Karen Walker and The Wishing Steps: Happy Book Release!

Happy Release Day!!! 

I just wanted to give a shout out to Karen Walker today and give all of you a heads up.

Three Women and a Single Story That Unites Them Across the Millennia

“Totally engrossing. A must-read for today’s wise woman!”Rev. Kathleen McKern Verigin, minister/priestess

Brighid, Ashleen and Megan: Bound through time by a curious light, a mysterious voice and a call they dare not ignore. Yet in obeying this strange force, the women must face soul-searing trials that call into question everything they know and believe — about themselves and about the world around them.

“Guaranteed to inspire you to a deeper level of spirituality and a new appreciation for Goddess.”Rev. Clara Z. Alexander

Check out Karen's new website at www.karenhelenewalker.com

Apocalybsessed: The Expansion

So Monday's Listy Blog was just my list... but here are my specifics and why...

I am only now realizing it's just me. Well, a few of you had thoughts. But I think we are the exception.

When people announce some new skill on Facebook or post pictures of the cool stuff they canned... I claim them for my apocalypse team. Nobody outside of the writer-verse seems to be thinking about it. So I wondered... are other people secretly amassing supplies but keeping it to themselves so when it happens nobody shows up at their house? Or am I ridiculous because of the entertainment I love?

Because I have plans.

MOST Important (aside from collecting my various loved ones):

GET WEST. The population is WAY too dense here. Supplies of available stuff will go fast and if it's the zombies, there are way too many people to be turned into them, and if it's the flu disease will spread so much faster with this many people. And if it is nuclear war—HELLO, nobody wants to be sitting between Chicago and Detroit.

Something like this oughta do it

HOW will I go west? Well going through Chicago just seems stupid. That twisty gnarl of tollways is going to get clogged in about two minutes flat, and a person has to go clear down to 70 to go SOUTH of Chicago... So North? Well I don't fancy having to count on the Mackinaw Bridge staying open—that bridge is five miles long and if all of Michigan is trying to cross it, I see a problem. Nope, I plan on hitting someplace like Traverse City and taking a BOAT to the Upper Peninsula. I will make my way to Highway 2 to cross the country.

I told you I'd been thinking about this.

Next Step:

WHAT WEAPONS? I've probably been watching Walking Dead too much of late, but I am convinced the sword is for me. Or possibly a hatchet—not a full-sized ax. I don't own any guns anyway, but I've been thinking guns run out of ammo. If it's zombies that is definitely the way to go. People acting all Neanderthal because apocalypses bring out the worst in some people is another matter. Though I happen to think I am better at strategy and stealth than I would be in actual combat. I was the kid that they quit the hide and seek game for because nobody could find me, so I am counting on that. A lot.

And FOOD! Stuff that is light enough to carry but you can make more substantial, like dried beans are PERFECT if you are somewhere you can take two hours to prep, so I'd take them. But you also need portables... Peanut butter... regular nuts. In fact trail mix generally is really darned efficient (thus the name TRAIL mix, duh). Canned stuff SOUNDS nice, and if I was in one place to store it, okay, but it is HEAVY and some portion of that heaviness is just water weight. In fact some freeze dried rations from a camping store would be good. My dad used to have that stuff, though the only stuff I'd touch was the freeze dried ice cream.

Driving across Highway 2 I figure the biggest cities are Duluth Minnesota and Minot North Dakoka, so those aren't a problem. In North Dakota I figure I should dissemble a wind mill to take with us—that way wherever we go will have power... Because I am on my way to my parents' house—my stepdad is VERY handy—an electrician among other things, but he is also sort of like MacGuyver. I figure our team needs him. Plus my kids will need their nana.

So who's with me?

In other news, final edits for story go in today and I will submit for the Insecure Anthology. Shorts are hard, but it is good for me and I am relatively happy with the result.

My Apocalypse Plans: A Listing Blog Hop Entry

Bish Denham is celebrating five years of blogging (Congratulations!) and so is hosting this fabulous blog hop whereby she is asking us all to make a LIST (I love lists). Check out her page for her list of participants!

My OWN List? What I plan to do when the Apocalypse Happens

1) Gather my people (family and friends who are interested)
2) Pack supplies (durable food, sleeping bags, basic tools, protective weapons--what we can carry)
3) Head WEST (population density is a problem)
4) The other side of Lake Michigan steal an all terrain vehicle
5) Seek shelter in old farmhouses (where stocks of home canned goods and practical things abound)
6) Collect people along the way who offer skills (hunting, medical skills, plant knowledge, building skills, mechanical skills)
7) Find someplace easily defensible and with a potential food supply (mix of farming land and fishing or hunting) in Idaho or Montana
8) Build defenses and set up alarm system
9) Just Survive Somehow (some of you may recognize that one)

Anybody else have their apocalypse plans in place? I will be expanding Wednesday if anyone wants more detail.

Now go look at everybody else's lists!!!

Youthful Frights vs Adult Fears: A Blogfest

So this is part of a blogfest hosted by Denise and Yolanda at Write, Edit, Publish... and I love the topic. Because we all grow up, eh? Most of us anyway. And these differences in what scares us (and whether we like it or not) are enormous.

Erm... and I failed to follow the rules... I was meant to write a piece of fiction here and instead wrote a blog post... ooops...  but it is a bad habit of mine... only reading part of it...

 *sigh*

I did this once. Wouldn't now.

Man, I was a kids who LOVED the rush of fear. Maybe it was adrenalin. Going fast, spinning, heights... that all fits in there, too, but I really loved to be frightened. I still enjoy scary movies but there is something about all of these things that has changed... About the time I became a mom (I was 28) anything life endangering (perceptively) got REAL scary, not FUN scary. Part of it was my pregnancy was the first time in my life I'd ever felt physically fragile—off balance, slow to change directions... no more darting across the street like I always had. I could honest-to-god get hit.

But it is more complicated than that. I think it may even be biological. It makes sense to me that people who become more cautious when children are born are more likely to both have children live to adulthood AND be around to raise them.

Yeah, not so much.

So what SCARE did I used to enjoy that now I don't? The PLAUSIBLE stuff. I still LOVE suspense—I prefer the unseen threat—but I hate serial killer movies—totally too scary (except from a detective of cop perspective—then I can do it--but not killer or victim PoV). I never liked the blood and guts ones much, though I can take it in certain circumstances—like the gore of The Walking Dead doesn't bug me because it is zombie gore.

But the things that truly terrify me (that always seems horrifying but never popped to mind first when I was young) are things like losing children (or horrible things happening to them) or losing my personal faculties... I mean I know I wouldn't know, but in the case of something like dementia that comes on slow, I know that would really bother me. I have had a good processor my whole life (though not nearly as great a memory) and I LIKE being smart. I think I may not take it well if that all slipped far enough I was no longer capable of at least mental independence.

So how have your fears changed? Be sure to check out the other blog hop contributors, too—they are posting between today and Friday.

Most Exhausting Vacation Ever

It started two days early, which should be a good thing, right? I was signed up to take Thursday and Friday off—nice four-day weekend halfway between Labor Day's long weekend and Thanksgiving's four days off...

But see, a week ago Saturday my husband woke up with back pain—pretty bad. Bad enough that on Sunday he went to urgent care. They prescribed something, but he is in recovery and after talking to people about it he decided it was a bad idea. And by Monday he seemed to be improving.

Then Tuesday. 5 AM... he woke up needing to get out of bed and couldn't. I had to help. And then I had to stay home because he couldn't stand on his own, so I called in sick. I found an acupuncturist who could see him, figuring that might be relief without medication. It didn't help much.

And Wednesday was worse. In fact we spent it in the ER. Six hours. They FINALLY figured out a mix of medications to address the problem without triggering addiction stuff—prednisone for the swelling, a muscle relaxant... and slowly it started to help...

He was up and down on his own Thursday (my first day of vacation) but not up to driving... so we went to the massage appointment... Friday the same... and we went to acupuncture... Friday though, he managed to make dinner, so that was something...

Oh. Did I tell you about the leaky faucet? Yes, through ALL of this our tub faucet was leaking hot water badly enough that we had to keep shutting off the water centrally except while in use. He guided my son through fixing it. Which worked for about 8 hours. Then again... another eight... then he managed it... for a day... every day we've had to re-fix the bloody faucet.

All the chores on me. All the shopping on me. All but the one meal on me. I am freaking exhausted.


And did I write? Yes. I wrote a paragraph. In five days. One paragraph. Though I did diagram my cozy mystery for NaNaWriMo, so that was good. At this point I can't wait to get back to work to get some rest *sigh*

Ah well...12 days...

Distraction Season

So for years I hardly watched TV. I had one or two shows I watched if I caught them, but I couldn't typically be bothered to catch more than my absolute favorites. But you know what? On-Demand and Netflix have been really terrible for my viewing habits. Now if I find something I like I can watch and watch and watch... and then I get hooked on these series... and then I have to wait for the new season. Which is now *sigh*

I really got more done before this happened.

Oh well... So What am I Watching?


New Season

Walking Dead (Sci-Fi-Apocalypse-Drama)

I finally decided to give it another chance this summer. I had watched two episodes before and it just hadn't actually done anything for me. I'm not a zombie fan. But the further I got in, the more it was about survival and the different sorts of people who do, and about the relationships. And the REALLY good stuff—how a crisis brings out the best in some and the worst in others so the people are often the real enemy (and how do you tell who is good and who is bad?) So now I'm glad it is back even if that gives me three shows to watch Sunday night at nine... yeah...

Doctor Who (Sci-Fi, Campy but with serious heart)

I love Doctor Who. And I love Peter Capaldi's portrayal of him. I never thought I could love another doctor like David Tennent, but I DO!

How to Get Away with Murder (Thriller-Drama)

Love this show. And it's a different flavor than a lot of my list. Viola Davis is brilliant and I love the kid who was Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter movies.

Arrow (Comic-based, Superhero)

I have loved this as my only comic book show and am slightly worried what will happen as it gets more intertwined with The Flash which does nothing for me. I sort of miss the days when it was just Oliver, Diggle and Felicity. Now everyone is a superhero. That said, this season has a couple promising details, so I will keep watching.

Homeland (Thriller-Political)

I watch this with my neighbors and LOVED the first three seasons. I'm hoping it finds its footing again—there are only so many ways Kari can go crazy or she and Saul can be mad at each other. But I will keep going, as I like the social time and it is usually pretty decent.

Honorable mentions for Castle, Bones, and Once Upon a Time, all of which I watch, but none of them urgently—I will wait until there is a whole in my schedule, possibly even post season


Just Starting

Blindspot (Thriller-Crime)

Billed as a female Jason Bourne... a woman is found naked in a duffel bag in Central Park, totally tattooed and with no memory. Turns out each tattoo is a clue for a crime that is going to be committed... It is heart pounding and I like the characters. A little worried they are going to solve each tattoo puzzle right on time with strains my disbelief but so far it has been great.

Quantico (Thriller)

This one is time jumpy, so we both began the training season with the entering cohort at Quantico AND see 8 months later as one of the women in the class is accused (framed?) for blowing up a building. I suspect as we go through the training with her, we will WITH HER spot the clues she needs about her classmates (one of whom actually did this). It's a nice set-up, actually. A book could be set up this way and work well.

Minority Report (Sci-Fi (2058 is the year, I think)-Crime)

So several years ago three children with the ability to see the future (crimes in the future—they are called Pre-Cogs) are used by the government to stop terrible crimes before they happen (and arrest people before they've done anything wrong). But the kids were prisoners, held in a milk bath because it acted as a conduit to help their visions coordinate. It is eventually learned sometimes their visions DON'T line up—two agree, one doesn't (The Minority Report). It suggests the future is not always set and some of the people may have been imprisoned who didn't need to be... The children are let go to a private place where they can't pick up visions because they are so nearly alone... and for years it's fine. Flash forward a dozen years and one of them, Dash, feels the urge to do something good—to help. So he shares some of what he sees with a cop and a sort of partnership is formed... but not without complications.

Bastard Executioner

This is historical fiction... some minor fantasy-ish elements (a woman called a witch who is a healer but gets some visions and some prophetic dreams). It is set in Wales at the time of William II. The King is weak and allows first a Baron, then an advisor, abuse the Welsh Village. During one of the Baron's raids the MC has most of his village (including his pregnant wife) murdered. The MC though, is healed by the witch and given a scar to disguise him as an executioner for the area. The executioner was cruel so his wife goes along with the story and he begins integrating with the village, befriending the Baroness... It is political intrigue and interpersonal drama... people forcing others to do things they would otherwise not through blackmail... that sort of thing...


So are you sucked into any TV distractions this season?

I'm Not WORTHY!

Halo, fine peoples! And welcome to first Wednesday, which is the monthly meeting of the Insecure Writers Support Group.

So I've blogged a lot recently about trying to get my writing mojo back in line. And I am making progress. But there is an elephant in the room... one that knocked me off that pony to begin with. I really suck at promoting myself. Part of it is I hate it, so I have not had the discipline to make myself learn to do it.

But see a couple of my beloved writer friends have invited me into their ranks for some cross-promoting, collective projecting, building platformy, learning, doing quality stuff. But I totally feel out of my league. They a OODLES of books each. I have six and three of them are really part of one big one. I haven't published ANYTHING in 2015 because I got knocked off that pony in January and proceeded to spend the next six months with my arms over my head trying not to get kicked.

These ladies have NETWORKS and SYSTEMS and they talk about stuff that blows me away. I'm like “Wait, whut?” I've never put together a real promotion package. I don't have graphics skills so I don't all the brilliant stuff to go with promoting. I mean I have a couple buddies who've helped but I only feel like I can ask so much for free and since I've made all of about $40 with A Shot in the Light (Actually I've lost money as I paid for editing)

So where to I find the gumption to learn to do this stuff I don't really even want to know how to do but know I need to do? I really really don't want to let these ladies down but right now there is such a large pile to learn that I feel overwhelmed and can't even make myself start...

If it were you, what would you learn first? What is the single best thing you learned how to do in the pool of bizillions of things we are meant to learn?

Thanks in advance if you can help!!!

And don't forget to go visit some other insecure writers today!!!

Balance

So a video went around recently of the Portland flame bagpipe player balancing on a ball while he played and it got me to thinking about my childhood. I never managed to walk on a ball because that is like three-dimensional balance, but my dad worked at a hardware store (owned it for a while) and would bring home these spools for cable and rope, and my friends and I would race on them.

Like this, only smaller (usually--I did use one of these sometimes)

We would set up obstacle courses in my basement where we couldn't touch the floor, walking on these from sofa to fireplace mantle to chair.

Outside our driveway was lined with river rock, cemented in to form a jagged spiky barrier between cement and grass, so that too, I would walk, poised on the points—some of them with no reasonable surface, others large enough to stop and make sure my balance was in place. When I reached the fence I'd then traverse that.

One of these--simple design

So I'd climb from rocks to the fence, walking on the lower with the upper between my knees for balance, but in some spots either the upper or lower was gone so I needed to balance across. Some of the planks were pretty wobbly in there...

It's not shocking that by junior high the balance beam came naturally to me. In fact for years I prided myself on superior balance. But as I age and my muscles tighten and my weight shifts it doesn't come nearly so easily as it once did.


How Does that Apply to Writing?

I think the practice practice practice lesson is incredibly applicable. If we want to be balanced and poised and not look like a fool sprawled on the floor then we need to keep in practice. Some of us will have more natural balance than others, but we can all do it if we work at it enough. But I think the tight muscles thing applies, too. If you do the SAME THING all the time it will start to pull you out of alignment. So even if you aren't ever going to PUBLISH in another genre, maybe give yourself some fun exercises once in a while.

With that in mind, I've decided I want to, in my “non-writing months” (when I'm editing, which is usually 9 months of the year) I am going to additionally write a short story in an off genre. I may or may not submit these. Probably depends on how they come out. But I really am in need of some regular stretching. That said, after the entry for the Insecure Speculative Anthology, I saw a submission request for WITCH stories. So I think I will try one of those (I have a couple witch ideas in my idea file). The deadline is November 30 if anyone else is interested.

So back on the spool, my friends!

What do all of you do to stay nimble as writers (or whatever your preferred art)?

Trying a New Genre

So in case you haven't heard, the Insecure Authors Support Group is putting together an anthology... a contest of sorts. There is more than a month to the deadline and if you want to participate, there is still time. Ten stories will be chosen from those submitted and will go in the anthology. The TOP story will get a badge and the priviledge of naming the book...

The thing is... it's speculative fiction. Which I've never written. I've never thought I had quite the imagination for these alternative worlds sorts of stories. But I just finished an edit and had six weeks until NaNoWri Mo so it's not time to take on a BIG project, so I thought... what the heck? I can write a short(ish) story in 6 weeks... (if I ignore the fact I always say I can't write short stories at all)

And you know what? I'm having a ball. I picked my point(s) in history I wanted changed (one theme, but a series of things had to not happen) and what do you know. It lined itself up nicely with my favorite villain(s).

My point of telling you all this is that I think it can be good for us to push out of our comfort zone. Write something you've never written and even if it isn't any good, you've STILL had a good exercise. I'm hoping my story will be good. Even if it doesn't make it into the anthology, I may try it out in another publication. I only have very few short stories out there, so even THAT is new for me.

Do you try new things now and then? What's the next think you're going to try?

Sexy Monday

I know. Not normally the first think you think of, but I have two good friends with book releases today, both of them pretty sexy... all four of them? Both authors and both books? A whole bunch of sexy going on in any case.

These two ladies are family, in that way writers that help each other out a lot are family, and so if you like a sexy read, I hope you'll give em a look.

I will throw out an R-language rating, since I usually stick to PG around here. If you don't want to see it, look at the pictures and read MY words.

Vagabond: On the Road by Jade Jamison
(book 2 of series, best read in order)

All that glitters isn’t gold. Sometimes it’s plastic.

Kyle Summers hits the road with her band the Vagabonds, living the dream. Five young women are tossed into the limelight with little supervision, seemingly left to the wolves. Kyle is driven and headstrong, and—while she enjoys the temptations of sex and drugs on the road—music always comes first. In spite of her friends crumbling under the pressure and lack of support, the Vagabonds become a household name and enjoy success not experienced by people far beyond their years.

But Kyle realizes two things—one is that her relationships are hollow without love, but she and CJ, her main love interest, are only on-again, off-again at best, leaving her feeling unfulfilled. The second is that Kyle quickly grows weary of dealing with egos and prima donnas, and she feels helpless while watching her band fall apart.

Can she save her band—and her relationship with CJ—or will she end up alone and forgotten?

Vagabonds follows one young woman’s rise to fame past the pitfalls of sex, drugs, and easy money, through fortune and success to heartbreak and betrayal. Five girls build their band the Vagabonds from nothing but a hunger to create and quickly find that they are nothing but pawns in a larger game played by managers, agents, the press, the music industry, and all manner of unscrupulous, greedy people who want to feed on their triumphs. Friendships and lives hang in the balance. Who will survive?

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1huiVzU
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1Vtgr3v 

House of Payne: Rude (book 4) by Stacy Gail

(confirmed in spite of being book 4, these can be read out of order and only 99 cents!)

The Last Thing She Wanted…
From the moment Sass Stone overheard her social worker call her “broken,” she’s been hell-bent on proving her wrong. A broken woman doesn't have a posse of kickass friends, a foodie lover’s dream job and a string of pretty boys she enjoys playing with. Sure, she has scars, but they’re buried so far down no one even knows they’re there. Certainly her former foster brother, Rudolfo Panuzzi doesn’t know about them. The man she’d dubbed “Rude” could sniff around all he wanted, but it wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He’d never get inside—her pants, or her heart.

…Was The One Thing She Needed
A dozen years and several combat tours in the Marines has a way of maturing a man, and Rude is no exception. His last mission killed his closest friends and almost killed him, leaving him with wounds on both body and soul. When he looks in the mirror, the haunted eyes staring back remind him far too much of his sexy little foster sister, Sass. That’s when he knows there’s more to her than he ever imagined… and he’s imagined one hell of a lot.

When Want And Need Collide
One by one, Rude destroys the defenses that have kept Sass locked inside herself. But even as she reluctantly allows him to coax her out of her shell, a dark cloud casts its shadow on their world. Is it something from his past… or hers? 

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/StacyGailRomanceAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacy_Gail_
Instagram: https://instagram.com/stacygailsworld/
Blog: http://stacygail.blogspot.com
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/stacygailauthor/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/RmNxH

****Stacy is doing a Release Day Blitz with Give Me Books on the 24th, and I'll have a giveaway that starts then and goes through the 30th.****

GIVEAWAY: Rafflecopter giveaway of a $20 Amazon GC, a $10 Amazon GC and a $5 Amazon GC. From 9/24/15 to 9/30/15.
CODE FOR RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Your Daily Digression: Self Help at its Zaniest

Need a little help being sillier? Is life a bunch of stern looks and red tape? Well I have the book for YOU! Or I will, a year from Christmas...

My Digressionista is a giraffe

See, I've had this idea for quite a while... know those calendars with a little inspirational quote every day? Something like THAT, but digressions... thinks or acts to make life a little more random, though not random in the mathematical sense, because all said, in a year of randomness, you are likely to end up with the same thing several times if it were truly random... random including some repetition and all... but I digress! (see how I did that)

*cough*

ANYWAY... with my other writing and my LIFE interferences (gads, I hate that) I've decided the only way I'm really going to get this written is if I write ONE digression each day. Then I will finish in a year, just in time to format and get it ready for Christmas (which means it needs to be a 2017 calendar, yes?

Giraffe-necked weevil. Not nearly so cute as a giraffe.

BUT... (this is the part where some of you might be able to help me) it's be really cool if there were some art, yes? Photos or drawings or ink blots or some combination of the above? And IS THERE anywhere to produce something like this Indie, or should I start bundling this as a proposal for some publishing company? Who does this sort of thing? (and if I'm going that way, should I be thinking about a 2020 calendar #commentaryonthespeedofpublishing

Anything anybody knows about anything like this would be amazingly helpful.


And the OTHER One.

So I should finish the final (of this round) spit polish of Also Appearing tomorrow...

Here's the pitch at its draftiest:

Leia Clarence feels like an extra in her own life. A bystander. A bit part. An “Also Appearing”. Her friends and older sister have social skills she can barely understand, let alone display. To compound matters, her parents are relegating her to a summer at the lake, away from her friends, with poor internet and cell phone connections and no way to keep track of the social scene back home. It's going to be the worst summer ever.

Until she meets a cute guy who lives at the lake year-round. Trey is mischievous, charming and hot. And the crazy thing is he seems to like her, too. Not her friends. Not her sister. Her. She isn't a shadow, but the focus of his attention and affections. For the first time ever she has a starring role in her own life. At least until something goes wrong.

Back at home she tries to recapture that feeling of mattering, of being somebody, but it seems easier to just numb the fact that she doesn't. Alcohol, drug experimentation, and a different sort of boy all fail. Is there anything Leia can do to grab back that leading role, or better yet, write the script for her own life?

Also Appearing, at 59,000 words, is a contemporary young adult novel about a girl's struggle to break expectations that her friends have and to find an identity that not only fits, but allows her to soar.


I would LOVE LOVE LOVE feedback on this, especially if this is a genre you read or write in. And IFF anyone is honestly interested, I am looking for a couple second round readers.

And So It Begins

I normally like beginnings, and historically the start of the school year is one of my favorites, but I am feeling a bit melancholy this time around. Thing 2 is a senior in high school, so it is my LAST start of school for one of my kids... and it is the start of the University school year, too, and my day job is so much busier when the students are present.

But in the spirit of having a better attitude, I am hoping to approach all this like it's a good thing. A chance to start fresh, reset my goals that thus far this year have been sorely missed...

Also Appearing

I think this is the only thing I've actually managed this year. I finished my edit Saturday. I am going to give it ONE MORE read to make sure there aren't any editing scars and then it is ready for my 2nd reader(s).

What That MEANS

It means I have 8 weeks until NaNoWriMo which is time to do TWO things:

1)  Edit one fairly done story
2)  And PLOT my NaNoProject

But What To Edit...

I think I am going to take a stab at Medium Wrong. I could do Kahlotus Disposal Site, but that has a different sort of problem than I feel currently equipped to deal with. Medium Wrong I think I can do... My goal is perhaps a “more or less” one... There is a paranormal element that I tried to keep very light, but I think I need to commit or tamp it down or it ends up deus ex machina. Committing would mean more clues or evidence Amanda has some sort of visions thing that she is capable of, the tamping would give her real ways of knowing stuff... I think the former works better.


As for My NaNo Project, I think I am going with a mystery. I still need to find my niche here. I want SO BADLY to walk the line BETWEEN cozy and actual dark mystery. I don't want humorless or just typical whodunnits. I want dark crime that affects real characters, but I want some of those characters to have tics and snark. I WILL do it!!! But I think I need to flesh out my characters better before I start and then I think I want to diagram the main murder plot. It is what I did for my cozy series and it helps me to not sort of get off pace or give too much away right up front.

So that is the rest of 2015 for me...


As for NON-Writing Goals for the rest of the year...

Um... wait, what? I really should have some fitness goals. I know I should... I think what I can commit to is some strength training and stretching stuff (I already walk a ton). And I should make some eating attempts, but I'm not convinced I will do a lot... Life is too full...


What about you? Do you have things you are trying to wind up in the four months left in 2015?

12 Steps for Writers

This is an Insecure Post

[This post is ALSO meant to be lighthearted and fun and in no way diminish the important role the AA 12 Steps play in the lives of many. I have loved ones alive because of them, so no disrespect intended]

1.  We admit we are powerless over the publishing industry. That it was making our lives unmanageable. 

2.  We came to believe a calling greater than publishing could restore us to sanity. 

3.  We made a decision to be true to our inner writer and turn our lives over to the writer we could be. 

4.  We made a fearless searching inventory of the mistakes we were making in both writing and publishing. 

5.   We admitted to our inner writer and our blog rolls the exact nature of our wrongs. 

6.  We were entirely ready to turn our inner writer over to a writing improvement process. 

7.  We humbly asked peers and beta readers to give us honest feedback and where we fell deficient committed to workshops and exercises to improve. 

8.  We made a list of all the idiot things we'd done in futile attempts at publishing and became willing to learn from them. 

9.  We erased evidence from the internet wherever possible and outed ourselves where it wasn't so we could at least claim to know better now. 

10.  We continued to take personal inventory and when we made mistakes, admitted and fixed them. 

11.  We sought through writing words and sentences and stories to improve our inner writer, making a conscious effort to be our best writer self, each day better than the day before. 

12.Having a writerly awakening because of these steps we carried them forth to other writers.

Don't worry about the publishing. Worry about the writing. The rest will come.


So there... a little goofy, but it occurred to me last night that what has been very hardest on my love of writing and has dampened my drive and my work ethic about it is my pursuit of publishing. I mean I want to publish. But I want to love writing more, and I think I write better when I let go a bit of what I think will sell, because apparently I know nothing.

Now go visit some OTHER insecure writers!!!

The Crack of Writing

And I don't mean butt crack.

I woke up yesterday... sort of... I actually lay in bed about 90 minute half asleep half awake with various ideas infusing my consciousness... I finished the season's True Detective the night before, so there was that... and I've been watching the Walking Dead, so there was a bit of that... a lot of escaping bizarre things, but I had enough awakeness to stop the action and go back and revise if something looked to dire. Lucid dreams... though I can't do that in a full sleep—only in a half-one. But I woke up with a truly great series idea... I'm very excited.

Now if you've been around, you know me and ideas... I have to let them stew a good long time before they are ready to expose to the light, but I tried to write down enough that I won't lose it all... enough to add to as things wind together. I am calling it the Armageddon Games. That is all I will say on the matter.

What I can say though, is that THIS is my favorite thing about writing. These shiny new ideas and the work of planning out a book from them. The actual writing I love, but I have lost some confidence on that part, so it feels harder than it used to. Editing too. But man the ideas are sure fun. I have a fairly large Excel file of ideas. I will never manage to write them all, but if I've lost steam, this is like a jump start. Actually got back to the editing I've been meaning to be working on all month last night.


Now if I could just have someone volunteer to shop and cook, and someone else to clean... then I'd be back on track.


In Other News:

Driver's license day

Samories, Volume 1

(Sam Memories, that is) My son begins his LAST week of summer vacation as a high school student this week. Last week he registered and yesterday I made him fill out a lot of silly long-shot scholarship forms (they are mostly lottery things, but somebody has to win, right?). I have tried to reinforce that college applications THIS week will be easier than they will after school starts.

He is applying to five schools—three in Michigan, my alma mater (Oregon) and our long shot (Stanford). The latter two would require incredible scholarships, but you never know unless you try, eh? His ACT scores were really strong.

I start to worry here, too. He is sometimes wise, sometimes impulsive, but a year from now, leaving for college, he will not be an adult as most of his peers are. He is sixteen right now. I'm not sure what that means except I think every year at that age is HUGE for maturing a bit more, so he will be 6-12 months behind most of his peers. He's only had his driver's license a few weeks.

At the same time, college was my very favorite time, so I am excited for him to have it on the horizon.

There's No Accounting For Taste. Thank Goodness.

Say WHAT?

Well first, let me give you a little background.

See, I am watching Season 2 of True Detective and a lot of people I've talked to (or read reviews from) really didn't like it. Know what? I LOVE it. I think it's fantastic TV. It's a little subtler than Season 1. And there are a lot more characters to keep track of and some people don't like that. I'm not sure if it is because it complicates it and some people LIKE complicated (*raises hand*) and some don't. Or if it is that the real estate fraud is harder to wrap the mind around than serial killer? Whatever the case. I think it's fantastic.

Know what else I've been doing? Obsessing about Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones... and the more I discuss this with many people, the more I see how SOME people love this character, and SOME people love THAT character. But more than that, SOME characters are loved by some and hated by others (and I'm not just referring to the sickos who love Ramsay Snow (because there are some). I mean legitimate normal people... Take Daenarys... My neighbor HATES her. She is my daughter's very favorite character. Me? I'm capable of more subtlety than that and can like her and still see her flaws.

Remember Harry Potter? Did you ever get in enormous debates about Snape? I was involved in truly passionate conversations where people deeply held beliefs about him, all based on the exact same material.


What This MEANS to me...

Every reader, watcher, player, consumer brings their whole self to their experience and so what they see or read or hear is filtered through that and every last once of us has a different experience. It can cause some people to like absolute drivel like The Bachelor (yes, I'm judging). And it can cause others (sometimes reasonably, in the case of people who can't tolerate violence) to hate a masterpiece like Game of Thrones. My buddy Joris isn't interested because he likes his favorite characters to live and it's a fair point.


I think this is all FABULOUS. Why?

Because it is incredible, as a writer, to think I might be part of something so interactive like that. That I can feed one side of the equations and a thousand people can turn it into a thousand things but I was part of ALL of those things...

And ALSO because we ALL create different stuff, and the fact we all bring something different means we all have different preferences, which means there is a market for just about anything. (if we can find them, anyway)

So there.

Do you have any favorites you feel unfairly get the shaft? Any truly popular books or shows that you can't seem to get into?

My Home State on Fire

If you haven't been under a rock for a couple weeks you probably know about all the fires in the Pacific Northwest. Washington State has has a lot of attention as some of those fires are particularly large and three firefighters were killed last week battling one.

What you may NOT know is every firefighter in the US is already working overtime. There is no more internal capacity available. So KINDLY, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have sent help.

For an idea of how bad this is I took a screen shot from THIS mapping website—it is an official one—it is the same one I use professionally to pull mapping information and they are updating it regularly. Look at all the fires in Northern Idaho.

The red spots are satellite-observed hot spots, even if a fire hasn't been formally marked. My parents are in Moscow, Idaho, which is about 30 miles above Lewiston on this map (about where Idaho, Washington and Oregon all meet) and about 30 miles from the nearest fire which is in Harvard, Idaho, but because the fires are in every direction, the air quality is horrible—full of smoke. Wear a mask if you go outside, bad.

My friend Nancy took a picture yesterday and posed it with one from 5 years ago (images used with her permission), same time of day, same “official weather” (clear) were it not fr the fires.

July 2009 8am

That dome in the middle is the University of Idaho's Kibbie Dome where they play football. It's a pretty little town, isn't it? Farmland in every direction.

Then this picture taken from the same exact spot (she thinks the smudge in the middle was a bug, but the difference is striking, regardless) Same weather forecast except the one below is meant to be cloud-free. In addition to the smoke, you ca see how much drier the grass is below--how much higher the hazard potential.

August 23, 2015 8:30am

I remember an earthquake recently that got me into a conversation on natural disasters and I always think of Idaho as a place that doesn't really have them. This is a startling reminder that in fact they do.

Homes have been lost. People have evacuated. It is heartbreaking that people with herds of cows or horses sometimes just have to open gates and hope for the best because they don't have means to move them.

A friend of mine played local hero and set a time and threw out an invitation for people to donate whatever they could. On Friday they took 1000 bottles of water, a bunch of Gatorade and power bars, and delivered them to Kamiah, Idaho (Thanks, Reen!)—the people coordinating firefighters were very appreciative, for the water especially. I feel badly for being too far to help tangibly and am worried about family and friends. And SO SAD. For all my mocking Idaho's politics, it is one of the prettiest and most varied states anywhere, and it is devastating to think of the thousands and thousands of acres of forests that will be gone for decades.

If everybody could join your karmic energies, whether prayers or meditation or thoughts... however you do it, and send thoughts of rain, it would definitely be appreciated.

In Related Spirit, Sort of...

Idaho is an underappreciated place and my cousin's cousins, Cameron (left) and James, are spearheading a TV show related... two brothers trying to save their farm. The trailer is funny and the idea is fresh and it feels very much like home. If you have the ability, they are doing an Indiegogo funding of it. It's called Idaho Boys.

Subject to Experimentation

So I think our son is experimenting on us.

Let me give you some background.

In 1992 my husband and I adopted a kitty named Lucy because Bernie, our other cat, had lost a sibling and was sad. (I mean who doesn't get their cat a kitten when they are sad?). Lucy was very quirky. A guard cat. A beer thief. And ice cream thief. (really any dairy product) And like ALL the cats I've had as an adult, she was a bathroom cat. And then some. She trained us very thoroughly, that one.

You see, if we left the lid up, we would come in and there she was, poised on the rim, scooping all the toilet water all over the bathroom. (so we became people who put the lid down. Always. And if we looped the toilet paper from over the top she would sit on the toilet and unravel the WHOLE ROLL into a heap on the floor. So we became “from under” people with our toilet paper.


So About This Experiment...

We no longer have Lucy, sadly. But we have maintained those habits. Yet SOMEBODY has begun putting the toilet paper on wrong. Now I ALWAYS still go from under. And I think hubs does too. But I believe my son (nearly 17) has learned to change the toilet paper, yet... HE DOES IT WRONG! But see, I'm proud he's learned to do it. So I usually just enjoy that it wasn't just stacked on the side of the tub or the back of the toilet. But SOMETIMES I can't help myself... and I turn it around.

But YESTERDAY, I KNOW for a fact I ignored that a new roll had been put on backward... yet when I got home someone had switched it... and it occurred to me the son may be testing his dad and I to see how long it takes to flip it... to see WHO flips it.

So today? New roll. And I turned it around.


Does your family have any striking quirks?

The Onion: A Problematic Metaphor

So the first thing that is problematic here, is an onion is usually used as a simile. A person claims he is LIKE an onion. Not that he IS an onion. But semantics aside, let's look at what this poor loon is trying to say.

I'm complicated. Layered. Like an onion. You keep having to peel back layers to understand me. I'm really very deep.


Well okay, my mistaken friend. Here is the deal. While the onion SKIN is different (because it is exposed to the dirt it grows in and then the air and elements, the other LAYERS of the darned onion are just like the layer before but a wee bit smaller. Unless of course you hit rot... that is a possible surprise. Not a good surprise, but at least unexpected... Otherwise when you peel back, you are just getting more of the same. Not that it's bad. I like onions. But they just are NOT that complicated.

So if you are NOT trying to claim that you might be secretly rotten deep down, probably avoid the onion metaphor.


In Other News

No, never mind. I don't have any other news. I DO have a reminder though... if you are in or near Ann Arbor and are interested in professional feedback on your first twenty pages during the Kerrytown Bookfest, check THIS out.

Argue Naked

So I went to a sort of Bridal Shower for a colleague Wednesday—I say sort of because really it was more a happy hour get-together in her honor rather than a silly game stuffy affair. But the one wedding-y thing we DID do was each of us around the table gave a piece of advice to the bride. And everybody said mine couldn't be topped, so I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Now I know what you're saying... that Tart looks for ANY excuse to be naked. And you aren't wrong. But this is actually some excellent Tartish relationship wisdom. Know why? It is really hard to be MEAN when you are naked. You are all out there and vulnerable and it just seems like a really stupid time to be rotten for the sake of being rotten... And mean and rotten are two things it is best to AVOID when you argue with your sweet baboo. Because mean rotten things come back to bite you again and again and again. Far better to stick to the topic at hand with a tangible reminder than this is the person you love standing there in all his (or her) glory.

I'm not even the first one who thought of this. There is a website and a book by the name... (I have a book plan, too, but mine is a mystery)

But this stuff works... (provided neither of you is a psychopath)

So there. Now you're smarter.

The Sparkling Edit: An Insecure Post

Welcome to First Wednesday and the Insecure Writer's Support Group!

So I finished a round of edits on Friday. That was good. I'd actually mostly finished a week earlier but had several places marked for expanding, so Friday is when I finished “filling out” those parts. (Yay me!) But with all the books I've read recently, I've felt like I want to now do a round where not just the STORY is what I want, but the words are. I am calling it the sparkling edit.

I am delusional. A friend asked me if I planned to throw glitter at it. It might come to that.

I know I don't write super descriptively, and I've always preferred simple language because while it might not be beautiful, at least it never gets in the way of the story. The language itself can be invisible as the story soaks in. But I'm starting to think it's not enough. I need a bit more “pull the reader in” stuff and some of that just has to be descriptive language. But well done descriptive... evocative and visual, not just describing... Emotions, too... I can't just tell what they are, I need to infuse how it feels.

It doesn't feel natural and it's hard. And I may just abandon it and go back to the last draft. Even in my first two pages trying to think about writing this way has me totally questioning what I have there. I feel like I need to completely rearrange everything. So I am feeling VERY insecure at the moment, but I suppose if we don't try new stuff, hard stuff, stuff that makes us uncomfortable, that we never grow...


Have you conquered any new writing challenges lately?

Don't forget to go visit some other insecure writers!