Kats, Critters, and Demon Baby

Today I’m taking a break from writing sort of could be maybe – it really depends on how the rest of the day evolves as it chugs along the ever-changing track of diapers, feedings, and naps. Yes, (*gasp* *sob*) I’m one of those wicked stay at home parents who writes. Unlike some of the other parents, those intrepid stalwart souls who decide to stay home to nurture their child, I’m an XY pattern.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my daughter. Seeing her smile when she wakes up, her certainty that I’ll make her world better with a clean diaper and a snack of mom-juice makes a world of difference. Hearing her outrage when I don’t get that diaper changed fast enough or it’s taking forever for her snack to be ready is just as rewarding.

Just as watching her beginning to roll over (front to back and back to front) and sit up in her little chair at ten weeks of age is rewarding. I know that in many respects it won’t be long before I have lessons to plan and teach, activities and interests to cultivate, and if I’m blessed one day she’ll forget she needs me. I have the feeling that by the time she realizes I’m still useful I’ll be gone, but such is the price of my world. But, I digress.

Back to why it’s a sort of break day. I guess the main reason is I’m tired, it’s quiet (for the moment), and I’ve done a bit of work thinking up different life forms for a storyline. When I was younger, I always hated the two-dimensional paper doll ‘alien creatures’ some authors thought were all it took to craft an interesting story. Yes, I liked seeing the main characters grow and evolve as the story progressed, but why did all those alien supporting characters have to be so, bland.

The Wife gets irritated with me at times because there are occasions when I’ll think out loud and describe a creature with the usual response of: “I’d rather read about it, when will the story be ready?” She never does like hearing she’ll have to wait, because I do try to make my supporting cast interesting. No cookie cutter ‘it looks like a dog (cat, horse, insert Terran animal name here) but isn’t’, instead I research ancient life forms, let the reptilian mind wander a bit, and come up with, critters.

Currently The Wife has a copy of “Mono-Earth: The War of the Egg” in her pumping bag, a little ‘light’ reading to do (140,000+ words plus defining appendices) when she’s on lunch break. We were talking last night and her complaint was: “It started out with an interesting prologue, then in the first chapter it switches to some ordinary guy. Why? I mean, hearing what an ordinary guy he was when he started telling his part of the story was boring, until he got to that canyon and stuff started getting weird – now that was interesting…”

I suppose it was too simplistic for me to answer with: “I did it that way because sometimes ordinary boring people stumble into and get swept up with events so far beyond their control they become less than ordinary characters.” I’ll try to remember the rolled up newspaper I got across the snout next time…

While I let my current cast of miscreants, creatures, and victims ferment and come up with more of the story they want to tell, it’s time to crack open the works of others and visit their worlds. I’ll also watch some inept Sci-Fi movies (Demon Baby laughs at Terminators and such – she’s a future empress of the multi-verse after all), and do some laundry. I remember I once had clean socks, somewhere, sometime. I’d better go see what the cat did with those socks, he plots to take over the multi-verse one empress at a time you know…