Woke this morning to a Huntsman spider on the ceiling. Not a good thing in our household. Paula must be the only person in the world more creeped out by spiders than I am. I know Huntsmans are harmless (compared to smaller, deadlier spiders like the funnelweb...) and I may be 189cm tall and 120 Kilos of big hairy bloke (6'2.5" & 264lbs to our old timey folks) but the idea of getting too close to a spider the size of one of my hands... So, I waited in bed till it fell down. Paula got out of the room pretty quick then, but I'd noticed it fell onto a hat of hers. Gingerly, I picked up the hat, tip toed out to the living room where there was an open window, thrust the hat outside and shook it.
Cold and wet outside. The cats are clamouring for attention, walking in front of our screens etc... Basil (being a part Kiwi by breeding, thus born for cold and wet) is having a ball outside. I think he's currently working on expanding what is now his own personal swimming pond. We're going to have to do something about all these holes he's digging.
Time for my second cuppa, then I've got to write a newsletter for my clients. I think I'll let them know about the current batch of scams doing the email rounds in this one. Fake bank detail checks and that silly fake adobe program. A reminder of their security software routines would be a good thing too.
Just completed the newsletter. It's fairly dull, but at least it's informative and my DrDaves clients will benefit from the advice in it... if they heed it. Time for another coffee, my brain is slowing down to the point of stalling. Then, I'd better go get another jar of the stuff from the shop, we're running dangerously low.
Reading over Dream Stealers (the version I submitted to Aurealis) I spotted a silly typo and that somehow the paragraph indenting had gone haywire in the conversion to rtf format. I made the corrections and shot off a quick message to Stuart (the editor) but he said not to worry about re-submitting, but thanks for the heads up. I don't want to come over like a nervous parent who's first child is spending their first day in school (but I can't help feeling like it) so I've promised myself not to send him another email till I hear back about acceptance or rejection of the story. I should point out that I can't publish any part of the story here till (if) it gets published by them, as it's a condition of submission to Aurealis that all work be original (obviously) and unpublished until after publication in the Magazine.
I've been working on character development today (primarily) and a small refinement to the world creation for Belt Wars. I've added the following in the middle of the paragraph describing the first Belt War:
The Belt has a very hard time in the war too, as it needs Earth to supplement it's meagre food supply. Starvation is rife in the Belt during the war, they nonetheless prevail, but deep resentments are left on both sides.
As it seemed obvious to me at the time, I hadn't included it originally. Doing the character descriptions though (as per the next exercise in Jeff Carvers program) made me realise that just because it's in the back of my head, doesn't mean it's fully crystallised yet. Putting "pen" to "paper" in this fashion has helped me realise a few things about some of my characters I hadn't thought of before now, so I figured it made sense to apply the same logic to the worlds they lived in. Even if I don't use all the details I come up with, they're sitting there in my mind as I write about the events unfolding. They can't help but enrich the entire body of work.
Very tired tonight. Hope the new mozzie coils work as advertised. The mosquitoes just haven't let up lately and I can't take another nights broken sleep.
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