Barkerburgh

The night of Wednesday, December 12, 2007, and into Thursday morning, I spent several hours playing Quake II, Warcraft III and Mechwarrior III, and a little Thief. I’d spent an hour or so working on NaNoWriMo 2006 and the TV was on in the background. Once or twice the William Shatner Warcraft commercial came on.

Part of the NaNoWriMo 2006 project involves non-imitative Star Trek replicator type technology which is related to holodeck technology, and I was writing a scene that involved its use. (NB: Star Trek didn’t invent it first. I’d mention Venus Equilateral, but…)

I’m mentioning these as likely influences because when I went to bed, I dreamt.

When I dream, man, do I dream. And I dream in colour.

(more…)

In response to popular demand, here is the Word document version of my 2002 novel, The Word in the Box.

From the Barker Reviews, May 2003:” It is about a boy named Martin who is given a quest; to find a magical word in a box, and that word, when spoken, will make everything perfect and everyone perfectly happy. He’s never been on a quest before, and never met any magical creatures, that he is aware of, and so this quest promises to be both interesting and educational. For him and the reader.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Here’s the thing. And it’s the same thing that bogged me down last year. I spend way too much time tweaking, massaging, improving and otherwise editing what I’ve already written, rather than just writing the story, then coming back later to fix things up, and otherwise edit.

Here’s your task: keep me hoppin’. I’m a little bummed on this, so you be my Jacob Marley (and three spirits). Text, email or comment me to remind that, as in all things, time is short, life is shorter, 2006 was over a long time ago, and I’m on the downhill slide to who gets to pawn my bed-hangings and candlesticks. It’s all up to you now. And me. More me than you, really, I suppose. You’re like maybe 30%, 35 at best. But 30% of a success is certainly better than 30% of something less succcesful, isn’t it? So you hang in there. I’m counting on that 30%. Maybe 35.

(I suppose you could be my Clarence, too. But that’s a whole ‘nother life.)

And y’all keep wishing me luck, now, just like y’all have been!  If you do, I promise I’ll stick my head out the window on November 30 at midnight to shout “You there, boy, what day is this?!”

I’m not entering NaNoWriMo this year, but instead will work on finishing my last year’s project which so many of you contributed ideas to.

I have transferred the research and background notes to MediaWiki - a freakin’ godsend for this sort of thing, as you well know I know well - and will use that to carry on.

I won’t say I’ll hit 50,000 words, but I may very well go over…

There will be much and sincere wishing of luck starting…Now.

So mosta y’all recall, I’m sure, how I found a Pentium III on the sidewalk along the Danforth a few months back. 650Mhz, 128 meg of RAM, since upgraded (via once forgotten RAM chips) to 320. There was a DVD reader (not much more than just that), a CD burner, a good video card (since upgraded to a Reid-supplied GEForce 3 card), a good sound card and a good (reliable, unlike its Win98 predecessor) network card.

What I don’t think I whinged about too much was that I thought my story files (novels, novel-like projects, and short stories) were on an unaccessable hard-drive, perhaps damaged by storage since the pre-Christmas total crash. I had plugged it in to the system and the system wasn’t recognizing it. Well, here’s the thing of it. It wasn’t the system or the drive. It turns out it was the IDE ribbon cable. On a whim on Thursday night, I replaced it and now I have access to all my soon-to-be-great novels and stories. Including my once long-lost NaNoWriMo novel, which I can once again work on. Huzzah.

To be honest, after I thought I’d lost them, I was seriously bummed. I felt like the stupid old universe had finally won, after all I’ve been through. But, finally, optimist that I am, inveterate mental Snoopy dancer that I am, I won. Finally.

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Simon likes to walk now, no stroller for him. Yesterday while we were out we went by the firehouse just a half a block from home. On the pretext that Simon has his own firetruck (which he does) and he likes it (which he does) I asked a firefighter if we could go in and take a close look at the firetruck (a pumper) that we could see through the closed door. The firefighter ran the lights, goosed the siren and pumped the air horn for me. Simon. Who, while a little spooked at first, nevertheless liked it just fine. So did I.

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And if you’re ever in the St. Clair and Dufferin neighbourhood and you want a tasty nosh, totally check out the Anatolian Pizza & Doner Kebab House. Have the lahmacun, pronounced approximately ‘lommajun‘. It’s this delicious Turkish pizza that smells exquisite and tastes as good as it smells.

Well, I’m not going to make the NaNoWriMo deadline.

I have just over 21000 words in the three part story that grew out of your suggestions.

I’m going to keep working on it because the idea and storyline are good and who knows, it might go somewhere.

Thanks to all who contributed suggestions and woe to those who didn’t: you know who you are.

Way behind. More later.

I always invite myself over, like I did last Thursday night.

Luisa prepared pizza dough in the bread maker and provided toppings, cheeses, sauce, pans, the whole nine yard shebang.

Now going back a couple of decades, one of my ‘hospi-fuckin’-tality industry’ jobs included preparing pizza crusts practically from scratch, so when I got to do my own crust on Thursday, (I got the traditional round pan), all my ancients skills tried to surface, not entirely successfully, I will admit, but sufficient unto the day.

I tried to create a balance, a harmony, of all the ingredients, including, as some forget, the cheese and sauce. These are often overdone, either individually or together. Again, not entirely successful.

However, it turned out great, I got to take home what I hadn’t finished and it was great cold the next day!

Spent a great evening with the family, even though I don’t like them very much (I’m sure I don’t have to tell any of you how they all are), and as usual got to see a lot of Reid’s cool new stuff, whatever it might be.

Didn’t right a goddamn word for NaNoWriMo that day, though.

Until Reid’s finished renovating tnir, my NaNoWriMo updates will be at http://my-nanowrimo2006.blogspot.com/

Good luck, Reid and thanks for keeping good old tnir going this long, all the time hosting us all and all our stuff…

So here’s what I’ve done with the contributions.

I made two lists on my W2K machine. One is the contributions sorted by contributor (that’s you, except if it isn’t, and you know who you are) and the second is just the contributions themselves sorted alphanumerically (not just alphabetically because one of them involved a 600 pound hamster…)

Some of the ideas reminded of a dream I’d had several years ago, involving doppelgangers from a parallel universe and an alien invasion of the solar system some time in the future, so that was the framework I started to hang everything on.

Now, if you go to the comments and look at the contributions, you might think I can’t integrate them all, as ideas, as springboards, as contextually appropriate dialogue, or anything. But I have.

You’ll see.