vacation

Eek.
Now my blogging time is being eaten up.
My voice recorder is collecting ideas, but how to tease them into a post is a mystery to me.
Recent recording: To say that a novel is plotted and planned like a chess game is not only a cliche, but a bad one. Many chess games are terribly obvious and lopsided. Those that aren't frequently end in a draw. Most of what happens in a chess game is beneath the surface and all you really see is some pawn magically making it to the last rank to be promoted.
The novels described as chess-like tend to be more domino-like, where everything gets set up painfully and then, pllllllllllllllllllllt, all fall down.

How did I get to thinking about this? Well, the ominous goldfish opening led to books on chess openings which take a simple beginning and explore several promising continuations.
For example, the classic Goldfish would lead to a frantic trip to the pet store to find identical fish as replacements.
But you could also have a Talking Goldfish Gambit in which the Goldfish begin to spill secrets about their owners.
Or the Literal Goldfish Sacrifice in which a child shaves the gold off one of the fish to make a ring, which turns out to be magic.
I'm just saying.