Friday was an interesting day. And I use the word “interesting” with loaded meaning (couldn’t find the right smilie to indicate that, so here we are).

High point: finding out with an hour to spare that I would get to do a phone interview with Joss Whedon. All I really remember was that I was focusing on not sounding like a doofus, my painful discovery that it’s a big, big mistake to pound down a large Sprite to calm your nerves when you’re afraid to leave the phone long enough to pee, and that when he did call and we talked I sounded like a doofus.

With luck it’ll appear online Tuesday and in the paper later in the week. Only really new thing in it that I haven’t seen anywhere else: the Dr. Horrible episodes will appear on drhorrible.com pretty close to 12:01 am on their launch dates. Didn’t get if it was PST, I’m hoping to hear back about that. My favorite quote was when I was asking about his knack for attracting obsessive fans:

“That’s what I am, that’s what I grew up as. The things I love, I love very hard.”

Low point: immediately thereafter, when my car blew a head gasket on the way home and my brother-in-law and I spent four fun-filled hours next to Beville Road trying Bars Head Gasket Fix in the desperate hope that mine had blown in just the right way for this to work and save me many hundreds or thousands of dollars that I don’t, strictly speaking, have.

Results: I have an interview which I have now transcribed and will tomorrow edit, modulate, and possibly remaster until I sound like David Attenborough, am now working on my article. Car is running well if not smoothly, the oil has been changed, and we’ll see how that goes.

All in all, best thing about the weekend? Watching the little videos Teres took of the concert with our camera, where her fangirl shrieks can plainly be heard over the din. She’s been blushing nonstop, I’m working on making one of them my Windows startup noise.

I need a new Web service, and I don’t think it’s other there yet. Nor do I want to set it up myself, I just want to avail myself of its nonexistent services.

I want a plot search engine.

Say I think of a fantastic idea for a story (it could happen). And say I invest time, trouble, and skullsweat into developing that story. How do you think I’ll react when I realize, halfway through, that not only has someone already written that story but probably did it better. Pretty darn despondent, that’s how.

So to head off that despairfest I’m calling for a plot search. If I want to write about time-traveling monkeys I want to know how many brave writers have gone that road before me, never to be heard of again (answer: 6). I want to type in “Barnard’s Star,” “alien warfare,” “Cheeze Whiz,” and “testicle” to see if I’m original or just pulling from the collective unconsciousness.

How tough could it be? All we’d have to do is review every book ever written and enter the plot and publishing info as keywords in a database. There are people online who do that kind of thing for fun.

In the meantime, I’m off to write. Hmm. How would Cheeze Whiz react to microgravity…

Joel Watson of HijinksEnsue.com was away this week and asked Adam and myself if we’d be interested in supplying a guest comic to his geek-friendly strip. We were, and we did.

(Note: our comic today is entirely SFW, previous comics in his archives include NSFW language)

PRESS RELEASE

The Network and What’s the Use Productions have jointly announced that the episode of Hiatus that aired April 18, 2008, will be the final one. Production on the show has halted, and there have been no public plans to carry on with the show in any capacity on The Network or any other venue.

“Hiatus has been an important part of The Network’s history, and Manny Ulrich’s visionary show has broken the boundaries of what television is capable of,” said Cornelius Snyvel, Presidential-Adjunct of Entertainment, The Network, in a prepared statement. “We’d like to thank Manny, the incredible cast, and the talented workers who put their hearts and souls into this engaging creation that nonetheless made us less cash for the time slot than a re-rerun of ‘Midgets, Midgets, Midgets.’ It was not an easy decision for us, but we had to go with what was best for our stockholders.

“We hope Manny will make more shows for us,” Snyvel said, before slamming his door and pulling his shades down.

Manny Ulrich could not be reached for comment and may not be aware of the current status of his show. The creative genius of “Mars Cops” and “How Can I Be Pregnant?” is on a sabbatical in the Honduras and should be approached with caution.

Hiatus was introduced as a mid-season replacement in February to cover lost programming during the writers’ strike. Despite being broadcast out of order and regularly pre-empted, Hiatus quickly earned a devoted following of enthusiastic fans. It is unknown at this time what the future holds for this franchise.

***

And we’ve already seen what it’s being replaced with.

OK, I couldn’t let it die. The show was just too good, too special. And when an insanely talented friend wanted to start a webcomic and needed a writer and a subject, well…

Join Ven, Casey, and their friends as they fight to keep their favorite TV show alive despite network indifference and hostility. Also, other geek stuff. The very first strip was posted a few minutes ago, and I wanted you guys to know about it first because you’ve always been there for Hiatus in the past. With luck, new strips will appear (starting next week) every Monday and Friday.

There’s also a forum to post episode discussions, fan fiction, and fan art, and I hope those of you who have already created some will post it there as well.

Come on over for the launch of the web’s newest comic, and help save Hiatus!

www.savehiatus.com

The January edition of The Writer magazine (on sale now) has a feature on writing flasher stories and there’s an entire story on the cover with a familiar byline. Turns out I can write short stories and three years of newspaper columns and I got a cover for a quickie story I wrote for the heck of it for BirdandMoon.com’s 55-word challenge.

Here’s the whole thing (but you should buy a copy anyway, for more comments from me and a nice long article on short, short stories). 55 words, not counting the title.

He Met Her

He met her at the club, lights flashing, music battering.

“So, you heard about my job.”

“Yeah.”

“But you know, I’ve learned something. With your love, I can go on even without the big bucks.”

“I’ve learned something, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m much more shallow than I thought.”

And she smiled, sadly, and walked away.

When Merril answered the phone Liza was in mid-cry. “I found Vincent!” she sobbed.

“The gorgeous dream guy you met last summer? Where?”

“I ran across him today, his real name’s Phil. Turns out he takes vacations, finds some babe and gives her the perfect boyfriend for two weeks of hot sex. Then he goes back to being Phil. Gah! I’m so stupid!”

“Liza?”

“He’s shorter in real life, too. Asshole.”

“Hey, you got vacation time, right?”

“Yeah, but–”

“So go be someone else’s fantasy.”

There was a long silence, and then Liza chuckled.

“Maybe I’ll call myself ‘Phoebe…’”

Margie hated February 15th.

Bad enough she didn’t have her own valentine, but she had to clean up after the ones that did, and that was torture.

The sheets in 206 were covered in baby oil. Flower petals and torn lingerie clogged up the tub in 210. 211’s headboard was actually dented, for God’s sake.

Grumbling, she pushed into 212 and found another depressed soul. Alone, sitting on the bed, still in a tuxedo, he was staring at an unopened box of chocolates and looking handsome and vulnerable.

“Happy Valentine’s Day to me,” Margie whispered, and she closed the door.

I’m happy. The Serenity movie site just had a contest to win props from the movie; 1st prize was a complete Alliance uniform, runner-up prizes were chopsticks used in the movie. The assignment was to write a report from the point of view of an Alliance officer on the day River Tam escaped from the Academy, with a limit of 10,000 characters.

Here’s my runner-up-winning entry: Read the rest of this entry »