1,076

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

I'm on the mend, K, and scheduled for discharge after breakfast.  I need to verify that the ID specialist wrote the extra three days on the prescription.

Giacomo Giammatteo has a self-publishing info website, http://nomistakespublishing.com/ (and a book to sell).  Looks like good details.  (I read one of his novels.  Not bad.  Not quite the style for me, but good, interesting character work.  I can imagine some people I know being followers.)

1,078

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Short report:

Last Sunday night I got hit by chills and fever again.  They were mostly over by the end of Monday, but I was in no shape to go anywhere, even though I could see another leg infection starting.  It was late afternoon Tuesday by the time I could get out, and the hospital's ER was recovering from a wave of admissions.  At about 22:40 antibiotics were prescribed, IV.  Unfortunately, I'm a very hard vein stick.  They got the two sets of culture bottles and four other vials, but setting an IV required finding a vein angel on duty.

That took until almost 01:30.  By 03:00 the exhausted staff was getting the place back in order--but I hadn't gotten my antibiotics.  I raised a gentle fuss (the staff had worked over 8 hours without a break) and got the first bag around 03:40--five hours after I got into the ED proper.  And my leg was five hours worse.  The change was very visible.

I spent my first day waiting for a bed in an overflow room down the hall from Emergency, sharing a couple of hall bathrooms with Pediatric Emergency.

The first time I went to use one I walked in on a woman with her kid.  She hadn't locked the door.  Then I found the WC's misinstalled, so that my private parts dangled in the water when I used them.  They were both the same way.  I have to wonder if men ever use those bathrooms--or are meant to.

In that busy room I didn't get much sleep.  I got a bed upstairs just before dinner.  Since then I've been sharing a room with a very noisy fellow (awake, asleep, and in between) and so got no sleep Wednesday night.  I've mostly caught up now.  (Maybe, just maybe, the fellow's fever just broke for good.)

I put my chances of discharge tomorrow at a bit over 50%.  I'm supposed to get a quick check by a vascular surgeon, and that could keep me in too, until it's too late to get the discharge paperwork through.  (Nobody wants to cause a delay but nobody knows what's waiting on them.  Management is denied the right incentives.  If people start lawyering up and refusing to pay for the extra day, management might get the right incentives.  I don't believe our current system with insurance gives that right incentive.)

I have a promise from the Infectious Diseases specialist of three extra days on top of the oral antibiotic they'll discharge me with, to be set aside and stockpiled so I have something to take right away when chills and fever strike again.  We don't expect it to completely block an infection, but to give me time to get in so that a quick round of IV treatment will cover it.

1,079

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

I've been tied up by things, things that involved a great deal of hurry-up-and-wait and may involve more.  But I'll try to get some reviews done in the next 36 hours.

1,080

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Norm d'Plume wrote:

I looked up bigly. It's a word! My theory is that Trump, really a Democrat, is actually brilliant and putting on a reality show while secretly destroying the Republican Party.

Or maybe Trump is sick of seeing politicians get away with things that Even Trump Would Go To Jail For?  Then this is his revenge on the whole hideous mutant strain?

Jeez, Trump the Shark, will ya?

1,082

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Bigly.

1,083

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Agree ... and you have the 'alternate history' problem.  You might get away with it if you don't name the individual and avoid the specific word 'tweet'.

Brachistochrony

I don't notice PoV subtleties that much, so long as the camera moves slowly, so to speak.  I see a continuum in Nicholas's series from deep 3P to true omniscient (not the same as 3rd-party observer, which sees all externals in a scene, but is not privy to any character's mindscape), but I don't notice it unless it doesn't seem to work.

Nicholas seems to write in a PoV that moves from a close 3P to a 3rd-party observer.  I have no problem with that so long as 'camera movement' is smooth and does not joggle the topic flow, which is my first concern.

Would you mind sharing your approximate word count with us?  I'm guessing 160,000 to 180,000 words.

Just started John McWhorter's =Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue=.  McWhorter's thesis is that English, nominally a Germanic langusge, has grammar and other structure shaped by Celtic and Cornish.

Maybe ...

But does it also somehow prime the reader?

Yet we never see any part of the Grinch but his obsession until that point.  Is it that point that tells us that the Grinch doesn't -actually- hate the Whos?

For some reason I was thinking of the TV animated production of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and old Grinchy's lie "There's a light on this tree that won't light on one side."  I realized, finally, that the story slips something past us--the Grinch actually does something kind, the way he gets Cindy Lou back to bed.  You can say he has no choice, but is that really true?

What other iconic stories slip things past us?

1,091

(6 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.

There's an inch of dust on that golden moldy.

1,092

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Flenser?

1,093

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

You mean where mom and daughter meet during this part of the adventure?  I keep thinking of different ways for it to happen.  It will more likely be be bacon-saving, at least at first, and if it comes after Merran's visit-by-choice to Pike, you can expect sparks to fly.  Hmm, maybe what I need is some irony with the fury.

I would say that a gulch is bigger than a gully.  A gulch is big enough that you have to climb out of it; a gully can by small enough to step across.  Unless they make gullies differently on your side of town?

1,094

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

But it's not just how much Power is available, but how you can handle it.  And Fire is less effective at cooling than the other Elements.  You're also looking at the latent heat of fusion.  Not as severe as the latent heat of vaporization, but still a substantial amount of energy.  Remember, even new ice needs to be 3" thick if you mean to walk on it.

Of course, since you don't like Melayne, you can simply say she used her sorcery poorly.

Dorothy Parker's 'pure as the driven slush'.

Are you calling Dirk an AI, or does that jave to be capitalized?

To replace the train, split your byline into two lines.

1,098

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Or ... the problem is supposed to be fixed, but (almost) no one trusts the tech?

1,099

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Find another name.  Second Eyes maybe, or Glimmerers.  Or borrow  a word from computer science and call them lookasides (from Translation Lookaside Buffer.)  Or maybe the window of the soul peering out.

1,100

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

To the many to whom I owe reviews: I've got holiday stuff to do today.  I'll work on the reviews tomorrow while I wait for some work on my car.