My Fragrant Prezzies Arrived!

The Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfumed oil blend I ordered in honor of a character from THUMB arrived today along with three imp's ears (samples). This was a reward for my quick, focused revisions on the first few chapters of THUMB. As I anticipated this one package so much over the past two weeks and was thrilled when I received it today, I just may be using this as a carrot for me in the future. I love BPAL's site and the whole concept of putting allegorical ideas into smells and could play around there for a while, creating a cache of fragrances that I can go to for my writing (give characters and settings an extra oomph with actual smells to reference).

Riffing on Sarah Monette who brought BPAL to my attention in the first place, I give you the results of the sniff tests.

In my utter glee at receiving this package, which was a reward for reaching a milestone in THUMB, I got a bit overeager and, instead of simply opening one of the imp's ears to smell straight from the bottle, I splashed a small amount on me. Thus, Jezebel became the first sniff test. It is described on the site as a blend of honey, roses, orange blossom and sandalwood. On me, it smelled like baby powder with a faint trace of cotton candy, which made me think of J.R. Ward's lessers.

After my shower, next up was the stuff from the 5ml bottle I had actually purchased: Undertow. Described as a blend of lotus and juniper with a hint of mint, it was quite sickly sweet strong upon opening the bottle. It took a few minutes for that strong cough syrupy smell to alter into a light, crisp floral with a trace of something very near to citurs. Mark likes it, but I'm somewhat on the fence still, both how it smells on me and if it actually matches the characer for whom I bought it. (The scent's literary description is why I purchased it, because it nicely followed an arc for the character.)

I had meant to stop there tonight, but I was too curious to leave the other two scents untried. (This means that my nose may not be smelling right anymore, or at least not smelling distinct blends properly. I will repeat the sniff tests in the future and report back on my findings, of course.)

Next I tried Namaste (sandalwood, jasmine, rose, patchouli, cedarwood and lemongrass). I smelled the lemongrass immediately, though the sandalwood and patchouli and rose are there with a closer sniff, and the lemongrass doesn't overpower the other smell after a few moments. I liked this one best as it is bright yet complex and overall very soothing.

Last I put on a small amount of Vampire Tears, which had the following laundry list of contributors: wisteria, white grapefruit, neroli, green tea, jasmine, white ginger, honeysuckle, iris, and tonka. It smelled like candy out of the container and immediately on my skin. The more floral and muskier tones came out after longer wear. Not too bad.

Things You Shouldn't Do Near Writers, Part the Many

While it might decrease the fodder for our novels, I'm beginning to think writers should wear some sort of identifying mark on their foreheads to keep people from acting in ways that are just begging to be put into their next novel. Lots of folks don't like finding themselves doing something stupid in print, even if the names have been changed to protect the idiotic.

For example, my mother was recently in the hospital (she's out now; fun with ulcers!), and I had to take her something outside of visiting hours. I went through the emergency entrance, and was promptly required to sign in (I'm pretty sure she checked my ID, but can't remember). I got a badge that said "VISITOR" and the day's date, but, while there was a space for it and the lady knew exactly where I was going because I had told her, not my destination. I then proceeded to wander through the guts of the ER nurses station, trying to navigate my way into the main hospital and patient rooms. A kind nurse pointed me in the right direction. I passed another nurse on my way through the halls, and then walked right by two more nurses at a station in the patient area who didn't appear busy. I passed one more nurse deep in the patient hall before arriving at my mother's room. I smiled pleasantly at everyone and looked them in the eye, giving each one of them a chance to stop and confirm what I was doing there where I wasn't supposed to be. I'm not a mystery or thriller writer, but even I couldn't help but think of all the ways such a system could be manipulated for an antagonist's nefarious purposes.

My next example is much more bold as the person in question knew for a certainty that I was a writer. But it's also a trickier situation. I'm pretty sure he tried to proposition me for an affair. Why am I not certain? Well, I'm seven years removed from the meat market, so I could be rusty on interpreting "interested male" signals that aren't coming from Mark. And it's not like he said anything conclusive. But he did go out of his way to engage me in a conversation (we were in a large group setting and he had no reason to chat with me in particular over the several folks around him). Also, when I shook his hand in greeting, he slid his index finger up to the pulsepoint of my wrist. He also had that lean-in-close, keep eye contact, and smile with 1000 watts thing going throughout our conversation, which I kept centered on our respective families, just in case I was being hit on.

Let's say he was trying to start something. This just makes the writer in me go friggin' nuts, all because of one question: why? What sort of married person solicits another for an affair? Is he from an open marriage? Is he a compulsive adulterer? Was he bored? It was a convention-type setting were most folks were from out of town, so maybe he just didn't want to be lonely in the hotel that night? Maybe it was a sting operation, and I would've ended up on some warped Dateline special with my face all blurred and my voice distorted as part of an expose on the state of marriage in the US.

Going in the Mary Sue/Glittery HooHa direction, maybe I'm just that hot and fascinating that he couldn't resist. Or maybe we knew each other back in high school or something and I never noticed him then and he's always had a crush on me.

OK, I can't stop laughing at those last two. I stopped writing wish fulfillment stories in college. Hell, when it didn't take long to recognize that Denise in HD was quite clearly me, I tried to kill her off right away. Tried, but she separated herself enough from me and got very insistent that the story needed her. I don't quite believer her, which is yet another reason why I've set that novel aside in a nice deep, dark drawer.

Anyway, people, you've got to be aware how much a writer will put you under a microscope to figure out what makes you tick, why you did something. We'll engage in armchair psychoanalysis before you can blink. We'll also scrutinize just about any venue and event for a means of exploitation, for an opportunity to really jump start the conflict and make a story of the situation. Be careful what you do around us unless you don't mind seeing how we take the truth of what we see and dig for interpretations you might not like.

Delayed Milestone Announcement

With the activity surrounding Drew's birthday and with Mark's parents being in town, I totally spaced on blogging about the other big day that happened last week.

Mark and I celebrated our fifth anniversary last Friday.

We left Drewbie in the capable hands of my in-laws and went out for a very nice dinner at the Ahwatukee Melting Pot. I don't know if all of the tables were set up this way, but in our section of the restaurant, each table was enclosed in a curtained-off alcove. We had no idea that was how the restaurant was set up, but we couldn't have planned it better. They were also having a neat Mediterranean-themed special dinner, which was delish.

The only downside of the evening was discovering that the Barnes & Noble on the way back to the highway only sold books, not music and movies. (We had gotten on the topic of 80s hairmetal toward the end of our meal--the perils of living with a writer as I'm writing a book that makes liberal use of said music.) We were craving some Def Leppard and were bummed out to find only a vast stretch of books in the store.

We were further disturbed by the group of insanely young-looking kids mobbed outside of the store after 10PM on a Friday night. Some of them looked to be 14, but most of them looked to be about 12. I know I was raised with some fairly strict rules and curfews, so I may be drastically out of touch with the norm for what kids are allowed to do these days, but damn. What kind of parent lets their twelve-year-old hang out at a major strip mall (there's a movie theater and several other big box stores around the B&N) within spitting distance of a big-city interstate on a Friday night after 10PM? Drewbie may hate us for it, but not just no, but hell no if he ever asks to do that.

How appropriate that, on our fifth anniversary, Mark and I proved to the world our full emergence into the adulthood state of pining for old music and shaking our heads at kids these days. All we needed to complete the transformation was to have chatted loudly about "when I was that age..." to each other.

Process Examination #10: Lowered Expectations (aka Reality Bites)

OK, so I finally did some number crunching and frank assessment of THUMB and another project that has come up.

(This other project is a revision of a novelette into a novella for a sub opp with Samhain publishing, which is primarily an e-book publisher and their stock is primarily romance. This project is much more toward paranormal romance than SF, so I'm going to submit it under a pseudonym as a nod toward perhaps starting a career in that genre and in e-books. The career that I want is in traditionally pubbed science fiction and fantasy novels, though, and I've seen more than one writer suffer due to a backlist in a romance genre and in e-books. Hence the pseudonym. But I do have a number of shorter pieces and ideas that don't seem to fit in with the SF short fiction markets, so I might as well see if I can turn a coin where they might fit better.)

Anyway, a draft of THUMB is going to be 90K minimum and 100K maximum, and I've only written about 23K so far. That's 67 or 77K by the end of the year if I want to hold myself to my original goal of a draft by the end of the year. I was thinking I could buckle down and likely make this work. But with the sub opp that fell into my lap, I need to add a minimum of 12K to the novellette and a maximum of 22K to bring that story into the range this opp is looking for. So that means about 80K minimum and maybe even as much as 90K by the end of the year.

While I would like to be producing at a level that would have me reliably writing 30K a month, I'm not there yet, and with holiday guests and travel coming up and my stubborn refusal not to give up one night of downtime with my husband every week (I will not sacrifice my family or my marriage for any career), I just don't think it's possible to get 80K or 90K by the end of the year. Because the sub opp is due Jan13, I pushed my THUMB goal back by a month, giving me just under four months to finish that draft and about three months to finish the paranormal revision.

It's a bit more manageable, but I know that I have to push myself harder than I have been, hold myself to what I'm capable of doing each night. I'll be revising the novelette during Drew's naps (that's an hour of guaranteed work), and in the evenings, I'll be working on THUMB. I can fairly reliably produce a minimum of 500 words for every hour I have my BIC, often 750, and sometimes 1000.

So I'll need 24 to 44 days of pure writing at 500 words to get to the right word count on the novella. Add in 15-20 for pre-writing and rewriting, and I'm set for meeting the sub opp deadline with a good amount of wiggle room.

As for THUMB, I need 134 to 154 days of pure writing at 500 words/day to get to the end of the draft. Given that I usually have more than an hour to work in the evenings, I think I can shave off 30-40 days from that estimate. I'm also going to work out a weekend schedule with Mark that gets me a couple of extra hours during the day and boost my output that way as well.

Basically, I've taken a hard look at my writing goals, at my writing output, and at the habits I've fallen into that reduce the output for no good reason. For example, when I had a great writing night last week and then felt my brain turn to mush the following nights, I gave myself a half hour each time and called it quits without trying anything to get words. I'm going to start employing freewrite mandates at times like those. If I feel in any way that the words aren't going to come the way I like that lets me write my usual output, then I will start freewriting in fifteen minute intervals. The freewriting can be an examination of why I'm not feeling the words come, it can be a rambling examination of the chapter I'm trying to slog my way through, it can be the same word over and over and over and over and over again. But I have to freewrite for fifteen minutes and then re-evaluate how I'm feeling about producing actual draft content. Given how I've seen my mind and muse work in the past, I'm pretty sure that this will trigger something I can run with, if not in the first fifteen minutes then definitely in the second. And if it doesn't, then at least I will have tried.

This is the way I'm going to get a better handle on my regular writing abilities and start treating myself and my goals seriously in yet another way. I want a career in which I write a book a year at minimum, preferably two. I think I'm capable of it, but I really haven't given myself a chance, haven't worked on discipline enough to see what I think of a schedule that would give me that output. I know I'm happier when I'm consistently producing, regularly working my way toward the end of a project. I think this is going to have great results.

Not Quite Into the Tricycle Concept

The Drew Monster hasn't warmed to the idea of pedalling just yet. He doesn't mind being pushed on it. And he certainly enjoys pushing the trike around himself, and he loves putting rocks in the little "trunk." But actually using this device as a mechanism for self-propulsion along a sidewalk? Not so much.

His biggest birthday hit seems to be all the coloring implements, though the Diego Rescue Cell Phone was a required traveling companion for a couple of car trips after his big day. And every morning starts with a rousing round of music on the new xylophone. But, of course, he had the most fun on the day of his party by pulling all of the tissue paper out of the big huge bag Uncle Brad put the Diego phone in. And we still haven't set up the Thomas train set yet, so we'll see what sort of play time that gift gets in the coming days. Of course, Momma and Daddy are very happy with the clothes and birthday money which we spent on clothes as he's starting to get too tall for his current wardrobe and definitely needed better fitting cooler weather wear.

So thank you everyone who helped us celebrate Drew's 2nd Birthday. We'll be sending Thank You cards shortly, and each one will include a Drewbie Original Scribble for extra collector's value. The art will most likely be in either blue or purple, his colors of choice. Or pen, perhaps, as Andrew Thomas has been known to wield ink as a preferred medium.

Two Years Old

We have now officially entered the Terrible Twos. Some days it feels like we've been here for a while, others it seems impossible to put the word "terrible" anywhere near our son. But no matter his mood, there's no escaping the excitement of watching Drew grow and learn and change day by day. Right now he's interrupting me by demanding I cover my ears with my hands like he's doing. No, I have no idea why.

He may not speak very clearly, but he certainly has a lot to say. And it's quite clear that he understands just about everything we say these days. I wouldn't be surprised if he figures out the spelling trick long before we're ready for him to do so. Right now he's wowing us with his ability to point out animals in his favorite books on demand. We'll tell him, "Show me the yellow duck." And he'll flip through the pages of the book until he gets to the page with the yellow duck on it and will proudly crow and point to it.

A year ago, the Drew Monster's favorite toy was a mini-keyboard thingie. He quickly tried his parents' patience by pressing one button over and over that started a series of songs. Nowadays, his favorite toy is the couch in my office. He loves to take all the cushions off and walk around on the wood framework (it's an IKEA piece) and straddle the slats and otherwise contort himself around the thing or bounce on the cushions on the floor. We're getting him a tricycle for his birthday this year, so we'll see how he manages with that and how it changes his favorite toy rotation.

It's very hard to believe it's been two years, and I don't think that's a feeling that's going to go away ever. Eventually, whenever someone asks me how old my son is, I'll probably end up replying, "Older than I think."

Happy Second Birthday, Andrew Thomas.

On the Recent Silence

I wrote a good 2000 words in a couple of hours Sunday night, and it seems that those 2000 words were most of my allotment of words for the week as everytime I've sat down to write since then my brain has produced a dribbling, novocain-lipped, incoherent babble that rapidly degenerates into "Ugh". Hence the silence. And it seems like it's going to continue as my in-laws arrive tonight to visit and help us celebrate Drewbie's 2nd Birthday tomorrow. (I will manage to drag a nice coherent post out of my gray matter tomorrow for that.) Maybe on Sunday I'll get back into the swing of writing here.

One Wookie to Rule Them All

It's been on the net for two years now, but via Abigail Nussbaum, I have just now read this great secondary character analysis of the Star Wars mythology. If I were Lucas, I would cop to this interp as it would make me look oh so smart.

The Trouble With Growing Up

While yesterday's post of self-awareness and enlightenment does a nice job of making me seem mostly well-adjusted and right with the world, it left out a key piece of information. The knowledge gained by catharsis and navel-gazing is great when it's there and helpful and makes you interact with the world in marvelous ways. But it's not always there. Or, rather, it's always there, but our damned dirty ape brains can't always get to it. So we can acheive enlightenment all we want and still wind up being compelte jerks to each other when it counts.

There are times that I wish I hadn't looked closely at myself and tried to improve my way of looking at the world. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be wincing about stupid things I've said and done in the past, ways I've mistreated people, times I've been so self-absorbed that I couldn't see the needs of others, or, and this is what really irks me, moments when I've been so focused on my life that I missed opportunities of friendship and mentorship.

Here's the kicker: I'm going to do it again. Because as much as I can sit here and post about "happiness is a journey, not a destination" and live life for the moment and yadda yadda yadda--it's a very safe bet that when I need that understanding most, my lovely little brain will be spinning a loop elsewhere and I'm going to do or say something stupid that I'll wince at later.

Hey, World! I'm Finally Over Myself....Or Not

Over the course of living with my mother for three months, dealing with unemployment twice in six months, getting a sixth manager in three years without having changed positions at the DDJ once, traveling for three weeks as a single mom, buying a house, setting aside 80K in one novel and navel-gazing my way through 20K of another, and juggling part-time hours from home with the Drew Monster, I think I managed to put my sense of self into an appropriate perspective. I no longer have an inner twelve-year-old strutting around in my head, yelling, "I'm destined for greatness! Greatness, I tell you!" Instead, the inner voice has aged and developed some kind of wisdom and now says, "Greatness may be in the cards for me. It may not be. I'm just living my life, taking care of myself and those I love to the best of my ability day by day. What happens, happens."

This way, I can still dream big and spin scenarios that have me winning Hugos for my first novel and short story the same year I win the Campbell--and then I can laugh myself silly, shake my head, add a dose of reality to the scenario (God, can you imagine the sophomore slump after such a freshman effort? Talk about pressure for the rest of your career.), and get back to slogging through the draft that feels like shit.

I'm also not holding my past pains as close to my heart as I did before. Cloaking even the smallest part of my self-image in victimhood and pity just made consistent happiness all the more unreachable. That's not to say I'm going to ignore the bumps and bruises life's given me. They are a part of me, they've shaped me (in ways I may not fully understand still). I will continue to examine them insofar as I can learn from them. I'm not going to wear them like a badge of honor anymore.

Being a stay-at-home Mom who also works from home has finally allowed some of my perfectionism and control-freak tendencies to lessen, too. This is something that writing started five years ago, that career changes continued, that the first year of Andrew's life furthered. But it wasn't really until this month that I finally understood that I'm going to have moments and days and maybe even weeks when I can't seem to get anything right with Drewbie. I'm going to pick the wrong battles. I'm going to have moments when the TV will have to serve as a sitter because my brain won't respond to even the lightest prodding. I used to worry about every inconsistency, every failure, every second I wasn't engaging Andrew in an activity that would enrich his mind and develop his skills. I've got one smart, tough kid. He's working as hard at figuring this world out as I am at trying to help him through it. We're going to stumble as we learn--and learn something then as well.

Accepting that, destined for greatness or not, I've got a life to live as richly as possible each moment, puts the pressure of perfection neatly aside for the most part. Tomorrow's another day, and all that jazz.

That all sounds great, and between a lovely drive through the valley between the Dragoons and the Chiracahuas at the beginning of the month and a drive around the Catalinas just over a week ago, I think I managed to really accept this knowledge, absorb it, and understand it after years of gathering it. Because somewhere in there I realized that the DDJ isn't ideal, but it allows me to have the lifestyle I want (stay at home with Drewbie, extra time and energy to write). Because somewhere in there I fully accepted that I don't really care if I ever get published or not--I'm writing for me. Because somewhere in there I stopped seeing Andrew in light of all the ways I've screwed up and started seeing him in all the ways he's succeeding, sometimes despite me.

But it all breaks down when I get to my physical self-image. I am beginning to loathe my body, to hate my smile. I think it's because I've finally come to appreciate how I looked when I was in college and see how much I've changed in appearance since then. Also, while my weight is just fine for my height (though I wouldn't mind slimming my tummy and thighs a bit more), I want better tone in my body particularly in my abdomen so I don't have to stare at the flab hanging over my c-section scar for the rest of my life. The big problem with the State of the Bod is that I am literally covered in stretch marks from my belly button to my knees because of the weight I gained during pregnancy. Because I scar easily and keep the scars I do get, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get rid of those stretch marks. And they are ugly and impossible to ignore.

How do you accept the way you look, embrace it, and ignore the inner twelve-year-old who thinks you should be the most attractive creature to wander the face of the earth?

Process Examination #9: Variations on the Theme

I should've known better than to submit a query letter for critique by an editor who doesn't publish SF. I tried to quibble a bit in the opening paragraph and highlight elements that might be more fantasy than SF so it wouldn't look totally stupid to be submitting this query to her attention. Unfortunately, in that quibbling, I opened the letter with this lovely sentence and got appropriately dinged for it: "I don't know where to draw the line between fantasy and science fiction." So, of course, the editor talked about how unprofessional that sounded, that you don't know your own field, etc. An excellent point, but it made me wince all the same.

She then went on to say that query letters don't need to summarize the plot and to stay away from big blocky paragraphs that belonged more to a snyopsis. The query letter needs to get to the heart of theme and characters that create an intriguing concept to entice the editor to ask for more. Another excellent point, phrased in a way I either hadn't heard before or hadn't absorbed as it wasn't my own query letter on the chopping block at the time.

That got me thinking, can I even begin to distill this novel into its selling concepts yet? I've got some ideas, but it's hard to mention the one element I know that's fun and sets my story apart--80s hairmetal throwbacks--in a way that explains why that element is in the story without bogging it down in a worldbuilding infodump. So I turned to that squirrelly concept of theme to look there for something that might make a query letter stand out.

OK, I also looked at the characters, examining what makes them unique and fun to write, what conflicts they get tossed into that make the story interesting. But that, in turn, brought me back to theme as I started noticing, well, themes in my characters and conflicts.

Unfortunately, all I've got are words: chosen vs blood family, decisions under pressure, corporate shenanigans, and breaking the rules. I had the first three more or less from earlier contemplations on the concept of theme. The last one came up while considering the query letter and what stood out about it as strong. Every single one of my characters breaks the rules in some fashion and often for interests that aren't self-serving. Well, my bad guy's the exception, but even there, he's more concerned about his family's company surviving, not really about his own power and interests. I guess the key difference is that my good guys don't break rules that put others in danger without the consent of those others, whereas my antagonist doesn't see a need for any such thing. To him, everything is expendable as long as his family's company endures.

While all of these meditations on theme and characters and conflicts are enlightening, I still don't have a theme I can articulate in a sentence or two. I still can't convey clearly the awesome in my book. I know, I know. I'm not even at 20K yet, so I shouldn't be fretting about this too much. I'm sure by the time I get to "The End" in this draft I'll be able to express theme and Teh Awesome in a way that's going to make a wicked query letter. But I don't think I'm going to stop analyzing THUMB for theme and intriguing elements as I work through this draft. It's helpful. It keeps me on top of what my characters are doing, on how my conflict is twisting and shaping.

Opening a Can of Worms

We bought some cans of cat food the other day, and they instantly became Drewbie toys. He loves to stack them. He loves to slide them around on table tops. He loves to move them between his two favorite areas: the coffee table and the breakfast bar. Yesterday, he surprised his parents by stacking up the cans on the breakfast bar, climbing down the stool, walking over to the utensil drawer, and fishing out the can opener, which he then dragged back to the breakfast bar and played at opening the cans. He has rarely seen us use the can opener.

This morning, he showed off even more of his impressive smarts by digging out a bottle cap popper/can puncturing combo to work on the cans with.

Also, he's added "hot" to his verbal repertoire and "Bye, Daddy" to his list of crude sentence constructions, although our favorite was when, upon returning from a trip down to Tucson, I asked him (but was really asking Daddy) if he had pooed today. The Drew Monster's answer: "Oh, yeah!"

The Obligatory "Darn Those Fightin' Irish" Post

I'm told by my mother's Wolverine-loving significant other that I have been remiss in mentioning that Michigan did in fact pound the Irish last weekend. And, yes, the Irish did lose to Michigan State yesterday. The '07 Irish have indeed made Notre Dame history: this is the first time we've started 0-4 (and we could very likely go 0-8), and yesterday also marked the first time a team has ever come into our house and beat us five times in a row (*shakes fists at the Spartans*).

But I'm the wife of a man from Buffalo and life-long Bills fan. And I was a Bills fan in my own right years before I met him. I'm also a Cubs fan. And I was at Notre Dame for the beginning of our spectacular bowl game losses. Hell, I even went to one of them. I know how to shake off the ouch of this season and look for the positives (we finally scored an offensive touchdown yesterday! woo-hoo!).

So, yes, Michigan trounced the Irish. After they got stomped by Appalachain State, though, I find it telling that my mother's significant other would consider the Wolverine's beating of an Irish team ranked 104th (or lower, after yesterday) is gloat-worthy. We're the college football punching bag this year.

Process Examination #8: Maintaining the Narrative Thread

I'm in the process of completing a very tight-focused revision of the 17K words I've written in THUMB. The only purpose of this rewrite is to add in new narrative dots and delete some old ones so I can connect them in a slightly adjusted narrative thread.

I've discovered that I am not the sort of writer who can say, "Hey, if I change/add/delete this plot point way back in Chapter 2, the story will look like X here in Chapter 8 where I'm at now," and just keep going ahead with draft. If I try to do that, I get lost in the many ways from Point A to Point B in each chapter and end up building an entirely different narrative thread than before I came up with the new plot points but that doesn't follow from the new plot points, either. It's one of the ways I got to 82K in SoZ without leaving Act One.

It's not easy to force my way through a "only look at this one aspect" revision. There's a part of me that wants to burrow down into the nitty-gritty of every sentence and Fix the Whole Damn Thing. But that would take way too much time, and I'm not willing to invest energy in that sort of revision when it's likely I'll be making more substantive narrative thread changes as I work my way through the rest of this draft. But it's hard to catch a bit of dialog or description and wince a bit, knowing it could be better, but just zip right past it because it's out of scope for the revision.

So I've decided to dangle a carrot for this task. Via Sarah Monette, I have discovered the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. They specialize in perfumes that represent poems and literary characters and the like. I'm not really excited about it for dousing myself in scent (though I have no objection to that, should I enjoy the scents I purchase), but Muse is practically pinging with the possibilities. Scrolling through their scent descriptions, looking for character matches, getting olfactory input for the novels. And I'm completely caught up in Muse's excitement.

In one of my backstory scenes, I have a character spritzing herself with perfume. It's more than just a "hey, it smells good" thing. To her, it's like armor and a weapon. It hides her even as it empowers her. She knows this and revels in it. But I had no idea how to describe that kind of a scent. Now, after wandering through the BPAL website, I've got a couple of ideas based on their allegorical connections.

So, as soon as I finish this limited rewrite (which I'm thinking I can get done by the weekend), I'll be rewarding myself with a purchase at BPAL. And then it will be back to the draft, armed with the super sniffer and an intact narrative thread. Nothing's gonna stop me then.

Why I'm Watching the Oscars in 2008

Jon Stewart's just signed on to host. 'Nuff said. Watching him snark on Hollywood is more entertaining than watching what Hollywood produces, with a few notable exceptions.

Flip the Switch

I've been pulling words for THUMB out of my fingers for a while now, feeling like everything was terrible, that I was somehow approaching things from every wrong angle possible, that I was going to have one helluva time rewriting this book (assuming I could onsey-twosey my way through to the end of it).

I started to feel a little better when I got the idea for the medical device, but then I still struggled with the ship's mechanic chapter. I kept thinking of different directions to go with the scene and kept telling myself it felt like a housekeeping scene the way I was going at it. I just couldn't get a read on it that would let the words flow.

So I sat down with my notebook today, put the day's date, and then wrote the following: "Problems w/Chapter 6." On the second item, the solution to my problem with the scene hit. The rest of the page in that notebook starts with "OK, this is good." Then it goes on for a half page of how to revise the first two chapters to mesh up with the solution for the problems with Chapter 6. Then I've got a page of draft for the New New Chapter 1. And then I wandered into a query letter draft that ended up reading more a like synopsis for a page. I stopped that effort and sketched out the bullet points of what needs to be my query letter.

Let me explain.

My RWA chapter is having a special "members only" sit down chat and critique session with Mary-Theresa Hussey (senior editor of Luna, among other things). She's willing to look at the first two pages or query letter from any of our members. I thought about this opportunity, how I'd hate to pass it by. But I don't really want to have the first two pages critiqued. I've actually already been through that experience with HD and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've also had my query letter and first 30 critiqued by a multi-pubbed author, so at first I wasn't too eager to try to whip anything up for MTH and was content to listen to her pick apart the work of others.

But then I remembered how much I hate not knowing why an agent or editor passes on a query letter when that's all they've got. This is a perfect opp for that. So I'm trying to put together that query letter for a novel that's not even a fifth of the way finished.

Mark's been having all sorts of great success with finding a new job (hasn't landed one yet, but there are three possibilities that seem to be moving very fast from resume forwarding to interview to calling the references). I'm happy for him, but part of me is both relieved and irked that he's using up our good luck. Relieved, because it's a lot less likely with all this stuff falling into place for Mark that MTH is going to read my query and say "Send me more now". And irked, because of the same.

Sigh.

Observed Trauma

The Truth Shall Set You Free. This is such a glorious aphorism. It's certainly one to live by whenever possible. And yet, I struggle with it in certain venues. A while ago, Elizabeth Bear posted at length about the trauma in her life, mostly to help herself and some close friends process current and past trauma that had flared up to get in the way of life. I remember reading that and having a riot of reactions for days. I have no trauma like hers. In fact, most of the trauma in my life is observed, secondary instead of primary. It's had a profound impact on the shaping of my life, of course, but I can't really purge it in a blog post because it's not mine.

Honesty is a great thing. Outside of the dark places in my mind that I prod for writing ideas every now and then (or from which writing ideas tumble out and scare the piss out of me), I could quite happily post at length about who I am and how I came to be that way. (The dark places, given time and the light of more attention, likely will fall into the "share and share alike" category. But I think I have another decade of knowing myself before they get there. At the least.) Unfortunately, I can't. Because the shaping of me is the product of others' pain and suffering and secrets. I can't out their trauma to explain me.

It's a strange thing to always be there to watch your loved ones take a traumatic blow while you emerge more or less unscathed. You don't think about your scratches. You collect yourself after the shockwave and go rushing to the loved one's aid. You get the urgent needs cared for and settle in for the long wait by the hospital bedside. Maybe that's when you notice that there's a long scratch on your arm or a shallow gash under your eye or maybe your neck has some backlash or maybe your ankle is a little stiff from the fall you took due to the shockwave. You make sure your loved one's attention is elsewhere, then you clean and bandage your minor bumps as best you can and go right back to the bedside. This is usually when you start replaying the event over and over in your mind, looking in hindsight at all the warning signs, berating your lack of attention, swearing to be more vigilant in the future.

And maybe months later, you'll notice that the scratch left a wicked scar or your ankle acts up whenever a storm comes. You set that aside, feeling guilty for even daring to catalog your own injuries given what your loved one had to endure. Eventually, you learn to take care of any bumps and bruises that life deals you, always comparing them to that observed trauma. You don't mention them until the wound festers and suddenly it's so much bigger than it should have been and it embroils those around you. You berate yourself yet again for letting things get so bad, for burdening those who already have too many burdens because you failed in taking care of yourself properly.

It's not quite survivor's guilt, because the other person is still alive and struggling to meet each day, and you weren't really in the same boat anyway. You try to make yourself perfect, to be strong, to be there whenever you're needed, to help with the recovery, to protect against future trauma. You get used to denying your own pain and needs because, damn, how can you even begin to impose when the comparison is so off?

Of course, that enables those around you to think that you don't need help and to dismiss your problems or to hear them as an attack (either reaction may or may not be due to the presentation of the problem), prompting you to delay sharing your problems in the future so as to prevent those reactions. The Circle of Hidden Pain. And it's a pain that makes you feel guilty for even having it because you haven't really "earned" it like those whose trauma you've witnessed.

Process Examination # 7: Focus Point

For this writer, inspiration doesn't always come in the form of a great character, or a fascinating conflict, or a beautiful setting, or some intricate thematic concept, or a grand plot. This is particularly true when I'm in the midst of writing a novel. Inspiration comes in odd ways during the novel writing, often when I'm thinking about some niggling macguffin of one sort or another. That is, the niggling detail is important in that it frames a daily aspect of the characters' lives but isn't really central to the plot.

In this case, I was trying to get some details figured out for exactly what the medical device that one company sells and that my MC repairs/maintains/audits/what have you does, other than the hand-wavey "it uses advanced tech to sequence DNA, hunt for illnesses, and monitor cellular processes in a short amount of time". Hand-wavey is good for vague plot directions and outlines. It's bad for actually composing draft (unless you don't mind going back in to put in details). And I was in the middle of a chapter in which I realized how much the hand-wavey details sucked for my space ship mechanic.

So, of course, I side-stepped the mechanic's details and went to the MC's job details. Helpful for the next chapter I need to write, not for the one I'm currently mired in. BUT, it worked! I got the most amazing idea for my medical device. It's specific enough that it acts as a focus for further research I need to do on the topic.

Research of any kind needs a focus point. As someone who participated in academic research for five years, I obviously knew this. I just don't think I ever quite understood it. I've known for a while now that THUMB was going to be addressing cybernetics in a big way. I even tried to do a little bit of general research on the topic to get my bearings, but I was frustrated that no clear path to what I needed for my story emerged (not in the sense that I wanted answers for how a futuristic technology would work; more in the sense that I couldn't escape the general). So I set the research aside and kept writing, wanting at least to keep the story going, knowing I could add details in later during revisions (though this would not make for a pleasant rewrite).

Now that I know how the medical device works, that serves as a focus point for the cybernetics research. I know what interface of biology and technology I'm looking for now. I can read articles and books with that in mind, culling details when they turn up. Another chunk of the novel falls more securely into place, serving as greater assurance that I can in fact make my way to "The End." It's the reverse of "connect the dots." Pre-writing inspiration, of the sort I described in the first paragraph, provides snapshots of an overall picture, which I then dutifully piece together in a way that seems to make sense. Inspiration while I write is like a microscope, showing me the subtleties of that picture. But if the microscope has nothing to focus on, it's still a big blur.

Digging in the Dirt

Andrew loves to dig around in dirt of any sort. Mud works just fine for him, too. I have no idea what about dirt fascinates any child so much. Is it the texture? The sense of buried treasure when a rock or something a little more animate is unearthed? The way it changes the color of the skin and turns white fingernails black? The strange taste of it?

One of his favorite things to do at my mother's house is to help her in the garden. And I'm not looking forward to the day when we finally rake out the remaining piles of rock in our backyard and take away his fun rockslides (that become mudslides after a rain).

Yesterday, while Mark was grilling up dinner and chatting with Brad (D'oh! I think I've completely neglected to mention on the blog that my brother moved to one of the Phoenix suburbs a few weeks ago. It's nice to have him so close and indulge in sibling relationship that lets us talk face to face regularly.), Andrew found a patch of dirt in the backyard and just started digging with his fingers. At first, I think he was trying to pry loose some small rocks. Then it became some sort of mission. The ground was packed too hard for him to dig very deep, so he settled on digging a shallow ditch over a large area, tossing the loose dirt over his shoulder to varying degrees of success. A couple of times, he laid down in his ditch. Or tried to. Cleaning his hands for dinner was quite a task.

I don't mind the dirty clothes and child. One day, when his clothes might actually fit for more than a few months, I might. But it's amazing to watch him dig. He's so determined, so intent. There's a purpose to clawing away at the ground for him. I just have no idea what it is.

The Best State in the Union

We thoroughly enjoyed our camping trip in Chiracahua National Monument and the valley between the Chiracahua and the Dragoon Mountains. The drive was gorgeous, including the trek along I-10 south of Tucson, particularly when we entered the Texas Canyon and got to stare at gorgeous rock formations crowding around the highway and beyond. Exploring the Dragoons and Chiracahuas and the valley between was just amazing. The biggest cities in the valley are Willcox and Douglas, and labeling either "city" is a bit generous. Most of the valley is rural desert grasslands, small towns dotting the state roads the run the length and width. Douglas, the little we saw of it from the car while driving longer to let Drewbie extend his nap, has a fascinating historic downtown district that really needs to be restored. We saw the Mexican flag waving about a half mile or so in the distance, the closest Mark's even been to that country.

I don't think I stopped smiling the entire time we wandered through that valley. We even found the perfect writing retreat. Now's not a great time to be thinking of extravagant vacations just for writing, but Mark and I are already devising ways to set aside time and money so I can spend a weekend at the Sunglow Ranch and write my fool head off. It might take us a year, but we'll get me there. I think I'll probably set up some sort of savings so I can make that retreat an annual thing. Just wait till you see the pictures we took.

We're already planning another camping trip to the area as we didn't have enough time (and didn't know the grade of the hike) to explore Cochise Stronghold more than having a quick lunch in the campgrounds. Plus, Tombstone is just on the other side of the Dragoons and there's a number of other sites and trails in that valley, so we might need several more trips as the Drew Monster grows up and can handle more hiking.

Drew is already an excellent hiker and climber, though. Mark and I realized as we watched him scramble up rocks (while Mark remained close by and had a firm grip on the Elmo tether) that we need to get in better shape if we're going to keep up with El Boyo Diablo in the future. The Drew Monster mostly had a good time, although he had several hissy fits as if to remind us that, yes, he is indeed less than a month away from turning two. He was pretty excited to be in his own sleeping bag on his own mat this time instead of the travel crib we used before.

It was a great trip. So much to see and marvel at in that valley. Mark and I have now been to the southeast and northwest corners of the state, and explored a decent amount of the central corridor. And we know there's still a ton more we've missed. We're already planning another camping trip near Lake Havasu in a couple of months, and we've got another camping excursion over to Canyon de Chelly in the works for next spring. Arizona truly is the best state in the Union.

Things to Make You Smile, In Case the Long Weekend Isn't Enough

1. Mark had an interview yesterday that went very well. Keep those fingers crossed and the prayers and good thoughts comin' as they're obviously working.

2. #5 Michigan just lost to Appalachain State. At Michigan. For the season opener. During the innaugural broadcast of the Big Ten Network. Understandably, the Big Ten Network announcers are now all over themselves, talking the game up as the biggest upset in college football history (which, if you've gotta go back to the 50s to get anything comparable, it likely is) in order to put some sort of spin on their first broadcast of the Big Ten's marquee team. Warms my heart it does. I feel for whomever Michigan is playing next week. That's going to be one ugly game.

3. Notre Dame's star QB recruit was injured over the summer and isn't starting, and the starter fumbled the ball not two minutes into the game. This makes me smile because, win or lose, we're playing Georgia Tech, a team with valid Top 25 aspirations just like us. If we lose, we still get to laugh ourselves silly at the Wolverines.

4. In case the International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch Day kerfuffle wasn't enough to amuse you about how some science fiction writers seem to fear the future, read up on the latest from the Discover-endorsed standard-bearer of science fiction and fantasy writers in America.

5. #4 would be even more entertaining were it not for the fact that it seems there is a trend that writing orgs have internet slapfights that seem extraordinarily ironic for their genre. Every year or every other year, there seems to be a big RWA scandal involving authors who dress a bit too naughty at conventions or try to sell their much-too-steamy books. I predict the Mystery Writers of America will have some sort of huge falling out in the ranks about the identity of a writer satirizing them under a pseudonym within the next five months, just for parity's sake.

6. We're going camping starting tomorrow morning (have a family BBQ this afternoon), so we should have more pictures of the Drew Monster getting crazy dirty while roughing it soon.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend.

All About Perspective

I love The Onion. They made my day today with their take on pregnancy. Warning: whether it was intended or not, those with strong pro-life sentiments may find a few paragraphs not quite so amusing. Strike that, those with strong pro-life sentiments might find the whole thing offensive. When I read the article as a mother with a somewhat bumpy pregnancy and recovery, though, I can't take offense at all. I laughed heartily.

Border State

Living in central Arizona, we do see quite a few Border Patrol vehicles, but we don't usually see them in action. The Casa Grande Border Patrol station is actually here because they can't set up a station on reservation land, and Casa Grande has the closest access to a large stretch of reservation lands that are popular for illegal aliens making their way up to Phoenix on foot.

So I was somewhat surprised to see three highway patrol cars and one border patrol SUV surrounding a Jeep (all vehicles appeared to be empty of their drivers and riders) on a patch of dirt by the on-ramp we use to get on the interstate. A couple of miles off into the desert, there was a helicopter circling around a particular spot of ground. So the chase was likely over or coming to its close. Given the condition of the Jeep (looked pretty new and spiffy), I'm fairly certain that the perp was either a border drug runner or a coyote (what the smugglers who lead the aliens across the border get called here; these lovely people are known to take a group of aliens into a fairly remote part of inhospitable Arizona desert in high summer, point in a vague northerly direction and say "Phoenix, four hours walk," and leave).

It's one thing to know that the Border Patrol exists. It's another thing to see that in action. And it's something else entirely to think about the lives and moments that intersect to precipitate that action. That last is not an obvious train of thought for those not involved, but I think it's the most important.

Bit o' Stress*

Last week Operation Find New Job (Part Deux) took its toll on the household. Beginnings of depressions, bruised egos, flaring tempers, insomnia. The Works. The goal for this week is to try and fold in this piece of insanity a bit better so we can function as a family to support each other through it. Blogging may continue to be sparse to non-existent.

*Likely because I needed a touch of happy ridiculousness today, thinking up this title reminded me of that god-awful candy Bit 0' Honey. (I would say it's a refreshingly true product name except for the fact that they don't tell you that the bit of honey is mixed in with sawdust.) This icky concoction is (or was; hopefully he's come to his senses) the fave sweet of former Fighting Irish Coach Lou Holtz. A group of friends in our brother dorm were Lou Holtz Fanboys to the Extreme!!! They made it a point every year (no matter that our freshman year was the man's last year coaching the Irish) to write him and ask if he, in his Magnificience, would be so kind as to watch an away game with their humble selves in their meager dorm rec room or if we would deign to come and impart his Noble Wisdom to their ignorant dormmates, or somesuch. They always had a bowl of Bit O' Honey candies (and Diet Coke, another reported fave) on hand just in case His Worthy might drop in unannounced despite sending very polite and often personalized "Thanks but no thanks" responses to all of their requests. I think one day he did drop in for a quick visit. If one of the group ever reads this, I'm sure I'll be labeled a heretic or blasphemer for not remembering the details of this visit down to the way he had his shoes tied.

You Must Choose, But Choose Wisely

Drew's mealtimes have improved significantly by giving him a choice of menu options. Except for breakfast. The Boy rarely eats a good breakfast these days. But give him a choice of pizza or PB&J sandwich at lunch, and he'll enthusiastically pick one and eat more of the selection than he's eaten before. I can't believe it took me this long to figure this out. We've been having him make his snack selections from the pantry for a while now (supervised, of course), and one of those moments hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course Drew would enjoy having a choice of meals as well.

On the matter of what he wears, though, Drew didn't even try to put up with denying his say in things. Starting a couple of weeks ago, he refused to wear whatever we pulled out for him, morning or night, opened the dresser himself and dragged out what he wanted to wear. This has resulted in night-time outfits of pants with no top and day-time outfits of the same sleeping pants with a shirt. He does have a couple of favorite outfits: the bright orange shirt with a pirate shark on it, the beach rompers in bright blues and greens featuring frogs, and a pair of beige shorts that amazingly still fit him despite being intended for 9 month old babies to wear.

The other choice Drewbie regularly makes is to wear socks. Given the 100+ heat outside, I find this choice surprising. But he does seem to be very into socks at the moment.

I'm taking this as good practice for the teenage years. If I can tolerate his wacky choices of wardrobe now, I just might be able to stomach the even crazier ones in the next decade. Maybe.

We're Following the Leader, the Leader, the Leader, Following the Leader Wherever He May Go

Jacquandor is very lucky that I was looking for something to blog about today (the two topics I had been considering being not quite ready for public consumption) and, also, procrastinating. I've got a new chapter of THUMB to start, and my darling muse has yet to let the bits of flotsom and jetsam gel into anything coherent for this chapter. Yes, he is very lucky that I am in fact responding to his "Seven Things" Internet Meme tag, as my first instinct is to pretend I never saw the tag* and risk exploding the internet just as I risk unraveling the fabric of space time whenever I delete a "Forward this or [insert dire consequence here]!!!" email, usually sight unseen.

So, here it is. Seven things you may or may not know me, the Crazy Relationship Edition. (My earlier iteration of this meme listed seven things about me in seven categories. I'm not going that route this time.)

1. I was once propositioned twice in the same night by two townies in a bar in South Bend. This was during the course of a Girls Night Out, and I was pissed to have to deal with Male Horomones at all, so I left the bar in a huff, asking loudly, "What, am I wearing Eau de Slut perfume?" The next day, I went to Claire's a bought a $5 ring that, in the dark of the bar, could double as an engagement ring. I wore said ring every other time I went out with the girls that summer. It didn't help.

2. For a very brief moment in the seventh grade, I dated the most popular guy in school, who happened to be black. Our relationship was instigated primarily by a friend we had in common for unknown reasons. It was the shortest relationship I've ever had, lasting less than twenty-four hours, only three of which we actually spent together. During those three hours (the course of a junior high dance), we shared several slow dances. We also held hands while surrounded by his friends (a pretty thoroughly mixed race group) who looked at me as if I had green skin and some antenna. I think this was because my only known asset (other than that I wasn't fugly) was that I was smart, not because I was white. We kissed each other on the cheek at the end of the dance. The next day, one of us called the other and we both agreed without any hesitation that it just wasn't Meant To Be, heaved simultaneous sighs of relief, and went about our lives.

3. I played the whole "let's just be friends" card with a boyfriend in junior high. We had been friends before we dated, and dating for quite a number of months, IIRC. I missed the friendship uncomplicated by the relationship (mostly because the relationship had led to much cruel teasing by some of the In-girl crowd and I let it get to me). He took the break-up hard. So hard that he had a friend of his slip an add for bust enhancement cream in my locker. So hard that he told all of his friends that I was a lesbian, which I found out about much later and actually laughed at the news. We've since reconciled and are pretty good friends.

4. The guy who gave me my first kiss was eager to ignore me when he realized a kiss was all he was going to get out of me. So eager, in fact, that when he tried to excuse his avoidance of me by saying he had mono, he couldn't understand why I might get a little freaked out about that. I had to say, "Remember? You kissed me?" And he did this little, "OH. Yeah. That." Later that day or that week, he was kissing someone else. Ah, l'amour.

5. As I was on my way to ask the guy I liked to escort me to the Junior/Senior prom my junior year, I was intercepted by a senior drama buddy of mine. And he asked me to the prom. I felt awful, but I had to say no and explain that I was actually seconds away from asking someone else to go with me. He was more frustrated and embarrassed than heartbroken as I was the third girl he had asked. I still feel bad about that, but the guy I asked said yes, and we ended up dating for the rest of high school, with a minor hiccup of a month during senior year.

6. The first "boyfriend" that I can remember having was in the first grade. I think our relationship was characterized by sitting together at lunch and playing together on the playground. Occasionally, he gave me rings that I'm pretty sure he had stolen from his older sister.

7. One of my last boyfriends broke up with me via a seven-page long email, during which he said it was my fault he had to lie to me, told me I had no right be upset about my parents' divorce because of some variant of the "there are starving children in China" argument, and (in rebuttal to my WTF? response) whined about how much time I spent studying. Then, three days later, he sent me flowers and made "maybe we shouldn't have stopped dating" noises.

I'm not going to tag anybody for this meme except to say that anyone who reads this and needs a blog entry and is at a loss for words or simply needs further means of procrastination, feel free to consider yourself tagged.

*This is the last meme I did, and it was practically perfect in every way.

Stardust Needs You!

I caught Stardust at 10AM last Sunday along with about fifty other people. It felt strange to be watching a movie so early on a weekend in the theater, but the movie was well worth that minor discomfort. Hell, Robert de Niro's performance alone was worth both the price of admission and the snacks I bought, with the Dead Prince Peanut Gallery making up for any loose change that de Niro might not have covered.

It was such a beautiful film filled with gratuitous witchery and prince-death, Stupid Hero Tricks, and enough darkness to remind you when you might forget that, no, this isn't a Disney Fairy Tale. Alas, though, it didn't perform nearly well enough in its opening weekend to have it stick around in theaters. So if you want to catch it on the big screen, it would behoove you to do so this weekend. And bring some friends, maybe see about turning the box office numbers around.

I thought about why Stardust didn't do better. I mean, c'mon, it's friggin Neil Gaiman. If he can't draw a big crowd, then there's no hope of any of the rest of us SFers making a big splash in Hollywood. My yet-to-be-published novels are already sad about this. The only possible explanation I could muster was that the male SF community was mad for Rush Hour 3 (or, to be more generous to the other sex, The Bourne Ultimatum) instead. Then I remembered that Flash Gordon was having its season premiere on SciFi that Friday as well. Yet another draw for the SF community. Then I actually watched that premier during one of its re-airs and figured anyone who had watched that in favor of even Rush Hour 3 wad no doubt kicking themselves all the way to the theater the next night. I never quite got in synch with the characters' reactions to what was happening, and then there was the problem that No Female Shall Be Anything Other Than Brunette. With Similar Facial Features and Body Type. At least they messed around with their hairstyles. This phenomenon, though, was especially problematic when they tossed one of the women in a harem, also full of brunettes who looked nearly identical, even in height.

Anyway, if you haven't yet seen Stardust, you should really go see it. If not for yourself, do it for the future of quality SF books getting made into movies.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Found out yesterday that Mark's company is up and moving to California come October. He was given the option of moving with the company or being out of a job come the end of September, with the company's sincerest regrets and best efforts to recommend the hell out of him. It didn't take us very long to go with the latter option. While Mark has really enjoyed this company and the science he gets to do there, even he can't muster the faith that the move is going to do anything for this company's viability. That's saying something.

We've got six weeks to get him a new job without losing any of our savings, but our savings have been intentionally plumped these past few months specifically for this eventuality, so we should be OK for a few months after that should the job search not go well.

Sigh. Where's my multimillion dollar publishing contract when it's needed?

Process Examination #6: I'm Kellie Hazell, Reminding You to Help Control the Pet Population. Spay or Neuter Your Plot Bunnies Today.

Oy, the perils of the first three chapters. The brain is supplying ideas, various routes to get you from Point A to Point B, various morsels of character info that ratchet up conflict and promise for a big pay off. Beware the lure of the plot bunny.

I have not been successful in fighting the plot bunny temptation in my previous novels (and, no, I don't consider it an accomplishment to reach for the kitchen sink, pause, then decide against tossing it into the first act of the novel). Those bunnies are just so darn cute. You pick up a pair: protag and antag. And you examine their coats and decide they are perfect for the novel. You will enjoy watching these two square off, detailing their triumphs, their failures, their every single nose twitch and tail wiggle. Every hop will have significance, every nibble of the carrot. Then you step away for a moment, your attention on finding just the right novelty item to put in the cage with them to enhance their surroundings. Only when you turn back to the bunny cage, you find that there are suddenly quite a bit more than 2 bunnies in there. But you can tell how they sprang into existance, what traits of the parents they kept, how they provide so much more context and conflict and depth to the story.

So you get a bigger cage for the little beasties and write away, not missing a single juicy detail. Somewhere in there are your original bunnies with their particular story to tell. You may even develop that appropriately in and around your meticulous recounting of the progeny's antics. But your reader probably isn't going to have much luck finding that thread or giving it greater weight then the rest of the stuff you've shoved on her, and she's probably not going to be able to develop a coherent story question to carry with her as she reads.

The Plot Bunny Problem crystallized the concept of the story question for me, actually. I always understood what was meant by a story question: it's what you want your reader to be asking about the story, usually by the end of the first page, definitely by the end of the first chapter. Will the hero beat the bad guy? Will the heroine and hero get together? Will the protag learn that family isn't just about bloodlines? But I didn't understand just how powerful that story question needed to be and that even directly related information and questions can dilute it, especially in those first three chapters. In order to figure that out, I had to get somebody to critique the rough, rough first three chapters. Sure enough, my critter asked a whole bunch of story questions, two of which were what he needed to be worried about in that chunk of text. But he couldn't tell that. And I really couldn't see the problem with the other questions until he gave them equal weight to the important ones.

Now for my next process dilemma: to rewrite based on that critique or to move forward? I think the first antag POV chapter will help clarify this in my mind.

His Business Traveling Days are Over (For Now)

This trip back to CO was likely the last time I bring Andrew with me. Not because he's misbehaved during the trips, far from it. He loves traveling. No, once he turns 2, I have to pay full price for his ticket. The DDJ certainly isn't going to cover it.

This trip then was a nice farewell to our unique joint business trips. Drew flew well both ways. He even took out the safety features card and read along with the safety video (the card has pretty pictures!). He slept well, though not in the crib the hotel provided. He climbed out of the thing his second night there. So I used the base of the crib (really a play pen) as a mat for him to lay on, but he didn't like that for much more than an hour or two. So he shared the king-sized bed with me for the other three nights.

He ate very poorly for me every night, too. But apparently he ate quite well at day care, which is better than nothing.

The last day of the trip, he came with me to the office. He was a big hit as always and helped me out quite well with the few bits of work I had to do.

The highlight of the trip, though, was when we went to the mall for dinner and I let him play in the kiddie area just to the side of the food court. Drew was sitting on the top of a slide, deciding whether or not he really wanted to go down the thing, when some girl behind him got impatient and kicked him. Drew slid down the slides' raised edges on his back before thunking to the ground. I shouted something (I think it was "Oh!") and bolted to him, picked him up and took him back to the table to calm him down. Only he wasn't calming down. He didn't seem hurt at all. In fact, he kept reaching back for the kiddie play area. Sure enough, as soon as I plopped him down in the play area, he stopped crying and went trotting off to play as if he hadn't just sailed five feet through the air and landed on his back.

But it's good to be back and better to know that I don't have to routinely play at being a single mom anymore. We had some fun traveling together for the DDJ, but that solution has outgrown us and its time to find a better day care option for us here in AZ for Drew when I do travel. It should be easier to manage now that the summer is over and day cares aren't flooded with kids who are back in school.

I Would Laugh If It Weren't So Creepy

Who says the TSA doesn't have a sense of humor?

I opened up my suitcase in the hotel and was surprised not to see one of those TSA cards informing me in copious boring legal terms that my bag had been opened and searched prior to being loaded on the plane. Then I took my laptop out of the bag and found the card.

Three guesses where it was.

Nope. Getting warmer. Close.

The card was nestled--yes, I said nestled, as though someone had placed it there with care and may have even thought about swaddling it--in my pair of lacy boy short underwear from Victoria Secret. Under my laptop. There is absolutely no chance it could've have arrived at that destination without someone clearly putting it there.

Even more disturbing was that the Drew Monster's Curious George stuffie was squished in next to the TSAd boyshorts underneath the laptop.

I believe I will pack nothing but white cotton briefs everytime I must check a bag in the future. To hell with panty-lines in my work pants.

Begin Radio Silence

Tomorrow morning, Drew and I head off to Colorado for the DDJ. We'll be getting back Thursday afternoon, and then Mark's aunt (Drew's godmother) will be flying in Friday. Posting may be light to non-existant until next Sunday.

Really, it's a very good thing if you don't hear from me until then. I'm making smashing good progress on THUMB, thanks in part to the RWA Tucson chapter's Book-in-a-Month challenge. It's keeping me honest and forcing me to look at every bit of free time in terms of whether or not I can get out a couple of pages. This is my word count so far:



So while I might have free time in the upcoming week, I'm going to do everything in my power to use it toward increasing that total.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to squeeze out a few pages while El Boyo Diablo is napping.

The Simpsons: Best Conveniently-placed Items to Hide Nudity Montage Ever

We saw The Simpsons Movie on Tuesday. It was chock full of stuff that we'll need a couple more views and slavish attention to the commentaries to catch, but there was still plenty of fun to be had in the first viewing.

One thing I've always enjoyed about The Simpsons is that they more often than not follow up slapstick humor with something rather witty and less obvious, sometimes incorporating that into the slapstick humor itself. Sometimes they just go crazy and obscure too (I'm thinking of "I call the big one Bitey" that nearly every male fan of the show thinks is the Best Line Eva; it just doesn't do it for me). I really appreciate how the show skewers certain tropes, too. My favorite example of this is how often cars (and other conveyances) explode for no good reason--a nice "take that" to stupid big summer blockbuster action sequences that defy the laws of physics.

But they really outdid themselves with their take on the Austin Powers-esque sequence of a nude Bart skateboarding. The "interesting bits" were hidden in several clever ways for most of the scene until near the end when Bart moves behind a hedge--and everything but the interesting bits are obscured. (I'm curious as to how crudely animated male genitalia qualifies for a PG-13 rating, though. Maybe because it was, in effect, disembodied? Truly a philosophical quandry.) The cake-topper of the scene, though, was when Flanders caught sight of Bart's package in the middle of saying grace over his meal and blurted out a startled "Penis!", which his sons dutifully repeated as part of the prayer. ("Bountiful Penis" is just screaming to be made into a rock band's name, of course.)

Along the same lines as "I call the big one Bitey" was the "Spiderbig" song Homer sings that many male fans have been squeeing over. Again, it just didn't do it for me. Then they busted out with the choral version of the song later in the movie, complete with chamber orchestra trappings. That, ladies and gentlemen, is funny.

Other great bits included: "American Idiot" (Funeral Version), retinal scans of several of the mutant squirrel's eyes in order to pass security, Krusty emptying a tanker full of flop sweat into the lake, and Maggie saving Homer from gun-related violence.

We've been following the genesis of this movie on the DVD commentaries of the regular episodes for a while now, and, though I never expected fanboy squealing, Mark delivered on the anticipation by threatening me with divorce if my request that he buy popcorn before things started made him miss any part of the movie. Our marriage was saved by a late start and three trailers.

Fascinating Writing Discussion o' the Day

Elizabeth Bear compels you to compare and contrast John Denver and Gordon Lightfoot YouTube videos and then apply the results to a discussion of genre conventions. The comments are also fascinating and gave me several moments of "ow, my head hurts" and fond memories of the days when I just heard a song and liked it cuz it was catchy and all thinking stopped there (those days started to end when my grandmother wouldn't get me a Milli Vanilli tape because of the song "All or Nothing"; they breathed their last gasp when I heard "All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You" and my brain couldn't process the persistent attempts of the pop culture world to make that a sweet, mushy love song).

As for the bit about examining genre conventions, I think you can only question a certain number of them at a time. Otherwise, your novel becomes less about telling a story and more about the mechanics of telling a story. The latter are often hard to read and assigned to annoyed students for the purposes of writing long essays about the plight of the common man or somesuch.

Also, there's a certain power in writing a nothin'-here-but-us-tropes story: Everyone can access and understand it. In that case, it's up to the writer to wield the tools of theme and character development appropriately to provide depth in the construct of those facile genre conventions. But I suppose it can be argued that shallow themes and flat characters are part and parcel of certain genre conventions, so that having a layered, difficult theme and textured characters immediately means you are examining genre conventions and giving the hard answers.

D'oh! Now my logic's all twisted into a pretzel.

Process Examination #5: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Draft

When I set out to write backstory in order to better write the draft of my current work in progress, I hadn't expected to write over 20,000 words of backstory. I thought 10,000, maybe. Just enough to sketch out a couple of defining events that brought my characters into the situation that starts my story.

One thing I have learned very well over the past five years of writing is that I suck at estimating how many words any one scene idea is going to take. I always think it'll take less than it does. Always.

But that's OK. In this case, it was perfect, particuarly because I was able to write over 8,000 of those 20,000 words in one week, and the rest over three weeks. I don't mind spending a month on writing backstory. Or, at least, I don't mind it when writing the backstory reveals a gaping plothole that necessitated a change in my antagonist's plans. A significant change. I can just see how writing the draft would've been like pulling teeth with the original concept. I would keep writing and writing, trying to find through each new scene and chapter what was wrong and how I could fix it. Introducing new plot angles, maybe even new characters, throwing all manner of tangentially related ideas into the draft in the hopes that something would stick.

I can just see it because that's pretty much how I've written every idea before.

The backstory, though, revealed my plothole before I even had a chance to write my way around it, simply because it forced me to ask a particular question: What exactly did Toby do to escape his previous life and get himself stuck in his current one? Without the answer to that question, it was impossible to write one particular piece of backstory. Three days of mind-probing later, and I realized that the science I had set up for the story--terraforming--wasn't going to work. It just wasn't logically possible (no, not the concept of terraforming, just its place in my story).

This brought me around to the concept of theme. For a while now, I've been asking myself what the theme of this book is supposed to be. What point am I trying to make? I could never shake anything clear out of my head. I could feel something there, a whole mess of mental connections and thoughts and ideas, but I couldn't articulate it. When I asked that question after 20,000 words of backstory and a clear outline of the requirements of my story's science, I got a question in response: What trends have I noticed in my pre-writing?

That simple question gave me both the beginnings of a theme and a science concept that works for the story.

I've still got that last backstory scene to write, but I need to do a few bits of research first, so I'm not trying to talk cybernetics out of my ass (or, at least, not entirely out of my ass). I'm also ready to start writing draft as well, at least the first two chapters that don't yet involve the science because my two protagonist POV characters have no clue that the current problems they are twisting themselves around are because of a science project that will mess with their lives so much more.

I think this experience has finally kicked away the fear of writing a full novel's worth of words that have to be tossed out as I did with Shadow of Zehth. I know the hallmarks of that problem. I recognized them pretty quickly in just writing backstory. I figured out the right questions to ask, and I figured out how to organize the information I did know so I could tailor my search for answers.

Also, I figured out that, yes, it's possible to look at the draft you're creating and realize that it needs work before it's a finished product and to fix it as you go. But, I've also realized just how productive I can be when I stop thinking of the draft as a stepping stone to a finished product and just get on with telling the story. I'm less concerned with the work of revision now. Something finally clicked in my brain to tell me that revision is a separate step, and I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. That's going to be some monstrous process examiantion then, I'm sure. In the meantime, I've got a story to finish.

I Hear the Secrets Drewbie Keeps When He's Talking in His Sleep

The Drew Monster has inherited a couple of unfortunate parental traits. The first being that he likes to move around in his sleep. He hasn't yet started the night-time treks through the house that his father does, but he can cover the mattress any night of the week. The second that he's started a night-time ritual of a few words.

Every night between eleven and midnight, Andrew says something in his babble-speak. It's usually just one word, sometimes two. And I can never understand it as one of his recognizable words. But he's fairly consistent about this. He blurts his word and then doesn't make a peep, no other sounds to indicate that he might be awake.

He gets this from me. My nocturnal yammerings are not as regular as his, but I'm the one who will chat. Mark, of course, does a good deal of talking and, often, screaming when he's in the middle of a sleep-walking stint, but he doesn't ever separate the two. Hopefully Andrew will not get further into his father's realm of night-time wanderings, as I'm not sure what I would do with two men roving the house at night, running and jumping and pushing away from their nightmares. If that should happen, I think I'll have to sleep in a room by myself, lock, and barricade the door and let the two of them duke it out.

Various Thoughts to Catch the Blog Up

I've had another week where I either couldn't dredge up enough excitement for a post or couldn't get past the "nobody wants to hear what I have to say" stupid censor. Most of that was brought on by the news of someone else's tragedy whom I never met and have only interacted with intermittently via phone and fax through work. Still, it came on the heels of a major plot snarl that already had me questioning my abilities as a writer and on the coattails of a bad lunch time interaction with Drew (I don't care how many books say that it's normal for kids to eat like horses one day and then eat nothing at all the next; it might not bother me as much if I haven't been hearing how low Drew's weight is compared to other kids for practically his entire life; his bad meals make me feel like a bad mother). So I fell into a bad empathy spin for this person I've never met and really don't know from Adam. Thus I haven't posted. But the empathy spin has passed, so more posting this week, to be sure!

Yesterday I was down in Tucson for an RWA meeting. It was a great meeting: after the report on National, we had a panel of men in dangerous jobs--a pilot, a border patrolman, and a motorcycle cop. It was all very fascinating. They spoke candidly about their job and the risks, and the members had great questions to ask. I knew very little about the Border Patrol despite seeing their SUVs all over the place, so it was a real education hearing about what they do and how. It actually gave me an interesting idea for a story that I don't have the time to write.

But the craziest part of yesterday's trip was trying to get back home. We're in the middle of monsoon season here in the desert. In Casa Grande, that doesn't mean too much beyond lots of wind and dust and late night storms. But in Tucson, that means streets become rivers. I had forgotten. Nothing like taking a right and discovering that a paddle would be more beneficial than an engine. I spent a good hour weaving my way through Tucson, trying to find the driest route to the interstate (and given that ten of the on-ramps nearest where I was are closed due to construction, this was a very tricky proposition). Luckily, my familiarity with the town hasn't gone away, so I was never lost. But every Tusconan knows which streets to avoid during a monsoon, and I had clearly lost that knowledge in the past seven years.

Also this week I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was a satisfying conclusion. Except for the epilogue. For the best explanation as to why I didn't like the epilogue, I'll refer you to Abigail Nussbaum because I couldn't put my finger on it until I read this from her:

The impression conveyed by the epilogue, however, is of the kind of quaint conservatism that the novels had previously militated against--family and tradition and community triumphant, with nothing ugly beneath the surface. What Harry, Ron and Hermione have accomplished, in other words, is to bring modern notions of equality and justice to the wizarding world without subjecting it to any of the social effects of modernism, chiefly the collapse of traditional institutions and worldviews. That's not just neat. It's dishonest, and disappointing given that the series had seemed to recognize how problematic those institutions were even as it glorified them.

My only other gripe with the story was the manufactured sense of urgency that so many quest stories suffer. It wasn't the worst offender I've seen, but it had its moments. Chief among them was when Harry was deciding on a course of action and his choice depending on which of two people he was going to talk to first. Time seemed to be of the essence as he made his choice and talked to one person instead of the other, but really the only urgent matter was for the reader to learn certain pieces of information before learning what Voldemort was up to at that particular moment. I know this is the case because, having made the choice before talking to either of them, he no longer had to worry about time and proved that by taking a month to plan his next move after speaking with both people and confirming what Voldemort was up to. Really, there was no reason that the book should've spanned a year's worth of time other than that this setup was ingrained from the rest of the series.

As for other goings on, I did unsnarl the plot issue I mentioned above. I need to do a bit more research before I can finish the backstory, but I've got enough to write at least the frist two chapters, so I'm pressing on with draft. I expect I'll have another process examination post on Tuesday.

Have you had your inner conspiracy theorist shut down yet today? If not, read this by John Scalzi. While I was at first surprised that there are actually sane, intelligent folk chatting up the possibility of a Bush-led coup to make him Emperor of the United States, I found myself falling in love with the idea from a writer's perspective. How would something like that go over in a first world country with computers and TVs in every home and guns in nearly as many? Would any governtment that has just wrestled the constitution to the ground have enough resources to stop every Jane Doe with a blog? Could they monitor all IMs and cell phone conversations? Revolution would not only be easy to foment in that fictional set of circumstances, but it'd likely be comical because there would be so many revolutions all around the country--many of them with diametrically opposed goals. Talk about anarchy. Excuse me while I jot some notes for yet another dystopic novel.

Rejected Novel Dedication #7

To my beloved cat, Scritch:

I can has keebord now?

KTHX!

Drew's New Toys

Mark and I really hope that Drew is going to have a lifelong love of soccer, otherwise the excessive amount of bouncy balls in our empty-but-for-the-telescope formal living room will be just that. Excessive. These days, Drew enjoys kicking the balls as much as watching Momma or Daddy try to pick them all up at once--we are always thwarted, mostly accidentally on purpose. But it's somewhat hard to resist the Drew Monster when he utters his first sentence ever while pointing at the WalMart bouncy ball display: "Moe bah!"

Excessive or not, though, the proliferation of inflated rubber spheres in our house is a preferable distraction from Andrew's other shiny new toy: El Boyo Diablo hearitly approves of our new-to-us mini-van.

Yes, after much budget analyzing and used car research, we have become a two-car family. Friday night we bought a 2004 Kia Sedona. I believe the official color is called ruby red or something (I'm looking forward to the day when car color nomenclature goes completely into Odd Land; my car might become "Dorothy's Ruby Slippers Red" or somesuch). It's got an impressively low amount of miles on it for a 3 year old car, which was the biggest selling point for us. We were completely surprised to find a DVD player in the car as the internet listing hadn't put that on the features list.

The entire family is psyched about this. Drew loves climbing all over the seats and grudgingly gets into his car seat when Momma or Daddy have decided we've wasted enough time and need to get on with the errands. Mark loves all the extra cargo space we've got, something that is woefully inadequate in our little Saturn sedan--packing up for our recent camping trip was quite the experience. And me, I love the fact that I am no longer stuck indoors or at the mercy of other people's schedules when the temp soars past 110 and Drewbie gets antsy. As for the extended family, they no longer have to rent a car when they come to visit because now we actually have room to transport them AND their luggage to and from the airport. Plus the power windows in this car actually work!

We had originally intended to wait until May when the Saturn was paid off to get a second car, but I was slowly going crazy without a means of transportation during the day, and Mark didn't relish the Tetris-like organization of any excursion. Plus, the next big house purchase was furniture for the formal living room, and neither of us was keen on taking away Drew's kickball gym. The living room's going to have to wait until next year. By then we may have a dozen brightly colored balls bouncing all over that room.

Does This Mean I'm Part of Fandom Now?

Due to reading a couple of blogs about the state of SF, in particular its readership and fannish aspects, and other influences that I'm not sure I want to examine, I had a very strange dream last night.

I was part of a group putting on a small Con (short for convention, not confidence). Only we were putting it on at a hotel where some other huge Con or event was going down. And we were trying to pilfer attendees. We decided to con (in the confidence sense, this time) people to come to our meager conference room in the hotel by having a big chocolate spread. The theme was Easter, for some reason (maybe I'm getting all precognitive and looking into next spring), and we were infinitely pleased with ourselves for coming up with this "lure them with chocolate" thing. Somehow in my dream, this ploy ended up working on a bunch of stuffy white male exec types.

Then we really got 'em when they walked into our meager conference room and found a room full of women led by Teresa Nielsen Hayden who decided we all need to unleash our inner girly-girls by applying make-up as we discussed the role of women in current science fiction novels. At least the make-up was kinda cool in that, with one stroke of a blush brush, this purply glittery stuff swept along the side of your face and sort of applied itself however it saw fit. It wasn't the best self-aware cosmetic I can think of, though, as we all ended up looking like Kim Cattrall in her Chinese Demon Bride getup in Big Trouble in Little China, which I recently saw the other night.

At this point, Drewbie startled himself awake, thus waking me up and interrupting my subconscious from the effort of furthering an academic conversation in a room full of smart women masquerading as freakazoid geishas nibbling on gotcha! chocolates.

When I fell back asleep, the Con was over, and I, like a true fan junkie, was looking for more Con action. I found a stack of local newspapers, one of which was the local SpecFic Society rag, and it was advertising a Con not too far away. In fact, it even had a map that morphed from a layout of Phoenix to something out of your standard quest fantasy novel. (One of the place names, right next to a cute rendering of a dragon, was "Pinot Noir." I think my subconscious was looking for a little help at this point, and rightly so.)

Alas, the alarm clock went off, preventing me from having to sword & sorcery my way through Phoenix and into Pinot Noir for what would have undoubtedly been the Best Con Ever!

Time's like these, I really want to know how the mind works. I mean, if my subconscious can spin a yarn like that in my sleep, I want to learn how to hijack it better when I'm awake and really kick my fiction up another notch.

Process Examination #4: Dodging the Draft

Ah, the writing life and its bountiful ironies and contradictions. Not long after I posted my bit about how I felt I was ready to start in on the draft only to discover I wasn't, I started getting very involved in writing backstory and finding my characters' voices and avoiding getting back into the actual novel draft. This is not to say that I did excessive backstory writing or pointless character navel gazing. Rather, in focusing on the backstory scenes and letting them reveal what they would about the characters, I better understood the plot of the novel itself. And in better understanding the novel's plot, I had a better grasp of just what it would take to write my way from Chapter 1 to The End.

Eep.

One of the benefits of organic, completely fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writing is that you have a vague destination or goal in mind and this lets you focus rather completely on the journey. It's a great metaphor for life, and you do get lost in the joy of exploring a world or a set of characters or a story without worrying about the destination. It's my comfort writing. It's not how I want to write professionally, though, because it's damn inefficient and frustrating when you'd like to boost productivity. It's possible that I have yet to channel my muse appropriately to allow for the best organic writing experience. Maybe one day after I've finished at least one more novel I'll try it again and see what happens.

But even as I've figured out how to get out of truly organic writing while still avoiding rigorous outlining, I hadn't considered what it might be like to have worked out enough of the plot and character arcs--in the sense of staring down a daunting 100,000 words. It's one thing to broadly outline where you're going and why and who's going to be doing what when they get there. It's quite another to sit down and type in all the details of that journey. Nevermind that I've done this before for Human Dignity. I'm still a little twitchy from writing 82,000 words of Shadow of Zehth and realizing I had to go back to word 1 and start all over.

So I might be writing a bit more backstory than I though was necessary when I first realized I wasn't ready to start the draft. But I'm getting a lot more puzzle pieces for this book in doing so, and I'm getting to know my characters very well. I'm also getting a good sense of the further research I need to do to write some key scenes better and incorporate stronger details into the going. This is the benefit of doing backstory, at least for me. It's like taking a practice test. The pressure's off, so you can play around a little, figure out where the strengths and weaknesses are, if it's possible to use this character in this way or not (found out that one of the plot arcs I had set up for a non-POV major character wasn't going to work because that character, when I wrote backstory from her POV demonstrated a slightly different set of morals than I expected).

But, of course, this could become excessive very quickly and thus allow me to stall when I should really start digging into creating the novel. So I've limited myself to one scene per character that I want to learn more about. I have a cast of six characters, and I know I want to write backstory scenes from five of them. I've already written one and a half of those scenes. My backstory has also yielded a seventh character who will play a major role in a subplot (and a minor role in the plot), and I think I might want to do a scene from her POV. But that scene and the odd man out of the first six I mentioned will be extras as things stand now. I might use them to kick start me out of any potential future stalls.

The one very good thing about dodging the draft is that I've seen how vital backstory free-writing is for me. It's solidified plot and characters. It's highlighted weak spots that will need attention either in research or revision. It's given me surer footing in the world of this novel, but it has its limits.

This Just In!

The very last line of the next Harry Potter book is:

Harry looked around him at the carnage, shrugged, and said, "I, for one, welcome our Death Eater overlords."

OK, so not really. Or maybe. I have no idea. I'm getting the book on the 21st just like most of the rest of the world. It was one of those "What if" moments that took a macabre bent.

I'm actually confused between looking forward to seeing the new HP movie and looking forward to reading the HP book. I don't think I've quite realized that I can do both before the month is over. The movies have been fall treats for me, the books summer ones. I'm sure I'll get over it.

Rejected Rejection Letter Response #1

In lieu of my Rejected Novel Dedications feature, I give you a lovely depiction of author insanity at its finest. (May not be work safe unless your volume is low.)

At Long Last! Pictures of the Drew Monster!

Yes, we finally have fresh Drewbie content at our website. So check it out.

Andrew Goes Camping

The Drew Monster absolutely loves camping. I think its biggest appeal to him is the ability to get filthy dirty with little to no effort.

Because of the fire danger in Arizona this time of year, we weren't able to have a campfire, so Drewbie missed out on that camping experience. And he didn't seem to like waking up confined in his playpen rather than in his bed, but he calmed down pretty quickly and fell back asleep in my arms, so it all worked out.

We were up in the Tonto National Forest around Payson. It's a beautiful drive up the Beeline Highway from the swanky eastern Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills. (We actually drove through Fountain Hills one day, but the World Famous Fountain--it's apparently the third largest in the world--wasn't on at the time.) The main purpose of the trip (other than seeing how the Drew Monster took to camping) was to go to Tonto Natural Bridge State Park. It's a small little park with a couple of quick but steep treks to get under an amazing bridge carved out by water. It had been threatening to storm the entire time we were putting up our tent and walking down under the bridge (yes, Red Hot Chili Peppers was running through my head a couple of times that afternoon), but it waited until we were safely under the large stretch of rock before cutting loose. So we and several other folks sheltered under the bridge while it poured rain and thundered all around us. Drew figured out that dropping rocks into one of the pools under the bridge was great fun indeed and heartily demanded "Moe!" whenever he ran out of rocks nearby. It was a very nice excursion.

Mark and I were just tickled that Andrew enjoyed camping so much. We're already looking forward to our next camping trip, which will probably be in September or October/November.