Endtime Blues

I had a craptastic dream last night.

In the dream, some sort of apocalypse was happening, and all of my friends were heading back to be with their families (all of whom live in the immediate area). My family’s a couple hours away from me IRL, not too difficult to get to, but pretty much impossible to reach during the endtimes.

No one was trying to get to me.

I don’t know how I knew; maybe Dream-Me received a phone call or something, but I knew there was no one out there who was going to try to help me or reach me, and let me tell you, that was one hell of a bummer.

GNW and its offshoots are firmly tongue-in-cheek, but I did try to touch on what happens to human relationships when the world goes to shit. You cling to whoever you can find, whether it’s the nice neighbor who didn’t let you starve, or the well-meaning Boy Scout who won’t try to attack you while you sleep. But I don’t think Vibeke has faced that sort of loneliness that comes from having absolutely no one. The story would be a lot grimmer if she did.

I don’t know what brought the dream on. I’m working on a short story that faces a protagonist who really does feel alone, but for entirely different reasons — and she’s basically okay with that. Solitary woman, if you will. Getting into her head has been fun.

Deep Thoughts

I was stitching together some back cover copy for the serial novel, which still has no name. Still working on the “intro” paragraph–the one that introduces the world and tells us what’s up.

However, I did come up with a more succinct tagline that encompasses the story and appeals to my snarky side:

Bad Parenting + Teenage Hormones + Senility = Civil War

Still no word on the Big Machine, aside from the fact that they are indeed sitting on it and I want it back, dammit.

I think today calls for Starbucks.

Suz vs. Homer

“Do we have a copy of The Iliad anywhere?” I asked Dad.

“What about Illinois?”

“No…The Iliad…you know, Greek verse, fall of Troy, Achilles…”

“Oh! Homer wrote that, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m rather hating on Homer right now…or rather, most free translations I can find.”

“I read that years ago,” he mused. “It was long…very bloody, too.”

“Yes, well, I need it for a project.”

My Cordeilla Project, all 100,000+ words of it, started out as a fantasy retelling of King Lear. Shortly thereafter, it spiraled into something even bigger, when I decided to include the “Trojan survivor” aspect of the mythos. Well, to be fair, it started including itself…and I decided at some point to follow Stacy’s advice and go big or go home. So I went big. Way big. Epic big.

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