Books Lying Open
¤ Dark Tower VII, Stephen King
¤ The Dilbert Principle, Scott Adams
¤ Middlesex, Jeffery Eugenides

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Review-related memory lapses.

Answer of the Day:
¤ Because true acoustic fidelity can only be achieved with the proper equipment.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May you desire a 3rd cat in a deep orange to give the other two another play companion as well as to ensure that every single color of clothing you might ever choose to wear would be visibly covered in cat hair.

ot much blog today, but there is a decent-sized chunk of novel excerpt down below, if you enjoy that sort of thing.  I actually wasn't going to blog at all today, since I've been concentrating on fiction all weekend and want to get right back to it with what remains of my attention, but I had the little football announcer thing below written up already, and I've been rewriting chapter three this weekend and had several large chunks that were entirely deleted and more or less suitable to post in the blog... so with the content already available, I had merely to write an introduction and a conclusion. And here they are.

Just to be live journal inclusive, here's a pointless tidbit about my real life from the weekend.

I got up Saturday around noon on about 4 hours of sleep, since Malaya had been super busy all week and we were behind on errands, had nothing to eat in the house, etc. So we went out, bought some food and produce, hit a few other stores, etc. Got home, ate, all was well and I really didn't feel that tired, despite having minimal sleep the night before.  Malaya had to get up early Sunday morning, and as we usually do when she's got to get up before me (which is the usual state of affairs) we worked side by side until around 11pm, had a snack, and then I tucked her in, which entails lying side by side in bed and talking and snuggling and such for a bit. It helps her get to sleep and gives me a nice break and eye rest.

The problem Saturday night was that I was tired before the tucking in, and I was more tired after it. I got back out here around 12:30 and tried to work, but found myself almost dozing off in the chair. That's odd for me, since I'm often tired around 11, but past 1 or so I get my 2nd wind and then I'm good for 4 or 5 hours of work. Sometimes 6 or 7. I made it until about 1:30, getting a bit more done while wondering if I should have a soda and corn chips snack to wake up, and the next thing I knew it was 2:30 and I had a neck ache from sleeping slumped over in my chair.  So I faced defeat and turned off the computer and brushed my teeth and went to bed, about 4 hours sooner than usual.

It took me a while to get so sleep, but I finally dropped off around 3... and woke up at 4:30, with a cat on my feet, hunger in my belly, and no more sleep in my head. I tried, lying there in a variety of positions until 5am, but it was no use; I couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up, took the cats back out into the living room, closed the door so Malaya could sleep, nuked some pasta, and wrote for 2.5 hours until she got up, at which time I went back to bed around 8am, and slept rather fitfully until noonish.  It's now 11pm Sunday night and I still feel pretty fresh, so with any luck the 3 naps I took last night and 15 minute one I got this evening while vegging out with Malaya will sustain me in productive fashion until my usual 6 or 7am bedtime.

And no, none of this effects any of your lives in any way.

I did watch some football on Sunday, including the whole NFL Primetime show on ESPN from 4:30 to 5:30, which had sufficient highlights of every game to keep me relatively happy. True, I only watched the whole show since Malaya was sleeping leaning her head on my chest with her legs over my lap and I couldn't get up, but I did get to see highlights of every game. I also watched some of the post game stuff after the early game, and in about five minutes I heard two typically amusing/idiotic quotes from the various ex-jock sports guys on CBS. It prompted the following blog entry, since it touched on an issue I've long bemoaned.

2) Not one minute later, another ex-jock (Dan Marino) talking about LaDainian Tomlinson taking a short pass and running half a mile: "You love guys who can get that RAK, those yards after the catch."  When the highlight ends they cut back to the four guys on the post game show and the other three are cracking up, asking how you get "RAK" to equal "yards after catch" and Marino defensively mumbles that it's "Run After Catch" and that "you guys know that" and that he shouldn't have to explain every stat he mentions, etc.

One of the great inequities about professional sports announcing, at least in the US, is that ex-jocks have about a ten step lead on everyone else alive, when it comes to getting a jobs broadcasting or commenting on the sport they played. Ten thousand guys (and some women) out there every year graduate with broadcasting degrees, studying late at night to memorize the name of every player in the league, able to articulate their points and speak under pressure, etc. And if they're lucky, they might get a job as a PA at FOX Sports, or a guy doing stat collection or highlight packages for ESPN. Meanwhile, ever other ex-jock meathead with 3 years of General Studies in college before he left early for the pros who says he wants to get into broadcasting is given a job on TV without any experience other than having played the game, regardless of if he's got any ability to speak or analyze or not. (Usually it's "not" as you would expect.)

I suppose this is all done for ratings and name recognition, since the average fan will sit through a typically-awful pre/half/post game show and ignore the fumbled names and inarticulate speech, so long as a player they enjoyed watching 5 or 10 years ago is the one doing the inarticulate fumbling.  But I can't believe it results in the best broadcast possible, given the lack of intelligence jocks are so widely-renowned for. Especially when there's such an enormous available talent base out there of non-jocks.  Especially given how much "conventional wisdom" is simply wrong, and how much of it persists solely because jocks all buy into it and keep it going in their industry, while all objective outside observers have long since rejected it.

--- Excerpt begins ---

At last allowing her attention to turn to the boots, Vena knelt down and brushed the scraps of fallen cloth and leather away from them. In addition to the bits of lining that had fallen from the armors, there were swatches of still-joined rings lying here and there on the bottom of the wardrobe, and countless individual rings, most of them spotted with rust or lying in broken crescents.

Vena hoped the boots had fared better than the chainmail, and she pulled a pair of low boots out, shaking them to knock loose the bits of fallen metal. The boots were more like shoes, no more than ankle high, and made of a dark green leather that still gleamed. It was undamaged by age, as far as her eyes could tell, and when she felt inside the boot the fur lining still felt soft and supple, though it was covered in dust. Vena upended the boot and shook it vigorously, sending a good handful of broken metal rings scattering across the floor, along with rust flakes and dusty bits of disintegrated leather and cloth.

Feeling inside the boots, she didn't find any more chunks of metal, and she turned around to sit in the wardrobe and dust her feet off. They were covered in the dark gray dust and sand that filled these caves, but Vena gave them just a quick slapping at before sliding them into the boots. She was too eager to see what magical properties these boots were enhanced with to clean her feet entirely, and anyway, she didn't see any stockings in this wardrobe, and she figured these boots had seen worse than her dirty feet.

The boots didn't fit very well, though the padding was luxuriously soft, and Vena just sat there for a moment, enjoying the fur on her bare feet. Besides them being too small, she didn't feel any sort of enchantment. There was no urge to run right up a wall or sprint until her heart burst, so she dared to stand up, though she had to clench her toes to do so. Still, she kept a firm hold of the wardrobe door, just in case her legs suddenly developed a mind of their own.

They did not, and after standing there for a moment Vena frowned. She'd been dreading some uncontrollable urge to run or leap, and now that she felt nothing, she was mildly disappointed. Oh they were lovely boots, though she couldn't have walked far in them without pain or cutting the ends off to let her toes straighten out, but where was the magic? They had to be enchanted in some way, or they wouldn't have lasted through the centuries in such pristine condition. Might they just be really comfortable boots that had an enchantment to make them indestructible?

"Well, I once had a pair of felt gloves that I'd have kept forever." Vena muttered to herself, looking over at [spoiler snip]

She reluctantly pried the boots off, marveling at how quickly she'd grown used to this weird new life she was leading. Stone golems? Centuries-old Necromancers? [spoiler snip]

She set the green low boots to the side, thinking that perhaps she could loosen the stitches a bit, or sew some leather into the heel or toe to make them large enough to wear comfortably, if none of the other pairs of boots worked out. But she had to admit that she hoped never to wear those green ones again. She'd grown greedy after just a taste of magical clothing, and now it wasn't enough that shoes kept her feet dry; they must enable her to fly, or leap ravines, or run non-stop for days...

Vena trailed off, her mouth hanging open. What sort of boots did Quinoss wear, she wondered, feeling a hot flush run up her back and across her cheeks.

He'd had that odd bone armor on in Balain, and said that it [spoiler snip] when he'd taken it off in the cave outside of Balain. But he'd never mentioned any magical properties from his cloak or boots. Not that she'd asked, but... could his boots and cloak have been giving him strength and stamina during the long hike from Balain to [spoiler snip]? Was that how he'd been able to hike day after day [spoiler snip] while she almost died on her feet?

Vena was suddenly angry, all of her irritation with and resentment towards Quinoss returning in a flash. What right did that bastard have to keep her running in rotting leather boots and a whore's dress while he strutted along in magical boots? He probably hadn't even felt tired until the last two days of running. [snip]

Blackly furious, Vena hacked and spat, tasting fish in her saliva. That annoyed her still more, and she picked up and slammed down the green boots, before turning and pulling out a second pair. As she dumped the broken bits of metal out of them she fumed, every thought of Quinoss and his treachery and deceit.

Her anger faded a bit over the next fifteen minutes, as she tried on three more pairs of boots, and found all three too small. The first and third pairs didn't impart any noticeable enchantments to her, but the second pair made her feel light and springy. Curious, Vena gave an experimental hop, and squealed in delight when she found herself looking well above the top of the wardrobe, having leaped at least three feet straight up.

Her shriek of joy became a screech of pain when she landed, and found that the boots did nothing to cushion the impact. It felt like she'd just missed the last four steps on a flight of stairs, and doing that in hard boots with minimal padding hurt badly. She fell and rolled sideways to lessen the impact, but it still hurt, and her heels stung and and her toes were left throbbing from being crushed into the too-short toe of the boots.

Sitting back on her butt in the sand, Vena tugged the boots off and hurled them into the corner, gingerly flexing her toes and sniffing back tears of pain and frustration. Her feet hurt, she was angry at being unable to find any boots that fit, but mostly she was pissed at Quinoss for making her run all that way without offering her any help, and for enjoying the benefit of magical boots while she walked her feet to blisters in the uncomfortable light boots she'd had to wear to pass as a whore and sneak into the Royal Cemetery.

She had to admit that he'd given her most of the food on the journey, and he had surely saved her from death in the Cemetery and then on the way to [spoiler snip], but those admissions just cooled her anger; they didn't extinguish it. Trying to change the subject in her mind, since being angry with Quinoss wouldn't do her any good at this point, she thought about how she could use that last pair of boots. Besides using them to leap high enough to stop Quinoss' head flat, anyway.

They'd be great for entering, though they weren't any good for escape, since that almost always required a descent from whatever window she'd climbed into. They would also be very dangerous to use; she'd have had to practice a great deal, perhaps by leaping up a steep hill, or a ladder, or even into a pond? Being able to leap to a fifth story window was of no use if she went easy and only made it to the fourth floor, or leaped right over it and smacked into the wall. Falling to death or a breaking leg by trying to leap somewhere she could have climbed would be a pretty stupid way to end her career. Of course she'd already ended her career, at least in Balain, and she had to admit it had been in very stupid fashion. After all, the most daring and risky caper of her life had netted her nothing. Less than nothing, considering that she'd lost the enchanted crowbar she'd gone in with.

Vena was just pulling out another pair of boots, hoping these would fit and do something, especially since there were only two pairs left, when the [spoiler snip] began to squeal and make clicking noises [snip]. She scowled at the creature, meaning the angry look for its master, and quickly dumped out the last pair of boots, then yanked them onto her feet.

They felt very nice, padded with something cushiony that wasn't fur, and while they didn't fit, they weren't bad. Just slightly too long and too wide for her feet, which were longer than usual for a woman. Vena stood up, trying out the boots and hoping her first step wouldn't send her flying up to the roof, before following the [spoiler snip] out the door. It leaped down from the roof, bounced off the cave to the side of the doorway, and bounded into the main cave, heading quickly towards the stairs up to the kitchen area.

Vena followed, trying out a few jogging steps in her boots on the way. She thought that her legs felt lighter than they had an hour before, but she wasn't sure if that was real, or just her wishful imagination. Her very small test leap was effortless, but she didn't go any higher than usual. She gave another one, wanting to see how good the boot cushioning felt on impact, and gave a start when she didn't feel the landing at all.

This was interesting.

Eyeing the stairs ahead of her, Vena broke into a run, one that she could really feel in her still sore legs, and leaped up and straight at the wall to the side of the stairs, kicking her feet hard as she hit the wall. Not only didn't she fell any pain at the impact, she stuck to the wall for about two seconds, before she leaned back too far and began to fall, and yanked her feet away from the wall to keep from landing on her ass.

Back on the floor, she stood still for a moment, staring down at the boots in amazement. These shoes were able to absorb impacts, and stick to walls? She couldn't believe it, and halfway up the narrow stairs, tried to simply walk up the wall to her right.

Vena raised her right foot and stuck the sole of the boot to the wall. She could easily pull her foot away, and yet the bottom of the boot remained firmly attached to the wall if she tried to keep it there. The problem was that she had no way to go any higher. It was like trying to climb a vertical ladder without using her hands; she could leap up and cling to the wall for a few seconds, the balls of her feet holding her there, but with no handholds she soon fell back down. Also, her feet were threatening to slide out of the too-large boots the whole time.

Curious, Vena took off a boot and examined the sole. It was unremarkable; some sort of tanned leather with grooves carved into it to give better traction. Her hands didn't stick to it, and when she slapped the boot into the wall, it didn't stick at all. Not even when she put her right hand into the boot and pressed it against a wall. The enchantment required that her actual foot be in the boot for it to stick, which was a shame. She could have climbed any wall with gloves that let her hands stick to the stone or wood, but it wasn't possible to walk up a wall with her entire weight hanging down below her feet. At least she didn't think so.

Perhaps she could do a handstand and press her feet against it behind her, and then walk forwards up the wall while hanging downwards, bent at the knee and looking back over her head at the ground below? If she fell she'd just have to flip over and land on her feet rather than her head, and let the boots magically absorb the impact. She did think she could climb up between two walls, with one foot on each side, but few buildings worth robbing had walls that close to another one.

The [snip] shrieked again, and Vena cursed it under her breath as she slipped the boot back on and trotted the rest of the way up the stairs. After ten steps she noticed how light her legs felt, and smiled, sure the boots were giving her more stamina. Though she felt great, she forced herself to slow to a trudging walk before she turned the last corner and reached the top of the stairs. There was no need for Quinoss to know just how good she felt, not while he was feeling sympathetic for her sickly condition and running her baths and making her dinner. It was the least he could do for her after nearly killing her on the run to [snip].

--- end of excerpt --

As I said, this is relatively rough draft, and it's been completely removed from the novel now, which is why it's here. Even though it's gone, I thought her boot experimentation was pretty cute and worth posting somewhere, and since I didn't have anything else for today, here it is. I don't want to give out many details about chapter three, but there is still some discovery of new equipment in it; it's just handled very differently than it is in this scene.

Also, this scene typifies what's wrong with chapter two, length-wise. It's not bad, it's just much longer than it needs to be. Too much of Vena thinking everything over, too much description that's not essential, etc. It's just longer than it needs to be, and longer than it should be. I'm keeping things much faster in chapter 3 and beyond, now that I've gotten that out of my system with chapter 2. At least that's the theory.

Lastly, many things in chapter 2 changed between the first version and the current version. This excerpt from chapter 3 was written after the first version of chapter 2, which is partially why this got deleted. Vena's state of mind and equipment is very different at the start of chapter 3 than it was in the first version, so don't expect her to end up just like she is in this little piece.

As always, comments are welcome.