Milestones take a different shape for different people. Some of them may seem insignificant, but be meaningful just the same. This morning, I woke up to the discovery that Living Next Door to Heaven 2 had just achieved a voted score of 9.00. That is likely to be a short-lived achievement. With 2350 votes tabulated, you'd think it was fairly stable. But based on the algorithms used at SOL, the 2,351st vote that is less than a 10 will drop the score back to 8.99, where it has been for most of the past three or four years. Still, it's the first time I've had a story score a 9.00 and I'm damn happy about it.
And in the vein of Living Next Door to Heaven, I'm continuing the release of the individual books in the series. This morning, the third book in the LNDtH1 series, Foolish Wisdom, has been released on bookapy. Creating the 2nd edition releases in this series has given me an opportunity to once again sweep the text for errors and come out with a much more attractive final result. No doubt not perfect, but the best yet.
In the meantime, I'm continuing to write, even as Team Manager: SWISH! is posting a chapter every three days. This week, I finished writing the new Wayzgoose fractured fairy tale, Jackie the Beanstalk. It's now gone off to my fine editors and I hope to begin posting here by the end of the month (July).
Remember The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends? Please tell me I'm not the only one old enough. They were on American TV from 1959-1964. This show featured such memorable characters as Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Dudley Do-Right. And one of my favorite segments, "Fractured Fairy Tales." Perhaps that is where I first learned to take story concepts and themes and totally munge them up to come up with a different take on the situation. (Note my do-over stories, Damsels in Distress stories, Swarm Cycle stories, Pygmalion stories, and coming of age stories.)
I didn't set out with a specific fairy tale in mind when I started writing Jackie the Beanstalk, other than the obvious twisting of the title. But various mythical and fairy tale creatures and adventures picked their way into the story as I wrote. I can only call this a fractured fairy tale.
No sooner had I written "The End" on Jackie's manuscript, than I opened a fresh page and wrote "Chapter 1" for the next Team Manager adventure. The third in this series is tentatively titled Team Manager: SPIKE! in honor of the beginning of volleyball season. However, Dennis is making drastic changes in his life and has been tapped to lead conditioning exercises for the cross country team. But so much is happening in the school's expanded athletic program. Volleyball, cross country, football, and cheerleading all have a claim on Dennis's time. What's left, of course, is for his girlfriends.
In the first chapter, Dennis inadvertently issues a challenge: "Let me tell you, Dave. Football is for those guys who can't keep up with cross country." I have a feeling Dennis will need to back up those words with action! This is not quite the same thing as shooting foul shots in basketball.
Of course, my Patreon $10/month patrons are reading the chapters as I get them written and have chapter one in their hands this morning.
I think that's the news for today, other than it's over 90 here in Idaho and we've already got smoke filtering into the area. I want to sit outside, but I also want to breathe. I'll have to choose one or the other, I suppose.