Trippy triple post.

I went for the easy words. Blame the carbs.

Drabble:

The yawn felt like it nearly split her face in two. Today, the afterlunch lethargy threatened to put her face down into the test bench with all its flashing beacons and winking LEDs. The fault lay directly on the spaghetti and garlic bread she’d purchased from the deli. She knew better. Avoid the tryptophan and the carbs; get a salad intead and she could stay alert throughout the afternoon. She could get some coffee to help countereffect the sleepiness, but it actually takes caffeine an hour to have a physical effect on the human body. Still, it would help, eventually.

Can I hijack away from drabbling for a moment, SVP? I need to float something.

Jenn feels I ought to do the synopsis and first 100 pages of Burden of Memory (the "what feeds on vampires" novel, now to be referred to as BoM).

So, I want to write the synopsis. The setting is Africa, a thinly-veiled version of William Holden's Hollywood community hotel in Kenya. The backers and Hollywood elite sit down to a sumptious feast on the set of a troubled movie production, as the movie's people try to get them to dole out more money to complete the film. They're fed the local animals, cooked in gourmet style.

Among the dishes is one made with monkey meat. And the monkeys are carrying a very odd little virus, that jumps species between primates, and has no effect on the people who just ate the monkey, but rather sets up in the sex line cells, and transmits to the next generation. And I want the reader the watch them eat this sumptious dinner, and also to watch the virus enter their systems and settle in and begin to mutate. It's these peoples' grandchildren who manifest the illness, which is a form of PNH: Paroxysmal nocturnal haemglobinuria. I quote my expert source on this:

This is a weird disease, cause by a mutation in the delightfully named Pig-A gene, which makes the red cells fragile. This disease can come on in early adolescence and looks like a progressive anaemia. One interesting problem is that you have to be very careful with giving transfusions to these people as they can spontaneously destroy (haemolyse) all the blood and get very sick. They also get a severe blood clots A symptom of the disease (hence the name) is they can get blood in their urine at night from time to time. A similar group of disease is Fanconi's anaemia caused by a variety of different mutations in, which again have not all been worked out so you could have some latitude there in inventing the mutation. This has been associated with radiation. These children often have other strange symptoms - abnormal kidneys, strange skeletal problems (especially of their forearms and thumbs), and odd skin pigmentation.

I'm thinking of doing it with a sort of "Hot Zone" take on the writing style.

Comments? I'm off to bank, would love some input.

Deb, interesting idea. Susan, I forgot to congratulate you on your travel piece. Yay for getting jobs. Karl, I'll read you tomorrow first thing. I just got a total(writing) love letter from my college creative writing teacher...I sent him the latest clip. God, did I need that today!

Oh, Erika, yay for love letters!

Deb, your synopsis sounds delightfully creepy.

I know. I think he wants me to write my memoirs or something...I think I'm way too young.And not interesting enough, since I never actively tried to commit suicide(only lusted in my heart, so to speak) my mother is the fun kind of crazy, and my dad and I never made out.Shit, we don't even speak, mostly.

Writing teacher is a drama king, but he did tell me that he hasn't felt like reading anything since the semester ended, and he read mine, which, great to hear.

That reminds me of a lit teacher I had in college who I showed a short story to. He liked the twist ending and recommended I read "Monstrous Regiment of Women" (I think is the title). We were discussing story in class later, and I made a comment about the plot structure, and he said, "Well, Connie does have a keen grasp of plot, and ..." I was happily boggled.

Of course, my Advanced Comp prof would often put little remarks like "I can tell you're being lazy here" or "Not up to your usual standard" on my papers. Damn, I miss college.

I don't, for the most part, but writing class was fun.

Because I couldn't resist the plug, and lists are likely to make me show off:

"You going to Further Confusion this weekend?"

"Sure, it's a perfectly cromulent way to spend four days. Where else can you help a sleepy anthropomorphic cheetah with a pantaloon fetish with her luggage and then ask her out to coffee afterwards, only to find out that she's really a he? Watch costumed critters pose for photos with the hotel staff in cheerily compromising positions? Or recoil in utter, abject horror as your yummy room-service spaghetti undergoes some strange overnight carbohydrate transubstantiation because your room-mate forgot to plug in the hotel fridge?"

"Fair point. I think I'll stay home this year."