I mentioned my story last Thursday, so I guess this Thursday is as good as any for an update.

I’ve worked out more of the story. I even found a way to work in some elements that were previously only mentioned in dialogue. Now, the main character I’ve decided on will have a larger role in some of the background story, which will pull it all together nicely. Just have to work out a few things yet, but at least there is progress.

Also, for those following, the Swine Flu map has been updated once again this evening. (Thanks to Michelle for a tip!) Feel free to bookmark it.

By the way, how often do you see siblings (same parents, no remarriages or anything) that are 25 years apart? Like the mother had the first child at 20 and had another child (perhaps unexpectedly) at 45. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of examples such as that, but does any one know of any for sure?

Okay. That’s all for today. I’m actually pretty tired right now.

This milkweed seed looks almost angelic, the way the light bounces, bends and reflects upon the filaments. They look like upraised arms with a tiny skirt, like a ballerina seed. Plant one, and you probably won’t grow your own ballerina girl, but I bet you’ll make some Monarch butterflies very happy!

Textures are cool. This is why I sometimes take photos of odd things.

This is how your lungs will work after you get the swine flu. No, not really. At least, not so far as I know! You know, sometimes I forget and look at my own map to check the progress of the swine flu; then, I remember that I am the one that has to update the map! It doesn’t update on its own.

Also, I keep typing “swine fly” instead of “swine flu.” Watch out for those swine flies! Those things are huge! They eat like pigs!

Maybe the texture is how the floor of your chicken coop will look after you build your own chicken coop! Yeah, that wasn’t the best of segues, but it’ll have to do!

Chicken and pigs. Pigs and chicken! How boaring! LOL!

Ugh. Long day. Best to stop now.

Or any day of the week, for that matter.

I saw this guide on How to Build Your Own Chicken Coop and immediately thought of Speedy.

Gardening is popular these days, and with the swine fu spreading, who wants to go to the supermarket to get eggs? Time to raise your own chickens! (Just make sure you check your local zoning regulations.)

And, with your very own rooster, you won’t need an alarm clock anymore either. Of course, if you’re out of work, you don’t need to get up early anyway. But, cheer up, your chicken friends will keep you happy and well-fed! Worried about cholesterol? Well, just pop out those eggs yolks. Plus, you can grow your own garlic–that’ll help you balance out your cholesterol! Raise some herbs, like parsley and chives, and your omelettes rockin’!

Where am I going with all this? I have no idea. I guess I’ll stop now.

The new swine flu that’s gotten everyone’s attention this weekend is an interesting one. It’s not just a “swine” flu; instead, it contains a mixture of swine, avian and human DNA.

All of which begs the question: Is Cincinnati to blame?

Known for its flying pigs, could Cincinnati have been the melting spot where the swine and avian flu viruses merged?

Of course, I’m not being serious. I haven’t even seen a flying pig outside my window in years.

The swine flu, on the other hand, is serious business. Like past flu outbreaks that have become pandemics, the swine flu is causing the deaths of healthy adults between the ages of 25 and 49. Usually, that age group would fight off a typical flu without much trouble.

I’ve been maintaining a map of the outbreak over the weekend, updating it as news comes in, for the swine flu. You can see how it’s jumped around, so it may be spread much wider but hasn’t affected people yet. We’ll see as the week progresses.

Hopefully, it will be one of those things that pans out. And, we can do our part to help it pan out. Be sure to wash your hands! That’s the most common way things are spread, especially from the hands to the nose, mouth and eyes. If you get sick, make sure to limit contact with other people so you don’t spread it around. It is an airborne virus, so coughing and sneezing spreads the virus. I’ve heard it spreads in a 3 foot radius, but I don’t know how accurate that number is. And, if you have any concerns whether you have the swine flu, don’t hesitate to contact your doctor or other medical professional. Right now, officials are recommending the same precautions you would take during the normal flu season.

And, for those that were wondering, this is the Year of the Ox, not the Year of the Pig (or Boar). That won’t be until 2019.

Astute readers will also notice that the city in the picture is not Cincinnati. (I had to make do with what I had!) But, do you know what city it is?

Since everyone seems to be keeping an eye on the swine flu outbreak, I put together a little site with a map showing where the cases have been. I’ll update the map as new reports come in, though, hopefully, we won’t be seeing more states turning pink! (Pink indicates cases have been reported.) More hopefully, there won’t be any more red spots!

Thursday, I tweeted about Spammer FAIL: “As seen on OPERA!” Well, the comment spammers on my blog aren’t much brighter. You saw yesterday’s post about Little Too stepping out for you? You see that it’s just a picture, right? It’s not an informative article or even an advice piece, right? Yet, the first comment on the post was obviously a spam comment: “Great suggestion!” (Paraphrasing.) Yeah, nice try buddy.

You know, I haven’t heard a peep from Deborah since reporting that, in the future, she lives next door to a pantless Speedy. Oh, wait… She has a new blog post now. She must have been busy and must not have made her blog hopping rounds yet this week… She will be so surprised…

Little Too steps out of the picture to see you.

You can read more about Little Too on her blog at LocoChihuahua.com. Not that she actually updates her blog or anything, which balances things out because no one reads this blog. At least there is symmetry.

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been taking a look at some of my novels-in-progress. Now, while I should be working on story #2, which is the one I scanned in notes and stuff for, I instead feel myself drawn to story #5.

The other night, I resolved (somewhat) the plot hole that I had with story #5. The problem was that I needed a certain character to live, but there wasn’t a strong enough reason to let him live. A bigger issue is that the villains really didn’t need to be where they were. I’ve resolved that problem. Now, I just need to figure out how they are going to let the character live without having him ruin their plans.

This particular story is actually one of two stories. The part I’m working on is, basically, the prequel. It is the backstory I developed while working on the main story. It just makes sense to do the prequel first. For one thing, the events of the prequel motivate the actions of some of the characters in the main story. The main story has seven main characters.

The prequel has a story, but it doesn’t really have any main characters. There are two characters that were my main characters, but, in analyzing the story, I don’t know if they can really stay as the main characters for the purposes of moving the story along. The one is outside the sphere of activity. That is, he is not directly involved in the primary plot of the story. If he knew what was going on, he’d be able to do something about it. Instead, he doesn’t find out until later how involved he was. With the other character, he’s perhaps too good at what he does. He’s not going to be going through the personal struggles that are necessary to move the story along. There is no growth for either one of these characters.

Of course, the story could be restructured to show their earlier struggles and mistakes and the events that led them to what will be their big moment. That would be a possibility.

Another possibility is to focus more on the character-who-must-live. That’s the one I mentioned earlier as being the one I needed to keep alive though the villains (previously) didn’t have a strong reason to do so. This character is one of the seven main characters in the main story. So, drawing him out here might take away from his development in the main story. Still, it’s workable, except for one small factor: he needs to fail. I don’t think people would want to read a story about a character, only to see someone else swoop in at the end and save the day. Could work in a comedy, but I don’t think it would be doable here.

Through the midst of this, however, another character has risen to the top of the pack. There is a character that was an important part of the story, but wasn’t necessarily a major character. A while back, I had an idea for a character’s background, and I had two characters that it would have been workable for. One was in the prequel (this character) and the other was in the main story. I opted for this character, because I knew the resolution of his personal conflict, and that worked better with the plot of the prequel than of the main story. It wasn’t going to be a major plotline. It was only going to be a subplot, a B storyline. However, the more I think about it, the more I think that it might be workable to have this character be the main character.

So, I am currently tossing around ideas in my head as to whether this will work and how to make it work. It’s interesting that it isn’t the type of character or story I set out to write, but somewhat of a natural progression over time.

Maybe, just maybe, sometimes procrastination pays off.

What could be behind the mystery door?

For more photos, visit Wordless Wednesday.

If you come here for inspiration, today is not your day. Turn around and go back.

For one thing, the economy really sucks right now. I mean, it really, really sucks. Let’s just leave that at that.

Two weeks ago, I finished writing my eBook. It took me about 8 weeks to write about 54,000 words. Mind you, I did recycle some of my previously written content and incorporated it into the eBook. But, that was a small portion, I think. And, I wasn’t running at full steam those 8 weeks either. I think there was a 1-week period where I didn’t do much at all on it. I think, at my max, I was able to write maybe 2,000 to 2,500 words in a day.

I had three test readers lined up to read over my eBook once it was done. Since finishing it, I haven’t heard a peep out of two of them. One has been active on forums, but hasn’t replied to my message to him. Another has been, near as I can tell, completely absent from the online world since the first week of April.

The third person has been busy. I sent her a copy over a week ago, but I don’t expect to hear back from her until next week at the earliest, because she has been busy with a number of projects.

So, that project is pretty much in limbo until I hear back from people. There are some things I could be doing with it, and I have done some of those things, but I haven’t been pressing full steam ahead with those. I’d just like to wait for feedback and then wrap everything up all at once. I’d hate to tweak something now, only to have to change it again later, you know?

But, since last week, I’ve pretty much lost focus. I mean, I could be working on other projects and, in fact, I did spend about two evenings last week working on a new project, but, for the most part, I have not been as productive as I should be.

On the one hand, I know that I can complete an eBook in about 8 weeks. The thing is, what do I focus on next? I didn’t really expect to take 8 weeks to complete the eBook I did. I thought it would be something fairly quick and easy to put together. But, once I got into it, I wanted to add more and more, to make sure that people would get something of value out of it. And, even though I have another project that is a bit more timely and should have been released this month if not last month, I didn’t want to switch gears and quit working on the first eBook to tackle another. That’s how I end up with too many incomplete projects. So, I pushed through with the one eBook. Now, what next?

I basically have three eBook projects. One is not time-sensitive, but it is one I have been working on for a couple years now, off and on. I have big plans for it, which is going to take more time, but I really want to provide a lot of value with this one too. The other two are more time-sensitive. They tie in together nicely too. So, I should probably be working on one or the other of those. On one, I hit a stopping point trying to find some information for it. I’ve been stumped where to find it, and have found bits and pieces but not to the extent that I want or need. The other requires a lot of research and writing. I am 7% finished with it though–woohoo.

Then, there are website projects I have as well. And, it just seems I am going in so many different directions and not accomplishing much. That’s why I need to pick something and work on it. But, the thing is, what to pick? The problem right now is that you really need to pick the things that are going to pay off sooner rather than later, you know? Money doesn’t grow on trees, though Congress has it printed as though it does, but that’s another story.

On top of all that, eCommerce sales are really, really lousy right now. The economy is one part and the other part is probably because my eCommerce site’s pages have dropped from page 1 in Google to pages 4, 5 or 6. And, a lot of the ones outranking me are just garbage sites. Very frustrating.

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Congress is reportedly planning to introduce legislation this week to force sales tax collection nationwide. So, where ever I would ship a product to, I would have to collect the local sales tax based on that person’s address and then remit that to the state or where ever. Can you imagine the increase in software costs that’s going to cause? Shopping carts will have to be rewritten, these tax schemes will have to be implemented, will we have to store huge databases to keep track of who gets taxed what or will we have to rely on probably slow state servers to check the address to determine the sales tax? Are Congressmen born stupid, or is it something in the water over there?

In the midst of that, I look at some of my novels-in-progress, and I notice that the one that is the furthest along, the one I spent a good month or so on back in 2004 writing, has only 10,000 words or so. 10,000 words! That pales in comparison to the 54,000 word eBook I wrote! And, that’s frustrating to me too. These are things I would like to finish, but I keep putting them off, and it’s because that’s not stuff that generally pays well. For lots of fiction authors, writing novels doesn’t provide their full-time income. It is supplemental at best. Of course, you hear about people making millions off their books, like J. K. Rowling, for example. But, while you may think and believe you write well enough and have good stories to tell, in the end, you can’t rely on hopes. That doesn’t pay the bills, you know? It’s hard to justify spending a lot of time writing something that may be a long shot at making money when you could be doing things that have a better shot at making money.

Still, there’s the thing where it’s hard to put a full effort into things you don’t enjoy doing.

Then, on top of all that, there seems to be a whole industry out there that seems intent on destroying relationships, or preventing them from forming, all under the guise of better relationships. You see that from Hollywood to Congress to the spam in your eMail. If women don’t have flawless, airbrushed skin and perfectly toned bodies and implants, no man will love them. And, women will laugh and dump a man that doesn’t have a porn-star sized little friend. Marriage isn’t about sharing, it’s all about you and your own feelings. It’s okay to cheat if your spouse doesn’t make fireworks go off in the bedroom. Women only want rich guys. Men only want supermodels. And so on.

And, that’s all baloney, yet people fall for that junk. They don’t consider the long-term; they look for the short-term. And that’s sad and destructive.

There’s too much focus on the physical part of relationships. Too many regard that as the only part of the relationship that matters. But, that’s only a part of a relationship. And, that’s also why, in the “old days”, people were encouraged to (and even did) wait for marriage before engaging in that part of the relationship. That way, they made sure the other portions of the relationship were on a strong footing. Many may regard that as old-fashioned and out-of-touch, but, with divorce rates at anywhere from 48% to 60% in the U.S. (depending on the source), something isn’t working with that attitude, is it?

I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers, because I don’t. But I am reasonably sure that the answer is not all in the physical side of the relationship. Because, you know what would be nice? Not someone to “rock your world” or any of the other euphemisms we have for certain activities. No, it would be just someone to talk to. Someone who would always be there for you, and vice versa. Someone you could trust and rely on, and vice versa. Someone who would talk and listen, and vice versa. Because, I don’t envision my “golden years” reclining in a tub in the backyard overlooking a lake, waiting for some little pill to kick in. Because, at that point, who cares? It’d just be nice to have someone to talk to. Sit in the back porch in the afternoon, listening to old music or reading the digital paper, drinking iced tea on a mid-summer’s day, with a nice ceiling fan quietly running and birds chirping in the trees with a nice breeze blowing and someone to talk to.

Then again, I plan to live forever, so maybe I just need to settle for talking to myself.