Author Archives: David Crampton

Swinging

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It’s been a hell of a weekend. There have been some seriously stressful points, and some seriously amazing moments. I’ll recap the top in each category, and leave the rest for a later time.

Major awesomeness of awesome. Also awesome. Riverdance. Live. At MSU‘s Wharton Center. Nikki was gifted two tickets to Saturday night’s show by the amazing Peter and Becky as a thank you for watching their kids. I went, expecting to have to suppress grumbling and complaining, as a favor to Nikki. What I got was an experience that filled my eyeballs and ear holes with symbolism, story, talent, and inspiration. Holy balls, was that an amazing thing to partake in. I was drawn in from the moment that I realized that those clicks weren’t time delayed because of distance, he was clacking his shoes together in precise time WHILE IN THE AIR. Also, that drummer was better than the fiddler because, c’mon, eighties hair.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s lice. Our five year old’s Dad’s family discovered these little jerk faces minutes before Nikki was due to pick Aidan up for our weekend with him. (No judgement here, please. Clean and dirty people alike get afflicted with these bugs.) As previously mentioned, we sit for other kids, so we missed out on another weekend with him. On top of that, because the aforementioned kids were at our house on Tuesday, we spent the weekend turning the house upside down, piling everything that could be washed into the laundry, and everything else into plastic bags. We shampooed, we got haircuts (Nikki is becoming a pro with those clippers), and we sprayed furniture and carpets. All signs point to us being in the clear, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that that’s the case.

My hair needed to be cut, anyway.  The stylist at Walmart really screwed it up.

3 years old

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Cian is three years old.  It’s been three years since that morning in Ingham Regional Medical Center (now McLaren Lansing) when he came into the world, weighing a whopping 9 pounds.

He’s suffered through what we thought was a dairy allergy (and are now thinking is a mild case of FPIES), two collisions between his head and concrete steps (I had no idea a tooth could get pushed up into your gum, let alone pop back into place – but seriously, stop running on the stairs!), and the terrible twos.  He’s come through it all with a vibrancy that has shocked me, and made me once again believe that anything is possible.

If you ask him how old he is, he will proudly tell you “Fwee!”

Happy Birthday, Cian.  I love you.

But, seriously, use the railing when you’re on the stairs.

New to me

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From this picture, I’m pretty sure that two things jump right out at you.

We’ll not talk about the first one, which is the size of my nostrils.  I really need to avoid that camera angle.  Heh.

The second is the new-to-me car in the background!  While my ideals sob at moving away from the Pontiac Sunfire, it’s pretty difficult to cram a family of six in that little, aging, teal car.  So, I’ve taken a hit in fuel efficiency, and received upgrades in space and luxury.  I have to admit, I never expected to fall in car-love with a Chrysler Pacifica.

I tell you what, though.  I’m hoping to have this one for the long haul.

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Writing Journal

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From my writing journal, back in January:

Julia is being very hard to nail down. I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised. For a main character, she’s entering the story quite late. So, while the extras of her world have been getting attention, histories, and the beginnings of character development, she’s only showed up as a cute and flirty waitress at a pool hall.

So, she needs to hit the ground running. Maybe? All the cool facts about the life she leads or her flaws or whatever won’t make her feel living as you read. They won’t make the reader feel like they already know her. Because they don’t know her. So, I guess I’m trying to cheat.

Long back and forth isn’t going to do that. Conversation is great, but it doesn’t get you inside the character’s head. The other characters are being put through a gaming device – the dreamscape – and we’ll see deeper into them through their reactions. The hand-off to Julia should be abrupt. Writing it from her point of view, so she’ll be internally flipping out about the dreams, but she’ll refuse to work in a group. She’ll say that she’ll take the case, try to get the gun, get zapped, and shoo them out of the pool hall. Then we’ll follow the group for a bit, and follow Adam until he *OMGSPOILER*. If it’s going to be that long until we see her again, am I introducing her too soon?

And more, from this past Sunday:

I don’t like the hand-off of Adam from Seth and Susan to Julia. It’s forced. It feels fake. It’s preventing me from moving forward. What would happen if Julia wasn’t at the pool hall, if her shift was over? I’d have to send Sol and Jonah, and have Seth be the one that hustles over to Susan’s apartment. That would also allow for some physical intimacy between Seth & Susan. Maybe this would work better:

I then proceeded to re-outline the progression of the entire novel, starting from switching Seth out for Sol in rushing over to Susan’s flat.  Since then, I’ve been writing like a fiend.

Writing Journal

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From my writing journal, back in December:

Need to get Julia up to speed, but have her hesitate. She’s a solitary that has been trying to unravel a lot of Detroit’s more spooky mysteries on her own. She has had no formal training as a witch or an investigator. She has a natural talent being the former, and has picked up quite a bit from books, spiritual advisers, and her own experiences with the paranormal. Her continued rookie mistakes with the latter have the DPD on the lookout for someone with her description for breaking and entering, petty theft, and connection with an arson suspect.

She avoids serious contact with others so that she can be free to investigate on her own, as she pleases. She has no delusions about protecting others. Also, she has been dreaming of Adam. It is unclear is she is picking up on Walter’s manipulation of Jonah, or if she is just that spiritually tuned in to her city.

The scene at the pool hall will be a hand-off of Adam to Julia, as she’s an intended main character of her world. What to do with the rest? They’re not going to sit on their hands.

No, of course not. They see two sides of this – Adam vs. Walter. So, they’re going to track Walter down. Walter doesn’t even come to their world, he’s manipulating through dreams for Bob’s sake. Shared dream? Shared dreamscape?

Writing Journal

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From my writing journal, back in November:

Well, crap. What are Jonah and Seth supposed to do? Seth is taking command, even though he won’t be going on the trip to the *OMGSPOILER*. Seth and Susan, by the end of the night, will end up physically entangled, if not romantically. The girl that gave Sol her number ends up being Julia, the witch-in-training. So, Seth will state that they need an expert in the strange, Jonah will volunteer Julia, and Seth will gloat about the phone number once more.

Phone Geekery

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I desperately want to mod my phone into a reliable and useful state. I’m 75% of the way there. Its original software made it more than useless – it was a menace.  More specifically, it was a menace to my wife’s sanity.  It’s hardware is sufficient for my needs, unless it’s the hardware that has caused all of the problems.

Nah.

If that were the case, moving from MotoBlur to CyanogenMod wouldn’t have fixed anything.  HAS to be the software.

I’m going to try SuperOSR for a bit, and see if that one fixes the last few bugs, or if it creates any more.

Your smart phone? It’s a computer. That’s all. If it hangs up on people, reboots on its own, calls people while its screen is locked in your pocket, it’s either the hardware or the software. Why would you toss perfectly good hardware without trying to find software that works?

Writing Journal

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From my writing journal, back in October:

Start the first scene in the coney, as it is now. Describe the place, and the people, and Seth’s worry about Susan’s state of mind. Open near the end of their visit and bring the run-in with Adam closer to the beginning.

This was the second time that I started a rewrite of Adam’s Name, so I was on the line about whether I just needed to chuck the piece or if it could be fixed. I had tried to rewrite the conversation-via-journal as regular conversation, but it still felt choppy and forced. It was a few more months before I felt the urge to revisit it, this time with the idea to include structure, as well as dialogue, in the rewrite.  So far, the story has done nothing but improve.