Acknowledging My Better

In our early years, while Mary Ann liked photography too, I was the one who schemed to get the camera and took many pictures and experimented with different film stocks. I had a winder to make my own film canisters from bulk Tri-X or FGRP. I had the chemicals to develop my own. At least with the black and white films. Color was far too complicated and expensive. I took vacation photos, extreme closeups and astrophotography. While none of my pictures were artistic, I did have a reasonable eye for composition. I never desired to be a photographic artist, I was much too interested in the gadgetry and pushing the limits of what could be done with the tools.

Mary Ann took a different route. Since I married her, she has always had an artistic itch. But at first, she didn't have the training for it. Her stick figures needed work. But that didn't stop her. Decade by decade, she developed the skills. She would latch on to a technique and push it to it's limits. Our mailbox has a painted squirrel on it. Christmas decorations and other household knickknacks have her touch.

And then, she started using my 35mm cameras. It was as if she'd finally found the right tools. Of course, my cameras quickly reached their limits as she found her muse. More expensive cameras. Bigger lenses. Photoshop. Professional grade tripods. Camera levelers. It goes on and on. And that's just my gadget guy's perspective.

Her artwork developed rapidly. Yes, there were some great photos taken with her Olympus point-and-shoot digital camera, but with professional tools in her hands, she took off. Tens of thousands of photos later, maybe a hundred thousand, she has blow-you-away landscapes, world famous flowers, and her own unique style that she hopes to show off at the Montreal convention. She's an artist that has found her media.

So, my little snapshots have dwindled. I take memory pictures and research pictures for my stories. But I have no delusions. Mary Ann is the photographer of the house. So to illustrate. Here is the best of my fireworks shots (taken with my iPhone) and a sampling of the many shots that Mary Ann took.

The Black Hole Network

Rural living has its benefits, but solid internet connection isn't one of them. No cable, no DSL, and rural dial-up isn't even as good as dial-up. I've had ISDN for awhile, but that's gone. At the moment, I'm using two network sources, both with serious problems. HughesNet has horrible bandwidth caps, and it's easy enough to hit the daily limit by accident, especially with video clips, Flash websites, and automated software updates.

I also use the AT&T 3G USB modem, which, when it works, provides a comfortable level of connection. I can download video from iTunes and handle the software updates with no problem. Unfortunately, it's not stable. Often, several times a day, something strange happens. According to the system preferences panel as shown above, I'm still connected to the internet, packets are sent to the AT&T system, but nothing comes back. Send is active. Receive is dead. It's like a network connection to a black hole.

I'm using the Mercury device as shown, and when it is in black hole mode, both blue LEDs are shining solidly, as if everything was fine. And if I click the Disconnect button, it takes a minute or so for the software to time out, as if it's trying to negotiate an orderly shutdown but can't.

The only partially reliable way I've found to bring the network back more solidly is to shutdown the Mac Mini it's connected to for five minutes and restart. Whether that's a software cleanup or hardware cooling down is uncertain. Or it could just be my imagination.

Still, erratic network connection is better than none. I just wish it didn't take up so much of my time.

Spicy Traffic Ticket

Okay, that's over. Now all there's left to do is to tell the story.

Mary Ann is suffering a successful garden. Harvest is producing more than we can currently eat, so she's hauled out all the old canning jars and scoured the local stores for some of the more obscure canning supplies. The pickles were excellent and probably there are more to come. She has more yellow squash frozen in bags than we'll likely use all year. And sunday evening, she decided to convert a bag of tomatoes into salsa. She sliced the jalapenos and the onions and the garlic and before it was done, her hands started to burn. They were sensitive to heat and I had to be brought in to help ladle the salsa into the jars and help put them into the boiling bath.

She googled and found numerous home remedies for jalapeno burns, but nothing seemed to be working. I found her washing her hands in cooking oil and coffee grounds and she asked me to squeeze lemon on them as she scrubbed. Still, nothing was working. From her description, her hands felt like they were inside an oven.

A search for the poison control center brought up their cute, easily memorable 800 number, 1-800-222-1-222 and this was familiar problem with them, but one with no easy solution. The sympathetic lady suggested maalox or milk soaks and aloe vera jell, none of which we had in the house.

By this time it was well past my bedtime, and well past the store hours of anyplace local, but there was a 24-hour Walmart down the way. So shortly before 2AM, I got in the jeep and headed off.

Highway 79 parallels the train tracks and everyone in the Hutto area is familiar with long waits for the passing of the trains. The last one I counted had ten locomotives and about 120 cars. One like that was heading toward town from the direction of Round Rock as I approached the crossing. But, the light up ahead was green and the crossing signals were still dark. In my mind I was thinking of several things. The first was looking at the Walgreens on the other side of 79. If they were still open, then I could get everything there and get the supplies back to Mary Ann much quicker.

Approaching the rail crossing, I was well aware of the train. My father worked for Santa Fe Railroad all his life and he trained his kids to never trust the crossing signals. I knew how far away it was, and how fast it was going. There was never any question of safety, but rather speed and efficiency. I glanced down the track as I my wheels rumbled over the rails and saw it coming several hundred yards away. Before I reached the green traffic lights, I heard the ding ding ding of the rail signals coming active.

Walgreens was shut down for the night, so I turned left and headed toward the Walmart still a few miles west on 79.

It was a puzzle when flashing lights came up behind me, but I was past the toll road intersection and the road was deserted so I had no problem pulling over. The lights followed me, so yes, they were signaling me, although I had no idea why.

I waited patiently until the policeman approached the passenger side and I flipped the latch so he could talk to me. He told me I had run the railroad warning signal, and asked if I had an emergency. I explained about Mary Ann, the poison control center's directions and furthermore that I had not seen any lights. He took information and after going back to play with his computer for a few minutes–long enough for me to call Mary Ann and explain I'd be delayed getting her the materials–he came back with the ticket. It was a polite and quiet exchange. I suspect that from his position and angle, probably on the north side of the tracks, he saw my jeep leaving the tracks with the lights flashing behind me and just assumed I had run the lights.

Tired and frustrated, I continued on and made my stop at Walmart. I played the sequence in my mind several times. There's no doubt the signal had not lit by the time I crossed the tracks. Technically, I had legally beat the signal. But should I contest the ticket. $297 is a lot of money. Plus, the last time I'd gotten more than a warning ticket for a burned out headlight was years ago, maybe 15 to 18 years ago. If was an affront to my honor.

Silly, I know. By the time I returned home I knew I had to make some decision so I could get much needed sleep. I could contest the ticket, but with nothing more than the statement of a citizen against the statement of a policeman, there was little chance I could win. It might make me feel better. It might not, depending on how the situation played out.

Or, I could accept that I was pushing the limits on the rail crossing. It was indeed a tight decision. Rail crossing lights don't have any 'yellow signal' to warn you that you are about to make an illegal crossing. It's all up to your judgement and the judgement of the policeman watching you.

I can't prove anything, and it was my decision to cut it close. I'll just pay the fine and go on. Life is too short to spend time and emotional energy on something so unprofitable. Let it go and let it show up in some story line later on.

Next, the execution. My ticket materials list a website, www.huttotx.gov and sure enough, there's a menu item for paying tickets. Unfortunately, once I entered my driver's license number and my date of birth, the ticket entry didn't show up. Sigh. It is less than 24 hours since it happened. I'll just have to wait until the ticket gets entered into the system. It would be nice if I could get this behind me.

UPDATE: Tuesday. It appears the Hutto website was just shifting gears. Today I was able to pay the fine and put it behind me.

Time Travel Stories: Making It Fit

This is the fourth and last of the time travel short stories I'm posting, and the one I wrote most recently. Of the four, Echoes, Litterbug, Far Exile, and now Making It Fit, it was this last that contributed the most ideas to my upcoming novel Golden Girl. In particular, the idea that the whole change-the-past / can't-change-the-past thing was purely a matter of energy was something I wanted to explore. Another part of the time travel sub-genre that I needed to work out was the idea that changing the past was a necessary element in a time travel story. It seemed that the only choices were change the past and explore the paradoxes, or show the human tragedy of attempting to alter history and failing. In Making It Fit, I attempt storytelling with a different goal. I'm happy with how it came out, and I hope you like it.

Golden Girl Cover Art Progress

Today, I received some initial sketches for the Golden Girl cover–a set of four options to choose from, based on my first suggestions. I'm grateful for real artists who can take my conceptual ideas and create an image of space and action. In this case, they had to work pretty hard, because my mental image was spread out like a wide screen display and the cover has to be tall and narrow to fit an 6x9 inch book. I ought to have considered that from the beginning, but I lack the skill set and the experience to have foreseen the problem.

I'm looking forward to see what they come up with. I expect to be pleased. I've had good luck with the covers on my books and I always get compliments whenever I have them displayed. Not that everyone likes every cover. That would be quite a bit to expect of any artwork. But there is no consensus. One cover that is artistically crude (I requested it that way) is regularly picked up first from the table and often purchased. Great art and art that sells books aren't necessarily the same thing.

Just as soon as I get Golden Girl's final artwork, I'll post it here. Deadlines are approaching.

Time Travel Stories: Far Exile

The third in my set of time travel stories, as I prepare for my time travel novel Golden Girl, is a bit different. Think of it as a homework assignment. Some years back, when I was exchanging email with a Name agent I hoped to work with, he suggested a few books I might look at to improve my writing. I clicked over to Amazon and ordered them, but as I read, I found them interesting, but not at all my style. Still, as an exercise, I took one of the most interesting stories of the lot and attempted to write my story in that style. Mix a 1930's style with a 1950's plot and the result is Far Exile.

Now, some of you will recognize the main character in a heartbeat, but the point of the exercise wasn't using him in a new setting, but rather using some of the techniques, such as no internal dialog, and strictly limited sensory information. However, I wrote it, so it came out as science fiction, and in some sense, a time travel story. At least in the sense of a visitor out of time.

I never really attempted to submit this story to the magazines, but it at least deserves a little exposure, so please sit back and take a look.

School's Out. Oops. Help.

One of my long, long to-do list items was to get a book trailer for Falling Bakward posted to YouTube. I had talked to a few high school students and teachers and while everyone seemed to want to help, I was never able to get everything in place, and now, school is out for the summer.

I had put together a two minute video with no actors on screen, just because I knew it would be hard to corral the right mix of people, so I composed a script and a video that was mostly computer images. All I needed was a few sound effects and an appropriate voice to speak the lines.

So, this is a call for help. What I need is a male, high school voice with either a neutral accent or something appropriate for South Dakota to read a little less than two minutes of script to match the events on the video. So any volunteers? Have a relative or friend who wouldn't mind having his voice on the video and his name in the credits?

Let me know, and I'll give you the link to the script and the video file.

Here's the podcast link to the novel on iTunes (free).