This time around, it was my turn to come up with the topic for Carly & Karen’s Round Robin Photo Challenge, so I chose “Secrets.”

I recently went exploring around Richmond’s famous Hollywood Cemetery (no connection to Hollywood, California), a fascinating place with very old graves dating back to the early 19th century. More than 1800 Confederate soldiers are buried in this cemetery, as well as three U.S. Presidents.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “taking a secret to the grave.” Eventually, the graves themselves stop telling their tales, when time, weather and mold eventually wear away a gravestone. I’m sure there are records somewhere that indicate exactly who lies beneath this marker. But the absence of that information does make you wonder, doesn’t it?

And I can’t let this “Secrets” challenge go by without a quick trip down memory lane. I’ve always had dogs; my parents got me my first dog when I was almost a year old and we grew up together. She was a collie pup — not the collie pictured here — but a dog that taught me the power of the love of a four-legged friend. Years after that first dog died, I decided I wanted another collie — the one you see pictured below — and at the same time, we also had a Shih Tzu (correctly pronounced as “SHEED-zoo”) as our inside dog.

I walked the Emperor (which is undoubtedly what the Shih Tzu, Koko, considered himself to be) into the backyard one day, and my second collie, Skye, came over to say hello. I managed to snap a quick picture during this passing of some secret. What strikes me so funny is the intense expression on Koko’s face, as if he can’t wait to hear what happened next! This photo, incidentally, hung in the South Carolina State Fair that year — probably 1995 or so. It didn’t win (nor did I expect it to), but at least it went on display.

Here’s that picture, which still hangs on my wall:

Here are the other participants in the Round Robin Photo Challenge. Be sure to visit their journals as well.

Lahoma

Promise

Becky

Dorn

Karen

Betty

Carly

Mary

Sara

Debbie

Renee

Dorn

Celeste

Phinney

Marie

Maryanne

Robin

This time around, it was my turn to come up with the topic for Carly & Karen’s Round Robin Photo Challenge, so I chose “Secrets.”

I recently went exploring around Richmond’s famous Hollywood Cemetery (no connection to Hollywood, California), a fascinating place with very old graves dating back to the early 19th century. More than 1800 Confederate soldiers are buried in this cemetery, as well as three U.S. Presidents.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “taking a secret to the grave.” Eventually, the graves themselves stop telling their tales, when time, weather and mold eventually wear away a gravestone. I’m sure there are records somewhere that indicate exactly who lies beneath this marker. But the absence of that information does make you wonder, doesn’t it?

And I can’t let this “Secrets” challenge go by without a quick trip down memory lane. I’ve always had dogs; my parents got me my first dog when I was almost a year old and we grew up together. She was a collie pup — not the collie pictured here — but a dog that taught me the power of the love of a four-legged friend. Years after that first dog died, I decided I wanted another collie — the one you see pictured below — and at the same time, we also had a Shih Tzu, (correctly pronounced as “SHEED-zoo”) as our inside dog.

As I walked the Emperor (which is undoubtedly what the Shih Tzu, Koko, considered himself to be) into the backyard one day, and my second collie, b>Skye, came over to say hello. I managed to snap a quick picture during this passing of some secret. What strikes me so funny is the intense expression on Koko’s face, as if he can’t wait to hear what happened next! This photo, incidentally, hung in the South Carolina State Fair that year — probably 1995 or so. It didn’t win (nor did I expect it to), but at least it went on display.

Here’s that picture, which still hangs on my wall:

Here are the other participants in the Round Robin Photo Challenge. Be sure to visit their journals as well.

Lahoma

Promise

Becky

Dorn

Karen

Betty

Carly

Mary

Sara

Debbie

Renee

Dorn

Celeste

Phinney

Marie

Maryanne

Robin

One last weekly meme. Why? Oh, I don’t know…call me a glutton for punishment, I guess.

The concept for this one is pretty simple: there is one topic, two different questions, but you pick the one you want to answer and answer only that one.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, let’s have a go of it, shall we?

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC: AGE

QUESTION A:
When you were in high school, if you could have picked any age to jump to and stay that age forever, which would you have picked and why?

or

QUESTION B:
Do you feel your present age now? In other words, do you feel that you are younger, older or right at your actual age emotionally and physically, and why?

Choose A or B, (indicate which question you’re answering!) then either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.)

Bill of “The Wildcat’s Lair” recently showed off the writing space he and his wife share. (Yes, they’re writing a book together, which fascinates me.)

So I thought I would do the same. I will admit that I did clean up a little, but there were several things piling up that I had needed to attend to anyway before the end of the month, so I used “picture time” as an excuse to attend to them!

You’ll note the squeak ball in the lower right of the picture. The dogs, when they think I have been at the computer long enough, will come over for a little attention. There’s nothing like having a faithful dog remind you that despite your frustration and feelings of inadequacy at not being able to make a scene work, they still love you no matter what.

So that’s my space. What does yours look like?

How much would you pay to allow someone famous to kill you?

Sounds like a strange question, but someone paid $25,100 last week to appear in Stephen King’s upcoming novel, Cell. The “honor” was being auctioned off to raise money for the First Amendment Project.

If the winning bidder is fortunate enough to be female, not only will King use the bidder’s name, but he’ll make sure that the character is actually killed in the novel, which he describes as a violent tale about cell phones that destroy users’ brains, turning them into zombies.

But male or female, it apparently goes a bit further than just having a character share your name. In the auction, King requests a physical description of the winning bidder. He’s apparently going for extra authenticity for anyone who wants to pay that high a price.

Twenty-five grand? If I had that kind of money lying around, I wouldn’t be able to bid in such an auction: I’d immediately drop dead from the shock of it all.

Here we are, up and running with the Spirit of 76…76 editions of the “Saturday Six,” that is.

I included a few questions from two weeks ago, suggested by those who played for possible Reader’s Choice questions. If you have one you’d like to see asked, email it to me and be sure to include a link to your journal (if you have one) so that I can mention you as the source of the question.

But first, Jeff of “What the Hell?” was first to play last week. Congratulations, Jeff and welcome back!

Last week’s questions marked the second time that Sandi played, but the first that she left a link, so stop by her journal and welcome her!

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! If you don’t have an AOL journal, you can still play, but of course you’ll at least need an AOL screen name, which you can get for free with AOL Instant Messenger, to be able to leave a comment here. To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. (Again, if you’re playing for the first time, please be sure to say so in the comment!) Enjoy!

1. Of the following, which one best describes you at your worst? (You can’t select “None of the above!”)
a. One who doesn’t finish what he/she starts
b. One who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk
c. One who always finds the worst in a situation
d. One who generally knows what’s right but does what’s wrong

6. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #69 from Betty: (She recently returned from a trip to Las Vegas!) How do you feel about gambling?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), click the e-mail link on the About Me bar and send it to me.

MY ANSWERS:
1. I think “C” is too often me, followed closely by “A.” I’m working on both.

4. I am 70% Psychic:

You are pretty psychic.
While you aren’t Miss Cleo, you’ve got a little ESP going on.
And although you’re sometimes off on your predictions…
You’re more often right than wrong
So go with your instincts - you know more than you think

5. I used to talk to a childhood friend of mine for hours at a time. I would estimate that our longest call was probably three or four hours long. We’d sit and watch television while we were on the phone and discuss the shows as they went by. Sad!

6. I think that gambling, like most other things, is enjoyable and harmless if done in great moderation; it’s the excess that causes problems.

Important lesson: make them check your DVD in while you’re there at movie rental stores!

I found out the hard way what can happen once you drop your DVD rental in their drop box and move on, assuming all will be well. The last time I’d visited the rental store was on July 1st. I returned the DVD roughly on time, but on July 18th, according to the store’s records, the DVD case was found to be empty.

But at the time, I didn’t know any of that.

When I moved to Richmond, since this was a national video rental chain, I had them add my present membership to a Richmond store. Naturally, the store asked for my Virginia driver’s license and I gave it to them. I know for a fact that they updated my address, because after moving here, (and before they did away with their late fees), I would receive phone calls and postcards if I was late getting a movie back.

But I never received any notification about this allegedly-missing DVD.

Then, about three weeks ago, my mom got a call back home from a number that showed up as “Private” on her caller ID. The person claimed to represent the video store. My mom told them that I lived in Virginia now, and the person seemed surprised. But the caller did not ask for any forwarding telephone number or address, thanked her and hung up.

I called the local store in Columbia, assuming that they’d be the ones not to know I was now in Richmond. They looked up my account and saw no sign of a problem.

A week later, at my mom’s address, I received a letter from a company called “Credit Protection Association,” which had apparently been hired to collect the debt the video store claimed that I owed. This “bill” contained the store’s telephone number and location, and I realized that it was the local store here in Richmond! I called them and the manager explained all about the empty case.

Well, I had lots of questions.

First, how did they come to “forget” my Richmond address, the same address that they had been using in the past when I was late getting a DVD on time or when I had a late fee due? He had no answer for that.

Second, if this DVD case was found to be empty on July 18th, why was I just learning about it around September 1st? He claimed that they would have started sending out postcards within a week of the 18th. When I told him that my mom had only received something from them after the mysterious phone call, he didn’t have an answer for that, either.

Third, if the store called me to find out about the DVD, why wouldn’t they have asked for a Richmond address or number, since the store is in Richmond? He said that the people who called might have been from the debt collection company. That was all the more reason why they should have asked for the correct address or phone number. He didn’t have an answer for that.

Then came the last and most important question.

You see, though I’m not the most neat and organized person overall, I am meticulous about certain things. Handling DVDs and CDs is one of the things I am meticulous about. I don’t leave DVDs and CDs lying around outside of their jewel boxes or cases. I hate that. I know that they can scratch so I take care of them. If they’re not in their case, then they’re still in the machine. There is never a third option.

Since the 18th of July, I couldn’t count how many DVDs I’ve watched. Obviously, I don’t have the DVD or else it would have turned up. So what do we do now?

He had an answer for that one quickly enough: either I pay the $13.64 that they claimed I owed, or I wouldn’t be able to rent any more DVDs from that store.

“Even if I don’t have the DVD?” I asked. Even then.

I promised to look around the house and get back to him. I hung up, looked around the house, took a flashlight to my car and there was no sign of the DVD. Of course there wasn’t. It couldn’t have been anywhere else except inside the case.

You know those people you laugh at who mail a letter at the post office then can’t resist opening the door once or twice to make sure that the envelope would make no escape attempt? I’m one of those people.

When it comes to DVDs, I usually rent more than one at a time. So I not only make sure it drops safely down the shoot, but before I drop it in, I open the case and make sure that the right DVD is in the right box. I don’t ever drop a case in the slot without looking at the DVD to make sure I haven’t put one of my own in the case by mistake.

But this manager was going to make me pay anyway? No. I called another of the company’s stores and got a district number. At Charlotte, I spoke to the Director of Operations for the region, explained the situation and told him that I didn’t appreciate being accused of theft.

If a customer puts an empty box in a drop slot, it can only mean one of two things, I told him: either the customer is intentionally trying to steal the DVD but is putting the empty case in the slot to try to put one over on the store, or the customer has made a mistake and THINKS that the DVD has been returned. Either way, it seems to me, the store should act immediately to get their disc back, not wait two months to try to find it.

The man laughed and said that I should be his loss prevention manager. “You’re right about that,” he said. And he also said the corporate policy is that the store should immediately begin making phone calls until they reach the member. That, of course, never happened.

I suggested that it’s clear that this store manager thinks I’m trying to steal a disc, or else he would have never told me to pay or else.

So he contacted the District Manager who apparently then made a personal visit to the store in question and cleared my account without any further question.

I have since rented another DVD from a different store within the same company. I have no intention of going back to the one that accused me of trying to steal the movie.

But in the future, when I do return a DVD, you can bet I’m going inside the store, and they will be asked to check the DVD and verify that it is in the box and that my account is clear before I leave.

I have no problem taking a little extra time and inconvenience to prove how reliable I am.

I must be missing something here. Two years ago, my wireless carrier, Verizon, informed me that I would be eligible for a “free” phone when it was time to renew my service. The “free” part only applies to phones less than $100 in cost. Phones more expensive than $100 would be sold to me less a $100 discount. No problem.

A few months back, I asked about this when I thought I had lost my phone. They told me that my renewal date would be some time around the first of October or so. They must have given me the exact date back then, but I didn’t remember it. I found the phone later that evening under my car seat, so I didn’t think any more of it.

Last night, I went to a local Verizon store to see about renewing and getting the new phone. Greeter — that’s all her name tag said — asked for my phone number. Then she asked for my name. Then she told me that my renewal date is October 4th.

“Well, that’s close enough,” I suggested. “What kind of phones do you have these days?”

Greeter wasn’t playing. She said I couldn’t get the new phone; I would need to come back after October 4th.

I told her that it was explained to me that the phone was supposed to be a perk of renewing for two more years of service, which I was prepared to do at that moment. She said that it was, but that I couldn’t renew before that pre-determined date.

On my way back to work, I called Verizon customer service, which, on my cell phone, is a toll-free call: let them pay for it!

I asked what happened once my contract was up and was told that my account would automatically go to a “month-to-month” setup. And a month-to-month setup costs more per month, right? Right.

Then I explained that I had gone to their store to renew my contract for two more years, only to be told that I couldn’t renew until after October 4th. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” I asked. “I was standing in your store, ready to renew right then for two more years and was turned away.”

“Well they certainly should have let you renew, but you still wouldn’t have been able to get the discount on the new phone until after the date.”

My schedule is pretty full for the next couple of months. I certainly don’t expect to go to a month-to-month billing arrangement if I am unable to get there by October 5h.

“Oh no, sir. Your contract isn’t up until December.”

What???

It seems that the “free” phone thing becomes available two months before your contract is really up, a little detail no one ever bothered to mention before. They want me to come in and renew, but only within their timetable. That’s putting the customer first!

I’ve noticed a few writers complaining about Courier New, the supposed “standard” typeface most common for manuscripts. Some say that they hate Courier New’s appearance and prefer Times New Roman instead. Others say Times is difficult to copyedit with because the letters are closer together and hard to wrap proofreader marks around.

I’m just curious what typeface those of you with manuscripts in the works prefer. If you don’t type your manuscript at all, there is a “Longhand” option as well.

I’ll let the poll run for a week or so and tally the votes in a future post.

In response to the post over at Absolute Write that I mentioned in yesterday’s entry here comes this pearl of wisdom from James D. MacDonald:

When a reader tells you that there’s something wrong with your book, they’re usually right. When they tell you how to fix it, they’re usually wrong.

Nice.

If Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, at more than 1400 pages, is a bit too daunting a task for your reading list, there is good news. The Guardian reports that publishers are creating new “reader-friendly” versions of the great classics as well as recent high-brow hits.

War and Peace is the first of several titles to get updated translations that should make the books easier to understand or even just get through. Tolstoy’s Russian novel has been retranslated by Anthony Briggs, a Birmingham University Russian professor who spent more than four years tackling the original text. What has changed? Here’s what Briggs tells the Guardian:

“‘I felt it needed refreshing and renewing,’ he said. In translating the book he aimed to keep the reader in mind all the time. ‘You should try to recreate for the reader in English an experience that is as similar to that the Russian reader would have had,’ he said this weekend.

“The original translations have the heroine Natasha looking in the mirror after her devastating illness and saying, ‘Can this truly be I?’ This is too slavish a translation for Briggs, who renders the same line as ‘Can that really be me?’

“‘When you read one of the older translations you feel as if you are being read to by the Queen or by Lady Antonia Fraser,’ said Briggs. ‘I am very different to previous translators. I am a man, for a start, from a pragmatic, lower-class, Northern background, and I hope I have made it more readable for today.’”

Somehow I might have thought that “hearing” a character say “Can this truly be I?” might lend a little extra bit of atmosphere to the original.

Silly me.

Stephen Hawking, the professor whose A Brief History of Time sold more than ten million copies, has created an easier-to-understand version of his landmark work called A Briefer History of Time.

More titles are certain to follow, assuming that these “easier” versions find a large enough audience. Somehow I think that most of the people who reject such works because they are “too difficult” aren’t likely to bother with an “easier” version, either.

I wonder how long it will take someone to get around to Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula. Can’t you just imagine Jonathan Harker being greeted by the Count for the first time? Instead of saying, “I am Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house,” maybe he can simply say, “I’m Dracula…whassssssssssuuuuppp!”

Over at Absolute Write, a popular subject has re-appeared: the discussion on the appropriate length of chapters.

One writer asked how many pages is “too many” for a chapter. This writer said that someone who was reading her manuscript was discouraged because the chapters were all about twenty pages long. Chapters that long, her reader claimed, made her feel “dumb.” So, the reader decided the helpful thing to do would be to arbitrarily place suggested chapter breaks every six pages, without any concern as to whether the story was at a logical chapter break or not. The writer, understandably, was concerned by this.

There have been many responses, and most of them, thankfully, have suggested that there is no real rule about how long a chapter needs to be. Most seem to feel that they end their chapters when it feels right. What more can a writer be expected to do?

One writer left a response that caught my eye:

“I’m writing my first novel. I’m making each chapter 4000 words long. It’s an arbitrary number but it gives me a structure so I can measure my work. I also have specific things in mind with each chapter I write so I either write 4000 words or until my scene is over.

“Okay I don’t really worry about word count until I’m editing my chapter. Then I use my word count as a guide to either flesh out or cut back. My first chapter is only 2000 words long but then I could use more description since it’s sci-fi and takes place in a space ship. My second chapter I actually got what I wanted in 4000 words. Of course in rewrites all this could change.

“It’s a starting point and helps keep me motivated.”

To her comment, I said:

“If that is working for you well enough to keep you going, then I wouldn’t suggest that you stop. But I have to admit that it sounds a little scary that you write a chapter based on the number of words. Chapters don’t have to be the same length. Some authors do occasional chapters that are a single page long. If your chapter can accomplish what you want it to accomplish in two pages, why write until you have 4000 words? What are you filling the rest of the chapter with? Are you really telling the story at that point, or are you just padding until you hit word #4,000?

“Like I said, if it is working for you and you’re happy with the result, then keep going and keep writing…I just thought I’d ask because it might be worth considering.”

After that, here’s the rest of what I had to say on the subject of chapter lentgh:

“For me, because I prefer horror/suspense, most of my chapters are shorter. I think I’ve written a twenty page chapter, but if I have, it was only one that was that long. My chapters probably average about eight pages, but I’ve had a couple that are only a page and a half long.

“I write until I hit the end of a scene or a point that feels like a natural break. I don’t set a goal of how many pages each chapter should be: I tried that in a previous novel I was writing and the result was that I did end up padding pages to get to the end of my preconceived chapter length. It slowed the story down to a snail’s pace. I’ll never make that mistake again!

“In terms of the points about attention span, I’m the first to admit that mine isn’t as long as it should be. I’ve worked in television for almost 15 years, and have watched it for 35, so I’m sure that has helped the problem. If an author is going to make an assumption about my attention span, I’d much rather he assumed that it wasn’t long and wrote shorter chapters.

“I am also the first to admit that when I’m browsing in a book store and come to a book that looks interesting but is written by someone I don’t know, I will skim through and get a feel for chapter lengths after reading the first chapter or two. If I see that every chapter is at least twenty pages, it is very unlikely that I’ll buy that book.

“Why? Because I hate to stop reading in the middle of a chapter. A well-written chapter to me, is the end of an important point in the story, even if it ends in a cliffhanger. It seems like a good place to stop and a good place to pick up from the next time I open the book. If the chapters are too long, I feel obligated to read through the whole chapter, and am therefore less likely to pick up the book unless I know I have a lot of time, which is seldom the case.

“I reached the point of not worrying about chapter length by a combination of trial and error and from reading books within the genre I am writing. Since most suspense novels tend to be shorter chapters (because it gives the appearance of a faster pace), I quickly lost the guilt over not taking each chapter’s page count into the double digits!”

You’ll never really know what does or doesn’t work for you until you try it. There’s nothing wrong with experimenting. But if you do experiment, you should try to keep an eye on what you’re doing and remember to go back and check to make sure it is still working. My experiment didn’t work, so now I have a system that is different works better for me. That is one of the things I find enjoyable about writing: using many other viewpoints to help me find my own way.

If this were years instead of weeks, the 75th edition of the “Saturday Six” would celebrate its Diamond Jubilee. Since I’m pretty sure that no one is sending me a bunch of diamonds to celebrate the 75th edition of this weekly meme, I’ll just move on after a quick thanks to those who play week after week.

Also, I’ll mention that I know that several of you actually suggested some “Reader’s Choice” questions in your responses last week. I will be using those over the next couple of weeks. This week, we have four “Reader’s Choice” questions, but all of them came to me via email, so I thought they should get priority.

But first, Andi of “She Said What?” was first to play last week. Congratulations, Andi!

Last week’s questions marked the first time that Donna and Betty
played the ‘Six.’ Be sure to stop by their journals and say hello.

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! If you don’t have an AOL journal, you can still play, but of course you’ll at least need an AOL screen name, which you can get for free with AOL Instant Messenger, to be able to leave a comment here. To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. (Again, if you’re playing for the first time, please be sure to say so in the comment!) Enjoy!

1. When is the last time you took a vacation and went basically nowhere? Was it as relaxing as previous vacations where you have actually planned a trip?

4. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #65 from Hannah: What book character do you most identify with and why?

6. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #67 from Judi: If you had to make a choice for the rest of your life between food and sex, which would you choose, provided the following conditions: If you chose sex, you would never feel hungry, but just wouldn’t be able to enjoy a nice meal or the tastes of good food or drink; if you chose food, you would no longer have the physical intimacy and pleasure, but you still wouldn’t feel deprived of it. In other words, whichever one you choose to give up will be a series of pleasures you’ll never be able to experience firsthand again.

(With apologies to Judi, I did rephrase the question slightly. If it isn’t as clear as it could be, the fault is mine, not hers.)

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), click the e-mail link on the About Me bar and send it to me.

MY ANSWERS:
1. Just this week, in fact, which is why I asked the question! I didn’t go anywhere other than running errands and exploring a little around Richmond, which is full of fascinating places. Mostly, I sat around the house and watched TV with the dogs.

The highlights:

A fine, amiable and dreamy young man, you were also from a long line of dribbling madmen. King at 12 and quickly married to your sweetheart, Bavarian Princess Isabeau, and enjoyed many happy months together before either of you could speak anything of the other’s language. However, after illness you became a tad unstable. When a raving lunatic ran up to your entourage spouting an incoherent prophecy of doom, you were unsettled enough to slaughter four of your best men when a page dropped a lance. Your hair and nails fell out. At a royal masquerade, you and your courtiers dressed as wild men, ending in tragedy when four of them accidentally caught fire and burned to death. You were saved by the timely intervention of the Duchess of Berry’s underskirts.

This brought on another bout of sickness, which surgeons countered by drilling holes in your skull. The following months saw you suffer an exorcism, beg your friends to kill you, go into hyperactive fits of gaiety, run through your rooms to the point of exhaustion, hide from imaginary assassins, claim your name was Georges, deny that you were King and fail to recognise your family. You smashed furniture and wet yourself at regular intervals. Passing briefly into erratic genius, you believed yourself to be made of glass and demanded iron rods in your attire to prevent you breaking.

In 1405 you stopped bathing, shaving or changing your clothes. This went on until several men were hired to blacken their faces, hide, jump out and shout “boo!”, upon which you resumed basic hygiene. Despite this, your wife continued sleeping with you until 1407, when she hired a young beauty, Odette de Champdivers, to take her place. Isabeau then consoled herself, as it were, with your brother. Her lovers followed thick and fast while you became a pawn of your court, until you had her latest beau strangled and drowned.

A severe fever was fended off with oranges and pomegranates in vast quantities, but you succumbed again in 1422 and died. Your disease was most likely hereditary. Unfortunately, you had anywhere up to eleven children, who variously went on to develop capriciousness, great cruelty, insecurity, paranoia, revulsion towards food and, in one case, a phobia of bridges.

3. Oddly enough, I think my favorite book is “50 Great Ghost Stories,” edited by JohnCanning. There was one story in particular, “The Haunted House at Hydesville” that I never tired of hearing my dad read to me.

I found this little quiz online recently and gave it a shot. It turns out to have been wrong about my actual birth order, since I am an only child, but I definitely liked seeing that it thinks one of the things I should be doing is writing novels!

You Are Likely a Second Born

At your darkest moments, you feel inadequate. At work and school. you do best when you’re evaluating. When you love someone, you offer them constructive criticism. In friendship, you tend to give a lot of feedback - positive and negative. Your ideal careers are: accounting, banking, art, carpentry, decorating, teaching, and writing novels. You will leave your mark on the world with art and creative projects.

Autumn is by far my favorite season of the year, and a photo like this can make the reason immediately understandable. I never cease to be amazed by the dazzling colors that appear, almost as if a rainbow magically exploded all over the foliage. (I didn’t boost the color at all: the scene I photographed really is as brilliant as it appears to be.)

It motivates me to create somehow.