Best Smile Ever

Drew gave me the best Mother's Day present yesterday: he slept in, woke up with the biggest grin, and laughed as often as possible. Minus the sleeping in part, this is his usual day, but it still made yesterday seem extra special.

Drew's giggles and grins have a way of doing that. There's just something about his obvious joy that can turn the grayest sky blue for a moment. And I'm not saying that because I'm his Momma. His smile brightened the morning of a young woman who had just missed her flight out of DIA. He drew a crowd of servers and busboys at The Melting Pot this weekend, and he entertained them all while they smiled and cooed and laughed. The power of Drew's little face all scrunched up in a grin is amazing.

I know that as he grows, he may not always smile and laugh as freely. He may turn his face away from strangers instead of staring at them with fascination as he takes in the world. But right now, I'm amazed at my happy little boy and his ability to infect others with his happiness.

More Fantasy Cliches

Via Tambo, put your heroes and villains to the cliche test. I went through the hero test, checking everything that bore even a hint of a resemblance to Rayn. Scored a 94. Ouch. Went back through and unchecked everything that I had a "yes, but" answer that put a decent spin on the cliche and scored a 27. My villains did the best at 13 and 18, but then my villains tend to be my best drawn characters. Wish I knew why. *halo*

Jivin'

Don't know where Mark found it, but here's my blog in jive.

FanFic Redux

Last week, I made mention of the infamous Marion Zimmer Bradley Darkover case. I'm proud to say that my quick recitation of the popular understanding of the facts didn't really come down on one side or the other. I'm also proud to say that I have since tried to delve deeper into the matter after seeing a few "um, that's not really relevant" comments elsewhere. And when I say "elsewhere", I mean in Anna Genoese's recent posting about fanfiction, which led me to the monstrous Making Light thread (!!!750+ comments!!!), and to various legal-type links from there.

In those many, many comments, after the MZB incident got bandied about and was met with less-than-universal acceptance, Mercedes Lackey (apparently as close to the cat's mouth as we can get now that MZB has passed) provided the details of the situation. Meanwhile, Teresa Nielsen Hayden was crafting this analysis of the MZB affair. So there you have it: what really happened in the MZB case, and a good analysis of why it's representative of other things for authors to watch for rather than of how fanfiction causes problems for authors.

Yes, but...

Via Denver-based agent Kristin Nelson, I've taken this Fantasy Novelist's Exam. And failed. But only on a couple of questions (which got my ire up, actually). Some of them are just plain funny.

9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?
She's only in disguise to specific groups of people in my story. The reader knows she's a "god" from page 1. Does this count as a failure?

10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?
No. Definitely no. Considering what I have in minde for Book 3, that would give everything a decidedly VC Andrews bent. No.

16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?
Actually, my male character is the one who gets captured and rescued, but that's Book 2.

28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?
D'oh! But this is where I started to get mad.

29. How about a quintet or a decalogue?
OK, so my Velorin series is sitting at a projected six books, the first three of which are a trilogy, the latter three being their own stories in the series. Now I'm irked. Just because a fantasy story is epic in its structure means that it must be a Tolkien derivative and therefore bad?

49. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won't break the plot?
Ah, my pet peeve in all fiction, fantasy and every other genre. If your story goes on for pages only because folks who had good reason to talk about the matters at hand suddenly decide not to, I will Get Mad. I did read a good exception recently, but the characters all realized they weren't talking to each other and why, and it was actually a bit of a big plot point and thematic for different cultures coming together under difficult circumstances. (Really, go read Elizabeth Vaughan's Warprize.)
53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel?
*snerk*

56. Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?
I can't help myself: would it be more believable if he forced himself on an unwilling beerwench instead?

65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal?
Obviously the examiner has never experienced one of Rachel Ray's 30-minute "stoops."

My mini-rant about trilogies and such aside, this was a fun little test that pokes at all the tired fantasy cliches. But many a wise editor and author has said that cliches are cliches because they work. The trick is to write them well.

Be Gone From Me

It meant staying up a bit later than I had intended, but I finished the revisions for Carson's Learning last night. It was a necessity. Over the weekend, I managed to reach that point in a story when you despise every word, every image, every plot point. I pushed myself to finish the revision, though, working mostly on blind faith that my subconscious (aka the Muse) knew what it was doing. Honestly, there are changes I made last night that I have no idea if they make sense for the story. Hell, I could've suddenly made the ending a big deus ex machina cliche and had the characters turn out to be robots in someone's futuristic version of The Sims, and I probably would've written that in with the same "gee, I hope I started threads for this stuff earlier in the story" attitude I had last night. After I collapsed in bed, I tried to summon up some positive thought for CL. I think I managed to tell myself that I had done very well with the last lines of the last two scenes before the negative tirade of what I hadn't done very well drowned it out. And then the jitters started: what if this does get published? Nevermind the fact that I'm submitting it to an anthology whose sole purpose is to seek out fiction that breaks genre rules and boundaries, I was suddenly worried that CL had BROKEN GENRE RULES AND BOUNDARIES! What had I done? If I can't put it into its niche, how can I sell it? And even if I can sell it, how will readers know what to do with it? And even if readers know what to do with it, it's going to get ridiculed by peers and industry pros because it has no niche. And...and...and....

So I have sent this bad boy far away from me, into Andi's capable hands for a critique. I'm trying hard not to say good riddance to bad rubbish because I know I love this story, and I know I can make it good enough to sell (that is, I can do so once I have Andi's far more objective comments to assist with the final revisions). But I also know that if I see so much as a page from this story right now, I will shred it gleefully into teeny, tiny pieces and sprinkle them into a toilet.

Drew's First Feaver

I arrived at Drew's day care on Friday to find my son just not himself. Not only did he just look tired, he also had to be held so he could rest his head on my shoulder. He had been that way for an hour or so, but didn't have a feaver and seemed to be teething hardcore. Within another hour, his temperature spiked up to 101.7. Tylenol brought it down overnight, and we spent almost all of Saturday keeping the feaver down and letting him lounge all over us. He perked up in the afternoon, acting more like himself. We thought we were out of the woods until he woke up early that night and hurled (mostly all over himself, but Momma got nailed with a few stray spits). He was fine after that, except for some lingering Momma-clinginess yesterday and a bit of an odd behavior with his right ear, which we'll be monitoring and will bring him in to the doc if he's still doing it this afternoon.

Mark and I did very well with Drew's first illness. There was no panicing, no rushing to the emergency room, none of that stuff. There was confusion as to why he got sick this time when he's not in direct contact with anyone who's ill as compared to a month ago when Mark and I were sick as were several of the kids at day care. And, of course, there was a strong desire on both our parts to snap our fingers and make our little guy feel A-OK. Taking care of him this weekend made it very clear just how active and independent the Drew Monster is ordinarily. I guess it was something I took for granted.

The weekend was definitely more exhausting than usual. And it was significantly less chipper as we were lucky to get only a couple of Drew's smiles and missed out on his amazing belly laughs. I never take those for granted--I always seek those out as often as I can to carry with me--but I hadn't realized just how much missing those abundant laughs and grins would bring me down. I find myself staring at the picture of his whole-face smile more often than usual.

This does not bode well for my psyche during the gloomy teenage years.

More Drew Pictures Up

We've got more pics up. These include Drew in his high chair, Drew meeting his Uncle Dave, Drew standing, Drew smiling, and so on. My fave of this bunch is the one of him passed out on me, I just wish he had his head turned toward the camera. He looks downright angelic when he sleeps. Unless he's dreaming of bananas.

Speaking of Copyright Law...

Last week, I posted about a particular case of copyright shenanigans in which an author's estate's wishes weren't followed. Toward the end of last week, Lee Goldberg once again alerted me to a case of copyright infringement. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Someone has written a piece of Star Wars fanfiction, published it without permission from the copyright holders, and is selling it on-line.

For those of you who don't know (*waves at family members reading the blog for Drew pics*), fanfiction is a genre of fiction in which a writer takes an established fictional universe or cast of characters or whatnot and writes their own story using those established entities. It's a fairly big underground thing that a lot of pubbed authors have spoken out against because they claim it violates their copyrights. The fanficcers have a broad spectrum of counter-arguments, none of which I know well enough to even summarize. In general, I don't have an opinion either way, though I'm sure that will change once I have a published fictional universe with copyrights to protect. I've seen a fair number of idiots and frothing at the mouth sorts on both sides of the aisle. There may be a body of case law to reference for fanfiction in particular, but the only case that comes to mind is the much-quoted Marion Zimmer Bradley Darkover incident, in which the fanficcer let MZB read her piece, and then sued MZB because a later Darkover novel (which never did get published) had similar elements to the fanfic piece. I can't remember if the suit was successful or MZB's publisher decided not to go through the legal mess and just pulled the novel from publication. Suffice to say, things got ugly there and they often get ugly in this debate.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a good summary of this particular FUBARed episode, including links to the cached views of the author's now-pulled website. Most of the blogging response if focusing on this author's insanely stupid reasoning as to why she's not violating copyright laws here (and for the best blow-by-blow smackdown of this, check out Scalzi's post). This rated a rolling of the eyes and a head shake from me last week when I read it (and was in the middle of much work at the DDJ), but I actually had time today to go to the now-cached website, and I found this amazing morsel in a review of Another Hope:

In the remarkable genre of apocryphal Star Wars mythology comes Lori Jareo’s Another Hope. Mixing familiar moments from Lucas’s first Star Wars film with a mass of new story material, Jareo gives us an alternative history of what happened on Tatooine, Alderaan and the Death Star based more soundly on the now-complete three prequel episodes.

My eyebrows shot up at genre of apoycryphal Star Wars mythology. Talk about niche. But my favorite was the sentiment that this piece of fanfiction is based more soundly [than the original SW film "A New Hope"] on the prequel trilogy. Until this point, I'd had to take anti-fanfic vocals' word that fanficcers actually believe they know the characters/stories/universe better than the actual creators, but now I see it for myself and just am absolutely stunned.

But, on the other hand, assuming this author doesn't get the pants that house her amazing cajones sued off of her, I can take this as precedent to publish my "Deal or No Deal" fanfic in which it is revealed that The Banker is really Howie Mandel's long-suffering alternate persona and NBC, having realized this after the first episode, is now working with several mental health programs to get Howie help, and the models are all robots that Howie built while working through a third personality break after "St. Elsewhere." (Well, if you were a part of a six-year long show that ended with a variant on the horrid "it was all a dream" cliche, wouldn't you have a schism too?) Really, this is the best work of fiction I've ever written and ever will write, but it won't be violating copyright laws when I publish it on Amazon because I won't be earning anything from it (all profits will be donated to the "Save Howie's Psyche Now" fund) and only ya'll will know about it anyway...so don't pass this link on or else I'll get in hella trouble with some lawyer types.

Heh.

Calculating Advances and Other Fun Facts

Anna Genoese, an editor at Tor, has been doing a lot to inform us aspiring and business-unsavvy writers about the ins and outs of getting a book from accepted manuscript to your local bookstore shelves. Her latest post gest into the nitty-gritty of the costs of such an endeavor, including how publishers figure an advance. Get your math hats on and bust out those calculators, this post is thick with number crunching. But it's a great post that sheds some light on the black box of the business of publishing. It also gave me some ideas about how the seemingly normal connections I've established via a few writing endeavors (my crit group, etc) may help boost my sales on that grand day when such a thing will be more than hypothetical. Or at least I think it will.

Drew's Cuisine

Ah, the joys of learning to eat. We've got some great video clips of Drew discovering that food comes in solid forms, too. His expression was less than enthusiastic at first. But after a day or so, rice cereal mixed with formula worked just fine for him, and proved to be a good transition step. Then we tried bananas. The Boy actually shuddered as his face screwed up in a "Ewwww, yuck!" expression--and then he ate them anyway. I suppose it makes us cruel, but we actually gave him a few more spoonfulls after he had made his distaste known. That shudder was just cute!

We thought we had found a hit with the green beans, which he really seemed to enjoy. And then we tried pears. Move over green beans. Drew ate so much of his pear mush that he was too full for a bottle afterward and also slept through the night without a bottle. He's also green-lighted applesauce, peas, and sweet potatoes. We're not sure about squash, though. Either he was overtired last night and fussed because of that or he fussed because the squash was that bad. We'll have to see. Tonight we're giving carrots a try.

It's been a blast watching Drew discover new tastes and smells and textures. What hasn't been as much fun is discovering what solids do to his diapers.

Burn, Baby, Burn

As an aspiring author, I'm always on the lookout for information about various viewpoints and actual cases on copyright law. Lee Goldberg's recent post about the matter is absolutely fascinating, as are the comments. Really, go read the post.

I'm going to have to make it a point in my will that all my journals and maybe even unpubbed work should be burned, my harddrives taken through an EM field, etc. By the time I die, there's probably going to be a damn good reason that stuff has remained my "private collection." I journal sometimes just to get thoughts out of my head that I really don't want there. If I didn't want them in my head, I certainly wouldn't want them making the rounds on the internet or whatever will pass for such in the time when my death may be something not statistically-speaking very far away. As I progress through my writing career, I may exempt specific manuscripts from this clause in my will because there may be a few books that I want to be pubbed but Death Calls before I am able to do so myself. And I'm going to get very particular about how such hypothetical MSs should be handled.

It's taken me a good three years to get comfortable with the concept of my more mature plot points and themes and such being out there associated with my name for all to see. Part of what made me comfortable with it is knowing that I have complete legal control over what the public will and will not see. This is not to say that I think all aspects of my words are perfect reflections of myself. No, quite the contrary. I've written characters that I would never want to meet in real life, worlds that make me shudder that they might ever come to exist beyond the page (or screen, or related merchandise, a woman's gotta dream, eh?). But there are places in my mind that I don't like to tread unless I am absolutely guaranteed that I'm going in alone or with a very trusted companion, where the words that live there strike too close to my own personal truths that are only my business to read. And my estate is going to damn well enforce that.

Of course, by the time I'm shuffling around in my 100s, I may be all about being a walking Freak Show and will have vanity-pubbed all my journals with purple glitter highlighting the really sordid bits and get them optioned for film and then do commentary on the DVD in which I reveal all the extra juicy stuff that rattled around in my head that I still managed to censor from even my private journals. And it will probably make for some very boring entertainment as I'm probably far less neurotic and racy even in my darkest mental nooks and cranies than I think I am. :)

Resolved: Academic Freedom and Catholic Character

A while ago, I posted my response to Notre Dame's presidential address regarding what academic freedom means at a Catholic university, specifically in whether or not such things as The Vagina Monologues or a queer film festival should be allowed in a broad campus setting. A bit ago, we finally got the president's final word. Here's what I consider the money quote, as it was much my point:

Catholic teaching has nothing to fear from engaging the wider culture, but we all have something to fear if the wider culture never engages Catholic teaching. That is why the Catholic tradition must not only inspire our worship and our service on campus; it should help shape the intellectual life of the university. Our goal is not to limit discussion or inquiry, but to enrich it; it is not to insulate that faith tradition from criticism, but to foster constructive engagement with critics.

Through the various bits and pieces of rhetoric and such in his response, my first impression was that the president knew exactly what decision he wanted to make (keep whatever secular media and non-Catholic viewpoints in the campus setting, but get just as loud and broad with a counter presentation that shows the Catholic doctrine) and took this opportunity to galvanize the campus into such an action on their own without a top-down "you will do this or else" approach. Maybe that's giving him too much credit or making him sound Machiavellian, I don't know.

It's just good to be proud of my alma mater and be reassured that it is a place where I would be happy to send Drew to not only get an excellent education but also to learn more about his faith. Not to assume he'll either want to go to Notre Dame or that he'll necessarily care a snit about Catholicism at that or any point in his life. I'm not ever going to be one of those "Momma was a Domer, and so you will be" alums, and I hope he actively questions his faith before he gets to college age. And this all assumes that Notre Dame would even want the son of a lowly genre writer whose novels contain, to use a Simpsons euphemism, "adult situations."

Move Me

Recently I've been looking for a book or a CD that will move me. Being entertained is all well and good, but every now and then, you want something to come along, slam into you, and leave you flat on your back on the floor going "Whoa." The last book that did this was Threads of Malice. I read one book recently that I thought would have the impact I was looking for, but instead it had quite the opposite. It was the first book I hurled across a room (thank God it was a paperback). I even threw it across the room TWICE because not only did it piss me off, but it did so in the last couple of pages. Yeah, note to self: a pleasant reading experience does not involve the author doing his best Dark Helmet "FOOLED YOU!" imitation. Is it too much to ask to find a book that both entertains and makes you think in a fashion that is easy to read and profound? And why do the arguments of "art vs success" always seem to fall into "us vs them" lines that indicate genre writers only entertain while literary writers only go for the deep thoughts? Dammit, I want something other than fun fluff to read, but I don't want reading it to be a chore!

I've been a bit luckier in the music department. Thanks to Jacquandor, I have discovered the bliss that is Rachmaninov. After oohing and aahing over "The Isle of the Dead," I picked up his Symphony No 2. Wow. And recently, I have found Blue October. Their recent single "Hate Me" has been bouncing around in my head, so I decided to check out the other tracks on Amazon. And damn if I didn't realize that the songs I had been attributing to Peter Gabriel for some reason were actually by Blue October (the lead singer's voice sounds somewhat similar, but it really took me too long to straighten this out; guess I'm just used to Peter Gabriel being very eclectic).

So at least my music needs have been met. And I know there's gotta be at least ONE book in my terrifying To Be Read pile that will give me the deep and entertaining experience I crave. Just gotta find it.

Getting Closer

In the midst of the insanity that was last week, my little countdown up top there dropped into the double-digits. Once we get the final date of Mark's defense, that number is going to shrink a bit more. I think he'll hack a good two weeks off it at least, but he who is doing all the writing and preparation isn't so sure. Also, he just had a review he co-wrote with his thesis adviser accepted, adding to his growing list of professional pubs. His resume is killer--he just needs to get it out there in the coming months. The insanity of the move is drawing nearer, we just don't know for sure where we're moving to yet. The goal is Arizona, of course, and things seem to be pretty hopeful for that possibility. Everyone keep their fingers crossed for a continued good forecast for the biotech economy in Arizona.

Sharing a Moment

Life is getting back to whatever passes for normal with an infant, and now I have time to process again. I finally have some time to reflect on the big event of the past month: the trip to North Dakota. We're advanced enough medically that five living generations of a family isn't as rare as it once was, but we're also changing society in a way that delays having children, so it may become rarer despite medical advances. At any rate, my family has been blessed to have five surviving generations, a linked bloodline of five people counting back to 1911. It was a great weekend of family memories and fun. And the side benefits were great: after spending all but the first month of Drew's life by ourselves, it meant a lot for so many of his relatives to be there to see Drew experience a pool for the first time, to watch as he first learned how to munch on his toes, to share in his amazing smiles. My grandfather worked the trip into his chemo schedule, and in a recent spate of news of bad weather across the country, it was a nice prayer answered that their drive back home didn't delay them and interrupt his very important regimen. My uncle who hasn't seen my great-grandmother in twenty-four years surprised us all by showing up for the weekend.

But all those great stories aside, I keep coming back to this picture. I know it will be the first image that comes to mind when I reflect on this trip over the years. The five generations picture is great--despite the fact that I've still got ten pounds of baby fat to lose--but it's posed, it's heritage. This picture here is a moment. Great-Great Grandma Arel is saying something to Drew, and he's listening intently. I'm not sure I heard what she said then, and I know Drew couldn't have understood it, but it seems to represent the entire point of the weekend. A sharing of wisdom, a serious encounter. Great-Great Grandma Arel is looking at Drew, fully aware of who he is and of who she is, the single point from which at least 50 people are connected by blood (and if I had a better grip on all my cousins, I'd know the exact number). And Drew is looking back, very serious, very attentive, with the mind of a beginner, full of curiosity, wondering who he is, who she is, and who those 50 people are and who else is to come.
I've never had much of a chance to get to know my great-grandmother well, and I'm not sure my mother had much of a chance either. Mom lived decently far away from North Dakota growing up--though not quite as far as I did--ensuring that any visit would be brief and usually a part of a "quick, we've got two weeks to visit everybody, gotta smush it all in" mindset. Plus, my great-grandmother hasn't been able to travel much herself for a while now. I do know that she lived on her own until a year ago when her circumstances no longer allowed her to do so. She's survived as a widow for thirty years (actually, longer than that, I think). And despite the fact that she hasn't been happy in the nursing home, she had lots of smiles for everyone that weekend. She keeps a rosary by her favorite chair and that chair doesn't face the TV in her room, it faces a bulletin board brimming with pictures of her family.

I hope Drew absorbed a lot in that moment, looking into his great-great grandmother's eyes. There's a lot of wisdom and love there, and even though I only had brief moments to encounter it myself, I feel truly blessed to have witnessed it at all. Yes, this picture will be the first image that comes to mind when I think of this special weekend.

Lemming Time

While I finish digging myself out of the hell that is the DDJ, here's a fun meme I found via Andi and Tambo.

Meme Instructions: Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

Events (Couldn't limit to 3)
763 BC - Assyrians record a solar eclipse that will be used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1219 - Dannebrog - oldest national flag in the world - and flag of Denmark. According to legend, fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse (now Tallinn) in Estonia, and turned the Danes' luck.
1667 - The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean Baptiste. He transfuses 12 fluid ounces (350 ml) of sheep blood to a 15-year-old boy. The boy later dies and Baptiste is accused of murder.
1752 - Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.
1785 - Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1924 - Native Americans are proclaimed United States citizens.

Births (No limits here either)
1330 - Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales (d. 1376)
1755 - Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist (d. 1809
1915 - Thomas Huckle Weller, American virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1917 - John Fenn, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1939 - Brian Jacques, British author
1973 - Neil Patrick Harris, American actor

Deaths (I limited myself to only one extra)
1381 - John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice of England
1849 - James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States (b. 1795)

A quick, fun "circle of life" reminder. And some story ideas. I mean, a flag--one with a name, no less--falls on my birthday nearly 800 years ago and it's recorded? The chronology of Mesopotamian history started with an eclipse on good ol' June 15, 763BC? Groovy.

Another Draft Bites the Dust

I finished the first round of revisions to Carson's Learning last night. I think I kept only 20% of the original version. And all but 500 words of the 10,700 I wrote this past week (GO ME!!!) were brand new. I had planned to finish the new draft of this project last Monday when I was taking care of all the errands we missed while we were out of town, but I only got 5,500 words (yes, I know, "only") before I realized that I had no gas left and a decent amount of territory left to cover. So I put Soz aside so I could crank CL out, and I wrote the last word last night. Now I'm going to let that bad boy sit in the dark for at least two weeks before I head back in for revisions. And I have some decisions to make. Technically, the anthology for which I intended this piece didn't put a word limit on submissions, but they did say 4,000 to 10,000 words was the preferred range. Um, even with some stellar revisions and tightening of transitions and phrases and so on, I'll be hard-pressed to bring the word count down to 14,000, let alone 10,000. I'll still give it a try as I think CL would be a great fit for this project, but I'm not sure they're going to read my cover letter beyond the word count.

That's been the focus of my life in between handling major stress at work, getting sick (feaver and chills = fun!), getting Andrew all checked out and immunized, introducing him to solid foods (after three tries, he's a pro), and acting as a personal driving service for Mark and a colleague while the bus drivers are on strike. Wheeeeeeee.

Travelin' Man

Drew has now been to four states: Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota (our layover this weekend), and North Dakota. He's not even six months old. Pretty cool. I've got a longer post in the works for the weekend and some others that have been brewing since January, but the DDJ became the Frackin' DDJ this week and I use my free time to remind myself to breathe. To tide you over until I have a moment for more interesting posts, check out Drew's latest photos.

Five Generations in One Room

I was going to write tonight. Honestly. Then the fracking car accident on Tuesday kept me up way past my bedtime. Then my brother called late last night and kept me up past my bedtime (of all the reasons to lose sleep, this comes in second to comforting Drew and taking care of him at night, meaning I don't mind). Then Northwest cancelled our later in the morning flight for one leaving at 7:30 tomorrow. And we live an hour away. And DIA is not an airport to chance getting there only an hour before your flight. Do the math. I will be crashing as soon as we are packed tonight.

Where are we going? Grand Forks, North Dakota. Drew will meet his great-great-grandmother and renew his acquaintances with his great-grandmother and his grandmother. He will dazzle them with his ability to smile at the least provocation, to babble excitedly at his pacifier, to grab his toes and roll onto his side, to roll onto his tummy, and to sit up all on his own for long periods of time. And we all get to watch as he experiences a swimming pool for the first time. Stretch-marked Momma will be covered from shoulders to knees and dangling her feet in the pool. (Actually, I really don't care too much what a bathing suit would reveal about my postpartum bod; I just don't feel like trying to squeeze the time and money in to buy a suit that I won't use again before I have lost the last bit of my pregnancy weight. Lemme clarify: I don't care what a one-piece bathing suit would reveal. Ain't no way in hell I'll be wearing a two-piece for a bit.)

Watch for fun pictures on Tuesday.

OK, Murphy, the Well is Full

I've got enough experience at the moment to keep the well of my creativity quite stocked, but Lady Luck and Murphy think that I could stand to use more, apparently. It wasn't enough to give me the surprise of unexpected proceedures at the urologist yesterday. ("Oh, they'll just do an ultrasound of your bladder" turned into "Now we'll do this quick five minute procedure with a catheter and some tubing".) Last night as I was coming home from my fabulous critique group, I got into a very minor accident. It was on a stretch of road that is notorious for drivers thinking they have more room and turning rather than waiting that the curves of the road aren't tricking them (which they almost always are). I've been driving this bit of road for five years. It's the shortest bit of road on my commute, really on any drive to and from our apartment, but it's the one on which I'm always the most vigilant. More than once that vigilance has paid off as I honked or braked or swerved out of the way to avoid an accident. No such luck last night. The snow didn't help. Neither did the car in the other lane help, cutting off my other escape route as someone tried to make a left turn in front of me. I couldn't swerve without potentially having a head-on with another car. I had to slam on the brakes, which turned into an ice skating adventure, and ended with a minor bumper crunch.

Everyone was fine, it was just me and the other driver involved, Drew was safe and sound, asleep in his crib at the time. And the accident wasn't my fault, so we won't have to do the Deductible Crunch on top of the Bumper Crunch.

I was mighty tempted to just dissolve into tears or hysterics, but I kept it together for the hour it took for the cops to get there and write up the report. I even managed to find the positive. It helped that the other driver was just a kid, (read: 16; I remember the horror and terror of my first accident, also minor; hard to get mad) and his family was very nice to both him and me. It also helped when a car with fireman's plates pulled over and made sure we were OK with a quick thumb's up gesture. And I was listening to Rachmaninov's "The Isle of the Dead" which is a beautiful, haunting piece that does wonders for SoZ inspiration and kept me calm, oddly enough. I think I would've lost it had the radio been on and something cheery and bubble-gummy had come on.

Sigh. When it rains, and all that.

Writing Update

I've been very bad at updating my word counts in the sidebar. I usually remember to update the counts on a Monday or Thursday, when I'll be writing that very night. So I don't update, knowing I'll be changing those numbers in a few short hours. Today I remembered, and I won't be changing those numbers again until Thursday, and then only the Carson's Learning ones (I revise CL Thursday nights, work on SoZ every other writing night I get). And seeing as how I finally came up with a title for this first Velorin book that I like and that lends itself to a pattern for the other Velorin titles, I figured I'd post a writing update and update the darn sidebar.

First big news is that I renamed Strings of Discord (originally Strings of Betrayal) to The Shadow of Zehth. This fits much better with the big problem facing the characters and is a phrase used several times in the book. I won't be changing this title unless those who decide to represent and/or publish it tell me to. Feels good to finally have that settled. I have never enjoyed the titles I gave this project in the past. Now I do. Oh, and the draft creation is moving swimmingly. I had hoped to break 50k this past weekend, but Saturday night was a date night for me and Mark (our third since Andrew came along) and Sunday night I could barely keep my eyes open despite taking two naps during the day. We're going to Grand Forks this weekend, so breaking 50k will have to wait until next week unless I can find some time at work or squeeze it in elsewhere.

The next big news is that I have really enjoyed and seen a lot of success with the alternating works-in-progress I've been doing. I hope to finish my CL revisions on Monday (taking that day off from work, mainly just in case we have trouble getting out of Grand Forks on Sunday, but I'm planning on it being a hefty writing day). I'll leave that project alone for a couple of weeks, do another (hopefully much less extensive) round of revisions, and then submit it to this anthology. While the majority of my writing time will still be spent on SoZ draft creation, I intend to keep Thursday nights as non-Velorin writing. I'll work on the novel that continues the events and characters from CL (it's in The Masque's universe, and I do intend to revisit that novel, but if CL makes it into the anthology, I'd like to have the "follow-up" novel ready to go by the time the story gets published. I'd also like to have SoZ finished then, too, so I have two novels to submit to agents and editors with my "Oh, and I've published a novella" query letters. (Damn, I said if in there. I suppose that's OK for specific publishing opportunities, but if doesn't belong in my general publishing goals.)

That's the State of the Writing as of today. Consistent progress and a submission on the horizon. That'll work.

The Upside

A lesson I started to learn when I was unemployed but didn't fully get until I held Andrew while having my c-section incision packed is that there's always a silver lining. Sometimes it's very small compared the huge-ass cloud hanging around, and sometimes you don't see it until the cloud is gone, but it's there. I went through a lot last year, but I got a beautiful baby boy out of it. That's a fairly obvious silver lining. Very strong, very clear, very visible. And while I was going through that pregnancy, I had his kicks and punches inside me. Obvious again. I think there's a reason why all my morning sickness and sleeping ickiness stopped when I started to feel his movement. It gave me that extra boost I needed to push past any mental blocks keeping the first trimester yuckiness entrenched.

Recently, I've been having some more medical problems. Again, nothing too crazy, just some fairly severe abdominal cramping about once a month and some minor cramping more frequently. Add in the fact that my bladder hasn't been "normal" in over a year and a skin lesion that's been hanging around just as long, and we've got a recipe for more medical poking and prodding.

But hey, at least that damn root canal is done.

After reading Tess's post about refilling the well, I've realized that I've got more of an upside to this than the usual (my health is still basically fine despite these few blips--and I've got excellent health insurance, I've got the basic neccessities and then some, I've got time to write, I've got my bouncing baby boy--who just mastered rolling onto his tummy--and I've got Mark and lots of supportive family and friends). I'm just adding to the a ton of unusual experiences I can bring to my writing. And I get to meet a lot of different people in the process (Urology seems very specific for a part of the body that I didn't think would need a specialist; shows what I know). This is just another of my many adventures. Granted, I'd rather stop having adventures that involve my health, and I might go verbally postal at the next phlebotomist who tells me they could draw my blood better if I'd drink more water (I drink 3 liters a day, my veins just aren't easy to find), but it's still a large glom of new experiences waiting for me. And I say this knowing I've got a biopsy of that lesion in my future with the bonus weight of my father's and uncle's recent malignant skin tumor removals to manage. (Excuse me while I take a moment to do some strutting for how far I've come in this particular arena of life. OK, the Snoopy Dance has ceased.) New experiences and new people equals more to draw from every time I sit down to my writing.

Tess goes to Libya, I go to the urologist.

Everyone's Talking Shop

Well, that's not entirely a bad thing. Maybe a tad overwhelming, though. PBW gathered questions from her readers and started a sort-of meme to get the answers, and started to answer them herself. (This post has the best "what to do when you get The Call" list I've read.) Tam weighs in on the meme. Tess tracks the insanity of her latest book's title. And then Scalzi reports his numbers.

Did I mention my head hurts? And I think my jaw is still sagging after reading Scalzi's numbers. But it's a great article for aspiring writers, because, yes, he does make $100k/yr, but he does multiple projects to get that. He doesn't just push out a book a year and let the dough roll in, which is what a lot of people think writers do.

These are such great essays about the business of writing that I may actually print them out and keep them in a binder somewhere handy. For that day when I will need it. (I think I might eliminate "if" from my vocabulary when it comes to my writing. :))

The Business of Writing, Or "Ow, My Head Hurts!"

Tobias has a great post about writerly self-promotion, and Tess puts a different spin on work-for-hire contracts that many writers need just to survive. I like it when I find articles like these because it reminds me that I have to consider the mechanics of publishing as well as of writing.

And then there's Anna Louise's post about the business of publishing (part of her demystifying publishing campaign), and my head starts hurting. I think I should've read a post a week, not all of them at once. This is good information, good perspectives, good things to keep nattering around in your head as you move beyond the step of getting the darn book written. (By the way, it's frustrating when you know you can complete that step faster but have to go off and do something ridiculous like earn money for forty hours a week. It's even more frustrating when you get a great critique, read some great advice, and have your instincts start screaming, "This is it! This one is going to make it!" but you know you're at best eight months away from submitting your current WIP, and that's assuming you'll be able to finish the draft and revise it in those eight months. Oh, and you'll be moving to a new state sometime in those eight months, buying a house, etc. I'm remarkably more patient than I used to be, but there are days....)

There's a lot to know about publishing after you get that book finished and polished. The author's work does not end with "The End". This is hard for an as-yet-unpublished writer to deal with, though. The primary goal for those of us trying to break into publishing should be to write the best book you can. But you also have to be ready for that fabled moment when you get The Call--with absolutley no guarantees that it will ever happen. So if you're someone like me, whose current definition of multitasking involves plotting while pumping, you'll probably be inclined to hold off on learning the business of writing in favor of just writing, dammit. You'll wait until the business of publishing becomes something relevant to your limited time--usually meaning after you get The Call from an interested agent or editor, and by then you're playing catch-up for the rest of your career. In some ways it feels a bit like preparing to win the lottery, read: a bit of a waste, but probably vital should it ever happen. OK, so I've exaggerated a bit there. But it makes the point: not only is it hard to just write the damn book, it's doubly hard to be prepared for the off-chance of getting published both in the sense of everything you have to know to keep yourself in the game and in the sense of finding the time (which is usually always pegged toward writing the damn book) to learn it all.

That's why it's nice that we have folks in the biz who take the time to distill vital information into easy to read and understand bits and pieces to at least give you enough background that you won't be flying blind when The Call arrives. Yes, I said when again. No ifs today either.

Field Research

Between the general cataloging of my books after the busted pipe and Jenny Cruisie's cover design lecture, I got to thinking about how I buy books. I do buy a lot of books. I never really used to, and I often swapped books out at used books stores to save and still get new-to-me reads. I even dabbled in the local library while I was unemployed, but I found that my SF&F selection was pretty much limited to hardback releases, thus drastically winnowing the genre pool. So I started finding bargain deals and eking out wiggle room in my budget to regularly buy books (it became necessary as my critique group meets in Borders once a week; I have a lot of willpower, but I'm going to cave and snag a book at least once a month given that temptation). I buy books for two reasons: publishing research and pleasure. The books I buy purely for pleasure are new titles from authors I know, and most of the time I grab them as soon as they are placed on the shelves. Those are the books that I bounce around about, eagerly anticipating their release date, scheduling time to bury myself in them as soon as I have them in my hot little hands.

The books I buy for research purposes are another matter entirely. Into this category fall: books that were recommended by authors I like; books that were recommended by my writing family and friends; books that were recommended by non-writing family and friends; books that I've heard have similar elements to my ideas; books I snagged simply because the cover drew me; books I picked up in a bargain bin that seemed marginally interesting and were only a buck or something; books that got good industry buzz; books that had a unique marketing approach; etc. Now that I've budgeted for it, I tend to buy a lot of books for all the reasons the publishing folks say sell books. And then I assess how well each method works in a very anecdotal, memory of patterns sort of way. I don't keep tallies, don't keep notes. I just kind of go with my gut, wing it, get an impression, and file the information away for my use later. (By the way, I tried this with the music industry once and only once. I find that I'm willing to risk the $7--or less with the deals I tend to find--on a book that I will end up not liking, but I'm unwilling to risk $12 on a CD that I will end up not liking. This is because I can still learn a lot from a book I didn't like and put that $7 to use in a very tangible way, but that $12 is gone unless I can find a used music store willing to take the CD for anything close to what I paid for it.)

All this translates to a spectacular To Be Read pile. Or not so spectacular, depending on whichever book I pull out of the stack. It's all very haphazard, but I really like it that way. Sure, I could make science out of this, catalogue each book by reason I bought it, note my impressions, etc. I could create very pretty spreadsheets and such. Talk about sapping the fun right out of everything. And it seems to be a bit contrary to the reason I do this. Instinct can't be quanitified. Reactions can't be measured. This is something I do purely to get a sense of the market, the industry, what readers are actually looking for and drawn to. It's already paid off in that it keeps reading as a fresh hobby for me (I never know what I'm going to pick up next and why sometimes), and I think it will pay off when I have to start thinking about things like cover copy and covers art and such. And, yes, I said when. No ifs today.

What SF & F Mean to Me

A while back, Tobias had a great post about the fun and relevance of SF. He talks a bit about how he came to love SF and maps the history of his reading adventures. That got me thinking about my own journey to reading SF and fantasy and to writing it.

Before we moved to Germany, SF&F would've been right up my alley. I used to play "V" on the playground, orchestrating who got to be the aliens and who got to be the resistance and who would be captured. I think there was often a queen alien involved, though I don't remember if that was a part of the show. The game often devolved into a lot of running around and screaming and kids pretending to rip off their faces to reveal the alien underneath. Then there was the really cool set of trees in the play area across the street from my house, where we made a little gathering area in the center of the trees (I think they were really dense weeping willows; they would have been right behind that lighter colored pavilion-looking thing not too far from the center of this shot). In addition to the generic playing of "house" in this nifty spot, I created some sort of fantasy world with magic and some dire problem we all had to fix, but the tree place was "safe." I remember playing that particular game until dusk, and the willows looked especially ethereal then.

We moved to Germany in the midst of a family crisis, and I buried a lot of my creative instincts, thinking that they wouldn't serve the needs of the family. Still, I managed to do a lot of day-dreaming that I kept entirely to myself. It helped living in neat little villages--sort of hard not to let the imagination run away every now and then. Our first house in Germany had been the local pub haunt of Schinderhannes, the German Robin Hood. Our second house was at the edge of town, right before farmlands that sloped into a forested valley where a very old castle ruin sat (four walls, that's about it). I could get lost in the stories I would spin while climbing the cherry trees at the edge of town or while hiking through the valley around the castle ruins. Our third house in Germany was also at the edge of a village, overlooking yet another valley, this one a bit steeper. There was a lot of mystery buried in that valley, but no castle. (Actually, the castle in this town was perched on top of the hill, rather than buried in the valley; also, the castle had undergone extensive renovation to be some sort of resort/hotel-like thingy.) No, in this valley, we'd sled down at a breakneck speed during the winter, dodging the fences of animal pens; and in the summer we'd run down the valley as fast as we could without breaking our necks and then go tearing down the lane that led to someone's hidden cottage. After this fun spot, we moved into the housing on the military base, but we were still at the edge of the base and had ample forest to wander through before bumping into the barbed wire fence marking the base boundary, thus making up for the drastic lack of imagination one could find in base housing itself.

What does this have to do with reading and writing SF&F? Well, all that day-dreaming and those unique surroundings kept my creativity going despite my efforts to squash it. I didn't read anything beyond the standard bubble-gum pop-ish fare for my age group, and that didn't bother me--reading heftier books was for school. I watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and that added a lot of fuel to that creativity thing I kept telling myself I didn't have (I was a scientist, dammit). All of those experiences mished and mashed and melded until I got to my senior year of college and realized that I had periodically been starting a story or a novel a couple times a year while at school. And I discovered that the fluff I was letting myself read was distinctly boring and not doing much other than annoy me in the precious little down time I had from classes and research. I can't remember why, but I felt the pull of the SF section of the bookstores in South Bend. And I started wandering through them, trying to figure out which were the gems and which were the sparkly poo. I picked up Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series (she was one of the few names I recognized; I think my mother had read the Pern novels at some point when I was really young and the covers must have caught my eye), devoured it, and found myself disappointed in its lack of detail. I wanted more. So I went back to the bookstore and found the thickest damn book in the section that caught my eye. It was Melanie Rawn's Exiles.

I. Was. Hooked.

Since then I haven't come up for air, trying to make up for all those years that I read only Sweet Valley High or The Babysitter's Club and so on. In some ways, I'm glad I waited to discover SF&F all on my own after my formative years. It makes me feel like a kid again everytime I'm in that part of the bookstore, dazzled by genre, comforted by it, belonging to it. It's my own, something I went and found after I worked my way through a bunch of crap growing up.

Writing SF&F is another matter. I first started writing because I had a Point. Yes, the awful, dreaded lecture was the impetus for Human Dignity. That's the main reason that it might be quite some time before I go back to it. I have a Point in all my other projects, but it is always secondary to the Story. Or, rather, the Point is reflected in the Story instead of the other way around. And because SF&F as reading material was my own discovery, it felt natural to stick with that genre when I discovered writing as my own dream--not anyone else's, not what I thought anyone else wanted my dream to be.

Science Fiction and Fantasy unlocked something in me, or it was there when I unlocked a part of myself I hadn't realized I had been shutting away. Other genres are fun to read, and I certainly enjoy including other genre elements in my writing, but I don't think I'll ever leave SF&F or let another genre into my life as completely as this one.

Done.

Nearly a year ago, I had a fairly nasty toothache--on top of all the joys of morning sickness. That toothache turned out to be decay so bad, the tooth needed a root canal. So at 12 weeks preggers, I prayed my stomach would tolerate the hour and a half under the dentist's drill to clean out the tooth. I did well. Very well. Then came the next appointment to get the tooth ready for the crown. I didn't do so well. I tried again to get the whole business over with. No luck. One last time, I scheduled an appointment--and cancelled when I came down with shingles (I think I was around 27 weeks pregnant at that point). At that point, I gave up hope of finishing the tooth business while I was pregnant and scheduled an appointment for a couple of weeks after Andrew was born. Had to cancel that appointment when they told me my c-section incision was open and infected. Finally in December I scheduled this appointment again--only by this time, I had to switch dentists because my old dentists had stopped taking my insurance somewhere in all of this. And a new dentist meant getting approval from my insurance company to go forward with the procedure. On Valentine's Day, I finally got that damn tooth prepped for the crown.

And yesterday, finally, at very long last, I got the permanent crown cemented to the piddly remains of my molar. It wasn't without a bit of insanity. The only way I can tolerate the drill at the moment is with a nice dose of valium. So yesterday, I went home early (not actually for the dentist, but to be there for flippin' FedEx--long story), curled up with a book for a bit, took my valium, and walked over to the dentist. It shouldn't have been an issue. I've taken this drug before and it didn't affect my motor skills at all. But I had forgotten to eat lunch yesterday. Hey, what can I say? The book was engrossing. I didn't actually start to stumble until I was in the dentist's parking lot. And it made for some fun maneuvering to get me in the that stupid dental chair, but I didn't fall once. I must say, though, that I was remarkably chilled when they went to drill out a cracked filling after cementing the crown and discovered they hadn't numbed me quite enough. My bite's still a little off as I've been chewing pretty much on only one side of my mouth for nearly a year. It feels wierd to chew on the other side--I have to consciously move food over there for mastication.

But no matter: the Root Canal from Hell is DONE.

Happy International Embarrass Yourself as an Artist Day (Belated)

A while back, Elizabeth Bear challenged other writers to post "the awfullest, grottiest, ancientest piece of juvenilia you still have a word processor that will open." You see it's taken me some time to embolden myself to accept this challenge. I know I have older and far more retched pieces than this, but this is pretty darn awful. So much so, that I can only bring myself to post the first paragraph (it goes on for 20 pages...ouch). I still remember what I was thinking when I wrote this and why I wanted to write it and a good deal about what I was trying to do--enough so that I might revisit it one day (after having printed these 20 pages, shredded them, and fed them to a fire or let the cats use them as litter or something else equally satisfying).

Without further ado, here is the first paragraph of In the Frame of a Golden Sunset (and excuse me while I gag again at such a soap-opera-ish title, blech).

Missing. Missing. Missing. A funny mantra. But his own, his creation, or lack thereof. The business of his life seemed to meet the socially acceptable requirements. Successful job. Respect from his peers. A loving family, mother and father and sister, no wife, of course. After unsuccessful attempts at this world’s pathetic excuse for relationships, he had buried himself in that successful career of his. He had found himself attracted to a number of shallow women. He often wondered how he found them. Seemed to migrate toward them. One rather painful episode triggered him to embrace his work. It filled his life then. But no longer. And now that damned mantra. Missing. Missing. Missing.

I can find problems not only with each sentence, but nearly every word. The POV wanders, slips and slides. I've managed to create a character that, as written here, I already want to kick off a bridge--maybe that's a sign of latent talent to accomplish that in a paragraph? And I love that "no wife, of course" bit, how it seems to qualify the "socially acceptable requirements" of his life. Gag, gag, gag. I even somehow managed to give this ponderous oaf the name of a rather recognizable celebrity without realizing it at the time. That gaffe is the only thing that makes this piece even remotely entertaining (my character is a satirist, writes books and columns and such; the poor man I accidentally named him after does nearly the exact same thing). To think that I wrote this very early in 2000. I've come a long way in six years. A VERY long way.

Now please excuse me while I go scrub my fingers and eyeballs for ever having written and read this.

And Even More Pictures

Finally got the scanner back up and running and the last batch of photos from Ye Olde Point 'n Shoot are up. And since it was such a beautiful day yesterday (and will be again today), we went to a nearby rec area for a nice walk and, of course, took some pictures with the spiffy digital camera we got for Christmas.

Helping Another Writer

Many aspiring writers think that getting published equates to getting a bunch of canvas bags with big dollar signs on them. Get that Great American Novel into the publishing houses, and get busy moving into your mansion, buying your fancy cars, shopping at Cartier, etc. That only happens for a very small percentage of writers. I'd say less than one percent, but that's a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess). Most writers slug it out every day to earn enough money to keep them solvent for the next year, or even month. And, in the case of an amazing woman who manages to write a ton as well as run Forward Motion, Vision, and a host of other writing-related things, she's down to getting enough money to make it through the next day. I'd like to wave a magic wand and give Zette those canvas bags with dollar signs--filled with the green stuff, of course. I'm going to do the next best thing in this mundane world: direct interested folks to buy her e-book and do so using her HollyShop affiliate link, and not mine. Just click over to Zette's site, and then click on the Shop.HollyLisle.com sidebar box. I tried to figure out how to give you her affiliate link directly, but I don't want to do anything that might screw up her comission stats and whatnot.

While you're there and giving a little commission to Zette in addition to royalties for buying her book, check out Hunting the Corrigan's Blood by Holly Lisle. It's a e-book reprint that starts out with the MC in close quarters with a corpse. Talk about a hook.

All told, you'll spend less than $14 for two books that are both non-traditional (and, if you ask me, worth checking out for that reason alone for market research purposes), one by an established print author, and another by an established electronic author. And you'll get those warm fuzzies for helping out an author in serious need.

Where's the Conflict?

Here's Andrew helping me puzzle out a plot point. He's concentrating harder than I am, but it obviously helped. I passed 40K in SoD last week. I celebrated by buying myself new pants that 1) aren't maternity pants and 2) actually flatter my current figure, but 3) aren't my original size, but the next one up. While I'm still irked that I can't fit back into my regular pants, I'm VERY happy to have put away all of my maternity clothes now and actually feel something other than frumpy in work clothes. Progress.

Anyway, I found myself asking about conflict the other day as I prepared to keep chugging on SoD. The chapter was just a bear anyway as I had to fully transition into the middle of the book (never my fave), write toward a later scene without really knowing what's going on in this one, describe a new subset of Velorin society, keep some tension going about a subplot, and do all of this in Raynal's POV, which is my hardest POV to write. I forced and stumbled my way through getting everyone to an oasis, introducing the problem at the oasis, setting up camp, and dealing with the problem a bit. I was set to write a scene about a lively campfire dinner and dancing in order to introduce the cultural subset and reveal some backstory of another character. But it just all seemed so flat. Mainly because I had no idea what the conflict was. Rayn has come to some sort of peace with the new insanity in his life, the nomads he's with are nice people, the problem I've introduced has been dealt with for the moment (it'll bite him in the posterior later), and everything's pretty peachy-keen at the moment.

As Tam so elequently noted, that just won't cut it.

So I tried to figure out where there could be tension. I thought there might be something in the backstory I needed to trot out, but it wasn't there. At all. I toyed with the idea of skipping the chapter and writing the scenes beyond it, but I need the information that I know I can beat out of my mind to make the next scenes easier to write. Finally, I figured there might be some conflict if I had Elaynor (Rayn's traveling companion) decide to blather on about The Plan to Rayn while he's trying to listen to a campfire melody that may contain new information about a history he's trying to write--and he doesn't understand the singer's dialect unless he concentrates. Not the craziest conflict, but it was the best I could do. I set out to write it, pulling each word from my fingers, wincing at just about everything, knowing that my next major rewrite was going to start right at that scene.

Then Rayn surprised me. He dropped a clue about himself. As he was taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the campfire celebration, he remarked about how wonderful the laughter sounded and how it had been so long since he had heard any. I had to stop and look at those words for a while after they fell out of my fingertips. I tried to pester Rayn with questions, but he didn't want to talk after that. I kept writing, hoping he would drop a few more morsels. And he did. I now know a ton about his outlook on life and what he wants, why he's hunting for history and what he's avoiding with that hunt. I know his internal conflict. Can't really use it in the scene much right now, but damn is it going to make his POV scenes easier to write. It'll make the eventual rewrite of this putrifyingly bad chapter easier.

And following the meager conflict I was able to determine would be in this scene, the natural progression led to a very tense moment, rife with conflict that led naturally into the next chapter. Nice when it all comes together. Helps to know which questions to ask. Helps when your characters actually deign to respond.

More Pictures

Before the day gets away from me and I forget again, we've posted some more pictures of Andrew. There are more coming, but it requires updating the driver for our scanner for the last roll of film before we got the digital camera. In the meantime, these are cute.

It's Only a Model, Part 2

Sigh. Everything is finally back in it's proper place. Well, except for the stuff we had to pitch, which wasn't too much. A lot of wrapping paper and gift bags, a few magazines--and all six of my Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. I had never meant to keep them as the collector's items they've apparently become, but I did hope to pass them on to Baby the Second, should it be a girl. All the remaining damage is to our books. The humidity generated in blowing the carpets dry warped over a hundred books. I've cataloged everything. Now I have to research their replacement costs. Fun.

But having renter's insurance has certainly paid off. We'll get reimbursed for everything. The folks upstairs aren't so lucky. No renter's insurance, and they're getting the bill for all the damages since they caused the break by turning off their heat. Ouch. So a move designed to save them a few bucks on their energy bills turns out costing them several grand at the very least. If they had renter's insurance, they'd have a small deductible to pay.

Now's a good time to talk about lessons learned. First lesson: always have insurance, especially if you're going to leave the heat off in an apartment during a record-breaking cold-snap. Second lesson: maintain an inventory of the items you own that you would not want to lose forever (side lesson: it may be wise to transfer all your pictures to digital data). Third lesson: back up your data someplace away from your property. I cannot begin to describe my horror when I thought there was a fire in the apartment above us and I realized that the quickest thing I could grab (my flash stick) would only have my two current works in progress. Grabbing my laptop would've saved nearly all of my typed writing, but all my paper-only notes, all my critiques of HD, The Masque, and SoD, all of my research would've been gone. I have remedied some of this situation by making sure I have multiple back-ups of my Word docs, and I will be researching off-site data storage. But I have to impletment a better habit of typing up my writing notes on a more regular basis and scanning what I can't type. Means a lot of extra time, but I can't ignore that punch to the gut that I experienced last Saturday.

And the final lesson of this ordeal: we need a clearly defined emergency response plan for our little family. We may have had one before Drew came along, but we certainly haven't put one together since. And it was painfully obvious as we scrambled to get ourselves safe. We will fix that.

All in all, as far as disasters go, this was minor, and it taught us a lot for a rather small price. Granted, it would've been nice not to have experienced this and to have done everything this taught us without the direct lesson. But lemonade from lemons, and all that.

It's Only a Model, Part 1

The following is a post I wrote up on Sunday. There's more to the story, but I haven't been able to write anything up yet. Stay tuned.

I was all set to hop on-line Saturday evening and type up a quick writing update post. My company, for some reason, decided to give us President's Day off, and I realized that I would be able to get a decent chunk of draft creation done for SoD on Saturday and Sunday and then spend Monday revising Carson's Learning (a novella set in The Masque universe) for submission to an anthology. Seemed like a great plan. Just a few minutes before I was ready to write said post, I heard an alarm coming from outside the apartment, but close by. At first I thought it might have been the tornado siren (it being the only outside alarm nearby I could think of), but a quick reminder that not only was it below zero outdoors, there was also a good few inches of snow out there too. A tornado seemed a bit unlikely. So Mark went checked and discovered an alarm on our apartment building was going off. I immediately thought "fire" and go into a panic trying to bundle up the boy, bundle me up, and figure out how to grab what I could of my writing before it went up in smoke.

That's when I heard the water.

Standing in the nursery, I hear what sounds like a lot of water dripping, and not just going through the pipes like you can hear when the folks upstairs flush. I'm holding Andrew and his jacket and Mark is half in a shoe and half out of one as we try to figure out just what the hey is going on. Then water starts pouring from the lights, vents, and sprinkler in the bathroom off the nursery. Drew goes into his bassinet in the living room as we dive for towels and get everything off the floor in the bathroom. Then it starts coming through the sprinkler in the nursery and the living room and the light fixture in the hall. By this point, someone from the office is helping us move shit out of the flood.

That's when I remember the closet in the nursery also has a sprinkler--and that's where I keep ALL OF MY PAPER ONLY WRITING NOTES AND MY TWO BACKUP COMPUTERS.

Cue Andrew crying inconsolably unless Momma's holding him.

I go to the master bedroom with The Boy, keeping him from going nuts, while everyone else dashes around the place like mad rescuing my notebooks, our videotapes, the computers, etc.

That's when I remember that my wedding dress is also in the now-flooding closet.

At this point, I just hug Andrew and stop thinking about everything, waiting for the water to stop and for the insanity to ease to a low boil. I watch as maintenance men arrive with buckets and wetvacs and hear pounding feet in the apartment above ours. The lady from the office tells me that they forgot or just plain didn't set their automatic thermostat to stay above 64 before they left for vacation, which wouldn't have been a problem until we hit frickin' 13 below that day. She hands me a key, telling me we can stay in the complex's model apartment, which is pretty much our same layout.

So I bundle up Drew and manage to find shoes for myself before heading over to the model across the drive, and Mark begins making multiple trips with stuff we'll need for a couple days and nights out of our place. This includes two very irate cats. We get Andrew bathed, fed, and to bed and then finally we order some take out and pour ourselves some rather strong margaritas.

The tequila helps us as we discover that our temporary digs is most certainly a model: maximum looks, minimum function. The plentiful TVs and stereos are all plastic. The master bed has a ton of pillows, none of which are suitable for sleeping. The king-size bed has a gorgeous bedspread--and nothing else but the crazy 80s fabric of the mattress itself. There is not a single square of toilet paper. The stove isn't hooked up. And so on.

But we have my laptop and Battlestar Gallactica Season 1, so we snuggle under the bedspread, trying to convince ourselves that the slippery feel of the mattress is kinda like satin and therefore luxurious, and settle in for some tipsy viewing of good SF.

We're one episode in when Andrew starts to cry. Poor little thing is congested and keeps waking himself up to breathe. Cue yet another trek back to the now extraordinarily humid apartment with many industrial fans blowing under the carpets so we can get the "What to Expect" book, a humidifier (yes, the irony is appreciated), and Drew's Little Noses Saline Drops. By the third episode, we think we've managed to get Andrew breathing well enough to sleep somewhat longer than an hour at a stretch.

Most of today has been spent keeping The Boy occupied as he is fussy after his night of so-so sleep. He's slept on Mark. He's slept on me. Hopefully he'll sleep better tonight. And tomorrow he goes to daycare so Mark and I can check out the apartment for damage, start the cleanup process, and get much needed naps.

A Valentine's Day First

For our first Valentine's Day, Mark proposed. Not at some swanky restaurant, not over champagne, not with flowers in one hand and chocolate in the other. I was teaching a developmental biology lab course and had several projector slides to show examples of chicken organ tissue. The last slide was supposed to be the final example of a particular region of the liver. Instead, up popped the words "Kellie, will you marry me?" Mark, who was my "assistant" TA for this lab section, got down on a knee and held up a ring. My first thought? Honest to God, I looked at that slide and, even though we had already decided to get married a couple weeks before and even though we had even picked out the ring together that weekend, I frowned and thought, "That's not the liver." My students thought it was a joke. Mark and I had been living together for the entire course to that point (OK, so it was a whopping four weeks), but they had no idea we were even dating.

Now here we are five years later. We've done the fancy dinner thing, the flowers thing, the chocolate thing, the "naughty undergarment" thing, and the jewelry thing. (Actually, Mark gives me jewelry for just about every birthday, anniversary, and holiday he can afford to. Not so much because he thinks he ought to give me jewelry or even because he wants me to have it, but more because he loves geology and gets a big kick out of looking at unique stones. Last night he gave me a beautiful pink rhodocrocite slice.) Last year was very low-key as I was suffering through morning sickness and the idea of chocolate was enough to make me green at times. This year was set to be low-key as well since the Drewmeister's around and we don't exactly have a long list of baby-sitters. But this V-day took a unique turn even for us.

I'll be going to the dentist, hopped up on valium, finally taking Step 2 in the root canal from hell--the seating of the crown. Step 3 will be two to four weeks from today when they actually screw that sucker into my jaw. I'm sure there are less romantic things than spending a Valentine's Day evening with your numb-lipped, drooling, spaced-out-on-drugs sweetie, but I can't think of them at the moment.

Aspiring Writers Take Note

Tobias Buckell has a great promo idea for his new book, Crystal Rain. It's sort of like the bonus features of a DVD. If you've got a copy of the book, you can access goodies such as short stories with the characters and universe of the book, a sneak peak at Tobias's next title, and author commentary on what it was like to write a scene or why it was written the way it was. This is a very neat idea, one that I'll put in my toolbox for that glorious day when I get published. Not only does it give buyers more bang for their buck, but it gives Tobias and his book an edge over the crowd as this is a new thing (or I think it is...have I been missing out on cool extras for other books?) and grabs the interest and attention. I know I'll be visiting his site often to see what new features he's added (there's a "coming soon" spot for deleted scenes). Maybe this is the writer-geek in me just going "squeeeeee!!!!" but I think this is something that even the casual reader will find interesting. Go. Buy. Get the goodies.

Drew's Quirks

My son is quite the grinning fool. Honestly. He just finds the pre-flash light of our digital camera to be fascinating, which is why I have a ton of serious pictures of Drew and not a whole lot of him smiling. His face was probably all scrunched up in a joyous grin just seconds before I took this picture. I mean, this is a boy who will go from passed out asleep to a full-face grin quicker than you can blink. It's very rare that he doesn't wake up with a huge smile. Well, make that a huge smile as soon as he sees Momma or Daddy peering into the crib. This kid likes to grin so much that we have to be careful while he's eating because he will try to suck on the bottle AND grin with obvious results.

Speaking of eating, The Boy can put away 6oz every two hours, but he's the skinniest thing (as far as babies go, Drew is in the 17% weight-wise). Conversely, he's ramarkably tall for four months (84%). Guess he's working on beating Daddy's height of 6'2" as soon as possible. I'll be the shrimp at 5'8" before he turns five, if he keeps this up. :)

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Drew continues to despise being on his stomach. He likes to kick around on his back (loves the changing table), and he's even perfected a half-roll onto his side. I'm waiting for the day when he completes the roll and realizes he just put himself on his tummy. That ought to be a very fussy moment.

More than laying on his back, Andrew loves to stand. He's almost able to stand on his own by gripping something for support instead of just standing in Momma or Daddy's lap while we hold him. He enjoys standing most of all when he's in front of a mirror. And he thinks it's even better if he's in his birthday suit, just before his bath. By the way, he gets the biggest kick out of his baths. We have one of those detachable showerheads, and everytime it gets close to his face when we're rinsing him off, he opens his mouth to try to drink some of the water. It's very cute.

And then there's the Mutant Eyebrow. Sometime in his first couple of weeks, I noticed what looked to be a stray hair on his temple and brushed it away. A few days later, it was still there and I thought it was just another hair and brushed it away. Two days after that, I thought I was going crazy with this damn hair and tried to pick it off his face and toss it away instead of just brushing it. The darn thing was attached! It's this very long, curly thing now. He gets it from his father, who also has mutant eyebrows, although his are white and never stop growing unless he clips them.

So those are Drew's quirks of the moment. I'm sure he'll abandon some of these and acquire others as the months march on, but I thought it would be fun to share a quick snapshot, sort of a day-in-the-life thing. For my own memory if nothing else.

Writing Space

A while ago, there was a sort of blogging meme going around the blogosphere about posting pictures of your writing space. I had meant to post, but, due to image uploading issues from my home computer, never did. So here it is now, Kellie's Writing Space.

This is where I used to write, looking at the space from within the room. Comfy chair, inspiration board with lots of fun cartoons and quotes and pictures, nice big desk with room for scented candles and such, and easy access to my bookshelf with a ton of reference books.

Here's a shot coming into the room. If you look at the items on the right, you'll see assorted toys that make it clear this is now a nursery. I do miss this spot. It was quiet, it was comfortable, it was me. But now it's Drew, and he deserves his own space, even if he can't stand on his own yet.

Since Drew showed up, this is where I do my writing. Glorious isn't it? When I'm done, I close up the laptop and store it on top of the electric keyboard just out of frame to the right. I keep a couple writing notebooks stashed there, too. Must be mobile until we move and I (hopefully) get a space of my own again. I know Mark also wouldn't mind a better spot for his big scope. I wouldn't mind either. It kinda dominates this area, which is supposed to be just for eating. Ha.

Writing: The Hunting Metaphor

Lynn Viehl (aka S.L. Viehl, aka Jessica Hall) is an extraordinarily prolific writer. She routinely writes at least five books a year, all for paying markets. Last year, she wrote nine. Did I mention that she also has rheumatoid arthritis and has to dictate her novels? No, I'm not kidding. As a former moderator of the Forward Motion think tank, on-line class instructor, yahoo writing group leader, and blogger extraordinaire, Lynn has spent a lot of time helping aspiring writers learn and improve their craft. Me included. Now she's written an e-book to help writers improve their productivity.

Way of the Cheetah is a quick read, full of helpful, easy-to-apply hints, and it's as entertaining as Lynn's voice always is. In addition to the basic tips that are standard fare in many general writing how-to books (how to develop a schedule and stick to it), Lynn also blends in some of the emotional/mental analysis that make Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way such an amazing book. But Lynn doesn't stop there. She also provides a chapter on how to maintain writing equipment and how to store your writing for a minimum of data loss headaches. She finishes up the handy advice with a chapter on physical health maintenance and its impact on writing. At the end of each chapter, she has several exercises to help incorporate the her advice into your writing world. These exercises range from the simple to the advanced, depending on where you might be at in your writing journey and in life in general.

I enjoyed Lynn's no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is look at writing beyond just getting the words on the page. While not every tip she has may be applicable to every writer, I found that all of her advice helped me analyze my own process and gave me ideas for improving it. This great resource for maximizing your output is available for download here.

January Lessons Learned

I made some general goals at the beginning of the year: Lose weight, stay sane, and write more. I put a few specifics to those goals, but I really kept everything vague. "Finish a draft of SoD" instead of "Write 3000 words a week" or something. I had a good reason for that. Andrew doesn't really allow for as structured a home life as I'm used to. Gotta go with the flow, roll with the punches. So I resisted putting together a real schedule as I knew I would be more likely to get depressed, discouraged, or monumentally frustrated with The Plan when I kept having to abandon it because Drew decided he didn't want to take a nap on Sunday like he did on Saturday, and so on and so forth. But I also decided to review my goals and my steps toward them on a regular basis. Here's what I learned in January.

In the staying sane department, I learned the hard way that I'm not going to get good sleep--at least, I'm not going to get what I used to consider good sleep. A good night nowadays is one in which Drew only wakes up wanting his pacifier and will go back to sleep. This still means that my days of six or seven straight hours of sleep are gone, or at least very rare. And in the month of January, I had a hard time with that. It didn't help that The Boy decided at Christmas that sleeping twelve hours straight was cool and did so consistently and then suddenly decided it was uncool two weeks ago and likes to start whimpering loudly every three hours or less for his pacifier, sometimes waking up fully for more food. My bod did not appreciate the sudden reminder of what good sleep felt like followed by the abrupt shift back into the normal operating procedures of caring for an infant. I drank a lot of coffee, tried to catch extra snatches of sleep by playing the "snooze button" game, and just generally went a little nuts. I learned that focusing on being tired and on the sleep I'm not getting makes the sleep I do get suffer. And sleep-deprivation of this sort (not the first six weeks of baby sort, which is entirely different, mainly because I wasn't working full-time then) turns me into a deranged Super Woman. I know I'm not getting sleep, and I know I have so much to do, so I go crazy trying to get everything done, and then my brain never really shuts off at night, and the cycle repeats the next day, and my brain keeps this constant stream of babble going that drives me crazy.

Luckily I realized what I was doing after only a week and a half, went home early one day, left Andrew in day care (hey, we're paying for a full week's worth; why waste the money?), plopped myself in bed and read Jenny Cruisie. I tried to nap, but couldn't (might've been the coffee I had had that morning), but by the time evening rolled around, I actually felt tired, not overworked and overstimulated and overwound in general. I've been sleeping better and feeling more productive ever since. Now I can objectively look at my goals, what I did right in January, what I did wrong, and how I can improve.

As for weight loss, I did manage to lose three pounds. Four more to go before the docs consider me healthy, twelve more before I'm back at pre-Drew numbers. The Monday morning treat and Thursday night take-out pattern went well, though the sleep issue made me cheat things and buy more snacks and such. But at least I know this plan will work. Again, the sleep issue kept me from doing weekday workouts, but I did manage my Sunday morning one well. That will work, and working out the sleep stuff will help for February. Something else I learned about my weight loss goal: I absolutely CANNOT try on my pre-Drew pants and skirts until I'm at least within five pounds of my pre-Drew weight. I can't conceive of them fitting me until then, and trying them on beforehand gets me very, very depressed. I don't need that craziness right now.

Regarding writing, I did not do myself proud in January. I did OK, but I know I can do better. It was that damn sleep thing again. I often decided not to write when I could have because I was just "too tired". And I learned that it's hard to forego time with The Boy in favor of writing on the weekends. Especially when he was only taking naps when I was holding him for a while. That's why I really, really need to put together some sort of schedule, something to help me manage my time better, particularly on the weekends.

January wasn't a bad month, but it was certainly a learning experience. I needed that month to figure out a few things about life with Drew and the DDJ. I needed to see how my goals worked in my day-to-day. I certainly did make a lot of good steps toward my goals in January, but I know I could have done more. Now, armed with the lessons of last month, I should get closer to my goals in February and hopefully learn more to close the distance faster in March.

A New SF Adventure

Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell reminded me of a Tootsie Pop. While the hard candy coating isn't bad, you know it's covering the gooey chocolate center you'd rather be eating. Which is why I always bite into those things instead of waiting for the candy coating to be licked away. I know, that's a strange comparison to make, but let me explain. We're given a strong hint of the fascinating SF backstory on the back cover flap, and then only vague or fleeting references until two-thirds of the way through the book. While the adventure story is well-written and certainly enjoyable as it vividly describes a blended Caribbean culture under attack from an Aztec-like society, it didn't hold my interest as much as that frustratingly brief and rare glimpse of the backstory did. And, just like the Tootsie Pop, once we were thick in the backstory, it was over much too quickly. But I'm certainly invested in the primary characters now and am already looking forward to the next book.

One of those characters is Pepper. As I struggled to get to the gooey SF goodness of this book, Pepper's chapters kept me hooked. Buckell did an excellent job of making him a distinct and enjoyable voice, even if the subject matter of Pepper's thoughts wasn't so pleasant. While Buckell creates a fabulous and compelling conflict toward the end when John deBrun recovers his memory and must marry the two distinct lives he has lived, Pepper is the more complex and natural of the two. I'd recommend this book for Pepper alone.

Even though I wanted the last third of the book to be drawn out more, to delve more into the information and emotion and detail once the backstory is revealed, I still enjoyed the read. Maybe not as much as I could have, but enough to get me drawn into the Buckell's world. Should be a lot of fun to read more adventures in the setting that Crystal Rain introduced.

This book will be released in hardcover next week. If you'd like to read the first third fo the book before you commit to the $25, click here.

UPDATE: For unique DVD-like bonus features (author commentary, deleted scenes, short stories in the Crystal Rain universe), click here.