Haus of Rhi

Camp Nano had actually been chugging along reasonably well through the middle of the month. Halfway through June, I managed to stay on track and broke the 25k barrier only a day or so late. And I did hit 50k... for the year. The irony is that, well, the day I broke the halfway mark? I received an email from my Riptide editor. Yep. I am wading through edits, my focus on a completely different project. And switching gears between them doesn't happen easily enough for me to try finishing out the month goal of 50k. Especially not when all my creative energy is going into polishing. It takes a lot of elbow grease. Can I count the 2k+ that I've added in the edits? So! August Camp Nano it is, then! I'll take the year-milestone of 50k as a technical victory, putting me at the halfway point for that. I set an annual goal of 100k for this year for a couple reasons -- the greatest being a matter of quality over quantity, but editing processes contributed heavily as well. I knew ...

Earlier this past week, I grabbed a special collector's edition of Scientific American Mind titled "His Mind, Her Mind: How We're Different" off the magazine rack. Because, in all seriousness, I wanted to see how they tackled a headline I caught on the contents page. An article titled, "The Third Gender." I'll admit, though I had high hopes, just seeing that title gave me a queasy feeling. I knew deep down that it was going to be rough reading before I even started. Guess I'm a masochist, because I read it anyway. And you know what? I was right. I realize that Scientific American isn't a scientific journal where the foremost minds in their fields publish those papers that you need a comparable doctorate to parse through. That being said, the author of this particular article still contradicted himself so often that I began to suspect he was confusing himself. Or perhaps was confused himself already, and it simply presented that way in the ...

Dear readers, Hi! Send Twizzlers and black licorice jelly beans please? Oh, and more coffee of course. Not that I don't have plenty, but one can never have enough. The weather's great, sun's warm, and the occasional glimpses of Black Hawks and Chinooks are just enough to be a timely distraction. I was sorely tempted to go sit and watch the #soldierporn flying around all afternoon, but that sun-so warm and lovely in an indirect way on my front porch-promised the murder of a thousand lobster-burns if I dared neglect my day's task. So I saluted the Chinook with my Moleskine and went back to writing.

I rarely recall much of any detail about my dreams anymore. They dissipate the moment my conscious awareness reboots and comes back online. This morning was different. In living color, playing out before me as though I were an actor in a lead role of a theater production. The edges of the stage, the curtain, invisible. Immersed, I experienced every emotion, every touch, heard every word and musical note, with clarity and realism that I cannot begin to describe. I think I might have even experienced a few smells, too. Talk about engaging all the senses. I know it was a dream. But it didn't feel like one. And the words came pouring forth from my fingers before the fuel of caffeinated beverage was past my lips. I rarely write 600 words in ten minutes. Hell if I didn't this morning. Good morning, new muse. Go sit in the corner and strum your guitar and keep all the other muses in some kind of passive state of non-frenzy while I finish this other project. And then I wil...