In your face
No, I'm not talking about certain sex positions today.
I finally signed on for Facebook to figure out what all the hoo-ha is about. And found a whole bunch of folks I went to high school with. The amazing part is most of them haven't changed a bit! The other amazing part is, they say, "So, I hear you've written a book..."
Actually, that's the oddly scary part. The last time I saw most of these people was the last day of high school. And here it is, twenty-*cough*-some years later and I find myself caught in how to respond.
I rattle off a list of books to one, and offer a website link to the other (and then I deleted that post because Facebook will find the link and post it like a little ad and I wasn't quite ready to post ads to people's Facebook pages). Anyway, it's hard to explain, but it's just weird.
It's like the teen of *cough**splutter* years ago is competing against the me of today, who, um, is a little brasher, little more forward, than she was then. (Actually, I was the super-shy one.) Sort of "see how I've changed?" versus "well, no, I haven't really".
But it's given me some food for thought for the current WIP. It involves the reuniting of two childhood playmates (no, not that kind, ick) and I'd already added a level of her personality-slash-attitude occasionally slipping to that of the teen who had a crush on this older guy. I think I need to do the same for him though. And I think I can go deeper into their conflict as they can now struggle to reveal how much about themselves have changed over the years.
Never mind that I haven't written a word for about three weeks. The next scene is waiting in my head for me to get the time to write it. But see, messing about on Facebook is good for something.
Oh, and anybody know if it was possible to diagnose somebody with a venereal disease in the 1800s besides taking a look and seeing sores? I'm wondering if I'm going to need a private detective as well....
4 comments:
One of the common treatments for syphilis (and other venereal diseases) in the 19th century was mercury. Side effects of mercury poisoning would have been perceptible.
If the disease had progressed to secondary or tertiary syphilis, there would have been very visible effects, described in great detail on Wikipedia.
The facebook thing? SCARY. There's a reason Ive stayed away for 20 (yikes,say it isn't so!) years.
I'm no help with the Facebook thing. I just sat down and talked with Julia Quinn last weekend, who says that Facebook has been wonderful for promo for her, but it still freaks me out. I'm sticking with MySpace for now.
Re: diagnosing the clap: it seems to me that the most common symptom is/was a burning sensation during urination or during orgasm for a man.
I'm on Myspace (and bebo, etc) and I really don't like Myspace. In fact, now that I don't have a book release on the near horizon, I have been blissfully ignoring it.
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