to watch all of the episodes in the hours I have left (of the free preview), but I almost never get to the end of any show anymore, whether I want to or not.

Oh, and I went for a run again tonight, not that that's what I came here to talk about.

3/19

I watched another two episodes last night.  I like it so much, I think, if the first episode had shown up first (like it was supposed to), I'd be on episode nine or ten by now, instead of episode five.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: a lot of people decide they want to be writers when they see something really bad (and realize they could do better) or see something great and are inspired to imitate it.

For the last hour, I've sat here at the library, thinking about writing but not necessarily writing, and spending (wasting?) a ton of time reading about the fates of the characters on "For All Mankind" in our universe.  I did, however, submit my short story ("Fountain of Knowledge") to the contest, after having been informed by Marshal Latham, that he beat me to it (and good for him).
It will not win, but I didn't really write it for that.

3/20
I couple of days ago, I got one of those emails that said, "There was a data breech at our company, and it is recommended that you change your password."  I ignored it, which is my solution to everything.

And then, today, I got an email that made me pause and reconsider.  The subject line was my password.  I clicked on the email.  It was a blackmail message that said it had hacked my computer some time ago and it saw the naughty websites I'd been going to.  Unbeknownst to me, it had activated my webcam and had some incriminating video of me that it would release publicly . . . unless I paid them $4800, after which, it would destroy the evidence.

Below that, was another email with the exact same subject line and message, except a slightly different link to where I could send my forty-eight hundred dollars.
You may think I took this seriously, since the email specifically mentioned my birthmark, underdeveloped phallus, and sexual fetish featuring the music videos of Ke$ha . . . except I don't have a webcam.  So there.

Anyway, it gave me enough pause that, after I deleted the emails, I went through and changed my password on a number of websites, resetting them and trying to replace the corrupted one with something I could remember.

And dang if that wasn't a real challenge.  First off, some sites wanted a capital letter or a number in there, or worse, both, and how the devil could I keep them all straight?  After all, I've had the same password since Hector was a pup, and we tossed Hector into the deadfall past the Pet Sematary just last August.  I imagine it will vex me for the next few weeks.

3/21

I had planned to go to the library and write (probably finishing this blog there), but I called Big and he told me they were expecting a tornado (or several) in Houston and he was stuck at the station until one o'clock, waiting around for the worst to happen.  We ended up talking for quite a while, and when I realized this, it was too late to hit the library.

So, I did my usual 1.6 mile run and no writing at all.

Today was the last day of the free Apple TV+ sample, and I started watching "The Morning Show," a series about the morning news with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.  Because I worked in the news for a brief space of time, I've enjoyed watching shows about it, and I think Big has expressed the opposite feeling (of course, I was there less than a year, and he's been there more than twenty). 

Aniston and Witherspoon have very similar on-film personas, and I've always suspected they were playing themselves in most of their projects, and (whether it's a cruel double-standard in Hollywood or not) that has made me like them less than some of their contemporaries.  Regardless, I didn't make it far into the show (I had intended to just watch the first episode, since I knew I didn't have time for more) before the free trial expired, and they hoped I would subscribe so I could watch more, but I wasn't hooked.

Later at night, I got sick to my stomach, and even though I'm an old, old man now, I had that silly internal debate I used to always have of "Should I make myself throw up so I can feel better, or should I just tough it out?"  I seriously do not get how I could have not learned this lesson yet.  The last time this happened to me (jeez, it was so recently, I'll bet it wasn't even February, but March 2022), I thought, "Nope, I'm gonna throw up now," and suffered for less than one minute before hitting the bathroom.

And yet, tonight, I groaned and wandered around, trying to continue watching television, hoping the nausea would go away.  And when I finally went to the sink and had at it . . . I felt instantly better (like you do, what, 75-90% of the time).  Will I never learn?

*This should've been my first clue that something was terribly wrong.

**Apparently, he came onboard in the second season, a while after I had stopped watching the show.  Huh.

***It reminds me of the time Jeff and I watched EASTERN PROMISES on DVD, and struggled to make sense of all the Russian being spoken throughout the film.  Finally, Jeff clicked on one of the options, and English subtitles showed up whenever a character spoke Russian from that point on.  I felt like a dumb guy then too, except, to be honest, I could follow the action a lot better in that movie than I could on the tv show last night.

Podcast That Dares 32: The Phoenix on the Sword

In this episode, I present Robert E. Howard's "The Phoenix on the Sword," the first published Conan story from 1932.  While the recording isn't QUITE that old, it's still years overdue.

Download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "Phoenix on the F-Word" Moretto.

Weekly Update 3/14

3/8
I did some sit-ups tonight, but you know something?  Sit-ups really suck.

I also went to the library, but once I got there, I didn't know what to work on.  I read over my original 2020 outline for my Outpost novel, and was reminded how little of it I had covered in fifty thousand words.  Deciding to continue where I left off, I did a search for "outpost" and was surprised to find a story I'd written about Ebenezer Scrooge that I had totally forgotten about.  I opened the document and read through it, like it belonged to another writer, maybe a friend of mine who had mentioned it once.  I expected it to be abandoned halfway through, like everything else I've ever written, but it was a complete story, all the way to "the end."  Huh.
The date I finished the story?  December 30th, 2021.
AND I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN IT.

I can't wait for you to hear it, so you can forget all about it too.*

3/9
My nephew (14) had volleyball practice to go to tonight, so I didn't hit the library.  But that's okay, I'm not really working on anything right now.  I did go on another run, and one of these days, I need to do push-ups.

3/10
I'm at the library again, but darn it, I haven't written anything.  I'd say "I don't know what's wrong with me," but after so many years, between you and me . . . I know.

I ended up grabbing that Christmas story I wrote (and forgot about) last December, and looked it over.  I made a couple of additions, and decided to title the story "The Baleful," thinking I was pretty clever.  I found a random point and inserted a reference to "Scrooge the Baleful" in the text . . . then I discovered that I had already done so a couple of paragraphs later in the original writing.  I'm not sure if that makes me clever or not.

3/11
I both wrote and went on a run tonight.  Plus, I did about twenty sit-ups.

3/12

Looks like I'm not going to make it to the library again today.  A cousin of mine asked if I'd like to do karaoke with her and her boyfriend (she also invited my niece and her boyfriend), so that may be a fun activity tonight . . . if it happens.  There's a toy show here in town (the first one that's been held nearby), and I'm taking my two younger nephews to it.  I'll let you know if there was anything of interest there.

Hmm.  There wasn't.  Only three people showed up to sell their wares, and about five or six others showed up to buy, so I'd say it qualifies as a bust.  There was free pizza and soda, but it was that thin, floppy, super greasy kind that I'm not a fan of.  But free is free.

I had a short window in which I could have written and could have exercised, but I must admit that I didn't.  I did some audio editing, but that doesn't count as either.

So, once night fell, we went to the karaoke bar (well, technically, I went there twice) and it didn't really work.  The (very) young girl behind the counter told me to get online and make a reservation, and when I looked, they were booked up until eleven, but when I went in with my nephews to wait for my niece and cousin, there was only one guy in there, singing Seventies folk songs (and Tom Petty's "Breakdown"), so I didn't think there would be a problem.

By the time my group go there, the folk singer had gone home (his last song was Have You Ever Seen The Rain?), and the girl behind the counter asked if we had made a reservation.  We had not, but since the place was literally empty**, I figured we were okay.  But she told us we were not, and that our only option was to make a reservation for eleven and come back then.  I told her I had two children with me, and eleven was too late.  She told me that there were reservations already made (there are, apparently, regulars who came in every week) and she couldn't let us have the room if people who had played by the rules were on their way.  

I told her that we were there now, no one was using the microphone, and couldn't we just do it until the regulars got there?  And then, oddly, she changed her tune, and told me they had a rule that only groups of four or less could use the room.

I told her that the fourteen year old and my aunt weren't going to sing, so we were only five, and one of those five was eleven years old.  When she didn't budge, Cathexis's boyfriend said he wasn't going to sing, so that brought our group down to four.  But the girl said our group was still too big, and so we left.  There had been something else going on there, and I didn't know what it was.  My suspicion was that she had invited some of her friends over, saying, "Hey, nobody's using the main stage right now, if you want to jet over here and sing a few songs before the weekend crowds get here," and I was ruining her fun.  But I'll never know.

So, I told the group to come to my house and we'd just use the karaoke machine my uncle got us a couple of years ago.  And that worked out.  My sister joined us (and even sang a couple of songs), and my brother-in-law was off camping, so only the four year old might have complained . . . and he was asleep.

My cousin's boyfriend was tall and blonde, and could easily have played Captain America if Chris Evans didn't want to do it (or he could also play the guy who turns out to be the villain in WATCHMEN).  He seemed like a friendly, patient fellow, but I wondered what it would be like, to be dragged to a karaoke party by your girlfriend, meeting the family . . . and being forced to sing for others' amusement.  Maybe it would be a dealbreaker for some.  For me, of course, I'd think it was pretty cool, but of course, karaoke is within my very limited wheelhouse.

Cathexis and I sang "Dammit Janet" together, which I don't think we ever had before, and it was very impressive, but my sister did snark that I had just proposed to my own niece.  My nephews were also willing to sing in the house when they were much more timid in a public setting, so that was nice (even if I had to endure them belting out "Dance Monkey" for the fifth time).

We couldn't get it to play two mics at the same time for some reason, but I thought it was still pretty fun.  And it hadn't cost a damn thing.

3/13

Well, I did my usual run today, and it was fine (I used to think I ought to expand the run to two miles, but I only ever did that once, and never repeated it--and now I'm out of practice and 1.6 miles seems quite enough, thank you very much).  

3/14
I went to the library and wrote so little it absolutely should not count.  Mostly I made a list for an upcoming podcast episode (or possibly video) , and jotted down an idea or two.  I apologize for being so inconsistent this week, and I promise . . . next week will be even worse.

*Heck, maybe I should cut out the middleman and not even release it.  

**I may have misused the term "literally" here, since obviously, we were there, as was the girl behind the counter, just

I Perform "My Hilt Itches" on Cast of Wonders

Underachiever much?  I was recently given the Comic Fantasy story "My Hilt Itches" by Sydney Rivers to narrate over at the Cast o' Wonders podcast.  I voice a sword, so it must be Monday.

Well, get this: the author of the story is sixteen years old.  When I was sixteen years old, I wasn't a published author, unless you count drawing obscene parodies of Gumby and Pokey that got confiscated by my teacher and spread among the teaching staff.

Anyway, it's about an enchanted sword and his less-than-valiant owner.  Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 217: Stuck Truck Episode

With a vehicle stuck in the snow, Rish decides to podcast . . . and not release it for six months.

Would you?

Download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon right HERE.

Logo by Gino "Amok Truck" Moretto.

Weekly Update 3/7

One of my goals for March was to either write or exercise every day this month.  As a sub-goal, I guess I'll keep track of my progress each day.

3/1
I went to the library and wrote fairly extensively (including that word I cannot spell, the B in FBI).  Also did a few sit-ups at my cousin's house.

3/2
I went to the library again and wrote nearly to the end of the story (it's now 4000 words long, dammit).  Toward the end, it occurred to me that I had an enormous plothole in front of me, and if I wanted to fix it, I'd have to rethink the whole darn thing.  It would mean changing an earlier scene, cutting a little bit from the middle, and eliminating the ending I came up with for it tonight.  
In other words, I think I'm just going to ignore the plothole and move on.  It's not like this is screenwriting, where you do draft after draft, flailing wildly in an attempt to please the producers, a potential buyer, or yourself.

3/3  

Unable (unwilling?) to go to the library again, I went for a run tonight.  It was the full run I used to do (1.6 miles), and I made it alright.  Guess I should start doing it regularly again.

3/4 
I sat down and (finally) recorded the Introduction and copyright bits for my next story collection, along with a flash fiction story to include in the next one, and recorded on Abigail Hilton's new book until I'd filled my memory card.  I then deleted a file and recorded again until I filled it once more (two paragraphs away from the end of the chapter), and then I said the f-word.

I hit the library again, knowing I'll be busy Batmanning tomorrow night.  I am close to finishing the first draft of my story for the writing contest (due in thirteen days).  It's gonna be five thousand words long, and that's way too long to cut it down for the thousand word contest limit.  But I'll deal with that when I get to "the end."

I was reminded today, looking over the document, that I had left a blank the other day when Olivia was trying to start her car, because I couldn't remember the word for the sound an engine makes trying to turn over.  So today, I looked it up, hoping there was a word for it I had simply forgotten.  It turns out that, no joke, the word for a car starting up is vroom.  That's not a word, boys and girls. 

There seems to be no word for what I was looking for, but if you DO consider vroom to be a word, then the word for an engine's attempt to start up is ruh ruh ruh.  And that's what I went with, Bossk help me.*

So, I don't believe I mentioned this the other day (it's still so weird not to be blogging daily), but I got discouraged when I discovered a massive plothole in the story and nearly stopped writing it, knowing I'd have to do a major rewrite.  But I didn't.

I did alright, got so close to finishing the story I actually typed "the end."  Oh, wait, I guess that is the definition of finishing it.

Final word count: 5761.  But I am feeling alright with it. 

3/5
Plans got canceled on me this afternoon, so I hit the library right before it closed.  It was raining on the way there, but when I went out to my car, there were two inches of snow on it.  I took my first attempt at writing a story for the contest, sitting at a reasonable 1303 words, and whittled it down to a thousand.  The library announced it was closing when I was at 1007 words, so I hastily rewrote two sentences, hoping they wouldn't log me out early (as they've done twice now), and saved the file and emailed it to myself when it reached exactly 1000.  

The story is frankly not very good, but hey, that can't be helped.

3/6
No writing again today.  As penance, I ran my 1.6 miles.  I had considered wearing a short-sleeved shirt on my run, but chickened out at the last minute (it was 30 degrees out today, surely colder at night).  I listened to a podcast while running, and it's the sort of thing that makes me want to podcast more, in case there's someone out there doing the same (running, not thinking about podcasting).

3/7
This was one of those days where I neither wanted to write nor exercise.  I went running last night (around 9:00 or 9:30), and it was cold, but survivable.  Tonight, it was midnight, and about ten degrees colder out, and I absolutely could not MAKE myself do it.  And there's a treadmill, right there, all I'd have to do is plug it in, turn it on, and go . . . and I wouldn't do it.

Instead, I decided to watch a show my niece told me she'd watched yesterday.  About a week ago, I saw a commercial for a horror/mystery series that struck me as "Lost" but with vampires.  It looked really good, but then the title came up, and it was, no joke, the Worst Title I Have Ever Seen In My Many Years Upon The Earth.**  I mean, it just floored me.  The TV series was called "From."

"From," boys and girls.  "From."

That should not be a thing, ladies and gentlemen.  People should've lost their jobs over that one, perhaps been put in jail for a year or so ("What are you in for?"  "Me, I punched a child in the face at San Diego Comic-Con.  You?"  "Oh, I executive produced a television series . . . we called it From."  "You sick son of a bitch!"), and I absolutely should NOT have watched the show, due to the title alone.

But I didn't want to exercise, so I watched "From" instead.

And it was the sort of garbage tailor made just for me.  There's a little town (presumably up in Canada, based on the Michael J. Fox way of saying "sorry") where the inhabitants can never leave, and once the sun goes down, they board themselves into their homes, because shape-shifting monsters lurk outside, and appear as loved ones to get folks to let them in the door or window.

I enjoyed it (though I was frustrated by the "Lost"-inspired everybody's-got-a-secret-that-will-be-parcelled-out-episode-by-episode aspect to the show), but I felt guilty throughout, knowing I wasn't exercising, and more importantly, being reminded of the snowstorm story I wanted to write almost twenty years ago (when there was this blizzard that struck when I was visiting Big Anklevich in his then-new house, and it looked like I'd be forced to spend the night), and never did.

I did a round of sit-ups, then bumped my head on the coffee table and used that as an excuse to stop and watched the show for another hour.  Then, I got down and did a few more sit-ups, but my heart just wasn't in it.

*Because I didn't want to waste another seven or eight minutes on it.

**And you gotta remember, I've lived through action movies called SOURCE CODE, PEPPERMINT, THE RHYTHM SECTION, THE 355, and BALLISTIC: ECKS VERSUS SEVER.  And let me throw in THE LAST MIMZY, HOW THE WEST WAS FUN, and MISTER MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM for good measure.