A Call to Action: Beyond Hatred

It occurs to me that most white people don't identify with their latent racist thoughts and assumptions because they don't identify with the word "hate". For the middle-class white person, "hate" is too strong a word. 

Instead, what we experience is labeled "distrust": A black person in a white neighborhood must be up to no good. Two black people, and they're definitely up to no good. A black person knocking on the porch door -- a danger. A group of black children -- disruptive. A black person in power -- must have a racial agenda. A black person reaching for his drivers' license -- a threat. A group of black people congregating in the street -- a riot. A group of black people arming themselves and standing in front of the state capital -- an insurrection. Distrust may be more dangerous than hatred here, because it's easier to justify to ourselves.

We have to face ourselves and question the assumptions we make every day. We have to question the reflexive fear of the Other. Would we react that way to a white person in a similar interaction?

Our distrust is digging people-sized holes in the fabric of society and nullifying our fellow humans in this world. It feeds into the hatred of the people we're comfortable with calling racist. 

We must address our daily mistrust. Humanity is at stake.

Writing Exercise: Welcome back, Josh

This is the Open Door Coffee Company in Hudson, Ohio. I haven't been there yet.

I sit at the cafe with my cup of coffee, waiting for something. I'm not sure what -- inspiration, perhaps.

Inspiration arrived in the form of a man, a young man who strode up to the table with no wasted effort. He was slender, almost slight. His dark brown, almost black, hair just touched his collar, and his face was boyish, with wide, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a quirked smile.

"You're Josh," I said as he sat down across from me. "I owe you an apology."

"What for?" His face fell into serious, studious lines.

"I'm sorry that I didn't let you grow up." It was true -- I chose him for the story I had written at a too young age, so he couldn't show his true potential --

"That's okay," he noted. "I'm a writer too. You just got trapped inside the source material."

"You weren't supposed to know about the source material," I growled. A dream -- a racy dream -- an embarrassing dream that I had written about to exorcise.

"Nothing to be ashamed of," Josh countered. "We write from dreams. Then we revise. Look on the bright side -- you can do a lot more with me now."

"Josh!" I hissed. "Don't you even -- "

That quirky smile spread across his face.

Struggling for Inspiration

I think I'm getting used to quarantine life.

This feels normal now, spending most of my time indoors with an occasional sojourn on the porch. Spending my days working at the computer at home doing my class work, or reviewing my students' work.

The only problem is, I'm really struggling with my writing.

When I need to refresh my mind to write, I usually go to a coffee shop. My choice here in Maryville is the Board Game Cafe. Like much of Maryville, it's closed during the COVID-19 holding time. 

Drinking coffee at home is not the same. Even at my coziest, drinking coffee and listening to classical music, I don't feel the inspiration. There are no interactions that catch in my ear, no moods except my own. So I'm struggling for inspiration.

Reimaging Josh

Writing status is pretty much stalled lately. What writing time I've had I've donated to trying to figure Josh. my male lead in Gaia's Hands, out.

I decided to make him a few years older. He's now 25 and an instructor at Jeanne's university. This creates them more equal, which is a thing that had been bothering me since I started writing the original work some 5-6 years ago. 

But who is Josh now?

Much the same, although a bit more confident and a bit less puppyish, which is a good thing. Physically, he stands slightly below average, slender but deceptively strong from his aikido training. His brown-black hair touches his collar. He has lighter brown, almond-shaped eyes from his father's Chinese heritage, and a quirky smile. (Which brings up the point that I can't see people in my head. I have a person in mind when I write this, but I cannot find any up-to-date pictures of him on IMDB, alas.)

Personality wise, he's pretty calm and balanced, yet he chose aikido to temper his anger from being bullied as a child.  He's mature for his age, but he's also a writer and mystic. He sees visions now and again that help guide his life, but he pays the price in headaches. He practices aikido and Shinto, has a fascination with Japanese spirituality, but his heritage is Chinese/Italian/Irish.

Josh's worst fear is rejection, especially rejection for the mystical side he usually keeps hidden. He is driven by creativity, honor, and love; his biggest fault is his temper.

Josh, like everyone, is a set of contradictions. I still don't know if I have him developed enough in my head yet.

Fountain Pens

This is a stock photo. I don't write that neatly.

As a writer, I've developed this thing for fountain pens.

I've loved fountain pens since I was a child, ever since I found a 1920's plunger style Parker pen at a junk auction. The pen wrote for quite a while, which was amazing since it was 50 years old when I bought it. I still have it somewhere, but it no longer writes. I might be able to clean the years of residue, but the gold nib is beyond repair and I'm no longer able to get the nib to replace it.

I have to say I'm not a pen snob (like I am a coffee snob). There are pens out there that cost $300 or more; I'm not buying those pens. I buy pens in the $25 range with my "mad money" (fun allowance). In this range, you can get pens that work just fine -- Lamy Safari and AL-Star, Pilot MR, Platinum Plaisir, Noodlers Ahab. All these have smooth writing and ease of maintenance. 

Not all my pens have been successful purchases. I have a Kaweco Sport from Germany, and while it's a charming pen (it looks like an oversized stitch ripper) it writes really scratchy. I may have to take it to a pen shop to get the nib adjusted. This, however, would cost more than the pen, which cost me about $15. 

You can get cheaper pens than these, but the operative word is "cheaper". I got a Jinhao clear plastic (demonstrator) pen for $2 plus shipping from Wish. It wrote just fine, but it dries out when you don't use it often. A good design has a cap airtight enough to keep that from happening.

I don't aspire to an expensive pen -- no Mont Blanc for me (although there are better pens in that price range). I would like to have one pen with a gold nib someday, just because they write smoother -- according to one reviewer. Another says there's no writing difference. I don't know if I want to spend that much money to find out. 

So that's what I've been doing with the allowance these past couple months. The pens do not sit idle. I use them for writing my daily journals and writing exercises in different colors. I think they help jog my mind into writing as they flow freely on the page and make my writing look poetic, even when I'm grumbling about how things are going. 

I might have enough fountain pens now, but they're so bright and shiny that -- look! Another pen!

Hope is a Verb

I'm working on the principle of hope --

I'm putting together an author's website (not really a blog like this one). It would be helpful if I get published, either traditionally or self-published. The way I see it is "if you build it, they will come". This is my notion, anyhow. I won't post the URL until the site is ready to go live, which will be if something happens on the publishing front.

In reality, right now is a holding pattern. I am waiting for more news on one novel I've queried, and I may even query another (the new improved version) before I decide to self publish. I just like to have something to do, to work toward. I like to feel like I'm creating my own destiny. I am creating hope, by preparing for a future where I am published.

Hope is what keeps me going when I am feeling down, as I am in this pandemic. And accomplishing things gives me hope.

Memorial Day

Sunday morning and -- No, it's Monday. Memorial Day, when we look back at all those who have died in military service. 

As a Friend (Quaker), I am a pacifist. We believe that violence, even violent words, is to be avoided. We call this the Peace Testimony, and that is one of the most vital creeds of a religion that has no dogma.

We hold nothing against our men and women in the military; we abhor the system that exploits them for battle. Quakers believe there are no just wars and that there are alternatives that need to be tried.  Wars are fought for geopolitical advantage these days, and in earlier days were fought for land and empire. They were not fought for ordinary folk, but ordinary folk stood as cannon fodder. 

This doesn't mean the Friends don't honor the soldiers who have died in war. We mourn them deeply, perhaps more so because we feel they didn't have to die. 

So Memorial Day is a strange day for me, a reminder that thousands go to war and fewer return. And I would thank every soldier for following their convictions, yet hope they find a way clear from that path.

Hope and Coffee

Sunday morning, and there is not enough coffee to wake me up.

After the past couple days, some good friends on Facebook, and my decision to try self-publishing if I don't succeed in the traditional route, I feel much better. I am researching self-publishing methods, concerns, etc., right now. 

I will have an author's website (not chatty like this, but to promote writing, events, etc.). I should have one anyway, even if I'm traditionally published. 

So I will prepare for the possibility, and even if I get taken in on the traditional route, I will have prepared things that will be needed for that route.

This is what hope does to me. It comes to me in the midst of defeat and illuminates my path -- but only for the next few steps. I never know where I'm going past two steps ahead.

But I still desperately need coffee.

Contemplating self-publishing

I have decided that I may self-publish if my efforts to publish traditionally don't yield any results.

This is a big change, as those of you who have been following the blog would notice. I had been strenuously arguing that self-publishing doesn't give one the strong incentive to improve and requires a lot of work from the author. I would still argue this, but I have been improving and submitting since 5 years ago, and this is a long time to be getting rejections (about 250 or so).

Then I found that an author I follow has been self-publishing for close on two years after her publisher and her agent dismissed her. This was an author who had three books traditionally published. 

It is obvious the industry no longer nurtures its writers. I think this was what I was looking for in a traditional path -- some nurturing, because this is all new to me. Not that I would be a victim for fraud -- I'm actually good at spotting that. It's just that I wanted advice and encouragement, and now I know that's not happening.

So what I'm going to do is let this query run through (I get rejections daily), and I'm going to research the possibility of self-publishing (platforms, where to get cover art, etc.). I might do one more set of queries 6 months from now while I'm working on a plan to brush up my media presence, etc. 

We shall see.

Nothing to see here ...

I won't be blogging today because I'm under the weather. See you tomorrow!

How are you doing?

I have readers all over the world, and I'm curious. How are you doing in this pandemic?

• Are you isolating? 
• Are you wearing a mask when you go out in public? 
• Is your country doing well in fighting back the outbreak? 
• Are you safe? 
• Do you have your job? 
• Are you hanging on? 
• Are you fighting depression?

I'm doing okay. I'm fighting a bit of something because life lately has been depressing, what with isolation and all. I'm safe at home. I still have my job as a professor, where I have been doing my work online. Just hanging on.

Getting inside Josh

Because I can't draw my character. Because I can't post a male nude. Use your imagination here.

I'm still working on Gaia's Hands, because I don't have much else to do right now. 

I'm trying to get into Josh Beaumont's (male lead) head so I can develop and write him more fully. This is a challenge for me, because I'm not 1) male, 2) twenty years old, and 3) a mystic. No, scratch 3); I've had some nonstandard experiences in my life. 

I want to be authentic with the character, especially with his sexuality, which is an important part of what is basically a romance novel at its heart. Josh is pretty normal in that category, except for the fact that the object of his affections is 25 years older. And he's a virgin. As an older woman, I want to make sure this is realistic (other than the age thing, which happens sometimes) and not personal wish fulfillment.

This isn't a total problem, because Josh is mature for his age (about 25 emotionally) and I think that comes from his being a mystic. Josh has visions that change the course of his life, and Jeanne has been the star of his visions lately. 

So I want to paint Josh as a gentle soul, but with drive. Someone who sublimates drive into poetry. Someone who's going to finally ask for what he wants when he can't hold it back anymore. 

He's my project for today. Let's see where I can go.

On the Verge of Querying Again.

I have minor corrections to do on Whose Hearts are Mountains today, and then I will query the last 30 agents. Wish me luck.

I don't know what I'm going to do if these last 30 come up empty. Yes, I do. I'm going to query Prodigies (the improved version) in a few months, and start the cycle again. 

I feel like a glutton for punishment. But at this point, I have documents as good as I can make them, and I can't not share them. 

Nothing more to say today, but: here's a cat.

Me-Me, aka "Brussels Sprout"

Writing Gaia's Hands from Scratch

I think I'm going to start Gaia's Hands from scratch.

I've come to the point where I realize the bones of the book are not sound.The current version of one of the protagonists is not someone typical of men in romances: the 45-year-old cop. A former Navy Seal or Army Ranger. An uber-masculine rancher. A billionaire. In other words, the typical protector of a helpless female. Josh, on the other hand, is a surprise. His non-staid nature is in his writing and his visions. He's a bit fey, perhaps, but without its twee underpinnings. Instead, he is brave in his emotions and his drive.  I need to be less scared in rendering Josh.

There is not enough buildup of the romance part. The book, I'm told, is a romance, given how two characters meet, discover each other, and fall in love. There's not enough tension. There's not a big blowout where they're sure they're never going to see each other again. 

I have not written this book the way it deserves to be written. Jeanne is accomplished, but lonely. Josh is young, but determined. There are all sorts of reasons why they shouldn't be together, but they're internalized reasons from dominant culture. 

And then there's the fantasy part. That won't take too much work -- Jeanne's talent of getting plants to grow + Josh's attachment to the spirits of Shinto = surprise! In fact, if they develop Jeanne's talent together, they grow closer. The romance needs to be attached to the accomplishments.

Now ... OMG, I have to rewrite this novel. Josh and Jeanne scare me, especially Josh. He's too close to my fantasies. Yes, I'm an older woman who's attracted to younger men. And smaller men, too. It's not like I'm not attracted to my husband, but whereas most women go "wow" when they see Jason Momoa, I say "wow" when I see someone built like a dancer or a lightweight wrestler. 

This fear is what kept me from writing this story this deserves. 

A Creativity Ritual

I need something to slap my imagination into working.

Life has been pretty staid lately. I've already complained about it -- the lack of scenery, the lack of creative forces, etc. Time to not complain.

When my editing is over (at least on the current novel, which is three out of four), it's time to spend some time in creative freefall.

This will involve some sort of ritual -- A bubble bath, some rose-scented spray, a candle burning, some fresh paper and fountain pens. Free writing, possibly based on one of the novel ideas (pun intended) I have sitting in a drawer that I haven't felt passionate about). Possibly based on short story ideas.

I need to do something besides edit, I think. Although I have another novel that needs a rewrite. Maybe I should go there. But I am so, so bored of editing that I think I need a recharge.

But First, Coffee

My summer class (the one I'm taking) hasn't started yet, and the summer class (the one I'm teaching) is chugging along, so I have time to revise. I'm still working on Apocalypse, and it's not been very systematic, because I'm almost to the end and I'm thinking of what I should have done Back There. I figure I will finish and go back, making for a long process.

But first, coffee.

Our local coffeehouse (Oh, how I miss the Game Cafe!) delivered two pounds of Oddly Correct's "Meat and Potatoes", which is a solid yet somewhat esoteric brew. I have a cup right now, and it's a blessing during quarantine when we've run out of our roasting beans for a few days.

So I will work today, caffeinated, hoping my inspirations will catch hold and I can make Apocalypse even better than it was. 

Really fluffy towels

This is the Grotto (spa) at The Elms in Excelsior Springs, MO.
I wish I was there right now.

Editing Apocalypse (for the fortieth time) is a real bear.

One moment I think it's looking good, the next I know I'm feeling discouraged. I feel I have it all together, and then I think it's missing something. I forget I'm reading for character and start changing grammar in sentences.

It's a frustrating time.

I think it may be time to go on to something else. I need to make a poster of my latest research for an online convention poster session. Great idea, I think. My mind is tired of six hours of reading a day. Of course, it will take me at least six hours to do this poster, so ...

Sigh. I need to take a break. One that involves a spa and really fluffy towels. 

A Slap

So these last few weeks have been a great growth time for my writing. I have revised two out of my four novels (Whose Hearts are Mountains and Prodigies) to give more of a development of character at the beginning instead of barreling into the plot immediately. I am working on a third, Apocalypse for the same, and the fourth, Gaia's Hands, is going to require a lot of work, especially now that I know it's a romance novel. 

And I would never have known to do this without rejections from agents sending me to developmental editors and beta readers and books about writing. I haven't been revising just to pay my dues; I really feel like I have a better product because of it. 

My mother once told me it took two people to paint a picture: the artist and the person who slaps the artist when they're done. At this point, I feel like I need a slap. I need someone to read something and tell me if I'm done. 

And then, in my next set of queries, what if I don't get accepted by an agent? What's next? I have really no idea to be honest. I suspect it will feel like a slap in the face.

Wishing for a Thunderstorm

I was hoping for a thunderstorm today.

I love thunderstorms, with their gushing rain and big booming thunder. If I weren't so aware of my mortality, I would stand in the thunderstorm and scream with the lightning.

Thunderstorms are cathartic, clearing the air of heat and dust, clearing my mind of stagnation. Changing the topic from waiting to doing. 

The color of the dewy grass after the storm cheers my heart. It makes me feel like rebirth is possible.

I will have to wait till tomorrow, apparently, and even then the forecast might be gentle rain or misty drizzle. I'll accept those, even knowing I will miss the more dramatic storm.

Heaven and a Cup of Coffee

"I feel like I've died and gone to Heaven."

I thought about the phrase this morning while drinking the best cup of coffee my husband's ever made, and I wondered what that would actually be like. I know that different people's notions of heaven differ, but many of them seem to look like life on Earth except, maybe, with less material goods, more leisure, and more happiness*.

If this is Heaven, I can't help but think I will have feelings other than joy and a deep contentment. I'll have left all these people I know and a life I've stated as "pretty darn good". Won't I mourn my lost life? Won't that perfect cup of coffee make a poignant reminder of my mornings on Earth? 

Wouldn't I get tired of my perfect coffee every day? Part of what I love about our coffee in the morning is the fact that my husband and I order the varieties we want to try, Richard (husband) roasts the beans, and we critique the resulting brew. Wouldn't we lose something if the coffee wasn't of our production? 

So I think of Heaven, and I worry a bit. Because if Heaven is that perfect cup of coffee, I'm afraid I would be bored before long.

***************



* Less materialism seems to be a predictor of happiness on Earth as well, so there might be something to this vision.


**My notion of Heaven is that I will become a traveling soul with consciousness that can zip across Heaven and Earth at the speed of a thought. As I travel,  I will quickly lose more and more memory of the material of Earth, and I will only be a force for good.

A Pretty Good Life

So today is my one day of summer break. My online class (the one I'm taking) starts tomorrow while the internship I'm teaching starts Tuesday. But those classes will still give me plenty of time for writing because I'm stuck here anyhow. 

So what am I doing for summer break? Baking some bread. Editing some writing. Making my own personal recipe of thousand-year-sauce chicken. Planting some lamb's ear and garlic chives. Drinking more coffee. Petting the cats. In other words, business as usual because, frankly, I have a pretty good life.

Girlie-Girl working hard on a Sunday.

Richard is making more coffee while I type this. The cats are lounging in various areas of the house. Eric Satie's Gnossiene No. 2 is playing on the stereo. It's chilly outside, but it will warm up by the time I'm ready to plant new plants. 

There's a new, beat-up spider plant in the window. I'm going to try to give it a good life, too. I mean it's really beat up to the point where I think I need to remove most of the biggest leaves. But it will survive and so will we. 

Daydreaming a Summer Break

Sorry to keep you all waiting, but I had to finish grading final exams for my last class. I'm officially done with my semester, which if you read yesterday's post, doesn't feel like an ending at all. I'm wondering if going tent camping in my backyard would feel like a vacation. At my age, it would probably feel like torture.

Honestly, if I could afford a travel trailer, I'd park it out at the nearby park for the summer just to feel like I'd gotten away from people. I like that idea -- it would make a perfect writing retreat. Home away from home, and even wifi (not excellent wifi, but passable). 

A cabin out in the woods would be nice. If it had wifi. I need to have my internet to monitor students and the like. 

I'm just not ready to break the shelter-in-place and be in space with lots of people. I'm certainly not going to take the face mask off the few times I'm anywhere near people. 

It just doesn't feel like summer without my little writing retreat.

The Seasonless Year under COVID-19

I can't tell what season it is.

In academia, we have a defined year with three seasons. It starts in fall with the first day of classes, and fall semester ends with Christmas. In January, the spring semester rolls around, and it's of slightly different character than fall semester, lacking the tinsel and greens of December and adding the bacchanalia of Spring Break. The school year ends at the beginning of May, and even though I supervise internships and take an online course for my Disaster Mental Health certification, the change in routines -- no faculty meetings, flexible schedule, time to take a vacation -- marks that a season has passed. Until the end of summer, when we start preparing our classes for the school year.

I have no such thing this year.

We started online classes in March, which made the school year feel like an endless prep period, typing on our computers and missing the face-to-face interaction. I'm answering emails from students at 9 PM and at 5 AM, so I feel like I'm always working. We're going from that to summer -- but the freedom of travel has evaporated with COVID-19's sequestering.  So I'll spend the summer working with my interns online using Zoom, and the flexibility of my time will not matter. Days are melting into a sameness, and that sameness is work without any defined boundaries. 

I admit that I'm getting a decent amount of writing done because I have to do something with the time I'm not working on student stuff. And I'm grateful that I can shelter in place, as my age and weight makes me at risk for a more severe infection. But I find my rejoicing at summer terribly muted, because there is no summer. I wonder when there will be a summer again.

A reading that seems to corroborate my current feelings:
https://theconversation.com/will-covid-19-be-the-death-of-summer-vacation-135776

Nothing to read here.

                                              This page deliberately left blank.

An interview with ... me!

Here is an interview with me that a fellow writer, C.A. Campbell, posted on her blog today.


It's right here!

Reattempt at first chapter of Apocalypse

This is a potential first chapter to Apocalypse to set up a feel for the characters and the setting -- the "before". One of the big problems is that I'm not a big description writer -- I try to do those things as concisely as possible and I'm not sure they're enough. Sigh. 

******
At Barn Swallows Dance, the sky was still deep indigo and the air slightly damp when life began to stir. The early risers made coffee in their homes’ small kitchens; the late risers slept blissfully unaware of the small commotions of the dawn.  

Micah Inhofer, as farm manager, showed up to the farm half an hour before his staff, checking his phone in his makeshift “office” just inside the sheep barn, surrounded by friendly bleats from the Welsh Mountain flock. He ran a long hand through a shock of black hair and consulted his notebook. The cows would be milked, and the milk pasteurized for the collective to drink and make yogurt from. The eggs would have to be gathered, all the animals fed, the produce picked. 


In the commercial kitchen that served the whole sixty-odd members of Barn Swallows’ Dance, Mary Rogers, dark and slender in white chef’s gear, poured beaten eggs into the line pans of old bread drizzled with cinnamon syrup to make french toast casserole. 

Nearby, Shelby with her blue spiked hair cut up a large bowl of strawberries and added sugar to them. Early breakfast was more than just breakfast; it was the ritual that not only started the day, but cemented the residents’ sense of belongingness. 

“How are the raspberries doing? Have the birds gotten to them yet?”

“They’re doing fine, and we should have some in a couple weeks. They’re in the Garden. They’re protected from the birds there.”

Mary nodded. The Garden took care of its residents.


Outside, Jeanne Beaumont-Young, stocky and grey-haired, pulled coffee out of the solar roaster, taking a whiff of its richness, and brought the bowl inside to be ground and drunk. The early morning was like church to her, and coffee was its sacrament, which meant she was its priest. She smiled at her metaphor and put it away, feeling more comfortable with the science of roasting coffee beans.


Her husband, Josh, meditated in the Garden as he did every morning, a slight young man in the orchard entwined with vines and surrounded by herbs and berry brambles. A practitioner of Shinto, he focused on the spirits of the garden that Jeanne had designed and the collective had planted. The spirits, he believed, tended the two acres of orchard and food plants from the moment it had begun to grow. Now it was the Garden, and one could hear the capital G in the way people spoke of it. 

He heard a rustling of leaves and smiled, knowing he was welcome in this clearing in the orchard, which he considered the heart of the collective.


Gideon Stein strode back from the shower house he had built next to the small collection of tents that housed summer residents, feeling the chill against his bare torso and legs and a twinge in his back he attributed to middle age. He entered his own ger, a white conical tent with blue markings he had painted himself. He changed out of his shorts into jeans and t-shirt, then braided his long brown hair into a plait that hung down his back. He reminded himself that he needed to look at the latch to the pasture the sheep and goats shared at the moment, because the goats had managed to almost break the latch in their attempts to break out of pasture. He couldn’t help but admire the goats’ chutzpah. 

He thought about his former life as an architect and his most renowned work, the Frazier Dream Bridge in Vancouver. He couldn’t live that high life anymore, because the costs of stress were frenetic energy alternating with crippling, deadly depression.

 He had come to Barn Swallows’ Dance to recuperate, perhaps even to hide from the press that had named him a dangerous visionary. 

Sometimes he wondered what he was called to do.


In a house at the other edge of the collective, Rita Yilmaz looked down in fond exasperation at her oldest, Ty, who sprawled across every inch of his bed, still asleep. The twins, silent as always, stood behind her; she knew they smirked at their unruly brother. Her children’s hair, flaming red unlike her own black curls, reminded her of her long-gone love and the message he had just sent her, to meet him that night behind the Commons. Perhaps there would be another child. Perhaps he would leave again in the night. Zoi was a force of nature, and an enigma, she thought. 

“Ty!” she shouted. She prodded Ty’s shoulder and Ty, tall and slender like a sapling, grimaced and opened his eyes.


Ilsa Morganstern, general director of Barn Swallows’ Dance, downed her morning medications as she sat on her bed. There seemed to be more medications every year; by her early eighties, that meant a lot of pills to swallow. 

She thought about her morning announcements to the collective for early breakfast. Nothing too pressing: a pothole had opened on the north exit, there would be make-your-own sundae for dessert that night, the women’s rugby team from the university would arrive the next day for their summer session; Gideon and Larry had pitched their tents in the tent camp. 

No crises, Ilsa noted with satisfaction. No fires, no tornadoes, no crop failures thus far.

She knocked on wood.


Laurel Smith hadn’t slept. Like every morning, she put on her coveralls and checked the pockets to make sure she had the keys to her small house in the collective. She would milk the cows before early breakfast; after breakfast she would muck out barns. She regarded her deceptively petite build; she could shovel manure faster than the men in the barns; her strength had always been her most employable trait. 

She could remember nothing of her other skills and education before the attack that left her without memories, without a past, without an identity. She would skip early breakfast, to avoid revealing these secrets about her life.


Elsewhere, in a place where daylight and night had no meaning, Adam sat in a vast expanse of a room barely lit by a glow that emanated from Adam himself. The walls were uneven banks of tiny black crystal, the floor a flawless sheet of milky white that seemed almost a molten blue in the shadows. 

Adam himself looked human, if genetically blessed; his long black hair flowed like water across his shoulders, and his fine-boned Asian features possessed uncommon beauty. He wore black jeans and a t-shirt, clothes that mimicked the humanity that he watched over, and perhaps envied.

This was InterSpace, the place where Archetypes lived, maybe barely existed, in the space between atoms, as beings of energy who could shape their space with their will. Adam’s world, at that moment, consisted of the walls and floor and the comfortable leather chair he recreated from a memory of Earthside, out of the stuff of InterSpace.

In his hands, Adam held a lock of hair braided into a circlet — golden blonde, the pure tones of an Archetype like himself. A contrast to his own jet-black hair. A memory of love, however brief; something that Archetypes were not supposed to experience. 

A memory from six thousand years before in a life left waiting for something.

Waiting for the legend to come full circle, when he could reveal himself again.


Luke Dunstan, an Archetype, rued giving in to the Triumvirate.
He sat down heavily, appearing as a man of average human height, with flaxen-blond hair and a weathered face. He stared at the perpetually burning bonfire outside the vast cave his consort Su had constructed from the matter of InterSpace. The limitless space held the appearance of stars in a night sky. However, no artifice would make the formlessness of InterSpace more like the warmth of Earthside.

The fear that usually lay quiescent in him burned cold like the bonfire -- a fear for humanity, the humanity that the Archetypes had been created to protect from their harsh tribal history. He buried his head in his hands, feeling every minute of his six thousand years of existence. 

Luke remembered the discussion, thousands of years before, with the three fellow Archetypes who called themselves the Triumvirate. The four sat in a room with a long marble table traced with gold, conjured up in InterSpace from a memory of Earth. The walls stood as  black crystalline arrays and the floor as milk-white glass, the natural state of InterSpace. 

"You tricked us. We meant to steer humans' destiny," the pre-Etruscan, with his waves of chestnut hair and pale skin, stated flatly, pounding a fist on the gilded table. Light emanated from his fist, from all the men, leaving the rest of the room in shadow.

"Humans are meant to lead, not be steered," Luke, new to his life as an Archetype, countered, heedless of the chasm opening up before him.

"So you believe," the Ubaidian debated, materializing a goblet in his hand. He drank of it deeply. "I disagree. They quarrel with each other and strike each other down. They do not learn. They need to be led, and you have destroyed our chance to lead them."

"They should be allowed to find their own destiny," Luke argued. "You cannot do it for them."

"I think you will find that we can and we will ultimately guide humans' destiny, and that the Council of the Oldest, whoever they are, will not interfere." The pre-Etruscan smiled. "It's only a matter of time." He leaned forward. "You may play games, but we do not. There are three of us, and only one of you. Three against one — we could end you ... "

Luke capitulated out of weakness, the weakness of a newly born, unworldly Archetype. He made the bargain to save what he treasured most, without seeing the loophole that put all of humanity in danger.

Luke remembered, and spent his long life ever vigilant for signs the Triumvirate would gain control.


And nobody, not those who slept in nor those who worked before dawn, nor those who lived in a world without sunrise, knew how rapidly their lives would change in the subsequent days.

Feeling discouraged about my writing

I'm feeling a bit discouraged about my writing this morning.

All I've been doing is editing, and editing more than one work's beginning. This gives me a pretty myopic view in many ways, as I'm focused on the first moments of the work, trying to give my readers a setting to react to.

I'm feeling very discouraged. I've been doing this for, what, seven years? And I'm still fixing mistakes. And I don't know, through all this, if I'm getting any better, if my work is getting any better. I don't know if it's worth it, because I don't know if I'll ever get published. Or, if I self-publish, if I'm good enough to get published. I don't want to be published until my stuff is good, really good, and I don't know if I've got what it takes to get there. 

I need a breakthrough, not a breakdown. And I don't know if I can find my way to it.

Monday Morning

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

Monday morning, which seems a lot like every other day in this pandemic -- I have two cats at my workstation (the corner of the loveseat in the living room), and I'm drinking coffee.

Today is work (the ordinary type where I have to grade final exams for classes) and work (the writing type where I look at what I've written and what it needs). I've done fixes on Whose Hearts are Mountains and Prodigies, and it's time to apply it to Apocalypse.

You see, now I know what my problem is. I started right into the action and didn't give the story its moments to develop characters and scene.  I hope I'm doing it right this time.

First Chapter from Prodigies (rewritten)

After classes for the day, I stepped out of the music building at Lakeview Academy, a private residential school for the arts. I walked quickly down the paths, through manicured lawns, past buildings dedicated to teaching written, visual, and performing arts. I walked under trees that would show their fall colors in a few weeks, past the banks of mums that gave the campus an air of nostalgia. I could walk this path with my eyes shut, as I had walked it for seven years, ever since I was a junior high student nervously clutching my viola. Instead of the scrawny, frizzy-haired biracial child I had arrived as, I had grown tall and slender, and my hair tamed and pulled behind me in glossy tight curls. I still saw both my mother and father in my looks — brown skin, deep brown eyes, a thin and fine-boned nose. 

My mother and father, however, had died when I was fifteen, in a plane crash attributed to unknown causes. I found out when Dr. Estelle DeWinter, my mentor, found me in art history class and walked me back to the office to break the bad news to me. Although I felt like I would crumble into nothing, I cried very little through it all; I sat through bewildering appointments with my parents’ lawyers and suffered two years of a guardian who threatened to pull me out of Lakeview. Only the surprising effort of Dr. DeWinter kept me in Lakeview until I became an emancipated minor at 17. 

I think I missed what could have been with my parents more than what we actually had; I spent my life in residential schools from age seven, to develop a musical talent my parents recognized as extraordinary. If I inherited anything from my parents, it was my ambition, and from my grandmama I received humility to temper it. What I claim as my own is discipline and my own inexplicable talent, a freak accident of birth.

I walked quickly toward my weekly meeting with Dr. DeWinter. I was lucky to have a mentor at Lakeview that I could identify with as one of the few black students at the arts academy. I entered the Administration Building, an austere Neoclassical Revival building from the beginning days of the academy. Inside, dark wood paneling and white walls lent a gracious, if institutional air. I went to the front office where Mary Kravitz, the secretary, stood guard behind a low partition. “I’m here for Dr. DeWinter, if she’s ready for me.”

“I’ll ring her.” I was punctual, as Dr. DeWinter had taught me. This, she said, was the most basic courtesy of a professional, no matter what accounts of divas in the news would have one believe. 
I didn’t look forward to the meeting, because I knew that I would disappoint Dr. DeWinter again. I had not applied for any colleges yet, and it was my senior year of high school.  I couldn’t explain to her or to myself why I dragged my feet except that I didn’t want to leave the familiarity of Lakeview. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself — anything but music was out of the question, but I didn’t know if I wanted to go into music performance, which was what was expected of me, or fall back on music education. Therefore, I hung back, feeling guilty in my school uniform.

“You can go back, Grace,” Mrs. Kravitz said behind her counter. She hung up the phone and stared back at her computer screen.

I turned the corner and walked down a corridor of shut office doors with their shaded glass windows showing light inside. I reached Dr. DeWinter’s office, with its hand-lettered name on the door, and knocked.

“Come in, Grace,” she announced in her voice, warm and dry like a plucked viola string. I tried to read her mood from her voice and failed. I opened the door and slipped through it, into the familiar office with its jungle of plants in the window. I sat on the wooden chair that looked like it had seen generations of students before me — even Dr. DeWinter herself — and had survived them all.

“Grace,” she said, turning to me from her wooden swivel chair. “How have you been?”

I looked at her, her straightened grey hair swept back into a bun, her oval steel-framed glasses accentuating her nearly black eyes. She was my mentor, she was the mother I had never really had in a lifetime of residential music schools, and we walked through our ritual of the past seven years. “I’m fine, Dr. DeWinter. I haven’t gotten that cold that’s going around yet.”

“Good. How are your lessons going?”

That I could smile about. “I’m currently butting heads against Paganini’s 24 Caprices. What kind of demented genius could write those?”

“Paganini did. And played them, too. What does the music say to you?”

“Impish. I mean, technically very challenging. But the feel of it is that of a little imp, darling and devilish, taunting other violinists.”

“Do you still prefer your viola to violin?” Dr. DeWinter smiled.

“I know I have to give equal time to both instruments, because there’s so little written expressly for viola, and you keep telling me I have a career ahead of me. But my viola — “ Here, I sighed. “My viola is almost like a part of me. It’s like my voice.”

“And of course you’re still getting voice lessons on the side.”

“Yes, but I think my voice will always be for me, not for the public. I have a good voice, I know, with good musicality — but I’m not Norah Jones, and that’s who I’d want to be.”

“I would agree with you there,” Dr. DeWinter said — and paused. Here came the question I didn’t want to answer. “Speaking of careers — “
I would never get away with anything with Dr. DeWinter. “I know, I know. College applications. They’re due November 1st.” I felt my stomach sink as I realized I had disappointed my mentor. “I’ve been looking on the internet, but —”

“But?” asked Dr. DeWinter, eyes boring into mine.

“I don’t know what I want. I know you’re expecting me to go into music performance, because you believe I have great potential — and I know I do. I could probably get myself into some program like Berklee or USC, but I don’t know …” Here I dithered, revealing my indecision and my discomfort at anticipating the future. I had no idea how to be an adult — not even how to budget my money, as I spent money for nothing but tuition, room and board, and the occasional concert dress. I had few clothes that were not uniforms; little contact with the outside world other than field trips to operas and plays and concerts and art exhibits, not to mention performances. I suspected real life was more complicated than that.

“I think we’ve sheltered you too much here,” Dr. DeWinter said after a long pause. “You’re almost eighteen, and you’ve been in residential schools since you were seven.” It was true; my parents had placed me in an enriched boarding school called Renaissance School for the Arts when it was clear that I was a music prodigy, and from there straight to Lakeview. 

I felt a flutter of uncertainty in my stomach as I tried to explain to Dr. DeWinter: “I want to stay here another year. Explore my options. Learn — “ I hated to admit the next part — “learn how to live on my own.”

“Most people learn how to live on their own by living on their own,” she said wryly. “I want you to try to fill out a few of those applications, at least one, within the next week. You can ask Ms. Hollis in the school counselor’s office to help you with those, you know.” 

“I know,” I sighed. “I just —”

“You really can ask for help if you need it. Being on your own doesn’t mean going it alone. Take it one step at a time.”

If only I knew what that first step was.

Later, after dinner and a string quartet rehearsal, I was back in my room. I had a room to myself, which had been part of the original arrangements for me at Lakeview. I had few belongings, as I needed few. The posters on my walls, something which would surprise most people, were superhero movie posters — Captain America, Wonder Woman, Black Panther. On a shelf were the glass menorah my father’s mother had given me, a tiara I had purchased as a joke, a stuffed-toy Siamese cat, as close to a real cat as I'd ever been able to keep, and trophies I had earned in competitions. The items that declared me a princess, a reputation I had built myself in self-defense from the microaggressions, as Dr. DeWinter called the sidelong stares and condescending conversations I often faced in the classical music world. 

I lay on my bed, surfing Facebook on my phone. Various chatters from my classmates, people I knew but didn’t really know. It was as if we lived in parallel universes. In their universes they went home for Christmas, they paired up in the halls and broke up just as quickly, and some of them risked expulsion by sneaking out to the ropes course or behind the gymnasium to have sex. I had not gone there; first, for a protective instinct I’ve always had, and second, because I was saving myself. Not for marriage, but for that career I knew I should have. 

Suddenly tears started to flow, blurring my screen. There was nobody I could talk to about this — Dr. DeWinter didn’t relate to me on this level and I didn’t want to talk to the school psychologist about it out of that same sense of self-preservation in my core. So I thought about the Paganini piece and felt ready to tackle it again.

Progress (I think)

I think I'm through the edit of Prodigies -- it's going to my in-house reader now. The edit was about two things -- emotions and plotting. I hope I have those in a better place.

I guess Prodigies will go out on my next querying round, and I'm hoping the beginning now brings agents in. They should get to know the main character now. 

Now, I'm afraid, it's time to go back to Gaia's Hands. I would rather prune very prickly roses than go back to Gaia's Hands, to be truthful. That book needs so much help, being the first one I wrote. It needs replotting and characterization and dilemmas and ... I still don't know if I want to start it from scratch.

I do worry because I haven't had an idea for a new book for a while (but Whose Hearts are Mountains wasn't that long ago, either). On the other hands, I want the existing works to be sharp, sparkly, and compelling. I hope I get closer to that.

Coffee Haiku

I can't stay awake --
Now the coffee has kicked in.
Everything is fine.