What would you call a blog that only posts once a month? A mlog...? I've been busy as a badger over at my Twitter account, and also for some reason it's become increasingly difficult to navigate Blogger of late.
I've also been remiss in my substacking. One thing that takes up a lot of my time is my fiction-writing. Been pretty productive in the past few months -- had 4 story ideas on the back burner of my mind for years, finally got around to realizing them: the first is a story about a young man (perhaps in his 30s) who for reasons the writer (moi) doesn't clearly divulge (I like keeping certain things enigmatic in a story) happens to be in a situation of living with his great aunt, sort of subletting a room in her nice pleasant suburban home (she lives alone, a widow, kids all grown up and gone). The story isn't really about anything, there's no real plot, I just wanted to imbue it with an ambiance of a suburban home in springtime, with the protagonist having a cold throughout.
Next was a complete change of pace, a surreal story utilizing almost impenetrably arcane vocabulary about a tiger in an area of the jungle that happens to be inhabited by a strange god who was put there as punishment by higher gods. Again, no real plot, just a lot of ambiance.
After that, I dusted off an old idea that had been knocking around in my head for years -- a spoof of the TV show The X-Files, using characters from the show in my story -- particular Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). In fact, my entire story is told from the perspective of the female FBI agent, Scully -- though not in 1st person but in 3rd. This one, unlike the two previous ones, is plot-driven, a nice plot device to carry the story along -- but as always, I'm more interested in ambiance than plot. I dutifully lay out the plot like a long elaborate 100-page mouse-trap, but all along I'm more interested in the atmosphere, the language, and any quirky humor I can milk along the way.
Finally (so far), the fourth one which I'm still embroiled in (59 pages so far) is another spoof -- this one of the TV show House, again using the show's characters in my story. The hook and premise of this one is rather ingenious, I must say. First, the same team is assembled as figured in the TV show -- only here they are not in med school and Dr. Gregory House is not the eccentric taskmaster doctor guiding them to their degree and license. He is in fact a 'ghostbuster' -- his job is to go to haunted houses, inns, hotels, etc., and figure out why people have experienced 'ghosts'. Of course, mostly, his job has involved dispelling any supernatural explanation and uncovering a natural one all along. All the med students of the TV show, and his doctor colleague 'Wilson' are here part of his ghostbusting team. For this conceit I hit on the perfect title: Haunted House. The hook is that although he is a staunch atheist and thinks the supernatural is stupid, he's also a widower who still loves his wife after she died tragically 8 years prior -- and in fact he has had experiences of her 'haunting' him, though of course he must explain these away through naturalistic means. I won't give away the spoiler -- partly because I'm not sure what it is... yet.
Gooooombye....
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