I’m leaving for Seattle in the morning.

I’ve previously discussed my visceral fear of flying, but tomorrow represents a new kind of challenge: the layover. I figure if I can deal with two flights in one day without weeping, then I’ve probably conquered my fear, or at least found a way to manage it.

It will be an odd sort of vacation. For one, I’m working during it (the main benefit of freelancing being the freedom), also, as soon as we get back, we have to pack up the condo (at least a good chunk of it) and get it ready to go on the market a week Thursday.

Either way, it should be a good trip. Lots of food and drink, a couple readings, and a chance to meet up with some friends. It’s the last week of the write-a-thon as well, and I’m planning on a sprint to the finish.

I just need to catch my breath.

Here’s the new car. 2008 Saturn XR

While technically a GM vehicle, it’s a European import and has the world’s coolest sunroof. As an aside, the purchasing experience was exactly (and refreshingly) as Saturn promotes it: no hassle. Plus they let us go on a test drive that was 3X as long as any other we’d been on. The only thing that would have improved the experience was maybe some free candy. Otherwise, high marks.

To wit, in the last week I have:

- Taken on two new clients
- Purchased a car
- Booked a vacation (leaving in five days no less)
- Found out I’m moving to Waterloo
- Decided to put our condo on the market in early August

After months of being unable to count myself amongst those claiming to lead a “busy lifestyle”, things have made a sudden 180. It’s not like I was sitting around with a proverbial thumb up my ass, but there’s been a definite shift in momentum.

As such, it’s been difficult to put fingers to keyboard – a lot of my writing this week is going on inside my head. I’m creating cerebral character sketches and jotting things down when I have time. I have to do some painting around the condo this weekend – hopefully the fumes will help with ye ole’ creative process. Couldn’t hurt.

It’s been a crazy week around here. Very busy work wise, and there has been some interesting Life Events (when you capitalize it, the events sound bigger. Like asteroids or something.) All good things, details to come.

In consumer news, I ended up buying an iphone so I could be more mobile, while still running my business from home. Quite happy with it so far. Though Rogers, as Dan says, are kind of idiots about contracts, etc.

The two of us also finally purchased our travel package for Seattle. We’re leaving on July 28 and we’re back on August 2nd. Should be a good time, and I’m quite looking forward to going back.

Writing has been happening a little more slowly this week, as most of my word-energy has been dedicated to the day job, but I’ll be catching up this weekend.

Right after I go car shopping. (See? Things happening.)

It poured rain for about an hour yesterday afternoon, and we got soaked through, but it was warm enough afterwards that even though everyone was wet , no one was cold.

The highlight of the day for me was seeing Stone Temple Pilots (that’s a picture of a the mostly-lucid Scott Weiland that I snapped above). Really tight, powerful set that featured all their old stuff. For an only recently reunited group, they didn’t sound rusty at all.

Linkin Park wasn’t bad, too. They do the whole Loud thing really well.

I think I’m getting old, though. Today my neck hurts and I can’t hear a damn thing.

Now that my first write-a-thon story is drafted, I wanted to cleanse my palette a little before moving on to the next one. Here’s another free-write exercise. 400 words from the pov of a character put in a new situation via a witness protection program.

Betty did bombs. Explosives. Fucking grenades. Betty didn’t do birthdays.

It was a suitable punishment then, that since she’d been plopped down in the middle of suburban New Jersey with four summer outfits and a nicely furnished two bedroom condo, every Saturday was spent in someone’s living room or backyard, eating cake.

That’s what you get for accidentally setting fire to the Russian Consulate.

“Is this black forest?” She said to Margaret as they watched the older women’s kids slide back and forth on the teeter-tooter. “God. It must be. So moist.” The words coming out of her mouth were as sickly sweet as the stuff going in.

You need to blend in. The suits in DC had told her. Fit in or they’ll find you.

Yum. Cake.

Margaret licked her hairy upper lip. “Oh, honey, you have no idea. I had to tell the lady behind the counter three times that I didn’t want that dry vanilla stuff we had at Leona’s last week. “

Margaret was a friend. Hmm, no. Maybe a ‘friend.’ She was nice enough, able to show Betty the ropes around town while providing a nice stash of local gossip, but with her pale skin and weak wrists, she was the kind of woman that Betty would have snapped in half is she were still working for the Covenant.

She took another bite of the cake, jabbing her tongue into the dull, cold prongs of the blue plastic fork. It was just past fifteen-hundred hours. She was supposed to be knee-deep in mission plans, not wrestling with her skirt.

“I love that outfit, by the way.” Margaret pointed her mojito in Betty’s direction. “The floral pattern is just lovely.”

“Thanks.” Betty took in Margaret’s beige pants hitched up to her sagging breast line. “I, uh, I really like the cut of your slacks, too. Very modern.”

In this moment, Betty wanted to blow something up. A half pack of matches were sitting next to the pastel clumps of used birthday candles. Seeing them made her fingers crawl with urgency. She held on tighter to her paper plate, but it was beginning to buckle.

Margaret took it and used it to gesture towards the kids. “How about a game of pin the tail on the donkey?”

Not now, Margaret. Not unless you have a Beretta 501 Sniper Rifle. And maybe a variable-power scope.

“Where are the onions?” She asked.
Walter had gone to the store with the other locals who had chosen to avoid the suffocating death of the military hole-ups. Together in morbid silence they had rummaged for produce enough for a few last meals. As usual, he had come up short.

“Great.” Anne swallowed her tears as she emerged from the fridge. “Fucking radishes.”

As soon as it started raining I ran out on the balcony for urgent, strategic Jade Tree placement. Dubbed ‘Jade Willow’ by Dan, who has a fascination with naming all plants after a certain red-headed witch, it’s been with me less than a month and it’s already starting to shrivel. Am I watering too much? Too little? Poor Willow.

They’re supposed to be really hard to kill, but that’s what all the green-thumb types say about bamboo too, and I have three cute little dried-up stems of it in my living room to prove otherwise.

I’m good with other living things, I swear. I’ve kept the cat going for like five or six years now. Sure, he may have a bit of a weight problem, but he’s happy. Thank god he’s not green. He’d be dead in a week.

Ho-hum.

I’ve finished the first draft of my alien invasion story, though to be honest, it’s not really ‘finished’ so much as I arrived at an interesting ending that really doesn’t have anything to do with the beginning. This is nothing new for me – I end up reverse engineering a lot of my fiction. I’ll go back and hopefully be able to bring the rest of the narrative in line with the ending.

Same goes for day-to-day life, at the moment. I’ve got little bits and pieces that are working well, and I know where I want things to end up, I just need to find a way to make everything fall into place.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this can be accomplished with magic beans or a rocket ship powered by Shetland ponies. I tried the latter and it didn’t end well.

I guess that only leaves effort. Time-consuming, frustrating, liberating effort.

Yay?

My dinner-party story has been put on the back burner.  I still plan on writing it, it’s just that it was getting very weird: Rob Roy showed up.  Then Bono.  And I don’t want to subject anyone to anything resembling the middle act of Across the Universe.  

But all is not lost: I’m now over 2000 words into my new alien invasion story.  To me, alien invasion can be totally cool or incredibly cliché, and I look at getting this piece into the former category as the challenge.  Here’s a tiny excerpt:

The klaxon at the end of the street released one last curdling scream before breaking down into unending feedback. Walter was alone, then.  The dead eyes of his wife and the thing inside her casting judgment upon him in the dark.

Also, this morning I sent out my Niagara Falls story “Horseshoe” to a good market, so we’ll see what happens.