Pilot's Log

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of October 24, 2013

"If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark." That helpful advice appears in Norwegian Wood, a novel by Haruki Murakami. Now I'm passing it on to you, just in time for your cruise through the deepest, darkest phase of your cycle. When you first arrive, you may feel blind and dumb. Your surroundings might seem impenetrable and your next move unfathomable. But don't worry. Refrain from drawing any conclusions whatsoever. Cultivate an empty mind and an innocent heart. Sooner or later, you will be able to gather the clues you need to take wise action.

"...We're gonna make our own lightning!"--Neil Diamond

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of June 14, 2012

Nineteenth-century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev once called his fellow novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky a "pimple on the face of literature." But more than a hundred years after that crude dismissal, Dostoyevsky is a much more highly regarded and influential writer than Turgenev. Use this as inspiration, Sagittarius, if you have to deal with anyone's judgmental appraisals of you in the coming days. Their opinions will say more about them than about you. Refresh your understanding of the phenomenon of "projection," in which people superimpose their fantasies and delusions on realities they don't see clearly.

I tried to resign from my officer's post in the Knoxville Modelers Association overday and the other members were trying to talk me out of the move. My reasons are as much practical as emotional; I don't know how much longer I'll stay in the area and the club is better served by somebody who can give it the effort and resources it needs. But they just tried to appeal to my sense of self-esteem and pep talk me. I don't know. If the cheerleader's heart isn't in to cheer, what good is it to the team on the field?

From Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, content excerpted from the Glossary of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (which excerpted it from the backside of a package of breakfast cereal):

The Universe--some information to help you live in it.

[SNIP!--for brevity]

4 POPULATION: None

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

This may or may not surprise you: while I did "go to college", I never actually "left home" and so I had a front row seat for my mother's entire literary career. She started by subscribing to Writer's Digest magazine at about the time my brother started school, and she took up the magazine's correspondence courses in creative writing. After a few short stories that never saw print, she turned to novel writing.

I LINK TO MOST OF HER COMPLETED WORKS HERE, but since that time one of her previous print-only books was re-issued as an e-book, we were attempting to get her only remaining print-only novel re-issued as well, and two other complete books had been submitted to her publisher but hadn't seen release. (I'll have to get back to her publisher[s] about that myself.) She's done a lot of work on her final book, and I hope to arrange for an author friend of hers here to complete it for her.

That still leaves a kennel full of orphaned story pups and kittens. As her assistant, I tried to keep track of them so I could help Mum stay focussed; I had a little file called the Tracker set up to log down which project was which. I'll share with you a selection of what was in it as of 2006, plus some other older concepts Jane had come upon.

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: About a drama professor getting started at a small liberal arts college.

CELEBRITY CAMP: A reality-show inspired story about a secluded retreat where newly-rich and newly-famous people get accultured and learn to avoid the troubles of the new realities. (Previously, Jane had a similar idea called SNOB SCHOOL, about a teenage girl of a rock radio entrepreneur having to attend debutante school on the orders of her new stepfamily.)

THE CHILI POKER CLUB: A set of fast college friends try to keep their relationships alive after graduation by perpetuating a poker game club.

COMPLETE SET: A struggling young woman acquires a box of what she thinks is sewing patterns from a deceased lady's estate sale, but it turns out to be a collection of baseball cards kept in memory of her son lost in Vietnam. The discovery brings the woman into conflict with a recent widower friend of the lady and his pre-adolescent baseball fan son.

THE CONDO: A suspense tale about a woman fleeing a stalker, a private detective investigating hints of an impending cybernetic break-in at a bank, and the condo room they wind up having to share over that weekend.

CRISPY CONE: A sequel to DEARLY BELOVED set in the same town, about the family who runs a drive-in diner that is one of the social centers of the community.

THE DUCHESS: Based on the true life of Eleanora, an heir to nobility in Renaissance Italy who was at the center of many political intrigues and married the young Duke of Urbino in 1508.

THE FLIRTATION: It's been a long time since I'd seen this, so I've forgotten a lot about it. I think it's about a wager between two romantic intellectual rivals.

I'D RATHER BE IN VENICE: A very self-referential romantic suspense story about the world of art thieves and forgery.

MARRYING MAN: Set in Andrew Jackson-era Tennessee, it's about a "horse whisperer" woman who is something of a feminist--and her family's attempts to find a match for her and get her to "settle down".

THE OTHER WOMAN'S OTHER MAN: A fiancee hires a detective to verify the faith of her would-be husband...and the two determine that what looks like infidelity may in fact be blackmail.

PIECES OF THE PAST: The discovery of a quilt hidden in a wall of an old house being renovated leads to a treasure hunt--and some antics from ghosts of the house's previous occupants.

RESOLUTIONS: Three women at a New Year's Eve party are told by a psychic to write down their resolutions and the psychic promises to make them come true. The narrative follows the three over the course of the year...at the end they, and their loved ones, find that it all came true, but with changes.

SAFE AT HOME: A woman who swears off men after a break-up instead gets a break-in when a new tenant at her duplex mistakes her side for the side he's started renting. Can he make it up to her? Will she let him?

TWENTY-ONE GUN SALUTE: A young woman in a rich family turns twenty-one and gets full use of her share of the family trust fund...and she decides to start a business.

THE WIDOW SANDS: Based on true history...during the Pennsylvania Oil Boom of the late 19th Century (basically a parallel to the Wild West--and the spawning ground of much great industry wealth and robber baronies), a widow goes to the boom town and finds that the "school for girls" she inherited from her late speculator husband is a saloon and brothel. She struggles to set things right, and has difficulty riding herd over her "students", but eventually earns a respectability for the town that keeps it alive once the boom ends.

THE X.Y.Z. AFFAIR: Two law students (one named Xavier and one named Yeoman) and their professor (named Zackery) work together for the Public Defenders office when a poor landscape worker is accused of murdering a rich landowner. (This was intended to be the start of a series of mystery novels involving the same characters.)

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GREASE MONKEY by Tim Eldred.

What do you think is the biggest plot hole in my backstory?

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of January 26, 2012

Poet Elizabeth Alexander says that in order to create a novel, a writer needs a lot of uninterrupted time alone. Poems, on the other hand, can be snared in the midst of the jumbled rhythms of everyday chaos -- between hurried appointments or while riding the subway or at the kitchen table waiting for the coffee to brew. Alexander says that inspiration can sprout like grass poking up out of the sidewalk cracks. Whether or not you're a writer, Sagittarius, I see your coming weeks as being more akin to snagging poems than cooking up a novel.

I do need to finish that novel tho'.

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I like them both. Really. There are some times I want facts, and sometimes I want a story.

Mum finished her re-transcription of her last print-only novel, COME HOME TO LOVE (which may get a new title as Mum hates the old one), today.

I had scanned some old LJ entries of mine over the weekend and so had the idea of buying her some donuts to celebrate. Only, at the supermarket, I realized that with the money on hand I couldn't afford what they offered.

Knowing my folks, on the morrow they'll make their usual Tuesday run to the bakery thrift store and get the week's bread. Maybe they'll also pick up a bag of mini donuts too.

With habit comes predictability.