July 2020 News

Happy Summer to you. 

Today's mood = Muted. There's lots to do. No room for frivolity. Not here anyway. Not today.

Watching

Wife and I have now consumed 2+ seasons of Alone and it's been occupying a good bit of my brain cycles, as the robots say. If you're unfamiliar, it's a reality show wherein they abandon 10 individuals in the woods and see who can stay isolated the longest. You get pulled if you begin to starve or tap out. 

At present, although I've managed to enjoy all I've seen, I can only recommend season 6 which is on Netflix. The previous seasons are victims of all those cable TV tropes from a (hopefully) dead/dying era. 

[tangent - Of those cable TV sins, my biggest pet peeve = obtrusive commercial breaks sandwiched on either side by massive time-wasting chunks of STAY TUNED FOR THIS! and LOOK WHAT JUST HAPPENED! clips. As if I might change the channel or recently did. Cut that out. It's not a thing anymore.]

But season 6 only does this minimally, if at all. Obviously there are no actual commercials and the show at large manages to seamlessly portray the highly edited escapades of these ill-fated survivors. I won't ramble too long on the inspiration this show incites, but it's largely related to project Schala.

Reading

I've been fairly disappointed with the last several books I've picked up. So I went back to Kings of Paradise for a reminder on how good a book can be. I love this book. Humor, tragedy, intensity, interesting world, one character with a crazy interesting super power (perfect memory) and another who can astral project. If I haven't recommended this book lately, I'm recommending it now. Fair warning - adult content: cursing and cannibalism. 

Building

By the time I air this, it SHOULD be alive so here's the big secret: I'm building a zipline in the front yard. Maybe someday I'll throw some pics up here and give details on the projects I get into. Probably not. If I have time for that, I need to be writing. Find me on Instagram or FB. I put pictures there. 

Writing

I've compiled ALL notes for editing Fohrvylda (Irdessa's story) and they number around 13,7500 words. A good bit of that will get trashed. Some is very old and will refer to things that no longer exist in the story. But that leaves still a ton of notes that do need consideration. My work is cut out for me. Good thing is, editing is easier than drafting. Just grind, grind, grind. No inspiration or imagination needed for a lot of it. 

Next Month

Measure the progress. Plan for more.  

dtl