A Jawa defends his position of saving R2D2 from rusting in the desert

I have four Jawa Star Wars action figures from the 1970's. I've played with them while playing with my children and our Lego bricks. They still have the personalities from when I played with them when I was a child. Two of them are less serious, misunderstand many things in a funny way, and sometimes a bit reckless.

So my son, Adonis, and I were discussing various things while on our way to the sitters. I was using my Jawa voice and he asked why Jawa's have such a high pitched squeeky voice. I told him because of how they spoke in the first Star Wars movie I saw (now labeled Star Wars IV) and mimicked what they said when the one Jawa told all the others to come out and pick up R2D2 after one of them zapped him. And then the conversation switched and went something like this.

Son: You stole R2D2.
Jawa: No we didn't, we saved him from rusting in the desert.
Son: That's stealing.
Jawa: If we hadn't of come along when we did he would have rusted in the desert.
Son: You still stole him.
Jawa: From who?
Son: From Anakin Skywalker.
Jawa: Anakin Skywalker wasn't their owner anymore.
Son: When Darth Vader came on board the ship he was looking for them.
Jawa: He was looking for them because he wanted the plans not because he owned them. Princess Leia was their owner.

At that point the conversation turned to Anakin being able to own them even though he was dead because he was wearing clothes from Star Wars II or III. It sounded better while we were having the mock argument as we were speaking very quickly and sometimes trying to talk over each other as the Jawas have a tendency to do that and in Adonis' opinion they talk too much.

We are fans of Star Wars and get into various interesting conversations with me pretending to be one of the Jawas. Two of my other children, Liem and Sharleen, started pretending to be Jawas a few months ago and get into it too at times speaking in high pitched voices.

Another common point of discussion is the fact that the Jawas often crash Lego vehicles such as cars, trucks, space ships, planes, helicopters. It's always an accident or because two of them are fighting over who gets to drive. So today the Jawa said he hadn't crashed anything and that he was a good driver. Adonis added the word yet to imply that he would crash at some point today.

I want a space colony on the moon!

I've been following the news reports on the radio about the space shuttle program coming to an end. Tomorrow the Atlantis returns to earth never again to leave it. And it's the last flight. I think it is sad that space exploration hasn't progressed further than it has. And to leave it like this and not have something in place already, I shake my head. I'm sure there are some who will say it's too expensive and that there are better things to spend money on. I agree there are many worthy projects to spend money on and so many that would benefit people right now.

That doesn't stop me from thinking how neat it would be to have a colony on the moon and to send people to Mars and possibly set up a colony there too. A large space station, like a little city, orbiting the earth would be nice too. And I would love to be able to visit such a space station or one of those colonies.

At the very least it would be nice of the countries of the world would cooperate, or corporations for that matter, and send people to the moon again. If for no other reason than to show everyone that the US did get there in the 1960's and put to rest all the nonsense about it being a hoax.

The US should at least replace the space shuttle with something to take astronauts to the international space station even if there is no ambition to return to the moon or go on to Mars.

Friendships

As I go about the Internet trying to become known in my way and finding people to help me with my novel I am creating friendships that I hope will last a long time. Since high school I have not forged any long lasting friendships in person except perhaps at my work. There are people I know that I trust and I am friends with but at this point I doubt I will be in contact with them once I or they move.

I am still in contact with two friends from when I was in school. One I have known since middle school, the other since elementary school. We e-mail each other every few months.

I am sure some of this is the way I am and the way life changed after high school. Other than right now there is no other place I have lived longer except where I grew up. I've lived in the same house in Virginia for just over six year. Where I grew up I lived in that house in Utah for eleven years continuously.

I have some friends I only know from conversations via the Internet. Some of these I have known for about five years now.

Too me, communicating on a regular basis opens up the possibility of creating friendships. As I communicate with people and ask them to beta read my book, edit my book, and/or design the cover for my book, I hope that some of them become my friends. Most of those who volunteered to beta read my book are my friends. I realize that me hiring editors and cover designers means I have a business relationship with them, but in my mind I consider them as friends. They have chosen to help me the best they can. The depth of the friendship is something different and since I have just met them on the Internet in the past few weeks there is not much depth there yet.

It seems to me it is easier for me to make friend via the Internet than in person. I am divorced with custody of my four children and so most evenings are spent at home out of necessity. Saturdays is when I do my grocery shopping and other errands. Sometimes I don't get a chance to take a break and relax on Saturdays until the evening. Sundays I spend at church and then home relaxing. So all that leaves little time for me to strengthen friendships with people who live near me. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention I spend three hours a day commuting to and from work.

I want to find time to go visit peoples blogs and write comments. I want to participate on kindleboards more. When I do visit blogs I often can't seem to think of anything to say and the same thing seems to happen on kindleboards. There are so many wonderful people there that know so much more than me about self publishing and I learn a lot from them and for that I am thankful.

I believe I will have many more friends as time progresses, but for me it happens very slowly.

More Idea's Already?

So, now that my first draft is done I have all kinds of ideas flowing into my head for book two in the series as well as for other books, including sci-fi. Good grief. I want to finish this book first and get it published then work on book two. I am generally good at staying focused.

So far I am almost one fourth of the way through the first round of revisions. At this rate I should be finished by the end of July. I think I'll have my story ready for beta readers about mid August. As I complete each fourth of my book I am sending it off to Arkali (Yep the one at kindleboards.com) for editing. This way I will be able to include her suggestions and corrections before giving my story to my beta readers. I am surprised at how many people I have found that are willing to beta read my story. I even have a teenager and pre teen that will be reading it (not counting my children who may decide to beta read for me). I believe I will have changes made based on beta readers by the end of September and expect to turn my story over to its final editor in early October. Cherie Reich at Hazard Editing will be doing the final edit.

Now if I can just keep those story ideas at bay until I get all that done, I will be doing good.

First Draft Completed

I finished the first draft of the first novel in my series about dragons.  I added a chapter showing one of the main characters during a time of happiness.  It was actually meant to be part of another chapter but became its own chapter.

Now I think I'll read through the entire story and then start the first round of revisions.

First Draft Almost Finished

I managed to write about 800 more words in my WIP.  That was yesterday.  All the week prior I managed to get distracted by various things including preparing to go camping, camping Friday to Saturday at Lake Anna, playing runescape, and now Eden Eternal.

There is only one more chapter I need to look at and then as long as I don't think up another chapter or two the first draft of my novel will be done.  I wrote a much needed chapter to make things fit into place and took out a chapter place holder that was never going to get written.

This will be the first time I have ever finished a first draft of a novel length story.  I did write a novel before this but decided to do a major rewrite before finishing the first draft and then the story never got finished.  I keep reading that others say the first novel you ever write usually should never be published.  Hopefully that was the one that I never finished.  If the interest of my children in my current novel is any indication I would say that this novel is one that will be of interest to more people.  Time, of course, will tell.

As long as Eden Eternal doesn't distract me too much, I should have the first draft done by the end of this week or at least before the 5th of July.

More details about my story

Right now the working title of my book is Dragon Claws Rage.  I feel like I am getting closer and closer to finishing the first draft.  The story is just over 73,000 words.  I want it to be longer and believe it will be.  The reason I think this way is because some of the chapters need to be fleshed out and do more showing than telling.  Some chapters seem to be but an outline of what should happen in the chapter.

I'm not an expert and so perhaps saying that my first draft is finished inspite of these chapters may not be accurate.  However, I wrote a chapter at the end of the book and then realized it was too sad to be the end and have figured out a way to end the book on a happy note, very happy one indeed.

I have been eliminating my place holders where I marked my story that I need to return.  I use ~~~ and just search for that.  There are only two or three of them left.

What I found surprising is that my story right now has 66 chapters.  Since I know I am going to add one more it is going to at least have 67 chapters.  I think it likely as I start the second draft that some of them may get combined into one.  I tend to write short chapters.  Each chapter either has a change of character point of view or some other logical end point.

I am a member of critiquecircle.com and plan to put up the first chapter there for critique either today or within a week so that I can start getting more feed back.  I got very good information from the editor that I plan to have edit my book once it is ready for editing and so during my second draft I will make use of her very sage advice to improve my entire book watching for the things she pointed out.  I am also planning to use the emotion thesaurus at http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/ since I believe that will help me show rather than tell.  Such as show a character getting angry instead of simply saying he got angry.

More ideas are flowing about the second book and possibly the third.  I've always wanted to make this a three book series and then after that write more stories in the same world.  I have five or more short stories that I wrote over ten years ago that are in this world and I may expand one of them into a novel.  But that is for later.

The main dragon creator was a wizard named Holvien.  All the dragons he created he gave a weakness to ensure they did not turn against their creators.  Another council member, Tedorlan, didn't see the need for such a weakness.  After Holvien had created three different dragon types, Tedorlan created the largest, most intelligent dragons yet and did not give them a weakness.  These are the red dragons.  They inherited some of Tedorlan's attitude and soon turned against their creator and the nation that created dragons.  So the next two dragons Holvien created were designed to meet that threat and so they have a natural protection from the red dragons psychic powers.

The dragons Holvien created followed his pattern for using safeguards when they created altered humans to help them.  They gave these humans some of their own powers but limited the activation of that power.  Only when three of the altered humans are touching each other will the power activate.

Well, I am off to work on my story now.