Sprung Spring

Spring has exploded in the rolling plains. Winter hung on and on and on--and then all of a sudden, kablooey! It's spring.

The daffodils came and went so quickly, I missed them, and I've already got iris blooming. I mention this, because I finally went out and worked in the front flower bed this afternoon, pulling up those giant thistle things and volunteer elm trees that I missed last year. And I only got one corner of the bed, the one under my office window that has horrible heavy clay dirt that turns rock hard when it dries out, and is overrun with Bermuda grass. (Which I HATE. Hate, Hate, HATE.) And now my shoulders are killing me even more than they were before I went out to pull weeds. And I have the whole rest of the flower bed to pull the thistles and elm trees out of. (sigh)

But the sage is coming back really strong and the iris are putting up lots of buds, and the roses are leafing out nicely (need to replace a rose that died with one of the ones we put in pots--I think the other potted one may die before spring gets too much more advanced...) and the lilies are coming up. Lots of work to do, so I can't slack off. I'll be getting different exercise in this week.

I only got 4 pages written today, even though I spent my 3 hours at the work. I ran smack bang into a love scene. I wasn't ready for it, so I finally quit and went off to think about it. I know what needs to happen, but I need to figure out how to get into it. My characters are always too dad-gum talky. (sigh again) Tomorrow the love scene. I shall prevail!

Blogging

I have signed into Blogger at least three times this week, intending to blog, and never got anything written. I did manage to blog this week, but this was three other times I came here to blog again, and never did.

I even had some things to write about. Like, how when I walked down to the bank this week, the librarian saw me heading back (the library is half a block down the street from the bank), and came out and hollered at me to come sign something. I had to sign something to send in to the State Library people. Or maybe the federal Library people. I don't know. I did read it, but I don't remember who it was for. I'd forgotten that she called me last week or so and asked whether I was the president of the Library Advisory Board.

I knew I was on the board, but had no clue whether I was the president or not. I've been on it for over a year, and we've met once. And when Jerri Ann said she thought I was the new president, I said, fine, I'll be the president. Only now she tells me we need to meet and come up with a policy for the kids' computer use at the library once school is let out. Sigh. And one of our board members lives way out of town past a couple of slidy hills and some low-water crossings and can't get to town if it's raining, so of course it's been storming all week...

This is like when I agreed to be the vice president for the Friends of the Library, because I wouldn't have to do very much. Then we discovered that we had to completely split the Friends from the Advisory Board, and the president of FoL went over to be an Advisor, and I got to be the President of FoL--and that was when the treasurer discovered that we really needed to fill out the official IRS paperwork to become an official non-profit organization (even though we barely fundraise $500 per year), AND we needed to re-do our bylaws to make them fit with the IRS papers. Sigh. This always happens to me.

I did remember to go to community choir practice this week. It was sounding pretty good when the second soprano showed up so us altos weren't drowning out the only soprano who was there for most of rehearsal. Oh well. Performance is Palm Sunday. AKA this coming Sunday. Hopefully, whatever's making the gunk in my throat will die and I can sing all those Fs without getting rattly. For some reason, an F (the low one--I haven't been able to hit a high F in 25 years)(I can only hit a high E when the sun is shining, all allergens are dead and the birds are singing sweetly in the trees. E-flat is generally possible.) shakes loose all the gunk in my throat, when there is gunk, and makes me cough. It's not where the voice breaks--that's somewhere around an A or B--it's just the gunk vibration note. (And I'm sure y'all really wanted to know all that...)

The daughter made an A in her probability class for her statistics PhD. The younger son made a 99 on his engineering test. (This after majoring in theater performance and theater design for 3 semesters before switching to engineering.) We haven't heard from the older son in a while. Hmm. So, life is mostly good.

Oh, and today, we went to town and bought half-price ready made frames for a couple of paintings, and put them up in the son's room. They look pretty good, if I say so myself. It all started when we moved out the old broken-down dresser and moved in this antique chest/armoire/desk thing (it has drawers, a door where you can hang up things, and a pull-down writing area). Then I brought in one single painting (see above) to see how it looked over the armoire/desk--and the fella said to bring out all the paintings-ready-to-hang, and we found two more that looked good. We put the "Breakfast in Tuscany" painting over the chest/desk and the one above across the room, and a big "boys at the beach" painting above the bed, but to one side, not over the headboard. Yeah, we started something.

Procrastination

Yes, I am one of those people who, if you look up procrastination in the dictionary, will be pictured there. I am the queen--nay, the Empress of Procrastination! At least when it comes to blogging on my own blog.

Okay, I have excuses. Like, I left town. And then when I came back the computer was still in the shop. For the rest of the whole week. But I could have blogged. I could have used to backup computer, even if it doesn't have any bookmarks to find places, and I'm not sure I even have the e-mail set up. I could have done it. But I procrastinated. I read. I read and read and read.

I also wrote. I learned a long time ago that if I want to get all the way to the end of a book, I need to Write First. So I came into my office and wrote every morning last week. Some days I only got 2 pages done, but I got them done. I need to remember the No excuses mantra. I want to finish the book this month. I'm getting close to the end. And unexpected things are still happening, so it's all good. But I need to get more than 6 pages in 3 hours.

Anyway, that's where I've been, and that's where I'm at. Oh, I'm all excited. C.E. Murphy (of Urban Shaman fame) got an advanced reader copy of Eternal Rose and she wrote me this wonderfully incoherent e-mail all about how much she loved it. If you've ever met Catie, you will understand how wonderfully incoherent she can get about all sorts of things. So it was nice that my book was one of them. I'm all happy.

Off to sleep now. After writing time in the a.m., will go let the dermatologist look at my skin cancers tomorrow (WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!) and see how they're doing with the cream treatment. Then I will go paint. I drew off a picture of one of the grandboys I love, so I'm going to give it a whirl. If I can successfully paint three portraits that don't suck, I may donate one to Brenda Novak's diabetes auction fundraiser next year. This is number two. Wish me luck.

Books, Books, Books

I came home Sunday evening from the 80th birthday party weekend for the fella's dad and looked at the letter included in the second panel of Rita contest books I agreed to read...and discovered that I had until Wednesday (IOW, today) to read them all. Seven of them. By today.

Fortunately, none of them were massive tomes, so I was able to get through them fairly quickly. But I have been reading madly since Sunday evening. I read two Sunday night, two on Monday, one yesterday, and the last two today. And yes, I read them with full comprehension and can tell you what each of them was about. But I'm not going to because they are contest entries, and it's a secret.

I think I'm kind of taking this week off from the writing, which is risky, because I really want to finish the book by the end of the month. So I'm typing it in instead, and doing my first edit/revision. I'd like to get 50-60 pages in by Friday. I'm heading to Waco fairly early on Friday, for the workshop I'm doing (finished it today) and the booksigning at Books-a-Million.

Oh yeah, I'm doing a book signing at Books-a-Million in Waco on Saturday beginning at 2 p.m. Hope it goes well. I've done absolutely no PR for it, but one of the other ladies participating has done quite a bit. So...

I'm ready to be home for a while. We've been gone the last two weekends, and the fella's been gone for at least a couple of nights during the week for the past month.

I got an envelope from the agent with suggestings & critique about the last couple of things I've sent her, and now I'm going through the thinking part of my response. It takes me a while to think about what people suggest/say about my writing, whether it's a critique partner, an agent, an editor, or whoever. Most of the time, what they ask about is something I'm aware of, and thought I had in there, but it's obviously not clear, or not clear enough. So now I have to figure out how to make it clear.

And I have discovered that I really don't like a lot of description in the books I read (and thus in the books I write). Sometimes I want to know about the clothes, but not every single stinkin' time, and not in any great massive detail. Nor do I want to know about the furniture or the architecture, in great detail, which is why it's hard for me to put in enough to suit other people. That happy medium is hard to find.

Anyway, I'm here. I'm heading off again. (The workshop is on The Plotter/Pantser Hybrid, or, Whatever Works for You is Right.) And I'll be back again on Sunday, hopefully without a big stack of books I have to read in a hurry. (Though I still have one to read for a different contest, but I have till April on that one...which is good, because it is a massive tome...)

Long-Term Spending Habits

I got in a conversation the other day with ... the fella, I think it was. We were talking about music and "oldies" and what music we had and liked back in the day--when we were in junior high and high school.

These days, the "must have" tech is an iPod or similar MP3 player. Back then, it was a portable record player, or for the really rich kids, a stereo. (This is pre-boombox days, folks. I'm old) And instead of a playlist, my friends had stacks of .45 rpm records. Singles.

I owned one. That's right. One lone .45 rpm single. (Dedicated to the One I Love by The Mamas and the Papas) And our ... you can't call it a stereo. It was an old cabinet-style radio with a turntable in the top. It was the equivalent of having one song on an old ... Walkman. Maybe. It's not so much that I was impoverished, though with multiple siblings and a dad with a college prof's salary, I didn't have a whole lot of disposable income. It's just that I chose to spend my money on different things.

This was the moment of epiphany. Because when I considered what I spent my disposable income on back in my high school days, I realized that it is exactly the same as what I spend my disposable income on Today. I buy books, and I buy earrings.

I have two massive piles of books in my office, and a rapidly growing pile on the table behind the recliner in the den of books I've read since the new year that I don't want to mix with the books I read Last Year. I don't just buy books. I buy BOOKS. Lots, and lots and lots of books. I buy books almost every week, three or four or five at a time. (I think I bought 5 at Target this week...) (Some weeks I'll get a couple at Target and 3 or 4 more at Barnes & Noble.) (Hmm. I bought those books at Target on Tuesday, and today I ordered 4 more at B&N online...) (And I just got a second panel of books to read for RWA's RITA contest.) (Hello, my name is Gail and I'm a bookaholic.)

And I buy earrings. I have an extensive earring wardrobe. I've become a bit more discerning in my earring purchases in the last...mumbledy-something years. (I'm a grandmother. You do the math.) But I own a pair of balsa-wood parrot-in-turquoise-straw-hat earrings, and I would snap up a pair of lady-bug earrings like I had when I was in high school in a New York minute. (I also have garnets, lots of Navajo silver, silver from Norway, turquoise slabs, green amber...lots of stuff.) I'm a sucker for cool earrings.

There are other things I tend to spend my money on. Office supplies--I can get all oogly over pens and notebooks. Yarns and fabric for crafting and quilting. Paint supplies. Flowering plants--indoors or out. Books about crafting and quilting and painting and gardening...though that's back to the books, isn't it? Thing is--all those things go back years and years and years too. I bought my first African violet when I started college. I learned to sew in high school. I took oil painting lessons in high school. And of course, I was writing things in notebooks. (Fan fiction for the original Star Trek, and for High Chaparral, which you trivia buffs may know something about.)

I haven't outgrown my addictions. I've just become better funded.

Oh, and I'm still writing. We'll be in Paris for the rest of the book.

ISBN for THE ETERNAL ROSE

One of My Lovely MySpace friends told me that they pre-ordered The Eternal Rose from Amazon.com today. (Or maybe yesterday. Time is relative in cyberspace.) Anyway, I was totally shocked and thrilled, since I hadn't known until then that the books were available for pre-order. (Yay!!)

ISBN stands for something blah like "International Standard Book Number" (which might be right, or might not, because I'm totally guessing) but that is what makes a book "real." It's not the paper or the cover, tho those totally help in the "real"-making, but e-books, which have covers and type, but no paper, have ISBNs. The ISBN identifies the book to the public, and to bookstores and to anybody who wants to know about a book. Two books can have the same cover. Two authors can have the same name (which is frowned upon, but happens). Many, many books have the same plots. (FYI, there are only 16 plots. Or maybe only three. Depends on who you ask.)

But no book will ever, ever, ever have the same ISBN. It identifies one book and one book only. MINE. What is this secret number, you ask? Well, first of all, it's NOT a secret. (Share this news with your friends.) And secondly, there are actually two numbers. There are so many books, the ISBN people are switching from a 10-digit number to a 13-digit number.

That said, Here they are:

• ISBN-10: 080957165X

• ISBN-13: 978-0809571659

Go forth and pre-order. If you want to.

Oh, and I'll be posting a pre-pre-order excerpt from the book for my newsletter sometime next month, probably (depending on when I can remember to do it, and if I don't, nag me, 'kay?), so if you're not signed up for the newsletter and you want to be, send me an e-mail with "Subscribe" in the subject line, and I'll sign you up.

Dadgum! It's COLD!!!

I was going to do a blog about Maureen Dowd and her cluelessness, but I've never been able to read Dowd anyway (Oh, how I miss Molly Ivins! She's the only one who really ever got Texas politics) and we all know she needs a great big giant clue, so forget about her. I just want to get WARM.

We finally got the snow/ice melted off our back patio, and it decides to snow again. And get really, really cold. It's gotten warm enough to melt some of it off, especially off the streets, so I haven't had to do the 4-wheel drive thing, but it only stays that warm till for about 15 minutes, then gets cold again. Ugh. This time last year, my tulips were coming up. It snowed all morning yesterday, and most of the morning today. Good writing weather.

I actually got 7 pages written today, the most all week, but still not as many as I wanted. I may reach Paris soon. In fact, I'm hoping to get everyone there tomorrow. Cross your fingers.

I should have re-potted my plants this afternoon--I bought the potting soil so I could do it--but didn't get there. I went to the college basketball games, but missed the end of the women's game and the beginning of the men's because I went to community choir. All ladies tonight, but at least there was more than me and the director this time. (I forgot completely last week...) It was fun to sing, but I rusted the voice out doing it and didn't cheer at the ball game at all. I clapped really loud, tho.

Just agreed to write an article for the Published Authors RWA chapter website. Got to do that by Monday. Now, if I can get any revisions for Eternal Rose from my editor, I may have my ducks in a row.


Um--another painting. I think I finished this one last August or September. I painted it from this photo I took.

Let's see...I went on a reading binge earlier this week. I read Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs, Let There Be Suspects by Emilie Richards (a cute mystery with a minister's wife heroine), Catching Stanley by Deirdre Martin (hockey playing hero, neurotically shy dog trainer heroine), Howling Moon by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, (hero's a werewolf, heroine's a shapshifting jaguar with a serial killer jaguar after her), and Maelstrom by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon (living planet that's evolving the people and beings living on it). Hmm. No wonder I'm not getting much written this week. Reading too much...

Slow weekend

It's been a really slow weekend. We talked about getting tickets for the Sousa concert at the Amarillo Symphony, but when the fella had trouble getting home from Austin, it's just as well we didn't. Amarillo was socked in with fog and freezing drizzle most of the morning and early afternoon. He's been spending a lot of time in Austin, because the Texas legislature is meeting. They only meet for a few months every other year and all the business has to be done very quickly--the theory was that if they didn't meet too often, they couldn't cause too much trouble--and being in the junior college business, the fella feels the need to be present to make sure the gummint doesn't forget to fund the colleges. (They only pay for about 1/3 of the cost of running them, right now...but this isn't a government or educational blog).) Anyway, it means that for the next several months, he'll be in Austin almost as much as he's at home. And it's nice when he comes home again. :)

We spent the weekend just hanging out. We watched a couple of the movies I rented to watch while he was gone, and didn't watch at all. I read a book. We changed lightbulbs--this is a complicated process that involves getting out a ladder (high ceilings) and lots of cussing, so we tend to let a lot of lightbulbs burn out before we go round changing them. And okay, he does most of the work. I stand by ready to catch him in case the ladder wobbles, and throw away the old lightbulbs. But we replaced three of the four bulbs in the den, two of the three lights in the spare room, the light in the laundry room, one of the bathroom lights and... surely there was another one--oh yeah, one of the 4 bulbs on the ceiling fan fixture in our bedroom. (Told ya we wait till we're fumbling in the dark.) We can see again! (I really like the fluorescent fixtures in the bathrooms...)

I'm going to have to start going to basketball games with him again soon--except this week, it's on Thursday, which is choir night--okay, I completely forgot to go to the community choir this past week, but the fella was out of town, and it's harder to remember stuff when I don't have any schedule at all to keep... Anyway, I can go to the ball game, then sneak out for choir practice, then sneak back for the rest of the guys' game.

I've made an emergency hair cut appointment for tomorrow afternoon. I need to make myself a big sign to put on my desk so I don't forget to go. We're getting a family picture made early Tuesday morning, and my hair has reached that icky in-between too-long-to-be-short and too-short-to-be-long stage, where some of it wants to flip out, some of it wants to flip under, and some of it sorta wants to go sideways...(No I do not have photos!) and no way am I having my picture made with in-between hair...

I need to write a "alumnus success story" article for Gwen Shuster-Haynes' marketing workshop. I'm not sure it got me to doing more things that what I was already doing, but I feel better about the things I'm accomplishing, and I think I'm focused better.

Okay. This weekend, I watched Sixteen Blocks with Bruce Willis (liked it), and Mrs. Henderson Presents with Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. I also read Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and Tongue in Chic by Christina Dodd. (Dodd's title doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story, but it's cute, and I liked the book. I liked both books, actually.)

Back to work in the a.m.

Nothing new

Nothing much has happened since yesterday, except I did finally get boxes and stuff to mail out the goodies to the winners of the contest I held for my newsletter subscribers. They're all ready to mail and sitting stacked in the den.

Didn't call my sister for her birthday yesterday... (Happy Birthday Cathy!!) Didn't repot my plants which are all sitting with the new pots on the kitchen counters. I really ought to do that tomorrow. Never did get tickets to the Sousa concert the Amarillo Symphony is having. I guess I'm not as productive as I thought I was...except I did get lots of stuff mailed.

So now, I'm going to post another one of the paintings I finally took pictures of. I finished this one around Thanksgiving...

Staying busy

I finished a new painting last night. I carried it out onto the patio (which is finally almost melted off, after a month of snow & ice back there) to photograph it --along with the others I hadn't got round to taking pictures of. I'm really proud of how it turned out... Even if I did trace it with an opaque projector--it doesn't look like paint-by-numbers. Now I have to find photos of the other kids to paint...

Been mailing a lot of stuff lately, clearing the decks to get back to finishing a manuscript. I sent the revised synopsis for the Victorian steampunk fantasy I'm working on to my agent on Monday. Yesterday, I mailed off a couple of contest entries. Today, I finished revisions on a dark-ish paranormal and will be getting that in the mail this afternoon. Hopefully the editor will get back to me soon on any revisions wanted for The Eternal Rose. Until then, I'll be getting back to finishing the Victorian, New Blood.

Oh, I finished Kristi Gold's new book, Fall From Grace, last night--read it all in one huge gulp. Fabulous book--one I think she was born to write, and I know she's been wanting to write it for a long time. Wonderful, heartwarming story.

Let's see, what else do I have to tell you? The lump on my wrist is what was once known as a "Bible cyst" (aka a ganglion cyst) because once upon a time, to treat it, you'd lay your arm/wrist out on a table and get somebody to thump it hard with a big Bible and pop it. As long as it doesn't get to really hurting bad, I guess I'll just leave it be.

Super Sunday

Fixing to go to a Sunday school party at the local doctor's house (there's only one in town) for the Super Bowl. Spent the afternoon making Marshmallow Treats and Chex Mix. Since the fella's allergic to all wheat stuff, I leave out the wheat Chex and pretzels and bagel chips and just put in lots and lots of rice & corn chex, and extra nuts. We like it. :)

I have my Victorian synopsis all ready to send off to the agent. Spent Friday trying to condense my WWII story down to a 2-page synopsis. I had to put it into Times New Roman to get it down that short, but it works.

Only contests are that strict about length. Yeah, I'm going to enter this in a contest--it's a totally new genre for me--historical, non-romance. The Panhandle Professional Writers of Amarillo's Frontiers in Writing contest is a good all-genre contest for everything from poetry to screenplays to non-fiction articles, with cash prizes, and the only publication requirement is that the manuscript entered has not been contracted for publication. You can have other stuff published. So I'm entering. I have to finish the revisions on the entry pages, and get it mailed off by the end of the month.

I also have to finish judging three more contest entries, and read one more book for the RITA awards. I guess those are my goals for next week. Get my pages revised and get the contest entered. Finish all the judging.

And I have to go back to the doctor yet again. The neck lump is shrinking, but when we went to the high school basketball games Friday night--last district games of the season--and when I was clapping and hollering for the kids, this...thing that feels like a bone...came sprangling out of my wrist. I have yet another weird lump--this one's under the skin right at the base of my thumb. I tell ya, I'm getting tired of this lump/spot business! Oh well. At least I can still type...

Synopsis and snow

Got a couple of inches of fresh snow this a.m. Fortunately, it warmed up enough most all of it melted off. Except for the stuff on top of the ice and snow still on my back patio. I'm beginning to think that won't melt till spring arrives for reals.

Last week, by the end of the week, I wrote 52.5 pages. (YAY!!) Which gave me, for the two week push, 115 pages total. Not bad atall, friends.

But that meant that this week, I had to write a new synopsis to go with all the stuff I wrote and finish the story. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Lots of pages' worth. (You all know my theory--you get to count synopsis pages double because they're twice as hard to write.) Then I scratched out two or four pages' worth because I decided I didn't need the ballpeen hammer murders in this book, and could save them for someone else, because with the Hungarian Inquisition, who needs murders too? So I have a brand new ending--or rather, the same events still happen, but they happen for different reasons, and different bad guys commit the same evil events, and it all works out beautifully and ties everything together, and I probably never would have figured this all out if I hadn't sat down to write as much of the story as I could all at once.

Got to go to town yesterday and paint. I am happy. I got to work on the portrait--it's close to being done. Fortunately, I ordered more canvases. I'm out of things to paint on, unless I paint over something...which I could well do...

I have 9 pages of synopsis written, which will probably type up to 15, and counts as 19 or 20 pages in the "count" because of all the pages I got to X out when I took out the murdered guys.

Oh, and I got to go to the doctor again today. (I went yesterday to let them look at the skin cancer that's being erased with a cream) Now I have a lump on the side of my neck, right on top of the muscle there--a swollen lymph node in a weird place, so I get to take drugs for that too. Lots and lots of pills. I don't feel bad. Except the lump is sore. Oh well.

Community choir starts tomorrow. I will not forget. (And if I do, y'all get to chastise me.)

Nobody Expects the Hungarian Inquisition

Thought I'd be writing a daring escape through the streets of Budapest running from the Hungarian Inquisition...and wound up writing the first kiss...and stopping right when they arrived in Budapest. Oh well. I'll have the escape to write tomorrow...and the heroine's reaction to the kiss...

Took me 9.5 pages to write all that, so...

Fixing to head into town. The streets look pretty melted, and they're predicting upper 40s today (about 8.5 C) in Amarillo, so I should have no problems, as long as I don't stay so long they freeze again before I get home. Okay. I'm gone!

I made the Front Page of the Paper!

Okay, it was only my name, not my picture, and it was for the sledding excursion the fella and I took last Sunday, (they just said we went sledding--I guess it was news 'cause we're grown ups...) but we were in the paper...


The picture is of the jump on the hill to the west (the jump is to the west, not the hill--we were on the same hill) of where we were sledding. This is a big lo-o-oooong (as in wide, not tall) hill, so there was room for lots of people to sled. And we did NOT go over the jump (which you would know if you read my Snow Bunny post).

Anyway, I'm sitting here in my office with the two big windows, with the little space heater running and my new dry socks on, because I ventured forth into "Texas in the Snow Land" to go get mail from the post office, and it was slushy out there!

Fortunately, all the cars that passed me (and there were enough to constitute a rural Texas rush hour--meaning two cars sitting at an intersection, only one of which has a stop sign, and the one without the stop sign is waving for the other one to go through--honest! This happens to me all the time--anyway, there were lots of cars on the street) were kind and considerate enough not to splash me with the slush. Which I appreciated, since just walking splashed up plenty of slush. I got my socks wet, and my pants. Some of it was 'cause it was splashy, and some of it was 'cause it was deep! Over the tops of my tennies deep.

And the parking slots in front of the post office are just Pure-D Ice! The parking area is on the north side of the building, so (like my patio) the ice from the ice storm didn't melt off before the snow from the snow storm hit. Only people have to go to the post office to pick up their mail, because if you live in town, they don't bring the mail to you. You have to go to the post office. (This is why I only have a P.O. Box for my snail mail.) And all those cars parking there packed down all the snow on top of the ice, and turned it into ice, and the sun can't get to it to melt anything, so I had a really slippery time getting up to the part they salted. But I got my newspaper and saw my name in the paper.

Okay, mini-rant here. There was a "guest column" in the paper from some numbnuts who lives in Utah whining about the snow removal on Interstate 40, about how the snow plows were pitiful and nobody salted the road and he slid off the highway three times, and when he got to the New Mexico state line, everything was perfect. He wanted to know if the snow was just too much for Texas. (Failing to observe, of course, that the snow storm that dumped all the snow in the Texas panhandle skirted New Mexico and didn't dump much, if any, snow over there.) My answer:

Well DUH!! OF COURSE IT WAS!!!

This is TEXAS. We don't have mountains here in the northern part of the state, like New Mexico does. We don't get much snow. We do get some, which is why there actually snow plow blades to fit on the fronts of the pickups. Further south in Texas, you don't even get that much. And I'm sorry, I'm not going to advocate spending that much tax money for something we might need maybe every third year. Last year, we didn't get a lick of snow. That's why we had a million acres burn last spring, because we got no snow, no moisture of any kind. (Duh!)

And most of the time, when it does snow, it's usually 40 degrees (about 4.5 C) within a couple of days so everything melts off quickly. (It's above 40 here today.) So all you whiners from Minnesota or Utah--shut up! Wait a coupla days, it'll warm up, and you'll be on your way. Cause we aren't buying a bunch of stuff that's not going to get used. Deal.

Okay, end of rant.

Wrote 9 pages so far today.

Spent too much time looking in my old historical atlas, but I did discover that I can't send my hero and heroine to Bucharest when they run from the mountains. It's way the heck and gone the wrong direction, and over on the Ottoman side of the mountains. So they're going to Temesvar first, before they hit Budapest.

In 1863 (or 1864, depending on how old I decide my heroine is), the Carpathian mountains were part of the Grand Principality of Transylvania, which was in turn part of the Austrian Empire. I knew the bit about the empire, but didn't know it had a fancy name...

Spent a lot of time working out new stuff about how the magic works before I got started, too, but that paid off. It all came out in the story.

I'll shut up now.

The Writing Progresses

Not as much as I'd like for it to, but it progresses.

I wrote 9 pages yesterday, and 8 pages today. I'm going to try to get more written later in the day, but I do have a lot of other stuff to do.

I had to make notes today not to forget Crow's presence. I don't know why this crow is important, but I'm bound to figure it out sooner or later.

I also need to find out:

When did "bleeding" stop being an acceptable medical treatment?

and

When was Europe generally wired for telegraph? I know they had it in 1863 or 4, but how far did it penetrate into various areas?

Yeah, I know I'm cheating by posting my questions here, because I know one of you lovely people will find the answer for me. This way I can spend more time writing the story, right?

(Watching the Methodist preacher shovel out his driveway across the street, and spread salt...)

We may all be in Paris soon--but I think the Paris action will move to London in sections... We shall see...

Snow Bunny

Yesterday, it snowed. Today, the weather was sunshiney and butt-tingling cold, and the fella talked me into going out to go sledding.

The hill from the college gym down to the track is probably the best hill in town--there are other hills at the college, but most of them are either too shallow, or have a street with potential cars passing right smack at the bottom. (I could just see these crazy kids sliding down the hill and shooting all the way across the icy street right in front of cars...There were a couple with their water-ski tube standing out by that hill...)

Anyway, we loaded up the classic wooden toboggan and the purple plastic sled and drove out to the college. Two or three families were already there, but they were at the part of the hill where one of the crazy Carter kids had built a ... ski jump--except since it was a sledding area, it was a sled jump, I guess. The junior high kids were aiming right at the jump. The littler ones were going around it...or sometimes their sleds would poop out before they reached it. We walked back toward the street to a semi-packed area that didn't have too many footprints on it, and I was given the privilege of "first sled."

So I climbed on the purple sled and took off (it was hard to keep the thing from sliding out from under me). And before I'd gone three feet, the silly thing spun around and I went the rest of the way down the hill backward, laughing like an idiot. Then I had to climb back up the hill. It's not a real long hill, but I'm really out of shape. And I'm a Gigi (okay, I'm old). I was huffing and puffing by the time I got to the top. I rode both sleds down the hill a couple of times. We rode the sleds together. (I got snow on my backside because my backside is wider than the sled is. But if you repeat that, I'll deny it.) I did the belly-flop ride down the hill...the plastic sled was less likely to turn around and go down backwards if you did it that way.

And of course, every time we got to the bottom, I had to get up off the ground, which, with my knees, is quite a production. Oh, and I had to wear a pair of the fella's cowboy boots because I don't own a pair of shoes that will keep the snow off my socks...so my feet were slopping around in the boots while I climbed the hill so many times. (Not that much. He has little feet, and I have big feet...probably if I'd put on 3 more pairs of socks, I wouldn't have had a problem.)

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It was really, really cold--so cold my whole face felt like "coming back from the dentist" on the way home--and I got really winded climbing up the hill so many times, and my knees got to burning a little. Maybe they're getting stronger with all the working out. And us old folks put on quite a show for all the kiddies out there sledding. ;)

Oh, and thanks SO MUCH to all of you who sent answers to my questions. I didn't really expect anybody to go out and hunt the answers on the internet, and I totally, completely appreciate you doing it. (Yes, Catie and Becky and Kathy, this means you!) All y'all (yes, that is an all-encompassing plural indicating everyone who reads this blog) are the bestest!!

Today was Sunday. I didn't write anything. Didn't take a nap either. Played games on the "backup computer" instead. (sigh) And watched The Dresden Files. :)

Things I have to look up.

So. It's snowing like crazy outside, and has been pretty much all day. Snow's probably halfway up my shins--or would be if I were crazy enough to go outside in it, which I'm not, so we'll never know just how deep it is...until somebody tells me, I guess.

Anyway, I actually wrote a little bit this morning, which I don't usualy do on Saturdays. But today I did. And I put so many things in the margins that I need to look up, that I started a separate "Things to Look up" page, so I can just go look them all up at once. I'll have to go back in the MS and note down all the other stuff I need to look up from earlier in the week, but today, I have:

1. The number of bones in the human body?

2. When did Prince Albert die (you know, the guy Queen Victoria was married to)?

3. How long has banking been important in Geneva and/or Switzerland? When did they start the numbered account thing?

4. How long does it take to wash a henna rinse out of hair?

5. What is the Hungarian equivalent of "Mister"?

and

6. What was an important Romanian city in the early 1860s?

Anybody who knows the answers to these burning questions is encouraged to e-mail me the answers or post them as comments (preferably with documentation so I can make sure you're right...not that I don't trust you, but...you know the saying: In God we trust, all others Verify...? Well...)

I did get 6.5 pages today, which with the two pages I wrote last night, and didn't count with yesterday's pages, makes 8.5. At least I'm more or less consistent...

Hey, I got my books to judge in the RITA contest yesterday. I have things to read. Seems the delivery service couldn't find my house, so the guy took it to the Sheriff's office, and one of the deputies brought it by the house. I guess that's what you do these days--if you can't find some place, take it to the cops...

Onward!

Getting Things (Scenes) in Order

Okay, first of all, I am a "beginning to end" writer. I know there are a fair number of people out there who write scenes in whatever order they come, and then put everything together at the end. And that's a perfectly valid way to write a novel. My friend Robin D. Owens writes that way.

I can't, because my scenes don't come in "whatever" order. This happens first. And because that happened, then something else happens and the characters react this way--everything builds on what came before. However, sometimes I do realize while I'm writing away, that I should have written a scene that happened earlier. And most of the time, I will stop and go write that scene before I go on, because I can't really go on until I know what's going on in that scene.

In the Victorian steampunk book I'm currently working on, I realized somewhere in Chapter 5 that I really ought to write a new series of scenes about what's happening in Paris while my hero and heroine are busy in Transylvania. So, twice, I had to pause in the middle of the action and go back and write a scene that I'd forgotten to write when I came to the proper place for it, and write about Paris.

Today (and I'm really proud of myself for it), I switched locales to Paris right when I needed to switch. Mostly it was because things were getting dicey with my hero, and I had no clue what would happen next. Or, I knew what needed to happen, but I wasn't exactly sure how my heroine was going to pull it off. So, I went to Paris and wrote about that. It worked. I kept writing even though I didn't know where I was going.

Of course, I still have to figure out what my heroine is going to do, but... hopefully, when I sit down and write, it will come.

8 pages today, so far.

Annoyance While Reading

I am freezing my ears off!! Because I believed the lying thermometer in the window off the back entrance that looks onto the patio when it said it was 40 degrees out. It may well be 40, but the stupid thermometer doesn't have a clue about a little thing called "Windchill", so when I went out in my windbreaker to walk to the post office, I FROZE!!

Okay, that wasn't what I wanted to blog about. This has been bugging me ever since I finished the book last night, and will continue to bug me till I vent, and you are my vent-ees of choice.

So. As pretty much always, when I went to town yesterday I stopped at Barnes & Noble. And I bought a book off the remainder table. The story--a historical romance--was pretty good even though I skipped all the redundant love scenes, as I usually do with this author, but I paid less than paperback price for the hardback, so that didn't bother me so much. What jerked me right out of the story was something I probably wouldn't have even noticed a few years ago, but really caught my attention now. Basically, it was this:

Oil paints do not dry overnight!!!

A major part of the plot to this book was the painting of a portrait. A full-length painting in oils on canvas in what we would call a "photo-realistic" style. The kind of portrait artists did back before we had photographs, back before the Impressionists came into fashion. One in the style of the Old Masters. And it made me CRAZY. Because the artist decided the painting needed to be done in a hurry, so he was working like mad on it every day.

You cannot do that with oils.

Now, I'm not saying you can't paint an entire painting in one sitting. You can. There's even a special term for it: alla prima. Which is Art-ese for "all at once." But see, if something has a special Italian name, you can bet it's a special sort of technique, and it's a technique that really didn't come into its own until the latter half of the 1800s with the advent of the Impressionists, after this story was to have taken place. And it's something that has to be carefully done, because it can very easily turn into muddy smears. The Old Masters mostly did not paint alla prima, unless they were painting frescos on walls--and that was done with egg tempera or other water-based paint (which dries quickly), not oils.

However, the Old Masters' techniques in oil were based on layering paint, sometimes in transparent glazes where the colors beneath glow through and sometimes using the opacity of certain shades, like white. When one is painting wet into wet, it is almost impossible to get truly bright highlights and truly dark darks, because the paint blends with what's already on the canvas (and often turns into dull, ugly, muddy colors when it does). I like painting in oil because of that ability to blend on the canvas, something that is impossible to do with acrylics because of their almost instant drying time. Oils stay wet for days which means that you can continue to blend the colors, almost as long as you want to. That can be a good thing. However, there usually comes a time when, if you do another thing to the paint, you'll mess up what's already there. You have to just stop and let the paint dry.

See, this is another benefit of painting in oil. Once it dries, you can paint over it and it won't disturb what you've already put down. You can layer in highlights, punch up darks, intensify the brights, and it won't mess anything up. (You can also paint over mistakes.) But if you don't wait for the paint to dry, it will just make a big mess. And oil paint doesn't dry overnight.

Depending on the paint used (white takes the longest to dry), the ambient temperature and the amount of humidity in the air, it can take five (5) to seven (7) days for an oil painting to become dry to the touch. This is why, in my weekly art classes, I usually have two or three paintings going at once, so that when I reach that "time to stop and let the paint dry" point with one painting, I can pull out another and work on it. By the next week, the next class, the paint will be dry enough to put on the next layer. And this is in warm, dry West Texas...

If you touch the paint before it's dry, not only will you get paint all over you, you could smear the paint and ruin the painting. And it really ought to dry for the minimum of a month (in my warm, dry climate) before you frame it, because at only one week, the paint's usually still tacky enough to stick to the frame when you nail it in. Artists won't varnish paintings until they've been drying for a minimum of six months, preferably a year. Yes, it can take that long before an oil painting is really, truly dry.

Which is why it blew my mind when, in this book, not only did the artist have a "great unveiling" of this very important portrait the Very Next Day after it was completed--without ONCE saying "be careful of the paint, it's still wet" (something I say frequently to my spouse and house cleaner when I bring a new painting home, especially if anything more than the highlights are wet)--but they apparently framed the sucker and transported it cross country on a carriage!

Now there are--and have been for the past two hundred years at least, maybe even since Carravagio--specialized shipping boxes for transporting still-wet paintings. But you'd think the author would have mentioned having to take special care with the wet paint, or have the characters worry about the villain smearing the paint and thus destroying the value of the portrait, or something!! But no! Nothing!! It wouldn't have taken a lot of explaining, not much alteration to the story to give the painting time to dry here and there... Really, I'm pretty sure this is the primary reason portraits can take months to paint, because there's so dadgum much Drying Time that has to be built into the process.

Just a sample of the silly little stuff that authors don't realize can cut into a readers' enjoyment of the story. Makes me worry about all the things I haven't researched all that much that could mess somebody up. But really, for such an important part of the plot, don't you think she could have at least interviewed somebody about painting in oils, instead of just reading a book about it? Books don't have space to talk about drying time...

Oh, and I only got 7.5 pages written today. Couldn't get to sleep last night till way, way, WAY too late. Slept late this a.m., then my mom called, so I got started late. But I still got halfway to my 15 page goal. I know. Excuses, excuses... Tomorrow is another day.

Heading to Town

It's above freezing for the first time in a week or so, the ice is melting off the street, I think I can get out of the driveway, so I'm heading to town.

This means I'm stopping for the day at 9 pages. (14 total yesterday)

Wow. This means I've written 53 pages so far this week. No wonder my arm and shoulder hurt. (For some reason, the black ink pens don't flow as smoothly as the blue ink pens (I alternate between black and blue from one day to the next, so I can track how much I write a little easier.) and I find myself gripping them harder--today was a black ink day)

Anyway, off to the "big city."

The main streets are dry, so if I can get off my street, I'm home free, and it's looking really good. So...

Writing Lots

So, I started this writing push yesterday. Before this week, I was satisfied with writing 30 pages in a week. Between yesterday and today, I've written 30 pages. (Okay, 28. But I'll write 2 more after the Fella turns off Boston Legal in the other room...my office has no door...)

The writing is somehow also organizing the rest of my life. Okay, I haven't called Frances yet to tell her I traded months with Elmonette for hosting the Art Club lunch, but today, I watered all my plants and moved the bougainvillea and the Christmas cactus back in front of the window. I baked those really, really ripe bananas into oatmeal cookies, and to be fair to the fella, baked him some of the World's Easiest (and best) Peanut Butter Cookies (gluten free). I even got out of the house for a few minutes.

I had some things that needed to go out in the mail, and after I didn't freeze when I took out the trash, I tested the ice on the driveway. It was pretty slick, and the street looked slick too, so I decided I'd be safer on foot than trying to drive. So I put on my big coat and my gloves and I walked to the post office. (It's only 3 blocks.) If I walked on the grass, I had plenty of traction, so I slipped and slid across the streets, kept to the grass the rest of the time, and did just fine.

And now, I have written through the Ordinary World, the Call to Adventure, the Meeting with the (scary) Mentor, the Threshhold Guardian, and my heroine has answered the call and is off on her quest.

Anyway, 15 pages Monday, 13 pages (so far) today.

Getting the Year Underway

So. I've had my week to recover. Spent some time judging contests. Spent some time thinking about story plots and goals for the year. (Goals sounds so much more do-able than resolutions...)

And next week, I'm going to be doing Candy Havens' Fast Draft. I have a couple of people on my "team" to help encourage each other in writing 20 pages a day. (Ack!) And I spent this a.m. thinking on paper about the plot for New Blood. That's what I'm going to be writing. I am not sure how I'm going to tie all the elements together, but I did think of one way to bring part of it in.

I've never really tried to write that many pages in a day, and since my longhand pages (yes, I'm still going to work in pen and paper) average out to just over one page of standard ms. typed, I'm going to aim for 15 pages rather than 20. That should be a good equivalent. It is going to be a definite challenge. Which means I'm going to have to go to bed at a reasonable hour at night so I don't fall asleep in the afternoon over my paper.

I'll try to report back in on Sunday--I do take time off at least one day on the weekend--and let you know how it's going, if not before.

Hmm. Art class starts this week too, but I'll have to finish my pages before I can go to town to paint. I started a portrait of my youngest and got enough finished to give it to the spouse for Christmas, but I need to finish it, cover up the pencil marks from the drawing, that sort of thing. I need to take pictures of the new paintings, but it's too cold to do it today.

It is COLD outside. And snowy. Not much snow, but the dusting of snow is layered over a thin sheet of ice, so it's very slippery. And very, very cold. With the two windows in my office, it's even colder here, so I'm going to stop and go have lunch and warm up my cold little pinky fingers. (And all the other fingers too.)

Wish me luck in the writing.

Happy New Year

I'm tired.

Wait, let's start over.

I have been told that I need to update my blog. I knew that. But I'm so tired!

The day after my last post, we headed down to the Dallas/Fort Worth metro mess to pick up the daughter and her family at the airport. On the Friday before Christmas, we drove home again with eight people and all their gear in the vehicle, two of them in carseats. (We left the third grandboy's carseat behind because he's 5 and big enough that the law will let him do without, and it wouldn't fit.) And from then on, most of the time, we had nine (9) people--three of them 5 and under--at our house. Can you say chaotic?

It was fabulous. But I'm really tired.

The middle grandboy is on a dairy and gluten-free diet (dairy for his autism, gluten for digestive issues), so we had to cook creatively, and hide the real stuff. All cheese became queso, and he had a special cup so we knew if he was drinking somebody else's milk. But lemon meringue pie fits that menu just fine. He wouldn't eat any of it, but his granddaddy (on a modified version of that same diet) loved it a lot.

We had lemon meringue, buttermilk, apple/pear/apricot and pecan pies. We had marshmallow treats and flourless peanut butter cookies (much tastier than the other sort, and easier to make). We had Chex mix without Wheat Chex or any of that other stuff--cereal and nuts only--which are the parts I like best anyway. We had our Christmas Eve tamales with carne guisada and guacamole. We had Christmas day turkey and cornbread dressing (is there any other kind?) and sweet potatoes with honey and lime glaze and ---well, needless to say, we ate and ate and ate. Er--that is, we dined to an elegant sufficiency.

We had twelve for Christmas eve and Christmas dinner. The son-in-law's parents and sister came to join the fun for a day or two. They're great people. When the two sons left the day after Christmas, one to go to work, the other to go on a Boy Scout Explorer Troop ski trip, my parents drove up from Austin to get to see the Pittsburgh clan before they had to go home, so we still had nine. The older son's boys stayed at Gigi and Grandaddy's house while their daddy went to work.

We went to the park every day the weather was nice. The little boys invented new ways to slide down the slide. (I think the city put in a new slide with sidebars since the little one fell off the top a year or so ago--not because of the fall, but...) The boys got anybody handy to push them on the swings. One of them (the little one, I think) got knocked down when he walked a little to close to his cousin swinging. The playground equipment is seriously old, and scattered around our little town's park, which means the kids run a little more going from one thing to another, which was good. Tired them out so they'd sleep. Fortunately, the 2-year-old still takes naps (though he fights them tooth and toenail) so Gigi got to lie down with him and rest up a little. Then he'd stay up till midnight, the little stink bug.

His big brother would crash out early--and wake up early. He was up Christmas morning before anybody else. Even Granddaddy. We have a rule that we wait till everybody's up before we go in to the tree to see what Santa brought. He waited...but he went in to peek, and was whispering to us that Santa brought him a blue car, and brought baby brother a bike. The other two were so groggy when they finally woke up that they just sat and stared at their goodies for a while.

Our family isn't one of those that rips into the packages to see who can open all their stuff the fastest. The competition is to see who opens the Last Present. Who can hold out the longest? Who can make Christmas morning last the longest?

Well, we have a new winner. The middle grandboy was still opening presents around two in the afternoon. He was a little overwhelmed by all the noise and the paper and new stuff, so he stopped and played with things for a while in between. His cousins were very good about not opening presents for him--I was proud of them for that. But then, they were excited about all their new stuff. And the candy.

In the midst of all this chaos, I got a new computer. The old one turned out to have more wrong with it than I thought--the hard drive had physical damage as well, so they had to do a data retrieval. I had most everything backed up, but I wasn't real sure how much was "most everything" so... And so we didn't get to pick up the new machine till a few days after Christmas. Then things were so crazy, I couldn't really get in to load programs and such. And then it started doing this weird locking up thing whenever it was started or restarted, so now I have to take it back into the shop tomorrow. If it ain't one thing it's another.

Everybody has gone home or back to school now. I need to get to work on the writing--which means I need to clean off this disaster area of a desk. (Did you know stacks of books made pretty good climbing blocks? Of course, the stacks tend to fall over, but hey...little boys need to climb...) At least I can write without actually having the computer present. Maybe they won't keep it very long this time. But I'm so tired!!

Christmas Fun Ahead

Well, the new computer isn't getting picked up today. It's ready, but the roads up on the caprock and into Amarillo are all iced over, and I'm not about to brave them for any reason. Especially since I'm such a chicken about driving in icky weather. So the computer will have to wait till later.

We should have no problems heading south however, to pick up the grandboys (and parents) in Dallas. Originally, we were only going to have the one boy for Christmas, but plans have changed, and our older son's two boys are going to be able to come for Christmas morning as well. Their dad will be flying out to work right after Christmas, but the boys will get to stay till he comes back on the weekend. The house may well be straining at the seams, but we'll have lots and lots of fun.

Wish me luck, and sanity. :)

Dead Computer

Yep, mine finally bit the dust. It's several years old--more than several, actually, but I don't need a lot of bells and whistles. I need internet access. I need to run my word processing programs, etc. I'd like to run games, but I do have the "spare" computer in the boy's room, when he's away at uni with his bells-and-whistles supercomputer. (Not the one he leaves behind.) Anyway, I have a new one ordered, and should be able to go pick it up on Tuesday, I hope. I like the open architecture computers that I can take in and swap stuff out as needed, and have a good local company to build it for me, for a quarter of the price of the boy's supercomputer for his engineering classes.

But, this means I'll be having trouble getting online for the next little while. First, because the available computer is in the boy's room, and he's in it much of the time, and when he's not, he has a tendency to unhook the computer and take it to friends' houses to network all their computers and play vast games of ... something. (I wonder if he brought the folding tables back...) And second, by the time I get the new computer and get it all hooked up, it will be time to go pick up the grandboy at the Dallas airport. Oh, and his mom and dad too. And once the company arrives, it will expand and contract to various amounts--as various parents, in-laws, children, grandchildren, and nephews and Boy Scouts stop in for visits--all the way through New Year's. And when there are curious 2-, 4- and 5-year-olds wanting to help you on the computer...well, it's really best just to leave the poor thing turned off.

It's also really hard to write when one has lots of company and has a broken computer, so I won't be getting much of that done either. However, I did get The Eternal Rose manuscript turned in, so there's not much to be done.

If I don't stop by before next Monday, y'all have a Merry Christmas. (And a Happy Hannukah too!)

Firsts for Me

So, the fella has a meeting in Orlando, Florida. Neither one of us has been to Orlando before, so we decided to come early and play for a few days. So at the age of grandparentness, we both got to go to Disney World for the very first time. (We've never been to any Disney park before, though I did get to watch the fireworks at Disneyland from across the street once...) Anyway, since there was just the two of us, we went to Epcot and Disney/MGM parks and walked my legs off. Don't know if the fella walked his off or not, but I do know mine are gone. Well, okay, they're still attached to the body, but they are sore. Still, we had a great time, riding the rides and watching the shows. We're definitely people who like shows.

We also got to watch the space shuttle launch from the beach over in Cape Canaveral. I'm pretty sure we were in the town of Cape Canaveral and not Cocoa Beach, but it's hard to tell where one starts and the other one leaves off. The fella is a fan of NASA and space stuff, so he really, really wanted to go see it. Enough that we drove over Thursday when it was cancelled, and drove back on Saturday when it finally went up. And we did get to watch. I took pictures, which are still in the camera. Then I called the boy and told him we got to watch the shuttle, and he'd forgotten that we were going to be in Florida and was all trying to figure out how they'd moved the shuttle to west Texas... Then he was really, reallyjealous. Mostly because we got to go to Disney World without him. (neener, neener) Hey, he gets college tuition. He doesn't get Disney.

So, today the meeting starts and there are a bazillion college people running all over this hotel, and there's no room for me to get in anywhere and eat, and there's nowhere else nearby for me to go, and I'm really hungry, so I think I'm going to see if the lunch rush has finally faded, and I will take my manuscript with me to edit while I eat, because I'm not in a mood to read about the history of the Solomon Islands, and none of the novels I brought are speakin to me either. Ooh, but I did find a book I want to get--it's a history of the real Scarlet Pimpernel people (there were apparently a number of them) in the Napoleonic era. I'll have to look...

I'll blog later, if I do anything else interesting... (Aren't y'all lucky I brought my computer glasses with me so I can see the computer screen?)

Sunday Stuff

I just have...stuff...going on. Yesterday, the fella and I put up the Christmas tree. It's always a fun time, even though it was just the two of us--I think we may have waited till the boy came home to put it up last year. Anyway, we found, in a box of package decorations, a big bunch of new ornaments neither one of us remembered buying. There's a lovely "crystal" nativity, and a little boy playing "Indian", and Santa in a canoe fishing, and a bear in a canoe fishing, and Santa ice skating... It was a nice surprise, but we're still accusing each other of buying the ornaments.

Of course, putting up the tree is always preceded by moving furniture, so we have extra tables in the front entry, and chairs in weird places. Had to find places to put away tea sets and dragons and things so we could set out snowmen (they're on top of the piano, and one of them dances whenever the piano is played. He danced himself right off the piano once...) and angels and stocking holders and things. The house looks very festive...as long as no one looks into my office. Hmm. I wonder if that's why he suggested putting the Christmas tree in the corner in front of the doors to my office, instead of in front of the front bay window... Hmmmmmm.

Cute story. Thursday, the fella had to fly to Galveston, but it was snowing and snowing and he wasn't sure whether his flight would get off. He had a 7:00 p.m. flight, and kept checking all day to see if it was on time or canceled or what. Well, about 3:30 Thursday afternoon, when he checked, his flight was canceled. There was a flight at 5:15, or the next one after his was delayed till 10:30 or so. Since our town is at least an hour from Amarillo (where the airport is), he had to hop in the car and drive through the snow right away to get to the airport.

On his way out of the office, he grabbed a can of Coke (diet caffiene free, actually) to drink on the road. But it was such a tense drive, with the blowing snow and the hurry to get there, he never opened the can. The weather guys were predicting temperatures in the teens, and he didn't want the can exploding all over his car, and when he parked in the garage, the snow had blown in and made a drift in front of the parking space. So he took the can of Coke out of the car and dropped it down in the snow drift.

Friday was gorgeous, and snow melted all day. By the time he got home late Friday night, the snow had melted enough that he could see the top of the Coke can in what was left of the drift. So he picked it up and inspected it. Looked fine--no bulges, no leaks. So he popped it open and drank it on the way home. Snow drift ice chest...

So, we have the Christmas tree up. We've started wrapping stuff. Still have grandboys to shop for, and nephews (we have a LOT more nephews than nieces--and the girls are easy to please) but we're ahead of where we were last year.

And next week, I want to go over the second proposal I want to get out and see about getting it in the mail. Onward and upward. Or onward, anyway.

Snow: Can't stop it now...

It has been snowing since midnight or so last night. May have stopped an hour or two ago--it's hard to see outside in the dark. I don't object to the snow too much. I mean, it's moisture. I sure don't want the place to burn like it did last spring. But it sure is cold out there with the high wind and the snow and everything.

The cold makes me want to bundle up in the fella's recliner with my crocheted blankets (even though I haven't actually finished one of them--it's still big enough to cover you up) and read. I sure don't get out to walk to the post office and pick up the mail. So I guess I ought to go back and use the treadmill thing in the back bedroom. Need the exercise. But I'd really rather walk outside. But it's so cold!

Speaking of exercise...it's really sad when even the fortune cookies begin to nag you! Yes, I got a fortune cookie fortune at one of the restaurants where we ate while we were visiting over the holiday that said something to the effect of "Work on upgrading your exercise routine." I mean, come on! I know I need more exercise. But from my Fortune Cookie??!!?! Hmph.

Mostly I read today. Yesterday I read Od Magic by Patricia McKillip, and Rules of Seduction by Madeline Hunter. Today, I've read an old novel--not really fantasy because there's no magic, but it's not set in any world we know--called Swordpoint by Ellen Kushner. And I'm reading the sequel now. Interesting books all of them.

Good News after Thanksgiving

I didn't think I ate that much while I was eating it, but I feel like I'm waddling now that I'm home again. I had turkey and dressing and ham and yams and greenbeans and fruit salad and Brasilian cheese rolls and buttermilk pie and apple-pecan pie and... hmm. No wonder I'm waddling...

So, okay, now the news can be shared, I believe, since I have the contract in my hands.

The Eternal Rose has been picked up by Juno Books and should be published next July in trade paperback format.

Juno Books is the brand new fantasy/paranormal romance imprint of Wildside Press. I tried several times to find the editor at the World Fantasy Con in Austin when we were there earlier this month, but never did connect. However, my good friend and Luna Author C.E. Murphy (an even better friend than ever I knew) pitched the book for me when she connected with the editor. And did several other favors like forwarding e-mails, etc., with the result that the editor tracked me down by cell phone a week ago Saturday to make an offer to buy the book sight unseen.

Harlequin is willing to give me back the rights and that is in process now, so all you wonderful people who read the first two Rose books and loved them (and you are truly wonderful people) should be able to read the third book only a month later than it was originally scheduled by Luna.

Life is good.

Especially when you can add pie to the equation. :)

Done with Tweaking (for now)

Dang, I'm not quite making my "goal" of posting to the blog at least once a week, am I? But I'm trying!

I've been working on re-doing the synopsis to The Eternal Rose to make it fit how the story actually came out, which required re-reading the story again, which had me finding all kinds of new places that needed tweaking. Finished the new synopsis last Friday. Finished the tweaking this a.m. This leaves me time to bake pies and flourless gluten-free cornbread tomorrow before I go paint.

I have to drive back to Amarillo today. Saturday, the fella and I went to town early. I had a Panhandle Professional Writers meeting and he had an auction he wanted to attend. (He's become addicted.) And when we went to load up the stuff he bought into the back of the SUV, the bookcase wouldn't fit along with all the boxes of stuff. (He did get the two tea sets I wanted. One German and one from China--and one of the odd lot boxes had a platter that matched the German set. More teapots (rubbing hands in glee)!) So, anyway, I have to go back to town this afternoon and pick up the bookcase. They won't hold it any longer than today. I'll get the buttermilk for the pies too. After the auction, we ran a few errands, had dinner at our favorite Japanese place and went to the late show of Casino Royale. I like the new Bond. I like the movie--they have James running a lot...

Tomorrow, the pies. And painting class. I'll bring my Boys at the Beach painting back home. And Wednesday, we'll drive 5 hours to pick up the older son and the grandboys, then two more hours to pick up the younger son at his college apartment, then two or three more hours (depending on traffic) to the parents house.

Have a nibble on a publisher for the last Rose book. Cross your fingers that we can get things worked out in time.

And thanks for all your comments. I'm not good about commenting on the comments about the blog, but I do read every one of them.

Been a Long Time

Yeah, I know. It's been a long time. I'm in roller-coaster mode again. One day on top of the world, the next day, convinced I don't have a clue what I'm doing trying to write a book. Typical writer.

So, I went to my very first World Fantasy Conference, which was a bit of a culture shock. It's much more laid back than the romance writer's meetings--largely because it's as much for fans as for writers. Instead of workshops about "How to do it better", there are panels to discuss "Why it is the way it is, and should it be that way?" There aren't near as many people, and they have readings, where authors read from their work.

I got to read. Surprised the heck out of me. Especially since the final decisions weren't made till the last week before it started, while I was out of town in Austin. I had forgotten to bring any of my books (or my bookmarks to hand out, sigh), so I had to borrow the books from my Mom to have anything to show people. And I loaned my copy of Eyes of Crow to Jeri Smith-Ready so she could read it, because she'd forgotten all of her books too. There were four of us reading in a "paranormal romance" session--even though none of us actually write paranormal romance... I suppose I could have broken out an exerpt from Devil in a Red Dress, to give an idea of a "real" paranormal romance, but it's not exceptionally romantic yet, so... Plus, I haven't sold it.

Anyway, Jeri read, I read, Robin Owens read her Luna book, and Shanna Swendsen read her non-Luna Enchanted, Inc. Which is a really cute chick-lit-y fun fantasy. It was good. I had a couple of guys come up to me on Saturday and Sunday and tell me they enjoyed it (probably because I read from the blood, guts and gore part of Compass during the battle where Kallista gets her magic) and would check the books out. So, new readers. Yay!

And I talked to several editors, one of whom might be willing to take on the last Rose book. I hope. No harm in trying, anyway. But I need to do a new synopsis for Eternal Rose so it matches the actual book--which means I need to read the book over again, which means I'm going through and revising again. I put some stuff back in--but I think I'm going to take it out again. I need to finish reading, do my turning points and make sure the story stays on point. I really liked all the sword-fighting, but... it doesn't necessarily move things along. I can always put it on the website.

Most of them probably don't want to do a 3rd book in a series started by another publisher, but all of them seemed interested in other material, and, well--there you have it.

I found several new books and new authors. I finally picked up a Carol Berg, as my daughter has been nagging me to do, since Ms. Berg was at the conference. She told me her favorites of those she has out now, and I picked up Transformation which was a very different sort of story and very good, so now I'm going to read the rest of them.

And I picked up some YAs. The one I liked best was The Queen of Attolia, because it made me want to read the other books in the series. It was very gritty--the main character got his hand chopped off early in the book, so obviously one can write pretty much what one wants to write, especially for older kids. I might like to write YA fantasy (which wouldn't be too far a stretch from the other stuff I'm doing). I was thinking about YA, and realized that I doubt I could write the YA "girl" books, because my girl didn't really like them, I never did, and besides, my boys were the last ones at home in the YA years. So I'd want to write YA "boy" books. And at the YA/juvenile fantasy panel, someone said that YA books for boys were very much in demand. So.

But I have many many places to go with the writing already. Beginning with the revising of Eternal Rose and the writing of a synopsis for it. Then I want to finish the synopsis for Thunder so I can get that sent off--I've got it mostly written, but I'm not sure about the ending. I may not have the details together till I actually write it, but one can't write "So, in the end--somehow he makes her remember everything and they all live happily ever after." But that may be what I end up with. And then after that, I'll get the partial together for Red Dress and send That off, and then, I'll get back to finishing New Blood. Sounds like a plan. Now if I can just get it all done. Especially since it's the holiday season... More traveling, but at least the nest is empty.

OH! And I pulled out a book from my TBR stack that had fallen down amongst the others and read it and loved it, and can't wait till the next one: THE LOST FLEET: Dauntless by Jack Campbell. It's the very first--if you like the Captain Jack Aubrey books, you'll like this. If you like Naomi Novik's Temeraire the dragon books, you'll like this one. It's naval battle in space--the hero has been frozen in an escape pod for about 100 years, and placed in command of a fleet just before all the admirals are assassinated at truce negotiations. It's up to him to get the fleet home. Great story. So, there you have my latest recommendation.

I'll try not to be so long before posting here again. Just couldn't get up the energy. (sigh)

Dreaming in Austin

I've been in Austin since Sunday. Came down from the Dallas/Fort Worth area after moving furniture for the son (who'd better move it out of his grandparents' garage right quick) to a conference downtown for the fella...ate way too good while he was conferencing. Then Tuesday, I drove all the college board members who came to the meeting (and the fella) to the airport to fly back to the panhandle. And I drove across town in the bus to the parents' house.

My Mama is starting to have trouble remembering things. I wouldn't worry if she just forgot names (I've never been able to remember people's names either), but she forgot that Daddy called while he was out yesterday afternoon, and was worrying about where he was even though he'd called to tell her. She's not bad yet, but now I'm worrying. Anyway, we have had a good time. She took me down to "her" shoe store--a "real" shoe store, where they measure your feet and find shoes to fit your peculiarities. Which in my case are a wide square-across-the-toes foot with a very high arch, and a big toe knuckle with arthritis in it. And after only four tries, we found a nice pair of black dress shoes that didn't kill me when I put them on. Paid more for them than I have ever in my life paid for a pair of shoes, but for shoes that don't commit murder, that's important. We did have to hunt for the shoe store for a while because Mama couldn't remember exactly how far down Burnet Road it was, but we did eventually find it. ;)

I'm using Daddy's computer to post this blog. He was in on the very birth of computers, worked on them when they took up the size of a big room and required punch cards to run a program--and the punch cards were an improvement from earlier data input. So he doesn't have a problem working on aged equipment. Actually, Daddy's stuff is newer than my father-in-law's computer. He's still working off Windows 3.1, I think...we keep threatening to get him a new computer, but he resists mightily. If I were at the in-laws, I would not be blogging. And I have a chance to get to the computer, because my brother just gave him a new hand-me-down laptop. It's probably five years old or more, but it's newer than the one he had before, so it's a new toy, and I get to play with the desktop. :)

Anyway, the World Fantasy Con starts this afternoon, and I'm all excited. I've never been to a fantasy conference before, ever, so this will be a really new experience for me. I will be the gray-haired granma wandering around goggle-eyed. And I'll get to read from one of my books in a group reading, so that will be fun.

I doubt I'll have time to blog during the conference, but if I do, I'll be here. Otherwise, I'll report when I get back home on Tuesday. The conference goes through Sunday afternoon some time, and it takes all day (between 9 and 10 hours) to drive home from here (even tho we are on the north side of Austin), so I'm not leaving till Monday a.m., so I can get home before dark. And maybe stop off in Waco to visit the boy. Yeah, I'm staying free at the parents' house--they're only about 10 or 15 minutes from the conference hotel, so I can do this one cheap. :)

Later--

Thursday Thoughts

Hey. I told you I stunk at titling stuff.

Okay, so. Went down to Waco for Baylor Homecoming last weekend. It was our 30th reunion year, but didn't see anybody we know except for one guy who was in the journalism department with me who now teaches there and writes mostly non-fiction books. Had a good talk with him and his wife (who went through the same education school program the fella did so they had stuff to talk about).

Went to see the boy, mostly. He still hasn't gone by to talk to people about changing his major to see if they'll let him into their department. (GRRR!!) But he's doing well, not starving...not cleaning up his apartment either, but hey, that's what college is for. To learn that occasionally you do have to take out the trash and wash the dishes...

We went to the Homecoming Parade Saturday morning--Baylor has the biggest homecoming parade in the nation--and the winning Class A float caught fire just before it got to us. It was one of two "dragon" floats. One (the one that didn't catch fire) was a "St. George and the Dragon" theme float, (only St. George was in a football helmet and pads, rather than shining armor) and the other was a Chinese dragon with a bear-type face. (For those of you poor souls who don't know, the Baylor mascot is a bear.) Anyway, both floats had fire for the dragon's mouth--and the Chinese dragon caught his face on fire. Fortunately, the "float walkers" had fire extinguishers and put it out in a few seconds. Still, it was a rather exciting few seconds. The son thought it was hilarious, since the burning float was built by a "rival" fraternity.

The football game was hot, Hot, HOT. I put on sunscreen and got burnt anyway. It was so bright, I wore--well, a towel, okay? I wore a towel on my head to shade my poor little part (I have sunburnt the part in my hair so many times it isn't funny) and my eyes so I could see the field. I didn't get one of the ball caps in the car before going into the stadium. I probably couldn't have worn it, because I have a giant head--bigger than anyone in the family--but I didn't even think about it. Hence, the towel-head. We stayed through the whole entire game, even though Baylor was behind by 18 points going in to the 4th quarter--and it was worth it, because about 10 minutes into the quarter, the Bears came roaring back and won the game. Very exciting. (I like football when I have something invested in the game. Or when I'm there in person. I get very loud.)(Hey, I'm a Texan. And I live in a small town.)

Then we came home. I'm going to Austin for the World Fantasy Conference next week, so it'll probably be a little while before I manage to get here to blog again.

Oh! Got a phone call from the daughter in grad school. (The only daughter I have.) She made all A's on her mid-terms. (Rather expected, since her brothers' nickname for her is "Girl Genius") And the grandboy who lives there actually condescended to speak to me on the telephone. He didn't say "Hi, GiGi." He sang "The Itsy Spider" to me. The Spider got washed, but wouldn't climb back up the spout. He sang to me twice. Once to say hi, and once to say bye. Boy genius, I tell ya. And that spider never did get back up that spout, but boy did it get washed.

Okay, I've bored you enough. Giving a shout-out to Lindi! Hey girl--and if you get your bachelor's, you tend to be less poor (Okay, I'll give the lectern back to your mom now)...yeah, I need to update the website. I'll get there.

I finished the synopsis for Devil in a Red Dress so things are moving right along in that area... Later.

What A Difference a Day (or Two) Makes

Well, the next day--the day after I wrote that last blog about being insecure and mistrustimg my own judgment--I sat down at my desk, and the words just flowed. It was a great scene, and had great conflict and emotion and sexual tension and I absolutely loved it. I even went "over quota" on the pages.

And then, the day after that--I got maybe 3 pages written. Okay, some of it was because I went to Amarillo on Tuesday as usual (finished a little painting, painted over another sucky one) and bought books. I bought The new Lois McMaster Bujold (which is FABULOUS) and Robin Owens' new HEART QUEST and a couple of others (including, finally ANANSI BOYS which had made it to the remainder table and cost the same as a paperback)--and I stayed up reading Heart Quest (also FABULOUS!) till way too late and when I got up Wednesday morning, I was sleepy and the brain wasn't really perking on all cylinders and I had to head downtown for a Friends of the Library meeting at noon anyway, which meant I needed to stop a little early...Yeah, I know. Excuses, excuses. Still, couldn't get into the story.

And then today, stayed up too late again--this time getting through Nora Robertses new sorcery/vampire series--but I slept late. So I started late. But didn't have anywhere to go, any thing I had to do, except make it to the bank before 3:00 p.m.--so I just kept working. And again, the words flowed and the characters spoke to me. I did have to make myself stick with it until I got my 6 pages (think I got a little more, when I reached the end of it) and barely had time to grab some lunch and walk to the bank. Hmm. Now I think about it, the weather's been about as roller coaster as my writing. The writing has gone better on the pretty days.

I listened to some of the RWA workshops on my iPod while I was out walking, and I think the last couple really helped me focus on what I needed to do with these scenes. Of course, they didn't come out at all like I thought I had planned--but then that's my writing style. I plan the overall plot (which I actually haven't done with this book, except very, very vaguely) and then when I get to the scenes, I line up the characters--whoever needs to be in the scene--tell them "Okay, in this scene, Lilah wants to find out who Will thinks is after her, and Will wants to tell her so there's no conflict in that, but when she finds out, she doesn't like what she hears and has to argue with him about it. Ready? Okay--Go!" And I turn them loose and watch what happens and write it down as fast as I can. And it went in a few directions I did not expect. So I'm both a plotter, and a pantser. I know what the scenes are supposed to be about--but I have no idea how that stuff is going to happen. Which is why I can't write out of order.

Anyway, I think I've gotten my 24 pages for this week. (I hope.) Not writing tomorrow. Heading south to go visit the son at university and go to the Homecoming football game and hang out. Then I'll have a few more days at home and it's off to Austin for some Texas community college board association meeting thing, and then the World fantasy conference at the end of the week. Guess which one's going to be more fun?

I'll blog next week, but probably won't while I'm out of town...

Insecurity

The bad thing about a publishing fiasco like mine is that it can undermine a writer's confidence until there's nothing left but a big sucking sound. I know the decisions made were because of numbers and the "bad" numbers were due to unrealistic expectations...but still, when I sat down to write this morning, I found myself second guessing every word I wrote. Is it good? Is it good enough? Is it emotional enough? Too emotional? Exciting? Too talky? Not talky enough? The questions keep coming, bombarding me until I just want to go GAAACK! and bang my head on the desk.

And here I am working up workshops for RWA National conference again next year. Two of them, this time. Like I think I know what I'm doing.

Maybe I'll just bang my head on the desk, anyway. I'm not quitting mind. I'm just not sure if what I'm plugging away at will be any good. (Yeah, I know. Typical writer...)

Did get 6 more pages done today. I need to find out how to do those little thermometer-esque things, something that will fill up with every page written...

Down in the Flatlands again

It's not that flat in this part of Texas--we're in the "Rolling Plains--but it's a lot flatter than the Rocky Mountains, so yeah. I'm home in the flatlands again.

I had a great time getting the fella to drive me up even higher in the mountains so I could take pictures of bright golden-orange aspens and reflective lakes and rushing Chalk Creek, and Cottonwood Creek--missed the creek that goes with Cripple Creek somehow--but got a bunch of pictures of the Arkansas River too. Over 300 pictures, actually. I ought to print a few of them out and take them to art class with me. Did you know there is still a HUGE gold mine operating in the Cripple Creek gold field (actually, it's closer to Victor, but it's all considered part of the same gold field...)? I didn't know that, till we drove past it.

We went swimming in a hot springs pool--swimming pool-sized, but hot as a really hot hot tub--on the one day it didn't cloud up and rain in the afternoon. The fella went fishing some while I was taking all those pictures--didn't catch any fish. He's not the most patient fisherman in the world, but his philosophy is--if you don't catch anything in the first half hour, standing out there in the cold in the same spot won't get you any more fish...

I listened to a lot of RWA workshops on my iPod (I have very little music on the thing.) and thought about writing, but did almost none of it. Did a lot of crossword puzzles. It was nice having the time off.

This week, I'm trying to get back into the work, and have to pick up food and get ready for a dinner party for all the college administrators on Thursday night. Ack! (It's a small college--still, dinner for 14 is nothing to sneeze at.)

But I did a bunch of Tarot readings for the characters for Devil in a Red Dress--some of them didn't make sense, but I can figure that out later--and printed out the chapters for Thunder so I can really get into revising them. Next I need to do some more character work for Devil, and do that revision stuff--but that's for the rest of the week. (Hmm--maybe I ought to shorten the "devil" book to "Red Dress", in case I write some more books with devils in them...)

Thanks to all y'all for your comments. I appreciate them muchly.

Shadows Fade

Yeah, I suck at titles, but I've been trying to think up a new title for the WWII book, and have been waxing poetic...I'm leaning toward Thunder in a Cloudless Sky for the book...

Anyway, the blues do go away, especially with Hershey's dark chocolate kisses, and with the application of the mind to the Next Thing.

The next thing for me, right now, is a trip to the mountains, leaving tomorrow. I have the iPod plugged in, charging it up so I can listen to all the RWA workshops I didn't get to go to in Atlanta. I need to get the battery out of my camera and charge it up, and load the extra camera memory card. I plan to take lots and lots of pictures of aspens and fall foliage in the Rockies, and hope that the fella will stop along the highway when I want to take pictures. I have to figure out what food to take, because we're staying in a "cabin" (it will sleep around 25 or 26--but the upstairs is closed up now) with a kitchen.

I'm taking the books--the ones I'm writing--though I don't know how much writing I will get done. The fella is the sort who tends to need to be entertained. He's not very good at doing nothing, even when he's on vacation. He likes to go to the pool (there's a hot springs nearby, but we don't know if it will be open out-of-season as it is) or hiking to the top of the mountain, or to museums or... we'll take cards and dominoes and maybe the Trivial Pursuit game. He'll take his Sudoku book (if I have to pack it in my bag) and another book or two--I may take Thermopylae, the history book I bought for research recently, for him. (Of course, I'm taking a big fat bag full of books for me to read--but I read faster than he does.)

He hasn't taken any time off from work at all this year--and he gets three weeks, plus all the time the college is closed down. I have basically told him "You will go on vacation." He can hike to the top of the mountain if he wants, but otherwise, he's vacating, if I have to sit on him. I'll tie him up and toss him in the back of the car with the luggage. But I think he's looking forward to it. I'll charge him with taking pictures for me. (Like I don't already have enough pictures to paint--but one can never have too many...)

And when I get back, I'm digging in... to something. Probably to getting Thunder ready to send out, and on Devil in a Red Dress. I'm going to be doing the pre-writing in the mountains. I think I can do that while we're up there...should be fun. See you in a week, +/- a day or two (since you already know I'm not the steadiest blogger around...)