Over at Mur Lafferty’s blog I Should Be Writing (the blog version of her podcast of the same name), there is a section called News from Poughkeepsie where Jared Axelrod posts a writing prompt to help get writer’s started, well, writing. Usually they have a theme for the week, with a new prompt showing up almost every day. I love that the prompts are geeky and unique, and usually start my mind thinking about what else could happen. Or what I could write with that idea.

I finally got around to writing one based off this week’s theme of cybernetics. While I’m not sure that mine may technically fall into that category, I still am proud of myself for one, actually writing something for a change, and two, putting myself out there and posting what I wrote as a response for everyone to see. It may never progress farther than this prompt, but that’s fine. At least I’m writing. Now I just need to keep doing that.

“He’s waking up,” Wilhelm heard as he opened his eyes. He instinctively reached toward his head, and felt someone pull his hand away.

“Don’t touch it yet, Mr Ellis. We’ll be bringing you into the recovery room in just a moment where you’ll be shown how to work your new implant,” the young nurse smiled.

He certainly didn’t feel different, and didn’t feel any pain. This surgery was a much experience than having emergency appendix surgery when he was in college.

The door to his right opened and he heard the voice of his doctor call out.

“Send him in, we’re ready!”

Wilhelm stood and walked through the open door into the recovery room. His doctor was standing next to a chair, a long cable in her hand.

“Sit, Mr Ellis, and take this,” Dr Draper said, extending the cable towards him.

He looked at the connector at the end of the cable and felt his implant for the first time. His heart quickened as he began to realize just what he would have to do.

“Take it,” she said again, her voice growing impatient.

Wilhelm took the cable as he sat down and tried to connect the end to his implant. After a moment he felt the two click into place, and turned to look at his doctor.

“I’ll start the introduction program. It will teach you all you need to know,” she walked over to a computer and pressed a few buttons.

“Will I get to learn Kung Fu?” Wilhelm joked. “You know, like in The Matrix?”

She sighed. That same old joke never goes away. “Only if you survive.” She smiled as she pushed a button, sending the training program directly into his brain. His eyes widened with fear before they closed, a sight Dr Draper took amusement in seeing. Scaring new recruits never gets old.

Ever since completing the half at the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon last April, I’ve been considering trying again. As you may or may not remember, the half wasn’t what I had hoped it would be. Not only did I have an injury that kept me from running very much at all, I had a bad stomach bug the day before that left me weak and dehydrated, adding an hour onto my goal time.

So it’s been in the back of my mind that I need to do it again. I know that I can do it, and with the race just four months away, I need to keep up my training. I’m up to about four miles on long runs, which is a pretty good start. I’ll be taking it slow, so I don’t reinjure my hip. While it would be nice to increase my speed, I’ll be happy with just finishing under my time last year.

For those interested, I’ll be following my own modified Hal Higdon plan. It will mean I run 4 days a week, with a couple of days cross training. I’ve found that having one day off of complete rest gives me something to look forward to, in addition to giving my body rest and keep burnout at bay.

Week one is half over. Only about 15 more to go.

Fridays are the one day in the week when I don’t go to the gym. It helps give me a break so I don’t get burned out, plus gives me an opportunity to run errands during the week so I’m not so busy on the weekend. Usually those errands are boring and uneventful, but not today.

I’m on my way back to work, sitting at a stoplight waiting to turn left, with one car in front of me. There is a guy handing out small fliers and taking donations in a white, plastic bucket. He talks to the lady in the car in front of me, and starts walking to my car. I wave him off and mouth “No, thanks” without rolling down the window.

Side note - I don’t like to donate with cash like that for a couple of reasons. For one, you don’t know if the charity is legit, and two, I like to research and find out how much of my money is going to help and what it’s doing. The only exception is tossing some cash into the firefighter’s boot.

Anyway, while I had my hand up, I was rubbing it due to my tendinitis bothering me. The guy leaned over and had his face right next to my window, smiling. Here’s what happened:

Him: “Roll down your window!”

Me: “No, thanks.”

Him: “You in pain? Roll down your window!”

I could see he wasn’t going to budge, so I cracked it a little.

Me: “It’s just tendinitis”

Him: “Do you believe? Take my hand.” He put up his gloved hand.

Me: “No.”

Him: “Jesus Christ will heal you, take my hand.”

Me: “No he won’t,” as I rolled up my window and drove off since the light just turned green.

As a non-believer this amused me as I thought about it. Jesus would heal my repetitive stress injury through some guy standing on a street corner, as long as I believed! I guess if it didn’t get healed then I just didn’t believe or pray hard enough. Nothing like holding back a reward because the person didn’t do something exactly right or give they enough attention. Sheesh, that Jesus guy sure can be a douchebag.

There are a lot of tough things about being a feminist parent. One of the most frustrating is trying to find toys and books that don’t reinforce gender stereotypes. I’ve ranted a few times about “girl” toys, but this time will be different! This post is about books.

Since My Grrl is still young, it’s been easy to fall back onto favorites when it comes to reading her stories. We’ve had countless readings of Dr Seuss books, some Elmo and Dora books, and Spider-Man books. But since she is getting a little older, and partly because her folks need a little bit of change, I’ve started looking for some positive girl role model type stories.

The article over at The Guardian about feminist books for five-year-olds caught my eye, and I’ve already wanting to look into a few of the ones she lists. (I liked how she wrote her review of the books, and then the reactions of both of her kids to the story.)

An obvious ‘duh’ I should have thought of was Pippi Longstocking. I really loved the movies when I was a kid, although I think that might need to wait until My Grrl is a little older. It’s a definite idea to get for my niece who is almost 6 though.

One of the two books My Grrl has was actually on her list.

Princess Smartypants By Babette Cole

A riotously subversive read. “Princess Smartypants did not want to get married. She enjoyed being a Ms.” Princess Smartypants keeps giant slugs as pets and challenges her geeky prince suitors to roller-disco marathons. When one of them finally wins her over, she kisses him, intentionally turning him into a toad. “When the other princes heard what had happened to Prince Swashbuckle, none of them wanted to marry Smartypants. So she lived happily ever after.” Excellent. Although, interestingly, the children seriously struggled with the idea that anyone might not want to get married.

I really like the idea of the tough and smart princess that doesn’t need to get married or have a prince rescue her. However, I had a bit of a problem with the execution in Princess Smartypants. She was just plain mean to the princes. When we tell the story, we try to say that what she is deliberately doing to them isn’t nice. It doesn’t matter if the person is a prince, that doesn’t justify turning him into a toad just because you don’t want to get married. I really believe that the message could have been told in a kid friendly way, yet still convey the idea that a girl doesn’t have to get married or have a man to have fun and be happy. My idea was that the final prince did all the things she asked of him, and since he was a lot of fun, they decided to be best friends. Or something a little better than deliberately turning him into a toad. It could have also shown girls to tell people what they want, and to communicate. The story that her mother was pushing her to marry someone, and that the princess was trying to make the tasks impossible to get out of it, instead of just telling her mother what she wanted…just doesn’t sit well with me. Again, a good idea, but poor execution.

The other book we have is The Paperbag Princess.

Princess Elizabeth was planning on marrying Prince Ronald, who was practically perfect. Then along came a dragon, which destroyed her kingdom, kidnapped Ronald, and burned all her clothes so that she had no choice but to wear a paper bag. She tracked down and outwitted the dragon. She challenged the dragon to burn forests with fire and to fly around the world. The dragon completed the tasks but after flying around the world a second time became tired and fell asleep. Elizabeth then saved Ronald. He didn’t even thank her and told her to come back to rescue him when she looked more princessy. Then Elizabeth realized what a bum Ronald was, told him off, and went off to live her own life.

The Paperbag Princess story was better, but the ending was a little abrupt. Even My Grrl seemed to think there should have been more to the ending, but otherwise it’s a decent book. Recommended for those with young kids.

Anyone have any good suggestions for books we should buy her? I definitely want to check out the library, but I also want to support authors who create books with positive messages. I know there are some good kids books that feminists would be happy to read to their kids, or have their kids read once they can.

There are so many good charities that need donations, it’s hard to decide which one to give to. Or give at all in this economy. However, there’s one charity I’ve given to for the past couple of years, and this year was no different. Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Charity.

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over 5 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

This year, we have continued expanding across the country and the globe. With almost 70 partner hospitals and more arriving every month, you can be sure to find one from the map above that needs your help! You can choose to purchase requested items from their online retailer wish lists, or make a cash donation that helps out Child’s Play hospitals everywhere. Any items purchased through Amazon will be shipped directly to your hospital of choice, so please be sure to select their shipping address rather than your own.

When gamers give back, it makes a difference!

I made my purchase through Amazon yesterday, and the DVDs will be sent directly to Children’s Hospital here in OKC. It’s tax deductible!

If you either can’t make a purchase due to your budget, or you don’t do Amazon, Child’s Play also takes cash donations through PayPal. Even just a couple of bucks can add up if many people contribute.

I only wish I lived closer to Seattle so I could attend the Child’s Play Charity Dinner. There are tons of cool gaming items in their silent auction, with lots of cool people in attendance. One day I’ll make it to either the dinner, or even better, to PAX!

There were days where the words flowed out easily, days where each word was a struggle, and then there were days where no words were typed at all. The last one happened way too much in the early part of November, but I ended up pushing through and coming back.

That’s right, I finished NaNo this year.

A lot of the time I didn’t have any idea on where the plot was going, but I was able to have a lot of fun with character development. The funny thing to me was finally experiencing what many writers have spoken about; their characters doing things that weren’t expected. I never understood that before. I mean, I created them. I am writing their background, their personality, what they say, and so on, so why would they do something that wasn’t what I wanted? How it happened to me was when I would be writing out a scene that I had planned in my head. Nothing too detailed, just a basic idea of what I wanted the characters to do. But the character didn’t end up doing that. She ended up doing something different as I was writing out her actions. Even though I was the one driving her personality, she ended up having control over what she would do or wouldn’t do. I have to admit, it was kind of cool and interesting to experience.

So I’ll bet you’re curious what my story was about. I started with an idea that I saw over at i09. They were listing some creatures that deserved a shot at big success, like what vampires and werewolves are currently having. This one stuck out with me, especially the part I bolded.

Lich

Where you’ve see it: Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy.

What it is: Sort of like zombies with brains (and not the eating kind), liches are undead creatures who retain their intellect but whose bodies keep on rotting. They’ve generally chosen this way of non-life as a sort of perverse immortality.

Why it deserves a shot at the big time: Liches have been a staple of high fantasy, and it’s time to drag them into the modern era. Egomaniacal scholars, wizards, and business men could all seek to preserve their consciousness for future generations, with terrifying (and fairly gross) results. There’s a definite supervillainous quality to liches; they may not jump out and shout “boo,” but they’re likely to have a horde of horrifying minions. And when you finally see their faces, liches can be pretty frightening themselves.

I ended up with a hodge podge of Mass Effect, Event Horizon, Dead Space inspired space horror, where rich clients could preserve their mind as a Lich. It had a huge corporation behind the technology that made it possible, and the same corporation provided a planet in their privately owned system where the Lich could develop their powers, intellect, or whatever else they wanted. My heroine was a bad ass soldier who was infiltrating the elite security forces to investigate what was going on, since the corporation was hiding the Lich and their technology from the government.

My story had everything. Action! Conspiracies! Rotting, powerful, immortal creatures! Violence! Sex!

They only thing is that I didn’t finish the story. While I did hit the 50K mark, the plot didn’t find an ending. I wasn’t sure how to tie it all together, so I just kept dragging out the characters doing stuff to get the count. I’d be interested to see how I could get it all together and finish it. I still think it’s an interesting story. What do you guys think?

And speaking of dragging out the word count, I admit to cheats. Oh the cheats! Like unnecessary chapter titles, or not using contractions, or using an ellipse to count as a word, or very detailed sex scenes. The worst cheat it did was have someone singing the ‘bottles of beer on the wall’ song for about a page of text. Except it wasn’t just a bottle of beer, it was a bottle of an alien drink that had two words in its name. It’s not a cheat I’m proud of, but when it comes to NaNo, sometimes you need something, anything, to bump up your word count for the day. Of course, it’s the cheats that are the first to go when editing.

Anyone else do well? Not do well? Or the most important question of all… Are we going to do it again next year?

It’s the time of year when many employees are asked to give donations to charities through the Combined Federal Campaign.

CFC is the world’s largest and most successful annual workplace charity campaign, with more than 300 CFC campaigns throughout the country and internationally to help to raise millions of dollars each year.

It’s been a great way for me to give, since it’s deducted from my paycheck throughout the year. One that is always on my list to give to is Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma, but this year I wanted to give to some kind of skeptical charity. Or at the very least one that helped promote science and critical thinking.

I started by doing a keyword search of the charities for “skeptic”, but was not happy when the one and only hit ended up being this:

Reasons to Believe www.reasons.org Ministry that uses emerging scientific discoveries as strategic resources to
engage skeptics and equip believers with a fact-based foundation for Christian faith and outreach

Oh, joy. In addition I could also donate to Answers in Genesis. Yes, the same one that built the Creation “Museum”. Of course, there are many, many different Christian charities that are available, like the well known Catholic Charities, but I don’t understand how those two can make the qualification and re-qualification required each year.

So if I couldn’t give to a skeptical organization, my quest began to find a good science based one. Don’t get me wrong, there are quite a few really good organizations. Domestic, children, and sexual violence charities, AIDS charities, homeless and community organizations, civil rights…just to name a few. I ended up deciding on Science Olympiad:

Encourages male/female/minority K-12 students to participate in academic events at tournaments designed to promote career interest in science/technology/engineering/math (STEM) education.

Yay for getting kids into science! I really wish there were at least a few skeptical organizations available. I mean if quite a few creationist and “the bible is true!” type organizations can get approved for CFC (and believe me, there were more than just the two I listed), how hard could it be to get the James Randi Educational Foundation or the Richard Dawkins Foundation added as an option? I know I can’t be the only one who would love to give to a skeptical organization through the CFC.

If there is anyone involved in a non-profit skeptical organization, please please please look into the application for CFC for the next donation period. I will definitely donate if you make it on the list.

It was great to have my first visit to London fall on November 5th.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

A very happy Bonfire/Guy Fawkes Night to all! Ah, to be able to visit London again on this night would be great. I was there during my honeymoon 7 years ago, watching the bonfires and hearing fireworks go off in the neighborhoods near our hotel.

In honor of the holiday, read or watch V for Vendetta. Me, I think I’m eyeing a Remember, Remember shirt.

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

I’ve gotten used to bad commercials for video games. Especially when it comes to representing women who game. But the latest commercial for Uncharted 2 goes a step farther.

*sigh*

When I Googled for this commercial, the hits I did find thought this was hilarious. Some days it sucks being a female gamer.

I’ve mentioned that I did National Novel Writing Month back in 2005, and every year about this time I think hard about doing it again. Well, this year I am committing to it, and even though I haven’t really got a plot (ACH!), I’m diving into NaNo to attempt another 50,000 words in November.

Yes, you read that right. I’m going to try writing a 50,000+ word novel in 30 days even though I don’t have a plot.

But see, that’s part of the fun of NaNo. It will force me to just write without over analyzing everything. One of my issues is that I’ll start researching and find out my story idea doesn’t fit in the way the world works, so I’ll toss it. Other times I have started thinking about writing, but my inner editor will say “That idea has been done, and done better.” Or, that’s just “famous-movie-plot”. The thing I have to remember is something I read in a Wil Wheaton interview from last year:

I was working really hard on this one idea. I had this idea that I thought was really cool and I spent several days breaking the story before I realized I was writing Quantum Leap. This was really disappointing to me — not because I don’t like Quantum Leap, because I do, but because I didn’t realize that I had put those things together.

So I started a new story and then realized I was writing Enemy Mine. I said to my friends, “I’m writing Enemy Mine, what do I do?” And they said, “Enemy Mine is just…” Well, I forget the piece of literature, but it’s just two men on an island.

And one of these guys said to me, “Just write your two men on an island story.” And I said, “But it’s Enemy Mine.” He said, “Really, is it these two exact guys doing exactly these things?” I told him no, it wasn’t, and he said, “Then it’s not Enemy Mine. It’s two men stuck on an island together.”

Actually, you know what? I don’t think it’s name-dropping; Ed Brubaker told me that. He tells people this all the time because he was given this advice when he was a neophyte writer. He was stressing out about there not being a lot of new stories to tell and someone else said to him there are only five story ideas.

The problem for us is that Alan Moore has done all five of them — and he’s done them better than anyone ever will. But Ed said, “Men on an island. Just write it. It’s okay.”

I really try to remember this. It’s really good advice when you think about it. How many different zombie movies do I really like or love, but are basically the same plot? Lots, really. So it’s very possible to have the same basic plot, but make a good, enjoyable, yet unique to the genre, story.

I’m not positive I’ll end up with a zombie story, but I did pick up a sourcebook for All Flesh Must Be Eaten called All Tomorrow’s Zombies. When I saw the cybernetic zombies IN SPACE, I couldn’t pass it up. I’m shooting for a sci-fi story this year, yet I can’t help including some kind of horror element. It’s what I know best.

And besides, futuristic zombies IN SPACE? Who could pass that up? If you’re planning on NaNo, add me as a writing buddy!