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La Kev

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Okay, I know that I promised the whole exercise clothes to writing clothes to work clothes expose today, but it occurred to me that I need pics of each stage. So I’ll do it tomorrow.

That seems suitably frivolous for a Friday anyway.

Instead, today I think I’ll do a little ode. An essay of mine once appeared in a literary magazine dedicated to odes, which I always thought was kind of a cool idea. While the first definition of ode is “a poem written to be sung,” the modern use has it as a “lyric, rhymed or unrhymed, addressed to some person or thing and characterized by lofty feeling and elaborate form.”

Since this is about my friend, Kev, maybe that’s not what I mean at all.

Hee hee hee.

Today is Kev’s birthday and it’s made me reflective. We’ve know each other now since I was 15 and dropped as a bewildered sophomore into trigonometry class with a bunch of juniors. Kev helped me with problem sets and charmed me with his charisma and humor. I fell in love with his soaring tenor in our high school stage productions as much as his sweet brown eyes.

Oh yeah, I pined after him.

He flirted with me. Okay, he flirted with pretty much ALL the girls. But the other ones he dated. I crushed on him until spring of my junior year, when I finally broke down and left a love letter on the windshield of his car – a Baha VW Bug he’d dubbed the Baha Humbug – inviting him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.

What can I say? I’m a traditionalist.

Maybe I had a way with words even then, because he bit and we started a love affair that lasted two years. It was consuming and wonderful and perfect and everything first love should be. Between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I broke up with him. I still remember the pain of that, how I’d asked him to love me, then asked him to stop.

The thing is, we still love each other. That’s the best part.

I don’t regret my choice, because we’ve both found really wonderful life partners and our lives have moved in very different directions. And yet, after all this time, we’re still friends. We talk on Yahoo IM and know each other’s old jokes. We trade music and he keeps me up to date on the musical theater scene. There’s a deep-running affection between us. Sometimes I think his is more for the girl I was, but he also keeps a library shelf of everything I’ve ever published. He was among the first to encourage me to write, which was a gift beyond compare.

So, Happy Birthday Kevin! It will be interesting to see what the next 30 years brings.

P.S. If I forget who you are, will you remind me?

Morning Commute

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I drove my boss in for work this morning.

She lives in New Hampshire, so we don’t normally see each other all that often. She was in town to work on a project that I can’t work on, due to conflict of interest. So, she stayed with us and we got to socialize, but we didn’t work together.

This morning, I drove her into downtown Santa Fe. We stopped at Starbucks on the Plaza, which is one of my very favorite Starbucks anywhere and she treated me to my first Gingerbread Spice latte of the season. I dropped her off at the offices, said goodbye and came home to my desk overlooking the valley, while all the other cars streamed into town.

It’s funny to break up my ritual that way. Normally my working day starts with me changing out of gym clothes into writing clothes, then into work clothes. Some days, I don’t really leave the house, except to go to the gym or to take a walk. My daily rhythm becomes largely my own. I’m aware of the East Coast time zones, as my colleagues there shut down for the day, or the Pacific Time folks, who generally start and finish later. Otherwise, I have no commute, no one glancing at the clock when I sit down at my desk.

It’s a lovely lifestyle. Don’t mistake me – I appreciate it no end.

There’s a certain comaraderie, though, to the beginning of the day. I like seeing the woman at the traffic light fluffing her hair in the rear-view mirror while the yellow school bus passes in front of us, small bodies bouncing inside. I like seeing the line-up at Starbucks, of the people in suits with briefcases, the stylish shopgirls in their black outfits getting ready to open the galleries, the scruffy types who wander in to stay a bit and maybe bum a cup of coffee.

Then again, I know it’s fun for me because I don’t do it every day. I don’t have the accumulated aggravations of traffic, the people paying more attention to primping than driving, the hassle of loading a small body onto the school bus in the first place, the sinking heart at the sight of the long Starbucks line while the hands of the clock march to the time I’m supposed to sit at my desk.

Instead, my job is to sit at my desk overlooking the valley and write about it.

Today is Tuesday! You Know What That Means?!?

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Today is Release Day for Marcella Burnard’s Enemy Within!!

Let the dancing, rejoicing and the running out to bookstores (or your favorite online ordering venue) begin!

I believe Marcella is planning to run a contest today for people to post their pics with a copy of the book, which should be on her blog. It wasn’t when I wrote this, but it’s only 6:30 at her house, so we’ll cut her a little slack. Maybe the interwebs aren’t awake yet. But my understanding is that if you post a pic of yourself with the book, you’ll receive your heart’s desire.

Or pretty damn close, anyway.

Regardless, here’s my copy just arrived on the Kindle, with a little Dia de los Muertos action. See? Even the dead love Marcella’s book!

This book is so awesome, in fact, that it’s already one of the five nominees for RT’s Best SciFi Romance of 2010! I kid you not. They already gave her a top pick review.

The only complaints I’ve seen about the book from reviewers is that there’s TOO much science for some of the readers who prefer a lighter story. Which says to me, all the better for us sci fi/fantasy lovers!

Go embroil yourselves in someone else’s politics, in a civil-war in totally different star systems. I’m pretty sure Health Care never comes up and I know that blowing things up is a perfectly reasonable solution to most problems.

Have at it!

Mini-Break

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Quote of the Day from Crazy Lady at the Gym (spoken to David while I’m using a weight machine with my blissful earbuds in): “She’s wearing two of my favorite colors: red and turquoise.”

So, this is the view from our hotel room this weekend, at the Hyatt Tamaya Resort at Santa Ana Pueblo. We went down for the Barenaked Ladies concert hosted by the Santa Ana Star Casino. We decided to make a mini-break of it and stay over Saturday night. That way we could have some drinks and not have to drive home.

We had the best time.

David and I drove down midday Saturday. We passed the Santa Ana Star Casino which, quite disconcertingly, has large signs on it that say “this is YOUR casino.” Past the bright lights and big signs of the casino, the road wended deep into the countryside, to the Tamaya resort. Beautiful, gorgeous, you so should have been there.

We ate lunch on the patio, enjoying the gorgeous blues skies and golden afternoon. I took that pic with my camera phone, so it’s all wrong. But I thought it was worth posting, just for the blue. While we ate, a guy came in with a tote bag from the BnL Stunt tour and sat down to eat lunch. We speculated whether he was a fan or with the band. Then the waiter asked the guy at the table behind us how everything was and he declared that everything was beautiful! I laughed at his broad-voice enthusiasm, then realized he was Tyler Stewart, the band’s drummer.

Yes, we *are* that cool.

After a fab lunch, which included drinks and brushes with celebrity, we went to hang at the pool. Isn’t this photo somewhat reminiscent of Darynda Jones’ cover for her upcoming debut? Totally not on purpose.

The hotel shuttled us over to the casino for the concert. This was the third time I’ve been to a BnL concert and the smallest venue by far. I loved being in a smaller room. The casino also provided a bar for the concert-goers, with beer, wine and margaritas. We queued up to get our drinks (note the Canadian vibe permeating the experience) and I noticed the guy in the scruffy black sweatshirt talking to some people nearby was Ed Robertson.

While we waited for the concert to start, I saw this couple, reading to kill the time. These are classic BnL fans: the geeks of the world. I mean that with all the greatest affection. They’re probably my readers.

So the question I know you’re all asking: are they as good without Steven Page? (He left in February 2009.)

Yes and no. The interplay between Steven Page and Ed Robertson is legendary. The two enjoyed the amazing synchronicity like the kind that made Steven Tyler and Joe Perry so great together and so much weaker apart. Yeah, that’s missing. Page brought a major presence to the stage. He and Robertson wrote many songs in a style that allowed them to bounce back and forth off of each other.

I missed that.

However, an interesting thing is happening. Because the songs require it, the other three members of the bands are stepping up more to provide that interaction for Ed Robertson. The show came out quieter in some ways, deeper and richer in others. Old songs received a new spin. The humor still comes through. In the mandatory rendition of “If I Had $1,000,000,” Robertson asked if we’d come to the treehouse and bring OUR casino. Because after all, if it’s OUR casino and the House always wins….

The also talked about flying into Albuquerque on Southwest Airlines and riffed about seat-lottery strategy.

This was not the arena-event of their Stunt era. The one where I couldn’t hear anything because of the teenage girls screaming in my ears. This was a group of tremendously good musicians sharing their art. Are they wounded? Oh yes. And it comes through. For an encore, Robertson took the drums and Tyler Stewart sang a vicious, prancing parody of “Alcohol.” Though Page left the band amicably, I wonder about his 2008 cocaine arrest. The remaining four guys sing songs that remind of dysfunctional relationships and what it’s like to live with an addict.

Like all good artists, they’re using that pain and turning it into something extraordinary.

Waffles for Breakfast

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Quote of the Day from Crazy Lady at the Gym: “This frosty weather is messing with our gardens – it’s not natural.”

I had no words. Which is saying a lot for me.

My spooky Halloween decorations look cool at sunset though, don’t they?

Clearly I’m feeling quite rambly today. I’m looking at my list of potential blog topics and none look interesting. My writerliness might be getting sucked into this new story I’m working on. It’s called (right now) “Sapphire” and it’s an erotic contemporary romance. An editor requested to see it, so I’m getting it all finished up. It’s interesting how, because it’s contemporary, I seem to be getting more into the thoughts and emotions. My modern career-gal, Taylor, has far more neuroses and hang-ups than virginal Amarantha did. Of course, they both get ravished just the same. Some things transcend era.

The big question is what to write next. I’m trying this schedule of spending three months drafting a long work, setting it aside for a month to “cook,” writing something short, then spending a month revising, then another short. October sees the end of this “writing a short” month. (Okay, I’m running about a week behind -have been since July. You can dock my pay.)

What this means is: time to work on the next big project. And I’m not sure what that will be. Oh yes, I have a list. I have several manuscripts in various phases from a jotted-down idea to one that’s 36K complete. Allison asked me which is tugging at me and I confessed it’s still The Body Gift. I haven’t quite cut that umbilical cord.

Of course, if I get an offer on it, I’ll almost certainly be diving back in with revisions. That’s pretty much inevitable. I know that, so that might be feeding in.

At any rate, I’m contemplating going back to a nonfiction project. Part of me thinks that, since I don’t have any other strong tuggings, I should pick the project that’s most marketable. Then I think, who am I kidding? If I was good at picking marketable projects, I’d be Nora Roberts. KAK has a vote in for me to finish the 36K one, which I might. It’s also probably the most unsellable project under the sun, so I’m waffling…

See? I warned you I’m in a rambly mood today. Say, I don’t solicit comments often, but let’s play Vote on the Next Manuscript!

Here’s the list: (I’m keeping each description brief, so as not to unduly bias my judges.) (And, no Marcella, none of these are good loglines, I know.)

The Daughters (36K done) – Fantasy, lots of sex magic, about girls being manipulated by a cult

Writers Group story – Nonfiction, 12 intertwined stories about women in my first writers group and how they ended up

St. Johns love story – contemporary romance, a woman travels to St.Johns because she falls in love with a singer’s voice

Wendy story – literary fiction. 30 yo woman living in small-town Wyoming with parents

Sorority book – Nonfiction, intertwined essays (yeah, it’s my thing right now) about women from my sorority, then and and the ensuing years, what sorority life was like

Papa book – narrative nonfiction, from the divorce scandal that banished my grandparents from theater mecca to the ashes of alcoholism

Post-apocalyptic vampire story – could be expanded?

Okay! What do you all think? Feel free to say you hate something, too. All suggestions welcome!

Ho-Hum to OMG

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This is an old picture, taken while I was doing some field work on Pinto Creek near Globe, Arizona.

Random choice, I know.

That’s kind of how life is, though; how people are. Some days a certain or image is in our minds and the next, something else. For a while I’ll be madly in love with a certain band and later I’ll think of them fondly, with a certain nostalgic affection. Celebrities are hot one moment and yesterday’s kitty litter the next. People spend time and money trying to track and, better, create these phenomena. They can’t. Our attention is riveted, then lost.

Yesterday I read a published author’s blog post about a conversation with her agent. They’d been discussing what she’d write next. They went over a number of ideas and the agent said, which one are you most excited about – except this one. Of course the idea the agent eliminated from discussion is the one the author was most excited about. But the market has been tepid for her books. She’s had a bad run and the publishing houses aren’t picking her up like they used to. She and her agent are trying to reposition her and it’s clear she’s feeling down about it. Like everyone, she frequently refers to the “changing publishing industry.” Things are just difficult right now, she says.

I also have a couple of friends who are querying their manuscripts and getting not much response. They’re not getting requests for even partials. These are good writers with good books. But people in the industry, in the top tiers, aren’t looking for that right now. They’re looking for hot and hip. They want the next phenomenon.

Earlier this month, I mentioned Oprah’s interview with JK Rowling. You can watch it on You Tube and it’s worth the time. The best moment, I thought, was when Oprah asked JK if she had ever imagined Harry Potter would become such a phenomenon. She said no and turned the question around. It was fascinating to hear these two vastly successful women, both of whom had once been in the poorest of circumstances, discuss the amazing serendipity of their successes. Especially now that both are at the end of their particular comet-rides. Oprah is ending her talk show and Rowling has ended the Harry Potter series.

Oprah asked Rowling if she’d try to do something like it again and Rowling instantly said no. She said, in fact, that people regularly warn her that she’ll never do anything that huge again. She’s promised herself that she’s not spending the rest of her life chasing the phenomenon, trying to top what she did with Harry Potter. Oprah said she finds herself thinking about how to do it with her new network, how to make it be the sensation like her show has been. She stops herself, too.

They both referenced a moment in an interview with one of Michael Jackson’s people. How no one had expected Thriller to become such a worldwide phenomenon. And how Michael Jackson then spent the rest of his career and his life chasing it, trying to make it happen again.

He is now, of course, the great cautionary tale for all creative types.

Ambition is a necessary thing. It’s what keeps us going in the face of adversity. In the face of people who just aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about your work. But it’s the love of the work itself that’s truly meaningful. Neil Gaiman (my hero, you know) was featured in an episode of a children’s show, Arthur. It’s only something like 12 minutes long. I thought I’d only watch a minute or two, since my boy did the voice. Then I got so drawn in and, yes, even a little emotional, I watched the whole thing.

It’s about writing a story – a graphic novel, actually – and sticking to what you want to write, rather than what people like. (I admit I did grumpily mutter, when Neil tells the little girl that he wants a copy of her book when she gets it published, something along the lines of “easy for you to say, you’re Neil Fucking Gaiman.” But it was just a little spat – he still has my heart. He can be my inner Neil anytime.)

At any rate, I think those “lessons for children” are good lessons for all of us. You never know what people will like. And what made them say ho-hum yesterday might be OMG tomorrow.

I do know this: we need to love it first.

Four Reasons I Don’t Do NaNoWriMo

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The moon behind the clouds last night. I nearly photoshopped out all the little points of light. I suspect they’re artifact – bits of reflected light – but I thought we could pretend they’re stars. On a cloudy night. See? We can have it all.

I am a fiction-writer, after all.

The writer Harley May sometimes roasts author photos, for her own twisted amusement, mostly. She roasted mine today. If you care for a good laugh, check it out.

I seem to be cutting a wide swath this week. Linda Grimes’ blog post today is a result of me Double-Dog Daring her. And Marcella Burnard’s blog post yesterday talked about a conversation we had about setting aside writing time. Must be my karma lately.

Either that or I spend way too much time yakking to people online. No, no – that can’t be it.

Apropos of that, a number of people have asked me if I’m doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month). I’ve blogged about this before, but I won’t point you to those posts because I’ve been kind of cranky on the topic in the past. Because, no, I don’t like NaNoWriMo.

A lot of people do. They love the feeling of community, the outside deadline to draft 50,000 words in one month. Several people got their first serious start at regularly scheduled writing through the project, so they have great associations.

I think I’ve mentioned plenty of times here why it doesn’t work for me, but enough people have asked that I thought it’s worth mentioning again. I’m not one of those organized bullet-point bloggers, but today I do have a list of my Four Reasons I Don’t Do NaNoWriMo.

1. It’s not about developing a regular writing schedule

NaNoWriMo is about a one-month blast of a hell of a lot of writing. With some exceptions, most writers, even those who get to write full time, don’t write that much in one month. People who commit to NaNoWriMo are making a pledge to do whatever it takes to meet the goal. That can be useful, but it’s important to me to fence off that regular writing time, write every day and make steady progress. If I stick to 1K/day, I can write 365,000 words in one year. I’m not meeting that goal yet, but it’s what I’m shooting for.

2. Too much pressure

Because I don’t yet get to write full-time, I’ve found that 1K/day is about all I can handle and still be worth my salary. I can do more than that for short periods of time – I can write 5-7K in one day, when under pressure – but it drains me. I don’t know that I could keep that up even if I didn’t work full-time. Writing 50K words in November means 1667 words/day for thirty days in a row. That kind of pressure makes me crazy and, believe me, you don’t need me more crazy.

3. It doesn’t match my own method

To write that many words in that short a time means fast-drafting. That’s writing as fast as you can with no editing, no careful crafting. The idea is that writing fast removes barriers and frees you to simply write. There are many jokes that December and January are novel-finishing and editing months. That kind of drafting can be really great if you like to write that way, or don’t know yet how you like to write. I’m not much into fast drafting. I write reasonably quickly when I’m drafting, but I do go back and edit and reshape as I go. I produce pretty clean copy when I’m done. This is the method I’ve developed over about 25 years. It works well for me. Sometimes if I’m blocked, I’ll try the vomit/fast draft approach to get through the wall. Otherwise, I’m happy with how I work. I believe it’s important to find what works for you and, like nailing down a regular writing schedule, stick with it.

4. I’m a holiday girl

Okay, I get in trouble for saying this, but I’m endlessly amused that a guy started NaNoWriMo and picked November partly because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m sorry guys, but I think Thanksgiving ends up being four empty days for a lot of you and a whole bunch of work for a lot of gals. I know it doesn’t apply to everyone, but how many households have you been in when the men are watching football and napping on Thanksgiving and the women are cooking? I love Thanksgiving. I love cooking for it. But I spend a LOT of time preparing for it. And when I’m not doing the labor of love, I’m spending time with family. The day after Thanksgiving I get to spend shopping and having lunch with my mom and my stepsister, Hope. It’s a very fun day for me that I look forward to, but it’s not a day for catching up on word count. All of that is fine, because I have my regular schedule and I take holiday from it, just as I do from my day job.

So, that’s my NaNoWriMo Manifesto. (heh) But all of you digging in to do it, best of luck and full steam ahead. I’ll provide the pumpkin pie.

The Hardest Part

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This Cooper’s Hawk landed on our bird feeder yesterday morning. One moment the finches, wrens, jericoes and quail were flocking about, happily pecking at seeds, the next they’d poofed and this guy appeared, as if manifesting full-blown from Zeus’s forehead.

Oh yeah, they eat mainly birds. Prowling the feeders seems a titch unfair, though I suppose we’re technically still feeding birds…

We’ve been working the last few days on setting up a new group blog, the Word-Whores. It’s Allison‘s baby and there will be seven of us altogether, which lets each of us blog on one day a week. This is a group of gals who are all some of my favorite people. We plan to launch on January 1, 2011. 1/1/11 – nice symmetry to that.

At any rate, we’ll all blog on a similar theme each week, so we wanted to come up with a year’s worth of topics. We each submitted at least eight ideas and then voted on the whole list. The top 52 became our year’s worth of topics.

It was really fun for me to see the results. (Hey – I like spreadsheets, okay?) Every suggested topic received at least one vote. Six topics received unanimous votes.

The one topic I really didn’t like got six votes, too. I was clearly the only person who didn’t like it. Marcella – whose sci fi comes out ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! – said that the one topic she didn’t like made the list, too. So then we spent some time talking about those topics and how we’d address them when it came time. By the end of the conversation, I had a good idea of what I’d write for mine. And I realized I spent more time thinking about the one topic I didn’t like, than all the rest put together.

There’s a lesson here somewhere. The same kind of lesson as joining a book group because you’ll read books you wouldn’t otherwise. Working with a group of people means you entertain ideas you normally wouldn’t. It forces you to turn your perspective and see the world from a slightly different angle.

And you know I always like that kind of thing.

Aerro Nicole

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Aerro Nicole De La Fuente, daughter of my stepdaughter, Lauren, was born yesterday.

She’s actually my second grandchild, as her brother, Tobiah, turned two this summer. Their dad, Damion, has gorgeous eyes, too, so I expect both kids will be heartbreakers.

It’s funny how many people don’t know I have stepchildren. I look young for my age anyway, due to good genes, a long-term skin care program and a happy life. But I also acquired my stepchildren young. I was twenty-four when I met David twenty years ago. At that time Lauren was six and her brother, Mike, was eight.

So they could have been mine biologically, too, if I’d gotten started early. One of Lauren’s best friends had a baby at sixteen, so she’ll be on my same track.

It seemed David and I were always out of step with the other parents. Most of them were older than we were – or maybe they just seemed older. I was still in grad school. David had gone to college late and was in the early years of a new career. Neither of us had any money. We lived in a tiny apartment, with a grocery budget of $50/week, and Mike and Lauren stayed with us every other weekend, all summer and visited once a week for dinner. Our friends always forgot we needed to either bring Mike and Lauren along or find a sitter when they threw impromptu parties on kid-weekends. None of our friends had children. And the parents of the kids’ friends seemed so much more fixed in life than we were.

By the time Mike and Lauren were older, that was when our friends started having kids. Many of my cohort, my high-school and college friends now have children who are around ten years old. Lauren had her first baby at twenty-four. The same age I became a stepmother, I pointed out to her. She seemed young for it, but then, so was I.

Am I young to be a grandmother? I suppose so. But I’m hearing people say 60 is the new 40, which means that 40 must be the new 20. By that measure, I acquired stepchildren when I was in grade school.

Age is a rapidly changing concept these days. People may not be living a lot longer, but they’re certainly more youthful for it. Here we are, twenty years later and David is back in school, training for a second career – or perhaps third, depending on how you look at it. Mike is back in David’s home town, doing the things David did in his twenties, before he went to college. Lauren has a son who is two years older than her new daughter, who was born the same weight as Lauren was.

It all cycles around. David and I are looking forward to spending time with Tobiah and Aerro (named for the snowboarder in last winter’s Olympics, if you were wondering. And Nicole is Lauren’s middle name) as they grow up. We have more room and more money now.

And we’re still young. Doesn’t get any better than that.

Welcome to the world, Aerro. We love you.

Hunters Moon

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Our weather has finally turned. Gone are the hot, dry baking days.

The last week has been cool. All night long the rain pounds on our flat roof, a soothing sound that makes me want to tuck deeper into the warm covers.

I thought I might not catch the rising Hunters Moon, but then it crested the cloud banks over Tonto National Forest, in all its radiant glory.

We lead fortunate lives, that we don’t worry about hunting for the winter. We may fret about paying the credit card bill or defaulting on the mortgage, but we aren’t watching the descending long nights with trepidation, wondering if we’ve put enough food by to last all the way though deep winter and spring blizzards. We don’t look at our children and wonder which won’t be around for the next summer.

Perhaps worry is worry and the subject doesn’t matter.

It’s human nature, I suppose, to take the blessings for granted and focus on what we don’t have. We angst about what people might think of us, whether we can win the lottery and get that million dollars, if that agent will request a full manuscript. It’s not that these concerns aren’t important. If they weren’t meaningful to us, they wouldn’t occupy our attention.

But we’re not counting on the full moon to give us a little more light to hunt by either. Instead, it’s just a beautiful orb, illuminating the night.