Rambling Some More

Once again I am blogging on the bus while I am enroute to somewhere. In this case I heading to Homestead for our regular Tuesday Practice. We have a couple of the young folks coming along on the juggling and stilting. The balloons as always are going well. nce again I am blogging on the bus while I am enroute to somewhere. In this case I heading to Homestead for our regular Tuesday Practice. We have a couple of the young folks coming along on the juggling and stilting. The balloons as always are going well.

On other blogging fronts I have started a blog just for my singing activities with the Trinity Choir. I found it very interesting to be nominated and elected as President of the Choir. Of course this is an administrative post. So I will not be making any creative decision. I would not have accepted if that were the case. Frankly there is not much for me to do unless we are rewriting bylaws and that was done last year. I suppose if the weather is really bad I have the authority to call off the meeting. Still, with this mild winter that has not been an issue. Anyway this blog Notes From My Choir is about my adventures with the Gospel Music.

I have continued to work on The Last Great General. I am pleased with the progress of this book. Working McRandal into it has been difficult. On some level I just want to leave him out. Still, the events of his time are directly tied the events of this book. One would think that he was somehow involved in the events of this book. I am not sure if the part I have him playing in these books is in character for him. I will have to kick that around some more.

On the up side I figure there will be three books in this story arc. They will deal with in these books is in character for him. I will have to kick that around some more.

On the up side I figure there will be three books in this story arc. The first will deal with Evangeline’s origin. The second will deal with the Yamato’s origin and the third will dal with how Brengle got mixed up in all of this. Since they have lost Mason her origin will be spaced out over all three books. One of the up sides of this series is the way we are only dealing with a hand full of ships. In the later books there are so many ships and I do not think that I am doing any of them justice. The Sarah, Yamato and Tojo Maru get a great deal of attention in the first book. We also get to see how the Excaliber comes about.

Well I have rambled about all of that enough about that. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

More Book Stuff

The Last Great General is plugging along. In this book there are basically five main characters. And four of them interact with each other.

There is Evangeline Booth who is 12 at this point. She as been joined with a highly advanced war ship and is wicked smart and has extra human abilities. He best friend is Yamato Yukawa who is the computer for another powerful war ships. She has a physical android bady that makes her look like a teen age girl. There is also Commissioner Samuel Logan Brengle who was a real person. He was a Prophet in The Salvation Army. And much of what the Salvos are today is thanks to his writings. He and the two girls are thrown into the future where they have to solve a temporal problem. The other character in this group is Admiral McRandal who is about to be installed as the President of a new United States. It is his history that disappears.

Added to this mix is Catherine Mason a Salvation Army officer from the future who commanded on the salvo’s ships that can travel through time. She started off the story with Evangeline, Yamato and Brengle. When they get thrown into the future she is separated from them. In the first book her companion is the hologram from her ship. I have written about Mason and the relationship she has with her hologram. So I am having no trouble with that.

The problem that I am having is with Brengle and the girls. Brengle is much older than Evangeline but his life was lived in the past. He is the one that gives us perspective on what is happening in the future. on a personal level I think he would try and be some kind of father to Evangeline. Also I would think that a man from the past would have a problem with her only friend being a computer. He is never fully comfortable with Mason who is not entirely Human. So how would he feel about a super smart kid in charge of a powerful warship?

On the up side I have given myself a break on the accents. Evangeline, Brengle and McRnadal are Americans. Yamato is a computer that speaks perfect English. The only dialect I have to deal with is Mason and I am fairly certain I have her down.

Well it is something that I will have to slog through. be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Snow

It snowed today in Pittsburgh. There has not been much snow thus far. Today was the first day that we really got enough to cover the ground. It was little more than an inch. It did not even fully cover the grass. Even so it was the closest thing to snow that we have had in a while.

I was waiting for the bud today and there was a snow covered sandwich board sigh. After a few minutes someone came from inside the show and dusted off the sign. It was a sign for iced fruit drinks. If you cannot read your sign because of the snow you might not be selling that many frozen drinks on that day.

Anyway it was a nice brisk day. It was also nice to have an excuse to wear the really scarf. It had been hanging lonely on a hook near my door. Occasionally the cats would try and climb it but that was all of the action that it got.

I continue to work on the books. I have been feverishly working on the first one. I may have the first chapter ready soon. I think I may post it on line or something.

Well that is it for the moment. Be safe out there and keep you stick on the ice.

pointless stuff

I have noticed that every time I start to follow a famous person in the twitter a couple more people follow me. If that holds true I could have a million followers if I follow all the famous people assuming there are 500 thousand famous people on the twitter. I just started following tom Hanks to see if I get any new followers. I know it is a pointless thing. Still, I am getting the feeling that the whole point of the twitter is to be pointless.

Speaking of pointless. I am working on the balloon section of the basic clowning proficciency for the Brigade. Balloons are the most time consuming thing that we have to explain in our text. And frankly I have been doing everything else except for the balloons. There are so many pictured that need to be taken and resized and then you have to do the text to go with them. And if you find you need for description you have to go back and look at the text and take more pictures and so on. This is a real pain to put into the new smaller format books that we are using. Still that is the way that it had to be. We are using half the trees and it is better and cheaper in the long run for various reasons. Getting to that point has been a real pain though.

Learning balloon animals is one of the most time consuming things that we have to do in our group. It is also the only basic skill the has consumable materials. Thus it ends up being the most expensive skill over the long term. Well what can one do? It must be done.

The first book in the series is going rather well. It is odd it looks like it is going to be rather short compared to some of the later ones. I suppose there is so much that I cannot talk about in the first book it keeps me from rambling on. The rate things are going I may have the first chapter reasdy to put up on this blog by the end of the month. By the spring I could be deciding if I need to go looking for a publisher. I do not know how I feel about trying to publish something that i have been working on for so long.

WEll everyone be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

A Title Before

For those close to me they have had the please of my disorganized and messy writing. Literally there are hundreds of note book around my house. I just put up a set of three shelves to contain the note books that i am using at the moment. they are all filled.

Anyway the only published stuff that i have done is some clown text book type things. The only ting that I have not done is publish a work of fiction. It has been a long held aspiration of mine. Everything else I have wanted to do in life I have had the opportunity to do on one level or another.

Well anyway usually I start with a blank note book and write several chapters. As i mentioned a couple of entries ago I have been working on a series of books in a story arc that goes over a couple thousand years. Anyway the first book in the series revolved around James Booth's parents. His father is the General of The Salvation Army. I would say more but it really messes up the story if you know more. The major plot elements of this story all get mentioned by James as he recalls his young life in latter stories. So I have not done much with this story, actually nothing.

Then it comes to me that the book should be named The Last Great General. I have never had a good title for something before i have spent a couple month working on it. In fact I have several things that are simply numbered and do not have a title at all. Heck i don't even have a name for James Booth's father. Since he was talking about him he always called him Dad or Father.

Well for some reason that was all very impressive to me. Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.