03-28-05 @ 9:27 am EST

Blah! I don't feel like typing up that history entry just yet but I have to come up with something to run that stupid bitchy entry out of the most recent place. >_< I never have anything worth writing about in here anymore.

Cripes, and now I'm just sitting here, staring at the screen typing nothing. *sigh*

Well, as for WHY I don't feel like nor have the time to type up that history entry, I wasted all morning reformatting Chapter 4 of Wood's Historic Mackinac for posting to an LJ I created a while back to host out-of-copyright books. I don't have the space on my Powow site to post them so they go there. I wish to EVENTUALLY post all these Mackinac Island texts online so people like me can have easy access to them. It took me ages to find the ones I did, and there's still at least one, maybe more, that I need. Can't find it online though. :/ Did see a copy on sale at eBay once, but it cost too much. I see copies--both paper ones, and CD page-scan copies (probably ripped from the sites I myself used!)--at eBay all the time. Too bad those people paying for them probably aren't aware they can access them for free if they would just look. (People making money off of selling CD copies of what's available online for free should be slapped. I hate that they do that. Sellers of hardcopy texts are one thing--some people prefer hardcopies--but sellers of what you can get for FREE? Pathetic.)

My webhost will probably yank their free webhosting long before I make much progress, though. _-_ Wish I could afford a site of my own. A BUNCH of sites. I hate relying on webhosts that could restrict the available space or disappear without notice at any moment. And my Powow site is getting crowded already. That's the one site of mine that people actually LIKE. For it to disappear would be sad.

Still working on RTMI and TAC, of course, though the former keeps getting me stuck. EVERY single time I get to an exciting point I've been wanting to reach, I hit a brick wall immediately afterward. :/ I hope this story eventually ties together because the truth is I'm writing the damn thing as I go along, and with a lot of it, I honestly have no clue where it's going. SOME of the things that I had no idea how to resolve earlier are falling into place, but other things are still mystifying me. In short, I'm just as lost as Charmian is! >_<

TAC, since it's still in rewrites, doesn't offer so much brick walls as just dragging along. I already rewrote the scene with Fe'kheru and Meteri so now I'm bored because I want to spend more time with THEM but they don't return until Part 44, I think. -_- I'm bored of the Great Red Tribe!! Anyone reading it is probably wondering where the hell Ameni and Thi'usa have gone...they do show up again...but not nearly as much as before...the story should just be called the Djuta Chronicles now...or something. I do try to bring Ameni back into it later on (first in an as-yet faltering subplot with a female Moru, then in a subplot involving Taka and a blacksmith...cripes, don't get me started, I'll never shut up), but seeing as that's MUCH later, I have no idea how it will go. This series started out as me exploring relations between two different races and ended up being just me drooling all over the Apsiu; get rid of the damn humans, they're boring. :P

I did mull a bit over another interesting future subplot (I use the term loosely--by then, "subplot" could be MAIN plot!) involving the Free Apsiu...there is a female one named Patet, and Meteri...cripes, I have to shut up or I'll give everything away!! I have so many ideas for that thing, yet no coherent order for them, and who knows if they'll ever turn up. >_<

That's one thing that has me worried. It's taken two years so far to reach the Part 42 rewrite, but still, that's only...however many chapters up to Part 65 left. A little over twenty. And the plot is already pretty developed in the later chapters so the rewriting MIGHT not take as long. (Unsure about that.) After the rewrite of Part 65, the story is bound to go a LOT more slowly, as I'll be coming up with it as I go along, not redoing what's already done. And I know from unhappy experience that once you slow down, people lose interest, and stop reading. :( The hits to the main folder have already dropped somewhat; when I finish the rewrite and get into the new chapters, will I completely lose every reader I have? Only one regularly comments and it's the people who actually comment on my writing who keep me wanting to write in the first place. I hate seeming so selfish, but it is. At the moment it's not so bad with TAC since it continues to draw in hits that my other writing does not, but should there cease being any comments for it whatsoever, I would probably feel the same way about it as I did about RTMI not that long ago (and probably will again...I appreciate the five or six other people who so far said they were reading, but I REALLY wish they would comment more than once! -_- ). It wouldn't matter how many hits the thing gets if I have no idea whether anyone's actually reading it anymore.

That was the main reason I created the updates page--my very first commenting reader followed me to Writing.com from Fanfiction.net, back when FFN allowed adult material and back before technical errors forced me to stop updating there and tech support never, NEVER, EVER bothered even RESPONDING to my requests for help (FFN and spinoff FictionPress suck!--because of them I can no longer post my longer works there, so I refuse to post my shorter ones!--boycott them!). That reader really enjoyed the story...but as soon as it took me more than a few weeks to work on one chapter...she simply disappeared and never came back. I don't know, I understand getting pissed off with a writer who never updates their work...I've fallen prey to that plenty of times myself. I think you shouldn't start something unless you have enough dedication to really try to make your way through it. (Yah, I'm one to talk.) But this was only a month or a month and a half, and she never returned. Do readers have an idea how long it can take to write things? :/ I posted the newest chapter and she never saw it because the story was not good enough to have her come back again...*sigh*

So, I created the updates page to let anyone like that know that yes, I WAS still working on the thing and had not just given it up like far too many writers seem to do. (The FOUR online stories I used to follow diligently, and had hoped the writers of would stop by to look at MY writing, which they never did?...each of them petered out...the two offsite ones stopped updating, and the two onsite ones just deleted themselves without word and I have no clue where they went. Kind of put a damper on me wanting to read anything else unfinished!) Just so they would know that I hoped not to end up so fickle. I do still worry that when an update takes a while in coming, and there is nothing new for me to post to the updates page, that people will still lose interest...but at least people are checking it out. I guess if I ever get a really MAJOR hangup I'll say so on there.

Truthfully, though, I do not know if this series will ever reach an end. I do not know if I will ever finish it, nor even how much longer, rewrite included, I can keep it going. I was not sure about the fate of Manitou Island while I worked on that, and I'm not sure about the fate of RTMI, and I'm REALLY not sure about the fate of any future projects. For all I know I could get hugely bored or stuck and have to just stop work on them completely...witness Osiris, which I actually have all the plot for written down (SOMEWHERE!), and The Trench Rats, which I only just last night thought to put a notice on, saying it has been put on hiatus. Good thing nobody showed much interest in that serial because I don't have much interest in continuing it! It'll probably be one of the first to go if I ever have to delete some of my statics (which I might if this damn RTMI never frigging ENDS!!).

I just saved this entry offline and called it "skewduh," just because I have no idea what this entry is even really about. Ugh.

*distracting myself with a game of Tile Fall again*

Blah, I'm sucking today. :/

I keep wanting to also briefly mention the most recent CD I got. I have a bad habit of picking up CDs at Wal-Mart just because I like one song by the artist and so assume the rest must be as good (Hoobastank), or because the cover looks really neat and interesting (Keiko Matsui), or because it's an instrumental soundtrack and I like the work of people like Hans Zimmer and Mark Mancina and so I hope this soundtrack will be just as good (Two Brothers). I should really stop doing this because of course I usually end up disappointed, and with another CD on my shelf which I will barely, if ever, listen to. >:/ Well, I resolved never to get a CD on the spot again, and to try to listen to music samples at Amazon first if available (saved money not buying Donny Osmond's latest that way), though even that isn't failsafe. I saw an odd-looking CD there a couple of weeks ago though and agonized over it and it finally suckered me into buying it. Damn colorful interesting jacket art!!

Does Writing.com allow Amazon image links? I guess I'll find out...

ASIN: B0002VYQDO Le Best Of Product Type: Music List Price: $16.98 Amazon's Price: $16.98 [Buy Now!]

Well anyway, seeing as I'm writing this mostly offline and will not know until I go online...up there you will either see just a link, or an image link, of what I bought. It's Cirque Du Soleil's Le Best Of, and I bought it just because it was by something as weirdly exotic as Cirque Du Soleil, and because of the pretty people on the cover. (The lady in blue, on the right, really sold me. For some bizarre reason she makes me think of Sooleawa Chepi from my Manitou Island stories.) I grumbled to myself all the way home, just knowing it would totally suck. I didn't even know Cirque Du Soleil HAD music albums. Shows how much I know.

Well, I waited until late that night to reluctantly put it in and listen to it on very low volume because I feel like the entire WORLD can see and hear me when I'm utterly disappointed. The first track, "Egypte," was rather odd but not so bad. I listened to the whole thing and it was not a wonderfully fantastic album like it could have been, especially considering the pretty blue lady on the cover, but still, it does have THREE songs on it that I really like. Yes, three...not so many as I would have hoped...but they're really cool songs. Those are "Alegria," "Reveil," and "Vocea." (I know, they all have accents in them, but I don't feel like dragging out Character Map so blah.)

"Alegria" is sung by this woman named Francesca Gagnon. I thought everything on the album would be in French but in fact I don't think ANY of it is in French. Too bad! This song would be totally AWESOME for a Manitou Island soundtrack. Gagnon has a very odd distinctive voice and really gets into her singing--it sounds like she could bite somebody's head off while singing. I mean that in the nicest possible way. It's rather too bad this was the second song on the CD because after that, I had really high hopes that the rest would be as utterly fantastic as "Alegria," but it isn't. *le sigh* But I guess the CD was worth it for this song alone. I thought it was in Spanish, but I looked up the lyrics and they look like Italian. But then I REALLY looked at the lyrics last night and they look like they're all Italian except the last stanza, which looks...Spanish! So, I really have no clue. It's foreign, at least. O_o

This song has GORGEOUS orchestration (don't let the slightly plodding synthesizer-like beginning fool you) and better yet, it has--LOTS OF PEOPLE SINGING! :D Just a slew of them! It's such a BIG HUGE-sounding song that it seems like it's from a soundtrack (well, I guess technically, it is--it's from Cirque Du Soleil's Alegria), and I was so impressed that I went to Amazon to listen to samples of their other albums...only found samples for Alegria and one other one...and what a letdown! The rest of the album sounds like...polka, or...circus music, or something. -_- Even Gagnon couldn't save that. Maybe someday I'll look into it further, but not now. *sigh*

Well, "Reveil" is mostly instrumental, and in a big way that it too sounds like it would be at home on a Disney soundtrack. (I too mean that in a good way. A Hans Zimmer/Mark Mancina (with Phil Collins!) good way!) "Vocea" took a moment to grow on me, but it finally did. It's very menacing sounding, and in some kind of weird...Baltic language, or something...but it's got this eerie thudding beat, like an ominous march, and these equally ominous backup vocals...they keep singing "Na preva halimhiero" over and over...no idea what the song is even about. From all I could learn of the...performance, or whatever, that this is from, Varekai, it's something about a winged boy falling to Earth and falling in love with a caterpillar girl... O_o ...I couldn't find info on what any of the other albums are about. Hm. How woefully little I truly know of Cirque Du Soleil. Isn't it fun and difficult to type Cirque Du Soleil? Anyway, it too is a good song, despite the strange indecipherable lyrics, and I could completely imagine Charmian leading an army of evil mitchi manitous and wabanos off to battle against Megissogwun to this one. *cough* What was that? Nothing. Never mind.

So...buy Le Best Of Cirque Du Soleil, just for "Alegria," "Reveil," and "Vocea," and like or dislike the rest of it as you wish.