#barnstarring

OMG, you guys. YOU GUYS!!!!!! 

See this nifty octopodal guy? His name is Khrith and he’s one of my very own Original Characters (in an as-yet-unpublished BASEBALL IN SPACE novel).

He’s Europan (from the Jovian moon, Europa), natively a water-breather (but can and does breathe air), and he’s the catcher on the team. 

My daughter’s friend @42nights drew him for me and ... and I can’t tell you how fucking excited I am to see him. He’s PERFECT - she got every single little bit of him right and I gave her such a wonky description. He’s exactly the right shape and look and ... 

Just look at him, with his four upper tentacles with their grippy flipper ends and his weird creepy face (don’t ask him to smile, it’s ... really unpleasant), and his fascinating, muscular walking tentacles. 

His uniform is perfect - she got the mixture of traditional catcher’s uniform (the leg and ‘knee’ pads and the chest protector) and weird outfit to fit an 8 legged dude JUST RIGHT.

I’m so excited to go back to this story now and re-write it and publish it, omg. 

So, I had only five Resolutions this year. I’ve been working on them, but one I just ... didn’t do. I wanted to get a story written and published on Amazon (self-pub) by my birthday, which was in June. 

Didn’t happen. I just missed it entirely.

However, the story I wanted to finish is actually one I need to re-write. It’s finished, but in need of an in-depth re-write and re-working. So, now we’re at Nano time.

I think I’m going to use this year’s NaNo as an opportunity to re-write my novel. I’ve got outlines of nearly all of the chapters done already, so I’ll have a good place to start, but if all I do is type out the day’s words as an exact copy because nothing needs changing in that section, that’ll be okay for me. I just need to make myself get the damned thing done. 

My NaNo info is up there, if you want to be ‘buddies’ on the site. 

***

Here’s a quick synopsis, and the first couple of paragraphs of the story.

The Io Stars, one of the intrasolar barnstorming baseball teams, has needed a new third baseman for a while. When the manager, Flannery, finally finds one, he's very good, though young. However, mysteries in his past might destroy the team.

*~*

Randal sighed as he watched the latest crop of hopefuls swing and miss, run and fall, and fail to catch.

“Hopeless, it’s hopeless,” he muttered. He leaned forward, twining his fingers through the twists of the chain link fence blocking the batting area from the near seats. Several other members of the team sat nearby, all of them wearing similar hang dog expressions. At his words a floating ball the vivid purple of bright grape jelly sank closer to the ground.

“Are you sure?  I mean, have you watched all of them?”  The jelly-like creature’s voice was high and anxious sounding. His surface, which had been a shiny, smooth rippling ovoid, grew jagged points and darkened to a rancid shade of maroon. “Are we going to have to break up the team?  Will our contracts be sold, sending us away from each other?  What’ll we do?”

*~*