I Talk Funny

I talk funny, but that's OK.

My syntax is flawed natural. I don't oft say the "t" in don't. I use the past tense of the verb with the past perfect when I use the contraction. I've ate dog in China. I make up words on the fly and define them in the same context. We've got the unabridged OED for a reason, and that's Shakespeare.

I pronounce words the way they sound and feel instead of the way everybody talks on the news. I create voices, I collect accents, I speak from simple English and simple grammar to complex English and gnomic.

Because I've worked places where people dain't English speakers (including the United States), I up and down and around my English level to match the audience, instead of expecting the audience to match me. Unless they're supposed to be trying, in which case we'll make it hard correct.

Nobody wins when nobody communicates, and nobody has fun when we all communicate the same way. Play with a language and it'll play with you.

We haven't got no prescriptivists 'round here.

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Book covers, people. Horrible book covers. Where are the artists come publishing time? I'm not just talking about Fantasy chain-mail bikinis, I'm talking Science Fiction books without matching covers. Any publishable genre book will have a Hook Image tailor-made for the cover.

Here's a good cover. I can't find the book (if it even exists), but I can imagine it's my type of book.

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2000 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die" - in progress (~1/18)

Lived Too Long To Die

Today I began "Lived Too Long To Die", a science fiction book, with a bang of productivity. My output goals for this project are 2000 words a day, each day, until I hit 90,000 words or the plot ends, whichever comes second.

It doesn't have to be Perfect, it just has to be Good. And I write Good. As that last sentence just proved.

Captain Frank Evers leads an eclectic survey team to break the Quarantine around Earth after generations of silence. Can the mission succeed after what they discover on the surface, or will they be trapped amongst the Sol remnants of humanity forever? More importantly, can Professor Kelly Qu draw the taciturn captain out of his shell long enough to find Love against the backdrop of a ruined planet?

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"Mr. Toob, it's hard for me to say this..."

"Give it to me straight, Doc! Don't sugarcoat it."

"Your problem is that you're a tiny man who breathes water and can't sit up in your own tube habitat."

"Oh no!"

"Also I'm not a doctor, I'm a chef. And those flowers? Garnish."

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3000 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die" - in progress (~1/30)

Bitsy Pollo

There's a folder I have labelled simply "Bitsy Pollo" and inside are all the most inane of my many ideas. Today, let's reach into the folder and display a few.

It was the first day of the vernal equinox and Bitsy Pollo was scared.

"The Mystery of the Ghost and How He Died: A Mystery Short Story in Two Acts. Also the Ghost Tells a Werewolf Story."

Billy was tall and handsome, with one eye for the ladies and the other eye for himself. Cross-eye Billy, they called him.

"Darling Simony, why'd you have to go and pet the lion? Why?"

Will she be able to use her economics degree for Good this time, instead of Evil? And then find LOVE?!?

Hey-a-lou, in the day: I jazz while I write, and then rock the night.

An agoraphobia monster: it's a monster that takes up the entire outside world. And is made of a breathable jello material ("The Wobbling, THE WOBBLING"). It's like being snowed in...by monsters.

A butterfly kicking a dolphin. The full moon is in the background. Were-butterflies came to mind. 

A planet where butterflies evolved from men?!?

That is all.

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Finished up the Tree Spirit story and sent it into the aether. I like how it turned out, dark without being gloomy and with a firm sense of place. Classy. In other submission news, I'm making an exception to my Pro Rates Only policy in submitting a story to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Who wouldn't want that name amongst their writing credits? You'd never have to explain that you were an SF writer ever again.

The sexy conclusion.

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2000 words? OK
Short Story "Moving In, Moving On" - finished, submitted