Phoenixwriter: Blog

It's been a seemingly long time since I posted a new story. I guess I needed to watch more Murdoch Mysteries episodes and more Frankie Drake Mysteries to become more inspired. Dreaming of airships and listening to a mix of techno(Metric) and Jazz music gave me the foundation for this first ever Steampunk story. I'm still new to the idea of steampunk or exactly what makes a story steampunk. I hope I did a good enough job.

I tried to focus it on Mary, Edward and Serena and everything else is the backdrop for their adventure. If enough of you like this one I could be inspired to write the 3 other story ideas I have for my characters. In this story I tried to envision a different world and in some ways somewhat better than ours; more equitable. Sorry to my American readers, but I needed a bad guy and "Manifest Destiny" and "Christianity" makes America the logical bad guy of my story. I also remade my fellow Canadians to be less cruel and evil than we have been and somewhat still are.

Thanks once again to Barney R for his great editing. The tough part about editing something written by a person with Bipolar 2 disorder like me is the missing words, sentences and paragraphs in a story due to manic thoughts streaming from my mind faster than my fingers can type them. Then during depressed moods when I'm able to write the story becomes excessively wordy.

I hope you all like this first and hopefully not last adventure of: hopelessly nerdy scientist/inventor Edward, his bride the rich girl tomboy Mary and their lover, Lara Croft-like, spy/soldier and adventurer Serena Wolfe. Serena was not meant to be as important as she became after the first couple paragraphs, but that's how the story emerged from my mind. If you like it, I'll see what trouble these three lovers can get into on their next trip to: Ottawa or Niagara Falls or even Paris, France?

Christmas has always been a special time of year for me often full of joy and sadness; expected for a person with Bipolar 2 Disorder. For the third year in a row we had horrible problems with online shopping. My wife earns less than minimum wage delivering newspapers as a "contract worker" in Canada and thus she earns a quarter of her annual income in Christmas tips. We often buy things which broke over the year or which would help make life almost bearable as a poor rural Canadian. When a certain company tried to take double the cost of a laptop and electronics; stealing our insurance and mortgage payment. Last year a more reliable company had problems with our online order and Christmas morning my wife was finally able to get the order through. This year the same company had a computer glitch which caused them to be unable to accept the last of my wife's money spent on gift cards; a way to prevent a company from stealing more money than the bill required. Once again on Christmas morning my wife solved the problem again.
This is how we replace things for the house, buy clothing, movies and get gifts for each other; luxuries. We live in a rural Ontario town which pretty much becomes a ghost town after dark in winter; more so during a snowstorm like last night. The stress built up and my wife and I exploded due to the gift card mess. We stormed out of the house going in opposite directions into the storm. Bad weather is the great Canadian equalizer; especially during a snowstorm. After 10 minutes going in opposite directions we cooled our heads and love triumphed over anger. I think the stinging cold blowing snow in the darkness helped. We came up with a plan and by morning my wife's idea solved the problem.
I was still depressed in the morning even after the problem and crisis was resolved. My mom called to wish us a merry Christmas and we talked a bit and my bipolar depression lifted slightly. Even at age 50, talking to your mommy makes everything better; Hahahaha. Then I made a light breakfast and shoveled a path from the door to the road. We opened the few presents and gave our cats some new catnip toys. Then we were off to a free community dinner at the town hall with all the fixins plus all us poor folks we got a $10 grocery gift card. Then we got the instant blizzard of lake affect snow from far away Georgian Bay. Soon it will be the last tradition of the Doctor Who Christmas Special and then sleep. Shoveling even more snow can wait for the morning; possibly even Boxing Day snowshoeing for exercise. Last year I wore jeans and a t-shirt; even rode my bicycle on a snow-free Christmas Day.

On a another thought, I know I've not posted in a long time, but I've been writing and writing and even more writing; a tiny bit of editing. I have 600-700 pages to edit and then send it to my volunteer editor possibly after breaking the trilogy into thematic chapters. I got distracted and took a vague idea for a Steampunk Mystery adventure story into an actual multi-page story thus far with characters I now love. A few more winter walks in a blizzard and I may come up with a sppoky "Shining-esque" winter horror story. Norwood, Ontario is the perfect little rural town with a few additions for a perfect horror or mystery story.

A few more days and my depression will mostly be gone and I can enjoy the season. We all experience the season differently. I need merely survive the season and with luck a Seasonal Affective Disorder desk light will help with the winter blues. With all this snow we can also take pictures for next years personalized Christmas cards. There's nothing like Christmas in the country. Be safe and enjoy the season. Winter is not always the enemy. It can be fun.

I know some authors work, not mine, has been pirated by that Veronica West person. Amazon.ca also has all the same pirated stories, so check the Canadian site also and I did find the exact same stories there. Sadly I did see many of my favourite authors' titles in the lists. Let's report this person and get rid of them. The world does not need people like that.

I write for fun and to entertain myself and hopefully others. Some here do make money from their stories and I'm willing to pay for them; both amateur and professional writers. Please don't let this deter the great and favourite authors of mine on here from posting great and fun stories. Happy hunting and writing.
Derrick

I've had a busy couple months with a couple unexpected personal financial and health problems. This is often my most productive time of year and I've come up with four new story ideas, but this one DEMANDED to be told this week. I thought the concept and style interesting. Hopefully it is long enough to tell the tale and give enough flesh to my characters, but short enough to give a feeling of how intense the relationship between my characters Eric and Ginger with the main character Georgia.

This story came to me as I began the massive proof reading and first run-through of part 2 and part 3 of my largest story to date which is a trilogy close to 1000 pages long. I'll be lucky to be able to post it within the year. I have only slogged through 17 pages, but will try to force myself to do 5 or more pages of editing per day. It will eventually be posted. It's influences have already shown themselves in the past 3 stories I've posted.

This story is more of a fun, sometimes sad story of ordinary characters thrown into unexpected experiences which changes their lives forever. I've seen this often in real life, but maybe I've simply known interesting people.?

Barneyr has been a great help editing and proof-reading my stories; along with encouraging me to write. He's been very helpful encouraging my playful fun stories which I also enjoy. I'm sure over the next year as I edit my "Travelling Canada" series I will get diverted or distracted briefly to write other stories like "It's Me Again". I suspect songs inspired the story idea and main character, Georgia's, name. Hope you enjoy it. Back to editing on a rainy bland day.

Looks like there was a posting error with "Karate Bitch Saves A Life- Maybe Two?". I verified it simply by seeing that one of my main character's measurements were repeated in the SOL posted version, but the original .txt file has it only once. I found out thanks to a reader of the story.

I'm reposting it and hopefully it works. I'm very new to the idea of uploading and posting stories; along with any possible problems. Sorry for any confusion or trouble reading the story.