Happy Thanksgiving from the floor

I write this from the floor of my former study. Which has no furniture in it, only the computer (on the floor), two cat boxes, a scratching post, and posters still on the walls.

The living room is empty except for some trash bags and my purse.

The bedroom has my mattress on the floor, the TV on the floor, and all my most important worldly possessions on the mattress: eee pc, pajamas, the book I'm currently reading, and the notebook I'm writing Blood Treasure in.

The bathroom contains essentials and one towel.

The kitchen contains nothing except cleaning stuff. The house smells oppressively of lavender oil, my mother's current favorite cleanser.

I can't move in with Mom yet because my brother and sister-in-law and three nephews are staying with her until Saturday morning, and my sister-in-law is allergic to cats.

I so totally hate moving.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your furniture.

Hey, where's my STUFF?

Okay, so I had planned on blogging about the names in The Taste of Magic, because I realized the other day that I'd used almost every single name on the list I made before I started the book. And some of the names I ended up using in odd ways, like the name Ryman became ryma, a type of alcoholic beverage, and Amon became amon, a traditional troll instrument, and so forth.

But I can't blog about it because the notebook where I have that list of names, and also the bedside table where the notebook was sitting, and in fact pretty much everything else in the whole house, is gone. Because I am moving in with my mom this weekend and while I was at work little pixies came and packed up my belongings and took them to my mom's house. I had to go over to Mom's when I got home to collect a pair of jeans.

Fortunately, the pixies didn't notice the book I am reading, Stevermer's A Scholar of Magics, which I am enjoying immensely and didn't want to put down just yet. I think that's the only book in the house at the moment. Oh, and I loaned my brother Shearin's Magic Lost, Trouble Found, partly out of curiosity to see if a guy would like it, partly because I like the series and I'm recommending it to everyone. I'll keep you all posted on my brother's reaction.

I cheated

I won Nano, yes, and today I went in and uploaded my file so I'd be an official winner, with a certificate suitable for printing and everything. Only, well, I had already combined the two Taste of Magic files and I didn't want to fool with just pasting in the part I wrote during November as opposed to the part I wrote during the latter half of October. So I pasted the whole thing in, which is my I look like I wrote 30-some thousand words today.

On the other hand, damn this is the fastest book I ever wrote. I can't remember the precise day I started it, but if it's been more than a few days over six weeks I'd be surprised. 82,000 words in six weeks! Go me!

Done!

Okay, rather than write a short story, I just started the sequel to The Taste of Magic. It's tentatively titled Blood Treasure, although I suspect that'll change.

Anyway, I managed to get not quite 3,000 words, enough to tip my word count over 50,000 for November. I win Nano! And I have the first chapter and a half written on the sequel, which is a pretty good start.

The ultimate NaNoWriMo problem

I've written about 47,500 words on my NaNo book since the beginning of November. This is great, because I still have almost a full week to write those last 2,500 words. Except that the book is done.

It's done like dinner. It's totally finished. There is no need to add one more scene. But if I don't write 2,500 more words, I will fail NaNo!

I guess I will just have to write a 2,500 word short story in the next week and count that. But even if I don't, The Taste of Magic is done! I read it over today and it's good! It flows well, the characters are interesting, and it's a fun plot.

Now I set it aside for a month or two and let it age. When I come back and reread it, let's hope it's as good as I think it is.

Nothing but books

I have finished my Christmas shopping, except for my mom and whoever the family member is whose name I draw at Thanksgiving. I got everyone books, even my three-year-old nephew (although I did get him a toy too).

I am doing my part to support the publishing industry. Also, I bought myself some books.

I'd list what I got for everyone but I don't want to spoil the surprises in case they read my blog. I'll just say that I think I chose well and if I didn't, well, at least I supported some authors. Oh, and I ordered a hardback of In the Company of Newfies by Rhoda Lerman to donate to the local library in Jasper's name. It's a wonderful book, if you know someone who loves big cuddly dogs.

Good night, Jasper, 1996-2008

My dog Jasper died tonight. He was very sick, so I called the vet (a saint who makes housecalls) and she and her assistant came out and helped him go. It was very peaceful, and he slipped away in just a few minutes. We buried him in my mom's back yard. Next spring we'll plant a dogwood tree over him.

If anyone mentions the rainbow bridge I will cry all over the internets and everyone might drown. But Jasper was a Newfie, so he will swim out and rescue everyone.

Sleep tight, my good dog. I love you.

Hold on hold on hold on hold on forever!

Honestly, I think the second I submit something to a magazine, it stops responding to anyone. I shouldn't admit that I have this strange effect on editors. Other writers will start throwing things at me.

The editors, they taunt me with longer-than-usual response times until I think maybe I'm under serious consideration, and then I check Duotrope and realize there are no responses to anyone for the same amount of time! It's like the editors all fell off the side of the world. And then--rejection! And the whole process starts over again with the next magazine.

And no, I haven't received any rejections since Oct. 14. In fact, except for a hold request on Oct. 23 and an acceptance I can't tell you about yet on Nov. 6, I haven't heard anything at all about anything. Which is BOTHERING ME.

The long tail of worldbuilding

When I was in middle school, I had already decided I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I figured that clawing my way to the top would be such an interesting challenge that when I was incredibly famous, I'd start all over with a pneudonym that not even my publisher would know.

Let's pause for a moment while I roll my eyes.

So, yes, at 14 I was a clueless noob. But I did one thing right: I started worldbuilding. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just threw everything in, a big cauldron of creative stew that I just kept adding to. I don't think that's unusual in writers. What's amazing to me in retrospect, though, is that I consciously kept my stew free from ideas that I got from other writers, TV shows, movies, and comic books. It was all my stuff, and I did it on purpose so that I wouldn't accidentally use someone else's idea and think it was mine.

That's kind of awesome. Thanks, mini-me. Because I'm still drawing on that amorphous, all-encompassing stew of a world that I started building a really embarrassing number of years ago. The Weredeer books are set in a chunk of that world I named Endra, for instance. And the reason I've been able to write The Taste of Magic so quickly from a standing start is because I had not just the world but the characters, setting, and plot ready-made, just waiting for me to write about it. It had been pending for so long I'd nearly forgotten about it.

And I'm still adding to the stew. One day, for instance, one of my books will include something called the Mare and Stallion Dance. I thought that up about a month ago and I'm still not sure what sparked it, but it's a fun idea and it'll fit in a story one day. Now, though, it's in the world stew (that metaphor is not really holding up, is it?), where I can play with it and turn it around and add more details until I'm writing a story that needs the Mare and Stallion Dance. And there it will be, ready to use.

Exhausted. Miserable. Want to finish.

I wrote 7,500 words yesterday. Despite a miserable night being sick after a bad frozen pizza, I was up this morning writing again. I am almost done with this book. I'm about to crash right into the big final confrontation. And work is interfering! I just got home from work, and tomorrow is my big ten-hour day.

It's bad, because while I am typically a rather emotionally volatile person anyway, when I'm in the throes of a difficult scene or the end of a book, I'm much worse. And this week I don't even get my usual Thursday off. And everything managed to go wrong today, from minor irritations like running out of a particular handout, to major ones like the incorrect installation of a testing program I was supposed to use tonight that could not be fixed, so that tomorrow I have to call and reschedule ten people who were supposed to test tonight. And oh, were they happy.

Last night I picked up Moon Called by Patricia Briggs out of my To Be Read pile, because it was the thinnest book in the stack and I needed something to occupy me in between me getting intimate with Mr. Toilet from up close (TMI, I know. Sorry. Hope you weren't snacking). Not only is it darkish urban fantasy with werewolves, but Patricia Briggs is on the bottom of the "I want to read this" stack because I read her Dragon Bones book a few years ago and thought it was crud. But you know what? I'm enjoying Moon Called very much, which just goes to show that one should always revisit authors one dislikes from time to time.

weather and words

I finished a scene where Ana does some escaping on a river in the pouring rain at midnight, and wrote myself into such a state of freezingness that I had to get up and go wash the dishes, just to warm my hands up. Then I made a pot of very strong tea to warm me from the inside out.

The total wordcount for The Taste of Magic is almost 70,000, with half of that written in the two weeks or so before Nano started. That means I'm nearing the end and the action is picking up a lot. Big important events are about to occur, character allegiances are about to shift in some major ways, and hopefully the ending will indeed contain all the thrills and spills I can cram in. And to signify to the reader that all this is on the way, the book's weather has turned nasty.

This is such a cheesy plot device, but it's also completely ingrained. No matter how hard I try to make sure the weather is Pleasant! even when the world is going crazy, rain or snow or oppressive heat or gawd forbid even a storm sneaks in when I turn my back for one second. And no matter how hard I try to convince myself that weather does actually have to happen in books, and that sometimes (like the rain on the river that I just wrote) weather plays its part in the plot too, I still know perfectly well I'm just being cheesy.

Still, I'm not proud. The rain stays. But I will do my darnedest to turn the weather mild and sunny for the big finale, see if I don't.

Happy birthday, Jasper!

My Newfoundland dog Jasper is twelve today! That's like a million in people years. Actually, it's about 95 in people years for a giant breed dog. The average lifespan of a Newfoundland is 8-10 years.

I stopped on the way home from work and got him a bunch of his favorite chew treats, the ones that promise "hours of nutritious fun!" I gave him two of the biggest (a giant Busy Bone and another brand I can't remember), and of course he had them demolished and every crumb eaten in about half an hour, tops. I need to get him a new cow hoof--those actually take some chewing and he likes them.

I've got a headache and it's cold and I'm totally unmotivated to write. I just want to lie around feeling sorry for myself and watching Dale Hinman's Body of Evidence. But I can't, because it's still Nano and I've still got just over 20,000 words to go--to cross the Nano finish line and to finish my fastest-novel-ever! I want to get at least a few thousand words today if I can.

Kaboom!

I got to write the explosion, which wasn't technically an explosion but still lots of fun to write. Here's an excerpt at the start of chapter 29 (I have short chapters):

One moment Rafael and I were flirting, the next moment the roof had caved in and people were screaming. I hate it when that happens.

Pieces of wood and shingles rained down on us, and a big chunk of the ceiling landed on the table and scattered plaster everywhere. Rafael grabbed me and dived under the table.

I realized he'd cast a shield spell over us. He threw himself on top of me and I felt his energy feeding into the shield, pouring into it like me healing in a hurry. More pieces of roof fell around us. "Rafael, don't--you'll kill yourself."

"I'm fine," he gasped. "There's something out there. I won't let it hurt you."

The table sheltering us was flung aside, and I heard more screams. Plaster dust shrouded the room, billowing down from the ruined ceiling; it obscured my view through Rafael's shield, but not enough to stop me from seeing what was climbing in from the roof.

A dragon, red-gold and not quite solid. I could see the edges of the roof through it, and the cloudy sky.

More books please

I just got my latest order from Amazon. Yes, I know, I swore last month I was going to throttle back on the Amazon orders. They're just so tempting, with the 4-for-3 paperback offer! And I have noticed I'm not buying DVDs or music hardly at all anymore, just books.

So this time I ended up with:

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison

I don't remember my mood when I placed this order, but it must have been DARK. Because all these books look depressing and half of them are urban fantasy--and we all know how much I just love urban fantasy. That was sarcasm.

Nano has knocked my reading time on its ear, so I don't know when I'll get to these. I already have almost a whole shelf full of To Be Read books. And Mom wants to drop by Books-a-Million after we have lunch together today.

Raccoon Commandos rescue puppy

My mom blogged about it over here, with pictures but without all the expletives I uttered. Her neighbor's puppy got his head stuck in his gate. Nuff said.

I stayed up late last night and wrote until I got to the explosion! Yay for the explosion! Now fun stuff can happen again.

Recruiting for Raccoon Commandos

My dog Jasper and I snooped around my neighbor's yard after I got home from work today, by walking up and down the service drive where their trash cans are. The trap and trapped raccoon are both gone.

I was pretty bummed about that, actually, since all day I've been imagining myself as a raccoon savior. I figured I'd march right over there and release the raccoon by using my awesome human intellect coupled with my slightly less awesome (but still awesome by raccoon standards) muscles. And after that I fully planned to stage nightly raids on the Havahart trap, springing it after my neighbors went to bed but before the raccoons were out, which is more satisfying than breaking it and probably won't get me arrested. I even planned to wear a black burglar mask. It seemed fitting. And then, years from now, one day when I was menaced in an alley by a bad guy, the raccoons would come to my rescue!

But as of now, all is quiet on the Raccoon Commandos front. I'll keep you posted.

Okay, so, in writing news: Nothing to see here. Please move along. We are a hedge. Also, I have still not reached the freaking explosion in The Taste of Magic and I am frankly getting really bored with this neverending section. I just hope it doesn't turn out boring to read. I just have to write one stupid conversation before the kaboom! Why can't I manage that? Well, because it's almost all exposition and I have to dole it out carefully to keep it from being an infodump--or worse, turn it into, "As you know, Ana, your friend Ash has escaped from the Tower and is on the run from the guards...."

Foils raccoons and pesky humans

I woke up at five to a horribly inhuman snarling, growling, and whimpering practically right outside my window. Of course it was the neighbors.

*rimshot*

My neighbors--the ones I loathe, and did I mention that Mom says the guy is on the Tennessee sex offender list?*--have a Havahart trap on their garbage cans to trap raccoons. I guess it's easier to trap a raccoon and relocate/kill it than it is to, oh, BUY A BUNGEE CORD to tie down the can lids.

I peeked out the bedroom window and had a good view of the trap, containing one big fat raccoon. Three big fat raccoons were trying to get their buddy out, to no avail. Finally they gave up, and when they had gone the trapped raccoon fell silent. So I tried to get back to sleep before my alarm went off at six.

And of course I couldn't sleep for worrying about the raccoon, and at 5:30 I got up, pulled on a jacket and my shoes, and went outside.

The raccoon was all huddled up in the rain. Now, I've opened a Havahart trap before--with a skunk in it, no less--but that was about 15 years ago. I couldn't remember how it worked now. But hey, I'm a human being, the supreme tool-user, with opposable thumbs and everything.

So after ten minutes I went back in and turned on the internet. Which FAILED ME. I finally found a list of manuals on the Havahart site and guessed at which trap my neighbors had (a really old, crappy one, apparently), and found out how to open it. With a really bad diagram. Apparently one wrenches up on the door and props it open with a stick. Not included.

It's November. All the sticks I could find broke when I looked at them. And it was raining harder, and my accursed neighbors seem to be awake now. So I failed to save the raccoon.

But I swear to gawd or dawg or whoever, I'm going to break their damn trap. I'm a clever human being, after all. And I know where I can get a set of boltcutters.

*all the guys I went to high school have "issues." It's probably why I'm still single.

Six little words

It's amazing how these six little words have made me so happy (and nervous) today: " We're still deciding on your book."

That's a reply to a status query about my manuscript out at Mundania. They've had it since December, and I've been half-assuming I just missed the rejection email. I did hear from them in June that it was with an editor for a full read, but a lot of spam emails have choked up my old email address since then. It's too easy for me to miss an important email. That's why I use my gmail account for almost all submissions these days.

Speaking of submissions, from a post over on the Absolute Write forums, Mundania received over 2,200 subs between December 2007 and April 2008, of which they kept about 25 for full reads. So even if they ultimately pass on The Weredeer, obviously I'm doing something right.

Well, where have I been?

Considering that I usually have to keep myself from posting all the time lately, it's a tiny miracle I didn't post at all over the weekend. I haven't been doing anything fun, I promise. I mean, I did sleep a solid nine hours last night and went and saw Madagascar 2 yesterday (which was fun). On the other hand, my left contact is driving me INSANE. It's just a little bit fuzzy. I told the eye doctor last week and he said I just needed to get used to it. No, it's still fuzzy, dammit. I look forward to telling him in my follow-up visit Thursday.

I'm almost through the boring part of The Taste of Magic, which admittedly is not as boring as I originally thought. It's just not as actiontastic as I like, so it feels like it's just dragging on and on. Fortunately, a few people are going to break some laws, and something will explode (I still haven't reached the explosion I promised myself). Then I should be into the last third of the book and things will have to heat up a lot--which means more fun stuff to write about.

Feets...dragging...

I'm at a sticky part of my Nano book. I stupidly put a Ceremony in, with the King, who offers Our Heroine a Boon, and even typing this sentence is boring me silly. Forcing myself to write the actual scene is even worse. It smacks too much of epic fantasy and requires way too much description.

I comfort myself by remembering that I've got some funner scenes coming up. But first, oh gawd, I've got to send Ana to a Meeting of Revolutionaries, where Nothing will happen, and that in itself is Significant.

No no no! I refuse to do two boring scenes in a row! Something's going to happen at the damn meeting. Maybe I'll blow up the building.

picky picky

I went back to the eye doctor and got my contacts today! And then I came home and immediately put on makeup, because now I can see my face. It looks all naked and vulnerable without glasses. And I have those pale circles around my eyes that glasses-wearers often get in the summer.

I bought a paperback in celebration, Fairie Wars by Herbie Brennan. I couldn't find anything else that looked even remotely interesting in B&N. Last week I bought Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff and took it with me to read in the eye doctor's waiting room, and it was a real disappointment. She kept changing POVs for one thing, initially breaking to new sections to do so, but then she just gave up and wobbled back and forth from paragraph to paragraph. That's not omnicient, that's sloppy. For another thing, the supposedly 27-year-old main character acted and spoke like a 40-year-old. That made it vaguely creepy(er) that she was all about the other main character, a 19-year-old kid. Cradle robber much? Not to mention that the pace seemed really slow and I didn't actually like the characters, and the talking cat did not actually act much like a cat. Cats don't frown.

I know, I'm horribly picky. While I was browsing the shelves, I kept adding to a mental list of what I don't want to read:

too much hard SF, or indeed much SF at all
epic fantasy
most urban fantasy
retold fairy tales
retold myths
anything about Roman times
anything about King Arthur
anything about Robin Hood
anything Celtic
[because look, those themes have been mined WAY too much]
anything based on a game or a movie
wolves or werewolves
vampires (mostly--I do make rare exceptions)
political machinations (see epic fantasy)
twee fairies (a la The Good Fairies of New York, which is pretty much unreadable)
evil fairies (sorry, E. Bear, I just can't get into it)
heavy-handed humor (i.e. most humor)

And I could go on and on. And on and on and on. It's a wonder I can ever find anything to read.

Intellectual rights, my butt

You can blame my boss for this entry, because she came in to the office with a sheet of gold-foil stampy things--some kind of faux Easter seals or something--and asked me if I wrote letters. Because I'm always writing in a notebook, and it must be letters, right? So I told her no, I was writing a novel, and we laughed, and I told her about Nano and all. And she said, "Oh, you'll have to let me read it when you're done" and I said I would when it was published one day, and then she got a funny look on her face.

"You know, I don't care, but don't let anyone else know you're writing a book during working hours. Because if they found out, the college can claim intellectual rights to the book."

I've heard this before. The argument goes that since the writer is being paid for the job, everything they produce while being paid should belong to the employer. I've heard that some companies have even latched onto ideas that their employees have had, because the employees must have had the ideas on the job and therefore the employers own them. The ideas, not the employees. Although it's a fine line at that point.

So, can the college claim The Taste of Magic is their intellectual property? Will they? I don't know why they'd bother--it's a fantasy novel that isn't all that well written (I'd love to be a great writer, but I know I'm not and I'm okay with just being a writer who writes fun books with appealing characters), and mediocre fantasy novels are a dime a dozen. No, actually, they're free. Take one. I have a bunch.

But I'd rather burn the manuscript than let some entity claim it's theirs because I wrote it on the clock. And let's just split some hairs about that too. Sometimes I write on the clock. Most of the time I don't. Do parts of the book belong to the college and the rest belong to me? What about revisions? I always do revisions at home. The college is welcome to the rough draft--it's certainly not worth jack. And the characters, world, and most of the plot was invented at home on my own time. Some plot twists came to me at work, but plot twists are worthless on their own.

So no, I don't think the college, or any other entity, owns my books. I own my creative output no matter when or where it's produced. If the college dislikes me writing on the clock, they can fire me. They can't take my book.

Slow day at work = word count spike!

Man, I wrote some 4,000 words yesterday, longhand, entirely at work. We were really slow and yesterday was my long day where I work 8:30 to 7:30. So I just scribbled all day and filled a big chunk of notebook, and now my Nano count is nearly 11,000!

Hopefully I can do that again today.

I moved up a big event that I'd planned to put near the end, because there wasn't enough going on, and it actually worked really well. I threw in a dragon (sort of), a werewolf, and someone dies.

I just did a quick Mary Sue test for Ana, and she is so totally a Mary Sue (score of 35). I knew that, though. I'll have to have her do something irredemably horrible. I think I know what it'll be.

Don't forget to vote!

My mom has a post up on her blog about voting, which I hope you find amusing since she mentions me and the town we both live in. Her blog proves how really small our town is--hop over there and at least look at the pictures of the voting announcement and the polling place.

Incidentally, I will be moving in with my mom (heavy sigh again) at the end of November. She just moved into a bigger rental house that is about one minute away from my teensy rental house, so it only makes sense to double up for a while. We'll split the rent and utilities and so forth, which means she can save money and I can start to pay off my student loans. The CEO of EdAmerica probably just burst into tears of gratitude.

Let's plot twist again like we did last Nano

Today, writing at work in a spiral notebook between phone calls, I stared into the black gulf of running out of plot again. So I wrote in a really weird--but totally it-makes-sense--plot twist. Yay for Nano!

The Nano site is still really slow, as it always is the first few days. I have the first chapter of The Taste of Magic posted on my Nano page, but of course I can't even get to it to get the URL for you. Oh, wait--got it. Go here for my page, and then click on the Novel Info tab. Incidentally, after this coming Saturday I'm going to jettison anyone from my buddies list who shows a word count of zero, because the site only displays 11 buddies.

And I thought Weaver's Shroud was supposed to go up on Trunk Novels Saturday, but the site still hasn't been updated from October. So I don't know if they're just running behind or if they've pushed the date back or what. I'll post as soon as I know. Because I know you're all just dying to read a ten-year-old unedited fantasy novel about spinning.

Zombie cows

Mom and I had this conversation today in a book store:

Me: I figured out what cows sound like.
Mom: What?
Me: They sound like zombies.
Mom: What do zombies sound like?
Me: Braaaaains.
Mom: That's a zombie?
Me: A zombie cow. All cows sound like zombies.

Then we went to Panera, where the food is overpriced and not very good, and they have about one plug for every twenty tables, and we wrote for a while. Mom's doing Nano too. She's writing about a man who gets laid off from his job at M&M Brakes and enters a turkey shoot for the money, and accidentally shoots someone. I'm working on The Taste of Magic, of course, which still feels like the awesomest book of awesome evar to me.

I just introduced a new character. Yeah, 40k words in and I've introduced a major character. At least, he keeps trying to become a major character. I'm going to hold him back for now, but in the sequel (of course there will be a sequel--these characters are too fun to drop) he can take center stage along with Ana. They have some interesting chemistry. Maybe because he's a troll.

Two stories here, two stories there

Catherine J. Gardner found out before I even realized the list was up--I've got two stories in Every Day Fiction's year's best anthology. The post with the full list of stories is here.

It flummoxes me. I like "Bad Luck" okay, but I never thought "How My Sister Lost the Game" was my best by a long shot. In fact, I really didn't expect to get into the anthology at all. I have a tiny feeling that maybe they made a mistake, and the two slots I ended up with ought to have gone to more deserving stories.

Still, I'm pretty pleased. And while we're talking about EDF, one of the co-editors, Jordan Lapp, has won first place in the third quarter 2008 Writers of the Future contest! WOOHOO! Way to go, Jordan!

And speaking of Catherine J. Gardner, for that matter, she has a story up at Macabre Cadaver's new issue, "In the Dumpster King's Zip Code." And in the same issue, Jeremy Kelly has a story too, "The Crop Bearer." Both stories are awesome with a capital awe. You really have no excuse not to go over there and read them.

And I have written about 200 words on my Nano book today. Which is about 1800 words less than every single other person on my buddy list. Must...write...faster....