4/6/25
4/3/25
THE MUSE IS A CHARACTER I'M WRITING
THE MUSE IS A CHARACTER I'M WRITING
Shamefully or understandably, one of my writing projects is a novel that is not on hold but that I've revisited after months away. I don't have writer's block. It's that Life demands too much survival from me and too much time including long commutes, in this long moment, to focus. The author Erica Jong said, and was quoted saying, that the time to write cannot be replaced. I know!
The novel is set in the realizable past but is a historical novel. The research for it, which I also enjoy, frankly takes far more time than the writing. That's because I know that a knowledgeable reader will crash into any inaccuracies and not be able to go with the reading flow and the reader who just wants to suspend all belief is someone I don't want to mislead.
It's my aim to enter that time and place and know it as well as my characters.
I'm not complaining. Researching is not just about finding the right information to read. My research has included photographing historical photos on walls in various locations as well as walking certain neighborhoods to photograph buildings. I have a list of buildings I want to go into just to see the lobbies; some of the places in my novel are long gone or have been repurposed or are up for refurbishing. I often listen to music from the era I've placed characters in, because they listen to that music. I've paged through books about the history of the era and photographed just what I'm focused upon and eventually print that out. Clothing and haircuts and perfume are included in my work.
Recently, when I revisited my novel, I started by reading what I've already written. Time away is an excellent way to discover that what you wrote months or years earlier still stands, that it's valid, that it's good or even great. I continued to write a chapter that furthers the story the other day. I'd printed out what I wrote previously and I knew what I wanted this chapter to accomplish as the story moves forward.
It seems to me that my main character, the one my readers will get to know the best, is my muse. This character is continuing to tell me her story so I can write it.
C 2025 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved
4/1/25
CARLOS SANTANA TOUR CONCERT IS EXCELLENT!
check out the bass solo Benny Rietveld
***
One of my favorites...
3/19/25
HUMILIATION : EXPERIENCE FORTY-SIX : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP
Christine Trzyna
This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop.
C 2018-2025 Christine Trzyna
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love. It's karma.
3/17/25
3/10/25
THE BRYAN KOHBERGER - IDAHO FOUR TRIAL IS SET TO BE ABOUT EVERYTHING NOW
THE BRYAN KOHBERGER - IDAHO FOUR TRIAL IS SET TO BE
ABOUT EVERYTHING NOW
by Christine Trzyna
If the Idaho Four murders had happened not so long ago - let's say two decades ago - Bryan Kohberger would probably not have been arrested as an "innocent until proven guilty" suspect. As there has been no confession, no knife found, but a whole lot of this and that, the murder of four innocent college students living off campus at the University of Idaho is still a crime of circumstantial evidence. There are many who believe the man is innocent, including, she says, his attorney and his defense team. And thousands of news articles and other media, including many True Crime YouTube stations with authoritative guests, speak of him as the killer. Of late is the exploration of how he might be executed by firing squad.
Though not much of a true crime aficionado - compared to the very many who follow outstanding crimes and criminal justice case by case - I love a good mystery and have occasionally participated in the sleuth game over the years. After all, as a ten year old, Nancy Drew books were far more interesting to me than books I was forced to read, such as the English classics. With so many crime and forensics television series giving viewers lessons of discovery, there's a temptation to be just like Nancy, the heroine whose investigative ways lead her to follow the clues and solve the mystery.
The upcoming trial will have everything now. DNA evidence, video evidence, door camera and sound, cell phone pinging, social media and networking, texting, and Internet purchasing... That's why the Bryan Kohberger - Idaho Four Trial may just be the Trial of the Century. Frankly many people I've talked to about it mention how different the O.J. Simpson trial would have been if this technology had been available.
One thing for sure: If Bryan Kohberger is not the killer, then someone who has or may go on to kill again is out there.
As mentioned in a previous post, I find that the constant use of Internet social media as a display of good times, good looks, and in some cases teasing sexiness, by the students, particularly, the two girls who, as childhood friends, slept and died in the same bed together, not worthy of being murdered, but stupidity. (It could be argued that it was also show-offy and competitive.)
As well there is reason to think some of these students were alcoholic and we all know that drunk people loose their inhibitions and under the influence do all sorts of things they may regret later. I associate membership in Frats and Sororities to be indicative of alcoholism as well. Allowing their rental house to be a party house so notorious that some students partied there when not one renter was home, was also just plain stupid. I do not think all college students party as a way of life so excusing the way these activities opened these students up to privacy invasion and being targeted as just what college students do is in error.
I marvel at how a student could work, ace classes with a full time class load, and party too. Maybe I don't personally have that level of genius or guts.
I'm not excusing murder of course, just encountering facts.
I also still find it irksome when I hear true crime authority figures not understand what being a grad student and a TA means or even what a Criminal Justice candidate studies. Finally someone spoke up and said that thousands of people who major in Criminal Justice - bachelor, masters, or PhD's, do not go on to commit murders. The analysis is interesting to be sure, but has not lead to more than speculations.
These last few days more information, such as the redacted texting between surviving housemates, which aids the time-line, has been released. ... As if tantalizing advertising for the upcoming trial.
Of all the "evidence" it is the cell phone pings that I find to be ridiculous. This is because of my own experience with cell phones.
My first cell phone was a gift, along with what proved to be very limited service. (I appreciated it, at a time when I could not afford to buy one myself.) However, while living on a block full of apartment buildings, I had to go outside and walk up the street to make and take calls and there were significant delays when it came to receiving text messages.
In recent years I had a cell phone in a residential area where calls and texts seem to go through with more ease. However, I was amazed to see the information on the phone that "locates" a person and their phone, for it identified me as pinging in Las Vegas, especially in the middle of the night, and Vegas is about 270 miles away! (I also had not ever called anyone or any place in Vegas.) Up the road from my place was a quarter mile stretch in which the locals warned me that even ATT had no service. Was it the ocean? The hill?
Currently, I'm sometimes startled to see that my phone knows exactly were I am, as it switches one town- one block - to the next. Other times my location is all over the place.
Of all the "evidence" I find to be most controversial (and frightening) is the DNA - touch DNA - evidence. This DNA on the metal button of a leather knife sheaf is not even a fingerprint.
In fact, I haven't heard anything about fingerprinting at the crime scene.
Is the information that has made the rounds of YouTube and other True Crime podcasts even true? Such as that despite inspections of Bryan Kohberger's apartment on campus, office on campus, and car, which was taken away by the FBI, there is NO blood from any of the students? I ask, "How can a murder scene so bloody that some may have seeped out of the house foundation" NOT result in student blood - DNA being found?
Friends say that likely the murderer suited up for murder and quickly got rid of the clothing. How masterful that might have been, even if wearing overhauls or the like. No time for a shower, in this case....
Most worrisome is that thousands of people who entered their DNA results into genealogy databases, who DID NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR THESE TO BE USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE SUCH AS BY PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS, POLICE, FBI, learned - what the hell - they did so. This did not just violate Bryan Kohberger's privacy but also ALL THOSE PEOPLE'S privacy.
I learned that your garbage is no longer yours or private once you throw it out. Something I have done - put my garbage is someone else's garbage bin - is suspicious behavior. So is wearing gloves to deal with garbage...
I, like very many, are eager to get the blow by blow of the trial. I believe Kohberger's defense attorneys will try everything to reduce his sentence or get him off. We will learn much.
Do I think Bryan Kohberger is innocent?
I am open to that idea.
C2025 Christine Trzyna
My favorite True Crime podcast, and I listen only to the Bryan Kohberger coverage, is Surviving the Survivor.
2/24/25
SNL 50TH ANNIVERSARY SKITS DESPERATE - UNFUNNY - GUTTERAL and GROSS
I really wanted to be amused - especially by the UFO abductee skit that featured some so called "A List" actors, but it seems the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 50th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL featured comedic desperation which resorted to dirty shock value !
I always appreciated that SNL was on. It was so New York City and one of the few television shows on networks that featured creative skits and guests - but over 50 years I was not ever a chronic viewer.
In recent years, on a Sunday, I would watch the YouTube redux of the previous night's skits. I and some friends loved the Donald Trump parodies especially.
I enjoyed the fairly recent dog park skit, in which the actors ran the gambit of dog behaviors from scooting butts on the floor to the zooms, but one of my dog-lover friends saw it and said, "No! No! They didn't!
The skits I saw for the 50th anniversary - sorry!
It's kind like when Joan Rivers was funny for national television standards but she (and her daughter) became known for filthy language outrageousness and crass putdowns instead.
If you want to laugh without all the sexual references, watch DRYBAR Comedy on YOUTUBE!
2/16/25
DESTRUCTION : EXPERIENCE FORTY-FIVE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP
So much DESTRUCTION from fires, floods, hurricanes, tornados. Natural Disasters.
Write about an experience of loss from some event that you had no control over.
Christine Trzyna
This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop.
C 2018-2025 Christine Trzyna
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love. It's karma.
2/10/25
2/5/25
TRIVIAL or SUPERFICIAL or LIGHTHEARTED ; THE LIST OF THE MOMENT
WHAT'S NEW?
I'm Curious :
Could I really get dual citizenship based on heritage and live in the European Union?
Can I find the pattern free and on line to 3d print a new cell phone case?
How will I feel when my gentleman friend moves away?
I Might Just Be Done With : My "friend" who I just blocked after she called me 24 (twenty-four) times in one day. (I felt like she was like a rat in a maze after the cheese that's not there.)
So funny! : (Lately my sense of humor has been dark, very dark; if I'm the next to die, do not have a memorial service for me. Too many people just show up to eat free food.)
AM I WHO I KNOW?
My Favorite Person Is : My gentleman friend ; come what may.
The Person(s) I'm curious about : My gentleman friend ; his romantic history.
Celebrity I (once) met (just saying) : Robert Smith from The Cure (off stage, no make-up)
IF I COULD TRAVEL BACK IN TIME : Art School age 17.
I'M LISTENING TO : Tedeschi Trucks Band, Graham Nash, Luther Vandross
AM I WHAT I INDULGE?
Book I Recently Read Cover To Cover : None: I can't concentrate. (But I still do order books in at the library.)
Book(s) I Keep Meaning To Reread : The Only Girl: My Life and Times On the Masthead of Rolling Stone by Robin Green
UNDERSTANDING
Person(s) I Get and Nobody I Know Understands : A couple, who have been together for nine years, and celibate the entire time.
AM I WHAT I EAT?
Cheese Of The Moment : Cream (on scrambled eggs)
Bread : Hawaiian
Condiment : Mayo
Sweet/Snack : Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, plain popcorn, pistachios
Spice : Traders Joe's 21 Seasonings Salute (It's getting expensive.)
I'm Drinking : Lipton black tea (Still have not acquired the taste for green.)
I Just Overate : Kidney Bean and Turkey Chili
I'm Craving : Homemade mashed potatoes with lots of real butter, and sprinkled with Traders Joe's 21 Seasonings Salute
AM I WHAT I BUY? Clogs with colorful vinyl dog print, bright, cheap acrylic yellow sweater with big faux snowflake across the chest (I was in the mood), nail polish in neutrals (I know, I know), eye-shadow in neutrals (I know, I know).
I WANT TO BUY: Giant lightweight durable carry bag with a zipper. Earrings (It's been a while).
AM I WHAT I MISS? Quietude, Solitude, Laziness, Fantasy.
I'M GETTING BETTER AT : Realizing that someone I'm talking with is mentally ill or addled - suffering from memory loss or disorganized thinking.
I FEAR? Liars.
C 2025 Christine Trzyna
Ask yourself the same questions.
Don't let me influence you.
2/2/25
1/31/25
FIREAID LA BENEFIT CONCERT
The Annenberg Foundation will oversee distribution.
Billy Crystal announced that U2 donated $1 million, while Connie and Steve Ballmer pledged to match donations made during the event.
Viewers were encouraged to contribute online through FireAidLA.org or by text.
Proceeds will support affected families and fire mitigation efforts in Los Angeles County.
1/30/25
1/27/25
1/24/25
1/21/25
NEW YORK DOLLS : YOU CAN'T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A MEMORY
1/18/25
1/16/25
1/15/25
WILDFIRES EVERYWHERE : NO ALLAH IS NOT PUNISHING THE WICKED !
Spiritually sick people are
posting YouTube videos
with this sensational religious bigotry.