As little bit of a difference I’m going to talk about when things accidentally fall into place as I’ve not been writing much this week (tons of cleaning had to be done) . Also I’m still waiting on acceptance/rejection notification for Corpse Powder and Blood Red Roulette.

I’m noodling around with two new things. One that might be aimed at light and fluffy contemporary (as a challenge) and the other a SF short. The first I wanted to set partially in Vegas and partially in Columbus (as a counterbalance to all the research I had to do on Corpse Powder) as I know these places fairly well now. On the first few searches I only found one anime con in Vegas (and surprisingly Columbus has several but I knew that because I attend those!). It was also just far enough off strip (@ 1.5 miles) to be a pain in the butt. Then I found one that is on strip more or less. Huzzah. I don’t know what will become of this one but I’m considering it for camp nano.

So that fell into place for me. Then came Deveral. He’s from a SF short I’m working on (watch it not stay short). I knew for a couple of years ever since I saw this video that I wanted to have a character with chromatophores in his/her skin.

And I wanted a few other non-human attributes so I settled on the eyes (because I have a thing for eyes) and decided I didn’t want the cat pupils. Instead, I went with goat because they’re freaky . Being a biologist, I know that it’s more than just pupil shape at play here but I didn’t know all that much about goat eyes. A few minutes of research fixed that. One thing about them is they allow for great peripheral vision and are found in prey animals (goats, deer, horses etc). Okay then.

So I had two attributes that went with a species that gets preyed on. So now I’m working on an ancient predator (now extinct) that fed on these people. I don’t know if it’ll end up in the story but why not? It probably shaped their culture. Even if it’s one line, it’ll probably be there.

And now, back to my cleaning. Sigh.