Cool discoveries

I found two very cool things this week. I think they're very cool, at any rate. Moleskine Storyboards is a Moleskin with inset frames designed to allow illustrators, animators, and cartoonists the power to write and draw scenes. I instantly wanted one, but I didn't buy it, not sure what I'd actually do with it. I really shouldn't go into the PaperHaus store in downtown; there's far too much temptation.

The other cool thing I found was Dark Places, a version of Quake I that takes a happy seat next to my text-mode quake, sketch-mode, and blueprint-mode. Dark Places upgrades the 3D engine of the original Quake to nearly Quake III quality, with proper 3D shading. Instead of a random spray of pixels, the "points" of a grenade explosion are now arcpoints with soft glows between them, giving the "boom" a much more realistic feel. Instead of a spear of uniform white, the ghosts now spit green, glowing gobs with hazy auras. Everything in Quake looks amazing, and apparently the author has created add-on worlds that are even higher quality, with better wall textures and clearer monsters. This is the Quake in our imagination, and I'm actually really happy to see someone working on it.

"Freakishly Fast."

Word of the day: Esquivalience - n. the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities. Use this word a lot, please.

A friend of mine said once that I wrote "freakishly fast." I don't feel like it these days. Despite the fact that I've plowed through the same 17,500 words now, twice, I'm no closer to finishing Robots of the Deep vs. The Vampire Girl of Fallow Five. There are too many unanswered questions.

My biggest fear is this: "Y'know, if this were a David Weber novel, it would make perfect sense for that station to open fire on the Christine, explanation forthcoming. If this were a S.M. Stirling novel, it would make perfect sense if, at that moment, our very, very female robot to sudden go berserk and start tearing the Christine a new asshole as she tries to kill the girl, now an ex-vampire, on whom she has a desperate crush. But I don't write those kinds novels."

It's got a pace-- a mild combat scene, a perfunctory love scene, a better combat scene, a better love scene-- and now I'm feeling a bit stuck. There are all kinds of questions, like, why did the Sinox attack five thousand years ago, and why is Cheyenne in her combat body, why did the Christine's AI know that the Robot Recovery Trust Fund would pay "absolutely anything" to bring Cheyenne into the fold, and what does the mysterious M know about vampires anyway?

I hate being the author and not knowing the answers. I've got to figure out how to write "those kinds of novels." With magnificent language to boot.