(This is a post from yesterday, written on the flight home,
with the assumption that we would have internet when we got back, though we did
not. So it’s a little late to be posting, but better late than never. Plus, I’ve
been neglecting this blog too much).
Well, we’re finally (almost, actually, since I’m writing
this on the plane, via Word document) home and it’s time to reminisce about the
trip.
All in all, it was great. We got to go to the pool, the
beach, the zoo, Disneyland, the old neighborhood, and to just hang out in
California for a week. I brought my tablet so I drew a bit (though no animating
got done, I’ll have to catch up on that once we’re home and I have an actual
drawing setup) and I also continued to work on The Scamble, which I will talk
about more in a bit, though just sort of idly messing around with ideas for it
rather than trying to work stuff out since most of the time I was too busy with
other things.
It was hot, of course, and I could live with the heat but it
was not enjoyable. We went to the beach a couple of times, and it was great
swimming in the water and being in the waves, and we went to the pool too,
though that was less exciting and get-buffeted-around-by-water-y. Basically, we
did plenty of water-related things to survive the 95-or-so degree temperatures.
We visited all the old haunts, the Wild Animal Park (now
named the Safari Park and unfortunately very disappointing), went on a walk
along the shallow river in Fallbrook (though the paths were eroded and without
Fang, who died a couple weeks ago, it was lacking) and, of course, spent a day
at Disneyland (which has remained the same and was great).
Oh, and I saw a live coyote, a dead coyote, some big owl
with feathery ears (possibly a great horned owl, though I’m not sure what their
range is), plenty of lizards and other small birds, heard a rattlesnake, and of
course saw tons of animals at the zoo.
Now I’m on the plane to home, gazing out over some dry,
tan-colored desert-y place, possibly California or maybe Utah (I suck at
geography, however, so if we were flying over the moon I might not know) and
thinking about various creative and homestead-related projects.
I’m dreading all the processing work that surely awaits us
at home (not to mention my stupid fall allergies), and the backlog of fruits
and vegetables to be picked and preserved (there’ll be tomatoes to sauce,
raspberries to pick and freeze, zucchini to harvest and dump on unsuspecting
neighbors, and maybe even corn or onions or potatoes to process, who knows). We
also have the half (or maybe quarter, I’m not completely sure) a pig that we
bought from a local small farm here waiting for us when we get home, and while
I’m looking forwards to being able to eat pork and bacon and ham and such
(since lately it’s been nothing but hamburgers, and for the past week in
California I’ve been almost 100% vegetarian*) but it’s going to be a challenge
because we’ll have to learn how to make the bacon ourselves (which sounds like
a fun and terrifying adventure at the same time) .
*I’ve been eating meat only if I know where it comes from,
nothing store-bought.
We’ll also be home just two days before the Tour De Fat bike
race (in which people dress up in crazy costumes and bike around town) and we have a great group costume theme
thingymagig planned, all Doctor Who related, me being Amy, my brother being the
tenth doctor (because he has some strange grudge against the eleventh or
something, I don’t really know), my dad being a dalek and my mom being a
weeping angel (with the TARDIS being pulled behind us on the bike trailer).
However, since we have only two days and we have barely
anything done I expect to end up going as Castiel, from Supernatural, (this
year’s Halloween costume) since I already have a trenchoat about the right
color and of course a tie, white shirt and black pants are easy to come by. I
probably shouldn’t be so pessimistic, but at the very least we’ll be able to go
as a half-completed Superwho group.
(Sort of) speaking of Halloween, November is coming soon (though
I can hardly believe it’s almost fall again) and I was excited to realize that
I might have a story to write for NaNoWriMo again (which is great, because I
was completely out of story ideas all summer and feeling like I wouldn’t have
any stories to write for NaNo), the Scamble!
Of course, I have to finish working on the world and
characters and premise and finally plot in two months but now my goal is to
have the world and story (though I’m not sure how I’m gonna write it, I was
sort of thinking of making it a series-like thing with separate books for all
of the Scamblers’ adventures) finished by November. And I think once we get
home I’ll have enough time to really work through the current snag I’ve hit! (And
even if I don’t get a plotline finished before NaNo, I think this is the sort
of story where I might be able to try and write it as I go, without any
storyline whatsoever).
Even if I don’t get even the world finished before November,
I think I still want to try to write for NaNoWriMo, and I will probably just
end up kidnapping some of my half-completed characters and throwing them into
some sketchily-built world and hope it works (which, now that I say it, sounds
like a horrible idea but a lot of Wrimos write that way, right?).
Either way, I’m pretty excited about November, and heck,
even winter (more time for artistic work, and it’s perfect timing as I’ve
started to want to work more and more on improving my writing and drawing just
this last week) despite the short, cold, greenery-less days it brings.
So, I suppose I should actually introduce the Scamble more
now, which is the current name of a story/world mix project I’ve been working
on for exactly (unless I am wrong in which case I am extremely sorry about my
horrid math skills) eighteen days now.
It started out one day as one of those great
flash-of-inspiration things that never actually happens to anyone (except this
time it did) where pretty much the whole world and premise for the story and
characters just appeared out of the blue (in the case of the Scamble, while
doodling a completely unrelated scribble
of the vaguely-mammalian creature at the top of this post) on the 12th
of August at, if I had to guess, 1:00-2:00 PM (I know this because I drew it
right as we were leaving to go to a concert). After the initial flash of
inspiration I only had to work a bit on the mechanics of the world (which were
already thought up, previous little ideas for how magic would work and for how
animal-people might look that I’d thought about but never had a world to use
them in) before moving on to characters (the current challenge for me and the bane
of my existence) and just exactly what the Scamble is.
Ah, the Scamble. I’m not quite sure myself what it is, but I
suppose I should explain the basic idea behind it.
It is a sort of, magic store. A junkyard for magical
objects, Robert or Maggie might call, but really what they do is they retrieve,
find, repair or destroy magical and cursed objects (find or repair in the case
of the former and destroy in the case of the latter).
Yes, in the Scamble world (which at the moment is modern-day
earth) there is magic (and animal people, called fen), and it is a very
valuable thing (or rather, magical objects and other minor magical things like
spellbinds and charms are) but also a very dangerous thing, in the case of
curses, cursed objects, and pain magic, or even fire and accidental magic.
I still have yet to get all the characters worked out, or
exactly what the people at the Scamble do (or what is even needed for people to
do) and whether or not they are related to the government at all, and I’ve
started to stray pretty close to Warehouse 13 territory, I think, so I’ve been
sort of cautiously tiptoeing ahead, afraid to make any big decisions about the
story or world (which is like being afraid to go out of the house in case you
are locked out even when you have the keys in your hand) but once I get home
I’ve promised myself I’ll work on it more, and more seriously, and I’ll not be
afraid to be decisive about the world and what goes and what stays.
Basically, California is great, but it’s also gonna be great
to be back home, and it’s really, really great to be finally back to working on
stories and worlds and writing!
So, as I look out the airplane window over shadowy canyons
and red, scrubby hills crisscrossed with winding roads obscured by the
occasional white wisp of a cloud (can you tell I love flying and being able to
get a bird’s eye view of everything?), I bid you few people reading this
goodbye, and good luck writing (or drawing or singing or dancing or sculpting
or picture-taking or sewing or anything-ing)!