Standing On Boxes

Up, and up, and up… gas on the corner went up 5 cents today… it’s now $2.23/gallon for premium. That almost as high as last summer’s highest around here. It’s going to cost $50 more, at least, for my next 2,700 (round) trip to NY this Spring…

Need to start working on other fics… but nothing has jumped out at me to work on…

My Highlander crossover ‘The Apprentice’ is stalled because I can’t seem to write an action scene with swords. My Tanya Huff crossover… isn’t so much stalled as on hold while I deal with other stories…

And poor Willow is still stuck on a mountain side in another fic… if I can ever figure out the action scene to get her off it. The companion story to that one, “The Other Girl”, is waiting for me to write the bridging scene that shifts the scene to England in time for Willow to get back from her mountain.

Notice anything in common? All of my fics are stuck on action scenes…

I finished the first draft of the last part of the prologue for my “Bond Girl” crossover fic. And then chopped it into smaller chunks to make it easier to deal with. So now the prologue is in 4 parts (I think one part is still too long) – for a total of 13182 words. A bit long for a prologue for what was supposed to originally be a short fic.

And it’ll probably be several hundred words longer by the time I revise the parts I finished today.

But that can wait until tomorrow… it needs to proof overnight.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Airplanes, guns, and evil robots. An evil overlord type… Okay.

Joe and Polly, the main characters are a bit annoying… and Frankie (Angelina Jolie) ? She shows up 66 minutes into the movie and exits 6 minutes later. And back at 94 minutes for a quick cameo. I feel cheated! I wonder how much they paid her for her appearance.

And a whopping large rocket… makes a Saturn 5 look like a bottle rocket.

For those playing the home version of Big Oil’s – “We won the election for you, now watch us screw the middle class and poor, with a little help from our friends at OPEC…”

Gas prices in Eastern TN have gone up a bit this week. Up 20 center per gallon (since Monday) at my local corner Weigels to be exact. For my car, that’s an additional $3/tank. An extra $6 a month for my work commute.

And it’ll probably go up another 25 cents/gallon before it levels out. Good thing the election was LAST November and gas prices stayed stable then. Not that I’m cynical or anything…

Phew, another chunk of “The Bond Girl” – Part 3 of the Prologue is almost done. Except if it gets too much longer it’s become parts 3 and 4 of the prologue.

Sort of finished another FFA story that has been bugging me for weeks. Feels done but not really.

Oddly enough, my idea for a Bond/BtVS crossover had absolutely nothing to do with the rumors that SMG wants to be in the next Bond flick (Not that I believe the rumors myself). Never even occurred to me until today.

Oops.

There’s a BtVS ‘news’ website. It’s a collection of photographs, video, movie clips, and etc. for anything and everything having to do with “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Cast and crew. What they did before, during, and after the show was on the air.

Pictures of the assorted actors/actresses doing the promo rounds for their current/new projects, photo shoots, magazine articles and covers. And things like appearances at movie premiers, award shows, charity functions.

All things having to do with their job in some way. They get paid, in some way – money, fame, attention, etc – directly or indirectly – for that kind of thing. They are selling either themselves or their product (movies, tv, whatever).

I expect them to be doing that. Acting/movie making/entertainment is a craft that involves a lot of self promotion. If the consumers, us, of the product of that craft don’t know about it we can’t “buy” it.

BUT… do we really need to see photos of someone on vacation? When they are obviously trying to have some private time with family?

For example – Recent photographs of Sara Michelle Gellar hanging out on a beach… trying to be a normal person, spending time with her SO between movies or press tours, are so unnecessary.

And it might just be me but these particular photos have a distinct stalker feel to them. Almost had to go wash my eyes out when I stumbled across a couple of them. (Not because there was anything “bad” in them – they were perfectly innocent pictures, but because I felt like I was intruding on something personal where I didn’t belong.)

About time somebody invented some kind of non-intrusive privacy shield.

And the difference between this and writing fan fiction? A world of difference in my opinion. Fan fiction involves fictional characters , not the actors who might portray them (Okay, there is something called RPF (Real Person Fic) but there is no excuse for that kind of thing. There is something seriously wrong with that. Bad stuff. It’s not the same thing as fan fiction, as it is classically defined anyway.)

People who have problems separating actors from the characters they’ve portrayed need serious help. Or people who forget actors are real people.

And all this because of a few photos that annoyed me today… time to go find a periwinkle field to sit in.

I don’t recommend it. If it says ‘tender’ what they actually mean is “soggy” and the parts that don’t have the consistency of mush are stringy. Or maybe that’s just the one brand I bought?

Anyway… buy it fresh… much better.

“Live and Let Die” – A Bond car chase with boats. And cars. And Louisiana. And southern sheriffs.

“Secret Agent? On whose side!?”

Maybe.

The Prologue to “The Bond Girl” might be done. Not sure yet. It should have gotten shorter not longer when I revised it.

I’ll give it another ‘once over’ tomorrow when I’m not tired. We’ll see.

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Okay. I’ve split the prologue into two parts. It was getting too long for me to keep everything straight as it was. I’m starting to think what I originally had planned for most of Part 1 actually belongs in the Prologue. So it might end up as the third part of the prologue.

I really need to start watching other things… Tomb Raider is on… but I have it on DVD.

Emeril is doing corn-dogs tonight. Of course, he has a deep fryer built into his kitchen. Makes it easy.

Emeril’s wisdom for the day: “When in doubt, make salsa!” (Something fell apart in the oven.)

The last update to ‘Bond Girl’ didn’t happen. So, oops…

Phew… now it’s up… 4700 words of fic-y goodness. Maybe. YMMV.

It isn’t done but my newest fic Bond Girl has reached first draft status, more or less. Still needs work. Too wordy and something is missing. But I’m not going to get any more written tonight…

With only the best verbage…

Several hours of tweaking and fiddling and I still need that final scene to complete the prologue to my new story. Maybe it’ll come to me in the middle of the night…