Pieces of Me

I'm guest blogging today at Faith V. Smith's blog about how I chose characteristics for my hero and heroine that were different from each other but all traits in me. Join me over there and comment!

Guest post on genre distinction at FF&P

Today I'm guest-posting over at the RWA Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal chapter blog. The topic is how to distinguish between scifi/fantasy with romantic elements or romance with scifi/fantasy elements when submitting your manuscript to publishers. I've given a tool to help authors make this distinction. GO HERE to read the post.

Guest Posting at Long and Short Reviews

I am the spotlighted author at The Long and Short of it Reviews this week from 3/21-3/25. Come read my blog posts and comment! On the main page you'll find a different trivia question daily taken from that day's post; email your answer to the address given and you'll be entered to win a copy of one of my short stories--either Sweet Cicely or Martial Hearts.

Day 1: Initial vision for the story and where the fantasy goes from here.

Day 2: All about the dragons of EE!

Day 3: Bats disguised as dragons...

Day 4: Where did Murex ordinensis come from?

Day 5: The geography and music behind the cultures in EE.

Why Readers Rarely Make it out of High School

Larry Correia (NYT Bestselling fantasy author) over at Monster Hunter Nation has a great post about how the "classics" we're all forced to read in middle school and high school pretty much lead to no one being interested in reading anything recreationally again. Ever.

A small sample:

Why is the Scarlet Letter a classic? Reading it gives you a sensation similar to repeatedly giving yourself paper cuts across the cornea. Let me ruin it for you. Spoiler alert. A woman has to wear a big read A. People suffer. All the light will flee your soul. Puritans are jerks. Yet, it is a classic because at some point in time, some dude with a doctorate in English proclaimed it to be a classic.
...
The one good thing about being forced to read The Great Gatsby was that I discovered Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft afterwards because I figured that not everybody from that time frame could have been that incredibly annoying.

My sophomore English teacher dismissed those works as “pulp” not “literature”. Really? Because who has influenced more people in succeeding generations? Cthulu or Gatsby? My money is on the big squid.

Go HERE to read the full article. Funny stuff.

Busy, busy, busy

This article is a follow-up to the weekly series at The Prosperous Writer. This week's topic is: busy.

****

When I have too much time, I get less than nothing accomplished. I click about the internet, randomly following links and wasting precious computer minutes away from my 8-yr-0ld (bored out of her mind 1/2 way through summer vacation)--minutes I could be spending updating web bio postings or my website or my freelance writing info or researching a quick article or writing at least part of an article or planning parts of a new story, writing on an unfinished manuscript...you get the idea. I flip through the guide on the TV screen, again proving that no matter how many channels you have, nothing worth watching will be playing at that moment. Checking e-mail inboxes three times an hour does not force messages to appear.

And a side-effect is that when I am not busy, I spend too much time doing nothing and am frequently (consistently) late going to any sort of appointment or scheduled event. I lack a clock inside my body. No inborn sense of time passage. Even with a clock in front of me.

The flipside of this is having TOO MUCH to do--manuscripts piling up on my to-be-read pile, rejections that need to be composed and sent, contest entries to judge (I have participated in the Lone Star Writing Contest for 3 or 4 summers), edits of more than one manuscript at a time both for my freelance work and for my publisher, crits to do of my writing partners' work, promotions for my book (we now have a release date--and only 8 months remaining until then!), and--if I get all that done--my own writing. Guess which of those takes a backseat?

I have still found that my productivity goes up, up, up when I have a very full plate. How is this possible?

When I have no time, I am forced to make time. That is, I shedule every moment from waking to falling into bed. I look at what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by, and then break each into small daily chunks. Write those down on the to-do list, and when I've reached my daily goal on one I move to the next, then the next, and so on.

Remarkably, I can move through three or more edits and readings within a six-hour period, by keeping up with a small daily amount for each. "Fifteen pages. I only need to do fifteen pages on this manuscript then I move to the next one, which has ten pages. Then I need to spend 30 minutes (timed) researching for ____, then I need to check this email box for new messages from my client; if none, then I move on to ____."

When I look at it as a number of pages to reach rather than a number of hours spent, I also trick my brain into focusing better, as well as utilizing odd minutes. Odd minutes are when I get interrupted--frequently, repeatedly, throughout the day--yet come right back to where I left off when I get the chance. Maybe that is only fifteen minutes at a stint, but I get through my page count that way.

Right this moment, I have finished my alotted page counts for today and am goofing off. I meant to turn off the computer 1/2 hour ago. I tried to update one website, got bumped from their server, tootled to another, read a blog post, remembered to update my release date here on my blog sidebar, decided to answer Christina Katz's newsletter blog challenge...and here I sit. How did that happen? What was I going to do when I clicked on here? I forgot. I'm not busy at the moment.

Good Health

I’m continuing a topic begun on The Prosperous Writer’s ezine.

This past week saw both my husband and daughter laid low by a virus, which manifested as fever, aches and chills, a cough, and tissue-box-emptying nose issues.

I didn’t catch it.

Every few hours I’d pop a thermometer into someone’s mouth and pronounce numbers like a member of the stock exchange. “It’s up.” “It’s down.” “It’s up.” Refills of water and orange juice were made available, cold compresses refreshed on foreheads, DVDs exchanged for others, cough drops fetched. Lots of chicken noodle soup made and eaten.

I had to reschedule three appointments, one for each of them and one for the truck, which if it starts is going in tomorrow. Every morning had to call the school and say “she won’t be in.”

What did I do special to not catch their bug? I’m not entirely sure, but I know many things I consume or avoid which they do not. This list always makes me feel like a bad mother.

1. Airborne. As soon as I measured kidlet’s temperature Tuesday morning, I took some. Family won’t touch this. It is pretty gag-worthy and must be downed quickly. And you’ll need a chaser.

2. Zicam. The tablets you suck on—I took one every evening at bedtime. They taste good—reminding me of children’s aspirin from childhood (back before we knew about Reye’s Syndrome…I just dated myself). I have read all the reports on the controversy about Zicam destroying your smell/taste senses. The stuff works—I’ll risk it 3 days of the year. Hubby noticed the taste diminishing properties and decided not to use it anymore.

3. Herbal Tea. Chamomile, Rooibus, mint, raspberry—I have many varieties. I can’t tolerate caffeine and I prefer the mild subtle flavors to be found in herbal teas. I have at least one cup per day. The family won’t touch this.

4. Veggies and fruit. This week we had on hand broccoli, bananas, strawberries, apples, carrots, spinach leaves, and applesauce (homemade—the last jar. Bummer). The kid ate as many of these as I could throw at her. Hubby—not so much. He was all over the bananas, so that’s something.

5. Chicken soup. Pushed the chicken soup big time. Shockingly, Hubby welcomed this for lunch multiple days in a row. I tired of it and had leftovers from the fridge on day 2.

6. SLEEP. As much as possible while nursing a coughing little one who wakes the dog every time she coughs. Okay, I didn’t get much sleep at all for two nights and still had to work, my job being at home and all. I did my 3-hours of concentrated work in 1 1/2 hour stints. Sleep my family did plenty of. Multiple naps were taken by each of them, allowing me peaceful time in the afternoons to work undisturbed. I didn’t get any naps—are you kidding? I’m the mommy. The animals still had to be fed and walked, phone calls made by a certain time, e-mail checked on regular schedule, lunches and dinners prepared. And when else am I supposed to work? But I did go to bed early each night, since Kidlet was sleeping in my bed. Hubby slept downstairs on the air mattress.

7. Soda. I don’t touch this stuff for the most part. My husband would dry up and blow away if he did not consume 48 ounces a day minimum of Coke or Pepsi. As I mentioned above, I can’t handle caffeine, so I avoid colas. I’m not big on sugary pop either. I will drink ginger ale if mixed with juice…or rum (but that’s another story). Kidlet drinks far too much of the stuff, thanks to her father’s influence, but I keep her to 8 oz or less per day, never after 7pm, and as little caffeine as I can. Root beer is her favorite. While ill this week I don’t think she had any.

So other than starting with good general health, and eating right, drinking tea, water, OJ, getting as much sleep as I could, not sharing utensils or food or playing kissy-face, washing hands after clearing away used tissues from table tops (Really? The trash sack is right next to you), I didn’t do anything special.

As soon as they were independent of fever I took a long hot bath and read a book.

So what do you do when your whole family is sick to avoid catching it yourself?

I Must Be Growing Up

"I can't write a detailed love scene. I picture Aunt Connie staring over my shoulder! Ugh, what would she say?"

Aunt Connie is my father's elder sister, a nice Christian lady with strong family values, a hard worker, a caring person, a wonderful mom, grandma, and aunt. I love her love her. I looked forward every year to our annual summer trip across 8 hours of desert in a 2-door sedan without air-conditioning for a stay at the farm where she lives with Uncle Don. (Uncle Donald had a farm...E-I-E-I-O). For me, growing up in the suburbs, their farm was a magical place. Great fields of corn and onions, barns with mysterious corners, occasional litters of kittens, a henhouse, the swift and scary forbidden zone of the irrigation ditch, the wide sweep of lawn and a tire swing where we cousins would play for hours until long past dark. Sigh.

Anyway, the thought of writing a sex scene that my aunt might read made me cringe. I usually skim through them as a reader "Yeah, yeah, a hand here, a tongue there, tab A in slot B--get to the plot!" I was more of a "fade to black" love-scene writer.

Until my editor contracted The Empire's Edge on the condition that I spice up the love scenes. She wanted at least one to go to consummation. Of course I said yes.

Then I sat on the rewrites for weeks, not doing it.

Finally, I dug in and expanded here and there. Fleshed it out. I did pass it by my crit group with a query "It doesn't sound cheesy, does it?" But I was fairly confident I'd gotten it right. A few more tweaks from writing partners' suggestions and it was off to my editor with not one but two consummated love scenes.

This evening, I had a chance to speak with Aunt Connie. She asked about my book. "Is it something I can read?" she asked. I confessed to the love scenes and my fears about writing sex--that her sensibilities are my bugaboo. She laughed. I said, "One saving grace--the hero and heroine are married when they do it." Her comforting chuckle rippled past my ear. "Well, all right, then."

She said she'll probably skim past the two scenes :-) That's fine with me. I love you, Aunt Connie!