UHR 2005 – Yosemite! pictures now ready for perusal.

Tree-hugger

I finished “The Hodag” and, after some editing, it should wind up at about 5500 words. I will circulate it to my group of readers soon. You know who you are. If you want to be part of this illustrious group let me know. Affordable memberships available on a sliding scale.

I also put in some good work and I’m now 90% done with “Castleneff” which stands at 8200 words and still needs a more put-together beginning. It will likely end up being the longest short story I’ve written. Whether it all works is another question entirely, but I enjoyed writing it. This one needs some serious work before it goes out to my reading circle to make sure its coherent and consistent but I’m looking forward to putting on the finishes touches and seeing the response.

What next? I’ve got a strong hankering to take on “Anders’ Saga” (aka “The Learning Tree” for you Clarionites) and I might just do it. We’ll see. I want to model it after a real Icelandic Saga and that seems like fun for some reason.

I’m still working my way through Steven King’s The Dark Tower and it feels like work. I’m about 3/8ths done, I guess, and I’m back into putting in regular blocks of time on it–listening to it over lunch, while I make dinner, while I make the dog’s Kong, etc. To be honest, I’m wanting it to be over although I do want to know how it ends.

After that’s out of the way, I’m sticking to short fiction for awhile. That’s what I’m writing and I find that King’s often long-winded prose jars me out of that mindset. Digressions, unnecessary information, and random musings are the order of the day in The Dark Tower and I’d like more single-helping servings of fiction for awhile. I just subscribed to F&SF and I think I’ll be following that up with a subscription to Asimov’s and maybe a couple others. Weird Tales? Realms of Fantasy? Paradox? Fantasy Magazine? Lady Churchill’s? Interzone? Cemetary Dance? So many good options but a fella could go broke and not be able to keep up with the reading if he’s not careful. (BTW, renewed interest in subscriptions is in large part thanks to a generous endowment bequeathed upon me by supportive parental units for that specific purpose. Thanks parental units!)

I still occasionally find time to dip into “The Thousand Nights and the One Night” which, if you’re familiar with it, is nothing more than series after series of loosely related short stories. So that counts as sticking to short fiction, at least by my rules.

So Real Madrid got what they deserved yesterday — a 1-0 home defeat to Ars*. Madrid played lazy and gave away the ball time after time in the first half, especially inside the first 25 minutes. The last 20 minutes of the half they started clicking but the Ars* still looked dangerous on the break. Henry scored on a solo effort (he’s the whole team at present) in the opening minutes of the first half and packed it in. It would have been an entirely different game had Madrid scored first, and it would have been abysmal had Reyes scored in the opening minutes, as he probably should have.

All is not lost for Madrid. If they can nab a goal early in London it’ll be wide open but admittedly the Ars* are much better at home. With Madrid’s firepower, Ars*nal can’t just sit back for ninety minutes so it should be a good match. Individual moments of skill by Robinho, Zidane, Henry, et al made the game well worth watching, even if it tended to be a choppy affair. The return leg is in two weeks on Wednesday, March 8.

Today is Barcelona at Chelski. I don’t know who to root for in this one as I like neither, and the winner will be one of the favorites to lift the trophy. I think it’ll be between the winner here and Juventus, but that’s just me.

Current Mood – Pretty Good |
Currently Listening To – Woody Guthrie – “Library of Congress Recordings”