OwlManAtt’s Blog

Hah, second post in a month. Man, I remember the days when OwlManAtt.com updates were almost daily…even when I had nothing to say, I’d still shoot my mouth off…

Ah well. No point in feeling nostalgic. It’s almost time for me to get some sleep, but first I wanted to say a few words.

First and foremost, NaNo is almost upon us. I have not done much as far as more outlining, but meh. I like shooting from the hip.

I’ve been thinking about titles, though. A good title for the book is needed before I can begin. I have a paper with a list of prospective titles, but I still haven’t decided…I’m thinking something like ‘Endless Thread,’ or ‘Darkest Thoughts’. You know. Grim, unhappy, dark. Like the rest of the book is going to be.

So, tomorrow I’m doing lunch with the rest of the CT Shoreline NaNos at some damned bar in Hamden. I suppose that will be fun.

It’s just waiting for Tuesday now…

In other news, I’ve started another project. Unlike most of my projects, this one is actually getting done. It’s called OwlDB, and it’s like an address book on crack. It’ll be hotness when I’m done with it.

OwlDB uses the Smarty templating engine for its presentation stuff. It’s pretty cool. It allows me to get the bullshit out of my code and into template files, which are much easier to manage than embedded HTML.

Smarty can also generate dropdowns and stuff with default selected things, making my life a whole lot easier.

Howdy, ladies and gents. I realize that I haven’t written anything for the blog in quite some time, so I thought I may as well give you something.

First and foremost, no, I’m not dead. I know that this is going to sadden a lot of my loyal readers, but that’s just too fucking bad. Damn hawks.

But on to business. As you all know, November is approaching rapidly. Any one of my readership would tell you in a heartbeat what this means; NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo, is, of course, National Novel Writing Month. Last year, I produced the ~28,000 word piece Eron, which is available on the fileserver in ~/nanowrimo/2004.

So, on to this year. What will I be doing for NaNoWriMo come November? And how in the hell do I plan on doing it, what with my job and other projects?

Well, to be frank, I plan on doing it with a hellava lotta tea and sheer motherfucking luck. This year, I intend to finish what I start.

And now, the question that you are all dying to know — what am I starting, precisely? What tragic tale shall I be spinning this year? To put it in its most simplistic form, I plan on telling the tale of fear, uncertainty, and doubt at its very worst.

However, nobody wants the short, painless summary, do they? You readers all want me to go detail every little nook and cranny of my concept for you, right here, right now. Unfortunately, I will not be doing so, but I will share a bit more than that pitiful summary.

The concept behind my story is borrowed from the Psi Corps books. I do not feel that they did the discovery of telepathy as well as they could have, for obvious reasons. (The books were supposed to be about Alfred Bester and the corps, but I have a different take on how things should have played out.) In such, I’m hijacking the very, very beginning — the discovery of telepathy by two scientists during a joke project — and doing it my way.

How do you think people would react to the discovery of telepathic abilities in some human beings? Most would certainly not take it in faith that every one of the people with these abilities will do the honourable thing and not pry into other people’s heads with them. Couple this with the inability to know who could and could not walk through minds, and you have a situation just waiting to explode.

That, ladies and gentelmen, is what my story is going to be about. For more details as they become available, check the planning folder.

Something new for this year: I’m going to try and write a minimum of two thousand words per day for the story, hoping to hit (at a minimum) sixty thousand words by the end of the month.

So yea. In related news, I’ve been hanging out on the NaNoWriMo IRC chat (#nanowrimo @ irc.goodchatting.com). There are a lot of good people there, and there is Phil Radio. Ph33r t3h Ph1l R4d10.

And that’s about it.