The Towel Day Blogfest

It's May 25th!  Do you know where your towel is?

Today is Towel Day, a day to honor the memory of the amazing Douglas Adams.  I decided to host this blogfest, because I've loved the work of Douglas Adams for most of my life.

(A quick note.  The linky list will remain open through the end of the blogfest, so feel free to jump in!  Click HERE to find all pertinent details.)

I've read all of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books.  I've heard the radio programs.  I also own the book below, which is a great peek into the life of Douglas Adams.  If you're a fan and you haven't read this, I highly recommend it! I also find it notable to mention that page 42 of this book is left blank.  This was an appropriate choice.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to share at first, which is funny since I'm the one hosting this blogfest.  I decided to share a few Douglas Adams quotes that speak to me, and I figured I would wrap things up with a little flash fiction tribute.

Quotes

"I love deadlines.  I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

"Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."

"For a moment, nothing happened.  Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."

"The Guide is definitive.  Reality is frequently inaccurate."

"The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind."

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.  There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

I could cite so many more amazing quotes, but I'll have to leave it at that for now.

Now I hope you'll enjoy my flash fiction.

The Tale of the Lost Towel

Zerndoggle Ramfort Smith III woke early on the morning of his 42^nd birthday with a sinking feeling in his kneecaps.  Most people got sinking feelings in their stomachs, except for the Fetts of sector ZZ5 Plural A Beta who had no stomachs at all, but Zerndoggle could never get the hang of normalcy.

Why did he have this highly irregular sensation?  He’d committed a grievous error, one far too ghastly for even the Monks of Eternal Repentance to understand.

Zerndoggle forgot where his towel was.

Not that he would admit this, of course.  He instead contended that his towel suffered from spontaneous massive existence failure.  Surely if it could happen to the Starship Titanic, it could happen to his towel.

Unfortunately, the mystery of the missing towel went far deeper than a simple SMEF problem.

The towel, still damp from Zerndoggle’s last bath, was inadvertently left next to a ballpoint pen.  When the wormhole inevitably opened to take the ballpoint pen to its home planet, the towel was pulled through along with it.

The damp towel landed on the back of a giant mutant star goat that happened to be floating past the ball point pen planet.  Mold soon began to grow on the towel, and soon it was home to an entire mold colony.  Over the millennia, the mold evolved until super-intelligent mold spores began to launch from the towel.  The spores encountered many species, and they settled in the brain tissue of the travelers they encountered.  These travelers didn’t suffer from any outward signs of illness due to this mold infestation, save for one terrifying symptom.  The infested all developed a sincere love for Vogon poetry.

As for Zerndoggle . . . his fate was too terrible to mention here.  What else could you expect?  You always need to know where your towel is.

Celebrate the Small Things-Week 19

It's Friday, which means it's time to Celebrate the Small Things with VikLit!

I have a few things to celebrate this week.  

First of all, my youngest Lyle was playing on the playground when he fell off a ladder.  I had been momentarily distracted by my oldest getting himself into trouble, so I failed to avert the accident.  A fall of five feet onto the rocks below is never fun, and when a two year old does it, it looks quite scary.  He cried, but fortunately he was fine.  He didn't even have any bumps or bruises to speak of, and he was running around and playing again within a few minutes.  I still felt guilty, but let's face it.  Kids will have accidents in spite of our best efforts to prevent them.  I'm just celebrating the fact that my kids are safe and healthy.

We also had a tornado warning here.  While my husband was at work, my kids and I got to spend a half an hour in the basement.  No tornado actually touched down, so I'm celebrating that.  With the horrific tornado that tore through Oklahoma this week, there's no escaping the realization of how bad tornadoes can be.

My nephew Asher turns one on Saturday, so that's another thing to be happy about.

Saturday is also Towel Day.  To celebrate the life and works of Douglas Adams, I'm hosting the Towel Day Blogfest.  I starts today, and runs through the end of the day on Monday.  Anyone participating need only post once during that time, and the post can be pretty much anything to do with Douglas Adams and his work.  I'll be posting on Saturday, so feel free to stop by and check out my tribute.

What would you like to celebrate?

Memoirs From the End of the World: Entry #37

Those of you who have not read previous installments of this serialized story can find the entire thing on this PAGE.

Memoirs From the End of the World

Entry #37

The test was done.  The results stared RC in the face.  Though the test only confirmed what she suspected to be true, that didn’t make it any easier.

Her hands trembled as she attempted to go about her daily tasks.  Harrison discreetly brought RC a little extra food for lunch, but he warned her discretion could only go so far.  “I’ll give you some time to get used to this news,” he assured her, “but Brock will have to be told about this sooner or later.”

“I know.”  RC simply hoped that she could put off that conversation indefinitely.  Once the topic came up, she couldn’t begin to guess how Brock would react.  Maybe he wouldn’t want to have a squealing infant around.  The sound of a baby crying could attract all kinds of unwanted attention.  Or maybe it wouldn’t even go that far.  Maybe he’d decide that, due to a lack of medical resources on their end, it would be easier to drop her on the doorstep of the breeding facility.  She shuddered at the thought of living in a meat locker until she turned thirty, being passed around to whatever males the overlords felt were genetically compatible enough to produce superior offspring.  Having to hand over every child she ever had.  She’d do anything before facing that fate.  She felt certain of that.

Even so, the fear ate away at her, and she only had one person with whom she could share those fears without having to engage in awkward explanations.

Alyx listened to every word, and while he tried to maintain a calm expression, she could see the worry in his eyes.  “No matter what happens, I’ll make sure you don’t end up at the breeding facility.”  He looked around the room.  Most of the rebels were out on a mission to raid a warehouse filled with food.  Ollie had gone along with them.  Isabel was watching Peter and Sheera, though Sheera resented the idea that she needed to be watched.  “Maybe you don’t need to worry too much about Brock’s reaction.  He had no problem bringing them in.  Or us.”

RC sensed that Alyx wasn’t convinced by his own words, though he surely wished he could be.  There was a clear difference between bringing young teenagers in and RC’s situation.  Still, she didn’t say this aloud.  She wanted to wrap herself in the delusion that everything would inexplicably turn out all right, even though it couldn’t possibly last long.

Later on in the day, RC balanced Romero in her lap.  Though she trusted Alyx with her feelings, she needed to sort things out for herself first.  Perhaps writing her thoughts on paper would make things more clear.

Dear Romero,

More than anything, I wish I could talk to my mom right now.  Growing up, I trusted my older brother Pete with everything.  After all, he always looked out for me.  Still, I don’t think he’d understand this.  Not really.  Instead of comforting me, as if that were even possible anyway, he’d probably try to castrate the guy who did this to me.  I think my mom would have known a way to make it all feel better.

Of course, after Pete died, all the fight seemed to go out of her.  Maybe she wouldn’t have enough strength left in her to help me.  My grandmother would have though.  If the overlords had let her live, of course, she would have found a way to help me.  She was never the type to quit.

I want to be like that, but right now, I wish I could pull a blanket over my head and block out the world.  I wish I could go back to a time when life seemed to make sense.  To a time when I had a family, and I didn’t have to worry about whether I’d still have my freedom when I woke up the next morning.

Maybe that’s why I’m so worried now.  This might be the most disgusting way to end up having a family, but this child is going to be my family nonetheless.  I’m just hoping

RC paused, almost afraid to write the rest.  Did her lingering thoughts make her a bad person?

She shook her head.  Her thoughts certainly couldn’t make her any worse than Leo, or Gas Can, or any of the others.  Confident in that much at least, she put pencil to paper again.

that I don’t hate it.  Will I be able to look at its face without remembering where it came from?  Will I even be able to make it through this pregnancy without resenting it?

I won’t lie.  If I could go back in time right now and undo all of this, I would.  Yet here I am, living with a reality I cannot undo.  So, I can only hope that I’ll be able to look at my child and love him or her.  I hope I can look back on this one day and say I wouldn’t change it after all, because this is where I am now.

My life has changed forever.

She closed the journal and set it down beside her.  Alyx, who had kindly averted his eyes while she wrote to respect her privacy, wrapped an arm around her shoulders.  They sat in silence for a long time.

“What are you thinking about?” he finally asked.

RC bit her lower lip.  “I’m thinking that while we may be safe here for a while, we need to make it outside the city.  I can’t risk giving birth here.”

FSF: The Charmer's Wrath

It's time once again for Five Sentence Fiction!  This week's prompt as decreed by Lillie is CHARMED.

For those who have not read previous installments of my FSF serial, you can find the entire story to date on this PAGE.

Unchained

Chapter 33: The Charmer’s Wrath

Ylana’s hands and feet seemed oddly detached from her body as she stood above the bed inside the shaman’s tent.  Nara had lost consciousness by the time she arrived, and her bandaged face and arms hinted at just how severe this accident was, though she didn’t yet know the details.

Image "Burning Eye Hot Tears"
 by abdelrahman/deviantART

“Do you know what happened to her?” Ylana asked, the desperation she felt leaking into every word.

The shaman, a tiny tangerine-skinned man who only stood as high as Ylana’s waist, replied, “She accidentally got in the way of the Charmer’s Wrath, and it marked her as a result.  The Wrath wasn’t even meant for her, but she’ll have to pay the steepest of prices all the same.”

3 Up Blog Hop

I thought I'd give a quick shout out for a blog hop I recently learned about. Randi Lee over at The Emotional Process of Writing a Novel came up with the idea.  All you have to do is say you want in, and you'll be added to a list.  Your name will be paired with someone else on the list, and at their convenience, they will visit your blog.  After reading a couple of posts, they'll tell you three things that they like about you or your blog.

The next person to sign up after you will be the one you visit.  Once you have the information, you can head on over to their blog at your convenience and give them three positive things that you like about them or their blog.

That's it!  All you need to do is visit one person one time and give them 3 Up! Hence the name of the blog hop.  It's quick, easy, and a good way to network with your fellow bloggers!  It's also a confidence booster, and who couldn't use that every now and then?

To learn more and sign up, click here.

Revision Strategies

Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about one step in the writing process. Revision.  This is the step where we polish our words so they can shine in the world.  Or at least, we hope this will be the case.

For me, revision is the most difficult part of the writing process.  The fevered excitement of creating that first draft has faded.  You know that first draft isn't perfect, and if you're going to turn it into something you can truly be proud of, you need to dive back in with a critical eye.  You need to understand which parts of your story work.  You need to understand were the weaknesses are.  You need to see how each scene contributes to the story as a whole.  Without those crucial pieces of knowledge, you cannot tell your story in the most effective way possible.

I can honestly say that I've always struggled a bit with revision.  It can be difficult to motivate myself to revise, because I want to tell new stories.  I also don't know where to start.  If you jump in without a plan, it can all be a bit overwhelming.  I'll share my current revision strategy with all of you.  It seems to be the best method for me thus far.

1. Have someone you trust read your work.  They will be more able to point out the flaws you've missed, because you're too close to the project.
2. After having stepped away from the project for a few days, go back and give it a thorough read through.  Have a notebook available and make notes as you go.  Ask yourself what the goal of each scene is and how it relates to the overall story, how well you think you accomplished the goal of the scene, and what changes you think you might like to make.  If you find the scene doesn't actually contribute to the overall plot or character development, consider getting rid of it altogether.  You may like a scene, but that doesn't make it essential.
3. Begin your rewrite with those notes in hand.  You may come up with new ideas as you go (and that certainly isn't a bad thing), but it will help to have a reminder of the issues you need to address.
4. Once the rewrite is complete, have someone else take a look at it.  It's important to know whether the changes you've made are successful ones.
5. If all has gone well, your next look at the story will be a quick polish where you look for grammatical and spelling issues.  Make sure you've made the most effective word choices you can.

Keep in mind, steps 1-4 may need to be repeated more than once before you proceed to the final polish.  This is not a pleasant fact to face, but if you're passionate about writing and truly want to do this, you may need to confront that reality head on.

Image courtesy of Idea go
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Anyway, I know there's no single correct method, but this seems to be the one that works for me.  It gives me an organized plan of attack, and I need that.

Do you enjoy the revision process, or do you dread it?  What method do you use?  Do you have any handy revision tips?

Express Yourself: Reading

It's time once again for the Express Yourself Weekly Meme, which is made possible by Jackie @ Bouquet of Books and Dani @ Entertaining Interests.

What are you reading? It can be anything you'd like to share, from novels, to manuscripts, to food labels.

I recently finished reading Space Chronicles by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  It's an interesting account of the space race and the factors that drive the space program.  For any space buffs out there, it's a quick and informative read.

I'm focusing on editing this week, so I'll be spending most of my reading time revisiting some favorite short stories and poems from Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman.  If I get too invested in a novel right now, I know I'll end up neglecting my editing duties.  Besides, Neil Gaiman stories are always worth multiple read-throughs!

What are you reading this week?