I'll just say this...

Writing a character who's truly innocent, almost to the point of cluelessness, is hard. I've had to go fifteen times back and revise different points in Sarah's thinking. Cherise isn't being mean, not even as a joke, she's looking after her. Adelynn's secrecy is a complete mystery to her, but she does it because she trusts Adelynn's judgement.

Grief. Can I keep this up for 90,000 words? This is exhausting. Writing a real ingenue character is hard work, because she's not faking it. Every moment where she's the POV character, the "excuses" she makes for why other people treat her the way she does have to feel completely honest, not contrived, not dishonest, not excuses at all.

I have 4,000 words to get the mysteries into place, the first assault of the dragons underway, and blow up a bakery.

Ripping vinyl

Ha! I have the vinyl ripper working, complete with excellent post-processing filters. Mostly it was hardware hacking, but I think I've got it now. My first three tests were Microchip League's New York, New York, Billy and the Boingers I'm a Boinger, and Deathtongue's U Stink But I Love U. Next, I have to see if I can get my Ded Serios Skidmarks in my Shorts off cassette after twenty years.

Omaha wants to see if I can rip from LaserDisk. Oh, man, that's a different science entirely.

Oh, damn.

A quiet day at the Villa Sternberg

Omaha and I spent the day doing mostly small projects. I took apart my turntable, cleaned off the tracking mechanism, and re-assembled it. It worked for two albums, but stopped working again on the third. I don't know what's wrong with it, but I suspect a combination of a dirty spindle and a weak belt. I mean, come on, the thing's nearly thirty years old. Oh, well. I'll probably have to stop by Home Despot or something like that and go through those insanely diverse collection of gegaws looking for a replacement belt.

I will say this, the recording I'm listening too, by the way-before-their-time techno band MCL came out really well. I'm impressed with the dynamics and response levels. The bass is really perceptible. The Patrick Gleeson version of The Four Seasons, on the other hand, has too many pops and crackles. I haven't figured out how to clean those out.

MCL, on the other hand, nobody seems to have heard of. Which is too bad. In 1987 they released a pair of dark industrial-techno albums which would be completely comfortable in 2005.

We had honey-mustard chicken, noodles and corn for dinner. Nothing big, just what we had in the cupboards. I took Kouryou-chan down to the park for an hour. It threatened to rain the whole time-- it's been a gray weekend all around-- and it did sprinkle on us a little, but we ignored it. It was good to get out of the house for a little while.

On the other hand, I'm still fretting about Moon, Sun, Dragons. More on this later. I'm going to wrap my head around a few ideas. I'm still on target for a February 1st release of the second Aimee serial, though. I have a new version of narrator running and it seems to be stable.