Potentiality Arises

I have a job interview scheduled for next Wednesday at SWAT Solutions for a software testing position. It may be an interesting job, but we'll see. I've also talked to a recruiter who may be able to get me an interview for a Software Engineer position. This, amusingly, however, would be at Regency Beauty Institute. Wouldn't that be funky. Not exactly a company I would have thought I would ever work at.

I have had my first day back at FLS for this temporary time (8 days total). It is good to see some of the people I worked with there, as I had several friends and left the company on excellent terms with everyone. I will be covering later hours, working from about 1-10 each day. I am able to be at the office for about the first half, then be home and work remotely for the last half, which is nice. It'll be good to have a paycheck again.

Chapter five for The Lords of Sargoff is posted, and I just finished up the rough draft for chapter twelve, putting the current total novel length of the story at 119 pages. Very exciting stuff. :)

LotD: Great White Shark Images. Sharks happen to be one of my favorite animals. These are impressive shots of a shark attacking a seal. So, if that might make you sad, you might not want to look. :)

Temporary Employment > 0

A small amount of temporary good news - I will have a job for about a week. :) I will be working at FLS - my old job before I worked at Priority - for about a week during some busier times (all these primary elections and such make things busier). So, while it's nothing permanent (and I don't believe I will ever have anything permanent again at FLS), it's still something - an extra paycheck we wouldn't have had otherwise. So, yay. :)

I have posted chapter four to the The Lords of Sargoff page, as well as a link to that page on the links list on this blog. All the chapters, at this point, are in the rough draft stage, so there may certainly be many grammar and spelling mistakes. Also, it is quite possible that several names of characters and locations will change, including possibly both of the main characters. But I'm not going to worry too much about that until after the story is finished, and I go back and start doing major edits.

LotD: R2-D2 Laundry Baskets. Laundry is always easier with a friendly astromech droid.

The Lord of Small, Excessively Simple Web Pages

For your reading pleasure, I have created a small, excessively simple web page to post chapters of The Lords of Sargoff. It now includes the first two previously-posted chapters, and the newly-posted third chapters. It also includes chapter titles for all of the currently-planned 19 chapters. I don't know if, were this actually to be published, that I would even want to include chapter titles, but I figured, for now, that I'd add them. If you read them, please let me know what you think! Any suggestions or comments (or spelling/grammar errors) would be greatly appreciated.

I am getting rather excited for February 3rd. The New England Patriots (my #2 team) are aiming to cap off an amazing perfect season against the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. Go Pats! The Giants are a good team and played well against them in the last week of the regular season, but I think the Patriots are just too much for them to handle. Hopefully.

My job hunt continues, without any major breakthroughs. I did meet with a recruiter who said he may have some openings at U.S. Bank, but I haven't heard anything from him since. So we'll see. I did find what seems like a good publisher to submit fiction manuscripts to today, so you never know. We'll see where life takes me. :)

LotD: 10 Incredible Old Computer Ads. 80 megabytes for less than $12,000. What a deal.

Almost Halfway There

I just finished chapter nine of The Lords of Sargoff, and there are (currently) 19 chapters planned, so I am almost halfway. The length of the first nine chapters is about 22,000 words, which is the same as (approximately) 90 pages in novel-form. So, in theory, I should be nearing the novel length of 200 pages by the time I write chapter 19. Then, I will be going back and doing a lot of heavy editing, and will be adding things, so the length should get longer. But I have a while to go before getting to that point.

I may be creating a small web page where I can post the story chapters instead of posting them here. That means, of course, that I will still keep my blogging audience up to date when new material is posted, but the stories themselves will not be in the blog entry, which is better.

The job hunt continues. I have talked to a couple recruiters, and will be meeting with one in person tomorrow. We'll see what comes from that.

LotD: Star Trek Teaser Trailer. Thank you, Yahoo! Movies. As I've been become a bigger Star Trek fan (and now that I've seen all ten movies), I've been getting excited for the new Star Trek movie that comes out late this year. It's a fine little trailer, even though this doesn't show very much.

The Saga Continues

I have continued the joys of job hunting, but am yet to come across any major job leads. My old boss at FLS said that he should know more about whether I will be able to go back there by this Thursday. Even if I do go there, that doesn't mean by job hunt will be over. I may only be at FLS temporarily, while I find something else more permanent. Unless FLS happens to change my job description (and add to my salary), both of which are rather unlikely. But we shall see. :)

Below, I have posted the current chapter two from The Lords of Sargoff. This is just over 2 pages in Word (a little above 1000 words). A lot of this is from what was previously posted as chapter one several months ago, but it is shorter (as a lot of what was there has now been moved to chapter three). So, to some of you, a lot of this will be rather familiar. That being said, I just finished up chapter seven, and will be, as soon as I click "Publish Post", starting on chapter eight.

Let me know what you think, if you read it. Everything still needs a lot of work, of course.

LotD: Alienware Curved Display. That's just crazy.


The Lords of Sargoff

Chapter Two

It was dawn by the clock’s standards, but darkness still spread over the plains of Sargoff. Not a star in the sky, no moon or moon crescent hung there to shine. No sound was heard, no breeze was felt, no creatures moved. In a small grove of trees stood a man who had been there for hours, waiting. He had not slept nor grown tired, his mind glued to the task at hand.

His clothes were all faded brown and in rough shape, from his thick steel-toed boots up to his rimmed hat. Several scratches and dried blood stains shown in his coat’s dark fabric. A thick pack hung from his back, and a sheathed dagger dangled from his belt.

The maple and fir trees, organized in a perfect circle, surrounded him densely on all sides and left an open area in the middle nearly an acre in size. It was mostly empty, except for two large rocks that sat next to each other and were long overtaken with moss and plant life. The grass stood up nearly to the man’s waist.

He watched through one of the few gaps in the trees as a dull light emerged on the black horizon and sped through the air. It came to an abrupt halt high above the waiting man, hung there for a few moments, and then dropped. It stopped falling directly in front of the man and hovered at near his eye-level.

“You’re late,” the man said, his voice deep and fiery.

“Yes, my lord,” the high-pitched response came. The outline of a mouth made of light emerged on the shining sphere. “I do apologize, but—”

“No time. Where is it?”

“I carry it.” An illuminated arm grew out from behind the light, and it reached over its body and inside the mouth. It rummaged underneath the bright tongue with its human-like hand. Loud noises came from within its body: clangs and rumbles as if large heavy objects banged against each other. The bright hand soon emerged holding a small grey box that was at least twice the size of the light’s fist-sized body. The box was exquisitely decorated with sparkling gold, diamonds and pearls.

An eyeball stuck out of the mouth of the glowing sphere, attached to a thin string of sagging light that seemed to drip small drops of brightness inside the mouth and onto the ground below. The eyeball was completely bright like the rest of its body, except for a small black dot on its front side.

The man took the box into his gloved hand.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” the sphere said.

The man grunted and then asked, “how does it open?”

“Open? Why would it need to open? It’s a ceremonial piece—”

The man walked to the large moss-covered rocks and threw the box against one of them. It broke open and even more rare jewels fell from its insides onto the ground. The sphere of light gasped and turned a bright reddish color. “What are you doing? That thing is worth enough to buy the whole country!”

“Indeed it is,” the man said. “Or powerful enough to rule the world.”

“What?”

He knelt down on his knees and used his fingers to sift through what had become a pile of miscellaneous gems and stones on the ground. “One of these is much more special than the rest.”

“Those big diamonds are beautiful,” the light said. “Those are much more special.”

“Here it is,” the man said as he held a dull round stone in his palm.

“That?”

“This.”

“Why that?”

“Because this is power.”

“That? That is nothing. A rock you’d find anywhere. Nothing that the eye finds pleasing.”

“Yet ever more useful.”

“Useful?”

The man nodded.

“But sire, these are the lowest of the stones, created by the lowest of stone makers. Even the slaves are given them. How is such a rock useful?”

“Because this is no mere rock at all. This thing brings life, and only through life can you bring death, and only through death can there be peace.”

“Peace? From what war?”

“Peace from those who bring war to create death, and peace for those who bring war to create life.”

“And this little thing can accomplish that?”

The man looked slowly from the small object in his hand to the light, his lip curling up on one side.

“Power is not the same thing as size. I thought you of all beings would know that.”

“My power is the same as my size; I have no great powers. But this thing, it is just a rock, my lord,” the shining ball of light said. “Thousands of them sit on the bottom of the river—”

“This one is different,” the man said. He pointed at a thin green line that encircled the object, except for a small gap. “This is the mark of Lord Hamrin, the great warlock of the forest. This is no stone, but an orb of great magical powers.”

“An orb? But magical orbs are much bigger and brighter—”

“Most of them are.”

“—and they leave no question of what they are. What makes you think this is an orb, my lord?”

“Because I have seen it before. Several years ago, in the palm of Lord Hamrin himself.”

“But—”

The man held out his hand, and the light silenced.

“Cymor, my friend, this has been my life’s quest,” he said, holding the rock between his fingers. “And here it is.”

Cymor’s eyeball stared at the man, squinting. “It must be special, then, Jothan,” it said. “And this Lord Hamrin wants the orb back?”

“He has been dead for many years.”

“Then who wants it? What does the orb do?”

Jothan scowled slightly and ignored these questions.

“We must move out.”

“Where to?”

We go to Irkinoth,” Jothan said. “We must speak with the king.”

“Irkinoth,” Cymor repeated. “Though I have no memory of being there, or seeing it on a map, somehow, I know just where it is.”

Jothan looked at him awkwardly and dropped the orb into his pack. The pair of them moved south through the field as the sun started to peak over the horizon.

The Unseen Road Ahead

Yes, you would think that, without a job, I would be blogging more. :) Well, I hopefully will be now, and will try to keep my massive blogging audience up-to-date with my job hunt.

When I left my job at FLS, a woman there gave me the name of a person and a company that I could contact in case my new job didn't work out. And, of course, it didn't. I have now found out that she is the sister-in-law of the President of the Lucidiom, Inc. Not too bad of a connection, but then again, the company is in Virginia. I have contacted them, but unless they allow telecommuting or have a Minneapolis branch, that option won't go anywhere.

I am waiting to hear back from my boss at FLS to see if they will take me on again, even temporarily. Hopefully they do, but who knows. The timing has made things interesting, as my boss was out for a few days, and then his boss (the owner of the company) was out for a week. But I am hoping to get an answer within the next couple days.

God works in strange ways sometimes. I know that everything will work out for us just fine, but things like this make me question exactly what my purpose is on this planet. I enjoy computers, but I don't often feel that that's really where I'm supposed to be. I enjoy writing and see more purpose in it, but don't know exactly what to do with it. Ah, the future will be interesting. :) On that thought, I plan on being able to put a good amount of time into The Lords of Sargoff over the next week. I'm pretty excited.

LotD: Possible Eighth Harry Potter Book. Maybe, maybe not.