Hello, everyone! I am here on vacation and I am just trying to stay in the developing groove of posting at least once a day during this week and the next. So, I am relaxing, letting nothing dictate to me what needs to be done immediately, or even ‘when you get a moment’. Right now, there is nothing more pressing for me than getting some yogurt, doing a little laundry and some dishes. Other than that – my motto will be: Cum promptum hoc faciam. SO, there might not be any posts other than the occasional ‘still here and enjoying myself’ send-ups. I will be writing, but it will take on the slow, leisurely pace of someone who has no Nanowrimo deadline looming, or an artist needing to know how large this book is going to be before she can finish the back cover. I have no extra pressure than from what I am going to exert on myself for Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I won’t be able to do the whole stuffed crust thing, it’s just that the budget for the pizza was considerably tighter than I had forecast of first and the cheese was the easiest thing to get rid of and make it. I am still going to have a homemade stuffed crust pizza one day, but it won’t be for Thanksgiving, nor will it be for Christmas (we have hamburgers on Christmas). More than likely it will be for the first meal of the year. What better way to ring in the New Year than around a mouthful of homemade stuffed crust pizza? I can feel a new tradition being started.

I have been outlining I/O Error and I still have some hesitations about it. I’m taking two tropes that normally don’t go together at all: Robot Gone Mad and Cursed Ship. The switch I am doing with the first one is that we’re seeing things from the Robot’s point of view. More often than not with this particular trope, we’re seeing events unfold from a human’s point of view: we’re told that Robbie is going crazy and he demonstrates it by acting wacky and/or lethal. Well, I’m going with the idea that we’re watching all the events from the robot’s POV. Robbie (or in the case of the main character, Gail) isn’t going crazy – it’s responding to what it thinks are correct procedures and in line with the commands encoded within it. As far as the Cursed Ship trope – this one I am toeing the line with. I did my research on naval tradition as far as these sorts of things go and apparently, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with this. I would say more, but I don’t want to spoil anything. I am re-doing the outline and the rough draft so that I can get it right, since this is going to be my first horror novel. I just hope that my doubts about it are just a matter of jitters and not warning that I am venturing into territory best left to the professionals.

Well, my jeans are dry, so I’d better get them folded and put an end to all this unnatural usefulness on my vacation. Thank for reading, and as always – feel free to drop a comment or two in the box before.

Oh – on a bit of a housekeeping note: I am now without a plumber (business issues) and if anyone has anyone they can recommend in the Louisville area to come by every now and then to check on the pipes that would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy