oyster50: Blog

It's been a month since I last popped up here. Life's pretty good. Real life - the job - has taken interesting turns that make it fun to show up in the morning, and also require that I bop around the countryside a bit. For that entertainment, they pay me.

Dorable, my lovely and somewhat flighty muse has been cooperative. The chapters for three active stories are rolling out every two or three days.

I just thought about it, and right now I'm basically writing three different threads of the same story arc of the Smart Girls.

I do want to nod my head in the direction of some of my readers and my editor who have been prodding me with vignettes and story lines. Makes writing fun.

And as long as it's fun, I'll keep doing it. Plus, I don't have these stories plotted out in advance, so I want to see what happens next, just like you do.

It's been a fun story, but juggling four active stories is a bit much for me and I was running out of direction for this one. Thank you all for reading.

Since so many asked, here's the deal on Chapter 19a of Community 3. As you, my faithful readers remember, I started the story of Tommy and Mimi a few chapters ago as part of Community 3. It didn't take long to see (and be told - I pay attention to comments) that the story of Tommy and Mimi should stand on its own. By that time I'd written it into Community 3 as far a chapter 19.

Most of you remember the confusion when I peeled the Tommy & Mimi story out to set it on its own. When that happened I still had the original chapter 19 on my computer, so when I started writing the new chapter 19, I had to either get rid of the old one or make a new name. The new name was '19a'.

So that's it. '19' is part of Tommy. '19a' got posted. A bunch of people think I'm losing it. I'm old, but I'm not THAT old.

And as always, I appreciate the feedback.

As many of you have deduced from my stories, I'm a denizen of Southwest Louisiana.

Harvey missed me. Tried twice, but the second try doesn't count. Tropical storm force winds? Feh...

Rain? eighteen inches in three days, but none of the road I travel locally, including the ones to and from work, were flooded.

Thousands are not so fortunate. Even here in my area, the amount of rain resulted in flash flooding - the water came down faster than it could run off. Houses flooded. Cars flooded.

I don't want to NOT mention my neighbors in Texas, from the Sabine River west. Folks, this isn't a case of dumbasses building on the creekbanks, these are people with homes outside the hundred-year floodplains, in some cases outside the 500-year plains. When you get four feet of rain (Dayton, TX got over 50 inches) in three days, the old rules about flood plains go out the door.

This is a weather disaster of almost Biblical proportion.

Fortunately for me and my employer, facilities, for the most part, didn't suffer damage, at least not MY facilities. Others, again, were not so fortunate.

The Houston area is perhaps the largest concentration of petrochemical industries in the US, and they suffered. 25% of oil refining capacity went off line. Expect gas prices to spike. Worse than that are the myriad other chemicals that come out of the area. Want a fright? We lost over 60% of the nation's ethylene production. EVERYTHING you do in daily life depends on ethylene.

I'm awfully proud of the way that ordinary people in the area, including my own Cajun Navy, stepped in to provide help. It's a great country that produces that manner of action.

But me? I'm good. Thanks for asking.

Since others are doing so, let me take a second from totally screwing up how things are posted and thank the guys who've edited my scratchings over the years - Jerry and Denny. I call both of these guys 'friend'. They make my horrible typing and my occasional spelling and grammar flubs into something that is readable. They're responsible when it looks good.

I also want to thank readers who ship me these snippets and ideas. You folks have given Dorable some ammunition, as in "SEE?!? If you were a REAL writer, YOU would come up with ideas like that."