TWIC Jan 2014

I had a great Christmas.  We went to my sister's home in Alaska.  The little guy liked his carved cheetah (see any of the past twenty or so blog posts on the subject) but received many toys that were more interactive.  I think the cheetah will be more of a memento of his youth than a toy to be used day to day.  That's what I tell myself, anyway.

My sister gave me a Dremel set.  There were some parts of the cheetah that my knives and gouges couldn't reach well and I think this set will improve future carvings.

I hope all my reader(s) -is the bracketed 's' joke getting old - had a similarly good solstice or Christmas or Festivus or the like and are ready for an exciting new year.  I still have not made any resolutions but do plan to.

Two links for today.
Fred Clark at Slacktivist writes with wonderful eloquence about empathy and evangelical Christianity.  I have no idea what he is like in meatspace but in his blog sure gives Christianity a good name.  Recently, he highlighted a blog post from two years ago that offers a suggestion for your next novel.  Well, the post is about a problem with libertarianism but is framed as a way to create a bully for your story.

Each of us lives in a network of levels of government, with each level in turn differentiated with various agencies, services, bureaucracies, offices, officers, regulators, responders, police, courts, councils, legislatures, schools, libraries, etc. ...non-state, non-individual entities that make up our world: families, friendships, clubs, teams, bands, troupes, affinity groups, congregations, denominations, businesses, banks, exchanges, markets, unions, neighborhoods, theaters, leagues, societies, charities, associations, etc....Look again at that list of entities above — families, friendships, etc. Any one of those might, at some point, come to function as a “bully” in the life of an individual. In doing so, it would be betraying its intended purpose and function, but any single one of those entities so corrupted could turn a person’s life into a hell.

So instead of using that list above as the starting point for another lecture on subsidiarity, let’s instead think of it as a novel-generating machine. Pick one item from the list. Twist it into a bully. Voila! There’s your next novel.

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Dan Piraro and Wayno frequently collaborate on ideas for comics.  At the second link, Wayno goes into detail about how his original idea transformed into the published comic (found at the first link).