I bombed out on a relatively easy goal for Camp NaNoWriMo 2018
I had to visit the emergency room after two days of throbbing pain in my mouth
I had to visit the dentist due to the above and get a semi-tooth yoinked due to infection
I had to take antibiotics due to the above which have fun side effects like diahhrea
I barely ran at all due to weather, my suddenly sore knees and general ennui
I gained 1.1 pounds (I’m actually surprised it wasn’t more)
I felt like no progress was made in work-related matters (this may change)
I wrote almost no fiction at all
My one-post-per-day blog rule fell to dust (this is post #21 and I’m pretty sure I’m not cranking out nine more tonight)
Other stuff
There were also some good things and I am more hopeful for May. If nothing else the weather should be better.
Also I’m going to start the 21-day complaint-free challenge again. I feel like I went from being super-observant in watching what I was saying (ie. complaining) to just opening my mouth and spewing rants almost randomly. I need to get back on track and find my inner teddy bear.
I am typing this on a Logitech K750 wireless solar-powered keyboard. It’s got low travel, laptop-style keys, but they still have more travel than, for example, the keyboard on the current-gen MacBook Pro. It’s pretty quiet to type on. My main complaint is that there’s no tenkeyless version. I’d prefer that so I can move the mouse closer to the keyboard, as I don’t use the numeric keypad all that often. Also, it’s got a glossy surface around the keys, which is reflective and mildly annoying. Still, it’s pretty good.
But I miss the mechanical keyboard I was using previously, a Das with blue switches–the noisiest ones you can get, pretty much. But it felt very nice to type on. I’d thought about getting a tenkeyless version (not from Das, they don’t make one), but after trying out the WASD six-key tester that includes all six popular switch types, I finally decided a tenkeyless with red switches would be a better choice. The red switches would offer the benefits of mechanical keys, but without the loud clicking and with less force required for actuation. Win-win.
I ordered the Cooler Master Masterkeys S with red switches and it arrived today from Amazon.
The keyboard works fine, but I was immediately surprised at how much noise it still makes despite having “quiet” keys. There’s no distinctive blue switch CLACK but it still definitely makes a distinctly unquiet click when keys are pressed. Also, the sound makes the keys seem weirdly hollow. I’m not sure I like it.
I’m thinking a tenkeyless with blue switches may be the best choice after all.
BUT…I just tried testing the six red o-rings that came with the WASD tester on the Cooler Master keyboard and I like the results enough in terms of noise reduction that I’ve ordered a full set of o-rings. I should have them in a few days and I’ll see if they do the job. If not I’ll consider exchanging it for the blue switch version or maybe go for a custom-designed WASD keyboard, which, while pricey, would definitely say ME. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
Anyway, I now have a whole pile of keyboards:
Das mechanical with blue switches
Filco mechanical with brown switches (tenkeyless)
Cooler Master mechanical with red switches (tenkeyless)
Logitech K750 scissor switch keyboard
Another solar-powered Logitech designed for Macs/iOS devices (no keypad but not tenkeyless, either)
Yet another Logitech low travel keyboard, the K380–but not solar-powered!
A Corsair gaming keyboard with mechanical switches that I hated so much I don’t remember the details, but it disabled the Windows key by default and you had to run a macro to enable it. It also weighed 100 pounds.
Probably a few others I’m forgetting
I may need professional help. Or maybe another keyboard.
The bad news is my weight is up for the month and up more than March. The good news is…um…April was kind of a terrible month so maybe being up 1.1 pounds is not so bad. Also, I have been jumping up and down about 1.5 pounds lately, so it’s quite possible that tomorrow I’ll have actual weight loss showing.
Nonetheless, the fat stats:
April 1: 167.1 pounds April 30: 168.2 pounds (+1.1 pounds for the month)
Year to date: From 162.3 to 168.2 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)
And the body fat:
January 1: 18.5% (30.2 pounds of fat)
April 30: 19.5% (32.8 pounds of fat–up 2.8 pounds)
My goal for May is to stop inflating. To put it less ambiguously, my goal is actual weight loss. You know, where my weight goes down instead of the opposite of down.
Also, despite all evidence to the contrary, I remain donut-free.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, is in a small way a depressing read, in that author Daniel Kahneman explains–as documented by years of research and studies–just how susceptible we are to leaping to the wrong conclusion, making clearly unwise choices and falling victim to blatant manipulation.
On a more positive note, Kahneman also shows how we can at least be aware of both how our brains work when making decisions and the ways it which our brains can be manipulated, whether through deliberate action or side effect.
The book lays out its essential premise, then builds on it in citing the many studies Kahneman and others conducted. The premise is that our brains run on two main systems, System 1 being fast, driven by emotion and intuitive, while System 2 is more deliberate, logical, but also kind of lazy, often letting System 1 win because doing all the background checks on what we impulsively think is right is just too much work. To our benefit, it turns out that System 1 is right most of the time.
The bulk of the book goes into detail about various ways we filter the world and how these two systems deal with what we find, whether it’s making a seemingly safe but sub-optimal choice due to loss aversion (we feel loss much more than we feel gains, something that can be used by companies or other agencies to steer us toward the choices they want us to make), or letting the last memory of an experience shape our desire to go through it again, even if that last memory is not representative of the experience overall.
This is a thorough book and the author does at times belabor the points being made. A few edits would keep all of the ideas presented intact while only losing some redundancy, but Kahneman’s writing style is completely accessible, so the difficulty is entirely in the length and not in the prose.
Equal parts snarky and respectful, this look back on the paperback horror novels of the 1970s and 80s is a gruesomely delightful trip down memory lane.
Hendrix’s language in describing the outlandish stories moves beyond colorful and into tasteless at times, but I could never decide if it was in keeping with the spirit of the books described or if he was trying (and perhaps failing) to adopt the presence of a guy at a bar sharing some whacked-out stories with you. It doesn’t come up a lot and I suspect it won’t be an issue for most people attracted to this book, but be warned all the same.
How you read this book will greatly affect your enjoyment of it. This is not something to read on a Kindle or Kobo ereader. If you are not in possession of a paper copy, you owe it to yourself to read this on a larger tablet, all the better to take in the dozens of gaudy, gory and inevitably skeleton-filled book covers. I recognized a few here and there, but even as a fan of horror in the 80s, a lot of these were new to me.
Did I mention the skeleton covers? Skeletons were very popular.
When you’re not drinking in the bloody book covers, Hendrix provides a somewhat truncated overview of the period, dividing the chapters into different themes such as Hail Satan, Creepy Kids, Weird Science and so on. For everyone who scrunched up their toes at that scene in Stephen King’s IT (hint: it involves sex and kids), Hendrix lays out stuff that is far worse here, stuff that layers on one outrageous, offensive, gory, horrible, disgusting thing on another, then slices them all in half with a machete and serves them up for dinner, with the boiled blood of babies as the gravy. I’m probably underselling some of these novels on how gruesome they are–and this is before Hendrix even gets to the actual splatterpunk sub-genre.
In a way, Paperbacks from Hell is sad, as it chronicles the rise of popular horror fiction that began after Rosemary’s Baby became a hit in the late 60s, and follows along as it sputters out in the early 90s. This is when horror proper gave way to thrillers (aka a million variations on “killer on the loose” stories). While Grady doesn’t talk about contemporary horror, a visit to any decent-sized bookstore (those that remain) will reveal that not much has changed. Horror is again a niche, and in some ways worse (or better, depending on your perspective), with endless series based on zombie apocalypses, other apocalypses, or zombie apocalypses mixed in with other apocalypses. If you like zombies, though, you pretty much have a lifetime smorgasbord already waiting for you.
In the end, though, it’s the lurid full color book covers that make Paperbacks From Hell worth looking through. There is enough here to keep a Ridiculous Book Cover blog going for years.
Recommended for fans of horror or fans of paperback art who don’t mind the occasionally gruesome work. And lots of skeletons.
Nothing here, just a picture I took while walking along the Brunette River.
(I kind of wished the phone or I was smart enough to keep the flowers in focus. Maybe there’s an app for that. At least it’s not shot from the standard “hold camera out in front of you” height like every other picture I take.)
I do not recommend waiting 30 years between visits to your dentist.
My partner Jeff called his dentist and got me an emergency appointment today at 12:30 p.m. so they could look at and determine what to do with my infected ex-tooth (extract with prejudice seemed the only real option).
I wasn’t totally sure if they would look today and excavate later, but it became clear early on that time and tide and infected ex-teeth wait for no man.
Fortunately, dentistry has improved a good bit in the last 30+ years.
The dentist and assistant were both friendly and explained everything, especially after I voiced my unfocused anxiety that had kept me away as an adult. The chair now moves up and down with the press of a button. I’m pretty sure the last time I sat in one it was operated with a foot pedal and brute force.
Directly in front of me was a flat panel screen showing images of what appeared to be some rural area in South America. The people had nicer teeth than me, which I supposed was the point. Then an image of a steer staring into the camera came up and I was confused. I later learned the images were from work my (new) dentist had done in Central America. I am unclear if he worked on the steer. It wasn’t smiling.
The dentist acknowledged that old dentistry was pretty primitive (I think of McCoy exclaiming about the medieval medical technology seen in 20th century Earth in Star Trek IV) and carefully explained everything he was doing or would do and how it was way better than the old days.
The first step was to take an x-ray of the affected area. I was asked after if I wanted to see it and declined, because how could it not be grossbuckets? I don’t want to see gross things that are inside me, even if they are about to become outside me.
If you don’t like descriptions of dental work, stop reading now or skip to the last paragraph.
First he used a cotton swab to apply some topical numbing gel to the area that would be frozen. This helps reduce possible pain while getting the freezing shot, and indeed, I felt very little of anything as my mouth was frozen. A promising start.
After giving it five minutes to set, the work began. The dentist reassured me that it would be quick and relatively painless, thanks to the infection. Yes, this seems weird. He explained that teeth normally set their roots into the bone and used the analogy of fence posts in cement. Very tough to get out. However, the infection around my ex-tooth’s roots had basically turned what would be cement into goop. The three individual root pieces would come out easily.
And the first two did, popping out with no sensation at all.
I got jabbed with some more freezing at this point, and I did feel a little pain, for which both the dentist and assistant profusely apologized. I actually felt bad mumbling a complaint.
I also realize how super-tense my body was and made an effort to relax. I closed my eyes and couldn’t think of anything to distract myself with, so I just kept them closed and focused on not making my body an unbending board.
The third root was a little trickier to get to. I heard sounds in my mouth I don’t like hearing. I tasted something gross. I’m not sure what it was, but they apologized again and suctioned it out.
The suction was very weird. They told me to clamp my mouth on it for maximum effectiveness, but when I did it felt like it wanted to pull out my insides. It didn’t hurt or anything, it was just strange. I want to say it sucked, but I’d never do that.
The third root came out and the dentist poked around a bit more, removing some of the infected tissue, to help speed healing. He advised me I would probably want to take the T3’s I’d be given, though the assistant offered that Advil could work, too, with the bonus of not messing with my stomach or mind.
I took the T3 when I got home.
The work was complete within half an hour or so and I left with gauze clenched on the left side of my mouth. It’s out now and I don’t think it’s bleeding, but I have more gauze just in case. The freezing has mostly worn off now, so the puffy face look has diminished.
I was told to eat soft food today and be careful with hot/cold food or beverages over the next few days. I can brush tonight, but not swirl anything around in my mouth. Using a straw is forbidden in the same way turning 31 was in Logan’s Run.
Now I wait for the pain as the numbing wears off, to see how effective the T3 is, and I anticipate the soft eggs or soup or whatever it is I’m having for dinner.
And I’ll be making an appointment for a regular check-up like I should have done 30+ years ago.
Overall, not exactly a delightful experience, but definitely not as bad as I’d expected.
Yesterday my ex-tooth was causing me no end of misery in the form of a constant sharp pain in my upper jaw. It was the kind of thing where if you thought about it, if you concentrated on it, you could make it worse, get it to really start throbbing. Doing the opposite, focusing on getting into a Zen-like state of calm, would minimize it, but at best it would become a constant background thing, kind of like someone mowing the lawn outside your window, except they inexplicably do it for the entire day without taking breaks.
I was given two things to help with the ex-tooth. Tylenol 3 for the pain–remember, Tylenol 3 is not like the over-the-counter version. It’s a narcotic and enough of it can make you quite silly. The other was the antibiotic to combat the infection. I was given a T3 and an Alleve tablet before leaving the hospital, then took the antibiotics about half an hour later, after getting the prescription made.
Within half an hour of that, the pain was gone. Not just blunted, but essentially gone. The area around the ex-tooth is tender and sore, but the actual pain is gone. Today I’ve been continuing to take the antibiotics, but no T3s, and the pain is still gone.
It’s actually a little unnerving how effective the drugs have been. It makes me wonder how often they are used to similar effect for more nefarious purposes. Mostly I’m just glad we have medicine that can do this kind of stuff, because trying to distract myself from pain is something I can only manage about 50% of the time. I’m like a half-monk. One moment I’m in deep contemplation, the next I’m distracted by my own weird train of thought, like “Don’t think about the pain, you’ll only make it worse. Oh, I’m thinking about it right now, aren’t I? Yes, I told you not to do that. Right, I’ll stop. Okay, I’m thinking about kittens now, not the pain. You know, that constant ticking pain in my jaw. I mean kittens. Adorable kittens. I am not thinking about the pain I just described. I am full of lies.”
Anyway, Tylenol 3 and antibiotics are my new best friends this week.
It shouldn’t be convenient to live only a few blocks away from a hospital and its emergency room, because you should never have to go, making the convenience irrelevant. But life is nutty and ignoring the dentist because of irrational fear can have consequences.
As I am about to demonstrate.
About six years ago one of the teeth in my upper jaw cracked (oh, I should warn you, if you get squeamish about anything tooth-related, stop reading now and instead do a search on this blog for the tag “cats are funny people” and delight in the results). It wasn’t painful, it just happened. I don’t know why it cracked, other than maybe a family history of bad teeth–and my neglect in visiting a dentist regularly (or at all) as an adult. A few years after that the remaining tooth gave up and I became the owner of a toothless gap in my left upper jaw. Except it wasn’t really toothless, as the roots and a tiny bit of the exposed part of the tooth remained.
I avoided brushing this part–much like I avoided dentists–because it was generally pretty tender and an accidental brushing would leave it sore.
A few days ago it felt sore and I thought perhaps I had accidentally brushed it. Then I woke up yesterday and it was still sore and further, it felt more like a toothache, actual pain and all that. I took some Advil and Alleve. These had virtually no effect. The whole area around the ex-tooth was tender and seemed inflamed.
Weirdly (or more likely, because I’m a guy) when I woke up today and felt the same pain, I almost still went out for my run. It was sunny and mild, so I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. Sanity prevailed, however, so I promised myself to visit the emergency room first, then I could go for the run.
I did not go for the run.
Approximately an hour and a half after arriving at the emergency room, I left with:
confirmation that the ex-tooth was infected
orders to see a dentist in the next 24-48 hours (“No later than Monday” was stressed several times)
one Tylenol 3 and one Alleve (in my tummy, since a nurse handed them to me with a cup of water)
a prescription for Tylenol 3 and antibiotics
affirmation again that hospitals are a place you never want to be
Here is my visit, with timestamps where applicable:
3:50 p.m. I have arrived. I go to the check-in counter and have a hard time hearing the person talking through the glass. I am given a surprisingly hard to remove bracelet with my info on it and have a seat. I expect to wait awhile and am not disappointed.
There are a few people here, but their injuries or ailments are for the most part not immediately obvious. a guy wearing a Tool t-shirt is here with his partner and I assume he has an arm injury, as he only has his left arm in one of the sleeves. I can’t quite see the other arm. This is probably a good thing.
A nicely-dressed woman keeps walking in and out, talking on her phone and holding a tissue to her nose. She eventually goes back to the check-in desk and complains that her nose is bleeding again. She gets to cut in line and is ushered away. I’m not going to try a nosebleed. I can wait.
I try to ignore my ex-tooth, which is currently getting Straight A’s in pain-causing right now.
There is a young Asian guy with a trendy haircut. He looks completely fine.
To my left is a woman around my age or a bit older. She coughs in a loud, wet, unhealthy way. At one point someone comes up to her and says they need a blood sample, then proceeds to do it right there. I don’t remember them taking blood in emergency before. I am glad she’s at least one seat over.
A guy in his 30s shambles in slowly. He is wearing open-toe sandals, is unshaven and looks terrible, as if he hasn’t slept in two months. I can’t hear what he is saying at the check-in desk, but the tone and manner suggest ailment over injury. He then reaches down to the small trash bucket by his feet and sticks his head into it, barfing. I can tell he is trying to throw up quietly. I am not unappreciative. He’s given a bracelet and looks like he might sit next to me–still clutching the plastic trash bucket–but he decides to stand, then to just amble about. His wife and baby arrive a short time later. The baby looks like he is deciding whether or not to cry.
Eventually a staff member takes away the garbage can and gives him a plastic barf bag instead.
To my delight, the baby never cries.
4:20 p.m. I am called to Triage 2, which is…right beside the check-in desk. I get asked questions about allergies and such and am given a bracelet that reads GIVE PENICILLIN ONLY IF RASH OVER ENTIRE BODY IS DESIRED. I sit back down and wait some more.
4:27 p.m. Mr. Self-Treatment arrives at the check-in desk. In a firm and articulate voice he describes various symptoms–a heaviness on the chest, chronic tiredness, etc. and laments over how he has had to self-diagnose and treat himself, even in the presence of professional doctors. I never figured out what the distinction was with professional doctors. Maybe he originally sought treatment by actors who played doctors. He went on for a bit, spending equal time complaining about the system and then complaining about himself. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. His vocal chords were very healthy.
4:32 p.m. I am finally moved to…the second waiting area. In a call-out to The wizard of Oz, you are told to “Follow the yellow brick line.” Okay, they leave out the “brick” part, but I remember this line from before. I follow it and then get confused because the end arrow is mostly peeled away and I’m not sure if I’ve actually reached the end. A kindly old woman confirms I have and also shows me where to put my chart, which is also in a yellow folder.
She seems smarter than me, for which I am grateful.
The second waiting area is more crowded, so I anticipate a long wait here. Some people are dressed in gowns or sitting in wheelchairs. Occasionally someone gets wheeled through on a stretcher. I look to my right and see I am sitting next to a Nellcor sensor. I don’t know what a Nellcor is.
I wait.
Several people get called but no one responds. This may work to my advantage.
4:55 p.m. I am finally brought into the exam room and explain my predicament. The doctor marvels over how I went so long with the tooth equivalent of a bomb in my mouth not going off. I admitted I knew a day of reckoning would come. A curtain is drawn in the middle of the room and it is clear someone is on the other side. I am glad I cannot see who or what is on the other side because I get an unpleasant vibe from it.
The visit with the doctor is done in about five minutes. She is very friendly and asks if I have any questions after explaining things. I get my first warning to see a dentist in 48 hours max. She warns that T3’s can cause constipation and affect decision-making, among other side effects. She warns against arguing with my partner or getting a haircut while under its effects. I like her.
I go back to the second waiting area and once again wait, as one does in these areas. After a short period of time a nurse comes in with my prescription and the T3/Alleve combo. At 5:15 p.m. I am heading out the way I came in, off to get the prescription filled at Save-On Foods, where I will also buy Goldfish crackers as a pick-me-up.
The pharmacist is like the doctor, friendly and informative. She advises me of one of the side effects of the antibiotics, which is diarrhea. She in unsure if the constipation from the T3s will cancel out the diarrhea from the antibiotics. I like to think they will.
I finish my shopping, come home and indulge in my new prescription drugs. The first T3 works amazingly well, almost completely masking the pain. I can take one more before bed (if needed). I’m feeling a little light-headed as I write this, which is one of the other side effects. I have no immediate plans to drive a bulldozer or other vehicle, so the neighborhood is safe. For now. I may suddenly decide driving a bulldozer is a totally excellent idea. I’ve never been on T3s before.
I need to decide if I want to find an emergency dentist tomorrow or wait until Monday and see if Jeff’s dentist can take me on as a new (emergency) patient. I’ll probably go with the former, as it seems time is of the proverbial essence.
I’m not looking forward to the dentist visit. I mean, who would? You’d need to eat a lot of T3s to think the dentist is fun. Because most of the tooth is gone, removing the rest will require excavating through the gums. I’d like to think dentistry is all lasers and painless now, but I suspect we’re not quite there yet. I’m hoping getting anesthetized is an option. I can deal with waking up all loopy afterward and then experiencing exquisite pain (provided I have my T3s).
All in all, I’d have preferred a better weekend. If it turns out I won the $26 million Lotto 6/49 jackpot tonight, I will come back to amend the preceding statement.
On the one hand it’s a downer because humanity is doomed.
On the other hand, there’s a small chance humanity isn’t doomed.
Around these two extremes and via a conversation Strieber transcribed from memory of a man who came to his Toronto hotel room at 2:30 a.m. on June 6, 1998, there are warnings about screwing up our planet before we are able to leave it and inhabit other worlds, detailed descriptions of the barrier between the living and the dead and how we can learn to both detect and communicate with the dead by using the devices seen on the ten thousand or so ghost hunting shows on T&E. The mysterious man who arrives at Strievber’s hotel room refers to himself by many names and descriptions–Master of the Key, Michael, Legion, a Canadian (who doesn’t pay taxes), and at times seems both human and more than human. There are condemnations from him of our stewardship of the planet (which seems perfectly sensible, really), government secrecy, the accumulation of wealth over spiritual growth, and the bonus revelation of how the murder of a couple in the Holocaust prevented us from learning how to harness gravity, because the smart person who figured this out was never born.
But wait, there’s more. There is confirmation of intelligent life on other planets and in space itself (I’m assuming something more subtle than the giant hand that grabbed the Enterprise in the original series). There are aliens here, both helping us, and trying to thwart our growth and evolution. They are in the government, well-hidden. Lizard people? Well, the Master of the Key doesn’t say, but he does note that these aliens are skilled in deception, general mind control and besides, some of them look just like us so don’t even need to hide themselves.
But there’s even more! Earth is a fallen world. Another ice age is imminent and with it the risk that humanity will be wiped out because, to paraphrase Illidan, we are not prepared. If we are made extinct we will not evolve and join with the other radiant humans who have already ascended and become part of the fabric of the cosmos (we here on Earth are referred to as “elemental beings” by the MOTK. This comes across as a bit of a putdown). There is talk of how three major faiths–Christianity, Buddhism and Islam–are all part of the same triad, each just a different aspect. Also there is no god because we are all god. And we should help starving children.
Also, there are intelligent machines out there and we need to get around to making our own intelligent machines that are smarter than us because it’s the only way we’ll get out of this climate mess. But these intelligent machines will become self-aware and…it kind of sounds like maybe that’s not a good thing, although SkyNET is never precisely invoked.
At one point Strieber describes himself as crying at the words of the Master of the Key, and it’s not difficult to see why. This is a lot of stuff to absorb when you were just expecting a waiter to come in and change your hotel room’s towels.
Now, it may sound like I’m being flip, but Strieber does provide some evidence and plausible thoughts on the climate change warnings, which only seem even more compelling in 2018 vs. 1998. There is also evidence that some kind of electromagnetic hijinks are happening in areas where people report ghosts. The idea that a soul–some kind of intelligent (plasma?) energy–may exist outside of the body has some evidence to support it. But it’s still a lot to take in. The Master, like any good prophet/seer/I-know-more-than-you-do often speaks in riddles and metaphors. And just as you try to wrap your brain about what he’s really saying he lays out a hard scientific explanation for the soul and how to detect it.
In the end I was left simultaneously baffled, stimulated and entertained by The Key. I keep an open mind, even about things most people view as nutty, like UFOS, Bigfoot and healthy fast food, so I’m not willing to dismiss the things discussed in this slim book out of hand. Conversely, it’s actually pretty grim in retrospect. Strieber keeps things moving, though.
I can’t say I recommend the book per se, but it certainly offers some interesting ideas about our world and where humanity may be headed.
And if Donald Trump pulls off his human mask during the next State of the Union address and confesses to trying to stop the evolution of humanity, Strieber can totally claim he called it 20 years ago. Hmm, that sounds way more plausible than it should…
This year I decided to dust off my 2009 NaNo Novel The Ferry because I actually finished it and could use this month to polish it into a second draft, then have someone else eyeball it. I set a modest 15,000 word goal, since I wasn’t expecting to greatly expand on it.
Then a few days ago I chucked all that aside. Am I mad?
Maybe.
What happened is I started re-reading the story after a long time away with it, so my eyes were “fresh” and it just didn’t grab me like it should have. There’s a newer prologue scene I added awhile back that I actually quite like, then it goes back to the largely unchanged text of 2009 and it doesn’t really gel, though I can see what I was attempting.
In brief, I was trying to set the mood through a long, slow burn where tensions keep increasing, without anything actually supernatural or weird happening. The ferry is late. It’s really hot. The terminal is crowded. Tempers are short. A stranger insinuates herself to the main characters in a way that is not entirely welcome. But nothing actually happens. And instead of things feeling tense, it starts to feel a little more like, “Is anything going to happen?”
And when it does finally start, I’m not convinced it’s even that interesting. Weird and deadly dog-like creatures appear to have gotten on the ferry and start attacking. There is a fear of panic. The bridge appears to have been attacked and is now empty. But still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep reading…and I wrote the thing!
I went back to Road Closed and in a way it has the same problem. There’s a lot of set-up in the early chapters before anything spooky or weird happens. Right now I’m deciding on how best to rework the beginning of the story and how to fit things together at the end (the middle is strangely fine). It’s already stronger than The Ferry, because it has the added bonus of watching a guy slowly self-destruct from drinking even before the ghostly shenanigans start.
Here’s hoping, then, that I can make real progress on Road Closed this year and maybe even self-publish the silly thing.
