Scorched earth

Is it weird that Dexter does a better job at relationships by pretending to have emotions than a lot of other characters do acting on their emotions? Another thing I like about this show is that it is completely anti-episodic. There is no real story arc for each episode. It picks up where things left off last week and stops when they run out of time. The mini-arcs tend to be about his victims (or potential victims, as was the case last night), but the throughline story just goes on and on.

I also watched the profile on the royal family last night. I am not the least bit ashamed that I am a mild monarchist. My mother was very close in age to the queen and her mother was almost the same age as the Queen Mum. I was star struck the time I got to meet Princess Diana in a walkabout and I was devastated when she was killed—she’s the same age as I am, so the parallel continued into another generation, sort of. I am fascinated by the internal workings of the monarchy. I can’t explain why. I just am. I worked on a jigsaw puzzle while the show was on last night, but I enjoyed it.

I’ve come to a new conclusion about George Bush, though. I have a suspicion that he is ashamed of his teeth. What seems to be a perpetual smirk is just his way of smiling without showing his teeth. It’s just a theory, with absolutely nothing to substantiate it, but that’s the impression I came away from the show with.

I ruthlessly edited the short story I’m working on last night and cut nearly 550 words from the 4400 I had written to that point. That gives me a little bit of breathing space to wrap things up around the 5000 word mark. The story could easily grow to double that length, and I am filing away the possibility that it might become the next novel, that’s how much story there is. The main character is getting short shrift in terms of characterization, but I think that’s okay in this incarnation of the tale, which is meant to be a thriller. It’s hard to do much with character in 5000 words when people are getting shot, stabbed, chased, interrogated and threatened.

Switching gears again, I got back to the novel this morning and added enough to get me over the 3/4 mark. Working on two pieces of fiction is very much new to me, but so far I haven’t run into any problems because of it. The characters haven’t suddenly leaped from one tale to the other, and the terse style of the story didn’t ooze into the novel. I came up with a loose sketch of the ending last night, so I hope to finish the first draft tonight.