My · life · as · a · writer.

At the day job, I've been working on a guided tour for the Big 12 Facilities Dudes and Dudettes. Today, we went out and timed the driving tour with me nattering along. I get to help train the tour guides since I'll be doing family stuff instead of taking out of towners on campus tours.  Along the way, I had to do some extemporaneous filler.

One of the more interesting asides in KSU's history is the radio bunker located under the new KSAC tower located on the north end of camps. It was designed to house a two-man radio crew. That radio crew was to keep broadcasting in the event of nuclear attack.  It's been more or less forgotten by everyone but the building inventory folks. (waves at DAF) And no, it's not still in use. it's been deactivated and turned into storage. Based on the "Ooooh!" and the "I didn't know that", it's going into the travelogue.

However, my imagination is running rampant, now that I reminded my self about what I knew. How much effort would it take to reconnect to the tower's antenna ending some 100 feet in the air? Now I really, really want to finish "Framed" and get back to my "Obedience Training" trilogy.

At the day job, I listen to NPR via web page streaming whenever I have to do lots of stuff with numbers. I like going there for the articles. (Hmmm. That last bit sounds like guys talking to women about why they have a Playboy subscription. Weird. I chalk this up to writing a lot of building programs in the last week and tracking big numbers with lots of zeres across multiple fiscal years. When I'm not doing that, I'm conducting a virtual tour in my head and documenting it for posterity and the Big 12.^ )

The brain, she is mush. Anywhooo....

Cyber bullying is on the rise. However, the victims can fight back while winning friends and influencing people. All I can say, is don't piss off creative people. The worst I can do  (or will) is to assign their name to a character then kill that character off after a suitable amount of torture. Others will just sing a song about you and post it on YouTube,. then sell it on iTunes.

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^ I realized it was time to stop when I typed "And on our right is a teaching and research facility where the animals don't get turned into food products."  No one ever stops to wonder where the USDA gets its inspectors or how those inspectors are trained. They only talk about when the inspections fail.

Oh, beloved spring that has sprung
and set off my sinuses that do run
ferociously all day and night.
turning my mind into a fright-
ful place filled with thoughts half-done.

Yes, I know how that sounds.

Back when I was in college, I went to see the musical "Gypsy" and it was a blast. One number has stayed with me even while I've more or less forgotten the rest. You Gotta Have A Gimmick. In it, the shy Rose Louise gets advice about how to become successful at burlesque which begins her transformation into Gypsy Rose Lee.

For me, blogging is a lot like stripping. It takes a lot of confidence, a little bit of skill, and enough entertainment value to keep people coming back - even when they may not get to see a whole lot of skin.

I lurk a lot out in the blogosphere. Lately, there have been a lot of post on "How to Blog for Fun and Profit" and "How to Create Buzz via Blogging." What all the advice boils down to is 1) get out there on a regular basis. Regular being key. 2) don't wait too long between posts. One week minimum. 3) keep it interesting or entertaining. Don't just hawk your book, or whatever it is your selling.

Those three simple things are very effective. I know, because those rules keep me going back to a lot of other blogs out there. Daily blogging works best. Anything less than a week between posts, and I forget to go back, until I learned about gmail's reader function. There are other things to HTBFFAP and HTCBVB. These are 4) doing a blog tour 5) comment a lot on others blogs. 6) Link and be linked.

To that end, I will be posting here no less than once a week. Hopefully more. Let's face it, I've got to start creating buzz. Most authors have to self-promote these day. The only way to get over my stage fright is to just get up and start taking things off.

Hit it maestro.

I spend part of my time lurking over on the Bujold list serve. I don't post much there or here because it's either post or write; post or craft; post or hang out with my friends in meat space. Right now, with the work for ConQuesT speeding up, I thought I'd pick a random post and start reading. (My friends and I can spend hours talking a laughing, and I can't spare that much away from my projects right now. )

One of the topics is The Screwfly Solution  by James Tiptree, Jr. WARNING: if you're squeamish, get nightmares easily, or are a hot-button feminist, don't read the story.  You'll either be grossed out, wake up in the middle of the night or get angry about a work of fiction. (at least that is the small-to-date consensus over on the Bujold list.) That's why James Tiptree, Jr. is notorious in some circles -- aside from the fact that she successfully hid her true gender for over a decade. She diddled with cultural expectations and gender a lot and she did it well -- so say the critics and literati. I'm inclined to agree.

Tiptree very much nailed the male writing voice and style of the 60 and 70's in all its misogynist glory even though "he" was a notoriously feminist writer. The Screwfly Solution is my first Tiptree read ever. I knew about her history, but had no chance to read any of her work. So I read the short story and got blown away by it -- the skill, the way the epistolary format worked, the easily distinguishable voices of the characters, the biology based plot, the moral that's not really a moral. While The Screwfly Solution is classified as SF, I'd say it shades more than a little toward the Horror genre. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the old black-and-white horror movies that my friend quilt_lady  introduced me to. The action and gore in the old black and whites is slow to non-existent. The fear is all in the mind. It's what you know and the anticipation of what you don't know that makes you scream.

Anyway, I didn't find the short story horrifying. Engrossing, yes. Definitely engrossing. There was a mystery to be solved.  Nor did I get sick or angry at how events played out in the story. Plus I'm pretty sure I'll sleep well tonight despite having read it. I don't know if works of fiction don't move me that much viscerally or if my lack of mental and emotional screaming is due to the fact that I know people can be that nasty and short sighted for little-to-no reason other than "God's angel said" or "I just felt like it."

While doing the blog crawl during lunch, I tripped across the fact that nonplussed it its own antonym. More or less. Mostly more. According to the article the users of "nonplussed" is evenly split between "bewildered" and "unfased." Context, is once again, everything.

In the same article, I discovered that "bemused" is now considered to be a more or less synonym for amused. So according to the growing minority, this post is tagged as "amused and slightly amused" rather than "amused and mildly confused by disparate views and opinions." Lucky for me, at least as of November 18, 2008 when the article was posted, the number of "low-key WTF-ness" users outnumber the "this is kinda funny" users.

I have resolved for keep my "funny and confusing" tag. Because the war of the definitions is not at an end. I hope.

In an aside, does anyone know if there is a statue of limitations on commenting on a blog post? I have an issue with Bryan Garner definition of "skunked."

I was pleasantly surprised last night to see that the TV series White Collar is back on with season three. I was soooo happy to see that Mazi didn't die.

I'll have to do a review.

I meant to post last night, but I'm working on a knitting commission. My fingers were a bit occupied.

After the soy milk custard, I thought that skim milk custard couldn't be any worse, so I donned the apron and went back to work. The results were pleasing. I actually had chocolate custard (it was more like flan) at the end of the evening. I did everything the same but oddly enough, the taste was not as good even though the texture was worlds better.

After reading the soy milk ingredients I discovered the difference... soy milk is sweetened. Plus it had aspartame which is notorious for breaking down when heated. My soy custard was doomed, just doomed, from the get go. *insert dramatic wail with the back of my hand pressed to my forehead here*

Oh well. Now I know.

Thoughts on the skim milk version. I needed to add a bit more chocolate to the mix and possibly a teaspoon more of sugar. The soy custard ingredients were eyeballed (with the exception of the milk). The skim milk custard was actually measured. I also need to add a touch of nutmeg or some other spice to the dish, it tasted fairly bland, even for custard.

If it works out, I'll probably put this in one of the cookbooks I'm working on.

So, the roommate moved out and left a note saying "the food I left is yours now."

Part of that food is a nearly full half gallon of soy milk. (used to make breakfast smoothies) On top of that with the 7 inches of snow, I've been in the mood to bake. Tonight, that mood hit critical mass. It was either make brownies from scratch or play around with the soy milk. Out of curiosity, I thought, "What would happen if I made custard or a flan-type dessert with it?"

I'll wait while those who know something about food chemsitry stop laughing. For the rest of you...

  
The good news? It was a low calorie and healthy dessert
The bad news... Custards and flans should not be healthy or low calorie.

The good news? It tasted great because soy takes on the flavor of whatever you mix it with.
The bad news... the mouth feel was just wrong. YAY  for dairy and good ole milk fat. Fat means extra flavor.

The good news? It looked pretty.
The bad news... It only looked pretty on the top. The first spoonful was a bit distressing. A brisk stir reduced the lower part to a thin, gravy-like consistency when consumed piping hot. 

The good news? Tempering the eggs with warm liquid is not as big an issue as it is with real milk. So it doesn't curdle while you're mixing it up.
The bad news. It took twice as long to bake and then it started to curdle when it cooled.  Once it was cooled, it didn't set as much as separate out into chocolate flavored protein chains suspended in a mucilaginous liquid.

Needless to say... it's not going in any of my cookbooks.