Legos (Star Wars and otherwise)

 Recently I've been doing a lot of stuff with legos. I like to build these big scenes, take pictures of them, and then break them up so everyone else can use the pieces. One of my favorites is this huge Star Wars battle scene I made with two big green platforms:

Separatist Fortress

Republic Charge

The part I'm really proud of is the walker in the bottom picture. I built that walker from scratch. It wasn't easy. I also like the two clone troopers hiding behind the bush in the background of the same picture.

I also built a non-Star Wars scene--a space police station:

A downed power terminal--did it break, or was it sabotaged? 



A busy police station

I also take videos of the scenes because when I try to take a picture of the whole scene at once, usually all of the elements come out too small to see properly, so it's better to take a video of it. I like all of this scene, but a couple of my favorite parts are the repair girl fixing the power terminal, and the space police trooper riding on his transport.

Lastly, I've built a couple of places from my novel. The biggest one is probably this villain's lair:



The transparent legos in the scene represent mirrors that are positioned throughout the fortress. They're used as a type of surveillance system so that anyone in the room in the bottom left corner can see what's happening throughout the lair. The area in the top right corner of the scene (holding a creature I made up called a virulen) is booby-trapped--the walls can open, releasing the virulen unexpectedly!

I don't know what my next lego scene will be, but I'm thinking about doing a non-Star Wars, sci-fi thing, a little like the space police station--or maybe I'll do another scene or place from my novel. Who knows!



Moving, Part I

This week we've been moving. A lot. For us, moving involves driving all day. Where can I start? Lots has been happening.
Well, to start out, I've been riding in Dad's car with Dad and Joe. Dad and I are riding in the front seat, while Joe is in the back and the luggage is in the trunk (with few bags in the backseat with Joe). Fortunately, Joe seems to like Dad's car better than he likes the other car, so we don't have to listen to him whining all day.
Dad and I have been doing all sorts of things to pass the time. We listened to an audio book of Treasure Island. I did a lot of reading. Sometimes Dad let me play games on his Ipod or cell phone. Sometimes I just stared out the window and thought.
On our second day of driving, we passed through some hills in Arkansas (well, Dad said they were hills, but they looked more like mountains to me). The hills were covered in all types of trees, but mostly pines. It reminded me of a place in the novel I'm writing called the Eastern Mountains. The Eastern Mountains are tall mountains in the east that are covered in pine trees. That was inspiring.
Another time (I think it was also on our second day of driving), we got stuck in traffic. Big time. We were stuck sitting there for about three hours, doing nothing but move a few feet forward every fifteen minutes or so. That particular day, we had hoped to get to our hotel before sunset, so we swim in the pool. No such luck. We got to the hotel around ten o'clock p. m. No swimming for us.
Another thing Dad and I did: every time we crossed a state line, I would take a picture of the 'Welcome to ~'  sign. Most of the time the signs were by the side of the road, so Dad could pull over in front of them. However, the 'Welcome to Arkansas' sign was on a trestle bridge over a river. That certainly put a stitch in our plans. Luckily, I was able to get a picture of the sign even as we were crossing the bridge.


Welcome to Arkansas!

So our collection of state signs is intact, featuring Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.


Oklahoma--OK!

By the way--what did Tennessee? He saw what Arkansas!
 I was amazed as we entered Oklahoma City, which is where I'm writing this from. Oklahoma City isn't as big as Miami, but it's nonetheless a cool city, and it's fascinating to drive through it with your dad telling you what used to be there and how this building is new and how this highway didn't used to go this way, they must have rerouted it.
So far, I have a list of things I want to do while we're here this summer. Here it is:

• Go to the library, either on base or outside the base.
• Go rock climbing at the place Dad pointed out to me.
• Visit the water park I saw, the one that's close to our current hotel.
• Visit the 'Family Fun Center' that's right next to said hotel.

So there you go. And as the title implied, there will be at least one sequel to this post.

Adios!

Maps

So my new assignment from Mom is to blog at least once a week. The subjects? Just about anything.
This is my post for this week. The subject is, as you may have gathered from the title, maps.
I'm writing about maps because they're actually very important to me as a writer. About 45% of the names in my book were either taken from or inspired by names of towns on a map. Makes me wonder how I even named characters before I discovered this. (Okay, scratch that. Before I discovered this, I was writing Star Wars novels, and about 95% of the characters in those books had already been named for me.)
Anyway, there's another way maps are important, especially when you're writing fantasy. Soon after I began writing Version Three of my current fantasy story, I drew up a map of the made-up world. To tell the truth, I did this because I was getting tired of mapping out the whole thing in my head all the time. So I drew up a physical map.
Having a physical map has its problems. Every time I started the story over, the map had to change slightly. (Fortunately, I had had the foresight to draw it in pencil.) I added towns, added geography, I even added a bay and group of islands.

And this is where I realize just how much I miss writing Star Wars novels. I liked the whole concept of different planets, and I liked writing like that. I didn't like having to give it up. Some of the towns almost became city-states because of this. Almost, but it never actually happened.

I did come up with a solution, though. Some of the towns have their own residents who draw their nationality from the town they come from. So it worked out in the end.

So, maps. Yes, maps are important to me as a writer. Of course, a lot of the other names in my book are drawn off of other things. One character even got her name from a character in Greek Mythology (more on that in my next post). And I'll always need the map I drew of my made-up world. Some of the names I have in my 'name bank' (a list of names I might use in the future) were taken from the names of towns on a map of the southeastern United States during the Civil War. Maps are very important, and not just so you know where you're going on the highway.

Next Week: An update on my Semi-Random Book Character Ideas

Our Trip to Flamingo Gardens

Today I went to Flamingo Gardens, along with Ethan, Crista, Mom, Mrs. Buondelmonte, Vinnie and James. Flamingo Gardens is a large animal sanctuary and botanical garden. There were walkways through the gardens, and there were all sorts of amazing plants that I've never seen before. The animals were just as amazing. We saw many types of birds, including one called a spoonbill

Roseate Spoonbill

and at least three different types of owls: barn owls, great horned owls, and barred owls. We saw a show called Wildlife Encounter where animal keepers brought out four animals for the audience to observe. All of the animals were injured or handicapped in some way and were permanent residents of the sanctuary. I'll describe them here:
#1: An opossum named Penny. Penny was hit by a car, and although she survived, she was permanently blinded. The keeper told us that she is the best-looking opossum we'll ever see; opossums in the wild want to look as dirty, disgusting, and inedible as possible, as they have very few ways of escaping predators.

 Penny the Virginian Opossum

#2: A barred owl named Whisper. Whisper fell out of his nest when he was only three days old and broke both his hips. Rather than have him euthanized, the people at Flamingo Gardens kept him, knowing that he would never fly. Whisper had been a part of the Wildlife Encounter ever since Flamingo Gardens obtained him, as he could never be released into the wild.
#3: A box turtle named Shelly. Shelly was a pet that was given to Flamingo Gardens. As Shelly had been around humans and fed by them her whole life, she couldn't be released into the wild, as all her instincts were gone. Shelly is only nine years old. She is not yet fully grown.
#4: A baby alligator. The alligator was one of the offspring of the two alligators at the Gardens: Elvis and Priscilla. Like Shelly, the alligator had come to associate humans with food, and therefore could never be released into the wild. Alligators that associated humans with food will come closer to developed areas where humans live. Alligators that do that are killed, because they are deemed too dangerous to live. The alligator's skin is sold as high-quality leather, their meat is used in soups, and their head and jaw becomes a souvenir in a shop. This is why there is a law against feeding alligators.

I came away from Flamingo Gardens with a sense of thankfulness that I had gone, as my time in Florida is growing short and I know that it is unlikely I will ever be able to observe animals in their natural habitat again.