A Good Moment…

I love this kind of morning.

A stiff breeze blows, heralding the arrival of the next band of light thunderstorms.  I can hear it rustling the leaves of the bushes and trees outside my window.

Nothing severe, to be sure, but brief flashes followed by deep rolls of acoustic energy created by the sudden displacement/vaporization of water and air as millions of volts of static electric potential arc from the ground to the energetic clouds above.

The smell… a bit of ozone and the must of damp earth awaiting to soak up the next pending delivery of water from the skies.  It enters the slightly opened window quietly compared to its companion, thunder.  But present on its volition, nonetheless

Grey… the eastern sunrise is forbidden complete entry into my window.  In fact, one could argue that little of its day light is getting through.  The storm clouds are simply forbidding it today.  But enough gets by to have a pleasant photonic ambience to mix with a dreary, rainy day.

The wife – back from her trip last night – remains in bed, happy to be back in her own bed and “hungover” from the 7-hour drive it took to return her to her home.  The pets silent in their respective places of light slumber throughout the home.  Only my small feathered companion stirs, and he is more quiet than usual.

Nearly alone with my own thoughts.  My current choice of music plays softly from the bookshelf stereo.  Its acoustic energy mixes with the other vibrations in the room.  Comfortable… pleasant… and joyous, maybe?

A lovely balance of natural and technological permeates this microcosm.

I can only hope others get to enjoy this now and then.

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“Sunday, 9am

I saw fire in the sky

I felt my heart pound in my chest” – Sammy Hagar, Eagles Fly

Well… my parakeet was noisy, anyway…

Quiet morning here – except, maybe, for the parakeet.  The wife is (back) in bed.  She’s had a cold for the past few days and didn’t sleep well last night. My mom and sister couldn’t make their planned visit.  That might be for the best, though, with my wife being sick.  Hope my sister’s doing better.  My daughter left to back to college this morning after a nice spring break visit.  When my wife starts getting better, I guess life will return to “normal”.

So, I start my 46th year on this planet on a nice quiet Sunday morning.  I’d be remiss if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed for having things work out this way on my birthday, BUT it would be a bold faced lie if I told you that I’m not enjoying it.  Let’s put it this way, my “disappointment” is next to nothing versus my enjoyment of being able to sit here, listen to some music, hear the prattle of my bird and type this post.  The sunrise is coming through my window lighting up the room in a pleasant morning glow.  It’s gonna be a nice day.

I think it’s time for a little bike ride… later.

Marek Concept

So, in my attempt to… rework??? Mind the Shadows, I’ve been doing a little brainstorming.  During one of those sessions, I went out to Hero Machine and attempted to come up with a likeness of Marek.  What appears below is the result and what I see as a possible “future” Marek if/when he embraces what he could be.  I know that’s very vague, but I don’t even know just yet how Marek is going to deal with all that is about to be thrown at him or how he will evolve.  Keep in mind that this Hero Machine is meant to be cartoon/comic like, but I was fairly pleased with this result.  The fact that I’m no artist puts me in a situation where I have to make use of the tools I can find or beg others for their time and talents.

Marek Concept

I do think this gives a good base concept of who Marek can be.  Capable of magick, but not adverse to making use of more “mundane” means of self-defense.

Let me know what you think.

 

Number 50

No content… just cool that I made it to 50 posts.  Just chillin’ and listening to some good stuff.  Enjoy 😉

What an inspiration…

I guess it’s a Sammy kind of night…

And one more… kick it up a notch…

Thoughts and feelings… in SOUND.  ‘Night, y’all.

Something Else… can’t leave it be.

chisel stoneA new page on Mindracing 9…

I did a little editing the other night on a fantasy scene I had rattling around in my head.  I posted the first crack at it in my blog sometime back.  I decided to read it over again and made a couple of small adjustments.  It’s incomplete, but I think it has the potential to grow into something bigger.  With that in mind, I decided to give it a page here on Mindracing 9.  I don’t know if this will be a novel or a short story…  or a whatever.  I am just going to put stuff out there related to this.  I’ll try to “track” things so folks know when I’ve made edits, additions, etc.

Once again, I’d appreciate it if y’all gave it a read and let me know your thoughts.  Also, again, I don’t mind negative feedback.  If it sucks, please tell me why you think so.  If it’s good, please tell me why you think so.  If you have an idea about where you’d like to see the story go, by all means, speak up. 🙂

Getting feedback is a huge motivation for me to make an effort to do more.  It would be a very cool thing to get published “for real” some day, but I would be happy to know that I’ve entertained some folks with what I’m doing right here.  It’s the gamer in me that drives this.  It’s not about wanting an audience for a show or to make money (that would be nice, though) so much as a desire to provide something that somebody will have fun reading.  I used to DM/GM (that s dungeon master/game master for the “layman”) tabletop role-playing games a lot.  The most enjoyment I got out of it was when I knew my players were getting into their characters and the adventure/story I was laying out before them.  It had nothing to do with being “in charge” or the leader or looking for some ego trip.  I just loved being able to rile up the players’ imaginations and see them get hooked on the adventure.  When I knew they were into it, my motivation between game nights to get them more was through the roof.  If they weren’t into it, I encouraged them to let me know and give me ideas to work with.  That ‘s what made me a good DM/GM.  I’m hoping to be the same way as a writer, I suppose.  So, help me out, huh?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.  Thanks in advance for letting me know what you think.

Catch ya again soon.

Rework or Rebuild?

MadKeyboarding

As you may have noticed, I took down Mind the Shadows.  I felt compelled to pull it and… well… decide, I guess, what to do with it.

The truth is that I think it kind of got away from me.  I was more concerned about cranking out words and “action” than with understanding what I wanted for my characters – not to mention, among other things, what my characters wanted for themselves.

It started feeling like doing a job versus just being a story I wanted to tell and being something fun to do.  So, as you ALSO may have noticed, I got sloppy when I did produce words, AND I started producing less often.

I’m at a crossroads for either reworking (my term for doing some editing) the existing story or rebuilding it.  I’ll likely keep the general story line that I started, but I’m not sure if I’ll pare it down to being part of Marek’s background, or if I’ll rework and streamline it, then continue on from there.

I would like to get a bit more “future history” in there for a better description of the setting.  I felt like that was lacking.

I’m still learning how to do all this, so I don’t know what you should expect.

I wouldn’t mind some advice.

I did get one great piece of advice. It was part of what prompted me to start down this path for Mind the Shadows.  Dirty SciFi Buddha posted one of his musings that really got my attention.  Here is the link to the post.  He’s right, too.  I was cranking out “stuff”, but I wasn’t paying attention to my characters.  I wasn’t letting them become the living breathing people they need to be.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts about Mind the Shadows.  Let me know your thoughts about anything.  As always thanks for your comments and feedback.