(no subject)

The first 7k or so of the flesh-eating bacteria not-short story is off to my writer's group, which we're valiantly trying to resurrect despite the geographic distances that now lay between us. This, plus more than the usual pre-semester work stress, has put me back into Thinkin' Mode on it. I did take advantage of one of the subtler perks of working where I do and today decided to (politely) pester a biology prof about bacteria, in an attempt to actually get the science mostly right. I don't think my basic ideas were wrong[1] going into this story, but since a big piece of the plot kinda hinges on the anticipated behavior of my bacteria, I want to make absolutely sure.

Lives are riding on this, you know.

I'm running just under 10 dead people per word, on average. Pretty impressive toll so far. Alas, the vast majority of that is entirely off-stage, which certainly takes a lot of the fun out of wiping out large chunks of humanity[2][3]. That'll change, though.

So. Not sure if I'm going to be accumulating words again before I hear back from my writer's group or not, but that time won't be spent idle. I do miss the face-to-face interaction, though; between crazy work and the increasingly mobile sprogs, I don't get to talk to actual human beings nearly as often as I'd like and it's definitely getting to me.


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[1] and passing some questions by the armchair experts on the VP list a few days ago confirmed that at the least I wasn't wildly off the mark

[2] also, still riding high on getting to use the phrase "giant ass-warts". Ah, the things that make me happy to imagine seeing in print (-:

[3] I'm feeling a sudden need to have a dead-people-o-meter on my LJ.

pursuant to the previous post

...the dead-people-o-meter, for keeping track of how many people you've killed in the story you're writing (so much more telling than mere wordcount!):



Yes, I'm cat-vacuuming. It's Friday night and the twins are finally off to bed and, very shortly, so am I.

(If someone [even more bored than me] wants to take the time to make this an actual working meter, steal away.)