Without jinxing myself, I think I can say I’m slowly getting better at making this blog a weekly project. Even without the sense of the world slowly suffocating from coronavirus, this still rates high for me. Pathetic? Probably, but at least it’s getting done.

This week I started getting active on Twitter. I have to say it isn’t my most favorite social media platform. The stream is a hodgepodge of whatever the algorithms think I’m interested in, and it ends up just trouncing any interest I have in reading any of it.

If anyone can point me in the direction of a good tutorial, or a way to pare down what I see on my feed, please post a reply! I get enough news overload from the rest of the world and want to limit the exposure. Anxiety is real folks! And it does not go well with paranoia, which is far more contagious than any germ!

That’s all I’m saying on that topic. It’s too much of a downer. 

On a brighter note, I dug out and dusted off a couple of stories from the old hard drive. One story I trimmed down for entrance into a contest @StoryPonyOnline.

I would have entered one of the shorts I finished last week, but those both fall into the category of personal essays, which I really need to get away from or find somewhere for them to go. I’ve always written to escape my life, and writing about my life becomes an emotional drain.

Usually, I write personal essays to vent, then I need to move on to something else. Otherwise, it becomes a black hole which sucks me deeper and deeper to the point of no return. Anyway, check it out if you care to at https://storypony.com/crime/foxtrot-911/3863/ Check out the other stories on there as well, or post your own. Just, please give feedback!

So the stories I’ve dug out are fantasy/sci fi and sci fi respectively.

The first, which I’m not sure if it will end up as a multi-book series or a multi-part book, is about a princess and her bodyguard who are thrown together in a fight to save their planet from being taken over by industrialization. The main plot, at this point, is the love story between them. The sub plot is the takeover and subsequent revolution to restore the world’s way of life.

I see the romance as pretty straightforward, but the political game is a bit more complicated. It’s based on the environmental versus industrial struggle.

The trick is to make the parallel between our real world and this fantasy world seem natural. I don’t want it turning into a Christian Literature style story where the religious implications are so blatant a person may as well watch Leave It to Beaver reruns.

I want to invite someone reading this story to think for themselves and at least learn some of the ties between the two versions of resource use and how they link to economics. Seems complicated, but the concepts are really simple. Conveying them within the story so that they flow is the challenge.

The other story is a book I took a stab at a few years ago. Back then, I bounced between computer and notebook, and unfortunately some of the scenes I wrote long-hand have been lost. Don’t ask me how.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve moved in the last decade. There was a time I could still remember exactly where I put everything in my bedroom in high school.

Now, I can’t remember where I left my keys if something disrupts my routine placement of things. I’m not one to carry a purse, so everything goes into pockets when I leave the house and they go right back to the same corner on my desk when I get home. If anything gets between me and that desk when I walk in the door, I’m screwed! Let it be a lesson in organization!

But I digress. The main character (MC) has just been arrested for suspicion of kidnapping his coworker. He gets roughed up, of course, but he also has a drug in his system which will kill him without medical attention in a certain amount of time.

The real kidnappers have bought out members of the law enforcement squad, and MC has to find out who they work for and expose them before it’s too late. This plotline is interspersed with flashbacks which fill in the story and how it became the mess that it is.

Both stories have plot holes which I’m working on patching. Next week, I have some vacation time coming. I’ve debated taking a roadtrip. With gas prices taking a nose-dive, it looks inviting. However, with the Tax Man knocking at the door, I’m also thinking about staying home and spending some valuable time working on stories.

Anyway, that’s how things are progressing at this point. Feel free to drop any feedback or volunteer offers for beta reading at tommie.wendall@gmail.com, or leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you.

Thanks and have a great week!