B as in bumbling

I think the "b" key on my laptop keyboard is starting to go. Every now and then it doesn't show up when I type and I have to go back and re-hit it. Or maybe my left pointer finger is starting to go and I just don't know it.

I just finished reading Brother Odd. I started reading it again after I picked up Tony from the airport and we'd settled in to bed and watched a little TV (very fuzzy TV, since I never did get the cable turned back on. We get a few channels. The network ones, mostly. And Tony has rigged up an antenna -- I say rigged because he bought an antenna -- modern day rabbit ears -- but then managed to shut both antennae in the doors of the armoire...so now they are "augmented" by misshapen balls of aluminum foil that he has to massage into different shapes to get different channels to come in. Why don't we buy a new antenna? I have no idea. Probably because we don't watch all that much TV. Or maybe because there are so many other expenses and an aluminum foil antenna is the least of our worries. Who knows. At any rate...End digression).

The problem with reading fast is that I know I can finish a book in a few hours and even if those few hours fall around my bedtime, I somehow just can't stop. Yet another contributing factor to my inappropriate awake/asleep schedule.

Koontz definitely left it open for another book, though he has exchanged Elvis for ol' blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. In a nutshell (i.e. not remotely like a review I would write for YABC), I liked it. It still doesn't have quite the magic of the original Odd Thomas book, but it is good. That's the thing with series. It's hard to keep the same level of magic going, especially in Odd's case when his dead love, Stormy, is always on his mind.

It makes me want to write about a girl who's got some kind of oddness about her. Some kind of ability that's as much a burden as it is a blessing. A girl with a bit of biting wit. But not the whole I see dead people thing. As well as it works in Odd Thomas, it's been done and done again (you know...Sixth Sense, for one.)

I have that other sketched out idea for a book about a teen that is training to be the next Grim Reaper, but that's got to be a guy, not a girl. And it won't be at all like that Dead Like Me show (never seen it, but I just read the summary to make sure my idea wasn't anything like it).

So I don't know. I guess I'll have to just dwell on it for a while. Frustrating when you have a character's voice in your head and no story for them to live in.

And with that, I'm going to go to bed.