Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: You have traveled 20 years into the future. Your older self is sitting beside you, giving you advice that could change your life in significant ways. Write a scene about this encounter. Do you take the advice? How does your life change in the past/future after heeding the advice?
Inspirational Quote: “I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.”
-Jim Butcher, Ghost Story
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: Start a story with: ‘It was an ordinary day until a character from my favorite movie asked for my help to save the world.’
Inspirational Quote: “Remember, the essence of storytelling demands that we place our main characters on a path. A quest with something at stake, with something to do, to achieve, to learn, and to change.”
-Larry Brooks – Story Engineering
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: You are an alien on a ship headed toward Earth in the year 2036. What are the first five things you see when you transport to the surface of the planet?
Inspirational Quote: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
Trailer Park Shark vs. Gold Medal Man
Keep your hands and feet inside the confines of your easy chair–Shark Week is circling! It attacks July 23rd and lasts an entire week on the Discovery Channel and SYFY.
Before I begin my musings about the annual fest to pay homage to an eating machine, let me set the stage by asking you to imagine a cello. The Jaws theme begins. Come on, you can hear it–it’s two stinkin’ notes. Even I, possessing a cello I can’t play, can manage two notes. So now that you have that playing in your head, let’s continue.
For the past two weeks, I’ve seen advertisements for Shark Week in the form of sharks on a plane, Shark Week t-shirts, Shark After Dark nail polish, and Deep Sea Delight ice cream cupcakes. Then there is shark on a Seal. Unfortunately, the shark wasn’t interested in a Kiss From a Rose, it wanted pop star nosh.
The Discovery Channel lineup for the week of July 23rd – 30th offers scenes of serial killing sharks (because after the first attack they’re apparently serial killers), devil sharks, and a shark safari. There are also alien sharks, which I think could be a possible crossover event with SYFY. The main event for Discovery this year is Commotion in the Ocean – Michael Phelps vs. Great White. No gloves, mouthguards, or jockstraps for this one; it’s a race to see who is the fastest swimmer. Should we watch through our fingers like I did when I saw Jaws for the first time? Will Great White decide feed rather than speed is the goal? I guess we’ll see.
Let’s move on to the SYFY B lineup. There are some real winners for Shark Week 2017. 5-Headed Shark Attack (because 5 is way better than 4), Mississippi River Sharks, Toxic Shark, Trailer Park Shark (the things I envision here would take an entire post), Empire of the Sharks, and (drumroll) Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, tagline: ‘Make America Bait Again’. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Who knew that idea would fly…five times? I guess Tara Reid and Ian Ziering still need grocery money.
I will have to say I am disappointed that SYFY hasn’t taken my suggestion for one of their spectacular movie events. I want to see T-rex Hex. An evil warlock places a hex on (name the city) for shutting down his warlock consulting business. He turns the long-armed city council into short-armed dinosaurs and mayhem ensues. (What? It’s at least as good as Sharknado!) Just an FYI for all of you who are fans of 80’s romance covers, Fabio will be playing the part of the Pope in Sharknado 5. I think I’ll insist on Fabio playing the part of the evil warlock in T-rex Hex as well…now that would be worth the price of admission.
Two Weeks and a 9.6 oz Bag of M&M’s Later…
Two weeks ago, I began the task of switching hosting sites and overhauling my website. What a chore! It took a week to release my domain name from hosting site prison, then we, my (everything-to-do-with-computers-guru) husband and I began transferring all of my website files to a new WordPress theme on a new hosting site. OMG! What a lot of work, crying, and gnashing of teeth! Because the guru wanted me to learn how to do it myself, it was a painfully LONG process. Every time I thought I had a problem figured out, two more popped up. Then there were my cats, who knew when I was in the middle of something that I had to concentrate on. Deep into ‘how the hell do I make this work’ it was time for them to be in front of the computer screen or swatting everything off the desk. Today, thank you, Jesus, it is done. Now all I have to do is come up with some interesting posts and finish the book I’m working on. That’s all…no sweat. It might take another 9.6 oz bag or two of caramel M&M’s before that happens, but God knows I am trying. Come by, visit my new site, and tell me what you think. Oh yeah, just in case anyone cares, I have an SSL certificate which supposedly makes my site “safe”. No critters biting my visitors.
Avoid the Red Circle of Curiosity or Get Soap in Your Eye
I have a habit of checking the notifications on my various social media sites before getting up in the morning. I had one Pinterest notification this morning and opened the app thinking it would be a picture of a cute animal or the latest idea for inventive Christmas table decorations. Before I could open the notification, the Pinterest algorithm thought it would be nice to lay a trap for me on the front page. It was a black and white picture of a man standing beside a chair. At his feet was a big red circle. My better judgment said don’t click. The caption read, ‘People In the 1800’s Did This With Dead Bodies’. The man in the picture looked alive, or so I thought. There was definitely something on the floor behind his feet. I squint, but I can’t identify the thing on the floor. My journey through Victorian postmortem photography takes a morbid turn. The thing in the red circle is a contraption to hold the dead up in a posed position while the photographer snaps pics of them, usually with their eyes open, and sometimes with their living relatives standing around them.
I will admit I do like interesting cemetery monuments, and I do have Pinterest boards with photographs I took of said monuments, but what would make Pinterest think I wanted to see posed dead people?
As a writer, I have a vivid imagination. The characters from my books are real and in living color in my mind. This morning, after taking the red-circle bait, I had morbid black and white characters in my mind, staring at me with lifeless, open eyes as I stepped into the shower. For sanity’s sake, sometimes you have to keep one eye open in the shower even though there may be the sting of soap in it. Take my advice and don’t get sucked into the red circle of curiosity–especially before a shower.
