Hands Up!

I can't believe it. I think I've finished the rewrite. I just rolled through Chapter 20 last night. I've already fixed the page numbers, tweaked names and other things here and there--minor details, but important. All the scenes that were to be rewritten have been, new scenes have been added and others compressed or moved. I'm waiting on a couple minor fact-checks from my friends in Ireland, I need to get a copy of the manuscript to each of the Moxie to read over this next week, and I need to rewrite the synopsis to agree with the plot changes, but...it's all over but the screaming.

Finally.

Middles

Every writer has his or her Achilles' heel. Some have far more trouble beginning or ending a story than getting through the meat of the plot in the middle. I may not be published yet, but I've written six-and-a-half novels to date, and I've noticed my particular trends. I have never written a book that was intended as a standalone, though each book has a complete plot arc. My first chapter of any given series is always the one I rewrite the most. The first chapter of the second book of a series--not so much. For some reason that one always starts easier, even with the "our story so far" woven in as subtly as I can manage.

And then there are middles. (Sigh.)

Some of my middles are no problem at all--plenty of action, no sagging. Other middles tend to have a soft underbelly that I must later trim and tone. The current book, (the title of which I've changed from "Beyond the Pale" to "From the Ninth Wave") is one of the ones that needed to develop a six-pack.

Why do some writers have such trouble getting from Here to There? Depends on the writer, of course, but there are some common pitfalls. One of these I call the Invisible Middle. In this one, the writer has a very well visualized beginning and ending. It's just getting from point A to point B that's a little foggy. It's like starting out from a city on the west coast of the U.S. and trying to drive to one on the east coast without a roadmap. You might know roughly where your destination is, but getting through all the states in the middle...well, let's just say you might end up putting on a lot of unnecessary miles before you triumphantly drive into your final city limits. In my own writing, the cure for this one is to come up with a bunch of possible things that might happen to your characters on the way from point A to point B. The trick is in keeping the most likely events and discarding the ones that just won't work. Unfortunately, the wild brainstorming for filler often results in a bunch of scenes that don't necessarily grow well out of the original plot seed. When laden with too many "filler" scenes to pad out the word count, the middle can get rather heavy.

This brings me to the next problem middle: the Flabby Middle. See? The cure for the Invisible Middle led to a middle that's maybe a little too visible. The cure for this one is harder to come by. Good readers are a must if you can't see all the places where you've put in soft, doughy filler scenes. With the help of people who aren't afraid to tell you at which point your prose made them snooze off, try to identify the scenes you just wrote because you "needed something to happen between the scene where the character does X and the scene where he does Z." Chances are, the scene that should be point Y on the map ended up being a filler scene, full of things that don't really advance the plot. In these types of filler scenes, you're just trying to kill time for your character to make your overall timeline work out right. Watch out; these scenes usually have to be cut or changed substantially. In some ways, it's almost easier to work with a gaping plot hole than a doughy, sticky mess between otherwise lean action sequences. Every scene in the plot should logically follow the one before it and should contain something that advances the plot in some way. Character development is great for scenes with less action, but there should still be tension in them and they should still be important for the overall storyline. Otherwise, what are they doing there? Build your plot one muscle at a time. Construct it, then hone it until it's a lean, strong, beautiful machine. Don't ever pad it with fluff just because you need "something between here and there."

More on middles later....

The End's In Sight

I can hardly believe this, but I may actually be able to finish this rewrite by the end of August. I know I've had to adjust my deadlines several times during the last few months, but I think this time is really the last time. The reason I think this is that I've nearly finished the changes for Chapter 15, and I've examined Chapters 18, 19, and 20 and already made a few of the necessary minor tweaks to them to get them to agree with what's already happened. Chapter 17 may also fall into that same category, which pretty much leaves me with Chapter 16 to edit, and then we're in business.

I need to finish editing the one scene left in Chapter 15, which I'll do tonight. If there's time, I'll also start work on Chapter 16. The only possible things that might remain to do for 17-20 are minor changes to the conversations between my hero and heroine, which will probably take place over the next few days, and then I'll probably fall over in shock at actually being done. I'll need to run the finished book past the Moxie for one last read-through, and then it's off to Bob, finally. He's told me in the past that my skill with rewriting is one of my strengths, so we'll see how I did on this one.

I started out in early March with very little idea of what to do to fix the middle of my book. Between that and the family's time vs school issues, this rewrite took me a lot longer than I'd have preferred. I know that if I'd had a hard publisher's deadline, this would have been a recipe for disaster. So I will be taking steps to make sure this never happens again. I don't know how long a publisher usually gives an author to edit a novel, but I get the feeling it's probably measured in weeks, rather than months. This spring and summer definitely didn't go as planned, but I will manage things better from here on out, rather than letting things manage me.

The Office

Tonight I went to the Moxie Java just down the road from where I live. It was quiet and uncrowded. The music was elevator variety and very low in the background. I was able to buy a sandwich that actually had some protein in it. Granted, the sandwiches were all on croissant rolls, much fattier than I'd have preferred, but when pretty much all coffee-shop food is some manner of carbohydrate, a sandwich with some actual deli meat looks decent no matter what kind of breadlike substance it's made with. At least they had hot tea, and a table with a plug-in. The table wasn't so high that my arms had to scrunch up at the shoulders to allow me to type on the laptop. And they stayed open until 11 p.m., which they do every Friday and Saturday night. All other nights except Sunday, they're open until 10.

I think I just found my new away-from-home office.

I just finished Chapter 14 tonight. Just six more to go, and not all will require major adjustments. The end is in sight.

Late Night Diner Session

Okay, I know I've been doing the restaurant/laptop scenario a lot lately, but it's working, so I can't knock it now. Tonight I went to Denny's because I had belly dance class with my teenager during the afternoon and just didn't manage to get to work any sooner. The Denny's put me in a (mostly) quiet corner, brought me many cups of tea and didn't care how long I stayed there. As a result, I was there for about five hours and got all of the revisions for Chapter 13 done. Gasp.

To be fair, only about three and a half hours of those five were actually spent in writing. I spent some of the time eating dinner, and the rest of the time I was distracted by a guy right across from me with a cell phone. He must've gabbed for at least 45 minutes, and I thought he'd never leave. Then when he was done, he had to come up and deliberately interrupt me so he could comment about how he needed to get a laptop, too. Doh!

I finished working around 2 a.m. and drove home. Now I'm going to transfer the files to my PC (wish me luck!) and go to bed--assuming I can get the computer to stop grinding on its automatic updates and do what I want it to do....

Chapter Eleven--In a Good Way

I just finished the file for Chapter 11 this last week. The novel Chapter 11, not the financial proceeding. It had a new scene in it that allowed one of the bad guys to be...well...badder still. Which, in a novel, is good.

Tonight I took the laptop to another restaurant--I know, I know. Too much of that, and I could be looking at a different version of chapter 11. (Just kidding!) But I spent about an hour and a half, and got most of Chapter 12's first scene reworked. I'm thinking that there may only be one other completely new scene to write between here and Chapter 20, and revisions take me a lot less time.

In other news, I accidentally blew away all my customizations on Blogger again, so I'll have to redo all the links as soon as I have time. At least I didn't lose all my previous posts. (Shudder!) for a minute there, I thought I'd lost the past two or so years worth of posts. I'll be more careful in the future.

A Change of Scene

The notorious Chapter Ten is finished--has been for about a week now. So that's one piece of good news. And even though I overwrote one part of it by accident, I think the new stuff is just as good if not better. The scene turned out fine, and it put me over the mid-book hump. Things should be much easier and much faster from here on out.

I was having a conversation with my kids (okay, I was lecturing my kids) about why they have some difficulty in settling down to their schoolwork. Public school kids leave the house and their familiar home environment every day during the school year and go to a building devoted to just that purpose. They don't have access to the time-wasters and recreational temptations (like TV and computer games) that homeschooled kids have. The trick for a homeschooler is finding a way to put himself into the mindset of "when I go into this home office, I'm at school. I'm on school time, and I don't have access to my time-wasting activities." That's harder than it sounds, however. Easy to say, but not so easy to do. It takes a lot of mental discipline to pass up that computer game or online fanfic, especially when/if it's more interesting than the assignment due.

And what about writers? Most of us have our time-wasters, too. Minesweeper, Spider Solitaire, surfing the net, reading all the websites for hopeful fellow writers, reading all the websites of our favorite authors, and on and on into white page oblivion. Intentions are good, but they don't look like much on the page. Morale might be low due to not having a publisher's contract on the table, but a finished work at least has a chance at publication, while a blank page has none. I, for one, am out of excuses.

What have I wasted time on lately? Oh, for starters, watching DVD episodes of kids' shows I loved when I was nine--back in the 1970's. Oh, Mighty Isis! (Yeah, I know, I know....) Sometimes I just need a blast from the past, so I can keep things in perspective--sort of see where I've been so I can focus anew on where I'm going, I guess. And then there's something from the present...a fantasy novel written entirely in Irish Gaelige, which I'm laboriously translating so I can find out what the story is. (This exercise actually has some relevance to the book I'm writing, since I use some Irish in it, but still...) Two to three hours deciphering two paragraphs is a steep price to pay if it takes up all of my writing time for one night.

I admit I've been struggling with this rewrite, kind of like a motorist with half a roadmap, but I think it's safe to say that I've finally recognized enough signposts that I'll be able to find my way from here. Many thanks to the Moxie for helping me pull myself out of the ruts along the way! Most of the time, I just needed a soundboard to bounce things off of-- a talking, thinking soundboard--or two. Even the Huz got drafted into listening while I talked myself into the right plot direction. Funny how that never works as well when I'm talking to the cat, the dog, or myself....

Today I had another new scene to write, and I decided that another day of poor progress was simply not acceptable. So I loaded up my laptop and left. Stopped off for a dentist appointment, had lunch with the family, and then just took off and left them to fend for themselves (gasp!) I went to a quiet, unobtrusive Moxie Java, ordered an iced tea and hit the new scene running. It wasn't easy--but it was a lot easier than trying to do it at home with all the time-wasters calling. By the time I treated myself to dinner at a nearby restaurant, I had a thousand words, and they painted a decent picture. I have to say, I hate the laptop keyboard. It's not ergo, and it hurts me. But for that thousand words, it was worth it. I'm so close to finishing that scene that I'm going back to it now. I think it's safe to say that the logjam is finally broken, and if it takes going to the Moxie with the laptop every day from now until Chapter 20, then that's what I'll do.

A Step Forward

Last week was one of the most exhausting of the entire summer--and I'd think it would have been just the opposite. This was when the summer was supposed to have slowed down! I spent a large portion of last week trying to scare up ads for my younger daughter's feis program book, and that involved a lot of running around. A feis (pronounced "fesh") is an Irish dancing competition, and getting ads for the program book is part of how our group will meet the expenses associated with it.

On Monday I went to my chiropractor and had her look at my foot as well as my back and neck. I was expecting her to have to pull the big toe back into place since I'd corked it last Saturday. I was even expecting her to pull a few other toes back into place as well, since something had been not quite right with the middle of my foot for maybe a couple of years now. She did all that, no problem. But then she told me that she thought I was getting a bunion on that foot. That's where the big toe starts to lean over toward the other toes, and the joint at the bottom starts to form a sort of knobby protrusion which can be increasingly painful and may eventually make it hard to walk. I had no idea there was a problem. She told me that I needed to do something about it now, before it gets worse, so I went home and did some research to find out what my options are. Basically I came up with two: surgery or a brace. I choose the brace, since this thing is in such an early stage that I doubt a surgeon would even want to operate yet. (Also, I'm a wimp.) So now I get to wear a toe brace for several hours each day or night and see if I can stave off this problem getting worse. I'm ticked off about it, but as problems go, it could be a lot worse. I'll take a bunion over a fatal disease any day.

I managed to get the new scene for Chapter Ten put together. I had a hard time wrestling it into being, but now that it's mostly there I think it'll work well. It occasioned an additional reshuffling of scenes, and now I need to go through and look at all the things it rearranged so there are no timing issues--characters knowing certain things before they're supposed to, etc. But from here on out, things should go a lot more smoothly. At this rate I won't get the rewrite finished by the end of this month, but hopefully I won't have to go too far into August. I really don't want to take more than another two or three weeks on this. I'm ready for it to be done, so I can move on to the next book. (Or finish the third book of the Oantran Triad.) So, back to work for me....

Self Sabotage

Well, I finally did it. Lost a scene I'd written because I was hasty and careless. Yesterday I took the laptop to a Moxie Java and used it to reorganize Chapters 10 through 20. The trouble was, I'd already done a lot of that work on the PC at home and didn't realize it, so I ended up doing the same thing twice for no good reason. There was some benefit to it because I also made a few notes in the various chapters on the laptop that I didn't have on the desktop PC, and further refined my reorganization of 10 - 20. But my big stupid mistake came after I'd started to transfer the newly updated files from the laptop to the PC. I only had to change a few of them, and Chapter Ten on the PC contained a partial scene that the laptop did not. I thought I was being careful to transfer only things that had changed substantially on the laptop and improved the chapters in question. Then I realized that I'd overwritten the PC's Chapter Ten with the laptop's Chapter Ten--and in the process lost the partial scene that had been on the PC. Gone forever--no way to get it back. I'll never know whether the partial scene was particularly good or not, because it had been a little while since I'd read it through--but good or bad, it's gone forever. Now instead of polishing and finishing it, I have to rewrite it completely. They say that you can always fix bad writing, but you can't fix a blank page. Don't I know it! Sheesh.

Oh, and to add injury to insult, I fell asleep in the office's comfy armchair while I was waiting for a downloaded program to supposedly recover my overwritten files (starts the process but won't finish unless you buy it--very frustrating little exercise in doomed hope). Then I woke up suddenly with a sharp pain in my left big toe. Seems I'd kicked out in my sleep and whacked the toe on a fan which was on the floor in front of the chair. Hurt like a you-know-what, but didn't turn purple, so I guess it's not broken. But I've been limping all day because it hurts when I try to move it much or put any weight on it. I can walk normally, but at about a quarter of normal speed.

Apparently, I am my own worst enemy.

Power Lunch

Today (Friday) one of my Moxie crit partners and I got together for lunch and brainstorming. Both were excellent. I think we both went home with what we came for, which is always the best end to any brainstorming session--or any lunch, for that matter. I'd been spinning my wheels on this revision, but over the last two days I finally started to get a better sense of the road ahead. I think now I can finally write my way out of the corner. It's great when you have a sounding board for ideas--someone who can say, "No, that won't work because you did thus-and-such back in chapter seven," or "Don't forget, you still need to add this-or-that plot element, like we discussed last time." The input from another person always helps put things back into perspective. It's like a dress rehearsal for your wild-*** ideas before they go onto the page. Or if you're short of wild-*** ideas, then it may generate some--for all participants and all novels present at the table. That is my preferred version of a power lunch.

Conversions

My car now officially runs on ethanol. We just finished the conversion today. It has a lot more power than it used to; I like being able to accelerate faster, especially from a complete stop. They took a video of the conversion process. As soon as I have a link to the video online, I'll post it for those who are curious about what's involved. Please note that the conversion of the Ford 500 in particular is a little more complicated than most, simply because of how the car is put together and what it takes to reach the fuel injectors. The conversion process took about an hour for an experienced mechanic to do. Most conversions take a lot less time and don't necessarily require a mechanic. But then, that's Phouka for you. Can't be anything simple with this car, can it?

And of course, being Phouka, it had to pull at least one more little trick. This time it was the right rear turn signal. The Huz didn't notice when he drove it because he doesn't normally pay attention to the specific behaviors of my car, but when I drove the two of us to a movie tonight, I noticed right away that the right turn signal was going about twice as fast as the left. When we got home, we checked it out. Sure enough, the right rear turn signal main bulb is burnt out. Sigh. And we can't figure out how to get to the bulb to replace it--at least, not without the Chilton's manual. Can you imagine me having to take the car to the dealer to get a stupid bulb replaced? Argh. The kids would say "That's Pah-hooooka!"

On the writing front, I've been shuffling scenes, considering throwing out some and altering others, trying to get all the stuff from Chapter Ten through Chapter Twenty arranged so it all makes sense. I need to write a whole new scene or two for Chapter Ten. Meanwhile, the Moxie want me to throw out a scene that I thought brought an important sense of closure to one of the subplots, so I'm considering whether to throw it out in total or try to compress it a little and save the most important parts of it so it doesn't drag. I'm getting a little frustrated with this revision because without specific details on what parts really don't work in the storyline, it's feeling a lot like I'm trying to bake a cake without a recipe. The middle's soft. Okay, so I keep poking it with a toothpick, but I'm not sure which parts are baked and which parts are still doughy. Help!

Living Lean in the Forest

I just got back from a 5-day camping trip. Tent camping, not RV. We spent a good part of our second day gathering wood for the fire, cutting it, splitting it, and piling it. Now picture me at 5'0" and my husband at 5'11" on either side of an old fashioned crosscut saw, sawing away at a downed log like a pair of lumberjacks. My arms and legs hurt the next day; I woke up stiff and sore from using muscles that normally don't get a lot of exercise. Between that and pumping drinking water at a hand pump, swimming in the lake, etc., I imagine I'd soon get into amazing shape if I had to live like that for very long. Somehow I doubt the pioneers tended to be either out of shape or overweight.

Now here's the kicker: I took the laptop with me. I finished doing my paper edits for Chapter Nine and got all the edits input for Chapters Three through Nine. If I'd had another day or so, I'd probably have been able to write the new scene I think I need for Chapter Ten. With any luck, I'll be doing that tonight. But I found out that when you have a laptop running on battery power and you're limited to however many hours that battery will last, you're a lot less likely to even look at any computer games. Play a game = waste power. You get as fast and as efficient as possible. I was able to recharge the battery using an inverter and our pickup, but I only recharged twice and didn't find myself tempted to take it for granted. Also, with no internet, no email, no anything extra to waste time on, it was a lot easier for me to just dive right into the work without stopping to do other things first.

All in all it was five days of livin' lean. I am, however, very grateful right now for all the creature comforts that I usually take for granted.

The Pooka's Latest Tale

Phouka, the car, went into the shop on Friday morning and was out again by Friday afternoon. There was something wrong with the computer (and didn't I say as much two years ago when it wigged out on that trip to Portland?) As I understand it, a piece of bad code was causing the transmission to refuse to shift, even though there was nothing structurally wrong with the transmission. They re-flashed the code and now supposedly all's peachy. I swear, sometimes I hate computers. Can't live with 'em....

But I got to run errands earlier, which was good since we're about to leave town for a few days' camping. What isn't good is that my daughter brought yet another cold home, and of course after a few days' holdout, I came down with it. I'm not crazy about camping with the dregs of a cold, but will do so if necessary. If I get worse, we can always come back home. And I won't get worse, so there it is. As colds go, the one we had last month was by far the more miserable.

For the last two nights, I've worked on reading through Chapters 1 through 9 of the manuscript so I can figure out what to put in the blank Chapter Ten. From what I can tell, I've accomplished a lot of the changes I was supposed to make. I think I have an idea of what needs to happen in that blank space, so I need to check the story's calendar to make sure it fits in. Wouldn't it be a hoot if I actually came back from this camping trip with the book fully revised? Anyway, it feels good to be working on it again and know that I'm making progress. A great writing coach once told me it was more important to get it right than to get it fast, but ideally I'd prefer to do both.

Oh, and the reason I'm up so late/early is that this particular head cold isn't very conducive to sleeping lying down. If I have to make a choice between sleeping and breathing, I choose breathing.

Golden Compass

Okay, I couldn't resist this one. Who wouldn't be curious about their animal alter-ego?



You can find these at http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten is completely blank. I got to shuffling scenes, trying to address the revision points Bob and I had discussed, and somehow everything ended up getting moved out of Chapter Ten and into other places. So now I'm trying to figure out whether I really need to add anything new into that chapter, or whether everything else from Eleven on simply gets moved up to fill the gap.

I thought it might help to read through everything I have revised so far, from Chapter One on. But as soon as I started reading it, I had to start tweaking it. Dang it! I'm not sure whether it really needed tweaking, or whether I was just reading it too late at night to be properly objective. That's probably the case. I'll try again tomorrow.

We're about to go on a five-day camping trip, and of course, there's plenty to do to get ready. I was greatly tempted to just let the family go and stay at home by myself, but #1: my car's in the shop as of Friday morning, and I might not have a vehicle if I stayed in town. And #2: I promised I'd go with them. It's one of the family vs. career things, and in the long run, the family is most likely to stand by my bedside if something happens to me, so...I go camping. But I'm taking the laptop. So there! Who knows--maybe a change of scenery will jog something loose or mysteriously help me figure out whether we need to see another Colm/Brenna scene or a Niall/Colm/Brenna scene, or.... Argh!

If a tent in the forest inspires me into figuring out Chapter Ten, I'll go camping more often.

Just Life

I guess sometimes I don't post because I don't feel I have enough news on the writing front to post a good, thoughtful piece about writing. But maybe a few posts about our day-to-day life would keep the blog up to date and fill the wait between writing-specific posts.

Phouka's been at it again. Anyone who's read the posts I made back in 2005 about my Ford 500 car, Phouka, knows what I mean by that. This time it may be the computer. I don't know. You know how you need a problem to repeat enough times reliably so it can be diagnosed? Well, this is like that. The other day I went to start my car in a parking lot and it started flashing "check engine" and "check transmission" at me. All the way home, it wouldn't shift gears. Then we put it on a code reader, it flashed another nonsense code just like it did two years ago, and after we cleared the codes it behaved perfectly, shifting and everything. Then the next day, I was idling the motor in Park mode at a fast food drive-though window, (ironically at another Taco Time like two years ago) and when I went to shift it into Drive it gave a weird clunk and started flashing the same messages as the previous day. So, another drive home at 35 MPH stuck in first gear. Then I got it into my driveway, the Huz went out and messed with the clear info buttons on the steering wheel, and the next morning when he went to start it up, it was fine--started up fine, shifted fine, everything. We even took it to a meeting that evening and it behaved fine the whole time. If the transmission was shot, I'd expect that it would behave differently than this--but then, I'm no mechanic. However, it seems more like the computer is wigging out or something. Fortunately, those parts of the car are still under warranty. But I'll have to get it to wig out again so that when I take it in to the dealer, they have something to diagnose. Otherwise it's just the well-named mischievous Phouka acting up again and taking me for a wild ride. Hmph.

Otherwise, it's life as usual. Weeding the square-foot garden, putting nylon stockings on all the little apples on our tree to ward off codling moths without using pesticides...and trying to clean the house after letting it get so very disorganized during our last three hectic months of the school year. Then there's the vow renewal of a friend of ours this weekend, and a planned camping trip coming up one day soon....

And writing??? Um, going to do that now, actually. Right...now....I promise. The revision's almost done, assuming I hit all the points I knew about in the way I was supposed to.

A Good Crime Was Had by All

Okay, the silence is probably getting ominous, so it's time to squeeze a blog into the already crammed schedule.

This last weekend I attended our local mystery conference, Murder in the Grove. I took a master class on Friday from Margie Lawson. She had some interesting techniques for diagnosing and evaluating a manuscript, mostly focused on how you've handled the various story elements with regard to character emotion and highly charged emotional moments. It was a good class and certainly gave me a few new tools with which to tweak the rewrite. I also met Sharan Newman and took a class from her on Saturday--her information on research and accuracy in historical fiction was right in line with what I've always believed, and Sharan is as gracious a lady as anyone who has read her books could hope to meet.

The kids and I are about a heartbeat away from being able to mail the last of the homeschool packets for the year, and then I'll be hitting this novel revision with a sledgehammer. Next year I'll be ruthlessly dividing the schedule up into very focused blocks, which should result in my getting lots more writing time and the kids keeping pace or getting ahead with their schoolwork. Oak Meadow's such a great school program, we'd really like to be able to continue with it.

Meanwhile, onward....

Blue Moon

I'm still here, still working on the rewrite, still trying to get the kids through this school year. We're close now--just a little way to go and we're done. We even took part of today off to go and see the new Pirates movie. Good movie and lots of fun, but they left one piece of story unexplained in either a prime example of bad writing or bad editing. When I read a possible explanation online, I liked the story better. Supposedly the missing piece of information was in a deleted scene, if the rumor is at all credible. I hope it is. Seeing it on DVD will probably clear up my one objection to the script. I know it was a long movie, but sometimes the scene that gets cut is the one scene that makes sense of the whole thing. I hate it when that happens--in any medium.

I finally feel as though I might make sense of the one scene in my novel that was sort of hanging fire. I think I even managed to find the right place to include a particular detail that Bob mentioned over the phone. Now it's just a matter of finishing a couple of scenes, making little tweaks to a few others, and then taking a read-through and seeing whether the story hangs together with the changes I made.

That's about it. I didn't have a lot to blog about. I know it's been sparse lately and today's blog probably doesn't add a whole lot to the existing picture. But since I haven't been managing a blog a week lately, I figured I could at least blog once in a blue moon....

Deadlines

How many of your deadlines come from outside factors, how many are self-imposed, and how do you handle each?

The kids and I are coming smack up against the homeschool deadline for this year, which is a pseudo-flexible kind of thing. By that I mean that we're supposed to be finished with our 36-week school year by the end of this month, which gives the official correspondence teacher a couple of weeks to finish grading all the papers and assignments for the year, to get them done and grades submitted by June 15. But we've also paid for the teacher support through the end of June and can ask for additional months as we need them in case our school year needs to run longer for any reason. In the case of one kid, we may need an extra month, but in the case of the other, I hope to be done on time. We'll see. Either way, my personal deadline for this homeschool year is to be done by the end of May so I can have all summer to concentrate on writing issues, clean my house, sort through all the junk in the storage room and get things back under the illusion of control. I have no idea whether this will become reality or whether we'll end up stretching the school stuff into the summer as we have for the past two years. But I can always hope. Each summer, we gain a few more weeks of vacation time, which may or may not involve an actual vacation.

Then there's the writing deadlines. Since I don't have a publisher, my deadlines are mostly set by me and sometimes by tacit suggestions from Bob, who's a lot more realistic than I am. I have the tendency to set unrealistic deadlines, meaning I set them on a tougher schedule which I can rarely comply with in real life. For instance, I hoped to have this rewrite done by the beginning of May. Not only has that not happened, but I'm only halfway through the rewrite. Granted, there are a few extenuating circumstances, but I still feel that it should be going faster. Would I be able to go faster if I had an actual publisher's deadline to meet? Certainly it would help the family to take my writing time more seriously. But ultimately, my time management issues are my own, and I feel like I've been playing hooky. That must change, immediately. Bob can't market a book he doesn't have. And every week that goes by without the rewrite done is a week that he might have been able to make a sale for us and couldn't. So, shame on me. I must and will pull it together. I guess if that means the kids' school year drags longer into the summer, then so be it. Meshing of the schedules and getting all members of the family team to work together is a big challenge. But for me to figure out how to merge my writing into the larger family agenda is the biggest challenge yet.

I've Got a Bee In My Bonnet

This whole honeybee issue is really bugging me. I can't stop thinking about it. Every day I look at the news online, wondering what's happening with the bees. I hope they make it; I hope we all make it. But unless people wake up and begin to realize that everything we do has an effect on the environment, we may be in for a very rude awakening. I hate reading posts on the internet from naysayers who believe that they can go on spraying their pesticides, using their fossil fuels and polluting this planet without any kind of consequences. Scientific evidence says otherwise. This evidence has been available for decades. In fact, the whole ecology issue should be a no-brainer. (And yes, I did read the articles about the Varroa mites. They're getting more and more resistant to the pesticides, just like germs get resistant to antibiotics. We seem to be dealing with multiple causative factors in this bee issue, and I'm betting we need multiple solutions to solve the problem.) We've only got one planet, folks. Please, please, let's take care of it, and everything that lives on it. If we do that, then we're taking care of ourselves as well.

As to the book: no, the revisions are not finished. I scribbled as many notes as I could while talking to Bob on the phone, but other than that I'm working blind. I think I've addressed most of the issues we discussed, so we'll see what happens. I'm generally pretty strong in the revision stage; I hope that proves true this time. I guess I'm nearly halfway done. Should be closer than that, but we've had to put in some major homeschool effort in order to get finished on time. (The family got quite a bit behind while I was writing the first draft of the novel, so we've been hitting the books double-time to make up for it.) Two weeks ago both kids got sick, so we lost a lot of time there. And as part of my fifth-grader's science project, we're planting a garden. The new tomato boxes that the Huz built are going into place today, and then I can go shopping for the plants to go in them. We'll have home-grown tomatoes this year, dang it, even if I have to hand-pollinate them with a Q-tip!

Gotta go. I have assignments to make out, and maybe an hour of novel revision to do, and then I have to hit the hay because we're going to see a Spider-Man 3 matinee tomorrow.

Bee good to each other, and please send a few positive thoughts in the direction of the hives.

Earth Day and the Yellow Hummer

What could Earth Day and a Hummer possibly have in common? Well, it just so happens that the yellow Hummer in question runs on Ethanol. My husband just spent the past four days including Earth Day helping out at a local show featuring "big boy toys" like motorcycles, huge backyard grills, collapsible camper/trailers, backyard spa tubs, ATV's, the Hooters establishment, sandrails (racing dunebuggies) and other race cars in general, and, last but not least, the only Hummer in Idaho that runs on E-85.

Why ethanol? Where to start? It burns cleaner, keeps your engine squeaky clean, gives your vehicle a snappier performance (just ask the racers who've tried it--they're in raptures over the increased horsepower), and can end our dependence on foreign oil. Your car on petroleum fuel...ugh, sputter, cough, cha-ching! Your car on ethanol...vroom, vroom, feelin' good. Any questions? Check out this website and read all about it, plus take a gander at the strapping, healthy, corn-fed Hummer.

The View From the Top

Today we drove into the mountains. In part, it was so the kids could do some field work for various science assignments. The rest was probably due to the fact that we all love adventure, not to mention the fact that my husband has a 4 X 4, and he knows how to drive it. And drive it he did. Scared the **** out of me when we went down a road that turned out to have been washed out and swept by fire--I'm not sure in which order. We had to turn around in an alarmingly small space and go back to where the road had branched. There we tried the alternate route, but when we got close to the top of the mountain, we saw that the way ahead was blocked by snow. Only a short stretch looked to be blocked, but it was on a side hill, and deep enough that even with the wonder truck, we didn't dare try to make it through. So again we had to turn around and seek an alternate route. As dusk fell, we made our way back to the main highway. We eventually got home, but it wasn't by the paths we'd originally planned, and we never saw the view from the extreme top of the mountain because of the snow-blocked section of road. The view from that point was spectacular; or at least, I think it was. Maybe in the summer when the snow has melted, we'll finally be able to drive across that last bit and make it over the mountain and down the other side.

Kind of like the path to publication.

Synergy

How can it be April already, let alone a week into April?

The kids and I are booking right along on their correspondence school work. We have a few more weeks to go and a heavy workload at that; I don't know whether we'll have to drag the process into June or not. I hope not. It would be great to have a full summer off the school stuff for once, though my preference would be to do all the science for the upcoming year over the summer. That way, when it comes time to load the packets next fall, we can just reach into the file and pull the science lessons we need at the appropriate time. Or something like that.

I got a verdict from Bob about the initial draft of Beyond the Pale. Basically, it's like this: Beginning, fabulous. End, fabulous. Middle.... Don't worry, it's not toast. I just need to hike up the conflict in places, bring a few things closer to the beginning, intensify a couple of the relationships, that sort of thing. The basic storyline will stay the same, but we'll up the stakes in various ways--some subtle, some not. To tell the truth, I had the feeling that one of my villains was a bit under-utilized. I'm not sure how that happened, but he's now going to step more into the light. He should be a threat. How could a devastatingly handsome guy who isn't who he says he is not be a threat? I dropped a couple of balls without realizing it, but I'm ready to pick them up now.

I love what happens when Bob points out things I've missed in a novel. Sometimes when I finish a novel, even though I've had a crit group on point for months, we've all missed some of the forest for the trees. Just too close to the subject, I guess. Then Bob reads it and makes a couple of comments, and everything becomes clear again. It's almost always an "Oh, yeah," reaction--something I noticed once but then forgot about, or something I might have once meant to fix but then somehow didn't. A few issues take me by surprise, but after a little thought, I can see how the suggested change--or sometimes a different but similar change--will strengthen the book and take it up a notch. I don't like making mistakes, but I love what happens to the book when they're fixed.

That's where I lucked out. Not all agents are editors, and for the most part, they shouldn't have to be. But sometimes the right comment at the right time makes all the difference in the world. I don't need a lot of hand-holding and I try not to be the squeakiest wheel on the bus. However, a little bit of input can help a lot.

When you find an agent who will market your work to publishers, that's luck. But when you find an agent who refuses to settle for less than the best book he can get out of you and knows how to make that happen, that's synergy.

Change

We may end up moving this year. I hope we won't have to, because this move would come at a bad time for me; I'm busy enough as it is. I don't want to leave my friends, my house, the life I've built for myself here. And at the same time, a part of me knows it would be a great adventure to live somewhere else for a change. The east coast? The Great Lakes region? But that's so...far away. It would be a huge change for me, my kids, my elderly cat...

The Huz would be fine. His family moved a lot when he was a kid, so he's used to it. But not me. I put down roots. I lived with my grandparents in Montana for most of my life. I went to one school before college, all the way from K through 12. I moved a few times right after I started out on my own at age 18, but I've been in Boise for sixteen years. Ten of those years were spent in our starter home, and the last three years have been here, in the house I'm not sure I can bear to leave. This is the house I always dreamed about. I had a hard enough time leaving the starter home, but this...leaving this would be very, very hard. I love to travel, as long as I have my secure base to come back to. The more of myself I put into a home, the harder it is to let go.

The one thing I know for sure is that change will happen, whether or not I'm ready for it. I'm ready for some change, like publication, book tours and hard deadlines, but not for an entirely new base of operations. And what if I get the publishing contract right when we're about to move? Urk! Oh, well, bring it on. Better that than a lot of other, less constructive types of change.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This week is always one of our busiest weeks every year. My Irish dancer daughter spends the whole day running around from one venue to another, participating in performance after performance with her dance troupe. It's a whirlwind of appearances, drives across and around town, hurried meals, flying curls and tired feet. I envy her, but I'm very, very proud of her. She's living her dream--right here, right now.

I'll also never forget the day she watched me typing for the first time and remarked, "Mama, it looks like your fingers are dancing." And so all artists make beauty in their own way....

Dance on, everyone.

Catching Up

This last couple of weeks, all I've done is catch up on things I let slide while I finished the last manuscript. The kids are enrolled in a correspondence school and have an official teacher, but for everyday intents and purposes, we function like homeschoolers. I have to get their packets ready to mail, make sure all the assignments are there, etc. Sometimes we get behind, and over the past few months, we got really behind. We'll be fine just as long as we get our work done by mid June at the latest, but we're having to make up now for some things that just didn't get done while I was lost in "book fog."

So I've had my break from writing, but it didn't really feel like a vacation. I'm starting to get antsy from not writing, and I need to get back into it soon! But I also need to take care of some of these other responsibilities as well. If it's a balancing act now, I have no idea what it'll be like once I'm published. Whatever happens, I hope it involves staff--like a housekeeper, private tutor, and personal assistant, maybe? Yeah. That'll be happening.

Follow-up To Last Tuesday

It's a small world, and the Internet has made it even smaller. Over the past few years since I first explored the web, I've corresponded with all sorts of people I might not have met otherwise. Last Tuesday the world shrank a little more, in a good way.

I mentioned a book by William Brohaugh called "Write Tight." The next day I was greatly surprised and thrilled to see that the author had noticed the mention in this blog and responded with some great news. His comments are below in bold:

Kathy, thank you for the kind and humbling comments about Write Tight. I know the author well because, um, well, I'm the author.

Write Tight is not out of print (ISI Books is the current publisher), though availability seems a mite scarce at the moment.

Good news: Especially because of your enthusiasm for the book, I'm excited to announce (and yes, this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first place it's been annnounced) that Write Tight will be coming out in paperback soon--schedule at the moment is fall 2007.

Good luck in your writing, and thanks again for your kind nod to Write Tight.

There you go, folks; you heard it here! To find out more about this great editor and author, check out his website.

Fact Checking

I just saw a made-for-TV movie based on a popular author's romance novel. It was set in Montana on a ranch. What bothered me was the way they portrayed the people--a bunch of cowboy-hat-wearing "westerners". Why do people tend to perceive Montana as being so very primitive and hokey? Montana has relatively few stereotypical cowboy types. Sure, there are a few here and there, but you can find "cowboys" in every state. I grew up in Montana and then went to college there. We didn't speak with a weird variation on the Texas twang. Most of us didn't wear plaid or checkered shirts, cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Blue jeans, sure, but with athletic shoes and any variety of shirt, blouse or sweater. I hate to disillusion anyone, but Montana isn't the last bastion of the Old West. Most Montana citizens (or former citizens) speak with a Dan Rather accent, not any variety of a southern drawl. Our belt buckles are usually not any larger than anyone else's--when we wear belts at all. Sometimes people have similar perceptions of Idaho. But neither Idaho nor Montana is really the "West". We're really part of the Northwest region, and the culture and accent doesn't vary that much between Boise, Portland, Seattle, and Missoula. If you go as far as L.A. you'll get a vastly different culture, but L.A. is kind of a law unto itself.

When I moved from Montana to Idaho, I didn't experience any type of culture shock. Nor do I experience it when I visit Oregon or Washington. The cultures are pretty similar in all four states. But I never read stories where people from Oregon or Washington are portrayed as gun-toting, boot-wearing, twang-speaking cowboys. No, that dubious honor seems to be reserved for Montana and sometimes Idaho.

I'm writing urban fantasy set in Ireland. I've done my level best to make my portrayal of Irish people as real-seeming and accurate as possible. I don't write in an exaggerated brogue. I communicate with Irish people via email to try to make everyday details as accurate as possible. I hope to have a native Irish reader if I ever get as far as sending out ARCs for Pale. I've actually been to Ireland, which helps. I've tried hard to avoid making stupid cultural mistakes in the novel. I'd hope anyone writing about a place they don't know much about would make a similar effort.

One of the reasons Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson books ring so true with regard to places and life in the Tri-cities is because Patty has actually lived there. It was a joy to read in the Mercy books about places I'd visited many times and know that the author got it right. When I watched the romance novel movie set in Montana, I couldn't help wondering whether the people who'd written the script had ever even been there.

This is not to say that in order to write about a place, you have to go there. But I do think that at least a little research is in order. If you can't go to the place you're writing about, you can watch a few video documentaries on the place, read a few books, or find a correspondent who lives there and will answer your specific questions about the area and culture. The realism it gives to your book should be well worth the extra time and effort.

Culture differences are funny. Once in a while, my agent will ask a question or say something that I don't know how to answer or interpret. Sometimes I make a comment that amuses him. Most of it is simply me being a dork, though some of it is probably due to small regional differences in the language or culture. But hey, he's been to Boise! It isn't just a dot on a map. One day, I need to visit New York City because I've never been there. I have a friend who lives "back east", and she kisses people on the cheek as a greeting. We don't tend to do that so much over here, so I'm a little awkward at it, but I'm getting better. Most of this is about taking the effort to learn about other people's cultures, habits and etiquette. How hard is that? It doesn't take so very much extra effort, it makes people happy, and helps avoid offending people out of ignorance. Shouldn't it be the same when writing books or movie scripts?

E-Prime and Writing Tight

I've seen a few discussions on various forums about the technique of writing in E-Prime. I must confess, I'd never heard of it until a couple of days ago. It sounded like the name of a planet! (Says the blonde who's not really blonde.) For everyone who's not a linguist or a sci-fi geek, E-Prime is actually a method of writing which removes all the forms of "to be". It's harder than it looks, given the many forms that "to be" can take. It also recommends against using contractions, but I don't think modern dialog sounds right without them. So how can one tighten prose while keeping that "real life" flavor and not starting to sound like Commander Data?

When I finish a manuscript--I think I've mentioned this before--I go through and try to remove as many instances of "ing", "ly", "and", "as" and "was" as possible. Over the past couple of years, I've almost broken myself of the frequent use of "ly" adverbs, so I almost don't have to check for them anymore. When I do have an "ly" lapse, it usually occurs in a cluster; I'm not sure why. I don't remove every "ly,", just enough so they're not used in excess. I'm also down to a minimal use of "ing" verbs as well. I do notice that when I take out "ing" words, I tend to reform the sentence into a compound one, which often requires the use of "and." And it really bothers me when I see "and" peppered over my page, and I feel compelled to remove as many of them as possible, which often results in a few of my "ing's" being added back into the mix. It's just like a good recipe. Too much or too little of one type of spice and you spoil the soup, so it makes sense to taste as you go along.

Bottom line: I'm picky about polish. I go through and highlight all the offending words so I can see how thickly they're scattered onto my page. Each pass nixes at least a few of the offenders so that by the time I'm done, I've removed at least a third to half of them. With any luck, I've left the ones that really help the prose flow the right way. I don't use E-Prime to such an extent that there are no "to be" verbs left in my...ah...verbiage. E-Prime might make some writing easier to read, but it can also change the original meaning of a sentence. There's a time for more active verbs, but there's also a time to simply ignore the rules and just...be. It's the writer's job to know when to do what.

For anyone looking for a good instructional book on how to tighten up your writing, I can recommend William Brohaugh's "Write Tight". Sadly, it's out of print, but you can probably still get a used copy through Amazon's marketplace. With such tough markets out there, I can't imagine why any writer--aspiring or otherwise--might not want to clean up her prose and give a manuscript just that much more of an edge. It's not about perfection (which I doubt exists anyway), but it is about being thorough, professional, concise, fast-paced and reader-friendly.

Existential Nightmare

Okay, so I'm trying to write urban fantasy. No problem so far. Then I spent three nights surfing the web for info on how an immortal might become mortal, and it snowballed into an existential nightmare. I blogged about it, using up about an hour for composition time. Then Blogger lost the entirety of the post. I can't get it back, so I'll try to recreate it, though it won't be the same. Never is, dang it! But hey, even if the post isn't here in exactly the same form, it did and still does exist. Take that.

The bulk of the information online seems to agree that most immortals wouldn't even want to consider becoming mortal, but if they did then the only method seems to be incarnation into a physical body, such as becoming a baby. Not much info there. However, there was plenty of info about the attempts of mortals to become immortal. The sticky part is that it all depends on your definition of mortal.

Enter a group of scientists who contributed to a recent article in Time magazine, claiming that every facet of consciousness can be linked to neuron and synapse activity in the brain. According to them, no brain activity = no consciousness = no soul. Personally, I believe they're wrong, wrong, wrong, but I won't know for sure until I die and I'm not in a hurry for that.

If we take the above theory but assume that souls do in fact exist, then it would follow that the traditionally accepted "immortals" like vamps, mermaids, and fae are actually the mortals since they supposedly have no souls, while the "mortal" humans are in fact the immortals since we supposedly have souls.

See what I mean by existential nightmare? And all I wanted was to find a way for an immortal to become mortal. Or rather, I wanted to find a way for a non-corporeal being to become corporeal rather than by incarnation as a baby. And immortal vs mortal is different than non-corporeal vs corporeal, apparently. Arrghhh!!!

Then I went to see Pan's Labyrinth, and it provided as many potential questions as it did answers. If you like dark fantasy, go see it but be aware that it's rated R and when I say dark I mean dark. Also, don't forget the subtitles. It's all in Spanish.

As to the prevalent historical theories: Personally, I always hated the assumption that Sidhe don't have souls. It just doesn't play well with the way I view the Sidhe. But I don't want to get into any fights or flame wars over who does and doesn't have a soul. Fortunately, we all have different neurons and synapses, and different opinions. If we didn't, there wouldn't be much of a point to existence in the first place. As far as I know, I am a soul and I currently have a body. That'll have to do for now.

Pale in the Mail

The manuscript is off to New York. It came to 93,074 words, which is a perfect length--not too long, not too short. Now I'll just have to wait and see.

I can hardly believe it's in the mail. Once I was able to focus on it exclusively, the writing went quickly. I looked back at my previous blogs to find out how long it took, and apparently I played around with the outline and the first three chapters for several months, starting in March of 2006 and then finally launching full force into the rest of the book in September. (I was still mostly writing on the third epic fantasy last summer.) So the bulk of the writing of Beyond the Pale occurred between September 2006 and January 2007, including edits. It seems strange knowing that it's done.

I've finished 2 1/2 other manuscripts between the year 2000 and now, but they were all part of the same epic fantasy trilogy. Each manuscript had an individual story arc, but I guess in my mind it felt more like one very long story that I still haven't quite finished yet. So it's interesting to have completed something so vastly different than what I've been writing for most of the past six years. In a way, I'm still not sure what to make of it. On the other hand, I have this very strong feeling that this is the book that's actually going to make it through the publishing gauntlet.

I called Bob last Wednesday and left a message to tell him the book was done, and he returned the call the next day. I told him I wanted to do the last little bit of polishing and then I'd send it out the first part of this week. I was hoping for Monday, but then the synopsis needed to be revamped, so it all went out today (Tuesday). He should receive the manuscript around Thursday or Friday since I sent it Priority Mail. He told me he liked the first half, so I'm hoping he likes the second half as well. It'll be interesting to see what publishers' reactions will be, but while I'm not going to hold my breath or make assumptions...I still have that strange half-panicky feeling that tells me we're on the verge of something major here.

Or it could just be all the caffeine I had to drink while I finished the manuscript.

Taking Back the Past

Memories can be funny sometimes. As a child, did you ever have a favorite toy or a favorite game that you later lost or your parents got rid of for some reason, and yet somehow that toy persisted in your memory for years and years? For me, it was the Which Witch game by Milton Bradley. They put it out in 1970, when I was four years old--just old enough to remember how much I liked it and how much fun I used to have playing it.

I don't usually go into deeply personal stuff on this blog, and I'm not going to now except to say that I've recently been learning how important it is to deal with unresolved issues from the past. For me, the Which Witch game represented something that was taken from me without my consent. I'm not trying for a laugh when I say that my grandparents burned the Which Witch game in a fit of religious fervor--simply because it had a theme that involved "witches". They acted according to their convictions and I can't really fault them for that, but thirty-plus years after the fact, I decided that I hadn't given permission for that game to be taken from me and, dang it, I wanted it back. So I bought one on eBay. It arrived today and I played it with my kids. They love it, and it meant a lot to me to be able to share it with them.

Does it live up to my memory of it? Yes...and no. Yes, it's played just the way I remember and it's as much fun as I remember. But it's also a lot smaller in size than I thought it would be. For some reason, it was much bigger in my head. My teenager tells me that it probably seems that way because when I played it, I, too, was much smaller. She's probably right. Once I got used to that little slice of reality, it was fine. I'm glad I reclaimed that part of my childhood.

Brenna, my main character in Beyond the Pale, has a past that comes back to bite her in the butt. She needs to deal with it, take it out, examine it in the light of day and decide how it's going to affect her in the future. Memory can be an incredibly powerful thing, depending on what you decide to do with it. You have to decide whether you'll have power over it or whether it will have power over you. And you have to be willing for it to be either better or worse than the picture in your head.

Here's some food for thought: If you find your memory-turned-reality drastically altered, did the reality change...or did you change?

Go, Dresden, Go

I just watched the pilot episode of the new Dresden Files TV show on the Sci-Fi channel. I liked it; I'll watch again next week. I had high hopes going in, and then my estimation of the writers went up further when they didn't automatically make the ravens the bad guys. (If you watched the episode, you'll know what I mean.) We'll see how things go in future episodes.

Today at the Moxie meeting I got most of the manuscript edits back. I still have a few more chapters due in this week, but I have enough to start working on inputting changes for the first several chapters. The corrections I made via my own paper editing over this last week are plentiful--not too extensive in terms of content, but I did notice a few details here and there that didn't agree with each other. The best part of the crit/edit process was when one of the Moxie said she stayed up until 3 a.m. last night reading the manuscript when she could have left the rest until morning. She said she'd gotten to "the good part" and didn't want to put it down. Yay! (Hsst...Val...what was the good part?)

Now that I've had my meeting, eaten dinner and gotten my Sci-Fi TV fix, I'm going to start inputting edits. The night is young.

Curve Ball and Victory

When the Garda press office replied to my last email question, I found out a little about their weapons regulations laws, and the news was a bit disappointing, at least in terms of my book. Let me see if I can clarify that without giving away the farm:

My main character needed to use a certain weapon. Turns out, the weapon is illegal in Ireland. That was the curve ball I got thrown at the eleventh hour and for which I had to come up with a work-around, just hours before I needed to leave for the crucial Moxie meeting. The ladies were going to view my last two scenes, which included the major climax. No, I couldn't just let things ride, bring what I had and try to fix the problem later. They needed to read the crucial scenes in as final, polished a condition as possible, because I intend to mail the complete manuscript off to Bob within a week and a half or so. And yes, the weapon in question was crucial to the climax scene. Terrific.

I did find the work-around, with a little help from the Huz. We took an earlier idea of mine and a new one of his and combined them, to good effect. Disaster averted for now. The Moxie ladies each have a copy of the complete manuscript to read this week, and we're meeting again this next Sunday. In the meantime, I'm going to read through the manuscript once and make my own corrections to whatever I find. I always do a final check to eliminate as many of the extra occurrences of "and", "ing", and "ly" as I can. Barring the Moxie finding any previously unnoticed glaring errors, I should have the edits and final polish done by next Wednesday or Thursday. Then it's off to the Post Office and we'll see what happens.

Miscellaneous Post-Book Ramblings

Beyond the Pale is done. Total word count 93,293 words, give or take whatever edits I may need to do after the Moxie looks at the manuscript tomorrow. I also need to fire off one last question to the garda PR office in Ireland.

This is my sixth finished manuscript, and I've already written the opening lines for the sequel, if it turns out that I need one. While I work up an outline for the new book, I'm going to pick up where I left off on Shifts of Perception, the third book of the epic fantasy trilogy that Bob's been marketing for me. Whatever happens with Pale, I want to finish the trilogy. It may yet find a publisher.

I just went to the Astronet website for the first time in weeks. Get a load of my horoscope for yesterday:

"Pursue your goals with fierce determination. Distractions have no place in your life at this moment; all you can think about is the desired outcome. With that kind of attitude, success is pretty much assured."

Assured? Can I get that in writing?

Now that I'm awake for the day and considering it's a Saturday, I'm going to haul the family out to celebrate. Maybe dinner and a movie.

All Over But the Shouting

Just one more scene left to write, and that one's just a brief wrap-up of the last tiny loose ends. Shouldn't take more than a few hundred words. I've already taken a Microsoft Word word count on the rest, and this book's going to end up between 90,000 and 100,000 words, which ought to be perfect. I haven't written a book this short in years.

The last two big scenes were very important, so I had to make sure they went right. I threw out all schedules for the last week and just worked, ate, slept whenever. I've had an ear infection this week and I'm still trying to kick that, but I just slept for about seven hours, so I think that helped.

On Sunday I take the complete manuscript to the Moxie for their final crits. With any luck, Beyond the Pale will be ready to mail no later than the 22nd, sooner if I can manage it. Then I need to do damage control on all the real life issues I let drop while I finished the book.

Connections

Thanks to Mhici, one of the wonderful Irish writers I met via the Forward Motion website, I've been able to get answers for most of my Ireland-related questions. This particular lady has been kind, courteous and helpful. She always answers in detail with just a little more information than I actually asked for, and it's always right on the mark and contains some valuable little gem of uniquely Irish insight that I know will make Pale a better book. I don't know what I would do without her.

Sometime within the last 36 hours, I sent her an email with several questions, and this evening I got her reply. I've already used the information to make a couple of corrections in the manuscript. Email amazes me. The internet amazes me. It's like magic. I can send a message to a friend in Ireland and get a reply back with only a short delay. Sometimes the entire exchange of emails takes place within a 24-hour period. So much faster than all the old methods of international communication, and so much less expensive than a phone call! When I was in Ireland in 1992, I sent a postcard to our house-sitters back in the States. My husband and I arrived home before the postcard did.

One of my questions involved some Irish language pronunciation, so Mhici's going to consult an Irish-speaking friend for me. Her help has been so far above and beyond that I really, really owe her one. Or several. I hope I can repay the favor someday.

Writing progress: I wrote one of the last three scenes of the book (over 3,000 words) on Tuesday night. It was a tough battle scene with lots of magic flying around, but some things about it didn't feel quite right. Last night I realized that it just wasn't working for me. I didn't feel comfortable leaving it as it was, so I scrapped it all and started over. I like the rewritten scene much better. It's also shorter, which should leave me a little more word count budget for the last major scene and then the brief wrap-up afterward.

Memory

The Huz just installed one gig of new memory on my computer, and it's working a lot faster than it was. It had a quarter gig, and apparently 52 processes load at startup. WTF? How could that many processes need to load at startup? Makes no sense whatsoever. After the book is done, I'm going to pick up a copy of Windows XP for Dummies and see if I can find out how to fix that. The Huz is a brilliant computer guy, but he...well, let's just say, he dislikes Windows. So I figure if these little maintenance issues are things I can learn to handle mostly on my own, I'll save him the hassle. I'm actually not too bad a trouble-shooter, considering I have no Computer Science background. (I'm sure programming bubble sorts in C and word processing in Superscripsit on a TRS-80 in High School doesn't count!)

Gad, can anybody remember Superscripsit? I shake my head in wonder. When I wrote my first novel, I was 16 years old. I'd taken Typing 1 and Typing 2 in high school, and just before I got ready to go off to college, I got special permission to stay after school a few times and use the Superscripsit program in the computer lab to enter that novel and save it to a floppy disk. Years later after the Huz and I were married and bought our first computer together (awww!) he was actually able to access those files on that floppy and bring them across into a spiffy new word processing program called Word Perfect. It didn't look perfect, but the data was there.

You know, the story of writing that novel and saving it for posterity makes a better story than the novel itself. The idea was cute, but the actual writing was...um.... You know the old saying that a novelist's first million words are garbage? Yeah, pretty much. I was no Paolini. But I really have to hand it to my teachers--they rocked. My English teacher used to deliberately ignore the fact that I was writing a novel during his class; as long as I could answer a question when he asked it, he let me alone. I'd make my own corrections and hand-copy those pages neatly, then take them to the school office, where they let me copy them on the Xerox machine. Then my English teacher critiqued the novel on his own time. He marked his crits and comments on these horrible blue rubbery copies of my handwritten pages; I still have them somewhere, I think. Later, after I'd gone into the Typing 2 class, I'd distribute my neatly handwritten originals to a couple of other students in the class, and the typing teacher would ignore the fact that the three of us were typing out my novel rather than the class material. As long as we produced typed pages, he didn't care. The Superscripsit saved on the floppy disc was the culmination of two years of work on this same novel, which I continued to tweak for the next eight years or so while I went through college and tried out a nursing career. Writing-wise, I switched from spiral notebooks to an electric typewriter of my own, but my second finished novel was the first one written entirely on a computer--the same one I mentioned before with the Word Perfect program. Blue screen, white letters. Ugh. At the time, I thought it was completely wonderful. I had no idea how rapidly the technology would advance.

The Huz makes fun of me because I use the "page width" setting to type--I mean input--my novels into the Word program I have now. I like it, okay? It looks like separate crisp white paper pages. Call it a quirk. I've got more where that came from.

Almost Finished

I'm almost there. Two scenes to write, and Beyond the Pale is done. I'm taking it to the Moxie tomorrow to see what they think, and then I'll polish and edit for a week or two, depending on what issues come up, what details I need to verify with the nice Irish internet friends who've helped me with fact-checking, etc. I tend to write lean on description, so I may need to add in a layer here and there. But the end of the book is very close, now. In fact, I'll probably write at least the first part of the big climactic scene tonight.

I can hardly believe it's almost done. I started this book last March. Sheesh, that's nine months. Congratulations, folks, it's a book. For a moment there, it seemed as though that took a little longer than I'd planned, but then I remembered that during the same time I started Beyond the Pale, I was still writing Shifts of Perception. I only got to write on Pale a little bit here and a little bit there for roughly the first six months, until I finally just caved and told Bob I was going to set Shifts aside for a while to finish Pale. Now we'll see whether the switch to urban fantasy paid off.

Fear of Success

A friend and I were talking about what makes writers tick (or not tick, as the case may be.) One thing mentioned was fear of success, and whether it engenders writers' block. As writers, many or even most of us worry about what will happen if we don't make it. But the flip side of that is what will happen if we do.

Yesterday, I was reading Laurell K. Hamilton's blog. Some people had come to her site and done some Laurell bashing--on her forum, mind you! Her forum, not theirs. How rude. She mentioned that they hated her and hated her books. Sheesh. Hate is a pretty strong emotion to waste on people you don't even know and books you could just as easily set aside with no harm done. But what really stuck in my mind was that one day if I'm very, very lucky, that type of bashing could be directed at me or my books. Wait. What did I just say? That's right, I said if I'm very lucky. No, of course I don't want to be bashed or flamed online or otherwise. But the idea that everyone will love my books and no one will hate them is just unrealistic and more than a tad shortsighted. If I'm remotely successful, bashing is bound to happen sometime. It's better that people either love or hate an author's writing then that they're merely indifferent to it. If they just go "meh," turn away and shrug, that could be a much worse sign then if they get excited and buy dozens of books just so they can stage a book burning. What, you think I'm kidding? I heard that actually happened to J.K. Rowling. The story is that every time a group buys a bunch of her books to burn, her sales take a leap upward. Even if that's just an urban legend, I love it. We should all be so unpopular! Does the idea of being a target for flames scare some writers off? Maybe. Probably. It's not inconceivable that some writers are shy enough or sensitive enough that they'd rather write in obscurity indefinitely than expose their work to the flamers. And that's okay. Can't say I blame them. However, I obviously don't belong in that group or I probably wouldn't have written this paragraph.

What else can we turn over and examine? What about marketing? I've talked to some writers who hate the idea of touring and promoting their books--not because of the time or money it takes, but because of the public appearances. "I'd love to be published, but I hate the idea of having to dress up and do book tours and talk to all those strangers, etc," is a common theme. Well, sure, talking to people can be intimidating, especially if an author is shy and meeting strangers isn't his strong suit. Not every school kid wants to get up in front of the class and give his book report, and some never get over that fear. But hey, there's a reason TLC's Clinton and Stacy have a TV show that teaches people what not to wear. Shy humans can be taught! All the necessary book- and self-marketing skills can be learned. Groups like Toastmasters can help. Style guides help. A great haircut and some new clothes can work wonders. But yeah, I can see where shyness might overcome the desire for success in some of our writer colleagues. I feel for them. I hope most of them don't let it hold them back, but I know that some will. Good luck to them anyway. I try to look at it as putting on a hat. Today, you have on your writer hat. Tomorrow, you might put on your schmoozing hat, or your pitching hat, or your marketing hat. Dress for the job you want. Look the people in the eyes and smile. Like chocolate against dementors, it helps. It really helps.

One last fear topic for today. Fear of being a one-trick pony. That may be the worst fear of all. Let's say you had a little success. First book was published, you won an award, maybe you had a great sell-through. Now looms the big question. Can you do it again? Would it be better to go out on a high note and never write again? For some, maybe. For some, the possibility of not being able to live up to high reader and publisher expectations may be a crippling problem, especially given the midlist crisis that many writers face. Yeah, I said midlist, not midlife, but the symptoms are similar. What if all that you stand for, all that you believe in and all that you've built suddenly fails in the pressure cooker of today's market and you're forced to reinvent yourself right in the middle of your life...er, career? It happens all the time. Perfectly good authors get dumped due to bad sell-through, and as I've seen several authors explain in their blogs lately, sometimes the career is dead before the author even hears the rattle and wheeze. For some people, the pressure to recreate former or current success might be too much.

Certainly, it would be easier to leave off while you're ahead. That way, there's no Book Two for Amazon readers to cite as "disappointing," or bad sophomore sales numbers for editors to frown at and then decide to take a pass on the option for Book Three or Four. But the old cliche "better safe than sorry" just doesn't play well in my head. No risk, no gain. Book Two is always going to be a risk. But so is every subsequent book, no matter which number it is. And you can't possibly hit on target every time. If you do, you're golden. I salute you. But if you finally do write the book that bombs, don't throw away your keyboard! If the phoenix can rise from the ashes, so can an author. If one idea doesn't suit, another will. I have to believe that. It's not the rose-colored glasses talking, I swear. It's just that the only guarantee in this business is that those who don't chase the dream won't ever catch it. And I can't help myself. Must....chase....must.... Yep. That's me.

And these are my thoughts on this New Year's Day, 2007. Ask me again a year or so after I've finally caught that elusive success. See if I've thrown it back in the pond and gone off to hide in the closet. I'm a little precognitive, so I feel safe in saying that no matter what might be in the closet, it won't be me. I'll still be out in my office applying fingers to keyboard, still cranking out the stories in my head and trying to pawn them off on all of you who care to read them. I guess I'm just stubborn that way.

Happy Holidays

Season's greetings and happy holidays to everyone. I've been busy working on the last couple of chapters of Beyond the Pale, doing holiday things with the family, eating all the wrong foods and keeping all the wrong hours. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season! Best wishes for the upcoming year; may it bring you joy.

Real Life and the Great Holiday MishMash

Real life has really crept in this past couple of weeks. Moonshadow came through his eye surgery fine and is doing great, acting like his old self and no longer in pain. That's a relief for everyone; anybody who has a cat knows that when the cat's not happy, nobody's happy!

Christmas decorations are going up and holiday commitments are, hopefully, winding down. I've been trying to help the kids get caught up with their correspondence school lessons and get packets ready to mail, as well as getting holiday gifts bought, wrapped and ready to mail also. Next, I have to get the Christmas cards out; if I don't get that done this week, it's probably a lost cause.

So what about the book? Well, I'm about to finish Chapter 13 of a planned 16 or possibly 17. We're heading into the end game now; everything just rockets along from here to the end with scarcely a breath for Brenna, the heroine--and not much of one for her writer, either. That said, I'm sure Brenna would much rather be facing my Christmas rush than what she's actually facing now. The slightly weird part for me and the biggest disconnect between reality and the writing is that while I'm putting up Christmas decorations and wrapping presents, Brenna's still looking at Halloween in a few days. This never bothered me with any of my epic fantasy because I made up all the holidays, but with a book that takes place in the modern day world.... Oh, well, I suppose that's just the hazards of the job. Did I mention I love the job anyway?

Cat Update

Turns out it wasn't a terminal disease--at least, as far as we know. Moonshadow's lab work is very good for a boy his age. But the eye will have to come out. He had a cataract that pushed his lens out of place, and now it's where it isn't supposed to be and can't be put back. The good news is that his other eye is in good shape and shows no evidence of cataract, so he should have one good eye for the rest of his life, barring any unforeseen problems. I'm relieved that the whole situation isn't as horrible as what I'd feared, but it's been stressful. He's been my little furry mascot for so many years now. And just in case anyone wondered who really writes the manuscripts....

Bumpy Ride

Agh! Ten days since last post! In the meantime, I've moved the blog to the new Google account, blown away most of my customizations on accident and had to enlist the computer guru husband to help me fix the problem, and had to take the cat to the vet on Friday after discovering that one of his eyes had gone grey overnight. Freaky problem, still don't know what's up. He has a veterinary ophthalmologist appointment tomorrow. The kids and I are still behind on this years' correspondence school assignments. To top that all off, I had an ear infection and some kind of tonsil infection as well. It's just been a mishmash of various things going wrong or threatening to. And then I had to mostly switch my schedule from working at night to being up and trying to work during the day. I keep falling asleep in front of the computer, and it doesn't seem to matter what time of day or night it is. So for the past week or so, writing has been dicey.

The good news is that I'm partway through Chapter 12, out of a planned 16. Yay for me. If I can just keep it in gear, I may yet finish this thing before the end of the year. I've even got a tentative plan for a sequel, though I haven't heard yet whether the first one is going to fly. Never hurts to be prepared, I guess.

I know I've said this before, but whether this book makes it or not I'm just loving the experience of writing it. It's been great fun and I feel good about it. Even if it proves to be just a little no-go break from writing the Oantran stuff, it's been a good break.

That last paragraph was the PC version, the humble version, the cautious version. There's a little war going on in my brain that looks a lot like the cartoon of the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Here's how that dialog would go if it were an actual cartoon:

Angel: You've never written an urban fantasy before. You don't really know what you're doing, so don't expect miracles.
Devil: Ah, what do you know? You've never written urban fantasy before, either. This book is all that--it rocks. It's The One that'll get us published. Trust me. Would I lie?
Angel: Like a rug. You'll do anything to keep us in the game. Even lure us on with candy-coated dreams of publication and marketing and comic books based on the characters. You shouldn't get our hopes up. You're turning us into a masochist.
Devil: Everyone needs a goal....

Milestone

I did it! The first ten chapters of Beyond the Pale are done, reviewed by the Moxie, edited, polished, and out the door. I also revamped the synopsis and sent it out, too. Bob should get the package in a few days. Now I'll work on the last several chapters while I wait to see what his reaction will be. No matter how good it might have sounded over the phone, it also has to read well on paper, and this is my first urban fantasy.

I'm reluctant to make any assumptions about how well it turned out, but I will say that I like it, I had fun writing it, and I'm going to have fun writing the rest. That's what I'll do while I'm waiting. Whatever happens with it from here on, the best part is that it was a challenge for me, a new direction. Setting it in Ireland was a greater challenge yet. It stretched my skills and my boundaries as a writer, and that's always a good thing.

Now that the first half is mailed out, I'm about to have a great time writing the first scene in the next chapter. It's a cheery little scene that takes place in a hospital room, over the bed of someone who.... Ah, but that would be a spoiler, wouldn't it?

Queue

I voted. Spent four hours at the polls in a long line that meandered up and down two hallways and into several rooms. One family ahead of me waited for about two and a half hours and then had to bail halfway through because their kids had school in the morning. I arrived at 6:30 pm and didn't get done until 10:30 pm. I drove home and let the Huz heat up some dinner for me, and then we sat and watched CNN. We still haven't gone to bed, and I won't for some time; I still have two chapters to edit.

Ugh--in reference to the line at the polls, not the chapters. I won't state my political leanings here on the blog. Anyone who cares that much and reads my books in the future will probably figure it out. Goodnight, America, and good luck.

Cold Halloween, Hot Keyboard

One evening this week--Sunday or Monday, I can't remember which--the kids and I sat in front of a DVD movie (The Corpse Bride) and put together goodie bags for the trick-or-treaters. Call it a quirk, but I've almost completely stopped giving out candy on Halloween. I go to the party outlet and buy silly little Halloween trinkets and gizmos like plastic spider rings, skeletons, rubber eye balls, rats, pens, etc. to stuff into little bags instead of candy. I figure that most kids are going to come home with more candy than they should consume in a year's time anyway. I'd rather not add to it. That said, I admit that I was a hypocrite and gave my own kids bags that consisted of Harry Potter chocolate frogs complete with wizard cards, Harry Potter cockroach clusters, and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. I mean, come on! It's Harry Potter candy, which is so expensive that it isn't worth it to buy it more than about once a year anyway. It seems that Jelly Bellies has outdone themselves this year by adding two new flavors to the Beans: Bacon and Deviled Egg, I think they were. Yum.

Anyway, we had a lot of goodie bags left over because we didn't get as many trick-or-treaters as we expected. It was cold, cold, cold outside. Gary took the kids around and walked the German Shepherd, and when they got back, the kids dropped the candy and headed straight to the kitchen for some hot chocolate. Andromeda headed straight for her bed, where she curled up and tucked her nose underneath her tail. Poor puppy. The kids tucked her in underneath their jackets, and finally she got warmed up again. She had been starving to death as a stray before we adopted her; I guess even after the three months of good food, she still needs to put on more of a fat layer. If I'd have thought about it, I'd have put one of the kids' jackets on her before she went out.

The time from last week into this one was crazy. Last Friday, I went to a drama performance with a Halloween theme because a friend was going to be in it and asked me to come. Saturday was our party. Sunday was a party held at another friend's house, which I couldn't go to and sent the family instead because I had a writers' meeting. Then Monday gave us barely any time to catch our breath before Tuesday's usual Halloween craziness ensued. How I thought I'd actually get my chapters mailed off to my agent before Halloween, I have no idea. However, I do have things almost ready to go.

The Moxie reviewed my first nine chapters (sans Chapter 7 because somehow I missed printing it out in my haste before the meeting). It took them several hours to read through the whole thing, and I have to say that they are the most amazing crit group ever! I saw how carefully they were going over every page. They found all my little inconsistant details and snafus, and now I'm in the process of editing and polishing those chapters to make them submission-ready. I still need to finish writing Chapter 10, which I believe to be the midway crisis point of the book. Word-wise, it doesn't fall exactly in the middle of the manuscript, which was at the end of Chapter 8. I need to get chapters 7 and 10 to the Moxie for review, finish all the edits, and then format, print and mail. Now that all the Halloween craziness is over, I estimate that I have perhaps one more week's work to do before it hits the Post Office.

On the downside, I wanted it mailed before Halloween, dang it! Bob estimated somewhere between the end of October and the first week or so of November, so technically I'm still in the ball park. On the upside, I'm more than halfway through the whole manuscript, and unless it needs a huge rewrite or some other drastic change, I'll have only six more chapters to go to finish the whole book. I'm looking at maybe being done by Christmas, or mid-January at the latest. (Crossing fingers, thinking good thoughts....!)

Remembrance

For many, this time of year can be among the busiest. Public school kids are back in their classrooms, various businesses near the end of the fiscal year, and people's energies are split between forging ahead and settling old accounts. The pace can be exhausting. But as the fall days shorten, the light wanes and we face the oncoming winter, it doesn't hurt to spend a few moments in remembrance.

Remembrance of what? Committments made or broken? Failed politicians? The bottom line? Those things are part of our lives, too. But I was thinking of things that aren't so easily judged and measured.

Less than a hundred years ago at this time of year, our ancestors were madly gleaning every possible bit of harvest before winter set in. It was that, or risk starving to death during the winter months. Nowadays, we grumble while we wait for spinach to be put back on the menu. We lament the risk of eating steak due to the very preventable threat of mad cow disease. But there are so many different kinds of food available from so many different sources that here in the U.S., we barely think about stocking up food for the winter anymore. Why can your own beans when you can just get more from California? No spinach for a while? Annoying, but lettuce is still available, and you can still have some kind of salad. We're spoiled. Horribly so, because for many of us, if we ever really faced the cessation of our food supply, we'd be starving in huge numbers, just like people from much poorer countries. The global market has changed so much that in our rush to get where we're going, we often forget where we've been.

A couple of days ago, my younger daughter went with her father to watch the killing of two young steers. Just two years old, the steers were grass-fed, raised without hormones, and allowed to roam happily over the land of a very forward-thinking (or perhaps it's actually backward-thinking!) man we know. My family paid for a half-share of one of those steers while it was alive, and soon we'll be bringing the meat home to sit in our freezer, as we've done every two years for most of the past ten. We don't have a big garden, but recently we harvested ten pumpkins and eight sweetmeat squash that grew in our small garden spot in the backyard over the summer. Small echoes of bygone years, but they feel right.

Also recently, we took a trip to Idaho City and visited their old historic cemetery. While there are a few more recent graves, many date from Idaho's gold rush and logging days. The cemetery stretches up a hillside, its graves dotted along the slope among the pines, reachable by dirt paths worn by generations of feet. No carefully manicured lawns here--only the quiet breeze and the falling of pinecones and needles from the branches above. Many of the graves in this cemetery are surrounded by quaint old wooden fences, often fallen or leaning, some with trees and bushes growing right out of the middle of the gravesites. Many are marked "unknown", the records of who was buried there lost forever whether or not their ghosts remain. One pioneer who went on to become a mayor in Boise buried his beloved young wife in that cemetery, and though he doesn't seem to be buried beside her, you can still read his moving words carved on a long stone slab atop her grave. In another spot, a whole family seems to have died in the same time frame, tragic victims of some illness or accident. Another small white native stone off the beaten path bears nothing but the initials J.W. and the words "at rest", its hand-carved letters a mute testimony to someone's poverty, but also a legacy of love for the person they could barely afford to bury. Another huge gravestone that practically shouts "money" belonged to a man from Ireland, buried all alone and far from the homeland he left behind.

This isn't meant to be a depressing post. Far the opposite. It's really just a reminder that in this busy season in the middle of modern concerns, maybe we should take just a moment and stop to think about how far we've come, and where we've come from. My Celtic ancestors felt that Halloween (Samhain) was a time when the veil between worlds was thinnest, when the dead could walk abroad and get a glimpse of the living. It was a time for harvest, for making domestic arrangements for the winter, for feasting and the forging of alliances, and--perhaps most of all--it was a time for remembrance.

Checking In, not Checking Out

I'm alive. I almost got into a car wreck a few nights ago, but...didn't. Our city is paying for its shortsightedness in road planning from several decades ago: now it seems we need all our roads widened to accomodate the increased traffic. This means a lot of late-night construction. I was on my way back from somewhere in the dark and had just come through an intersection, and the cars ahead of me suddenly slammed on their brakes in a place where we were all supposed to be accelerating, because our lane had been blocked by construction cones. Lovely. I slammed on my brakes, too, and I can just tell you now that my life did not flash before my eyes. My death, however, did. I remember thinking, "I'm not gonna stop in time, I'm not gonna make it, I'm not...oh, my god, I stopped!" And I did. The Ford 500 (Phouka) stopped on a dime, about six or so inches from the next guy's bumper. The ABS even kicked in, and I know I lost some rubber. The guy behind me hit the right-turn-only-lane, and we avoided a several-car pile-up. Barely. Seems my number was not up yet, but it easily could have been. Ford, you've got good brakes, and I've got good reflexes. Nice work, team.

Moving on...

I'm finished with Chapter 7 and am now into Chapter Eight. Just a couple more to go to the halfway crisis point.

What? The above experience wasn't a crisis point? Ah, no. My character's car was run into a ditch--before I had to hit the skids on the highway. Isn't it weird how life sometimes mimics art, and vice versa? If anything else in my life starts to coincide too heavily with what's in the book, I'm outta here, and there'll be movie rights to sell.