Posted 2:42 PM by Tim
Dan sat heavily on the worn steps of his porch. He sighed and put his head into his hand, half to hold it up and half to block out the sounds of his wife in the house who was still screeching at him. He was no longer listening to her, but he probably could not have made out the words if he tried. He had left her in the kitchen, and he was now on the front porch. Still, the noise of her yelling carried through the hallway and entrance, out the screen door and onto the street.

He wondered, briefly, if the neighbours would call the police again. He hoped not. His thinking was broken by the sound of the screen door banging shut against it's frame. He looked up at the sound, and saw his best friend Bill. Bill and his wife, Angela, had been invited to a backyard barbeque with him and his wife, Melody. Bill carried a foursome of chilled beers in his hands. Two of them were being offered. Dan took them both as Bill sat on the steps next to him.

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Bill opened one of his beers with a quick wrist action he had learned in college that not only opened the bottle, but also sent the cap flying away onto the lawn. Dan followed suit, twisting the top of the bottle without any sort of flair. He looked at the cap, bent it between his thumb and forefinger and flicked it into the grass angrily.

He took a long pull on his bottle and noticed that his wife had stopped yelling. At least, she had stopped being loud enough to hear from the front yard. A momentary thought passed about how it would look to police responding to a domestic disturbance call if he had alcohol on his breath. He washed the thought away with another long drink. He he was going to be dammned, he might as well be dammed for a reason, he thought.

"Propane," he said at last, breaking the silence of the yard. Bill, who had been taking a drink of his own beer stopped and looked at him. "We ran out of propane. I forgot to take the tank to the store to fill it." Dan risked a look back at the house. "That's what this is all about," he said, taking another drink, "or at least, why this one started." Bill nodded, but said nothing.

"It's been getting worse between us," Dan said angrily. "Melody and me. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the bills, or the new job," he paused for a few seconds then continued, "or the fact that we haven't had sex in months. Maybe it's all of it. Maybe it's nothing. Whatever it is, it's destroying my marriage." Bill took a drink.

"We're fighting all the time now. Hardly say a word to each other if we're not yelling it. I guess this is what they mean by 'good times and bad.' What I wanna know is: Where did the good times go?" He looked at Bill, half expecting him to say something, but knowing that he wouldn't.

"I know that the passion is supposed to come out of a relationship, but this is extreme." Dan took another long drink from his beer. "I can't keep going on like this. I can't keep coming home to anger and arguing. I just can't." Bill finished his beer, put the empty bottle down and opened it the same way he had the first.

"You've got to look for the good things," Bill said in his low voice before taking a drink from the full bottle. "It's not always easy to find them. Sometimes you have to look hard. If there's anything good there, you'll find it." Dan thought. What was good about his relationship with Melody. Had there been anything good lately? Anything at all?

"I don't know, man," said Dan, "there's some good things. Melody still does some things for me. Little things, like putting my paper on the table, or putting a glass of water on my side of the bed at night."

"Those are good things," Bill said simply.

"But they're so little. They don't take any effort. It's all just routine."

"You're wrong," said Bill, "Little things might not take a lot of effort, but they do take effort. The world may seem like it is made of big things and little things, but that's not true. The big things are made of little things. Everything is made from the little things. It's the little things that really matter. If you want to make your relationship better, start with the little things first. The big things take care of themselves."

Posted 2:57 PM by Tim
Goodness. I hadn't realized that the last entry was so... weird. And it's been up so long. Time to put something else here. At least drive that off the top of the page anyway. I've had so many ideas for stories that I don't get a chance to write them all down. I haven't got time to write anything today either, so I'm just going to put up a short list of the kinds of ideas that I've got milling around.

For NaNoWriMo, I've got the short list paired down to either: a "superhero" story about a bunch of teenagers fighting against deamons and a cult; or a story set in the post-apocalypse about a guy just trying to stay alive; or a story about an android trying to find his way in the world. The first one is the one I'm leaning towards. I've got at least a semblance of a plot for it, and I've worked out some of the characters already. More or less anyway. Trouble is, I've written things about it already, probably in this blog somewhere. I'll probably not end up using those pieces though, so I figure I'm still following the intent of NaNoWriMo - which is to write. The other two stories I see as being in the same world. Post apocalyptic. I could even see a way of joining the two of them together. But there's a lot of fuzziness in there, and I'm not sure if the stories there stan on their own well enough, or if they'd make any sort of sense together. I could see it being confusing to the reader.

Yesterday I had a though about a Vampire story. I'd like to try to stay out of the hair of the other vampire writers, especially White-Wolf and their publishing companies. The Vampire story I'm really liking becuse I can set it in today, and still keep it reasonably distanced from anything and anyone that I know personally. I've been toying with the idea of just writing it up now, and seeing where it goes. I might do that anyway.

Also, just as a bit of a look into the way I've been thinking, I've been toying with the idea of writing a trilogy. It seems that what's getting published now are long term stories. Books that have characters that have lots of things that can happen to them. Just look at the 3, 4, 5 and longer series of books being published in the Sci-Fi area of your bookstore. I think it makes sense for the publisher to pick up an author who can show that they've got plans for 3 or more books about well-thought-out and developed characters. That's continuing revenue for them. I mean, just look at Harry Potter. The first book suggests that it's at least a 7-book series (one book per year of school). That's a lot of books. Not to mention possible spin-off characters from those books, etc. Particularily in the case of Harry Potter, there's been several smaller books which are only tangental to the series (like the Quidditch books and such), not to mention other merchandise.

Anyway, that's what's been on the brain lately.