What’s With all the Crickets?

*chirp* *chirp*

It’s been very, very quiet around here. I have a few explanations.

You see, firstly, there was NaNo. I did very well the first few days of NaNo, too… and then I found out that an opportunity had opened up, and my husband and I are going to be moving to Texas. By the end of the month. So, between Thanksgiving and packing/planning… a lot has fallen off the wagon. Including NaNo. And this blog.

So. I’m going to try to be on here more often. At least once a week until the end of the year, then back up to fulltime, okay?

Meanwhile, look forward to our giveaway on Tales From the Hollow Tree as we release our first collection of stories.

Have you seen our cover? Isn’t it pretty?

Tuesday Talk – Remembering 9/11

A lot has been said about 9/11 this year for the tenth anniversary. I have to admit, I didn’t watch any of the special programming on TV, other than some news coverage on the memorial. I did think more and more about my experience. It wasn’t anything particularly special, but it was certainly a memorable day for me. I think I wrote about the experience in my journal at the time, but I haven’t written it out since, so here I am.

I was a junior in high school in Southern California. My brother and I took an early-morning scripture study class before school each day, so it was climbing in the car after this that I first heard on the radio about a plane going into the World Trade Center. Someone had seen my mom in the car and told her to listen in, I guess, since usually she read when she waited for us. I didn’t really even have a concept of what it all meant—what the World Trade Center was, exactly. At the time, of course, we thought just like everybody that it was just some little thing, an accident. A little plane couldn’t take down a major building like that, and that was what it seemed to be… a small plane that somehow didn’t see the giant structure ahead of it. By the time we got home and had the TV on, the second plane had hit. I remember staring distractedly at the screen while getting ready for school, and everything still not really sinking in.

At school things seemed more hectic than usual, but to be honest, most of the day was a blur. There was a lot of speculation, but the TVs in all the classrooms had been shut off from the office, so nobody could see the news or knew what exactly was going on, though most of the teachers were smart enough to realize that we were smart enough to handle what was going on—and that we wanted and needed to know.

I remember getting more and more scared as the day went on and words like ‘war’ and ‘reinstating the draft’ were going around. The second one was the one that really bothered me, and I spent most of the school day thinking of all the draft-age guys I knew. As I said, I was a junior in high school, so that was pretty much all my guy friends and my older brother. I remember going over in my head as to reasons why various guys wouldn’t be taken—or at least wouldn’t have been in the 1940s. Flat feet, bad back, no depth perception. Things like that. I also spent most of the day clinging to my best guy friend’s desk. I usually sat next to or in front of him in classes we had, and I had a tendency to sit sideways in my desk, so one or both of my hands were wrapped around his desktop  edge in any of the classes we had together that day.

Eventually the powers that be that were in the office decided to let us have the news back and turned the signal to the TVs back on, and that’s how I spent the second half of the day for the most part. Again, most of this is all a blur. I only really have two strong impressions of the day. Firstly, one friend of mine was having completely inappropriate reactions to the whole day—she was laughing at random things and actually said it would be cool if we went to war—I don’t think it had sunk in yet for her that it was more than just a building, that it had been so many people, too. Her reactions did calm down the guy whose desk I’d been holding on to all day, though, and that calmed me down, if that makes sense.

Secondly, it had spread that a girl I’d been friends with in middle school but had fallen out with had had a brother working at the WTC—I had one class with her and wished I’d been able to say something, but I couldn’t remember the last time we’d spoken, and I didn’t think I’d help at all, though I’d met her brother and was shocked and sad for her.

I was deeply impressed by how the country seemed to unite and pull closer together after the attacks, though, and when I think of 9/11 on a regular basis, rather than focusing in on the day itself, I like to think of the strong sense of nationality and brotherhood that existed afterwards. Of the news stories of volunteers pouring in from everywhere to help, of the emerging stories of the heroes of that day, and of the extreme blessing that so many people for one reason or another weren’t at the WTC when they normally would have been. Not all that came from that day was bad, by far.

I don’t really have more to add on the subject, so I’ll simply suggest you read Maureen Johnson’s account of that day which she shared recently. It’s much more relevant than mine, though mine of course, is very relevant to me.

Here’s to You, Judy Blume.

What book made you realize you were doomed to be a writer? 

The book that did me in was Just as Long as We’re Together, by Judy Blume. Yes, I’m a Blume-r. I started a deep love of reading before I really could read—somewhere there is a VHS of me reciting the picture book Who’s a Pest? from memory when I was four years old, before I knew more than how to spell my name. I raced through book after book after book, reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. Fiction, nonfiction, mystery, fantasy, it all had me enthralled. I gobbled up classics like The Secret Garden and Little Women and The Hobbit.

And then, when I was eleven years old, a friend made me read Just as Long as We’re Together. I’d read Judy Blume before, though I didn’t realize that what I was holding now was the same author as the Fudge books—which I loved for a totally different reason—but when I read Just as Long as We’re Together, I knew I’d found the thing I really and truly loved. Teen fiction. Young Adult fiction.

I was too young to even be considered a Young Adult, but Blume’s stories struck such a deep chord with me—maybe because I was on shaky footing with the friends I thought would last forever, maybe because I was an “early bloomer” puberty-wise and Blume dealt with those sensitive subjects so deftly. I couldn’t get attached to the Babysitters’ Club or Sweet Valley High books that friends were reading and loving so much. They seemed so paltry—Blume’s characters seemed real. Three-dimensional people with souls and pasts and lives of their own.

And I wanted to be able to create that. I wanted to write books that people could walk away from feeling like they had new friends, new loves, new people dear to their hearts. Stephanie Hirsh and Rachel Robinson (with her own book as a sequel) are still a part of me today. Insecure teenagers fighting to define themselves and their beliefs and motivations—that feeling, that fight, is what made me want to be a writer. What made me want to examine the struggles of the heart and the complications of loving people but needing to be true to yourself, no matter what.

I drank those books down, every Blume I could get. Deenie. Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. Then Again Maybe I Won’t. It’s Not the End of the World. And then I haunted the YA shelves in my local bookstores—you know, back when it really was just a couple of shelves, usually hidden in the kids’ section?—looking every single time for something more. I was starving for young adult books. And there were a few out there… but mostly I was running across things like Lurlene McDaniels‘ books—where somebody always dies and everybody else is left tortured and ruined for it—and that kind of melodrama was not what I was looking for.

I just wanted good characters. Great characters. Characters that I wanted to stay up late at night on the phone with. That’s what I found in Blume’s books, and it took me a long time to find characters as great in YA again—though it’s certainly not hard now. And maybe it’s not because there were other kids out there like me… who heard that voice in the vast wilderness of literature and finally recognized something that was their own.

My writing has taken a different turn than the contemporary Young Adult that I started making stories up for when I was ten or twelve, but the heart behind the writing has been the same—has strengthened, really. I’m trying my best to capture the kind of power that goes behind emotions when you’re a teenager, and I love the way that fantasy highlights that, and I enjoy putting (hopefully) believable people into impossible situations and see how they deal with them. What’s most important to me is the honesty of the emotion.

So here’s to you, Judy Blume. Thanks for giving me my spark. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Poseur

I had dinner with an old friend the other day. I guess you could say my oldest friend. It’s nice to touch base with someone who’s known you since your awkwardest of high school days, and who you still like and can relate to years later. We talked about high school, and our odd little group of friends that we had—a very nerdy, clique-y group of friends that completely imploded our senior year.

Yes, I did say nerdy AND clique-y. We were a fairly elitist back in the day*—we were smart, and likely to go places, and in a barely-accredited high school, that was something. Oh I could talk about how it all stemmed from insecurity and a somewhat fear-driven determination to not only succeed, but soar—about how our need to prove our independence lead us to tear ourselves away from the only foundation we had (each other)—but that’s a whole other post. This friend is the only connection from those days that is upheld on both ends—the only one that has lasted beyond facebook friends.

*I promise I’m not elitist anymore. I did it a lot when I was young… it’s not worth it.

What I’ve always enjoyed about this friendship is that this friend of mine has always given me a steady sounding board for my life, whether he’s realized it or not. I mentioned offhand to him while we were talking about how I’d always felt like a poser in the little liberal arts college I went to in UC Santa Barbara (where his sister also attended—she was at the dinner, too). I’d studied Literature, and most of the students in my classes wanted to be poets or write their own Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius—or whatever. I, meanwhile had always had my heart and mind focused on commercial Young Adult fiction—nothing deep and literary like my classmates wanted to write.

My friend laughed outright at me—”Don’t you think they were all posers?” he asked, outright. “It sounds to me like you’ve stayed true to yourself.”

And just by his saying it, I realized that he was right. As he went on to say, a lot of the people in that school want to be novelists—like the ideology of it, and the “romance” of being kept up all night alone in a room with a typewriter—but instead they’re teaching or holding down tech writing jobs or doing something else that has nothing to do with literature.

Meanwhile, I have made it my business to not only keep writing, but to learn about the publishing business, understanding the querying process, network with other writers and learned the mechanics behind writing a good novel. I also have almost 60K of one WIP, and 55K of another, and am closer than ever to seeing my goal of finishing a novel and querying it out to agents. I’ve also worked hard on building up an online presence, so that if and when I get published, readers will be able to find me and have lots of platforms to interact with me on.

This isn’t to say that none of my other classmates are on that same path, of course. But somehow I don’t feel like much of a poser anymore. Well, except when I actually try to use the word “poser,” that is.

There Are People Watching the Last Harry Potter Movie Right Now.

I, sadly, am not one of them. It’s still two hours to midnight where I am right now, and I don’t have tickets to go, anyhow. Hopefully I’ll see it sometime this week—funds are extremely tight right now and you have to pick your battles.

Also…  I have to admit that I’m not so keen on the idea that this brilliant phenomenon is over. Oh I know, there’s pottermore coming, but the essentials—the books and the movies—they’re done for good now.

I was an extremely reluctant Potter fan. In fact, when the books were getting really popular and the first movie came out I turned my nose up at it all over the place. So much hype could never truly deliver. My sister had read the first three books, and my brother was starting to read them, and I was busy freaking out about starting high school—which had them teasing about me being so much like Hermione behind my back. I rolled my eyes at it then, but looking back, I’m going to choose to take it as a compliment. I think Hermione is pretty dang awesome.

Anyhow, I went along to see the movie—see what the fuss was about. Harry was your basic orphan-turned-something-awesome-in-some-other-world kid, and a bit of a brat, truth be told. I have to confess that I didn’t like him at all in the movie. What I did like, however, was the banter between Ron and Hermione. I have to admit that when I started the books, it was entirely to see how and when Ron and Hermione* were going to get together. For the most part I still didn’t like Harry very much… but that would change.

*(On the way home from the movie I asked my sister, “So, in the end it’ll be Ron and Hermione, and Harry and… Jenny? Was that her name?” I totally called it.)

Each book at first was breath-held anticipation as to whether Ron and Hermione would finally kiss, and then every movie was hoping-beyond-hope that they would portray things faithfully.

I really only started liking Harry a lot during the sixth book. Before that he was always so angry. In the seventh book, I fell in love with him. He’d grown so much, come so far, and was so profoundly grateful for the ones that had helped him get there… and that was what I loved most about him. That he was so thankful for his friends and for the people who’d sacrificed for him, and I was so touched by it all that I wanted to cry.

And because I saw the movie first, I’ve loved the movies just as much as the books. Watching Dan, Emma and Rupert grow up has been a lovely experience… and well, I adore Rupert, always have. Ahem…

But now the last movie is coming out, and it’s all going to end. It’s a good thing… but sad, too. I’m glad that I have a little extra waiting time to see how the last Potter flick turns out.

 

*********

P.S. I’m participating in the Independence Day blogfest tomorrow, details are here, come check it out!

A Few Randomosities About Me

First things first – Go over right now and read my new Friday read over at Tales From the Hollow Tree. It’s called Procession, and it’s my favorite short that I’ve written so far.

Secondly – I’ve been watching Doctor Who with my husband… we’ve just started on Series Three. He misses Rose and sort of hates me for making him watch this show… and he’s not fond of Martha Jones yet (I don’t care for her much either, though I love Freema Agyeman).

Thirdly – We also just finished Veronica Mars. He sort of hates me for that one too… says it’s the worst ending he’s ever seen. I liked it better after being away from it for so long… though it did still leave me wanting more.

Fourthly – I’ve just listened to the audio books for both The Secret Garden and A Little Princess on Librivox.org (which I just love). I was so, so impressed with how much I still loved these books, especially the latter. Sara Crewe is one of my favorite characters, ever.

And lastly! I’ve been awarded the Stylish Blogger Award and The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award by the fabulous Ali Cross.

I’m supposed to give seven random facts about me, and then pass this on to eight other bloggers… I’ll do my best.

SEVEN RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME-

1) When I was a kid, it took me hours to eat a single orange. I’d eat it pulp by pulp. I had a lot of patience, apparently.

2) I learned how to sew when I was four years old, with a needle, DMC floss, and bubble wrap.

3) I collect middle names. (What’s yours?)

4) I am a really slow reader. Well, in comparison to my mom and my sister, at least. It takes me a week or so to finish a book, if I’m not too busy… but I’m usually too busy.

5) I’m considering going back to school to get a library degree, as soon as I finish my book and start querying agents.

6) This is getting closer and closer, as I’ve passed 50K  recently!

7) I have a new idea for a Middle Grade book. So, so, wonderfully new. Never been excited about writing middle grade before, but this idea is too fabulous to ignore!

Now, as to blogs to tag:

- Isabelle Santiago              – Inari Grey                     – Shiny Shiny

- Tristi Pinkston                   – Elizabeth Meuller        – Jordan McCollum

- Shari Bird

2K a day?

Let me start out by saying I’ve never finished NaNoWriMo. I’ve attempted it a good four or five times, too. I’ve never successfully gone a whole week making the daily word count—which in case you’re wondering, is 1667 words per day.

Recently, though, I’ve decided that my biggest goal for writing right now is to get through a first draft, remembering that it’s the second and third drafts that’ll make things pretty and nice. I mentioned this to my husband and said that the thing I had to do was set a word goal per day and stick to it. He asked me how many words I would write per day.

“Um… I don’t know.”

This was not the right answer to give him.

“I was thinking probably a thousand.”

He then challenged me to write two thousand words per day. I tried to explain to him that this would be impossible, and possibly make me cry.

But he asked me to try it… just try it.  I was unsure to say the least, but I agreed.

How is it going so far? Well I’m really only a couple of days into the challenge. Two thousand words, every Monday through Friday, at least until my first draft is done. I started last Wednesday. My first day it took me almost twelve hours, but I hit my goal. The next day I started a little earlier, but it still took me just about all day. Still, I had a very good idea of where my story was going—including a checklist of scenes I needed to write.

Friday I went on a quilt run with my mom. (Well, we dragged the husband along—you know, for extra goodies). A whole day of writing was gone. Saturday was part of the quilt run too. (If you don’t know what a quilt run is, google it. Then imagine it full of crazy old ladies.)

So… now I was 2000 words behind. I was worried this would throw off my momentum, and it’d be a challenge to get started again on Monday—today. Well, it was a challenge to get started today, but not really because I couldn’t find momentum—I just couldn’t find a chance to sit down at first.

I’m happy to say that when I did get to the sitting down, with some persistence I got even more written in a shorter time than I had the other two days—I wrote 3024 words today, and broke 48K in my WIP. This isn’t the most I’ve written of an original piece of fiction, but it is by far the most consecutive writing of an original piece I’ve done. I have one at 56K, but it’s all scattered in scenes, with big gaping holes in between. With the WIP I’m working on now, 95% of it was written consecutively.

Basically, I’m feeling good today. I even made up a good amount of the 2000 words I missed on Friday, so that I’m only a little over 600 words behind now, and now 600 words seems like a piece of cake. Even 2000 words doesn’t seem like a whole lot. After all, I can write 500 words in an hour, if I’m in the right zone. 2000 only takes four of those. That’s totally doable.

Well, right now, when I don’t have a job. I’m sure that has something to do with it. But at the same time, that’s exactly why I need to keep the fire burning.

So whatever your goal is, even if it scares you a little, believe in it. You’re capable. And if you need some support or a cheering section, hit me up. I’m good at that.

This house is full of food.

I’m not exaggerating.

I’m staying at a friend of my dad’s right now… kind of a long story…  This house is nice. Nicer than the house you’re imagining. Nicer than I know what to do with. This is the kind of house most people dream of. It’s in a gated community that’s similarly dream-worthy. The ironic part is that a lot of the houses in this community are empty 95% of the time, but bygones.

Right now it’s even nicer because we’re staying here alone, pretty much. This house sees a lot of guests all the time, though, so I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s full of food. Kitchen, pantry, fridge downstairs… etc. There is a lot of food everywhere. And I am doing a very bad job of being good and not eating it. My willpower is being tested here and failing utterly.

Utterly.

I’ve been stuck in the house a lot, which doesn’t help, and working on edits and formatting and tasks that involve a lot of sitting and inspire a lot of snacking. In a house FULL of snacks.

This is not a good thing.

I’ve been trying to spend time working it off with swimming and even a bout or two with racquetball (which I’m very bad at, but enjoy a lot—though I spend a lot of time with my arms up over my head) but I’m still worried I’ll be leaving this house with a few extra pounds… which is so far from what I need.

Got to get back on the wagon here… I’m foreseeing a drastic cut down on carbs in my future.

In other news… I’m in between editing projects right now, so hopefully I’ll get a new story up on Tales from the Hollow Tree by next week.

I’m working on Jethro, and I actually have a checklist detailing exactly what needs to happen to finish the story. There’ll be a lot of rewriting going on after that, I’m sure, but I’m looking forward to finally being done with a first draft of something. I’ve started to feel like a faker once in a while, when I look at how long I’ve been writing and how long I’ve been wanting to be published—but not been able to finish something. I’ve felt like one of those millions of people who say they want to write a book, but never do a thing about it.

The thing is, though, I’ve also always known that I wasn’t one of those people. Because I know this is the thing I’ve always wanted to do, and that eventually I’d be able to do it. Really it all comes down to that determination thing. Besides scrambling with day jobs (when they come) to try and keep money coming in, at the end of the day it’s the writing that keeps me going.

I think what’s really kicking me into gear right now is editing. Editing is fun and work that I really love, not to mention extremely gratifying when something you’ve worked on is released for publication. It’s still someone else’s book, though. And I want it to be my book. I just want my book to be ready when the time comes.

A through… ahem…

So, the A-Z challenge didn’t work so well for me. I didn’t even quite make it halfway through the challenge, and then I stayed away from my blog to avoid my shame. We really do get silly about our blogs sometimes.

I’ve been up to my elbows in edits for Drollerie the past couple of weeks, and am likely to be there for some time. It’s pushed writing to the corner of my mind, but I’m trying to keep the story talking in my head. I’ve been working on the mythology behind Jethro a little bit, talking it over with Isabelle Santiago. She’s helped me to realize that I still had thrown-out ideas that would work, and that maybe I should re-incorporate them. Previously I had taken them out because they were a little too complicated, but talking them out, I found solutions for a few things I hadn’t thought of before.

In other news, I feel a bit sheepish that it’s taken me so long to do this, but I’ve been given a Creative Blog Award by Deirdre Coppel of A Storybook World.

Thanks Deirdre!

J is for Jethro

Jethro, Arizona isn’t on any maps. That’s mainly because it’s plucked straight from my imagination. I was traveling all over the southwest a few summers ago, on business with my dad. Luckily this was made interesting on account of my father knowing the southwest like the back of his hand, and his willingness to travel off the beaten path.

I had a story in my head that, while not exactly just beginning to form (it had been a story before, you see, but it had been demolished and salvaged for scraps when it had gotten out of control and unpublishable), was definitely in the beginning stages in most cases. A lot of my time on this trip was spent writing poetry about desert lizards and musing on this story.

I was looking for a place. I knew it would be in the desert, but it had to be somewhere special, somewhere that was mine. And then I found a place that was almost perfect. We drove through Jerome, Arizona, a small mining town that’s all topsy-turvy and thriving on tourism alone, with intrepid architecture and dangers of mine shafts all round.

I knew that I had found something magically close to where I wanted the setting of my story to be. I regret that I haven’t woven more of its magic into the story yet, as I feel that will be something left up to the rewrites, but it’s all the glory of the modern world in an older western settlement, with the beauties of the hot Arizona desert, a desert I’ve grown to love in my years of traveling across it time and again in my youth. This is a story I love, so it’s fitting for it to have a setting that I love, too.

And I’ve just realized I now have two J entries… le sigh.