(no subject)

I had a Thought last night while I was madly pounding out my 500 words.

It seems to me that my protag and my preacher dude should actually know each other from before. I think (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) that circuit riders had a set route they did, and they came back to the same places over and over (thus the "circuit").

And this adds yet another level of angst to the entire situation. It's one thing if you watch a man of God die to protect you. It's quite another if you watch your man of God do that.

This will, of course, require a rewrite. Fortunately, I'm still on the First Draft stage of this thing. What is it I say? The first draft is my outline? Notwithstanding the paper outline I've got sitting over there. Which is a mess.

In other news, I'm not sure what just happened, but I may have blown through my climax without realizing it. So I'll just be over here, headdesking. Again.

Stolen from the lovely and effulgent matociquala:

The first lines meme. Basically, you post the first line of all your unfinished stories in an attempt to inspire yourself to actually finish one.

So. In no particular order, understanding that I don't title these things (usually) until I'm done with them:

Knowledge is power.
--from Books Gone Bad

The talking cat in the carrier glared at me and hissed.
--from Cat-Hoarding Dragon

The battle was a rout. Unfortunately, we were the ones on the losing side.
--from Chains. I don't even remember why I called it that.

"Let me get this straight," Russell Fisk said to his prospective client. "You people have dug up an abandoned cemetery to make room for a shopping center, and you want to hire my ship to take the coffins and headstones out to the edge of the system and space them?"
--from "Ghost of a Chance." Yes, that one has a title.

This wasn't the first time the Law of Unintended Consequences bit Alex Jarrett on the ass, but it was definitely the weirdest.
--from the New Alex Jarrett story. No, I have no idea what just happened there. If you figure it out, let me know.

"Ain't you a purty one?" the ghostly girl-voice whispered in my ear.
--from Cowboy Sleeping Beauty

A lot of small-town sheriffs are wizards, although people in general don't know that.
--from Tattoos That Come to Life

"At least the neighbors will be quiet," the realtor said, gesturing over the fence to the overgrown old cemetery fifty feet from the back door.
--from Unquiet Neighbors. This one and Ghost of a Chance both sprang from the same premise, actually.

I thought my life couldn't get any weirder--until a crossbow bolt transfixed my chest in broad daylight in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.
--from Weird Life. No, I have no idea where that one was going either.

Oh, God. I have enough just there to keep me busy writing for the next year. A couple of those were over five thousand words in before they sputtered to a stop.

Dear Every TV Cop Show Ever:

Small planes, such as Cessna 177s and 310s? Do not have a "black box." Or any kind of flight data recorder. Hawaii Five-0 and Elementary, specifically, I am looking at you. I was geeking out when Sherlock was differentiating between the sand on the beach and the sand he found (because the canon Holmes knew all the dirt in London and it was a lovely shout-out), and then you had to go and ruin it by having a small plane have a "black box." Props for having it the correct color (the black box is actually orange), but that kind of plane doesn't have one.

Also, five minutes on Google would have revealed that the cargo hold in that particular plane is not in the damn belly of the thing. Or, you know, you could have made a phone call. It's not that hard to get this stuff right.

Research, people. You're getting paid for this shit?

Sincerely,
agilebrit, who is married to a pilot and who actually owns a Cardinal RG