Friday 2 August 2002

Pic of the day: The not quite last rose of summer. It's got nothing to do with anything, but it's pretty. Prettiness is for roses, stray thoughts is for me. ^.^

Stray thoughts

'Stray hairs' said the thought in my head. '?' said I. 'I want to write a story called "Stray Hairs"' explained the thought. 'You are a would-be muse?' The thought nodded. Stray hairs ... that sounded kinda romantic. Or furry! 'It is not another were-beast story, is it?' I asked. 'Tee-hee' said the thought. That's not a very comforting answer.

I remember with somewhat mixed emotions the muse that helped me write Shadow of Cneko this spring. The feuilleton (novel in installments) went on hiatus late spring because of the pain in my hand and arm. Now I have speech recognition software, but I am not convinced that it is worth the trouble to resume the novel. There was way too much implied smut for my tastes. Of course, much of the point was to write in such a way that it would look innocent to the innocent and smutty to the smutty. But I really have a problem with thinking yaoi thoughts. And having a hyper, gay muse running loose in my brain was kinda disconcerting.

***

Come to think of it, "Stray Hairs" could be the name of the furry story that has been percolating in my brain this last weekend and onward. It's about this solitary programmer and farmer living on the outskirts of civilization when a girl comes out of nowhere and changes his life and that of his dog - because she is a furry long-tailed cat/dog girl from a parallel world. She doesn't speak the way humans do, and he doesn't speak the way she does ... theirs are not just two different languages, but two different modes of communication (the cattogs communicate by the touch, apart for simple primitive messages on the level of apes ... Look! Food! Danger! Sex! and any combination of such). Can they find any common ground, and if so what good will it do?

The problem is of course that this is enough for a novel, and I don't have the staying power to complete novels. I might be able to pull off a collection of shorter stories like Al Schroeder's Decajour or perhaps even like Fox Cutter's A Fox in the Works. But that's not the way I think. When I don't think in novels, I think in trilogies. (Like my Prometheus trilogy: Gift of Fire, Bound to Rock and Free Spirits. You can imagine the odds of me ever completing that.)

***

But tonight I just want to relax. It's been a long hot week. Believe this or not, but our floor hygiene technician at work came back from California and complained about the heat. Not the heat in California, the heat here! This is Norway, in northern Europe, not Malaysia or some such tropical place. Yet the heat this week was tropical, and there was little sleep to be had since no one here has air condition. Luckily the land's fever broke last night, with thunder first and then rain. The rain continued today, and the heat slowly faded. I walked to work with nothing over my shirt (but with an umbrella), but came home with a sweater top. Life is good.

Since then I have gained a couple levels for my Morrowind Summoner character, learned to levitate (still in Morrowind, I'm sorry to say) and eaten some chocolate (in real life, yay!). Read my favorite online comics, pestered message boards. Caught up with my favorite newsgroups. Made backup of my journals and e-mail. Life is indeed good, and I hope it lasts. (The lack of an obvious reload option still creeps me out.)

And now I am sleepy.