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Danny Adams

[ website | Bio of a Silver Fox ]
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A Spanish-Apache Duel [Jun. 1st, 2012|03:30 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |The State Of Getting Nervous About Planes ]
[Current Mood |frustratedfrustrated]
[Current Music |Music from *Gladiator*]

I really ought to be more timely with these, though lately it's been primarily circumstance keeping me from posting progress reports rather than laziness.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 5/28-30/12


New Words: 3750 (1550 / 900 / 1300) on Chapter 6 ("The Presidio") of Arizona. Alejandro, now a lieutenant in the Spanish army, and Itsa-Ichii, a full-fledged Apache warrior, spot each other during an Apache attack on Fort Tucson, and can't decide if they hate or admire what they see.

Total Words: 125700. This puts me at the halfway point to my total projected word count.

Reason(s) For Stopping: Usually nightfall; the computer monitor in an unfortunately dark room at night gives me headaches.

Book Year: 1782.

Mammalian Assistance: Vegas guarded his box pile while Nugget guarded my lap, while also wanting constant recognition (in the form of petting) while she was doing so.

Exercise: Round-trip walks to campus, walking Tucker around the neighborhood.

Stimulants: Occasional Dr. Pepper, some orange and fruit punch snow cones.

Today's Opening Passage(s):

Monday: In 1782, when Alejandro was eighteen, he took the blue collar of a lieutenant in the regular army of New Spain and left for the San Agustin del Tucson presidio. The giant black Andalusian had long since become Alejandro’s closest companion—the young man assumed if he were to find his own Companions as the king had, he would do so in the army. As Alejandro explained to the animal that with luck they would fight the marauding savages who stole him those years ago, the horse’s head thrust forward with curiosity as if he could already see the fort.

Tuesday: Her band had been afraid to attack the Spaniards’ walls, but Itsa-Ichii had not been afraid to draw close enough to them again and again to study them. How high—less than twice a man. How thick—less than half a man. And through the odd gaps in that wall that didn’t quite connect at the edges, she could see how few white-eye soldiers were inside, and what poor shots they were. She saw the foolish, weak Pimas who served them. Most of all, she saw how the Spanish didn’t even care about their horses enough to protect them by keeping them inside the walls, or have men guarding the fences.

Wednesday: The attack came around ten on the Sunday morning of May 1st and assaulted the presidio in two waves: Sweeping from the north around to Indian Town and their old enemies the Pimas, who showed little resistance, and then the fort itself. Itsa-Ichii was part of the attack against Fort Tucson, and though she was not the leader, many followed her.

Darling Du Jour: Morale was still low and the officers still cared little for how much training the men received. Alejandro knew he could improve their skills…if he could get their attention.

As the year entered March and the winds were still frigid, he came up with his answer: He would challenge them to outdo him.

Not simply outshoot them. That would only be seen as arrogance, and even the famous Spaniard competitive machismo, honed by Moors in past centuries and Apaches now, did not extend to mere target practice. So Alejandro stripped down to nothing but his pants—bare above the waist and bare feet on a windy forty degree day—and thus began holing a target.

The other officers—besides his brother, who knew at once was the young man was about—ignored him except to jeer and ridicule the “crazy farmer”. But the soldiers were studying him more closely. This Lieutenant Alvarez might be an officer from a wealthy villa, they groused, and crazy, but how could they let him show them up like that? One by one the soldiers, to the dismay of the officers, pulled off their boots, stripped to the waist, and answered his challenge.

So thanks to Alejandro, they were ready when the Apache attacked the still-unfinished Fort Tucson in May.

Submissions Sent Out In May: None. Partly intentional and partly happenstance, this marks the first time in eight years that I went for a full month without sending out any short stories and/or poems.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: [info]dancinghorse; V: The Second Generation by Kenneth Johnson.
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The Haters' Death Match [May. 29th, 2012|10:38 am]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |Tugging On The Ring Ropes]
[Current Mood |Vexed]
[Current Music |"The Gael", ala the Rogues]

In the past week, I've had two examples of extremists brought to my attention. First there was Pastor Charles Worley fellow whose sermon that would prove lethal to homosexuals if put into practice went viral, along with a 1978 audio clip of him wishing for the good old lynching days. On the flip side, you have tweets from these gay marriage supporters telling their opponents that they should kill themselves.

My reaction to these people who are polar opposites in belief but identical in their foul, corrupt, withered souls is simple: I propose a death match between them. Because it's only fair that if you want other people to die for their beliefs, you should be willing to die for yours. Right?

I also propose the following judges. On the religious side we'll have these fellows, though they may be late to the competition due to having to avoid certain neighborhoods while wearing their hoodies:




And for the pro-gay marriage side, this fellow, if someone will fetch him some high intensity suntan lotion and a beer, with foam:



The judges' decisions will be final. So will God's and history's, I imagine.

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The Only Thing Chuck Norris Is Afraid Of... [May. 23rd, 2012|06:19 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |A Safe Distance]
[Current Mood |curiouscurious]
[Current Music |North or South, nobody sings songs about spiders]

...And it showed up next to our porch yesterday.







I think it's also responsible for killing the dinosaurs.

In all seriousness, this is a brown wolf spider, which actually is not much of a threat to people--they tend to be timid and only bite if repeatedly provoked, and even then it's a low toxin--and is handy to have around because they eat mass quantities of insects (and thanks to all the rain and how much I procrastinate mowing the lawn, there's been plenty of fodder for all our spiders lately). I was just startled to see ho huge it was--in this case "huge" being defined as "the size of my hand". The little guy behind it is the size of the spiders that normally hang around our Spider Sanctuary, i.e. the front porch.

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The Bible On Homosexuality's Equivalency [May. 23rd, 2012|04:58 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |We Don't Need No Stinking Concordances Land]
[Current Mood |frustratedfrustrated]
[Current Music |"The One On The Right Was On The Left" by Johnny Cash]

There's a popular picture going around Facebook and other sources right now that has someone showing a tattoo with Leviticus' prohibition of homosexuality--the irony being, of course, that Leviticus also prohibits tattoos. This suddenly made me realize that even the folks who point stuff out like this miss a much broader point, and that in a way both sides of the argument are missing something critical in the context of the passages.

As examples, I take four passages about homosexuality from the Bible, two from the Old Testament and two from the New, to illustrate my point. Here they are:

Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination."

Leviticus 20:13: "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them."

1 Corinthians 6:9-10: "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God."

Romans 1:26-27: "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error."

Seems pretty cut and dried, doesn't it? The problem is that if you just quote these passages, you're actually taking them out of context in a way. Because none exist in isolation, and they weren't intended to be quoted in such an isolated way. (In fact chapters and verses in the Bible didn't even exist until the Middle Ages--all the text was written together without such artificial breaks.) So what does that mean?

Paul's passages are a great examples. Look at them again: In Corinthians he insists that "neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers" will inherit the Kingdom of God. In Romans 1:28-30 he adds "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them."

In other words, all of these are considered equal offenses.

Paul doesn't say "If you gossip three times a day, you might be risking the Kingdom of Heaven". He doesn't say "Homosexuality is horrible, but envy you might be able to slide by with". No, what he's saying is that homosexuality, envy, murder, greed, insolence, arrogance, boasting, drunkenness, reviling, being unloving and unmerciful are all one and the same to God. Being unloving and unmerciful are as much sins worthy of death as homosexuality.

You politicians out there, you may want to pay attention to that last bit.

If you consider homosexuality to be the pit of evil, then so are the gossips and the boastful. If you think that gossip isn't so bad...well, then, neither is homosexuality.

What this all boils down to for me is that one way or another, a lot of self-righteous people out there are going to be surprised when they wind up in the same afterlife as gays.
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Catching Up With The 18th Century [May. 21st, 2012|01:52 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |Waiting For The Revolution Land]
[Current Mood |rushedrushed]
[Current Music |"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by the Beatles]

I've been getting lazy about posting these, I know, and as it is I don't even have a daily word count because I lost track of where I stopped and started on different days. Ah well. Just a little obsessive detail that bothers only me. The main thing is that Writing Has Been Done.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 5/15-17, 5/19-20


New Words: 7700 on Chapter 6 ("The Presidio") of Arizona. Obsessive young Spaniard, Alejandro Alvarez, meet obsessive young female Apache warrior, Itsa-Ichii. The Apaches steal Alejandro's family's horses, Alejandro tries to get his back, and Itsa-Ichii tries to stop him. Meanwhile, the fort that will become the city of Tucson has only two walls, and those walls are only 3 1/2 feet high, because the Spaniards are more interested in misappropriating the building funds than paying their laborers.

Total Words: 121750.

Book Year(s): 1776-77.

Reasons For Stopping: Usually to get ready for work. Over the weekend I was doing yard work.

Mammalian Assistance: Vegas has occasionally been guarding the Writing Room from his temporarily reduced box pile, while Nugget guarded it from my lap a couple of times, and Friday once.

Exercise: Moving the aforementioned tens of thousands of books. Walking to campus, and most nights walking back.

Stimulants: Dr. Peppers mostly, with one glass-bottled HFCS-free glass-bottled Coke yesterday.

The Chapter's Opening Passage: The old-fashioned storytelling variety...

Even while they were still alive, the legend throughout the Pimeria Alta—northern Mexico and the southern third of Arizona—was that Alejandro Alvarez, Arizona’s last great warrior while it still belonged to Spain, and Itsa-Ichii, the greatest Apache woman warrior of her time, had been enemies locked in combat their whole lives. That story was not altogether far from the truth. They met at age twelve when he refused to stay in his villa during an Apache attack and she refused to stay in her father’s fire-shelter while he raided the Spaniards’ settlements on the border of the Apacheria. From that moment, even when apart they were locked in combat.

Darling Du Jour: Time's running short, so I'll just skip hunting through the text this time.

Submissions Sent Out In April: 1.

Total Submissions Out Right Now: 4.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Lord of the Two Lands by Judith Tarr / [info]dancinghorse.
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Not Dead, Just Busy [May. 21st, 2012|12:46 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Awaiting The Next Book Move Land ]
[Current Mood |restlessrestless]
[Current Music |"My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors" by Moxy Fruvous]

I've been writing again finally, after a three-week hiatus, and also spending the last few weeks moving several tens of thousands of books to open room for renovations. Sooner or later I'll post something at least a little substantive, but in the meantime here's a picture of me dancing with a gorilla.



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Stamping Done On The Seventeenth Century [Apr. 23rd, 2012|03:54 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |Onward To The Presidio]
[Current Mood |tiredtired]
[Current Music |Not much]

I have been writing--five days out of the last ten--I've just been lazy about posting Progress Reports. At any rate, the result of this latest effort was a total of 8550 words and finishing off the current chapter, which weighs in at a meaty 42,000 words or something like that.

For once, though, my problem with my writing isn't that I think it's too long in general, just that it doesn't do enough where it needs to do more and does too much where it needs to do less. (I should've just stuck with "too long"--that's simpler). But it covers a pretty vast span of time as such things go, the years 1628 to 1700. I did "whole era" chapters in my Shenandoah novels, but the length of time in this one is a first for me, so it was also a giant experiment as well as a giant chapter. Mostly it's set in the Hopi pueblo village of Awatovi--following four generations of one Hopi family and two friars who interact with them--plus brief excursions to Mexico and Santa Fe.

I'm not going to try replicating five Progress Reports, so I'll just do one for yesterday's writing.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 4/22/12


New Words: 2900 on Chapter 5 ("Spirit, Faith, and Reason") of Arizona. Killed some people off, burned some things, and finally drove out the Spanish from the Arizona pueblos. Oh, I also introduce Padre Eusebio Kino, who comes and goes and gets far less wordage than he deserves.

Total Words: 114050.

Reason For Stopping: Finished the chapter. After long last. As I posted the other day on Facebook, with all the stuff that happened while I was writing this chapter such as the flood and my aunt's passing, I felt like it not only covered seven decades, but took that long to write.

Book Years: 1696-1700.

Mammalian Assistance: My door was open much of the time, though only Vegas and Nugget took advantage of that invitation.

Exercise: Walked Tucker around the neighborhood; walked down to campus.

Stimulants: Minute Maid Orangeade.

Today's Opening Passage: Ramon de Alvarez stared into the sun every day hoping it would blind him.

Darling Du Jour: Completely context based...

He never returned to Awatovi. Neither did anyone else.

Non-Research Review Books In Progress: Turtledove; Christian; Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale.
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First World Writerly Problems [Apr. 23rd, 2012|02:41 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |Moving 18th-Centuryward]
[Current Mood |curiouscurious]
[Current Music |"Once This Was the Promise Land" ala John Coinman]

I don't know if this qualifies as fear of success or me just being spoiled, but I had a personal insight about one reason e-publishing is so attractive to me despite all of my concerns: There's less chance of getting pigeonholed.

Granted this may qualify for placement in the "I Wish I Had That Problem" department, and I won't exactly say my writing has been all over the map, but I have covered a lot of terrain. In the last eight years the novels I've completed include alternate history, science fiction, historicals, historical fantasy, and young adult fantasy. I've left unfinished one young adult fantasy, one historical fantasy, and two science fiction novels. And theoretically I could publish at least one collection of short stories and/or poems, nearly all of which would be speculative. The next three books I have in mind are one quasi-historical humorous science fiction and two historicals, the latter including another Arizona-styled epic about the Mississippi River.

In short, I could theoretically drive a publisher or agent crazy, especially if I want to try publishing them all under my own name.

Of course, there's a reason it might drive the industry members crazy: This kind of back-and-forth could make it incredibly difficult for me to find any kind of fan base, not to mention hindering sales. I know even bestselling authors have trouble with their less-popular stuff, like the major drops Terry Brooks would suffer whenever he switched from Shannara to The Word and the Void.

On the other hand I'm enjoying the freedom immensely, and it guarantees that I won't be writing a book that my heart isn't in. So I have to figure out a way to balance the two--provided I don't enjoy the unlikely Joe R. Lansdale event of finding fan bases in each genre.

Right now, as probably goes without saying if you at least catch this journal from time to time, I'm leaning towards Enjoying Myself.
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50 Things To Do Before You're 11 3/4 [Apr. 19th, 2012|04:34 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |Wanting To Go Climb A Tree Land]
[Current Mood |amusedamused]
[Current Music |70s TV theme songs]

This is the National Trust's list of 50 Things To Do Before You're 11 3/4. I'm bold-facing the ones I've done, and not cheating by including things I did after that age (though I will post notes on a few).

1. Climb a tree. Like a lot of other things on this list, this is something I still enjoy doing!

2. Roll down a really big hill

3. Camp out in the wild

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone

6. Run around in the rain

7. Fly a kite - I tried, but actually never got the hang of it until I was a teenager.

8. Catch a fish with a net

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree

10. Play conkers - No, as I'd never heard of the game before this list came out.

11. Throw some snow

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging - Maybe. I went sledding, but my understanding of the word is that this is somewhat different--a sled or sleigh pulled by an animal. Which I don't think I did, but I could be misremembering.

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race - I did, however, race earthworms.

18. Balance on a fallen tree - Preferably over a stream.

19. Swing on a rope swing - Preferably swinging into water.

20. Make a mud slide

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild

22. Take a look inside a tree - And when I could, I went into the tree too.

23. Visit an island

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall - I don't think so, but I've done it plenty of times since 11 3/4.

30. Feed a bird from your hand

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net - I don't think so, but I did catch some in jars.

34. Track wild animals - Deer, anyway.

35. Discover what’s in a pond

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab - I don't think so, though I did catch "crawdads", which also had pinchers.

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming - Wild swimming? As in skinny dipping? Not before 11 3/4.

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches - I'm not including using a lighter here, either.

45. Find your way with a map and compass

46. Try bouldering (rock climbing outdoors but with safety mats and short drops) - I did go bouldering. But not with safety mats and short drops. Ahem.

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling - Not till I was 22.

49. Find a geocache (use GPS and other navigational aides to locate hidden containers.) - Erm, GPS didn't exist at the time, or at least not for public consumption.

50. Canoe down a river - Not down a river, though I did canoe in a lake.

So...34 out of 50. Not bad at all. I see certain patterns developing earlier in my life here.

And quite honestly, out of those 34, I still do 23. Aside from my giveaway of #1, I'll let you guess which ones.

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Things Were Better Then, Except When They Weren't [Apr. 16th, 2012|08:19 pm]
[Tags|]
[Current Location |More Here Than There]
[Current Mood |curiouscurious]

Lately I've been hearing a lot of variations of the "Things were better in the 1950s" theme. So aside from the arguments about "Better for who?", I thought I would stroll around my library's reference section and see if I could grab some statistics and compare them to today. I grabbed the 1959 editions of the World Almanac and Information Please Almanac and compared percentages by population between then and now.

Offered without comment:

Church, etc. Membership (including Orthodox, Jewish, and Buddhist):
1957: 59.7%
2012: 43%

Total Crime Rate (as provided online by the FBI):

1959: .019%
2010: .033%

Violent Crime Rate (ditto):
1959: .0016%
2010: .004%

Divorce Rate:
1958: 25%
2011: ~50% (The sources disagree. For first marriages the percentages vary from 41-50%.)

The highest percentage of divorces, by the way, occurs in my native South: 10.2 men per 1000, and 11.1 women per 1000.

Poverty Rate:

1959: 20%
2012: 15.5%

Individual Tax Rates:

1959: 20-91% (The 91% tax rate was for those making over $200,000 per year.)
2012: 10-35%

Top Corporate Tax Rates:

1959: 52%
2012: 35%

Union Membership:

1959: 39%
2011: 11.8%

So there you go. Run the numbers as you will.

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