Halfway through

Geez, it's the end of June already. I round out the half-year mark with a rejection for poor "Never Be Alone"; despite my tepid fondness for it, I think it's time to retire it permanently. The editor gave me some good feedback which is probably accurate, but which doesn't make me want to pursue another rewrite.

June was okay. I didn't get much done, although I did rewrite an old story FUGGETYFUG I need to hack it down RIGHT NOW to 4k words and SUB IT before midnight! I can't believe I forgot!

Um, anyway, I rewrote an old story in June and I've half-written a new story. I sold a flash story to Bards & Sages Quarterly. I got some rejections that disheartened me enough that I'm considering retiring everything I've ever written and growing hot peppers as a hobby instead. There would be less heartbreak, since nothing much kills peppers and I have a head start with nine huge cayenne plants out back.

I have zero novels out right now, zero novellas, and only three stories. Right now I'm feeling so paralyzed at my inability to judge my own work that I'm incapable of sending anything out--not a query letter, not a manuscript, not anything. I guess this is probably a good time to ask for beta readers for chapter one of The Weredeer. You don't have to commit to the whole thing, just the first chapter. I'm pretty sure it starts too slow. If you're interested, drop me an email at kateshaw123 [at] gmail [dot] com and you will have my eternal gratitude.

Now I have to go chop down that stupid "Cult of the Butterfly" story to 4k words. Since it's squatting there like a toad at 6,300 words, I don't anticipate having much fun.

All the bloodsuckers love me

I've got two days to read one book so I can keep on track for the 50-books-in-2009 thing. I think I can do it! I've stacked nine books on my bedside table to inspire me, although I expect one of the cats will knock the pile over in the middle of the night. I finished The Mislaid Magician today, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, and enjoyed it very much; in fact, I think it's better than the second book in that series.

I picked about a quart of blackberries and raspberries this morning. Yes, raspberries! I didn't even know they grew wild around here! I found a big thicket of them Friday when I went hiking a new trail at Clear Creek. I love raspberries! Finding the thicket was worth all the bajillions of chigger bites I now have all over my legs. I wore Deep Woods Off today; ticks and mosquitoes I deal with as part of summer, but chigger bites are little itch machines, and it literally takes weeks for them to stop itching. Also, I react very strongly to bug bites of any kind, so I don't so much have bites on my legs as big red welts. That itch. A lot.

Incidentally, here's what I do with the blackberries (and raspberries!) I pick in the summer. After many abortive attempts at cobblers, I no longer try. Instead, I put all the berries in a big pot and set the pot on to simmer very low; don't add anything, stir occasionally. After twenty minutes or so (more or less depending on how runny you want them and how many berries you started with), take the stewed berries off the heat. Serve hot over chocolate ice cream! My sister-in-law taught me that recipe and it's perfect.

Lie to me

Argh, Catherine J. Gardner tagged me! It burns, it burns!

"Sometimes you can learn more about a person by what they don’t tell you. Sometimes you can learn a lot from the things they just make up. If you are tagged with this Meme, lie to me. Then tag 7 other folks (one for each deadly sin) and hope they can lie."

Pride: What is your biggest contribution to the world?

When I was only four years old, I invented Beethoven. I was something of a prodigy-prodigy.

Envy: What do your coworkers wish they had which is yours?

My salary. Because I am the dean of, um, the math department, oh yes.

Gluttony: What did you eat last night?

Las Vegas. Raw.

Lust: What really lights your fire?

Las Vegas. Raw.

Anger: What is the last thing that really pissed you off?

Angry? I am never angry. I am eternally serene.

Greed: Name something you keep from others.

Fort Knox. It's in my basement. Sometimes I go down and polish the gold.

Sloth: What's the laziest thing you've ever done?

Las Vegas. Raw.


I tag Jeremy D. Brooks because maybe he'll update his blog if I tag him, and, um, Alan W. Davidson because I don't think anyone's tagged him with this one yet. And five other people who want to do it.

Would you like words with that?

I spent my entire lunch hour writing, which I used to do all the time. I still don't have a title for the story, and it's not typed up at all (I'm writing it longhand), but I think I'm probably about 2,500 words in and roughly halfway through. It started out a little dark, but nothing Kristof the weredeer is in can stay too dark for long. But since the climax of the story is going to take place in a battle where basically everyone gets slaughtered, I figure it'll get dark again.

It's wonderful to be writing something that's flowing so smoothly. That hasn't happened since The Taste of Magic last fall. I don't think this story is my best ever or anything, but it's not bad and I'm having fun with it. "Having fun" is a very important part of the writing process, but one which is easily forgotten.

Is it Wednesday again already?

As introduced by Catherine J. Gardner, it's Work-in-Progress Wednesday! And I actually did some writing today!

Actually, I did some writing yesterday too. Yesterday I finished the rough draft rewrite of "Cult of the Butterfly," which is too long and horrible but at least it's done (again). I was going to start fixing it and chopping big chunks out of it today, but instead I started work on a new Kristof Hart short story (Kristof, of course, being the weredeer of The Weredeer). I'm having a blast with it and wrote about 1,500 words today--I haven't typed it up so it may not be quite that much, but maybe it's a little more. Anyway, Kristof is a main character but not the viewpoint character, which is an interesting challenge. I don't have a title for it yet, but I'm sure to come up with something awful by the time it's done.

Reviews ahoy!

Tangent Online just relaunched! It's a review site for speculative short fiction. Right now they're mostly just reviewing the big print magazines, but they've got plans to expand that. I did skim through to see what issues they've reviewed of various smaller magazines (*ahem* of course I wasn't looking for any of my stories, that would be silly) but I didn't notice any that I have personally read. Since right now they're only reviewing print magazines, which can be pricey or slow to arrive if you order an issue, it's a good way to get a feel for the kinds of stories a particular magazine publishes so you know whether to submit there (or subscribe).

Insert complete change of subject here. We're having corn on the cob with supper, and I gave my mostly-eaten cob to my cat Vincent. Vincent loves corn on the cob. He's finishing off the kernels I didn't eat, and of course getting them all over the floor. He's so cute when he's not deciding the living room carpet is a giant litterbox.

The troubling state of the mystery novel

I used to read mysteries all the time. For many years, in fact, I read almost nothing but mysteries. Some of my favorite authors were Joan Hess, Susan Conant, Robert Bernard, Marian Babson, C.L. Grace, and of course Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. But I also read crappy mysteries by less-than-great writers, mostly because I discovered the genre in my early 20s (rather than growing up steeped in it like fantasy) and for a while couldn't get enough of it.

Now every time I pick up a mystery, I find it hard to get through even a few chapters. I can't tell you how sick I am of the gimmick every mystery now has to have: this one's about a sleuth who QUILTS, this one's a sleuth who LOVES FERRETS, this one owns a COFFEE SHOP, this one has her own RADIO SHOW. Whatever happened to letting the characters be intrinsically interesting without a gimmick to hook in the yoga enthusiasts or cooks or doll collectors?

And those hooks don't work anyway, because the mysteries are as paint-by-numbered as any Harlequin. I like cozy mysteries, the kind with an amateur sleuth who stumbles across a murder by accident and feels compelled to investigate. Lately, every mystery I've picked up has followed this precise plot:

The main character is a spunky 30-ish woman, independent and single and quirky (see the gimmick, usually splashed all over the cover: 'A Ferret Fancier Mystery' or whatever). During the course of a normal day at the quilting bee/ferret fancier club/coffee shop/radio station, the MC discovers a body in an unlikely place, killed in an unlikely way. The police are called in, and MC is questioned by an antagonistic police detective. MC and Cop instantly hate each other, but MC is forced to admit that she finds Cop ruggedly handsome, but she would rather die than let him know. He is a world-weary man who has seen too much of the bad things people do, and he's sworn off women because of his horrible ex-wife. MC is incensed when she realizes Cop suspects she is the murderer, and she decides to prove him wrong by finding the real killer (and/or the murderer was a fellow quilting enthusiast, ferret fancier, etc. or a rival in some way relating to the gimmick and MC suspects her insider knowledge of quilting/ferrets/whatever will help her find the killer after Cop refuses to acknowledge that she could help him). During most of the book, MC pokes her nose into ludicrously dangerous/improbable/socially awkward situations and manages to extract information the police can't get through ordinary methods. Cop is furious at her meddling and threatens to arrest her if she doesn't stop, but of course she is made of sterner stuff than that and just goes right on meddling (in sequels, Cop will occasionally make good on his threat to arrest her, but he lets her go again once he thinks she's learned her lesson--and at that point, I always quit reading the series if MC doesn't dump him right then and there). Using an obscure piece of trivia only known to quilters/ferret fanciers/etc., MC guesses who the murderer is but not why he/she committed the murder ("It has to be Jane--she's the only one who would know that silver-tipped Montana ferrets are deathly allergic to peanuts"). MC eventually discovers the Awful Truth behind the murder, and is at that point in such danger that Cop insists on becoming her personal bodyguard until the killer is caught. MC and Cop soon discover that they are madly attracted to each other, although they do not usually have sex until the sequel (and even then they're probably interrupted by another murder before they get very far). Against Cop's orders, MC plans a trap for the killer that takes place at the quilt judging at the state fair/the ferret show/etc. While MC is in terrible danger, she outwits the killer and is saved at the last second by Cop, who only pretended he wasn't going to help her out and was secretly moving in with his men all along.

Good writing and fun characters can make this plot work, but there's precious little of both around these days. Setting takes the place of good writing, and gimmicks take the place of fun characters. If anyone knows of any good cozy mysteries being published now that don't follow the guidelines above, please please please let me know!