Category: Blog

A Day in the Life of a New Novel

admin / / Blog


The UPS man brought me a special present the other day, courtesy of the fabulously sweet Danielle Poiesz at Pocket Books:

An Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of Allison Pang‘s A Brush of Darkness!!

Yes, there was much rejoicing. And tweeting of my good fortune.

For those who don’t know, an ARC is an early version of a book, the publisher makes it up to send out to reviewers and so forth. It looks very close to the final product, but has yet to go through a couple more QA passes. ARCs are like teenagers, stepping out into the world, trying things out.

It’s a very exciting time.

So, I thought you might like to see what a day in the life of a new novel is like.

A nice start to the day, with toast and coffee.

Some time enjoying the fall flowers in the garden.

A cruise in the convertible is always fun on a gorgeous day.

After all that excitement, an afternoon nap. Isabel makes fine company.

Refreshed for a night on the town, happy hour with a lovely chardonnay and some taquitos. (Our novel is over 21 now – it’s okay.)

Taking in the historic sights of Santa Fe.

And dinner at the Cowgirl.

Finally, a bit of sexy time and sleep.

Goodnight, sweet novel – tomorrow will be another exciting day!

(Thanks to David, my mom and Dave for assisting in Brush of Darkness’s night on the town!)

The Book of My Right Now

admin / / Blog

Sometimes our dramatic landscape shows itself in subtler shades. Sunday evening’s storm reduced the mountains to grayscale, with all of the interesting outlines that brings. This is a piece of the ridged horizon I usually show you, my blog-gobblers, just with different perspective.

(I’m also getting better at my telephoto lens.)

When I was a kid, my mom loved to come down to Santa Fe, Phoenix and Tucson for warm-weather breaks. They were within easy striking distance of Denver and she has always loved the desert. Even then I was struck by the way the light down here makes the mountains look two-dimensional. I wrote terrible poetry in my adolescence, as adolescents are wont to do, and I seem to recall that one line went “the mountains are a cardboard cut-out, propped against the western sky.” Good set-design makes you believe a flat is three-dimensional, but the real world doesn’t always have depth.

I find it interesting to think about, but maybe that’s just me.

Kelly Breaky likes to tease me about my interest in perspective, and I suppose she’s right that it’s one of my core “issues.” I often say I’m a grey-area kind of gal. Very rarely am I willing to commit to the absolute yes or no on a scale.

For this reason, I have trouble with writers who talk about their “Dream Agent” or the “Book of Their Heart.” Actually, I never heard the term “the Book of My Heart” until I started hanging with more of the romance community. Granted, we’re more about expressions of love and passion than some other genres, but it’s still an odd idea to me, that there’s one book we’ve written that we treasure above all others. I loved Obsidian, but now I think The Body Gift is a better book. I tend to be passionately in love with whichever book I’m currently writing, in fact.

The Dream Agent hits me the same way. I don’t believe there is such a person for me. I can think of quite a few agents that I think do great work, any of whom I’d be delighted to have represent me. But then, I don’t believe in a One True Love, either. I think each of us probably could have wonderful lifelong relationships with any number of people. Each person and relationship is different and brings something new. Sure, we can’t fall in love and treasure just any person off the street. But the pool is bigger than just one.

The romantic in us loves the idea of the Dream Agent, the Book of Our Hearts, the Happily Ever After. But the practical person in us, who lives in a three-dimensional world, knows that everything runs deeper than that. What is right now, may not be right later.

All we can do is make the best possible choices, given the information we have right now.

The best part about life and the way it always changes? Nothing is truly permanent. If other paths are meant to be, they’ll show up, too.

Just wait for the light to change and show you something different.

Free Will and Bonfires

admin / / Blog

I waited until today to do my own tribute to Banned Books Week.

Seemed right to me, to let everyone have their say and make their plugs. Not that I don’t care, but maybe because I care so much.

I’m a believer in reading. In asking questions. I believe there’s nothing you can read or encounter that will taint or stain anyone beyond repair. We are elastic beings. More, we deserve the opportunity to decide for ourselves what ideas to keep and which to reject.

That’s the foundation of Free Will.

I remember finding out that there were periods in human history when people were to read only the Bible and nothing else. To keep their thoughts pure. As if people aren’t capable of culling the garbage for themselves. One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

You don’t get to decide for me.

So, in honor of Banned Books Week, I’ll take on the red-headed stepchild on the list of the Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2009: Twilight.

Yeah, I know. Twilight?? The megaseller everyone seems to love to hate? But yes. The series is Number Five on the list for: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group.

I first learned about Twilight when my friend RoseMarie London sent me a note from an editor-friend in New York City. The friend said she’d spent the weekend under the spell of this new book and how could she be so in love with a completely chaste hero? Knowing I was interested in such things, RM sent me the email and said maybe I should read it.

I did. And fell in love, too.

It’s easy to hurl stones at the massively successful. To find the cracks and pick fun at the giants. But I can vouch that, before it was THE THING, Twilight seduced me. Creating sexual tension where there is no actual sex is no mean feat. And if anyone thinks that being a teenager isn’t just like that, well then… no one can help you.

More, I know a teenage brother and sister. The older sister is a bookworm, the younger brother a budding jock and social butterfly. They both stayed in all weekend to read the newest installment on the Twilight series. Only the boy asked his mother to lie to his friends that called and say he was doing chores.

He didn’t want them to know what he was really doing.

Any book, or series of books, so compelling as to make a social teenager duck the peer pressure of his friends is a book that prevents more robots.

Fight the good fight. Buy a banned or challenged book.

Our children will thank you for what you gave them, not what you kept them from.

Money and Respect

admin / / Blog


I took this during our photography class break last night at Santa Fe Community College. I love living here because everywhere you look, it’s lovely.

There’s been bruhaha the last couple of weeks over tussles between agents and writers. This is mainly turning up on blogs and the comments to them. This guy gives a good summary of recent events. I’ve never read his blog before and I don’t know him. I don’t really like his tone and attitude, but the links are all there. It’s also a good insight into how some writers are feeling about agents these days. What’s most notable is Michelle Wolfson’s response in the comments.

Michelle is an agent I chat with from time to time on Twitter. She’s amusing and provides intelligent insight to the business. Plus, she doesn’t really handle the kind of thing I write these days, so I can chat with her without feeling like I’m, well, kissing up.

At any rate, Michelle was annoyed about all this on Twitter yesterday and asked where this feeling is coming from, that all these writers think agents don’t respect them.

I told her I think it’s part of an overall trend.

Sure, we can look at social media, the intimacy of the publishing world and other familiarities that breed this closeness. Writers have to believe we’ve written the most fabulous book in the world, or we’d never finish writing it, much less withstand the grueling process of trying to get it published. Unfortunately, not everyone will agree with us on that conviction. When a decision is made based on whether it will make money, and the rejection is handed down, people feel hurt.

When people feel hurt, they lose all sense of humor and perspective. We all know this.

But that’s not my point.

I’m seeing this kind of thing all over. Something about the economic downturn has created an environment where people are wanting everyone to know just how hard their jobs are. One flight attendant I used to follow, both on her blog and on Twitter, finally turned me off because she kept posting about how little respect flight attendants receive, how difficult their jobs are and how much money they don’t make.

I can see, to a point, wanting people to have a realistic view of your profession, that it’s not riches and glamor, but after that point, it gets tiresome. We all struggle with difficulties in our jobs. That’s why they pay us to do them: because we wouldn’t put up with the grief otherwise. I don’t know many people who say that they get paid plenty enough. It’s human nature to dream about what you could do with more money.

It’s also human nature to complain when you don’t have everything you want.

I’m not sure what the ranting does for people, except maybe provide a vent. It reminds me of bitch sessions I’ve heard where people try to top each other with how badly their spouse behaves. People say they’re fighting for respect, but really what they want is validation and admiration. These writers complain that they don’t like agents who don’t show respect for writers. I think what they don’t like is agents who don’t think their book is the Next Big Thing.

It’s notable that the writers who are represented by agents don’t seem to they’re so awful. And no, I really don’t believe it’s because they’re cowed into silence.

So many people now looking at writers like Stephenie Meyer and thinking it should be them. Silly stories and easy money. We all want that job. More, a lot of people feel entitled to it.

The trouble is, none of us are really entitled to anything at all. And all the blog posts and tweets in the world won’t change that.

Smoke in the Valley

admin / / Blog



There was a controlled burn yesterday in the Santa Fe National Forest. We could see smoke billowing up to the east of us all day. They’re good here, though – they put up highway signs and send tweets telling us that’s the case. Over night, the smoke all settled down into the valley.

It smells like a campfire today. Only without the marshmallows.

I’ve been having different dreams the last couple of nights. Unusual images. Monday night I dreamed that David and I were driving over a bridge, the kind of high, arching white ones that span the waters between the mainland and barrier islands. David was driving. I looked down to see that there were whales teeming in the water below. Great blue whales, hundreds of them. They raised their heads out of the water, splashed their tails, rubbed noses, feeding and frolicking. David asked me if I wanted to pull over to take pictures and I said yes. As I was walking back to the car to change lenses (I know – look at me, even dreaming about changing lenses now!) I saw David talking to our daughter Lauren, her guy Damion and our grandson, Tobiah. I was surprised to see them there, to see there were tons of people there now, and Lauren said, oh yes, people were coming from all over to see the whales, such an extraordinary event.

Last night, the dream seemed more like my usual quest dream. I think we were running around saving kidnapped people. There were Russians involved and a maximum security prison. Your dreams are like this, too, right? Anyway, at the end of the dream, David reached into his bag and pulled out this enormous black frog. From this drawing you should conclude that, yes, my MS Paint skills suck, and that it looked like no real frog on earth. It was glossy and turgid, like one of those balloons you can get at the grocery store.

The frog looked unhappy, so I told David to put it in the sink and fill the basin with water. The frog lay submerged in the water, watching us with crystal blue eyes and smiling.

Yes. Frogs can smile. Especially the big, black ones.

At any rate, I’m taking this as things welling up from my subconscious. Amazing creatures, joyfulness and restoration, emerging from dark and hidden places.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Though I’m willing to entertain other interpretations?

Best Seller Within

admin / / Blog


The countdown has begun.

Marcella Burnard‘s first book Enemy Within comes out November 2! What’s more, she’s already has her first review.

RT Book Reviews gave Enemy Within 4.5 stars and called the book a top pick. Unfortunately they won’t let you look at the review itself unless you have a subscription.

But let me liberally quote from the text:

“…smoking-hot new talent Burnard.”

“Burnard does a stellar job with the action and pacing…”

“[the genre] just got a major infusion of talent!”

Pretty fab, yes?

Marcella is laboring under a deadline to finish revisions to the sequel, Enemy Games, so I get to be the bearer of this great news today. Since Marcella’s not available, I can provide some little-known trivia:

No, the plot is not the same as the Star Trek episode where Kirk gets split in the transporter. This was actually the first question I asked Marcella when she told me the title of her book. She frantically looked up the episode and reported back in relief that her novel was nothing like that. She’d had no idea the title had been used before. Apparently not everyone memorized all the titles of the episodes in the original Star Trek series.

Go figure.

Instead it’s about this:

After a stint in an alien prison torpedoes her military career, Captain Ari Idylle has to wonder why she even bothered to survive. Stripped of her command and banished to her father’s scientific expedition to finish a PhD she doesn’t want, Ari never planned to languish quietly behind a desk. But when pirates commandeer her father’s ship, Ari once again becomes a prisoner.

Pirate leader Cullin Seaghdh may not be who he pretends to be but as far as Cullin is concerned, the same goes for Ari. Her past imprisonment puts her dead center in Cullin’s sights and if she hasn’t been brainwashed and returned as a spy, then he’s convinced she must be part of a traitorous alliance endangering billions of lives. Cullin can’t afford the desire she fires within him and he’ll stop at nothing, including destroying her, to uncover the truth.

Finally, Marcella said I could confirm the rumors that she posed for the cover. I’ve actually seen that outfit, as she wears it on her sailboat from time to time. She keeps the blasters locked up, however, so the cats won’t get into them.

And yes, she really is that stacked.

Here’s the draft cover from her modeling session before they retouched it.

Congrats Marcella!

Lamy Llamas & Falling Stars

admin / / Blog

Yesterday we took a little drive down the road to explore and enjoy the pretty day. There’s a town nearby called Lamy we’d been meaning to see. Not a whole lot there, but this llama seemed quite proud of his domain.

Last Friday, I wrote a post about popularity and how I was a dorky child. My mom worries when I write posts like these, because she thinks it means she was a bad mother. For the record: she was and is a wonderful mother. From cross-comparing with other people, I suspect I drew one of the best mothers out there. It’s probably because she’s such a good mother that she worries about it.

At any rate, she asked me why I never talked to her about feeling like I was such a dork. I said that my great dorkiness seemed so self-evident that it wasn’t worth discussing. It would have been like saying “I have a nose.”

More – I think that the world of children tends to be a place adults can’t quite access.

Literary Agent Nathan Bransford wrote a blog post about dead or absent parents in children’s literature. As he notes, there are sometimes complaints that to have a child or young person’s parents be dead or absent is lazy writing. It allows the writer to skip huge chunks of family dynamics. Bransford argues that it exposes the young person to the world and forces them to be their own hero. He has an interesting point.

But I think it’s more than that.

Just as in the Peanuts cartoons, where the adult voices were a series of nonsensical wah-wah-wah burbles, the world of children excludes adults. Not deliberately, but because what matters to children and what matters to adults diverges wildly. No young person explains to their parents the complex and volatile politics of the playground, largely because it makes no sense in any other context. The small resonance of a lunch shared or stolen means nothing to people dealing with corporate takeovers.

Children’s literature simply creates the analogy by removing the parents. The echoing, insular world of children is replicated emotionally by having the adults be absent or even cruel. Then, when mentors appear, they take on even greater stature, for being the only figure in an empty landscape.

Our parents want to protect us from the cruelties of the world, which is their job. And, as parents, we want to believe we know our children and what they face. But the truth is, we all ultimately face our demons alone. For all the love, the advice and support, the mentoring, it still comes down to the face in the mirror.

Stories simply relate that truth.

Catch a Falling Star and Put It in Your Pocket

admin / / Blog

We sit up on a hill, with Galisteo Basin and the densest part of Santa Fe below us. The dramatic reverse of heavy rain after weeks of baking sun, leads to fog the following morning. It flowed in rose-tinted waves at sunrise, up and out, back into the vast sky that brought it.

Apparently I’m in a poetic mood this morning.

I get that way sometimes, where I feel an upwelling of something inside, something sweet and bubbly, and I want to send it out into the world. It can take an odd form, depending on where I’m at.

I remember when I was young – maybe 8 or 9? – and we were on a field trip for school. This makes me think I was 8, because in 3rd grade I was in this experimental class where we spent a whole bunch of time traveling around Colorado learning history. I think it was intended to give us hands on stimulation. That was a strange time for me, because there were only two other 3rd graders in this class, a few 4th graders and a whole slew of 5th & 6th graders. We’d all been flagged as gifted or talented or perhaps just oddball. On bus trips, our teachers would have long division contests and kids who got the right answers received prizes. I always put up my hand and guessed answers, even though I had yet to learn multiplication tables, much less division. I always figured I had a shot of getting it right which, of course, I never did. This practice had the additional bonus of annoying the other kids, making me more of a social outcast than ever. In an odd way, though I knew this, it didn’t really bother me.

But that’s all beside the point.

On this particular trip, the teacher announced that this particular girl – older, pretty, very popular – was moving away. Tomorrow would be her last day at the school and we should all be sure to say good-bye and wish her well. She was one of those people who are inexplicably liked by everyone, as if she carried a bit of sunshine with her and people just liked to bask in it. She was likely 11 or 12, but to my 8, she looks like Bo Derek or Farrah Fawcett in my memory.

I went home from school, put Perry Como on my 8-track player (which would cycle endlessly) and set up my little folding table. I made clay animals for this girl whose name I can’t remember. I made probably a dozen of them. Into each one, I poured my admiration for this girl everyone liked so much.

I dried them in the oven, painted them and put them in a little box to take to school the next day. When my mom asked who they were for and I told her, she said she’d never heard this girl’s name before and didn’t know she was my friend.

My mother clearly didn’t understand that a young goddess like this wouldn’t be my actual friend.

You can imagine the scene. I marched up to her at school and gave her this fairly extravagant gift of a box full of little clay animals. I was reasonably good at it and she was surprised that I’d made them. That I’d made them for her. I still remember the surprise and confusion on her face. The discomfort, because what I’d done was clearly weird. But she was a nice person and thanked me.

Still, I understood that this had been over the line.

Looking back, I think what I was giving her was more of a tribute. Perhaps I hoped for some of her charm to rain on me. Frankly, I hadn’t really noticed her much until I saw everyone gathered around her to say how sad they were to see her go. I wanted that in a way I hadn’t known to before.

I still admire those with the gift of popularity. I can see how their natural charm, their sunny attractiveness draw people to them. Sometimes I try to emulate it. But I still have enough of that weird kid in me, the one who can listen to the same favorite soundtrack twenty times in a row, that I can’t quite get there.

(A boyfriend once cited the same tape loop in my car as one of the reasons for break-up – I’m not kidding. I mean, I would have changed it if he’d asked. It just happened to be my favorite album at the time and I wasn’t done obsessing over it and, well, yeah…)

Ultimately it comes back to that I’m still the one who will put up her hand and ask the uncomfortable question. Sometimes I impulsively give gifts that are too much. too out of the blue. I’m very bad about saying things I shouldn’t. Every once in a while, I envy those with the crowds of admirers. I think it must be pretty neat.

I remember that embarrassed girl, with her box of clay animals. I’m still her.

And that’s okay.

Corn Moon

admin / / Blog


I know a lot of people are calling this the Super Harvest Moon, but it’s traditionally the Corn Moon in September.

This full moon coincided with the autumn equinox, with the moon rising as the sun set – thus the “super” part. I’m not sure who coined that term. It smacks a bit of “super-size-me,” and I kind of doubt the Native Americans of North America, who coined the full-moon names had the concept of “super,” but I could be wrong.

“Ho, Little Elk, did the Great Spirit reward your hunting?”

“Yes, Red Eagle, the Great Spirit sent me a Super-buck deer. We shall eat well tonight.”

See what I mean?

At any rate, this photo of the corn moon is not from last night, but from the night before. We were reliably forecast for rain to come in yesterday, to the tune of 80%. The forecasting types could apparently see this one coming from a long ways off – a long chain of heavy-bellied clouds working like a conveyor belt to bring gulf moisture up to us.

So I took the photo the night before, just in case. Which was a good thing because we had pouring rain all afternoon and night. We never saw the sun, much less the set and the moonrise.

Which was perfectly fine because we hadn’t had any moisture for weeks and weeks. Everything had become dusty, cracking dry.

The calendar shows the full moon on one day, but really it’s full for about three days. Depending on how far off of full, you might see it slightly gibbous, with a slight shaving off of one side. It’s not always easy to pinpoint, that exact moment of perfect fullness, when the waxing stops and the waning starts. We’re back to my pendulum now.

I take comfort in that concept, that nothing in nature is ever a fixed point. Instead, our universe is a dynamic system, in constant change.

What appears to be still is simply a snapshot.