Poverty

Hypatia has to have poverty. Granted it is an alien world transformed for the rich rourist trade, but even with robots, there has to be people doing low-end jobs. There has to be people that get stuck on Hypatia and can't afford to leave. There has to be people who get blacklisted and can't find jobs. There has to be people who run out of money, luck or even become injured and can't work. Where do they live? What do they do every day? How do they survive?

The Suit

This happened in real life, but it would make a great short story. Here are the facts as C. Related them to me. Here's what I suggested and where this could go.

C.'s daughter is getting married next month. C.'s mother needed a dress to wear, but C.'s mother put very restrictive requirements on the dress:

* high collar to hide her chicken neck

* long sleeves to hide her spotted skin

* cost no more than $40

A dress was found for $39.99 in a not-soo-good color for Mom.

While walking through another store, Mom noticed a lovely suit. Her eyes lit up. It was torquoise. C. Got her mother to try on the suit. It was perfect, but it cost $80. Mom refused to buy the suit despite C. Offering to spring for the $80.

Later, upon hearing the story, C.'s husband insisrted they buy the suit.

I suggested C. Tell her mother it was a final sale and she could not return the suit. C. Suggested she say it was marked down even more. I said L., the daughter, could insist grandmother wear the suit at the wedding.

This sounds like a great start to a story. Of course, I will hear what really did happen.

To make this magical, the suit could have properties. The off-color dress could have properties, too. The clothes could end up on the wrong people. Or something even beter could come along to spice this story up. It's literally the stuff of real life which we all deal with creatively every day.

Sea Caves

Sea caves appear in Careless in Red. When the tide is out, you can walk around in the cave. When the tide comes in, the caves are flooded. In this case, the water gets so deep a person trapped in the cave will drown. Sea caves have been used forever as places to hide things. They are favored by pirates.

There are sea caves along the shore of the North Sea on Hypatia. Who would look for anything valuable in a galaxy where there is ftl space travel, artificial intelligence and teleportation devices? The Hypatia pirates do it.

Oops

I lost it. I had a plan for yesterday's blog entry, and then it went right out of my mind. I'm moving in less than 3 weeks, so lots of things are flying right out of my head. I guess writers are just as subject to stress as anyone else. I'll do my best to keep this blog up-to-date.

Rosetta

I'm not even sure if this is the correct spelling for the Rosetta Stone, but I have this idea that Rosetta, Rosetta Stone, or some other form can be used to describe the protection for Hypatia. It is spacebound, secret and stays hidden most of the time. Star will be approached to join. I think it will be a good fit for it, at least in the short-term.

Rant

Every blog needs a rant now and then so here's one for you today.

I was a fairly early adopter of podiobook listening at http://www.podiobooks.com/ There's a lot of sci fi on the site which I enjoy. (No surprise this.) I've listened to Lafferty, Lowell and Hutchins. I caught Sigler on his own feed. The Rookie made me laugh and was a good read. I'm not into horror so I pass by a lot. Only recently have I come to appreciate fantasy. I'm enjoying podcastle at http://www.podcastle.org/ and I've had Escapepod in my feed for a long time http://www.escapepod.org/

One of the things I've noticed is the incestuous character of science fiction podcasting. I think they like to think of it as networking. I interview you. You interview me. It's two podcasts. We get interviewed by a third person. That's three. Then we each interview the third person and that's two more podcasts. The bottom line though is there are only three people.

So Hutchins decides to have a big deal about short stories in his Seventh Son Universe and everybody's all excited. Don't get me wrong. I'll listen. I enjoyed the story. But come on. It's not that big a deal. It's a group of folks, mostly unpublished or published by very small presses, recording their stuff.

Writing for yourself, reading to small groups of people, it's been done forever and ever amen. This isn't news. There's just the Internet to spread the reading around. I think it's great, but it's not earthshaking. The campfire is just a little bigger and we don't have to worry about forest fires.

Am I sore because I'm not included, I'm not as good a writer yet?

I thought hard about this. At times, I am, but then at other times, most of the time, I am quite content to push on my own limitations and see where I go. I'm not so serious about all this.

You want to be a writer. Be a writer. Just don't keep going on and on about it. Write. Read. Publish. I'll listen if it's audio.

End of rant.

Azotus

The activities of Philip, a deacon in the early church, came up. He finds himself on a desert road in the middle of the day, running to talk to an Ethiopian eunoch. After the man is baptized in a pool beside the road, Philip is snatched away to Azotus and must walk home many miles. He preaches along the way. Philip's adventures are not recorded, but it is such a wonderful story because it challenges me so.

Can I run to catch up with the chariot?
Can I expound on a passage of Scripture such that my listener will ask to be baptized when water appears miraculously?
CAn I be so focused on my message that I can even share it when plunked down far from home with no physical means of support?

Philip certainly has networking skills to find food, shelter, protection and people to preach to.

Imagining myself into this kind of evangelism and commitment is my creative work for today.

Going Forward

The more I read and the more I think about it, I think I want to imagine a world very different from my own. I finished reading Mike Resnick's starship trilogy. I was amused to read that 3000 years from now people will be using paper and pens. Oh, there were some advances with computers, but basically everything stayed the same. Things will not stay the same. So writing about a time in a future requires my imagination and requires choices. I can't imagine it all. I have to choose what I imagine. My biggest challenge so far is imagining my main character. I need to go forward and imagine other characters, too.

If, for example, Old Kelly can communicate telepathically, it makes sense that she may not be able to speak or hear. Then again, she is old. Perhaps that is why she cannot hear. I need to think about this some more. What are Kellens really like and why was she in prison for so long anyway and does it matter to this story?