Amelia's Blog

Hello everyone! As you have undoubtedly noticed, I haven’t been posting much lately. Well, posting here, anyway. I started a writer’s website with a different hosting provider, and have been posting three times a week over there, along with a few other things. I would encourage you to hop over there and change your bookmarks if you have them here! Thanks a bunch, and I’ll see you there! ~Mike

19 Sep. 1780,         My collegues and I received a most interesting visit yesterday eve. A man calling himself an interested party asked about our steam engine research. He said was from an influential Bavarian institution that would fund our advances if we agreed to help them with some biological research. I must admit, I feel skeptical that there is any future is such an activity, however my brother scientists expressed excitement. Even so, if they can help push our revolutionary (if you'll forgive the phrase) steam projects, we cannot pass up such an opportunity. 24, Sep. 1780         A most curious creature. Having the main appearance of an insect, this dimunative beast has the dexterity and flexibility of a rodent! It even has the hands of a racoon of some sort. Our Bavarian benefactor calls it a "drakul." Recognizing it instantly as the father of that infamous character Vlad the Impaler, I asked him w...

One of the most valuable things you can do as a writer is to write down scenes that come to mind. Even if they don't seem to connect to anything else you're working on. For instance: I wrote a quick horror-esque scene about... maybe a year ago. Nothing huge, but a boy cowering in an alley as a horrible creature bore down on him. Here, take a look. The boy ran. He stumbled over a trash can and looked behind him, breathing heavily, eyes wide with terror. The thing chasing him looked vaugely like a dog, but instead of fur, it was covered in scaley chiton. Its tail was long and whip-like, ending in a serrated boney spike. The boy choked on a scream and started running again. The creature paused briefly to savagely swat the garbage can out of the alley before picking up speed after the boy. The boy took a corner and was horrified to be face to face with a dead end. As he spun around looking for another way out, the creature padded around the corner. Barely able to draw breath, the...

        I think anyone that does any kind of writing struggles with fear. Fear that no one will like what you wrote. Fear that your teacher won’t give you a good grade. Fear that what you write won’t make any sense.                  Now, I’m not gonna go on about writer’s block, because I think in most cases, all writer’s block is, is an excuse to dismiss the fear you feel. Put a tangible name to it. It probably helps to give writers something to fight. No one wants to deal with fear. That’s the whole point, in a way.         One think that I have noticed about my self these last several months, is that fear is insidious. Most times, you do not notice that it has crept up on you. You make excuses. “Oh, I’m too tired,” or “It’s hard to write AND work on my school work.” For me at least, I think these boil down to simple fear. Aft...

I wonder if you can have TOO many social networks?

Testing from Ping.FM...

Cynthia looked over the top of the paper she was reading and glanced at her friend. The normally tall Hitomi was slouched down in the chair across from her, the stack of newspapers she took ignored in front of her. They were in Atlanta, looking into a bunch of strange robberies in the area. They grabbed as many different newspapers as they could, though they haven’t found much. Her friend, however had abandoned the search ad was staring into space. “I think I’m supposed to be the quiet one, Omi. You’re upsetting the universal balance.” Hitomi jumped slightly, and looked back at her blankly. A few slow blinks later, “What?” The paper hid the smile that threatened to break CJ’s normally impassive expression, and she watched her friend come back from wherever she was. Most likely, Alana was there with her. “You’ve been staring into space for the last hour. These papers aren’t going to read themselves, you know.” The obvious amusement in her voice made Hitomi raise an eyebrow. “Yeah.” She ...

By the time Larry came back to fix the door, Rob had could absorb and extrude a variety of objects. The larger the object, the more difficult the process and the more painful it was to extrude it. The process wore him out, and his hand felt like it was covered pin pricks. Larry knocked and pushed the door open. “Hey, Rob. I’m going to reseat the door. It shouldn’t take all that long. Hey, what’s with all the fruit?” “Trying to see if I could absorb it.” “Any luck?” “Well, it goes in okay but nothing comes out.” “New way to eat?” “Ha. Good to know it doesn’t work, in case my life depends on having an apple at a moments notice.” Larry shook his head and dropped his tool box by the door. “How the luck otherwise?” “Not bad. There’s a trick to it, but once you have that.” He shrugged. “Not going to say it’s easy, but less difficult.” He paused, “Not surprised I’m trying to learn to control it?” Larry turned to face his friend from where he was getting his tools ready. “Rob, I would be surpr...

Once Larry left, Rob started pacing back and forth. Deb watched, slightly bemused. She took a sip of her coffee, and arched an eyebrow. “Okay, Larry leaves and you start pacing. Want to let me in on the story?” He waved a hand, “I’m afraid he’s going to end up being right. That we will have to break in.” She mulled that over, “Maybe,” she said, slowly. “What then? How do we deal with that?” She shrugged, “I guess we should just cross that bridge when we come to it.” She grinned wryly. “It’s not like I’d ever admit it to him, but I think Larry might have the right attitude.” “You called him an idiot.” “Well, he is.” He sighed, “No, he’s not. He’s just trying to impress you. You’ve got to start being nicer to him.” She glared at him. If only he would open his fool eyes, she thought. “Then tell him to stop being stupid about it. Anyway, it’s still a bad idea.” She shrugged helplessly, “What else can we do?” He stopped. “I don’t know.” She stood and went over to him, “Like you said earlie...

“You want to what?” Deb’s voice went up an octave. “Larry, we’re not some sort of action heroes here. Up until yesterday, we were normal office drones.” “Oh come on. How hard can it be?” “You idiot. A government lab. With guards outside, probably more on this inside. Right, we’ll just sneak in!” “Easy Deb,” Rob placed a placating hand on her shoulder. She blushed, but he missed it. “She’s right. This is crazy talk. None of us have even so much as picked a lock before. We can’t break into a secure government facility. We’d get ourselves killed. Isn’t that something you were pretty adamant against us doing yesterday?” Larry’s face fell, “Oh geeze. I’m sorry, you two. I wasn’t thinking.” “Obviously,” Deb muttered, but they ignored her. “You just got caught up in things. It’s okay. I guess we could at least try the straightforward route. I mean, it’s not like we’ve got much to lose.” “Aside from our lives you mean? Robbie, this is insane. What if they lock you up and start testing on you? ...

“Damn door.” Rob grunted, putting his shoulder into it. He fed the hungry washing machines, in another hour he’d have to feed the equally hungry dryers. He hated doing laundry. His coinage was always noticeably lighter. He tossed the basket into the bedroom door as he leaned back, letting his weight shove the door closed. “Deb?” He went into the living room and saw her huddled in one corner of the couch, wrapped in a blanket and shivering. He hurried over and knelt, “Are you okay? I’ll turn up the temperature.” She shook her head, “I already looked. I think it’s me, Robbie. What ever is happening to you is happening to me.” He looked into her fear widened eyes, and saw his own worries mirrored there. “Okay. Okay, let’s start figuring this out, then. If we can find out who did this and why, maybe they can tell us how to reverse it.” “What if they can’t? What if this is permanent?” Tears began streaking her face, “What then?” “Then we deal with that, Deb. The worst thing we can do is giv...

        Hello, hello! It’s story time again. This week, it will be all Chapter 5 of Fast & Loose. Next week... I’m not sure yet. There will be a story, but if it’s F&L or the start of Book 2 for Adventure Inc depends on how things flow. What I would like to do, is split my writing time between the two, so I can alternate to have a little variety. Who knows, right?         Okay, then. Enough babble, on with the show!                                                                                   ...

        Hey there!         I spent a while last night re-tagging the story posts. Adventure Inc is now tagged as such, with each also tagged as “Book I” and then broken up into the smaller story tags. The “Fast & Loose” set are tagged as such, too, but since it’s just one story (so far) that’s the only way it’s tagged. I’ve also added a label list, which lists all the tags that I did.         Hopefully, that should help a bit. I wanted to arrange the tags so that they’d be in story order, but you can only do it two ways. I’ll keep looking into it. I’m also taking a look at ways to segregate the stories. Since Goggle’s Blogger lets you have multiple blogs, I might separate them, but I’m not sure yet.         That’s all for today. Like I said, we’ll get back to story on Monday, if I decide I make any more changes to the blog, I...

        Okay, apparently, I lied about posting twice more last week. Does it count is at the time I wasn’t? Well, either way, I do have a target. I’ve been working pretty diligently on an earlier project I started here, which is the old “Untitled” project I had a while back after the first round of Adventure Inc.                  I was pretty consumed by Adventure, that I let that one lie fallow, when I really shouldn’t. So, that’s what I’m going to next. This week, I’m going to work of re-tagging the archives better so that it’ll be easier to find the various parts, and in order. With all of that in place, we should be all set later this week,or first thing next.                  And this time, I’ll post twice more with updates.         Maybe.

        Hello, hello! I hope you enjoyed Adventure Inc! While that was the last part of “The Fall of the Fourth Reich” rest assured, you haven’t seen the last of Hitomi, CJ and everyone else. Well... mostly. This week is going to be a bit of a break though, as I consider if I want to dive straight into Book 2 “Stranger Than Fiction” or go back to one of the other projects I’ve started.         Don’t worry, though. I’ll be posting twice more this week with updates and other thoughts, so keep checking! I’m not going anywhere! Until then, thanks for reading. You ain’t seen nothing yet!         

“Hey, CJ.” Mitchell looked up from his notes, which seemed dusty despite being in a four star hotel. “You eat yet?” She looked at him with amusement. “Uh, I think I had a bagel.” He blinked owlishly at her. “Right. Come on.” “But I’m not done translating this scroll.” “You can finish later.” She huffed an irritated breath. “Did you ever eat before we met?” He shuffled uncomfortably, “General Douglas had a petty officer assigned to bring me food three times a day.” “Mitchell,” she walked over to his desk and placed a hand on his cheek. “I’m worried. You get so caught up that you forget things. Like food,” she wrinkled her nose, “and hygiene.” He sniffed his shirt and made a face. “I didn’t notice that before.” She glared at him, but she knew he saw the real worry there. “Okay, I’m sorry. Let me take a shower. Then we can go down to a restaurant and eat.” She nodded firmly. He took his time, but she didn’t mind. She looked over the piles of books and scrolls with a fond smile. There was ...

“Hey, was that the mayor? Damn, he looks pissed.” “Hmm? Oh, yeah.” “You okay, partner? You look distracted?” “Sorry, Hitomi. Yeah. I think I might be part of the reason that Mayor Todd is annoyed.” “Ah. It doesn’t take much to set him off when it comes to Buck, though.” CJ looked over, and slightly up, at Hitomi. “True. Still, can’t help feeling a bit guilty.” “Nah.” Hitomi waved a hand. “I’m pretty sure Buck would be the first person to tell you to stop. Now. You see Jerry bail out earlier?” CJ nodded, her expression darkening. “I asked him why, but he told me to mind my own business. In fact, he was quite rude about it.” Hitomi made an indelicate sound, “Sounds like he was nicer to you than to me.” She stopped and looked down, “He hurt Alana deeply with what he said to her back at the sheriff's office. I almost wish I had interrupted just so I could slug him.” “It’s his choice, Hitomi. We may not agree with him. And the way he did it was,” she paused, “questionable, but it is his...

“Your Honor, despite our differences, you should know I would never deliberately endanger the public.” Buck was having trouble keeping his voice even. “And yet your ‘Institute’ is close to the city. Why is that? You’re just trying to make me look bad!” “Dammit Lewis! That’s not it. That’s never been it, regardless of what your paranoid delusions might say!” “That’s Mayor Todd to you. You lost first name privileges decades ago.” Buck slowly stood up. While he didn’t quite tower over the mayor, he was much better at being intimidating. The other man had let himself go to seed and wore a perpetual scowl. “You are being foolish. But,” he looked away briefly, “you are the mayor, and I’ll comply. Now, if you don’t mind I have extra planning to do. Your Honor.” Buck made the honorific sound like an insult. Todd drew himself up, his face reddened. “You do not get to dismiss me, you pompous, self-serving,” “Stop!” The shout made both men turn. Doctor Conner stood in the doorway, “You both are b...

(Author’s Note: Yeah, I know this is a long one. I just couldn’t find a good way to break this in half. Anyway, after this, all that’s left is the epilogue! We’ll talk more after that! Read on, MacDuff!) “Master!” Jackal lumbered into Anubis’ audience chamber. His master had already started to crawl out from the rubble. He hurried over and helped Anubis up with a gentleness that belied his size. Anubis looked up at his last loyal subject and patted his arm. How could he have been so foolish? He had seen this, and yet he still permitted himself to fall into madness. A madness that cemented his fall. He suddenly felt very old. His sandaled foot sank down into a pool of water. The explosion had cracked the floor and the cold water had began to seep in. He allowed Jackal to help him keep his footing on the now slick floor. When the soft clapping began, they almost mistook it for more debris raining from the ceiling. They both turned and looked at the person standing in the doorway. She was...

The explosion, while mostly contained within the generator room, did greatly damage the underground complex. Several hallways collapsed, as did many rooms. CJ, Buck and the others detonated the explosives after they were safely outside, but didn’t see anyone else besides the jackal man inside. Jackal was woken by the explosion, the electric shock making his thoughts fuzzy for a moment before their situation fully dawned upon him. Shaking his head, he carefully stood up and steadied himself against the wall. A deep-throated growl of rage bubbled up as he started down the hall to find his beloved Lord Anubis.                                                 < ——— >         The dungeon was in ruins. One of i...