Achievement Unlocked! Outline Completed! (20 gamer points)

So, tonight I finished the first draft of my outline for the novel Command & Control. This is another Seth Jackson novel set in my nationalized Space universe. A future where mankind never unified and national identity has been carried out to the stars, and there appear to be no intelligent aliens at all.

The  outline clocked in at 34 pages, and I need to go back now and revise the out, then use it to prepare for the actual writing. The book has three big sections and each section has its own cast of characters, along with a small number that carry though. (this book has a high body count.)

I am also working on two short stories, so there’s now now doubt. I have gone insane.

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Can he get the ring off the map?


A game I own and used to play quite a bit with friends of mine is Risk: the Lord Of The Rings Edition. Unlike normal Risk which is a game that can last forever, I remember games that went over entire weekends, this version actually has a set ending. There is a timer of sorts, a golden ring (the One Ring) traveling to Mordor. To get the ring to Mordor the player’s whose turn it was had to roll high enough to get the ring there, if he failed the ring sat in place and the next player took a turn and the end tried to move the ring off the map and end the game. In general whoever had the final turn usually ended up winning.
Watching the Republican Nomination process this cycle I’m suddenly think if Risk: Lord Of The Rings again. There are only 27 days until the first contest and the first delegates and I am wondering if Newt can get the ring off on his turn. If you look at the chart of combined polls above you can see that Romney has a fairly steady level of support, but never a lot. One by one others have challenged him, first Bachmann but even as she started to climb, Perry jumped into the race stole her fire, raced to the lead and crashed just as quickly. Perry was replace by Cain, he took his turn at the lead and then like Icarus fly too high, got burned and came crashing to the ground, now it seems to be Newt’s turn. (‘My name’s Newt! No One calls be Rebecca!’ — Sorry, wrong Newt.) He’s getting to level that none of the other not-Romney have attained and he’s doing it so close to the first contests. Can he start a tide of victories and steal the nomination from the traditional Republican choice? (The runner up from the last contest often seem to get the nomination with the Republcan Party, see John McCain for details.)
No matter what happens, it’s going to be exciting.

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Sunday Night Movie: Bowfinger

I was not in the mood for an untested product on Sunday night so I dove into my library of DVDs and pulled out a comedy that I knew I would enjoy and that I have not watched in some time, Bowfinger.

I missed this film in the theater and caught it went I rented it once from an internet company that is no longer with us. I honestly can’t remember the name of the company but there business was that they would bring DVDs and food to your home within an hour of your order. Netflix is a better deal, this was still daily charges and the whole shebang that most video stores did for their and to their customers.

Anywho, I really enjoy this film though it is not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s a simple story really, Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) desperately wants to be a film maker, but he’s never been on the inside. His account has written a spec script and Bowfinger tries to get hollywoods biggest action star, Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) to agree to be in the movie. Naturally that fails but Bowfinger, undaunted by such setback decides he will make the movie, with Kit in it, anyway. He’ll simply secretly film Kit, and a person who has an amazing resemblance to Kit (Eddie Murphy again) and edit these strangely filmed scenes together. Except for the camera man the rest of the actors and crew have no idea that Kit has never agreed to be in the movie. So Bowfinger is conning Kit, and his friends and associates.

There is a wonderful performance by most the cast, particularity Heather Graham who plays a wide-eyed innocent just off the bus and looking to be a star. A young lady who rapidly learns how to works the business if show business.

This movie is not perfect. I agree with a friend of mine who think it would have worked better had everyone been in on the con except Kit, but faults aside I still very much enjoy this film. In no small part due to the fact it is really about dreamers and how clinging to your dream can be a very painful thing in this cynical and dirty world, but losing them is worse.

 

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A pretty good day

So this morning was a trip to the World Famous San Diego Zoo with my sweetie-wofe. We had a very nice and got in a some decent exercise. Afterwards we went to a new place for Lunch, the Sea Rocket. This was an upscale bistro kind of place, so not my usual haunt. The food was good, the services was excellent and we enjoyed ourselves. (Though the burger I ordered was too large to eat like a hamburger and I was forced to utilize knife and forke to tackel the thing.)

Then it was grocery shopping and home. The entire time I had my mind gnawing and working on a problem in my newest novel. I have been going like gangbusters on the outline, it’s now up to 24 pages, and this week I came to a sudden and terrible halt. Partly because of the huge load of work that descended upon us at my day job, partly because of the arthritis flare that took me out of typing commission at home, and partly because I knew I was stuck for what was going to happen next in the plot.

If you think of the plot as a number line I was at 18, and I knew what happened from 23 on, but 19, 20, 21, & 22 were leaving me stumped. Today I think I cracked the problem. I’m going to sleep on it and try writing it out tomorrow, then I will know if it worked.

And I’ll close out with a photo from the zoo taken with my iPhone 4.

 

 

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going to bed

No writing tonight as the arthritis in my fingers has been hell today. I shouldn’t have been late on my medication last night.

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Loscon post -Day Three

The first panel of the morning was Robert Heinlein’s Future History, what he got right and what he got wrong. This was a panel discussion of a number of fans and scholars of Robert Heinlein, including the author of the Biography, Robert Heinlein: In Dialog With His Century. It was very innteresting, but covered little new ground. Verdict: Okay

Next up was a panel on upcoming movies in the next 3-5 years, however audience members kept derailing the single presenter and we had progress very slowly. So slowly I bailed on the panel and went to another. Verdict: No good. I stepped into a video presentation about Nazi Germany’s flying wing fighter and tests of a full-scale model as to its stealth capabilities. Now a bad documentary, but it leaned on the hyperbole of what this fighter would have meant to the war so late in that conflict. Even in full production in late 44 or early 45 this would not have turned the tide of the war. Verdict: Alright

Next I went to GRAIL: A Mission of Gravity. This was a presentation about the recently launched unmanned lunar mission to map the interior of the moon by gravity. The probes, two, were launched in September but because they are taking a very odd low energy orbit to the moon are still in transit. The GRAIL spacecraft should start operating early next year and after a three month mission we should have a detail mass mapping of the lunar subsurface.  Verdict: Pretty good

Final panel was How Should Magic Work in a Story? This was a two person panel of Tim Powers and Harry Turtledove. It was s fast and far ranging discussion of fantasy and magic and how to work the elements of the fantastic without breaking disbelief. Whenever these two get together it’s usually very good and this was no exception. Verdict: Thumbs Up.

 

And that was my Loscon for 2011.

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