Some very exciting things are happening that I can’t talk about, but I can give a few pieces of news: two of the Jill Kismet novels, Night Shift and Hunter’s Prayer, are now available for preorder on Amazon. Also available for preorder are two anthologies I’m in, Hotter than Hell and The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance. See, I HAVE been busy. A busy little bee.
There is some good news about a Selene and Nikolai story I have to keep under my hat for a while, and more YA good news that I hope to be able to share very soon. But, as I look up at the paragraph above, I think that maybe I haven’t been the sloth I feel like. That’s the problem with working so hard and having a book come out two years after one finishes it–it feels like one hasn’t done anything in the intervening time.
As for the bureaucracy…well, let’s just say that a certain bureaucrat is discovering that he can blow off anyone else in the world in order to protect his institution’s safety rating. But he can’t blow off my kid, and he certainly can’t blow me off. When I get stubborn I am every bureaucrat’s worst nightmare, not in the least because I insist on getting things in writing and framing the questions so they have to answer them correctly.
Hey, I worked for a bank and in public relations. I know how this bloody well works, and if you think you can roll over the top of one of my kids, buster, you’ve got another think coming. So there. Nyaaaaah.
Nuff said.
There’s errands to run today and a revision to finish, so I’m going to sign off. Have a great weekend, Readers. and a happy Leap Year to you one and all.
Posted on February 28th, 2008 | Posted in Real Life
First, the seriousness. Preditors & Editors has been sued by two people they exposed as shady operators. P & E is an invaluable reference for writers seeking representation, and it would be a terrible thing if the people they warn new writers against succeed in shutting them down. They’re accepting PayPal donations for legal bills on this page. It’s a good cause, I think.
Now for the seriously amusing. I just received, this morning, proof positive that all the money spent on advertising is not spent in vain. To explain this, I must explain the Little Prince’s nervous stomach.
If the Little Prince doesn’t eat breakfast, his stomach acts up and it’s Vomit Time. But getting him to take some nourishment in the morning is like trying to convince people to get inoculated in the 1700s. In other words, a huge bloody neverending apocalyptic battle. It is made easier by the fact that I give him two choices of things I’d prefer he eats. “Do you want toast or Cheerios?” “Do you want oatmeal or toast?” That gives him an illusion of choice, which is something a five-year-old cherishes.
So last night I went to the grocery store to get milk and other things, and the Teen went with me. Standing in the cereal aisle, I asked him to please for the love of God pick something you’ll eat in the mornings? Because he is another one with a nervous stomach and food issues, and it’s just simpler to have him pick what he wants. He picks Honeycombs and Frosted Flakes, and away we go. With me muttering to myself that I might as well just buy him a bag of sugar and make a cardboard teat for him to suck it through. To which he replies, “Are those pecan-caramel turtles in the basket? Where did those come from? Who’s going to eat those, I wonder?”
Goddamn sarcastic kids.
Cut to this morning. The Little Prince is all cute, rubbing his eyes and blinking sleepily. I start the morning ritual, only this time I am Sooper Sneaky. “Do you want Cheerios or Honeycomb?”
Because it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, the important thing is that he eats something, for Chrissake. I don’t care if it’s sugary, he just has to have something in the tum-tum so I’m not mopping up bile.
“Honeycomb?” he asks, screwing up his face like I’ve just asked him “Lizards or flies?”
I pull the box out, show him the front. “This is Honeycomb.” His eyes light up. I pull out the Cheerios and show him. “These are Cheerios.”
“Honeycomb!” he says, and stares enraptured at the box as I fill his bowl. The rapture gives way to confusion. “It smaller than box on!” Translation: Hey! It’s smaller than the illustration on the front of the box! I’ve been gypped!
“That’s so you can fit more in your bowl,” I say. I think, Madison Avenue is leading me down the primrose path. I’ve just sold cereal to a five-year-old. I’m going to hell.
“OOOOOOOOh,” he says, serenely, and goes back to staring at the box like it’s a television.
“Now after this you can play with your bubbles,” I say, because we ran out of bubble solution two days ago and it was like the Titanic went down. Major disaster, so the most important purchase last night wasn’t milk, it was a huge container of bubble sauce.
“Mum,” he informs me, “I need to eat Honeycomb. Then I play bubble.” He takes one last longing look at the box, then skips into the other room to wait for his cereal to appear on the table. (I had him carry his own cereal bowl ONCE. Never again. Do you know how hard it is to pick soggy Honey Smacks out of the carpet?)
Would you believe (she asks rhetorically) he ate every damn one of them? Every single loving one. Smacking his lips and saying, “Dis is GOOOOOOOOD,” four or five times.
Welcome to parenthood, Lili. An occupation involving publicity stunts, crafty political maneuvering, Mafia-like indirect enforcement, and pounds of sheer cunning as well as the ability to take a horrendous amount of irony on a daily basis.
Thirty pages away from the end of this revision; I’m considering another pass after this. It’s not quite The Book That Would Not Die, but it’s close.
Many writers get upset over revisions, which is normal. But it’s important to remember that most editors have no personal animus against you the writer, or against your work. It feels awful personal, of course–the work is your baby, of course it feels personal. But it’s not. Most times the editor just wants to make the work the best it can be.
For the writer, revisions are a delicate balancing act. One has to balance between the vision of the work and a fresh pair of eyes seeing what might be flaws or holes. It is rare that the editor just wants to make you suffer. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen–I’m just saying that nine times out of ten, when you think that’s happening, it’s not the case.
A lot of fledgling writers either slavishly take every suggestion of their editor as gospel or resist every comma change. Neither is the correct approach. Somewhere flexibly in-between is best. One has to accept that one’s deathless prose isn’t, well, deathless. It’s hard to keep that in mind after however-many drafts and in the emotional heat of revision, but it’s well worth trying to remember.
The second piece of news is creeeeeepy. Mark Morford wrote this morning about the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Nine skiers tearing their way out of their tent in the middle of a subzero night and running pell-mell, almost naked, down a moutainside? Radiation? Hair turning gray?
No human footsteps other than the their own?
*shiver* Oooooooh. Weird. Weirder than anything I could come up with. The world is much weirder than human beings like to suppose. It is a constant source of aggravation to me that fiction needs the suspension of disbelief in order to be successful, even when Real Life is so zany and wacked-out nobody would believe it if you wrote it down. Another artistic dilemma.
Hmmm. On the other hand, that would make a good story…if one could keep from being paranoid and creeped-out while writing it. Given how often art informs life, I’d be wary of doing so.
Tomorrow, the world. No, seriously–Angela at Nice Mommy, Evil Editor had a simple-looking recipe for jambalaya and I will be altering it just slightly–no green pepper, since the kids abhor it, and no shrimp (since I have grow to abhor crustacean cockroach of all forms); but some nice apple-chicken sausage and some Australian lamb roast I got at Trader Joe’s.
I know, I feel horrible eating lamb. (But Liiiiiisa, you said you looooooooved me!) But I had a moment of weakness in the frozen section. I generally eat vegetarian–with the notable exception of Guiseppes from La Bottega.
I’m halfway through revisions and in the long dim slog of a book that Needs Work. Which means one pass through for suggested revisions and big changes, then another pass through for fine-tuning. Guh. Thank goodness everything I have planned to make this week is simple.
In other news, I have become fascinated with spam. No, not to eat. In specific, I’ve become fascinated with the spam that purports to be from an “Internet millionaire” who is offering “this one chance” to “make it big!” It’s just a pyramid scheme like any other, but I can’t help chortling over the breathless prose and typos. I have a little teaser of an idea having to do with spam, you see. Hm.
I’ve also become fascinated with this online flash game. I have to set a timer, or I could lose hours messing with it. For some reason it appeals to me mightily. (Damn the Teen for showing it to me.)
All right. Time to do a little work and then put the jambalaya together. Further bulletins as events warrant.
I am attempting split-pea soup. (Wikihow has a good recipe, very simple, with PICTURES. Us cooking-challenged need pretty pitchers.) There’s a bunch of ham in it, and the onion will be caramelized and added later (because I like the taste browned onions give to a soup.) Plus a quartered potato to take some of the salt out.
The Selkie made caramels again this weekend and gave me some. I have the best writing friends ever.
I have been thinking about cooking lately. The Selkie assures me I can cook, since I can read and am reasonably capable of following a recipe. I was told I was a worthless cook so often growing up that I think I believe it. It’s hard going, trying to figure out how to do a week’s menu and get everything thrown together at the proper time. Part of the problem is the stress–I feel as if I’m being graded on a particularly fierce exam, and failure to perform well WILL mean pain.
This is akin to how I feel about a lot of stuff, not just cooking. The echoes of childhood taunting echo for a long time. It is hard to challenge basic assumptions about oneself that were etched in with acid when one was tender and impressionable.
I’ve started reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I suppose I’m on a non-paranormal kick. I generally read non-paranormal fiction and a good deal of history, but I’ve been noticing lately just how much paranormal romance and urban fantasy there is nowadays. This is a good thing–I think it shows that our cultural vision of the world is changing, becoming a little more inclusive of difference.
Or so I like to think. The cynic in me disagrees sometimes, pointing out that most paranormal hero/ines are crippled by their “difference” and gifts, set against the world in a one-person war. However, that’s a step up from the absolute silence about all things even remotely woo-woo that used to reign in fiction, even fantasy and horror (Derleth and Lovecraft and King notwithstanding.) I think the field is undergoing a renaissance, and I’m curious to see how it will all turn out.
Anyway, White Teeth is very engaging. I read the first few chapters about six months ago, during a slow morning at the bookstore, and couldn’t forget it when I had to finally put it down so a customer could buy it. So, now I have a chance to buy it, and I’m enjoying it as much as I thought I would. In particular, Smith’s hilarious little asides and ear for dialogue are very good.
So. It’s revisions for a few more hours, then I think I’ll reward myself with a chapter or two. Rewards are good. The Muse likes rewards.
I’m exhausted. I just want to spend a few weeks in bed, doing nothing but sleeping. Of course, I’d probably get bored after ten hours or so and want to read something. I just finished Robert Goddard’s In Pale Battalions, which was amazing. I saw the major plot twist but was snookered by the identity of the murderer, which is a pleasant thing. I’m used to knowing who the villain actually is in the first ten minutes.
In any case, there’s going to be a long weekend full of work of one kind or another. If I get to bed early tonight I may even be bright-eyed tomorrow. Just don’t expect bushy-tailed. Heh.
So my forum was hacked recently. This morning was spent fixing that, applying security fixes, and purging spam members from the database. Fun fun fun until someone takes my keyboard away. I have kind of neglected the forum of late, being occupied with the Chihuahua of Real Life making advances to my metaphysical leg. Bad Lili. No biscuit.
On the other hand, the hack was amateur and the fix simple, so that’s good. That’s the kind of problem I can solve.
I’m slowly catching up with the mountain of work that slammed into the bay during the recent unpleasantness. I think I’ve done a month’s worth of work in the past week alone. Plus I’ve been stuffing my head with books. In addition to all the new stuff I’ve gone back to comfort-food reads–Stephen King’s Rose Madder and Nancy Price’s Sleeping With the Enemy. Both are about abused wives who leave their husbands, but there the similarities end. Of the two, I think Price’s is the better book; but Rose Madder hits a few nerves with me that are both uncomfortable and cathartic. I seem to remember King saying in On Writing that he wrote it while Under The Influence, and there are certainly some stylistic messes in there. Still, there are moments of cold shivers that I keep going back for.
Sleeping With The Enemy is as different as it’s possible to be. The structure is much tighter and the book is much, much shorter. There is no paranormal element. The motif I like best is the “books can save your life” running through the whole thing. As a testament to the curative power of literature, it’s pretty matchless in my opinion.
The biggest quibble I have with BOTH books is that the abused wife goes straight from the abuser to a New Love. Which is SO NOT WHAT ONE SHOULD DO. That’s a good way to get into a new abusive relationship. I wonder why such different books share this hiccup. The treatment of domestic violence in a lot of fiction hinges on highlighting the New Love as gentle and sincere, a change from the Old Bad Love; maybe because the idea of a woman who doesn’t want anything to do with men after being beaten to a pulp by one might not move a story along in the traditional way. Or is it because a woman, in our culture, is still largely viewed as an adjunct to maleness and therefore must go from one relationship to another in order to be “defined” enough for the story’s purposes?
Why is this theme so prevalent in fiction about domestic violence? It’s damn near a trope; I seem to remember it in every movie that touches on the subject as well as most novels I’ve read dealing with it.
I am undecided whether this is a narrative crutch/copout or whether there’s a deeper gender bias issue here. I’m interested to hear your thoughts, dear Reader.
Posted on February 20th, 2008 | Posted in Real Life
Yes, this is my morning. Pretty much.
And the UnSullen Teen wants another one. To which I say, firmly, NO. And no again.
The kids get so used to me being flexible, it’s quite a shock when I say “no” outright.
And hard on the heels of the cat beating me out of bed with a baseball bat is the news that our harasser (I say “our” because this person’s actions are affecting our whole family with the stress and bother) has escalated again. *sigh* Fortunately we’re well equipped to deal with this, but still–how much longer is this going to go on? *sigh*
Anyway, I should be able to knock off more of the copyedits today. Work is a sure panacea.
Be safe out there, dear Readers. And keep your eyes on those tricksy little beasties.
First, NEWS! You can now preorder both the first Jill Kismet novel, Night Shift, and an anthology with a Selene and Nikolai story, Hotter Than Hell, at Amazon. Also in Hotter Than Hell are stories by Kim Harrison and lots of other cool peeps. (I don’t have the list handy, but trust me. It’s, as the Teen would say, badass.) The books won’t be out until July and June, respectively, but just having them up for preorder is marvy.
Next, random sorts of pieces of things. Bad seventies rock is going through my head. In a little bit I’ll put on some vintage Rolling Stones to get it out. Fortunately, Jill likes Rolling Stones. A LOT. It goes with her fondness for muscle cars. I’m not even sure how old she is, because she seems fluent with a lot of things before my time–but then again, so do I. (She likes Amy Winehouse and Keely Smith too. Go figure.)
If you haven’t guessed, I finished a pile of proof pages and am about to start on copyedits. Then it’s revisions for a completely different series, and more revisions for the third Kismet book. (Which shouldn’t be too rough, and should set me up to get into the fourth Kismet book–the closed-door-mystery circus book. Which I have to read Spangle for, apparently.)
It’s good to be working again. The recent unpleasantness did drain me of most of my usable emotional energy, and I was having even more trouble sleeping than usual. But gulping down massive quantities of art has helped, and taking a few days’ worth of vacation helped too. Can’t run an engine without fuel, after all.
In any case, it’s time for a shower and then diving into copyedits. I have a brief burst of productivity this week before a bit more unpleasantness next week. I plan to spend the weekend working round the clock too. I feel surprisingly good and energetic. It could be the sunlight for the past few days–we don’t often get such brightness in February.
The trouble with staggering personal revelations is that once they’re finished, you have to engineer a whole new set of habits to harness the insight you’ve gained. Otherwise, you might as well just sink down into the slough of old habits, and the entire thing is wasted. It takes about ninety days to get a new habit worn into the groove of the old ones, and it’s a slow process. The trouble with self-help books is that they give you the “jolt” of a revelation but don’t force you to make new habits. So you feel like you’ve done a lot of work, but in fact you’ve only used the ersatz emotional hit of the book to avoid further work. *sigh* Of course, self-help books are like lose-weight books; if they really worked a whole multi-billion dollar industry would sink without so much as a bubble and we can’t have that, can we?
Jeez. And I thought I was an optimist. Happy Tuesday, all. Hope yours is sunny and bright too.
I also went and saw No Country For Old Men at Cinetopia, pretty much the only place near me it’s playing. I’d already read the book, so I was pretty prepared. But I have to say, the Coen brothers plus Tommy Lee Jones plus Josh Brolin equals win.
I have this very, very embarrassing fondness for Josh Brolin. Not in Goonies, mind you, but in Young Riders. I loved me some Young Riders back in the day. I hated the fact that the female Rider had to fall in love and be completely emasculated (it’s the only word that fits, but I hate some of the overtones.) Why, I wondered, couldn’t they make her strong in her own right, and make the man an accessory to her, instead of pigeonholing a character who could have been genderbending?
*sigh* But I loves me some Josh Brolin. Yes I do.
I also bought Supergirl for the kids. The Little Prince is in love. He woke me up this morning by poking my nose and whispering, “I just want to watch Supergirl?” With big eyes and all. Little flirt. I doubt he understands it’s Faye Dunaway we really watch for, and Peter O’Toole. I’m kind of sorry the movie didn’t do well at the box office, because as much as I love me some Christopher Reeve or George Reeves, I liked Helen Slater’s confused teenage supergirl. Easy on the eyes, that muffin was.
My Muse demanded a great deal of food this weekend, which is all to the good. A period of consuming right before a huge artistic push is the norm for me, and it shows I’m gathering steam. The complete spending of emotional energy drains the well creative endeavor is drawn from; it’s kind of a creative law of thermodynamics.
I also came to a huge realization. But more about that later. Suffice to say it wa a good weekend, I feel rested and renewed, and ready to…oh, damn.
Proof pages. Copyedits. Revisions. I’ve got a lot of work to do and not much time to do it in.
