“Dad! Dad! We have clouds today! Get a picture before it leaves, please!”
Well, she did say ‘please’. I’m always obliging when manners are used.
It’s not the best, but it was the one Han picked out of the three I took, so it’s going up for all of you to stare at and critique my amateur photography skills. We’ve had clear skies for days, so she was beyond excited to see something in the sky. I don’t have the heart to tell her that the clouds mean our weather pattern will soon resume its’ normal routine of twice-weekly downpours.
Fun times for the postman.
It’s finally Tuesday, and management couldn’t figure out a way to deny my half-day again. So I might actually get through the evening without suddenly falling asleep at the desk! I might even get to write tonight!
I’ve updated the Session Calendar with tonight’s priority list, and I’m hoping to finally finish Mardek’s Side Arc story. The past few days haven’t been the best for my nerdy hobbies.
Stay safe out there, readers! Maybe I’ll be able to post news later tonight.
I get that I occasionally say weird things for comedic effect, but I never expected “By Thunder” to become my version of the Ultimate Vow, or for such an example of my speech to become one of my regular statements.
I watched “Treasure Planet” at an impressionable age. Sarah is very patient with me and my antics, and I am grateful.
As the title should tell you, there was an attempt!
The moment of downtime from yesterday was taken up by the reason for the title’s question, which I will get to. Instead, I went about my traditional writing time, late in the evening and struggling against the exhaustion of being a late-30s guy with a manual labor career.
This is to say: I got another page of story before my sleepiness started influencing my typing, resulting in an additional two pages of incoherent babble. This means, unfortunately, that my late-evening awake period was spent cleaning up what I had worked on earlier and deleting the word salad.
Maybe I can sell the latter parts for political speeches. They’d probably make more sense than what those folks keep trying to promulgate.
In regards to developing the Lightspear Forms, I’ve come across an interestingly frustrating snag. I’ve been trying to find an artist who could help me with visuals to those Forms (who hopefully will understand that payment arrangements would be made; I support artists, but I am also poor and could never pay a full commission right off the bat) much like the Lightsaber Forms do.
These are absolutely gorgeous illustrations.
The snag was when I realized I couldn’t find the artist of the above illustrations in order to credit them or seek them out for possible work/references. I’m going to find out who made this artwork eventually, but the initial searches proved fruitless. That’s irritating to me; no artist should have their work up without their name attached to it. If any of my readers knows who created these illustrations, please let me know.
In the realm of the day-job, I was shown some kindness by my customers and presented with a gift: a new hat!
This is now my favorite work hat and I will not be accepting anything else.
We postmen complain about bad customers, but I have to say that I have good people on my route.
And finally, a moment of startled embarrassment. I’ve been learning what I can about the business end of being a writer, limited as I am without a higher education in the field (or any field, really; learned more math through my work than ever did in a classroom), and I was told by several folks that “I need an agent”.
‘Why’ was my first question. I’ve known of writers having agents and that doing so could help the writer with selling a series, but that’d make sense for an established author. For someone like me, who’s been writing for 20-odd years and hasn’t had a single response to his submissions, it strikes me as wasting the agents’ time. But I looked into it, nonetheless.
After a morning of research and not really finding any definite answers (ah, the internet; so vast and full of information, but dammit does need a library system to sort that information into ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ essays), I came across an agent who had some big names on his list. Terry Goodkind, Mercedes Lackey, Harry Turtledove, and what caught my full attention: Timothy Zahn.
I managed to find the firm and agent who represented authors I was a huge fan of (and vaguely interact with online; Turtledove is very polite to his fans), so what do you suppose I thought to be a good idea?
I wrote him an email. After reading his page and seeing how he went about taking on clients, I thought he’d be the person to ask for advice on the world of literary agents. I wrote about my personal science fiction story I was working on (I won’t be putting it up here, as there is a slim chance it could be publishable) and asked what I’d need to make it presentable.
That’s all par for the course with me, understand. I’ve gone to people seeking advice before, and thought nothing of asking questions of high-level writers (and when they respond, they’re genuinely helpful), but I’ll admit I was nervous about writing to someone like this individual. It wasn’t until after I hit “Send” that I realized something: my email has this blog’s address attached to its signature, as I write emails to current and prospective players.
I basically wrote a fan letter to a high-level literary agent, asked him for advice and what I needed to gain an agent, and sent him an invite to read a blog. My best case scenario is that the email was deleted before being read. At worst, he’s read it and come here to look my fan-fiction over, and that’d be the end of my writing career. I need a very deep hole to hide myself in from the sheer embarrassment.
So, with that story-time finished, I’m off to sling letters and hope for a few moments to whittle away more at the Sidewinder Stories. To the agent I inadvertently invited over here, if you’re reading this: I apologize.
Stay safe out there, readers, and check your email signatures.
The kids noted two things while we were ambling to leave the house this morning: “Dad, it’s still dark out here!” and “It’s way too cold!”
Sigh…they’re Louisiana kids, and they don’t have experience with autumn or winter temperatures. Gotta give them slack.
I, on the other hand, have fond memories of the South having actual seasons. Today is what we call “Mailman Weather”.
Amazing.
The kids will learn eventually that having triple-digit temperatures is not preferred, most likely when they realize that they’re not slowly cooking while playing outside.
While they’re struggling with weather changes, I’m handling my own struggle. I knew that it would happen eventually, but I was not expecting it to happen so soon: Math homework is confusing to this old man.
I have no idea what’s going on.
If this were algebra, geometry, or even basic calculus, I could help the kid. But I read the instructions and stared at this sheet for a solid minute before the 6yr old took it from me and said “It’s okay, Dad, I’ll ask Mom.”
Thank God Sarah is in the education field and an actual mathematician. I proved to be no help at all, and I find that to be deeply insulting.
There will be moments throughout the day that I’ll be able to work on the Sidewinder Stories. At this point, I’m pushing myself to finish Mardek’s Side-Arc so not only you can read it, but I can read the thing. This is what happens when you keep telling yourself to finish a story: you start obsessing over seeing the finished product.
With that, I’m off to sling letters and handle route maintenance to finish the half-day. 400 addresses to update…yay…
Welp, it’s just after dawn and it’s time I got back to slinging letters.
Yay…at least it’s pretty in the morning
The irony to this is that while my writing time is about to be severely reduced, the walking helps me go over my ideas. Hopefully, I’ll still have energy left to me by the evening to get at least a couple pages.
Though I did pack the tablet with me, so maybe I’ll be lucky and have a few moments of downtime. Here’s hoping.
With the kids off to school, it’s time I walked back into the office and the world of the postmen.
Don’t let the title mislead you: I’m still working on the Sidewinder Stories!
I just keep remembering that I have other things to work on, and occasionally I fall asleep.
I’ve been noticing a tendency during the sessions for my players to debate over the sources we use for the timeline. Me being me, I have only one real way to handle such an occurrence: Writing!
How often these essays will be posted, I can’t say, but I will set up their links before I write them out so players and readers will know that I’m listening to their questions and will make the effort to answer them.
As the evening is settling in, I’m getting ready for what will surely be a form of revenge from management: overtime. I won’t be seeing a less than 11-hour shift outside of Sunday for weeks.
With that, I’ll see to adding a little to the stories before bed. For everyone that’s made it to the end of this, I present Old Man Casey!
This bit of urban artwork has been up in my town for…I want say over ten years. It’s directly across the place I usually sit down at for coffee, so it’s also the thing I zone out on when I’m still sleepy or needing to caffeinate before the long drive home.
I like to think that one day, I’ll figure the artwork out. Or the artist will show up and tell me that I need to stop thinking too hard about what was a moment of fun to them. Until then, it remains a favorite object to zone out on.
Happy Monday, readers. Stay safe out there while I continue to wake up and meet the day.
I’ve always had a personal rule when it comes to any world-building or campaign-writing: if the players add something to my world and it fits, I need to respect their creative drive and add it to my campaign.
Now, with the current campaign being a Star Wars campaign set in the Expanded Universe timeline, I’m beginning to understand the pressure the authors of those novels must have felt when they were adding to the universe.
Last year, one of my players gave me some details to their character that I thought would add depth to the character, honor the players’ creative perspective, and enrich the Star Wars universe. Unfortunately, I also forgot to write the bloody details down, so when they gave me new details based on what they had said beforehand, I was understandably (from my biased perspective) confused. I went back through my notes and, to my horror, realized I had been moving from a point with background details that would not be in following with my rules on player contributions.
To Lina: I apologize. I didn’t write the damn thing down.
With that, I’ve spent the evening going through my background notes and adding the details necessary. Old Man Casey is, also understandably, sleepy from my late-night work.
Hard working dog right there, folks.
Now that that has been fixed, I can continue with my writing, or rather since it’s nearly midnight and I’m driving the kids to school in the morning, probably should go get what sleep I can.
I swear, I need to include a section for GameMaster Essays so I can explain what notes I have.
Stay safe out there, readers. Hopefully I’ll have Mardek’s Side-Arc ready for posting in a couple days, and the next Adventure posted shortly thereafter.
The dogs were understandably angry with us. Not only were we gone, but we put them up with people who gave them haircuts.
“I’m going to pee on everything.” -Indy
There’s a reason why I have the rule of “get everything on the floor put away” when we come home after a long trip. Not ten minutes after getting home, the corgi was peeing on any bag I hadn’t gotten to yet.
“I’m not getting 5 feet away from you for two days.” -Korra
The Goldens are old enough to understand that sometimes we leave, but the youngest of the pack, Korra, still doesn’t like it if we’re gone for more than a day.
Now that we’re all settled back at home, it’s time I prepared for the Main Arc session tonight! So much to do, such little time.
Stay safe out there, readers. I’ll write about how they did sometime tomorrow.
It’s been said to me before that when you set something in your memory, a friends’ vehicle or a regular but significant interaction, you start noticing it more often in your everyday life. In the past, I would have scoffed at this notion.
But ever since taking up with the US Postal Service, I’ve found it all but impossible to avoid noticing the presence of the post office, even on my day off. I’ll be at home all day, never once stepping further from my home than the property line, and I’ll see a mail truck in some sitcom or movie. My family has taken great delight in pointing out a collection box or postal vehicle and saying “Look, it’s you!”
The sarcasm is strong in my family.
There are moments, however, that I’ll spot something that reminds me of work but doesn’t annoy me. Those are things of history, mostly. When I find something I know we used to use but is largely defunct, I’m always intrigued.
Spotted this in Dallas while I was out walking. That is a mail chute. When you have a multi-storied building that has multiple offices occupying it, you need an area to drop off outgoing mail, preferably on a floor the postman can access quickly. So, instead of leaving outgoing mail outside the office, tenants would simply drop the mail down the chute, and it’d be collected at the end of the day.
I wish we still used these, to be honest. Not only would be useful, since it’s uncommon for building tenants to use the collection box, but it’d be a connection between me and my postal brethren of decades past.
Small moments like this are things I enjoy immensely.
Swift's Corner 