Isn’t that sunshine graphic cheesy? God, I normally hate that kind of thing.

But, I had a great weekend. Granted, Maurice and I were stuck at home, but we watched some movies together, and some movies apart. We had nice meals rather than each of us fending for ourselves, and we enjoyed our time together.

Here it is Monday and the week itself has not started out so well. I’ll get to that later below.

Continuity Issues

I’m going to talk about The Walking Dead now, but I swear this has to do with writing and I’ll get there. Stay with me.

Continuity issues comes up in every television series and frequently in series novels. Usually they’re little things that you can let slide, but sometimes they are glaring. I was watching The Walking Dead Saturday night and a continuity issue smacked me in the face.

In season 1 of the series, Rick and Glen had to walk through a group of zombies (They’re called Walkers on the show). I don’t remember why they had to do this, but I think it was to reach a car or something like that. Anyway, (this is kind of gross) to get through the zombies, they cut one open and spread its blood and guts over their bodies. They did this to hide their scent so they could then walk with the hoard to get where they were going. It worked until it started raining, of course.

Fast forward to the end of season 9. Our heroes meet up with the creepiest, most vile antagonists they’ve run into since the show began. (The show isn’t really about zombies. It’s about battles between different clans trying to survive) Anyway, this new group they’ve come upon are called The Whisperers. The way the Whisperers have survived over the many years is by cutting the skin off the zombies faces and wearing them on their heads. That way they wear tattered clothes, stumble around like the zombies and look like them. There’s one huge error, and you may have guessed it…the Whisperers only wear the dead skin on their heads. They don’t cover their bodies with zombie blood and guts. The zombies would smell them! This totally goes against what we learned in season 1. These Whisperer folks are weird, pure evil, and not to be messed with. That’s all well and good. I love watching them but I just can’t look past that damn error in the continuity.

Now, how this applies to my writing. After I published book 2 in my series, I realized a very small continuity error between books 1 and 2. It’s so small that I doubt anyone would ever catch it, but it bugs me. (I’m not going to tell you what it is) Up until now it’s been in the back of my head to do something about it, but have never gotten around to it. After watching this flaw in The Walking Dead it is driving me crazy! That gives me two tasks this week. The first one is to fix the continuity issue in my books and upload them so they won’t be there for people who buy my books in the future. More importantly, I need to create a series bible.

I started a series bible when I very first began writing book #1. I’d put a note here and there, but it isn’t as thorough as it should be. In it now I have what the protagonist looks like, what type of car he drives, and its color. I also have what his favorite drinks are and many other things, but I didn’t keep up with it as well as I should. I know there are many things that should be in the bible that aren’t there. This next week will give me the opportunity to fix that. I can’t read both books. As much as I enjoy my own books, I’ve read them a million times via editing. I’m going to have to skim through them and log anything I come across that may need to go in there. There are people who charge a small fee to do that. I may have to go that route. No, Mitch did not cover himself in zombie blood and guts in chapter 1 of the first book, but I’d hate for someone to catch as big of an error as they made in The Walking Dead. I still enjoy the show, but that will always be in the back of my mind.

Television

For whatever reason, Maurice and I both were wired late last night. My plan was to go to bed around 10pm, get up early this morning and get some exercise right away. We were both so wired, we stared at the TV for hours.

Maurice can watch woodworking shows for hours on end, and he does. He has no desire to have a work shop, and he has no desire to create things with wood on their own. But, there he is night after night watching men and women creating everything from vases to coffee tables. I understand the appeal in a way. The creators are usually soft spoken, have a dry whit, and play relaxing music. It’s meditative for him.

As a kid, I watched a lot of TV. A whole lot. That changed when I became an adult. When I first left home I believe it was about two years before I bought my first television set, and I didn’t care. If I wasn’t out partying with friends, I spent every night with a book. I’d guess I read four books a week or so. Eventually, I saved enough to buy a very expensive TV and a VHS machine. (Were they VCR or VHS? I don’t remember) Those things weren’t cheap back then and I had to have the top of the line. I paid around $550 for mine. In addition, it was just before Blockbusters (remember them) so I had to pay a membership fee to join a video store to rent them. I think memberships were around $100.

Even after having both of those high end electronics, I still didn’t watch much. I continued to put on light music and read. There’d be weekends where I’d rent a flurry of videos. I enjoyed movies, but not TV shows.

There have been shows I would enjoy over the years, but it was off and on. St. Elsewhere changed that. It was the first show that I had to be home the night it aired. I became addicted show and swear the final minutes of the last episode is still the most ingenious moment in television.

After St. Elsewhere, I swore I would never become a slave to TV again, and I stuck with it. When I watched, it would be something like a sitcom episode, or some cop show. Something where I could watch one night and it didn’t matter whether I watched the show ever again.

That changed a few years ago. I still probably watched dramatically less television than the average Joe, but it was a lot for me. Of course, there was The Walking Dead, it’s spinoff, Fear The Walking Dead, and then shows on the opposite end of the spectrum like The Great British Baking Show. Now, I’m down to only watching TWD and the Baking show, but they have me in their grasp. The two of us will usually watch some show over dinner, but it will be something innocuous like Aerial America. Something that requires no thought.

All of this is to make the point that I was too wired to get to bed at a decent hour, so I continued to catch up on The Walking Dead. It’s thrown today’s schedule out of wack.

A Bad Night and a Bad Morning

I don’t know what it was that had Maurice tossing and turning all night, but I was dealing with nightmares. I used to never remember dreaming whatsoever, but that changed with nightmares around 6 mos – 1 year ago. Last night it was Donald Trump.

I don’t like hearing about people’s dreams, and I think most people are like me, so I’ll keep this brief. Last night my nightmares were about Donald Trump. Trump was hosting some non-partisan event on television. He would never attend something at a place like the Kennedy Center, but there he was hosting it. Being the jack-ass he is, he began the event by reaching in his suit pocket and reading the latest polls. The polls showed a huge turnaround and made it likely he would, without question, win the election.

After that happened, my best friend called me in tears. It took me hours to calm her down to get off the phone. As for Maurice, he said despite us only having half the money we want for moving to Uruguay, I needed to immediately start the process. We agreed we’d move into a nice place out of the city for less than $300, buy a mattress, a dorm refrigerator, a hot plate and a microwave. We could work our way from there. The rest of the dream was spent with me frantically getting all our legal documents in order for the move.

Now the bad morning. Despite the best intentions, you can guess I didn’t wake up at 6 am for my walk. I was exhausted and freezing. It was nice and warm under the covers. The temp outside was below 60 degrees f. I used to love cold weather, but my body adapted after living in the desert for five years, but never changed back when I moved to California. After over 15 years of living here, I still get cold around 70, and anything below that is downright freezing. Plus, I didn’t prepare. In addition, most of my clothes are way too big on me. I would have had to scramble in the dark to find a pair of jeans that would stay on if I tightened my belt enough. 99% of the time, even when chilly, I wear shorts. My upper body is what can’t handle the cold. It’s my lower body that can.

I usually don’t walk midday. We live near very busy bus stops and there are a lot of people wandering aimlessly with no masks on. I don’t mind it when I reach the small neighborhoods and pass people in their lawns, out jogging, or taking their dog for a walk. But, it’s getting through those crowds that entraps me.

Despite this bad way to begin my day, I still plan to make it a great week. I’ll set out appropriate clothes each night and do my walks. During this week I have a Zoom appointment with my psychiatric quack, who I’ll lie to and tell her everything is great. I have to go in for my annual check up with my dermatologist, and do a short recording session and some minor editing. Normally, that much in one week would be terrifying, but this morning I’m okay with it. I’m still shook up from my bad nights sleep, and am exhausted by the little amount I’ve had, but I feel optimistic about the rest of the week. As of now, depression, mania, and anxiety are in check and I’m going to embrace that as long as I can. I’ll even make the rest of my day the best I can.

I’m now off to get it started. Enjoy your week.