namaste

First off, hello everyone! Every once in a while I think I should post something new on Dreamwidth, since my last posting was from my June half marathon. (Just did the Detroit International Half Marathon today. Took a minute off my time from June. Also, the Canadian border guards are a lot nicer to runners. They were high fiving people and cheering. U.S. border guards kept yelling at people to not wander off course and shouting to show our bib numbers.)

Also, I was playing a bit with some new toys, namely Doctor Who. Been watching the show since Four's era, but got the itch to do a little something this time. Link goes back to my LJ.

Title: Mood Indigo
Author: Namaste
Summary: The Doctor insists this visit is all about the surprise. River prefers a challenge. PG, about 1,750 words, Doctor & River Song. Spoilers through the most recent season/series.
Author's notes: Thanks to leiascully for the quick beta. Any comments & concrit welcome.
Excerpt: Maybe this was some gift inherited from the TARDIS in the first hours of conception, cells splitting and doubling while exposed to all of space and time, telling her secrets she'd spend her life learning all over again.

Mood Indigo

Tomorrow I officially head out to run a half-marathon. I say "officially" since I've run the distance in training with a distance running class, on a route that's even hillier than tomorrow's route. (It's the Dexter-Ann Arbor run, if anyone's curious. I'm number 1855.)

And for all those times when I thought -- a class for running? WTF? -- it's worth it with a good coach and the right people, at least for me. The thought of going out and running 10 or 12 miles (or even six or seven) on my own is daunting, but knowing that Liz and Lorray and Dave and Susie and everyone else will be there as well gives me a reason to get out the door, and the miles are much easier to handle with a group.

Since this is my first half-marathon, I've told myself to be happy with any time, though I'm hoping to finish in under 2:30.

"The Doctor's Wife" (Loved it! Loved her! "I stole you.") marked the third straight episode that Rory has said "I'm a nurse" in some context.

So is that reference a simple reminder to the audience? A setup for some future moment when that will be important? Or merely a contrast between "The Doctor" and "The Nurse?" (The Doctor being the person who comes in, announces things that make things happen, while the nurse is the comforter, the doer of day-to-day needs.)

And how wonderful to get reminders of Amy's feelings for Rory. Her image of delight (I think it was delight) being her wedding day and him.

Oh, and humans are "bigger on the inside." Brilliant.

Apparently I could go on and on about moments I loved.

Finished reading "Super Sad True Love Story" last night. Still don't know exactly what I think of it. In one sense, it's a fairly simply plot, but it's played out against a future AU scenario that's so easy to imagine, that it all has a unique spin to it.

It certainly has its dystopian attitudes, but at the same time is so damn entertaining to read, that the pages fly by and you keep wondering what's next. (One review of it I'd seen is that it was a near illiterate world, but that's not really accurate. There's no dense faux/bastardized language to wade through. It's fairly straight up journal on one side, with the other POV told through something similar to Facebook posts and IMs, but the bulk of the story is told via the journal.)

Starting the prowl for the next book to read now.

Also ... a couple of years back I did a one week "summer school" course at Oxford through its outreach program on writing. Oxford now is offering everyone who's ever taken a writing class in any one of its various offshoots a short story contest -- 1,800 to 2,200 words. I may have to see if I can hone in on something, just because. It would be good in the midst of all the insanity dealing with my brother's issues to be able to put some effort in writing again.

Speaking of my brother ... Some of you may know he's been in the hospital since Dec. 14. Long story short: Major hernia, major surgery, complications, infections, ICU (six weeks) yadda, yadda. He's been in rehab since March 1 (yay!) although will need longer term rehab at another facility, so I've got this month to get him moved out of his current apartment and put his stuff into storage. Even if he had money to pay for both rehab (which is actually being paid mostly by Medicaid, though he'll have to pay in most of his income -- he's on Social Security Disability) and his apartment rent, he can't move back in there because there are too many stairs.

I remember when he went into the hospital and I thought it would be nice in a week when everything was back to normal.

Title: Cup Of Kindness
Author: Namaste
Summary: A drabble collection. Five times House and Wilson spent New Year's Eve apart, and one New Year's Eve together. 600 words, PG, friendship.
Author's Note: Just a little something, because I wanted to start the year with a little writing, even if other things in life seem beyond my control.
Sample: Wilson keeps an eye on him from a distance, spying across the snowy balcony, or from the alley, not quite sure what it will take to close the gap between them.

Cup Of Kindness

I hit a writing spurt late Saturday/Sunday and broke through something. It's coming a little easier now, even if I do end up with huge gaps in the narrative I know I'll have to fill in later. I view this less as a "first draft" of the novel and more as a really, really extensive outline, since I know the vast majority of it will be rewritten and reworked, if I still like it at the end of this.

I managed to pass 20,000 words today, so nearly to the halfway point, in terms of the required number of words. I still worry that I'll be able to sustain the plot as I go, but each time I worry that I'm about to run out of steam, I find something else that I really hadn't expected, but really like.

Anyway, here's another excerpt, if anyone's interested.
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1,200 words for my NaNoWriMo so far, a few hours into the month. Of course today would be the day when I'll be out of town for 12 hours for work, but I squeezed out an hour of writing time before I needed to leave.

Briefly, the story is the basic "journey of discovery" trope, with a guy named Nick who decides after a bad day in Iraq to ride a bicycle across the U.S. for reasons he can't quite define. (I've blatantly stolen the name and general concept of the character from Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, and am taking advantage of my own cross-country bike ride 12 years ago. I figure that this format allows for episodic telling -- when I get stuck, just move on to another day on the journey -- and when I can't think of what to write, just glance through the photo album from that trip and see what pops into my head.)

Finished reading "Cloud Atlas" the other day. I really enjoyed it, thought it was clever both in terms of the variety of writing styles he used and how the whole book was shaped. Still uncertain whether I'd call it a novel as one specific story, though, or more of a series of loosely linked novellas. Not that it wasn't enjoyable, just ... mulling it over yet.

Reading Anthony Bourdain's "Medium Raw" now and have two more books still on the reserve list at the library, waiting for them to come up. (Pearl Buck in China and The Warmth of Other Suns, about the migration from the rural south to industrial northern US.)

Working on a one-shot Nolan-POV fic, which I'd love to wrap up by Sunday since I've signed up to attempt NaNoWriMo this year.

Also need to get my crap together again and send out more submission info for my kid's book in search of an agent/publisher. I've received two rejections so far -- one publisher, one agent -- and need to get it out in front of a lot of other folks.

So here in the Detroit area, people have been following the story of a 7 year old girl who has been cyberbullied. A dying 7 year old girl. Of Juvenile Huntington's Disease. Whose mother died of Huntington's just two years ago in her 20s. And she and her family are being cyberbullied on Facebook. And bullied in real life through stuff like having a truck containing a coffin parked in front of her grandmother's house, by her grandmother's neighbors, apparently because the neighbor's kid wasn't invited to a family birthday party quickly enough.

Yeah.

Pretty crappy.

But all is not lost for humanity. Local toy story organizes fund raisers and treats the girl to a shopping spree. There are clowns. And a balloon wand. And roses. And a white limo.

If you've got any tears left after watching the Chilean miner rescue, just check out the videos. Or this comment from the store owners in the comments:

When I was getting my goodbye hug (and trust me, she hugged me like crazy), I whispered in Kathleen's ear and asked her, "Sweetheart, what was the best part of the day?" She thought for a moment, and whispered back... "Ponies." She smiled as she put her head on my shoulder.

Title: When Blythe Met Rachel
Author: Namaste
Summary: Things have been changing for years for both Blythe and Cuddy, but they're finding something they can believe in through it all. Builds on events of the Season Six finale, but is speculation from there. Rated G. About 3,800 words.
Author's Note: I've stolen both the structure and title format from "Family, Friends And Other Complications," if you're wondering why it seems familiar. Thanks for the drive-by betas!
Excerpt:"See, this is why I don't tell you anything," House said.


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