Entry Recieved...

Well, got an email from the WotF contest to say my entry has been received. Now, I just have to "allow 10 weeks after the close of the Contest quarter for judging to finalize." That means I should get the results by mid-September.

Honeymoon Events

On our honeymoon in Mexico, we stayed at a resort named "Canto del Sol." They had a great buffet that we hit up three or four times a day, a beach, swimming pool, and tennis courts. It was apparently in the "old" section of town, meaning that it was a little more authentic, and a little more difficult to find someone who spoke or understood English very well. Most of our taxi drivers spoke only Spanish, but all you needed there was the name of your destination.

We had a lot of adventures on our honeymoon: horseback riding, swimming with dolphins, ocean kayaking, sand castles on the beach...Mexican taxi rides. Child was an expert cowgirl. Our guide for the horseback ride spoke only Spanish so there wasn't a whole lot of talking going on, but most of the ride was just through rivers and jungle anyway, so there wasn't a whole lot of commentary he could have given. "On your left, you'll notice another tree."

It contrasted sharply with the horseback riding Child and I did for our one year dating anniversary: there were no safety forms to sign here, no instructions, and since he couldn't really ask us whether we wanted to do it, our guide's technique to seeing if we wanted to gallop was to start doing it, of course causing our horses to follow suit, then look over his shoulder to see if we were enjoying it. (For the record, we did.) All in all, it was a ton of fun, and I got to practice my Clint Eastwood squint. Next time, I'm going to work on the "spitting-between-the-teeth."


The kayaking was also fun, and I got to brave the jellyfish we saw in the water to get the picture below.


We also got offered weed on the beach by some old guy with missing teeth but respectfully declined, despite his insistence that it would be good for us.

Oh, and the swimming with dolphins was a lot of fun too. We got to dance with them, get kissed by them, and ride them by holding on to their fins as they swam (all under careful supervision of their trainers, of course). Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring our cameras, and because of my refusal to give in to what I consider scams (read: paying $17 for a single picture), we don't have a picture of it. :)

Writing Tips

And another thing: I wanted to start collecting writing tips (general ones, and those applicable to just the sci-fi/fantasy genre), and thought I might as well make it public.

This first set of tips is from K. D. Wentworth, coordinating judge for the Writers of the Future contest. They are the top five reasons she immediately rejects entries. (http://wotfblog.galaxypress.com/2007/07/ top-five-disqualification-points-during.html)

1. Poor spelling and copious grammatical errors

2. No sign that this is a science fiction or fantasy story by the end of the first page

3. Inability to tell what's going on by the end of the first page because the writer is withholding critical information from the reader in order to create suspense.

4. Overused tropes such as vampires, elves, witches, ghosts, trolls, dwarves and dragons, without an original take on the subject.

5. Massive information dumps at the very beginning of the story where the writer is telling the reader background information instead of working it into the story.

Looking through my old email for another list of tips a friend (Eric James Stone) sent me, I found that they were actually given by K. D. Wentworth as well, at a Writers of the Future workshop. Some are specific to WofF, others are very good tips no matter what you write. I was going to go through and highlight my favorites, but reading through the list, they are all just great tips, pet peeves, or problems I have myself. So I'll just mention one that made me laugh, and is really true: "Don't start with a character waking up. Or with amnesia. Or naked. Or being tortured. Or waking up naked with amnesia while being tortured."

1. Don't send inappropriate submissions. It's a contest for science fiction or fantasy, so don't send children's stories or poetry or murder mysteries. Sometimes up to 50% of WOTF slush is inappropriate.
2. Don't play games with the reader. Eight deadly words: “I can’t figure out what is going on.” If the reader can't tell what's going on, it's hard for the reader to get interested. This means (a) write clearly, and (b) don't withhold from the reader information that is apparent to the POV character.
3. Put a speculative fiction element on the first page. Something that makes it clear this is science fiction or fantasy.
4. Avoid overwritten beginnings. ("Frank's dual orbs of sight...," five adjectives in a row, etc.)
5. Avoid word pictures that force the reader to see everything.
6. Avoid characters in high school. (They can be high-school age, but don't have them actually in the school.)
7. Don't count on the title to get noticed (or as the only indication of speculative fiction element).
8. Don't start with a chunk of exposition. Prologues or things like fake newspaper stories can be a bad way to start.
9. Characterization is not what someone looks like. Do not have a character notice his or her appearance in a mirror.
10. Don't start with a character waking up. Or with amnesia. Or naked. Or being tortured. Or waking up naked with amnesia while being tortured. Such beginnings are done so often they are clichéd.
11. Avoid overworked themes such as the characters being Adam and Eve, or with a character floating in space being born at the end, or Noah's ark.
12. Don't use an unusual or weird POV character, such as the knife that will be a murder weapon. (She got a story in which the POV character was a dust bunny.)
13. Don't submit a story that exists just for a joke.
14. Avoid bad, over-the-top metaphors. "Words fell from his mouth like rancid spinach."
15. Avoid trite conventions of the genre: elves, vampires, werewolves. (Can be done later in career, but hard when starting out.) Originality is valued in the genre. An original idea can beat a better-written old idea.
16. Don't submit anything that has its origin in other media, or even hints at it. (No Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.)
17. Don't submit with bad formatting.
18. Don’t use overused words: “orbs,” “impossibly,” “smirked.” Don’t misuse words. (This is very subjective, of course, but she mentioned "impossibly" and "smirk" as ones she saw too much of.)
19. Don't have a story in which nothing happens in the first two pages.
20. Don't misspell, and if you do, not more than once per page.
21. Don't make your hero a nasty, obnoxious jerk. Villains as heroes/unlikable main characters/irredeemable jerks as protagonists fail to gain sympathy from the reader.
22. Eight more deadly words: “I don’t care what happens to these characters.”
23. No serial killers.
24. Don't fail to "land" the ending. (If a story is like a plane flight, the story doesn't end with the plane stopping in midair.)
25. Don't have a passive main character.
26. Don't use the wrong main character. Write from the POV of the character with the most to lose.
27. Don’t start with poetry you’ve written yourself. (It's OK to begin with a short quote from someone famous, maybe.)
28. Don’t use made-up words with extra apostrophes.
29. Don’t use made-up words that are unpronounceable or have no vowels.
30. Make sure the ending is prepared for in advance.
31. Don’t include a map or illustrations.
32. Don’t base it on a D&D campaign.
33. Don’t write in second person.
34. Don’t say “this is part 1″ or “continued” or “excerpt.” Don’t ever make the editor think the whole thing isn’t there.
35. Don’t put copyright notice on the manuscript.
36. Don’t go overboard on first sentence. We are supposed to believe it. ("After I fished Albert Einstein’s eyeball out of my martini...”) Sometimes the key is not to hook the reader, but to keep from pushing the reader out.

Writing Progress

I just remembered something that I wanted to start doing on my blog: posting occasional progress updates on my writing. More for myself than anything; no one else cares, but it's a good way for me to sort of mentally track how I'm doing.

So, currently:

One story submitted to the Writers of the Future contest (June 30, 2007). I think that's actually their "third quarter," and since the second quarter (Jan - Mar) finalists were posted on June 11, I guess I can expect to find out the results about mid-September.

I've submitted a couple stories in the past. One was an unpublished finalist and the other didn't do anything. The first I really liked, and the second I knew was a novel trying to be a short story, so it seems my instincts are fairly good. Unfortunately, they're telling me that my currently submitted story is also a longer story trying to be a short one, but we'll see. I tell myself not to expect anything, but I always hope. :)

I still have a novel on the back burner that I've set aside while I focus on trying to win this WotF contest, but maybe I should start diversifying a little and return to it. I also have several other short stories I need to get around to finishing. There's just so many projects I want to work on...

Back from the honeymoon...

I'm married to pretty much the best person in the whole world! Not only is she absolutely beautiful and brilliantly smart, but she is great to travel with. We entertained ourselves during the interminable airport waits and flights with some pirate dice and a deck o' cards, which was a lot of fun. The kid in the seat in front of me on the last flight home was also entertained, craning his head back to watch us play cards.

The trip to Puerto Vallarta was absolutely great, and Child and I came back still liking each other! We did everything from ocean kayaking to horseback riding to swimming with the dolphins, and we were offered weed on the beach but decided to pass on that. I'll try to post overviews of the various activities over the next couple days--we're finally getting Comcast installed at the new house (another story of itself) so I can finally blog when I spontanously think about it, instead of trying to remember to do it from work.

Whoo. It's been a while since I posted. Without having constant Internet at my new apartment, I can't casually post a blog entry when it flits across my mind. Then again, some might say that's a good thing...

First, because it sticks in my mind the most...

I have to say that Kayla planned the best one-year-dating anniversary ever. We went horseback riding up in the Stewart Falls area, and it was loads of fun. I got to imagine myself as Clint Eastwood, and I think my squinty eyes were superb, if I say so myself.

Also, my younger sister is finally married. I have to say I think she's nuts: he's working at an internship while she's in school at the moment, so she'll only see him half the week. I can't imagine not seeing Child for three or four days straight.

But speaking of marriages, mine is coming up as well. This Saturday. 4 1/2 days (I'm sure Child could give you the hours). I've already been living in our new apartment, and Child's been slowly moving her stuff in as well. Curiously, one of the more difficult things to become accustomed to at the moment is sharing stuff. I've spent so many years carefully keeping my stuff separate from roommates' stuff that I have to catch myself just before asking Child if a particular game is "mine" or "hers". Oh, right. They're both of ours now.

It'll be interesting being married. I'll have to make a lot of changes, especially since I'm used to doing things by myself (programming, writing, and reading aren't by nature "group" activities). Fortunately, I also enjoy doing things that are much more fun with two (hiking, camping, Frisbee), and even the former activities are more fun if Child is sitting somewhere nearby.

Hmm. Now that I actually got around to blogging, I forgot half the things I wanted to talk about. Oh well, if they're important, I'll remember them...

Sometimes, you bite off more than you can chew. When this happens, sometimes your bite can chew back.

It was a close battle, but Goober won, even though the grasshopper was about three times the size of the crickets he usually eats.



We also put a small frog in his water dish, and he tried to eat that also, but his tongue wouldn't stick to it.

Last night a group of us decided to hike the Y (a giant "Y" painted on the side of the mountain).



On the way up, we started noticing ring-sized neon green and blue boxes along the way. Curiousity finally got the best of us and we opened them. Each box would have the answer to the previous riddle, as well as a new riddle. Halfway up, we finally met some people who informed us that the boxes were part of a church activity, and the first letter of each answer spelled out the name of a "kidnapper," who turned out to have kidnapped a couple watermelons. It was a fun activity, even though we weren't even part of the group. :)

Killdeer are birds that have an interesting habit of building their nests on the ground. Note in the following picture how well the eggs blend in.


If a predator (or photographer) starts getting close to the nest, the Killdeer will start making a rucus and pretend to have a broken wing, leading the predator away from the nest.

Well, four hours later...

Did you know that if you really put your mind to it, you can think of plenty of things to do in an exam room while you're waiting for the doctor?

1. Blow up a latex glove and play volleyball
2. Play "Pirate's Dice" (requires the Pirate's Dice game)
3. Invent new wheelchair tricks
4. Draw face on inflated latex glove. Write "Release Me!" on the back.
5. Take comment card, write "Help! We have been stranded in a deserted exam room for three days now. Have built small fire to keep warm. No food or water, living off of isopropyl alcohol" and hide inside wheelchair's removable handle grip.
6. Attach inflated latex glove to 16" cotten swab, wave like a flag as you cruise hallways in wheelchair.

These things will last you about 20 minutes. For the rest of the 3 hours and 40 minutes, you're on your own.

Ah, the joys of modern technology...tempered, of course, by the fact that it's in the hospital emergency room that I'm enjoying it.

I have my laptop and I'm feeding off the ER's guest wireless while Child and I wait for the verdict on her injured foot. We were playing Ultimate Frisbee at a nerd-club (Quark) social when Child and some guy went up for the Frisbee at the same time. Child came down with it, but her foot was unhappy with the position it found itself in, and made the fact known with large, shooting pains.

So now Child's mom is reading a "Health" (what else?) magazine, Child is devising new excuses to take the bag of ice off her foot, and I'm sitting here wondering what you need a 16" cotton swab for.

I probably don't want to know.

Yesterday, we had an amusing incident happen. I was passing by the front desk when I heard Pat talking with a woman who had come in with her (30 year old) son to claim her dog. Pat was looking over the paperwork, saying, "Let me see if I got this right...Hmm, not sure I have this right...I work in the back, so I'm not too familiar with the paperwork...Julieann! Come see if I did this right..."

Listening, I was confused, since Pat knew exactly how to do the paperwork. She asked Julieann several times if she had done it right, each time involving her leaving the front desk, going to the back room where Julieann was entering stuff in the computer, then coming back to the desk. It was taking a lot of time, and by this time I was wondering what was going on. On the third or fourth time, Julieann came back with her to the front desk, then suggested, "Maybe they want to microchip their dog."

Pat's eyes lit up. "Do you want to microchip your dog?" she asked the woman. "It's only $10 if you do it right now." The woman agreed, and Julieann and I took the dog to our medical room to microchip it. After we shut the door behind us, Julieann finally explained Pat's strange behavior. Apparently, the son was wanted by the police, and Pat was trying to stall until they showed up. I'm assuming that when the police brought the woman's dog in, they mentioned to Pat that the son was wanted, and when Pat saw him come in with his mother, she phoned the police.

Juliann and I took our time microchipping the dog until we finally saw Pat rush by the door. We figured the police must have showed up, and finished the microchipping. Sure enough, a police officer and a detective had showed up. We handed the dog over to the mom while they took the son aside, and eventually the whole group moved outside and eventually left.

Well, I played "real" laser tag for the first time yesterday. It was a lot of fun! Our team won, but it helped that 2 of the 3 people on the other team were wearing grey shirts that glowed white under the blacklight in the arean. It was actually pretty close for a while--I remember glancing at the score-board ten minutes or so into the half-hour game and noting that the red team was ahead by a couple points. In the end, though, we ended up 15 points ahead.

Also, my latest short story (Working title: "Mockingbird") is almost done. A few more revisions, more agonizing over the beginning, reviews from a few trusted friends, then I'll send it off to Writers of the Future. I've been a finalist once, but as they say, close only counts in horsehoes and hand grenades. Once I'm done with this story, I have another one in mind ("Lost in Space"), and I still need to go back and finish up "Big Honkin' Ship" at some point. (Note that none of the titles are the real titles, which have not been decided yet.)

Yesterday, a rancher brought us "a passel o' cats," 18 to be exact. He had trapped them using a clever contraption involving chicken wire, bait food, and a long string that he used to trip a gate. I'm not sure how, but he had managed to get them all inside a giant plywood box that he had nailed shut. It took two of us to carry the crate inside, and as we tilted it on end to fit it through the door, we could hear 324 claws scrabbling around inside. Not a happy sound.

I and one of the other workers, Mark, took the crate into our "Cat Intake" room. Shutting the door, we pried out the nails holding the crate shut. I think we were both expecting the crate to spontaneiously explode, sending cats flying around the room like a shotgun full of bouncy-balls, but as the last nail was removed, the crate stayed ominously silent.

I opened the lid a crack, and saw 36 glowing eyes staring at me. Apparently they were just waiting for a sign that freedom was imminent, because they chose that moment to make their break for it.

Cats of all colors and sizes went zinging around the room, scrabbling up the walls, bouncing off the door, and ricocheting off the ceiling. Wielding our cloth pinchers, we tried to snag them mid-flight, but there were just too many! They were everywhere! All seemed lost! We were about to beat a desperate retreat when we noticed a curious phenomenon: we already had opened a few of the cages in the rooms, and the cats apparently saw them as safe places, foxholes so to speak, from which to launch new attacks. Quickly, we started slamming the full cages shut and opening new ones, which the still-loose cats also mistook for safe zones, climbing up the walls to get to them. Moments later, all the cats were ensconced in cages, and the battle was won.

Child and I went canoeing today, along with my cousin and three of my siblings. It was a lot of fun--I borrowed the van and trailer from my parents, we loaded the canoes, and drove several miles up the Canyon. There's a lot of construction on the Canyon road right now, which made things a little interesting, and we had to slid the two canoes down a steep, 30 foot gravel embankment to the railroad tracks below. From there, it was a short bushwhack to the river, and we managed to board the canoes without tipping over.

The trip down was a lot of fun, although about five minutes from the end we hit a reef and capsized. The scurvy dogs serving before the mast abandoned ship despite my threats of taking the cat o' nine tails to them, and one floated downstream while the other struck for the far shore. Eventually I got the canoe righted and dragged to shore, and eventually resumed our trip with the one able-bodied seaman who returned. The mutinous first mate who floated downstream protested that she had been recovering one of the lost sweeps, so she was spared a keel-hauling. That, and I'm getting married to her in a month and a half...

At the animal shelter we have a "shelter dog," a Golden Retreiver that we decided to keep for ourselves. His name is Rufus, and he's a great dog, still a little young (read: excitable at times), but very quick to learn and very friendly. He would play "fetch" for hours if you let him, and loves everyone.

Rufus was intrigued by a rabbit we got in. The rabbit was mildly interested in him in return, and not at all afraid.


They got along for a short while, until the rabbit decided to try an experiment and see if breaking into a run would trigger an instinctive chase-reaction from Rufus. The experiment was a total success, much to the rabbit's surprise, and it was spared a potentially-traumatizing conclusion by me tackling Rufus as he ran past the third time.

Today, a dog made it through the euthanasia chamber without dying. His three companions did, but he didn't. I think the CO tank was almost empty, and there just wasn't enough gas to kill them all. He was obviously sick, with drool dripping from his mouth, but he was sitting up and very much alive. It reminded of an almost identical case that I saw in the news a year or so ago, about a dog back East that made it through the chamber alive. Someone at the shelter rushed it to a vet, they fixed it up, and adopted it.

Ours wasn't such a happy ending. We didn't have the money before to save its life, and we didn't have the money after. We put it in the smaller cat euthanasia chamber and ran it through again. It's in a much happier place now.

But whose fault was this really? It wasn't our lack of funding or time or space--the problem started long before the dog got to our shelter. I want be accusatory and say it's the fault of owners who don't properly care for their animals, who don't get them spayed or neutered, or let them run loose, but I try to be understanding. Sometimes little Bobby opens the door and Tiger slips out, or the meter reader leaves the gate open and Spot escapes. One way or another, animals end up at the shelter.

But here's where I can make a difference. I think a lot of animals at the shelter go unclaimed simply because people don't know where to look for them, or even that the shelter exists. Our jurisdiction covers a dozen cities and towns, and 30 miles of highway. I can see how someone at one end of our jurisdiction might not know to travel to the other end to find their missing pet. The problem is that other than listing ourselves in obvious places like the Yellow Pages, we don't have the money for extensive advertising.

The trick, in my mind? Free advertising. Take advantage of newspapers and local tv stations. Create a story that is newsworthy, and they'll cover it. My idea? Collect a number of collars equal to the number of animals we euthanize every year. Last year, that was about 3000. That's a big pile of collars. Dump them somewhere public, get some attention, and reporters will flock to the story like flies. Explain the situation, the story gets out, and now a lot more people know that their animals end up at the shelter, and where the shelter is.

But why stop there? Take that carload of collars and go to other shelters in the state. Start a website. Get other groups to do it in other states. Make it a big deal. Get on CNN.

But you have to start somewhere. Earlier this evening, I emailed a handful of different pet supply companies, asking who I would talk to about donating collars for an awareness program. If I don't get any success there, I'll go in person to the local PetSmart and other stores. Failing that, I'll just start saving collars from the shelter. Hey, we get plenty.

While I'm working/waiting on that, my next step will be to start thinking about a website design. Somewhere that I could get word out about the program, get support, and possibly PayPal donations to help buy collars. It might move a little slowly since I have other important things going on in my life at the moment (e.g. getting married), but I'll keep it moving forward.

Yesterday, we had two dogs come in to the animal shelter. They were Newfoundland mixes. They weighed 225 pounds. Each.

They were huge. I could have ridden on them, easily. The funny thing was that in the kennel next to them was a miniature poodle, probably 10, 15 pounds max. It was an amusing dichotomy.

Only in Utah: I was on a bench just inside the door at Walmart, waiting for a prescription to be filled, when a guy walks in carrying a shirt. "Returning that?" the Walmart door-watcher said, reaching for her "return stickers," but the guy shook his head. "I forgot to pay for it, so I came back," he said.

Do you think you'd see that in your hometown?

Texas

Last Wednesday, Child and I went to Texas, to escort her grandmother down to Corpus Christi to see an old friend who was in the hosiptal. After we dropped her off there, Child and I drove up to New Braunfels, northeast of San Antonio, to visit her other set of grandparents.

They had recently bought a house on the Guadalupe river, and we stayed there for several days. One of the highlights was going inner-tubing on the Comal river. At one of the parks in New Braunfels, they had a "tube-chute," which was a narrow, curving channel that the water was forced through, making and exciting ride for inner-tubers. You could float all the way down the river, and get out at several stops before you left the city.



It also seemed a popular destination for beer-drinking inner-tubers, which just seems a bad idea to me. Granted, the river wasn't exactly white-water, but mixing drunkeness and water just doesn't seem smart. A couple police evidently thought the same, and were posted at the bottom of the chute checking for underage drinkers.


On Sunday, we left New Braunfels and went through San Antonio to Castroville, where my grandparents on my dad's side live. We visited with them for a couple hours, as well as some other relatives who live right by them. That was a fun visit, since I haven't seen them for about five years.

After that, we drove back to Corpus. On Monday, Child and I visited the beach on Padre Island, where the water wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it would be. I'm not a huge fan of the ocean--it's cold, salty, and wet--but the visit was actually enjoyable, to my surprise. It helped that Child was there. :)


We flew home this (Tuesday) morning.

Engagement

Wow. Got some serious catching-up to do.

First things first, I'm engaged, as of three weeks ago or so. The wedding's on July 6, reception on July 7.

To propose, I had an evening planned out. I started by taking Child three roses, and told her the best part of each day was seeing her.

We went and played some Frisbee Golf, then I gave her three more roses and told her the funnest (yes, not a word) part of each day was playing games with her. After that, we went out to eat, then I gave her three more roses. We were meeting a couple of her friends up the canyon for a bonfire that evening, so I told her we just had time to do a geocache.

(Geocaching is using a GPS unit to find a cache or treasure that someone else has hidden and posted the coordinates of on the internet.) Previously, I had hidden my own geocache up the canyon, near the park where we were meeting her friends for the bonfire.

I told Child I had already programmed the GPS coordinates in, and gave her the GPS unit to follow. We hiked up in the mountains for a few minutes, and eventually found the cache (a peanut butter jar). When she opened it, there were a collection of easter eggs, all with little slips of paper inside. On the top of the cache, there was a note that said, "You know how this works. You must choose something to take, and leave something in return." (In most geocaches, there are a handful of little trinkets, and you can take one of them and leave a trinket in exchange.)

Each of the little slips of paper had things like, "Move to Alaska," or "Become a progessional puppy-killer," things I knew she didn't like. She figured out pretty quick at that point that it was my cache, and said, "But I don't want to choose any of them." I told her I had another option, and pulled a final egg from my pocket with the ring inside.

The thing she had to leave in return was her answer, and she said Yes. :) I love Child...