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Didn't sleep well last night, which surprises no one, but the most striking thing about that was possibly being haunted by strange visions prompted by the art in this post, titled "The most unsettling undead concept art we’ve seen in a while". I'm not usually given to being disturbed by images, and while cruising the artist's gallery all I really wanted to do was wrap myself up in his imagination and parade around. But I went to bed tense, and light flickered when I closed my eyes, and my brain promptly figured that this meant death lurked behind every corner as opposed to being some sort of vasovagal response that also made the room spin. Like a logical brain would do.

It probably didn't help that I watched The River last night, which wasn't scary but had one very unsettling moment involving a monkey when you don't know quite what's moving. Thus far I'm disappointed because I don't recognize any of the monsters (the second hour's one sounded at least plausible), and while I'm no expert, I did a ridiculous amount of research on Amazonian/South American mythology in an attempt to find enough on upside-down jaguars/jaguar shamans to finish a paper. There is so much cool stuff in the Amazon that I really hope it's inspired by local mythology rather than "random monster in an exotic locale." But I'm also not a found footage fan, it just isn't as... well, horror-y to me as more cinematic styles. I just don't feel it, and since the camera work is intentionally shoddy you get less of a look at the monsters, which is usually the only saving grace of a meh horror.

The only bonus with insomnia is that it's usually a great time to plot. If I can remember what I plotted (barely). There's an anthology I want to submit to that's science-fiction and all it requires is "something on gender roles." At first I figured, yeah, I don't write anything that DOESN'T analyze gender roles! but as I sat down to write, everything that came out was bad. I started one universe with a character set I'm fond of but I don't have much for them to do, and when I turned my attention to Space Noir, the story kept getting bigger... and bigger....

After maybe six abortive attempts at fulfilling this prompt, I finally found something I like! With a real plot! And the shameless space romance I wanted to write! It's never taken me this long to get into the beat of a short story before, so I'm feeling pleased with myself.

Then I remember: First draft of my law review article is due the 17th. FML.