BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’ve got me a big old depression on, as well I should have.

You see, our TV is about 25 years old and the horizontal O/T is acting up, not to mention the focus divider is relatively unfocused, and color guns in the CRT are drifting into an acid trip of psychedelic haze. I mean, I love me some Stana Katic on the screen, but when she’s blurry and sorta bluish like those silly-ass Avatar aliens, well… Not my thing, yaknow?

What does that have to do with a line from a song? (Aphrodite’s Child – 666 for you young’ns who didn’t get the reference in the title.)

Well…. The Rapture, of course.  I was going to nab myself a free 50″ LED Flatscreen after folks went on up to heaven. I mean, what the heck? It’s not like they would be needing them anymore.

Of course, I guess I was being a little too honest.

“What?” you ask. “You were going to steal from Raptured Christians? How’s that being honest?”

Easy enough to answer yet again. Like I said, they weren’t going to need them anymore. Basically, I was being the honest and upstanding sort because I was waiting for the folks to be gone and not coming back. If that was the case then it would sort of be like finding some lost property, reporting it, and then waiting the appropriate amount of time for it to be claimed. When said claiming didn’t happen (or could be proven to have no chance of occurring – duh, rapture) it would be mine. Completely legal.

Had I been the dishonest sort I would have run an ad in the paper, or just gone knocking on doors looking for sheeple who bought into Camping’s BS and convinced them to give me their stuff. After all, they wouldn’t be needing it anymore, so it should be an easy sell. According to the news, apparently it was an easy sell for some not-so-honest types out there. Folks were giving crap away left and right.

I guess I just stood in the wrong line.

Damn me and my scruples. Guess that’s why I’ll be stuck here playing polo with the horsemen.

More to come… (Until October 21st, of course…)

Murv

One of the questions I get asked on a regular basis is –

Murv… Sellars… How is it… That you… Are able to keep… Things straight… When you are… Writing?

As a rule, the odd hesitations between words and phrases sort of freaks me out, but I just figure the person asking was doing way too much Uncle Cidney in their teens while listening to Steve Martin comedy albums. All of us old farts will get that reference, trust me.

But anyway… (No, not a Blues Traveler ref, although it could be)… I usually explain that I am what’s called a “Seat of the Pants” writer. That means I have an idea, I know how it starts and kind of know how I want it to end. I might even know a couple of things I’d like to have happen in between, but the journey to get there isn’t really plotted until I sit down and start taking dictation from my characters.

Now, to keep things straight for them, I have books. As in binders that contain biographical data, etc. Mostly because since I write a series I have to be able to stay in touch with the arc and maintain canon (one n, not two, meaning it doesn’t go boom unless I screw up.)

However, I have to stay on track for a given story arc within a novel as well. That’s where rectangles come in.

“Rectangles?” you ask.

“Yes, rectangles,” I answer.

Behold – the incredible, versatile, and really especially cool, Index Card…

Don't bother trying to enlarge it. I blurred all the info, mwuhahaha...

So there’s your answer… I have a corkboard, a pencil, some pushpins, and a whole lot of index cards…

Bet ya’ thought I was talking about dextroamphetamine when you saw that title, didn’t you? Awww, c’mon Eileen. You know better than that…

More to come…

Murv