Adventures in October

Busy, busy weekend. And I'm expecting L.K. Hamilton's Lick of Frost on my front porch any time now, and when it comes, I'm pretty much going to drop everything and read (hmm, isn't there a school program called that? DEAR?), so I thought I'd get a blog in while I could.

So, I went to a chapter writing retreat in Valley Mills this past week. As you can see, the little house where we all crowded in isn't much, but it gave us privacy, a place to all squeeze round the same table, and a place to sleep, so we camped out for the weekend and talked writing. I got positively inspired. I'm still working on the Irish/Navajo story, but I brainstormed a plot for a two-page excerpt I wrote who knows how long ago that I always liked and thought could make a good story... and now, I really want to get to work on that one too. (The other picture is the view from the porch at our retreat place.)

Then, I headed to DFW to see the daughter while she was down in our neck of the country at her 10-year-high school reunion. (Good grief--do I have a kid that old?)(Guess so.) Her brothers came from Waco and Dallas and we had a great family visit. I can't get any more pictures to upload, or I'd share some of the pics of the great big lugs riding on the kid's toy tractor. They're pretty hilarious. Oh, and the punkin my littlest grandboy painted for me. It's adorable. And now sitting on top of my TV. (Hopefully, it won't start leaking stuff before Halloween's over.)

Came on home Monday, after taking the girl to the airport to fly home. The fella had to go to Austin with his board members Sunday, and came home on Tuesday just as I was heading out for the post office. It's a lot farther away here than it was in Clarendon. Lot bigger, too. Anyway, last night, we had yet another thing to go to--at a Mexican restaurant this time (yum). Since there's a big biker rally on the island this weekend--they're expecting around 600,000 people to stop in--the "proper attire" for the dinner was Biker Gear. All I could find was a long-sleeved hoodie with a dragon on the front, which made it too hot to wear my leather jacket. Did my best, you know.

I'm told there's an average of one death-from-stupidity per every 100,000 people at this biker fest. Rally. Whatever. Last year, one guy rode straight down 61st Street and right off the seawall without stopping. The fall killed him. He must have missed the ramp down to the pier, and gone off the side with the rocks at the bottom of the wall. Hope they're smarter this year...

Beach report: Slower tides these days. Just one today, in fact--low tide at around 3 this afternoon. Lots of rocks on the beach, lots of gulls. Most of them were waking up for the day--except for one young bird who still had his/her head determinedly under his wing, sleeping late. Saw a one-legged gull again, and a cormorant, and a whole flock of the little skittery sand birds. Mostly I've seen them in ones and twos, but this was a flock. Saw a bunch of seagulls fishing, too. They were flying in a line, like brown pelicans do, but not as big, of course, and not flying nearly so high--maybe 3 feet off the water. Then they'd swoop down and fly along at less than a foot off the water for a stretch, then back up for another 10 or 20 feet, then back down. I think some of them dipped down to catch something every so often. Bigger waves--lots of guys in wetsuits with their surfboards. I even saw one coming out to surf as I was leaving.

While I have to wear actual shoes to walk, while it's colder, I'm going to have to walk on the seawall sidewalk. I get too much sand in my shoes and track in up the steps and into the house, and I hate having to deal with the sand. If I'm in the flipflops and barefoot, I can wash it off on the driveway. Still, it's going to hit 80 F (26C) most of the rest of this week. I could go later in the day and still walk barefoot...

Need to type things into the computer and see how many chapters of White Elk, Red Sword I have, and I can go work on the science fiction-y story... Need to come up with a title for that one.

Quickie

I'm going to try to get a quick post up before I head to my writer's retreat this weekend. And I thought I'd toss in some general shots of the city on my island.

For instance, this is the church across 25th street from the post office. It's hosting the island's Oktoberfest this weekend (which I won't get to attend).

Got some writing done yesterday. I'm feeling pretty good about it--throwing two separate things at my heroine to be dealt with almost simultaneously--but I realized I forgot to explain the opening statement in her scene, so I have to find a place to squeeze that in, in an already overloaded scene. Today, I'm just packing, cutting up cantaloupe & watermelon to take along, moving plants inside, that sort of thing.

I'm going to leave a few plants outside, that don't seem to be suffering from the cooler weather. Some of them didn't seem to have a problem with the cold, maybe most of them, but the wind's been a problem. I have a lovely rex begonia that had its leaves so blown around that the stems broke (or bent too much and got pinched off), and the angel-wing begonia lost a few leaves that way too. So I just brought everything in, except for the ones that didn't seem to suffer any damage at all.

This picture is the bandstand across the street from the library. I think I took the picture from the library parking lot, or maybe the sidewalk. Anyway, this is where the Tuesday night band concerts take place during the summer. Where the cars are parked, they put up park benches for everybody to sit and enjoy the concerts--lots and lots of fun.

There's always a ton of stuff to do around here. We're missing a lot of things by being out of town this weekend, and of course, there are so many things going on, one person just can't get to it all.

Last night, the Chamber of Commerce hosted an awards banquet and presented awards to all three of the "institutions of higher learning" on the island--there's the fella's community college, a medical school and a branch campus of one of the major state universities. So we had to be there, because the fella had to accept the award. It was a nice dinner, with a very nice presentation. I thought it was a pretty good deal, to be in town just 3-1/2 months and get an award. :) Met a lot of nice people, and one of these days, I'm going to get to talk to some of them for longer than 3 minutes at a time. I'm hoping I can remember some names, next time I see them.

One more picture. I didn't take this one myself, because I completely forgot it was happening. I snitched it from the newspaper. Yesterday was the start of the Harvest Moon Regatta, a 150-mile sailboat race down the Texas coast, with over 200 ships taking part. The one on the front page of the paper showed the Elissa with all its square-rigged sails & multiple masts, but I couldn't find it on the paper's website. Oh well. I hate that I missed seeing the boats start off, but one just can't make everything.

Y'all have a good weekend!

Summer Comes to A Screeching Halt

Let's start with The Beach Report.

Okay, so I mentioned briefly that a cold front blew in on Monday. BOY did it blow in! It got downright cold. And it blew all the water way out from the beach. WAY out. I haven't seen the water so far out since we moved here...almost to the end of the jetties.

If you'll look at last Thursday's blog entry, you'll see a shot of this same beach before the norther got here. Tuesday, when I went out, the water was far enough out, this guy (you can see him. The vertical dot that doesn't have a sign on top...) was walking over there.

This is a shot of the side of a concrete ramp that comes from the street down to beach level. I took the first one last week. This was at low tide, folks. (Don't know why low tide was so high that day. Wind, again, I guess.) And the second picture I took yesterday, from the water's edge.


The second shot was also taken at low tide, but the tide was a WHOLE lot farther out than it was last week. Yeah, the shot is from the opposite angle, but still. It gives you an idea of how different the weather was. Of course, you can't see the cold, or the sharp wind.

Everything looked washed very clean. I walked out close to the water, and saw so little stuff (except for seagulls, who'd found something to chow down on), that I decided to walk back at the high-tide mark, and found some cool stuff there. More pink barnacle shells, and several other cool shells. One was as long as my hand and almost as wide, very thin, and kinda irridescent, but it was sand-brown, so I didn't take its picture. Maybe now that I've washed it off... I did have to wash a whole lot of sand out of the barnacle holes.

The sand was cut into some really cool wave patterns. A lot of it was the usual washboard-looking stuff, with flat tops, but some of it was really different. Diamond-patterned, or... maybe like tucks in fabric. I thought it was cool looking, anyway.

So, there's the "First Blue Norther of the Season" beach report. A bunch of kids went to school in shorts on Monday, and froze. (They had pictures in the paper.) It was cold Tuesday morning, and this morning, but by this afternoon, it was gorgeous. Really nice for my trip to the library. My knees were hurting from walking so far two days in a row, so I skipped the beach this a.m. and walked from the library to the post office downtown, this afternoon. Clear sky, warm & not too hot, nice breeze...perfect. And it's not but 4 or 5 blocks between the two. Had my lunch out at a nice Mexican restaurant over near the medical school.

Got quite a bit written today. New stuff, not just re-treads from the first version (which now that I'm reading it again, I can see the suckage). It's moving along. I'm liking it better. Like the characters better, like the writing better. Wondering when I'll get some of this exposition in, but you know? If it doesn't make it, I don't think it will hurt anything...

I also got a chapter critiqued for the weekend retreat. Now I need to search through magazines for some interesting pictures to pull out for the workshop I'm presenting. One of the original presenters had to cancel. I also need to crit three more chapters. Eep! It always takes me so long to do critiquing. I will be present for the critting, though, so maybe I don't have to write so much stuff...

There's another fancy dress Thing tomorrow night--not as fancy a dress, I don't think. Ought to be able to wear my black lace skirt and pink beaded jacket. Maybe.

I'll try to blog before I drive out Friday, but if I don't...I'll see y'all when I get back.

I'll leave you with a final picture...the shrimp boats have come in close to shore, with the falling temps. I could have taken a picture of several together, except for the sun's glare off the water, and by the time I moved away from the glare, they'd separated. Oh well...

Wild Weekend

The harbor cruise was fun. We took the motor-powered cruise. Big ol' boat that A&M uses for marine research of various kinds. Just six of us on the boat with "Captain Jim. " Basically, we went down the harbor to the ship channel and back, didn't go out in the bay at all. Lots of interesting stuff to look at. (This is the "other" boat, very much like the one we're on. Took the picture while we were pulling out.)

We saw lots of cool stuff. The local cruise ship, getting loaded up for another Caribbean cruise... We saw the "tall ship Elissa," from the water. Elissa is a museum herself, and also a working sailing merchant ship. Locals volunteer to sail her and keep her ship-shape.





There were also cargo ships unloading tractors and shipyards that didn't look like they had any ships to work on. I think one of the shipyard things was still under construction. Besides all the big ships (including Coast Guard cutters and ferries and barges), there were people out fishing. Apparently it's about time for the flounder run to begin and folks were everywhere, on the bank and in boats, catching fish while all these huge ships were pulled up to dock right across the water from them.

But the absolute coolest thing we saw while we were out cruising down the harbor was the bottle-nosed dolphins. A whole pod surfaced right in front of the boat--six or seven of them. I couldn't get but three in the same picture--they were pretty far ahead when the big bunch surfaced, and not all of them came back up close enough for me to take their picture. But they were right there in the harbor along with everything else, swimming around like there were no ships or fishermen. Cool, huh?

And then we went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age, because I'd been wanting to see it, and it was totally worth going to see. Loved the clothes...

Sunday, we got tickets to the Grand Opera House to a concert, and decided to go to that, since Moody Gardens--which was having "Free Day for locals" will be there next year (or whenever) and the pianist won't be. The music was great, but Sunday afternoon is not a good concert time for this girl. Sunday afternoon is Nap Time, and I kept falling asleep in that dark theater, at least through the Brahms. I did stay awake for the Mussorgsky Pictures in an Exhibition--just because I like that music a lot.

There were a whole bunch of other things going on over the weekend...a bicycle "ride around the bay" benefit thing, I think a breast cancer walk, an art festival, I think there was also a jazz festival...and we just couldn't get to all of it. (A couple of the cyclists got hit crossing the causeway, even though they had two lanes blocked off just for the bicyclists...)

So now, it's Monday. Worked on White Elk this a.m., got the latest version of chapter 1 in the computer and sent off for critiquing. Hopefully I've added in enough emotion that it will work. Hopefully.

Beach Report: Went back out to walk this morning. They've been predicting a cold front for today since last week, but you couldn't tell it by my walk. It was 81F (27C) when I got to the seawall at 8:30 a.m. And there wasn't a lick of breeze anywhere. I have NEVER been on the beach when the air was so absolutely still. It was hot, walking this a.m.

Because it was Monday, and the beaches got groomed for the weekend, most of the seaweed was gone, unless it got washed up right next to the seawall. I saw a couple of chunks of floaty, crinkly kind. (Guess I ought to take a picture of that, too.) A few shells, more rocks, and a whole lot of rocks right next to the fishing pier.

But I saw something I'd never seen before, completely new for me, and totally cool. I guess it washed ashore because it had broken off something else. It was a chunk of hard, clear plastic pipe about 2 inches in diameter, with a metal plug on one end that had been completely covered three-quarters of the way around, and over the end with some kind of little mussels or clams. Each shell was about thumbnail sized, and attached to the pipe by some kind of...neck, or stem. Kind of an icky, fleshy, ribbed, dark brown stem. The shells looked thin, and they were triangular shaped, with rounded points, white with dark orange edges. Looked sorta like mouths with lipstick on, because the shells were all open, some with little critters sticking out.

I thought about bringing it home to take a picture of here, but the critters were still alive, and when they died, they would sure stink. So I tossed them back into the water (they washed back out again) for the seagulls to eat, if they ever figured out they were edible. (Maybe they aren't. I don't know.) The seagulls weren't messing with them when I first saw it. It looked sort of like a rhythm-band instrument--a stick with little castanets stuck all over the outside to rattle together. It did rattle when I picked it up, as the shells clacked into each other...

So, anyway, that was the cool stuff I saw this morning.

Then, sometime later this morning, the wind swooped in out of the north, blew over the rubber tree and the purple ginger (I did pick them back up), and brought in the cold weather. By 2:30 p.m., it was 63F (17C), and blowing like crazy.

I may have to go out and check the beach at low tide tomorrow, see if anything cool can be found. We are told that this is the time to go beach-combing, because the wind pushes the water way out, and all sorts of things turn up on the sand...

Fancy Dress Party

So we went to the party. This is me in one of my new fancy dresses. I like sparklies, and there are sparklies all the way down the front of this dress.

The invitation wasn't real specific about where the party was--the hotel and convention center is a pretty big place, and we had to hike through the hotel till we found the right ballroom. I actually remembered a few names of people I'd met before, and even recognized who went with who even when they weren't next to each other. I've met a dozen or more women named either Carol, Carolyn, Caroline or Karen... at least it seems that way. Makes it easier to remember names. I can just come out with a Kar--and mumble an ending, and they'll think I remember. I'm so bad at names, I don't mind at all being introduced as Grace.

Grace was actually my nickname in college, because I was so good at tripping over cracks in the sidewalk and getting run over by rampaging Weimeraners and losing my balance and falling into people and stuff. If somebody was going to mix my name up, that was probably a pretty good one to stick on me.

So, here's the fella in his brand new tux. Someone told us at the party that the island is actually a two-tux town. I suspect we're not rich enough for the two-tux level, but his position is a pretty political one, so we may get that many fancy-dress invitations. We'll just have to wait and see. The guys were mostly in tuxes, but the ladies were all over the board--some in cocktail dresses, some in fancy dress pants, some in long dresses. I'm just grateful I didn't drape my sleeves in the food...

And yes, I have to show y'all my shoes. I got really excited about finding a pair of shoes that would actually go onto my feet--and I found them at a Department Store! Usually, department stores don't carry anything that will fit me, (wide feet, high arches) but I could get my feet into these, they didn't hurt any more than any other shoe, and they didn't cost a bazillion bucks. They have sparklies on them too, but the sparkle doesn't seem to show up in the picture.

While we were at the fancy party, before dinner started (beef wellington and a really great red and yellow tomato salad), we got invited to go on a boat excursion this afternoon, and since we had no other commitments, and we like boats, we jumped on the invite. I'll try and get back to let y'all know how it went--and I will take the camera for more pictures. I really need to get back to my painting... (Pictures=stuff to paint, so when I think about pictures, I think about painting.)

It sounds like all I'm doing is running around and going to parties--and I'm doing a lot more of that, for sure. There's lots of stuff to do here. But I am still working on stories and writing. I got quite a bit done yesterday--finished character interviews and re-wrote the opening. Now I need to get it typed in and merged with the rest of chapter one, and ship it off for critique at next weekend's writers' retreat. Except I have to go on this boat ride. And tomorrow afternoon, we have tickets to a concert downtown at the Grand Opera House. (Need to try to take a picture of the inside there...) Anyway, this one is a contemporary urban fantasy romance with the various cultural mythologies merged and mixed together. Tentatively titled White Elk Red Sword, but I'm also considering something like The Shaman and the Warrior Princess... anyway.

Beach report: Went walking with the fella this a.m., and since he has no flip-flops and I like to walk IN the water, we drove down to see if Academy was open (wasn't), and walked from 45th street to about 27th and back, instead of from 61st to 53rd, like I usually do.

Gorgeous weather--not a cloud in the sky, nice breeze, water pretty cool. More shells than rocks on the beach, but not many of either. After we crossed the 3rd jetty, there was a whole lot of seaweed of both kinds (crinkly-leaved floater and big-stemmed with roots). We're waiting for the first big norther to blow in and push all the water way out so we can really go shell-hunting. Seagulls, pigeons, little bitty sandpiper/pipits. Saw a big sandpiper/stilt (I have Really got to go get my bird book.) with only one leg hopping away from us. And just as we were about the climb the stairs back to the car, we saw an egret fishing. Going to have to break out the long-sleeved shirt and hat and sunscreen for the harbor tour this afternoon...

I really am appreciating all the "Book sighting" reports. I had a sighting! I went across the causeway into town for the RWA meeting last Tuesday (listened to Sharon Mignery do a great workshop on Conflict), and stopped off at the Barnes & Noble, and there they were! THREE copies of The Eternal Rose and one of The Barbed Rose. So I signed them. Didn't have any stickers...I'll take some next time I head into town--which might not be until the next meeting, but that's just the way it is. So. Thanks, y'all. :)

Insecurity Strikes

Thought I'd open with a view of "the seawall as it was"--how I remember it from when I was little, all rocks and no beach (the bit in the foreground's been brought in). This is to the west from where I usually go down to walk. I walk to the east, cause there's no beach this way...

So anyway, I pulled out this old story I'm wanting to re-write, and revised the opening pages, and I'm still not sure they flow. Or rather, I feel like they open too slowly. I do want to open with this particular scene, but it's a slow scene, a slow build, and I'm struck with insecurity that I'm doing it right, or that it's a story worth telling, or... anyway.

I stopped and have been doing characterizaton work. Because my heroine is a completely different person (except for her name, appearance and backstory), with a new personality, and I had to stop and think about a few things about her. What her personality is. Whether she likes change or hates it. Is she adventurous? (She is.) So I did a lot of that today and yesterday. And now I'm working on the hero's character stuff. I know him a lot better than I do her. And I'm still not sure that the opening works. I hope it does, but... Maybe I will e-mail my pages in for the Chocolate critiques my new RWA chapter is doing next month. And my pages for the critiques at the retreat I'm going to next weekend...

Tonight is the first Big Fancy Shindig in our new town. Because of the fella's job heading up the local junior college, we get invited to all sorts of dinners, fundraisers and other community stuff. But I have to tell you that the events here are of a whole other magnitude than where we moved from. You do not need a tux to go to the Saint's Roost Chuckwagon Cook-Off or the cancer society barbecue out at the Bar H. The Prevent Blindness Gala in our new town does. There are lots of people with lots of money on the island, plus the population--the Panhandle town had right at 2000 people. The island town has 60,000. What is that, you math people? a 300% increase? More, probably, right? Anyway, this calls for some serious primping.

The fella went out and bought a tux. He decided the beaded stuff I already had wasn't fancy enough, so we went out and bought me 4 more dresses. (Two are formals, two are cocktail length.) Plus shoes and underwear (yeah, the dresses need special underwear) (which cost more than the shoes, which totally freaked the fella out, because underwear aren't supposed to cost more than shoes)--and I still didn't spend as much as he did for the tuxedo. So I get to buy another dress later. :D I'll try to remember to make him take a picture tonight so I can share. It is a gorgeous dress, and fancy shoes, and all. We'll be classy. I want a nap, but if I go lie down, I'll mess up my hair, so I'm posting my blog instead.

Beach report: Mostly swept clean, but still lots of big rocks near the fishing pier. Not big as in boulders--those are always there, but big as in lots bigger than the shell scruff that was there last week. Saw a little bit of the sargasso-type stuff, but mostly the big seaweed. Some of the big stuff was new--still green. Just seagulls, except for one little pipit (or whatever the little bitty sandpiper-like birds are--I really need to get my bird book moved down here). No cormorants or egrets.

See those pink shells? That's what I picked up off the beach after Humberto. Cool, huh? Pink! I think they're some kind of barnacle... (There are two of them--the two in the back left? Those are separate from the big chunk. I put them in the back to sorta prop the other ones up...)

The tide was really high when I got out there today, though it was on its way out. It had been higher, almost all the way up to the seawall, undercutting some of the dunes. Haven't downloaded that picture yet.

Chugging along

So. I'm going to make myself show up here on the days I go out to walk--at least the days I walk on the beach. We will see how this goes.

I got my revised partial of Thunder in a Cloudless Sky off in the mail yesterday afternoon. And as a reward, I went to the Hastings store on the island and bought the new Karen Chance book, Claimed by Shadow (the title in in dark red on a dark charcoal gray cover, and it's really hard to read--but the author's name is in white, so it's easily visible. The cover is gorgeous, otherwise.) and read it. Good book. I may have to read it again to be sure I followed everything, but I liked it real well.

Today, I pulled out an old book I want to rewrite, and it's really going to be hard going. I think I'm going to have to back off and start from scratch, instead of trying to keep the good stuff from what I had before. My opening scene with my heroine sucks--at least what I have so far, because it's all blithering about the scenery. I need to just jump into the action. I have to open with the hero getting his talisman and having a vision--I think. Yeah. That's really where I want to start. Then I want to jump right into the action...and I've got my heroine strolling across campus thinking about concrete. ACK!!!

So maybe tomorrow I can get my head on straight and write a decent chapter 1. Because I think the vision thing will be a prologue. Even though I will probably call it chapter 1. It's the day that everything changes. But it's not really where the action begins. It's the hero's call to adventure.

Today's the local RWA chapter meeting, so it's my chance to head into town and shop the "big" bookstores. (The Barnes & Noble and the Borders are practically right across the street from each other.) And I'll probably hit the mall too. I want some throw rugs. Then I have to figure out how to get to the restaurant where they're meeting with the speaker for dinner before.

Beach report: Big Rocks are back on the beach, at least between the 61st Street pier and the jetty opposite the grocery store, and some new pieces of the big rooted seaweed. Last time, there were only tiny little shells and rocks, but today, big ones. Surf was up some, sky was gray, but light right at the horizon, where you could see those streamers that mean it's raining.
Cool morning. Didn't really want to get my feet wet. If it gets much cooler, I'll either walk later in the day, or wear shoes. (It's not letting me upload pictures, so I guess I'll show you my cool pink shells and where I walk at the beach next time...)

Not Goofing Off

At least, not entirely. I didn't make it in last week to blog--partly because my internet service was down for two days (no clue why, just couldn't get anything) which threw everything off, and partly because I was working hard to get some pages written, which kinda distracted me from--well, pretty much everything. I didn't even get out to the beach but twice. (There was lightning on Monday, so I didn't go out.) (Here's a picture of the beach where I usually walk, looking past one of the jetties toward the fishing pier--the blurry spots are due to water spots on the lens--sigh.)

I did get a pretty good set of pages written, though I didn't make 30 because I blew it off on Friday. The boy and his dog and his girlfriend were coming down for a visit and I wanted to finish the cleaning I usually do in the afternoons after I write. Since our visitors were arriving around noon, I wanted to have a clean bathroom before they got here. (I generally clean only when I can't stand it any more (and I have a much higher tolerance for dirt/clutter than the fella) or when company's expected.)

They arrived, we got my car out of the gate, locked the dog in the yard, and went out for shrimp po'boys, and then to buy the boy shoes and sandals. He'd worn out/ripped apart the old ones (the dog did not eat them--I saw them. No tooth marks). Then we came home and ate boiled shrimp (I got unsorted medium to large ones right off the boat--they'd had enough time to de-head them (I hate de-heading shrimp--I always get stabbed) and sort out all the little gumbo-sized shrimps, but not sort the great big ones from the not-so-big ones, so I got some really huge shrimp in my mix for a good price.) and learned that the girlfriend had never in her life peeled a shrimp. This was shocking, because she lives not too very far from us, and the good seafood is very available... So we taught her how to peel the suckers. They were very good. And I made my mushroom/onion/parmesan risotto casserole (you don't have to stand over the stove stirring, but stick it in the oven to bake) to go with, and it was wonderful. :) (The picture is of the house from the yard--which is actually on the side of the house--so you can get an idea of how big the yard is. And my big fabulous deck.) We had ice cream on the deck, and didn't get too many mosquitos.

I have some more pictures of my island I was going to share, but I have to go iron my shirt and put on makeup, so I'll go ahead and post this. I'll try to get back in the next day or so and put up those other pictures. :)

Beach Watching

Before I start: Big hey to Lindi, and tell your mom to send me your address!

I don't head over to the beach every day, not even every other day, but I try to get there at least once a week. It's my reward for living here. :) And for working, and for getting out and exercising. And every time I go to the beach, there's something new to see.

Some days, it's the cool patterns the waves make as they pull back from the shore when there are little shells and stones in the sand. Some days, it's all the open-but-complete scallop-type shells scattered in just one spot on the beach. Last week, the beach was pretty much swept clean. All the seaweed that had been littering the sand was gone, no shells, no rocks, just sand.

This week, the seaweed was back, except it was a different kind of seaweed. The other stuff I think was sargasso--no roots, crinkly leaves, and tiny grape-looking...grape things. The stuff this week had roots and thick fleshy stems. I think the stems had arrow-head-shaped leaves on the ends--some of the stems still had leaves on them. But mostly, there were just roots and stems and some places where the stems thickened into bulby-looking things. A few of the stems were still green, but mostly, they were brown.

And there were rocks on the beach. Very few shells, but lots and lots of rocks of all sorts, including some concrete chunks. There's a concrete driveway/ramp I walk by between a couple of the jetties that's been undermined a pretty good distance beneath, so maybe the concrete came from there, but who knows? (these jetties are built about every 100 yards, made of huge chunks of pink granite, to break up the waves) Not me. This just seems to be rock week. I haven't seen any more of those pink barnacle shells since Humberto roared by, but we're not even getting many mussel/scallop shells now.

And of course, there are the birds. It's amazing what some of these poor birds survive. Last week, there was a sandpiper (at least I think that's what they were--they were as tall as stilts, or maybe a little taller, and speckled brown with a brown beak instead of being black and white with orange beaks--I left my bird ID book back in the panhandle...) that walked with a funny, kicking-out gait on one side. It had a little trouble keeping up with the other sandpipers, and flew a lot more when trying to get away from me as I walked down the beach. (They always seem to run ahead of me down the beach, instead of going to one side or the other.) I finally decided that it had broken that left leg some time or other, and it hadn't healed right, so he had an odd kick in its gait.

Earlier this week, I saw a couple of one-legged seagulls. Actually, they had two legs, but their feet were messed up. One was missing a foot completely. I know it didn't just have one leg tucked up under it, but was actually missing a foot because it was standing there with two legs dangling down. One leg just stopped before it got to the foot part. And when it walked, it would put its poor little stump down on the sand. (Mostly, it flew, but apparently I didn't disturb it that much.) The other handicapped seagull had both legs too, but one of its feet had been mangled someway. Or maybe it had the seagull version of a club foot. Instead of the webbed triangle shape of its other foot, the bad foot was a kind of wad of web at the end of its leg. Poor baby. But they both looked fat and sassy. They still had their wings, after all.

Today, the footless seagulls were apparently out shopping for breakfast elsewhere, because all the seagulls I saw had both feet. Today, I saw a snowy egret fishing on the beach. The egrets usually fish over on the bayside of the island, because the water's quieter there, and further inland, it's shallower. I thought at first that this one was a bit nervous of the waves, but as I watched, it stood right at the edge of the water, intent on the incoming wave, until it pounced. I wasn't sure it caught anything until I saw it swallow the tiny fish. So apparently egrets will fish in the surf too. It was so cool to watch.

(The picture is of an egret I saw over at Pier 21, near the "pirate ship". It was fishing off the chain--I didn't get a picture after it spread its wings for balance...but that was cool too.)

I have noticed that the younger gulls will fly away from me before the older ones will. Most of the mature gulls just saunter off while the youngsters are flapping out to sea. How can I tell they're young, you ask? (I know you're not asking, but I'm going to tell you anyway.) Because young laughing gulls have brownish feathers and adults have gray ones. The adults lose their black courting caps in the winter when their heads all go more-or-less white, but they'll grow their black heads again in the spring when they have to look spiffy for the opposite sex. Yeah, I'm a geek. My sister got me into bird-watching, and I'm still stuck.

So, back into the writing. Gonna get my 25 pages done on Thunder and start working on...something else. Not sure what yet. Read my first book this month--a Roberta Gellis I'd been looking for, Enchanted Fire, about Orpheus and Eurydice. I have all her other Greek god myth books, but this one... Have it now. Enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks so much for keeping me updated about where you find my books. Y'all are the best.

Dashing In

I MADE myself stop putting edits into the computer so I could come blog and tell all y'all (however many of you there are) what I was doing.

Actually, I made myself stop earlier so I could get to the bank before it closed and cash my birthday check. Yes, my birthday was way back at the first of the month, but first I lost the card, and when I found it, I couldn't drag myself out of the house in time to make it by the bank. I had to do the bank and the library today, cause I had some books that needed re-checking. I decided not to get any new ones. I've got old ones I still need to read--and there's that re-checking thing, since I didn't get some of the old ones read on time. (One research book, and one book(Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley) that I intended to pick up and read a long time ago, but never got around to it. I'm about 7 chapters in and enjoying it so far--and the research book is a really good one. Very atmospheric, very "feel of the situation." )

So anyway, I spent all of last week revising New Blood and this week, I'm putting the revisions into the computer, and going over it one last time as I do so, looking for more places to tighten or clarify. I do revisions on hard copy, because it's too easy to miss stuff on the computer. It's going pretty well. The office looks like a snowstorm hit, because I'm just letting the pages float to the floor, and since the fella's away for a couple of days, I don't feel like I have to pick them up.

In fact, since the fella's away, I had lunch out, between the bank and the library. This was a place on Broadway between the college and downtown that doesn't have a name that I could see, but has "Donuts, Kolaches, Burritos" painted on the outside. It's a very Texas place, apparently, since I'm not sure there's any other state in the nation where that would be a common combination. I was the only customer in there at almost 2 p.m., and had the shrimp poor boy (I'm becoming addicted to those things--I had to pull the shells off the tails on this one) and an apple fritter. Turns out the baker was sitting nearby, and had the counter guy bag me up a couple more fritters to take home, free gratis. How cool is that? I'll definitely be going back there--just because the food was good, prices were good and the owner/baker was really nice. I had intended to go to this place called The Taco House, but it's back toward home from the bank, not toward downtown. Oh well.

Oh, and we got to go hear Don McLean (of "American Pie" fame--the original song, not the movie) in a concert on Saturday. We got to sing along if we wanted. :) It was a lot of fun (though I'm not used to wearing shoes with backs on them and got the beginnings of a blister), but dang, the guy got old. So have I...beats the alternative, though.

And when we went to visit a church Sunday morning, a fight broke out in the lobby between two neighborhood guys and a church member, and I got stepped on. Nice church though, but dang, it's way the heck on the other end of the island.

It hasn't taken me long to get into the local island mentality. I don't like to cross the causeway unless I absolutely have to. I'll just stay on the island, thanks--and what happens on the island stays on the island...

Thanks for all the reports of books arriving. Keep 'em coming. I'm especially wanting to know if anybody sees the book on shelves in a bookstore. I mean, even if you ordered your book off the internet, you might go into a bookstore for some Other reason, and you could just wander by the Charles DeLint shelf (I'm usually not too far in front of his books) and see if there's a pretty blue book...

My readers are the very bestest. :D

There for the Grace of God...

I have now survived my first tropical storm.

Humberto blew up very quickly--Wednesday morning, they were talking rain, maybe some thunderstorms. I had trouble finding the newspaper because a big branch had fallen from one of the trees in the front yard. Maybe 3 in. diameter at the base. Very branchy, with lots of dead leaves (so I think it was half-broken before it fell). Not real heavy, though I couldn't drag it off the front sidewalk very easy. So I went on to my planned afternoon of errand-running and library-visiting.

When I reached the post office, the fella called and told me that the thunderstorms offshore had been officially declared a tropical storm. But it wasn't raining very hard, so I went on to the P.O. and the library. Still wasn't raining hard after the library visit--spent a lot of time there, checked out one book. They didn't have any of the others. So it was after 4 p.m. when I left the library.

It started raining harder while I was at the seafood market buying shrimp. (Hey, I was downtown. The fish markets are on the piers downtown. Why not buy shrimp?) And even harder when I went to the grocery store. By the time I got home, it was pouring. And I had groceries to carry into the house. Not much wind, but lots and lots of rain. Exchanged my walking shoes for flip-flops to keep the shoes from getting too soaked. Lost a can out of one of the grocery sacks, and just left it lying there in the rain. I was trying to carry as many sacks as I could at one time so I didn't have to make more trips, and didn't have a hand to spare (didn't even have one for my umbrella--just sorta held it in place with my chin...) to pick it up.

So by the time the fella got home, Humberto was still hovering about 20 to 35 miles offshore and building up steam. The neighbors had come over to tell us that we flood--if not right away, then maybe when the high tide came in. So after our shrimp dinner, we spent the rest of the evening carrying beds, futon mattresses and assorted other things upstairs to the main floor. (I was already nursing a strained finger--now it's really sore...) The electricity went on and off a bunch of times, then went off and stayed off, so we went to bed early.

Humberto skirted us. We didn't even get water in the garage (which will happen in a really hard rain). A few more branches (smaller ones) fell off the trees, lots of leaves on the deck. But at the north end of the county, an older couple had their house moved a foot off its foundation and the roof peeled off. Even though the eye went ashore much farther east. This was maybe 50 miles from us. We are grateful for small mercies.

Yesterday, I was a slug. (Okay, I was writing like a maniac to finish my pages for the BIAY bracelet.) Today, I went out to walk at the beach. The sand is still soaking wet, even up near the seawall where its usually dry. And I found a whole stretch of whole, joined-together scallop shells. (I kinda think the gulls got to them, but maybe not.) Plus some pink barnacle-looking shell things, and a blue crab claw. (The gulls definitely got the rest of the crab.) I didn't touch the claw, but I did bring the pink shells home. (I'll post a picture, when I take one...) So Humberto was a little rough on the under-sea residents too, seems to me.

I'm working on the new synopsis for Thunder. I like it, but it's going slow. I need to decide what I'm going to work on next week...Ought to be getting revisions for New Blood pretty soon. I want to finish my revisions for the proposal of Thunder, get the synopsis written and out, and then...I dunno. Do revisions on New Blood, then maybe start the Irish shaman story over. Or work on my demon slayer story... Hmm.

Birthdays and other stuff

So I had a birthday over the weekend. I am now another mumble older than my previous mumbledy-something age. :)

It was a very nice day. A lazy one. We went to the beach early. The water was still quite cool--actually cool, rather than the bathtub warm water you get later in the day. I think this is why I am so spoiled when it comes to swimming. I spent so much time in the Gulf with its oh-so-warm water, that I think that's the temperature swimming pools (or lakes, or whatever) ought to be. Anyway, besides being on the cool side, the water was practically like glass. The surf's rarely more than a foot or so high, but it will usually start a good fifty yards out from the beach. Not that morning. Ten feet. Maybe twenty. And beyond that, glassy, gently rolling waves. Just the way I love it.

I'm not much of a surf girl. I really don't enjoy being blasted by the whitecaps. I like to go out beyond the breakers where the waves just roll in and float up and down. I don't know that there are many beaches--except on the Gulf coast--where you can get out past the surf and still touch bottom. People complain about the puny surf in the Gulf, but that's exactly what I love about it.

We didn't stay long. Maybe an hour. The seaweed has stopped floating in. I'm told that when the seaweed stops, the jellyfish start coming in. It's going to be hot for another month or so...I hope we don't get too terribly many jellyfish. They're not much fun. I'll have to stock up on meat tenderizer. It's supposed to help with the stings.

After puttering around online while the fella went to get a haircut, we spent most of the afternoon watching a bunch of episodes from the second season of ROME (my birthday present I got myself, donchaknow...). And then we went out to dinner.

In the past, I have made a joint birthday cheesecake or lemon meringue pie for me and the fella, since he's so much older than I am. (Eight whole days.) Usually, though, there's at least one other person around to help us eat it. Since even the boy was away from home, I didn't bake. So, we decided to have dessert with dinner.

I didn't realize that the two places I had chosen as an either/or for my birthday dinner were literally around the corner from each other. The first place was all booked up (that's what I get for having my birthday on a Saturday), so we walked over to the other place, the Saltwater Grill, which just happened to be right in front of where we'd parked the car. They had lots of room, fast, perfect service, fabulous food and we split an order of butterscotch bananas for our birthday cake.

Oh, my, LORD, those bananas were good. It was just a whole, sliced-lengthwise banana (cut in half, so we each got half a banana) drenched in just-made, so-good-it-must-be-a-sin butterscotch sauce. There was ice cream, and some whipped cream, and some strawberries and blueberries on the plate, and they were all the yummier for the butterscotch sauce. We practically licked the plate clean. I'd have licked it, for real, if we hadn't been out in public.

The corn-and-crab chowder was yummy, the seafood pasta had so many shrimp and crawfish tails in it, I couldn't eat them all even when I quit eating the pasta to concentrate on the goodies, the fella's fish just quit swimming that morning...but as good as that was, man, those butterscotch bananas... Who needs cake???

So. Now that my self-indulgence is out of the way, who's got books? If somebody gets a copy of The Eternal Rose from a bookstore, any bookstore that isn't direct from Wildside/Juno, will you let me know? Thanks.

And I'm working away on Thunder still. I got three pages written today. Wrote several pages of synopsis yesterday. And I got hit by a brainstorm for this story... don't know yet if I'm actually going to do it, but it would increase the conflict by a buttload, so I just might. I'll think about it some more.

I also finally repotted the tropical plants I bought--a salmon/yellow hibiscus, a white jasmine, two "blueberry ice" bougainvilleas (I already have a "raspberry ice" one), a rex begonia that seems to love the humidity outside, and a variegated African violet I moved from the panhandle that I'd never got round to re-potting. I ran out of soil in the middle of the job, and had to run back to WalMart to get some more. It's so nice to be able to do that. (Though I could have run down to Smith's Feed and Seed back in the panhandle, if I'd done it there.)

The Books Are Arriving

Commenters have commented here that they have received their books. (Thank you very much. It was good to know folks are getting them.)

I have now received my copies. Yes, they are beautiful. I might even read it. I read my very first two books when I got them. (They were short.) I read Compass Rose. I only got about halfway through Barbed Rose. So--given how many times I read Eternal Rose through the revision and re-revision and paring-down-to-size process, I'm not sure I'll be able to get all the way through it. I might go back and re-read Barbed Rose again.

I have found that when I create characters and a story that I like, I still like them when I go back and look at them again, even if it's just a fragment I came up with ages ago that has no business even thinking about publication. I usually pick apart the prose when I read back over the story, but I still like the characters and the story. Or at least the intent of the story. What I wanted the story to be...I might realize how the story ought to be better told.

This is kind of what I'm doing now with Thunder. I came up with the idea so, so long ago--but I still like the idea and the characters and the story. I just know more about story-telling now, so maybe I can do them all justice. I hope. I've done more research, and I'm having a little trouble reconciling the emotional numbing symptoms of a PTSD sufferer with my character's need to locate her family...but an overprotectiveness of loved ones is also a symptom, so maybe I can balance it that way. There's apparently a wide variation in behavior--and given that my character is not so very "post," I think I can make it work. It's some of the hardest writing I've ever done, though.

Oh, there's a nice review of The Eternal Rose if you're interested, and in response to the comment about the bit that left the reviewer scratching her head, let me just say: It's a fantasy. And leave it at that. :)

Nice slow week this week. Not much experimenting in the kitchen (I made Mediterranean Salmon with white beans last week...pretty good, even if salmon isn't a Mediterranean fish--is it?). The steaks were awesome though, and we had leftovers. Then I found some sweet corn in the fridge to have with the leftovers, so they were awesome twice.

No beach visits so far this week--my walks have been around the neighborhood--and I'm going to have to get up earlier and get out the door earlier to beat the heat. But if nothing else gets planned--and if it doesn't rain--I think I want to at least go to the beach to swim for my birthday Saturday. (Dang, but I'm getting old.)

They did call me to interview for the part-time job I applied for, but that's two weeks away. I think it will be an interesting job, and still leave me time to write. Which I need to get busy and do. I need to earn my charm for September. August turned out to be just impossible. I'm probably 6 pages up right now, but that leaves me with 18 to go. I'm having to do as much thinking and researching as writing though... Have a research book I need to go buy.
Better run...

THEY HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING

At least this is what I've been told. THE BOOKS HAVE LEFT THE PRINTERS. Last week, they were on the way to the distribution center. Next week, they should (note the word: SHOULD) be at the bookstores.

If you have ordered a book, whether directly from Juno, or from Amazon or any of the other stores, you ought to be getting it soon. Probably before I get my copies. A friend/fellow writer (Carole McDonnell) for Juno just got her copies of her book (Wind Follower), and I think hers was released before mine.

So. There is the latest book news. I'll get it up on the website today or tomorrow. You ought to be getting your hands on them soon.

In other news, I have finally been on the island for a full week without 1) boxes to be unpacked, 2) a conference to attend looming in front of me, 3) company. School has started at all levels from kindergarten to university, and it may finally be possible to get settled in. Maybe.

I'm going a little giddy, I think, from all the delights of living in a larger city. There are restaurants! And concerts! And--stuff!

We have "subscribed" to the local symphony orchestra. They had a BOGO (buy one, get one free) deal on season tickets for new subscribers, and since we just moved here 8 weeks ago, we couldn't be anything else. So we subscribed, and went to the first concert of the season last night--the annual Pops concert. It's a small orchestra, mostly volunteer, I think, because this is a small city. But I enjoyed it tremendously. Not only did they play the Ed Sullivan Show spinning-plates song (A. Katchaturian's Saber Dance), but they played Bugs Bunny cartoon music. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2, which was a lot more bubbly and fun than I remember from the cartoons.

They played in an improvised auditorium, since their regular venue--the (historic) Grand Opera House--had something else, so the marimba player was kind of down in a hole and I'm not sure he could see the conductor, but it was a symphony concert! And they played fun music! And we only had to drive 10 minutes to get there! That last is a MAJOR consideration, given that up until 8 weeks ago, we had to drive an hour to get to the nearest theater unless we wanted to watch the drive-in movies or the high school band. (The movie theater is about 15 minutes away, but we don't have to leave the island.)

The symphony concert was the same place we went to a concert on Friday night (the fella's birthday). That concert was a "rock and roll experience" concert--at least I think that's how they advertised it. Instead of Elvis impersonators, there were two bands, one impersonating the Beatles, the other impersonating the Rolling Stones. They were pretty good, all in all. The music was great, though you could see a few cracks around the edges of the impersonations. The guy from Louisiana impersonating Mick Jagger actually said "y'all" once. Has Jagger ever gone in for that southernism?? But it was fun. We got a kick out of it.

And this evening, after all the weekenders have (hopefully) gone home, if it's not raining/thundering, etc., we're going to the beach. To swim. Without little guys to watch. And then we're coming home to cook steaks. We had to leave the grill behind, so I guess we'll broil them in the oven, but these are some gorgeous steaks... Can't wait.

Great Big Giant Wave Pool

The grandboys have come to visit. They went on a bay fishing trip with Daddy and Granddaddy yesterday afternoon, and caught a little shark and a sand bass. Four little pieces of fish that tasted delicious. Yes, Gigi cooked them. Gigi did NOT clean them. We got somebody else to do that.

The boys do not want to go to the beach. They want to go to the Big Giant Wave Pool also known as The Gulf of Mexico. We got them to eat the fish by telling them it was chicken. They loved the fish--even after we told them it was fish... So we figure they'll love the beach, once they learn it's the original Wave Pool. Sometimes, it IS all in a name...

We are grateful that Hurricane Dean seems to be heading south of our location, though we hope it doesn't do too much damage to Mexico. When Tropical Storm Erin came onshore last week, it rained all day here, and the surf was up (it's usually non-existent in the summer). However, things were so churned up that, instead of whitecaps, we had browncaps. I'm hoping the sand is on the bottom today, when we go out.

Let's see, I have some questions I want to answer.

I'm not going to get to go to World Fantasy this year. It's in upstate New York, and while I'd like to go, I need to sell another book first. (sigh)

Comics. I've collected a lot, but mostly X-Men related. I do have quite a collection of Daredevil comics, because I've always felt a connection with him, even back when I was a kid in junior high and high school. I can see, but I can't tell where anything is (poor binocular vision & no eye-hand coordination). Daredevil knows exactly where everything is, but he can't actually see. We're opposites. Anyway, the Daredevil movie wasn't exactly the best in the genre, but Daredevil comics are uber-cool, IMO.

And I too would love to be able to say "This old thing? Why, it's my Magic Hoohah!" in a conversation.

Still no books. Though I probably ought to check the mail box here at the house for my new driver's license.

Next week. I can write next week. Hopefully.

Writing about Sex

I have a list of things I want to blog about someday. I write them down--the ones I can remember long enough to write down--so I don't forget them. For instance, I do want to write about the TIME Magazine article "Who killed the love story?" But not today.

And the son, who is home from university this week, found my list and wrote on it: Monkeys in Outer Space bent on destroying zuwieroiyushamnn At least that's what I think he wrote on it. And I may write a blog about monkeys in outer space bent on destroying...whatever... But not today.

Today, I'm going to blog about sex. Specifically, about writing about sex in novels. See, I got a note on my Shelfari Shelf from a friend who said that she was "unimpressed" by the One Rose books because she didn't like books that "focus so completely around sex."

Which took me totally aback, because I certainly didn't think the books at all focused so completely around sex. I've read books that focus completely around sex, and believe me, they have a LOT more sex than the Rose books do.

The Compass Rose has only three fully consummated love scenes in it. It has a few more "sex by magic" (sorta like phone sex, only without the phone) scenes, and the characters talk about sex a lot. Because the books are about men and women who care about each other, who have a relationship--who are married to each other, to be more exact--and who have different understandings from each other about relationships and about sex and how the world works. And I firmly believe that to put people in that kind of situation and NOT address the sex issue would have been nothing less than a flat out lie.

(The Barbed Rose has more sex, as does The Eternal Rose, because in those books, the relationships are on-going and more fully developed. By the time The Eternal Rose begins, seven years have passed since the beginning of The Compass Rose. The characters have been married for that long. Sex is going to be a part of those relationships.)

All those books that have men and women traveling together on a quest for months to retrieve the Magic Hoohah and save the world--and the characters Never Even Think About Sex--are just plain lying, IMO.

People think about sex. They have sex. They screw up their lives because they try to ignore sex and they can't. Or they screw up their lives because they have sex with anything that moves and never figure out why they're lonely. Sex is a part of life. It's a huge part of life, and I think that novelists--in whatever genre they write--should address it, if they're comfortable with it.

In speculative fiction, like fantasy and science fiction, it's possible to explore a greater range of "what ifs" than in novels set in contemporary or historical times, and exploration is a good thing, I think. If I'm ever able to write more books set in the One Rose universe, I can see Kallista's children complaining that it's hard enough to find one person willing to put up with your faults--

I do understand that sex is a private part of life and that some people are uncomfortable with a discussion, or even a portrayal of something so intensely private and intimate. I understand that some people have moral issues with reading about sex. Personal opinions are just that. Personal opinions. And everyone's entitled to have them. Which is why I left the note up on my Shelfari page and didn't delete it. Tanis has every right to not like books with much sex in them, and every right to express her opinion.

But I did want to explain why I wrote the books the way I did, and why I write about sex, and there's not a way to respond to a note on one's own page, and I didn't want to stick a note on her page without any context, so I came here to share my philosophy of writing about sex with the world--or at least as much of the world as comes by to read my blog.

I'm still waiting for my copies of The Eternal Rose... Sigh.

Beyond Tired

Although I probably shouldn't be by now. It's Wednesday. I've been home (again) since Sunday evening. But I still feel like I've been dragged backwards through the bushes. And then maybe beat with a stick some.

I went to ArmadilloCon in Austin last weekend. It's a science fiction/fantasy conference, was lots of fun, but dang, I'm really tired now. And it was hard attending when I hadn't even been in the new house for a week. Still, I bet I'm the only one in a while who's been put on both the sex- AND the religion-in-fantasy panels. We had a lot of fun doing the panels--laughed a Whole lot during the sex-in-fantasy panel--and I scored a necklace-and-earring set and a dragon print at the art auction. Both very cool and very lovely. (The jewelry is purple rock--and no, I don't remember what kind it's supposed to be--that will go very well with the purple rock earrings I already have.)

So, now the boy is down from college for the week. I need to go drag him out of bed so we can go to the washateria (all the laundromats around here seem to have that title) since we haven't rented laundry equipment yet--and doing laundry in the garage is REALLY going to be not fun around here... The heat index has been in the 110s (43 C) the past few days--worse than in Houston because of the killer humidity.

We have had fresh boiled shrimp this week--bought at the grocery store, not a fish market, but still the freshest stuff I've had in a long time. Wonderful. My next goal for the week is to get out to the beach and get IN the water, sometime before the boy heads back to school. The grandboys are coming to visit next week (so the posts here will be sparse, I'm sure) and I plan to take them to the water several times, but their WunkaBob won't be here then...

Cross your fingers that the books (The Eternal Rose) come in next week. The printer has promised them by then, but...

I'm trying to write, but not very hard. I got 4-1/2 pages done Monday, but there's just too much to do. Went to Ikea to buy tables to set up for computer desks--and forgot to buy the second table. Sometime, when I'm back that way, I'll have to get the second table. (sigh) That's my project for today, though. To put the table on its legs. It's bound to work better than the card table I'm using right now...

I'm here. At the new place. We loaded up Saturday, after packing stuff all day Friday, then drove partway Saturday afternoon. We got to town about 3 the next afternoon, unloaded Sunday night, and the cable people came by today (Wednesday) to install the cable and get the computer up and running. I've unpacked and put away stuff. The kitchen is sorta, mostly together. I have a bed to sleep in, drawers and a big closet for my clothes...and a washateria somewhere around. I'm still learning my way around. It's helpful that this town is mostly a grid.

And this a.m., I decided that if I was going to live at the beach, I was going to go to the beach, so I put on my shorts & T-shirt early, before it got hot, and drove down to the beach (we're about 1 to 2 miles from the beach), and walked barefoot along the water. There was an egret, two different kinds of sandpipers, and of course a whole horde of seagulls that appeared like magic out of nowhere when some turistas started flinging bread at them. The broken shells in the sand here and there weren't a lot of fun, but the water was...

I'd forgotten, though, just how HOT it can get here. The temp is not actually that high, but because it's essentially 100% humidity, it Feels really, really hot. Well over body-temp. We went to a free band concert near downtown last night, and as long as the breeze was blowing, it was bearable, since the sun was mostly down, but if that breeze stopped... I'm just going to have to get used again to being slightly sweaty all the time...It was a fun event though--every Tuesday night in the summertime. They play a little of everything, have a kids' maracas/rhythm band song, have a flag parade every week. It was mostly locals, too, which I found interesting. If the grandboys get to come before school starts, we'll have to take them.

I have the computer set up on a card table. I'll have to wait and see about a writing space--we haven't brought the dining table upstairs yet. (Yeah, I'm in a house where I have to climb stairs--a full flight of them--to get to the front door.) I figure next week will be soon enough to get busy writing. I've got a fantasy con in Austin this weekend. If anybody's there, come by and say hey. :)

New Time Waster on the Web

Okay. I have a MySpace space. I've never really been able to figure out what to do with it. But some kind friend sent me an invitation to a NEW thing where I fit RIGHT in. It's called SHELFARI. I guess as a sorta pun on Safari--I dunno. But it's a place where you can list the books you've read, state your opinions on them, and find other people who like to read the same kinds of things you like. And make friends with them. And stuff. It's GREAT!

Yeah, of course I'm there. Or here, as the case may be. I've found another place to put up the books I list on my private "personal reading log." I share my "reviewlets" with the loop at Romance Readers Anonymous, and now I'm putting them up at Shelfari. So far, I'm only doing the books I've read this year, because I'm working like mad to get the books in the ABR boxes into my log before I move this weekend. So I can know which ones go to the library and stuff. So I do my 10 books at a whack, e-mail the list to the RR-A loop, then head to Shelfari to stick them all on my Shelf, then go back and paste in the reviewlets. It's been lots of fun. I've found friends--I mean, friends I know in "real life," there and waved frantically at them. (Oh! Yvonne "friended" me! Yay!)

So, yeah. I'm not writing. I'm trying to pack (put all the "essential" family pictures in a box this a.m. along with the essential cookbooks and the research books--and then actually managed to carry it out to the garage). Trying to keep things neat-ish. The real estate agent and a MLS guy came by today to measure everything. I'd been told they would come take pictures--I took some pictures last night, not including my still messy office--and copied them onto a CD, which I gave the agent. And they didn't take any more pictures, so I guess they'll use the ones I took. Hope somebody buys this house soon. It's only 2 bedrooms, for all the size it has, so it may take a while.

So Shelfari is giving me something else to obsess about (aka waste time on) till I have to go pick the fella up at the airport on Thursday. I'll go into town early and watch a movie, or something... ;)

Printing

At this very moment, I am printing out the complete (and still pretty long) manuscript to New Blood to mail to the agent tomorrow. I like it, I like how it's turned out--there are still things that could probably be cut, but it works for me, so...

This means that I mail it, and then I have to start doing not-fun stuff like packing boxes. I'm not going to take any books but the research books I'm using for Thunder, and a few of the TBRs--because if I don't have books to read, I will buy books to read. I will probably buy books to read anyway, but...

Oh, and we may have someone to buy our house after all. Cross your fingers that everything works out. We're still moving into the house with the big deck first weekend in August, but it's exciting news. I don't want to have this dragging on. I'm hoping I'll be able to move ALL my books into the house, but...

Eww. Just occurred to me--it's REALLY humid on the coast, which is not good for books. I'll have to find a place for my comics in the house--or sell them all on e-Bay. I miss them, but don't have time for them any more. Especially won't if I have to get a dayjob, which is a possibility.

Next writing project, to be started in the new house/town--I'm going to revise the demon hunter book and see if I can get over the first barrier. Then I'm going to start the re-write on the urban fantasy Irish shaman/Navajo warrior princess story. Oh, and I'm still writing 25 pages a month on the WWII story, Thunder.

Um--I've finished the new Harry Potter book. I was out of town when the mail order package came in, but I read it. It was a satisfying ending to the story, I thought. I've also read an old Barbara Delinsky, Looking for Peyton Place, which I liked, and Liz Maverick's launch of the Shomi line, Wired, which I think I liked, but it confused me a lot, so I'm not really sure. On the airplane coming back, I read Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep (liked it) and Soul Song by Marjorie M. Liu (liked it too). Need to sort my ABRs (already been read) into keepers, library donations and trade-ins. I haven't lived near Waco in 8 years, but I'm still carting my trade-ins to Golden's Books on Franklin street there--best used book store I've found so far. Maybe I'll find a new one in the new place, but will wait and see.

Oh! I did get my domain up and running again. (It helps when you pay your bills on time. ) Now to update it. And then, to shift my plan. I have it on one that isn't particularly idiot-friendly. I need something for the computerly ignorant.

Hitting the Fan

Something has hit the fan. We shall not endeavor to figure out what the substance is. But it is not pleasant. I have been on airplanes, and spent the night in a place other than home without my suitcase. The trip started off good, but the ending? Not so much.

Went to the island to look at places to live. Spent 3 days doing it, looked at so many houses they started to blur together, and we have a place--or will in a couple of weeks when we hook up the U-Haul and head down to live in it. There is a great big deck. With a roof over it, so one can sit on the deck and admire the rain falling. It rained while we were looking on it. This is something of a temporary solution, but I think we'll probably be here at least a year, so not that temporary.

We went walking on the Seawall one evening. It was fairly cool, and as long as the offshore breeze could reach me, it was pleasant, but it was so humid, when the buildings blocked the breeze, it got really hot. It's going to take me a while to get used to the humidity, coming from West Texas, where there isn't any.

The fella is currently staying in a little beach shack, even though it's about six blocks from the beach (sounds close, but it isn't) that really is a shack. The boards flooring the porch are a little too flexible, and a few are missing their ends. It has one living area, a bedroom with a twin bed, a bathroom and a little kitchen. It's liveable, but not really comfortable. The futon we slept on had to be the most uncomfortable thing I've slept on since the floor. But it was good enough for a weekend visit.

We changed my flight to later on Sunday so I could stay a while longer and look at a couple more houses--and when I got to the gate at the airport in Houston, the flight was delayed about 45 minutes--but my connecting flight was delayed too. Then, when it finally arrived and they let us get on the plane, a thunderstorm had moved in and they shut down the ramp, brought all the baggage handlers and such inside. Which was a good thing. I didn't want them fueling the airplane in the lightning either. But that meant I missed my connection in Dallas (the whole world connects in Dallas--if they're not connecting through Atlanta). I could get off the plane, have the fella drive back into town and get me, or I could go on to Dallas and stay with relatives, and no suitcase. I went to Dallas. They had a toothbrush for me and a pair of clean underwear (a girl has to keep her priorities straight!)--(I will not return the underwear. I'm buying a new pair for her) and a bed to sleep in. And finally, a day and a half late, I am home again.

I am having domain crises, so yes, the website is down at the worst possible time, when the book is due out at any time. I will try to get it back up asap--but I'm not sure how long that will take, especially since I'm feeling poor. We will just have to see.

Oh, and I got to watch pelicans fishing. They are such huge birds in the air, and they seem to like to fly in straight lines, one behind the other, in groups of three or four. Not in a Vee, in a line. When they were fishing, they would go about 20 feet in the air, then drop like a rock into the water. Big splash, then they'd sit there a while, floating. Don't know if they were swallowing or recovering from the belly flop (that's what it looked like)--I wasn't close enough to really see. But it was totally cool. Can't wait to see it again.

Getting the steampunk book revisions in the 'puter this week and printing it out to mail. Hope I get it all together. Have to pack my research books to move... At least we don't have to worry about moving bookcases--this house has lots and lots of builtins.

Off We Go

Not so much into the Wild Blue Yonder, but off to the beach, anyway. Looking at houses. By August, I should be re-located. For the most part. I hope. So today, I'm trying to get everything ready to go--and mail a birthday present. The oldest grandboy will be six on Monday. (Ack!) I also packed up all the stuff I found at the house when I cleaned up. (Including the missing box for the video.)

I have written my 25 pages for the week. I wanted to go further, but I wasn't sure where I was heading. The past couple of days, my characters have been walking somewhere--today they arrived, and I am not real sure what needs to happen here. I can figure out some kind of a scene, but what purpose would that scene have? How could it affect the plot? It needs to affect the plot in some way. So, I'm thinking I might do a flashback, use it to explain why my heroine stayed on the island.

I've decided on some major revisions, cutting out early scenes, mostly because what I've learned during research doesn't match up with what I had originally plotted. Westerners were actually in less danger than Chinese in Japanese-occupied territory during WWII, even out of China, even those from nations at war with Japan. At least somewhat. And the plantation society was primarily male, so there weren't many children needing teaching. Schools mostly came through the missions. And all this means major tweaking, especially to my motivations. Major plot events don't have to change, but the hows and the whys will, and I don't know exactly what those are going to be. So I guess I'll have to think about that over the weekend.

I was going to post stuff about RWA conference, wasn't I? Well, I forgot. I'll make a note of it for next time...

And Summer Goes Slipping By...

I have been scolded for not getting a post up. It's not my fault--or not so much. I've been away. And I'm about to go away again. But I'm here now and so I shall attempt to get up a quick post.

You may recall from earlier posts (like the one just previous) that I had the grandboys for a week plus. We had lots of fun, going to summer reading at the library and such. Spent more time that I liked hunting for a) video tapes borrowed from the library and/or b) the boxes said videos came in. I had to get out a left-behind golf club and fish one of the boxes out from under the TV stand. One of the boxes I still can't find--but the nice ladies at the library said to bring it on back anyway. (the video, not the box, since I don't know where the box is, so I can't bring it back. But the orange video is sitting on the end table in the den.)

Then their granddaddy left town to go start his new job. (For some reason he thought that was important.) That wasn't so bad, but then the son--the little boys' daddy--didn't make it to town till about a day later than we'd hoped. (Me and the little guys.) We did fine, but we sure were glad to see their daddy.

Then I took them all home, and drove down to Austin to see the parents and the sister & B-i-L who were down from the far northland to see my niece graduate from Air Force bootcamp. That was an adventure and a half, but we don't want to make this blogpost too long. The picture here is of the niece getting her Coin the day before the official graduation. She was an honor grad, but I blurred most of those pictures. (sigh) Anyway, it was a lot of fun to get to go and see all the ceremony, where she lived, all that stuff, and to visit with the family.

I took Mama & Daddy home before the rest of them came back up, because they couldn't keep up too well with all the "young folks." We had a nice time shopping and "resting up." Then it was time to go to Dallas for RWA.

That was an experience and a half. And I took Absolutely NO pictures while I was at conference. I don't know why, except that I just didn't feel like dragging the camera around. So I didn't. I didn't even get a picture of me with my Prism award.

Yeah, I won the Prism Award in the fantasy category, which is a pretty nifty and well-respected award for fantasy and paranormal (like vampires and stuff) romance, presented by the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter of RWA, for The Barbed Rose.

The Prism is given each year for the best published novel in several fantasy/SF/etc. categories (of the books that are entered, anyway). The other two finalists in the fantasy category were also LUNA authors, and I honestly never expected to win, which meant that when I did, and they asked me to say a few words, I had to fumble to come up with something. I sincerely hope I didn't make an idiot of myself. I was absolutely thrilled--I've wanted one of these babies since I got to rub the one Robin Owens won...in Reno, I think it was. The award is a beautiful crystal...prism. It's a pyramid engraved with the award name, the category, and the book title and author (me!), and it turns all sorts of lovely glowy colors depending on what angle you look at it. It's sitting right on top of my desk (in one of the cleared off spots.)

I'll write more about conference when I recover a little more. I danced a lot at the Harlequin party, and I'm still sore from that. A few of us tried to teach all the Yankees about the Cotton-eyed Joe, but I'm not sure how well it worked. Oh well. And then there was all the REST of the dancing.

I intend to post at least one more blog before I head down to the island for the weekend to look at houses. We shall see if I make it. I'm trying to write 25 pages on the World War II novel (working title: Thunder in a Cloudless Sky--because that's what artillery firing sounds like...) by Saturday this week, so I can earn this month's charm. It's 25 pages for the month, and I haven't written anything at all so far this month. (First boys, then out of town.) It's looking pretty good. I'm up to 16.5 so far. Of course, I haven't done a THING toward moving... except unpack the suitcases and divvy up the give-away books from conference.

Okay, done. I'm ending this too-long blog. Really. Now. I'm quitting.