Scarlet Letters

Chapter Ten of YELLOW ROSES is a royal pain in the ass. I had a version written, and it wasn't spectacular - owed more to LAW & ORDER than my own experiences with the law - but at least it flowed well. Then I realized I was cheating. I belong to the Heisenberg Compensator School of Science Fiction, you see. There are two schools of thought - the Asimov School and the Heisenberg Compensator School. In the Asimov School, everything must have an explanation. Everything works according to reality, nothing is left to chance. Tom Clancy follows this school to an extreme - his books are practically technical manuals. But when STAR TREK first proposed the concept of the transporter, there had to be one smartass scientist who said it was impossible. His name was Heisenberg, or so the story goes, and it had something to do with the disruption of energy in the brain... I dunno. Transporter=impossible. So in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, at one point they were fixing the transporter, and...

It's cold in Illinois tonight, folks. FOLKS: How cold IS IT? So cold I can see the steam rising from my cup of tea - and the tea's not too hot to drink. So cold the tip of my nose is numb and I have to cup my hand around it to keep it from falling off. So cold I stopped feeling my toes hours ago - and I'm wearing socks. So cold I'm lighting candles on the off chance they contribute some ambient heat to the polar air. I hate the insulation in my bedroom. It's the biggest flaw of my apartment - my bedroom is on the first-floor corner of the building, and it has a big picture window with no storms or screens, just a single pane of glass between me and the outside world, and all the heat just sucks through the walls and ceiling. It's a pervasive cold, just sort of sinks through your skin into your bones and you don't really notice it all that much unless you're thinking about it (or writing a blog post about it as you procrastinate on writing your new ghost ...

And New Age music fans, in case there are any who read this blog. :) Michael Stribling, New Age musician extraordinaire, will host a launch party for his new CD, "Out of the Darkness, Into the Light" in Fresno, Calif. at the end of this month. This is the follow-up CD to his album, "Songs of Hope and Healing," which rose to #1 on the New Age list last year. It's a meet-and-greet, food and drink, raffle prizes, etc. Admission is free, and any proceeds from the event will go to Tree Fresno, a coalition for trees, trails and greenbelts in the Fresno area. The event takes place 6-8:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26 at Perfect Balance Yoga, 5091 N. Fresno St., Ste. 133. For more information call 559-222-6212. The CD is available at www.leela-music.com or call 559-436-4994 to order. Michael Stribling is a former drummer with Crosby Stills and Nash and toured with Johnny Mathis. He's returned to music after retiring from his career as a psychologist. And in the interest of f...

Post more in my blog. So I'll begin with this: http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/12/annotated-anita-blake-vampire-hunter.html About half the people I know have posted cheering on this fellow in his sporking of the Anita Blake comic book. Much of his commentary seems to be based on what he's heard of the later books in the series, which take a screaming left turn from the horror-mystery tone of the first five books and into paranormal erotica. Even so, he's dead-on about much of his complaints. I was really looking forward to this series, because I'm a big fan of Anita Blake. Okay, of the first part of the series. I do believe my interest in the series has gone far, far downward as it's become much more erotic, which is funny for someone making her living, in part, from paranormal romance. But if anything, my work is going in the opposite direction: removing highly sexualized content because it was distracting from the story. But hey, for once, it's not all about ...