If only my cat got along with other members of her species, I'd have a lovely blue-eyed white kitten with six toes on her front feet. Alas, Bast hates other cats. Here's a fascinating page on polydactyl cats. (Link via Neil Gaiman.)

Hee hee: "The End of the Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe's cat.

Here's a list of things to celebrate in November, if you're looking for an excuse to party. I'm assuming they know November only has 30 days.

My inner child is ten today:

The adult world is pretty irrelevant to me. Whether I'm off on my bicycle (or pony) exploring, lost in a good book, or giggling with my best friend, I live in a world apart, one full of adventure and wonder and other stuff adults don't understand.

How Old is Yours? (See how good I am at procrastinating? And still I've almost reached my word count for the day.)

Now I'm at 3,684 words (I feel like I'm writing a boring high school essay and counting every word -- "Only 46,316 to go"). Oh well, it is kind of encouraging to see how far I get each day. To know it's actually possible to do this thing, even if it isn't going to be the best I ever wrote (and it won't be, but that's what revision is for). Here's a little snippet:

"The folklore book was really hard to read. All academic. I finally ended up skipping the partsthat the author had written, and just reading the stories he quoted. They were neat. Like fantasy stories, only more real because people really believed they happened. The fairy book turned out to be pretty silly. It was all little people with butterfly wings and some totally fake-looking photographs. But it was the only one they had at the library. I found it next to the Sherlock Holmes books."

"That must've been The Coming of the Fairies. Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote Sherlock Holmes, wrote that one, too. He was a little odd."

"Did Mum have that book?" Maddy set down her fork. She couldn't eat the overcooked green beans, but the lamb and potatoes and rutabaga had been delicious and filling.

Dad looked down at his plate, as if he were trying to decide whether or not to tackle his own beans. He poked at them, then said, "I think she did. She had a lot of books. '‘Plenty of goodness and just as much crap,' she used to say."

It's a bit of conversation between my main character, 14-year-old Madeline Fletcher Macleod (Maddy) and her dad (who doesn't have a name yet), about her mother (Mary Macleod, nee Fletcher), who died giving birth to Maddy. They've just moved back to Scotland, where Maddy was born (they left as soon as she was old enough to travel). Anyway, back to it.

Now here's something truly scary: Mystery Park.

The park is based on the “mysteries of the world” and the extraterrestrial theories of Swiss author Erich von Däniken.

Woo hoo! The Secret Common-Wealth just hit 2,399 words, which is 399 more than my daily goal of 2,000. Yay, me!

One person is already past 7,500 words. Guess they're trying to finish theirs in a week.

First go and the novel's at 1,441 words. If I use every one of the 30 days of November to write, I need at least 1,667 words per day, so I've got 226 words to go for today. 'Course, I'd like to be done early . . . Oh yeah, it's called The Secret Common-Wealth. Betcha can't figure out what it's about (hah).

From the NaNoWriMo Weekly Pep Talk:

Writing a novel, unlike cow-tying, is not something you really ever know for sure you can do. It's one of those frighteningly unpredictable activities like lawn darts and breakdancing that people with all their faculties tend to shy away from. Because, as adults, we don't usually gravitate towards endeavors that make us feel like complete idiots.

Wouldn't ya know it, it's the first day of NaNoWriMo and my second cold in two months just reached the drowning-in-my-own-fluids stage. Yuck. At least I can sit in bed with my laptop (the Internet cable even reaches in here).

I recently found out what it is like to nearly lose an eye. Or rather, I found out what it is like to come a little too close to nearly losing an eye. Er . . . What I am attempting to say is that I look like I was in a vicious catfight where my opponent tried to claw out my right eye, except it was really a stupid dog-petting accident.

I have a tall, narrrow dog. Narrow enough that when he rolls over on his back for a tummy rub, he doesn't balance very well. Consequently, I knocked him off balance while rubbing his tummy. He kicked out with a back leg to get balanced again, and my face happened to be in the way. Funny how I was more concerned about whether or not my eyeball was still intact (it was) than whether or not my cheek and eyelid were (they were, just scratched and stinging like the dickens). Or maybe not so funny, as it's easier to mend torn flesh than regrow a gouged-out or otherwise damaged eye.

Somehow, this didn't end up being nearly as amusing as I thought it would be. I guess I'm just not very funny.

I've figured it out. Cutting your hair is cutting yourself free from the accumulated past. All that hair was around when things from your past you might not want to remember happened. By cutting your hair short, you're removing all but the most recent growth, the most recent past. So those women who cut their hair right after they get divorced are removing themselves from their past -- their marriage -- so they can start fresh. (As for Samson, I think that had to do with a pact with God or something. But maybe Delilah was cutting him off from his heritage -- his past -- as well as his strength when she cut his hair. Or else I'm just making shit up again.)

Except I'm not trying to get free of my past. At least I don't think I am. Though moving back to Victoria to finish my writing degree was liking coming full circle, right back to where I'd left things when I moved away to study archaeology. So now I've moved to Duncan and cut my hair to escape the circle and start someplce new. Except that's not it at all. Not really. I'd already started off in a new direction (more or less) before I cut my hair. So I still don't have the answer. Oh well. I rather like it short.

Hair. I told Rowena I was composing something about hair, on the occasion (slightly after the occasion, now) of cutting all mine off.

Long hair is supposed to equal power. The Biblical Samson had superhuman strength, but once Delilah cut his hair off, he was weak. In some stories, mermaids are said to die if their hair dries (or is that nixes?). There are probably other legends along these lines in other cultures, but I can't think of any right now (ugh, I should not attempt to write deep, meaningful things when I have a phlegmy, snotty cold; this was going to be a fabulous piece of creative non-fiction).

I used to have very long hair.

Although the continual comments like, "Your hair is sooo long," and "It must have taken you forever to grow your hair" sometimes got annoying, I always liked having long hair. And it was long. I could sit on it (making it difficult, sometimes, to get up from a chair). It would get stuck under me in bed now and then, so I couldn't move my head. But then I dicovered that hanging it over the pillow got it out of the way. It was nice to brush.

Then I decided to cut it. People keep asking me why, and I can't really say. I just felt like it. I could never really do anything with it, besides put it in a braid, or put it in a pony tail, or maybe two braids or two ponytails for a change. Loose is nice, but have you ever tried to brush three feet of hair after you've stood out on a breakwater for an hour? Think high winds and salt air. I ended up with a rather disreputable-looking nest attached to my head. Some slovenly bird would have loved it. I very patiently brushed it out and though how lucky I was to be able to grow my hair so long. And then I decided to cut it.

So the braid the stylist took off measures about 27 inches (meaning that, unbraided, it'd be longer). Then, of course, she cut more off as she was styling. Everyone in the salon was worried that such a sudden change would be a shock. I felt fine. The hair is going to do good. It's all packed up to mail because I kept finding it. It's a weird thing to find a superlong braid of your hair lying around the house. Kind of like stumbling on your own severed limb, I imagine. But not as gross.

So now I have short, kind of saucy hair and I really like it. Can't say why, exactly, though when I was looking for haircut pictures online, I came across an article that said a lot of women get their hair cut short right after they get divorced or end a long-term relationship. It's a power thing. Short hair gives them power. A little different than the Samson and Delilah story.

I don't think that's why I did it, though. For power (haven't ended a relationship recently). I can't tell you why, but that wasn't it.

I haven't written a thing in October. Not on this blog, I mean. I did actually write some other stuff. But now that I know at least one person reads this babbling nonsense (Hi, Rowena!), I shall try to write more often.

So. Writing. I re-worked a little character description I did a while back (it won me a contest, the prize of which was domination of the world) (well, actually it was a replica of the One Ring, but it's still cool). Now it's something resembling a short short story, and is called "King of Kings, Master of Camels" (yeah, long title for a story a mere 360 words long). So now I have to find some unsuspecting editor to send it to. I've also been looking over some of my creative non-fiction, thinking about how I might revise it and where I might send it.

Fiction has stalled a little. I've started work on a Cobbleshore story called "Great Skerry," but I -- as I too often seem to do -- kind of skipped over the middle so I could get to the end. So then I made myself take some time through the middle and wouldn't let myself write the end. So now I have a so-so beginning, a boring middle, and no end. Bleah. I think I need to start again.

And I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo (that's National -- except it's really international -- Novel Writing Month. It's in November, and the object is to write a whole novel (or at least 50, 000 words) in one month. Quantity over quality (which, I think, is a good way to write first drafts). I'll be working on a YA novel called The Secret Common-Wealth, which so far is a vague outline (which is okay, as the rules say no writing until November 1). We'll see what I actually get done.

Take The Geek Test. I'm a major geek at 38.06706%. Yikes! I knew a was a little geeky, but major?

I can't remember what they were at before, but "Come-From-Away" is now on page 12 of Bitbooks' Digital Fiction Links, and has an average rating of 10 (out of 10), while "A Gift of Bones and Motley Feathers" seems to have disappeared from the listings entirely. Weird.

These have gotta be the coolest action figures ever! I need that Rosie the Riveter. (link via a link to the librarian figure on Neil Gaiman's blog)

Finally, something I can blog about. Yes, I wrote something! I'm about two third of the way through a new short story, probably titled "Great Skerry." AND I recently edited two other stories (another rewrite of what was once called "Bird Bones and Feathers" and a fine-tuning of "Caught on Thorns: Three Variations of Snow White," which is really three stories for the price of one). AND I almost have script and thumbnails done for issue two of Fey, the comic that takes me forever to create. Still no sign of a link to Faerie or Bust from Scott McCloud's 24 hour comic index, though. Must be patient.

In other news, sort of, I didn't win the Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition. Not that I expected to, but it would've been cool.

Me, according to the numerologists at Facade. Weird, but kind of cool.