This week has been pretty good for me. Part 2 of Girl will be proofed today; part 3 is in first draft, but complete. Part 4 is started. Finishing that will give me a two week lead time, I’d like to get parts 4 and 5 done this week. Girl is getting started on her new school schedule, and while I know she’ll always give me time if I really need it, I want to get a bit ahead so that if she has a week from Hell we still have proofed copy ready to go.

This feels like a pretty good pace, 2k words/week. I think Body Double (which had a more structured plot/style) was about 3k/week, and that was a bit much — but a good part of that was trying to fit in my plot elements. I’m less concerned about forcing the plot to fit in a certain number of parts with Girl #16180. I almost see it as more of a science fiction comic than as a novella told in chapters.

It’s meant to be fun, to keep my writing, and to leave me time for other writing, and creative work. When I did the images, I was doing about 5-6K/week, sometimes more — I was always getting ahead, since I wrote almost every day, and published only on weekdays. So I can do this, you’re probably wondering why I’m stressing about it. The deal is that, after Body Double, I don’t think I published anything for months, or a year. IIRC, though, both Something About Him and Choices were written afterwards, so all writing just makes you stronger, if it doesn’t burn you out. {And there you go DennyW, links to asstr.org}

OK, that was probably the silliest usage of pull-quotes ever.

Still, I have no problem with highlighting adult/erotic content. It’s fun, after all. And I’ll be getting back to that whole search for fun thing. It’s just that right now doing fun things is more interesting/fun than talking or thinking about why it’s a cool-ish philosophy. Although, since I’m a geek, writing an essay about it will prove to be fun at some point in the future.

Girl and I watched the first episode of Raines last night. It’s a cop show starting Jeff Goldblum, which is what NBC brought into replace Studio 60. From the ads I thought he talked to the ghosts of the dead, and used their info to solve crimes, much like the book I recently read, Don of the Dead. But that’s entirely not the case. His visions of the deceased are actually his hyper-active imagination, with whom he has discourse, since that’s how he’s used to solving cases with his ex-partner.

They did a really good job with this in the pilot. His vision of the victim changed as he learned information about her. He heard her voicemail, and she picked up a southern accent. As he saw her more or less purely, she changed, her behaviors changed. It was probably a lot of fun to be the actress who played her. The special effects were simple, but effective, people would disappear or change as they walked behind trees, or out of camera shot, for example.

The other really good thing about it, was that the victim, as Raine’s imagination, never gave him any solid information. It fed his intuition, yes, but it had to then be used in the real world to get real evidence. It helped him focus his investigation, but didn’t provide new information. A few times he’d ask her ‘Why do you say X’, and she’d respond, “It’s because that’s what you think is going on.” There’s the potential for this to help him and for him to be grossly misled by it. That, I think, sounds fun. We were to tired to watch the second part. (Especially as I played more Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door)

My only complaint about it, really, was that the motive of the killer was kind of unbelievable. Still, as a pilot, and with a lot of character stuff to do, they did a decent job. It was, way way way better than the original Dresden Files pilot, and I still want to see that show.

I’m going to lunch with SexyWife and JB today, and will probably go home to plot my evil D&D-type plans. I have some ideas stemming from last week’s marathon session, and want to make a couple of stock dungeon spaces, with some randomish encounters. There’s a “Dungeon” beneath the city that could have almost anything in it, if I create my own random encounter tables then they can be moderately story driven, too. I also need to look over some of the factions that they’ve (knowingly or un-) had contact with.

Since the PC’s have mostly wrapped up what they were working on (or gotten to a point they can’t proceed without more magic/money/resources), I want time to pass, and for them to work toward some other goal — whatever that may be (I’m not 100% sure). I also think it might be a good time to talk to people about modding their chars a bit. I think I may advise them to re-spend some of their skill points; there’s a gambling skill Girl’s character should have, and I found a feat that might make more sense for SexyWife’s character than spending some of the points she spent (and she may have a different vision of her character now, anyway).

So, I’m expecting a busy weekend. The Goddessdaughter™ will be here tonight, making Ostara eggs (and SexyWife promises me deviled eggs tomorrow). Off to do a bit more work before lunch.