Not All Who Wander Are Lost

I'm writing about hell right now. I know. That's a rather harsh lead in, isn't it. It's true though. I just sent a character, a fallen angel named Rue, to hell. I want it noted that I came up with his name long before I ever read the Hunger Games, by the way. It comes from Ruvan, the name of one of the angel judges. I made him an angel judge at hell's gate who'd lost his compassion. He's booted down to earth as a human to rediscover his compassion, and of course, the devil has his own plots and plans. So, now Rue's gone to hell. He's actually there to rescue a soul that the demon Asmoday tricked into going with him. I was a little stuck, though. Hell's a huge concept--what do I want it to look like? That's a bit of a brain bender. How do you describe hell? Do you stick with the Judeo-Christian concepts? Do you spiral down into Dante's concentric circles? What about the Greco-Roman underworld with its Fields of Punishment and Sysiphus an...

So, I'm off for the summer and I usually spend the first week off from school not doing anything really useful. Other than laundry and trying out some of the recipes I've clipped during the school year that I just didn't have the time for, I don't usually do much. However, this week I've been fielding visits and phone calls from heating and air conditioning people all week. The AC keeled over and died this past Sunday in the middle of a Pampered Chef party. Good thing we were just using the microwave that time. Now, I've been lucky, it's been a nice week--mostly in the seventies, but this weekend is supposed to soar into the nineties. Now, instead of using the time between the HVAC visits to fiddle with a storyline or edit a few completed chapters I'm messing around on Amazon finding books for my Kindle. Yep. It's way too easy to spend money on that toy. Now, I admit I'm looking forward to being able to take it when we travel. Not, that traveli...