Radar rainbow circus mist fungus desk

I avoid reading my spam as much as possible. Don’t we all? Gmail very conveniently dumps suspicious mail in the spam folder before I ever lay eyes on it, and mostly I ignore it. But, you know, every once in a while a non-spammy message ends up in there, so I skim the messages every few days to catch wayward messages.

I zip down the list of names and subjects. Most of them are unintelligible, garblings of drug and sex enhancement products, but every once in a while a creative spammer will have a catchy subject line. I don’t mean catchy as in commercial-jingle catchy or gross catchy. I mean that they do something a little different.

One style of message pastes in a bit of a news article or headline into the subject line. I guess they’re trying to fool us into thinking that someone has sent us a news article to read. These aren’t particularly interesting to me, but they do tend to stand out.

The style that I really like is the random list of words subject line. These are often like monkey-poetry. A random list of words that somehow come together in a lovely juxtaposition. More than once, one of these listy little gems has inspired a character or scene in my writing.

So, if you’re lost and looking for a smidge of inspiration, take a skim at your spam subjects. You never know what you might find.

Oh yeah, NaNo Day 1: 3500 words.

NaNo Technology

I remember in a class once, we discussed the history and development of the novel at length. I forget what we were reading, but we discussed letter-writing habits in the nineteenth century. Paper wasn’t particularly cheap, and apparently it wasn’t uncommon to reply to a letter by turning the paper sideways and writing a new letter right on top of the old. This was also a common practice for a variety of texts in earlier periods in which parchment was even more dear. This could, I recall, go on for several layers of script, creating a complicated palimpsest, a tangled treasure chest of words and meaning. Imagine the care of writing, the care of the letter or book as an important object, the care of deciphering the layers of words. Better than TV. And they used the heck out of those pieces of paper and parchment.

So today, I sit here in front of my computer, undoubtedly reusing electrons that have been used and reused many times in the storage of various data on my hard drive. There is a stack of newspapers under the table, which will be set out for recycling this week unless they are snatched up first by someone to fold or tear or smush into some other creation.

I wonder about the NaNo Novel I’m planning for this year. I’m tempted to shun these little electrons, and pen my NaNo07 long hand on old newspapers to make a point about waste and reuse. Of course, in order for it to count, the NaNo will still have to be transcribed into bits and bytes to upload. And would my newspaper scribbles be more precious to me somehow? Or more frustrating? Would I even be able to read it? Would my hands fail me in the scribbling?

Does the act of NaNo, the intense and sometimes frenzied pouring out of words in the moments between our responsibilities, invest the words with some special meaning no matter how they’re marked out? Perhaps not the same way that a cherished scrap of parchment or heavily reread and rewritten packet of letters might be.

I’m sure there was something interesting I was going to say here.

What? What’s that you say? You say tomorrow is NaNo Day? I guess I’ll go out and play.

Nanopsys

Shall we get our NaNo on?

Amy versus the Mud Vampires, or
Bloodeating Mudsuckers from Prague

Meet Amy. She grew up on her family’s cattle ranch in Eastern New Mexico. Now she is a high school social studies teacher in Albuquerque. Her life is busy. Her life is normal.

At least she thinks it’s normal.

Amy is about to discover her secret birthright. Amy is a witch. A bloody powerful one.

And she is in great danger.

While cleansing Amy’s house of bad energy following a bad breakup, Amy’s well-meaning, though clumsily non-magical neighbor has just inadvertently broken a protective halo of power created by Amy’s grandmother before her mysterious disappearance.

Now some scary things are knocking on Amy’s door….

…ugly bloodeating mudsuckers
…a former student with a wicked crush
…a sexy cop with a secret

Polish This

If I am ever accused or convicted or a crime, especially something as serious as allowing a child in my care to die, feel free to defend or condemn me as you find appropriate. I hope that you use sound judgement and rational reasoning in your opinions, but it’s really your right to think what you wish however you wish. Yell if you feel like it. Write if you think it’s appropriate. But please. Please. Save the shoe polish for Saturdays at the sports complex. This is not a soccer match or football game. This is the death of a child and the destruction of a family.