Flea markets are sometimes totally worth it...

One of my best friends from high school, Sara, and I spent last weekend in Harpers Ferry, WV to go white water rafting and horseback riding. There's really not a lot else to do in Harpers Ferry (except go to Charles Town Races and Slots... and YES I had that stupid song stuck in my head all weekend) so finding things to do got a bit tricky. Friday night at dinner Sara asked the waitress what the nightlife was like and she literally laughed before telling us nothing (well, there was a bar up the road called "the pub" but she "strongly recommended" that we didn't go there. We drove by the next day and it sure enough looked like a really shady place. You have to ring a bell to get into it.... wth?). Our rafting excursion wasn't until two pm Saturday and neither of us slept well Friday night, so we were up early Saturday morning with nothing to do. Looking through a binder of "local attractions" in the hotel room, Sara found a flier for a local flea market. I've always thought flea markets are nothing more than giant yard sells... and Saturday's experience did nothing to discourage that thought process, but I will never discredit them any longer. If you look hard enough, you can find some really awesome stuff.

For instance... I've been searching for Clueless (yes, the movie with Alicia Silverstone) and surprisingly no one in the area has it. Sure, I can order it online, but the shipping is nearly as much as the movie is. So I was pleasantly surprised to find Clueless stuffed into a holder at one of the stands on Saturday morning, and the guy selling it only wanted two dollars for it. Which seemed totally fair, considering the only reason I want to see it is b/c it's considered one of the best spin offs of Jane Austin's Emma, and it is also included on a couple lists of movies to see before you die (and we all know how crazy I am about my movie lists).

But the best find of the day came a few minutes later, at a stand three rows over from where I found Clueless. As you might recall, a month or so ago I compiled a list of books that influenced me as a reader when I was younger, and a writer now that I'm older. One of the books on the list was TimeCat. The copy I read when I was younger is a newer edition, rereleased for modern kids. I found the first edition copy of the book, hiden away in a pile and the seller only wanted fifty cents for it. I was so excited to find it, and I'm sitll excited now.

Of course, in the long run the book won't be worth anything (it isn't like finding a first edition of Gone with the Wind, or anything) but it's so cool to look at the old illustrations and hold the old book in my hand. And it smells fantastic... old and a bit moldy, just like all the great old books do. I'm not sure I'll be going to too many more flea markets... but Saturday's was definitely worth it.

Above is the old, and below is the newer version =)

I'm a bad, bad blogger

It's been about a month since my last post.... my bad. lol. Things have been crazy, and I can't really blame it on school, since that ended before my last post. I can't blame it on typing, because I haven't actuallys at down to write in a couple weeks... so I'll just blame it on my being lazy. Which is true. I come home from work at night and I don't feel like doing anything. And I've gotten addicted to Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, so when I come home that's the first thing I turn on (TV on DVD...not the best idea for people that get addicted to shows easily). So I'm going to try to make a pact with myself...I need to do writing of some sort before Dr. Quinn gets turned on (and after Dr. Quinn, Trueblood and The Big Bang Theory).

We'll all see how well that goes.

Anyways... Last week before I flew out to Denver, I sat down and put together an outline of my third book. It's something I've never done before. Usually I sit down and just let whatever comes, come. And my reasoning for creating an outline was kind of morbid. I hadn't been on a plane since 2006 and was kind of nervous about flying. I'm also not one to give away anything about the novels I'm working on, despite being bugged my someone about what I plan to do in the third. So I got to thinking that in the slim chance somethign did happen to me, I should at least have something outlined so that people know how the story was going to end. Morbid, like I said. But the outline has been really helpful. I have everything planned now, including names of characters and places.

These are things that I usually try to figure out as I'm writing the piece and it's usually a break in tempo b/c I like to find names that have meaning...and since it's an alien language I'm creating most of the time I have a lot of liberty with combining languages and words (ie- my character Malgar is a combination of the french words "mal" meaning bad and garcon which means man.). I've also picked some character names because of what they mean. Some where coincidental. Jason means Healer...which I think is appropriate. Amber means precious jewel. In my other story my main character's name is Clara, which means friend. Those were all coincidental. But in my upcoming story I took the time to search names by meaning, and then chose the ones I thought worked best. I won't list any here.

Now that I'm completely off topic... outlines. Back to outlines... It was amazing how fast everything came once I sat down to create the outline. Don't get me wrong, the outline is 12 handwritten pages and took me all day at work to complete, but obviously I couldn't sit down and type out a full book in 8 hours. And now that I have the outline, all I have to do is go back and connect the dots and fill in the blanks. I have to add details and dialogue, but my story is done. It's amazing. The next time I sit down to start a book, I'm going to be starting with an outline.

And having an outline doesn't mean that I can't stray from it. There still needs to be surprises, even for me. The characters aren't real unless they surprise everyone, even their creator.