As I begin writing this, it is October 3rd. My Box Elder tree has shed most of its leaves, and the Honey Locust fronds are a beautiful mix of green and gold. Hubby and I are planning a road trip up to Itasca to go leaf-peeping since the leaf reports say the leaves are at 75%.
And my lawn guy is mowing because the grass is six inches long. And it is 89 degrees.
In OCTOBER...IN NORTH DAKOTA!!!
I am not used to the light being so low on the horizon while it's this warm out! Most years, we even have our first blizzard the first week in October.
Going leaf-peeping in shorts is going to be fricken weird. But if it means a milder winter, I'm all for that.
This month's writing update.
I've been plinking around with two new stories, but I haven't worked on them much. They are still in the "I'm deciding if this is worth writing" phase. I've mostly stayed focused on the nostalgia story. I finally figured out a great ending for it and finished the story. I completed a full revision pass on it at the end of September, and now I'm letting it sit for a few days before I come back for another pass. It should be ready to submit by mid- to late- October.
I've gathered a couple of rejections on the story I have out, but there are still a few publishers left to hear from. In the meantime, I'm going to dust off another one to send out, so I'll have two of my "pre writer's block" stories out making the rounds by the end of this month.
I've also been regularly attending the local writer's group again, and that's been awesome. I can't say enough about how important it is to surround yourself with other creative people. It really helps inspire!
Speaking of which, I also attend the first "Larks and Katydids" from the Horror Writers Association. This is an amazing gathering of writers just to socialize over Zoom. There is another session coming up at the end of October, and I'm really looking forward to it. I love my local writer's group, but it's also very cool to hang out with writers in my genre, especially since there aren't exactly a ton of them locally and I'm not the convention-going type. So the Larks and Katydids Zoom meetings are a great way to meet other horror writers (and to put a face and voice to some that I've known forever online but never "seen").
What I'm reading this month.
I finished Mirrored Heavens, by Rebecca Roanhorse for book club, and it was good. It took me a while to get into it, but then I fell in love with the Carrion King, lol.
I was then dismayed to find out that it is book 3 in a 3 book series, so the story is done--unless the author decides to write another.
I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, but then I missed the book club meeting on it (shocking, right?) I read it before, many years ago, and I remember it being more interesting, lol. I was not impressed.
I also re-read The Call of Cthulhu, by Lovecraft, for a different book club, and I finished The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, for the new horror book club that starts this month.
Now I'm currently reading The Final Girl Support Group, by Grady Hendrix, for my regular book club, and I'm about halfway through the borrowed book Mordew, by Alex Pheby. I'm really enjoying both of them!
What I'm learning this month/class report.
I am absolutely loving my university class this semester. It is turning out to be everything I hoped it would. We've been covering topics such as the manosphere, mobile tracking, unwillingly becoming viral content, the implications of living longer thanks to tech, and physiognomy.
It's absolutely fascinating.
And it is a class that requires reflections and responses. So the usual course of business is that after we read a text/article, one half of the class ponders and responds to the reading. Then the other half of the class responds to those original responses.
This is often just as fascinating as the subject matter. The classes are mostly made up of people much younger than myself, so I have ancient insights to offer (lol) and they have the modern take on things.
For example, I did not know that tracking is generally accepted by the younger generations. In my day, the idea of tracking your partner was something only weird, controlling creepers tried to do. But now they consider it a normal part of a relationship, especially since so many of them spent their childhoods being tracked by their parents.
Remember, I was the generation who had to have a PSA to remind our parents that they had kids: "It's 10 PM. Do you know where your kids are?"
So to me, tracking sounds like some crazy shit I would never put up with. But I was also the last generation where we weren't handed a social security card at birth, because back then, our parents were against having a "government number."
This knowledge of differing worldviews becomes important as the world moves forward with AI. It makes me aware that I look at/respond to AI from a GenX viewpoint, and these kids are looking at AI from a completely different worldview.
So I am absolutely loving it. Registration for next semester is coming up at the beginning of next month, and I want to keep exploring this focus area. I haven't decided if I'm going to take the computer science class that focuses on this area or the psychology course that focuses on this, if it is offered.
The pyschology course would help fulfill credits toward my social science major. I already took the computer science course, but that was 25+ years ago. Back then, it was also only 2 credits. So now it would gain me an extra credit toward the computer science minor (presuming they will let me retake it for credit) and it would cover the extreme advances in tech. When I originally took the course, we didn't even have smart phones, much less smart tvs and all the other interconnected tech we do now. So I think it would be very interesting to retake it.
And I'm still working on my other stuff: Spanish through Duolingo and Udemy, Codecademy, Javascript, etc. I'm still focusing on doing at least one Duolingo lesson and one Codecademy lesson daily, and doing the others as I have time.
This month's playlist. The ten songs I'm listening to on repeat.
This month's pondering/share/rant.
I've been trying to live my life under the "Offer Accepted" principle, as you can probably tell from the amount of stuff going on lately in my blog posts.
The Principle of "Offer Accepted" is a little bit like that bad Jim Carrey movie, "Yes Man", but it's just not as extreme. It comes from a NY Times article about how we are offered so many opportunities to do and try things, and yet we come up with so many excuses not to. A lot of times, it even seems like we look for excuses to turn experiences down.
So when I see a class, or an event, or something that seems like it might be fun or interesting, I try it. That's how I ended up going to the Leathertooling workshop at Turtle River State Park. That's how hubby and I just completed a little haunted house for a competition at the public library (which, by the way, he REALLY got into and had a great time doing it, lol).
"Offer Accepted" is how I ended up at a concert where a band plays Metallica on cellos. I hadn't been to a concert in...geez, two decades? But I saw it, tried it, and now I have a new band in my playlist because it turns out I love Metallica played on cellos, lol.
Sometimes the philosophy of "Offer Accepted" works out, like the haunted house or Apocalyptica, and sometimes it doesn't...like the ceramics workshop I signed up for at the University. 😂
Normally, I'm pretty good at sticking with the whole "age is just a number" philosophy and being the only student eligible for the senior citizen discount at the local diner usually doesn't bother me.
But every now and then, the vibe feels off, particularly with some student gatherings. And the vibe felt off to me at the ceramics workshop. It may not have been related to me--I might have walked into a room where the vibe was off already and it had nothing to do with me. Maybe a couple of the students were art students with one of those classic "feud between creatives" going on. Or maybe the students there were the sort of creative types who have an angsty vibe--nothing wrong with that, but maybe that's what I was picking up on.
So, while I did do "Offer Accepted," I also NOPED right out of there almost as soon as I got there. So far, that's the only one I've bailed on. I've tried other things and decided that they weren't for me, but I at least stuck around and tried those.
I can't wait to see what will be the next cool thing to try!
That's it for this month. Until next month, Stay Spooky, my friends!
~~Here be monsters . . . and corgis.~~