Oooh -- A Shiny New Sale!

Picking Up The Pace

After hearing very little news since WorldCon in Chicago, in the last few days not only is "The Once and Future Tomato" coming out in Neo-Opsis (DW), the very limited edition (5 copies) hand crafted booklet of The Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest winning authors (DW) is almost ready, and I'm working on getting some panels and a reading at next month's WindyCon, but...

Today I got word that my short-short story "Brooding in the Dark" is being bought by Interstellar Fiction for their November issue. Their tagline is "Just a new magazine wanting to bring you all sorts of tales of science from every corner of the known universe."

This is a cool little story about dedication and purpose. The first draft, though, while it had the hook and the setting, wasn't really going anywhere. Just a mood and a setting, nothing happening. But vignettes don't sell -- sometimes you just have to "tell me a damn story" as Jeffrey Ford told us at Clarion. I shipped out an early version, expanded it, then finally got rid of a whole flashback section. Yes, kids, you CAN tell too much of the story, particularly when the whole piece is just 1500 words. (grin) What's left is a good story that fits its size. And yeah, I like all my stories, pretty much.

You'll be able to read about Battlestation 193 next month -- will keep you apprised.

Dr. Phil

Morning Drives

Glory

I don't drag along the Nikon D1 commuter bag with me every day, but my equipment bag does have the little Sony digital with a Carl Zeiss zoom lens. It's autofocus is much too happy locking onto the front windshield, so I lose some pictures, but at least I have a camera. (grin)

A week ago Thursday the sun was hiding behind a bank of clouds and the gaps created these lovely glory rays shooting over half the horizon. It persisted for the first forty five minutes of the drive, but in the beginning it looked like Allendale was blessed. This pattern continued in the evening, too, but those pictures weren't very good.


Sun rays basking glory over Allendale -- from 84th Avenue fields. (Click on photo for larger.)

The Flock Struts

Last weekend I wrote about the elusive wild turkeys (DW) and the large flock which has taken to crossing some of the roads about a mile, mile and a half, from us.

This Thursday morning I had to stop on Warner to let the big birds calmly strut across the road. It had rained overnight and between the dark clouds, the sun rising and the wet, it looked pretty amazing. While waiting, given that there's about 20 birds in this flock, I got out the Sony to try one shot. Of course, I had to look up at the rear view mirror because of the tire screeching noise behind me. Seems that this Toyota was all hell bent on closing the gap to the Blazer, which meant it was going in excess of 55mph, decided that they were going to pass me -- and then saw all the birds and was trying to brake and shimmy on the wet road, as they were not practicing driving under safe conditions. I wasn't too worried, they were screeching to a halt quite a distance away. But what-ta-id-iot.


I didn't correct the exposure, because you can see more of the turkeys this way. (grin) (Click on photo for larger.)

Two driveways up a second grouping of turkeys had just crossed and were standing around. Yesterday, I slowed in that area and saw about two dozen waiting at a driveway about to cross. There's a K-O-A campground nearby, and Mrs. Dr. Phil said that the other day someone reported early morning turkeys walking around that place.

It's like Hitchcock, but more stately and in slow motion.

Dr. Phil