Showbiz Cowboys

Project: Radium Town, the Steampunk Weird West adventure set in my hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma at the dawn of statehood and starring Will Rogers. Now with bonus Tom Mix.

Writing stage: Research

What I accomplished/learned: On Saturday I went to the dollar store and bought a new notebook and a pack of note cards for research and plotting, and in the notebook I began jotting down a timeline of real life historical events relevant to my story and characters. In the biography of Will Rogers that I’m reading, I’m up to where he became a vaudeville sensation and joined the Ziegfeld Follies and started to get noticed by Hollywood, which is farther than I needed to go. I learned that Will was quite the world traveler at the turn of the century, and he was in England at the dawn of the Edwardian era, and I might be able to use that. I learned that he and Tom Mix were in a Wild West show together here in Oklahoma and were BFFs, and I can totally use that. I also learned that Betty Blake, the girl that Will would eventually marry, was quite different from the type of character I need her to be for my book (which I very much expected), and now I need to focus on figuring out how my alt-history directly affects her to the extent that it takes her from a quiet Kansas girl to a butt-kicking government agent.

C25K/UFYH: On Saturday we did yard work, and I mowed the back yard, which satisfied both my workout and unfussing requirements. On Sunday I did fargle-all but sit around in my robe and read steampunk short stories and watch Supernatural and knit, because last week tired me out more than I realized. Matt made a corned beef brisket and my robe was green, so that was our St. Pat’s day. ANyway, today I vacuumed the whole house and took out the compost. Later this afternoon I’m either going to go out with Matt to toss the football around or I’m going to go for a walk. Either way, I’ll get some kind of movement in, although I’m still not quite up to snuff on this whole C25K thing. I’m still waiting for the weather to become warmer and stay that way.

Later: I have design work to do for two clients, and quite a bit of e-mail to answer, and I need to work on lining up some clients for April so I’ll actually have time for Camp Nano instead of having to spend all day every day writing Demand Studios content. And then after dinner we’ll fall into bed and watch Walking Dead.