OMG, Batchelders.

Now and again—you run across a family in genealogy that just boggles the mind. A Reverend Stephen Bachiler, a minister from England, was involved in at least one bollixed-up attempt to migrate to the colonies, (colonists went, he, the organizer, didn’t)...

From Tommie: Was Jules Verne the first SF writer?

Some list Homer. And to a certain extent that’s so: he wrote voyages to the unknown worlds and to hell and back. And some list the Egyptian Sinbad, Sinhue, who did likewise: in the days before space travel, there were ‘exploration’ stories. But to...

[Book sale] We have started the dreaded cleanup…

of the (dracula music here) basement. We have boxes. Boxes of books. We have shelves of books. We are going to have to unload some books that are our books [we own them and have had them for years] but are not OUR books, if you get what I mean. This is the spillage of...

Moving past the outline…

Or at least the tight outline. You’ll see the word count bounce around as I replace ‘outline’ with finished text. You’ll note I’m down another pound: this one has been a battle. But we’re there. Lower weight than any time since the...

Thunderstorms…

Rare as hen’s teeth up here. Last night we had one. Usually rain sifts down as anything from fine drops to fine mist that sifts down over three days. If we do get lightning, it’s usually ‘dry’ lightning, and virga, which is rain that evaporates...

The pond is staying clear…and the writing…

…is advancing into the sketchy, magic-happens-here part of the outline. I outline only in broadest terms, mostly to get the pacing down and to get an idea of the slice of time… This doesn’t always work: sometimes an incident turns up that skews your...

:Head/wall: The pond…

…is clear. It wasn’t yesterday. It was green murk. Today, though I did absolutely NOTHING… It’s clear. You can see the rocks on the bottom. It’s my theory that the bursting of the sand filter gasket that dumped sand and dust into the...