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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 1635150" data-attributes="member: 13098">Thanks!  The bird was my primary "issue".  Seeing it, I couldn't get the image of an angel out of my mind.  I tried three different ways to work a story in with that image.  I took a chance on the multiple usage.  Normally I would say it twice, but use it once.  But, using the image twice just felt "right".  In this case I decided to go with my gut.*nod*  Good point.  I was trying to work the doctor's refusal to acknowledge Lou as part of the story - Delusional.  Maybe I tried to be too light with it?  I will definitely give that some thought. Guilty!  You should have seen the dreck I cut out to get Darren there as soon as I did.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />  Unfortunately, I needed to do the writing to get my state of mind where it needed to be.  But, more editing might have allowed story flow to come sooner.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  Fair enough.  I will make a little commentary just because.  I've been through Pampa on my way to the Celanese plant there.  We had a location in the plant that I had to cut-over a network connection for.  Very odd place for me.  I had to go through all the safety videos, I had to wear a hard hat, I had to have long pants and steel-toed boots.  I learned the sirens they use for the different emergencies.  It's been over a year, so I would need to take a refresher safety course if I were ever to go back.  This was odd to me.  Keeping in mind that my father worked for Sandia National Labs, on Kirtland Air Force base, it wasn't as if I never had to think about things like that.  It was just so different.  Part of that difference was driving through the town of Pampa.  It was spooky because I was expecting to find a few buildings.  Maybe a general store or a gas station.  Maybe a little cafe.  But, there was nothing.  I asked the guy I was working with about it and he told me about the explosion and how all the structures were damaged and Celanese just bought the structures and the land.  Inside the plant, they have a little wall with some information on it.  It was an interesting read.  I'm sure there are still people living there.  I think they still have a post office building.  But the only landmarks I saw from the time I entered Pampa to the time I left was the Celanese plant, the stop sign on the road out of the Celanese plant, and a grain silo.  Weird!Then I got back to Albuquerque and I decided to look it up on the net the next day.  Nothing!  I could talk to people that remembered the event.  I talked to people that remembered hearing about the explosion.  But, I couldn't find very much on the net.  I could find other related explosions that seemed to be on the same scale, but nothing substantial about Pampa.  It kind of bothered me.  Maybe there was something subconscious for a story there?As I recall, there were two people that died in that explosion.  It was a Sunday afternoon and there weren't many people working that day.  Overall, it was a "good" accident because there was very little loss of life.Yes it was.  Very much so in fact.  It was the third idea that came to me.  Se below for more of my thoughts on that. I think the doctor came across as flat and not the brightest bulb out there.  I realized it as I finished the story and it wasn't entirely my intent.  Though, Darren is certainly not the smartest character out there either.  Oddly enough, I did an informal poll after I posted the story.  Most of my co-workers remembered that WWII was happening then.  None of them could peg that July 16, 1945 was when we first tested the bomb.  I am beginning to wonder if there is some social commentary to be had here.  For the record, I had to lookup what day we tested the bomb.  So, I am no better.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />  (Or maybe it is a commentary on public education in New Mexico?)  Really?  Cool, I will keep that in mind.  It would be a different direction for me to explore.Huh - I hadn't even considered that as part of the story.  Now you are making me think I didn't go far enough.  Interesting.I wanted a kind of a dueling perspective on what is real and who is deluding themselves.  I wanted the reader to get done and maybe ponder whether Darren was right, or whether he was just a wack case who strung together disparate circumstances to make a big, magical conspiracy.  (The Doctor certainly went with that theory.)  I wanted a moral question if you accept that there are people using magic that could end drought.  If you killed those that opposed such a noble goal, are you evil?  Is there a relative morality?  And if you saw the links to Rainmaker, you might see how even a noble goal might be twisted to serve base greed.  There are definitely ties to Rainmaker in Delusional!  The two stories are very much related, but I am hoping that maybe Delusional has enough to stand on it's own.  As for the morbid tone, I blame the pile of meat and the bird corpse.  It's hard not to look at those two pics and not feel somewhat morbid.  Before the pics came out, I was wondering if I could write a decent story dealing with the human experience of Love.  Not anything very romantic/erotic, just something that kind of had that feel good feeling with a very human story.  That would be a different type of story for me to write.</blockquote>

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