Stuff I Don't Write

That's Moochy Sheep there, a permanent fixture on DH's desk since Easter, and she wears his glasses when he isn't. She's looking particularly intellectual here, and yes, that is Dr Who in the frame behind her.

Why Dr Who? Am I a fan? Nope. DH is. Said frame contains a "Perfect 10" collage I made for him a couple of holidays back. The reason the doctor is making an appearance today is that yesterday, I unearthed an old story originally serialized in the dearly missed First Light years ago.

Before I found my home in historical romance (where, truth be told, I knew it would be all along, ) I dabbled in other formats but nothing else ever felt right. This does mean there are a lot of will-n0t-be-finished things lying about, and that's a good thing. I needed all of those baby steps to get to where I am, where I do believe I've hit my stride.

"The Confessions of Catherine Braizel" is more than anything else, a character study. Cath is a soldier at some unspecified time and place in the future, currently working as a customs inspector at an offworld station after being pulled off the front lines of war following an incident she relates to the company mental health official in a series of stream of consciousness sessions.

I found the printout, forty-nine pages long, while looking for printouts of another old project (this one historical) and now the question of what to do with it remains. SF is absolutely not my genre, so this piece is an oddity. I like Cath, her forthrightness and the way she acknowledges and works through the rough parts of life, traits my historical and time travel heroines exhibit as well. As for the incident that got Cath pulled from the front, that might turn up in a future historical as well, though it would probably go to the hero....unless I have a heroine disguised as male and infiltrating the military that way.

For right now, my plate is beyond full, as in the 'curl into a fetal position under the desk for fifteen minutes, clutching a teddy bear and muttering something about deadlines, then put on big girl panties and go back to work' sort of way. New ideas and new/old ideas are going to have to wait. At the moment, I'm making sure that my people have successfully crossed plague-ravaged England, travelled through time from sixteenth century Scotland to modern NYC and back again, in addition to fleshing out a Georgian house party where a man with no self meets his match in an independently wealthy widow until the past catches up with them both.

All the while still looking for the notebooks that have my Edwardian heroine investigating the light in the library window of an abandoned house. Hopefully I have some of that printed out, but if not, there's more retyping in my future. If anybody needs me, I'll be under the desk. Oh, and could somebody be a dear and hand me Moochy? Teddy bear is on break.