Worries and Wonders
I was awakened very early, by my current schedule, to pay the oil delivery guy.
And then, well, I was awake. And yesterday's mail told me that my unemployment payment this week was partial, which probably means I've reached the end of the extended payments. I'm hoping that the extra extension is in effect already, otherwise I don't know what I'll do for money when the small amount I've been able to keep set aside from my tax return this year is gone. Anyone want to commission me for anything, now's your chance!!!
Being awake, and assuming that the unemployment office is closed until next year, I set to working on something that I can do, and got about 2000 words in on the Grandmother Marie story, bringing it nearly to 2900 words. It's somewhere in the vicinity of half done now; I wanted to finish the first draft today, but eventually the fact that I hadn't gotten my 8 hours sleep set my eyelids drifting downward, and I returned to bed. I've got to figure out a real title for that story!
Now my bath is running, I entered the SF Reader short story contest, and I'm packing stuff so I can draw icons as thank-yous for the donors who've supported me the most in cash and comments this year at the New Year's party at Lytheria.
And then I dropped in to the creators' forums at Torn World and noticed there's banners to use for Torn World -- it's opening VERY soon now, in 2010. But 2010 is now just hours away! I'm not sure exactly when Ellen will declare it officially open, it could be as early as Midnight in whatever Alaska time zone Ellen lives in, but here's the site: http://www.tornworld.net Check it out!!!
There is already some public content on the site, and there will be more--fiction, poetry, and artwork. And there will be significantly more content for subscribers, as well as a system of credits so you can vote with your cash to let us know which pieces you like best. You will also be able to adopt characters, and to contact writers and artists to commission stories or artwork about them, if you don't want to write a story yourself--and your character will be able, in the stories, to interact with other characters in the Torn World. I'm very excited to see how this will all work in practice!!! There's a system to have stories approved as "canon", or officially part of the Torn World, which includes checking with the owners of any character in a story, so if you own a character, no one can marry them off (for instance) without your approval.
ellenmillion has been working hard to get the site ready, and the other creators have been beta-testing things for months, so we're all excited to be welcoming new people there!