When the Going Gets Weird

NaNoWriMo 2006 Installation - Days 7, 8, & 9

2006-11-09T23:55:00.000-06:00

November 9, 2006

What can I say? I've had a lot of company. And it was my birthday. So encourage me already! The link above is to my entire novel (so far). I spent some time cutting and pasting and tweaking. Please, SOMEBODY, comment. I've never had a single comment in this blog. . .

NaNoWriMo 2006 Installation - Day 6

2006-11-07T00:33:00.000-06:00

Papa Legba

November 6, 2006

NaNoWriMo 2006 Installation - Days 4 & 5

2006-11-05T23:24:00.000-06:00

The above picture is of Beale Street in Memphis. I neglected to make a note of the year. Down at the end where that car is parked, is the New Daisy theater. The Presley Plaza and the Orpheum are on down from there and on the left, though you can't see them in this picture. King's Palace will be on the right between the Daisy and the Elvis statue.

November 5, 2006

NaNoWriMo 2006 Installation - Day 3

2006-11-04T00:08:00.000-06:00

Bronze those blue suede shoes! The MLGW building is to your left. Watch your steps through the bushes. The tall yellow sign across the way is for the Orpheum theater.

November 3, 2006

NaNoWriMo 2006 Installation - Day 2

2006-11-02T23:28:00.000-06:00

The picture to our left is the beautiful Peabody hotel in Memphis, TN. The finest hotel in the South - even in my own post-apocalyptic future.

November 2, 2006

Not nearly as many words as yesterday, but plenty of words anyway. It's nearing midnight, so I'm posting these and getting right back on the grindstone.

NaNoWriMo 2006 Installation - Day 1

2006-11-01T21:11:00.000-06:00

The following was not entirely written today. It was, however, painstakingly pulled out of notebooks and cubbies and then painstakingly put together. Gaps were filled. I am a little ahead, but that's probably a good thing.

November 1, 2006 - Day 1

NaNoWriMo 2006 Approaches!!!

2006-10-24T16:04:00.000-05:00

After falling far short of the 50k marker last November, I’m going to
give it another try. I’ve had some actual encouragement at home this year, and at least one promise of help in baby wrangling while I lock myself away to write. Much better than last year so far.

Also much better than last year, I’ve accumulated both virtual and literal file folders stuffed with research and other handy information. I’ve got books this time! I’m as prepared as any good Boy Scout. Except, I could use more rope and maybe some Fast Luck Oil from Lucky Mojo.

Lucky Mojo has been a big influence on my choice of magics for this
story. catherine yronwode has an awesome site over there, just chock full of information on modern magics. Heck, she taught me the word syncretism. I'll be pulling heavily from her pages as well as a few sources on Hoodoo, Voodoo, Vodoun, Santeria, and other practices along that vein. I'll also be burning a candle to St. Peter while I write, with a Lucky Hand root on my desk/altar.

Last year I worked on a post-apocalyptic western. I had some good ideas and characters but no plot in mind. This year, I've got an outline. Yep, that's right, an outline, plot and all. Here it is, in its mutated glory. And I'm the only one that really understands, especially since Blogger won't keep my format.

The Little Queen of Spades and the Suicide King

I. Risen & Shining

A. Ellegua wakes Maurid
B. They travel the Nether-road
C. Ellegua info-dumps in the bar

II. Guédé at the Cat’s Cradle

A. Ellegua intros Guédé
1. Mamma Brigitte – herself, backup vocals
2. Leroy– bar servant, guitars, vocals
3. Mr. Cross – cowry shell necklace for conjure, management
4. Nebo – psychopomp, drums
5. Banda – exotic dancer, backup vocals
B. Brigitte charges Nebo with Maurid’s safety
C. Nebo Makes a Deal with Maurid
1. Regardless of Outcome
2. Maurid’s Forgotten Past
3. Vengeance

III. Get Your Mojo Workin’

A. The Conjure Woman
B. A Price to be Paid Later
C. A Warnin’ and a Hand

IV. The Peabody Hotel & Casino’s Anniversary Tournament

A. The other gamblers
1. Sylva – neutral, unknowingly has Ellegua’s prize
a. Twelve Cowry shells
b. Divination
c. Hearts and Spades
2. Ellegua’s Backup
3. Hired Pro #1 – dreg $
4. Hired Pro #2 – NSA $
B. Risky Business
1. Busted Cheating
2. Tempers and Guns
3. Memphis Law
C. Winner Takes All (and Vanishes)

V. Breaking Even

A. A Bet is a Bet - Conjure Woman & Sylva
B. Is a Bet - Nebo
C. Is a Bet - Ellegua

VI. Other Notes

A. Sylva is the conjure woman’s niece. She’s in Memphis to get in touch with some relatives. She’s gambling for fun & jink.
B. POV will shift between Maurid & Sylva.
C. Nebo’s deal & Maurid’s past are a whole different story – sequel?
D. I’m writing scenes and stringing them together like beads.
E. This is the first time I’ve ever used an outline for a work of fiction.

Why I Love Arkansas

2006-08-13T21:50:00.000-05:00

There's lots of water in Arkansas. Even during a drought. Those little dark specks out there? Sailboats. Those sandy looking beachs? Rocks - shale, quartz. . . But altogether a very nice Vista. This is from the top of Hickory Nut Mountain, overlooking Lake Ouachita. There's geocaches out there. Heck, I think there's one somewhere behind where we stood taking this photo. My Aunt Donna took it, by the way.

Well, we're finally firmly established in a new residence. Things are falling into scheduals. Money is being painstakingly and slowly made. And everyone seems to be mostly healthy. Blessings. I'm taking my colloidal silver.

Anybody got a line on a rootworker? I got some questions. How about a mp3 of the Memphis Jug Band's "Aunt Caroline Dyer Blues" or Robert Johnson's "Little Queen of Spades"? I need those too. How about just some Tommy Johnson songs?

On a side note: They're going to give your cellphone number to telemarketers on August 28th. Fix it in moments: www.donotcall.gov

Now I gotta get a picture of that wormwood in the front yard.

Dammit!

2006-06-12T11:59:00.000-05:00

Well, I had this nice long thing almost finished, and I went and didn't save it. *Poof* two hours of work gone.

Grr.

I guess I'll write something up about Geocaching later.

2006-04-23T22:34:00.000-05:00

My Favorite Bettie Page Photograph

Don't know who took it, or when it was taken, but 305 is my favorite. I liked 304 just as much, even though it has a little mark on it in the versions I've found. And I can't find one right now. So 305 will have to do. And it does well.

There are countless images of Bettie out there. And it makes me so happy! I try to collect all the ones I like. There are so many.

I hear they made a movie. It sounds like it might be fun, but I doubt it plays anywhere near me. I'll have to wait for the DVD, and then probably order it over the 'net. It won't really be Bettie; it'll be some actress I've never heard of. But, eh, we'll try out my willing suspension of disbelief.

Some of you may ask, "Why all this fuss about a pin-up model from the '50s?"

I've always been a tomboy. Always preferred the company of males over that of females. Except for my mom's elaborate dress-ups, I grew up disdaining all things feminine. Throughout high school I tinkered with makeup, but it was more to make me look, I dunno, more gothic, I guess. Just heavy, dark eyes kinda thing. Eventually I just quit wearing it, aware I was smearing bat shit and whale puke on my face. I also didn't like what it did to my contacts. Icky.

Don't get me wrong; I had Barbie dolls and My Little Ponies as I was growing up. But race cars and Transformers were really cool too. I liked to play in the dirt and the creek. I liked to ride bicycles and play ball. I adventured alone in the woods, swinging across the creek on vines. In ever wild little girl lurks a jungle Bettie.

My favorite Barbies were dark haired, like me. They all had Bettie's bangs. Mine bangs have a cowlick. I'll never have Bettie's bangs without a lot of hot iron, hair spray, and effort. Which is not at all my style. Except for the effects of deodorants, moisturizers, and razors, I'm fairly natural these days.

Bettie's pictures put me in tune with the little girl my mom wanted me to be. Feminine, beautiful, and fun. Maybe not tied up and being spanked by another chick, but definitely a high fashion or beach Bettie.

Bettie had some mad seamstress skills as well. She made almost all of her costumes. Except for some of Irving Klaw's mail-order special requests. Now, being non-feminine, I never took Home Economics. I never learned to sew. I recall my mom and my grandma trying to teach me things, but only the rudimentary bits stuck. I was better at macrame.

I aspire to be able to sew as well as Bettie. I'd love to make my own wardrobe. I hate going to stores to pay money for clothes that don't fit right or look the way I want them to. My mother-in-law has been trying to teach me to sew, recently. Hopefully we'll find more time for it, and I'll get better. I want to make my own clothes!

So Bettie is the girl I want to be, the Barbie doll I loved as a kid, and my alter ego for imaginary jungle adventures. She's got that perfect kind of beauty. When she's looking at you, you know you're going to have fun. She just shines. Even when she's tied up and being spanked by another chick.

2006-02-03T21:27:00.000-06:00

A Day of Epiphanies

Well, one or two anyway. No real miracles though. :D

Why is it that as soon as my son is at grandma's, I can manage to get settled in and cram chocolate covered coffee beans down my muse's throat? Does he really make an anti-creativity field around me? Perhaps the smell of children makes my muse sleepy. What a horrible idea. Oh well, one more reason not to teach.

I used that big word, so I damn well better make it count, yeah? So there was a question that spawned both of these sudden insights. What do I like to do more than anything? Books - reading - writing- collecting books. Right. I should have noticed it before!

I have a lot of books that I may have spent money for. Reading doesn't make me any money. I'm trying to make money writing, but it's coming along too slowly. But I'm really quite sucessful at collecting books. Too sucessful, because I'm rapidly running out of shelf space. Some of them need to be gotten rid of.

This thought process led eventually to plans of owning a mango farm in Costa Rica, and only a few bookshelves of works I just couldn't live without having on hand in case I want to read or refrence something specific. And then I took a breath.

So I know where to get a lot of books in good condition. And when they run out, I know where to get some more. In my comparisons, Amazon seems to have the better deals han eBay. I also have to say that I've bought more books from Amazon than I've ever bidded on anything on eBay. But I may be biased.

I must do more research. And try not to get distracted by 1955 Playboys with Bettie Page centerfolds, or back issues of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, or FRUIT FARMS IN PUERTO RICO!!! *gasp* Hunter, preserve me.

And so passed the first epiphany.

Work was typical for a campground in February. I helped out with organizing the gift shop's inventory, added up and made a new postage chart since it went up two pennies, and answered the phone. It was, honest to crackers, boring.

So I'm sitting there slackjawed over my inventory list and thinking that we need to order more of those tree identification books, and hope that they sold as well in the spring and summer as they did in the autumn. My muse sits bolt upright as says to go look at the catalogues. So I drag them out and start flipping through them, looking again for books specifically on my area. Out of six little catalogues, only seventeen of the books in all of their pages were set within a hundred-mile radius of my back yard.

And that's what Arkansas is - my back yard. Along with some places right across our borders - Table Rock, Bull Shoals, Memphis, Greenville, Monroe, Shreveport, Texarkana, and FayetteSmith. I know the rocks. I know the places where there aren't any rocks outside of gravel pits unless a man brought them there. And sometimes, if those rocks are novaculite, they were traded from quarries less than fifteen miles from here. Folks still use the quarries. A few privately owned ones produce some of the finest whetstones in the world. Then there's the crystal mines, and the diamond mines. There's no gold in Arkansas, ask Rush. And then ask the graveyard and the lake that marks Galena about lead poisoning. Every wonder why people that live on the Saline River are sometimes kinda weird? Ever wonder why they seem like they might be crazy? Because they eat the fish every day, and drink the water every day, and they've got more mercury in their systems than a nineteeth-century hatter!

So yeah. I could go on for days. But I need to get it all organized. I must calm down.

Photo of Hunter S. Thompson by Allen G. Arpadi, yoinked from Wikipedia. Aarrrg!

2006-02-02T18:52:00.000-06:00

Things to Love about Christianity

Chick Tracts

Just go read any one of them on this page. I think the last place I got one of these was at Memphis in May. I try to keep them, but they dissappear. I've only got a couple. "Bewitched!" is my favorite I think. Just because my name is Ashley.

2006-01-30T18:11:00.000-06:00

Ways to Perish in a Nuclear Apocalypse
any other suggestions are welcomed

The initial bomb:
Nuclear radiation
Thermal radiation
Flying debris
Flashblindness
Electromagnetic Pulse
Fallout
Fires
Collapsing buildings
Broken damns
Broken sea walls
Broken levees

Other humans:
Evacuation traffic
Lack of utilities, machinery, or industry
Disease
Lack of food, water, or shelter
Insanity
Enemies and invaders
Panic
Riots
Anarchy

Even in a fallout shelter:
Inadequate food and water
Poor or incomplete construction
Lack of medical supplies
No livestock, crops, or farmers
Feuds
Stir-craziness
People outside
Contamination

See Also: Genesis Vault: at Center City

2006-01-28T11:00:00.000-06:00

Somebody's Gotta Do It

After being laid off for a month, they called me in to work Friday. Man, my legs hurt; standing up and doing next to nothing all day sucks. I'm only working one day a week, and getting a hundred dollar paycheck every two weeks. It ain't much, but it'll buy smoke. Or food if my winter stores run low.

My job is alright. I like where I work, but there are things there I'd rather be doing than answering the phones and greeting everyone who walks through the door. Not that a State Park Campground is very busy this time of year, even on Fridays. But I really would rather be out from behind the desk and out on the trails. I used my free time yesterday to research cypress tree ecology and eBay kayaks. We sell them cheaper, and there's no shipping for me. Just got to walk that sucka out the Visitor's Center and strap it to the truck.

There were also Americorps folks there yesterday. I'm not exactly sure what Americorps is yet, but they all seemed really nice. There was a dreaddie vegan guy, so they're probably cool. They're staying in a couple of our cabins for a while and are doing trail maintenance grunt work. Painting trail markers hot pink, dragging fallen trees away, moving rocks that have slid downhill or been washed away, and replacing a bridge, I think. Fun stuff, it sounds to me. I think they're volunteers or are getting college credit or something. Anyway, they wear nice pants, even if they are such a dreadful color.

I hear they get a $5 a day stipend. That sucks. I may spend my paycheck on beers and go hang out with them next Friday. Or whenever they get a day off. Some of em are old enough to drink a beer with me.

The picture is one I yoinked from ArkansasStateParks.com. It's my lake, some pro photographer took this at sunset, presumably from a helicopter. There are some quite scenic mountain tops, but I've never seen this angle from any I've been on. But I could be wrong.

2006-01-24T12:19:00.000-06:00

Here We Go

Well, Bs & Gs, I finally retreived my computer from my dad, and managed to talk my isp into sending me another cd with the dial-up software on it. *joy* And for those of you that are gasping that I'm still on dial-up in this, the twenty-first century, let me just say that the phone lines out here in BFE are the same ones they put in right after the Depression. We folks living out in the cut can't seem to talk SBC into giving us modern phone lines with DSL capabilities. Cable? Did someone say cable? *scoff* As if they could run a line over the mountain, through the woods, and around the lake. But I'm not complaining. Such is the cost of living in an absolutely beautiful place.

The picture features my front yard. See those trees? That's the Ouachita National Forest, people. A wonderful place, so please keep your empty beer cans and Mountain Dew bottles the hell out of there. I'm tired of cleaning up after you filthy people. And quit chipping the quartz crystals out of the rocks with hammers! I was climbing around and cut the hell outta myself on what I'm sure was a beautiful natural crystal formation that someone had smashed so they could take it home.

Okay, sorry, my inner druid fought her way to the top.

I've never blogged before, so I'm not really sure what to put up here. Seems like a nice place to vent, though. I'll be back when there's more for me to say. In the meantime, enjoy the scenery.