Exterminate!

I intended to do significantly more work on the story-in-progress this morning, but I had a batch of interview questions in my INBOX and if there’s anything that bugs me more than something pending in my INBOX, I don’t know what that might be. So I spent the better part of an hour responding to these questions, which left me only 30 minutes for other work. I reread yesterday’s work, tightened up the language a little, and by the time I got to where I’d left off, my morning session was pretty much up.

To make it feel like I accomplished something, I wrote a few new lines and realized that I was really close to the end. All that’s left is denouement, and this is the kind of story that needs a denouement, albeit brief. I like the get-in-fast-and-get-out-faster style of writing, but sometimes the characters need a few lines to process what they’ve been through. I should be able to finish it in first draft tomorrow, and I don’t expect to be as far over my 5000-word limit as I’d feared. Maybe 5200 tops, which will easily edit down to be within limits.

I spent part of last night hooking up a new gadget I received for my birthday—a DVD recorder. Connecting it to the TV and audio system was child’s play (well, not exactly, because it involved a lot of moving things around and pushing cables through places where cables were never meant to go) but getting the VCR in line proved more of a challenge. I finally figured out the right combination of cable connections and DVR settings so I can use the VCR as a player. Haven’t yet experimented with recording on the new system, but I have a stack of videocamera tapes that I look forward to transferring. Last fall I took a four-day research trip to West Texas for a novel and it cost me something like $65 to get three 8mm tapes transferred to DVDs for posterity and rapid access, so I won’t have to do that again.

Before playing with the home theater, I watched Resurrection of the Daleks. I realize I’m jumping around, but the tapes are trickling in from all over, so I watch ’em as I get ’em. I found a source for the Black Guardian trilogy today, which completes my Fifth Doctor collection once I receive the four series I ordered on Saturday. I’ve always found the Daleks cumbersome (how do they manage staircases?) and strident, but they aren’t half as strident as Davros, who seems intent on shrieking his megalomaniacal plans at least twice per series. He’s beyond nefarious—he’s annoying.

Though I knew Tegan would leave the series by choice at some point, I was surprised by the way it happened. Didn’t see it coming, and it felt a little unsatisfying. Oh, by the way, I’m staying behind, quick handshake, sayonara, bye-bye. I guess it’s the flight attendant in her.

I picked up Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow yesterday. I haven’t read his Dante book yet, but I decided to tackle this one while it’s hot.