My newsgroup on SFF Net is gone. Rather than leave everything to the last minute, I asked the folks in charge there to shut it down on March 15th, which they did.
So this is my new home, I suppose. Or one of them, anyway.
I saved a bunch of messages and threads there, some recent, some not. I’m planning to copy some of them here.
For example, here’s an item from May 11, 2004 — the oldest I have saved, and the last in a thread entitled “Fragments”:
It is late spring, but still the Druvars remain camped upon m front lawn. I have spoken with their chieftain, but he will tell me nothing save that they will leave when the time has come that they must leave. My neighbors seem to be quite amused by my predicament, and I am no longer able to share in their amusement.
At first I was not particularly disturbed by this uninvited visitation, but it has been fully five months now since the first cookfire scorched the grass, and the novelty has worn off, replaced by annoyance.
See, sometimes I write down story openings that occur to me — usually openings, but once in awhile a scene from the middle of a story. Sometimes I know what the story is, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I actually write those stories; sometimes I don’t.
I collect these fragments, and look them over every so often to see if one is ready to turn into something more.
This particular fragment never went anywhere, but I still kind of like it.
I kind of like that, too, actually.
I wonder if anyone in 2004 looked up “Druvar” to see if it was a real word. (All I could find was Albanian “dru” meaning “tree” or “wood”. Seemingly Druvar could mean “tree people”.)
It never even occurred to me to check whether it was a real word! “Tree people” is about the right feeling, though.