bits and pieces: late October update

I’m somewhat disappointed that WordPress decided to send me a ‘Happy Blogging Anniversary’ message a day early this year. It’s the “Thanks for flying with us” part that would have made it funny (in a twisted sort of way), this being the fifth year and all… Yeah, I know — that doesn’t make sense. And I don’t have the words to explain it right now. Short version: it’s a book thing. 

In case you’re wondering, I’ll be spending a good part of the 28th of Wisdom October watching some of season two of Stranger Things. (El has no idea how fortunate she is that her out-of-body experiences were facilitated with a nice, comfy sensory deprivation tank instead of a hyperbaric chamber.)

Today, I read a post by Rhi on Autism and Expectations titled “The Four Social Rules Every Autistic Person Needs to Learn.” You should read it, too, even if you don’t know (or think you don’t know) someone with autism, because the issues addressed apply to neurotypicals, too. As the blogger says, “When you tell the people who love you that you want them to stop doing something that hurts you, and the response is, ‘No it doesn’t hurt you, I will not stop,’ what are we teaching our children?”

(Someday, I will acquire a coffee mug with that famous “Children Learn What They Live” list on it, just like the one Bea had when I was a youngster, and I will smash it with a hammer, and I will feel better… If a child lives with fear, he learns to be fearful. If a child lives with guilt, he learns to feel guilty. The last time Bea ever hit me — because it was the last time I was ever in her presence — I was thirty-four years old, and she’d been telling me what a bad person I am for having low self-esteem and whatnot, and I just looked at her and said, “Children learn what they live.” So she hit me repeatedly about the head and shoulders with her fists.)

As far as writing projects go… The clone is working on the fourth and final novel in The Awakening series. (We had sorta hoped to make it five — tradition, y’know — but that would have meant dragging the story out more than it should be. ‘Sides, there’s a tradition on the other side of the ‘inspiration family tree’ that says three books plus a sort-of prequel is the way to go.) We’d been using Stars’ End as a working title, but that may not even be relevant now… A few threads were cut — to be picked up later for a different story in the same setting — when the decision was made to end the series with book four, and one of those threads was what the working title referred to.

We’ve also been working here and there on 1) the sequel to Project Brimstone, 2) Changing Magic, 3) “that novel,” and 4) a novel that looks like urban fantasy on the surface. If we stick with our plan to publish in chronological order (whenever possible — Changing Magic is out of sequence with the rest, for example), either the sequel to Project Brimstone (we have a working title, but I don’t want to mention it yet) or “that novel” will be next. It would be great if several of you wonderful people volunteered to be beta readers, once we reach that point… 

(What kind of weirdo re-watches Person of Interest as “research” for a character in an urban fantasy story? I’m amused that my clone-sibling took my suggestion for the character’s name, though. Apparently everyone calls him Bear, since his surname is Barringer (sp?), but his first name is Robert, after Robert Wolff, a character in a novel by Philip Jose Farmer. We do enjoy playing with irony… )