I’ve been kind of quiet lately

The work week has kept me pretty busy lately. That brings a certain amount of satisfaction, but it doesn’t make for good blog material. Fortunately, I was able to reblog a couple of good things, and I was up at Story Empire yesterday.

Still, that isn’t the same as fresh content. My daughter is visiting this weekend, and that’s always good. She’s also promised to give my son a haircut and I’m excited about that. He’s starting to look like that creepy girl from The ring. Maybe a member of the Manson Family.

We decided to rent a movie and watch it together last night. We went with ‘Birds Of Prey.’ Color me disappointed at best. Margot Robbie was so good as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, I didn’t see how this could miss. It missed. It felt rushed to market to capitalize on the prior success. Characters were under developed and it was kind of a mess. It wasn’t as bad as the second Ghost Rider movie, but it wasn’t good either.

There hasn’t been much writing time available, but I sent out a bit of Lanternfish for critique. I already have one sample back, but will save it until I have them all.

I forced a bit of time today and managed a thousand words of, well, it’s another new project. I was invited to send a short story to an anthology and committed. They like the idea of getting a speculative author to contribute something. These are all going to be murder mysteries.

There is a bit of a time crunch, but not too bad. Fortunately, I already have a private detective that I don’t need to create from scratch. It looks like Jason Fogg is on the case. If you’ve enjoyed Jason from either of the Experimental Notebooks, or Viral Blues, you might want to watch this space for more information as it unfolds.

I’ll probably continue to tap away at it this weekend. Lanternfish and Mrs. Molony are at points where they require more concentration. Right now, I’m still introducing characters and setting up the murder ideas with the Jason story. It’s easier to hack away at, and can be fine tuned later.

I still need to work up my next Story Empire post and get it scheduled. This will bring an end to my Character Archetypes, and I’m sorry to see it go. I may, or may not, do a wrap up post to it later on.

Hope you’re all finding something fun this weekend. Old What’s Her Face give up on finding a puzzle. It seems like everyone else got the idea before she did and there are none to be found.

The Rest of the Weekend

We watched the Olympic opening ceremonies Friday night. We both knew that Rio couldn't put on quite the show some of the recent venues have, but we're disappointed in what they did present. Their preaching about the environmental issues seems disingenuine when thinking about the worries of water quality in all the venues. Nobody may ever top the Bejing opening ceremonies, but I expected more. Maybe something involving Carnival and some dancers. Parts of it were cool, but it kind of fell flat with us.

We had date night last night. A simple dinner and a few dark beers at the Backstage Bistro. This is adjacent to the theater where we watched Suicide Squad last night. This movie is a ton of fun. It has a few unnecessary characters, but those in the forefront carried the show. Will Smith has the chops to shoulder the acting work, and he did.

I've grown tired of all the Harley Quinn costumes, pinups, and various other artwork. I got over it in a hurry last night. Harley is a great character, and her love for the Joker comes across as dangerous and genuine. Margot Robbie did a great job with her character. This has to be tough, because so many people have expectations for Harley. More so even than Batman and Superman.

Smith and Robbie worked together a year or two ago in Focus. It was a good movie too, but it wasn't a super hero movie.

Harley Quinn, yeah – I want one.

I managed a few words again today. I tried my hand at a specific micro-fiction that I've been thinking about, and don't like the result. Maybe by typing something out, it will occur to me how to fix it. I also added about 1500 words to a short story I'm writing. I have no idea how long this one will be, and it might approach novella length before I finish. I've said before, they need to be as long as they need to be. I'm not going to change that theory now.

I also worked up a couple of critiques for my meeting next week. These are good writers, so I find myself treating them more and more like a beta reading project. If I don't get back to work on The Yak Guy Project, the guys are going to be all caught up in a few months.

I find myself better suited to write micro-fiction and short stories when there are distractions. With the Olympics and other Summer activities going on, it may be October before I get back to Yak Guy.

I wound up cutting down my Seckle pear tree today. It got a dose of fire blight that I just can't get rid of. I've pruned and pruned, and it just keeps spreading. I left a couple of feet of stump and sacrificed the entire crop. If I got ahead of the spread, it may still make a nice bushy backyard fruit producer. If not, I'll completely remove it and won't replace it. I spent two years getting my hands on this variety, which is my favorite. If it's going to be a needy baby, I have better things to do.

Back to the paycheck job tomorrow. I hope all of you had a great weekend. Did you write anything? Did you see the movie? What did you think of opening ceremonies?