Progress September 2020

At this time last year, my target was to publish The Long Dark about now. I was coming to the end of a detailed critique cycle and I figured it would take a few months to process the feedback, revise, and complete all the finishing touches for publication.

It ended up not being quite as straightforward as I'd imagined. There were some common comments on a few areas, and I went out to a couple more beta readers after a serious round of edits to see if I was getting close. Now I'm working through those story lines again on what I think will be my final round of edits before detailed proof-reading.

While the story was out with beta readers, I've been working on cover art. Again, this has ended up taking longer than I'd originally intended. You can see regular progress posted her all the way back to May.

One part of the artwork was bugging me, though. The sun wasn't right. It's meant to be a red giant, which will be huge in the sky but nowhere near as bright as our sun. I started off emphasizing the redness, but I've never been really happy with it and never figured out why.  

 

Then – a silver lining to all the smoke in the sky the last two weeks – I was looking up at the sun on my way into work and realized I've been trying to show Big Red as a sphere. I decided that was a mistake, and the disc would likely appear a lot flatter, like our sun at sunset or through a smoke haze.

I'm not quite there yet, but getting close. 

 

All told, I do feel like I'm now in the final stretch, and still aiming to publish before the end of the year.

As if 2020 isn't crazy enough already ...

On top of all the 2020 craziness, the west coast is ravaged by wildfires.

Obviously I'd seen the reports from California, but hadn't realized how close to home the trouble extended. Until Tuesday morning, when we woke up to smoke-filled air drifting from across the border.

Air quality here has been poor all week. Here is the view from my deck this morning. You can see the haze obscuring nearby trees, and the row in the distance – only half a mile away – is almost invisible. 

 

Fires extend all the way through California, Oregon, and Washington state.

Ironically, it was only a week ago that Ali and I were commenting how lucky BC has been this summer. When we went on vacation, campfires were still allowed at the end of August, something we've never seen in all the years we've been here. After several record-breaking years of wildfires, this summer has been damp and cool, so we haven't had to deal with mass evacuations on top of the pandemic.

Not so down south!

Wherever you are, I hope you're keeping safe this crazy year.

Last gasp of summer

So, we're now into September. Since moving to BC, I've always reckoned on Labour Day marking the end of summer. Yes, we may still get warm spells for a few weeks yet, but as soon as the sun disappears it feels autumnal. Darker mornings and evenings, cooler air.

In the last week, Ali and I took another trip up-Island. We enjoyed our week in a cabin back in July, and decided to do it again to round off the summer. It was just the two of us this time (plus dogs) which made a nice change. The week started off a bit crappy, with a two-hour hold-up on the highway due to a serious accident earlier on in the day, followed by a day of rain, but things improved throughout the week. Overall, we had a good time doing nothing much in particular.

Now it's a long weekend before we all get back to the grindstone.

There is a lot of confusion and anxiety about the upcoming school year.

At Ali's school there is supposed to be distancing and other health measures in place, including some remote learning. But from the information available, it looks like all students will be on site for a large chunk of the time which seems to make a mockery of the need for remote learning. If on-site is good enough for half the day, why not the whole day? And the class sizes are too large to allow effective separation.

Matthew will resume college studies, and it looks like most of the learning will be remote other than essential lab work. Again, questions of practicality rear their heads if an on-campus block is followed by remote work where the students are supposed to be off site.

Maybe things will become clear in the coming week, or maybe it will be a gong show. Who knows?

COVID stress

The pandemic is still with us, obviously. March seems like a long time ago, let alone the blissful ignorance of January when it all sounded like a distant problem being faced by people half-way around the world.

Back then, it felt like the world was being turned on its head by the evolving spread of the disease, and the ever-changing advice as new facts emerged. Precautions appeared at first unthinkable, then laughable, then became incorporated into everyday life.

Now we are settled in for the long haul. Who knows when a vaccine will be available, or how effective it will be? Meanwhile, the world has to keep turning and we continue living our lives as best we can. Masks, distancing, and other changes in how we live and work have become an accepted part of life.

But, underlying all the more obvious disruptions and anxieties, I've noticed a more subtle source of stress. It's not something I've heard people talk about, because most people I know work from home most of the time, and this stress is most noticeable in the office.

Social distancing means deliberately and consciously keeping your distance from other people. That requires constant awareness, and active avoidance behaviors. That is not normal behavior for a social animal. In fact, it goes fundamentally against our very nature.

Intellectually, I understand the reasoning. Heck, I'm doing exactly the same to my co-workers – keeping distance, backing off if I see someone coming the other way in a narrow hallway. But on the receiving end, it feels like being shunned, rejected, cast out from society.

Casting people out is a harsh and cruel punishment practiced by societies since time immemorial. It hurts.

Of course, this isn't punishment, it's precaution. But knowing that there's a good reason, that it's not about you, doesn't lessen the hurt. When intellect conflicts with gut feeling, intellect loses. I don't know what the answer is here, but it doesn't feel like something I can just “deal with” or get used to.

WeWriWa - The Long Dark

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image. 

 

This snippet concludes the opening chapter from The Long Dark. Anna drives a massive surface vehicle and is aiming to retrieve a hard-to-reach navigation beacon before winter closes in. A sudden sound startles her. The last snippet ended: Home and safety, a crawler driver always looked to their rig first when danger threatened. 

 

=====

A faded echo rolled over her like distant thunder. Anna scanned the horizon. Her scalp crawled. There’d been no signs of a storm, and the landscape around her seemed placid, unmoving. Besides, that didn’t sound like it came from the depths. She squinted skywards. 

A vapor trail traced a fast-moving line across the coppery sky and cast an ethereal shadow on the skim of cirrus that muted Big Red’s shine. Anna puzzled for a moment, and released a pent-up breath. Dangerous time of year for craft to be chancing a landing. 

She sighed and shrugged, not her problem, and turned her attention back to securing the beacon.

=====

Hopefully this ties together Anna's scenes with Jennifer's. 

After three months' sporadic work, cover art is now down to finishing touches.

 

WeWriWa - The Long Dark

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image.

 

Continuing the opening from The Long Dark in Anna's point of view. Anna is driving a massive surface vehicle and is aiming to retrieve a hard-to-reach navigation beacon before winter closes in. 

 

=====

Up another hanging ladder, Anna mounted a slender catwalk suspended below the front of the cab. She selected a lightweight cable from the row of drums above her head and released the drum’s clutch. 

Once more on the ground, she fastened the dollies a few meters back from the end of the cable, then clipped herself on for safety. With the end of the line slung over one shoulder, and a sounding pole in her free hand, she tested the surface ahead as she trudged away, sinking ankle-deep with each step. 

Despite the late season wind keening around her, sweat slicked the edge of her mask by the time Anna slogged her way to the beacon. 

She slackened off the beacon’s guy lines and carefully lowered the heavy three-meter pole to the ground, slipping the axle of a dolly beneath each end. 

A sharp crack followed by a muted rumble startled her. She glanced instinctively back to the crawler, calming her heartbeat when she reassured herself it was okay. Bright yellow boxes slung between silvery mesh wheels looked like a row of old-fashioned stagecoaches, except those ancient carriages were never built four decks tall. Home and safety, a crawler driver always looked to their rig first when danger threatened.

=====

Back to cover art, and progress at last. That last unit and wheel peeping in from the edge of the page is done. From now on, progress will be less obvious as it's down to details.

 

WeWriWa - The Long Dark

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image. 

 

 

Continuing the opening from The Long Dark. Although it's been drawn out in time by the weekly snippets, the chapter as a whole is quite short. To conclude the chapter, we switch back to Anna's point of view. Anna is driving a massive surface vehicle and is aiming to retrieve a hard-to-reach navigation beacon before winter closes in.

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Unhurried, Anna reviewed the crawler’s controls, checking the giant vehicle was safely immobilized. She grabbed her mask from a hook on the back of her seat, and pulled it over her head as she descended a narrow stairway to the cramped equipment bay beneath the drive deck. She paused to settle the mask properly in place and pull a strand of hair out from under the edge seal, then she hauled a pair of two-wheeled dollies and a tool belt from the neatly-stacked storage racks. 

Through the crawler cab’s lower airlock, Anna climbed a ladder to the ground. Hints of over-ripe fruit in the air reminded her that the mask’s filters would need cleaning when she reached home. Her unfastened jacket flapped around her thighs in fitful squalls. She ignored an icy chill working its way around her waist through gaps in her clothing, and lowered the dollies to the ground. 

She knelt and pulled off a glove to test the plant’s surface. Tight-knit matting and whorls of stringy fibers yielded to her touch. They felt dry, scratchy, but still held firm when she tugged on a handful.

=====

And (making use of the new rules) this scene continues ...  

Seasonal changes were coming on fast, but maybe she’d arrived in time in this case. She suppressed a shiver of unease as she peered at the ground between her and the beacon. She had a job to do.

=====

That big heap of firewood you saw last week is almost all gone, but it's been unusually hard work this year. Some years we get lucky, and most of it is the right size for our stove. It just needs to be barrowed around to the carport and stacked neatly ready for the winter. 

This year, probably around 80% of it was in chunks that needed splitting down a bit. To make things harder, this load is mostly maple and is very dense. Some pieces split easily, but some put up a fight. And there's a small-ish pile left that we couldn't touch with the axe, so today we're renting a log splitter for the day to tackle those last bits.