The last mystery novel I read, also from a discarded book cupboard in a hotel, left me feeling like I'd ate too much candy and drank too much soda, and I wasn't going to read another unless completely desperate. Well, I decided given how entirely british this book appeared to be, I could work on my britglish a bit (and I did learn some terms I've needed in the past but couldn't find, like "sponge bag" and "snug" (the one at a pub)) I also learned that for more American is in common usage as of 2003, like sweater, and that pubs do table service when the bartender feels like it. Hmf.

As result, I feel like I've eaten a mix of candy and nuts. The story was okay; it relied on more lying than expected to draw out the conclusion. It used flooding as a nice framing. And the key point of lying was echoed in the water and later snow that hides the evidence, or what they think is evidence. On the other hand it had a long stream of tweaky little contrivances that irked me and the author's voice comes out directly through the narrator, but it's supposedly the narrator but it doesn't *feel* like the narrator. Based on the book list in the front, she churns these out, and perhaps needs to slow down and step away a bit from the next one. It's especially glaring when the character goes to sweden and is walking around, it reads way too much like the author's notes about same as part of research, even the process of researching sweden smacks of the author, not the narrator. I don't like seeing the author's fingerprints on the story like that when I'm reading.

Wexford, her main character, is a little too daft for me and sloppy as hell from my understanding of a cop. (spoiler alert, here to end) Okay, we've gone to sweden to arrest someone who's been on the run for two months, but hey, it's nine p.m., let's just go to bed, and show up the next morning after a nice tourist stroll through Upsala. wtf? Interestingly this is American style crime fiction in that the investigator isn't brilliant, but just dogged, albeit, on-his-own-civilized-schedule-thank-you-very-much dogged.

What really stood out about this book for me, and kept me reading just to see if the steamroller I saw hinted at was going to roll where it seemed to be headed, was the blatant anti-religious sentiment. From the stated "American"-style fundamentalism shown in anti-social and misfit glory to the way guilt for events is handed around in black and white. Wow. I honestly wonder if this book even would find a printer in the U.S. When I get connected, I'll have to check, because really, it's that strong and would be that out of place in the U.S. where even a hint of such sentiments would be immediately shouted down and, uh, demonized to death. More than anything this demonstrates a marked difference between an audience in a country where atheism/agnostic/Jedi/FSM runs in the majority vs. the U.S. where it is 15% (a jump up from a long-term 4-5% before 9-11). (just looked it up, in GB 7% respond yes to "the bible is the literal word of god". Warning to activist christians in the u.s. lobbying for legislation... GB HAS an official state christian religion and look where that's landed religion)

There is one scene where the young female officer is faced with this circle of, well, religious sexist jerks and has a hard time keeping a lid on it after completely not understanding their references to women's holding the blame for original sin and therefore not being fit for whatever little elder meeting was going on. I actually laughed at the careful construction of this scene by the author, who is really itching to make a point. I'm not that old, but I grew up with this. Just get on with the story. When your concocting fingerprints are all over it, the scene becomes a farce, even if your target audience is sympathetic. You want to change minds, you need to bury your purpose waaay deeper.

I like Amy Tan a lot, and I wasn't disappointed in this. Her writing at every level is always top notch. In this story she takes an automatic writing text she found written (transcribed(?) if you will) by a medium who was channeling someone Tan actually met personally a few times, a woman named bibi. This woman was supposed to lead a tour group on the Burma Road, a group that is kidnapped by the Burmese Junta. (I'm not giving anything away here, btw.) She's murdered shortly before the trip and can't go, well, physically. Because the dead woman is a spirit and her friends want her along, she is able to flit between their thoughts and follow their journey. Paranormal aside, the resulting narrator comes out a very rare and workable, true first person omnipotent.

(First person omnipotent isn't that uncommon, but it generally only has "I" occasionally when the narrator is addressing the reader directly in an aside, rather than having a full character who can read everyone's actual thoughts as opposed to the fireside storyteller who is guessing and recreating this.) I'd recommend this one just on that account since it is so different. Tan spoils you for most other writers, tho, be aware.

Faced with a closet shelf (or cupboard, I guess it technically is given that it's a separate piece of furniture) four-deep in paperbacks, I found my nonfiction writing reading a little less interesting. Not that it isn't interesting... How to read novels like a professor is very interesting, but I can only take it in small doses.

Vacant Possession, despite the lurid cover and title, and publication date of 89 was a Penguin Classic imprint. I decided to give it a go, because in clive cussler's and danielle steele's company, it looked pretty good.

In my Reading for Writers class, we spent 8 weeks dissecting short stories, all of which had far more going on than their surface tales. But they were all in the 10-15 page range so not much length to really get immersed in. Vacant Possession was at the level of any of those we read, but it was 319 page of it, which is a pretty long haul to maintain at that level of writing.

It's a dark tale of insanity in all its variations and helplessness by the well-meaning victims who are too weak and too late when they do decide to take action to correct the path of their lives. Mantel does a good job of demonstrating that pretty much everyone is crazy at some level, and for the most part the truly crazy only differ in having the distinct advantage of knowing that they are insane and therefore operate more freely. She also does a good job with a narrator who isn't a child, but having been raised by an abusive mother who locked her in the house, has a similar viewpoint and most of the nice features a child's viewpoint provides.

Terrible events are rendered so that they feel utterly mundane. Events come out creepier that way, turns out.

More is going on than one reading clarifies, especially about the ending, which I'm sure would be clear with some careful mapping of where everyone is and where they are going next. But, warning: the ending isn't clear on its own. If you like easy closure, this isn't for you. If you like happy endings, even more so. (The horror! The horror!)

I suspect she is trying to make a broad statement about the personalities that vie within everyone's mind, by mixing certain personalities within the households, but I'm not sure about that. Some broader strokes are going on. Need to reread. Or perhaps find the cliff's notes or something.

Beach grogginess has made it hard to write new stuff, but it's apparently perfect for revising so I’ve been re-reading and tweaking Resonance and now Revolution. I haven’t been able to convert and upload all those old chapters, except for Wattpad, which now has the most recent version of Resonance. You can find that at wattpad.com by searching for “resonance greengecko” or using this link to part 1 of 8. I’m still working on the last of the sketches to finish the full formated pdf of Resonance.

While re-reading Revolution I realized how abruptly in chapter 20 I had cut off the delicious section of Snape and 9-year-old Harry sniping at each other. Snape bribes Harry with a trip to the zoo to finally win a round of it, and really, we should see some of that trip. So, here it is: (with a bit of extra lead-in, to set the mood (this is the morning after Harry has learned from reading the wizard annual that snape was a death eater))

---------
Snape didn’t speak, even after his breakfast was finished. He opened the odd newspaper wide and read, giving Harry almost no attention. It wasn’t until he had finished the paper and had it refolded neatly that he pinned his eyes on Harry who fixed him with a difficult expression in return.

“I don’t suppose you would like to learn chess?” Snape asked.

Harry lifted one shoulder, giving no ground.

Snape sat back, arms crossed, and matched Harry’s expression. “I don’t anticipate this situation continuing much longer, but I will point out, just in case, that should you need anything, you must ask. Winky will anticipate your hunger and thirst but I am not skilled at anticipating what else you might require.”

“True that it doesn’t look like you get to the clothing shops often,” Harry commented. “Or the barber’s.”

Snape tilted his head and his eyes widened. “Haven’t heard much of that tongue, have we? To your credit, I guess, that you are able to overcome sappy gratitude so fast; keeps it from clouding your mind.”

Harry crossed his arms as well and pushed back on the table leg to rock his chair back, a shouting offense in the Dursley household. “At least I’m not an evil dark wizard,” he retorted.

“Not yet anyway,” Snape mildly replied.

Harry swallowed. “What does that mean?”

Airily, Snape replied, “Only that you recently learned how to cross into the underworld and can command the grotesque creatures--demons shall we say--that dwell there.”

Harry’s brow twisted up. “I don’t believe you.”

“You haven’t seen them invade a room when you have lost control. I have.”

Harry tried to take that in. He had no sense of the man lying. “So what’s your point?”

“My point,” Snape smoothly replied, “is that a lily-livered white wizard would have dumped you on the street long ago what with your channeling Voldemort’s emotions and plans--hence your nightmares of him killing--let alone your mage-like skills with the plane where demonic creatures reside.” Snape relaxed a bit smugly, Harry thought, and added, “Look at it this way: I cannot possibly hold any of that against you. And as to the former, I am intimately familiar, unfortunately, with Voldemort and truly understand what he has put you through. There is no one else who could.” He appeared to rethink that, “Well, there is that little friend of yours, Ginny, who may understand, given that Voldemort took her over and forced her to do all manner of vile things such as kill all the roosters and write messages in their blood and set a deadly Basilisk on her school chums, but you don’t give her much of a chance beyond friendship.”

Harry shook himself as he tried to take in that diatribe. Finally, he said, “You’re just like my aunt and uncle, trying to make me feel grateful you took me in. They were lying too.”

Harry scored with that one; he could plainly see the man’s shift in attitude away from smugness. “I do not mean to be like your aunt and uncle. What an appalling thought,” Snape added after sipping his coffee.

Harry couldn’t help his lips curling slightly upward.

“Well,” Snape said, sitting forward. “We need to get through the day. I can certainly owl Candide, who I am positive would be willing to take a day off to spend it with you.”

“She your girlfriend?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” Snape said, lips pursed.

“I don’t need her; she’s too clingy. She needs to have kids of her own, you know,” Harry pointed out, sounding authoritative.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Right,” Harry taunted. “I’m just your first son. My opinion wouldn’t matter.”

Snape rolled his eyes and countered, “Your opinion has already been registered in the matter along the lines of I am chicken not to marry her, which may logically lead to your first point, of which your older self may have an interest, but certainly wouldn’t have any say.”

Harry put his chair down with a clunk. “Touchy,” he mocked.

Snape rubbed his forehead before glancing around the room as though looking for a distraction. “How about we go to the zoo?”

Harry froze and in a more amenable voice asked, “The zoo?”

"This way of travel is cheating, you know," Harry said when he was released. They had arrived between a brown stained wooden building and a fence. Myriad scents of animal fur and living quarters floated on the gentle breeze.

A boy of about six stared at Harry as he walked past, watching his heels catching on his cuffs. Harry propped his trainer on the next bench and bent to roll his trouser leg up better.

"You should have changed into something that fit, as I suggested," Snape said, waiting beside him. "You would pass for normal, then."

Harry straightened. "You should get a hair cut, then you would . . . oh, never mind," Harry said, exaggerating his turning away.

"Hum," Snape uttered far back in his throat.

They stopped before the elephants, who were rhythmically sweeping the ground with their trunks, gathering straw. Harry became lost in the scene, and the loud rasping noise. The largest elephant shook itself, starting with its great ears and working backward with great relish.

"You aren't simply going to stare at the same animals all day, are you?" Snape's voice broke into Harry's revery.

"You must admit they are huge and interesting."

"There are far more large and interesting creatures Muggles are not allowed to see. Dragons, for example."

"Really?" Harry said, losing all enmity. Gripping the railing, Harry rocked back on his heels to more secretly ask, "Is there a magical zoo?"

Snape's lips twitched. "There is a private one . . . but you have not been well enough behaved today to be taken to it."

Harry snorted, stepped down off the railing and walked along the pathway, stopping at something that looked like half zebra, half deer. They were just standing around flicking their ears, so he moved on.

When the crowd around them thinned, Harry said, "So, you don't keep any magical pets around except your owl. I'd think someone as evil as you would have a house full of red-eyed black cats to keep you company, to bring you the luck they steal from other people . . ."

They passed the camels. Snape was forced to wait to respond, "The only evil pet in the house is yours. She used to be blue, until you fed her your blood and she turned violet-colored."

"I don't believe you," Harry said, leaning far over the railing to better look up into the tops of an eyre.

"Suit yourself. Drinking your blood is what lets her feel your moods."

Silence reigned until the trail split off, one path leading to a building. "Let's go in here," Harry said, marching off to avoid being told otherwise.

"Ah . . . reptiles," Snape said as the dim, square walls closed around them. "The dark wizard's favorite."

They studied the poison-dart toads. "Doesn't look deadly," Harry criticized, nose close to the glass. "Looks too colorful to be anything."

"Truly powerful things hide their fatal tendencies."

Harry dropped back to his heels. "Yeah, right, Socrates."

They came upon the Rattlesnakes, mostly sleeping, but one of them slithered slowly around its matching gravel. Harry stopped to watch, mesmerized.

"Snakes are the evil wizard's absolute favorite," he said, sounding odd, like he talked around forcing down a smile.

"You would know," Harry said. They were alone in the corridor. "How many did Voldemort have?"

"Just one, but rather a large one," Snape replied. "Nagini he named her, and he spoke with her often. A skill that marks only the darkest of dark wizards."

Harry wanted to snort, but this sounded serious. "Really?"

"I saw him do it countless times. He could command her to spy for him, kill for him, even."

Harry stared at his face, his features sallow and even stranger in the low light from the windows opening into the reptile tanks. His black robes left his head to float, disembodied. This man intimately knew the evil wizard who had destroyed Harry's entire world and here Harry was, put in his care, which unlike his relatives, he seemed to be at least trying at. Harry looked away, feeling all kinds of things that pulled him in too many directions.

Harry slid his hand along the wall to the next tank. Snape read the tag. "Diamondback. Native to North America. Go ahead and ask it if it remembers the desert."

"Who, me?" Harry blurted.

Snape's dark eyes stared directly back at Harry. "Of course you."

Harry opened his mouth to reply with something snide, but closed it and turned back to the tank. The snake, whose scales resembled a weaving of sorts, lifted its head.

"Heeeelllo . . . Cowboy . . . " whispered through the glass as the snake's tongue flicked out.

Harry, strung tighter with nerves than he realized, sprang back from the glass. "You did that," Harry accused Snape.

"I did nothing. What happened?"

"Sssssorry to ssssstartle you . . ."

Harry held a hand up as if to fend off the snake. "Can't you hear that?" he demanded of Snape.

"I don't speak Parseltongue. At least, not at the moment. What did it say?"

"It said sorry for scaring me." Collecting himself, Harry stepped back the glass, so close his breath fogged it. To the snake he said, "Can you understand me?"

"Yesssss."

Harry bit his lip and stepped back again. "What did you call this?"

"Parseltongue."

Harry frowned, he had lost this round, clearly. "Let's go look at something else."

"Sssssee you later . . . partner . . ." The snake rose up to say.

Harry threw out a hand to wave goodbye and headed for the light shining from the doorway around the bend. Outside he stopped to blink in the bright light and headed randomly down another path, feeling sulky. He no longer found any appeal in the game of insults they had been playing and things grew quiet between them.

Ahead, Harry spied an ice cream vendor. Children stood around the broad umbrella, dripping treats onto their hands and clothing. Harry pointedly scuffed his feet and slowed as they approached, absolutely certain Snape would offer to buy him something. But Snape simply glanced at the pictures of the various chocolate covered delights and strode on, forcing Harry to follow.

After that, Harry paid little heed to the animals and when Snape suggested that it was time to go, Harry did not argue.

Upon their return, Harry shook his arm loose from Snape’s Apparation grip and strode back to the dining room. He had given too much ground on the trip, letting their insult game become almost fun, despite what had felt like an inexhaustible reserve of stubbornness. He did not like that he could talk to snakes like dark wizards could, and he was also a bit peeved that he hadn’t got ice cream. This had confused him badly and now he sat with his chin on his hand, looking glum.

Snape checked the post that had arrived in their absence and asked, “Something the matter?”

Harry wriggled a bit before responding. "I don't want to be a dark wizard."

"Then don't."

"What? It's that simple?" Harry mocked.

Snape returned his gaze with a level one. "In the end, yes."

"I guess you would know," he said, trying for more mockery. "That why you're here?" This last fell flat.

"Essentially." Snape put the letters he held down and gave Harry his full attention, something Harry was not used to except when punishment was being meted out. "I reached a limit and borrowed a moral compass from someone I respected, since my own was clearly not working."

"Dodgy doing that," Harry said, trying to imagine knowing someone he would trust that much.

Snape straightened. "Yes. Wise of you to recognize that."

This did not come out mocking at all, rather conciliatory. Harry saw an opening for his other complaint. “I didn’t get ice cream.”

“You didn’t say you wanted any,” Snape said, returning to his post.

“I always want it; you know that,” he retorted. He was certain he had made his mood clear after the reptile house. “Dudley always gets ice cream when he’s upset. And toys,” he added sulkily.

Snape glared at him over the envelope held up before him. “And had I offered it, it would have seemed to you merely a sorry attempt to buy your emotions.” Snape leaned closer, almost menacingly. “I am not your aunt and uncle, nor will I ever be. You and I are a family for reasons of loyalty, caring, and mutual understanding, not bribery. Believe me that it is sadly ironic that I understand that and you do not.”

Harry frowned more and put his head down on his arm. He wanted the man as his father back again, but not really. These opposing feelings were splitting him down the middle, he could feel the pull of it tugging on his deep insides.

“Harry,” Snape said, sounding caring, then apparently gave up with, “Never mind.”

“What?” Harry demanded.

Snape stacked the new post with the old and said, “You are making me fear that you, my old you, has merely decided that I am the best he could get for a family and forgives me everything solely based on that notion.”

Harry traced the deep wood grain of the table with his finger. “You’re better than the Dursleys,” he admitted.

Snape gazed down at him and said, “I think at one time I would have been pleased enough with that. Or perhaps not.” He picked up his post as a bundle and struck the envelopes against his palm. “I did not adopt you to hurt you or cause you such an emotional quandary. Quite the opposite,” he added quietly before departing the room.

I really should have a picture here, but I didn't bring the camera to the beach bar with wifi (pronounced Wee Fee).

Chapter 44 is up. I rather like the last scene which caused such trouble, initially. The progression of Harry's personality shift is going to speed up from here on.

Got a bit of a sunburn in one spot, which kept me out of the sun today (and subsequently at the computer, making edits, as you can tell)

Something about this trip, the theme seems to be tourist traps that have been thus since the year 1000.

My days have been wake up, drive, tourist, drink, sleep, repeat. I am totally wiped out, but fortunately we will be staying in the same place in Portugal for a few days in a row because Kevin has a conference.

I finally managed to align both some brain waves and the right mood for writing and polish up the last scene in the chapter. In retrospect I don't know why I had such trouble with it. It's a critical scene, but it played out the way it should. If that makes sense. It might not, I'm really tired and have to drive again tomorrow. When I close my eyes, I see roundabouts. And tonight probably pilgrims with bandaged feet, as well. People bike the St. Jacque route too. I'd recommend that. Those doing that look like much happier people.

Anyway, must sleep now that the room has cooled off enough for that.

We're currently driving on the coast of Brittany. Really really enjoying the Peugeot 207 convertible we got. At any rate. I'm having trouble with a really critical scene in this chapter (alone with being really exhausted when I get a chance to write). It's the last scene the chapter needs so once I get in the right frame of mind, the chapter will go to betas (I've worked the rest of the poor thing to death...)

Someone just sent me a PM asking how many chapters are remaining in Resolution. This is tough to answer and I've been notoriously bad at estimating in the past. However, pondering the outline... I think we have 15 chapters left. At a minimum.

So, I have this end game in mind, where Harry gets things straight, but the side effects of that are not insubstantial, so it's possible I need another 5 chapters to deal with/explore/exploit/whathaveyou that. So, let's say 20, to be safe.

That will peg it the word count meter at 600k. By the way, you readers are real champs. That's a whole lot o' reading.

In the usual places.

http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/viewstory.php?psid=213117
http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?psid=5321
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3470741/43/

Harry is being enormously cooperative about going all wonky dark. Heh.

Getting some stuff happening finally. Something I learned in my writing class "everything should push the plot along". Kind of obvious, but I guess I like to smell the Potions lab along the way a bit too much ;-)

Ragged Butterfly From the butterfly garden at Meijer's Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI

Xrayjuliet kindly donated a lovely sum to the Support Stacie auction and now there is an additional chapter to Resonance. For stylistic and plot development reasons it's not actually integrated in but posted as a separate story. In this story I was playing around with a different narrative voice that I rather like. It's a little freer than my usual one and allows for more wry humor.

Getting Detention Can be found in the following places:

http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?sid=9152
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5055350/1/Resonance_Chapter_23_A_Half_Getting_Detention
http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/viewstory.php?psid=267003

Enjoy!

Yes, yes, everyone is waiting on Resolution.

But a little break has been good for my creative juices. Work continues to be my biggest obstacle. Bad combination of lots of deadlines, but clients who are too busy to hold up their end. I'm tempted to take a year's sabbatical, honestly, not to get a total break, but to catch up.

But I digress. New story!

This was a what-if idea that captured my brain and had to be written down to get it off my mind. It felt a bit like Veiled while I was conjuring it, but it didn't turn out as successful as that one did. For one thing there is far less room to accomplish that level of closure. But I like how this story turned out. You have to read a bit into the way things flow to totally understand things.

The betas were awesome on this one. It really needed reworking, twice over, to get it where it is. Special thanks to Madderbrad, for lending a hand on that.

It's in the usual places:

http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/viewstory.php?chapterid=360189
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5037646/1/The_Sword_and_the_Doe
http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?psid=9103

As part of working on the second of my Support Stacie auction stories, I've been re-reading large chunks of Resonance. My writing style, tone, everything has changed and I'm trying to recapture it to work in an authentic chapter for the middle of it. I've picked a nice chunk of ground between chapters 23 and 24 for a little segue where Harry gets in trouble with his guardian, but things are resolved enough to slide neatly into 24. The end of 23 only needs the smallest tweak to make it flow, so it's a good spot.

Anyway, I'd forgotten how well I had flushed out Suze's character. I have this thing about being unable to resist doing things that are widely considered to be a bad idea, just to prove that it's not the idea but the implementation that goes awry. Suze was a Mary Sue experiment of sorts. I wanted to find the boundaries of this writing "mistake" so I could approach that edge as close as possible if needed. The limitations imposed by trying to avoid any and all whiffs of Mary Sue-dom are too onerous, I think. Especially in the Young Adult genre.

So, like an explorer, it seemed the only way to learn the boundaries was to send out a scout to map the cliff edge. Suze is pretty classic. She's too young to go to the ball, but Harry Potter of all people asks her to go. She's show great promise as a Seeker and has a wonderful broom to play with. She adores attention. She's a Slytherin and appears to make the best of the freedom allowed by being so.

Filling in the formula nicely there.

I did a couple of critical things while writing her that helped. She's not me. She's not even an alter ego as Aaron sometimes gets to be. I gave her undesirable physical limitations in the form of albinoism. I made her seek Snape's approval in a manner that makes the reader ambivalently uncomfortable while remembering doing the same at her age. I gave her serious antagonists to deal with, in the form of her parents and their perfectionist mentality. I managed to give the reasons for this an airing, although on re-read, I think Harry's quick psychoanalysis is tad out of character. Snape should probably be the one to make the assessments Harry does on this topic. But not a fatal problem. Harry's trying to be nice and make her feel better and it's not impossible he could come out with what he does. If I were to re-write it, I'd probably have Snape make this assessment to Harry alone and have Harry pass it on. Maybe not worth the extra work, though.

I think Suze works out just fine, until the scene where we see her at home with her parents. The cliff edge is getting crumbly there. I like the scene a lot because it explains why Suze is a Slytherin, and it flushes her character out in some nice useful dimensions. To badly paraphrase Tolstoy: Happy Hufflepuffs are all alike, every Slytherin is a Slytherin in their own way. Once I had made Suze a Slytherin, I was determined to establish why she was one and without that scene the picture would be incomplete. But at the crux of it, that side scene is purely a stunt to enjoy Suze's Mary Sue victory, however fleeting, over her parents. I knew it when I was writing it, so it's not a surprise, but confirmed on a re-read distant enough to judge it fairly. I didn't slide hopelessly over the edge, so that's okay. But the edge is definitely there. And it turns out the edge is not defined by lack of character dimensionality, or distorting of realistic plot line to meet self-absorbed immature emotional needs, the edge is defined, it seems, by the reader enjoying, too much, a character's success, especially borderline unearned success. You can break the other rules, but not that one.

I don't think this sort of character is utterly off limits, though. If you want young adult audiences to be engaged with reading, some of this is necessary. It has to serve the interests of a higher notion, though. I am not tempted to try adding another one into Resolution, I'll admit, but the exercise was worthwhile.

Some people commented about Suze's later appearance in Revolution, how Harry's opinion of her had shifted. What really shifted, I think, is I pulled her out of Mary Sue-dom and made her a normal character. I don't think she changed otherwise.

"Vegetable rennet" the label said. Okaaaay, I thought to myself, what the heck is that, and does it involve soy beans? After fifteen years as a vegetarian it is still odd to wish the label just said "rennet" so I could safely eat cow stomach and go about my day.

Turns out 80% of the world's rennet is produced by a genetically modified mold spliced with cow genes to produce chymosin, the enzyme found in the fourth stomach of a calf.

There are other vegetable sources of rennet and substitute coagulaters, including nettle, thistle, and creeping charlie, which demonstrates, if nothing else, that science is just a form of Potions carried out under better lighting.

Added: if anyone cares, I moved my picture a day to flickr, there is a link in the sidebar. Whoo hoo, my silly life in pictures capturing approximately 1/100 of a second, or 1/8640000 of my day.

Kevin at the dining room table/office holding the fat ornery one.

I think I will need a flicker account, as suggested.

I also don't think I will manage any art here, merely documentation.

Turns out the words "It's harder than you think" are magical ones that will get me to try anything.

A friend of mine had a custom book on her shelf which was her Picture a Day from a few years ago. She said it was a far better diary than writing even, but it's harder than you think. SOOOOO. I decided to give it a try.

( See pictures )

I read this on a plane the other day (we take piles of old magazines with us for entertainment) and found this article about retroviruses just utterly fascinating. I've been out of touch with science and did not know anything about how the placenta functions in mammals as well as how much of our genetic code is made up of debris from old retroviruses.

Even more fun. It is possible to resurrect an old retrovirus and test it to determine why closely related species are immune to aids or not.

A (sorta) related picture from my kitchen:

One Egg Shy of a Dozen Eggs from a local farm where they must have a veritable menagerie of chickens. I personally find the green ones the funniest, and not just because they are Suessian, they appear to be camouflaging themselves in the egg carton, because they are exactly the same color.

Currently I am diving into the first two stories due at the end of the month for the Stacie auction.

Starting with the What if Ron did not show up to rescue Harry from the pond in the Sword of Gryffindor scene in book 7.

Yum yum yummy

Hm, I just hope what I outlined doesn't turn out TOO creepy. A little creepy is good, too creepy, not so much.

It's up to the auction winner to decide what becomes of the story, and I haven't discussed that with the winner yet. I was thinking to present the story first and then see what the decision on that is. It might matter.

I few days late and a dollar short, as we say ;-)

It was too rough to send out (even to the betas) until I found some real time to smooth it out. I refuse to admit that one writing class has made me more conscious of mechanics and therefore is slowing me down. Really, I totally deny it.

Good class though. We are reading short stories and picking out the mechanical tricks in them and then writing our own examples using them. Fun stuff.

Wow. You guys are amazing. We are at $100, $151, and $40. (Thanks for being so generous, everyone!)

The Harry Potter auction has been split and now you can bid on just the story idea of Ron not showing up to rescue Harry when he is getting the sword out of the frozen pond. Or as I like to call it the Lady of the Lake scene, starring Severus Snape in Shimmering Samite.

I had a very strange idea for this story, triggered by thinking about how overloaded with old symbols the scene already was. It will be kinda creepy too.

And on a note of surreality. I leave you with a very old photo of my mom that I rather like.