I guess I’ve known that my computer was sick for a while — it’s been acting listless and sluggish. But I finally took its temperature, so to speak, and now that I know just how sick it really is, I’m finding it really hard to convince myself to do any “work” on it. Like I’m somehow, irrationally, wanting to give it a rest or something.

I did send a dreaded “checking up on my mss” email out though. The frisson of unease those give me is only slightly more rational than my desire to give my computer a “rest”. The odds are fairly high that I won’t like the answer I get, (“We’ve lost your manuscript, and you’ve waited all this time for nothing” being the most common response), but not asking doesn’t miraculously make the mss’ status any different… it just prevents me from doing anything about it.

I spent all yesterday working on an upgrade for my “Pirate Maker” Digital Paperdoll. It now does female pirates as well as male ones.

I’ve got all the storyboard sketches (or, as my kids call them, my scribbles) for Black Flag Volume Two: Blood Price scanned. Finally. It really should have been done a while back. (As soon as I finished drawing them, maybe?) But so much for spilt milk and all that — they’re done now, and nothing disastrous happen to the originals in the meantime.

Next I need to get them online somewhere, so I have an off-site backup.

There is now a computer game based on one of my story worlds. Well, an expansion to a computer game. I’ve added a page all about it to my website, where you can find installation instructions, or just check out all the sprite artwork I made — on display at the bottom of the page.

…my 20th Wedding Anniversary.

Last night my husband and I went for a walk, just at dusk, with all the fireflies twinkling in undergrowth to each side of the path. We didn’t get very far, though. For my husband it was the end of a loooonnng weary day, and when we saw Mr. Skunk emerge from the bushes and go trotting across the path in front of us, he decided that was all the reason he needed to turn back. On the return trip we almost stepped on a bat, who was skimming along only a few inches from the ground, looking for some some yummy bugs.

I haven’t got a rejection slip back on anything since early March, and I’m starting to become absurdly terrified that all the bad news is going to arrive at once.

This must be mere silliness — it’s true that one novel submission and a couple queries are overdue, but the other three novels out aren’t expected back for another… :checks records: …two months, …two months, …and two months.

Eeep.

Azure (my eldest daughter) will be attending her high school graduation after all, even though she claims to find that kind of cerimony pointless and inconvenient and boring, because people she knows insisted that they wanted to “see her walk”.

I took the younger two kids to the eye doctor and they will both be getting glasses… just in time for school to be over. I have this vague suspicion that I got the timing wrong on that one somehow.

And I think that’s about all there is to report. Other than the usual driving kids about, and waiting for Black Flag scenes to render, I haven’t been doing much.

So now for the latest In My Head Theater update, (because I have discovered that I like having a record of what stories I was mentally developing when).

I got a scene of Lock talking with his brother-in-law about how Lock has a serious woman problem. Which is a bit ironic considering who is brother-in-law is. I’m guessing this scene, if it ever showed up, would go somewhere after the new six — which I think I will call The Voyage of the Obsidian Star for now, ’cause I have to call it something. The scene probably won’t ever appear, however. I don’t see how it moves anything forward.

I also ended up running the courtroom scene from Blood Brothers — NOT as a dance number. Whew!

Plus I was getting stuff relating to the novel I’m supposedly writing, only I’ve been concentrating on Black Flag instead. I hope my back-brain isn’t trying to tell me anything. I want to get this first Black Flag story finished. I feel like it’s been going on for forever.

I’m getting more and more convinced that I need a Black Flag story between what is now Volume 5 and what is now Volume 6.

Which means that 6 is really 7, and 7 is really 8, and…
And I never was all that certain which precise order the other three went in anyhow. :rueful:

I need to start calling them by their titles, so I don’t get confused.

So…
Other than scenes for the new Black Flag story (that has yet to be titled, but follows immediately after Soul of a Talon), In My Head Theater has been running Black Flag: Blood Brothers as a big dance production number a la Gene Kelly. Something must be seriously wrong with me. Maybe I’m feverish?

On the plus side I got the next Black Flag page done in only three days. Three days is okay. Three days I can work with.

For the past week, In My Head Theatre has been running the one about the guru that reminds me of Scent of Spring (particularly the last scene), and the scene from Blood Brothers where Arouj invokes his Captain’s privilege. It also coughed up quite a few new bits of Black Flag 7 (although I’m not sure how “finalized” those bits are — the whole thing is still too fragmented for me to confident that there won’t be changes/slippage). I’ve also had some between volumes Black Flag scenes running, “Why Ghost looks the way she does and what her father did when he found out” and “How Morgan and Kidd manage to finally agree to a contract”. (Until now I hadn’t been absolutely sure that those two ever would get a contract, although the family scenes from Blood Brothers seemed to suggest that they might.)

As far as story development outside of my head goes, I finished off two Black Flag pages in one day, but unfortunately it was after having worked on both of them for a couple weeks. Wah! Why is it going sooooo slow?