1000 words today…not bad.

Since the Wife left for Honduras, Master Buddhapuss has not ceded his stuffed animal. What can I say, he likes Scooby Doo.

Four days, almost 900 words per day. Huzzah. Today actually counted out at 1400, but 500 of the total went towards a short story idea that hit over eggs and coffee. I meant only to write the first few sentences. A page-and-a-half later, I stopped. Not sure what to make of the diversion, other than I like what there is of it thus far.

Whether this productivity burst stems from the self-imposed deadline or it’s a coincidence, I care not a whit. Just hope it continues.

The Wife leaves for Honduras on Saturday. Have faith, the struggle continues on in New Jersey.

Except for pornography, America’s next most unsung pleasures is guns. The Lord of War is an insider account of an international arms trader who supplied all sides in a run of bloody conflicts between 1987 and 2001. Based on actual events – which exact events and who the protagonist represents in real life is unknown – the story follows a first generation Russian immigrant reaching for the American dream, a la Scarface.

From the sale of his first Uzi, to his role as the exclusive supplier to Liberia, Lord of War is the twisted tale of a man who moves contraband from point A to point B, contravenes international regulations and UN embargoes, and looks suave doing it.

His motives as a character are tenuous, and makes relating to him difficult. For this, and other shortcomings, the story suffers a death blow.

What works about this movie:
1) Nicolas Cage is competent as usual.
2) Good to see Jared Leto working again.
3) The story moves quickly.
4) There is little oversell hype surrounding the project. Bad buzz is not necessarily a detractor.

What needs improvement:
1) Voice over narration. With rare exceptions voice overs signal a train wreck in progress. On the plus side, one knows this immediately, as the narration starts in the first scene.
2) Moralizing. Believe it or not, there’s lots of money made selling weapons to individuals one would not invite to a dinner party. Five of the largest arms exporters are the most powerful members in the UN, a point the movie mentions. Thanks for the fifty-year old message, Western Union.

Verdict: DVD rental.

Wrote 900 words and processed a dog pile of orders today. Even better news, the steroids/cortisone shot/Allegra/antibiotic cocktail worked as the doctor forecast. The ear infection is no more, and for the first time in months, the hearing in either ear clocks out roughly the same. But the progress came at a stiff price.

Steroid based treatments are last ditch treatments for ear infections. If they fail – and this is very rare, amen for that – the next stop is a specialist. Experts cost money, so naturally, I hate them. Allow me to introduce my motto: if it’s free, it’s for me. There were times this cure did not justify the savings.

Four of the six days worth of the blister pack of ‘roids, I cursed every dose. Side effects included: mood swings, water retention, insomnia, dizziness, and incoherence. Basically, a normal night out for the intoxicated, only cranked to eleven, and every second oh so sober. Fortunately, the doses tapered off each day. By the fifth, life improved a great deal.

Freed of the last dose, I hit the weights. Strength levels are down about two to three percent. Not too shabby considering seventeen continuous days of antibiotics, antihistamines, shots and a haphazard workout schedule.

All in all, not a bad day out.

This weekend the Wife and I slept with wolves. Not the sort from Saturday morning cartoons either. Predators like these could shatter a bone and consume five pounds of meat per minute. Cute for the photographers, loyal to their trainers, and deadly to interlopers. God bless New Jersey. Only in the Garden State can one find such entertainment.

All right, so technically we slept at a private campground near Pennsylvania that borders a wolf preserve. A twelve foot high fence separated us from the animals. Danger of an attack: low to non-existent.

But on Sunday afternoon, once the campground emptied out, of the nearly 100 campsites, ours was the only occupied one. That night, if there was food, we cooked it. If there were voices, it was ours. If there was a fire, we stoked the flames. We ruled the campground. But we shared that power.

After the sun set, the wind laid down, and the last ember in the fire pit gave out, the wolves howled. And then the magnificient creatures, just like us, slept.

Here’s some pictures of the wolf preserve:

No, I’m not in the above picture.

Odin rules this pack.

Cache, a bobcat.

A red fox.

The comma is not my lover, nor is it even my friend; when dealing with quotations it may be my greatest foe.

After years of wondering how punctuation and dialog work together, today I grasped ( and punched and prodded ) the rules of comma engagement. In the vicious struggle,
I claim a partial victory. The manuscript is better, though my eyes ache courtesy project fix fractured dialog.

Since punctuation glitches are make or break at this stage of my career - though probably less so later, as I’ve heard that established authors often hand in completed works riddled with basic errors - dialog seems a good focus for revisions. For a stickler, grammar is easy crime to hang on a novice. The idea is that the fewer points of grammar violated, the less reasons an agent has to say no. Right now the pitch is ready, the story ( more on this later ) is tight, the writing flows. That reminds me, I need a fresh supply of heavy weight paper. Anyway, I must be reasonably certain about the presentation. Catching everything won’t happen, and can not, perfection is impossible, but I can aim high.

Initially, the target was clarity of character, packaging each spoken line clearly so what character said a given snippet made immediate sense. Whether the dialog corresponded with something the character might say is a problem for later. I’ve got a touch of character meld in spots, and that can persist until the final stretch.

The big hangup: where in dialog, if anywhere, does the comma belong?

Rules make for boring reading, so I’ll spare everyone my studies save the following lesson. A comma separates a quote from a tag.

What does that mean in English?
“Brian, you ignorant slut.” Kathy said. << Needs a little work.
“Damn Kathy, stop licking that,” Brian said. << BING BING!

This works when there is a quote and a tag. And what if there is no tag? Out comes Mr. Period.
“Oh, I will lick it off,” She seethed at Brian. << Naughty, naughty girl.
“Right then. I will stop right now.” She seethed at Brian. << Someone gets a cookie!

Seethed is not considered a tag, it’s part of a separate sentence. Hence no comma.

The upshot of this journey is the first 145 pages now have better comma placement in dialog. Additionally, I found many instances of quotes where the identity of the speaker was murky and adjusted them. This added quite a few words to the manuscript. In fact, it contributed more to the word count than any other session this week. That’s a lot of he said, she said.

EDIT - Saturday 11:35 EST - all 251 pages have clear quote attribution and comma placement in dialog. Check out that word count meter now, huh? 72, 871. Geez, if I revert to passive voice and modify roughly 1 verb per sentence out of 4957 sentences thus far, diluting the voice would mean nearly 5,000 additional words. Don’t worry, though, I avoid passive voice unless conveying the same meaning with active terms makes the sentence cumbersome.

For instance, “John is screwed” To me, that’s an acceptable use of passive voice. Why? Because, who screwed John is a lot less important than his predicament. Sorry about that, John.

On the other hand, “John was screwing old ladies out of money” makes my ears ache.

It’s not horrid, but no doubt with a little imagination I could make it so:
“John was recklessly screwing aged ladies out of precious ducats earned through years of service in the court of the Crimson King.”

Wow. There’s a verb in the above sentence somewhere, I just know it.

After an outage, it’s a relief when a system returns as before. If a piece of gear works it’s taken for granted; few praise the magic box that is technology. And the magic box always purrs, right? Of course it does, Virginia. What functioned perfectly yesterday, last week, and last month, no longer does. There must be gremlins loose, hopped up on glue.

But, when something mission critical malfunctions it’s like inheriting a car with a busted radio. Eventually one adapts to a stereo free experience, yet the silence never feels right.

In any case, I’m glad things are sorted out and running smooth.

Off to work, write, work and then errands.