09/06/2011
I don't believe in ghosts. Or spirits of any kind. I don't believe in fate,
or predestination, or black cats, or broken mirrors, or anything like that.
I don't know how a tattered, worn copy of
Diary by Chuck
Palahniuk found its way onto a bookshelf in my reading room. I don't
know how it got into my house. I don't know who
Breven Gaines is or
why her name is written on the inside front cover, or how her book got all
the way across the country and into my home.
All I know is I found this book on my bookshelf. I
thought it was a young adult book for my youngest son, until I read the
"Acclaim for Chuck Palahniuk's Diary" page. Then I thought, cool, right up
my alley. So I'm reading it. Now I may have to read all of Palahniuk's
books.
04/15/2011
Well...I finally finished reading The Paradise War. It's book one of
a series and while I found it rather enjoyable, it was not at all gripping.
It seemed to take me forever to finish because I just didn't care to get
back to it. So, it's not likely I'll read more of the series. The experience
of reading it wasn't anything like reading Lawhead's Robin Hood series. I'd
read those again!
I haven't chosen my next
book yet. I still have a stack on my dresser; but I also have a new Kindle.
I can't decide if I should put the hard copies onto the Kindle, just so I
won't be wasting it. But that seems a waste of the hard copies, doesn't it?
01/14/2011
A new year already!
I've reworked my Fenn book; turned it back into a five-book series within a
series. I'll pitch it to an agent at the Space Coast Writer's Guild
conference this month. I'm working furiously to finish the first book in my
other middle grade fantasy adventure series. Maybe I can pitch two!
I think I have finally come up with a winning
mainstream idea! It's eerie and a little weird. Perfect.
10/06/2010
For my next book, I chose My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and
Stand-Up by Russell Brand. To quote my oldest son, the book thus far is
"surprisingly uninteresting." I started reading it in a British accent and
it's helping a little bit.
I've decided to
take part in this year's NaNoWriMo. I
have the story in my head and am working on some scene ideas and characters.
09/25/2010
I didn't read much this past spring and summer. My husband was away for
months at a time, and there was something not right about a quiet bedroom at
night. So, I kept the television on and did crossword puzzles instead.
(Though I see I read quite a few books while I was visiting him in Iowa!)
But I did manage to stumble through Tell Me Lies
by Jennifer Crusie. It was a bit stilted; sounded like it came straight out
of a critique group in many spots. Some of the sex scenes must have been
pages and pages long. I skipped them. (I'm really not interested in the
mechanics of people's love-making unless someone is going to come up to them
in the middle of it and do something...anything--preferably involving an ax.) But there were several
redeeming qualities in character and humor.
I don't know what to read next. Vanity Fair?
The Princess Bride? Another one by Lawhead? And of course, Atlas
Shrugged sits on the stack daring me. Just the thought of struggling
through to a point where it might, possibly become interesting makes me
cringe. But determination will win out one day. We'll see.
On the writing front...let's just say I'm
pissed. You want my advice on being a writer? Well, here it is: be a writer.
Be only a writer. Write in the morning. Write in the afternoon. Tend to the
business end in the evening. All day. That's what you do.
If you have a job, that's too bad. Write when
you can. But don't take on a job if you don't have to! Sheesh.
But I've already done it. I don't know how I
managed it, but I did. If I can just stop with the subbing for people, and
tend to only my Zumba classes, maybe I can make a schedule work. But
all in all, I think I should not have gone back to teaching and should have
stuck with writing. I should have just forced myself to sit in the chair and
write and forget about Zumba.
But I didn't. And I don't know how to give it up
again. But I just may do it! But...if I give it up again, it's for good.
<sigh> It's not like I'm a spring chicken anymore anyway.
Then there's the fat thing. If I give up
teaching Zumba, I won't take classes either. So, I'll get fat. Really,
really fat.
On the bright side, being fat will make me very
angry and depressed and then I'll have lots of emotion to put into my
writing.
Okay, maybe I'll take classes...but then, if I'm
going to spend all the time going to class, I might as well teach the damn
things. And I've already spent a fortune on Zumba wear! Ah, forget it.
03/03/2010
As I said in my blog on the main page, I read a particular book with clenched teeth for the most part. But two-thirds of
the way in, I guess I became accustomed to the writing and, instead of being
bothered by it, I rather enjoyed it. One gem of a sentence made me laugh so
hard for so long, I posted it on my facebook page:
Slowly and deliberately, as if she were displaying
pre-Columbian artifacts to a group of archeologists, Merit took each item
out of the box and set it on the pine coffee table that along with the plaid
furniture had been sold as a set.*
When you read something like this and are
compelled to tell others about it, there's this awful sensation that tickles
your stomach. What if I have sentences like this in my manuscripts? What if
I just had to let my readers know, for some bizarre, creepy reason that the
plaid furniture and coffee table was sold as a set, by god! It's just so
important!
Makes you want to scour your writing.
On the one hand, you think, if I'm writing stuff
like that I don't deserve to be taken seriously and published. On the other
hand, you just read it in a published book!
Does it make you want to do better, or crawl in
a hole and scream? I can't answer that question for myself right now. Right
now I'm in a funk.
I need to send my Fenn book out to yet another
publisher and I'm digging through
Writer's Market and searching publisher websites trying to find these
hundreds of publishers my
hero/writer/god tells me exist to which to submit my precious babies.
I'm getting, maybe, eight more possibilities.
I look so forward to going to Oregon and meeting
Dean and his wife, Kristine
to learn more about all this stuff.
*Okay, so I left out the author's name and all,
but I just tried Googling that sentence and you can find out that way. Now I
feel bad for dissing the poor author, agent, publisher, all involved. But,
seriously, is that the funniest sentence or what?
01/02/2010
Finished the YA zombie book and it's away! The Fenn book is still making the
rounds as well. This year, early, I will finish the middle-grade zombie book
(I think the zombie phase is over now) and then move on to Elyse's story and
the 'story runner' novel. I haven't abandoned the 'friends' book, nor the
'wife' novel, but they are on the backburner.
However, I resumed my Zumba career. When I was
invited to teach Thriller on Halloween last year, I was so excited that I
realized I should return to teaching Zumba. The reality is that I am an
afternoon writer. I do my best work then, and only occasionally write in the
morning. I initially left Zumba thinking I would write every morning, as
well as in the afternoons. But I spent my mornings on Facebook and playing
games instead, and gained about ten pounds. So, I will just manage my time
well, give up the nonsense, and work hard at both my careers.
For Zumba, I have to take the AFAA certification
test to teach group fitness at the gym. So, I haven't had much time for
reading fiction because I have to study for that. But I've started back with
Tuck, the third book in the King Raven Trilogy. I've really
enjoyed this story and will be sad to have it end. But the stack of books on
my dresser just keeps growing, so there's a lot more to be read.
10/20/09
I spent the last weekend at
Disney World. Had a great time. The week before I bought some shoes, just
for the occasion. I wore them around the house for a couple of days,
because, well, everyone knows you don't wear new shoes to Disney World,
right? My husband told me that wasn't good enough. He said I needed to go
for a really, really long walk in them. I poo-pooed that. They're really,
really comfortable, I told him. They feel great!
On the first day we went to Epcot for the
International Food & Wine Festival. We weren't parked very far from the
entrance, so we ignored the tram and walked. Once inside, by the big white
ball, I knew I was in trouble. My new shoes were rubbing against my pinky
toes. Great! Just great!
By the end of our day, late afternoon, I knew I
needed some bandages for my toes. I didn't want to pay four bucks a pop at
Epcot's first aid station, so we stopped off at a convenience store before
heading over to a putt-putt golf place. I struggled, even with the bandages.
But I did my best not to complain. And my husband did his best not to say I
told you so too many times.
The next day, I double-bandaged my left pinky
toe and singled the right. But they still hurt badly. We went to the Magic
Kingdom and I opted for riding every chance we got. By late afternoon, I
could barely walk. We stopped at a shop in Adventureland and I bought a $22
pair of flip-flops! Oh, the ecstasy! My toes were thrilled with the
expensive shoes. And we left the park about an hour and a half later. But
that was a pain-free hour and a half and I was grateful.
Feet, I have learned, are very important. We
should take great care of them. They could rule the world.
07/10/09
I'm off to my high school reunion
tomorrow. I've no real idea why. My husband said it would be good research.
I spent a week shopping for something to wear. I hate shopping. I lost at
least a week of writing. But no doubt I'll come back strong on Monday and
write myself silly.
I'm not at all sociable. I don't really enjoy
the company of other humans, except for my husband (most of the time) and my
children. For the most part, you're all curious and annoying. And high
school was not at all the best time of my life--far from it. High school was
awkward and heart rending and embarrassing and shameful. Why do I want to go
back and see those faces again?
You know the honest truth? I think I go back to
show them that I'm here and that I survived and that if they remember me at
all the way I remember myself, I came through it. And I won't hide from it.
I came out the better for it, in many ways. But I'm finding that a lot of my
former classmates do not remember me as I do. They seem to think I was
"sweet" and "cheerful." Well, there's good in that, I guess.
06/12/09
The stack of books
on my dresser just keeps growing. I keep purchasing new books to read,
instead of finishing off the stack first. I apologize to all the authors
there. Luckily, they're blissfully ignorant. Twilight shouldn't take
me much time to finish. It's no Nicholas Nickleby. But some days I
can't read (there's television to watch on certain nights, you know). I'm
enjoying the book so far, despite the frustration of the writing technique
(which isn't all that bad). But a friend of mine has said, and it's been
corroborated in a recent
article, that the relationship between the two main characters is not
healthy. This isn't enough to make me hate the book, but it might disgust me
enough to keep me from reading any other books in the series. Like I have
time to do that anyway.
And of course, I completely forgot
about Hood. It's sitting here in a pile of things on my desk, instead
of in my dresser stack. I only remembered it because I glanced below at my
last entry. Sometimes it feels as if my time should be spent reading instead
of writing, but that's ridiculous of course.
I'm at a struggling point in both
the novels I'm working on now. There's nothing for it but to persevere,
muddle through, plod on, until I reach that better point during which I'm
excited about writing. Too bad that point doesn't last the whole way
through.
In real life, I have a dance
recital tomorrow. I do the tap and jazz thing, you know. Adult classes. We
recently had some recital practice classes scheduled in which our class
shared time on the floor with another class for an hour. So, the adult tap
class shared the hour with the tap iv class. It was a bit embarrassing. We'd
get up, we old ladies would struggle to get up, I should say, and do our little tap
routine. And then the young women of tap iv would get up and show us what
real tap dancing looked like. And then, we'd have to groan ourselves back up and do our
little routine again. Back and forth like that. It was like a dance off,
except there was no contest. The young women were very gracious.
And then it happened again with
jazz. We were put up against the advanced jazz class. I just knew it was
going to happen before I left home. I told my husband there would probably
be dazzling leaps and splits and rolling around on the floor. I wasn't
disappointed. But, though the old lady jazz class routine is not technically
complicated or exciting, it's very sexy and I like it quite a lot. I look
forward to my husband and youngest son seeing me perform tomorrow. (I only
hope the leg jelly that occurred during dress rehearsal doesn't show up
again.)
04/28/09
I read Poppy yesterday, by
Avi. I see that Poppy is book two and Ragweed is book one.
That's just awful. (You just have to read the first six pages to understand
why.)
I can't decide if I want to start reading
Hood during the day now and save Nicholas Nickleby for night,
because I might end up spending more time with Hood and end up
putting Nickleby aside. I've already set two books aside that I have
to get back to.
04/28/09
No, no. They definitely received it...and summarily
dismissed it. At least they reply. The next place on the list does not. So I
will definitely have to wait four months before sending it out again. I'll
check into some simultaneous submissions rules. I've always been leery of
simultaneous submission.
Meanwhile, I bought a few fantasy books, those few I
could find that I thought I'd like. How can I like writing something that I
don't care to read? Something's just not right.
04/26/09
Well, the post
office can't seem to decide what happened to my Fenn book proposal that I
sent off to a publisher. I may have to send it out again.
I started my three new projects and found myself uninterested. One was a
typical mainstream drama; another, a kids book with some zombie mayhem, and
a third, young adult with zombies and vampires. I was just not feeling any
of them. So, I started another fantasy adventure. I guess I will have to
start reading fantasy adventure. I'm clearly drawn to writing it. But
starting on this has reignited my interest at least in one of my other
projects. So, I certainly don't lack ideas.
03/31/09
The Fenn book is
out looking for a home. I actually have three projects underway now.
03/16/09
Currently I am working on the summary for my 'Fenn of the Wasteland' book.
Thank you to my niece, and the other homeschoolers who read my early drafts. You
were very helpful with your comments. As soon as the summary is complete, I
will send it out for sale.
I have two other projects beginning. One is an
adult novel about two people trying to save themselves, and each other. And
the other is another middle grade fantasy adventure.
