Mystery vs Sci Fi and Riddle Me

Yes! Finally! I've been waiting a year to hear the magic words: "I've got an idea and I'm fleshing out a map..." Welcome Don! I promise not to push or impose a deadline - but I do have space for publishing your "idea" in April. Just a thought...

This is the 3rd time I've been asked recently "where do you find the time?" Actually, I'm doing the athletic training program - intensive interval training with daily maintenance. (Clear the deck for editing and grading, and do something related to writing or Wormhole every day.) However, this schedule has not allowed me the luxury of writing my own story. All well, another day perhaps. Yes, Don, I know - weeks have passed away, but I do have an outline and a plan!

Bragging rights! All the work has paid off! I'm proud that the result of all the serials Don and I have been editing over this last year have given us 6 books published through Amazon: 2 Anthologies and 4 full length novels! We do have prolific, amazing, imaginative authors and a tech team that is unstoppable! This "writing project" has surpassed what I imagined when I started this 15 months ago. (The In the Beginning episodes will be free through the Wormhole Electric website through the month of December.)

So why sci-fi over mystery? Especially since I love a good mystery? A friend of mine, a mystery writer, complained that he'd made a small detail mistake that was caught by a reader. That, in and of itself is a good thing, but the reader wouldn't let it go! His blog was spammed by the reader - the story goes on, but the point is "detail". In real everyday life, everyone is an expert, and if what you write doesn't jive with the readers' experience and knowledge, you end up spammed.

Syfy is different. Maybe the readership is different - more willing to suspend disbelief - but the story and the world created by the author really is fictitious! Detail is in the mind of the writer. I also think Syfy / fantasy takes my mind away from the every day ferris wheel it gets caught in. And this genre still creates the mystery! That is what the characters are there to solve, but it doesn't have as many limitations and a lot less research. Mind imagining is a freeing exercise for curiosity and solving "what if".

 

(Warning: Soap box tirade) This cartoon caught me eye. I work and teach young adults just beginning to express and unfold their talents, which technologically, are breath taking! But I'm concerned about this up-coming generation. They lack curiosity which boggles me. They want to be "different" so they become carbon copies of their friends. (I vaguely remember my mom complaining about this with my generation.) Sometimes it feels like I'm moving from one pigeon hole to another, trying to get their attention while competing with zombies, vampires, the latest video game or the dramas that are unfolding over their iphones. Breaking them out of the insanity of "This is the only way I'll solve this - even though I've tried it before and it didn't work - but I know it has to work sometime..." is difficult. Sounds a bit like our current Congress. Too bad. They're all missing the thrill of the ride and the grand slam feeling of working well with others and accomplishing great things.

 

 

Okay, Riddle time.

My guesses for Don's riddles are:

garlic and spiders.

 

And here is one back:

Black chrome white

stacks of delight

push my buttons

to apprehend soaring heights of

 confabulations

expressions and observations

What am I?

 

Have a great week folks,

Carolyn