Tag: nanowrimo2021

A New Chapter in my Attempt to Dictate Entries

Well, I have finally given up and signed up for a for pay software dictation software.

None of the free software I’ve tried was a damn bit of good, so I downloaded Dragon Anywhere.

Hopefully, this will be a worthwhile thing. I have just signed up for a one week free trial, just to see if this is any good.

Next up, is to see if the wireless headset I use works.

Now that I have this new set up, I up completely out of ideas about what to write about. Hopefully this writer’s block will end soon.

Next question is whether I can transfer this over to WordPress.

Apparently the wireless headset does not work because when I do not have the phone to my mouth it only picks up a few words. Good to know. Now the next question. Can I walk with this? So far I’ve made it about half a block from my house and it’s still working. It’s night, and I’m looking around looking over the phone to be able to see what I’m doing.

Theoretically, I should be able to use the wireless headset. But it isn’t working for some reason. I mean, if you can make phone calls on it, shouldn’t you be able to dictate with it? I will have to futz around with it to see what’s going on with that.

I found a button that claims to copy everything to the clipboard. I am not sure if it’s going to take everything, and I don’t know if it’s going to put everything in the other paragraphs in the correct order, but let’s give it a try. No, I realized that I need to download the WordPress app to my phone so that I can just copy and paste.

There is a pair of ladies walking along behind me talking and I don’t know if this is going to pick up what they’re saying or not I think it might be this could be an issue.

They continued to go straight and I just turned that he will be okay if. If this is able to pick up other conversations, that may be an issue on some of my walks, because I do like to walk, like, on the Riverwalk where there are usually a lot of people.

I just installed WordPress on my phone, and my phone says I’m out of memory. So, it looks like I’m going to be cleaning up the memory of my phone for a while. Wish me luck.

I did it! I’m editing this post on my desktop computer after moving it from Dragon to the WordPress app.

I’m Nervous About the Upcoming Wheel of Time Series

What follows are some mild spoilers (should be mild spoilers) for the early books of the Wheel of Time series. I’m avoiding one major one that I’ll be going into in more depth later, because dammit.

Specifically this article, which says that the series won’t introduce characters and then have them disappear to bring them back later. Our initial group is Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Moiraine, Lan, and Thom.

Rand, Mat, Perrin, and Egwene grew up together in the town of Emond’s Field. Rand, Mat, and Perrin are almost exactly all the same age and Egwene is two years younger, but everyone in town expects her to marry Rand.

At some point, Thom disappears and then returns later. They’re going to circumvent this by having Thom not show up at all until “later.” Does this mean that the plot point where Thom disappears won’t happen at all?

Will Rand just . . . have a flute? Thom’s flute shows up a lot. Mat and Rand get free room and board at a number of inns thanks to Thom’s flute.

Alanna (rant deleted) is supposed to be a major player from early in the series even though she doesn’t (spoiler deleted) until the sixth book in the series.

Welp. There’s nothing I can do is watch the show and see how they work it all. out.

Reading Creep

Book creep?

It seems like there should be a term for how you can accumulate books in progress. I started out with a reasonable number of books — a hard copy book, an ebook, and an audiobook.

Now, suddenly, I have, like seven books in progress — three ebooks, three hard copy books, and an audiobook.

I’m going to have to scale back a bit.

The audiobook is the second Wheel of Time book, so that one is staying.

My three ebooks are Run, the third book in the Fearless series; The Deceivers, the second book in the Greystone Secrets series; and The Winterbourne Home for Mayhem and Mystery, the second book in the Winterbourne Home for Valor and Vengeance series.

I think I’m going to knuckle down and finish Run, then I don’t know. I actually have the Greystone Secrets one on my old phone and the Winterbourne Home one on my new phone, and I’m kind of tempted to leave it that way. That’ll leave me with two ebooks.

My four hard copy books are Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession, by Erma Bombeck; Cash in a Flash, by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen; and Eyewitness to History, by John Carey. I also have been working my way through the Young Wizards series and I’m kind of eager to get to my reread of Wizards at War and I have a copy of The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik that I’ve been holding off on because I’m really worried that it won’t be as good as I hope it is.

I may have the Bombeck one done tonight or tomorrow. I’m rereading Cash in a Flash because it’s the book that got me book blogging in the first place, and I’m hoping to find a way to monetize this blog besides just the Germane/Gratuitous Amazon Link thing. So I guess I’m jettisoning Eyewitness to History for the time being.

Well, five books isn’t three books, but it’s not seven books, either.

Book Casting

I don’t know why this is, but my brain casts characters in books without my actual input. Subconsciously, as it were.

Since we’re just a 17 days from seeing the characters of the Wheel of Time as actors, I thought I’d talk some about the actors that my brain has put in the roles.

Not unfitting, given my early young adult fixation on Classic Doctor Who, a lot of the characters turn up as actors who were in Classic Doctor Who episodes.

Hey! I just figured out that there’s a way to stick a table in a WordPress blog. W00t!

Unfortunately I cannot find any good pictures of the actors in question that gives photographer credits so we’re just going to name names and y’all can look up the actors if you don’t know who I’m talking about.

Starting from the beginning of the series, the actor that my brain first latched onto and said, “this one” was Mummy-era Brendan Fraser for Perrin (which means that, yes, Perrin’s eventual wife is Rachel Weisz, and no, I didn’t have to force my brain to that decision — my brain went “These two are going to end up together. Have some Rachel Weisz and I was, like, “Don’t mind if I do.”

Moiraine is Mira Furlan, who played De’Lenn on Babylon 5.

Min is Carole Ann Ford, who played Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, in the first season of Doctor Who, as she appeared when she was on Doctor Who. Another Doctor Who actor, this one was only in one episode, but explain that to my subconscious, Hilary Ryan, who played Rodan in the Tom Baker episode The Invasion of Time, is Nynaeve. I don’t know. I just work here.

And it goes on like this for some time. Elayne, Galad, Morgase, . . . . A lot of characters are as yet uncast in my brain. Strangely, that includes Rand and Mat. I’m one of those who sees the events of the book in my head, but my brain kind of puts an NPC with the physical description of those characters in their place.

After playing around with Doctor Who episodes on Amazon, my Germane Amazon Link ended up being The Mummy. Why do they not have the season boxed sets for DVD that they have for Blu-Ray?

Young Wizards Characters: Harry Callahan

When I (a) ran out of travel money and (b) was unable to travel due to COVID and decided to retreat into book blogging, one of the things I thought I’d do was write a bit about the characters of the books that I’ve read. I figured I’d do deep dives into protagonists and antagonists and things. I never imagined that my first character post would be about Nita and Dairine’s dad, of all things.

Additionally, I’m writing this at 2 am because my stomach hurts and I’m having trouble sleeping.

What follows will have spoilers for any/all of the Young Wizards books up to and including Games Wizards Play, but not for any of the short stories, novelettes, etc., or the New Millennium Editions. Turn back here, all who haven’t read all of the books in question and don’t want to be spoiled.

I’m currently rereading Wizards Holiday, which is one of my favorite books in the Young Wizards series. And one thought led to another, and here I am.

In one of the future books, I think it might be Wizards at War, but I might be misremembering, Roshaun says something to Dairine about how she . . . acts like a Wellakhite or something and that maybe she was born on the wrong planet.

I think that Roshaun is mistaken. I think that her father, Harry, was born on the wrong planet. It’s pretty clear by now that Harry was supposed to be, like, Nelaid (Roshaun’s father)’s brother or nephew or cousin or something, but the fact that the Wellakhite people assassinate member of their royal family led to the line he was supposed to have been born into ending before he could be born.

Would that have made Dairine a distant enough relative to make her a prospective queen of Wellakh? Or close enough that she and Roshaun would’ve been BFFs or what? I don’t know.

I originally thought that maybe Harry was a wizard. I mean, he could see the characters of the Speech, which non-wizards aren’t supposed to be able to do and Nita and Dairine’s visit to Ireland just in time to save them from the Lone Power was arranged by “North American regional,” whomever that is.

But why would he have acted so skeptical when Kit and Nita came out to him and Betty in Deep Wizardry in that case?

I guess that Harry and Betty’s conversation about sending Nita to Ireland being somehow “North American regional” will either stay a plot hole, or maybe something is explained in one of the stories I haven’t read? Or maybe Duane patched that up in the New Millennium Editions, which I haven’t read yet, either?

Another thing about Harry that hits me pretty hard is that he wasn’t offered the Oath. Once he discovers that Wizardry is a thing, he wishes that he’d been able to be a wizard and Nita thinks that if he’d really wanted to be a wizard he’d be one because there aren’t enough wizards to go around.

And I know that I never would’ve been offered the Oath. My mom had cancer when I was eight and then hid it from me for a couple of years after the danger was all over. This led to several years (including the one when I’d most likely have been offered the Oath) of being terrified of getting cancer. I remember asking my mom for a comprehensive list of all of the parts that can get cancerous so I knew which parts I didn’t have to worry about if they changed. I even panicked when I noticed the join between the two pieces of lower lateral cartilage in my nose.

I can’t help but wonder if something like that happened to Harry.

I Went Downtown Tonight (November 1, 2021)

I sat around all day, working on my reading and writing blog posts (this is my fourth post for today, and will go live on November 5), but not getting any exercise, or any reading on The Eye of the World.

I was so close to having The Eye of the World finished and I figured that a trip from my house to the Pearl and then walking downtown from the Pearl and then reversing the trip should be enough time to finish The Eye of the World and, just maybe, get started on The Great Hunt. And it was, too. Yay!

I was a little nervous a couple of times during my walk, but I mostly enjoyed the walk. I saw a couple of Christmas trees while I was out and about, but mostly it felt like a nice, autumnal evening.

I enjoy taking night photographs in the city because the play of light and shadow is so interesting. During the daytime around here, everything’s so bright. We get an occasional darkly overcast day, which makes photography interesting, but mostly it’s just . . . sunny.

Tonight’s picture of the Alamo. There were people standing in front taking family photos, so I decided to get an angled shot for this one.

Unfortunately, even after all of that walking, I’m still 2,000 steps short and it’s 10:45 at night. Let’s see if I can knock some of that out before bedtime (which is about an hour away).