...that the service at the West Covina Honeybaked Ham really really sucks.

Grrr. Bunco dinner tomorrow just got that much more complicated.

• Off to Brighton today. Wohoo. Just need to find a train that isn't cancelled. #

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I promise to do a big wrap-up on Monday but for a teaser, check out author courtneywrites darling blog post and pictures of her big speaking engagement at Kepler's Books for her second novel Positively.
Also, everyone should buy it. Because it's awesome and so is Courtney.

http://courtneywrites.livejournal.com/41253.html

And lkmadigan lovely lovely wrap-up of the Not Your Mother's Book Club extravaganza with Sara Zarr/Barry Lyga and more (again, my post is coming...)

Here: http://lkmadigan.livejournal.com/157063.html

Smart brain. Of course Danilaw likes 20th century rock music. First of all, it's a worldbuilding point (which I will not spoiler.) But if he speaks archaic English, however haltingly, it also lets him talk to the people on the generation ship, now doesn't it?

1629 words on Grail today--just over quota, but as soon as batwrangler gets here, I have to go to New Jersey. This is my last commitment for a good long time, though, and I'm looking forward to crawling into my hole and pulling it closed after me until I get a couple of these damned books written and revised.

The more accomplished I become as a writer, and the more confident I am in my skills, the worse my drafts get. In a lot of ways, this thing I am writing looks very much like a really elaborate outline. It's full of bracket notes that say things like [show don't tell] and [make these characters' voices sound different]. I'm choosing to believe that this is because my subconscious has accepted that there will have to be heavy revisions once I figure out what the book is about, and the only way I have ever been able to figure out what the book is about is to work through it.

Sometimes I outline. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I go back and outline stuff I've already written to see where it's going and get some distance on it. Sometimes I write out of order and sometimes I'm linear. Sometimes I scribble bits of scenes on scrap paper. There are no rules, only tactics that work or do not work.

Lately, my process seems to involve writing all sorts of sketchy things, bits and fragments and scribbles--and then later constructing a narrative out of them. This would terrify me, except I already did this on Chill and Bone & Jewel Creatures, and the final drafts of both books strike me as rather decent work.

Mean things: fears of the Other, barbarians, fretting by the phone.

16640 / 100000 words. 17% done!

To those I was sooo looking forward to seeing at the Equine Affaire, I'm yet again under the weather and can't make it today. I'm so sorry and I hope you all enjoy the events.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.
103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor.

104. Summer of '49 by David Halberstam. Another loan from janradder. This one covers the rivalry between the Red Sox and Yankees during (you guessed it) the 1949 season, a season in which the American League pennant came down to a one-game playoff between the two teams. Some great profiles here of players, sportswriters, owners, and fans, although at times--since I'm not that familiar with the rosters of these teams during that period--I got a bit lost with all the names. As usual, the sportswriters come across as some of the most colorful characters; they make all the best wisecracks. But there are also tall tales of players like Ellis Kinder, the Red Sox pitcher and notorious party hound, Dom Dimaggio and his little-known brother Joe, and Teddy Ballgame himself, the greatest hitter who ever lived. Halberstam has an engaging style and an eye for colorful details. Recommended for any baseball fan, but SPOILER ALERT: it ain't a happy ending, because the Yankees win, again.

San Francisco traffic: shudder.

I did arrive early and only a little harried. I saw my dear literaticat first – she was busy getting the most critical part of the evening in order: the cookies and mini-cupcakes! Alas, I never did partake of their desserty goodness – once things got underway, I was too busy.

We had a little time before the event started, so I said hi to Sara Zarr, met Allen Zadoff and Barry Lyga … then met some of the other MG/YA authors in the crowd who had come out to support us: Sarah Quigley, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, C. Lee McKenzie, Heidi Kling, Courtney Sheinmel, and Daisy Whitney! Three Debs, two Tenners, and lovely Courtney, in a class by herself. (I've met Cheryl and Lee before, but it was so good to see them again.) Thanks so much for coming out, you guys!

I also got to meet some new agent-sisters: Ilene Wong and Whitney Miller. Stay tuned … I’ll bet it’s not long before we’re hearing that their books have sold.

And of course the evening would have been tragically lacking without the amazing Martha Flynn in attendance! She needs to come visit me in Portland. I also met Debbie Duncan, aspiring novelist and busy reviewer.

I met lots of other people, including some young book bloggers … forgive me for not listing everyone. I’m supposed to check out of my hotel room in ten minutes (literally!) so I’m rushing.

Andrew Smith was the fifth YA author on our panel, but I didn’t actually meet him until the event was over. His book is called IN THE PATH OF FALLING OBJECTS, and sounds sooo chilling. Can’t wait to read it.

Barry spoke first, and read an excerpt from GOTH GIRL RISING (about boobs). Then Sara talked about the inspiration behind ONCE WAS LOST, and read an excerpt. Then Andrew got up to talk, and I said to Allen, “Let’s do boy-girl-boy-girl. I’ll go next.”

When it was my turn, I talked a little bit about FLASH BURNOUT, read an excerpt, and talked briefly about next year’s book – THE MERMAID’S MIRROR. On Twitter, Heidi had mentioned that she hoped I would read a teaser from the mermaid book … so I did! (The prologue, nice and short.)

Then it was Allen’s turn, and he read an excerpt from his debut YA novel – FOOD, GIRLS, AND OTHER THINGS I CAN’T HAVE. Within minutes we were all laughing so hard we were crying. I can’t wait to read the whole book! And selfishly … I’m really glad I didn’t have to follow him. Can you imagine?

We answered some questions, signed some books, and then the Third Annual Fall Book Bash at Not Your Mother’s Book Club was over! Sob.

I got to spend time chatting with Heidi about writing and parenthood and contemporary realistic fiction versus fantasy, and all kinds of deep topics. She’s awesome – and she gave me an ARC of her upcoming YA: SEA. Squee!!

I got back to my hotel around midnight, but I don’t think I fell asleep until around two. I was just so buzzed from the event. Thanks so much, Jenn, for making it happen. <3

I woke up this morning, poured some coffee down my throat, and went for a walk on the beach.

Even though Half Moon Bay is only 30 miles from the crowded metropolis of San Francisco, the beach was empty, except for one fisherman and two surfers in the distance. I love being on a deserted beach. It was more than an hour before any other people appeared.

(Again, camera-phone quality photos.)




The surf was high this morning, and loud.

( Read more... )

At first I typed "Girl vs. Kayak", but my relationship with the kayak is nowhere as adversarial as my relationship with the wall.

Kayaking was awesome, as expected. We went the more scenic direction this time, and got to admire the cliffs over Town Lake and the impossibly expensive houses on them (and the private docks they let rot, the bastards--give me those houses and I will keep the docks pristine!), turtles on logs, ducks, herons, other birds, dogs on Red Bud Isle, and rowing teams of both genders. Rowing teams are a bloody menace, but very nice to look at. It was warmer than I feel November should be, and I forgot sunscreen, but all in all very lovely. And now my shoulders ache. I may never lose the fifteen pounds that cling to my midsection, but I will have valkyrie shoulders if I keep this up.

The fact that I left the dock and promptly ate a plate of migas bigger than my head might have something to do with those fifteen pounds...

I'm so thrilled that I was able to write 41,403 words on my humorous NaNoWriMo MG, Mom Wars, in fourteen days. I took some time off last weekend to spend with my family, and spent most of this past week battling a nasty computer virus (which kept rebooting my computer...until it refused to run Windows anymore). I lost at least a day and a half trying to get rid of the virus, then called in tech support--who came to take my computer on Thursday. The good news is that my files are safe, and I should hopefully have my computer back, virus-free, on Monday. The bad news is that I couldn't copy my NaNo novel onto my laptop, for fear of spreading the virus.

I admit, I broke into tears when I heard that he had to take my computer...but I quickly recovered, booted up my laptop, and started a brand new file. It was really hard at first. I had to try to remember where I left off the night before. There might be a small gap between where I ended the original file and began the new one, and it definitely slowed me down a bit. But I was so determined not to let this ruin NaNoWriMo. I've worked way too hard for that. Before I knew it, the words were flying again, and I ended up having my two largest word counts for NaNoWriMo 2009 on Thursday and Friday. I think it was a combination of determination, sitting back and letting the characters lead my story, and the fact that I couldn't really go online.

One thing that has helped me this year, was working in more descriptions. Dialogue comes naturally to me, but my first drafts usually lack setting and descriptions. I decided to use the fast-paced writing of NaNo to help me overcome that issue. I'm sure I'll have to cut down several of them, but so many wonderful descriptions popped up that I'm sure I'll be able to use (and they might not exist if I hadn't chosen this strategy). If you need to up your word count, especially for an MG that will probably be cut down to the 30,000 range during revisions, think about using NaNo to work on one of your writing weaknesses. It's the perfect time to play around!

I've seen some amazing word counts. Go, go, go everyone! I can't wait to hear all about your new novels. :)

That’s right!  For a while now we’ve hinted about it and hoped, but now we know for sure where the Sanctuary books are going after Sanctuary Unbound comes out next June!

In the beginning we didn’t even know what we were doing.  We had ideas! Arcs of six books, three books, 4.75 books (okay, maybe not but some days it seemed like it!)  Things changed as we grew, and one of the reasons I love the Red Rock books so much is because I think you can see that we were growing.  It’s the only series we’ve been working on pretty much continuously this whole time, and I really feel like we’re learning so much with each successive one.  (And this is the time we give thanks to our fantabulous editor Anne Scott, who strikes a perfect balance between educating and encouraging, and makes each book so much better than it was.)

So, anyway.  We didn’t know where we were going when we started Cry Sanctuary, but we knew as we finished up the synopsis on the 4th book, the one that tied up all the loose plot ends, that we didn’t want to be done with the universe.  Maybe the denizens of Red Rock deserved a few months blissful peace after the crazy we put them through, but there was a lot we hadn’t gotten to explore yet.

One of those things is how it all started.  In Sanctuary Unbound we get to hint at the story of how the first sanctuary town came to be, but it wasn’t the time or place to explore it all.  Instead we’re happy to announce that close on the heels of the fourth book’s release we’ll be taking the series back in time with a novella set in 1933!

A Safe Harbor will feature Joan, a young wolf desperate to protect her people from the growing corruption in the Boston pack, and Seamus, an ex-bootlegger whose friendship with Gavin Hamilton gets him tangled up in protecting Joan as they fight to free themselves from the status quo and find a place that can be their own sanctuary.

I couldn’t be more excited!  And though it’s a bit of an odd time period I hope some of you will be just as excited as we are. 

Originally published at Moira Rogers = Bree + Donna. You can comment here or there.

  

Just yesterday finished reading an ARC of the new Daniel Fox book Jade Man's Skin, Del Rey, February, 2010. This is the book two of a trilogy begun with Fox's 2009 Dragon in Chains.

This is a fantasy based in a secondary world analog of Medieval China. Many readers may be familiar with Barry Hughart's brilliant Bridge of Birds as an example of Sinocentric fantasy, but where Hughart was telling a very Westernized, tongue-in-cheek story, Fox has chosen to follow a much more traditional Chinese path with the story and his characters. These books cover the range from Imperial intrigue to ocean-spanning magic to the smallest lives. Brutal, brilliant, complex and startlingly clear all at once, this series does a magnificent job of taking the reader into a culture, a time and a place that most of us have never considered.

I'm eager for the third volume, and these first two come highly recommended.

I did a bit of writing without write or die this morning to finish up a scene and then I dove in and churned out the words...



current total is:

28067 / 50000 words. 56% done!

I'd like to get between 500 and 1000 more words today...I need to go make some food before I write anymore though...or I'll be crashing hard soon.

The cousins sing side
by side in the sun-washed reeds--
crocodiles stand guard

Your Saturday moment of zen.



My high school dorm room, Hill House, Choate Rosemary Hall, ca. fall, 1979. © 1979, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I am interviewed by Michael Ventrella

calendula_witch on why we blog

scarlettina documents, among other things, my remarkable forebearance at Imaginary WFC 2009

Greenland's ice sheet lost 1500 gigatons of mass from 2000 to 2008 — Another liberal traitor in the global warming conspiracy.

NASA finds reservoir of water ice on the Moon! — In case you missed this. Big news!

Sunrise over DIA — A nice image from APOD.

?otD: How much up would an woodchuck upchuck if a woodchuck could chuck upchuck up?

---

11/14/2009
Body movement: 60 minute urban walk (San Francisco hills!)
Hours slept: 7.5
This morning's weigh-in: n/a (forgot)
Currently reading: Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

I'm bogged down in this middle grade story, which is really being written for Miss E, herself, because her Mom usually writes for grownups. It's a good exercise, I think, because it's not so much coming from me opening a vein or from one of my previously developed universes. But that makes it tricky as well because I've not spent much time with these characters. Well, actually, they're under my feet every single day, but I haven't spent time with them as FICTIONAL characters.

So there I was, beating my head against the 20k mark when I should be sprinting for the 25k mark, and I had very little plot and characterization and lots of writing my way in for this story #3, the middle grade one. And Miss E walks in the room and says "Do you think we could marry one of the girls [female kittens] to Thomas [who is very fat and 6 years old] so he can keep on being king?" Plot! OMG, Plot! Piling more Bad Things onto the characters!

Oh, and Miss E was not in any way discussing my current story being drafted. Because she's unaware I'm writing it. I've only told The Dude about it because it needs to be edited before she sees it and who knows how long that will take me. So Miss E is talking REALITY. Yes, she's got this elaborate monarchy going among the household cats, beginning with Mrs. Gaines as the queen, now deceased. (Ummm, plot? world? yup.)

And no, I have plenty of characters in this story, almost too many.

Announcing it here for the first time anywhere in print, Walkabout Farm now houses 8 cats. Yes, I said eight. It's going to be an interesting winter.

May they all become primarily outdoor cats by spring.

Frog Out

I'm fascinated by the idea of limerence, which wikipedia defines as an "involuntary cognitive and emotional state of intense romantic desire for another person".

Emphasis on involuntary. It's a compulsion.

When you can't stop thinking about someone, or when thoughts of that person literally alter your state of mind, you're in limerence. There have been studies that demonstrate how people in limerence and people on cocaine undergo the same brain activity. The same pleasure centers light up.

That person is your cocaine.




Limerence is, as one psychologist explained to me, a mash-up of physical and psychological influences. There's a theory that on a subconscious level we recognize something in another person that hooks into whatever need or neurosis we often don't realize we're carrying around. It's not love, although it sometimes leads to love, and when it does it creates a relationship that stays passionate for years. It can also create an unhealthy attachment impossible to break because the individuals are addicted to one another.

For some of us, attraction can be a warning. A red flag. Just because something attracts us doesn't mean it's good for us. If you grew up with a troubled relationship with one or both parents, and you seem to repeat the same bad relationship with a series of different partners, I'm probably talking about you. Sorry.

I don't think we can teach ourselves to "desire partners who are better for us" so much as recognize that love and desire are not the same thing. We can examine our history, our relationship patterns. We can heal the wounded places in ourselves if we're willing to invest the time and energy, and that act alone attracts higher-quality unions into our lives.

We can make the conscious decision to strike out for something different. We can recognize that the kind of person who has always been "our type" is the person we should reject, and that someone who might not seem to be "our type" is worth another chance.

It's not about resigning ourselves to a romantic relationship with someone we're not attracted to -- I think that's a living death, myself -- but recognizing that sometimes the most powerful attraction reveals itself over time, comes hand-in-hand with a deepening friendship. It might lack the sizzle and drama of limerence, but it also lacks the pain...and it just might go the distance.

DUDE R70 for watermelon!!! WTF?

Are they crazy?

I just went and planted a whole lot of revenge watermelon seeds, though honestly I've never really had success with melons of any kind.

My garden's looking pretty sweet, gotta say. Not amazing, but definitely way better than last year, or like the last three years. This season things are actually looking good. That's mostly because Enos (who works for my mom) came around to help me and he is made of awesome and amazing, plus I have never known a man who works that hard.

So yeah, between us we're going to have at least a semi-decent crop of veggies this year, although I should still go and plant more things.

So far we have growing:

Bush beans (I lost a whole lot to snails, so I've gone and planted another lot but yeah, I'm annoyed about that)
Tomatoes (Chocolate toms and cherry toms)
Onions
Kale
English Spinach
Chinese Cabbage (This is the first year I've tried them and OMG they grow so well, definitely a keeper for next year)
Zucchini
Swiss Chard (it's possible i have 2, at least 3 different types growing...I kinda forgot what I planted)
Pattipans
Cucumbers
Sunflowers
Mystery squash
Maize (two varieties) (Um, this is corn, I have a white one and a yellow one)

(Should add, I have the self-seeded gooseberry bush too, and the loquat tree, so there's some fruit wheee!)

Things that I am clinically incapable of growing:

Herbs. Any herb. Ever. Except lavender (I have tons)
Salad greens

On Thursday, I sent the proposal for Blood Oranges (working title, and almost certainly not the book's final title) to my agent. And now I'm waiting to hear back from her. I was hoping I'd get her thoughts before the weekend, but, alas, no. So...I wait. If she likes it as is, it will be sent along to my editor at Penguin. If Merrilee says the proposals needs work, I'll revise it, then send it back to her again.

As of yesterday, it's been four years since I finished Daughter of Hounds, which I began writing in the autumn of 2004. This time last year, I'd just finished The Red Tree, late in October, and was working on a short story, "The Collier's Venus." And now, here I am trying to find my way into the Next Novel, which I probably "should" have begun writing back in June. But my novels come slowly. I seem to be good for about one every two years. Well, that depends what you count and what you don't. If we say I've written seven novels— which is what I'd say —they have been written over a period of seventeen years. Which is, what? A novel, on average, every 2.4 years. Which seems entirely reasonable to me, especially given that, since 1993, I've also written and sold something 175 short stories, novellas, comic scripts, and vignettes.

Anyway...

Yesterday, I didn't write. Yesterday was cold and windy grey, the clouds low and threatful. And we went to an afternoon matinée of Roland Emmerich's 2012. A stupid, stupid, stupid movie. But, it is enjoyable on a certain level, that level wherein I derive a perverse glee from seeing all human civilization reduced to ruin and rubble, while almost seven billion people die screaming in convulsions of fire and water. It was stupid, but it was pretty. Stupid and pretty. I found it painful watching John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor trapped in the thing. At least John Cusack was allowed to be a bit lighthearted. Poor Ejiofor had to play the whole silly mess with a straight (and grim) face. I will say that Woody Harrelson was hilarious, and if only the film had given him a larger part, it would have been quite a bit more worthwhile. Has anyone else noticed that Emmerich keeps making the same film over and over and over, and that these films essentially adhere to a formula begun almost forty years ago, with Airport (1970) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972)? The last forty minutes or so of 2012 (the film was probably an hour too long, by the way) might almost be viewed as a cynical, hamfisted remake of George Pal's When World's Collide (1951). And did I mention this is a stupid film? No? I mean, it's like Emmerich hired a team of astrophysicists, planetologists, geologists, and engineers as consultants, then did exactly the opposite of whatever they advised. I was amused with Ebert giving the film 3.5 stars (out of 4), reasoning that "2012 delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year." Yes, it's big, dumb fun. Just check your brain at the box office, or it won't be.

Last night, there was a fire in the house next door. Spooky and I heard an odd pop, and ten minutes or so later, the block was surrounded by fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances, and smoke was pouring from our neighbor's roof. We went downstairs. The night was cold and wet, and we watched the firemen and the chaos. It appears the fire was started by a faulty lamp short-circuiting, something like that. No one was hurt. All the pets were evacuated. Today, there's a truck pumping water out of the basement. My impression is that the damage from the fire was minimal, but the smoke and water damage must have been quite substantial. There are a few photos behind the cut:

( 13 November 2009 )