News From Germany

My character, Miranda Evans, continues to have a considerably more active social life, at least in Germany, than I do (although I bet I had a better birthday party).

She also blogs more often than I do, although now that I think about it, she has yet to post a picture of Horton, whereas I post Scooter photographs all the time. Which reminds me. I've been watching the Olympics obsessively, but I'm prone to turning the sound off when a commercial comes on, so even though I'd seen the commercial where the bunny rabbit is sickly and the teacher performs emergency surgery with balloons, I only discovered yesterday that the rabbit is named Scooter.

Which also reminds me. When I was watching the compulsory dances the other night, Scooter (the cat) climbed on my lap, taking especial care to step on the remote control mute button. I guess he'd had enough tango romanticas for one evening.

Back to Germany. Miranda posted a new video. You have to scroll down to Feb. 19, because, as I said above, she blogs more regularly than I do (on the other hand, she blogs in German, and I can just barely manage to blog in English).

I love the new video. Dr. Prof. (or maybe Prof. Dr.) Moller talks about something. Probably nothing too cheerful, since there are pictures of volcanoes, which is never a good sign.

But the best part of the video is how the picture goes out at the end. Well, the best part is that the video exists in the first place, part of the astonishing German promotion for Life As We Knew It (whose German name I'll learn as soon as I get my copy). But the second best part is the special effect of the picture going out.

There's a scene early on in the dead and the gone where Alex is watching a newscast, the day after the mooncrash, and a scientist is being interviewed (perhaps Dr. Prof. Moller himself). The newscaster asks the professor something, and I, typing as fast as my pudgy little fingers allow, realize I had no idea how the professor should respond.

So I caused a blackout. Alex loses his electricity, and with it his TV reception, and I was spared coming up with something for the scientist to say.

A long time ago, I read a survey on which super powers people most want to have. My choice, being able to fly, came in second (having access to other people's thoughts was first, a truly bad idea). But when you write fiction, you have the greatest super power of all. You can make volcanoes erupt, and demolish power grids and wipe out entire coastlines, with a mere ten pudgy little fingers (nine, actually, since my left thumb just comes along for the ride).

Of course, you can also make happy things happen with those nine busy fingers. People can fall in love, have babies, win the lottery or the Olympics or both.

But the whole world, albeit a fictional one, is yours to control. Which is an extraordinary amount of power.

Now if I could only use that power over Scooter. I prefer my tango romanticas with the sound on!