Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Wacky Wednesday...This Day in History, Joke of the Day, Silly Trivia

Here's another wacky Wednesday post:

Last time I wrote this sort of post I was up in Estes Park, Colorado and on vacation.  Today, I'm back home in Tucson and on-call for work.  So, heck, thought I'd make the time to catch up on my writing among other things.  And to make things easier for me to concentrate on writing is the fact that my parents are also out of town...Taking another vacation.

As I'm writing this post, I'm listening to my iPod and the song that came on is one of Bloodhound Gang's songs: Mope  Funny as all get out in it's own absurd way.

Some funny bumper stickers:

Editing is a rewording activity
Allow me to introduce my selves 
Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done

Cool fact: A cat has 32 muscles in each ear!!


On this day 1929:  The great stock market begins to crash and continues through October 29, 1929
On this day in 1945: The United Nations is created.

Birthdays
Bob Kane: Batman's creator
Kevin Kline: Actor

The presidential debates are over, unless there is another VP debate that I don't know about.  All that's left is election and that's in two weeks and then finally all the ads will be taken off the tv and the signage that litters our streets can be taken down (hope they do that quickly!).

Well, that's it for now!!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Gemstones, Herbs, Impossible Missions and Javelina

Well, it's that time again...another installment of the ABC's of my writing life.  Today we continue with the letters G, H, I and J.

I am using both gemstones and herbs in my writing for my healer in my fantasy stories.  It's some stuff that I know a fair amount on both topics, especially the use of gemstones.  As you may have read in my profile or my last post I'm a massage therapist by trade and have a huge interest in the healing arts beyond my career.  A lot of minerals that get named have this "ite" suffix to it's name.  For example look at the minerals Pyrite and Tanzanite.  Pyrite is named because of it's iron content and has a rust red (fire) and thusly named for it's fire and is commonly called "fools gold".  Tanzanite is a blue opaque gem that is mainly mined in Tanzania in Africa.  Other minerals are named after the people that discovered it or at least claimed discovery and recognized as such.  Adamite is one such stone that was named after a person, Gilbert-Joseph Adam, French mineralogist.  Adamite is an opaque light yellow crystal.  In my stories I think I'll have some of the most common crystals and minerals in it; such as Quartz, and Diamond.  The world we are working with also has gold, silver and copper.  So, with that being said I am going to be making up some of my own minerals and crystals to suit the book and be named after certain role playing characters.  If you know me from one of the games and see your name with an "ite" suffix, you should feel honored.

Tanzanite

Now, with herbs I think there are certain herbs that are in common every day use that would fit right into the story line, such as sage, oregano, salt, pepper, basil and garlic, but some will be more of a rare sort and will be made up as I write.  Many of these are named after gods and goddesses or named after what it's used for or for the magic the herbs contain.

Sweet Basil

Impossible missions.  Well, I think most books of fantasy or science fiction thrive on the characters having the threat of an impossible mission.  Dungeons with unspeakable monsters and traps galore.  Space farers flying to surely uninhabitable planets with enemies around every corner.  Ones where you send your lackey, the expendable ensign down to the surface only to discover his death and chalk it up to experience.  Eventually our intrepid adventurers mostly make it safely through to the end to reap their just rewards whatever they maybe and hey, maybe they save the world, the universe and get the guy or girl in the end!!!

And now for something completely different.  This isn't exactly about my books, but it did tickle my fancy.  Last week at about three in the morning we had a little visitation of the wildlife kind to our neighborhood.  For some reason I woke up and I'm not entirely sure why.  All I know is that as I'm laying there I'm smelling this strange smell.  I sniffed my pillow and around the bed and thought I might have been smelling the pungent smell of a skunk, but we have another animal out here in our fair desert called a Javelina, a Peccary.  While I was laying there I was hearing the sounds of the newspaper delivery folks dropping off the papers.  All of a sudden the sound of the car and papers plopping onto the driveways stopped close to our house and the smell of the Javelina was pretty intense by that time, figuring that they were also quite close to the house as well.  After maybe about another five or ten minutes the car moved on and the newspapers continued flying.  Somewhat soon after that the stench also dissipated.


Thursday, October 18, 2012

I have been away?

Well, yes, I have been away.  Answering my own question.  The past several weeks have been a tough one.  I lost three people that were in my life.  One was a high school friend of mine that was tragically murdered.  The second was somebody I worked with and had committed suicide.  The third was a classmate of mine from massage school and she had a pulminary ambulism.  All of them happened with in a week of each other.  Then work hasn't been the hottest thing recently and I had been dealing with health issues (mine and the stress of a relatives).  So, with that being said it's been hard to concentrate on writing these days.  It'll get better.  I am getting better.  I'll do more writing now that I am in a better space.  I guess that's all for now.