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| DepositPhoto |
Our topic this week is freeform – anything on our mind.
Okay.
Squirrel.
As in, I’m thinking about lots of things all the time, but
nothing I want to write a post about, or which adds up to a post on its own.
I’m driving hard to finish my next Badari Warriors novel,
TIMTUR, so maybe that’s part of why I’m coming up empty of BIG ISSUES I want to
discuss in this space today. My brain is off into the far future, with my
imperiled hero and heroine, fighting the alien scientists.
My toddler grandson has discovered a love for multisyllable
words and gives them his all. Helicopter. Watermelon. Butterfly. He also loves
his Gramma and has taken to asking for me. Fortunately I live literally at the
other end of the same apartment complex and so I can walk down for frequent
visits. There’s nothing as restorative as a hug from a little one. His favorite books are by Neil Gaiman (the 'Chu' series) and Sandra Boynton. Plus of course, the SPOT books...all of which I read for him with gusto and sound effects.
There are a plethora of things happening in the world on my
mind. I tweeted last week that I’d realized the last time I knew so many
members of Congress (from both parties) by sight who were not my own
representatives was…during Watergate. I even recognize the Cabinet members and
I don’t think that’s ever happened. Someone else agreed and said we both must
watch too much MSNBC. Quite possible! But it’s not my nature and not my purpose
in being on social media to discuss current events, with rare exceptions. Sit
in my living room and we’ll hash it all out. Not here. Shrug. Your mileage may
vary. I vote, I donate and I let my elected representatives know what I think.
My high school gym teacher passed away last week. She was a force
of nature, kinda scary to an introverted-non-athletic-girl like me but
inspirational in her way. And I’ll never forget the rousing, somewhat puzzling sex
ed talks she delivered (“Gals, y’all gotta pump the BRAKES and it’s y’alls job
to slow down those boys and their accelerators when they git you parkin’ on
that dark mountain lookout some night after prom…” Slightly exaggerated for
effect – I AM a romance novelist – but not much.) I left home at the age of 19 to get married to
my high school sweetie and live the entire continent away from the location of
my high school, and only in the last year reconnected with my high school
community on FB, so it’s still a little disconcerting to me when that part of
the past reaches out and grabs my attention. That was a lonngggg time ago but
they’re all locked in my head as they were when we roamed the school together,
so it’s a surprise every time I realize hey, we’ve all gotten older. Kinda like
the cast of “Grease”. Revelation: No one from our class is 17 anymore.
I baked banana bread this morning for my son-in-law, father
of the aforementioned delightful toddler. Used my late mother’s recipe, which
is older than I am, has probably too much sugar and butter but tastes great of
course as a result. I’d written the recipe in what used to be my good
handwriting on an index card and put it in the wooden recipe box my Dad gave me
when I left home to be married.
There were various kerfluffles in the author world last
week, some more hurtful to people than others. I usually miss hearing about
these until they’re over and I almost never weigh in on them because most of
the time I have no direct involvement. My eyes open wide and I blink a lot in
disbelief as the tweets and posts go by in the social media stream and I might
discuss aspects of it all privately with close author friends but that’s about
it.
I watched a really unintentionally amusing scifi movie last
night where at the one hour mark exactly the alien spaceship crashed in Laos
(the first hour occurred in LA) and for the rest of the movie the hero and
heroine battled it out against the aliens side by side with a group of Laotian
drug smugglers who seemed to have dropped in from a kung fu movie of years
past, on a set that looked like Angkor Wat but wasn’t. Turns out it was a
direct sequel to another one I’d seen years ago which had ended with that movie's hero
changed into one of the aliens and his pregnant girlfriend stuck on the spaceship
high above LA. The production values
were actually pretty good, the hero was mildly hunky (terrific biceps) and I kept watching till the end, partly in disbelief
and partly because the story moved along briskly.
I read two great scifi novels in the last week or so –
Contagion by Erin Bowman and Planetside by Michael Mammay, and interviewed both
authors for AMAZING STORIES MAGAZINE blog. I did a long post for USA Today/HEA
on mermaids, interviewing ten authors.
We’re in the middle of a series of 100 degree days (global
warming anyone?) and although there are no brush fires near us this year, at
least not right now, I’m keeping my eye on the news just in case.
So, ok there you go, my stream of consciousness “this is
what’s on my mind today” post and now I have to get back to my characters and
their dilemma. Have a great weekend!
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| Not the Author although I do have blue eyes. DepositPhoto |
