I tried to post yesterday, but blogger was so slow. Everyone and their mother was blogging about election yesterday it seems. And in the midst of it all, I've been doing the National Novel Writing Month marathon again.

Here's a brief summary of my new novel.

My Nanowrimo novel title: Changing Timelines

The time is 35 years into the future. The world is on the brink of war, and a naïve scientist has sold to the US government the ultimate doomsday bomb, as a first strike mutual deterrence weapon. Tensions are high as the rest of the world feverishly races to arm themselves. His wife Tatsinda must travel back in time with the help of her husband’s greatest adversary to prevent the start of his research project which started when they were first dating. What’s at stake is the future of the world and future of her marriage with her beloved husband? Can she prevent him from starting work on his doomsday weapon without if affecting their relationship and eventual marriage? Will her attraction to her husband’s former best friend and greatest enemy in the future affect their relationship in the past? Can you change events in the past to affect the future? Can you change the timelines, or are some timelines, some loves, some relationships unalterable?

I have chapter titles as well. Mostly I use them as a trigger to let me know what needs to happen in each chapter and where in the plot I'm supposed to be. I have a plot and I know how it's going to end, I just don't know what my characters do to get there. I guess I'll have to write and find out.

Chapter 1 – What you love, you must now destroy
Chapter 2 – Love thy enemy
Chapter 3 – Every love has a beginning, every destruction a seed
Chapter 4 – Hate is the opposite of love
Chapter 5 – To love is a choice
Chapter 6 – Choice is sometimes a loop
Chapter 7 – Rewriting history isn’t what you think
Chapter 8 – The past affects the future, the future affects the past
Chapter 9 – A heart breaks across time and space
Chapter 10 – Some things can’t be altered
Chapter 11 – Two loves can’t exist in the same time and space
Chapter 12 – Sometimes love is almost too permanent.

I'm writing in third person instead of first, and I'm not used to writing from that point of view and it's hard.

So why the name Tatsinda? A friend from highschool told me she wanted to name her daughter that name. I have no idea where she got the name, but it's been stuck in my head since my teens. That friend went on college at Stanford; her father, brother and sister went to school there as well. I have no idea where she is now.

So the Shrubmeister won and I'm saddened, but definitely not surprised. I've been predicting it all along, but just because I'm an very amateurish political analyst doesn't mean I like the results I come up with.

What amazes me is the level of surprise in the media. I mean, is anyone really that surprised by the results of the presidential election, the senate races and the House of Reps? Hey, but I guess incredulity sells newspapers and tv time doesn't it?

Try this very soon, before someone gets Google to change its site:

1) Go to www.google.com (it also works with google.de)
2) Type in: weapons of mass destruction (DO NOT hit return button!)
3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, NOT the "Google search"
4) Read the "error message" carefully.

Someone at Google has a sense of humor. And will probably be fired soon...

Sunday October 24 wasn’t much better, except it did stop raining. My six-year old niece promptly woke up at 5 am, because to her little body she was still on Texas time and it was 7 am there. Kids are great because they’re like automatic alarm clocks, but if you’re tired then maybe having a living breathing automatic alarm clock in the house isn’t a good idea.

My aunt from Florida called and wanted us to meet them for lunch, so we hopped in the car and went to Oakland. The thing with having a kid is you have to build an extra hour into everything you do, because you have to make sure they get dressed and ready as well. Then there’s the let’s load up a bag with things for the kid to do because god forbid the kid gets bored and starts running around and wrecking havoc all over the place.

We picked up my aunt and uncle at their hotel and went to Jack London Square for lunch. Since my niece was with us we wanted to go to a kid-friendly place with kiddie menus, so we ended at TGIF’s. The place was loaded with families and their children out for Sunday brunch, so at least we were at the right kind of place. TGIF’s even had a menu and pack of crayons to give to kids to keep them entertained while they wait with their parents for their food.

At the end of the luncheon, my six-year old niece pulls out her lipstick, lip gloss and mirror and starts doing her lips. My aunt had this horrified look on her face as she wanted my niece. I had seen my niece do this the day before so I wasn’t surprised. Afterwards my aunt confided in me that she had never seen a girl so young put on lipstick before by herself. I laughed and told her, “They start them very young these days. You should see her perfectly manicured toe nails.” Did I mention that my niece gets manicures and pedicures from her dad when he comes to town?

The body viewing and wake for my uncle was at 2 pm, and at 5 pm there was going to be a rosary. Finding the funeral home was an ordeal. I hate driving in suburbs. The streets aren’t well marked and you can so easily lost, but after circling around twice we finally managed to find the place.

My six-year old niece is a trip. She had never seen a dead body in her life, and she just marched herself right up to the casket and touched the dead body of her grandfather. I’ve been going to funerals since I was little and I never did that. Everyone was kind of in awe and shock, because some members of the family couldn’t even walk to the casket let alone touch the dead body.

And since it was a funeral, the family traumarama continued. My departed uncle’s first wife, the mother of my cousin, showed up with her other two children. I didn’t think my aunt was going to show up because she had gone through a very acrimonious divorce with my uncle, and was still bitter and angry. My uncle was still with the woman who had broken up her marriage and family, and had been with her for over 27 years. Can you blame her? I don’t know if I could have forgiven the guy either. But hey we’re all civil and it’s funeral after all, and instead of the family-screaming match I had been expecting, my side of the family was very cordial and friendly. My other aunt’s family was smart, and they just stayed away. My uncle had been very vocal in his life about his feelings towards his first wife.

And this all happened in the first two hours of the body viewing. We still haven’t gotten to the rosary. More to come.