Thursday, January 15, 2009

Family, friends, and--band saws? :-)

Last week I was able to bum around in California for 8 days, during which a lot of fun things happened. Some of the highlights include hanging out with Mom and Robert; seeing a very curious play called You, Nero; shopping at America's third largest shopping mall, the South Coast Plaza Shopping Center, and getting Walk the Line and a dandy sweater thereat; discovering that I could watch the latest Sarah Connor Chronicles online; and hanging out with the 'staffes in central California on my way back, which included a very large number of fun things, including a burst of Kirianic creativity, multiplicitous conversations, soccer, frisbee, bocce ball, and two visits to their family and friends. 'Twas a good trip whose main flaw was insufficient length. :-)

For the record, Kiriana is probably 2-3 chapters from completion. *pause* That's pretty awesome, now that I think about it. :D

As for the band saw part, my grandpa taught me some of the basics of using one yesterday, and it was quite fun. I cut up a nice pile of sticks and branches for future use as kindling, and lost no digits or limbs in the process, so I consider it a success. I am to learn some more of its complex secrets before long, and eventually, a variety of other skills related to woodworking, electricity, plumbing, and car maintenance. I'm hopeful that by the time I have my own house, I won't have to scratch my head and immediately call somebody if a light fixture goes out, or some such like. ;-)

By the way, as an afterthought, I think a movie of Kiriana would be rated R simply for body count, letting alone the actual level of violence. (Actually maybe not, considering that the Lord of the Rings body count is probably 500,000.) But still, I was writing a scene where the question of how many people my protagonist and her most potent ally have killed was raised--and it's a lot. A number that seems to be rivaled only by the number of individual wounds these characters have received in the process. :P

Cheerio!

3 comments:

Jeremy VanGelder said...

Congratulations on the Kiriana progress. You've been working on it for what, three months? I hope that you can carry your momentum into the editing process.

Connor Hamilton said...

Thanks! Heh, I wish I could say I'd only been working on something that long for three months. Multiply that number by seven and you're almost there. I've been working on it (on and off, I began two other novels and a number of short stories in that time) over a period of some 22 months! :P

Jeremy VanGelder said...

Okay, I guess I got the title confused with your newer book. Well, congratulations are in order regardless :)