on writing about good and evil

Artwork by Ilka Lesonen.
Source: Haunted Florida

Before I begin, would you be interested in seeing one of the bizarre findings I occasionally find on my phone on the account of having a child who likes to just press buttons and crap when she has it in her possession? This is a potential blog post that might have posted from "me" had she been astute enough to actually know what the hell she was doing:

I like frozen in my head now and then 20 the same time 9th thrill k knhrghrjrhuwuyj3msnsbnfndnsmksehmekdkksnkshjhwhjjmnwknnsnjdehjrm.   Maybe some help hfj. The hotel. We 30 gggrhejsjekkmejwgrbhrnsjenwkrjjr

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Honestly. I think things like this are pretty good evidence of what the inner workings of a child's mind is like: weird, confusing, and scary. In addition to things like this, in past mishandlings of my phone, she's:

*Private Messaged a mad-faced devil from "me" to Patresa Hartman, who sweetly responded with: "Uh oh." and was very good-natured and understanding when I explained what was going on.

*Started a Words with Friends game with at least 3 adults who totally would've beat the pants off her had I allowed it to continue.

*Almost posted an Instagram comment from "me" under one of Jason Isaacs' pictures (watch DIG on USA--March 2015!). Very similar to the one above. Oh, he wouldn't have freaked out at all at that crazy message if he'd seen it, I'm sure. :-/ (....though, quite frankly, it would have served him right, because he posted a picture of himself this past summer with blood dripping down his face, which slightly freaked her out when she saw it {"Mommy! That boy has blood on his face! What happened to that boy on your pictures?!"}, thumbing through my Instagram account as she sometimes does. We had to have a talk about how actors pretend, that was just fake, that boy's name is Jason and he was just pretending; he's going to be just fine. Then, a few days later, he goes and puts up a picture of himself getting operated on in a hospital scene. So I had to do damage control, show it to her, and explain: he's still okay, still just acting. Then, about a month later, he goes and puts up a picture of himself with shrapnel coming out of his neck AND then follows that with one of him beat up and bloodied in some type of garbage heap. The garbage heap one she did see on her own, and wanted to make sure "What's WRONG with him?? Is he going to the hospital?" Quite frankly, I have no idea what's wrong with him, love--I mean, physically he's okay...but I suspect Jason Isaacs may have a slight issue with the macabre. Maybe? Though I bet this means he's had some kick ass Halloween costumes in the past.)

*Left a really bizarre picture with ensuing comment on my Instagram account which I didn't find until about 375 days after the fact. I left it up as evidence for what I have to deal with, day in...day out.

*Called several people at inappropriate times. Once left a bizarre voicemail. Possibly made a few calls overseas to complete strangers.

Okay, that's addressed. Now, let's move on to the writing process/novelist-in-training (aka NaNoWriMo 2014 project):

I love this process.

First of all, I'm ahead of the game. Thanks to a bottle of wine (Day 1, which was actually Day 2 of Nanowrimo), I made up for lost time. Then, thanks to Election Day (aka a day off work), I was able to get ahead of the game by about 10,000 words. This is unheard of for me. I am never (never!) ahead of the game, any game. And so this is going fairly well. 

The story is not going with the outline I set out to begin with. This is okay. I like it when stories veer off to the left, the right, and zigzag around several bends. I think this is how Life works anyway. 

I generally like my main character so far...I did some character development for her, but I don't really have a good feel for her yet. However, you know who I do have a good feel for? My antagonist. He's the coffee shop owner's son/Main Character's boss, and he's decided he's very psychic, and not in a good way. Sort of in a Rosemary's Baby kind of way--looks normal/nice on the outside, secret sadistic Satanist on the inside. And aren't THOSE people always such assholes. But god, when they're attractive, they're insanely hard to resist.

What I'm trying to communicate is: I would like to have unpure moments of wild abandon with this character. This character could take a nice girl and teach her to do very, very bad things at incredibly inappropriate moments in unseemly locations.

But you know what the most exciting part is, the part where I'm having the most fun? The research. 

So one of my characters (who I've not gotten to yet--he's coming, and I am So! Excited!) is a pirate. A dead pirate. The ghost of a pirate. And don't even look at me like that couldn't ever really happen because currently I'm reading WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT GOD, and it's teaching me all kinds of amazing, scientifcally-proven/Neil deGrasse Tyson-approved things about the utter mind-blowing, breathtaking magic of the Universe, atoms, energy, quantum energy, and the nature of all energy everywhere since the dawn of time before there was time. I say this all the time, but I'm pretty sure Science is one day going to back me on it when I'm long gone: GHOSTS ARE TOTALLY REAL, Y'ALL. 

I'm also researching pirates. Historical ones, not the dipshits who are out there going nuts on Captain Phillips and friends. Fascinating. I'm talking lesbian women pirates, pirate-hunters-turned-pirates, crazy ones, sane ones, greedy ones, courteous ones. All kinds of people sailing the Seven Seas once upon a time. And they had ridiculously awesome music, too, as if all that other stuff wasn't good enough. 

It's that part of the process that I think is making me too, too happy. Just the very act of researching builds onto the story in my brain. I'd like to find a pirate expert and talk to them. And now I also want to go on a ghost hunt with real paranormal experts. (Ask my friends who've been on ghost tours with me who are all laughing their ridiculous heads off right now why that's hysterically funny...I'm easy to scare the crap out of, is why--I almost pulled one friend's arm off the other night in the basement where The Shadow Man resides in the Sorrel-Weed House). 

But mostly I'm finding that research is also, in and of itself, sort of character building: lots of "what if?" questions pop up...what if this pirate had xxx? and what if there was also a girl pirate who xxxx? and what if my pirate really did xxx? 

I love that.

I just realized I wrote about God and quantum energy and pirates and ghosts and good and evil and my kid in one blog post. I also confessed to wanting to be lewd and inappropriate with someone who doesn't even exist. AND managed to stick in a Jason Isaacs/DIG (on USA!) mention on top of it all.  I am most proud of letting everyone know, publicly, that I'm willing to go bad places with fake men. I think it summarizes my purpose here on Earth pretty well, in terms of why I write. 

Go ahead and judge all you'd like...'cause God gets me and that's all that matters. Proof: the Milky Way Galaxy. (Read the book.)