Yeah, didn't get anything new cranked out today. Was more than a little preoccupied with other things... like queezing enough space into the budget for a spiffy new Droid phone. That should show up on Monday. I'll be able to write during my commute again! And read.

This is good.

The next spread for the coming chapter has been drawn. Behold!

1. King of Shields
2. Ace of Swords
3. Two of Cups
4. The Sun
5. Five of Shields
6. Four of Swords
7. Six of Cups
8. Death
9. Six of Spears (inverted)
10. Eight of Swords

Again, I'm not sure right off the top what characters are involved in this chapter, but I'm suspecting (once I further inspect the cards) that we may finally see Solomon Mercado (our Knight of Shields) or Kristy Roth (our Queen of Swords) make an appearance... there certainly is the space for them here.

That was kind of unexpected.

Looks like we have another two characters that just showed up, neither of which I was expecting.

Oliver Coffee is a former employee of Diversified Research Engineering, the company that just merged with British Implimentations.

Adolfo Demetrius is a gregarious stranger that came knocking on his door with a strange story and promise of destiny.

We also now  know there's some sort of movement afoot based around a sacred text of some sort. Could this be what the Seven of Cups keeps hinting at in the story spreads? It just may be.

I've also decided that I really need to make some changes to a section of Chapter 2... the whole justification for why BI starts a new division is a bit too doom and gloomy to be sellable, even in the reality of this story. They're more likely attempting to record and preserve endagered cultures than to be trying to save the world by total information management or something... going to have to figure out how best to do that.

Anyway, that's another 1900 words or so. Not quite caught up, but closer.

Can't wait to see what happens next.

Also, note the change in the URL of the site: it's now fiction.durosia.com. I figured that opens up a few more possibilities than just NaNoWriMo.

Oliver Coffee had never been an important man.

At Diversified Research Engineering, he had been in middle management, mostly shuffling paperwork between analysts, scientists, and the C-level suits. That's what he had been.

Yesterday he was let go.

Now, alone in his little city apartment, he lay in bed, awake, staring at the alarm that wouldn't be going off. Telling himself that he was OK with a little vacation. Knowing that he wasn't. He still stunk of last night's drinking, other evidence of it littered the floor.

He watched the minutes change on the clock. Eight thirty. Nine o'clock. Ten. Hunger and the need to piss eventually roused him. He shuffled through the stale air of his small studio apartment, absently kicking at an empty bottle of Jack. It rolled over the stained copy of his release letter, coming to rest on the edge of the packet that explained the benefits he was due.

Oliver hadn't read that. He hadn't been able to make it past the first page before apathy kicked in. All he cared about was that the last paycheck would be deposited with a hefty additional amount. An amount that might get him enough out of debt that hunting for a new job wouldn't be a problem. Maybe.Read more

It's amazing the difference a day makes.

Went out after work with some coworkers, had a great time. Got home a little before midnight and sat down to spread the cards and write a bit... and promptly crashed out on the couch.

I may be able to crank out 3K words on Wednesday, but I'm thinking the catchup may have to wait for the weekend.

Either way, here's the spread for the next chapter:

1. Two of Shields (inverted)
2. The Tower
3. Ace of Swords (inverted)
4. King of Swords
5. Eight of Cups
6. The Horned One (inverted)
7. The Moon (inverted)
8. Seven of Cups
9. Knight of Spears (inverted)
10. The Hierophant (inverted)

Well... it looks like someone is having a particularly rough time in this chapter. Figuring out who is one of the real challenges of doing "readings" this way.

In a typical reading, it's very clear who the subject of the reading is. Using the spread the way I am for this work of fiction, I have to kind of work backwards to figure out which character the cards are talking about. At least at this early point, where I'm still introducing the characters.

Definitely a challenge.

But fun. And a good mental and creative workout.

Now if I just didn't have to sleep or go to work, I could really make this happen tonight. ;)

Well, there's another 1700+ words down.

Next trick is to get around to doing that before it gets near 3 a.m. (Of course, it doesn't help that I totally crashed out when I sat down to start writing at 10 p.m., after being barely awake enough to make dinner when I got home... )

This time around, we've got one new character (who was mentioned in passing in the original setup), a new company mentioned and the "I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it" insertion of an MMORPG... it just seemed like the kind of thing Trent would be working on.

Noreen (who's name was generated in the standard method) fits a bit with both the queen's that showed up in the spread for this chapter. We'll be getting to know her better as time goes on, I think. The company she works for, Firedrake Consulting, was inspired by the last card in the layout.

Everything else... well... we'll see how that all plays out.

I was "accused" of being organized in all this by a friend. The truth is, I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants. Aside from the simple arithmetic used to divide everything up into 30 parts (one per day) and those parts into sensible chunks, I'm just going by what the cards lay out.Read more

Trent blindly slapped at the blaring alarm clock. Every swipe knocked something else off of his bedside table and echoed oh so loudly inside his throbbing skull.

Eyes still tightly closed, he finally laid his hand on the body of the clock and found the snooze button. Blissful silence! He groaned and laid back in bed, rubbing his sure-to-be bloodshot eyes while cursing himself for not remembering to turn the damn thing off the night before.

Oh, god, the night before! Now that had been something else. With the news of the merger, he had been concerned about the job he had been offered at BI. It was his dream job and the preliminary interiews had gone well, but the final two were a little less than stellar. He'd been late to the last one, oversleeping after spending all night logged on to the game server he was helping run. The competition was tough, he knew at least four other people--all programmers at least as good as him--who were vying for the same position with BI. When he didn't hear anything for two weeks after that, he'd just about given up hope.

And then he read about the pending merger. Trent knew there'd be a glut of people for every position that had been open at BI and that everyone from DRE would probably be given preference for most of those. He knew he didn't really stand a chance. So he threw himself into to the game.Read more

Looking at my schedule, I already see problems with getting one of these "chapters" done per day. I foresee weekend where I'm going to have to crank out three or four in order to make up for losing evenings to meetings, time with friends or, y'know, sleep.

Looking back on Day One's copy, I can't say I'm exceptionally happy with it. But, since it's all the way over there in another post, I can resist the urge to go and re-write when I go to work on tonight's installment. I may have finally found a way to not constantly re-edit things as I write or add to them...

Now, on to the next spread:

1. The Lovers
2. Queen of Spears
3. Queen of Cups
4. Five of Swords (inverted)
5. Wheel of Fortune
6. The Emperor (inverted)
7. Two of Swords
8. Two of Spears
9. The Fool
10. The Star

Another big bunch of Major Arcana cards... kind of appropriate for the beginning of a story, I guess--numerous external forces conspiring to make the lives of the characters more interesting than "normal" people and such.

Onward toward more typing...

I just finished banging out over 1700 words for the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo story. I want to write more. There are so many more nuances hinted at by the spread it's based on that I'd need at least another thousand to do it justice. But they'd also have to be shoe horned into the scene something fierce. Go read it, if you have some time, and let me know what you think.

For the names of the companies (British Implimentations and Diversified Research Engineering), I once again turned to Seventh Sanctum's generators. I'll be using them a lot.Read more

"Last night,I had a dream. I dreamt that I had brought together the best and brightest minds in the world and made a company that was as benevolent as it was powerful. When I awoke, I smiled, because the morning paper told me that dream was reality."

Mitchel Bender looked out at the auditorium, every seat filled by a member of his company. Some of them had been rivals as recently as last week, working on competing projects. The approval of the merger changed all of that. Now they were all united under the banner of British Implimentations, the company that Mitch's dear old dad Samuel had founded some seventy years earlier. If he could only see it now, Mitch thought frequently, he wouldn't recognize it, but he'd be proud.

Now it was Mitch's turn to be proud. Proud that the transition from two disparate parts to a coherent whole had gone so well. He had worked hard to bring most of these people on board and felt the pain of every severence check he had to write for those whos services were too redundant. The board had criticized the size of those packages, but hadn't dared to fight him too hard on the matter. After all, he'd never been wrong before about how public opinon could make or break their business.Read more

Welcome to NaNoWriMo 2009!

Jumping right in to the experiment using Tarot as the main guide to, well, everything in the story.

We start out with the main characters, drawn from just the court cards of the Minor Arcana:

• Queen of Swords
• King of Spears (Wands)
• Knight of Shields (Pentacles)
• Page of Cups

Well, that's an interesting spread. One from each of the suits.

Because it fits my normal literary tastes, I'm going to use our Knight as the main character. Turning to the wonderful name generator over at Seventh Sanctum, we find that he is called Solomon Mercado. I think I can work with that.

I'm going to go and do the same for everyone else. I'm also going to do a single card draw for each from the rest of the deck that will come into play in a second. Note that I've also decided to set the story in a more contemporary time than the Arthurian cards project, so there's going to be some translation and twisting going on.Read more