Bits and Pieces

Having finished Orphans Preferred, I find myself in the position of having no library books left to read. This means I will either have to make an unscheduled trip to the library--an appealing possibility--or finish rereading Anansi Boys for the fourth or fifth time, which is also tempting. I love that book.

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I spent a large chunk of today happily tangling myself up in writing a mystery subquest for The Broken Hourglass.* I had it all nicely plotted out and then partway through realized not all of my alibis and motives held. Back to the neat, tidy outline I'd printed out yesterday, pen in hand, scratching stuff out, filling stuff in, and generally making a mess before I could start writing again.

I have done very little with mysteries so far. I wrote one for the one in the Trio, but it is much more straight forward. I've always known mysteries took a deal of plotting, and doing it this way means keeping all lines of questioning in my head at once. I think I have it all plotted out now, but I've some witnesses yet to interview.

I wish I could load it up on the computer afterwards to test out how it plays on screen before I send it in, but I don't know WScript , so that's out.

Actually, I was slow off the mark with the mystery. First I had to read up on the Byzantine military to find out what to call the captain of a city militia. In the end, jcompton beat me to it on the search (wounding my researcher pride ;) ), and the answer is a tessarius, but I did get to read some good bits, first, about various empires and emperors and organizations (probably one reason he beat me to it; I bet he had the good sense to go straight for the answer).

And then I had to go read up on corny pickup lines to fix a niggling bit from yesterday's writing. That, of course, meant getting distracted by an article about college students who did a deliberate experiment with bad pickup lines to see whether or not they worked. No, I can't remember where it is to bookmark it, but their conclusion was "sometimes" and "it depends." So now you know.

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My sisters dug me out of the WhoDunnit this evening so we could take a walk on the beach.

And now it is time to walk the ever-faithful Cinder.

All in all, it's been a good day.

*Yes, I probably am going to keep including the link for a while. I'm excited & want everyone else to be ,too.