My story begins with an alien walking into a bar. I’ve had a very clear image of this bar / diner in my head since the story first popped into my head. While researching diners on the internet, I found one very similar located on Route 40, called the Route 40 Classic Diner.
Today my wonderful brother went there for lunch and took pictures of it for me. He assures me the food was as good as the atmosphere.
If you’re ever in the area, stop in and sample the food…and then send me pictures!
I’ve managed to finish a draft of “The Spaceport” for NaNo! 
This was an interesting experience. I had to fight through food poisoning, holiday planning, emotional ups and downs…and yet this was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever taken on. It took me back to my early years as a writer, when I could work with complete abandon. The quality is maybe a little better than it was back then, but not much. The story still needs a lot of editing as several characters changed significantly as the story unfolded. I need to go back and add in all of the layers of interpersonal dynamics and clean up some serious point of view issues, but it is done.
Now I need to return to real life and do things like laundry and cleaning the house.
I’ll also be pondering: could I do this on a daily basis? Because this is the pace a professional author needs to maintain in our modern world.
All I want is a living wage.
That’s all I wanted when I got out of college. Of course, the term was new then. Now it is almost obsolete. Workers are supposed to be grateful for 20 or 30 hours/week. When I became an employer, I determined that we would pay our employees a living wage. The business went bankrupt.
The Spaceport is my daydream business, the place I would work if I could. It has great benefits: healthcare, on-site apartments, intense mental health care.
You need the mental health care, because of the aliens.
I mean, when you’re working among humans and turn around to see some bug-eyed sweetheart staring down at you like you’re lunch, you really appreciate those on-staff psychiatrists.
Thinking about the benefits of working at the spaceport, I realized they’d have a great educational benefit, too, because they’d have an exchange program with off-world universities.
It would be a great place to work. Youth would be an advantage, because young people tend to be less traumatized by the unexpected.
In my years of dreaming about the spaceport, I’ve met the most amazing folks who have come to work there. Folks like Annie: sweet, homeschooled Annie who works in the gift shop…and her husband Trevor the grunge security guard. Then there’s “Bugs” (the entomologist) and Blue, the barkeep. Blue does have a name, but no one can pronounce it, so they just call her by the one word that comes to mind in her presence.
Blue invaded my mind in college. She’s snarky, sarcastic and makes a wicked Denebian sundown.
So come along with me as I bring these stories out of the closet and into your hands. If someone has the money to invest, I’d love to build the Spaceport for real.
I don’t have that sort of cash. I’m still looking for a living wage.
