Let the Games Continue, and Continue, and Continue

As I have mentioned in this blog numerous times, as well as in its capsulated purpose, I like all sorts of games and puzzles.  There can be a problem sometimes with this pastime of mine.  For one, there really isn't enough time to do everything that I like to do.  For instance, last fall I was taking a few online classes for grad school.  The assignments for those classes took precedence over almost everything else.  Fortunately, I was able to make sure everything was done in a timely manner and nothing wound up late.  However, working my puzzles magazines began to take a backseat to other interests.  Instead of the usual two alternating quarterly magazines that I had normally kept in reserve, I soon had three to four of them on hand.  This past spring, I took fewer classes, but one of them had assignments that could take hours to adequately finish.  (I had to compose diagrams based on the syntax of sentences.  Each sentence could take an hour to finish, due to the exacting nature of my unfamiliarity with the Pages app as well as my own aesthetic standards.) Some days, I wouldn't even do one puzzle in one those backlogged magazines.  In contrast, I would always make sure to work a puzzle in my favorite magazine, Games World of Puzzles, whenever I could.  Add in three versions of Candy Crush and a few other computer games, and my renewed interest in tabletop RPGs just kept the backlog growing.  I was barely able to keep from having five magazines at once.  In fact, I still haven't really fully read any of my RPG books that have bought in the past year, one physical and six downloads plus four more downloads earlier this month (Yes, it's the last day of the month.  Every other day in July was "earlier this month."  I hate saying that, but it is the expected idiom.). Just making sure I do a few puzzles each day, while maintaining a steady winning streak in all of my games is getting harder to do.  At least I have the time, with my store doing very little business and having so few new books I would want to read.  My playing time is even one of the reasons why I have all but discontinued my store's blog, Booknotes that is.  Just coming up with something new to say about the store has just gotten too hard.  In fact, I almost didn't come up with a topic for this week's post.  This one just fell into my lap, as it were.  I almost ran out of time to even type this post up, but I was able to finish the back-to-school decorating for the store just in time to start this project, and finish it before it was time to start another project.  I was even able to work a quick puzzle while waiting for the wifi to connect and the email files to come up.  I'm just glad I usually don't work all of the puzzles in a magazine, or I would never have enough time to finish even one before I would have to get the next issue of one or the current issue of the other quarterly.

When Weekly Means Once a Month

This week was the end of an era as Entertainment Weekly switched to a monthly format.  I had been a subscriber to the magazine since I was in college, after becoming intrigued by it from seeing in various waiting areas since it debuted.  Oddly enough, the initial subscription may have come through Publisher's Clearing House.  Yeah, I know.  Back in those early days, I would spend almost two hours reading it through.  I would even read the articles ad reviews about things I really wasn't interested in, just so that I would be informed on the subject.  Sometimes, I would become interested and try to check something out.  I would get about forty-eight to fifty issues a year, with an occasional special.  Over the years, some parts of the magazine would change, but the main gist of it would be some brief topical pieces followed by deeper articles, and finally reviews, with snarky comical bits laced in.  Then, there were major changes.  Many of the comical bits were removed.  Celebrity milestones were removed all but entirely.  No more births, marriages, and divorces.  Just an occasional nod to a birthday or death.  The memorials were the last to leave.  They used to feature almost every significant death.  Then, all of a sudden, they would only do features on a select few, the ones they felt were the most important to the current culture, even if that meant someone who was no longer as pertinent would have to be ignored.  Most of this extra information was shifted to their website.  In fact, their website would become the center of their reporting, as the number of issues per year were whittled down to forty-five, and then forty.  At least they let readers know when there would be a skipped week, most of the time.  Suddenly, they wouldn't always acknowledge this fact.  Many times I would have to inform them about a missed issue, only to be told that it wasn't out yet.  Then EW expanded to SiriusXM satellite radio, another avenue that I had only limited access to.   A streaming television channel would follow.  More information total was available, but I wouldn't have steady access to most of it until last year.  Even then, I preferred the physical magazine to anything I could find online.  In the last year, things started to change again.  The number of issues were tracking down to under thirty-six per year, less than three per month.  The radio channel was ended.  The streaming television was no longer being mentioned, so I don't know what happened to it.  More issues were being dedicated to subjects I couldn't get into, with more specials that weren't part of the subscription appearing on newsstands.  With my time being divided by other interests, I no longer read every article fully, many times just giving some parts a full skim just short of actually reading it all.  I rarely even read the magazine in one sitting anymore, finding it difficult to slog through it just to find the parts I liked.  Then, late last month, issue 1569 came out and it was just forty-four pages.  The page count had been going down for years, but it had been hovering around seventy, give or take, for the last little bit.  Even with such a short page count, I found it hard to get through.  When the next issue wasn't in, even after two weeks and I thought I saw a notice of it online, I called to see where it was.  I was informed that the new issue would be coming out the next day, even though the evidence I found suggested an issue had already been published.  That's when I saw the note about the change in frequency online.  Even though the title wasn't changing, the magazine itself would now be monthly, with two issues per year being standard size the rest double.  The amazing deal I got to renew should have tipped me off.  When I got the newest issue, I hated it.  While the format structure was about the same, it felt haphazard and muddled.  The information in the main article about Comic-Con felt dated, it just having ended.  The magazine didn't even hint about what turned out to be the biggest news.  What was worse, they had pictures of Supergirl in her old costume; the new one having debuted just after these pictures were taken.  The review section is going to be difficult to maintain.  Reviews were already lagging behind for movies, and the other sections weren't much better.  Television was focusing on streaming over network and cable.  Music featured more interviews as opposed to actual albums, mostly focused on artists that I never heard of and didn't seem to be genres I would like.  Books were the worst.  They would heap so much praise on titles I hadn't heard of, and I currently run a book store.  If distributors weren't paying much attention to some of these titles, why were so many being reviewed?  I expected more correlation.  Now, any reviews will either be too late to count or too early to matter.  I guess they want people to go to the site for topical information, and for readers to get deeper insights in the magazine.  I, for one, am not liking it.  Unless something improves, I doubt I will be renewing this again in two years.  At least try to clear up some of the mixing, as the current issue feels like everything is being mashed together to cram it all in, with only the barest suggestion of the previous format and ordering.  Ugh.  Do better, please.

[Insert Title with Pun on 'Dada' Here]

After yesterday's big revelation in my book, I must tell everyone about the other possible endings I had considered.  (While there are no spoilers about the ending here, you still might want to read the latest installment at The T. H. Weingarten Miscellany first, just in case.). As I mentioned last time, the original plan for the book included having a second part.  This was partially due to the fact that the book would have been about five chapters shorter than it is in its current form, and that would have been too short, even after editing to include more.  Part two would have been set four years later.  It starts out with Chris taking a look at himself in his large bedroom mirror dressed only in his briefs (the same mirror as in the current version).  He has not only lost the paunch he had been developing, but he had also put on about thirty pounds of muscle. He looks and feels great.  He is getting ready to go on a morning talk show to talk about his first book which is getting great early reviews.  He is also engaged with a wedding coming up within the month to a B- or C-list celebrity.  Suddenly, there is a knock at the door.  Sam barges in before Chris can respond.  Sam is also barely dressed, just some swimming trunks.  He and his friends are planning a day out and Sam wants to barrow something.  Not clothes, as Sam has grown to a 6' 4" man.  While still lanky, he has some muscle tone, suitable for the former captain of the school's swimming team.  In fact, Sam has an athletic scholarship for the University of Kentucky.  After some small talk, Sam leaves and Chris gets ready for the show.  On the way back from downtown, Chris picks up some of his old friends in preparation for a sort of bachelor's party.  At the time, the friends weren't as defined as they are now, so they really weren't the Rick, Will, and Pete of the current version.  Anyway, while getting ready for the trip, one guy traces a signal from Chris's bedroom to Sam's.  It is only now the Chris discovers that Sam had been secretly filming him while naked or nearly so.  Later, after Sam returns and the other men go to the place they are staying at, Chris confronts his brother.  After that, I had nothing.  I could't come up with a good ending at that point.  That's why I took some of those elements and introduced them earlier into the plot.  The rest of the the details are still canon.  I'll be using them in the follow ups to Dada.  That's right, it is a trilogy that I'm now brewing.  Each one taking place exactly four years after the previous one, after Sam graduates from high school and college.  I had other possibilities though.  At one point, Chris knew the truth about the accident from the start, and that his father was the only survivor.  He was comatose, but it was discovered that he had cancer.  The real reason for bringing him to New York was to save his father, as Sam might not have lived or even existed in this draft.  Chris would just hang around New York, waiting for the test results.  He would go on a date to the club mentioned last week as well as seeing the art film.  The experiences turn him off of both his long absent father and the city.  The final irony though was the while Chris was his son, he wasn't a match.  Fortunately, another long lost son or cousin was found who was a match.  Chris leaves with a terse goodbye to his father without the possibility of the two ever seeing each other again, whether or not the treatment works.  This was too much of a downer for me, so I ditched that idea quickly.  I am having trouble reconciling my ideas for the current ending, though.  I am setting up the seeds for the sequel, while making sure that enough is tied up so the book doesn't feel like I made to many twists and turns.  I will have to add many details to help set up the ending sooner.  I mean that last revelation.  I think I have set it up by making sure nothing contradicts it, but I might not have been clear enough.  I will probably add some chapters too.  Currently, the book looks like it will have twenty-three chapters, but I don't want to book to end on such an odd/prime number.  For this rough draft, that can't be helped, but it will work for the revisions.

Who's the Dada?!

Okay, time to get to a review of the second half of my fiction project, "Dada," from my literary blog The T. H. Miscellany.  Chris and Sam reach Sam's home near New York City.  Originally, it wasn't a mansion, just a regular four-bedroom, two-story house.  I made it larger as an enticement for Chris to want to stay.  It's probably too large now, so I might downsize it.  Really, eight plus bedrooms with a furnished attic and basement (both yet unseen).  What was I thinking?  Chris also doesn't explore the house at all the first day.  In fact, he foists Sam off on a neighbor so he can go on a date to a club closer to the city.  Wait, where did he find a date?  I hadn't decided, but I took it out because it made Chris too irresponsible.  I had only included it because I felt it would make a great moment when the book gets turned into a movie.  Just imagine, Chris and a woman are sitting in a round booth with mirrored sides.  As the camera pans from one to another, infinite reflections would cascade behind them.  A great looking moment, but it really wasn't fitting Chris.  Anyway, when he returns home, he crashes on the couch without even bothering to go upstairs to check on Sam.  I know, this made Chris a total creep and not the protagonist that he should be.  This would lead to a second day and night with Sam.  It is on the second day that Chris finally sees one of his father's films.  In the original plan,  Chris's father was either a direct student of Andy Warhol or one of his acolytes.  Remember, this story has been percolating from the late 90's, so this timeline was possible.  With a modern day setting, this would be impossible, but now Warhol is just an inspiration.  Furthermore, the film was slightly different.  While I've only posted a synopsis of the film, the main theme was the same:  three men spend a day fully aroused and no one notices or even cares.  The main differences are the lack of the art lesson (added only after I made the father an art professor, as well as to strengthen the connection of the possible meanings behind the title) and the final scene.  There had been no nudity in the original movie, making the audience's reaction even more shocking to Chris.  I previously mentioned, maybe, how I had a dream that helped develop Chris's own reaction.  Almost exactly copied from my dream.  Sam was at home again, being watched by a babysitter.  He would not see the film, yet.  Chris would return early, and he finally searches the upstairs.  The same situation with finding sheets occurs, leading to the discovery of the missing sister.  That time, Chris wakes Sam up without any embarrassing situations.  They have a late night talk, where Chris finally decides to take care of Sam.  And that was one of the possible endings leading into Part Two.  Wait, possible endings.  Part Two?!  That's right, not only was there going to be a second whole part that would add almost a third or more to the book but also I had other possible endings that weren't so neatly tied up. What were these endings?  Wait one more week, after I post the first installments of the next chapter, because those revelations are huge.  Once again, I post the icon pic.  it might not be the right one, but it is here.

And Then It Was Just Yada, Dada, Yada

In my literary blog, The T. H. Weingarten Miscellany, I am nearing the end of the first, rough  draft of my book.  Technically, I have reached the climax, and I have started to resolve all the problems that have developed over the course of the story.  It has taken over a year to get to this point, at least in writing it.  I have had the main gist of the story bubbling up ever since college.  Over that length of time, many things have changed.  From the beginning, the story was all about how a man, 'Chris,' had to become the guardian of the half-brother he never knew, 'Sam.'  I didn't come up with those names until I started writing the blog.  Even now, they could just be placeholders.  Chris was originally going to be a few years younger, or older.  Twenty-seven seemed to be the right spot, but there is a little leeway.  I didn't know what job Chris would have.  The publishing spot just popped up.  Originally, he didn't really have a job, beyond owning the apartment building where he lived.  He had mad great investments in college, as opposed to having all this money just falling onto his lap.  Strangely enough, most of the tenants wouldn't have known he was the owner.  Not even the few he considered his gaming friends.  That part of Chris has remained constant.  When he first got notified about Sam, he had known just who he was, as opposed to the slight doubt that Sam was claiming to be his son in the current version.  Chris just didn't know what to do.  Sam also was different.  He was now a thirteen year old who was just starting to go through puberty, as opposed to the raging mass of hormones he would turn out to be at fourteen.  He was still very quiet, although it was going to be more out of shock than vocal problems.  Apparent vocal problems, but you'll have to wait another chapter to find that part out.  Chris also knew more about his father in the early version, although he still hadn't had contact with him in years.  It was more of a clean divorce, rather than the borderline criminal activities his mother went through to hide them.  Chris's attitude towards his mother was better, too.  Very little antagonism.  In fact, his mother was much better off as well.  I think I had her as an up-and-coming politico of some sort.  I changed the dynamic, mostly to make Chris more sympathetic.  He was coming off as smug and irresponsible, so I had to play him off of someone even worse.  The first day the two spend together was also much shorter.  Sam didn't need a whole new set of clothes, so they went straight to the apartment.  One detail that was changed was that Chris found more about his father online, particularly a clip of one of his films.  He actually had seen parts of it, before he got to New York.  This would become a critical change, but I'll bring it up when I get to reviewing that section.  A road trip was always a part of the plan, although the medical reason came later.  I don't remember why they had to drive to New York, but there were two reasons why I wanted them to do so.  First, there would have been a scene where Chris visited his mother before heading on to NYC.  While Sam was napping, Chris would take a sudden detour and drive on it for about twenty minutes, on the sudden urge to ask his mother directly about some of the reasons for the divorce.  However, he accidentally kills a chipmunk on the road.  Chris takes the as an omen, and he turns around to get back on his way, an hour late.  The second reason was I wanted to pay homage to another book, Divine Right's Trip, by featuring a similar scene mentioned ion that book, the letters "D" and "R" being sky written.  It my version, it was part of the cause for the traffic jam that would delay the pair even longer.  The current version just has the letters as part of a partially obscured sign, seen near a horrible accident.  In both cases, the message would read "Drive Safely," the irony not lost to the reader.  In both instances, this led to the need to stay at a hotel for a night, and also the first scene where Chris catches his younger brother in an act.  Very embarrassing to both, but I needed some levity at that time.  It would also foreshadow the later scene with the art film.  Again, you'll have to wait for that tidbit, in next week's installment.  While this draft of the book isn't that long, there are still major differences that occur between the versions.  One last thing this week, though.  The current draft is averaging about eight pages, double-spaced, per chapter.  This will lead to a page count of under two hundred, making this more of a novella than a novel.  I am planning to revise, mostly by fleshing out some minor characters and adding some missing details.  This should push me to the two hundred to two hundred fifty level, if not higher.  As the next installments will show, more than just one scene was cut.