I am a pack rat. I collect random pieces of computer gear and electronics that I never needed, never used or will never use again.

We’ve been spending an hour a day going through the wasteland formerly known as the basement, throwing away junk, sorting, organizing, and cleaning. Eventually, we’ll hire someone to finish the basement and have a nice area for gaming.

Yesterday I took out all of the garbage we’ve bagged in the past week (12+ giant bags), including a dead television and an old couch.

One of the dogs woke us at 3:30AM this morning. I jumped out of bed to see what the fuss is about and I saw someone stopped in front of our house, in front of the garbage. The dog must have startled them. When I got to the window, they were jumping in the car and sped away.

My first thought was that they were interested in the TV. It was a 27″ TV — big, with no obvious signs of damage. No one in their right mind would have been interested in the couch. What didn’t occur to me, until Dena pointed it out, is that the TV was too big to fit in the car. So what, exactly, were they doing looking at my trash in the middle of the night?

Some friends have suggested identity fraud and I’ll admit that does make a bit of sense. Digging through someone’s trash in the middle of the night would be the safest way to do it. Luckily there wasn’t anything at the curb I’d worry about but it does make me seriously consider buying a shredder for personal documents that we happen to throw away.

This week felt like it would never end. Long days and short nights, each filled with rain and heat. We managed to avoid any more weather-related damage, thankfully.

Not much progress word count-wise, but I have figured out the shape of the story. It’s my first attempt at writing from a first person point of view (since school). It feels like it will work best for this story. Time will tell if I’m right.

Slowly but steadily, progress continues.

When I went in to the CSSF Workshop, I had all sorts of problems with my writing. My prose was passive, I told instead of showing. The ideas were solid, but the execution was lacking.

I focused on the grammatical in the weeks and months before and after the workshop. I’m reasonably certain that I’ve got a solid grasp on that aspect of the craft now. Feedback from my writers group seems to back that up.

The focus now shifts to characterization. What I’m finding is that I’m almost too tight, I think, on the details I put into the story for fear of infodumping. At some point, some infodumping is necessary, I think. The trick is limiting it to only as much as necessary. I’ve spent time revising and rewriting to reduce infodump and passive prose but at some stage I cut out too much and I need to work out how, where, and when to add detail that is vital to the motivations of the characters and tone of the story.

I put a widget in the sidebar on the right (for those of you reading this from LiveJournal, click here to see it).

There they are, in all their glory. My 2007 stats, current and up-to-date.

I know lightning and thunder are different, but Thunderstruck sounds cooler. First, everyone is ok. Just collateral damage around the house.

I woke up around 3AM this morning to a thunderstorm outside and rain coming inside. I got up and shut the windows, got a towel and dried off the ledge. I climbed over Perl (the dog) and got back down in bed. My eyes were just shutting when a thunderous pop filled my ear and a bright light filled the room.

I sat right up and Dena woke up. The dogs were alert: Dora cowered and Perl ran to the window to investigate. I checked around briefly to make sure the house wasn’t on fire. Adrenaline took a half hour to drop to normal levels and we went back to bed.

The fun began this morning. Dena woke me up because there was a buzzing noise coming from my office. That’s enough to get me out of bed, wide awake. I think we got off lucky. So far the damage is pretty minor. Both Vonage boxes (so our phone lines are out), the speakers connected to my desktop are kaput (although the desktop appears to be fine), and the cable box in the bedroom. Nothing irreplaceable.

I still have to test the rest of the household electronics and computer gear that was plugged in. The ground fault circuits tripped and did their job, as did the surge protectors on the big stuff. At least I know first-hand what a lighting strike sounds like.

When I was running WordPress I wrote a small plugin to track stories, word count, status, etc. Part of the reason for switching back to MovableType is that it’s running perl and I just love writing perl code.

Now that the move is complete, I’ve started on a Story Tracker plugin. Basically, it gives an author a nice little interface to keep track of a story — title, word count, genre, if/when it’s submitted/published. Basically a glorified spreadsheet. Coming from the Open Source world, I like doing things out in the open where other people can learn from my mistakes.

Once those basics are done and I’m generating some nice looking widgets for the sidebar to the right, I’m looking at adding licensing information (Creative Commons) and display options. It’s all for fun, but hopefully in the end it’ll be useful to someone other than myself.

Charlie Stross has an excellent writeup on doing readings.

I fear the day that I have to do a reading. I’ve never been a smooth talker in public settings. I’ve deliberately put myself in situations where I had to speak in public. In high school, I opted to take Public Speaking instead of the regular Speech class. It took me a couple tries to actually pass the class, but when I did I did so with an A. I’ve been a member of Toastmasters and I’ve run panels at Penguicon (some better than others).

It’s strange. Despite the fact that I talk to people for work on a very regular basis, have stood up and spoken in front of groups of strangers on many occasions, I still stuffer from extreme anxiety at the thought of speaking in front of groups. The thought of reading something I wrote is downright terrifying. It won’t stop me if/when the situation presents itself but I apologize in advance to those who end up suffering through it.

It’s been one of those weeks. Work has consumed most of my time and energy. I managed to do most of the research I needed to start on the story and start on the first scene, but I’m feeling edgy. I need to take some ‘me’ time and make some real progress. This weekend is looking like a good candidate for productivity.

I’m taking the rest of the night off. My writers group meets tonight, and I have a story up for critique. I’m going to head out early, and have some dinner. That’ll give me plenty of time to finish reading the other story being critiqued this week and maybe, just maybe, get some more work done on my new story.

I was going through my stack of Realms of Fantasy back-issues tonight after reading the slushmaster’s request to find a few issues to fill his collection. Somehow, we managed to get a copy of Realms of Fantasy issue 1 from October 1994. Pretty cool! The cover is loose but otherwise it’s in good shape.

While diligently doing my research, I stumbled across the perfect resource: Nikola Tesla: Colorado Springs Notes, 1899-1900. My WIP begins here, in 1899, in Colorado Springs, in Nikola Tesla’s laboratory. Score! Or so I thought. Amazon has a ship date between four and six weeks.

I decided to visit the library and see if they had a copy or could get one for me. After getting a library card (yes, I’ve lived here more than six years and never went to the library, bad Adam), I asked a librarian for help. As it turns out, he is also a fan of Nikola Tesla. He’s also a writer that wanted to write about Tesla, although from a historical perspective.

It turns out that the book I want is owned by only one other library, in Colorado Springs, and they don’t lend it out. The librarian helped me find two other books that should be useful: Wizard – The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius and The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla. And I ordered the book from Amazon. Even if it isn’t here in time to help with this story, it will be a nice reference to have. I am, after all, a giant Tesla fanboy, as was made clear as the conversation with the librarian progressed. I know more about Tesla than the librarian/historian interested in him.

As far as the writing goes, I have enough information to tell my story. I’m being extremely picky about making sure I have my historical details accurate, in as much of the story actually takes place in 1899.