LateNightHacking Louis Journal

Auth

Hi all. Time for another entry. Too many things to say, so I'll just mention what pops into my head. See, I think of lots of things to talk about, but it's so rarely a good time to write them down. Instead of trying to catch up on those lost opportunities, I'll grab this one before it escapes.

My goal for the weekend is to be able to see the floor of my office again. Ugh. It's covered in paperwork. I spent this morning working on the back yard. The left side looks good. The right side needs a lot of work. There's a lot of sod that needs transplaning, and it's a bear of a job. At least I can take consolation in the fact that, based upon the left side, it'll look really good when it's done.

I was checking for updates on the story pages I track (B.A. and G.H.). No updates yet that I can find. I wandered over to J.W.'s A View From The Fence. It's a great story, but the intro about the angora rose always struck me as odd. I decided to see if I could find a picture on the web. One of the first search hits was a copy of the story. Well, I went to the page's parent, and I found a whole pile of stories. Are they all by the same author? Egads! This could be exciting.

I finished Best In Show yesterday. It was pretty good. I wouldn't say all the stories are going in my list of all time favorites, but the variety was fun. Plus, I got to meet a few new authors and learn about some new story series. One of the stories that stood out was by Phil Guesz. He's an author I've read before, and he does excellent work in the Blind Pig universe. This story was new to me, so that was cool. I also read the bios and found out that he actually has published books, so I'll have to look those up too. The story Little Monster was well done. Another one that was interesting started out like a standard Mary Sue about turning into a wolf, but got interesting when the protagonist messed up and turned into a fox. :) I could go on; there were lots of good stories - Crucible, Wings, Painted Memories. Even Foxy Lady, which was another Mary Sue, was good.

At least in this compilation, the ones with humans in them were the best. More opportunity for angst, I guess. Or perhaps my tastes are chaging and the next thing you know I'll be reading soap-operas. :) Still, the ones where the protagonist has to overcome his/her own limitations tend to be the best. That makes the Blind Pig universe fertile ground. Painted Memories uses this pattern successfully even without human characters. Wings is compelling without using that pattern, so it's not the only thing that can work, but it is a good one. :)