All hail to the weather

Last night, while I was waiting for House to start, the wind picked up and it started raining. Heavily. The kind of heavy rain that clicks and clacks off the windows and the roof. The kind of rain that’s actually hail. Hail isn’t unheard of around here, and usually occurs during the worst thunder storms and can be a herald of tornadic activity. However, last night’s storm was unusually vigorous and prolific. I opened the front door and was treated to the sight you see here to the right. It looks like somebody dumped a bag of rock salt (or diamonds) on our walkway. The largest hailstones were the size of a quarter, and they leapt off the sidewalk on impact like they were made of rubber. Quite a change from the 80° weather we had a few hours earlier.

Speaking of House, last night’s episode on the theme of change was interesting. Lots of neat little character moments, which is the only reason to watch the show, in my opinion, because the medical stuff is much the same from week to week. From the lack of previews, it looks like we might not see anything new for a while.

I also watched the first episode of Eli Stone from last Thursday. Not bad. It’s about a lawyer who starts hallucinating because of an aneurysm. His father, long believed to be a drunk, had the same problem, they realize in retrospect. His acupuncturist, a neat guy who puts on the Chinese act for his customers, suggest that Eli might be some sort of prophet because of the confluence of certain events in his life that defy ready explanation—like how the woman suing one of his company’s clients just happens to be the first woman he ever slept with, and her autistic son transmitted a message to him through his building blocks that resonates with one of his hallucinations. I’ll check it out again this week.

I love non-fiction writing. Or, rather, I love the payscale of non-fiction writing. I was offered a gig for $0.50-$1.50 a word for a 450-700-word article. Ten to thirty times the accepted pro rate for fiction. How could I say no? I was also invited to speak at a mystery writer’s conference at a local community college in April. More details about that as the location and date are finalized. I’ll also be signing at Houston’s mystery bookstore, Murder By the Book on April 12^th in the afternoon.

I hit 30,000 words on the novel-in-progress this morning. 40% of the way through. I did a pen-and-paper edit of the first six pages of the short story I’m revising for submission last night. I’m so brutal with myself sometimes I can’t stand it. At least I don’t use red ink. I don’t think I could take that.