Like my story, this post has no title

I finally found a dry half-hour Friday evening to mow the lawn. A few inches of standing water at the bottom of the ditch that I had to work around carefully since the mower’s electric, but the lawn now looks mah-vellous. It rained off and on over the weekend, so I’m glad I took advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself.

Saturday, I drove to Galveston to do research for my novel-in-progress. The weather was iffy, and I went through a downpour south of Houston that made me think I might have picked the wrong day, but it turned out to be not too bad. A few rain squalls during the morning, but nothing that lasted more than a few minutes. I mounted the video camera on the car dash and just let it run as I free associated and commented on things as I passed them. Ended up with nearly four hours of tape, which I transferred to DVD yesterday. Though Galveston is comparatively close to where I live, only seventy or eighty miles away, I’ve only been a few times and I needed to put the whole island in context so I could figure out where to locate a couple of key sites relative to each other and the city’s landmarks.

Yesterday I did a full revision of the no-name story I mentioned previously. I had ripped out the guts of the ending on my last session, leaving wires dangling from under the hood with a promise to fix the machine later. At least now the wires are tucked back in out of sight. This morning I did another pass and confirmed that most of them are connected to the right widgets. Getting close to the point where I send it off to my first reader, but I need a title first.

I did a first and revised draft of my Storytellers Unplugged essay, which I will be posting a week from today, the day after I get back from NECON. By the way, the NECON program is finished. I’m on the bleary-eyed 9 a.m. Saturday panel: THE NICK KAUFMANN MEMORIAL “WHY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE A PANEL THIS EARLY?” PANEL or THE HORROR STARS OF TOMORROW. Moderated as usual by Nick Kaufmann. This year’s topic: Novels vs. Short stories — what’s the best place to start? Bev Vincent, L.L. Soares, Lucy Snyder, Gary Frank, Sarah Langan.

We watched four episodes of the Eccleston Doctor Who during the weekend. Best of the batch was Dalek, which features the classic villain in new light—isolated, confused and seeking purpose. The contrasts and similarities drawn with the Doctor are well done, as is Rose’s interaction with the “monster.” The Long Game was decent, too. I liked the smarmy guest star (“the editor”) and knew from the beginning that Adam was trouble (heavy-handed cues from the music notwithstanding). I like that the Doctor tossed the tosser off the TARDIS. No second chances. Besides, we didn’t need another Adric. The two-part cliff-hanger was okay, but the flatulence joke tired after a while. I like the interaction with Rose’s mom and “boyfriend.”

The preview for Father’s Day looks promising, though I note with interest that whenever a character goes into the past and changes something, it’s inevitably for the worse.