Vacation Day 4: Writing, movies, and maybe SNOW!
Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
This will be a short entry because while I did a lot yesterday, I didn’t do a lot of different “lot”s.
Basically I wrote all day. I added about 2,000 words to my short story – gonna have to watch that word count because I tend to get flabby when I’m having fun.
It was a perfect day for writing. I woke up to rain, which meant leaf-raking was out. I had no pressing matters to which I should attend. So I wrote.
About halfway through the session I identified some logic flaws in my story which I hurried to correct. My next problem is one of character motivation and building the story’s internal logic. I’ve solved the motivation issue but the internal logic – and the building blocks to support that logic – aren’t clearly delineated. That’s always a problem for me but rewriting will fix it.
As usual I have doubts – again that’s the normal process for me when writing. I can deal with it.
So in other words everything is going fine with the story. I hope to have it finished this week. I beg the editors’ indulgence.
Meanwhile the forecast is for a WINTER STORM to sweep over Northwest Florida late Thursday night and Friday. We have an 80 percent chance of SNOW on Friday! Can you believe that? I won’t be driving anywhere Friday – that’s for sure.
Last night I had a movie blowout. First I watched the last half of Steven Seagal’s “Driven to Kill,” a predictable potboiler I’ve written about before. Then it was the ridiculous but fun “Red Dawn,” followed by Kevin Bacon’s “Death Sentence,” a really, really underrated action flick.
The view from my upstairs patio overlooking the pool and courtyard of Bienville Square on Hughes Street in Fort Walton Beach. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
This morning I slept in until the late hour of 7:25 a.m. And I didn’t make the bed immediately. My God, what’s happening to me?
This is the day I usually become panic-stricken. It’s the first real day of vacation and I begin to sense the time slipping away. Saturday and Sunday are always the free bonus days where I get to do anything I want, though Friday night is the best. I have a full week of no stress, no obligations and lots of free time ahead. I can finally, completely relax, knowing that if the phone rings it won’t be a calamity that I am responsible for fixing.
I vow each vacation to not waste my time off sitting behind the computer. I promise to GET STUFF DONE, life-changing “stuff,” even if it’s finally ironing all the clothes in the ironing closet. I pursue this with great enthusiasm on Saturday, let up a little on Sunday, then awaken Monday to realize time is slipping away and I’d better get busy. That’s what I did today.
The house reeked of jambalaya. The fridge was packed to the point of nearly exploding with leftovers from yesterday’s Super Bowl extravaganza. But at least the kitchen was clean. In fact, the entire house looked neat and orderly. I was pleased.
So. I got my stuff together for my taxes. I take them to a CPA. In the past my taxes were so complicated I decided it was worth the money to hire somebody to do them. I’d been doing them and getting back $300 or so – the first year I took them to a CPA I got back well over $1,000. It’s been that way ever since, except one year when I made so much money writing I actually had to send the IRS a check. Unfortunately that has never happened again.
My first stop was the tax collector’s office. I had to apply for a rebate on the Pathfinder’s tag. The tax collector’s office is now conveniently hidden in the very back of the new Uptown Station expansion. You enter a foyer; on the left is an office that has not yet been finished. The guts of the thing are hanging out. On the right is the tax collector’s office. You walk into a spacious room and are immediately confronted by an electronic device that wants to know about your “transaction.” You push a button and it spits out a piece of paper with a number on it. Then, you wait until a very pleasant female voice calls out over a P.A. system what you hope will be your number. It reminded me of that Ridley Scott commercial for Apple back in the 1980s. The lady who helped me was pleasant but not overly friendly, which I guess is not a complaint per se. It’s just that every other time I’ve been there the staff was very chatty and personal, which I like. This person had that professional distance I’m not accustomed to encountering at the tax collector’s office. She did, however, get me the form and tell me where to mail it so my mission was a success.
I then dropped off bags of beer bottles, tin cans, plastic bottles, and aluminum at the recycling van. Wasn’t I just there Saturday? Why yes, I was. But over the course of Saturday and Sunday I filled two more bags! So there. And the drunken wasps were nowhere to be found.
As it was just around the corner, I dropped by the used book store to leave a couple of paperbacks and see if they had two books I’m looking for, The Bourne Supremacy and Ben Bova’s Mars Lives. They were closed! Seems like every time I go by there the place is closed. They keep irregular hours and who knows, maybe they close on Mondays. Or maybe the hired help was sick. Don’t know.
So I set out in search of a day-old bakery. There’s one on Green Acres Road but I thought there was one over by Santa Rosa Mall, so I headed off that way. No such luck. One thing I noticed, however, was the emptiness of the mall. At first I thought it was closed. A sad cluster of cars was parked outside the entrance to JC Penney, and another in front of the main entrance. That was it. My God, at that rate the mall won’t be able to stay open. I haven’t been there in years and probably should drop by just to see if they have some interesting new stores.
One other thing I noticed while I was over there is that Mary Esther has a nature trail! I guess it’s been there awhile but I’d never seen it. The place was unusually busy for a workday. I’ll have to drop by with my camera and do a photo gallery.
I visited the Salvation Army’s new digs at Mary Esther Plaza and bought a couple of books, The Flight of the Intruder and another war-themed novel. I’ve been reading lots of those lately and I enjoy them. Paperbacks at S.A. are only 50 cents. The selection is pretty bad but I saw a few goodies on the shelves.
Then it was off to the bakery, where I found a package of hoagie rolls for $1.75 and a loaf of whole-wheat bread for the same price. Why would you buy bread from the supermarket ever again?
I decided to make one more attempt at the used bookstore. Still closed. Arghhh! So I came home, changed clothes and went to Mom’s to work in her yard. I got a swath of leaves raked up and hauled out, and yet again mourned the forlorn “garden” I’ve tried to establish in that weird little space between her carport and house. I’ve tried everything in that spot and NOTHING will grow there, not even cactus. The only thing that ever did well was monkey grass, which I hate. My new attempt includes green and variegated spider plants, which you can literally throw on the ground and they’ll grow. If that fails I might just stick a bunch of artificial plants in that spot and be done with it.
Afterwards I returned home, got cleaned up and sat down to work on my zombie story. Gosh, I hope Steve isn’t reading this because he might be irked to hear I am just now starting the story. Truth is I’ve agonized over this thing. When I first heard of the anthology an idea immediately sprang to mind, but then I began searching for an alternative. Now I’m back to the original idea. I hope it’s trendy enough. I ran into that problem with a story I wrote for Live Without a Net. Turns out all the stories in that book were super-trendy; mine was a dowdy conventional story. I felt like I’d worn blue jeans to the prom. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake but the truth is, I can’t pretend to be something I’m not, in life or writing. So I’ll just do the best story I’m capable of writing and hope it’s good enough to make the cut. I created a Word file and started putting words on “paper” so to speak. The story began to unfold and better, because this is something I struggle with, the tone began to emerge. I like what I’ve done so far and that’s a good sign. It’s interesting – to me, anyway.
Then I settled down to eat dinner and watch that Steven Seagal movie I rented Sunday. Dinner was the vegetable tray we didn’t touch during the Super Bowl. I cooked the broccoli and carrots, and ate the rest of the veggies raw. The movie was predictable. Steven Seagal is a former member of the Russian mafia who now writes novels. His ex-wife and daughter are killed and he must find out who did it. Seagal is barely comprehensible when he speaks English. With an affected Russian accent – and his mumbling – you can’t keep track of anything he’s saying! At one point I fell asleep during the movie and will have to rewatch it.
I went to bed at the insanely early hour of 9:30. Isn’t that crazy? I was tired and immediately crashed asleep. With luck I’ll make good progress on my story Tuesday … and maybe get that ironing done. Won’t THAT be fun!
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Flickr user Todd Martin by way of a Creative Commons search.https://www.flickr.com/photos/tmartin/
I woke up at 6:45 a.m. to another gray day. Whoever called Florida the “Sunshine State” sold us a bill of good. Wait a minute. We don’t live in Florida. We live in southern Alabama. Roll Tide.
Today was to be a cooking extravaganza. That’s right, the Super Bowl was being played later this afternoon and I had to prepare a feast of New Orleans-themed food, which I had never done before (disaster), while making sure the beer supply never ran low (impossible).
So after lunging out of bed I set about making the house presentable for Ken and Jenny, who might injure themselves tripping over the dead rats in the foyer.
Cleaned up the bathroom, swept all the floors and then got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floors until you could actually see the original lineoleum pattern beneath the decades-old crusted-on dirt. I thought about tackling the inside of the microwave but decided it would be better for the planet if I simply threw it away and bought a new one.
Then I had to shower and run some errands. I had no ground turkey or Andouille sausage, both essential to my game menu. While I was out I dropped by Mary and Gene’s to get Brian to sign the bill-of-sale for the Pathfinder and pick up the old license plate. Naturally when I renewed it last October I took the two-year option, then sold it in January. They tell me I can “apply” for a rebate. That doesn’t mean I will “get” a rebate.
Afterwards it was off to Blockbuster where I used my free rental coupon for a Steven Seagal revenge thriller which I have yet to watch. I’m sure it’ll be suitably bloody. Seagal will restrain himself out of respect for civilization, then reach a point of no return and infllict fist-chop armageddon on a villain who kicks puppies and never pays his overdue fees at the library.
Next, Publix, which had 99 percent fat free ground turkey and the right kind of sausage. I also stopped at a Dollar General to buy plastic spoons and a package of bubble-wrap envelopes so I can send my Ultraverse box set to Dave for him to sell on eBay. Those dollar stores are absolutely the best place to find office supplies. I would have spent $3 on the envelopes at Office Max.
I returned home and set about the delicate choreography of “getting everything made.” First up: the chili. I could make it in the crock pot without tying up precious pans, which I needed for the jambalaya and red beans and rice. I browned the turkey, minced black olives, chopped a small portion of pickled banana peppers and threw in the last of the sun-dried tomatoes, along with two cans of tomato sauce, a can of diced tomatoes, a package of chili seasonings and the now-cooked turkey. A dash of vinegar, set the crock pot on 3 and that was that.
Then I had to cook chicken breasts to shred for the jambalaya. I had removed the breasts from the freezer the night before but I think they were still a little frozen inside because after 35 minutes in a 350-degree oven they didn’t look or feel cooked. I ended up baking them another half an hour, by which time they became overcooked and slightly dry. Oh well. They could rehydrate in the jambalaya. At least they were now easy to shred. And Ken and Jenny wouldn’t sue me for salmonella poisoning.
After that I cooked the Andouille. I simmered them in a mixture of water and beer for 10 minutes, per the instructions, then added some of the beer to the chili, which by now was smelling heavenly. I chopped up three of the sausages and set them aside with the chicken for the jambalaya.
It was going on 3:30 so I decided to start the jambalaya, which would take about half an hour to prepare. Ken and Jenny would be over at 5 so I figured I could finish the jamabalaya and put it in a casserole dish on top of a warmer, fluffling it occasionally, while I cooked the red beans and rice.
Cooking this stuff turned out to be insanely easy. Instead of making it from scratch I used Zatarain’s. I love the taste of Zatarain’s but it produces an unpleasant side effect, for me, anyway – it makes me all gassy. I figured I’d take a chance as the Zatarain’s Effect usually kicks in a few hours later thereby sparing Ken and Jenny the awful implications. I wasn’t sure how many people were coming over so I bought two boxes of the “family-size” jambalaya mix, figuring they always underestimate portions as to reduce the calorie count. Well, the folks at Zatarain’s weren’t kidding when they said “family sized.” By the time the jambalaya was done I had a mountain of the stuff. I packed as much as I could into the casserole dish and put it on the heater. The rest I stuck in a Tupperware bowl and put in the fridge.
Meanwhile, Mom dropped by with even MORE food – a batch of chicken wings, two packages of cookies, some kind of weird quiche-pastry hybrid and a gigantic vegetable tray. Oh my. I could have fed the entire population of Cinco Bridge with all the stuff I was making.
Started the red beans and rice. I then deployed the chips and salsa in the gigantic serving bowl I got for Christmas XXXX … I don’t even remember the decade.
Ken and Jenny showed up with more chips and dip, and beer, and we sat down to watch the game. I’d had the TV on since 1 p.m. and tuned to CBS, which was broadcasting non-stop Super Bowl “coverage.” By game time I was so sick of Shannon Sharpe singing “Rain on Me” I could have barfed.
Curiously, as the game got under way I got really, really full and didn’t feel like eating much, which was a shame because the jambalaya was excellent, the red beans and rice not bad, and the chili maybe the best batch I’d ever made. Wow but that stuff was good. I left out all the hot seasonings which allowed the taste of everything else to come through. I don’t think I’ll ever use another dash of hot sauce with chili.
We enjoyed the game and I was happy to see the Saints win, as it was their first Super Bowl and I know a lot of suffering Saints fans. Ken and Jenny took the long drive back to Niceville and I set about cleaning up the kitchen.
My fridge is now packed with a week’s supply of food. I’ve got mountains of cookies and pastries. The house still smells like jambalaya.
Oh, and the Zatarain’s Effect kicked in late in the night.
But a great Day No. 2 of vacation!
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .