The Plan

I've got a plan. I'm going to edit a chapter of The Wide and Burning World a day--no more no less-- for all of August. By the end of next month my book will be tied up with a neat little bow. Why not start now? Because not every plan has to be hatched as soon as possible. This is the August Plan: 31 chapters, 31 days...and 31 blog posts about the process. Wish me luck!

The Dark Knight Rises "Preview"

No, I didn't sell any of my precious bodily fluids to see The Dark Knight Rises in pre-release. This is my pre-review, or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Save $10. (This will pay off at the end, I swear...somehow this got ranty... And the Kubrick reference goes throughout. I dunno, I just like Kubrick.)

It's Always the Quiet Ones

I didn't become a writer. Silly as it sounds, I was born with the bug, and have always been writing in one form or another, the subconsciousness of the action as validating as the act itself. Now I talk about it, proclaim it as part of my life-boildown.

How long might it have taken me to embrace it, without the encouragement of those around me? Not forever, but a long time at least. And now I have that same power, the gift of "You should write more."

Here is where I got my breath stolen away in surprise. I didn't know he wrote wrote, you know? I don't think he really knows it either. Not yet, he doesn't. But someone should tell him.

Several New Ones

There's really no sense in spending this post tearing Ridley Scott's "effort" Prometheus the...criticisms it deserves. I can only count my stars lucky that this was not the film that emerged in the stead of Alien, given that the strong, independent, yet achingly feminine Ellen Ripley might have been replaced by a shrieking female lead defined by little more than an obsession with pregnancy and a fuzzy understanding of the important difference between belief and proof.

What to learn, what could it be? I like characters that attempt--even in vain--to lift themselves above their emotions when the situation requires. I like love stories: It's love that moves the mountain, or at least, what makes you want to move it. But there are more interpretations of the love-drive than the howling abandonment of reason in the face of loss. It's a good first step to realize this as an author. The next step is allowing your characters to learn the same lesson. Sometimes there is work to be done; suck it up, leave your boyfriend in quarantine and go do it.

Credo

When the weather changes, sometimes it's time for a little "poetry." Poetry without the caveat is how I started writing, after all. True fact.

It's going to rain again
Get grey
Monday's the new Friday, but Tuesday's always next
It's raining again
Don't think too much about it
Gut punch, fever-pitch
Swallow back the snot
I must not stop.

What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You

10% hardline facts 

20% wiki-research

>5% references

<5% personal experience 

60% imagination

This is how I roll, especially when doing established-setting-based writing (you say fanfic, I say to-mah-to). You want to know enough to not come off as a n00b, but not so much that you get beholden to others' ideas. If I'm inspired to write a piece directly based on something existing, it's because I'm interested in an idea of my own, set in a particular context. Get inspired and don't let outsidership stop you. Embrace it. Originality comes from innovation.

Brews for the Brew-god

Okay, okay. Instead of fussing with the very long post I've been working up about Chaos Space Marines (yes, I purchased a book from the Game Novelizations section of Powell's), I'll post something short-n-tasty that I wrote this week. It's sort of a work in progress, but I just know it's going to yield some great results. Snort. So, along with my first comics and my first novel, this is my first homebrew recipe, after my 5th batch of beer and 2nd batch of mead (which is winding down now. I predict July bottling). In the words of the late-great Heath Ledger, Here... we... go.

[Strawberry Blonde]
7 lbs. dry light malt extract
2 lbs. 14oz orange-blossom honey
1 lb milled crystal malt (something sweet!)
2 oz Hallertauer hops (pellets)
1 tsp Irish moss powder
3+ lbs whole frozen strawberries
11.5 g packet of dry ale yeast (your choice, I'm experimenting with Safale S-04)

1. Sanitize all your gear: brewing pot, thermometer, ferm. lock and stopper, mesh strainer, funnel, plastic bucket and lid. Normally I sparge right into my glass carboy, but not this time because...
2. In your bucket, combine the frozen strawberries and 2 gallons of water (try fitting a whole strawberry down the neck of a carboy. Yeah... now try getting it back out again! Bucket is bettah). During the time it takes to brew your wort, they'll thaw out somewhat and basically make strawberry ice water.
3. Bring 3 gallons of water to a boil in your big brewer's pot. Once it's hot, add the crystal malt. Steep for 30 minutes, keeping an eye on it (mine got foamy, nothing major, but still). Fish out as much as you reasonably can with your mesh strainer and discard the spent grains.
4. Add the malt extract, the honey (I put a little hot water in the near-empty jar and shook it, so I could get out all the honey-goodness) and 1.5 oz of the hops. Boil for 60 minutes.
5. With 15 minutes to go in your boiling time, add the Irish moss powder.
6. With 5 minutes to go in your boiling time, add the remaining hops.
7. Put the lid on and sparge through your strainer-and-funnel into your bucket. 
8. Pitch your yeast when cool. I did mine at 70F. Put on your fermentation lock.

Note: I was beer-prenticed under someone with a broken hydrometer, so I (ahem) often neglect to take OG readings. Lazy is the word for it.

Here's where we get into the theoretical part. I pitched the afternoon after I sparged. The night after I pitched, the yeast was fermenting away. Hooray, it's going to be beer! But, that was only yesterday, so who knows what kind of shenanigans will arise? I'm planning to rack into my glass carboy after a week, and bottle after (at least) a week in my secondary fermenter. I'll update this if there's some cataclysm and that doesn't happen. I always bottle with 1.5 cups of malt extract dissolved in a pint of hot water, and rest after capping for about 10 days.

I name all the beers I make, and in nerd-honor of the book I was supposed to be writing about, I think I'll pick a WH40k-themed moniker, this go-round. I've heard nothing but mockery of a Warmachine theme drink list. Apparently blue curacao featured prominently and the recipes were for chick-drinks, all. Nuts to that! A frosty homebrew is the beverage of choice in my meta. What could be more macho than beer, right? Well, maybe beer without strawberries in it... Drink up, Night Lords, it's always summer somewhere.