Helen Mathey-Horn's Blog, page 36

Spider Infestation and Local Politics

“That got your attention, I bet.”  I can almost hear my mother saying this.

No the two are not related except that I have pictures of both.

Which do you want first?  Politics, certainly, lets get that out of the way.

Went to the local forum last night where our three candidates for Governor of the State of Oklahoma answered preset questions.  It was interesting but as my husband said, it probably didn’t change my mind about which one I’m going to vote for, and the same for most of the people attending, but it was nice to see them in person and hear their own words, not sound bites on the news.

I honestly like that the lighting blurred out their faces (or my unsteady hand).  There are three candidates, a Democrat, a Republican and a Libertarian, not in that order in the picture.

As to the spider infestation, you know you have one by the number of spiderwebs you see, right?  Well two years ago, I had the spiderweb on my porch, and then last year as I put mine up a neighbor asked if I would help her do the same for her house, (that’s two) and this year, we both did our houses and a third web showed up on another neighbor’s porch.  Must be a different species as their web is woven differently.  Just sayin’.  So next year we’ll go for four?

Okay, I will apologize for the middle, out-of-focus picture.  My excuse is I had a 75 pound dog on the end of a leash in my other hand.

Yes, we grow big spiders in the ‘hood.

That was one thing I always hated in my grade-school years, walking into a spider web in the fields near my neighborhood.  You know what I’m talking about?   That same house where my family lived during my grade school years also had a roof peak at the back with a yardlight installed there 2.5 stories above the ground.  Come fall, there was the biggest, fattest spider in a web up there.  It must have been a spider’s dream spot as anything that flew at night was going to hit that web trying to get at the light.

So here’s hoping you don’t walk into any spider webs.  And don’t forget to vote.

PS – the Opening picture of a spiderweb isn’t mine, thank you Internet.  The rest (the goofy ones) are.

 

Creating Worlds

One thing that is fun about writing is not only do you get to create your own people with their foibles and strengths, if you write science fiction you can also create your own worlds and societies.  You can posit certain conditions and then think about how would people (we’ll assume humans to keep it simple) handle that environment.  It’s not like there aren’t endless examples of how we’ve done it on earth.  Cold and icy – what kind of clothes and dwelling?  Hot and steamy – what kind of lack of clothing and dwellings?  Dry and arid – where does the water come from and at what price?  And if it is an Earth normal kind of place, tilt for seasons and all, maybe a moon, what kind of societies would the various environs create.  You can almost crib-sheet the earth…just saying.

When I started writing the “Tienna’s World” books I started at a point where humans had been there long enough that they didn’t realize they came from somewhere else.  And in the first two books it didn’t matter that we/they didn’t know that.  It was science fiction/fantasy (more the fantasy) without dragons but with REALLY BIG BEARS and telepathy, at least in some inhabitants.   As I went forward in their time line I ended up going backwards, if that can make sense.  A few of the children from those first two books discover their ancient ‘roots’ when they find a colony station set up in their very northern region.  Now they have a dilemma as to what to do with this knowledge that isn’t generally known and much more powerful than their bows/arrows/swords and maybe a few explosive weapons.   To whom do you give control of that knowledge?  And throw in a time jumping agent from another place, things can get interesting.

Then there is the ‘origin story’ books.  Of those I have the first one fully formed but unpublished, the second is started but not finished, and the third resides in my head only.  I want to refer to them as “Arrival”, “InterMezzo” and “Departure”.

And between the arrival ideas and the first books I wrote, Tienna’s World has histories and cultures that can be explored; four thousand years in my estimation.  Long enough to have lost memories and technologies and develop others.

And each environment has produced an adapted culture, The Riders on the open Grasslands that are nomadic and move with the seasons, The Sailors along the coasts and the more reactionary Bachern cultures in the northern parts where life is not as easy and hanging on to the ‘old ways’ is more adaptive.

As a result I have so many different ideas of what stories there could be.  I’ve just got to settle down and write and not jump from one to the other.

So far, 2 and 1/2 have been published in Amazon.  “Dream Warrior” (the first that started this whole rabbit hole thing), “Uptimers” (where my husband said, “Can I borrow a couple of your characters for a book idea I have?”) and “Bait” (which is what happens after you’ve bought into your husband’s time jumping world).   The 1/2 refers to “Uptimers”, which is not purely my book.

 

What’s next?  I have a couple of books somewhere between “Dream Warrior’s” time and the beginning that might be ready to publish.  Sort of the ‘middle ages’ for Tienna’s World.   So many stories and possible cultures to create.  And I really need to return to the ‘origin’ stories and finish them up.

If you know your world and your people, it is almost inevitable what will happen next and suggestions of how they got there in the first place.

And of course there are always the plot twists, lol.

Halloween – Decorating

I like Halloween, well enough, but not to the extreme some people like it.  (I’m talking about you E and M.)  But there have been some ideas that I have found that match my sense of…weird, maybe the best word.

Take this.  My Death Star Pumpkin.  Not bad carving if I say so myself and I do.  I like carving pumpkins and this one is probably one of my all time best.

 

Then I saw this idea and had to wait until we were in the States so I could use the pillars.

It take very thick yarn which you can find at most hobby stores.  My neighbor down the street liked it so much that she asked me to help her do a web on the pillars in front of her house.  Done, and done.  We grow very LARGE spiders in this neighborhood.  Actually I need to find the ‘spider’ I have to go with this.  It is somewhere in the basement.

And then there is the pumpkin ‘rack’ cat.  The stand was for sale at the local grocery store last year.  You just have to supply a new pumpkin each year.

 

So…BOO!

 

 

Spam, Bam, No Thankyou Man!

Okay, being new to this blogging thing I am learning to deal with spam.  Not the funky fake meat that might be edible when fried within an inch of its life (mixed-metaphors-are-us).  No, the annoying people (?) pretending they read your blog and are responding.

I’ve lived overseas a bunch of years (over half my life) and I know what it sounds like when you are making stuff up in a language that is not your own.  I don’t know if it is human or a computer trying to pass as human, but really?  You like “X” on my blog when I talked about “Y”?  And no, I’m not into male enhancement drugs.  Where would that even enter into the conversation, except that now it has.

So if I didn’t reply to your sincere comment, please try again.  I might have ‘thrown the baby out with the bath water’.

And Hormel, no disrespect to you either…someone else invented the term and Spam is greatly loved in the Pacific rim.

Thank you.  You may now return to your regular programing.

 

Olivia –

Sometimes you have an idea and you decide, ‘why not?’

With this book, I decided to write it solely from the view of the male protagonist.  Which means Major Evert Fulton, home from the Napoleonic Wars, is learning about Olivia, his sister-in-law, as the reader is.  As her dead husband’s brother, the major expects to be listened to and his dictates followed, but Olivia is having none of that.  And, she isn’t answering his questions either.  How did she manage to spend all the money she inherited from her husband?  Where does she get the money she still seems to spend so freely?  And more personally, why won’t she let him closer?

By the time this post goes up, this book should be available on Amazon.

Gotta Love Technology

My laptop monitor has decided to die.  You know how that goes.  I am assuming you would be reading my blog on a home computer.  It could be a smart phone, I suppose.

So the computer is in to try and migrate (is that the right word?) all my files et cetera to my ‘just so happen to have’ backup laptop.  I bought the laptop to take on trips.  Looks like it is going to be the go to computer now.   At least I’m not in the position of making a decision on buying a new computer.

So if I disappear a few days, this my story and I’m sticking to it.

And, no, that is not my current or my dead computer at the top.  That is a picture of the very first (of now many) computers I’ve used over the years.  Anyone else start on an Apple 2e?

Update – Home with a working computer.  Thank’s Geek Squad.

Life Events – Writing

October 3 question – How do major life events affect your writing? Has writing ever helped you through something?

I took a writing class in high school.  During which I had this epic story idea, that I never  finished, and discovered I like writing.

Then life kept me busy.

At some point things changed and life was not going the way I envisioned.  I started thinking up stories in my head, mostly stories of revenge…wonder why.  None of them made it onto paper or even disk (dawn of computers).

Then life got busy again as I started out a new job, in a new country, with new friends.  Very busy.

But as my son got older and I had more evenings to myself I got a home computer and as I listened to Radio Monte Bene in the evenings (classical music) I started writing again.  And writing, and writing.  I was seeing story ideas in all kinds of situations; waiting backstage of a local theatre during a play and feeling like I could be living in England during the Blitz, seeing a piece of submerged fabric at the beach and wondering if there was a body connected to it.  You get the picture.  My imagination was on fire.

The impetus to start writing again came during a summer vacation with my folks.  We would go to their property in Wisconsin and veg for a week or so at a time.  I took paperback sci-fi to read, but ran through them pretty quickly.  My mother, an avid reader, told me to help myself to her collection.  Romance novels, not my first choice, but beggars can’t be choosers and I was reading three of them a day.  When people talk about ‘potato chip’ reading I totally get it.  I was downing those things by the handful.

After that first trip of devouring too much bodice ripping, I told my mom, I felt like I could write one just as good as any I had read.  “So do it,” she said.  The gauntlet was thrown!

My mother worked days at the time and my father worked nights.  So I would get up with my mother and see her off to work and start to write.  Then my dad would get up later in the morning and I’d stop and talk with him, we’d visit some of his friends and come home for lunch where my mom would join us.  Then she went back to work, and my dad pottered around on his projects and I would go back to typing.  About 3 I’d stop to help my dad get ready for work (he didn’t need any help, but we visited) and then after he left around 3:30 I’d hit the typewriter again.  My mom came home about 5 and we would do something for supper.  After that I would write again until about 9pm and go to bed.

Day after day…you can get a lot of writing done.  And it was such a good schedule for me.  The breaks were spaced just right enough, with the writing periods just long enough.

I never published that book and I would have to find the ‘floppy’ disk(s) it was on or just retype it from the hard copy I printed for editing purposes if I were to do anything with it today, but it was the start.  It opened the flood gates.

When at the end of the summer I went back to ‘the day job’ as my father would call it, I was ready to start writing the other ideas flooding through my head.  My son was with me, but his bed time was 8pm and I could get 3-4 hours of writing in after he went to bed before I needed to ‘collapse’.  I probably should have limited my time to 2 hours a night, but I was ‘on fire’.

The fire has burned stronger and weaker at various times.  Some ideas are still cogitating waiting their turn, others have made it out into the computer and a few have made it (recently) to print and the world.

Whereas I started  writing in the very, very beginning to rid myself of angst, it turned into daydreaming and then recording the daydreams.  I still probably write for my own enjoyment.  If the stories get published and someone buys and writes favorably of what they’ve read – well that’s icing on the cake.

I’ve joined http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html for this month.  Click to find other writers and their take on writing.

Two More…

…butterflies released into the world that is.

I placed them on the milkweed nearest to the patio for them to finish drying/hardening their wings.  They are gone now.

 

One nope – Two nope – THREE Monarchs More

Passing through the kitchen on my way to do ‘something’, and what?  One of the Monarch’s has come out of its chrysalis!  WooHoo

So to the back yard.  And all the pictures were blurry.  But a male and on his way.

Well, if there’s one?  Yep there’s another, pumping the wings gently.  This one is female and she sat long enough to let me get a better picture.

And if I’m to judge by the color of the remaining five chrysalises, there might be two more tomorrow.  (They turn transparent and you see the dark colors with streaks of orange.  See corner of the third picture above.)

Maybe they’ll fly back through Tulsa next spring on their way north?

Off to report them to the Journey North site.

Added – I feel like the “Count” on Sesame Street as I keep changing this header today.

Is it Fall yet?

First – Apache is on the mend.  Her perky self.  No picture as it is late, sorry.  Still no idea what caused the digestive issue.  Still on medicine for a few more days.  She’s not happy about that and will try to look inconspicuous when I start looking for her at meds time.  But once I get her mouth open she just goes with it.  Also since the vet said she was overweight a few weeks ago, she has not had PEANUTBUTTER- YUM so getting one pill buried in PEANUTBUTTER-YUM is worth the mom grabbing her mouth and squirting in the white stuff.

Second – The weather is starting to feel like fall.  We have black gum trees in our front yard and they turn fantastic colors in the fall.  Today I noticed that one limb (small limb) was completely covered in scarlet leaves.  The rest of the tree is a normal green.  Over achiever?  (The picture at the beginning is not mine.  It is a black gum but not my photo.)

Outside right now at 10PM it is about 74 degrees, but feels cooler.  And a great moon!  Cool nights, changing leaves and a bright moon – isn’t that a good definition of fall/autumn?

I’m pulling out the fall decorations.  I already put up a fall wreath on the porch.  (See opening picture a few posts back.)  I’ve got a pumpkin on my ‘black cat’ stand.  I promise I’ll take pictures tomorrow.  I’ve found the ‘pumpkin’ serving dishes I bought last fall.

And baking – 17 miniature banana bread loaves.  Had to clear the collection of frozen bananas out of the freezer to make room for other things and yes it is time for baking.  Five have been delivered to the neighbors, left, right and three across the street.  Like zucchinis, banana bread needs to be shared!  I’ve not had any complaints that I bake too much.  The one person who doesn’t do sweets is the one I live with.  So unless I plan to eat that much of whatever I’m baking, the neighbors are going to get gifted.

So the trees (tree) is starting to turn, the weather feels crisp, and I’m in the mood to bake.  Sounds like fall to me.