Ringmaster
If you meet me online, like on IRC or skype or any of a number of instant messaging services, then you’re likely to see me use the moniker “ringmaster”. Why is this?
(cue flashback effects)
If you meet me online, like on IRC or skype or any of a number of instant messaging services, then you’re likely to see me use the moniker “ringmaster”. Why is this?
(cue flashback effects)
The kids went out with Berta for Halloween last night, two of them all dressed up. Abby wore a mermaid outfit (rather than the Abby-sized peasant outfit we spent too much money on at the Renaissance fair) and Berta wore her peasant outfit. No… Riley refused to wear his knight’s plastic armor, shield, and sword, so he toddled around with them wearing just the gray sweatsuit I bought to put on under it.
While they were off collecting candy from our neighbors, I was doling it out myself to our neighbors’ kids. The kids started coming early - around 5:30pm. One of our neighbors from up in the cul de sac came by with a retinue of kids from that end of our street. He reiterated what another neighbor had told me a few weeks ago.
Most of the residents of our street apparently congregate at the cul de sac to hand out candy, rather than giving out candy from their houses. In this way, they can save the kids the trouble of trudging to each house, but it’s really just an excuse to gather and be social.
So after a few neighbors popped by with their kids, telling me to head up with a lawn chair to the cul de sac, I bowed to pressure and lugged my zero-G chair from the family room up to the patch of shrubbery at the other end of the street, and sunk into my typical quasi-social mode - the one where I don’t feel like I fit in and am not quite sure how to act.
I’ve been talking to some clients who ask some interesting questions. They’re akin to this analogy:
They’ve got spirit, but I guess it’s just knowledge that they’re lacking; knowledge that I shouldn’t assume that they already have.
I’ve been to the gas station three times this week. Maybe you have too?
The prices seem like they’ve been going down, but I feel like I’ve been spending a lot more time filling up. It just doesn’t seem like a tank goes as far any more.
November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in a single month. You may not start wrting the novel itself before November 1st, and you must be done before December 1st.
I’ve had weeks and weeks to prepare something for a novel, and I’ve really done nothing with it. I’ve had a few passing ideas. My first idea was to rewrite Sleeping Beauty.
In Sleeping Beauty, if you recall from the Disney film, Princess Aurora is boen and betrothed to Prince Phillip of the neighboring kingdom. An “evil” witch casts a spell on her because she was not invited to the birth celebration, cursing to prick her finger on a spinning wheel (huh?) and die on her 16th birthday. The good fairies protect Aurora as best they can, and hide her away so that the witch can’t find her to make the curse come true. Certain things happen that cause Prince Phillip to need to save the day.
What I was thinking about was how to translate this into a modern tale. These days people aren’t betrothed to anyone at birth. So it would be difficult to translate. I had some interesting twists to add to the story. What happens during those sixteen years that Briar Rose is stuck in that cottage inteh woods? What does she learn of her destiny?
But I don’t want to rewrite the original in the same setting, so I’ll need another idea.