Monday, March 19, 2012

The Wheel Turns

Egads, I'm thirty-two.

Last week it was my birthday, and I turned another year closer to forty.

Now, I realise that's a rather pessimistic way of looking at it, but that's not quite what I mean when I say it. I just can't believe that I'm in the second year of my thirties. I don't even feel thirty! In my head, I'm still somewhere in my twenties, and that's probably where I'll still be in another ten years.

You're only as old as you feel, right?

The second draft of Wild Ride is now finished, and I passed it on to Heather to read. Happily, the story elicited a few chuckles, and while there are a few bits of dialogue which will need changing, far too many instances of 'hey' and 'darling', and a few other tweeks needed, but it's definitely an improvement on the original draft. It's also two thousand words longer, clocking in at just shy of eight thousand words (thankfully, as that is the maximum word limit).

I should be sending it off in a few weeks to see if the folks at Fantasy-Faction would be interested in it for their anthology.

But for now, it's back to work on Serial Psyence.

Friday, March 9, 2012

How do you hide a car?

Now isn't this interesting.

Mercedes, to promote their new fuel cell car, which they say is invisible to the environment, decided to run a marketing campaign where the car becomes invisible.

It's called computer-aided adaptive camouflage, where a camera on one side of the vehicle transmits an image to a display (in this case a mat of LEDs) on the other side.

From a distance, the car actually does seem to disappear, or at least blend in well enough to be hard to pick out.

But that only works if you look at it straight on. If you're to the side, the illusion is shattered. But that's one of the problems of this type of camouflage. But it's a start. And I'm sure there's someone working on a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak ...

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Characters Go Their Own Way

Characters often like to do their own thing. You have their whole life planned out - in so far as it exists in the course of a story - and they go throw a spanner in the works by deciding that's not for them.

I've described it before as like having real people sitting in my head, telling me what to do. I'm not crazy. I promise. And they only tell me what to put on screen. So far, anyway.

I'm still working on the edit for Wild Ride, and finding that Celine has new ideas for her dialogue. It's a bit like she's whispering it devilishly in my ear. She's that kind of woman.

As characters go, Celine El'Teague, ex-movie starlet is one for whom I have a complete picture. Physically, she looks rather like your typical 1940's starlet with a curvy figure. Think Hayley Atwell, but with honey-blonde hair. Personality wise, she's strong, independent and knows what she wants. She can be very sarcastic.

In short, Celine is fun to write, and I'm really enjoying working on the short story. But when it's done, I'm going back to Serial Psyence. There's a killer on the loose on Callisto. And Patrick needs my help to catch him.