What the hell am I doing?
The Mayo Clinic and Calvary Church (foreground) which is the setting I used in my "World Beneath" story.
Hey there. I've been sick. I've been spending much of my time at a hospital in Rochester Minnesota, home of the world famous Mayo Clinic, and mostly hanging out in Oncology because they have the coolest nurses. If you've never been to Rochester, it's the place where I was born and lived for the first 15 years of my life, so I know it pretty good. It's changed a lot though, over the last 14 years, and I guess it's bullshit what they say about never going home again. I did it. But I get the idea.
Anyway, I won't bore you with a lot of meaningless details. Mostly I just wanted to show you that church, because it is cool as hell. I walked past it on my way to school a zillion times, I bet. Or maybe not quite that many, a zillion is a lot, but I never went in it except for this one time when I went to a Rochester Chess Club meeting in the basement because this boy I liked talked me into it because I always kicked his ass at chess! I'm kinda good at it, but I never wanted to join a club!
But I never went in the church itself until I got sick and then I was like, "Hey! I'm gonna go in there!" and my friend, this girl I was with, thought I was crazy! But you know what? They have a guest book! I signed it too, so if you look you can see my real name! Here's a picture of the inside to prove I was there...
Imagine a bunch of demons and angels holding a sacrificial ceremony...
Cool, huh? It's just like I imagined it. Sorta.
Speaking of school....You want to see mine? First I went here...
That's St. Francis church where I was Baptized, Confirmed, and made my first Confession!
Behind it is the elementary school and to the left is the junior high school (not in frame, sorry)
And then I went here...
That's actually the side entrance, on the east side next to the parking lot, but I had to walk. The front is boring.
And then we moved to Seattle, which really bummed me out. Go Eagles! I didn't even get to be a cheerleader, which really sucks!
Soooo...What the hell am I doing?
I'm trying to write, but I'm not really good at it anymore. I have a lot on my mind. So mostly, I'm doing some menial labor, like fixing old stories, editing and proofing, making them better or worse, depending on your point of view. I would like to finish some things. I'd like to write some new stuff as well, but we'll have to see how it goes. My health is made out of glass, basically. If I get dropped, I end up in the hospital again, and I so totally hate that! So I really have to not push myself, which is about impossible for me. I'm a born pushaholic. I like to go 100 miles an hour all the time, but now I can't.
So...I apologize.
What else? Oh! Stories Online is a site I always liked. Mostly because it was free and the system for posting and getting feedback, tracking stats, all that stuff was real user friendly. But mostly I liked it because I could post anything. That has changed recently. SOL submission guidelines now say that characters under 14 years of age are NOT ALLOWED ...That's a lot of characters for me! I like thirteen year olds, as everyone knows.
I'm not bitching about it. I don't own the site and Lazeez can do whatever he wants, but it is kind of annoying for me personally, just because I like having a maximum of freedom. I'll obey the rules, as everyone must, and continue to post there, but obviously not all of my stories are acceptable under the new policy. I'm saying all this because attentive readers may find subtle differences in certain stories posted at SOL compared to other places, like this web site. I may have to edit and change character ages, for example, in the "SOL Version" of a story. Some stories just will not ever work there because they require characters 13 years old or younger to make the plot work.
So that's the SOL deal and we'll just have to work around it.
And that's about all I have to say for now. There's no big message, no huge update of new material. I'm moving slowly and just wanted to say hello. If you've emailed me and I haven't replied, I'm sorry about that too. I have a ton of email that I haven't even had a chance to look at. I was offline for about 6 months, for all practical purposes. So I hope you'll understand and forgive me.
Thanks and best always,
rache
