Decision Point

I'm at a decision point:

Do I edit Reclaiming the Balance, or do I start writing?

 I think I've stated this before, but I haven't written anything new since I finished Whose Hearts are Mountains back in November/December. 

It's time to write. It's time to get reacquainted with the story line and with my main characters, Leah and Baird. I'm taking some retreat time this weekend to see what I can get going as a start.

I'm a writer again! 

Spring in my Heart

Almost March, and the snow still lies in dirtied drifts on the ground, piled person-high at the edges of parking lots. The wind chills are more often than not in the single digits.  Usually, by now, the snow pack has gone and the days fool one into thinking Spring has come early.  My peas are supposed to be planted on St. Patrick's Day, and I don't know if the snow will be gone by then, much less the soil warm enough.

In short, I am sick of winter.  

I want something new. Like many Americans, I think I want a new pretty thing. I replaced my iPhone 6 Plus after three or four years with a refurbished iPhone 8 Plus, and I'm already accustomed to its shiny new look. That's the problem with new things -- we step on the hedonic treadmill, buy shiny new things, and feel happy until that happiness, hedonic happiness, quickly fades.  

I want a new thing for my soul. I want to plant peas on St. Patrick's Day and watch them grow. I want to see my books progress toward being printed. I want to find a new challenge that absorbs me. 

If I can't have Spring outside, I would like Spring in my heart.

Editing into the Future

On my second editing pass through Whose Hearts are Mountains, I realize the story reads better than I thought.

My first edit is for word use, and I mostly eliminate as many of the passive verbs -- have, had, has, was, were -- with some fixing of awkward sentences as I see them. This gives me at best a choppy feel for the story.

My second edit is a reading edit, where I read to hear the sentences in my head and make sense of them. The book sounds good in my head.

Whose Hearts are Mountains isn't even the next book I'm sending to developmental edit. I'll send Apocalypse, which is the merciless edited version of three novels, first.  But I have good feelings about Whose Hearts are Mountains that I didn't expect I would have.

I still have to start writing a new novel soon. The only novel I have left to edit is Reclaiming the Balance, and that one has some necessary stylistic divergence (use of gender neutral pronouns for an intersex character) that I'm afraid will get in the way of its success.

I'm still wondering what I will write next. I have a few leads but do not feel passionate about any of them, mostly because they're sequels to things already written but not yet accepted. Perhaps I'm looking for a new idea.

 

The gaping maw of self-doubt

While editing, I realized Whose Hearts are Mountains really isn't a bad book. In fact, it's pretty good. I could look at it tomorrow and believe the opposite.

I may be the worst critic of my own books.  As well, I may be too enamored of them. On bad mood days, I focus on the errors and despair. On good days, I think my work lyrical and moving. On most days, I wonder how I can get myself published and wonder if anyone will read me.

Apparently, self-doubt is a constant companion of good writers, no matter where they are in their career, even if they have published books, even if they've made the bestseller list. So if I get published, I'll still have the doubt.

I've sensed this all along. Insecurity is a gaping maw in the pit of one's stomach, which requires more and more proof to feed it, and it's never satisfied. 

My self-doubt doesn't need more food. It needs to be accepted as a part of me that will always be hungry.

 

Sunday morning at Mozingo and my lack of inspiration

Sunday morning at Mozingo Lake. I'm sitting on the couch swathed in blankets in front of the fire, recovering from my decision to turn the heater down for the night. The main room temperature was 57 degrees this morning; the bedroom, without its own heat, probably hit the low fifties. So I'm now pampered on the couch while Richard makes hot chocolate.

I've decided to do one more editing pass of Whose Hearts are Mountains, suspecting that I concentrated too much on the "was is where have had has" and not enough on other aspects that need smoothing out. And I have one more novel that needs editing after that.

I'm postponing writing another novel, and I know it.

Like I said, I have an idea for a new novel that I've been sitting on for a while. The name of the novel is (tentatively) God's Seeds; I've talked about it in these pages. It might help me to do what I usually do when I write -- pay attention to the relationships between characters. The themes come first, the plot I create in the outline, but in my books, the relationships between characters create the dialog and the unfolding of the story. The main relationship in this novel is between Baird Wilkens, a half-human Nephilim and Leah Inhofer, a young adult with a startling gift. The story is in the Archetype universe, taking place a year or so after the Apocalypse. (Note to readers -- the Apocalypse doesn't turn out like you think. Look up the origin of the word)

It's just hard to write right now because of my failure to get something accepted. I've already fulfilled my goal of writing a novel several times over, so another novel isn't a tantalizing new goal. I haven't gotten published or even found an agent yet, and so that goal seems daunting enough that I'm becoming avoidant.

What do I need right now? A clear path -- an idea of what to do next. Give up? (I don't feel like I'd have closure if I did this.) Self-publish? (I'm still scared of landing into obscurity, and it wouldn't feel like closure.) Keep plugging away? (Insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the same results). Pray? (I've been doing this. No answer, my friends. No answer.)

At this moment, I guess it doesn't matter, because I'm parked in front of a warm fire in a pine-paneled cabin, Outside lies a snowy landscape and iced-over lake. All is fine.

I am not inspired

So, I'm done editing Whose Hearts are Mountains, and I'm still at Mozingo on my writing retreat. But I don't feel like writing. What am I to do?

Here's my problem -- I don't have any inspiration for a new book. I haven't since I finished Whose Hearts are Mountains (writing, not editing). This is part of the reason I've been editing the back catalog for eventual developmental edits. 

I have an outline for another novel, but my brain feels like a brick right now. I wrote a sentence, a first sentence, and it dropped like lead, inert and boring.  I don't feel that energy of attraction to anything I've writing. 

I think a good amount of this is how hard I've been trying to get an agent and how utterly fruitless my efforts have been. I'm discouraged, and it's hard getting motivated to write when there's a backlog of unread novels.

Wish me inspiration. Wish me luck. Wish me good spirits. Wish me love.

Writing retreat at Mozingo

I sit in my pajamas in front of a fireplace typing this. Think of this as a mini-retreat at a cabin with the winter outside and warmth within. In fact, it's warm enough that I'm getting sleepy ...

No, that will not do. I came here to write, or at least finish editing Whose Hearts are Mountains. I only have three chapters left; I can handle that. But first, a nap ...

A half-hour later, I'm awake. The fire is now roaring, and I'm ready to start writing again.

But first, I have to watch the video my friend in Poland (who probably doesn't read my blog) just dropped ...

I need to stop procrastinating. This IS my writing retreat.

On to editing ...

Poem and Origin

You break me in this place

Of aborted dreams, this ice

Wrapped around age seventeen,

My missing innocence,

The fear, the blinding fear

That I should love you with this sullied heart.

You remind me of what I haven’t known --

Beam of light in the dark,

Holding pure secrets,

Embracing my dichotomy

And fear, this blinding fear

That I should love you with my sullied heart.




When you realize that crushes, the crushes that started at an entirely too-young age, that persisted through your marriage to a very patient husband, are all ways of trying to break through the dichotomy that permeated your childhood:

I am innocent/I have been used sexually.

Now, as an adult in my fifties, that pattern of seeking someone's attention as a mystical cure for a secret affliction continues. I learn more and more every time, and I hope to reach an escape velocity from it soon.





The world assumes that those who have been sexually abused as children have somehow invited it upon themselves, that they have somehow lacked the innocence that would have stopped an abuser otherwise. The child accepts this judgment and judges themselves as someone worthy of hurt, and if the child is female, the purity culture surrounding them proclaims them soiled.

I blocked my memories throughout my childhood, only remembering them in adulthood. So I felt sullied but didn't know  why, and when I hit adolescence, I needed that proof that I was still loveable. And all those other things I felt I was lacking -- beauty, personality -- got rolled up with the damage from my abuse.

Writing Reteat this Weekend

Wish me luck -- I'm going on a writing (ok, editing) retreat at Mozingo Lake this weekend. It probably won't snow much here this weekend. That's where I need the luck.

 Mozingo Lake is the park some seven miles from us, owned by the city, with RV and cabin camping and a big fishing lake. We've secured one of the cabins for the weekend because I needed to get away to some place with a fireplace, a view out the window, and a minimum of distractions (and wi-fi, so we're not completely roughing it.) The cabins possess a rustic living room area opening to a less rustic-looking kitchen with modern appliances, with a bedroom and sleeping loft. Oh yes, and indoor plumbing.

We're supposed to get no more than 1-2 inches of snow Saturday night, and I expect that to hold. We're going to bail if the forecast changes by Saturday afternoon. The key here is "if the forecast changes", because sometimes we get more snow than was forecast. With a bit more snow, the roads at Mozingo will be an impassible winter wonderland until they plow. Here's hoping we get the whole weekend there, and here's hoping we don't get snowed in -- then again, if we bring extra food, getting snowed in could be fun ...

The Grass is Not Greener in my Yard

I want to get rid of all the grass in the front yard. Richard, my husband, does not agree with me. 

My husband, Richard

I don't see the upside of grass lawns. Unless you are a ruminant (a cud-chewing animal), you can't eat grass. It smells pleasant, but its scent is fleeting. Today's lawn craze requires a monoculture of this pretty useless plant without the inclusion of co-planting in the form of white clovers that would supply nitrogen for the lawn. An attractive grass lawn demands babying -- fertilizer, weed killer, mowing, reseeding. 

I read somewhere that the desire for a green grass lawn is a throwback to early humans feeling more comfortable if there were no trees in their domain for predators to hide behind. I don't buy this because landscaping incorporates plenty of bushes and trees for predators to hide behind. I myself think that the fanaticism for perfect green lawns, now with their perfect cross-hatching mowing patterns, has to do with what preeminent Victorian economist Thorstein Veblen called conspicuous consumption.

Conspicuous consumption refers to spending money in a way that shows that one has money. Perfect lawns are a perfect example of this -- they require a lot of monetary outlay and a lot of time investment. It helps to be able to hire a groundskeeper to get that verdant sheen without any dandelions marring the perfection.  

I could live without a typical grass lawn with all its high-maintenance needs. When the dandelions pop in our yard, I don't think of digging them up unless I want to roast their roots for Beau Monde style coffee (aka chicory coffee, as dandelions are a close relative). I fantasize about a lawn full of clover with its little white blossoms or edible lawn daisies, or a slope of camomile and pavers surrounded with scented thymes. Or maybe just expanding my edible landscaping until there's no lawn.

For which I'd have to hire a landscaper and participate in my own form of conspicuous consumption.

Author Mills and the Vulnerable

Last night I learned about author mills.

Author mills, sometimes known as vanity presses, are publishers that publish small runs of books for many, many authors. What do they look like? (Wikipedia, 2019)

• They go for quantity rather than quality of authors; they may have thousands of authors passing in and out of their presses. 
• Almost no editorial gatekeeping (i.e. editing and other quality measures)
• They only publish small runs of high-cost copies
• They expect you to buy your own copies to sell
•  Once you publish with them, they own your book and the rights to it.

The relationship, in other words, is non-reciprocal, and the author has paid, essentially, for services traditional publishers would supply themselves.
After getting all the rejections I've received, I'm scared that I'm vulnerable to such an approach. "Wow, someone wants to publish me!" is a powerful lure after a long, difficult, dry spell. And this is what the author mill counts on -- the starstruck desire to see one's name in print on a book cover.

Falling for an author mill because one hasn't found an agent/publisher yet is like getting into a relationship with a narcissist because one has had a dry spell in dating. Both look like they fulfill dreams, yet drain the dreamer dry with nothing in return. 

The ways to guard against this?  

• Value yourself and your writing  
• Know the signs of an author mill 
• Research before you commit. 

A great source with more information on author mills can be found here.

References

Strauss, V. (2010). The perils of author mills. Available: http://www.victoriastrauss.com/advice/author-mills/ [Feb. 20, 2019].

Wikipedia (2019). Author mills. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author_mill [Feb. 20, 2019].

The Peaceable Kingdom

In my Archetype/Barn Swallows' Dance stories, I write about the Peaceable Kingdom.

The Peaceable Kingdom originates with a passage in Isaiah 11:6-8, where the author writes about the animals, predator and prey, sitting peacefully together: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." 

Edward Hicks, a Quaker painter, painted a series of paintings known as The Peaceable Kingdom in a somewhat primitive way, incorporating William Penn's treaty with some Native American tribes in some of the paintings. 

The Peaceable Kingdom is obviously a metaphor, because we can't expect the lion to literally lie down with the lamb (as popular renditions of the Isaiah passage conflate), except perhaps in children's play. Perhaps that's why the passage evokes its sense of peace with such strength. 

Barn Swallows' Dance, my fictitious ecocollective in central Illinois, is my Peaceable Kingdom, or at least a noble experiment in such. Based on principles of right living, stewardship to the land, and pacifism, the collective has collected a variety of people who, like the wolf and the lamb, would not be expected to dwell together.

Imagine two National Guardsmen coexisting with a legendary draft resister. Or a real estate agent dwelling with an anarchist.  A gay conservative rural Southerner living with himself. Barn Swallows' Dance brings disparate sorts together to muddle their way through to the Peaceable Kingdom.

Because the Peaceable Kingdom is an ideal, the members of Barn Swallows' Dance never quite make it there. They face conflict, they bicker, sometimes they fight. On rare occasions, someone commits evil out of their xenophobia. But the collective has pledged to create the Peaceable Kingdom, and they never quit trying.

.

Expectations

I'm down to twenty readers, but I am assured that all of you are real people instead of bots or that the CIA is no longer reading this for hidden messages -- just kidding. I think. Thank you for following me.

I'm at a loss as to how to get more readers. This is my big worry about embarking in self-publishing as well. In a world where everything is screaming for attention, how does one actually get attention? Quality is not enough, as is evidenced by many industries -- music, books, movies -- where the hyped gets more interest than the small shining gem of a creation.

What's enough? I've never stopped to consider this.

Expectations have a way of expanding. At the beginning of this journey, I didn't know if I could write 50,000 words. Then, as I reached that point, I expected to be able to write whole novels which grew to 80,000 words or more. Then I expected to get published, which hasn't happened yet but could happen if I self-published. Yet now I expect to have more than twenty people read my blog. And I expect them to comment occasionally.  

 Maybe I should scale my expectations down. Maybe twenty faithful readers are enough. Maybe self-publishing, with its potential of only a handful of readers, is enough.  

Another round of killing my darlings

This morning, I'm editing a story for a short story contest. When I first wrote the story, I wrote it as an origin story for one of my characters and an exploration into cross-cultural relationships. For the contest, I knew I would have to edit out about 500 words to meet the word count.

But then, in the middle of editing words out, I realized several things. First, that the story could and should stand alone from its original purpose, so I edited out references to the magical realism world it came from. Next, embarrassingly, that there wasn't enough tension in the story to make it memorable. I want to place the biggest part of the tension internally, not externally, even though there's tension in the relationship between the two characters as well.

Writing is this process in which getting the ideas down on paper is only the first part. Refining the story into something that's not just readable but skillful becomes the harder part. The hardest part is looking at what you've written with a critical eye, carving away parts of the story that do not serve their purpose, no matter how much one loved them when they were written. This is why the rule of editing is "Kill your darlings," because in effect that is what the writer does in polishing.

 I'm off now to kill my darlings.

My Sanctum

As I have mentioned before, one of the things that saves me from severe winter blahs (aka Seasonal Affective Disorder) is my planning for the spring garden. 

I should explain that my garden has rules: everything I plant in it should be, at least in part, edible*. This means that I landscape with edible flowers, herbs, and plants that have been gathered and eaten in American or other cultures. Most of these can't be found in nurseries or are rather expensive if bought as plants, so I grow them from seed myself in my grow room.**

 Here is a view of my grow room, which is a small basement room that used to be the coal room back when my 100-year-old house was a youngster: 

Not very impressive, is it?

The wires are for all the fluorescent fixtures and the heat pads -- and the ancient iPad repurposed for record keeping that you see at your left.  The wall that you can't see is lined with reflective material that was meant to insulate a garage door. Peel and stick -- excellent for increasing the light in this room.

The flats you see are for two sets of items I'm growing -- the edible nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) and a handful of herbs (celery, lovage, yarrow, calamint, perilla, hyssop, alpine basil herb).

Closeup of my first herb flat

I have more to plant -- I'm waiting on seeds for my moon garden and more herbs and for some flowers (and for lots of things that will get planted directly in the garden. By the time I'm done, I will have six to eight flats of seedlings to nurture.

Not all of them will survive. Past seedlings have succumbed to damping off disease (which I fight heroically with cinnamon water spray) and watering malfunctions. Some seeds never come up. On the other hand, sometimes they grow faster than I expected, which is why I'm setting the top shelf (that you don't see) for taller seedlings to reside. I will save the best of the plants that come up for planting come spring.***

Spring comes to me sooner than to most because of my grow room, with its ugly cement floor and worn shelves. Today I sat with my seedlings, thinning them out so that they could grow strong, and feeling, if not happy, a bit less out-of-sorts.








* This year's exception is the moon garden, which is comprised of white, night-scented flowers, most of which are toxic to deadly if eaten.

** When I say "grow room", people think I've got one of these high-tech setups advertised on eBay where people grow -- well, plants that are illegal to possess or use in this state. Mine is not nearly so exciting.


*** This doesn't count the direct-seeded vegetables. I have to admit that I'm not as good with these because it gets too hot to weed and there are so many weeds. I'm working on using more mulching and earlier morning weeding.

Light

This time of year depresses me -- literally -- with its dark mornings and uniform bleakness of the terrain. It's not the deep despair of my bipolar depression, but a constant sense of flatness, of anhedonia, of just wanting to stay in bed. The festivities of Christmas that buoyed up my spirits have long passed; all now is grey.

My psychiatrist has prescribed 1 hour a day in my grow room for light therapy. There's plenty of light in the small basement room, supplied by eight fluorescent light fixtures. And, although it's a small room, there's a table and chair where I can sit and even an old iPad I use to maintain my plant records.

And then there's the plants. Right now, I have starts of herbs like hyssop and calamint, celery leaf and Asian celery, and my tomatoes and peppers popping out of the ground. For the most part, they're tiny seedlings with their seed leaves no bigger than a baby mouse's ear. But they're alive, and I almost believe I can feel the light of their lives brightening my day.

In the gloom of this season, I will take all the light I can get.

Valentine's Day according to economics

When I'm not writing, I am a family economist/behavioral economist. The philosophy behind both of those is that I study the use of time, money, and other resources -- in household units and in a manner that accounts for psychology.

Running Valentine's Day through the economics filter yields interesting results.

Take, for example, Valentine's Day as a method of conspicuous consumption, and the role of social media in creating the conspicuous part. Today, people will post pictures of flowers, restaurant meals, and possibly engagement rings or jewelry. The gifts may be given from the heart; the need to post pictures on Facebook and Instagram comes from a desire for the world to know the value of the item. 

Or for that matter, Valentine's Day as an exploration of assortative mating. This is an economic concept borrowed from sociology that posits that people get sorted into couples based on complementary resources and similarity of levels of resources. Thus the stereotype that the rich man gets the trophy wife -- there's a little truth to the stereotype, according to the assortative mating theory. So, in effect, we don't marry someone out of our league -- we marry someone that complements us. And we marry as much for their resources combined with ours as we do love and romance.

And let's not even mention that chocolate in a heart-shaped box costs much more coming up to Valentine's Day than it does the day after. That's pure supply and demand. 

I take advantage of this last economic fact by celebrating Half Price Chocolate Day tomorrow.

Seeking direction again

(Note: I am experimenting with larger print for a reader of mine.) 

Idea for my next book from the idea file:

Luke Dunstan, 6000-year-old Archetype, serves as a liaison between the immortal Archetypes and the humans whose cultural DNA the Archetypes hold. An edict from the Archetypes' Maker bids the Archetypes prepare to return these memories in the trust of the humans. Facing their loss of identity, the Archetypes draw battle lines; countless human lives are at stake. It is up to Luke and one young woman, Leah Inhofer, to stop the battle of Archetype against Archetype.

*******


I really need to get back into writing. Or at least editing.

I've been editing a bit, but even then I often skip out on it because it's tedious to go through a document to kill all the extra "have had has was were". I haven't written on a novel since finishing Whose Hearts are Mountains in December. I have some old ideas in my file (see above) but no new "a-ha" falling in love with the idea motivation.

Writing the blog every day, as I mentioned yesterday, is my lifeline to writing. As long as I write in my blog I'm still a writer. Right?

I'm afraid that if I keep getting rejections, my current lack of commitment puts me in an easy place to just walk away. This might be a good thing for me in the greater scheme of things, but it's not good when I think about being a writer.  

So I'm musing about what to do. Again. 

 

Why I write (almost) every day

For those of you who have been following me, you know that I write this blog almost every day, sometimes twice in a day. I write first thing in the morning, right after breakfast, before tending to the other duties of the day. Usually, I write this sitting on my living room couch, lap desk in lap, typing on a Microsoft Surface. There's usually at least one cat nearby -- today, Buddy is taking up Richard's seat on the couch.

There are many reasons I write this blog daily. The first reason is because it's a writing habit, I haven't written on a novel in a couple of months because I've been editing prior novels for developmental edits, but I'm still writing. I'm still keeping my fingers limber and my ideas fresh for when I start noveling again. (Is 'noveling' a word? My spellcheck doesn't think so.)

A second reason is because I feel a rapport with my readers. I estimate there are only about 20 of you regular readers, and that most of you are people I know. A few of you I'm pretty sure I don't know, given that you come from places I've never been to like Germany, France, and Portugal.  I like to write for you, and I'm glad you're reading.

 A final reason is that I hope to be published someday, in which case I'll need to have a blog, because it's what writers do. You regular readers know that I fret about whether I'll be published, and some days I feel down about it. I feel down about it today, as a matter of fact. Keeping a blog helps me hope that the rest of the trappings of being published -- readers, recognition -- will come to me.

My brain is slow today

I can't think of anything to say today. But here's a kitten:

Sasha, my ghost cat

I'm hopeful my ghost cat has moved in again.

I suppose I should explain my ghost cat. Some thirty-two years ago, when I was a graduate student, I owned a small, feisty black cat named Sasha.

I lived in a second floor, one-room apartment in an old house, with the porch roof just outside one window and access to the wooden fire escape out the side window. In the Illinois summers I had no air conditioning, so I tried to keep cool with a box fan and open windows.

I wanted to keep Sasha an indoor cat because I lived on a relatively busy thoroughfare in Champaign. Sasha had her own agenda. She found a way to pop the screen out of the front window, stroll across the porch roof to the fire escape, then bound down the stairs. She would eventually sneak upstairs with one of the other residents and sit outside my apartment door until I returned home.

Until the time she didn't. Tommy, the alcoholic hippie down the hall, strolled upstairs that evening to announce that he put a dead cat in the dumpster and figured it was mine. My friend down the hall and I raided that dumpster at 10:30 that night to find the reeking garbage bag that contained the remains of my Sasha, and buried her on university farm property late at night.

Soon, another cat found me, a grey and white polydactyl I named Kismet, who followed me halfway across town to become my cat. It was fall by then, and I no longer needed to keep my windows open. Kismet, like all young cats, would go into a chasing-nothing sort of frenzy, running around the small apartment, bouncing off the walls.

Except. Except that he would stop at the window, the window that Sasha used to break out of, and peer around the corner to the side of the porch, then run around to the side window as if watching something go down the stairs. And then friends would come and ask me if I had a cat, and I explained that Kismet was out somewhere, and they would ask, "What about the black cat?"

Eventually I moved, and moved again, and moved halfway across the country and back again, and I forgot about Sasha. But then, day before yesterday, my cat Chuckie started chasing around the living room. I thought nothing of it because cats do that. But then he turned a hard right and slammed into the French doors to the dining room. He stared into the dark room as if he saw something we didn't, something that crept away from him.

If Sasha has found me again, I welcome her with open arms.

Thinking of chocolate.

Today in Maryville,MO,  the First Presbyterian Church holds its Nth annual Chocolate Festival. Consisting of two parts -- the chocolate dessert bar and the take-home chocolatey cookie and candy bazaar -- it's an opportunity to treat oneself to a pre-Valentine's Day indulgence.

Chocolate has become synonymous with Valentine's Day in the US (So has Halloween, but Halloween candy isn't GOOD chocolate). Probably because in the lab, chocolate consumption has been linked to oxytocin secretion by the body, and oxytocin is the cuddle chemical. The jury is out on whether you can bribe someone to love you by giving them chocolate, however. (Note, you can also get oxytocin by hugging a friend, an animal, or even a stuffed sloth.)

I prefer my chocolates at the extremes -- very bittersweet dark chocolate and white "chocolate", that cocoa butter confection that just melts. Mass-produced American chocolate leaves me cold; Belgian and Swiss chocolate make me very happy. Chocolate caramel, chocolate truffles, chocolate-coated marzipan ... but not chocolate-covered raisins or gummies.  My favorite chocolatier in the US is L. A. Burdick, but I can't afford their chocolate (well, I could, for a treat. However, I can't afford their shipping.) They produce their chocolates with imaginative fillings that vary with the seasons and holidays. They just got done producing their Lunar New Year Asian-inspired chocolate palette; now they're in the middle of Valentine's season now.

I'm looking forward to the Chocolate Festival today. Don't tell anyone, but I actually like caramel better than chocolate, and my favorite dessert at the festival tends to be the chocolate pecan pie bars. This doesn't mean that I won't eat good chocolate when it's shown to me.

Making Peace with Winter

I'm definitely dealing with the winter blahs.

I'm not depressed-depressed, just feeling bleak. My life matches the outdoors -- icy gray, devoid of new growth. I have no new ideas for writing right now, no inspirations, no breakthroughs in getting published.

I need to make peace with this winter. Do I always need to be productive, always striving toward something, always trying to make something blossom in my life? I don't know; I feel best when I've just sent out queries, in love with the potential of my work being brought to a wider audience. I feel worst when I get a rejection -- I got another one last night. Thus is the way of winter.

How does one weather winter? By sheltering oneself against the chill and waiting. Maybe this is what I need to do -- take a break from writing, from editing, from sending out queries, from calling myself a writer. Maybe I need time to figure out how to reinvent myself again, as that's been a big part of writing for me -- trying to reinvent myself.

Maybe I will become something new come spring, when the ice melts and seeds come bursting out of their shells.

Excerpt from Voyageurs

Here's an excerpt from Voyageurs, the next book I will put through the query process:

(Wanda and Harold met me just outside the soup kitchen, on the cracked sidewalk, negative two years from my natural time -- 

"What now? I groused. "I was just about to eat lunch at the Mission."

"Don't be a bitch," Harold said loftily, as Wanda looked down her nose at me as if I'd crawled out from under a rock. "We've got an experiment we need you to do."

"Why me? I'm a Junior Birdman. You're the King." I knew, deep down, that I would do whatever Harold dared me to.

"You're faster than I am. I need someone fast to do this. I bet you can't do it, though." Harold examined his hands, probably for invisible dirt specks, as I'd never seen him with his hands dirty. 

"You bet I can't do what?" I demanded.

"Change the outcome of that game over there." Wanda interjected in her haughty voice. 

"But that won't work!" I groused. "The rock principle will keep it from changing. You can't change time."

"I'm going with you," Harold reassured me. "We're jumping a minute into the past to that shell game over there and you're going to tip over the right cup so the mooch sees he's getting conned."

I protested. "By 'we', you mean me. How would I know where the ball landed?"

"You know," Harold gritted his teeth. "You always know. I've seen you run that game."

"You can't change time. I try to change time and the cup won't tip over. It always works that way."  I'd tried it -- I could win the game with data I'd gleaned from the future, but I couldn't change the outcome of the game itself.

"But what if I change one or two other things at the same time?" Harold smiled, and I felt his charm dissolve my reluctance. "How would the timeline know which event to change? With one or two other changes at once, I hope to confuse things so that you can tip the right cup and ruin the game."

"But what about crossing ourselves?" I demanded. "I only get what -- four minutes before crossing myself kills me?"

"You'll have to do it quickly, I guess," Harold shrugged. "Unless you don't think you can -- "

"Alright. I'll do it." I always knew I would.

We jumped to three minutes before the start of the round, and Wanda came with us as witness. She and Harold stepped back while I walked up to the game, which involved a mooch and a grifter as we called victims and fraudsters on the street. 

I needed to reach in and tip the cup with the ball under it at the exact moment that the mooch would guess the whereabouts of the ball -- and jump before the grifter caught my wrist and took me behind the nearest building to beat me to a pulp. I wondered why Harold would subject me to that risk, or the risk of crossing myself and being crushed. But he had faith in me ...

One exhilarating moment later, I tipped the cup, revealing the ball to be in a different cup than it appeared to the mooch, and I jumped back to my present time without dying. I bent over, gasping and laughing.

"You're the best," Harold clapped me on the shoulder. "I knew you could do it. I think we should make a game of this. Call it -- Voyageur. Like Traveller, but provocative."

Then we blinked out of sight before the irate con artist reached us.)