Thistle Wars

I just can't believe how many thistles I keep finding every day in the back yard. It seems for every one I dig up, two more grow back the next day. Maybe now summer is over, they won't grow so fast. It was freezing for the first day of autumn (yesterday) nice today though.

I made some more progress on both the belt wars story and the third world war book today. Especially the book. I was working on what will probably be chapter two. I managed to nuke about 80-90% of the population of the planet and turn every major city into something between smoldering ruins and radioactive glass with a reasonable explanation as to why for every group of people. The stage is set for a grim battle of survival and or extermination (with possibly a smattering of forgiveness and understanding if I can swing it...) for the rest of the story.

TV reception has been greatly improved in house thanks to a daring (if I say so myself) stint on the roof. I changed the antenna orientation from an approximation of next doors, pointing towards a nearby mountain top, by about 55 degrees south pointing more towards Hobart through a valley. It just made more sense, I can't see any transmission towers on the mountain tops near here, and despite Launceston being a whole lot closer than Hobart the Hobart channels have always been clearer here. Less mountain tops in the way I guess.

Tomorrow, I may have a go at starting another Dream Stealers World story... or two. I've had a couple of ideas I could explore there. Rather than focusing on a washed up writer, this time it'll either be following a meteoric political career, or a scientist who's stumbled on the existence of the stealers themselves. Maybe both and I'll submit one story to one mag and the other to another. They're both different stories after all, not simultaneously submitting the same story to two mags, I don't want to even think about alienating my potential market. I don't want to serialise them either, these are just short stories that happen to be based in the same world, with the same rules, like Asimovs robot stories. I have a feeling I may well have the stealers stories ready before any belt wars story ever sees the light of day.