Reader Bob-a different person entirely from Bob the Demon I'll be writing about in November (I think)-is helping me set up a Discord server so I'll be able to chat in a forum regarding stories, writing, or my current travels. (Today, that puts me in Winnemucca, Nevada where I've spent the weekend overeating Basque food.)
I don't yet know or understand how it all works, but Bob is helping me with things like categories, channels, roles, and levels. I have no idea yet what any of those terms mean, but I'm determined to find out. This is the twenty-first century, after all. I know several other writers on SOL have Discord servers and carry on discussions with fans and patrons. I should be there!
I expect to get to Las Vegas on Friday sometime and hope my site is better than what I ended up at in Winnemucca. My reservation, filled out for one RV park, was hijacked by another. There was no way to get it changed that I was willing to put up with. I just wanted someplace to sit and write for a couple of days while I ran to various Basque restaurants to eat my fill. Delicious!
I've been busy writing the concluding chapters of Team Manager COACH! (I think I have two to go) and making notes for the 30-day blitz writing of Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon in November. I'm having a "good time" figuring out how long a trip it is from Girsu to Babylon and whether Cyprus is on the way to Athens. Coordinating a historical timeline in twenty or thirty different parts of the world with a fantasy character's timeline and the map of his travels is proving complex and confusing. (Wait! How did he get to India?) Especially since Bob doesn't always remember what location came first, second, and third, or which country had the best wine. That is usually the country he forgot because he was drunk most of the time.
I'm coupling that with a few features that I'm blatantly borrowing from famous writers-usually with my own twist added to it. Take for instance, the infinity room. I'm pretty sure I remember a similar pocket of some sort from a Heinlein story, and I know Harry Potter's Hermione had a bag she kept more in than the bag could possibly hold. And of course, there are the bottles that genies supposedly live in. My twist is that Bob creates the room for all the books he collects. But having books, he also needs to build a library in the infinity room so all the books are neatly stored. A library needs librarians, so he has to convince some librarians to live in his infinity room. If they are going to live there, they need houses, stores, food, restaurants, crops, animals, and wives. And those all need other people to tend to the work. And it all needs to fit in a neat little satchel that Bob can close the flap of and carry as he flees town ahead of a jealous husband determined to get his wife back. And don't rattle the bottles in the wine cellar!
Welcome to the wonderful world of a happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) demon named Bob!
My writing project for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November. (Sausage Grinder tier patrons will see the story unfold daily in November as I post the raw, unedited words pouring forth from my head.)