Strange Spring

This has been a very strange spring, weather-wise, in the Texas panhandle. Not only has it been very rainy, but it's been cool. Usually, by Memorial Day, we've had several days in the 90s (above 32C) and it's pretty much stuck there. This year, we haven't reached 90 yet, and most days haven't made it into the 80s (26C). This is extremely cool. I've had to pull on my light jacket inside a lot of days.

Some will say that this proves that global warming is nonsense, but weather naturally varies from year to year. But something changed this year (or maybe the end of last) that I think proves global warning. The USDA had to change the growing zones.

These are the zones that show the average minimum temperatures which determine the hardiness of plants that will grow in that area. When we moved to our part of the panhandle, we moved into zone 7 which has a large number of plants that will grow here. Lilacs--which need more cold--will grow in zone 7, and you can also leave cannas in the ground year round without them freezing. However, in the recent "rezoning"--the southeast Texas panhandle is now in zone 8. Those lilacs are going to be under more stress, with hotter summers and warmer winters.

Growing zones are determined by the average temps over a large number of years, so obviously those averages are moving up. Global warming.

I want to give a shout-out to Jessica (and congrats on that baby boy!) and to Lindi. Don't know when you'll have time with a computer, Lindi-girl, but we're proud of having an Air Force girl in the family. Come visit us if you can, while we're in the same state. :)

Also, I sent an excerpt from The Eternal Rose out to my newsletter subscribers last week. An excerpt that I will not be posting on my website. So if you want to read it, subscribe to my newsletter. >:D The how-to is on my website. I'll also give subscribers first look at the "official" excerpt when I post it on the website, if you need more motivation to sign up.

Okay, off to the doctor. I'm coughing like one of the lungs wants out...

Three-Day Weekends

Here's my other painting--it's one of the pilings for the Bolivar Point ferry on Galveston Island. I liked how all the seagulls (and one pelican) made themselves at home. I want to paint pelicans all flying in a row like they do sometime...they are so cool. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog rambling.

We're not going anywhere for Memorial Day. Obligations here in town, and all that. But it got me to thinking about three-day weekends.

Three-day weekends aren't an exceptionally big deal at my house. Well, not for me, because I work at home and can set up my own schedule how I want it. But we have three-day weekends all summer long, because the fella works at a community college.

A whole bunch of community colleges across the state--and maybe nationwide, for all I know--go to a four-day week in the summer time. They still offer a full slate of summer school classes, but years ago--we're talking fifteen to twenty years ago--they realized that an awful lot of their students skipped class on Friday. And Texas summers require some serious air conditioning, which requires some serious electricity, which costs some serious bucks. So they started shutting the campus down on Fridays and getting the 40-hour week into four 10-hour days.

The local college has gone to summer hours. Which means that we can have a 3-day weekend to go visit the grandboys Saturday week and not have to deal with Memorial Day traffic.

When we used to live on Lake Whitney (north of Waco), if we took the boat out on the lake on a holiday weekend, we didn't go out until at least five o'clock. Partly because the sun is lower then and less likely to turn me and our pale children into lobsters. Partly because the central Texas wind tends to die down beginning at about 5:00. But mostly because all the nuts who came down from the big city (Dallas/Fort Worth, mostly) to party on the water had burnt themselves to a crisp by 5:00 p.m. and were coming off the water.

Of course, some summer holidays we went out on the lake at 8:00 a.m.--the wind usually hadn't picked up yet that early, and the idiots weren't out of bed yet. This is Texas, remember. When it's 99 F (37.2 C) in the afternoon, it doesn't get much cooler than 80 F (26.6 C) by 6 a.m., and the lakes are all quite, quite warm. I got spoiled. I still don't like to go in the water if it's less than 90 F (32 C) outside, and the water had better be warm!

Anyway, while we're going nowhere and doing nothing--except maybe going to see Pirates of the Caribbean III, but not at the drive-in theater in town because of all the bugs I can't get off the windshield, and I hate looking through bugs--I hope that y'all have a great holiday weekend--those of you who are having a holiday. What are you doing for the weekend? I need to clean all the books off the floor...

Paint Class - Done for Spring

The spring semester has ended, and with it, my art class. For now. I probably won't sign up for the summer class until I know more about how my summer will go. Which means I may not get to go paint, if it fills up. More people sign up for the summer classes.

In a weird aside to the art class thing, I got a certificate for completing an "Intermediate Fencing" class. I didn't think I signed up for fencing. I never went to a fencing class. I might have signed up for piano--my art teacher also teaches piano, and sometimes I sign up so she has enough people in her class to "make." I always kinda wanted to go to fencing class--just to watch and see how it's done, not because I thought I could do it.

Anyway, at my last painting class, I finished up a couple of pictures. I think they turned out pretty well, but we'll see what you think. I'm only going to post one of them though. I'll put the other one up later. Those of you who know the boy--does it look like him? If you can tell who it's supposed to be, I'm going to assume it does. :) (A lot of the shading in the painting doesn't show up in this photo, alas.)

The roses and the sage are blooming like crazy. They should continue to bloom all summer long, which is nice.
I may finally have enough flowers to hide the weeds in most of the front--but the burr clover in the back...I need to get busy before all those burrs stick to my socks...

Let's see--I didn't mention my Mother's Day. All the kids called to say hello, and the grandboys did too. It's a little alarming when you ask "How are you doing, sugar?" and the little voice says "I'm much better now." Turns out the oldest had strep throat all last week. But he's much better now. So, I talked on the phone, and I took a nap for Mother's Day. I was very tired, because we drove down to Lubbock the evening before to watch the college baseball team in the regional playoffs, and we didn't get home again until after 1 a.m.

That late, it's safer to drive up through the canyon--you have to go around the Paloduro Canyon to get from here to there and back again--and around sundown, there's a lot of wildlife on the road. It's pretty country driving through the bottom end of the canyon--I have never seen it so green. Wildflowers and green, green grass everywhere. We've had a very wet winter and spring this year--for which we are grateful, after last year's drought and fires. The average rainfall in the Texas Panhandle through this time of year is just over 5 inches. We've had 15 inches of rain so far this year (not counting the nice rain we got yesterday morning), so no wonder everything is so green. We're 10 inches ahead. Anyway, we did see a deer driving back home again, but only one. I've been down that way in the mornings and seen turkeys, deer, coyotes, road runners and maybe wild pigs (Those pigs are sneaky) out on the road.

Oh. And the Bulldogs lost, but they were playing against one of the top-ranked pitchers in the NJCAA--a guy who usually "run rules" the other team. ("Run rule" is when they call the game after the 7th inning if one team is ahead by 10 points or more.) And the score was only 6-1. They were actually proud of holding them that close. I think they won their second game. But lost the 3rd. So the guys got to go home. And given that some of those students live in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia... You know, it was just a bit odd to hear "chatter" in those Aussie accents...

Talking about Show and Tell

Laura Shin said this on The Pink Ladies Blog: "Take “show and tell.” Some writers avoid narrative introspection because they’ve been told that’s telling. Yet, I would in most cases rather know what a character is thinking—her reaction—and not read generic physical actions that are supposed to show me how she’s affected."

Sometimes I think this avoidance-of-narrative-introspection is a "guy writer" thing. Something that E. Hemingway started--and I blame him for a lot of stuff. For the stripped-down writing style that has been so popular, for one thing. And for the "girl-cooties" school of thought about "litrachure." It's not that I am fond of purple prose, but it does sometimes seem that all metaphors and adjectives are now considered suspect in certain circles. Ah well.

I tend to blame television and movies for the lack of internal reaction in novels today, not the "show vs. tell" issue. If we're in deep POV, the thoughts and emotions are showing, though they can seem like telling, I suppose. These days, a lot of newbie authors, the ones I judge in contests, tend not to go on and on with backstory and what the characters are thinking-- they've been trained out of that, I suppose. Lately, I've seen the pendulum swing too far the other way. They write prose that reads a lot like a screenplay, with dialog, action, and nothing else. Which means a lot of the characters' motivations for their actions are completely missing.

If we don't get what the character thinks about something, or how they feel about something-- about who a person is, or what that person does, or about what they themselves do--then we don't get to know who this character is, and we don't know why they do what they do, and without knowing the character and understanding them, we don't care what happens to them. We have to explain what's going on inside a character's head. It doesn't take a whole lot. Just...enough.

Here's an excerpt from the first of my Rose books, The Compass Rose, to demonstrate what I mean. (I'll put the internal reaction in another color to make it easier to spot):

Torchay had changed out of his finery into old trousers, his tunic off against the heat as he worked through his bodyguard exercises.

“Don’t you usually do that earlier in the day?” Kallista tossed her pendant on the table beside the big bed and kicked off her shoes.

“I did.” He finished the flowing form he was doing and stopped. The faint sheen of sweat over his lean musculature tempted her eyes to look, to drink their fill. “I felt like doing it again. I didn’t expect to see you before dawn.”

“Yes, well...” She tugged her fingers free of the thin snug leather and pulled her gloves off, flexing her sweaty hands in the slightly cooler air. “Didn’t work out.”

Torchay walked toward the table. Kallista backed off. She couldn’t bear being so close to him. Not now. He poured water from the pitcher into a cup and drank it, then poured the rest into the basin and splashed it on his face. Kallista watched his every move.

When he had dried his face with the flimsy towel, he turned and saw Kallista watching. “Can I ask you somethi—? No.” He shook his head. “Never mind.” He hung the towel up and reached for his hair to release his queue.

“What?” Kallista loosened the laces of her dress tunic. “If you have a question, ask it. You know you can ask me anything.”

“Can I?”

She looked up and saw his gaze focused on her. The candlelight reflecting from his eyes made them glow with blue flame. She lost herself in them for a moment before she recalled he’d asked her a question. “Yes, of course. Anything.”

Once more he hesitated, seeming to look for something as he gazed at her, but what, Kallista didn’t know. [I put all this in a different color, because part of it is what K. thinks he's doing.]

“All right,” he said finally. “I will.” He ran his fingers through his unbound hair and it fell in waves around his face, crimson in the candlelight. “When you have gone out hunting all these years—“ He paused for a deep breath, looking away only an instant. “When you have hunted a man, why did you never choose me?”

Kallista swayed, Torchay’s question touching unseen things deep inside her, drawing her tight, opening her up. Her nipples beaded beneath the brocade weave of her dress and she tucked her hands beneath her arms, more as a guard against unwanted magic than an attempt to hide her body’s reaction. [all of the previous is a physical reaction--with a teensy bit of explanation, but after is where we get the true emotional reaction.] Why did he have to ask her that question now? Now when she wanted him so much it made her mouth dry and other places all too wet?

“I— It’s not that—“ Goddess, what could she say that wouldn’t either insult him or encourage him?

Torchay waited, his face an impassive mask, candlelight licking over his sculpted form, tempting her to do the same. She curled her hands into fists against the urge to touch.

See? Most of it is action and dialogue. But the internal reaction is sprinkled in with it, and that's all you need. Not a whole lot, but enough to expand on what is physically happening. You need both. The action and dialog AND the internal reaction--mental and emotional--to the action.

When I judge contests, I often feel like a psychoanalyst for the characters, given all the times I'm writing "Why?" or "And what does he feel about that?" Those things do need to be included. Not over pages and pages, but all the way through every bit of it.

8 Things about me

Natasha Moore tagged me to do this 8 things thing. Problem is, I don't know that there are 8 things y'all don't know about me... Anyway...

Here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I hope my 8 people haven't been tagged with something like this recently.
Okay, here are my 8 things...

1. Just got back from a quick trip to Galveston Island--and I didn't even go in the water! (shame on me--but I did take a walk down Seawall Blvd...)

2. I played flute in high school and college marching band--and I doubt I could get a sound out of the sucker now. I was not very good at it because I never actually practiced. Barely good enough to qualify. One of my roomies and I volunteered for last chair and next-to-last chair in concert band while in college, and when playing the really hard stuff, we would play alternate notes. Together we made a not-so-bad player...

3. I once worked as the "managing editor" of a small town weekly--what this really meant was that I wrote all the copy (except sports), took, developed and printed all the pictures, wrote the cutlines and picked out the stuff from the press releases to fill up the spaces in the rest of the paper. All in 3 days a week. For not very much $$.

4. While in college, the university renovated some old buildings, replacing towers that had been removed years before. The towers were built on the ground before being hoisted to the roof, and they were roughly the shape of a metronome--those weighted ticking things that keep time for practicing musicians. One of my roommates was inspired to take a gang of us and climb the construction fence and spraypaint the front of the tower (the plywood undercladding) like a metronome. And nobody knew we had done it until about 30 years later when I "fessed up" to the alumni magazine...

5. I've been reading Tarot cards for about 9 or 10 years--and still consider myself very much a beginner.

6. I have "tilted kneecaps" which gives them a predisposition to dislocate. Because I'm not very athletic, I've never dislocated them, but they're still persnickety about a lot of stuff...

7. I have 14 nephews and 4 nieces.

8. While walking down the seawall, and other places in Galveston (plus hurrying through airports for plane changes), my sandals wore blisters on both my baby toes. (I haven't worn them much since last summer and I haven't toughened up my toes yet...) And one of them popped. Owie! I'd better get them tough before RWA in July!

Good food and good books

Because the fella is on this gluten-free diet, I get all excited when I find new stuff that he can eat that's really good. I have probably a year's worth of Southern Living magazines in the house--I read them, and then set them aside to go back through later and pull the good stuff out--and sometimes (most of the time) it takes me a while to go back through. I think this particular magazine was around a year old. Don't think it was more. (I hope.) Anyway, the recipe was sort of Italian-Southern-Southwestern, because it was browned polenta slices topped with black-eyed peas heavily laced with fresh cilantro and tomato. Basically, you slice up one of those pre-packaged tubes of polenta, brown it in olive oil (they call for a non-stick skillet and cooking spray, but since I don't have a non-stick skillet...). Then you cook a can of black-eyed peas and chopped onion, and a little salt and cayenne, till the liquid's almost gone, add in some cilantro and tomato and top the polenta slices with it. Very simple. Very good stuff. I don't know that anyone but a Southerner would have thought to put black-eyed peas with polenta--but hey, fried polenta is just a fancy name for a round, flat hushpuppy! Maybe it's Texas cuisine, since it's peas plus cilantro and tomato, which has a lot in common with "Texas caviar." Anyway--good stuff.

I've been reading some good books lately too. Picked up DARK MOON DEFENDER by Sharon Shinn. I liked it better than THIRTEENTH HOUSE--which I liked, just not as much as DMD. This one takes place in the same universe, and is Justin's story, about how he comes into his own, and falls in love. There are TWO happy endings in this story. Very good read, IMO.

I need to make maps for Eternal Rose. I have paper and everything, just haven't done it yet. Going to Galveston and the beach for a day or two beginning tomorrow...don't know as I'll take the paper with me. I wonder if I need to use the legal-sized paper for the maps... I'll ask. Also need to write a short bio. I hate writing bios. I want to sound cute and clever, and just can't seem to do it. At least I don't sound clever to myself. Maybe it sounds better to other people. I'd post two bios here and let y'all vote on which one sounds best--but that would require that I WRITE two bios. I don't even want to write one. But I will do it! I am brave.

Okay--have to share this with you. When the boy was still at home and studying WWI history, they were doing some kind of project looking up the early efforts at propaganda, and he stumbled across a cache of French WWI war posters online, the "Loose Lips Sink Ships" sort. One of these posters showed a chicken sitting atop a pile of eggs and said in large print: "Je suis une brave poule de guerre!" Which translated means: "I am a brave war chicken!"

And now, every time I think "I am brave," I also think "I am a brave war chicken!" Je suis une brave poule de guerre!

So there. :)

Things that Amuse

I got a precious comment on my MySpace space, a relayed message from the littlest grandguy. He wanted his mom to tell his Grandaddy that he "pooped in da potty free times." He had no news for me, unfortunately. (sigh) But then, I'm the one who makes him take naps when he comes to visit. Oh well. They're cute, whatever they do.

I am also amused by a sentence out of this story which has apparently been around for 30 or 40 years, touted as "The Worst Story Ever Written." I don't know whether it actually lives up to its billing--I've read a lot of really bad stories--but it is pretty bad. It was apparently written by a 16-year-old fan boy who swore never to write another--and didn't--because this one was so thoroughly vilified. Poor kid. Anyway, this is the sentence in question:

The barbarian seated himself upon a stool at the wenches side,
exposing his body, naked save for a loin cloth brandishing a
long steel broad sword, an iron spiraled battle helmet, and a
thick leather sandals, to her unobstructed view.

That loin cloth brandishing the "long steel broad sword" made me chortle, because so much early, purple-prosed romance fiction used identical imagery and euphemisms. I'm not sure how the loincloth also brandished a helmet and sandals at the same time, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. :)

What are your favorite (or least favorite) euphemisms?

Sex in Fiction

I'm writing mostly fantasy now, but it's romantic fantasy, and it could as easily go the other way, to fantasy/paranormal romance. I got my start in romance, writing Harlequin/ Silhouette/ Mills & Boon series books. Those of you who've read the Rose books know they have sex in them. I don't think I've written anything without it--I know I haven't published anything without it. Some of the books I've written have more than others. I was surprised when I got through New Blood and only had one sex scene in it--but that's because of who my characters are. They have issues. A lot more issues than Kallista and her crew ever had.

I've found it interesting that most of the male-written fiction has a lot less sex in it than that written by females, despite the stereotype of the sex-crazed male, and the ones that have sex tend to do more "closing the bedroom door" than female authors. And while I haven't done any real statistically significant studies (which seem to me to be impossible anyway, since quality of writing is a pretty subjective thing), most male writers don't seem to write sex scenes as well as women writers. There are some who do. And most of them write romance. (Harold Lowry, who writes as Leigh Greenwood, and K.N. Casper are two good ones.)

I'm heading in a round-about way for my point. In a rather scholarly discussion of the romance genre begun by a Princeton University class in "American Best Sellers" on Romance by the Blog a couple of weeks ago, someone asked about romance and porn and the difference between them. And some of the respondents got into a discussion about whether romance gets labeled as porn because it is, at least in part, about women's sexuality, which can be threatening to some people. One of the respondents (Robin) had this to say:

IMO the vast majority of women are conflicted *in some way* about our sexuality. I don't know how much of this is a function of patriarchal assumptions about gender roles and how much of it is some kind of policing mechanism among women that is only *partially* informed by patriarchy (at what point do we take responsibility for our own agency as women?!), but I think the ambivalence emerges within Romance fiction ... and I'd even go so far as to say that much of what shows up in Romance is some effort to grapple with this ambivalence, to put it out in the open and to work it out somehow.

I quoted this, because I couldn't say it better myself. I do think a lot of the "policing" in romance fiction--and in other fiction by women--is done by women.

My Rose books are out of the mainstream when it comes to the relationships between the characters. They've had some pretty harsh reader reviews at Amazon because of that. (I haven't read any of them since I saw the first one--why inflict them upon myself?) I won't say the reviews were all by women, because I don't know. But I'd wager most of them are. The men who've read my Rose books (guys tend to want more bashing and gore than most fantasy books have--though the Rose books have plenty of swordfights and such) have liked them. Still, given the current uproar in the romance-reading world over rape in romance, and the letters I've received on the sex in my books--all anecdotal evidence to be sure--I'd say that women are the quickest to react, and to condemn when a (female) writer steps outside the "zone" to explore these ambivalent areas that make us squirm.

I won't be buying or reading the "rape" book (You'll have to go elsewhere to find out what I'm referring to.) because it's not one of my fantasies. Nor will I be reading any more books in the Silhouette Desire series because the heroes have gone too close to that abusive edge for my comfort even though my first published books were Desires, and I have a lot of good friends still writing for them. I hate that I won't be able to support them any more, but I don't buy books I don't read, and I just can't read those books any more. I hate that editorial/ marketing decisions have transformed what was once one of my favorite lines into something I just can't handle. But this is a personal issue.

Just because I don't like very "alpha" heroes doesn't mean I think nobody should write them. Just because I don't care for submissive-female erotica doesn't mean I think they should be banned. Obviously more women prefer that sort of erotica than the other way round, because several of the erotica publishers won't even look at stories with dominant women. And if someone wants to write rape-fantasy stories, I'm not going to say she shouldn't. I'm not going to buy them, because I don't like that kind of story, but I don't like really scary romantic suspense either, and that's certainly not going away.

I guess my point is exactly like the points made by lots of other people. If you don't like whatever sexual episode might be in a story, don't read it. If you do, and if you decide to post a review about it, try to be cogent in your reasons for disliking the story. But under the fiction umbrella--whether it be romance, fantasy, mystery or literary--an author should feel free to write about whatever kind of sex he/she wants to write. It's a way to explore part of what makes us human, and the mixed-up feelings that go along with something so important.

More Flowers

Had to mail some stuff today--the fella went to the post office to pick up the mail, but I had things to mail off, so I did my post office-park-ball fields-6th Street circuit, and when I got back to the house, looked to see whether the apricot-colored iris was open. It was, and gorgeous, of course. There was another new iris open too--the sun was really bright so the pictures are a little glare-y on the white petals, but I'm just tickled with how pretty they all are. I guess I won't snitch a piece of the pink one from the yard over on Main Street just before the park, even if I like it a lot. Not much place to put it...

We're heading to Memphis (yes, there is a Memphis in Texas, just like there's just about everything else) tonight to check out an estate auction for the old Memphis Hotel B&B. Ought to be some cool stuff, though I don't know what we'd do with anything more than what we have...

I'm just blithering on here to get some words to wrap around the flower pictures. Talked to the older son last night, and Little Bit--his boy who just turned 3 this week--loved the Tow Mater pillow/doll we sent. Every little boy needs a squishy Tow Mater. Now I have to get the package ready to send to the daughter (& family) for her birthday. Some of it is stuff I've been meaning to send since Christmas. (Yes, dear, this means the cactus blossom painting I've been promising...)

I'm still typing in story. I stalled out today--at about quitting time--when I ran into a big chunk of exposition I'm seriously thinking about leaving out. But I think I'll go ahead and type it in, then when I print everything out, I'll be better able to figure out where to make the cuts and how to transition from one part to another. I am tightening it up pretty good as I go. Synopsis is still 16 pages long, tho. But part of that is because a fantasy needs its universe explained, and New Blood is a new universe. I've typed in 200 pages, and have more than half yet to go. Groan. It's going to be WAY too long. sigh.

Prebby Flowers

That's how Doodle Bug says "Pretty Flowers"--or at least he did at first. He's the 4-year-old autistic grandboy, and he works very hard to make his words come out properly. He talks a little slowly, but he's very careful with his words. Anyway, this blog entry is called "Prebby Flowers" because I have some in my front flowerbed.

These are the iris right outside the front door. I've never had any of the maroon-with-white iris before, but I did have some of the Batik iris (the purple streaked with white) in our previous house. Last year, very few of the iris bloomed, but we've had a wet winter (and a very long one, but the snow didn't seem to hurt anything), and everything is blooming like crazy.


Now these iris are under the bay window, as you can see. The apricot one isn't quite open yet--I'll try to get out and take a picture of it tomorrow... (Hmm. That reminds me. Better take the battery out of the camera and charge it up. It was telling me I needed to do that.) But I thought the blue picotee iris were pretty. And if you look on the right side, you can see the rose buds getting ready to bloom. A few are open already, but they're not where I could get a picture with the iris. You can see a little bit of the blue sage behind them... I'll have to find the picture where I got more of the sage... Can you tell I like blue flowers? (The roses are red.)

Um. So. This week, I worked on revisions for New Blood. (The Victorian blood magic book, remember?) I think I have the chapters all revised. Need to input the revisions on the synopsis yet. Then I want to let it sit a while longer and go over it one more time. Then I need to type in the rest of the story, and make notes about the changes and revisions I want to make there. Some I can do while I'm typing in, but I think there are some structural changes that need to be made. And that's not so easy to do while typing. I was rather amused today when my horrorscope said that I needed to put away my artistic project for a little while and go back to it later. Exactly what I intend to do. :) Once it's typed in.

I had to take time today to judge some contest entries that were due on Saturday. I enjoyed judging them, but I missed the e-mail that said when they were due back, and there wasn't anything in the packet. I learn a lot myself when I judge contests. It makes me realize what's missing in my own writing--and I need to go back and ramp up the emotion one more time when I go through the chapters again.

Mostly I wanted to share my prebby flowers with you in this e-mail, but I can whine too, right? I burned my hand Saturday. Burned it bad. Bad second degree burn. (Disgustingness alert! Don't read more if you are easily grossed-out.)

It blistered up Saturday night, and popped. Then it blistered up again on Sunday. Bit fat quarter-inch swelling ugly blister. Monday a.m. it got a little hole in it, and all the water leaked out, and kept leaking until today, when it basically ripped open. So I put antibiotic on it and put a bandage on it (which wouldn't stay on my palm), and have been babying it. But it's still pretty icky. I'm just glad it was on the thumb side of my lower palm. I could still type. So there. That's my whine. I'll share more flower pictures with you soon. I didn't even show you the all-maroon ones. Or the white ones. Or the two-toned maroon-and-yellow ones... Yeah. I got prebby flowers.

Quick Monday Post

Running in quick while dinner is cooking (probably ought to go start the rice in a minute) to get something up here. It's been a...well, a sorta busy week. I did a lot of sitting around and reading. I re-read a lot of stuff. Re-read Eileen Wilks' Blood Lines, re-read the 2nd and 3rd "Kitty" books, Kitty Goes To Washington and Kitty Takes a Holiday. I like them better than the 1st book, though I like it okay. But I also had a lot to keep me busy.

Sunday, we had folks over for Sunday dinner, and I cooked on Saturday. Cooked WAY too much roast beef spaghetti...but that's okay, because it freezes real nice. I need to tear up the last roast and stick it in the freezer. Jan left a pie for us to eat. Fortunately, it's a kind that the fella can eat, if he doesn't eat the crust.

Oh, and I tried a new recipe that anyone who likes Southwestern cuisine ought to like. It's polenta topped with black-eyed peas flavored with cilantro and tomato. I really liked it, and it was easy to make, since I bought packaged polenta. (Had to buy it in "the big city" but it was available there.) Kinda hushpuppy/tamale-ish, and since I like both hushpuppies and tamales, I liked the polenta.

There's a college music department concert tomorrow night. The community choir got invited to sing along, so I've been going to the noon choir rehearsals, and tonight is the dress rehearsal (though we don't have to dress, just show up and work out all the glitches). There are some fun songs. I've really enjoyed the challenge. Wish us luck. It should actually be a good concert. It's sounding good in practice.

And today I printed out the 1st 3 chapters of New Blood to start revising tomorrow. I won't be going to town tomorrow, so I ought to be able to get quite a bit done. I hope. I have my notes. Just need to keep hold of all the threads.

Ta-DAAAAA!!

I HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK!!!!

Yep. All the way from the very first page to the very last, with more scenes and background info than it needs, that I need to slice out, and not enough emotion which I'll need to add in. But It Is Done. The bad guys get theirs, the good guys get theirs, and I have all the scenes (and then some) I need. Now I have to type the sucker in.

And it's going to be too long, as usual. (sigh) But I have already IDed some things I can cut, so that will help. (I don't need that much exposition...)

Today, I took a break. I put receipts in my accounting program. I worked on my weekly and quarterly goals. (Okay, yeah, I know we're already into April, and it's Wednesday, not Monday, but I've been busy!) And then I read. Okay, I went to choir practice, except choir practice got cancelled, since the pianist couldn't be there, so I came home, and then I read.

Whoever it was that recommended Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy, you were right. The books are Fabulous. I have been glomming onto Bishop this week. I ordered Belladonna (I had a coupon, so I bought it in hardback), and the 3-in-1 edition of The Black Jewels. I stayed up all night Saturday reading all three Black Jewels books one after the other. They were so wonderful. So this week, I bought the Dreams book, and another one called The Invisible Ring. Read them both already. Plus one by Vicki Pettersen that was pretty good, and I can't remember the title right off hand, but it's a debut novel and just out on the shelves.

Tomorrow, it's back to work for me. Typing the fingers to the bone. I'll probably just type in this week, and next week, work on revising the first three chapters again. I think now that I've finished the book, it will be easier to get the nuances right.

It's sorta like the portrait I'm attempting to paint. The tiniest change can make a huge difference. Hopefully, I can get the book right-er than the painting...

Back Around to Friday

I thought of all sorts of things to write about earlier this week, and never got here, and of course, I've now forgotten what any of those things were that I wanted to write about. So now, I have to just write about ...stuff.

This has been a good week writing. I'm really close to the end of the book--in the middle of the black moment--and got 37 pages written so far, which is really good for me. The fella wants to go to another auction tomorrow, and I have a few things I want to do in Amarillo tomorrow, so I'm going to go with him. I'm going to take the WiP with me, and the contest entries for a contest I've agreed to judge, so I'll be able to get some stuff done while at the auction. I hope.

I'm trying to learn how to do podcasts, so I'll be able to post some here, but so far I'm having trouble with the microphone. I can't seem to get it to work. (sigh) So I may go get me a new one. The mike worked with the old computer, but I'm not sure it's working with the new one. I need a new driver, maybe...

Been reading books too. Discovered a new author I like. I bought Anne Bishop's Sebastian, and loved it, so I picked up her new one, Belladonna, and it's really good too. So now I have a 3-in-1 trilogy of hers to read. Maybe I'll take it tomorrow too. But I really need to work.

Cuteness

We have some seriously cute grandboys. The oldest one is now in kindergarten and learning to write. And he addressed the envelope they just sent us (by means of their Wunka Bob who stopped off to visit before coming home for Easter). Not ALL the address, but our names.

It's kinda hard to mess up "Gigi"--but I am now married to "Granbaddy". We were amused. And we now have some seriously cute school pictures of the seriously cute boys. They called us to say Happy Easter last night. I'm amazed how well the little one talks. He won't be three till the end of the month, but he just chattered away on the phone.

Easter was very nice, but there were snowflakes falling when church let out. It did warm up a little bit today, which was good, with the boy heading back to school. (He got a speeding ticket--for shame!)

And today, I got 8 pages, and my hero got himself kidnapped. He didn't mean to get kidnapped, but you know how bad guys are. They do stuff. Bad stuff. These bad guys think they're the good guys...but don't bad guys often think that? Hopefully, the heroine will find him tomorrow.

White Easter??

Yes, we are having a white Easter. Or we will if the snow doesn't melt off any more. This is Texas. It's not supposed to snow after the iris bloom. (I've been afraid to look at them since it got so cold today.) But it's out there snowing.

Yesterday, we had Art Club. That's why I had to hike over to the Methodist church. Except I didn't hike, because I had a big casserole dish hot out of the oven to carry over. So I loaded up my car and drove the half block to the church, then I drove back and parked in my drive, and walked back to the church. Across the street, past the parsonage to the alley just beyond it, down the alley maybe 5 yards/meters and in the back door of the church. That's how far it is. Yes, I'm a wuss. But I had to carry a big sack full of pans of rolls (Sister Shubert rolls are Teh Best!) too.

Then at the end, it had started to drizzle and was very cold, and I only had on my suit jacket, which had no buttons, and I had a lot of stuff to carry back home, so I walked home, clutching my jacket closed to stay warm, and got my vehicle, drove back, double-parked in the alley to load up, and drove back home again. Yeah, I know. I'm bad.

As the youngest of the hostesses, I appointed myself head server, running plates into the lunching ladies while Fredie Jo and Ruth and Frances served them up. (Rhenda couldn't be there.) (And I ain't exactly a spring chicken...) Then we ate lunch, and an artist from the little town around our county lake gave a talk about art. (Hey, it's the Art Club.) She brought three of her Western realistic paintings and talked about composition and color and perspective and stuff. I enjoyed it a lot, because composition is something I struggle with. Of course, I prefer a more impressionistic style (I am just not a big detail person.) and I tend to do more still lifes and landscapes, but maybe there's a story in the paintings... She said she likes for all her paintings to tell stories. And she paints horses and Indians and cowboys without any kind of reference or model!!! Needless to say, I felt totally intimidated. (sigh) These are my horse pictures--the race picture is supposed to look blurry.


Then I came home and wrote. I was really excited about getting so much writing done Thursday, and I was excited about where the story was, and about getting that much closer to the ending, so I got 5 pages written Friday. Which made me happy. Because that made 33.5 pages on New Blood for the week, and my goal was 30 pages. I'm almost through the trial. Just need to have them dismiss the charges for lack of evidence. Then we'll be at the kidnapping.

The son is home for Easter. He wants to pick up his power tools and some other things to take back to Baylor. We went in to town this morning because he announced that he really needed some shorts (and of course wanted Mom and Dad to spring for them), and we were thinking we could get there and back before the snow got bad. (Which we did, since it isn't snowing now at all.) But it snowed on us while we were in Amarillo--just on the side of town where the mall is.

And Penney's was having a sale, so I bought 2 pairs of pants--they were on sale, and then if you used a Penney's card, they'd give you more off. So I bought a T-shirt and a skirt the fella found and thought would look good on me, too. I'm getting rid of all my fat pants. I still had a few pairs I've been wearing, but I haven't lost enough to go down another size, so I'm getting rid of the big ones anyway. But I needed a couple more pairs of the right size. Then we went to one of the Japanese "cook it in front of you" restaurants. I discovered that I like Monkey Balls. Still don't like most "regular" sushi, but I liked the Monkey Balls...

And now we're home again, and since the boy is off hanging with his friends, I'd like to pull together a little synopsis for Old Spirits. Wish me luck. :)

More progress

It's a good day. Okay, so I forgot that I was supposed to head over to the Methodist church this afternoon to help Fredie Jo and Ruth and Rhenda and somebody else decorate and set up for Art Club tomorrow, but hey, I got NINE (count 'em, 9!) pages written this morning.

In the same length of time it took me to write four (4) measly pages last week. Yayyy!!! (picture Kermit the frog running in circles waving his skinny green hands in the air, going Yayyyy.)(That's how I feel.)

Okay, nine pages isn't so much, when I have ninety pages left to go. But hey, if I can keep it up, in 10 days, I'll have the book finished. If 90 pages will get the rest of the scenes in. Actually, I'm probably already over my targeted word count. (sigh) But 9 pages is more than I've written on a single day in a very long time, and I'm happy.

We're just about to begin the actual trial. The 9 pages were working us into it, and getting the magic spell started. Now, the trial itself. Can't wait.

Though, since I have to make a potato casserole tomorrow, and hike myself and the casserole over to the Methodists by 11 a.m., I may start on this after choir tonight. We're starting some really cool spirituals. With hard alto parts. Fun!

But really, the book is getting totally cool.

The Writing Progresses--Again

Apparently I've used that as a title for my blog before. Sometimes that's all you can say. That the writing progresses. And it really is a very satisfying feeling, when it does.

I like to make scene lists, just note down the various scenes that need to take place, sometimes through the whole book, sometimes in a locale of the book. Then I get to mark off the scenes as I write them. That's the best feeling, though sometimes, I think--"Okay, I've written that scene. Why am I not to the next scene yet?" We will see if that's stuff that needs to be cut out later. I'm one of those who would rather overwrite and then cut away than have to add.

Anyway, I have written the love scene. In fact, I think I wrote two of them. (looks) Yep. Two. Okay, it took me a long time to get these people to this point, and I guess we all got a little excited. So that's all done, and now the bad guys have shown up again, and the heroine is getting arrested. We're on the fast track to the black moment and the end. Yayyyy!!!

Depending on how long it takes me to write the trial, and the kidnapping and the rescue and the grand denouement, I might be able to finish this by Tax Day!!

Smacked in the Head

Getting smacked in the head sounds painful, but it's not always bad.

This morning, while I was "snoozing," waiting for the phone to go off again (I hate lunging across the king-sized bed for the alarm on the other side, so I set my phone), I was smacked in the head by The Perfect First Sentence for a new story. And I had to get up and write it down. I wrote for 30 minutes, and got 2 pages. I just love it when that happens. :)

I'll have to make some notes and figure out further plot and stuff, but the idea's been churning around in my subconscious for the past 3 months while I've been working on finishing New Blood, so it's not hitting me cold...the hero of the new book is a secondary character in New Blood. So I've got him characterized, pretty much. (I originally cast Ralph Fiennes as this character, but he sorta morphed into Johnny Depp--more as he was in The Libertine than as Jack Sparrow...) I'm using the subplot I excised from NB as the main plot of the new hero's book. I just have to learn exactly who the heroine is, and what sort of magic she's best suited for. OH, and I came up with what I think is the perfect title. The new hero is a conjurer who works spirit magic, like the heroine in New Blood is a sorceress who works blood magic, so the new title is OLD SPIRITS. Yeah, I guess I'm excited a little bit...

I spent the day selling sausage wraps and breakfast burritos to the 2400 competitors (from 6th through 12th grade) in the judging contest the local community college sponsors. The Friends of the Library went to serve breakfast--and lunch. I ate one of each for my lunch. Yum. I had to get all my marshmallow treats for the sale made yesterday, so I could go with the fella to the estate auction in Amarillo.

The really good stuff was going up under the hammer today, so I didn't get the cool shamrock teapot or any of the neat things--last night they were just selling the box lots. My job is to say "Oooh, that looks cool, let's bid on that" and then sit in the chair and read my book and not look like I'm bidding. Last night, I read Her Perfect Life by Vicki Hinze--a FANTABULOUS book, and one of the Rita finalists. I'd already picked it up, and was meaning to read it when the Rita nominations came out, so that just made me read it sooner. Loved it.

We bought a box of copper stuff, and a box of boxes (mostly jewelry boxes, but there was a Silver Jubilee biscuit tin from 1935 and a really weird rawhide earring tree thing, and a cool inlaid mosaic-type box that was the one I really wanted for me), and three boxes of books that had Tarot decks in them. I read Tarot, so I wanted the boxes with the decks. And the one with Hopi legends--there was a lot of New Age-y stuff that will be good for research, and some Santa Fe art catalogs. Oh, and we got a couple of rolling file cabinet things for $10 each. Not bad. No idea where we'll put the file box things, but... I have stuff to fill them up. And then I got to eat dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. It's really noisy, but we like the food.

Varieties of Working

When I come into my office to write, I say I'm Working. In fact, in my "labels" for this post, when I put "work" up, that means the writing. Because I am a full time writer.

And it is tiring to sit and write. I do my first drafts in longhand, remember, so there's a little handcramp to deal with, and there's always the dreaded fanny fatigue. Sometimes, if my thumbnail gets a bit long, it digs into my forefinger as I'm holding the pen. And that doesn't even count the mental exhaustion. Or the tendency to slump into slumber...but that usually doesn't hit unless I try to write in the afternoon.

I've been writing a love scene this week. Or trying to. For some reason, love scenes seem to take me forever to write. It's not that I don't like writing them, or reading them either, but they're just hard to write. I mean, it's the same basic act every time, only the characters differ from book to book...and sometimes they don't. Sometimes, they're the same characters...but they're in a different place in their lives. And that's the only thing that's really, essentially different. But you have to make each love scene different, anyway. Because they're different people at different points in life, and ... and I have really had trouble getting into this particular love scene.

Every time I think I'm getting it finally underway, the heroine comes up with some NEW problem, some Other difficulty that is messing up her head, and frankly, she's as frustrated as I am. I think I have finally solved ALL her problems, and we're going to get some nookie going...but I have diabolical plans, and I know what will happen when things finally cut loose a little, and they're going to have to get into yet another conversation before they can get back to business. Monkey business, that is. And then they can do magic.

But that wasn't really what I was going to write about when I started this. See, I went out and pulled weeds again yesterday. And I was so tired and so sore, I fell asleep after supper and almost didn't wake up in time for choir practice--and the concert is this Sunday. (I'm wearing my new pink-and-black jacket.) And there are still way too many stickery thistle-dandelion things. (They're not really dandelions, because they're stickery, but they have yellow flowers, and make puffball seedheads, so...) I don't think any have bloomed yet. Maybe I can stay ahead of them. I'm not pulling weeds today. I'm getting a blister on my right palm from the trowel, and it's cold and rainy outside. Today, I'm going to be lazy. So there. :)

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!