Grey Places

Brenda Drake Pitch Contest!

2012-01-15T09:03:00.002-05:00

Yay, it's here! The first contest I've entered in 2012! For anyone who didn't know the contest was going on, you can check out the fun here. Feel free to join in!

Here is my entry:

Title: The Gone Missing Girl

Genre: YA Contemporary

Word Count: 101,000

Pitch: Nineteen year old albino Ansel isn’t one to go looking for excitement, until the day he saves a runaway heiress and gets tangled up in a real life fairy tale that’ll change his world forever.

I didn’t mean to find her. All I planned to do was retrieve a crappy book from the storage shed so I could cannibalize some of its pages for another book I was restoring. Instead, I found myself facing off with a deranged waif.

The busted hinge on the door should have clued me in, but that’s an oblivious bookworm for you. I was already plotting how I intended to rebind the book back in my apartment, not wondering why the door of the shed was broken.

Shoving my way inside, I cut to the right, heading straight for the box labeled ‘GerFairy’ which held double copies of the German fairy tale books in the bookstore. Even with the Coleman lantern, I didn’t notice her standing amidst the stacks of books at the center of the shed. Not until I happened to trip over a box and turned left to step around it.

I got a Blog Award! Aaaaand it's about time I posted anyway... face of shame

2012-01-12T19:15:00.004-05:00

So this super awesome friend of mine who is both a talented writer and an amazing mom (you know who you are Christi:) gave me a blog award! And on top of that I reckon it's about time I put up a post... I mean, you know, maybe... since the holidays are over... and I don't have any excuse... *mulls over possible excuses* *finds them all lacking* and there's a bunch to say.

But first, there are all these 'strings' attached to this blog award thing... and here they are:

I have to tell you seven random things about me…

Then I have to:

Thank the person who nominated you
Share 7 random things about you
Share the love with your favorite bloggers
Put up the Versatile Blogger Award picture on your blog

So first and foremost, THANK YOU CHRISTI!!! Both for the blog award and for reminding me (with that tender sledgehammer) that I haven't put a post up in, well in a long time.

Alright, on to the seven things about me. I'll try and make them interesting and new...

1) I've written 8 books and have another dozen in various states of process. Among them 3 are/have been out queried/requested. Several are still very rough, and a few will never see daylight again. Ever. But I've learned something from each one!

2) I'm an aunt! Aunt Waguli, to be exact.

3) I'm really good at digging graves. Yes, seriously. Totally morbid, I know. And no, I've never dug one for a human. But I've buried many fur people and I can lay turf so as you'd never know what was beneath it.

4) I've never been on a date. Ever.

5) I have arthritis. So far, it hasn't stopped me from being active, but sometimes I have rheumatic episodes that make it hard to do anything, even hold a coffee cup. You can tell if I'm having one by the number of cuss words audible before the lights come on in the morning.

6) My whole back is tattooed. And I drew the design. 9 hours worth of ink.

7) One time I spent 4 hours playing Cambok in 90 degree heat. Think rugby. With a stick. In a corset. Did I mention that Cambok is a medieval game? And, technically it's outlawed. At least according to a 1363 edict. I know, I'm a rebel.

Now I get to pass this blog award on to:

Brenda Drake

Heather Kelly

Lydia Sharp

Matthew MacNish

And that's all, I'm done. Okay, the truth is that I'm so freaking behind on reading all the blogs I follow that these are the only ones I'm up on. And in fact, I'm supposed to be working on a pitch for a contest on one of these fine blogs... which I need to go do now, unless I want to fail epically. Which I don't. But I give you my promise that I will try very hard not to fall behind so far in both my posting and reading after this.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again!

2011-11-28T17:09:00.003-05:00

Yeeeeaaaahhh. I'm aware that it's been a while, a sort of long while, okay it's been F*#@ing FOREVER since I posted. The truth is, that time is just getting away from me right now. Life outside of the cyber realm has been like juggling chainsaws. And I don't juggle. But I HAVE been getting a lot of writing done. And I've got an ms in the wind, hopefully it will set sail. We'll see. Anyway, I plan to make a serious attempt to try and get back into posting on a semi regular schedule again. Soon. Before too long. Eventually. I hope everyone is doing well!

SIRENS 2011

2011-10-05T20:28:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm sitting in a hotel room with an amazing view of Aspens, and it occurs to me that most of you probably - despite my feeble announcements that I'm still alive - think I'm dead along the road somewhere and that some random person is occasionally posting something on my bog to maintain appearances. I assure you that I do yet live. Aaaaand now I'm on vacation for the next 12 days... BUT that vacation starts off with Sirens 2011! Which means that I should have at least a little time to post on my blog. And since the Vail Cascade has wifi, I can even do it all quick and easy. So no excuses not to. Well, besides late night book discussions. Or the guests of honors' bedtime stories. Or the pool. Or... Okay, so there's a lot going on. But I do have time and I hope to get at least a few blog posts up before I disappear into the Utah desert or Santa Fe next week. Starting with this one.

And I hope to get some editing done on AGMG, thanks to AMAZING feedback from a certain beta reader that I love far more than my luggage (you know who you are :) which has been piling up on me while I got distracted by things like life.

Now, I'm off to get ready for the Sirens Supper. Squee Squee Squee. This is kinda like coming home. That's how much I love these ladies!

This is a Test, This is Only a Test... Okay, Sike, it's Real...

2011-08-29T09:20:00.005-04:00

Hey ya'll I'm still kicking! I know I owe you some explanations, and you'll get them... only you won't get them right now because today is my first day back at work from a week long vacation so I've got to, you know, work, and stuff. Oh, how was my vacation? Well, let us see...

I started things off with a trip to the Lady-parts doctor to get final diagnostics on some ongoing issues....

I discovered that my air conditioner had been draining into my bedroom for roughly two months, resulting in a flood so deep that once I'd cleared out multiple stacks of clothing, a desk, a full bookcase, and a box of antique quilts, there was still enough water to come up between my toes through the carpet...

While I was cleaning the mess from the aforementioned flood, we got hit by an earthquake...

Then hurricane Irene dropped in for tea...

And due to the natural disasters, my cat got so disturbed that he made himself sick enough that a vet trip was required...

And I got a rejection from my dream agent...

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE:

The Dr. found nothing physically wrong with me, and said I can feel free to blame ALL my problems on my twin sister for getting pregnant. We've fixed things with some birth control.

Although my room was a disaster area, and some of my deceased great aunt's art was ruined, I didn't lose anything I couldn't live without, and I now have a sparkly new arrangement of furniture that includes TWO book cases waiting to be filled with books!

The earthquake was totally disturbing - still is, stupid aftershocks - but let's face it, things could have been a LOT worse, and nothing got broken.

My cat is on the mend, since it turned out his illness was just stress, he's actually pretty darn healthy :)

My dream agent - though she passed on the one project - wrote me a personal response and reiterated multiple times that she loved my writing and that one day I was going to write 'the one' and that she didn't want to miss it so please, please I should keep sending her whatever I write.

So, yeah, vacation was... weird... but kind of pretty darn cool.

I Do Still Exist.

2011-07-18T18:21:00.002-04:00

This will be a boring post. It's pretty much just a post to say that I'm still around to post anything at all. I've been busy with both writing/editing and then life's been kicking the old tukkis so that's been keeping me busy as well. Point is, I still exist, and at some point I will actually post something entertaining again... maybe... most likely... :)

Interview and a Contest!

2011-06-29T11:11:00.003-04:00

Okay so I'm like in a spaz-life-is-taking-over-my-life-and-I'm-shutting-down-to-write time period here, and I've been remiss in blogging and all other social things. But according to Dan Krokos, I'm doing things right! Because in being a writer, his number 1 piece of advice is to write! You can read all of his other pieces of advice, along with a great interview over at my friend Christi Corbett's place.

And be sure to check out the caption contest! I'm contemplating my own entry as I type this. I'm sure it will be diabolical in nature...

Shelley Watters First Page Contest!

2011-06-25T10:23:00.003-04:00

Here we go! Time to post your entries for critiquing! Here's mine:

Title: Thornbriar
Genre: YA Fantasy Retelling
Word Count: 75,000

The first arrow nearly killed Beauty. If she had not had the good luck to trip over her injured coachman at just that moment, it would have pierced her breast. Instead, the black shaft of the arrow passed through her ruby curls as she staggered sideways. The coachman cried out when she trampled his broken leg in an attempt to regain her balance. Beauty ignored him, turning to look in the direction from whence the arrow had come.

She could see the archer then, facing her, a second arrow aimed at her heart.

Although he stood what seemed a great distance away, his features were inexplicably defined. It was as if some magic brought clarity to what ought to have been impossible to see. His long hair danced in a breeze that touched nothing else, the silver-blond strands sparkling in the few patches of sunlight that broke through the canopy of trees. His ivory skin glowed luminously, eyes solid black. He seemed a spirit, rather than a mortal man.

“Lady Beauty!” The downed coachman pulled on the skirts of her gown, breaking her trance.

Beauty heard the hiss of air and swirled, throwing herself to the ground. Three arrows whistled, following her motion with astonishing speed. All missed their mark by only fractions.

When her coachman pushed himself onto one elbow to shield her, she caught sight of the archer, again with an arrow directed her way. He held this one though, his unearthly face contorted in rage.

Contest Over at Shelley Watters!

2011-06-24T19:06:00.002-04:00

Alright, quick post to spread the word about this amazing first page contest (which I nearly missed in all the prednisone/poison ivy/week from the abyss drama) that's being held over at Shelley Watter's. The deets are all listed but I hope to see ya'll over there! I'll post again tomorrow. This is supposed to be my stay at home in my PJs and write all day long weekend. We'll see how that goes...

I'm Here... I Swear I Am...

2011-06-21T13:38:00.002-04:00

I'm still alive, still checking out others' blogs, still writing. It's been a very crazy few weeks. I will hopefully get a post or two up soon. Hopefully... O.o* whoa life is moving fast...

I've Got a Short Story Up At Underneath The Juniper Tree!

2011-06-12T14:50:00.002-04:00

Just a short post to say that a short story of mine is up over at Underneath The Juniper Tree!
I'm very excited about it, as the story has grown through several edits since I first wrote it and I'm proud of the final result.

It Lives... or, at Least, It Struggles to Do So...

2011-06-07T07:57:00.003-04:00

Hey y'all! How's that for a Southern greeting? So I'm still around. I've just been uber busy with work, and life in general. The internet was down at work, and I screwed myself by streaming too much video on my own internet stick (anime, Claymore and Last Exile) and so now I'm almost over my internet stick limit, and because I'm not rich, getting charged a bunch of overage charges would pretty much destroy my world. So my internet has been spotty to say the least.

A few things that have gone on:

My little cousin graduated! Ugh, he's the 'last' cousin... the baby... *rends hair and cackles like the Crypt Keeper*

I've written a few more short stories. I CAN NOT tell you how awesome Underneath The Juniper Tree is. I implore you, go check them out. Participate in the weekly challenges. Download their first issue and sit up under the covers with a flashlight (or in this day and age, a flashlight app) and read into the small hours. Then scare yourself silly running to the bathroom before bed.

I sent out one query... I KNOW... probably early... but I've gone over Thornbriar three times now, and that's on top of the initial transcribing edit... so we'll see...

I've worked on The Bonds of Aether, my steampunk-monk-in-an-arranged-marriage-zombie-armies WIP...

I'm frighteningly close to finishing Red Chief... but I'm wondering if it's going to be 'different' enough to stand against the other Faery UF out there... time will tell I guess...

I scuba dived in a flooded horse stall....

Gotcha on that last one didn't I? Well, it's a sort of true story. But that's for another time. For now, I'm off to muck unflooded stalls...

Made of Awesome Blogfest Contest!

2011-05-28T15:04:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I'm participating in the Made of Awesome Blogfest Contest which is being put on by Shelley Watters.

Here's my entry:

Title: Thornbriar
Genre: YA Fantasy Retelling
Word Count: 71,500

The first arrow nearly killed Beauty. If she had not had the good luck to trip over her injured coachman at just that moment, it would have pierced her breast. As it was, the black shaft of the arrow passed through her ruby curls while she was staggering sideways. The coachman cried out when she trampled his broken leg in an attempt to regain her balance, but Beauty ignored him, turning to look in the direction from whence the black arrow had come.

She could see the archer then, facing her directly, a second arrow aimed at her heart. Although he stood in the underbrush a great distance away, he seemed much closer, his features clear and strange. His long hair danced in a breeze that touched nothing else, it’s pale silver blond strands sparkling in a stray beam of sunlight. His ivory skin glowed luminously, eyes solid black. He seemed a spirit, rather than a mortal man.

“Lady Beauty!” The injured coachman pulled on the skirts of her gown, breaking her trance.

Beauty heard the hiss of air and swirled, throwing herself to the ground behind her coachman. Three arrows whistled, following her motion with astonishing speed. All missed their mark by only fractions.

When her coachman pushed himself onto one elbow to shield her, she caught sight of the archer, again with an arrow directed her way. He held this one though, his unearthly face contorted in rage.

Can't wait to read the other entries!

Never Growing Up...

2011-05-22T14:10:00.003-04:00

So I'm a very laid back person in many ways. I'm very slow to get angry (beyond seeing violence committed against others, or animals, then watch out) and I'm fine with sudden changes in plan. I'm too lazy to panic over much (besides fire...) even when things look bad. I obsessively love my writing, but I'm pretty flexible about it and I have hobbies I love, but I can drop them to meet with friends or family if need be.

About the only thing I will REALLY lock down on and freeze up over is a great book... or... a great anime series... It's like I'm possessed and cannot function until I've turned the last page/seen the last episode. With a great book, I'll even carry it on the tractor at the farm. And with anime, I'll leave my computer out and if we go in for a water break, I'll hit play, even if I only get a few minutes of watching. Why do I get so obsessed? What is it that locks me in? When I say 'great anime' I don't mean that I'm a connoisseur. I know many folks love Akira, and I hated it. I can't tell you all that much about the history of anime or anything. My cousin, code name Bike Warrior, could tell you more in his sleep than I can. What really nabs me when I flip a new anime on is the characters. Within a few minutes of the first episode, I'll know if I'm going to switch it off, or obsessively watch every single one. I just finished GunxSword. It's one of the only animes I've found where I loved all the main characters, as well as all of the bad guys. Van is SO the sort of guy I adore, and strive to create in my writing. The genuinely-not-perfect-sometimes-down-right-asshole-but-you-love-him-for-himself guy. It's such a hard thing to capture in someone. And Van isn't the only character with flaws. Everyone has a great depth, and I found myself loving and hating them in turn.

Which is also what's so vital in books. And maybe that's why I just can't put a great book down or turn a great anime off. Because they take me somewhere, let me reconnect with that part of myself which think of the characters as real, in their own way. That kid part of me that still takes the escapist routes, if even just once in a while. That part of me that will never grow up, never give in, never abandon those larger than life ideals of honor and bravery and the good guy doing the right thing. When we're a kid it's okay to believe in these things, to read books and watch cartoons that exemplify them in all their melodrama. But when we get older, they're put on the 'how cheesy is that' rack and viewed as a silly, guilty pleasure. Somehow, we're expected to look back and see that the 'real world' doesn't work that way. Which is why I will never grow up.

What about you? Do you have any 'guilty' pleasures? Do you still watch cartoons/read books and find yourself thinking of the characters as people you just met?

In Which I Fall Out of a Tree in the Name of Awesomeness... and You Vote on Something...

2011-05-19T10:51:00.015-04:00

So Shelley over at Is It Hot In Here Or Is It This Book recently posted about author headshots, and it sort of got me thinking... See, I don't take serious pictures. I mean, you'll find dozens of me glowering (apparently, I tend to glower) and hundreds in which I'm making absurd faces (I've actually been told that I have a rubber face, and I agree) but when it comes to 'serious' photos... um, yeah, I'm not so good at taking them. And since I don't have an agent, haven't even gotten passed the 'so close it was ALMOST an offer to rep' stage, I didn't think I needed to bother. After reading Shelley's post, I reconsidered. It was a timely bit of information, especially since I've been competing the the weekly challenges over at Underneath the Juniper Tree. Which, let me just squee and say that you should definitely go check out Underneath the Juniper Tree. They are awesome. And I think it's okay if I announce that a short story of mine will be in their June issue, since they've already posted that information on their blog. *cheers quietly to herself*

Now that I've blathered, I'll get back to the falling out the the tree in the name of awesomeness. After reading Shelley's post about headshots, I knew immediately that I didn't want a 'standard' one. I wouldn't even look like me if I tried to pose for something formal. I mean, really, the pictures of me at Fenris' wedding (where I was the maid of honor, no less) involved body builder poses... and I got all the bridesmaids to do them too... yes, I'm not very good at acting mature. Thankfully, Shelley included some of her favorite author photos in her post. And I saw that I could be me and still make it work. In my little warped mind, an idea was forming. The only requirements were that I had my trusty hat on, my hair was in braids, and that Scrump be involved, because, well, he goes everywhere with me. To these three things, I added a motorcycle jacket, combat boots, a ball gown and a steer skull bolo. And off we went. Into a tree. Because I love trees.

Climbing up was easy. I've had practice. Ma always dressed us in dresses, but then never forbade us from running feral, so I've been climbing trees in dresses since I learned how to walk. Subsequently, changing positions was equally easy. Getting down was the easiest though, because I fell out of the tree. Fenris, who was taking the pictures, got some great shots - both before and after my departure from the tree - so it was well worth it. Below, I've posted my top pics for an 'official' author photo. There's a chance one of my photographer friends will get to take some more photos this Saturday, but for now, these are my favs. Um, I can't post the post-splatter pictures without some editing. They are utterly fracking hysterical... however, my Skully underdrawers are all out there front and center... and seeing as how I'm agent-hunting and 'sposed to be all professional and stuff, they aren't really blog-compatible...

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Number 7

I know, 7 pictures isn't exactly 'narrowed down' but I put some up because folks over on FB have commented and said they liked them. Of these, I've got one I'm leaning toward, but I want to hear objective opinions. So let me have it! Leave a comment voting for the one you'd like to see on a book flap (assuming I ever manage to land an agent :) and then go get your hubby, or your wife, or your kids, someone off the street, anyone you like, and have them vote for a picture. Heck, send your followers, and friends over. I'd love opinions from total strangers. Remember, I write YA of all varieties. And you'll have to excuse the strange shape of the layout. I got some serious blog-hate from my template when I was loading photos...

Laughter is the Best Medicine Blogfest...

2011-05-16T07:55:00.003-04:00

So I'm totally unprepared for the Laughter blogfest, but I figure the reasons for being unprepared are sort of amusing so I'll just list them, but first a little intro to me:

My name is Artemis, or alternatively, Auntie Waguli... both of these may or may not be preceded by 'Crazy' depending on where I am in writing a first draft/editing finished drafts or submitting...

My Current Job: Biological Reintroduction Specialist with an Emphasis on Equine Maintenance, Reproduction and Behavior Modification (what that means: I shovel poop and work with/train horses from birth to adulthood)

So on with the excuses as to why I have no 'joke' to post...

I've been editing Thornbriar... and with only one hand, because the other one has been tied to the chair to keep me from trying to send out a shoddy query letter too early... you know you've sent them too...

I've also been repeatedly opening this short story I submitting to an online magazine, just so I can look at it... they sent the document back with editors notes... red stuff everywhere... it's AWESOME... like, a REAL editor edited something I wrote... and seemed to like it... *swoons over the red ink*

I've been bottle feeding a baby kitten... and apparently spoiling him rotten... so rotten that you can probably smell him from wherever you are...

I've been manically flipflopping from WIP to WIP... you know what I mean? You're working on one WIP, but you find yourself thinking about another one... or accidentally writing the names of characters from another WIP into the WIP you're working on, and wondering if the WIP you're working on is really worth anything, and maybe you ought to just trash that WIP and start working on the other WIP, although that WIP is a genre that's all over the market and maybe agents/publishers with think it's 'been done' when you go to submit it... and maybe you ought to stick with the WIP you're working on because how many YA zombie-fallen angel-mermaid love triangle books are out there? I mean, the market is BEGGING for something like that. So carry on, by all means. Some day they will hail you as a pioneer in writing...

And that is why I didn't do my homework. Have a great day everyone!

Mommyhood, Artemis Style...

2011-05-14T12:46:00.010-04:00

So I've joined the world of mommyhood, in my own strange little way. We've been nursing a very young kitten the last two weeks. When I say 'young' I mean he was about 8 days old when the farm's handyman found him in the bed of his pick-up truck. This after he'd driven fifty miles through thunderstorms, high winds and hail... yeah, the kitten's a tough one all right. Like any good 80's born girls, we immediately name him Mad Max Rockatansky.

My sister, code name Fenris, had Max for the first few days. Fenris has already raised one cat from just a few days old to adult, and I'm terrified of breaking tiny living things with my Ox-like strength, so she took the first shift. Then Fenris's own baby, Walelu, decided she needed more attention, and got sick in an effort to displace Max from his throne of adorableness. So yours truly has taken over motherhood of the kitten road warrior. Even now he's snoozing on my lap, wedged sideways under the computer so that I have to obsessively wiggle it every two minutes 'just to be sure' he can breath okay... yeah, I'd be one of 'those' moms... the kind who goes in at 2 am and pokes the baby just to see it squirm... But it's been fun. And I am utterly in love with the little guy of course. He's impossible not to adore. Here are some pictures, just to prove it.

See, I wasn't lying. Cutest. Thing. Ever.

Notice the notebook in the background of the one picture, pen sticking out of it. I'm writing... just slowly... around all the cuteness...

Between feeding and everything else that goes with little tiny taters like Mad Max Rockatansky, I've been working on short stories and editing Thornbriar. It's been really hard to resist jumping right to writing a query letter... but I've been a very good girl, and only just started loosely structuring a letter at the end of last week. I've also been working on a couple of WIPs, and have been feeling like I'm getting some good things done with my writing. That said, I'll feel better once I'm querying again. I always feel like I'm stuck in an epic fantasy novel, preparing for a quest whenever I set out to query. But I get antsy until I'm actually on the query road. I'm happiest in the thick of it, rejections and all.

Writing is an Extreme Sport...

2011-05-09T10:35:00.005-04:00

So I created a new sport last week. It's called babygate stairboarding. Seriously. I 'housesat' all last week because the rest of the fam was out of town. Aaaaand an alarm clock which was not MY alarm clock, was left with the alarm set... a sure recipe for utter chaos. I'm upstairs, so at first when I woke up and got out of bed, everything seemed normal. But when I went to the bathroom at the top of the stairs, I heard 'the alarm' which sounded like a horrible 'the world is ending, jump ship now' alarm. It also sounded like the security alarm going off and since I'd JUST woken up, never mind the lack of coffee, I panicked.

Anyone who's read my blog for any length of time knows that I'm terrified of fire too, and that doesn't help when there's random alarms going off. SO, I made to run down the stairs, managed to run directly into the baby gate at the top, rather than getting it out of my way. Because I have long finger-toes, my foot got caught up in the wire of the baby gate and I ended up jerking it out of my hand, flipping it flat, with my big, finger-toed foot square on it. And down the stairs we went. To my credit, I stayed upright, surfing the baby gate (have I mentioned that I was wearing a tank top and underwear, I mean really, could it get more epic?) all the way down to where the stairs turn right. It was at that point that the baby gate called it quits. I, of course, continued onward, rolling out into the living room and splattering Round-Headed Cat (she's, well, very round, and subsequently the last to run/first to suffer during episodes of chaos) before I fetched up against a recliner. I was totally uninjured, beyond a little carpet burn, and so was Round-Headed Cat... although she seemed a little more circular and less spherical for an hour or two. And when my head stopped spinning, I realized that the entire thing was WAY FUN. I mean, yeah, it wasn't so good for the old ticker, not at the top of the stairs headed down anyway. But I actually considered the fact that my sled was sitting on the porch, and I was sorely tempted to try another run using it instead of the baby gate... but I didn't. Really, I'm not sure Round-Headed Cat could stand much more excitement, not before breakfast.

Now that I've blathered, I'll get to the point of how writing is an extreme sport. Of course, if you're a writer, you've already probably recognized the whole babygate stairboarding connection. Writing a book is EXACTLY the same, albeit, you normally intend to write a book, unlike my ill-fated trip down the stairs. But you don't always intend to write a book. In fact (just like in my case with the stairboarding) sometimes you were all involved trying to do something entirely unrelated and apart from writing, but shazaam! Suddenly you're on this wild uncontrolled ride and you're not sure what you're doing or how you're doing it, or just how it's going to turn out. And when it's over with, even though you've got a dozen new grey hairs and you'd sell a kidney for some advil, you just can't help looking back at what happened and thinking 'what if we build a really big wooden badger?' and before you know it, you're at the top of the stairs, looking at a blank page again. And I can promise you, even if the next run ends with busted knees and scraped knuckles, no laughter and gut-wrenching defeat, you're going to show up at the top of those stairs again eventually. Because writing is an extreme sport. If everyone did it, it wouldn't be writing. So carry on fellow extreme writers! Fill the world with your attempts at stairboarding and resolve to never turn away from the precipice of 'what if' but instead, to always get a running start before leaping off of it!

Twitter Pitch Contest!

2011-05-06T11:08:00.003-04:00

All right minions! (I think you have to have like hundreds and hundreds of followers to say that for real, but I couldn't resist) There's an epically awesome twitter pitch contest going on over at Sisters in Scribe. There is a truly frawesome prize and guaranteed fun. I implore you to check it out! I've already entered (and am now obsessing over the remote possibility that I might place... *fights urge to start frivolous editing* ) but I expect to see some of ya'll join in too! I've been dashing over to check out the other entries and I have to say it's engrossing to read everyone's pitches.

I'm in a Meme! Yeah, I didn't know what it meant either...

2011-05-04T09:16:00.005-04:00

Okay, so the lovely Christi Corbett has tagged me in a meme! Aaaaand she was good enough on her blog to post exactly what a meme was... you can read about it here because I am a lazy slug and she said it better than I could anyway... So to get this thing started, I'm supposed to answer a few questions...

If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?

Wow, um, that's a hard one... I think - and this will sound strange - that I'd relive any moment that I spent sitting on my grandfather's lap. The thing is, my mom's dad was a Cherokee, and he was just so quiet, so ominously impassive, that as little kids we were sort of afraid of him. I can't really explain it, but there was such a gentle fierceness to him. By the time I understood how much he loved us kids (about age 8) he died of cancer, but I can still remember sitting on his lap, and I cherish that.

My grandfather, grandmother, and mother.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

Honestly not much... although there are a few Irish boys I wish I'd kissed when I'd had the chance... one Traveler lad in particular... I can still smell him sometimes when I wake up at night... hand-rolled vanilla cigs...

What movie/TV character do you most resemble in personality?

Sgt. Oddball from Kelly's Heroes, hands down!

If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be?

Um... there are probably lots of people who deserve to get pushed off a cliff... but unless one of them is threatening someone with imminent danger right in front of me, I won't be the one doing the shoving...

Name one habit you want to change in yourself.

I'm so impatient with humans... while animals get most of my soft side... I could work on that.

Describe yourself in one word.

Indomitable

Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word.

My West Coast sister! We're bound as only fellow writers can be, I'm a twin, she has twins, I live now in the town where her historical novel begins back then. It's epically frawesome.

Why do you blog? Answer in one sentence.

To write for public consumption on a weekly basis, and to make connections with other writers. She said it perfectly :)

Name at least 3 people to send this meme to, and then inform them.

Justine Dell

Lori M Lee

Lydia Kang

I Got a Blog Award!

2011-04-26T09:03:00.004-04:00

Okay, so the terribly awesome Gina Blechman just gave me a few blog awards! Okay... Okay... she gave them to me LAST WEEK.... and I'm just now returning the shout out... I know... I'm a slug... but I was finishing up on transcribing Thornbriar (squee) so now I can get it to the betas! Um, which, I have two lined up, but if anyone is interested in reading a classically styled retelling of Beauty and the Beast... let me know because at this point since I'm not like an established author who has to keep her next bestseller under wraps, I'm still pretty open to getting new opinions from new readers.

But on to the blog awards! I fear that this will be a shabby hoorah, as I have ponies screaming for food and stalls to be mucked, but at least I'l get a post up to represent...

7 Random Facts about me...

1) I'm almost done a second manuscript and while I actually have a series outlined for it, I never thought I'd actually finish it... and now I feel weird about the fact that it actually exists... @Iamsuchagoober

2) I've already started another WIP (I still blame you Janni... but if it gets published, I'm totally giving you cred) and I love it... even though it's confusing me at the moment... I love it double time because one of the characters could be Temperance Brennan's twin sister... If Tempy existed in a steampunk world... this is going to be a nightmare to write because I constantly have to look up wordy ways of saying 'your pants are on fire' and other important information.

3) My favorite game is Balderdash, and all variations of it... which means that I actually love coming up with wordy ways of saying 'your pants are on fire' and other important stuff...

4) I HATE driving...

5) I'm really wishing that I had more time to write right now... or at least an agent, so I could use them as leverage to argue for more time to write...

6) Um... I model for local artists... nude... and I love it...

7) I'm worried that listing the above will somehow come back to haunt me since I write YA, but I'm not ashamed of modeling and I think it says something profound about a person's sense of self when they do something of that nature... like something good, and something I wish more girls could see in themselves every time someone suggests that they hit the diet aisle at the grocery.

Now to pass on the love!

1) Christi Corbett

2)Heather Kelly

3) Donna Hole

4) Laura Diamond

Crazy Update Post...

2011-04-25T10:09:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I'm still here, even though I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth... Here's why I haven't been around:

I finished the first draft of Thornbriar!!!

I've gotten about 30k of Thornbriar transcribed/first overhaul edited.... soon I'm going to need beta readers...

I'm scary-close to finishing the first draft of Red Chief... it snuck up on me since I was so into Thornbriar and I keep forgetting where Red Chief is going to end, because the story won't be over and I keep smushing book 1 and book 2 together in my head.

Had Easter with the fam... yay for meeting cousin's boyfriend (finally) SUCH a keeper... even got the official thumbs-up from baby Walelu...

Aaaaand... wait for it... I started a new WIP... yeah, and I'm blaming this one all on Janni Lee Simner... because during some discussion on FB I made the remark that someone ought to write a story involving an unwanted arranged marriage that actually 'worked' and was from the guy's POV... and she went and said that I should be that person... so now I am... and there will be aerships... and monks... and deadnauts... which are steampunk zombies... in my world... did I mention that my man who isn't interested in getting married is the aforementioned monk? Yeah... um... epic, I know... but it will be epically awesome...

Why Every Girl Needs a Bowie Knife to go with Her Pajamas...

2011-04-18T07:47:00.013-04:00

So, anyone who's been reading my blog for any length of time (wow, writing that made me feel like Julie, from Julie and Julia) knows that I have a propensity for carrying bladed weapons. Now, whether this is a genetic throwback to times when some distant ancestor might well have had to thrash a saber-toothed cat while on the way to drop the Johnsons at the superbowl, or because I watched too many action movies as a kid, or because I hang out with SCA members and Civil War re-enactors and at the Highland games, has never been clear. But suffice to say, that normally, if you see me on any given day, there is a knife somewhere on my person. This includes days in which I never change out of my pajamas. Which turned out to be a really good thing last Saturday.

It rained on Saturday. Like all fricking day. And the wind howled. Like we had a tornado howled. Not joking. Anyway, the parental units went down to Galax, and I opted for staying at home so I could try and finish the first draft of Thornbriar (I did not succeed. It turns out that wrapping up the entire 'I solved the curse on your country now why don't you love me?' paradox isn't a snap thing, even when you know how it's going to turn out) and tape fence boards back on when the wind tore them off and tossed them like pick-up sticks while never changing out of my jammies. (if you don't know what pick-up sticks are don't point that out because you're young enough to fall into the whipper-snapper category and I will be forced to snark you)

Point is, I was home alone, in my pajamas, with a twenty-year old dog and a whole lot of bad weather. You know what happens with ancient dogs and thunderstorms right? I'll clue you in: it lightnings, then it thunders, then the shock waves from the thunder hit the ancient dog and it instantly has to go to the bathroom. Like right at that very moment instantly, not in like ten minutes when the eye of the storm is passing overhead and you have a halcyon interlude. Flash-boom-crack there I was staggering through the backyard with the blind-deaf-unsteady ancient dog as she tried to decided if she should pee by THIS patch of absurdly un-mown grass or THAT patch of absurdly un-mown grass.

While Ancient Mongrel and I were braving the savage winds and flash floods, Mother Nature was busy trying to rip the screen door off it's hinges. She was probably extra annoyed because I'd locked the other screen door completely down, double-latching the inside dutch door. The second entrance is just a simple screen door, and a lot easier to get through with a tottering old dog, so that's the one we'd left by. Well, about the third time Mother slammed the thing, it's little latch (one of those you just hook on an eye-hook) swung around like a pinwheel and voila it was a bulls eye! Aaaaand I'm neatly locked out in the back yard. With no phone. In a thunderstorm that had the Weather Alert station turning on auxiliary generators... and an Ancient Mongrel who had miraculously found just the right spot in which to pee and was ready to flop in front of the fireplace once more. So what's a girl to do?

Well, if you went to the Jones-Macgyver School of Preparedness, you'd do something spectacular. Like use wet mulch from under the picnic table combined with strips of your pajama bottoms to create a small fire via spontaneous combustion achieved through the internal heat of the decomposing mulch while using the Ancient Mongrel as a counterweight on a lever to pry the fire-weakened door from it's hinges so you and the Ancient Mongrel can swing through over the flames. But you happen to be a student of the Conan-Sonja School of Carrying Sharp Objects, you'd just whip out your long-knife and wriggle the blade between the door and door-facing, forcing it upward until you were able to pop that irksome little hook out of it's resting place in the eye-hook.

You can probably guess, based on the title of this post, which process I opted for. Just another use for my handy-dandy Bowie knife. Good thing I happened to strap its belt on over my $4 goodwill yoga pants pjs before I ventured out into the storm. You just never know when random sharp objects might save your patootie. See, everybody thinks I'm this big meany dragging around weapons, like an antiquated version of Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass. Yeah, not so much. I'm more likely to use my weapons for stuff like hacking my way into a can of bean, or breaking into my own screened porch...

Witty Me Not...

2011-04-12T08:14:00.003-04:00

I was going to write something all snarky and cute for my first post-funeral blog post... but that ain't happening. Well, I'm sure it'll have a little snark somewhere, since I have next to no filter between my brain and my mouth/fingers. But I'm not putting a lot of effort into it. Anywho, here I sit with rain pounding outside and a bunch of angry ponies milling around their stalls. Of course, if we turned the ponies out, they'd have a stroke over getting their little piddies dirty and would be screaming to get back inside immediately. Yeah, um, no Snowy River brumby-types on this farm...

All of this rain was supposed to hit us last night. Correction, oh-my-God-the-world-is-ending hail storms were supposed to kill us all in our beds last night. I slept with kevlar and a flashlight, prepared to go running out to save my Demon Chickens, should the aforementioned oh-my-God-the-world-is-ending hail storms actually make an appearance. Yeah, no. Sleepytime with the kevlar went undisturbed. Well, except for the incident in which Ari rolled off the foot of the bed and managed to hook the top of my foot with a claw in his desperate bid to avoid falling the outrageous two feet to the floor, which wasn't even a full two feet, since my laundry is, ahem, do to be done and piled up in the floor at the foot of the bed. Point is, hail was a no show. Instead, it's here today, like an unexpected visit from that annoying, gossiping aunt whom you love, but also don't really want lounging at your kitchen table, looking through your bills while you're getting cream out of the fridge, or sorting through your bathroom medicine cabinet while 'powdering her nose'. I don't mind the weather being unpredictable. I just mind weathermen promising that they're 'right on top of it Rose' while really, they have no idea what Mother Nature is up to, nor can they hint at what she might throw at you. Some day, I may actually learn my lesson and not listen to them.

On the writing front, I'm on the last two chapters of Thornbriar, I'm in the last third of Red Chief, and I've started a new WIP, as-of-yet untitled, which is a contemporary sort of Beauty and the Beast retelling. I know, I know. ANOTHER one. What can I say? I'm a sucker for any story about loving yourself for who you are, and in my versions, the Beast never gets shafted for a stuffy 'Prince Charming'...

I also have one query out. One small, lonely query. If this one gets handed an explody device, I'm officially shelving Evernow. Okay, I actually cried a little just then, seeing that written. I won't give up on her, of course, but if I'm going to beat the zombie herds in the foot race that is the route to publication, I can't have dead weight slowing me down. And a story that everyone seems to love, but no one really cares about, is a millstone around my neck. I'm spending time trying to put Evernow in a ball gown to win suitors' approval instead of plucking orphan characters off the streets of my mind and trying to give them their own lives in hopes that they'll succeed at getting crowned a success, rather than just showing up and making a scene like Evernow's done. *sighs mournfully*

Coming and Going...

2011-04-04T12:11:00.003-04:00

I'm going to be a little sporadic this week. Hopefully I'll get some sort of post up besides this one, but I make no promises. See, my stepgrandfather died unexpectedly on Friday, April 1. Only in my family can someone manage to drop dead and have everyone asking if they're really dead or if it's an April Fool's joke... only in my family of funeral director-types would anyone even expect that sort of April Fool's joke. Alas, it wasn't a joke, and now we're dealing with the aftermath of such things. Although this is a sad thing - he was a 'step' grandfather, but my birth grandfather died before I was born, and this man married my grandmother when I was only eight, so he's the only grandfather I've ever known on that side of the family - there will be funny stories to follow, I assure you.

I'll hint at them by saying thus far these topics have already been discussed:

The name of my grandfather's father... no one seems to remember it (?? we're leaning toward Lars, for no particular reason)

His sister's full name, no one seems sure of it, or how to list it in the obituary (again ??)

How we can somehow sneak his beloved dog's ashes into his urn, so they're interred together (something he's talked about wanting for years, but there's the small detail that it's apparently illegal to inter an animal on consecrated ground...)

Yeah, I'm definitely going to have a few funny stories to go alongside the sadness.

I Just Realized that Blogger Ate Me...

2011-04-01T14:01:00.003-04:00

Okay this will seem like a random post, but I just realized that blogger ate my original post on the matter. I'm participating in the Epic Follower Blogfest over at Shelley Watters and I was supposed to advertise. I did. And then Blogger ate it. And because I've been embroiled in high drama I didn't realize what had happened until now. You can thank Christi that I'm even in the constest/blogfest. She reminded me about it. *face/palm* anyway, I'm putting up an advertising post after the fact to prove that I did it. So there Blogger!

Epic Follower Blogfest!

2011-04-01T07:30:00.002-04:00

Okay, here's the deal. I'm part of the Epic Follower Blogfest which is being held by Shelley Watters over at her blog. You can check out the deeds here. So very cool, and with a GREAT prize. Plus you get to cruise around and read everyone's pitches. So very cool. Anyway, I've struggled with my pitch line almost as much as I've struggled with my synopsis... and I don't know how this will even rate. Feel free to give me your opinion on the matter!

Here's mine:

Title: EVERNOW
Genre: YA Dystopian
Word Count: 83,200

For 19 yr. old Evernow, surviving a cataclysm turned out to be simple. Falling in love with one of the Fey folk who caused it, not so much.

Thanks and good luck to everyone!

Onward With Life...

2011-03-28T17:46:00.002-04:00

Okay, so the work drama has subsided. Mostly it was gossip and conflicting 'stuff' the likes of which you get when you have the sort of job I do. And as my grandmother always said, 'You can lock against a thief but you can't do anything with a liar' so part of the upset just had to be sorted by the big wigs simply going to the source and asking for the facts. Thankfully, the truth is still worth something in a few places. That's all I'm putting up for now, I've got a date with a WIP... one in which I've abandoned my MC to a kelpie... so she'll be pissed off for sure if I don't get back to her soon...

Hair Rending Aside...

2011-03-24T22:22:00.004-04:00

So, all of my usual rejection drama aside, things are really bad at work right now. REALLY bad. Like... maybe there won't be a work anymore bad... but everything is a giant question mark at the moment... and even when the question mark goes away I don't know what's going to be left behind... I mean, maybe there will just be changes... and then maybe there won't be anything left to change, there'll just be 'wanted' adds... and I've never had to deal with this before. I'm an old prude in the work world. I've had the same job for twelve years. I love my job. And I'm afraid of being a grey-haired thirty year old with no agent, no writing career and no job. And I hate being afraid when there might not be any reason to fear anything. But I am.

Show Me the Voice Blogfest and Contest!

2011-03-20T08:35:00.003-04:00

It's here! The Show Me the Voice Blogefest and Contest has officially started! If you don't know about it, head on over to lovely Brenda Drake's Blog and check it out. It's being judged by the droolicious Natalie Fischer of the Bradford Literary Agency. There's still time to enter! You don't HAVE to put up your first 250 for critique, but I figure that you just never know what you might learn that you never realized you didn't know, so I'm going to put my 250 up for today at least, so I can get comments and suggestions on it, and I'll send it to Brenda for the contest tonight or tomorrow morning.

So without further ado, I give you te first 250 of Evernow!

Name: Artemis Grey
Title: EVERNOW
Genre: YA Dystopian

Life is so much easier without underwear. That was one of the first things Sal taught me. He taught me a lot of other things too. Like how to pee while holding a bow with an arrow nocked and drawn. In the Wild you have to know such things.
That’s what I’m doing now. Crouching over a leafy sprig of creeper so that my urine makes no sound on its way to the ground. My bow, Donriel, rests across my knees. My left hand holds it steady, my index and middle fingers twisted in order to keep tension on the arrow which is, in turn, applying tension to the string. I can let it fly while still crouched if I need to. But my friend, Brother the raven, is nearby at the moment. He’ll forewarn me of anything approaching.
I couldn’t do this wearing underwear but in just chaps and a loincloth it’s easy, with practice. I’ve practiced a lot.
Eyes constantly scanning the forest around me, I pluck a large leaf of lamb’s ear with my free hand. It’s almost better than toilet paper. Softer but also more substantial. The pale leaf comes away with a smearing of blood.
Damn! The curse rings only within the confines of my mind. I’m too smart to curse aloud. Damn. Damn. Damn!
I stare at the leaf for a moment then drop it aside and pick up another. I get the same result. The last time I cycled while I was in the Wild, I was with Sal.

So, tell me what you think! Good luck everyone!

Matchstick Impaired Irish Girl

2011-03-17T18:35:00.003-04:00

I'm supposed to be working on a WIP... any WIP... but I'm at one of 'those' points... you know the ones I mean, where those of us still seeking representation are like 'but what if that OTHER WIP is the one that someone will love... but I'm closer to being finished with THIS WIP... but really, THAT WIP is tighter and will need less revisions'... and since we don't have an agent to smack our bum and tell us which one they think is the hot tamale, we wemble. Any who, instead of working on a WIP, I'm sipping scotch (Balvenie Double Wood 12 Yr, for anyone interested) and writing up this post, which I promise will be pretty funny. At least, I'm still laughing, and if I can laugh about it, you ought to :)

Firstly, Happy St Patrick's Day! Which I celebrate simply out of tradition, since the real history is just a tad terrifying and not something I would really support. But I'll take any excuse to eat cabbage and nip scotch (I hardly drink) so here I am, celebrating the tradition, if not the actual root of the tradition.

That was the 'Irish Girl' part of the post... now for the matchstick impaired part. To start, you have to understand that I'm virtually fearless... except for fire. Now to clarify further, um, I love campfires, roasting marshmallows, fire places, and burning sage. I've even had fires in the teepee. However, 'loose' fire... not so much. I'm pretty much catatonically paralyzed by fear when it comes to like, house fires, forest fires etc. The only genuine faint I've ever managed involved setting the stove on fire. And it took me years to live down the rice cake in the toaster oven incident... but I digress, and you get the picture.

Soooo I decided to light a candle the other night. It was one of those yummy Yankee Candle candles. A vanilla one. This is something I do a lot. I mean, it's a CANDLE. Well, anyway, I went and got the box of matches (Amish handmade ones, no less) and returned to the living room where the candle was sitting atop our nifty fake-fire electric fireplace. First match, strike, strike, strike, nothing. I used up all of the gritty sulfur stuff, no flame. Second match, same deal (so much for 'handmade' being better) so I pulled out match number three. Now by this time, I was annoyed, the cats were lined up staring at me, trying to figure out why I wasn't on the couch any more and the forensics show I was watching was explaining how the butter knife that someone stabbed through some woman's eye didn't actually kill her, so I wasn't paying that much attention to match number three. After all, one and two already gave me the shaft.

Since I wasn't looking, I failed to realize that lucky number three lit up brighter than the Griswold's Christmas tree. Until the flaming tip flew by my face on it's way south, anyway. The entire match head didn't break off. Oh, no, just the sulfur part. It sailed up, then down, smashing into my thigh, because I had my hip all popped out with a little attitude. Yeah, so I was wearing stretch pants (you know you own a pair) that I bought like three years ago at American Eagle for about two dollars. You know, those stretch pants that are made of fake long john material. All the girls were wearing them for a while (mine have never left the house because my momma taught me better than to wear my jammies in public) and since mine are a couple of years old, they've attained that really soft skim of fiber that pants get when they reach that 'perfectly broken in' stage. Well, they HAD that soft skim of fiber. The right leg is bald now.

Yep, as soon as that burning sulfur got in the same zip code as my well-worn stretch pants, my right leg went up like the fourth of July. I made that breakdown Sally Fields had in Steel Magnolias look like a tea party. Seriously. Course, it's sort of hard to run from your own leg. I didn't get all that far. Just far enough to hit the front of my grandmother's ancient yellow recliner. Being, well, ancient, it can't take a great deal, so when I crashed into the thing, it rocked back, and I REALLY crashed. My butt stayed in the seat for about a tenth of a second. Just long enough for the chair to go over backwards and flip my flaming carcass into the stair banister, where I landed in an extinguished pile. You have to love furniture that's smarter than you are. Left to my own wits I would have staggered about squealing like a bad remake of the Towering Inferno. As it is, I came out with nothing but a very smooth pant leg and high blood pressure. And I did get the candle lit, dammit. And it smelled great. Even got rid of the singed stretch pants scent that was lingering in the air. So there you have it. I'm totally matchstick impaired. I mean, some girls have them and freeze to death in doorways. I have them and light my britches on fire. At least I won't freeze to death any time soon.

And with that, I shall leave you. I'm sure there's a WIP I can torture lying around somewhere... Happy writing all!

Contest and Housesitting... and Probably Some Random Blather...

2011-03-12T10:10:00.004-05:00

I'm housesitting at the moment. It's just over the weekend, not a big deal. And yet, something about the fact that I left home Thursday morning and haven't gone back yet is having an odd effect on me. I feel like I've never left work or something. It doesn't help that I'm in the last third of the first draft of Thornbriar and that vile-tempered Red Chief keeps trying to run roughshod over the retelling. God help me if the characters could ever actually show up in physical form and have at each other...

One of my temporary fur children. Can you feel her terror over having been left in my charge?

Next order of business... a CONTEST!!! My friend Christi (remember Christi? Smart gal I'm always stealing smart ideas from? That's the one :) sent me a link to a contest over at Brenda Drake's Head over and check it out. I'm uber stoked. Even more because as you'll remember, I'm nearing the point in which Evernow will be given a SPOT ON THE SHELF *cue high drama music* In fact, as soon as I've gotten Thornbriar finished, I'm going to take a break from querying, more like than not, and focus on editing Thornbriar as well as AGMG which I haven't forgotten about although it's been a while since I worked on it. But I digress. Check out the contest, join in if you've got something eligible. It'll be the first time that I've ever put that much of Evernow up on my own blog (I have been part of a few other contests involving openings and such) and I'm a little nervous about what everyone is going to think. Even if you aren't in the contest, swing by and give me your opinion!

And for the blather... am I the only, ahem, mature girl out there who still watches anime? I've got a number of friends who read manga (I'm still getting the hang of it) and I love light novels like D Vampire Hunter and Trinity Blood. But more and more, I'm dabbling in anime. It can get mighty weird, mighty quick, so I'm picky, but I just found Black Blood Brothers and spent all night with one episode after another playing while I was writing. Now I'm drooling for the light novels on which the anime was based.
Pretty soon I'm going to have a room full of light novels and their subsequent animes...

Bloggy-Type Awards!

2011-03-09T10:04:00.004-05:00

So I just got a comment from Kristina over at KayKay's Corner letting me know that she was awarding me two blog awards! *takes a moment to feel special* I'm not the only one either. So head over there and check out the other winners. Blog-hop and take a gander (you're not the only one to use that word Kristina :) at everyone's entries in the Catch Me If You Can Blogfest! Officially, it's over, but hey, everyone loves feedback, even after the fact. Thanks so much Kristina!

So, to accept these awards, I must:

Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.
Share 7 things about yourself.
Award 15 or so recently discovered great bloggers.
Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

Here goes!

7 Things about me:

1: I am an identical twin. I know, one of me is almost too much for reality, but hey, the other girl is virtually normal, so that helps.

2: I have a very high tolerance for physical pain. In fact, I have 9 hours worth of tattooing on my back, and I both ate a cheeseburger and fell asleep during the various sittings. I wish I could handle the near-misses with agents in a similar fashion, as opposed the Sicilian hair-rending that seems to overtake me every time I get a request for a full, and really encouraging feedback, followed by a 'not quite for me'... *rends hair*

3: I never had an imaginary friend, but I went imaginary places... I still go to imaginary places... I just write down the trips now and try to sell them...

4: I have spent hours asleep on my horse. No joking. My father was a sailor who could sleep on a rock in the middle of the ocean. I got his genes.

5: I also got my dad's 'can't spell sheat' genes... this hinders me greatly in my writing endeavors...

6: I hated school so much that when I randomly said once (in about fourth grade) that 'I'd quite school except that I know you'll go to jail and I don't want you in jail' to my mother, she LET ME BELIEVE THAT IT WAS ILLEGAL TO QUITE SCHOOL. Seriously, I was out of high school before I realized I was wrong! But I'm glad she did it.

7: I have dyscalculia, which is like dyslexia for numbers. To this day, I transpose them and anything numeric is an utter nightmare to deal with.

Who I'm awarding! Um, there's a lot of great new bloggers I've met, but I don't have time to award everyone because horses are screaming at me...

Trisha Leaver

Angela Scott

Kristina Fugate

Nicole Ducleroir

Gina Blechman

Okay, I know it's not fifteen but it's all I can manage right now... horses are still screaming and I'm a dork on the computer...

Beer for Lunch and a Recounting of the Infamous Air Freshener Incident...

2011-03-07T11:58:00.005-05:00

I'm having beer for lunch today. Not beer WITH lunch. Beer FOR lunch. Don't judge. It's been one of those days. One of those weeks. Hell, one of those MONTHS. No, nothing really 'bad' has happened. I'm just still moping over my near-misses with agents... I know, I should get over it, but if I could just 'get over it', I wouldn't care, and if I didn't care, I wouldn't be putting myself through this torture chamber that passes for the road to publication.

But I digress, and I have promised that I will put up some funny posts since I've been moping so much. And as KLo requested that I tell of the 'air freshener incident' I will now do so. Hopefully, you will enjoy. If I happen to get a little goofy by the end, we'll know I'm running out of beer... just joking, it's just one beer, and I'm not even driving the tractor later... :)

To begin this story, you must understand the entire situation of that day. Things have been very busy and very crazy recently, as only the life of aspiring writers who are also mothers or into horses can get crazy and busy. On the day of the aforementioned incident, we were shorthanded, had a lame horse, had a client who was supposed to buy a horse drop off the face of the earth, a man coming to take samples of all of the fields for seeding/fertilizing, a flat tire on the tractor, a sick kid, and an elderly cat who had lain against the electric heater and literally slow roasted a section of his own back... and that's just what I can remember offhand. Serious shifizzle was going down. Anyway, that was the sort of energy circulating. On top of all that, I'd just gotten one of THOSE rejections. The sort where you're 'almost' cool enough to work on the school newspaper, but not quite. So I was totally useless, beyond saving everyone else from any loose chocolate calories.
Lunch that day wasn't really lunch either. I mean, we sat down and started watching A Nightmare on Elm Street (the new one) but we had to get up for a hundred different little things that interrupted lunch. That combined with the AWFUL writing of the movie (although I ADORE Jackie Earl Haley's portrayal of Freddie) which only made me groan over how someone got the movie made while I can't even land an agent, sort of ruined lunch. The result was that lunch blurred into the afternoon chores and while we normally would have been outside doing something specific, we were, instead, doing random things inside. Like cleaning the cat litter boxes.
Now I work on a horse farm, but really the lady collects cats. Seriously. We have cats off the street, rescued from dumpsters, taken from hoarders and saved from the roadside. A few have wondered up of their own accord and one was thrown from the window of a moving van. The point is, where there are many cats, there is much cat poop. So cleaning the litter boxes is a daily thing. I was the one cleaning boxes. My coworker, code name Momma Chiquita was emptying the trash cans. My sister Fenris was yelling at her cell phone as it randomly dropped calls. While I filled up the trash cans Momma Chiquita was emptying with fresh dirty cat litter, we were arguing about how mean our boss Jefe, should be to both the woman who no longer seems to be in residence on planet earth (leaving us with a horrid pain-in-the-ass horse) and some random man who had done something stupid. The thing about Jefe is, she's a good boss, but sometimes she's TOO nice. And then we all get mad on her behalf. Also, Jefe had some other personal troubles at the time, and did not need extra stress.
While Momma Chiquita and I were arguing, Jefe came through the lounge from her office announcing that she now had to deal with an entirely new matter that involved her ex-husband (I will leave it at that) and went into the laundry room beyond us. As Jefe entered the room, Fenris exited, now yelling at the farm phone, which wasn't letting her dial a regular number. Meanwhile, Fenris' cell phone was ringing off the hook as our mother called for about the third time in a row, trying desperately to make contact. Over our conversation, Momma Chiquita and I could hear Jefe's cell phone start ringing out in the wash room, with, what we were sure, would be the most recently discovered catastrophe. Throwing out random snarks and bets as to what that catastrophe might be, neither of us saw Jefe come back into the room, although we heard her because she was still talking on the phone.
Wending her way between the two of us, she was passed and nearly to the office door before we noticed the smile on her face and the fact that her hand was raised into the air above her head. Really, it was the suffocating scent of 'tropical forest' that got our attention. A fine layer of mist was issuing forth from Jefe's raised hand as she doused everything in three rooms with an entire can of air freshener, including Fenris who was still screaming at the phone. The smile on Jefe's face was as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa's but said clearly that 'Everything might be going to shit, but it can still smell like a rose, dammit.'
Well, we got so damned tickled about being hosed in air freshener that we laughed until our sides hurt, and afterwards, none of it seemed half so bad. The moral of the story? Anything can smell better with the right attitude, even if you're still dealing with genuine shit. It's all in how you tackle it.
So when the going gets tough, get a little air freshener and get to work!

*I know that's bee spray, but what are the chances I had a photo of someone holding air freshener that way?

Catch Me if You Can Blogfest!

2011-03-07T11:51:00.002-05:00

Ok, this seemed like fun, so I thought, what the hey! Here are the first 500 of Evernow, my YA dystopian for the Catch Me if You Can Blogfest.

Life is so much easier without underwear. That was one of the first things Sal taught me. He taught me a lot of other things too. Like how to pee while holding a bow with an arrow nocked and drawn. In the Wild you have to know such things.
That’s what I’m doing now. Crouching over a leafy sprig of creeper so that my urine makes no sound on its way to the ground. My bow, Donriel, rests across my knees. My left hand holds it steady, my index and middle fingers twisted in order to keep tension on the arrow which is, in turn, applying tension to the string. I can let it fly while still crouched if I need to. But my friend, Brother the raven, is nearby at the moment. He’ll forewarn me of anything approaching.
I couldn’t do this wearing underwear. But in just chaps and a loincloth it’s easy, with practice. I’ve practiced a lot.
Eyes constantly scanning the forest around me, I pluck a large leaf of lambs ear with my free hand. It’s almost better than toilet paper. Softer but also more substantial. The pale leaf comes away with a smearing of blood.
Damn! The curse rings only within the confines of my mind. I’m too smart to curse aloud. Damn. Damn. Damn!
I stare at the leaf for a moment then drop it aside and pick up another. I get the same result. The last time I cycled while I was in the Wild, I was with Sal. Now I’m alone, with no one to keep watch or hunt while I lie in miserable discomfort. And bleed. And attract anything with half a sense of smell.
Brother startles me from my cringing thoughts, dropping from the air to strut around me in a circle. He lowers his thick-beaked head and snatches the soiled leaf of cows tongue from my hand. Skittering a step sideways, he grabs up the first one too, ratting them like a terrier with a toy.
“Yes, yes take them!” I murmur, shooing the black bird aloft. Sal taught him to carry dirty bandages, anything with blood on it far away and drop them where they won’t betray their source.
With the bird winging overhead I quickly set Donriel aside, rummaging for the cloths I carry in my rucksack. They never work like in the stories and books but they’re all I have nowadays. Three years after surviving the cataclysm that killed most of humanity, I’m used to going without what was once considered modern comforts.
I don’t have much time to debate what to do. It won’t take long for me to attract unwanted attention.
I skirted a small settlement yesterday morning. I might make it back there by nightfall if I rush. But if I go back to the settlement while I’m bleeding, they’ll know that I can still bear children while so many women nowadays inexplicably can’t. That will make it harder on me when I try to leave. And I will leave. I always do.
I decide to go it alone instead, find a defensible hiding spot and hope that I go unnoticed by anything roaming.

Why Being a Nun Has Left Me Ill-Equipped For the Process of Getting Published...

2011-03-02T07:44:00.004-05:00

I have been a nun my entire life. Sister Dreama of the Order of the Written Soul*

Being as I'm a nun, and utterly devoted to my Order, I miraculously avoided certain things that most other kids suffered when they were kids. Things they lived through and learned from. The biggest, possibly most profound of these 'missed life lessons' was dating.

Simply put, I didn't care to ever have a significant other. I had a lot of friends in school (hey, there were other Goonies around) and every single one of them dated. Girls and boys alike. They flirted. They held hands. They loved each other. Then things changed and they broke up (most of the time) and there was fallout. Or maybe they never even got together. I've comforted my friends (boy and girl) as they cried because they 'weren't good enough' for whoever it was that they so desperately wanted to be 'good enough' for. I was not given to any desire to share my life with a boyfriend anyway, and watching my friends go through all of that trauma and self-doubt and in some cases, worse, self-hatred and self-destructive relationships, I avoided the rats nest of dating and stuck with the Order of the Written Soul, where there was safety.

I had the same experience with cliques and friends. Having been blessed with a twin sister, I was never alone no matter what. So I didn't care if I ever had any other friends. In plain truth, I cannot ever remember trying to be anyone's friend. All of the friends I have, I either simply met and was effortlessly friends with, or they were people who met me through my sister and liked me. Thusly, I never went through that awful phase where you're willing to do almost anything just to fit in with a group. But I watched friends suffer. I watched them go for days without eating because the other cheerleaders never had to worry about 'that fat bubble' popping over the waistband of their skirt when they bent over during a routine. I watched really talented guys drop out of band because band was for geeks, and the same with drama (um you manly guys, remember how Chris Daughtry was always hanging in the drama room with us geeks? Yeah, not bad for a guy who participated in skits that included tying two-by-fours to your feet as skis) I saw horrible things done in the name of 'fitting in' with a certain crowd. And I was really glad that I didn't care. Again, the Order of the Written word was a safe haven for a little reclusive nun like myself.

The only problem is that now this little nun has left her Order behind and is trying to make her way in the world. And while she never had to care about anyone else's opinion while she was sequestered in the sheltered, loving embrace of her Order of the Written Word, surrounded by books written by others, and books of her own writing, now, she's obliged to care. Turns out that trying to fit in with pre-established groups IS JUST AS MISERABLE AS IT LOOKED LIKE. It hurts! Like hell. And I'm ill-equipped for the process. Totally ill-equipped.

I know my posts have been sort of drab of late. I can't defend them because they've been reflective of my mood. I think perhaps if the rejections had stayed simple form rejections, I wouldn't be as confused emotionally. I mean, if you meet a cute guy and he smiles and walks off, obviously he's not that into you. But if you meet a guy at the coffee bar, banter with him for an hour and he takes your number, then you wonder why he never called you. I mean you spend time thinking about it. Did you do something wrong? Was there a tissue comet on your nose ring? Did you have coffee grinds in your teeth? Was he just playing you? Did you totally read into things?

I'm aware that an agent isn't your significant other. I'm oversimplifying. But the analogy totally works for me personally. As much as you might love someone, you aren't going to be celebrating any fifty-year anniversaries if your relationship isn't a working one too. It's the same for an agent. You might like each other, but if you work in totally different ways, the match isn't going to fit. And if you work great together but don't like each other at all, well, that's going to make appearances awkward and stain the work part of things. I also know that an agent requesting material is not the same as making goo goo eyes at some guy at a coffee bar. But the nicer rejections can be... upsetting... in a weird way.

Every agent who's ever rejected me has been very nice. I really am not complaining about the agents. They have a job to do. Problem is, for them it's a job (although they love what they do) and for me, it's the rest of my life. Writer is a job I'm applying for, in a way, and every time a door shuts on me, I feel it. And sometimes getting handed a piece of paper that says "No thanks" is easier than getting one that says "You're an engaging person with a lot to offer, but we don't want you in our office." Again, I'm oversimplifying, I know. There are many reasons that agents reject. But as a writer, your emotional response is not something based off of logical thinking. No more than you're drive to write is based off of a mild interest in the craft. Most of us write because we NEED to. Likewise, we feel the impact of a rejection with that part of ourselves, rather than the logical side. Unless one of us is Spock... Anyway, this is something I'm working through. This strange catharses of 'You're a nice girl but I don't want to actually date you' associated with the 'one step closer to success' rejections where I get told that I'm a good writer who will succeed, just not now and just not with Agent X who's sending the rejection.

I apologize for my melancholy posting, and I promise earnestly to get some funny ones together. Maybe I'll tell you about getting stuck between the bed and the wall when I fell out the other morning (I had to crawl under the bed to finally get free) or I could recount the recent air freshener incident... or the trapdoor desk chair... I promise I'll organize one of them. Until then, I'm off to pony wrestle... Happy writing all!

*I just want to disclose that I in no way mean to disrespect true nuns who live in devotion to God. I grew up Catholic, and my mother was close friends with several members of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Some of my best memories are of sledding on cafeteria trays with the younger Sisters. They are very cool people.

Ugghhh...

2011-02-28T08:04:00.003-05:00

This is one of those times (writing-wise) that people keep helpfully telling me I will live through, even though it doesn't seem that way right now... The problem is that life can be so unexpectedly short... and it could be years before anything I've written sees daylight... and that's assuming that some day soon one single agent, somewhere, miraculously says 'Yep, this is TOTALLY for me' as opposed to 'Great, but just NOT for me'... and because several people I know are looking at vastly shortened lifespans (one of them is in her early forties, the other is only EIGHT) I'm feeling a little melodramatic. LK's sudden loss does not help matters. I look at LK, and how hard she worked, and for how long, and at how new all of her writing success was, and all I can hear in my head is the 'you'll make it eventually' my loving friends tell me all the time. But maybe I won't. I mean, maybe there won't BE an 'eventually' for me. You just never know. And right now I feel like I'm wandering around at the head of a road, but I'm not allowed to even start walking down that road until someone shows up and says 'Go!' and nobody is showing up.

Okay, whew. Sorry. I just had to get that out of my system. And for the record... I'll be sending out more queries this week... *bares chest for the inevitable bullets of failure, while hoping at the same time, there won't be any failure* and *continues working to make Evernow irresistible*

And, btw, I stayed up until 1 am last night (er, this morning?) and got OODLES written on Red Chief. And I'm all set to keep writing... as soon as I can get done with this pesky thing called 'work'... so yay for that.

Oh, and everybody please pray/send good juju to the sick people I know... too young is too young period, but eight years old is a travesty.

Five Question Friday...

2011-02-25T09:10:00.003-05:00

I totally stole this from Must Read Faster It looked like fun and I needed a not-so-serious post just to put something up. So here goes!

1. Can you drive a stick shift?
Yes. At like 5 mph... well, maybe faster, but let's say I'm not proficient, just passable. Now a stick shift tractor? Totally!

2. What are two foods you just can't eat?
Anything still breathing, and anything associated with feces. I'll try most anything, and I HAVE had haggis, but beyond haggis, nothing rear-end oriented.

3. Do you buy Girl Scout Cookies? What is your favorite kind?
Peanut butter patties!!!

4. How do you pamper yourself?
Do nothing all day but write/writing associated activities and/or reading

5. What is your nickname and how did you get it?
The funniest is Cow-Hips. I got it back in high school because while I wasn't scrawny at all, I did/still have very prominent hipbones. Like, REALLY prominent. When we would rough house and stuff, I was renown for hip-checking. I could send people sailing and they usually got bruised by my boney hip. So Cow-Hips became my nickname. It's a weird one, but the people who gave it to me loved (still love) me. The other is Artemis, which is now my pseudonym. I got that one because of my aversion to boys, and dating and my propensity for running wild.

LK Madigan

2011-02-24T11:30:00.003-05:00

I did not know LK Madigan. But still I knew her. I knew her because she was a writer, like me. I knew her because she had the same dreams I had. And she DID touch those dreams. She created things. Those things affected other people. She put herself into everything she wrote, and by reading what she wrote you met her, even if you never actually met her. So I knew LK Madigan without ever knowing her. And I miss her laughter without ever having heard it. Her laughter, her voice, her presence will live on in her writing for me. So many people who did actually meet her have put up things in remembrance. At first, I didn't think it was my place to put up something, since my memories were just ersatz glimpses of a wonderful and much loved person. Now I think it's a good thing so say that I will miss a woman who impacted me simply by following her own dreams, by indomitably existing in the world while she was among us.

These are the lyrics to a song called 'When I Go' by Dave Carter - another soul whose time was too short among mortals. It is how I want people to remember me when I have gone, and I hope that those who did know LK in life will think it a fitting eulogy to her. It's my little eulogy, from one writer to another.

Come, lonely hunter, chieftain and king
I will fly like the falcon when I go
Bear me my brother under your wing
I will strike fell like lightning when I go

I will bellow like the thunder drum, invoke the storm of war
A twisting pillar spun of dust and blood up from the prairie floor
I will sweep the foe before me like a gale out on the snow
And the wind will long recount the story, reverence and glory, when I go

Spring, spirit dancer, nimble and thin
I will leap like coyote when I go
Tireless entrancer, lend me your skin
I will run like the gray wolf when I go

I will climb the rise at daybreak, I will kiss the sky at noon
Raise my yearning voice at midnight to my mother in the moon
I will make the lay of long defeat and draw the chorus slow
I'll send this message down the wire and hope that someone wise is listening when I go

And when the sun comes, trumpets from his red house in the east
He will find a standing stone where long I chanted my release
He will send his morning messenger to strike the hammer blow
And I will crumble down uncountable in showers of crimson rubies when I go

Sigh, mournful sister, whisper and turn
I will rattle like dry leaves when I go
Stand in the mist where my fire used to burn
I will camp on the night breeze when I go

And should you glimpse my wandering form out on the borderline
Between death and resurrection and the council of the pines
Do not worry for my comfort, do not sorrow for me so
All your diamond tears will rise up and adorn the sky beside me when I go

del Toro Dreams, and Monstrous Things...

2011-02-22T08:20:00.015-05:00

So I had this random dream last night wherein Guillermo del Toro was making a movie out of Evernow. *pauses to catch breath, even though it was just a dream* Either you will think that del Toro turning my book into a movie is the most utterly amazing thing ever in the existence of my little monster-loving brain, or you will not get it at all. Suffice to say that IF del Toro ever even READ (and liked) Evernow, I would go into paroxysms of ecstasy. Much less if he ever made a movie out of the book.

Truthfully, childlike adoration and gaganess aside, Guillermo del Toro is, for me, what the Great Masters were for the art world. He is a Master in his own right, able to transform the world around him with a mere word or touch. His mind is a doorway into as-of-yet unseen dimensions. But he creates these amazing windows for us so that we can glimpse those places. And he has this unreasonable gift for reaching inside you and grabbing emotions you didn't know you had. All of this while surrounding you with gloriously magnificently rendered monsters. Monsters that both horrify and entrance. My kind of monsters...

Aaaaanyway... the whole dreaming about del Toro turning Evernow into a movie really sort of got to me. I'm not at all the sort of person who imagines her books up on the big screen. I have no secret desires to be an actress (although stunt riding would be totally fun, and I do think it would be awesome to sit for like five hours and get turned into some sort of beastie) and I rarely ever think along the lines of 'what actor would play which character' in my stories. However, some actors were already in my del Toro dream, playing various roles. Who knows where dreams come from. Maybe in some alternate dimension, an alternate del Toro IS making an Evernow movie, and I managed to somehow glimpse it. Maybe I ate some rotten cheese before bed. Or maybe I'm just harboring secret desires even from myself. The point is, I've been up for hours and I'm still getting the shivers when I recall the del Toro dream and the movie based off a book that hasn't even landed me an agent yet. And I've sort of gotten this list together of what actors would play what characters. And at this moment, I don't care how silly it is. I don't care that it'll never happen. I don't care that it's all fantasy. I'm embracing it. So without further ado, here's a little line-up of my own casting, along with a little blurby on why I think each actor/actress would be great for the part.

First off we have Sarah Polley in the role of Evernow. I have loved her since Avonlea, and frankly I adore her to no end. There has never been anyone else in my mind who could capture Evernow's manners, strength and vulnerability. Although Sarah looks like the girl next door, she can certainly kick serious ass and yet easily captures the nuances of emotion and heart that elude many actresses.

Next up would be Evernow's counterpart, partner in crime and devoted best friend, Clara. Although she's smothered in self-doubt and insecurity when they first meet, Evernow immediately sees a strength within Clara that will not be denied. Kristin Stewart is SO much more than vampire candy. She has the scope and depth to portray a girl who feels that her own identity is a burden to others, but who over time grows into herself and realizes that life is to be seized by the gonads.

What else can I say about Kevin Durand besides YUM? I mean, really, that's all there is to it. But if I have to, I can add that it's going to take a big guy all around to stand up to Evernow when she's pissed off and Kevin Durand is a guy who could look decent doing it. Good-hearted but dominating Tank is the warrior who first decides to take Evernow into the settlement where she meets Clara. Although Tank and Evernow never do see eye to eye, their relationship is a hippo-dance of respect, intimidation, and trust, with neither willing to give over to the other.

If I didn't have a character that was perfect for Doug Jones, I'd write one in just for him. That's how much I love him. He is the most gracious and gently mannered celebrity I've ever had the good fortune to met. This picture was taken at Dragon Con (yeah I'm wearing lingerie. And horns. What can I say? I mean, it WAS Dragon Con) Anyway, I'm sure that Doug doesn't remember me (unless he has a thing for horned 50's pin-ups...) because he meets hundreds of fans every year. He knew he wouldn't remember me the moment he met me. But he acted like he'd known me for years. He thanked me for wanting to see him, for waiting to see him, for supporting him as an actor. He told me that people like him wouldn't exist without people like me. I even got a hug. A really good hug. Doug understates his own abilities, citing good writing, good directing, good co-stars. But the truth is that Doug is an utterly amazing actor, and he is unquestionably my number one pick if I could choose anyone in the world to portray the Fey character of Shade in Evernow. It's hard to describe Shade's character without giving away too much, but suffice to say, that if you want someone to play a pivotal, vital, inhuman character, you need an inhumanly gifted actor. Doug Jones is the man for the job.

Uriah Amberton is an irrepressible charmer. You can never be sure if his cocky demeanor is a put-on or a warning of what lies in store for anyone who crosses him. As different from Tank as day and night, easy-going Uri usually lets his Tank lead the way. But there are shocking secrets in Uri's past. Luke Goss stole my heart the moment I saw him in Blade 2. Then he won my undying adoration as Prince Nuada. He's played many other roles and done a wonderful job in them all. But Nomak and Nuada have always stayed with me because in both cases, Goss portrayed honestly bad bad guys but they were bad guys that weren't JUST bad. They were characters that did awful things, but did them because of deep underlying reasons. In Nomak's case it was revenge for a life of agony, a life that had been created solely for someone else's benefit. In Nuada's case, it was out of love and the desperate devotion to his dying people. They were bad guys who had suffered bad things at the hands of others, not just mindless thugs. I need someone pretty and completely confident for Uri's part, and Goss fits the bill perfectly.

Michael Christian is maybe one of the most complex and chameleon-like characters in the story. Again, without giving any spoilers it's hard to articulate the entirety of Michael Christian's character, but Paul Bettany could nail him, and that's all you need to know. He's the sort of actor that can convince you to love him in one sentence and loathe him in one glance.

Elliaer is a young Fey boy who becomes Evernow's confidant and devoted companion. Although he and Evernow met under violent circumstances, Elliaer sees the goodness within her and readily offers his friendship to her. Just as she has never cared that humans are supposed to hate Fey folk, Elliaer has never cared that he should hate humans. Alex Pettyfer is a rising star who has both the looks and the skill to make it in any costume or character. I can't wait to see him in Beastly!

The Dangers of Trigger Finger... And Other Seemingly Random Dribble...

2011-02-21T18:29:00.006-05:00

I sent a query! I had it all planned out neatly. Of course, I've rewritten the thing several thousand times already. Then my sister, code name Fenris, read it. And I changed it a few more times. Then she read the ten pages that went with the query. And I changed that a few times. This was on top of some changes I made to the ten pages (that turned out AWESOMELY) at the suggestion of Christi. Thank you Christi! Fenris noticed those changes (most of them) immediately and loved them. Anyway, so I had all of this neatly plotted out and lined up and sitting pretty in the 'compose mail' section of my email. But I intended to read it all just one more time. You know, for good measure. Just in case... And then my index finger had a seizure. Or a spasm. Or maybe it was like a fart in the bloodstream. I don't know. Whatever it was, my finger hit the enter key, and since the cursor was hovering over 'send' (cause I'd tried to send the stupid query about three times already) the thing sent. Even though I wasn't ready to send it. Although I WAS ready. I just wasn't ready ready. Sooo I squealed like a pig in the slaughter chute, as if the noise and writhing might somehow be useful and it wasn't useful at all, just disturbing to everyone around me who thought that something was, you know, ACTUALLY wrong. Which, of course, it wasn't because I'd already made everything as good as it could be. The only part of the process that wasn't ready, was me. Funny how that works.

Christi (yes, I intend to hire her to go everywhere with me because she's so smart, and, well, she makes me feel smart by sharing her smartness with me) gave me the advice that in the future, I should leave the address box empty until the very last thing. That way I can play all I want with things and they can't go anywhere because I haven't told them where to go yet. I learn a lot of stuff by the hardest. This won't be one of those lessons. Next time, I'm leaving the 'where to' until last.

But, all of this momentary drama got me thinking. That and a comment left by my very good longtime friend, code name Perryn, on my Facebok status when I blathered about my trigger finger. Perryn's comment read: 'Maybe your finger is just smarter than you are. Maybe it got sick of waiting for you.' He might have something there. Maybe my finger was smarter than I was. It was those fingers that scratched out the first line to Evernow. The one line in the entire book that I promise has never been changed. The one line that several established authors have laughed at and loved. I didn't think about that line. I just felt it and my fingers wrote it. Maybe sometimes your fingers know better than you do. Maybe all you have to do is let them write whatever they want instead of whatever you THINK you should write. It's easy to get caught up in editing and editing is a good thing. But you can't edit something if you don't have enough of it to edit. After all, editing is sort of like debriding a burn. But first you have to have enough tissue - both damaged and undamaged - in order to be able to cut away the bad stuff so you can find the good stuff.

So the next time your fingers have an urge to write something, even if your head is telling you not to write anything that's not perfect, ignore your brain. Brains are overrated. Unless you're a zombie and then it's another matter entirely... But I digress. Let your insides decide what to write and let your fingers give it life. You can always trim the fat later.

So Random...

2011-02-17T07:57:00.004-05:00

I was in the Bernard Pivot Blogfest yesterday... totally hopped on board at the last minute when I saw all the coolness going by. And randomness of all randomness, My follower count jumped from 97 to 106!!! I mean that's like 10 more people! Totally gobsmacked. Aren't I supposed to like have a little party or something? I'm very stoked to have so many followers. It's like a scene from Julie and Julia over here where Julie finds out people are reading her blog... that or a recreation of Truvy shouting 'I'm a chain!' Not to date myself or anything... But anyway, I'm so excited to have broken the 100 follower mark. And I didn't even notice it was happening. Blame it on the dyscalculia, or the fact that whenever I do anything online during the day, it's done through a haze of dirt, horse sweat and hay particulates, but either way, my follower count snuck right up on me. YAY! Thank you everyone who added me to their list! I'm still working my way through all of the entrants in the blogfest, around trying to get a query letter reworked *wince, cringe, groan* and getting my real job done but so far I'm loving all of the answers everyone has put up!

And to celebrate the jump in my followers, an amusing picture... Followers, I salute you! And love you. Thank you for being there!

Bernard Pivot Blogfest!

2011-02-16T08:03:00.004-05:00

Nichole Ducleroir got this entire thing started and I heard about it from a guy who saw something about it when he was looking over a girl's shoulder in a wifi shop while waiting for a latte... ok, total lie, but it sounds good. The truth is that I saw it this morning while I was trying desperately to catch up on blog stuff (I haven't caught up on anything because I'm doing this instead) and it seemed like too much fun to miss. So here goes.

* What is your favorite word?
Indomitable

* What is your least favorite word?
But

* What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Pen, paper, nature

* What turns you off?
humanity scraping over nature, rather than trying to exist within it

* What is your favorite curse word?
Probably Hell's pit

* What sound or noise do you love?
Leaves falling through trees, horses chewing, train whistles my best friend snorting while she laughs

* What sound or noise do you hate?
traffic

* What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Something in the circus

* What profession would you not like to do?
anything with customer service

* If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
I'd love it if he just erupted into belly laughs

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Women...

2011-02-12T12:27:00.005-05:00

So I was going to use today to catch up with the blogging and email and yada yada yada... and then I started to write... so that's what I've been doing... instead of being all organized... like adults are supposed to be... rather than being so easily distracted by scraps of dialogue and leftover dreams that simply won't be ignored... Whatever! So instead of a long blathering post today, I thought I'd get all wild and dangerous and post the opening to my current main WIP. Those of you who've been reading my dribble for any length of time will know that my 'main' WIPs change almost on an hourly basis sometimes, but this one has been center stage for a few weeks now, since I entered the stage of 'unhappy with life right now, I think I have to considering shelving Evernow/related works' and I started focusing on something entirely unrelated.

That something is Red Chief. It's a YA urban fantasy, although most of the story takes place in Faerie, and is the first in a series that right now is plotted through three books. That could always change of course. I haven't even written a blurb or anything, but in a nutshell, the Unseelie Court gets a lot more than it bargained for when it kidnaps eighteen year old Eimhear in hopes of trading her to the Seelie Court in exchange for the Unseelie Queen's consort, who's being held hostage by the Seelie folk. Smart mouthed Eim immediately makes such problems for everyone that the mysterious Huntsman (who is aiding the Unseelie, but seems suspiciously above the Queen's control) binds her to him so that she can be Commanded to obey orders. What starts out as a rescue mission and struggle for power in the Fae realms turns into intrigue, romance, and an outcome that no one expected. And Eimhear will find out the hard way that the Fae folk aren't quite the immortal powerful creatures humans think they are.

So without further babble, I give you the opening of Red Chief:

No Such Thing

The day began with a dog peeing on Eimhear's cell phone, and it ending with her sitting chained to a dead tree. Given the choice, Eim would have opted for more dog pee. The thing about kidnapping, though, is that you don't get a whole lot of choice in the matter. That would sort of defeat the purpose. So there she sat, wadded up in a bank of dead leaves, surrounded by creatures that weren't supposed to exist. Creatures that, until only a few hours earlier, hadn't existed beyond her Grandma Dingle's Old World stories about people under the hills.
Eim's left foot still throbbed where she'd given one of her attackers a flying kick. With her New Rocks boots, made of heavy leather and metal, she should have broken the guy's ribs. Unfortunately, he seemed to be made of stone. Literally. Whatever he was made of, he hadn't been bothered in the slightest by her violent kicking. Frankly, none of them seemed particularly bothered by anything Eimhear did. Which was annoying as hell.
"Hey boulder brain! Can I get some water over here?" She yelled loudly on purpose because she'd already been warned to keep her voice down twice. Being a pain in the ass was what she was good at.
"Boulder brain. How utterly original." The stone creature, who was really very normal looking, stood from his place at the fire. "Here you go, dude. Pardon me, I believe the term is dudette." He came close enough to drop the canteen within reach.
"Seriously? You're only a couple of decades behind in terminology." Eimhear picked up the canteen, her manacles clinking, and watched him return to his companions.
She could almost believe that none of it was real, that it was all just a bad acid trip. Except that Eimhear never did drugs of any kind. Well, unless you counted the time that Justin Drake gave slipped her a roofie at the junior prom. And even that hadn't affected her the way it was supposed to. It just made her dizzy and when Justin tried to kiss her she'd broken his nose. Then he'd gone around school for a week telling his friends not to bother with Eim because she was 'roofie-resistant'. He'd only shut up after she knocked one of his teeth out. Some guys just learned the hard way or not at all. Of course, Eim's younger sister Sinead had been more scandalized by Eim's thrashing of Justin than of Justin's attempt to drug Eim.
"Well Eim, if you didn't stomp around like a maniac in boots and dated like everyone else, guys wouldn't feel like they had to slip you something just to talk to you." Trust perfect, inside-the-lines Sinead to blame Eim's unconventional behavior for everything.
No, this was no roofie in her drink. This was a genuine, bona fide event. Inhuman kidnappers and all. Three of them were sitting around the fire. A fourth was walking around somewhere in the darkness. Then there was the giant panther-like animal, which was also lurking somewhere, presumably close by. Eim still hadn't figured out what they all were, but she was hashing it out slowly, starting with the fact that they could pronounce her name.

This is literally the first time I've put any part of RC in electronic form. It's still in the longhand stage. But tell me if you love it/hate it/don't get it or whatever. And if anyone notices that the spacing is maybe strange, I'm desperately trying to convince my right thumb that I'm only supposed to put one space behind periods now... and I'm not good at it yet...

And randomly, LOOK WHAT THE MAIL BROUGHT ME!!! Unrelated-to-books SQUEE! Is he not ADORABLE? Since I have only me to schmooze me for Interplanetary Be Who You Are day, I schmoozed myself by buying this little guy from Fluffy Flowers on Etsy. Check Felicia's place out! This is my first purchase on Etsy and I'm in love with Fluffy Flowers! Now I must name him... Ideas anyone?

He Was Found in the Wreck With His Hand on the Throttle, Scalded to Death by the Steam....

2011-02-10T08:08:00.003-05:00

Five points to whoever recognized that line as being from 'The Wreck of Old 97'! Ok, so no one's been scalded. At least not to death. But I HAVE come to a few conclusions recently. One of them is that I will NEVER, no matter how hard I might try, make it as a barista. It's just not in my cards. Ever. Why, you ask? Well, the answer is simple, considering that our little farm coffee pot manages to fry some part of my body on a daily basis, I just don't see barista in my near future. I mean, seriously, I've burned my ARMPIT. How does someone manage that??? An ARMPIT for crying bananas. Welcome to my life.

The other conclusion that I've come to, and this one is a little less amusing, if not exactly 'woe as me over the cliff I go' hair rendingly dramatic. The conclusion is this: I am not happy at this point in my life. The reason that I am not happy at this point in my life is that I feel as though my writing is 'going nowhere'. I put the 'going nowhere' in quotations because it isn't really a physiological truth. Your writing is never stagnant. Never. No matter how unchanged you perceive it to be, it is, in truth, progressing. It just doesn't always feel that way to YOU. *sigh* This is a normal thing for anyone who's trying to break into the commercial writing industry. I know it's normal because I've had authors (successful authors) hug me and tell me it's normal. But they couldn't tell me exactly how it was going to feel, because you can't describe a feeling like that to someone who hasn't felt it. Now I know. And I'm done with knowing how it feels to think that no one, nowhere established in the industry has any faith or interest in you. I'd say I never needed to know what it was like to feel this way, but I think you do need to know, so that when you HAVE made it into the industry, you have compassion for all of those frustrated hopefuls. And on that note THANK YOU to every successful author, agent, editor, and anyone else in the industry who has been kind and supportive to me. I would not be where I am, trudging onward towards my goal if not for all of you :)

So, the question is, how do I adapt to this unhappy stage? To start, I think I have to let go of EVERNOW. I don't mean actually let go. But it might be time to stop querying it. Stop entering it in contests (although I'm still in Brenda's 'It was a dark and stormy night' blogfest/contest) stop looking for agents who are seeking dystopian work. Stop (for now) working on the companion novel. Just stop. I don't want to stop. I think Evernow says something. Especially with the world today, I think a book about a girl who refuses to settle for warfare and instead struggles for peace with a race unlike her own is a book kids should read. But I will stop. For now. And I'll work on something else. Red Chief most likely. I do love my pain in the ass, back-talking to Faeries, bad tempered Eimhear, and I think that it could be commercially successful too. So, onward! Although I admit that I'll glance back over my shoulder more than once...

What about you? Does anyone out there (published or not) have a book that they think will actually have a good impact on people reading it? Anybody (published or soon to be) have a book that is not slated for publication that they would sell a kidney to get into print simply because they believe in it?

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night Blogfest Contest... Yes I totally DID just Rhyme... Blame the Drugs...

2011-02-07T08:05:00.006-05:00

So I was checking out the totally fabulous Christi Corbett, who always has something interesting going on, and found out that she's participating in her first blogfest ever! Of course, being nosy, I had to go check out this blogfest, because, well, I'm nosy, plus there are PRIZES! Turns out that Brenda Drake is putting this thing on and the prizes involve the amazing Weronika Janczuk! Yes, that's right you can win several different goodies, all of them plenty enticing enough for me to enter.

Here's what you do:

Put up the first line of your finished manuscript on your blog and get all your friends' opinions on it.

Adjust first line per-critiques/as you feel needed

Post your first line in the comments on Brenda's blog

Cruise around to the blogs of everyone else participating and check out all of their first lines!

Go straight from here to Brenda's blog and read all of her instructions to make sure I haven't screwed something up... I am operating under the influence of codeine cough syrup and strong antibiotics at the moment...

Without further ado, here's the first line from my Dystopian YA titled EVERNOW:

Life is so much easier without underwear.

So whatcha think?

Blogfest!

2011-02-04T10:52:00.003-05:00

Okay, bronchitis and all, I've managed to get stuff together for this really awesome blogfest that's going on tomorrow over at The Writer's Hole. It's all about how far we've come as writers. And did I mention that there are PRIZES? How cool is that? Head over there and sign up to participate! It looks like serious fun. I, myself, am going to be putting up examples of before and after excerpts. It's gonna be epic!

How Far Have I Come? Light Years... and yet I still manage to be late...

2011-02-04T09:30:00.008-05:00

I'm late getting this up... oh the wonders of painkilling drugs... and how they make you sleep through things like deadlines, major holidays, and very grumpy donkeys standing outside your window braying... but I did eventually rejoin the living... so here goes... and BTW if you're feeling inspired and willing to join in, click on over to Christine's and sign up to participate! Or just check out all the other folks who are already participating.

So when I caught wind of this blogfest, I thought someone might have gotten inside my head and read my mind! My writing has come SO far since I started out that I almost don't recognize myself anymore. Which is a good thing, since it represents a forward motion and writing, to me anyway, is a journey from the first line you jot down until they pry the pen from your cold dead fingers. I had planned this long, rolling blather of a post to go alongside the examples of shudder-worthy and (hopefully) unshudder-worth excerpts from one of my books. But then I got a case of severe bronchitis (okay, I've had it like a month, but it finally kicked my ass and I went to the doctor for it...) and now I'm on 'bed' rest. Anyone who knows me know that getting 'bed' rest at my house is as likely as having a bikini contest in the Arctic... but seriously, the meds I'm on knock me loopy anyway so I'm doing the bear minimum for the next few days.

The excerpts I chose are from the first book in the first series I wrote with the goal of publication. It's a YA Fantasy, edging toward high fantasy. To set you up: A group of friends have just broken into and then out of a restricted building and now they're all scattering in attempt to avoid capture by the city Guard. One of them, however, is about to have an encounter with something more dangerous than any soldier. It's difficult to set up, so if anyone has a question, throw it out in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

As you'll find out within the first three sentences, the first draft ended up being written from about ten POVs... I know, face/palm... the real focus of the story was always intended to be the eighteen year old protagonist, Pony. I rewrote the entire thing strictly from her POV much for the better.

Without further delay, I give you my shudder-worthy version which is roughly seven years old:

Ruger saw Torc from a distance and was glad to see that the dwarf was alone and without any of the Guard on his trail. He hoped that the girls were faring just as well. It rankled him badly to know that they were out there on their own, but there was nothing to be done about it now but to pray to Amara that they made a clean getaway.
Pony had caught her breath somewhat and just decided to move on when some incredible force snatched her up and flung her against the nearest building. The strength of the blow stole all her breath completely, leaving her to thrash against whatever was pinning her there, feet dangling a good two feet above the ground. The entity was far stronger than any living thing she’d ever encountered, including Storm, but it was very mortal, unlike Death. As her senses slowly began to return, she could make out a form, the shape of a body, against her, even though she couldn’t see it with her eyes.
The presence of it was almost overwhelming, the strength intoxicatingly provocative as it pushed against her. And it was painful, a blade at her throat, hurting, but somehow not cutting. Not yet. Wisely, she made no sound, waiting to see what her attacker wanted of her, if anything beyond her death.
Ravenshadow hesitated at the last possible moment, reason fighting to overcome his blood-rage. He was injured better than he wanted to admit, and the Guard was still after him. This was no time to start on the girl, but when he’d glimpsed her, the blood-rage had come on him without warning. It wasn’t something the assassin asked for, but normally it was useful, and he had some control over when he fell to it. This wasn’t like that, and he was breaking his own golden rule: You couldn’t enjoy killing if you were dead yourself. He hoped the girl didn’t struggle. That would send him far beyond any hope of control, and he wouldn’t even get to enjoy killing her - it would happen too quickly. He wouldn’t even remember doing it.
When nothing happened, Pony kept waiting, trying to discern anything she could about her attacker without moving or letting him, her, it, know that she was even conscious. The pain on her throat let up, but whatever was holding her didn’t move or let go. She wasn’t afraid, only frustrated and confused. And wet?
Turning only her eyes downward, Pony could see nothing, but there was no doubt that she was wet. A warm dampness was spreading across her hips and thighs. She shuddered to think what it might be, but the entity hadn’t harmed her. Yet. It didn’t seem to notice the wet either, and just kept holding her there against the wall, its grip unbreakable and dangerous. She didn’t dare wiggle or otherwise disturb it.
Warring with his blood-rage, Ravenshadow was brought the rest of the way out of the mindlessness by the cries of the Guard. How long he’d stood there, he didn’t know, but the girl was still alive, strangely silent and acquiescent to his savage restraint. The Guard was turning down their alley and Ravenshadow dropped her, staggering back several steps, suddenly weak and lightheaded. Across from him, the girl fell, stumbling to her knees. The entire span of her hips and thighs was soaked with dark blood. The assassin had, for the first time in his long life, underestimated his wound.
Pony had never been more relieved to hit the ground, but she was immediately appalled by the sight of her own body, covered with blood that was not her own. Whatever had attacked her was still there. She couldn’t see it, but she could hear it, scuffling around, apparently disoriented by its blood loss. To her left, the Guard was closing fast, and the entity swept back and forth, still invisible, but leaving a bloody trail wherever it went. Whatever it was, it was going to be caught or killed in a matter of minutes. Unless she did something.

And now the hopefully much less, if not entirely unshudder-worthy version, which I was just poking around with and tweaking only a few months ago and I'm continuing to work on:

Being shorter of limb and wind than either Ruger or Dreena, Pony did what she surmised Torc was doing and chose a dark and crooked alley as her passage, so that she might have a chance to hide. Having heard no shouting since leaving the Hall she could only guess at what had caused the ruckus.
Hesitating in a recessed nook, she caught her breath and was preparing to bolt again when some incredible unseen force snatched her up and flung her against the wall of a building. The blow stole her breath and half her sense, leaving her to thrash against whatever was pinning her.
The entity was far stronger than any living thing she’d ever encountered, including Storm. It felt and tasted like Death in a way. Which would have sounded ridiculous to anyone else, but it meant a lot to Pony because living things were not supposed tot resemble Death in any way.
As her senses slowly returned she could make out a form, the shape of a body against her, though she couldn’t see it with her eyes. Whatever had her was a physical thing, not some magical force.
The presence of it was almost overwhelming, the strength strangely intoxicating. There was a blade at her throat, hurting, but not cutting. Not yet. She made no sound, waiting and trying to attune herself to the instincts she trusted so deeply.
Her first struggles had left her arms tangled about the entities neck. Her left land was wrapped in silken strands of hair while her right lay against warm skin. She could feel a pulse beneath her wrist, her fingertips brushing the firm cartilage of an ear. Before she could stop herself she gently spread her fingers, seeking more details. The pain on her throat eased, but whatever was holding her didn’t let go.
A warm dampness spread slowly across her hips and thighs. She shuddered to think what it might be. The entity didn’t seem to notice. Instinct told her that it was confused on some level. As if her quiet response to its brutal attack was the opposite of what it had expected. As if it was suddenly unsure.
Abruptly, it’s grip loosened enough that she slithered down along its body. Her hands grasped at leather straps and sheaths that lined its chest, but failed to gain purchase. Pony was relieved to hit the ground alive, but she was appalled by the sight of her legs. They were covered with blood that was not her own. Whatever had attacked her remained close by. She still couldn’t see it, but she could sense it. Splashes of crimson appeared in the soft dirt of the alley. To her left, the rattle of armor announced the arrival of a group of Guardsmen. The entity swept back and forth, invisible but for the bloody trail wherever it went.
Whatever it was, whatever it might mean her, it was going to be caught or killed in a matter of moments. Unless she did something. It might deserve to die, but it wasn’t in Pony’s nature to let anything die. No matter what it was.

I DID (go ahead and groan) query this back when it was first written. Thank bananas my queries were all rejected, most likely because the query gods knew I wasn't ready for any such step. Since then, I've written several more YAs, one of which has gotten quite a lot of requests for fulls (although an agent still eludes me for now) and I haven't even written up a new query for this fantasy series. But I keep going back to it, and someday, who knows, maybe it'll see daylight :)

Hope, Inspiration and Determination, All Slathered in Awesomesauce...

2011-02-02T06:00:00.003-05:00

Sounds like a feast right? You betcha! And I'm going to invite you to dinner! Here's all you have to do to get the meal of your life, AND have the chance to bestow your own hopes, inspirations, and modes of determination upon a fellow writer: Show up over at Christi Corbett's blog and join the party with a VERY special guest host! I know, I know, ya'll are probably wondering what sort of awesomesauce contains enough yum factor to drag the hermit out of her writing coma... I HAVE been a bit remiss recently... but I digress... What makes this guest host so darn special is that she's just like the rest of us! She writes, she hopes, she's inspired by the world around her, she surmounts challenges and charges forth into the crazy mess that is the amazing wonderment of writing... oh yeah, and she's ELEVEN! That's 11! As in, a decade plus one! I'm pretty sure I have bras that have surpassed such a ripe old age...

I, myself, was somewhat of a late bloomer in comparison to this singular unfurling flower... at her age, I barely knew I was female and thought that I actually could marry a horse... I still crawled into hollow trees looking for a doorway into Faerie, and fully expected for a nykur or nuggle to appear from the waters of any nearby lake or pool... wait a minute, I STILL climb into hollow trees and tread cautiously around still water... But my point, is that to be so focused and driven as to spin written tales and have the bravery to share them with others when you're so young is an amazing and glorious thing. So please, even if you only have five minutes to spare, find your way over to Christi's blog. Read. Enjoy. Support. And leave inspired. Your day will be better, I guarantee *said in that sexy southern drawl of Gambit's* But SERIOUSLY. DO IT.

CONTEST!!!

2011-01-24T11:56:00.003-05:00

Okay, random post just to hail this totally awesome contest for a book of Grimm's Fairy tales that's going over at Shooting Stars! Shoot right on over there (pun totally intended) and enter! Um, but be ye forewarned... I'm going to win that book so I can read it to my niece Walelu... so don't get your hopes up! Mooohooohaha!!!

Love me some lists...

2011-01-22T19:39:00.004-05:00

New anime love: check (Trinity Blood)
Manuscript out to prospective agent: check
Mass stockpile of chocolate for much feared rejection: check
Trinity Blood light novels ordered: check
Trinity Blood mangas ordered: check
Cat on my legs: check
Ink in my pen: check
WIP: check (so into it and loving it)
Anemic blog post: check

Now doesn't that seem like a lot's been done? And that's why I love me some lists... :D

Still Kicking...

2011-01-19T09:08:00.003-05:00

I'm still kicking... and still writing... and still getting chased around by life... but the important thing is the still kicking part... hopefully I'll be blogging soon too... but until then, happy writing all!

When Life Takes Over Your Life...

2011-01-10T08:07:00.004-05:00

It's been too long since I posted. The barn is also getting low on hay, and we might have some snow coming... I have 100 items in my spam box... I've fallen behind in my Poetry Pact posts... I've gotten zero (0) editing done on AGMG... Um, yeah, life has kinda taken over my life recently. What HAVE I gotten done? I sent out several queries... got several rejections... got one request for a full (!) ... sent the full... ran around frantically sure that it would be rejected instantly and that my life would be over once and for all... ate way too much chocolate, you know, just in case my life DID end, I'd die happy (no rejection yet!) ... Jackrigged my horse's blanket so that it would stay on... and, oh yeah, I did manage to write a little.

I had grandiose plans for writing this weekend, but those were graphically interrupted by the terrible shooting out in Arizona. Beyond the common horror that induced, I have several friends who live in Tucson, including Janni Lee Simner and her husband. No we aren't like BFFs, but after spending all of Sirens laughing and talking and eating dinners together, I got to know both of them enough to know that they're both very special people, people I care very much for. And it hurt to know that Janni was in the midst of all that tragedy, including the media aftermath. As she said on facebook, their community might be large, but it's also small and all of them know each other and this would be a monumental travesty regardless, but to have it be YOUR people, I can't imagine. Needless to say that I spent a great deal of the weekend staring at the little origami horse Janni's husband made for me and hoping that somehow, they could feel that I was thinking about them.

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of regular posting, but only time will tell if life will grant me that boon...

Starting Out the New Year on the Right Foot... Hoof... Paw... First Line... Whatever...

2011-01-01T12:04:00.005-05:00

I have a lot of high hopes for this coming year... like getting an agent... swooning editors with my total fabulousness... taking the publishing industry by storm... Uh, am I writing this all aloud? Ooops. Okay, so the swooning editors and taking the publishing industry by storm parts were just vague, possibly dramatized, representations of what I'm really aiming for. Broken down to it's most simplistic form, my goal for this year is this: To move forward in my writing career.

In other news... (can I just say that I LOVE, in case you haven't noticed, those ... marks they leave everything so open) I've been enjoying my straightened hair. It really isn't STRAIGHT anymore, but it's mostly straight, and still hanging much farther down my back than my usual curls do. I went out of the office at work the other day and was immediately jerked over backwards because I'd shut my luscious locks in the door. That process was aided by a gust of wind that hit me upon opening the door. I had ignored the wind because curls don't blow, they bounce. Except I don't have curls at the moment... I could hear my brother, code name Chucky Duck, laughing his a$$ off on the other side of the door... such concern for my welfare!

And speaking of funny, heartwarming recaps of last year, if you don't follow/haven't heard of Kristin Cashore's blog This is My Secret, you really should check out her post December Rundown. Kristin doesn't allow comments on her blog right now, but I really can't say enough about her posts and how they affect me. Whenever I'm feeling squashed by my efforts to get into the commercial world of writing I venture over to Kristin's blog and inevitably find something that makes me smile, grin, and feel hope washing through me again. And because of Kristin, I know that some day before I die, I am going to take trapeze lessons.

And on to WIPs... Uh, I've got a new one. Really, I seem to be in this glut of retellings. I've got Thornbriar, the Beauty and the Beast retelling that I've been working on. But now I've outlined a retelling of the Swan Princess, which I've titled The Swanguard. It's about as different from the original as you can get - apart from being told in a classical sort of manner. And now I'm working on Schneewittchen, a dystopian version of Snow White that involves gene tampering and nano technology. Don't ask. The mc, Schnee, just arrived and smacked me around until I had no choice but to pay attention to her. She leaves marks and doesn't sing to woodland creatures. I definitely got the feeling that I'd be better off doing what she wanted for the time being... I also came to the realization that Amarok and the Gone Missing Girl is really just a retelling of Catskin. It's struggling through revisions at the moment. I've gotten a lot a feedback on how I can make it stronger and better but I'm having trouble taking time from the WIPs to put into the revisions needed for AGMG.

Which reminds me that I need to depart from the blathering and get back to the WIPs. Even if there's no agent on the immediate horizon for me (think good thoughts, think good thoughts) the creating is good for my soul and besides that, each finished WIP is a future book that might be the one someone else falls in love with the way I did. Happy writing all!

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

2010-12-31T19:11:00.004-05:00

I know, super original title there. But I do mean it. Happy New Year everyone! I'll try and put a real post tomorrow. My big plan for New Year's Day is to write all day long! You know, I've always been told that whatever you do on New Year's Day, you'll do the whole year long, so I can't think of anything better to do than write! Besides, I've got to get the lead out of these battling WIPs and get someone finished so I can start editing them!

What about you all? Anyone have any amazing plans for New Year's Day?

Christmas Silliness...

2010-12-25T20:54:00.013-05:00

Enjoyed a great Christmas holiday with the fam. Yup, all of them. And of course, some silliness ensued... Silliness like my cousin remarking that my hair smelled good... which immediately degraded into creepy innuendoes...

And then the hair smelling became an open question about what the good smelling hair might look like straight...

This was the end result, though the curl is already creeping back in...

And then there were the coaunts and councle as we've dubbed them, with the wee one in the middle...

And finally, Christmas wouldn't be complete without a little elf named Walelu...

Merry Christmas All!!!

2010-12-24T07:47:00.003-05:00

If Snowpocalypse arrives this weekend, I'll undoubtedly be posting with all that free time I have. You know, between sledding behind the horse, and digging my mom, Snowbear, out of the drifts where she'll likely be happily trying to make a new house. But in case I don't manage to get online this weekend:

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! And HAPPY NONDENOMINATIONAL HOLIDAYS to anyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas as Christmas, but as some other variation of family awesomeness!

Social Fail... Horse With Two Names... And Lunar Madness...

2010-12-21T13:02:00.006-05:00

I went shopping last weekend... I hate large crowds... I don't do retail... I can't stand the commercialization of any otherwise special holiday... but I got my shopping done (nothing big, just little somethings for close family, useful things) and I didn't smear any sorry excuses for humanity. Actually, I can't say that I even saw any sorry excuses for humanity. Although there were hoards of folks out shopping, every single person I was near acted like a reasonable, kind human being. I'll take that as an early Christmas present. Gotta say that I still hate the crowds though. I think that if I didn't work outside the home (ahem, as in I was able to write full time) I would actually enjoy going out and people watching. But since I monger all my free time, I loathe having to share it with the public. Social fail. Of course, Sirens and the like don't fall into this category...

And speaking of Sirens, I've been doing a lot of looking at myself and my writing recently. I guest hosted on Christi Corbett's blog last week about keeping your writing dream alive and what the query process has been like for me thus far, and then I got a couple of rejections in a row. Normally those roll right off, but I was hoping to at least get a request for the ms, even if that ended in a rejection. Getting flat form rejections based on a query only, or query and the first five pages somehow feels like taking a few steps backwards. I even caught myself singing 'All I want for Christmas is an agent to rep me...' more than once. Meanwhile, I was putting up hay in preparation for some winter weather. This is something I do every winter. The same way. Every time. It goes like this: Drive into the field. Line up truck to back into the paddock (the paddock is too small to drive in forward and turn around) Get out, open paddock gate. Chase three horses and a donkey out of the way. Back into paddock. Open hay get. Back up farther. Unload hay. Drive off. Got it? Easy, right? Except that EVERY SINGLE TIME Horse With Two Names leads everybody into the paddock and into my way and I have to chase them away. EVERY TIME. You might remember Horse With Two Names. I wrote a short story about her that was published locally which you can read here. So anyway, this year, Horse With Two Names got a blanket. She's never had a blanket before. She's always wanted one. So finally I gave her one. Now she can still be a wild little horse, but a warm wild little horse. I put the blanket on her. She pranced around, so very proud and pleased. Then she led everyone into the paddock, right into the way of my pickup truck. So I shooed them all out. Horse With Two Names tore a$$ out of the paddock in her oh-so-lovely-new-blankie and around the front of the pick-up where she crashed and burned like a miniature recreation of United Flight 232. Sierra, who was right behind her, landed on top of her, and Dixie plowed into him. J.D. the donkey avoided involvement. Everyone was fine. But Horse With Two Names managed to scrape and scratch and dirty up that blankie she'd been so excited to get. Which got me to thinking. I don't want to crash my agent (when I get one) the way Horse With Two Names thrashed her new blanket. Sometimes we want something so bad that when we finally get it, we do something stupid or thoughtless and immediately damage whatever we were so happy to finally get. So, now that I've got another query out... I'm going to practice meditation and being calm, maintaining focus on the craft. Otherwise, I might get an offer to rep, only to have nothing but blanket burn to show for it...

And while I'm on the subject of crazy madness, did anyone else stay up and watch the eclipse? (No, not the Twilight Eclipse, the REAL one) I set my alarm and got up. It was hazy but I saw most of it. Nice, since the next one like it won't happen until like 2095...

I'm Guest Hosting!!!

2010-12-15T08:03:00.004-05:00

Okay, today is the day of my guest post over at Christi's place! *squees with excitement over the idea of meeting new people and having a good time* If you get a chance today, swing by, check out my post, give me a shout out. I guarantee that you'll leave feeling good and ready to write!

Guest Hosting!

2010-12-14T14:33:00.004-05:00

Okay, I'll keep this short and simple and I'm going to post again tomorrow... just to annoy you :) but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be guest hosting over at Christi Corbett's blog tomorrow! The main theme of her blog is never giving up on your dreams. It's a great place to meet new people and exchange ideas and information. I encourage you to check her out, not just for my post either, and leave a comment! My rambling post will be up some time in the morning (not sure exactly when as we're on different coasts) and I'll be stopping in to answer any questions (cause I know SO much about everything ;) throughout the day.

Yeah... What Was I Going to Say?

2010-12-13T19:19:00.004-05:00

Hmmm, I seem to be writing a blog post... which is going to encompass about a bazillion subjects... and I'm so scattered at the moment that I can't even get them into something that resembles order... but here goes...

It's so cold here that you can't blow your nose outside because the tissue will frees to it. Seriously. And I love winter but this isn't fun.

I'm feeling out of sorts because I can't settle on one WIP to focus on. I'm like a deranged hen. Normally I have eggs stashed all over, but I only go to sitting on one nest. Not so this time, I'm bouncing back and forth and it's hard on the hind-parts. I think this unsettled jag is being exacerbated by a query slump. Not that I've gotten oodles of rejections (just a few) but that I don't have many queries out. I hope to rectify this, but with the holidays, I expect that even rejections will be slow, which is understandable.

Speaking of chickens, my Demon Chicken Franklin is looking, well, sort of old. I mean, Frankie IS old. But that doesn't mean I like to think about him being old. *sigh* The frigid temps aren't helping. I've added extra heating lamps, and the old boy seems comfortable. His age is just showing more. I love my Demon Chickens.

Christmas shopping has been the biggest nightmare that never was. Meaning that I'm still trying to get it done. Thankfully, most of the people I'm so concerned with getting presents for, don't care if I give them anything at all :)

I want to enter some contests, just to be doing something 'else' besides obsessing over my novels and querying agents. Trouble is, I'm having trouble finding any contests. And before you suggest it, I know that Writer Market has a great listing... I've put it on my Christmas list... since I don't have the $$ to go buy for myself... Any suggestions?

And finally, I'll post again (in a much more articulated manner) about this tomorrow, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up now, that I'm going to be guest hosting over at Christi Corbett's blog on Weds and I want to invite everyone to head over an check it out! Christi is a great lady who runs an awesome blog. I'm uber thrilled and excited to guest host! More on that tomorrow... if I can still find the computer...

Now I'm off for some coffee, and to work on Redchief... I mean Anima Rising... or was it Thornbriar? Crap... at least the ideas are coming... can't complain about that...

Lost in Faerie... I'll Get Back To You...

2010-12-04T17:44:00.005-05:00

Okay, I'm not really lost... not really... But I'm EVER SO SLOWLY working my way through a much cherished ARC of Faerie Winter by Janni Lee Simner and freaking ferrets riding calliopes I'm in love with it. Utterly. Irrevocably. *sighs and resists the urge to pick up aforementioned awesomeness*

I've also been totally lost in my own dystopian world, working on a companion novel to Evernow. I am so into this can of worms that there's no getting me out without a fish hook... This kind of writing is like a drug for me, which is a little disturbing, but since it costs me nothing, and might pay my bills one day I guess it's a good kind of disturbing. Whatever, I'll got with it :)

Oh, and while I'm on the subject does anyone who might read this have an opinion/experience with querying a companion book? I mean, this is a just companion book, and unless something changes, it'll be able to stand alone. It takes place many years after Evernow, and thusly references to the Endings and the time before them are much more vague. Is it okay to query this book (tentatively titled Anima Rising, AR for short, you may now begin with the pirate jokes :) assuming that I don't have an agent by the time it's ready to query? Should I just reorganize my brain to see the two books as having no actual 'order' between them, and just see them as two books taking place in the same world? Or should I still view Evernow as the 'anchor' book to the set? There's probably a third book floating in my head, another companion/stand alone. Any impute will be appreciated.

In other news, Christmas is in full swing in our neck of the woods, so we've been doing stuff like getting a Christmas tree, and decorating and helping my grandmother (code name Gang) put up her tree. Dinner is calling... but here are a couple of pictures of Gang's tree...

It's nine feet tall and absolutely inundated with ornaments, many of which are older than me. The glass beads and tinsel are also ancient by decorations standards.

This is an ornament that Gang made back in 1972 in a craft class she was taking. Yes, only in my family can you have May West rendered as a claymation mermaid... It's been a cherished game, though, for all of us kids to rush to the tree every year on Christmas and be the first to find her...

Help Debut Author Talli Roland!

2010-12-01T06:21:00.005-05:00

I signed up to help Talli 'take on Amazon' with the release of her debut novel The Hating Game, by trying to get as many people as possible to buy it. The book is available electronically right now. The links are below. Talli is updating the book's climb on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. We're also having a friendly little competition with her UK friends between American Kindle and Kindle UK. How awesome would it be if we could get Talli to the TOP of Amazon's list? Please, feel free to pass the information along in your own blog posts or Facebook pages. It's a great book. Let's make this a great debut release!

Help Talli Roland's debut novel THE HATING GAME hit the Kindle bestseller list at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk by spreading the word today. Even a few sales in a short period of time on Amazon helps push the book up the rankings, making it more visible to other readers. Here are the links for both UK and America:

Amazon.co.uk:
Amazon.com;

No Kindle? Download a free app at Amazon for Mac, iPhone, PC, Android and more.
Coming soon in paperback. Keep up with the latest at www.talliroland.com.
About THE HATING GAME:
When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £2000,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes. Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?

Thanksgiving!

2010-11-24T08:15:00.004-05:00

I'm going to try and get a better post than this up, but all bets are off as to whether or not I'll manage it. In case I don't get back, here's a hastily constructed list of what I'm thankful for:

Family... even when they do things like leave silly putty-encrusted pajamas in your fridge... *kudos to the lovely lady who actually had to deal with that ;)*

Identical twin sisters... even if they don't get you all the time... because even when they don't get you, they've still got you... you get me? :)

Friends... the ones that give you surprise parties... even when they've been so busy with their own lives that they had to throw things together at the last minute...

Cats that keep my lap warm... even if it means that they're also sitting on my ms... or hitting random keys on the computer, erasing vital information...

Ponies that don't buck me off... even though they do insist on acting like a ta tas...

A steady job... even though it feels like it takes time away from my writing and makes me older...

A steady job... because it keeps me physically fit and young... and gives me inspiration for the writing I'm convinced it inhibits most of the time...

Rejections... even when they piss me off... and use the word 'but'... and temporarily crush me...

BLANK PAPER... because it gives me something to do with all of that *stuff* I get from those rejections... and it gives me a place to go, whenever I need to leave... a future to look forward to when the present is questionable... and a past to look back on once I've left where I am...

Still Kicking...

2010-11-17T08:15:00.003-05:00

So this will be a totally random, possibly maniacal post as I'm still drinking coffee (which has yet to enter my bloodstream) but I just wanted to get something down so I got a post up before the turn of the next century. Starting off...

OMG The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney!!! Squeeee on so many levels you'd need an elevator to get to them all. But seriously, without spoilers, this is a book about friends, justice, right, wrong, being strong (sorry about the rhyme... lack of coffee) changing what you want changed in the world, paying life forward, loving yourself even with your mistakes. I could just drone on but I don't want to turn you off, I want to to run out and get The Mockingbirds. I want you to read it, give it to all the teenage girls you know, all the women you know, EVERYONE you know. I really can't say enough good things about the book. It's a great story, written in a great voice, with about a bazillion good messages within it.

Onward now, to queries... I sent one out... just one, but to an agent I really think a lot of... I wanted to keep it as low stress as possible, so I went with just one for the time being. I'm working on a few others but I'm going to play it by ear, since life beyond writing has been a roller coaster recently.

WIPs! I signed up for NaNo... and although I am so far behind that it's ridiculous, I loved the experience. It's been nice just to have an ongoing record of my progress. My record hasn't been spot-on because I write longhand and I have to guesstimate word count, but I'm not doing it to compete, so it's fine.

Aaaand right in the middle of NaNo, I was completely blindsided by a companion novel to Evernow. Yeah, that's right, a girl showed up. Names were thrown. Threats were made. A story is now in progress. *sigh* And yet, I love this. Every. Single. Moment. Of. It. I love the occasionally dominatrix relationship of having stories show up and Lady Heather my butt into a new project. Call me weird, but I'm happy :)

Upswing...

2010-11-13T22:58:00.005-05:00

I found this comic on a blog. I'm not sure where. I'm probably breaking a law somewhere. But the comic has its creator's info on the bottom and I credit her for its creation. This comic makes me smile Every. Single. Time. I. Read. It. It is now the backsplash on my computer, and it will stay there until I get an agent... I swear*

*Vow is null and void if securing an agent takes longer than a decade... :)

In Which there is Currently a Mugshot of Me in a Conspicuous Book of Invaluable Knowledge...

2010-11-11T23:12:00.003-05:00

All that title is just to say that at the moment I'm the dictionary's poster child for procrastination. Seriously. I don't even LIKE computers. Really. But there are a few things that I compose directly on the computer (which leads to farting around instead of working) rather than scripting them longhand like I do my WIPs. One of these this is query letters.

In specific, I'm reworking a query for my dystopian YA EVERNOW. This is a ms that has gotten numerous bites, an ms that could be 'the one'. Thing is, how do you keep tweaking a letter (beyond detailing it to the specific agent you're sending it to) and yet say the same thing you've been saying? My Evernow query has gotten attention for the book, I don't want to go all awol and contrive some nutty letter, but I feel that I can't send the same one without ever reevaluating it. I mean, I've been querying Evernow for a year now. Part of the problem might be that I was raised in the south (well, we say south, but deep southerners would argue) so I know how to just slather the verbal buttercream on. But I'm more of a "Shit, I spilled the damn beans." kinda girl than a "Gosh darn it! The beans slurped!" kinda girl. And my query letter needs to be somewhere in-between. *sigh* Hence my dithering on the computer.... procrastinating... awfully... while occasionally glancing over at the query... which astonishingly enough, hasn't changed in the slightest since the last time I looked at it...

The Night Wind

2010-11-09T18:29:00.002-05:00

I was poking around on the computer and stumbled across this short story that I originally wrote for a contest, although I ended up submitting a totally different one. I thought I'd put this one up (I highly doubt it'll ever see publication elsewhere) and then later this week I'll put up the one I actually submitted. This one is a bit longer than the one that got used, as I forsook this one after writing it and never went back to crop word count. Anyway, without further ado, I give you THE NIGHT WIND:

I came awake quickly, with a start, the way new mothers often do. It was the sort of jerk where part of you knows good and well that something is going on before the rest of you is really awake. The room was pitch dark but one side of the window shade was crooked, allowing a silver shard of moonlight to streak inside and bounce all over the place garishly.
Heaving a sigh I wallowed in the blankets, looking inward, trying to figure if a dream had stirred me, or something real. My head was empty of any imagery or sensation, but I couldn’t settle again. The air was frigid, I always kept the heat on the lowest setting. Normally, I enjoyed nestling in the warmth of the bed and then popping out into the cold room in the morning. It was bothersome though, during midnight bathroom runs. Or times like now, when I was faced with the annoying feeling that something wasn’t right and I had to abandon my warm blankets to find out what.
Daring partial exposure, I stretched out one arm and fetched the glass from the nightstand. Wrong glass. I gagged on warm, watered-down scotch, and then spilled the last of it in the bed with me. Cursing, I gave up that glass to the folds of the bedcovers and retrieved the water that I’d been after from the start. It was crisp and did much to make up for the spilled mess. More awake, I peered around the room through the tangle of moonlight and shadow, still at odds.
A draftsmen's table stood against the wall across from the foot of the bed, piled high with paper and cans of brushes and bottles of rubber cement. There was a smaller table to one side of it, even more laden with all manner of art supplies. On the other side was a bookcase, beside that, layers and layers of paintings canvases, boards and prints were propped against the wall. It was the same under the window. The area opposite the window was a closet which currently vomited clothing and shoes into the floor before it. All the other walls had bookcases, all of them stuffed with books, with more books piled on top of them. That was why I always had ground floor apartments. I’d fall through the ceiling otherwise.
I looked back to the closet. It was large, yawning black even in the dark of the room, and its constant spew of clothing seemed to reach farther than usual. The longer I looked, the less like a closet and clothing it seemed, until the realization settled cold in my stomach that something was there. Not in the closet, but in front of it. Something big. Huge. Two spots glittered amber-gold and then blinked.
I had blindly assumed that they were buttons on something, reflecting moonlight from the window. I was wrong. The eyes blinked again and I began to discern a shape behind them. It seemed too large to be there, and yet it was. Wide set eyes, long face, immense mass. The eyes were predatory but the body was familiar in shape, sleek, but huge. Suddenly, the golden eyes shifted, turning, and a lance of black shadow as long as I was tall appeared in profile, jutting away from the long horse-like head.
“Well?” The voice rippled through me, made my skin draw tight under its deep melody.
I lay where I was in the bed, holding my breath and staring. There was a sheath knife under my pillow, another one right by my left hand. I always had a knife close by. But I didn’t need a knife, and I wasn’t keeping still because I was afraid of being attacked. I was keeping still because I was afraid that if I moved, he would melt away and disappear, afraid that I’d wake up and he wouldn’t be real. Across from me, the creature turned back, his horn again blending into a dark point on his forehead.
“Say something.” He sounded like stones shifting in deep water. It made my insides vibrate. He also sounded impatient, anxious.
“I’m, I can’t,” I managed to strangle out after another moment.
“Stop fighting the obvious and the shock will fade more quickly.” He advised drily. “I am standing here.”
“I know you are.” I retorted weakly, but my eyes kept trying to turn him into clothing or shadows, despite how the rest of me sensed his presence.
“Believing is seeing, so they say.” He said. “So you already know that I’m real.”
“I know.” I repeated, still weak. I slowly, creakily, sat up, still wrapped in blankets. “I can’t breath.”
“I’m sorry.” He stepped forward, lowering his great head in an apologetic expression. “There isn’t an easy way for us to meet someone.” He came to the side of the bed, which hardly reached above his knees.
His massive neck stretched over me, ropes of silky hair tickling my face and whispering across the blankets. His legs were as thick as my waist where they joined his body. His chest was as broad as the doorway. He lowered his long head even further, one huge golden eye gazing at me from beneath a tangle of forelock. The heavy bone of his forehead, gnarled at the base of his horn, shone in the shreds of moonlight. The horn itself was twisted and looked alive, like a tree branch of some sort, smooth and worn on the raised parts of the twist, black while at the same time transparent, like darkened glass.
“You’ve always known we existed.” He accused, not unkindly. “You’ve always waited to see us.”
“Yes,” the word came out in a low uneven murmur, difficult and forced after a lifetime of silence. “Why now?” That was a scratchy little whisper too. I meant my age. A thirty-two year old woman was hardly what people pictured when they thought of innocent maidens.
“The world is so full of humans, and their emotions and ambitions. Their ways, their selfish single-mindedness is suffocating. It is difficult to find purity anymore. Innocence is such a fine and fey scent to track and the stench of the overwhelming majority is wont to obliterate the evidence of you as if to spite the fact that they have not yet overtaken you.” He let out a gusty sigh that washed warm breath over me, banishing the chill of the room and intoxicating me with its sweet odor.
“But I’ve found you now.” He added pointedly, rumbled possessively deep in his great chest. The sound was akin to a growl.
“Do you have a name?” My hands itched to reach out and touch him, explore the contours of his face, the details of which were still hidden from my human eyes by the darkness.
He laughed at that and the sound was like music of a natural birth, like seed pods rustling in a breeze and the chattering of song birds, mellowed by the gurgling of water over moss covered stones.
“I am the shadow under fallen logs, the glimmer on a ravens wing, the cry of a dying rabbit. I am why the willows weep, and where the water goes when the creeks run dry in high summer. I am the creature that swallows the moon when She flees the sky each month, the place from which the hunting folk make berth. I am the Night Wind, the deepest shade and the darkest dream. Do I frighten you?” He turned his great head to directly face me, close, his harvest moon eyes predatory, his horn of darkened glass almost brushing my hair as it passed above my head. There was a malevolence in the velvet of his coat, hidden in the torrents of his breath.
“No.” This close I could see the sheen of his eyes, an almost metallic glimmer within the orbs. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“I knew you would not be.” He was satisfied, smug even.
“What do you want with me?” I stared into his eyes, trying to learn more about him just by staring, trying to see his intent.
“To protect you.” The Night Wind answered softly, but there was a sort of posturing undertone, that possessive note again. “To guard you always.” He gave another growling purr.
“Oh,” I couldn’t think of an intelligent way to respond to this announcement. Visions of his immense form trailing behind me at the grocery flashed through my mind.
“If I offered to take you away with me, would you go?” He asked, his voice still beautiful, but suddenly somehow unmoved, and impartial, unimpassioned, distant.
I hesitated to answer, but it was a lie, that little pause, a dark, weak little lie. I would leave with the Night Wind and not glance back, not once. There would be nothing behind me anyway, a life half attempted. Unfinished paintings and unattended affairs, half a bottle of scotch and strangers that I’d known all my life. It was true that I had some good friends and adored my nieces and nephews. But close as they were to me, they were miles away. It was like loving daydreams, on a plane of existence that I could never quite adopt as my own. I’d stood on this cusp all my years, sat in this doorway and had never known how to pass through it.
“Yes,” I said, but the Night Wind had known from the instant I paused that I would go with him.
His visage softened with delight and he quivered all over as if in excitement, his tail lashing against my closet doors. When I gave him a spoken answer, he tossed his magnificent head and made a sound somewhere between a stallion’s bugle and a wolf’s howl, ghostly and haunting and full of triumph.
“Come then.” He stepped back from the bed. “Will you come now?”
Wordlessly I climbed out of the bed. I stumbled from the trailing blankets and into the curve of his massive neck, enveloped by thousands of strands of silken black mane, supported by the stoney breadth of his massive chest. My arms would hardly have reached around his neck and I simply pressed myself tight to him. The long muscles of his neck curved around my left side, the beard of his chin brushing my right leg where he curled around me. His hide was slick and soft, but as impermeable as plate armor I knew, despite its warmth under my fingers.
I stayed there against him until my heart had stopped pounding and I could breath normally again, and then I reluctantly stood back. I couldn’t bear to completely let go of him, however, and kept one hand tangled in the ropes of his ebony mane. The Night Wind remained docile beside me, as tender as new growth and as dangerous as black ice.
We went outside, both of us fitting through doorways and halls that were logically too narrow to permit our passage. Outside it was cold, frost shimmering on the ill-kept grass in the silver of the moon. The chill couldn’t touch me now though, not while I was with the Night Wind. The breeze picked up, stirring the trees, tossing the clouds across the sky. But it did not touch me. It turned all around the place where I stood, rustling the bushes. But it could not touch me.
“Will you still come with me?” The Night Wind sucked the color from the very air. Even the blackest, deepest shadows seemed grey next to him, and yet there was a glimmer within him where the moonlight shone through.
“Of course.” I snorted, almost indignant. I dipped my toes into the pool of black feathering that fell from near his foreleg, spreading over the ground like left-behind spider silk.
“Hold out your hand.” He instructed and when I did so, he lowered his great head. Slowly, an onyx tear welled in the corner of his golden eye, sliding from it to drop into my hand. Rather than splashing, it solidified into a sphere of smokey glass, not unlike his horn.
I muttered breathlessly, holding it up between two fingers. “Hold it tightly while we travel, and when I tell you to, take it into your mouth and bite it.” The Night Wind said. “No wait!” He growled when I moved as if to do it right then. “Until you bite it, you may change your mind and remain here.”
“I’ll wait.” I relented. “But I want to go with you.”
“Then up onto my back with you.” He curled his great head around, lowering it so that his beard whispered against the brittle stalks of grass. There was a note of amusement in his tone. “Step upon my horn and I shall boost you.”
It didn’t occur to me to argue. I couldn’t gain his back without help and the spiral of his horn was thicker than my arm. It might look like a twist of dark spun glass, but it would never shatter. Hiking the tail of my gown up I raised my left foot and carefully placed it as instructed, curling my toes around the gnarled, twisting beam. The dark pearl of his tear I clutched in one hand carefully. The Night Wind lifted his head and I slid up his side, swinging my right leg forward so that as my hips cleared his back, I landed atop him, my right leg dropping down along his neck and shoulder on the proper side.
“I should not be surprised that in all the worlds you are but one.” The Night Wind murmured beneath me, his voice of shifting river stones reverberating up through me.
He stood there a moment, his head craned round as it was, predatory golden eye taking me in, his beard fluttering over the top of my near foot.
“An eternity consolidated into on breath. That is how you make me feel.” He informed me.
“My whole life has been a string of moments stretched into eternities waiting for this one instant.” I retorted with a grin, his tear held firm against my chest. “I’m still waiting for you to fade away and leave me here to wake up in the yard tomorrow morning alone.”
He laughed. The noise bellowed through the cold air, booming like a thunderclap against the stillness. The Night Wind reared, striking at the stars and his ebony strands of mane whipped wildly, sliding over me in fey caresses while his tail cut the night air and cracked like breaking ice. He sat low on his great haunches, settling against the earth, cloven hooves furrowing into the ground and then leapt forward into a gallop.
I was but a child on his back and yet my legs found the curve of his girth without effort. My thighs fit the slope of his withers perfectly. Our surroundings became trivial, then inconsequential. His hooves fractured the pavement with each footfall, but the pavement became dark earth, dried and wretched and weak to the presence that trod upon it. Onward we went, outstripping even the moonlight’s reach as we traveled through the darkness.
The Night Wind’s immense mass stretched and lengthened, his strides encompassing meadows and entire forests. When we came to a vast mountain range gauging the horizon with its jagged peaks, he sprang from cliff to ledge to summit as easily as a cat might jump to a windowsill. From the mountains breathtaking crown the Night Wind leapt skyward, plowing through cloud banks and splashing across sodden thunderheads.
At first, I clung with my free hand to the ropes of mane that flowed all around me, anchoring myself against the great curving muscle of his arched neck. I was afraid that I would fall and be left behind. Eventually though, I was overtaken by the sheer ecstasy of the ride. Leaning forward along his neck, I gazed down and gasped to find only stars beneath us, swirling amidst the tireless black pillars of the Night Wind’s feathered legs.
And then the air around us grew brittle and the winds against my exposed skin calloused. The Night Wind plummeted from our glittering pathway to land in the drab greens and crumbling browns of an ancient wood. Wheeling on his powerful hindquarters he turned to face the way we had come. Piercingly brilliant flashes of white hot light bloomed in the shadows, shifting and tearing through the soft darkness to form shapes that were not entirely unlike the Night Wind.
Shocked and horrified, I regained my fistfuls of mane, my skin prickling beneath the silver, brazen gazes of the creatures before us. Under me, the Night Wind swung his haunches, breaking my line of sight with the back if his head, his twisting spire reaching towards the sky like a menacing lance.
“What do they want?” I whispered, feeling exposed and scrutinized. Dropping my right hand, which held his tear, I put it behind my back.
“You.” He turned his head around to fix me with a golden eye. “You didn’t think it would be as easy as all that, did you?”
“I don’t understand.” The pit in my stomach became a hollow, yawning hole. “What do they want with me?”
“To protect you, in their own way.” He answered. “To keep you as you were, sheltered and, in their eyes, safe.”
“But,” I considered this, although my first reaction was aversion to the garish entities. I rolled the tear against my fingers. “I want to go on with you.”
“They cannot stop you if that is what you truly desire.” The Night Wind said, his river stone voice gentle and serious. “But if you waver, they will tear you from me and I will not be able to stop them.”
“What are they?” I loosened my hips, settling myself lower on him, turning my knees outward, bare toes pointed to the ground so that I could hook my heels beneath the curves of his immense sides.
“They are absolute light. Utter good. The best intentions. They seek the safety of all, through gentle guidance.” He said. His dangerous golden eyes shimmered, his lips peeling up to reveal long curved canine teeth and a grim, strange smile. “And I? I am everything else.”
We stood in silence for some time, in a limbo of sorts. The creatures who threatened my newfound happiness were beautiful in a cold, blank way. They were tall and muscular with flowing platinum manes and narrow whipping tails. Their delicate legs and finely shaped heads were lighter of bone than the Night Wind’s, elegant and perfectly balanced, but their pale eyes contained none of his intensity, their visages held none of his feral beauty. And their bodies refracted light with a harsh-edged brilliance, like cut crystal, clear and cruelly empty. In contrast the sensuous velvet lines of the Night Wind’s midnight form were derived of blown glass, filled with endless nuances of shadow.
I could find no sympathy for these strange beings. I could see nothing appealing in them and I felt no connection to them. I could not, would not, suffer myself to bend to the wills of these strange, crystal creatures who stared at me as if I were something to be taken away, not because they cared where I went, but because I was something the Night Wind had.
I was not prepared for the glittering lance that pierced my left breast, nor the one that followed it, stabbing into the right side of my chest. The force of them nearly threw me from the Night Wind’s back, but my left hand was still twined in his long mane, and that anchor held me firm. Grasping at his neck with both hands, I barely resisted the sudden drag of the barbs lodged in my chest. The crystalline shards burned inside me, drawing my strength.
Before I could find the breath to cry out, the Night Wind reared up, dancing forward on his hind legs. He plowed into our adversaries without hesitation, dark cloven hooves flashing, and I could do nothing but hang on, determined not to be taken. The crystal creatures shrieked their anger in high wailing howls, dodging and leaping. They lunged at me with their clear sparkling horns, as if to spear me again.
It was a violent fight, and though I remained astride the Night Wind, the shards in my chest pulled and wrenched me from side to side. I was going to loose my grip, despite that I was determined not to. A clump of the Night Wind’s silken mane tore loose in my right hand. The hair scattered from my fingers, but I hadn’t lost the black pearl of his tear. He had said that he would tell me when to bite it. But until I bit it, I could be kept here.
Before anything else could happen, I shoved the tear-pearl into my mouth. It rolled over my tongue and I caught it between my teeth, biting immediately. The tear shattered into a thousand pieces, releasing sweet cool liquid that drained down my throat. My vision blurred, darkened. Abruptly, a memory from childhood floated into my mind, where I stood in one of the back rooms of my grandfather’s stained glass factory.
A slab of dark glass leaned against one wall, glass so dark that scarcely any light could filter through it. My grandfather had ordered it for a customer, but it had turned out wrong and was going to be thrown away. I had crawled into the gap between it and the wall and stared for hours up into the mirky nether of the too-dark glass, lost in its unnoticed beauty. Now, I was swept into that glass, carried into it on the back of the Night Wind, whose tear sloshed inside me, washing away the hindrance of the daylight worlds with their harsh crystal guardians.
When I opened my eyes, I was still with the Night Wind, and we were standing amidst swirling shadows and slivers of midnight. The empty, crystal creatures stood across from us. They seemed familiar now, their expressions almost human, picking at my brain and begging to be recognized as friends or family or someone who should have been important but wasn’t. They stood, surrounded by shapes of white, hard edged tables and cold metals frames. Between them on a metallic slab lay something that was lately a woman, pale skinned and lifeless.
What a sad creature she seemed, so alone and empty. I ought to know her, I realized, but my head was filled only with the Night Wind. A shadow of film hung between us and that strange and twisted scene, but I twined my fingers into the Night Wind’s mane anyway, just in case the horrible crystal things tried to take me again. I shouldn’t have worried. They stared directly at us, but they saw nothing within the darkness that surrounded us, nothing beyond their own perceptions of what was real.
“Come then, I will show you all of my worlds.” The Night Wind said quietly, his voice of river stones rippling through my spine. “We will travel the shadow ways, we two. We will walk where others fear to tread, in the darkness where the day cannot go.” He shook himself all over, threatening to shiver me right off his back, and then rumbled with laughter. “Do you regret your choice to come with me after the melee it took to free you from them and their clinging?”
“Regret?” I scowled down at his lovely golden eye, one hand drifting to touch the places where the lances had pierced me. There were no marks on my skin now. “I wasn’t happy there, and they had no right to try and keep me there just to make themselves happy.”
He leapt away then, without warning, into the eddies of midnight, dusk and early dawn, leaving behind the garish figures behind us. If I had turned, I would have seen how the people shivered against the sudden chill, how their hair stirred in the sudden wind. I would have seen how they shuddered from the touch of the Night Wind, and how they turned from the darkness and into the light of day, heads bowed with what they could only perceive as loss. But I didn’t turn, I left what little I’d known behind, and embraced what I’d never yet experienced.

First Cup...

2010-11-06T09:17:00.004-04:00

As I sit here typing this, I'm drinking my first cup of coffee in roughly four days. No, I didn't feel a sudden need to cleanse myself of the glorious sludge known as caffeine... I got sick and couldn't drink coffee. I couldn't drink anything but water, actually. Eating didn't go any better. But here I am, just the same, no discernible weight loss, on the mend and suffering only a mild withdrawal from the pain meds they had me on for the sore throat. That's right, I managed to find a virus who's only primary symptom was a sore throat so extreme that standard treatment involved Codeine and Codeine cough syrup taken in combination. Yeah, I might as well have been stuffed into a titanium canister and blasted into space for the last four days. I can't even say that I got any inspiration from whacky dream-type delusions because if any of them were cool... I don't remember. In fact, I'm still setting things down to my left like, I don't know, my left hand, and losing them for half an hour while I look to the right for where they got to. Yes, I don't do pain meds very often...

But there's an upside to all of the drugged-out sickness. It's like hitting 'reset' on the giant computer of life. All the files are a little hinky at first, but they're all there. You just just have to let them reorganize. Meanwhile, you get this chance to decide if you want them to be in the same order or if you want new files to take the lead. In my case, I came home from Sirens (check them out and sign up to go next year, I want to see you there) and the week after in Colorado and I was so deranged with excitement and the drive to 'get things done' in the writing sector of life, I was so spastic with the need to somehow get away from my current life and try to fast forward to the life I hope to get with my writing, that I got not much done anywhere at all. Well, I got several outlines done for what I hope will be an urban fantasy trilogy, and I did finish the rewrites of Evernow. But really, I did quite a bit of irrelevant, frivolous dithering. Then I got sick. And the world sort of stopped. It was nice, even nicer because it was out of my control, and I had no choice in the matter. Sometimes the powers that be see that you need your reset button whacked, whether or not YOU realize it.

While I was sick I did manage to:

Reread most of The Bones of Faerie. Love. Love. LOVE. This book. And now that I've met Janni, (she's like the coolest thing since sliced bread, no joke and SO MUCH FUN to be around... so is her husband, Larry) I love the book even more. If you haven't read BoF, and you have any love for dystopian, or Faerie, READ IT! Then head over to Janni's LJ page and tell her which minor character of BoF you'd like to know see more of, for a chance to win an ARC of FAERIE WINTER. I'm so stoked.

Write... sort of... Mostly, I made myself scratch something down on my current leading WIP, RED CHIEF, because I signed up for NaNoWriMo right before I got sick, and I refused to fold that quickly. I haven't read what I wrote yet *shudders at the thought* but at least pen hit paper a few times... if I remember correctly... oh dear...

Laid around with my cats. If you have a cat, you'll already know that all of my activities while ill - including trips to the bathroom - were chaperoned by the reigning authorities... my cats. I mean, seriously, they've put a lot of time into getting me properly trained, right? So they have to protect their investment by making sure that I can't actually fit down the bathtub drain...

Most importantly though, while I was sick, I let things go. I found a place where I can escape from panic over the idea that I might 'never make it' and will be 'trapped' where I am in life forever, a place where I can be at peace with the fact that I currently have no queries out, and be happy knowing that I'm 'going' to have them out, once I've gotten them as spit-polished as possible. I found a starting point again. A 'first cup' in my writing life. So when I finish my first cup of coffee and hit 'publish post' on this happy little blathering tangent, I'm going to go start writing on Red Chief... WITHOUT the intent of finishing it so I can start querying. I'm going to write it because I want to, because writing it makes me happy. Because that's what makes life worthwhile. Writing for the sake of writing. The rest will come in due time. Or it won't. I'll still be writing either way. And loving every minute of it.

I've Been Bad...

2010-10-28T19:50:00.004-04:00

Okay, not that bad. But I did promise that I would get some more posts up about Sirens and my Colorado adventures... and, well, I've been revising instead...

I've finally 'finished' the revisions on Evernow. I've successfully (I think) added in another character, Lena, and although she doesn't show up until much later in the book, I think events are more believable with her as their vector. I also had some angst about Evernow herself coming across as too Mary Sue, even though I've never had a prospective agent, or beta reader make a peep about Mary Sueness... With the arrival of Lena, some of the pressure to save the day is off of Evernow, and yet Ever is able to maintain the stubborn indomitableness that is so much a part of her character.

Now I'm reading through everything yet one more time, trying to prepare to send off queries to a few select agents. For the first time, I'm having some Sicilian hair-rending attacks over the idea of these queries. It's hard to articulate why, since I've got an entire bowl full of rejections, but I think it's a combination of things. The fact is, I LOVE these agents and their presence in the literary world... rejections from them will be scarring. Not so much because I'll have failed to secure an agent, but because I'll have 'lost' the chance to show them I'm worth their time and effort. Another factor is that after a year of querying Evernow, I'm feeling as though perhaps I've been clinging to a star I 'thought' was going to fall... meanwhile other stories, or stars, were passing me by because of the time I spent on Evernow. I won't give up on Evernow, but I feel as though I may be facing a time when I'll be forced to set it aside. Then there's the fact that I feel like I'm not getting any younger. Rome wasn't built in a day, I'm aware, and I'm hardly old. But considering that it could be years from the time an agent offers to rep me, to the day I get an ARC of my book, I'm feeling the pressure to get an agent already...

And on that note... I'll stop procrastinating... and get back to my read through... and The Great Pumpkin...

Adventures, Revisions and Yawn....

2010-10-22T20:38:00.011-04:00

The week since I got back from Colorado has been.... uh, hectic might be the gentlest way of putting it. And I'm not even counting the loss of my ancient dog, code name NeedleNose, into the equation. Apart from departing dogs, we've had: sick babies, sick baby-daddies, sick horses, stallions no longer able to 'do the deed', check cards that have been 'blocked due to questionable activity' (never mind that I've been home for a WEEK, in my home state, AND the card was flagged for travel, meaning that they blocked me from stealing money from... myself) and one rejection, which wasn't unexpected, but still stung. Yes, nothing like being sling-shot from the bliss of primitive camping into the maniacal madness of daily routine...

Sirens was AWESOME. Seriously people, start saving your pennies now because next years theme is Monsters! I'm going and I expect to see at least a few of you there as well. It's not just for women! We need all the attendees we can get to make sure that this conference is successful and keeps going. I admit that I haven't been to any conference besides Sirens, but trust me, it is amazing. I mean, where else can you go and chat it up with an author like Marie Brennan on the shuttle for an hour before realizing who you're chatting with? (face/palm on my recognition skills)

Me, lurking behind my Queen Marie of the Onyx Court... (photo credit to the lovely Caila)

I was in the Denver airport for like fifteen minutes before the air filled with shouts of greeting and meeting as returning attendees and newcomers began meeting up in the Boulder Beer and Tap House. There were so many lovely people there! *sighs happily* I intend to devote and entire post to Sirens when I've been able to better consolidate my thoughts on it, but needless to day I had an absolute blast and we NEED conferences like this! So please, check Sirens out and think about signing up to attend next year. You too guys! We only had three men, of which I only saw two, and while they were both wonderful and engaging and fun... they were also both married to lovely, talented, ass-kickingly awesome women (Marie Brennan and Janni Lee Simner)

Two of the Origami creatures brought to life by Janni's husband Larry.

Instead of riding back to the airport with the other attendees from Sirens, I was picked up by two longtime friends, Hilary, my first boss (at the farm where I still work) and her daughter Caitlin. I hadn't seen either of them for almost four years and it was GOOD to get back together. They whisked me away for a week of nonstop adventure that included camping, hiking and swigging a few beers by the fires in some amazingly beautiful places. I'll devote an entire posts to all of that as well, but here a couple of pictures.

Cait and I doing the Colorado squint and smile.

If you look at the upper right corner of the picture, you can just make out a pale blue dot on the rocks... that would be Caitlin's jacket. I'm sitting in a chair with my back to the camera. Hilary took the picture from about half a mile further down the canyon looking back.

Besides all the 'regular' stuff going on, I've had a new girl appear in the middle of my revisions on Evernow. Yes, there's a new girl in the story, despite that it's been 'finished' for over a year, and sent to numerous agents. I didn't ask for her to show up, she just did. And she's as outspoken and opinionated as Evernow herself... so I'm obliged to work her into the manuscript. She's a great asset, this Lena. Already she's made herself a pivotal, if secondary character, and so many things in the latter part of the book simply work better with her as their catalyst. Oh the joys of revision.... the ravens of revision as I've come to call them. But in this case, the ravens are guiding me to a stronger product and I can't wait to get finished and see how it all looks.

Now I'm off to burrow back down into the aforementioned revisions... *yawns sleepily even though she won't be in bed for hours yet*

Dragging...

2010-10-20T18:15:00.002-04:00

So I probably won't get a decent post up until this weekend. I'm buried in revisions and my ancient dog died yesterday. She'd been waning, and her death wasn't unexpected. She simply went to sleep in the sunshine (beautiful fall day here in VA) and didn't wake up. Anyone who's had animals knows that this is as good as it can get when you lose them. Still, it's the first time in seventeen years that she's not puttering around the living room while I write. And her sister-pup is having an understandably rough time adjusting, so there's that to manage. Anyway, I promise I'll get around to posting a few pictures from both Sirens and my Colorado adventures that took place the week following some time soon.

It's Alive!!! Mooohoohaahaa!.... Hmm, I might have used that title before...

2010-10-17T20:48:00.003-04:00

So I'm still alive... but I've been roving all over Colorado having the TIME OF MY LIFE with good friends, second family really, and seeing things I've never seen before, doing things I've never done before. I'll try to start getting some posts and pics up about Sirens and my Colorado adventures later this week. At the moment I'm trying to get back into this annoying reality...

Sirens...

2010-10-07T13:58:00.002-04:00

Random blather post to say that I made it to Sirens alive and well. I intended to write a little post in the airport after I arrived but darned if I didn't immediately run into some terribly awesome ladies who attended Sirens with me last year! We sort of just ate and laughed and caught up with each other instead of writing anything like a blog post. Oh well, I said that my posts would be spotty... :) Any who, now I'm off to maybe write a little and munch at the sign-in for the official opening of Sirens....

Blog Awards!

2010-10-04T11:29:00.002-04:00

Thank you Melissa for giving me the Cherry on Top Award!

I'm touched!

Now that I've thanked Melissa (you should really check her blog out and meet both her and her lovely friend Milo) I get to answer this question: If I had the chance to go back and change one thing in my life what would it be.

It's a difficult question. I normally say that I don't have regrets because I try to think about big decisions in terms of 'is this something I'll regret?' and thusly if it is, I don't do it. Not that I never make mistakes, I make those all the time. But having a funeral director for a dad might have warped me, and often times I think 'If I die tomorrow will I be happy with today?' So, anyway, one golden redo in life...

I'll go with the most recent thing that's bothering me: I would NOT send out a query to an agent that I DID send out a query to. I'd change this because I was in a 'bad place' emotionally and mentally, which was linked to the stagnant state of my hunt for an agent, and I had a history with THIS agent, having queried him last year, at which point he passed but told me specifically to keep him in mind if I had other projects. So I did, of course, and the moment I had something different and strong (yes it had been edited several times over) I queried the agent. And predictable, he responded and asked to see the full... and I've heard nothing for the past month... So it's not that I regret querying him so much as I regret WHEN I queried him, ie in a moment of frustrated hope rather than in time period of laid back 'comfortable'. Sending it later might not have given me a different result, but I wouldn't be second guessing myself now.

I'm passing this along to several other bloggers that I have gotten to know and enjoy:

Saloma
Laura
Christi
Hanna

I also received the One Lovely Blog Award from Carolyn.

Thanks Carolyn! :D

Rules:

Acknowledge the blogger who gave it to you
Pass it on to 10 bloggers you have recently met.

Rebekah
Hanna
Bree
Jennifer
Deni
Talli
Melissa
Malinda
Heather
Martina and Marissa

Sirens, SceneCycle, and Superrandomness...

2010-10-02T21:13:00.004-04:00

This post... and likely any others I write in the next few days will probably be scattered and rambling... but wait, my posts are usually scattered and rambling...

In three days I will be leaving for Sirens!!! *panics because she isn't packed, hates flying, and she's just not ready to leave* Around the panicking, I'm so excited it's ridiculous. There are going to be several awesome Guests of Honor, and several other absurdly cool authors (ahem, Sherwood Smith, and Tamora Pierce) are going to be on hand to participate in panels and other presentations. So fracking (new fav word, even though I'm not knowledgeable about Battlestar Galactica) awesome! I'm going to Colorado a day early to partake in the Sirens Supper along with anyone else who happens to get to Vail before the official start of the conference. So if any of you happen to be going to Sirens, keep an eye out for me in the Denver airport. I'll be the one with the braids. No, not that cute girl with the matching luggage.... the one in the Sirens t-shirt with the Swiss Army back pack and the Harley jacket... and the zombie rag doll.... pretty sure I'll be the only girl with one of those...

On to SceneCycle! A friend and former teacher of mine has been telling me about SceneCycle for some time now, but I only just experienced it first hand today and I'm astonished. SceneCycle is a card-based game wherein players take turns constructing a story together from introduction of the main character to the final resolution. My friend helped with tweaking the games final format and she's already getting it involved with local school systems. The game teaches kids (and adults) to utilize their own imaginations and construct stories instead of simply reading them. The creator is a writer who wanted to become a better writer. Just in the short introduction I had today, I was impressed and excited about the idea. Right now the game comes in three themes, with the terminology and characters detailed to each one: Sword and Shield, Steampunk, and Dystopian. I've sticky-fingered a deck for Sword and Shield and Steampunk to bring with me to Sirens. I implore you to check SceneCycle out! The website is a little primitive, but they're still just getting off the ground, so please don't hold that against them.

Aaaand tomorrow my family is going to congregate in a batshit banana free for all known as the annual family picnic. These events are usually defined by things like: my cousin (6'7) flipping out of the hammock, impromptu soccer games involving my aunt (played on an all-woman team for years... where they were known to break each others' shins in practice) and eating... anything not nailed down. Yes, my family does two things well without even trying. These things are talking and eating. No, usually not at once. Although since there is an abnormal amount of Italians in our ranks, the occasional chicken leg to your neighbor's temple has been known to happen. If you're Italian, you'll understand how talking can lead to whacking your neighbor with a chicken leg. For those of you who aren't Italian, us Italians talk with our hands. Really excitedly sometimes. Okay, all the time. The point is, we're fun to watch and great to talk to... as long as you're at a safe distance.

Since I'm still trying to get organized enough to avoid airport security filing for overtime, and tomorrow is likely to be taken up with family antics, and magic (did I mention I know a magician? Zephyr. Seriously. Amazing) I might not get to post again until I'm in CO. I'll probably get something up while I'm in the airport waiting for the Sirens shuttle, but no promises. Anyway, I'm off on an adventure... we'll see if it turns out like Indiana Jones... or National Lampoons...

The Dog Who Cried Break-In...

2010-09-29T18:05:00.004-04:00

As promised, this post is the tale, not of a boy who cried wolf, but of a dog who cried break-in. I was at the farm the other day, minding my own business, dragging ill-sorted ponies through several inches of mud (YAY it finally rained!!!) when my cell phone rang. Considering I was in an area known as a vortex of inter-dimensional airways, and there was half a hurricane hovering overhead, it was a miracle that my phone even bothered to accept the call. Seeing that it was an unknown number, I was momentarily inebriated with the thought that this might be 'The Call'... you know 'That Call'... the one we all wait for and then usually go mute for the duration of? Yeah, no. Instead, someone identified themselves as an ADT service person calling to notify me that the alarm at my house was going off.

I asked him to repeat himself. He did. I ran into a wall, face-planted into a muddy horse butt, and stepped in... stuff that wasn't mud... The gentleman restated the reason for his call one more time. I immediately suggested that it was my ma, Snowbear, coming in from school, because I knew for a fact that she had gotten off early. Tote bag, groceries, you know, sometimes you hit the wrong buttons on the alarm pad. The gentleman informed me that the alarm was registering in the living room, specifically from broken glass. My first thought was the window, obviously. But my next thought was 'I've climbed in that window before, and your a$$ hangs out for everyone on the road to see'. The only other window has an air conditioner shoved into it. The ADT folks hadn't been able to reach my dad. I asked the gentleman on the phone - while scraping 'stuff' off of my boots - if he thought that I should leave work and go to the house to meet the authorities. He said it wasn't his place to offer suggestions. Men. Either they want to be in charge of everything or nothing. He asked how long it would take me to get home so he could inform the authorities. I looked out the front of the barn and saw grey sky... looked out the back and found solid white sheets of rain. I told him I didn't know, I was in monsoon season and said that I was going to try and get in touch with my dad.

I reached him, discovered that he had gotten the message from ADT and was heading home. He promised to call me as soon as he knew anything. So I went back to work, actually got a few things done, and waited. And tried to call my ma, who's notorious for never turning on her cell phone. After cursing about yet another unanswered call, my sister Fenris helpfully admitted that she was worried because what if ma had interrupted a burglar? Seriously? Thank you dear sister.

Well, anyway, it turns out that my ancient dog had knocked over a kitchen chair in her Alzheimer-like trundling, thusly setting off the 'breaking glass' alarm. And even if she'd been able to push another chair over and climb up to reach the alarm pad, since she doesn't have opposable thumbs hitting the code might have been difficult. On top of that, in her old age, she doesn't enunciate like she used to, so talking to the ADT rep who undoubtedly called 'Hello?' through the automatic connection would have been almost impossible. So the end result was that my MIA mother, Snowbear, got to chew the fat with our local sheriff and the rest of us got to suck on oxygen tanks because for a few insane minutes, we feared that someone wanted to steal our 'stuff', in the immortal words of George Carlin...

Bla bla bla bla and OMG so Fracking Adorable...

2010-09-28T18:29:00.002-04:00

I should probably have some sort of organized post (okay, stop snorting, I AM organized, on occasion... sometimes...) but I don't. I've got a manuscript flapping in the wind with an agent that I would just chew my arm off to land. It's been what seems like a lifetime since I sent the ms out (have you ever noticed how time slows down after you hit the send button?) and I'm wearing a rut in the carpet that could swallow an elephant. I know that the agent is an 'editorial' agent... so I'm hoping, and praying, and lighting little paper lanterns that he's making busy little notes and I'll eventually get an email with positive things in it. But statistically, I'm thinking things are going to end with a few wild moments of Sicilian hair rending and a few thousand calories worth of chocolate.

And since sending the ms out, I've gotten feedback from a beta reader that was, well, not awesome. I mean, she said it could be a good story BUT... and there was rather a laundry list of things she suggested that I change or research more. Things I didn't entirely understand her problems with, things that I'd thought weren't an issue at all, things that took me at the blindside. It made me question myself more deeply than I ever have. After a rough few days, I ventured to ask my bro-in-law, one of my other beta readers what he thought of the book. He didn't agree with the first beta reader at all. He 'got' all the things she didn't. He didn't have issue with a lot of the things she did (she's an anthropology major and this is the book about Ansel the albino Athabaskan) and he loved the characters that she felt were never really developed. Knowing his opinion, even if I haven't read his full critique, helped a lot. Sort of.

How do you know how seriously to take your beta reader's opinions? I mean, if someone tells me that the pacing drags logistically, I can fix that. If they tell me that it drags because there's too much mooning between two characters who are falling in love and have never been in love before, and the other betas don't think there's too much mooning, how do I take that? Respectfully I could have done with about a tenth of the mooning in the Twilight saga... but obviously I'd be outside the other 95% of the population... including agents and editors. So what defines the line between 'something doesn't work because you've mucked it up logistically' and 'something doesn't work because I don't like it'?

Whew... sorry about that blather but it's been a burr under my saddle. I'm not someone who dithers and question themselves. I can take rejection and critiquing, but this has been hard because I've found myself convincing myself that I've screwed up my chance with a great agent by blundering all of these things I thought I'd gotten right. And even having one beta (my bro-in-law is a great reader despite our connection. He has no trouble with detachedly telling me something stinks and why.) tell me my story is not trash, doesn't eradicate the fact that another beta didn't like the story at all. Even knowing that the book isn't her 'her cup of tea' from the get-go doesn't mean that there isn't some truth to her opinion of the book. I don't know. *obsessively starts dithering again*

And now for the OMG so Fracking Adorable part...

I recently (don't ask the exact date, I'm waaay to scattered to figure that out) found Rebekah Joy Plett. Can I just say that I LOVE going over to her blog? Not only do her posts make me smile, but all of her art? SERIOUSLY? SO FRACKING ADORABLE! I want to get half of them as tattoos so I can wake up and see them first thing every morning. Don't wince, I do love tattoos, but I'm not going to disappear under ink any time soon. Not that there's anything wrong with people covered in the stuff :) Anyway, you should absolutely scoot on over and check out Rebekah's blog. And if you do, give her a big high five because she just signed on with the super cool zombielicious Bree Ogden of Martin Literary Management. I admit that I stole the term 'frack' from one of her congratulatory commenters... what can I say? It's an awesome word... And I like me some learning of new awesome words... :)

Next post? A breakdown of the 'ancient dog home alone affect on breaking glass alarm systems' equation...

Here Comes The Great Blogging Experiment!

2010-09-24T06:09:00.003-04:00

So I signed up to be a part of 'The Great Blogging Experiment' in which everyone who signed up writes a post about a topic chosen by the events brilliant masterminds: Elana Johnson, Jennifer Daiker and Alex Cavanaugh. The idea is that we all write posts on the same subject to see how differently we each are in our approach. Pretty cool huh? I can't wait to read everyone else's post... which is going to take all weekend by the look of the list of participating bloggers (!!! Go Elana, Jen and Alex!!!)

I'm no expert on anything... well, maybe besides the arts of cat herding, frog wrangling, and poking large herbivores in the gluteus maximus with big needles... But I digress. Expert or not I'm going to take a stab (totally intentional needle joke) at postulating on how I write compelling characters and what I find compelling about characters.

Our topic: Writing Compelling Characters.

Here's the definition of 'compelling': 1. Tending to compel; overpowering. 2. Having a powerful and irresistible effect; requiring acute admiration, attention or respect.

After looking up the definition, I had a slight panic attack, wondering if my characters were compelling. They certainly drive me, and compel me to document their stories. But do others find them compelling? I think this is something all of us writers struggle with. Looking back at my two strongest manuscripts I believe that I've created compelling characters... in very different ways.

Evernow, the mc of my Dystopian YA is like a pit bull on steroids (in a good way, I like pit bulls). She does what she does for her own reasons and in her own ways. If she loves you she'll die for you and if she has unsettled business with you not even death is going to stop her from finding you and finishing that business. Evernow is her own brand of compelling. Her 'ask no questions, take no prisoners' attitude drags you along for the ride. You may or may not like her, but you'll be compelled (I hope) to read on and see what she does or says next. It's Evernow's self-confidence and fearlessness that draws you through the story. Even when she mucks things up, she determines to fix them at any cost. She might stumble through life, but she'll get through on her own two feet. She's a character of raw emotion and frank honesty, and even though her blunt, sometimes caustic responses and actions might startle you, they make her who she is.

In sharp contrast to Evernow, Ansel, the mc of my Contemporary YA, is compelling because of his gentle devotion to another character in the book. Although he has his own fears, Ansel chooses to put Catskin (the girl he soon falls in love with) over himself, willingly taking on the responsibilities of aiding a stranger. Having spent most of his life living quietly with his close-knit family, Ansel - an albino Athabaskan Indian - has little experience with either girls or trauma victims. When he realizes that he can help Catskin though, he doesn't hesitate to invest himself in doing so, for no other reason than he believes that it's the right thing to do. You're drawn to Ansel (I hope) because of his quiet resolve and unflinching determination to try and right the wrongs that have been committed against the girl he loves.

The point of that rambling blather was to try and show that there are infinite ways to make your characters compelling. To me, there's only one thing that must be present no matter what sort of person your character is: Personality. They don't have to be deep, or brave, or geeky, or smart-a$$ed. But they DO have to be themselves. They have to be what no other character anywhere CAN be. I've loved dull characters... because they were dull in their own charming way. I've loved egotistical morons... because, well, it was fun to read about them getting into trouble with their egos. You can love a character you hate, and be compelled to read on about them by that very hatred. If the character has no individual personality though, they mean nothing to you. So for me, 'compelling' comes down to what it is that makes the character tick. If they're believable, they're compelling. It's when they're contrived or 'forced' that I find them un-compelling. No, I'm not sure that un-compelling is a word, now that you mention it. But it gets the job done :)

So now I'm off to read other bloggers' takes on the matter of writing compelling characters. Squee squee I'm SO excited to be a part of this experiment. Thanks to everyone in advance for stopping by! Hopefully my post was at least entertaining... I only had to stop four times while I was writing this in order to: Unstick an ancient dog from behind the armchair. Feed a very ornery Donkuitote. Put my remaining Demon Chickens to bed. And crawl my way to the coffee pot for some liquid back-up...

The Great Blogging Experiment!

2010-09-23T18:05:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is The Great Blogging Experiment! I'm working on my own post as we speak... The topic is Writing Compelling Characters. I'm so stoked about reading everyone else's posts... *anxiously flips screens to her own... finds ten things she doesn't like*... and I hope all of you are too. There's still time to sign up! Hurry on over to Elana's blog!

A Demon Chicken Passes...

2010-09-18T09:37:00.003-04:00

It happened. I didn't expect it. I wasn't prepared. I'm the daughter of a funeral director. Death is like my creepy sidekick. We're comfortable together. I understand Death... but sometimes I wish he could warn me just a little before he drops in.

I went out to feed the infamous Demon Chickens (if you've been around, you'll have read about my Demon Chickens before) and found Jemima dead, apparently the victim of a fox who was smart enough to wait out of sight until she stuck her head through the chain link in search of wayward bugs. It was quick, I'm sure, and because I'm not easily upset by gore, the body wasn't awful. Losing Jemima was the awful part. Watching Towanda sit beside the body was awful. Seeing Franklin try and protect the body was awful.

I know they're 'just chickens' but I love them. And they care about each other. Maybe on a chicken farm, the chickens don't have any attachment to each other. But my Demon Chickens do. I left poor Franklin counting hens and coming up short this morning. How do you explain Death to a rooster? Towanda has taken up a guard position where Jemima's body was lying against the fence. I know this is nature. Chickens are food. I just tricked myself into thinking I had fooled nature into passing us by. *sigh* At least I can be assured that Jemima didn't suffer, and that she had a better life than most chickens. Tonight (I had to work this weekend) I'll bury her under the white oak I grew from an acorn and next year I'll be able to look at it and think that some of the leaves are Jemima's.

Eight Questions...

2010-09-18T09:36:00.002-04:00

So, yeah...I’ve been tagged in a game that goes like this, I answer a series of questions with entertaining comments. Then I tag others who do the same on their blogs. Warning: these answers will probably tell you more than you wanted to know about me. Or everything you did in which case I can't be held personally responsible for. You've been warned.

Still reading? Okay then. Enjoy. :)

1. If you could have any superpower, what would you have? Why?

My super power would be to see myself through other people's eyes. Because it never fails to astonish me how people perceive me sometimes... I've terrified people by joking, and at other times they managed to miss the fact that I was about to dismember someone... it's just amazing what you feel and what others see... besides all that... it might give me an inside track on how to lure agents...

2. Who is your style icon?

WHO? I can only have one??? Ummm, how about David Bowie and the Marlboro Man had a daughter together who then married Adam Lambert but had a passing affair with Katherine Hepburn, the resulting child of which was raised by all three of them... that's me. And if it doesn't make sense... my style is just as random... clothing-wise anyhow...

3. What is your favorite quote?

Changes daily... but right now, I'm going with: (Between two speakers) 'She's a little strange.' 'Oh, she's alright. Just tighten her helmet and send her on her way.'

4. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received?

"I was terrified to talk to you, but I'm so glad I did! Now I'm braver and I met someone totally awesome!"

5. What playlist/cd is in your CD player/iPod right now?

Um... I've been addicted to Pandora recently. Mostly 80's dance remixes. But for CDs I'm currently hooked on 'The Rain Within' by Andy Deane (woot on the solo debut Andy!)

6. Are you a night owl or a morning person?

Well.... both. I'll stay up all night and I LOVE sitting watching the sun come up while I drink coffee. Plus I work on a horse farm so up early is the daily routine. I prefer sleeping like 11 am until 6 pm... but that's in a perfect world...

7. Do you prefer dogs or cats?

Neither... I'm a cat/dog/chicken/horse/any other animal I come across kind of girl :)

8. What is the meaning behind your blog name

Well, when I was painting more and writing less, I signed everything Artemis Grey. It's like my drag queen alternate persona I can conquer the world side. And now it's what I write under, well, A. Grey. So for my blog I went with Grey Places because it's my place :)

Now, I'm going to tag... Matthew Melissa and Jess Can't wait to see the answers!

Life is Like Herding Cats...

2010-09-12T19:28:00.002-04:00

Have you ever tried to herd cats? Have you ever stood back and watched someone ELSE try to herd cats? (If you're smart, this is the way to go, less sweat, no fur on your clothes and the only lasting side effect is aching sides the next day from your hysterical laughter) I have had the incomparable experience of trying to herd cats. It involved diabolical plans of entrapment (none of which even came close to working) extensive maneuvering (forget the 'four legs versus two thing' I couldn't outrun a cat if I had eight legs) and enough moments of physical insanity to net me the million dollars on America's Funniest Home Videos. No, the cat's never went where they were supposed to. They're cats. And cats don't go where they're supposed to. If they did, they'd be dogs.

Anyway, the point of all that was to say that life is a lot like herding cats. You can plan. You can plot. You can run around waving your arms over your head squalling like a bimbo. But life is going to ignore you and do what it pleases. That's just the way it goes. Recently, my life has been completely ignoring me. It's just been doing its own thing, dragging me along like a sock on a string. Like a cat, it apparently only claims me when there's food involved.

I've at least been writing, between obsessively checking my email and mud wresting with my logline and pitch, which are entered in the contest that's been going on over at Adventures in Children's Publishing. And of course, I've been running mad at the farm. It's show season. And now the owner (who's in her late eighties) has decided to breed a mare... never mind that the stallion is thirty (the equivalent to a ninety year old man) and it's so late in the year that the mare isn't cycling like she ought to be. It makes for one long, never-ending adventure to be sure. And I've had no control over it. But sometimes not having control over things is good. Sometimes, you need to be a little out of control. Out of control puts you out of the box, because you're no longer bound by 'normal' circumstances.

It's a little tiring though... I'm looking forward to Sirens, which is coming up in October. I'll be staying with friends for the week following the conference. They live in Montrose and will drive up to fetch me from Vail and haul me off into the unknown for Jeeping, camping, rock climbing and bananas only know what else. I can't wait. I told them, 'As soon as that car door shuts, my tuchus belongs to you. Do with me what you will'. They're plotting even as we speak. That's what friends do. They kidnap each other from reality, when reality needs to take a hike, and they don't return you until you're ready to deal with that pesky thing called 'life' again.

Just remember, if you ever decide to attempt herding cats: 100% cotton clothes, less fur will stick to them. Rubber soled shoes, they'll give you more grip for all of those cutting horse moves you'll be doing. And catnip. Sometimes cats - and life - respond better to bribes than outright chasing...

You Misunderstand... I Live HERE... I Only Occasionally Visit This 'Reality' You Keep Talking About....

2010-09-04T10:13:00.002-04:00

I've recovered from my 'vacation'... mostly anyway. I'm back to work... which seems more like work than ever... and I'm trying not to turn green at the knowledge that my BFF Pippi was down at Nags Head playing in Earl's wind (not that hurricanes are fun... but parts of them sorta are, if no one gets hurt) while I was slogging through ninety-odd degree heat with aching joints (thank you cold front) and fighting with horses that aren't getting nearly enough done with them. Imagine a team of football players stuck in the locker room for a week or two, not allowed to get out on the field and utilize their energy. Yep. That's about what a horse who's not in training but is getting fed an inordinate amount of food and being stall kept is like...

But onto more exciting and less-likely-to-splatter you subjects...

I've got 'stuff' going on with AGMG. I refuse to really talk about it because I'm afraid *pauses to breath as she's momentarily struck with emotional paroxysms* that nothing but sorrowful drama and hair-rending loss the likes of which America hasn't seen since J.R. was shot, will be the only outcome of this 'stuff'. At the same time, of course, I'm fighting the redonkulous urges to try and look into the future. You know, the future where I'm deciding what to wear to a book signing and how I want to word the 'special thanks' to my brother Chucky Duck for not letting me throw my computer into a wall all those times I was so tempted to... Anyone who ever tells you that waiting isn't hard has never cared about the outcome at the end of that waiting. Seriously. I'm all for a stake to the heart, silver bullet, whatever, but make it fast and straightforward. Or love me the moment you meet me. But waiting... aaaarrgh!

What? Reality is all about waiting? That's what they keep telling me. I suppose it's true, which is why I'm practicing so hard to get good at it. But I don't live in 'reality'. I live 'here', where I write all the time, and even though my writing might not be perfect, people tell me what's hinky and I get to keep working on it until it hits that sweet spot and makes them smile and ask for more. 'Reality' is just that annoying place I have to visit every so often, like to pay bills, go to work, etc. I'm adept at carrying 'here' with me into 'reality', however. Anyone who's met me isn't likely to have forgotten the huge notebook I was undoubtedly dragging with me. That's why I love longhand. Paper never runs out of batteries, and even if my pen goes bogey, I can use someone else's... or a pencil... or a sharpened piece of stick charred black with a borrowed lighter... whatever. Suffice to say that it's harder to be thwarted from writing when you're willing to write on anything that'll hold still long enough to soak up ink.

And speaking of writing. I've started a new project. One that I see right from the off as being a series of three books. I'm in love with it. Not that I couldn't refrain from working on it in order to work on one of my other WIPs... you know... if someone I thought a lot of who was interested in me professionally suggested that I work on one of my other WIPs instead... But until that happens, I'm bouncing from my WIP Genesis to Kiss the Devil, my new love interest (henceforth referred to as KD)

KD involves another male MC, like AGMG and I'm finding that I adore this male perspective thing. I've always been more 'one of the guys' than 'the girl that hangs with the guys'. You know, in on all the fart jokes and pointing out hot numbers as they came in the door while we're shooting pool (an ideal way for men to scope the field without looking like they're scoping the field) and taking my turn at burping the alphabet. It's not that I sympathize with men more than women, or enjoy objectifying women (far from it) but I think that I've always been able to access this sociologically-fascinated part of my brain and objectively observe how men think and how women think.

Not that I'm an expert. No way. *snorts* I still have to check with my girlfriends when we're clubbing to see if a guy is trying to hit on me (I think most of them approach me like it's a bomb squad training session. You can tell how well it went by the number of guys who suddenly drift to the other side of the bar.) No, I'm not an expert. But I love trying to see things from a guy's POV, and somehow, it's sort of more fun. At least right now. Especially with Priest, KD's main character. He's a bad ass with a golden heart, even if he doesn't know it yet. And a big part of the story involves soldiers, what they go through in battle and how they're treated when they come home, which is a subject close to my heart. I've got a brother serving right now in the Navy and my family's been in the armed forces since... well... since history started. Anyway, I'm all about KD right now and I'm really excited about the idea that it could become a strong series, which is something I've been cautious about getting into since I'd rather not write a series, than write a series that flops in the middle of book two and goes toe-up in book three.

Now that I've rambled for a while in 'reality' I think I'll head home to 'here' and write a little more. I'll leave you with a picture though, just to prove that I do get out into 'reality' on occasion. Yes... having Walelu present at those locations of 'reality' is a darn big draw for me. And for the record, yes that was my drink, but no I didn't finish it.The menu said 'margarita' not 'fish bowl full of alcohol' so I ended up drinking a little less than half. And I got brain freeze several times. The best part of the picture isn't actually in the picture. There were about eighteen police officers eating at the table behind us... watching me ham with the baby and my drink... and I had no idea they were there until Walelu woke up and looked over my shoulder at them... *blushes* Yes officers... I write YA fiction... and occasionally act like a goober at dinner....

Random Thought...

2010-08-31T13:04:00.002-04:00

Am I the only person out there that stands up in front of the computer, takes a deep breath, slaps the 'send' button on a query, and then runs around the room in a tizzy unable to look at the computer again for fear that I'll see something amiss in the query?

I mean... I'm just wondering if it's a personal flaw... like something I should never mention again...

Pitch Workshop!

2010-08-26T09:13:00.004-04:00

Guys, I'm officially 'over' all the dramamrama that's been going on this week... okay, so I'm like 96 and 3/4 % 'over' everything that's gone on. And losing Pierre doesn't fall into that percent. You don't get 'over' things like Pierre, you just get acclimated to not having them underfoot...

But I digress...

The reason for this post is to invite everyone who happens to read this to head over to Adventures in Children's Publishing where the Pitch Workshop is officially open! Now this is one of the contests that I'd mentioned entering in an earlier post. There are fifty-one entries. Each of the entrants must critique five other entries, but we can comment on more if we want. The public at large is also encouraged to leave helpful, professionally worded and non-hating critiques and remarks. I'm having an uber good time just scrolling through and reading everyone else's pitch and I imagine that I'll be on the computer all afternoon commenting on them. Drop in and check them out!

And in honor of being back on the proverbial horse, I'm throwing in an absurd picture of me that my bff Pippi found some time ago.From left to right, Fenris (twin sis) me, Pippi (bff) and a one questionable upstart I'll dub G.I. Jane, who has, in the interim between the taking of this picture and the present, gone to college, had a child and turned into an awesome mom... In case you're wondering, I think I was nineteen or so, and randomly we're in the parking lot of a funeral home... yep, good times...

Pity Party at My House...

2010-08-25T00:02:00.005-04:00

So this post is pretty much a rant... not one about any specific thing... it's just a rant to let myself blather out some energy which might otherwise go somewhere negative. This vacation has been... weird... abnormally weird... and not so good, although it could be worse... I mean, it can ALWAYS get worse.

But here are the stats thus far:

Had to go in to work on Sunday to help breed the ancient stallion... helping in this process is just as awkward and potentially dangerous as whatever you're probably imagining.

Found out Monday morning that I was a hundred bucks overdrawn... seventy bucks of which was overdraft fees, one of those of which I got because the first fee conveniently cleared before a check, thusly allowing for the second fee. Both banks and bills suck.

Had to go to work Monday afternoon when one of the farm cats finally lost his battle with kidney failure. We knew Pierre was going to leave us, but that didn't make it any easier... then there was the hour and a half I spent with a digging bar on his grave... I now have open blisters on one hand...

Just got a rejection from an agent I love... still weepy over that. It wasn't my writing, but her connection with the MC, but it still hurts... bad.

It's a good thing I'm not Harold* or I'd have thrown myself off a building, or jumped in front of a train by now. Instead, I'm posting this, kissing my cats, and adding in a few lines of unadulterated snark dialogue for the MC of my current WIP, Genesis... just to make myself feel better. Some day when Genesis is published, I'll be able to flip it open, read those lines of dialogue and think 'I remember when I wrote those, how diabolically morose and forlorn I was'. I mean, I'm getting ready to send out queries on AGMG, and I'm getting really into Genesis... I might bend, but I won't break...

I'll leave your with a picture of Pierre. He was one of the most gentle, truly tender souls I've ever known.

* If you've never seen Harold and Maude, I implore you, rent it! It's something that will either touch you, or just make you scratch your head, but you'll be left thinking regardless :)
Now back to writing...

It's Gonna Get Wild...

2010-08-20T21:04:00.005-04:00

So I'm officially on vacation now... which means that all bets are off as to what might happen around the blog... I've entered into a couple of contests over at Adventures in Children's Publishing and Market My Words, so I'm sure I'll be wigging over those... and I'll be checking my email every five minutes, I'm sure. Not just for agent responses either but for the first impressions from my beta readers on AGMG. You should check out the contest over at Market My Words. There's still time for you to enter! And it's great practice.

I also intend to do a load of writing, now that my finger is finally back in service and I've got the time. I can't wait to sip coffee on the screened porch while the word wakes up!!! Oh, and come Friday of next week and I'll be renting a baby for the day to go hang with my grandma. Seriously, I'm kidnapping my niece Walelu. The only catch is that Fenris wanted me to reimburse her for the lost day of child care. So essentially, it's rent-a-baby. Whatever. I'm getting the kid, and that's all that matters! Moohoohaha!

And to start off the vacation, we'll be heading to Potomac Mills tomorrow to spend a day puttering through a bazillion stores and buying very little, which ought to be ridiculously fun, and I don't even like crowded places. I'm gong to try and get blog posts up but who knows where I'll be and what I'll be up to... so if I drop off the face of the earth... you've been warned...

I'll leave you with a picture of Walelu, taken just a week or two ago. I can't believe how quickly she's growing!

Oh, and for the record - in case you notice them - those are NOT my cigarettes on the chair arm. They belong to a coworker and I didn't realize they were there until I posted the picture and then I couldn't get it to crop them out.

Lettuce Write Contest!

2010-08-16T18:51:00.002-04:00

So I'm cruising around the blog world feeling rather useless since I still can't hold a pen yet and what do I find? A contest. But not just ANY contest... I found the Lettuce Write Contest over at Coming Down the Mountain, where the lovely KarenG spreads her wealth of knowledge and support to writers everywhere. Obviously, I have been missing out on her fabulous blog... but that oversight has now been rectified.

So I'm totally stoked about submitting the first three chapters of AGMG to the contest! It's the perfect timing for me as it'll make me feel as though I'm getting something 'out there' while I continue to tweak random older manuscripts, pine for my pen and obsessively check my email for 'no response' (still considering!) or 'yay' (offer to rep!) emails... yeah, I know there's a third sort of email that might be lying-in-wait in my inbox one morning... but we won't speak of that sort...

Anyway, check Ms. KarenG and her fabulous blog out and get your first three chapters ready to submit! You only have until August 21 to get them perfected!

I'm doing it again...

2010-08-15T09:55:00.004-04:00

I'm doing it again... posting multiple times after not having posted in a coon's age... I can't help it. I'm sitting here engulfed by this paradox of dysmorphic emotions with no one to talk to about any of them. I feel very professional at the moment. I feel as though AGMG is just a breath better than EVERNOW. I'm meeting writing goals. I'm managing the 'business type' side of writing - aiming for and hitting word count, editing within a certain time frame, strategizing for why this ms is marketable - and I'm already planning out my next big project. I have outlines for the next WIPs I intend to invest most of my time in.

I've chosen two:

GENESIS

Miakoda Auster has never been normal, and she's never wanted to be normal, which is good, considering that she has a history of doing things like killing rabbits with her bare hands as a kindergartner. Then at fifteen she's diagnosed with Adolescent Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis. If that wasn't bad enough, the drugs they put her on to try and help the arthritis wreak havoc with her body and health. As soon as she turns eighteen, Koda leaves her parents, all the drugs, and the awful heat of North Carolina behind, and heads for the brisk sea air of Skagway Alaska, where her older brother Graham lives as a fisherman. And that's when things start to get weird even by Koda's standards. Despite her quick temper, and generally ill-sorted attitude, she finds friendship with Iliamna, the new girl at the Scholl Hole were Koda works as a meat carver. But Iliamna isn't what she seems to be, and Koda soon learns that she had a destiny far different from the one she's now facing. A destiny stolen from her by the Rheumatoid Arthritis that's deforming her joints and causing her constant pain. Koda is a Genesis. A werewolf created by spontaneous mutation. One of only three known spontaneous wolfen, Koda doesn't belong to any of the existing five Lines. Instead, she has the ability to create an entirely new Line. Founding a new bloodline is a goal coveted by all wolfen. But Koda can never shift her shape. She can never take on her wolf form because her crippled joints can't withstand the forces of shifting, and the doctors have warned that a pregnancy might well kill her. But that won't stop the wolfens of rival Lines from battling over her, or claiming her for their own against her will. Caught up in a war she wants no part of, dealing with her own emotions over discovering what she is and facing the fact that she can never fully embrace her wolf side, despite her desire to do so, Koda must rely on Iliamna and the other members of the Eventide Pack, the only wolfens who care about her for more than her ability to found a new Line. But the arrival of a new wolfen, an ancient wolfen who has never before aligned with any Pack, threatens everything and soon Koda finds herself facing all the complications of werewolf love on top of her growing troubles.

ROOK THIEF

Etienne Ryan is happy just to get every day things done, like opening her toothpaste and taking care of her beloved silver oak tree. Rheumatoid Arthritis makes that almost impossible sometimes. Luckily, her older friend Trey won't let her wallow in her troubles. With her sharp tongue and tough attitude, Trey constantly pushes Ed to do what she can, when she can, to keep trying even when she feels hopeless. Trey is used to pushing Ed. Since Ed's father was killed in a tragic fire a year ago, Trey's been looking out for Ed, helping her with her father's bookstore, the Dreaming Hole. Billy Conrad looks out for Ed too. It was Billy who pulled Ed from the burning house, saving her from the fire that killed her father. But Billy is a little overprotective. Of course, considering that it was Ed's best friend, Liam, who set fire to her house, Billy's protectiveness is hard to argue with. When a new boy named Oren begins trying to win Ed's friendship though, things get a little complicated. Although he's secretive, keeping his scarred face hidden by hooded sweatshirts, Ed is quickly drawn to Oren and his unique perspectives. As their friendship deepens, Billy's concerns over Ed's safety grow too, and the tension between him and Oren soon becomes an all out war. And then there are the letters that Ed keeps getting from Liam. In them, he warns her that he isn't her enemy, the Rook Thief is. Sorting through it all, Ed begins to suspect that Billy might not be her hero after all, Liam might not have set the fire as everyone thinks, and the fact that Oren's scars resemble those on her silver oak, which was burned in the fire that killed her father, might not be just a strange coincidence... and all three of the guys fighting over her might be something other than human. But who is the Rook Thief? And who can Ed really trust?

I started working on Genesis because Koda showed up in my head and refused to stop driving me nuts until I addressed her situation. But I had already begun working on Rook Thief. So now I'm writing on both of them. Well... I was writing on both of them. At this precise moment, I'm not writing on anything due to the 'possibly fractured' finger which makes it impossible to hold a pen, but you get my meaning. That both stories involve girls with RA is coincidence. I often give my main characters something challenging with their joints because it's a subject close to my heart. I know, unfortunately, what it's like to have to ask someone to do something like tear open a packet of sugar for you because you don't have the strength to manage it. But Rook Thief was the first WIP I started where my mc had RA. Then later, Koda showed up with her own obvious complications. Several people have suggested that I shelve Genesis because werewolves have 'been done'. I HAVE always sworn that I wouldn't join the werewolf ranks (although I admit to being Team Jacob...:) but Koda isn't the sort of girl you can just say 'no' to... so here I am, writing a werewolf book...

Am I bananas? Should I ditch the furry dramarama and focus on Rook Thief? Should I keep at them both? Is there even room for another werewolf book? How different would a 'different take' on the werewolf thing have to be for you to take a gander? Do you just gag thinking about werewolf stuff? I'm all excitable because I already love the characters within Genesis, but it might well be a star-crossed love considering the glut of furry heroes and heroines in the marketplace...

Please, discuss! What WIP are you working on, even knowing that it might be a labor of love rather than a best seller?

Biker Queens and Pipe Dreams...

2010-08-14T10:15:00.003-04:00

So it's been a while but I've been away due to good things... well, mostly. I did manage to 'possibly fracture' one of the knuckle joints on my right hand that was already being supported by a ring splint. With ten fingers, you'd think I could manage to hit one that didn't already have one foot in the grave, but not so. The docs don't think it's fractured, but because my rheumatism was already active and engaged in an episode, the x-rays were a blur of inflammation, so now I'm on orders not to use the finger... I'll let you know how that goes... considering it's on my right hand and I can't even get a fork into my mouth with my left hand, not without getting some new piercings in the process...

But I digress... Before I went all dramarama with my knuckle, I finished writing, and subsequently transcribing Amarok and the Gone Missing Girl!!! At 81,500 words it was right on my projected target, which pleases me greatly. I worry sometimes, that should I ever get 'The Call' something an agent would want to discuss is my obsession with writing longhand because it simply isn't as easy to try and estimate word count and such when you're not working on a computer. But I made several estimations on my own writing and now that I've finished the transcription process, I can see that I was correct. Woot for me. I'm more confident in my own processes now. I can't wait to get AGMG out to my beta readers and see what they think. Since the mc, Ansel, is a guy and it's written in first person, I'm eager to find out if I've done a good job at capturing a guy's point of view and convincingly portrayed him... I'm already working on queries in hopes that I'll have a decent one roughed out by the time my betas finish their slicing and dicing. Am I strange for being so excited over feedback and editing? I can't wait to get started!

Another thing that's kept me off the computer is visiting friends and right in the middle of that I decided to enter a Ms. Shenendoah Harley-Davidson pageant... Alright, close your mouths, I know it's a strange announcement, but it wasn't as dramatic as it sounds. Really, it was a LOAD OF FUN! Why, might you ask, did a forward-thinking woman, who is stoutly against the objectification of women, enter something like a Ms. Harley pageant? Um, because it was fun! I am not one for beauty pageants, and that sort of thing. But if the women involved in them are involved knowingly and enjoy themselves, well, that's their right. It's all a very grey area for me. I don't think girls should be forced to think that they need to meet certain standards to be considered beautiful. But at the same time, I don't think that there's anything wrong with 'acting like a girl' if you're comfortable doing so. It all depends on the girl.

In the case of this Harley-Davidson pageant, it's a local event, run by great people, with an emphasis on HAVING FUN. The audience has always been greatly supportive, the girls participating much appreciated and cheered on for their participation. I've attended several times to cheer on friends, and this year I thought, what the heck, I'm going for it! Did I win? Nope. Didn't even make the top five. Did I love it? YOU BET. The thing is, the people involved with this event are all about strong, able-bodied women who are beautiful because of who they are. We had bigger girls, smaller girls, young girls just out of high school and one who just turned forty. There were secretaries and Reservists who were on leave with their units. Moms, and single ladies, a few ladies who were into ladies, and had no interest in men at all. It was a glorious gamut of gorgeous women and the focus of it all was to love yourself, no matter what. A lesson that all girls need to take to heart.

So now I'm off to finish another read through of AGMG before putting in an order at Lulu for my betas. And since I'm off today, I'll probably be obsessively checking my email because I've still got two fulls of EVERNOW out with prospective agents. Funny how you can want something in your inbox (offer to rep, offer to rep!) and want an empty inbox (hey, no rejections yet, they could still be considering!) at the same time. Keeps the pipe dream alive. Of course, you just never know when that smoke might turn into something tangible...

I'll leave you with a picture from the Harley pageant, so you can see a sampling of the ladies I had so much fun hanging with. And let me say we all had fun TOGETHER. We're talking, shoe-borrowing, doing each other's hair, tucking straps in, troubleshooting, not concerned in the slightest with who actually 'won' sort of fun.No cat fighting it this group! Just ladies supporting ladies in having a good time! This picture doesn't show everyone. It proved impossible to get everybody in one shot, at least for my peeps in the audience. They are all great women!

Quickie...

2010-08-04T12:04:00.002-04:00

Just a short post to let you know about what is definitely one of the most awesomest contest EVER that's going on over at Fiction Groupie. Just found this blog through Christi Corbett's blog, and I'm still exploring, but seriously? CHECK OUT THOSE PRIZES! Too cool for school! Any who... I'm off to sweat a little more... haven't met my salt quota of the day...

The Character Party is Here!!!

2010-07-29T13:51:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I'm a little late in posting this... but better late than never. Over at the fabulous Ms. Hanna's blog, she's hosting a meet and greet character party. By all means, go meet and greet! There's quite and interesting batch of folks... some of them not even human... and you're sure to make new friends! Feel free to leave comments and whatnot for the attendees, let them know how you feel about them!

And on a different note... but a much beaten dead horse... stay cool people, if like me you're still residing on the East Coast's variation of Crematoria... minus the lovely Vin Diesel...

Character Party!

2010-07-26T12:28:00.001-04:00

So this terribly cool cat I follow, Ms. Hanna C. Howard, is hosting an awesome event known as a Character Party, wherein you, and your MC are invited to get down with other writers and their MCs. It sounds like a great chance to meet people and be exposed to their work, as well as getting your own work out there for others to get interested in. I've already sent in my character stats... I actually sent in three characters, but they might not all attend, depending on what the response is like for the party.

And for anyone who read the last post I wrote... yes I'm still on Crematoria... and no, Vin Diesel has not shown up to save me yet... I'm still holding out hope though... :)

Heat Wave...

2010-07-25T13:43:00.002-04:00

So I'm down here in the Old Dominion roasting my stones off and I can't help but ask why we have to get all of our heat for the year in one friggin splat of hellacious time? Can't we have it all summer long? Lower temps for longer? Throw me a bone here! I mean, really? I've been joking (only it's not funny at all) that we've been transported to Crematoria... only there's no lovely Vin Diesel to swing us off the planet to safety. Instead, we're stuck here, dryer than a popcorn fart (as my grandma would say) and boiling in our own skins. Speaking of boiling, we were out at the pool yesterday (I'm housesitting again) and my sis's hubby Chucky Duck threw water on the cement to make a walkway from the pool to the gazebo and it boiled right in front of our eyes. It BOILED. I'm not joking.

My writing has been a lot like this infernal heat wave (roll your eyes, if I'm stuck with theses temps I'm going to make as many bad puns about them as possible) recently. I went from dithering around with the last chapters of AGMG to finishing that MS, going back and reworking several older MSs and getting a request for a full of EVERNOW.... all in the same five days... Talk about head-spinning... But it's been sort of lovely at the same time. Here's where you might think I'm going to work in some remark about the heat wave having its good points too, but you're wrong. The heat sucks. Period. But the writing related glut of stuff going on most assuredly does not suck in the slightest! On the contrary, that has been awesome! I guess the only thing the two have in common is that I had no control or choice in them. You just can't control things sometimes. You can prepare and do your best to set things up, but you can't make it rain. You can't snap your fingers and call up a cool breeze. Okay, unless you're Storm... and I'd never look right in one of those pleather X-suit things anyhow, so we won't go there...

Point being is that sometimes you get swamped with good and bad things and you can't do anything but endure them one way or another. In my case, the misery of our Crematoria weather has been somewhat displaced by the joy of my writing successes (I count requests for fulls as successes even if they end in kaput) and who knows, maybe the weather will break and I'll immediately get a few rejections. You just can't tell sometimes. But you keep doing what you're doing and eventually the rains will come, the winds will blow and someone will like what you're writing. In the words of Evernow herself, 'Nothing, good or bad, lasts forever, so enjoy each moment you're living in.'

Now, I'm off to fry some eggs on the sidewalk while I water the plants by simply standing over them and sweating...

Keep It Interesting...

2010-07-18T09:26:00.005-04:00

So I found this lovely little post by A. Victoria Mixon through the invaluable Adventures in Children's Publishing and I couldn't resist sharing. Part of my excitement is because I'm nearing the end of finishing the first draft of Amarok and the Gone Missing Girl (AGMG) but part of it is because I honestly fit into several of the 'personalities who WILL succeed in writing. And part of it is because it's been a really long time since I wrote a funny post and this gives me an excuse to because one of the personalities listed is:

THE IMAGINATIVE: those who are always looking for ways to liven up the party.

You know why so many writers have such great biographies? Because the best ones never know when to leave well enough alone. They pull up their socks and yank on their shit-kickers and go out there to face life with all their innocence and guilt and huevos shining in all directions. They pay their dues and take their chances. They shoot the rapids. They wrestle the angel. They throw themselves on the mercy of the lion.

And when they sit down to write, they approach it the same way, with recklessness and bravado and sheer, uncontrolled, brain-bursting inanity. That’s how they get themselves into the tops of trees and under the bowels of the earth, on the extreme end of adventures they can’t possibly get out of in one piece, hurtling lock, stock, and barrel into outer space. And that’s how they have the stamina and endurance to drag a whole galaxy of readers along with them.

Yep. That would be me. Not to toot my own horn. I'm just saying that I can't manage a trip to the bathroom without some sort of adventure. Honest truth. For example, I recently ended up in a sink hole on a trip to the bathroom. I kid you not. Okay, so the bathroom wasn't a conventional one anyway. Alright, alright, it wasn't an actual bathroom at all. Let me explain...

My BFF otherwise known as Pippilotta or Pippi, to save typing space, and I delight in getting ourselves into and out of all manner of adventures. Our most recent excursion was to the Eastern Shore, where we hauled her two foals who were born earlier this year to what's know as an 'Inspection' for the Oldenburg breed. This is too complicated to explain fully, but basically, Pippi bred her mares to registered stallions and the offspring gets judged by German (where the breed originated) judges and are given ratings and approved to be registered within the breed. So, Tuesday evening we loaded up two mommas and two very enthusiastic babies and started off for the Eastern Shore of MD, about four hours away. Now mind you both Pippi and I had already worked full days, me at the farm and her at a very stressful white collar job. We had an uneventful trip, and pulled into the farm where the inspection was being held around 11pm. Or I could say we skied in... thank you Google Maps for giving us a road, that hadn't been a 'road' in years and had been flooded out by the evening's thunderstorms. I can quote myself as actually saying 'Don't slow down Pippi or we'll end up swimming'. But we made it, although I think the horses were questioning our sanity by then.

The excitement carried on after our arrival. Twenty minutes before our timely entrance, someone else had arrived with an extra unregistered horse... taking one of our reserved stalls. So there we were, no one in charge (one of the ladies in charge was just diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, tragically, so management was spotty, understandably) and no stall for one momma and one baby... Eventually we managed to secure a single stall in the stallion barn. You know those movies where they always show the new guy being paraded down the halls in prison and men are cat-calling and such? Now picture the men as 1300 lb stallions, screaming and diving at their stall doors... Luckily Cat (the momma horse who ended up in that barn) is the equivalent of Milla Jovovich in horse form and didn't bat an eye at the boys. But I digress.

After all that driving (which required just a smidgen of coffee) and the stall drama, both Pippi and I needed a little bathroom break... but we hadn't yet been able to find a real bathroom. So in typical 'us' fashion, we just headed around the side of the barn into the utter blackness of the lightless Eastern Shore night. It was 12am by that time, and it's just water anyway right? It was still raining so no one would ever even know. And that's when yours truly found the sink hole.Luckily, I had my trusty plaid rubber boots on because of the rain... unluckily, the sink hole went well passed my thigh... Honestly I can't tell you it even had a bottom because my butt hit the ground and saved me from being entirely swallowed. My rubber boot filled right up and though fast reaction thrashing got me out of the hole quickly, I had to dump about a gallon of water out of the boot. Meanwhile, Pippi is laughing hysterically, and I still have to pee...

We ended up getting into bed (which was an air mattress in the horse trailer) at roughly 3am... and were up at 6:45 to start getting the horses ready. The babies hadn't quite recovered from the trip there as evidenced by this picture of me braiding one of them... The day ended up going amazingly. We had a great time, Pippi's colt was given a 'Foal of Distinction' award and we met oodles of nice people and one very cute pig.The trip home was quiet and we got back with no injuries. Although it took us a few days to recover sleep wise, we were both ready to hit the town for dinner on Friday.

My point here is that you can find adventure anywhere... even on your way to the bathroom... and if you can find it there, you can write about it in your stories... just be open to it when it arrives and never be afraid to admit to it when it finds you unexpectedly...

I'm Feeling a Little Monstrous Today...

2010-07-12T07:59:00.006-04:00

So on many fronts, I can't complain about life... and that should put me in a good mood... but it's not. Sometimes it's just all about one thing working for you, and if that one thing doesn't, it throws everything else out of whack and you're reduced to some sort of primordial, ageless monster who can't help their own actions. But that's not always that bad a thing... I mean, I'm kinda partial to monsters that have temper tantrums... So in honor of hissy fits over trifles, and embracing that monstrous part of you, I've thrown up a few pictures from my favorite movie of all time (yes, really, all time) No Such Thing, starring a host of fantabulous actors and actresses.

I'm usually all about the monsters, but at the moment, I can't convinced mine to kick back and take it easy. And it's kind of hard to get things done with your monster(s) running around distracting you and trying to convince you that it's all for not. I mean, monsters can be monstrous, while being unobtrusive at the same time. But at the moment my monsters are making quite a nuisance of themselves. I wish they'd take a lesson from Robert John Burke...

Sirens Squee...

2010-07-08T17:41:00.009-04:00

So I just booked my reservations at the Vail Cascade Resort in Vail CO for the Sirens conference Oct 7-10. SQUEEE! For those of you who haven't heard of Sirens, it's a conference based around powerful women in literature, both characters and authors. Last year was their inaugural year, and it was the first conference I'd ever gone to. I wrote a post about it after I signed up, which was a pretty amusing and accurate post. Actually, it's still pretty accurate, but now I'm a wolf that's very happy to be headed to the mall!

This is a picture taken out front at the Vail Cascade.

I had so much fun at Sirens last year that I registered for THIS year's conference LAST November. It was that much fun. Seriously. I got to eat dinner with Sherwood Smith (we even split a beer!)

Getting our funky on with Sherwood at the Ball

I got to dance with Kristin Cashore, I got to hang out with Tamora Pierce and I had a blast EVERY DAY with the Sirens staff who are knowledgeable, friendly, fun to be around and always willing to help out!
Seriously, I think the conference gods were looking out for me when they threw that little tidbit my way. Which actually, I owe a big shout out to Kristin Cashore for that because she wrote about being a guest of honor at Sirens on her blog and I read about it there.

Here she is during her Keynote Presentation showing off her totally LOVELY new twin nieces!

So, if you haven't planned vacation yet, I HIGHLY recommend you turn your eyes west and head into the Colorado mountains for a rip-snorting good time! And in case there are men out there reading this, never fear, men are totally welcome too. I think we had one brave fellow last year...

Tammy Pierce hugging my beloved boy, Scrump. She understands that even Zombie babies need love!

This years feature is faeries. I'm totally stoked over it. And I know that along with Holly Black, Terri Windling, and Marie Brennan, who are the guests of honor, the fabulous Malinda Lo, author of Ash, will be going as well.

Anyway, I'm off to work on Evernow... rearranging a few things despite that one agent has a full at the moment. I queried another agent who remarked on 'info dumps' at the beginning, or really anywhere in a book, and I know I've got a little of that disease, so I'm going in with the scalpel for a little nip-tuck. Then hopefully I'll get to work on AGMG. I'm only a couple of chapters out from the end of the first draft!!!

The Social Machine...

2010-07-06T15:05:00.002-04:00

And because it's been so long since I posted anything... I thought I'd over-post today, just to make up for all the posts I know I won't be getting done in the near future. Any who, I moseyed on over to Facebook and finally set up a profile under Artemis Grey. I planned on using A. Grey, the same way I sign everything, but silly old Facebook informed me that I needed a FULL name in order to be real... well, 'being real' is sort of overrated, but several people have recently touted to me how important it is for prospective agents to see that you have a social media presence, even if it's small... so I'm officially partaking in medial sociableness...

Dysfunctional Dystopia...

2010-07-06T10:25:00.003-04:00

Warning, this will be long, but I fear I shall smote myself from the inside out if I don't say my piece on the matter.

I've been thinking a lot about Dystopian YA recently. This is mostly because right now, my novel EVERNOW has gained some praise from respected agents, a few requests - one has a full right now, I'm trying not to stroke from the waiting - and I've gotten some very uplifting feedback about my voice and that I'm unique and yet commercial. BUT, I've also been told by several agents (although they passed on reping me for other reasons) that I might have difficulty with EVERNOW because it falls into the category of Dystopian, and many agents feel that Dystopian has 'been done'.

I try to keep an eye on the market, and what sorts of books are selling, what sort are due to come out, what's causing a buzz. Not because I'm trying to write for it, but just to be informed and in-the-know. I mean, seeing as I'd like to join that market, duh, it seems like a good idea to sort of keep abreast, you know? Which leads me to this Dystopian quandary. When I wrote EVERNOW, I didn't really think of it as being dystopian. Yes, it's set in the future. Yes, a world-changing event has taken place and most of humanity is dead. But there is no overpowering government. In fact, there's no human government at all. There is no ongoing chaos. There are no men in suits rounding up 'dissentients', and no civil war. When several people (not agents, or professionals) remarked that I should clarify that EVERNOW is not just a YA, but a Dystopian YA, I went and looked 'dystopia' up.

Below is the Wikipedia definition of the word.

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-: bad-, ill- and Ancient Greek: τόπος: place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is a vision of an often futuristic society, which has developed into a negative version of Utopia, in which society has degraded into a repressive, controlled state. A dystopia is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. It usually features different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and a state of constant warfare or violence. A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty for most of its inhabitants.

Now, EVERNOW has some characteristics of dystopia. No one has money, because it's useless and meaningless, so technically there is 'poverty'. And there is conflict, but between humans and Fey creatures, not 'the people' and 'the government'. The restrictions and oppressions in EVERNOW are by and large, physiological and based in fear of what might happen if you said 'no, I'm going to do things this way'. It's more that people simply don't act differently because it's easier to just fit in with expectations. Which is where the main character Evernow, herself, comes in. I found, however, when I started researching this dystopia phenomenon that, at least in my mind, a much, much greater breadth of stories are being classified as dystopian, regardless of whether or not they fit the dictionary definition of the word. I've put a brief list of recent books up into several categories. Some of the categories aren't officially recognized categories, they're just how I think of the books. All of the books listed were described as 'dystopian' either on Amazon or Google.

Dystopians:

The Hunger Games series
Birthmarked
The Forest of Hands and Teeth series
The Shadow Children series
Genesis

Techno Futuristic:

Feed
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Makers
Little Brother
The Maze Runner

Social Extremism:

Uglies

YA Alternative:

The Bones of Faerie
Exodus

YA Futuristic:

The Ember series
Incarceron
The Other Side of the Island

Now I know that you simply can't have things sub-categorized down to the smallest quibble, but when I read the descriptions of these books they differ immensely, and often the ONLY thing that joins them is that many are set 'some time in the future'. For me, personally, a book is not dystopian if there is no overbearing, controlling government entity. The entire basis of 'dystopian' is a ravaged society burdened by an overpowering government. The Hunger Games fits the bill. So does the Shadow Children series. Birthmarked and The Forest of Hands and Teeth series made it in because within those books, you're not allowed to go where you please and people can be (and are) 'black bagged' and simply disappear when they cause too much trouble.

For techno futuristic as I call them, the books are set in the future but the primary force within the story is technology itself. The government factor is replaced by technology, or non-government people using technology or high tech science.

I've never understood why the Uglies series were called dystopian. I haven't read them, and there is undoubtedly some government manipulation within them, but they come across as books containing massive forces of society, more than commanding government. 'Everyone gets surgery so they can become a Pretty' does not translate into 'I will have surgery because there is no other option, the government will kill me if I don't conform' for me. But since I haven't read the books, I might be missing something very important.

What I've called YA Alternative is pretty much where I would put my own book Evernow. These books are set in the future. Characters are taking a stand against the status quo, but that status quo is born of circumstance and society, not a controlling government. There are fantasy elements in the stories and yet they aren't overtly 'fantasy'.

I classified the last batch as YA Futuristic because really the only defining feature of them is the setting. I've read the first of the Ember series, and Incarceron. The thing that gets me about those two is that there is political intrigue, but really, theres nothing AWFUL about the settings. I mean, Incarceron is a prison, but the world beyond the prison isn't a bad place at all, and while the government is obviously covering things up, it isn't oppressing the people any more than they're happily going along with life. The same goes for Ember. Once they escape the city, the world above is different, maybe dangerous, but it isn't horrible. Although I haven't read The Other Side of the Island, it came across more as a 'railing against big business' than 'the government is killing the planet and we must rebel'.

I'm not sure, maybe I'm over thinking this whole thing. But it seems to me as if we're generalizing more and more and losing the individuality of books in the process. Just because the government is being conniving doesn't mean it's a dystopian government. Just because you feel like you're being pressured by society doesn't mean that the government will splatter you for going against society's accepted standards. Just because a book is set in the future, and 'something' has changed the world, doesn't mean that the world is an awful place to be. Just because you kiss a guy who's a werewolf doesn't mean it's a paranormal romance. Okay, did I catch you with that?

That's my other pickle with this 'dystopian has been done' thing. And I'm not crabby just because MY 'dystopian' novel hasn't been sold. I'm plain tired of seeing werewolf/zombie/vampire/demon/succubi books lining the shelves (although I tip my hat to their authors, because you know they worked like dogs to get those books on the shelves, and I respect that totally). Don't get me wrong, I have a few favs out there (no, not Twilight, not even close) but by and large, I feel like it's the same story over and over again. So how come not every book where a girl kisses something non-human isn't called a paranormal romance? Huh? Because right now there are oooodles of girls (and boys) kissing things that aren't human and many of those books are just filed under YA, not YA paranormal romance. Funny how people look at things, isn't it?

What to YOU think makes something a dystopian? Or a paranormal romance? Or just a plain old YA? Do you think that commonly accepted categories are accurate? What do you think has 'been done', for this century, anyway?

Grey Places

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LK Madigan

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I got a Blog Award! Aaaaand it's about time I posted anyway... face of shame