Tues. 08.14.18 – The great thing about the early evening sky this summer is that four of the five visible planets have been strung out like little jewels across the southeastern to western night sky: Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus. Here is a photo of Mars rising next to the Newland power plant.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.
Tues. 08.14.18 – While the true August new moon was on Saturday the 11th, this evening was the visible separating conjunction of Venus and the three day old moon. It was lovely.
Photo taken by Ms. Jen from the roof of her RV with her Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.
Sat. 08.11.18 – Every time I have been to Disneyland in recent years, I stand by the Mad Hatter Tea Cup ride trying to get a good colorful, blurred photo of the madness that is the spinning. This time, I was fairly successful.
Embrace the blur. Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Lumia 950 camera phone.
Above photo of a rose taken by Ms. Jen on May 26, 2018 at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, with a Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.
“Something huge is happening in the UK right now, and I wonder where it’s going. […]
Brexit was a classic example of a collusion conspiracy. Many of the named politicians and businessmen above stand to gain millions of pounds from a hard Brexit that causes the British stock market to fall. Others stand to make millions from juicy investment opportunities they were offered in Russia. We cannot know for certain what the quid pro quo for those investment deals were at this time, but I strongly suspect that support for Brexit (and more general socially-authoritarian right-wing policies) was part of it.
And now we’re seeing a rival collusion conspiracy surface. Not all billionaires stand to profit from seeing the remains of British industry sink beneath the waves, and not all of them are in the pocket of the Kremlin’s financial backers. There are a bunch of very rich, rather reclusive men (and a handful of women) who probably thought, “well, let’s sit back and see where this thing leads, for now” about 18 months ago. And now they can see it leading right over a cliff, and they are unhappy, and they have made their displeasure known on the golf course and in the smoke-filled rooms, and the quiet whispering campaign has finally turned heads at the top of the media empires.
If I’m right, then over the next four to eight weeks the wrath of the British press is going to fall on the heads of the Brexit lobby with a force and a fury we haven’t seen in a generation. There may be arrests and criminal prosecutions before this sorry tale is done: I’d be unsurprised to see money-laundering investigations, and possibly prosecutions under the Bribery Act (2010), launched within this time frame that will rumble on for years to come.” – Charlie Stross, The Pivot
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Umberto Eco’s 1999 article on ‘Ur Fascism‘
Here’s to Unsuicide: An Interview with Richard Powers
While I have been on my Big-Five-Oh birthday gift to myself writing retreat, I have also been reading. So far, I have worked my way through a re-read of the whole Ben Aaronvitch’s Rivers of London series and I am nearly finished with re-reading Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series (minus the more recent co-author or other author Pern books).
Why am I rereading books I have already read many times before, particularly in the case of the Pern books? I am reading them not just for the joy of the story but also to see and analyze how two authors who I admire have constructed their stories and series as a whole and from various writing perspectives.
What this past two months of reading and writing has shown or revealed to me is that I have a preference for multiple person point of view / main character stories or at least multiple threads of story interwoven over a single main character’s point of view with one story arc.
McCaffrey’s Pern books are almost always, with the exception of the YA books, multiple main characters with multiple threads of story. While Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series is from the POV of PC Peter Grant, each book weaves in multiple strands of story, including one series long story thread. One of the things that I also like about Jane Austen books is that by and large her stories are also ensemble stories, even if we see the story from the POV of one or two main characters.
The novel length story I wrote from 2015-2017, A Quiver Full, was a multiple character POV story. I started writing it as a short story for a writing challenge and it was originally written from the POV of two characters, after I expanded it to novel length – several more characters demanded their share of the conversation and stage time. After the fact, I got the feedback from a reader that it should have more of the romance of just two characters and not so much of the other stuff.
After finishing writing A Quiver Full, I printed it out, then I put it up on a shelf for a bit of aging before I reread it and started rewriting. It was six weeks on the shelf when I received the above feedback, which hit me enough of the wrong way that the first draft has stayed on the shelf and I started writing a whole new novel in December of 2017.
This second novel is from one character’s point of view. It is meant to be a humorous mildly unreliable narrator story wherein by the end the reader should be questioning if the main character really was all that and more or if we want our hero to be heroic rather than a mere man. Now more than seventy percent of the way through writing the story, I find myself longing for more strands of story – not in the novel I am writing now but in general.
Then it hit me about a week ago, as I was knee deep in my Pern reread that I prefer multiple characters with third person limited POVs in the plural to one or two main characters. I want more story, I want more points of view, and I want to be stretched. When I return back to California, I will be ready to take A Quiver Full off the shelf and start the rewrite.
But before I can do that, I have got to finish writing my one guy and his POV story.
05.27.18 – The Persian restaurant, Hafez, on Hereford Rd in the border-land that could be Bayswater or it could be Notting Hill, has a rather wondrous approach to interior restaurant decor. There are cookbooks everywhere, the walls and ceilings are festooned with antique and vintage silver and brass culinary and serving implements. Hafez is a delight to not only eat really good food but also a delight for the eyes.
This was directly above our seats this evening. Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Lumia 950 camera phone.
May 25, 2018 – York Minster‘s nave. This cathedral is truly beautiful, next to Salisbury and Chartes it is the most beautiful high medieval gothic cathedral I have ever seen in person.
It has been a thirty year, since spring 1988, goal / life list to come visit this beautifule high gothic cathedral. Rather than go to Spain, my Mom and I decided to travel to Oxfordshire and to Yorkshire via train this week and I am very glad we did.
York is a lovely city.
Black and white film photo taken by Ms. Jen on May 3, 2018 on the 4th fl. of the Tate Modern with her Nikon FM3a film camera, a Nikon Ai-S 35mm f/1.4 lens, and Kodak TMax 400 black & white film.
The digital color version taken with my camera phone can be found here.
* This post was first posted as an Early Access post at my Patreon account.
