Notes on Camping

Every year we go on vacation, just hubby and I. This year we got to use the in-laws camper and stay at a KOA. While we take the laptops, we don't as a rule spend too much time on them. However, the writing bug bites where it will soo... I began to note briefly some of the more interesting events over the five days of vacation. I also began some vague sketches, but am just too tired and lazy to scan them and include them. Maybe later, however I have added in links to some of the interesting things as I could find them. In any event, what follows is a short summery of our advantures.

Camping - Five days of hilarity?

Day 1 - Setting up (Mon)
Arrived at about 1 pm. Camper went up fine. Getting the pilot light lit on the other hand took a bit more time. Two hours later mission accomplished. The awning was wet and slightly mildewed! We had a bit of a problen with the power and it looked like we weren't going to have heat until I went and looked at the box and realized we had to flip Both breakers on! Ate a late dinner of steak and beans and went to bed with heat!

Day 2 - Water water everywhere! (Tue)
OMG! Are you serious? Sitting outside this morning and noticed things dripping. Went in and looked in the tub thing and discovered that the fawcets had been turned on and the tub had like three inches of water in it! This of course soaked everything that had been stored in there! Spent morning hauling wet stuff out of it, draining the tub and in general bitching. Finally departed to explore town and get universal remote and shower shoes. Spent most of the day in Port Angeles, wandering, shoping and eating. Rescued a dragon, bought colored pencils and had fun. Returned late afternoon and went to the hot tub, then showers. Was joined in early evening by several caterpillars.

Day 3 - So far so good? (Wed)
Woke early to sunshine. Planning on going to rainforest and Hurrican Ridge today. However, ended up doing rainforest and Dungeness Spit instead. Both were totally awesome. No flaws or crazy escapades. Well.. sort of. Once more Dungeness Spit tried to foil us. Needed exact change.. only had a fiver. Tried to see if someone could break the fiver and ended up basically being snuck in..LOL. I have three small rocks from the Spit and got to stare into Canada. Oh! Saw a black slug in the rainforest! I mean pitch black! It was kewl looking!

Day 4 - Oh wow..(Thurs)
Today was.... amazing. We drove up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Forest. For half the drive up we were stuck behind this bloody tour bus, which to it's credit made fairly decent time but still. Once it pulled into a turn out we made better time. I wish I could describe the scenery on the drive up, but I REALLY had to keep my eyes on the road. We got to the visitors center and... and... I have no words for the sheer magnificense of the Olympics. Vast, regal, proud, free... the words are too small to encompass the sheer vastness of them. Due to what we wore and the snow we dared
not hike all the way to the top of the ridge. We saw black-tailed deer, some as close as a few feet. The drive back down the mountains was more of a coasting. I want to go back. Back at camp we found neighbors. Boo, hiss! Went to hot tub for a bit, then built a fire, roasted hotdogs and just relaxed. Tomorrow is last full day.

Day 5 - And the end... (Fri)
Woke up late-ish. Sun shining and warm. Today is the day to loaf about the camp site, which we did. Made pancakes, the last two eggs and the last piece of bacon. Later went to pool and hot tub. I kept my hair up so I didn't have to wash it again. Took some time to study how water moves. It's... advanced. After swimming, came back to camper and laid in the sun for a bit and studied the little pine tree by our site. Also saw more caterpillers. It's been a nice day, warm and sunny. It's evening now and the clouds are drifting in. Planning hot sandwiches for dinner and then to start the packing process. We depart tomorrow morning. It's been fun.

Day 6 - Home again, home again (Sat)
Rained like mad overnight, but stopped before dawn. Somewhere around 2 or 3 AM someone pulled into the spot next to us. They backed in. Huge camper thing. Noisy truck. All I could think of was "Please don't hit my car or this camper." They didn't and I went back to sleep. Finally got up at 7 ish and began packing. In the course of closing up the camper we saved three or four caterpillers! Yay! Got on the road by 10:45 ish. Didn't actually get into house though till 4:30 ish. Lunch with folks and a bit of shopping on the way home delayed us. House was still standing when we arrived.
Cats and child glad to see us. Lots of laundry and memories. Note to self, do this agin.. but without the floods and breakers and such.

Break-through?

For a while now I've been "stuck" as far as making real progress with Restart. Oh I've prodded and dabbled with dialog in some sections, but no"brilliant" ideas.

It's the serial killer aspect. My mind doesn't work that way. I know this. I've been researching and reading and thinking about it for months. Frankly I wasn't getting anywhere, but as it's a fairly large section of the story I felt it rather important to make some sort of progress toward it; which I hadn't.

Yesterday, just before I had to actually stop playing around and get ready to go earn a paycheck I took a last shot at it. Actually, I decided to see what a timeline of it might look like. Don't know why I didn't think of doing that before.. I'll chalk it up to grief. In any event, so I start with the timeline thing ad it brought up an interesting question in an interesting way... what is the "average" number of victims for a serial killer and how often?

Back to the web I go.. but its a vague question and I'm really no further than I had been. Again I realize that I just don't understand enough about serial killers to do one justice. As I sat there frustrated a thought drifted through my mind... wish there was a template for one...

Ahhhhhhhhhh....

Just realized

For all my blathering about Restart, I've yet to put up a synopsis, or at least the working one. I posted it to my writers group, but nowhere else. Probably because at the time I didn't have any place else.

So, I'm going to fix that and hope that my idea doesn't... well, let's not borrow trouble eh?

I'm introducing a host of new characters: Peyton, Thaedra, Galena and an as yet un-named serial killer, plus a host of minor characters.

I've set it here... in Seattle! Hey, they say write what you know and I kinda know the area, so it counts!

So, once more into the breach dear friends!

The general synopsis goes something like this:
  
Peyton DeLaChat liked Seattle. He liked the weather, the scenery and the blissful obscurity. It helped that he'd visited the area before he relocated there. Getting settled was easy, even with no real plan in mind other than reinvent himself. Preferably with as little drama as possible. When women from the area's battered women shelters are being found dead, it wasn't personal, just news. When one of them from his daughter Galena’s shelter is one though, it becomes personal. When he encounters a woman from an old family, who's hunting a drug cartel for fun, life gets distinctly unsettled and annoyingly dramatic.

Well here it is, Sunday evening, the end of a fairly quiet weekend. I've got a clean house and clean clothes and clean dishes. What I don't have is a sense of having gotten a darn thing done! It's annoying. I want to write.. to spend time with my charactures and just see what happens. Sadly, life has a funny way of happening.

I started a new job last week. Working with kids who aren't as up to speed in reading, writing and 'rithmatic, as they used to say. Good kids, but hard work too.

But I digress.. So I haven't gotten writing done. That doesn't mean I've been idle. I've been promoting where I can, tweeting and the like. It's going well I guess.. kind of hard to tell. I did make Soul of Evil available via LuLu  this past week... well okay... late last night. I wonder if I can make the time to create a promo poster for the books?

Oh! My small triumph.. both Soul of Evil and Tales of Bedlam are available through Barnes & Noble!! I feel important now. If you got to te website and type my name in both books show up! It's exiting.

Maybe this next week I'll get work done on Restart. I'd like to. I miss hanging with the charactures in it. They are a much lighter bunch than in Soul. Well... yeah a much lighter bunch, even in their darkest moment they are lighter.

So, Sunday night and the start of a new week. Anything could happen.