What’s Up Wednesday? The week we don’t talk about the weather

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! It’s been a while since I joined in, went on WUW hiatus for the A-Z challenge, but it’s great to be back.

What I’m reading:

Finished “Discworld: Witches Abroad,” loved the ending. can’t quite figure out why they’d put a sample chapter from “Night Watch” at the end, considering that that’s 15 books further on in the series, but oh well. Also finished listening to ‘Neuromancer’ and borrowed some Spiderwick Chronicles audio from the library, and I’m back to reading stories from Asimov’s magazine on my Nexus.

What I’m writing:

Finished revising ‘Time Bubble Blues’ for the Young Gunns workshop, and I have a few extra days before the deadline (I’d mixed up the date in my head,) so I’m putting those to work revising ‘Gotta Have That Look.’

What inspires me right now:

Young Gunns is only a week and a half away! I’ve also been loving catching up on a little ‘Revenge’ on TV, and expanding my Monastery playlist.

What else I’ve been up to:

Dealing with a headache on Sunday, which ate up some of the revision time I’d been hoping for. Shopping and some other preparations to leave the country in June. Trying to figure out how much a Samsung Chromebook and an Alphasmart Dana can talk to each other without a Windows machine interpreting in between. (Answer: not perfectly, but not too badly either.)

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What’s Up Wednesday? Summer’s comin’…

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! It’s been a while since I joined in, went on WUW hiatus for the A-Z challenge, but it’s great to be back.

What I’m reading:

I finally got “Discworld: Witches Abroad” from the library, and I’m loving it! (It took a few weeks for them to get the hold ready, with glitches on the website catalog and a copy gone missing at the Central Library.) The best part, so far, is how Pratchett is not just ‘playing’ with fairy tale tropes, but weaving the very fact that they’re tropes into the overarching plot and the Big Bad’s magic. (Short version, the stories have power to enact themselves, and she’s guiding them to ensure an ending where she rules the country.)

Also: Still listening to ‘Neuromancer’, getting to the end and loving the ride even though I feel like I’m not following 100% of what’s going on. Finished “The Handmaid’s Tale” (loved the ending at Denay, Nunavut) and read more stories from Daily Science Fiction.

What I’m writing:

More revising, especially on Time Bubble Blues, where the bones of the new draft are finished and I’m working on polishing up scenes. Due date for getting my stories sent off to my Young Gunns classmates is coming up soon!

What inspires me right now:

Vampire Diaries, hanging out with fellow writers online (like at the Odyssey Salon, come check it out!) and the long weekend coming up! Three days without work to finish revising my stories… 😉

What else I’ve been up to:

Got the air conditioner ready for summer, just picked up new toner for the printer, which is very important considering all the printing out I’ll need to do. Finished my round 1 of novel excerpt critiques for TNEO, really excited about that. Still playing lots of Angry Birds…

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What’s Up Wednesday? Mayday is behind us

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! It’s been a while since I joined in, went on WUW hiatus for the A-Z challenge, but it’s great to be back.

What I’m reading:

Short stories from F&SF, Strange Horizons, and Daily Science Fiction. I’ve also been loving listening to ‘Neuromancer’ — thank you Hamilton Public Library for making it available as a digital audio download! And speaking of the library, I just found out that “Witches Abroad” is finally ready for pickup, after weeks of waiting on the hold. (Apparently they lost one copy of the book at the central branch, but the other got returned from a borrower in Dundas.)

I’ve also been listening to “The Handmaid’s Tale” here and there, nearly finished and I love how the narrator gets sidetracked picking at her own language, trying to understand how the roots of idioms affect how people use them. And still squeezing in some Escape Pod stories; read “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” the first time on podcast and loved it!

What I’m writing:

Back to revising, mostly the new outline for “Time Bubble Blues”, though I need to make some changes to “Gotta Have That Look” as well. I’ve also got a lot of critiques to finish for the ‘Never-Ending Odyssey’ workshop.

What inspires me right now:

Having time to write on the bus, and the sunny warm weather. Still loving the Chromebook, which is good. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which I’ve been marathoning on this past week and I’m up to the crossover storyline with the Captain America movie! Hmm… can I call my Angry Birds inspiring too? 😉

What else I’ve been up to:

Work, making time to be with family, trying to spring-clean the kitchen, particularly so that the air conditioner guy has room to work there. Booked my flight to Kansas and back for the Young Gunns workshop in June!

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What’s Up Wednesday? It doesn’t look like spring yet

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us!

What I’m reading:

Mostly short stories, from PodCastle, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways. Still listening to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘Culture: Excession’ on Audible. I found myself without my Kindle and tablet yesterday, still wanted to get some reading done. I stopped at a bookstore and considered picking up “Witches Abroad,” “Small Gods,” or “Magic Burns,” but ended up going home and reading a chapter and a half from “Knot Gneiss.”

What I’m writing:

NaNoEdMo hour counter is at 39 hours, 48 minutes, and I haven’t done any editing for today! The big changes to Orpheus/Underworld are underway, and I’ve broken ground on “The Time Bubble Blues.” Haven’t gotten much done on HTRYN and “The Angel’s Charlie” since last week.

What inspires me right now:

The Veronica Mars movie, whoohoo! Shiny new Chromebooks for Camp Nanowrimo. The lecture notes I brought back from Odyssey and the prospect of this year’s summer workshops coming.

What else I’ve been up to:

Getting locked out of my office, which is why I don’t have the Kindle or lots of my other gear which is locked inside. 😉 Checking out my assigned cabin and trying to get a little family reunion together.

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Time Bubble Blues 12

Good morning! I think these are the last eight sentences I’m going to share from ‘Time Bubble Blues.’ Next week, I’ll move on to something new, possibly fresh snippets from “The Aurigae Express.” So I’m going to skip ahead out of the flashback with Mindy and show Jack still trying to think his way out of the box.

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Using the schematics for the TimeBubble room on his computer, Jack was able to find the Master Panic Button circuits, which were hidden in a metal box attached to the ceiling. Jack unscrewed the side panels of the box, and examined the control board. He wasn’t an electronic engineer, but nothing in the circuit seemed to be damaged, and all the right indicators were glowing green: POWER, NETWORK, WIRELESS, and STANDBY FOR SIGNAL. Jack fished out the Panic Button hanging from his belt, and stuck his thumb down on it, hard. The indicators for WIRELESS SIGNAL ACTIVE and RELAY lit up, just as they were supposed to.

And still the door didn’t open.

What was the next step in the process? The Panic Button Circuit relayed to the time warp controls, to collapse the bubble.

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/. And go check out the A to Z Challenge.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Time Bubble Blues 11

Good morning! Here are your next eight sentences from ‘Time Bubble Blues.’ At this point, we’ve jumped back into another flashback of Jack and his family, from when he was getting ready to go to his TimeBubble room for the first time.

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“Grandpa, will you come with us to the park on Saturday?” Mindy asked him. Jack looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. “I’m gonna start as goalie for the first time.”

“No, sweetie, I’m sorry.” Jack turned back to the screwdrivers he was packing, and thought about how many screws he’d need. “But your brother’s birthday is in three weeks, and I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re going to be coming to birthday parties for a long, long time, but we’re not going to see you at all, except for that.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/. And go check out the A to Z Challenge.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Time Bubble Blues 10

Good morning! I was so busy this week that I forgot about signing up early for Weekend Writing Warriors, so I didn’t nab a great spot near the top of the linky list, but I’m still hangin’ in there. So I’ve got eight more sentences from ‘Time Bubble Blues.’ Jack’s still struggling with a computer that he hopes holds the key to find a way out of this TimeBubble room.

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In the hopes of calming down, he looked at the ‘frequently asked questions’ file:

“Just how does my panic button work?”

“There are many panic buttons in your TimeBubble room. All of them send a signal to the same Master Panic Button circuit. The job of the Master Panic Button circuit is to make sure that the TimeBubble field around your room is collapsed safely. Once the bubble field comes down, the computer in charge of your TimeBubble will unseal your room and let you out.”

“What would happen if my Panic Button malfunctions?”

“You don’t need to worry about that: All our Panic Buttons are designed to be so redundant and fool-proof that we don’t expect a failure for ten thousand years.”

Visit the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/. And go check out the A to Z Challenge.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Time Bubble Blues 9

Good morning! This is Chris Kelworth, comin’ at ya seven days a week for April. Well, I’m posting Camp Nanowrimo A-Z spotlights six days a week, and still keeping up with Weekend Writing Warriors. So here’s this week’s eight sentence snippet for ‘Time Bubble Blues.’ Jack still needs to find a way out of his TimeBubble room.

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The duct was narrow enough that he couldn’t crawl into it, and it didn’t appear to lead to any other rooms or any destination that he could send a message to. In fact, it only went three or four feet past the wall, and there was some kind of a nozzle and a machine that looked a little like the inside of an air conditioner. That was no good.

He was going about this whole thing the wrong way. There were files full of information about the TimeBubble residential facility and emergency procedures on the computer’s storage unit. He should have started there.

He found the room schematics first, and gasped. He hadn’t remembered that his digs here were so enclosed—like a bottle, there was only one way out.

Check out the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/. And go visit somebody who’s doing the A to Z Challenge.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Time Bubble Blues 8

Yikes! First off, apologies to all my followers who got a ‘coming soon’ email or caught the live show. I lost track and assumed that I’d actually filled in this scheduled placeholder post. 😦 But I’ve got another eight sentence snippet of ‘Time Bubble Blues’ for Weekend Writing Warriors and you. Jack still needs to find a way out of his TimeBubble room.

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Sitting and thinking about the past was wasting time, and he didn’t have much time. Jack wasn’t sure how much air he had in the bubble, but it couldn’t be too much, since the plan had been that it would get refreshed while he was off at Melissa’s birthday party. He picked the wall closest to the door, and managed to pry a length of the wood panel off it, but behind there was riveted steel. He didn’t have any tools which could melt through that.

There had to be another way. He looked around the room and spotted the ventilation duct high up on the wall, just a few inches away from the ceiling. First he had to push the bed over, sit down for a few minutes to catch his breath, and climb up on top of the bed to reach the grate. Then some quick screwdriver work and the grate was sitting on the carpet, and Jack shone a flashlight down the duct, peering inside.

Check out the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/ And please leave a comment, I love getting feedback on my writing.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Time Bubble Blues 7

Hey there, friends and followers. Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors, for another eight sentence snippet of  ‘Time Bubble Blues.’ Jack is reminiscing again about why he went to the TimeBubble building.

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Once Andrew stopped arguing over the premise, there was a lot of negotiation over Jack’s schedule. When he’d first started talking to the people at TimeBubble, he’d imagined that he could stretch out his five months for years and years, until his youngest grand-daughter got married. With only five months to spend, he’d have to be very stingy with his time: graduations, weddings, a few other once-in-a-lifetime events, and Christmas every year of course.

 

But Melissa had tempted him on the subject of birthdays, and he’d shown weakness. The family replied with a united front. It would be unfair, they said, to pick and choose different birthdays. There would be resentments and hurt feelings, and Jack wouldn’t be the one to bear the brunt of them. Either he had to swear off their birthdays entirely, or make it to every one.

Thanks so much for reading. Please leave feedback, I love getting comments. And check out the other Weekend Writing Warriors at http://www.wewriwa.com/