The Plot Bunny Farm

In winter, it’s dry inside, and static electricity comes to call. I stand up, I touch something, and I get shocked. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s the stair railing, a book, or another person — ZAP!

But I’m the only one in the family that it’s happening to yet, so my son asked me this morning if I had some sort of metal core that made me more prone to conducting electricity. I joked that it’s the metal screw in my foot. (It goes up from my heel through my ankle.)

Which, of course, with us being the kind of family that we are, led to joking about Wolverine and his skeleton. Do you know why he doesn’t shock everyone he touches? It’s the costume. You only think it’s Spandex; it’s really rubber to prevent the electric discharge.

What sorts of silliness have you been up to lately?

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Hvinde’s stepmother truly is the fairest of them all, goddess of beauty and ruler of the kingdom. Her priests, however, think it’s time to give somebody else a chance at the title of fairest, and at least one thinks Hvinde has a shot. What’s a girl to do when she’d much rather play bridge with the guards than primp for others?

As is probably obvious from the blurb above, this is my retelling of the Snow White tale, without hearts cut out, poison, or wicked stepmothers being forced to dance in red hot shoes made of iron. Read an excerpt below.( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Editing. (As in copyediting and proofreading, which I should be working on right now, instead of writing a post.)

English Breakfast tea. (Current beverage, decaf variety.)

Enough. (Although if we’re looking at the list of things I’m working on, I passed “enough” about ten items back. Or maybe fifteen.)

Evil muse. (She finally gave me the last line to go with a first line from a couple years ago, so now I have another story on my to-do list.)

Energy. (The running is really helping with that. I’m getting done with the runs and feeling positively exhilarated. Not necessarily wanting to sit down and set to work, but that’s a different issue, now isn’t it?)

Elephants. (At one point in elementary school, we had to create fictional restaurants for ourselves. Mine was “Erin’s Elephants,” and the restaurant was housed in a building shaped like an elephant, where the legs were elevators to get people and supplies up to the actual restaurant. Steaks were expensive, ice cream was cheap, and salads weren’t on the menu.)

Eggplants. (Which if you peel and cube it, then boil and mash it, makes an excellent thickener for all sorts of tomato-based sauces.)

Excuses. (None allowed.)

Empty. (As in my brain, when trying to pick a single topic for this post.)

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

I've noticed that Nevada's early voting has gotten a lot of national coverage in the past couple of weeks. As someone who grew up there, I wanted to mention it. For those who haven't been following along, Nevada placed electronic voting booths in places people normally visited -- malls, grocery stores, libraries -- and let people vote outside their local precinct at wherever was convenient for them. It has been phenomenally successful in terms of turnout, and a lot of pundits have been saying other states should look into following the model.

I'd like to sound a note of caution here, though.

After all, Nevada's infrastructure is built on the ability to place electronic machines of chance in any public building at a moment's notice. Other states just don't have the background to do that.

On the other hand, if IGT were supplying voting machines rather than Diebold doing so, there would probably be a lot fewer hackers getting into the systems. And they wouldn't even have to guarantee a 97% payback!