Week in Reveiw-Preview - Doubles Week

This Past Week's Posts:

Last week was Cozy Mystery Week.  As part of a blog festival, I did three posts on that subject this week, Tues, Wed, and Friday.

• Monday: Test of Freedom Episode 13 "Old Cooper"
• Tuesday: Miss Leech and The Yard comic strip #4
• Wednesday: Writing the Cozy Mystery: Hiding Twists with Misdirection
• Thursday: Test of Freedom Episode 14 - "Lady Ashton's Admission"
• Friday Favorites: What a Cozy Mystery Is To Me

Coming This Week on the Blog:

A month or two ago DWS suggested, in the comments on his blog, that if you can't decide on the ending of your story, write the story twice and publish them both. There are some situations where that seems impossible... but is it?

I'll be talking about "Writing it Twice" on Tues, Wed and Friday this week.

Monday - Test of Freedom Episode 15 "Sins and All"
Lady Ashton and Mary discuss the concept of guilt and what use it is.

Tuesday - Story Notes - Misplaced Hero, Misplaced Baroness
What do you do when the first story in a series takes place in the middle of the sequel? Skip it? Summarize it? Stand on your head to make it not matter? Send the new readers off to read the first story in the middle of the second?  Or do you write it again?

Wednesday - Writing Two Versions of a Unique Story
What if you have two incompatible versions of a unique story? Can you write that twice, and pretend it's two different stories?

Thursday - Test of Freedom Episode 16 "The Sick House"
Jackie is given leave to help an injured man, and Cooper learns a little about Jackie the Freedom.

Friday Favorites - Hitchcock's Doubles (and maybe Roshomon)
Thinking on Dean's "write it twice" advice: Hitchcock overtly recreated two of his early movies later; The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The 39 Steps.  (And if I have time I might talk about Roshomon too, but that may deserve it's own post.)


A Round of Words in 80 Days Update


This Segment's Progress:

I did not keep track of what I did this past half-week.  I let the kerfuffle get away from me.

(It's not that I didn't do anything - I had some very fruitful days - but I was completely out of my routine and didn't track it at all.)

See the other folks updating today at the ROW80 Linky.


The Not Ready For Full Time Diary

Getting laid off causes a lot of kerfuffle and paperwork and issues to be dealt with.  Way more than you'd think.

For instance, I'm getting all sorts of medical stuff done while I still have insurance.  And that means I'm "flyin' standby' on appointments sometimes, which can be very disruptive.

And just as those issues settle down, I'll be dealing with the fun and wonder of the Unemployment Office.

One of the side effects of accepting unemployment checks is that you are legally, morally and ethically bound to actually look for another job.  Lee M. made a comment on a post this week to the effect that my journey is interesting because I'm not just playing at jumping into the full time writing life while I wait for another job.

And that's true, except that we aren't really at that stage yet.  If I were to be offered a job like the one I had, I would have to take it; I couldn't turn down the insurance.

I was going to talk more about that, but, you know, I need to leave that until later. Why borrow kerfuffle if kerfuffle isn't borrowing you? (I think I mixed a metaphor there....)

So instead....

I'm going to talk about mugs.

I was chatting with some other fiction bloggers on the forums at Web Fiction Guide, and asked what sort of income streams they use to support their habit.  Most of them do exactly what one would expect -- they have many different sources of income.

There was a discussion of merchandizing, though, and one person with a very nice Zazzle store happened to mention that people tended to buy mugs, and maybe postcards and mousepads, more than anything else.

Oddly, these are things I wouldn't never consider becuase I don't buy them myself.  I buy t-shirts sometimes (which she says don't sell that well), but never mugs.

And I thought, "Hey, a mug would be a natural fit for Miss Leech!"  So I went and checked out the products at Zazzl, and then I saw something else:

Frosted beer mugs!

I know, I know, they're probably too expensive to be popular but the idea of having a beer mug with the official seal of the Awarshi Revolutionary Committee of Bureaucratic Practices - and the slogan "Beer Makes Bureaucracy Run Smooth!" or something like that - just tickles me pink.  (See ep 9 of The Misplaced Hero if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Also, maybe an apron with a "Niko's Blootchkes" logo on it. ("Everybody Like Blootchkes!")

Anyway, I have a lot of chores ahead of that, but I do think I could at least do a Miss Leech mug pretty quickly.  (In an upcomig cartoon I have an "American Gothic" type image of Stride and Leech which I could redo to suit it perfectly.  Or I could use some individual episodes.)

See you in the funny papers.