PS: My Halloween Costume

This is me as a Preppy. I have a secret passion for plaid woolen skirts. 

Tomorrow is NaNo

Tomorrow, I commit myself to writing 2000 words a day for the next month, I'll be honest; I'm not as motivated for this as I'd like.

I have a lot of documents to edit (now that my developmental editor lets me know what's not working). I have a novel that needs 25,000 more words.

On the other hand, there's feeling a part of something bigger than me. NaNo is huge. NaNo is worldwide. NaNo comes with its own motivation.

Oh, this is such a hard decision! I'll keep you posted.

Clarice Returns

As I attempt to settle down for coffee at the campus coffee shop, a spacious, dimly lit Starbucks with sensible tables to work at, a woman quickly walks up to me and asks, "Can I talk with you?" I notice belatedly she has a toddler with her, a towhead with a wise face.

"Hi," the woman says serenely, "I'm Clarice. You wanted me to come by?"

I took a look at Clarice again. She seemed so very calm with her hands folded on the table, her pale complexion and strawberry-blonde hair, that I had trouble envisioning her as my villain. "What do you have against Brent?" I asked her abruptly.

"I have nothing against Brent -- I kinda feel sorry about him. He's the type of guy who gets used by women. He was certainly helpful to me when I lived in Denver. Treated me and the kid to lots of meals. He took it way too hard when I left." Clarice smiled the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa. "I really don't know why he took it so hard. Poor boy had it bad for me."

"Jack, then? What do you have against Jack?"

"Santa Jack, you mean? Just that. My uncle has been Denver's epitome of Santa Claus for a couple generations. He actually gets stopped on the streets by little kids who want to know if he's Santa, even in his street clothes in the middle of March. He wasn't my Santa Claus. He didn't save me from my horrible mother and her stream of 'daddies'."

"I'm sorry to hear about that," I murmured. "So you're trying to get back at Jack?" 

"I don't know if I'm trying to get back at Uncle Jack or at Santa. If there was really a Santa Claus, wouldn't he have rescued me from my mother?"

I felt numb. I didn't know what to tell her. 

Becoming Kringle soundtrack

Because the upcoming book, Becoming Kringle, is about Santas and Christmas, most of my mix tape (or as I call it, soundtrack) music is going to be Christmas music. To go with the other theme, which is noir-ish, I chose a lot of Brat Pack and other crooners for my music. The mix is as follows:

Blues for Guy -- Andre Hossain
Christmas Memories -- Frank Sinatra
Mistletoe and Holly -- Frank Sinatra
The Merriest -- Various
Sympatico -- Howard Shore
Santa Baby -- Eartha Kitt
Winter Wonderland -- Frank Sinatra
Bucket of Blood -- Pino Donaggio
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm -- Dean Martin
Silencio – Angelo Badalamenti

I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – Perry Como

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas -- Frank Sinatra

I hope I don't get tired of Christmas songs by Christmas...

And no, I don't know why that song is called "Bucket of Blood". 

Meet Brent Oberhauser

I walk into one of my favorite coffeehouses, all blonde wood and warm brown walls, with an iron and wood staircase which ascends above to a quiet place above the counter. Under the stairwell are more tables, and at one of the tables sits a tall, bony young man with a shaved head and nerd glasses. I sit down; piercing blue eyes regard me from behind the glasses.

"I was expecting you," he said, cocking his head. "You're the author, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm the author. Are you on break?"

"Yeah, for a few minutes. Want a coffee?" He called out to the counter, "Bettina, Dr. Leach here needs a coffee. My treat."

A moment later, I'm settled across the table from the man. His long fingers cradle a cup of coffee.

"Your name is Brent Oberhauser, right?"

"Got it in one." He leaned back in his chair. "This is what I do when I'm not writing my dissertation. Or teaching American History."

"So," I asked, "You're going to be a professor, right?"

"I didn't have much of a choice. My parents are both professors -- political science and chemistry -- and I think they'd have died of shame if I didn't go for a PhD." He leaned forward again, setting all four feet of the chair on the floor. I heard his foot tap, and I wondered if he ever truly rested. "Me, I'm history. Not that that's helping me with my latest dilemma."

"What dilemma?" I inquired.

"I have to be Santa for the Yule Ball this year. I mean, last several years we had Kris Kringle -- I mean Kriegel. Short guy, ginger, runs a toy shop. He put the outfit on and he became Father Christmas. I'm gonna put it on and it's going to barely hit my knees and I'm going to look like a stork in a skirt or something. I'll scare the kids away ..." He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "Why did Kris have to move away?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, knowing that as the author, it was all my fault that Kris Kriegel and his new wife Marcia had moved to Missouri.

"I'll quit whining," Brent shrugged. "It doesn't look good on me." He unfolded himself from the chair and threw his apron back on. "Stay a while. I have to get back to work."

And so I stayed.

Meet Sunshine Walton

As I peered into my computer screen, a low and modulated voice broke into my reverie. "May I sit down?"

I look up, and the cafe became solid again. A tall, slender woman with brown skin and fine black braids pulled into a sleek bun stood with her hand on the back of the chair facing me. She is dressed in a red skirt suit with sensible black heels. Her air of calm competence left me feeling a bit awkward.

"Sure," I said, nodding to the chair.

She reached down to shake my hand. "My name is Sunshine Walton. You asked to see me?"

Oh, I thought. Oh. Of course I had asked to see her. I had thought I needed to see my characters for my latest book more clearly. I hadn't guessed ... "Yes -- yes. I did ask to see you. I just didn't expect you so -- quickly."

Sunshine smiled bemusedly. "Did you want to ask me some questions?" She sat straight, almost primly, in her chair.

"Yes. What is your background?"

"I'm a military brat." She sobered. "I think we moved five times by the time I finished high school -- no, six. " She chuckled, a low pleasant sound. "I got to see the world. It was a strange childhood. It was hard to get to know anyone outside my family, because then they'd leave, or we'd leave. It was a vivid and lonely childhood."

"Any romances in your life?" I wasn't sure that was a good question to ask, but I asked it anyhow.

"Oh, I had a grand romance in high school -- that was ages ago ..." Sunshine chuckled. "I was convinced he was the love of my life, and then -- "

"Then what?" I asked impatiently.

"We moved again. Apparently it couldn't last long-distance. He never wrote. Since then, I've been too busy to have a relationship -- college, finding a job in my field ..." Sunshine gazed in the distance, then shrugged.

"What is your field?"

"Accounting. But I also have some management skills. I think I have an innate talent for management, but I thought accounting was safer."

"Safer?" I queried.

"More likely to get a job. I don't like the thought of starving." Sunshine raised her eyebrows. "That's why my dad ended up in the military, I guess."

"One more question," I stated. "How do you feel about Santa Claus?"

Sunshine laughed. "I haven't believed in Santa since I was seven. I guess he's a good thing for the children. I suppose if I have kids, I'll do the Santa thing with them, but ..." Her voice trailed off as she gazed into the distance, then she shook herself.  She checked her watch. "I have to go -- I have an appointment across town in fifteen minutes."  She stood in an efficient motion, nodded to me, and strode out the door.

I smiled. Sunshine's studied calm was about to be upended by a bit of Christmas magic.

If you're interested in hanging out on my Facebook page, especially if you want to read shorter posts and interact, you can find and like my page at: Laurenwriter

My chat with the publishing coach -- part 1

As I noted in these pages prior, I am trying out two publishing coaches (this happened by accident when I realized I'd verbally committed to two different people). I spoke with coach #1 yesterday and this is what I learned:

1) My cover letter needs to be more personal. I had no idea of this -- I'm used to writing business letters, and that's what I did. I rewrote my cover letter keeping this in mind.

2) I need more of an online presence. This blog, for example, is an online presence, but few people know about it. I have a twitter account which posts links to this blog. I'm putting up a page on Facebook and have invited friends -- but few people etc. etc. In other words, I haven't been letting the agents into my online presence. I'm fixing this.

3) I have a writing quirk that could be dropping readers out of the story -- and it shows up on the first page. The quirk is that sometimes I give background in a blunt manner rather than through narrative or other storytelling. I break the adage "show me, don't tell me". My publishing coach is going to look for this in the first 50 pages; I need to edit the rest of this.

Being a serious writer, it turns out, is hard work. In my arrogance, or perhaps my ignorance, I thought my writing was publishing-ready when I finished it. I thought all that was needed was to proofread and change up some awkward language.

At the same time I'm grateful for my coaching and editing and I'm sighing about having to go through the document again.

But hello, online presence! Thanks for sharing the day with me!

Facebook, Stories, and Getting to Know You

On Facebook, getting to know someone looks like this:

Have you ever been arrested? Y/N
Had a parent die?  Y/N
Traveled overseas? Y/N
Gotten married? Y/N
(My answers are, in order, N, Y, Y, Y).

I don't think that's getting to know someone. Getting to know someone involves listening to the stories behind the answers above. In doing so, one can detect the feelings and thoughts of the person who's telling the story.

It's hard to do this on Facebook. People don't tell their stories when they don't think the other is listening, and it's hard to look like one's listening behind a screen. Nuances are lost. Emotions are lost.

That's not to say that I don't feel connected to people on Facebook. I feel connected to the people I'm friends with in real life. They're the ones who have my stories.

Facing my fears (writing related)

My worst fear about writing is that, after developmental editors and publishing coaches, I will be left with this choice: Write what I love or get published.

I have gotten several rejections by agents. I don't know if anyone will read me if I self-publish, because I've never been good at self-promotion.

There, I said it.

This has been my fear all along, that I will hit a dead end in my writing career -- and yes, I think of it as a career, or at least the start of a career.

If that's the worst thing that can happen, what are the possibilities?

• I keep trying to find an agent, with the great possibility that revising my query materials will not attract an agent.
• I self-publish, trying to get a readership on my own, which scares me to bits, because I hate self-promotion. I am convinced there's a psychological disorder called "Midwestern Female Syndrome" in which sufferers display inward perfection while at the same time striving to look mediocre to others
• I give up writing novels, because it's really a waste of time to write novels that nobody reads.

I don't have more than three possibilities in my mind. My mentor Les says that's a bad thing, because there are always more than two options. I, however, cannot quit until I've exhausted all avenues.

On the flip side, how would I measure success?

• An agent, and eventually a publisher if going the traditional route
• At least 1000 copies sold of a self-published book, without having to resort to buying the books myself and reselling them
• In the short run, at least breaking even on the investments I put into coaching, editing, and other items.

My vision, or where I would like to be:

• Money to supplement my retirement in 10 or so years
• A devoted readership
• A book signing tour 
• The confidence to say I'm an author

I think my goals are realistic -- perhaps too modest, but realistic. 

This is where I am, world.

If you could send encouragement (non-anonymous preferred), prayers, wishes, or advice I'd greatly appreciate it. 

The glory of age

I sit in my writing chair, keenly mindful of the leaves outside which have turned, brilliant colors we don't usually associate with wisdom and aging. Exuberance, we think, is for the young and for their springtime. yet the flames of the trees in fall should remind us that those of us who have grown older have our own glory.

Breaking through the writer's block

I just finished my outline (rough) for NaNoWriMo this year, two weeks early. I think I told you I'm writing the sequel to my first Kringle book of years ago (which needs a lot of work and I don't even know where to start!), Becoming Kringle.

It's a rough outline, but I at least have an idea as to where the plot starts and how it gets to the end, which is better than I have been doing.

I unblocked my writers' block once again, and I'm not sure how I did it. I think it might have been talking to Richard (my writing buddy), who asked the right question. 

Maybe, just maybe, I'll make a writer someday.

Half awake

The feeling when you're half-asleep and you can hear things around you move and stir; you let the sounds wash over you as you lay still, hanging onto the lassitude of your muscles and the fuzziness of your mind. You could move, break the film that separates you from the awake state; instead you lay suspended between the two states as long as possible. Outside is cold and things are expected of you; under the covers holds you in the arms of your childhood for just a few more moments.

Struggling to write (Warning: rambling a bit)

Ok, folks, I'm struggling to write lately.

In the last week, I've only met my 1-hour writing goal once, for outlining my NaNo book. I wonder if I'm going to have the ideas and the fortitude to write it.

I don't think I'm depressed, just a bit listless and pretty tired. And clumsy. I'm really clumsy. I banged my nose on my car while putting my computer inside. Word for today: proprioception. As in I have none. But that doesn't have to do with my struggle to write unless I inadvertently gave myself a concussion (no evidence that I did).

I think I'm also having an identity crisis -- I am trialing two developmental editors with two different books (as I mentioned earlier, Prodigies and Voyageurs), and I'm scared that they're going to say that my queries are great, but my books are not going to sell. At least I will know if that's the case. I tend to think if things come to that, I will go back to poetry and short stories that I don't feel people have to read.

I don't feel like a writer right now. That's the problem.
I don't know how to feel like a writer. A writing retreat would be good, but there's no place locally to retreat (except a cabin at Mozingo, but they're all occupied). I have to figure out how I can boost my feeling like a writer in lieu of an acceptance.

Any help you can give me would be appreciated.

Autumn is a great time to find oneself.

Autumn is a great time to find oneself.

Autumns force one into introspection, during those chill October drizzles that remind us that we have a home to go to, whether physical or spiritual or familial. Fog obscures the familiar and forces us to face the feelings of navigating in a strange world. Thunderstorms -- the glory of October thunderstorms! -- inform us that sometimes anger clears the air.

The indolent fantasies of summer -- the beach books, the margaritas, the vacations where we swear we'll move to San Francisco to start a coffeehouse or Florida to retire -- fade in the wild emotions of autumn, where idyllic sunlight through golden leaves becomes the crystalline silence of frost or the bluster of a wind that knocks down piles of the golden leaves now fallen.

Autumn is my season. I want to be the blustering wind, the crystalline silence, the fierce storm. I want to broadcast my emotions and make others feel, flush them out of the hiding places of their summer, make them see the richness of the fiery leaves even as they spiral around us in the gust.

I want to be autumn, for it's a great time to find oneself.

Publishing coaches

Because I don't know when to quit, I've pooled some money into working with publishing coaches. I have the query materials for two different books (Voyagers and Prodigies) out to two different publishing coaches.

To give you the idea of how publishing coaches work, I have to explain what query materials are. Think of them as a promotional/sales packet for the book. This packet -- a cover letter, a professional bio of one paragraph, a two-page (usually) synopsis, and the first so many pages of the novel, provides the agent enough information to ask for the whole novel to read or reject it. (I am not convinced that it really provides the agent enough information, but I'm not an agent).

So the agents are going to start by helping me revise the query materials. I don't know if it's the query materials, to be honest. I'm a pretty good writer. On the other hand, I am really bad at self-promotion. Ok, I'll qualify this -- I have done well promoting my work in my career as a professor. When it comes to creative writing, I'm more like "oh hai, could you read my stuff and tell me I'm a writer?"

I don't know what happens afterward. If it's self-publishing, I'm missing some of the things that make for self-made success: A published author who will vouch for me, previous published books, a lot of friends who will read my book and like it ... I hope there are alternatives for me because realistically, I don't have these. Maybe I should just put my book on Amazon and let it languish, because at least I'll have closure. (That sounded bitter. I didn't mean to sound bitter, whoever's reading this.)

Of course, I don't know what the publishing agents have to tell me. I need to stay optimistic.

I'll let you know.

The Problem with Illusions -- my confessional

This is a companion piece to the blog post I wrote on disillusionment. I believe we weave illusions to try to fulfill needs that our hungry inner children need to believe in.

I suppose I could start with Santa Claus. Children need to be loved and cherished and to have their hungry tummies fed. Santa Claus reads children's lists and metes out justice and fairness to the deserving and undeserving, answering for all the childish fears of abandonment, hunger, inadequacy. And adults have created a narrative about Santa and, deep down, believe the illusion is precious enough that they lament when their children are too old to believe. If their children are too old to believe, so are they themselves.

The illusions I have clung to have a lot to do with having meaning to someone, especially a male, for symbolic reasons I will explain. I was let down by the men around me growing up. I was sexually abused by a few people, not believed, not protected. My illusion grew -- that if I were important to someone, the abuse would never have happened. I would have been protected. Someone would have believed me. If I was important to someone now, it would be a magic spell that would make the damage in my past heal into inconsequentiality.

The problem with illusions is that they don't feed the hungry parts of our souls. They carry the seeds for their own destruction by our doubts and feelings of unworthiness. They wither when held up against the light of reality.

I have a friend out there that I owe an apology to -- friend, I wanted to be important to you because in the belief that it would heal something in me.

Disillusionment

Disillusionment, in a way, is a positive thing.

Yes, it's rough to believe in a thing or a person only to find out that what you believed to be real was mere illusion. We build all sorts of fantasies in our everyday life around things, and when we're disillusioned, those fantasies fall like building blocks.

Disillusionment feels like a chill wind to our face. We can perceive that wind as bitterly cold, or we can perceive it as bracing.  Disillusionment brings clarity, the sharpness of a winter day with the greys of tree trunks and the white of the snow.

With the death of illusion comes the birth of possibility. The future hinted at by the illusion crumbles, leaving everything, every path, every direction. It can be overwhelming, because we like the predictability of our illusory future, but it's possible that there's a direction even better than the one freshly closed to us.

Seeking clearness

I want to hear your thoughts. I'm thinking about where to go with my writing.

I have come to the point where I need to think seriously about whether to continue writing and whether to continue my quest to be published, which are related but seperate things.

Thoughts:

1) One doesn't write novels "for oneself". The rough draft of a novel is about 80,000 to 100,000 words. I write about 1000 words in an hour when I'm in the groove; much fewer when I'm not. This doesn't count the number of hours editing and re-editing, which I would estimate at least another 60 hours.

2) If I could share with people for free, I might be inclined to keep writing. I have trouble getting my friends (that's you!) to beta-read or read for the heck of it. The time I tried serializing on WattPad or that other platform way back when, nobody read. People don't read much anymore, I'm told.

3) It's easy to say "If I get an agent/get published/get readers then that's a sign from God that I'm supposed to keep writing." What if I don't get these? Is it a sign that I'm not supposed to work toward getting published anymore?

4) I will be working with a publishing coach, probably to pursue the self-publishing route. But the recommendations are likely to be "find some friends to read it, and have them write reviews". This bothers me because a) it seems like gaming the system and b) #2 above.

5) Without people to share my stories with, I'm losing the thrill. I want you to know my characters. They're like family to me -- the immortal lawyer Luke and his Denisovan consort Su, the dark Grzegorz, the droll Weissrogue, edgy Kat, and others.

I need your thoughts and your help.

The Romance of the Storm

It's a grey day outside == the temperature is dropping into the high thirties, and the leaves blow off the trees to make sodden yellow piles in my backyard. Any beauty autumn normally has seems lost in the grey sky, in the mist, in the cold.

It is because of this that autumn is the most romantic time in the world. Not so much because it's tempting to go inside and cuddle with someone over jazz and hot chocolate, but because fall is tempestuous, and asks us to meet it wearing nothing but our starkest selves.

In spring, we hide behind our bright faces, wearing our delight like lambskin, meeting cute and gamboling through light conversations. In summer we discover the needs of our bodies and souls, and we don't know how to articulate them.

In fall, we are scraped raw by the freshly sharp, cold wind. We are stripped from artifice like the denuded trees outdoors.  We have nothing but ourselves to offer. We are cold and hungry, shivering and in need.

There is nothing more romantic than the meeting of self to self without the trappings of status, prejudice, and superficial rules.

Homecoming Day

These lyrics tell about the ritual that happens across the US this time of year in high schools and colleges to commemorate football and community. They also hint at the dark side of community. I wrote this years ago, but in this #MeToo climate, others might find themselves in this song:

1. Chicken wire and crepe paper
wrapped around a hayrack
towed behind a pickup
in the Homecoming parade
In a town as small as this one
maybe smaller but that was
too long ago
my distant past
my childhood a charade

Chorus  (2x):
I had a dream last night
you turned around and asked me why
I wasn't coming home again
I couldn't tell you

2. Traps set in the corners
of the hallways of the high school
memories like serpents
poised and ready there to spring
tried to do my best  to be invisible
but that was impossible
a waste of time
a waste of everything

Chorus (2x)

3. Tried to tell the people
with their eyes glued to the TV sets
to look at something else
outside the color of their hate
I was just a child then but I wasn't
but that was 'cause
I couldn't be
it wasn't fair
you can't go back and change my fate

Chorus 2x

I couldn't tell you

Dear Universe (warning: frustrated writer)

Dear Universe:

I don't know how I feel about my writing right now. When I started writing, I felt I had things to say, things about true heroes meeting the world with kindness, peacefulness, and acceptance of others. I wrote about these things, edited my stories, and eventually submitted them to agents. And I got hundreds of rejections for them.

I realized I needed help making my works better, and I submitted my work to beta readers and a developmental editor to polish the stories, Then I submitted a few of them again to agents. And got many, many more rejections.

There is a Quaker concept (yes, I'm a Quaker) called "praying for a way to open." I have been doing that for a long time, even though I wonder if I have a right for the way to open given how much more privileged  I am than too many people out there. I have not seen a way opening; in fact, every time I feel a glimmer of hope, another door closes. I pursue ideas for publication -- the Kindle Scout program, which shut down just as my book was submitted; asking a successful author to put in a word for me; submitting directly to presses that take direct submissions. None of these have succeeded for me.

It is not that I am not trying, Universe; I have tried harder than (I believe) most. I do not say this because I want to guilt you into opening a door to me. I say this merely to point out that I need some guidance so I know whether to keep trying or not. I need to know whether I really have something important to say or if this is just a matter of my own self-importance. It seems to me that kindness and peacefulness, not to mention acceptance of others is even more needed now than it was when I started writing.

So here I am, asking for a way to open -- or for a clear indication that I shouldn't seek out publication anymore.

Love, Lauren

Becoming Kringle

I need to start planning my NaNoWriMo book -- well, as much as I plan these things. This is what I know so far:

Name: Becoming Kringle

Genre: Romance/cozy suspense

Main Characters: Brent Oberhauser, History grad student/barista. Tall, pale with black-framed glasses; shaved bald because of premature balding; tall and thin.  Looks like a young Moby.
Sunshine Walker, accountant for the philanthropic organization which hides the Secret Society of Santas. Tall, medium dark skin and braids pulled back into a neat knot at the back of her neck. Dresses neatly -- professional dress on the job; slacks and shirts off duty. Seldom wears jeans.

Basic plot: There's the A plot, which is Brent and Sunshine try to uncover blackmail against the SSS which the philanthropic organization covers. There's a developing romance between Sunshine and Brent. The B plot is that Brent gets drawn into the SSS through having to take over some of Kris Kriegel's (protagonist of The Kringle Conspiracy) duties.

Outline -- I have three chapters but there's no A plot there, just the romance. Big mistake.

So I have a lot of work to do here.

Plantsing

It's less than two weeks till NaNoWriMo, and I'm working on motivating myself for another year. I don't have any new ideas for books, but I'm writing a book I tried to write for NaNo in 2016. It's light and fluffy -- it's a romantic mystery that involves Santas, and I'm going to have to find time to outline it before I start.

There are, according to NaNos, pantsers and planners. Pantsers are those who write freestyle, by the seat of their pants. Planners are those who come in with a complete outline and follow it carefully.

I'm a plantser. Plantsers have a bare sketch of topics and fill them in freeform, and later edit for sense. We have not so much an outline as a list of chapter headings and a bare idea of what those prompts mean.

It's a fun way to write for someone who trusts their imagination and trusts they can pick up all the plot holes in the edit.

***************
For all my Maryville MO readers, NaNoWriMo starts November 1st. You can sign up -- you know you want to write a novel! -- at nanowrimo.org And if you decide to write a novel, please come drop in to the Board Game Cafe Thursday nights in November (November 1st, 8th, 15th, 29th) from 6-10 PM for a writing space with other writers! 

Interrogating Daniel

I finally got an hour of writing yesterday. Not a good hour -- I really need to get a feel for my characters again, because it's been so long since I visited Whose Hearts are Mountains, given my editing forays ...

I sit in the cafe with its bright light, tables and chairs from some old diner, and shelves of board games against the wall. Inspiration fails me; I stare at the letters I typed into my story. I'm bored with the story, bored with the process of writing.

A tall, lightly muscled man with black braided hair and dark skin strolls into the cafe. He is not like anyone else in the cafe; his presence washes the atmosphere with a certain surreality. I watch him order coffee, trade banter with the owner, and amble toward me.

"I'm Daniel," he says in a resonant baritone. "You must be Lauren." He reaches his hand out to shake mine. His grip is firm, his hand dwarfs mine.

"I am," I respond, "but how did you know that?"

His speech is easy, slow like honey. "Because you're my writer. You wanted to get to know me." He leans back in his chair as if settling back to tell a story.

"Tell me a little about yourself."

He chuckles. "You sound like my mother, the anthropologist. She can always get a story out of someone that way." He pauses, large hand wrapped around the coffee cup. Black coffee, of course. "I'm an Archetype, an immortal, but unauthorized. Earthbound, we call it." He takes a long sip of coffee. "My mother is the Kiowa Archetype, my father Valor Burris, the Archetype engendered to hold the cultural DNA of the African diaspora. I was born as an experiment, I guess, to create an Archetype Earthside, as it were. We didn't know about Lilith at the time. She's been around far longer than I have."

"An experiment?" I ask. "I thought Archetypes weren't good at creating new things."

"Those of us who are Earthbound, whether unauthorized or drawn Earthside like my mother, have spent a lot of time around humans. We've picked up a lot of things from them including, I have to admit, coffee and cozy spaces." He studied the coffee mug, then raised his eyes to mine. "We are babes in the wood compared to humans, who have shorter lives but more extensive folklore, more skills handed down from generation to generation, more identity as part of a whole. Except for the Earthbound, our generations do not interact, and each of us have to earn our limited experience anew. Thus we do not create -- but we among the Earthbound are developing abilities to synthesize information, to create. This is frightening to other Archetypes, which is why we're prohibited from entering InterSpace, the Archetypes' dwelling place."

"You're not allowed in InterSpace?"

"No," Daniel sighed. "We are Prometheus. We carry fire to our people, and we are punished for it."

The nature of a muse

I look in the mirror,
and over my shoulder
at the back of the room,
I see my muse --
maddeningly far away,
too far to touch,
too close for comfort.

Crazy

I hate the word "crazy".

When we call someone "crazy", we are assigning the label to someone's entire identity,  as if a mental disorder is the entirety of who they are. Their behavior may be crazy, but they themselves are a complex human being who happens to have a disorder.

I am one of those people. I have bipolar 2, and I have to do a careful balancing act to keep episodes of depression and anger/impractical elation at bay. I'm functional, although sometimes I get stressed enough that the symptoms don't break through.

When people think about the fact that I'm bipolar, I also want them to remember my sense of humor, my drive, my intelligence, my alluring beauty (just kidding), my love of cats, my relationship with words.

If someone uses the word "crazy" around me, I fear that they forget everything but this label. If you're trying to describe someone who is not functioning well with their disorder, use the word "dysfunctional".

Using the word "crazy" is a hard habit to break, but a bad habit to keep.

Recovery

"Here, this won't hurt a bit."

This is my favorite picture from Missouri Hope's moulage headquarters. Here I'm demonstrating various techniques on one of our moulage artists who was kind enough to let me bruise and cut her up pretty badly.

I estimated from yesterday's stats -- 180 roleplayers in three shifts, 4-6 moulage artists per shift -- that boils down to 7-10 roleplayer moulages per person per hour.

I haven't totally recovered yet. I feel like I have jet lag although I haven't gone anywhere -- except to the mythical country of Atlantica, torn by tensions between north and south, crippled by an earthquake and its aftermath. A country I helped create.

Life will be back to normal, back to writing, in a day or so, when I find my feet on firm ground and arrive home again.

Another year of Missouri Hope in the books.

Role players: 185

Amateur moulage artists: 6

Scenarios: Earthquake, car bomb, refugee camp, water rescue, beatings by marauding gangs.
Injuries: impalements, burns, disembowelments, cuts, scrapes, plucked out eye, bruises, lacerations, broken bones, drowning, cholera, old injuries badly treated.

Real world emergencies at the moulage headquarters: 0

I'd say we had a successful Missouri Hope at the moulage building.

Moulage mode

I can't talk about writing today, because my brain is completely into Moulage Mode.

I walk around the house looking for random objects that look like they'd make good impalements.

I have a gallon and a half of fresh fake blood by the basement door and I wonder if it's enough.

I have gone through two and a half pounds of powdered plain gelatin and I wish I had more.

I was told to prepare for lots of impalements. I have prepared 28 impalement prosthetics thus far.

Unflavored gelatin smells like burnt hair. My house smells like burnt hair.

I am dreaming third-degree burns.

I love this.


I'll write when I get time. It's going to be an intense couple of days moulaging for the biggest exercise that Consortium for Humanitarian Service in Education holds.

Naptime

What I could use right now is a good nap.

I think it's the change in the seasons, even though it's supposed to get up to 85 degrees today. Or maybe it's because midterms are coming up, or Missouri Hope is coming up, or ...

I am falling asleep at the computer while I type.

I miss my morning naps from kindergarten, when we put rugs on the floor. I didn't nap back then, instead staring up at the bare bulb in the hallway outside the door, and imagining conversations with it. If I had known that my future would be bereft of morning naps, I would have taken advantage of the time and slept.

Napping, especially in the middle of the day, is oddly satisfying, Thoughts of what needs to be done retreat temporarily and comfort seeps into my bones. My mind wanders into dreams of sorts, and then shuts off. Then I wake up 20 minutes later with my mind less cluttered and my body rested, and it's time to enter the fray again.

I really need a nap right now.

Autumn is not for you

Autumn is not for you, my misty faun —
The primroses long dead, sunflowers gone.
I walk alone on the last fair autumn night,
With memories seldom held to light.
Before too long, you’ll fade into the rain
While autumn and its penances remain.

The Art of Gorifying

Last night, I made shrapnel. Lots of shrapnel.

Missouri Hope is this weekend, and all my creative brain cells are occupied in making prosthetic plant-ons for casualty simulation. These are used to simulate impalements, and can be glued on someone's skin with spirit gum. I learned this from Will Lanfear, who is a professional moulage artist in New York state.

I made a quart of special effects gelatin -- 2 cups each of water and unflavored gelatin, 1/4 cup each of sorbitol and glycerin. It's actually fun and soothing to make, and it can be frozen.

The loops of intestines are ready, and all they need are fake blood  (1 jug liquid starch, 1/4 cup red food coloring, 1 teaspoon blue food coloring).

Yes, moulage (casualty simulation) is gory. It's a lot of sitting around the dinner table talking about the color of day-old bruises and how laminating plastic makes good glass debris. It's googling pictures of hand deglovings (this is exactly what it sounds like) and third-degree burns, and then figuring out how to recreate those injuries. It's buying a large wheeled toolkit to bring supplies in to the site.

It's being nicknamed "The Queen of Gore" by a retired Army brigadier general.

Yes, it's creativity.

ISO publishing coach

I am shopping around for a publishing coach, because I don't seem to know how to get myself published.

I'm serious about this writing thing. Even if I have to self-publish, I want to find a way to get my words out there and not beg my friends to buy my books. I know I'm not going to make a lot of money on this (breakeven from all the coaching and stuff would be nice, though). I dream of being well-known and well-liked, but this may not happen either. But I want to be read.

Jackie Kibler, one of my colleagues and a motivational speaker, has gotten me started on this venture. She, like I, think the traditional agent-publisher route is broken by too many writers vs too few publishers. Like any situation where there's a limited number of sellers/producers (otherwise known as an oligopoly), competition in the marketplace is that of branding, not of price or innovation. The marketplace of ideas is no exception.

So I am working on something new. Send happy thoughts and encouragement.