I make things.

That's the plan, anyway. Mostly, I just drink coffee and gaze mysteriously into the distance.

[ditoabbott]

Yesterday, I worked on the large plot for the multiple books in this series and got a bit freaked out by the size of the giant question mark in the middle.

Then my wife set me straight by telling me the plots of Outlander and A Discovery of Witches. Once I heard how complicated time travel makes plots, I realized how relatively simple my plot is. If you aren't accidentally marrying an ancestor of the husband you left behind in your original time line, before getting swept back into your original time line (possible spoiler alert...but maybe not, I was pretty confused) pregnant are you even HAVING an adventure?

DRAWING UPDATE: Back in the mountains! I put map drawing aside in November to focus on getting the book to the editor, and three months passed in the blink of a cursor.

Now I'm back in the groove. Finished up the northern Barbarous mountain range this afternoon while listening to tutorials on book publishing. The before/after pics demonstrate how a bit of light shading creates depth. Also, as you can see from the detail I'm putting into a map that people on e-books will never see, it's possible drawing mountains is a perfect storm to someone with my propensity for gilding lilies.

Stay healthy out there,

Dito

[ditoabbott]

Footnotes and Football

My dad asked me what my footnotes are for. I said, "They are points of interest that add value to a story, but would be a complete distraction to the plot." As an example, I told him about what I was working on today (see below) and he said, "Okay, I get it."

Today's footnote: "Broccoli scores a 12.7 (“Practically Guileless”) on the Ludwik-Vildenholm Malevolence Scale. To give perspective: cauliflower’s well-documented propensity to shove enemies off ledges, then feign innocence, earns it a score of 791.8 (“Don’t Turn Your Back”).

The highest scoring plant in history (931.8 - “Likely to Declare Itself A Warlord”) is Lady Misery, a sprig of rosemary that ruled a large valley in the Quarrel Mountains with an iron fist for the better part of a week, then got eaten by a belchgoat."

Today is the Super Bowl (a sentence that pretty well sums up my knowledge on that subject). I hope whichever team you cheer for sticks it to those no-good bums on the other team. Go _______ (fill in blank with desired champion)!!!!

I already know who wins the big game: my family, because I'm pretty sure I heard someone talking about making a cheese ball.

Stay healthy out there,Dito

[ditoabbott]

That’s what she said.

Everything I learned in English class was a lie.

In school, I was taught to vary dialogue tags as much as possible. "He said" or "She said" were cardinal sins. Instead, I was encouraged to make a story sparkle by peppering it with "She snarled" or "He harrumphed".

Then I wrote a book.

You may not have realized it (I certainly didn't until it was pointed out to me), but the vast majority of dialogue tags in novels are "said". It doesn't make for bland writing - on the contrary, using "said" gently reminds a reader who is talking without taking them out of the flow of the story. Reserve "She laughed" to draw the reader's attention to a particular character's reaction. It tells the reader what is important.

Pull out any novel and skim the pages. I think you'll see what I'm talking about.

That's my theory, anyway. I could be wrong. It's my first novel, after all. If I get this manuscript back from the editor with red circles around all thousand times I wrote "said", I'm going to delete this post and we'll pretend this never happened.Today I revised two chapters. Revision Five continues to chip away at the world count. We are now under 117,000! I'm over a third of the way through the novel, with two weeks until it’s due to the editor.

"Stay healthy out there," Dito said.

[ditoabbott]

Decades ago, my family visited the ruins of a weather station in the vast expanse of the Arabian desert. This abandoned station was notable for its high radiation levels due to the half-life of the batteries remaining in the facility (watching one of our convoy companions wield a Geiger counter was an education in itself).

I've kept a lookout in the ensuing years for signs of any super powers due to long-gestating cellular mutation and as of this morning, finally nailed one down: No matter how I place my coffee mug in the microwave on the rotating plate thing, it always, ALWAYS stops spinning with the handle away from me when I open the door.

Still ironing out kinks as to how I might use my gift for meting out vigilante justice (don't even get me started on costumes and branding).

[ditoabbott]

Drawing locations on the map for the front of my upcoming novel. This is Aeronoth, one of two Sky Cities to survive the Cloud War and the home base for the Merchant Guild. While Aeronoth is kept aloft by copious quantities of highly flammable heliovapor, her continued existence is fueled by rumor, smuggling tariffs, and back channel negotiations.

[ditoabbott]

Whatthefreakiatto Recipe

In today’s edition of Early Morning Adulting, we learned how to make a Whatthefreakiatto. Don’t be intimidated by its name, the steps are simple:



1. Pour a mug of milk

2. Add creamer (choose the caramel one because its nuclear powered and your wife doesn’t like it as much as the vanilla creamer, so you need to use it up in a humble personal sacrifice)

3. Heat mug in microwave for 1:28


(The critical step)

4. Instead of using your customary instant coffee decaf (its a long story, but my fall from fully-caffeinated grace involved an incident after two espressos where I went on eBay and bought a vintage 1943 German motorcycle w/ matching sidecar), ask yourself, “What if I try a different flavor of coffee today?”, then open a bag of Venetian blend decaf and spoon it into your steaming mug.

5. Gape in horror at the black mess you made. Stir the coffee grounds, to no avail. Every time you cease spooning, a wall of black ground will coat your milk like a layer of pumice. Do not worry, this is normal.

6. Tell your spouse. Learn that there is a difference between instant coffee and coffee grounds.

7. Refuse to surrender. Spoon black coffee grounds from your mug for five minutes.

8. Pour your milk into another mug, carefully avoiding transferring the layer of black sludge at the bottom of your mug.

9. Add milk to replace all the milk you’ve lost. Ignore the remaining floating grounds that taunt you.

10. Heat mug up again. 27 seconds.

11. Spoon instant coffee into milk.

12. Stir.

13. Ignore the Venetian grounds that refuse to die. Name it “Starry Night Coffee” in your head and resolve to google whether eating coffee grounds will kill you before you drink any.

14. Enjoy your Whatthefreakiatto. You earned it! Dito