All right topic skip!

I've tried this last week to post my final thought on villains Blue, no less than five times. Twice Windows has crashed (making me hyperventilate until I remembered I backed my writing up on my flash drive) once there was a power outage and twice Blogger has refused to put the post up here. I think, Blueness I'm going to have to e-mail it to you at this rate or better yet, pop by and we'll have coffee and an informal writer's meeting. Anyway, on to other topics because I have received chastisement for not posting as regularly as I have before. Imagine that, tarbs want to know what is going on in my life.

First, writing news/update as demanded. My antagonist has been named (which is a triumph) because I really am weak at naming people. I also know that he's going to be a cross between Iago from Othello and Elijah Price from Unbreakable. I don't mean an exactly 50/50 split of course, I can only snitch so much, but now I have a general frame of reference for how he thinks *AND* what his motivation is and why it is important to the main plot of the story!
Now, in my outlining I can move foreword with things and create the incidents needed to move from point a to b to c to d to e and so on. I can't begin to tell you how much having him roughed in has helped. And for those wondering about my snitching this and snitching that, remember it has all been done before and you can't copyright ideas or plots or archetypes, and writers have been stealing from one another since the time of storytellers. To further your understanding of the legal stealing, I heartily recommend the following books:

The Complete Writers Guide to Heroes and Heroines Sixteen Master Archetypes by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, and Sue Viders.

In here not only will you find the 'type' of your character(s) but also how they best interact with other 'types' as well as examples pulled from well known books and movies that help you further understand the ideas.

Theme and Strategy: How to build a strong narrative structure to help your fiction stand tall, run fast, hit hard and soar to success by Ronald Tobias. ISBN # 9780898793925

This book is worth its' weight in gold and is one of the oldest ones in my library. I reference it a lot and it's worth the price for the list of plot summaries in the back. Here, you'll find the 36 master plots that have been around since the time of the Greek playwrights, and possibly before. These are the ones that everyone uses and Tobias helps you to ferret out plot(s) from well known books. If you don't have the resources to buy a copy now, get it from your library and buy it later. (Currently shown as out of print but available through B&N's used section, Amazon's used section, and Alibris)

The Creative Call: An Artists Response to the Way of the Spirit by Janice Elsheimer


This one will challenge, rebuke, and echo Wayne Batson's cry of "Get off your chairs, and create" that he posted this week.


Okay, that's about it for the writing, lettsee what else do I have to report?

Oh, I'm in charge of another author signing, this time with Wayne Thomas Batson and George Bryan Polivka as our featured authors. I've got about six weeks to find props, make props, figure out staging, figure out advertising, and get the staff in three stores primed and ready for the event. And this time, I've sworn I'm not going to let it take over my life as it has before. So far, so good. I'm still working on my story as well as setting up for them.

Mom and I went to the Delaware Museum of Art last Friday and had a blast looking at the Pre-Rafaelite exhibit and the Tiffany Windows which were breathtaking.

This past Friday in an attempt to get more fun in our lives and continuing last Friday's venture into the realm of fun she and I went and saw Fools Gold in the theater and it was rather good, except for a moment of full frontal nudity that had no reason to be in the film at all. I hate that kind of crap. But really, the movie was well written and had some strong themes woven throughout, I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I'm going through and point-outlining it as an exercise to see just how the writers put it together.

And now, I'm going to go and be fascinated by Cyrillic alphabets.

~Scribe