Aigaion, Yet Again

Well, and other stuff too.

I've been going through the final (gruelling) edits of Aigaion Girl for the past couple days. I've also been laying it out as I go so that I don't still have a ridiculous amount of layout work to contend with after I finish edits. Other than the fact that I've become (even more of) an antisocial hermit who has trouble remembering to eat and bathe, I'm having a fair bit of fun.

Mephie is being held together with tape and love, but he's doing very well and I'm proud of him.

I really like the way this book is looking. Really a lot. It manages to look cute but not girly, modern but not unprofessional. I'm quite pleased with myself - and, since I ate my dinner again tonight and am about to shower, I get a gold star.

In other news, my sister had some headshots taken to give to her modelling agency. They're pretty darn good, though I have no idea if they're what the agency is looking for or not. I guess we'll find out. I'm actually thinking that I might (after making use of the gym here for the months between now and May) go to the same agency and see if they've got anything for me. It couldn't hurt, and anyway, then I'd have an excuse to get a bunch of professional pictures taken and not seem totally vain ;)

What else? I'm no longer a housekeeper. There's a whole story there which I won't get into. I now work in the kitchen (well, the hotel is shut down at the moment, which is where I got the time to do the extreme amount of editing I've been doing) as a dishwasher. The su chef is really nice, as is the head chef, so apart from dirty looks from the randomly angry australian chef, I think everything is going to work out fine.

Um, I have a cousin who has H1N1. I guess it's making its rounds. Scary stuff.

Canada's Economic Action Plan is an effing joke.

I think that's close to it. I really need to shower, so I can get up early(ish) tomorrow and get to work.

Some Stuffs

#1: My computer is temporarily fixed! Not that many people knew it was broken, of course, because I couldn't get online to tell anyone I couldn't get online. Ronnie, who is one of my supervisors at work, took it the night before yesterday, and brought it to me last night, having fixed it with duct tape. He is officially my hero.

#2: Because Mephie was on the fritz, my edits on Aigaion Girl had pretty much come to a standstill. I had the day off work today, so I decided to spend some time editing. I was sad for a while, because I'd forgotten my computer was fixed, but then I remembered that it was, and I just finished going back through A/G and changing all of the Canadian spellings to American (the main character is from Philly; I thought it would be weird if she spelled colour c-o-l-o-u-r). Now I'm checking grammatical things and then I think (*knock on wood*) I shall be done (*knock on wood again*).

#3: Room inspection again today. I think we did fine. Whatever.

#4: My computer, my MP3 player and my camera all broke last week. So far, just Mephistopheles has been fixed. The camera is dead for sure, but I'm not sure about my MP3. I was thinking about climbing Burges this week, but I'm definitely not going to without my camera; it would be far too depressing.

#5: I sent a lot of letters home the day before yesterday. I got a post card from my brother and sister-in-law, and it got me in a writing mood. I'm looking forward to sending Christmas cards this year, because there's actually a slight chance I'll get some back.

That's the update for now.

Royal LePage

Ookie.

So.

Editing. It's coming. It's slow, but it's coming. I'm working of WiliamGodwinizing Moloch, which is taking some doing, but I think is turning out fairly well. I'm almost 45% of the way through editing Moloch. Then I just have... well, every single other character... but I don't think they'll be anywhere near as hard to do, in some ways. I thought Moloch would be the easiest, initially, because I'm changing the way he speaks, not the way he thinks... but changing the way he speaks actually is harder, I think, because I have to do it pretty much one word at a time. Anyway, there's nothing much wrong with the way everyone else thinks, except that their thought processes are too similar, apparently. So I just have to clean that up. I want to be done by the end of the month 'cause I want August to be left for actual content. I think that's realistic. I'm buying myself a copy of this book for my birthday. I don't even care.

Also, I'm pretty much done the cover art. I might rewrite the synopsis, and I'm hoping to find an impartial reviewer, so I can have a quote on the back from someone who's not among my fictionpress readers, just to lend a little more credibility to the thing. Anyway, I'm fairly psyched.

What else. I nearly punched my brother in the head last night because he called me the C word. I showed remarkable restraint, and am kind of wishing I hadn't.

Now, as promised, some reviewiness.
I read Jingo after The Fifth Elephant because I liked the synopsis for Elephant better, but since they're both Terry Pratchett books, they were both amazing, and I probably should have read them in order, just because.

Anyway, Jingo was, as is to be expected, pretty amazing. It had a lot of Vimes, a lot of Carrot and a lot of Vetinary, and you can't go wrong with the three of them. It's a blatant attack of racisim and its causes, as well as media spin and almost everything that's wrong with the modern world, while at the same time, managing to make it acceptable to notice and discuss the differences of various cultures.

Seriously, if you don't read Pratchett, start now. Start yesterday. He's managed to surpass Heinlein as my favourite author, and Good Omens, his colaberation with Neil Gaiman, has almost usurped the throne of my number one favourite (still, barely, Pride and Prejudice). He's beyond amazing.

I've mentioned before that I'm a bigger fan of Pratchett's newer stuff, and Equal Rites is only his third novel. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it. It was printed in 1987 and has a lot to do with women's rights and other social issues but, as is always the case with Pratchett, the issues are adressed sideways, so you're paying attention to the story, not the message behind it.

The story follows Esk, a young girl, on her journey to become the first female wizard. Wizards in Pratchett's universe are not only chauvanists, but misogynists as well... and everybody, it seems, is of the opinion that there is men's work and women's work, except, of course, Esk, who is too young to understand why this would be the case, and spends a large portion of the book asking really inconvenient questions like, "Why?"

Another good one, anyway. I'm not as huge a fan of Granny Weatherwax and the Ramtops as I am of Vimes and Anhk Morpork, but there you go. Can't have everything, and this was a nice diversion from the big city.

And now... I'm out of Pratchett!!!!! :( Most of the stuff in the house was my sister's and is now packed away in storage or at her boyfriend's house; everything that is still in the house, I've read. I suppose I could reread it, but I want something new. I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of Pratchett for real... I think I'll just die.

Well, this has been fun, but I suppose I should get back to editing now. I have to clean the kitchen tonight, work out, edit some more and pack up for tomorrow, for I'm off to spend the week with my friend Sarah, which should be super fun.

General Smith Allen

You know what? I think from now on it's safe to assume I don't have a job, because when I do have a job, I'll likely have a huge post about how amazing it is to be employed (and how I'm okay with turning 35).

In the meantime.

I'm starting to freak out about Aigaion Girl. I just realized that I have a month and a half to finish editing it if I want it to be ready for the fall, and I really, really want it to be ready for the fall. Like, a lot. So much so that I actually misused 'like' in writing and am not going back to fix it. A. Lot. As well as editing it, I have to format it, design a cover for it and convert it into PDF. Okay, so the last part will take two seconds, but the formatting is likely to take approximately forever, and I'm scared that I'll screw it up somehow. For right now, the big thing is editing. I'm almost done editing one of my main characters. I have two and a half more main, three secondary and one background character to edit (it's written from the individual perspectives of a bunch of people), which I really want to get done by the end of this month, because then the actual story-edits start. Yeah, I'm freaking out just a tiny bit.

Also, I've noticed that when I'm... oh, how to put this delicately... when I'm being visited by my least-favourite aunt, I find that I'm more forgiving of asshole men who do not, under any circumstances, deserve anything from me, much less my forgiveness. I get all soft and feminine, and I think things that are absolutely ridiculous, like that said men might have a snowball's chance in Hell of ever winning back my affection. Obviously, this is beyond insane, and I put it down to hormones, because really. I mean, come on.

My back is killing me. I hate this desk.

I have no idea who General Smith Allen is, if indeed he is anybody. I typed in the word general, and the Smith Allen just flowed along after it. Whatever. I do the same thing when I draw. Every couple of pages in all of my sketch books is a drawing surrounded by weird little things I don't remember writing. An alarming number of them say things like: I hate my life and kill me, but a lot of them just say things that are completely and totally messed up and make absolutely no sense. A couple of them are scrawled sideways as if I had my eyes closed at the time, and warn about the perrils of trying to write in your sleep.

Anywho.

I miss people. I miss Claytron and I miss Morgan and I miss Dr. Allard who taught my Romanticism class, and Mr. Root, who taught Writer's Craft.

I think I should go. This is starting to read like I'm drunk and I'm not. Next up, reviews of whatever Terry Pratchett books I've read since my last review. Jingo and Equal Rites and probably one other one, but I can't recall for sure.

La, la, la

I totally forget what I was going to blog about.
Oh, right.

I´m done editing that one character, at least until I´ve edited the others, at which point I will likely start the process over again. So far I´m fairly happy with how it´s going. I´m staying at my brother´s place and going to the beach tomorrow, so I didn´t bring my laptop with me, which means I´m going just a little bit crazy, but that´s okay.

No job yet, but that´s not much of a surprise. I didn´t check the job bank today because my resume is on Mephistopheles and I can´t really do anything from hear anyway.

Also, I finished reading The Fifth Elephant, yet another of Terry Pratchett´s works of unadulterated brilliance. I love the Discworld books with Vimes in them; he is one of my absolute favourites. He and Vetinari and Detritus are all pretty well tied, and they´re all in this one, which is great. And Carrot. I love Captain Carrot. I´ll probably be reading Jingo as soon as I get home.

I want my story to be published now. I want people reading it now. I know I´ll have readers, when I do get it published. I know people will buy it - I just wish they were buying it right now, this second, no waiting. Ah well. You can´t always get what you want.

There was something else. Oh, BEACH. We were supposed to be doing other stuff this weekend, including camping, but alas, that fell through. So now we´re spending tomorrow at the beach, which will rock, but isn´t quite camping. I wish there was somewhere we could stop on the way and pick up a set of Morning Play. Morning Play is just amazing.

There was one other thing. Right. Party. I´m sort of ambivalent about going. For reasons that don´t really warrant blogging about, I´m sort of afraid it´s going to be horribly, horribly awkward. Maybe it won´t. Maybe everything will go swimingly... and anyway, I´ve gone to every single one of these things for six years; I´m not going to suddenly stop because of the potential for awkwardness... God knows if that would have stopped me from doing anything, it certainly wouldn´t be a worry now.

I think that covers the update of my life. It´s amazing to me how with no job, hardly any friends that I see regularly and next to nothing going on in my life, I manage to find so much to blog about. It´s a gift, really. I ought to be going now, I suppose. I want to head to the nearby convenience store and see if they have... I have no idea. I don´t really want anything, to be honest. I just feel like spending money and eating, because they seem like the things to do.

Okay, seriously, I need to stop writing this now. Apart from the fact that I´m not conveying any useful information, I´m probably scaring the Hell out of anyone who´s read this far. Sorry, gentle reader. See you soon for another update on my bizzare life.

PS, the Post Secrets from last Sunday were pretty good. I´m looking forward to Sunday´s, thatś for sure.

Gimmie a break, gimmie a break, break my off a piece of that KIT-KAT BAR

I've been editing today, and now I feel like taking a break. I'm about 4/5ths of the way through my second editing of one of the characters from Aigaion. It's written in first person from the perspectives of a bunch of characters, so I'm editing one character at a time, so I can stick to one voice. So far, I think it's working pretty well.

I'm having fun with him, because I get to use a thesaurus pretty well constantly, to maintain his weird, old-fashioned, slightly backward way of talking. I love using big, random words that no one has ever heard of and not having it feel unnatural or pretentious, because it fits the story.

This is one of my main characters, and I feel like he needs more page-time, but I don't think he's going to get it. The story could stand to be fleshed out a little bit, but the fleshing out is more in information than events, so it's only going to happen where I can slip it in unnoticed.

Agg, I am SO sleepy. I did get to work out today ♥, so I'm in a fairly good mood.

Hopefully, I'll get my stuff out of random dude's* barn soon, so I'll actually have summer clothes, and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to wear my green sundress to Conor's party. Conor is a friend of my brother's who's lived across the street since before we lived in our house, his party is an anual BBQ that I've attended every year for six years, and my green sundress is one that I've owned since I was 12 and almost fit in again. Just to clear that all up.

I have to go home soon and clean the kitchen, but I'm trying not to let that bum me out. Plus, I'm super damn hungry, but hopefully, I can make/ buy something within the next hour or so.

I think that covers everything. I don't really feel like finishing this editing right now, so I guess I'll leave it for tomorrow (or later tonight?). I have to buy some sort of folder to keep all this stuff straight in.

Damn it; now I want a Kit-Kat

*Random dude is the son of a man who was friends with my grandfather, as well as the neighbourhood dowser and the person everyone in the area went to if they wanted a good deal on kitchen appliances. He was cool. I've never met Random Dude.

Celeron M

Sometimes, when I can't think of a title for my blog posts, I just pick something out of the room at random.

Okay, so first: Books.
I am very sorry (and a little bit horrified) to say that I've only read two books this year. That's right, two. The year is half-over and I've only read two books. And I read them in about three weeks.

Book #1 was Terry Pratchett's Nation, which his only non-Discworld book I've read (I'm not counting Good Omens, 'cause that was a collaborative effort with Neil Gaiman). It's absolutely amazing.

It's darker than most of his Discworld stuff, but I think that's because it's new, and Pratchett's work seems to get progressively darker - which is fine, because I've always loved that kind of unabashed cynicism. I think that's what drew me to him in the first place. I don't want to spoil it for you, so I'm not going to tell you what it's about, except that it's kind of about the end of the world, at least, the end of a world, which for the people living there is the same thing.

Book #2 was another Pratchett masterpiece, a much earlier Discworld book called Reaper Man. That copy has been in my family's house for years, and for years I didn't read it because I was terrified of the picture of Death on the front (not the same cover art as shown right - I couldn't find a picture of the book jacket ours used to have). When I was maybe 11, I tried to read The Colour of Magic and couldn't finish it, and then didn't read any Pratchett for ages. Reaper Man is pretty amazing, but I have to say that in parts, it seemed like Pratchett forgot his readers weren't in his head with him, so I found some parts confusing.

Mainly, I loved the story of Death essentially being fired, and going to live and work on a farm. It was all good, but that particular thread was just too amazing, and I found myself constantly wanting to run and give him a hug.

As with every other Terry Pratchett book I've read, I'd heartily recomend it to anyone who wants something funny, thoughful, thought-provoking and generally amazing to read.

Second: I still have no job. It's not that I haven't been applying, because I have. Maybe my applying hasn't been as rigorous as it could be - I've spent most of every day for the past few months writing my book (now finished!!!!!), working out and drinking tea. It may seem like wasting time, I guess, but c'mon - I wrote a bloody book and dropped at least two sizes. That has to count for something.

But still, I think the main problem is that there just aren't that many jobs available. I mean, if I had a car or a college and/or university education, there are plenty of jobs I could get... but no one seems to even be looking for people, and if they are, they want educated people. Why you need college-trained secretaries and forklift operators, I'll never know.

I think that's it. Edits on Aigaion Girl aren't going to start until July, 'cause I'm giving my brain some away-time from that story for the moment, as hard as that is. I feel like I should be writing but I went through all 26 of my pending stories the other day and I couldn't find anything that I felt like writing at the moment. Maybe I'll start something new.

Right now I'm off to go back through the job bank and see what's available. Monday, I'll have to plaster the city with resumes - which would be a lot easier to do if all of my summer clothes (and nice shoes) weren't sitting in some guys barn - another long story. Yes, I know I look like a hobo and I know I'm wearing flipflops/my youngest brother's handmedown running shoes, but seriously, take my resume, then call me at my mom's office, 'cause the home phone's been cut off and I can't get my cell phone hooked up until I get paid for work I did in January... Hire me.
Somehow, I don't see that working as well as I need it to.

Ah well. I'm grumbling again, and I really didn't mean this to be a grumbly post. But seriously, I should never have stayed in town for the summer. I should have just said screw it, despite the serious lack of job and money, and just gone wandering in May like I planned to. Ugh.