Story Bread

Got the bread started and sat down to write early, but got sidetracked -- surprise! -- by the need to update Bloo KangaRue with new banners produced by the ever-talented kinzel. Of course, once I was down and dirty with the HTML, I found a bunch of other stuff to update. The whole Rue website ought to come down, really, and be replaced by a Sharon Lee author page. But not this week.

The score at what counts for midday hereabouts:

Project: Crystal Dragon
New Words Written: 340
Total Words: 17,565
Goal: 120,000+/-

Finished the out-of-order scene, and can no longer put off trying to figure out how to make the opening of the new in-order scene work. Can't start until I decide on a viewpoint, and the obvious viewpoint just ...Feels Wrong. Sigh. I think I'll do the dishes....

I feel -- so *special*

Just received spam from an outfit called Penknife Press. A unsolicited "sample chapter", which begins:

A Feast of Peonies
by
Obi

II
Copyright (c) 2003 by Obi

Usually, it was you, Jame and Li'l Bo. Jame was the oldest at seven;
Li'l Bo was the youngest, five. You were cousins. They were first
cousins; they were your second cousins. But at Big Ma's house you were
more like brothers. Jame had real brothers, three of them. Harold Junior,
who was older than Jame, and John and Wallace, who were both younger. But
you were special. You were the Three Musketeers; you were tall in the
saddle; you were Hoppy, Gene and Roy.

Big Ma was their grandmother. She was your great aunt. Back then,
you didn't know what a great aunt was, so she was just Big Ma, the woman
who was older than your own mothers and who told your mothers what to do.
You threatened Big Ma once, back when you thought she was just another
grownup. Big Ma had chastised you unjustly-- at least in your mind-- and
you threatened to tell your mama. "Ah'm the mama around here," she told
you. "Ah'm the big mama." You told your mama anyway, just like you had
threatened. Mama laughed at you, and from then on, you knew who the real
boss was.

...and goes on for Some Time. After it All, we have a note from The Publisher, to wit:

This message is being sent to a list of selected members of the literary community.

This list is ONLY used for Penknife Press notifications.

TO BE REMOVED FROM THE MAILING LIST, send a message from the address to be removed to opt-out@penknifepress.com with the word UNSUBSCRIBE as the subject and the first line of the message.

To Opt In, send an email message to opt-in@penknifepress.com with the word SUBSCRIBE as the subject and the first line of the message.

If you CANNOT reply FROM THE ADDRESS TO BE REMOVED, send the message to publisher@penknifepress.com and be sure to include the address to be removed in the message somewhere.

DO NOT SEND ANY OTHER E-MAILS TO THIS ADDRESS OR TO Fans@Penknifepress.com. THEY ARE ONLY READ BY A COMPUTER, NOT A HUMAN BEING.

- The Publisher

Copyright (c) 2003 by Penknife Press, Ltd.
******
I consider such spam to be an intrusion, and I consider Opt-Out to be high in the Top Ten in terms of Electronic Rudeness. Opt-in is the way polite people do business on the internet.

EDITED: To add author's copyright notice

Not so deep as a well

Squeezed another 260 words of novel out of the brain, and did a lot of xstitch. I'm encouraged that I hardly dropped the needle at all, especially as it's been a good long while since I've done the embroidery-for-therapy thing. Go, manual dexterity! At some point, I'll have four matching embroidered linen napkins. What I'm going to do with them, ghod knows, but I'll have them.

So, the afternoon session:

Project: Crystal Dragon
New Words Written: 260
Total Words: 17,825
Goal: 120,000 +/-

Took me too dang long to figure out the viewpoint for the next bit, but finally hit on a winner. Then I needed to build some stuff: a private room, furniture, a system of bribery, a document case, a title, some names. Thank goodness, that's all done.

More tomorrow. She said hopefully.