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 Hey, with the way my edit is going, I have to get my jollies where I can.

I was writing an email this morning to the FF&P loop I'm on, complaining that my perfectionistic streak won't let me get by with so-so world-building, as in using science that most people will accept but specialists will laugh at. My science has to be good enough that the specialist says 'that could be'.

Well, I've got a back-burner project (so back-burner that it's not even on my Projects page) that has been languishing because I need a virus. A virus that does a very specific, very nasty thing. During my research, I was shocked to discover that tiny mutations of any of several viruses will do the trick. The problem is that I kill off a good-sized chunk of the population of the planet while I'm at it, and mostly babies and old people. Oops! Bad politics. Back to the drawing board. :-)

Yes, I want people to die, but:
- only a limited number die
- and it effects mostly adults in their prime
- it's gotta be hard to figure out who is dying and why them
- it has to be fairly innocuous to most people, the young and the elderly
- very easily transmittable
- stays in the human population for several years (not just a one-year epidemic)
- selective to white Americans of northern european descent (I'm not a good enough writer at the moment to try major characters of other cultures... my perfectionist again, I couldn't do them justice)

And... I just figured it out!!! Found the virus, found the selection criteria for who dies when it attacks... and it all works!!! Wow!!! YAH!!! <happy dance time>

I just sent it off to one of my experts and she's investigating, but her first thought is that it works. Cool!! Now, if I only had the time to write it... <sigh>

Done with the happy dance, back to editing.