If this is Wednesday it must be Nostrum

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I have finally begun working on the N3 episodes. They are very, uh, drafty. Characters names change, plot points are inconsistent, all the usual stuff you would expect in something flowing unedited out of the fingertips and into the computer. And oh so dated, even though it was only 4 or 5 years ago. Ye gods! 

I'm thinking of publishing these episodes only in the e-book version, i.e., Ultimate Nostrum, Volume 2, and not printing them here. I know this is cheating on my part, since everything else I've done has been entirely open and free. But as they are only of archival interest, as compared to something I'm publishing for straightforward entertainment, it might be better to exclude them from the public eye except as that archival material. I have to admit, however, that reading them, with a touch of disappointment over their lack of, in my eyes, total success, makes me wonder if I should start up again and do it right this time. I mean, do a real N3 series entirely focussing on TOC themes. The problem is drawing the line between the satire and pure mean-spiritedness. I've come to dislike virtually everything about the operation, from the tactics of the students trying to get in to the politics of the advisory boards trying to mold it for their own benefit to the general shenanigans surrounding the actual event pretty much every year lately. I always thought Nostrum should be fun. None of this strikes me as any fun at all. But then again, maybe that's what makes it ripe for the picking...

Meanwhile, from Ultimate Volume One, a pdf of the list of characters as published there. Read it on your phone or tablet. The names have a certain poetry all their own, and they include a bunch of external references that you might find fun tracking down. And, of course, all the coaches' names are anagrams of philosophical type people. Lo Pat, for instance, is obviously Plato. But Seth B. Obomash? 

Have fun.