Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
New Book that Needs to be Read!!!!
A friend of mine, Abner Senires (I know him as Ace) has a new book out today, Kat and Mouse, Guns for Hire. it's cyberpunk pulp. I've had the privilege of reading bits of it, and it's grand pulp fun. Please, friends, check it out.
Here's the blurb:
2042. Bay City, California Free State.
Kat and Mouse are ronin--street mercenaries--who like cake runs. Simple jobs with quick and large payouts.
That's what these were supposed to be. Cake runs.
But when the Duo sign on, they suddenly find themselves targeted by a biker gang, a team of corporate commandos, a cybernetically-enhanced special ops agent, a stalker, a band of kidnappers, and a Japanese crime syndicate.
And they all want the Duo out of the way. Permanently.
Now these sassy sisters-in-arms must survive the onslaught and still get the jobs done. Because in the Biz, it's get paid or get dead.
As usual, Kat and Mouse are going to do things their way.
Heaven help Bay City.
Here's the webpage where you can purchase it:
http://www.abnersenires.com/katandmousebook
Please, take a peek. It's worth it.
Here's the blurb:
2042. Bay City, California Free State.
Kat and Mouse are ronin--street mercenaries--who like cake runs. Simple jobs with quick and large payouts.
That's what these were supposed to be. Cake runs.
But when the Duo sign on, they suddenly find themselves targeted by a biker gang, a team of corporate commandos, a cybernetically-enhanced special ops agent, a stalker, a band of kidnappers, and a Japanese crime syndicate.
And they all want the Duo out of the way. Permanently.
Now these sassy sisters-in-arms must survive the onslaught and still get the jobs done. Because in the Biz, it's get paid or get dead.
As usual, Kat and Mouse are going to do things their way.
Heaven help Bay City.
Here's the webpage where you can purchase it:
http://www.abnersenires.com/katandmousebook
Please, take a peek. It's worth it.
Friday, January 28, 2011
It's Been a Long Time Coming
Yes, I know, my posting has been very sporadic since the inception of this blog. Though I've been a writer since I was nine years old, I have never been much of a journal-keeper. Recording the made-up stories inside my head always had much more appeal to me than recording real life.
My daughters, on the other hand, are rabid journalists, and they keep telling me that it's beautifully cathartic. So I'm going to try and do a little more here, see if they're right. Besides, I'm told that a web presence is going to be important to my book marketing soon, so I need to get into the habit. THIS blog will NOT be used as my professional web presence; this is for me and my friends.
So since last I posted here, I finished the novel I was working on. The Fallen's first draft was finished on the second of December, weighing in at 428 pages, approximately 76,000 words. It took me seven months to write. For those who don't already know, here's the description that's in my query letter:
Malcolm Grey is a professor of comparative religion at University of North Carolina in Charlotte. He's an incredibly normal guy, smart mouth sometimes, but well liked, lives a quiet bachelor life. At least that's his cover story. Actually, he's named Maltharius, and he's a Fallen Angel. He took Satan's side in the Big War, and was kicked out of Paradise when the war was lost. He spent the next few millennia as one of Satan's inner circle of reliable Evilmongers.
Writing The Fallen was the culmination of a steep learning curve for me. I have written, gosh, seven novels in my life, counting this one. They were all terrible. The last one was in 1993, the year my father died. That novel was -- how do I put this gently? It sucked monster balls. It was painfully bad, and I trunked it. Okay, I didn't trunk it, I burned it. Yes, it sucked that badly. I spent the time between then and now writing non-fiction, writing short stuff, starting novels and not finishing them, writing online, and basically teaching myself the chops I obviously didn't have. I sold a few things, fiction and non-fiction, had some rejections, had some close calls, and basically learned a hell of a lot.
Do I have the chops now? Is this project the one that's going to be my breakthrough into larger markets? I think so. If it's not salable, it's still the closest I've ever been. I know it's a good story. I firmly believe that. The question is, are my writing skills enough to tell that good story.
We'll see.
Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the project I'm working on now.
My daughters, on the other hand, are rabid journalists, and they keep telling me that it's beautifully cathartic. So I'm going to try and do a little more here, see if they're right. Besides, I'm told that a web presence is going to be important to my book marketing soon, so I need to get into the habit. THIS blog will NOT be used as my professional web presence; this is for me and my friends.
So since last I posted here, I finished the novel I was working on. The Fallen's first draft was finished on the second of December, weighing in at 428 pages, approximately 76,000 words. It took me seven months to write. For those who don't already know, here's the description that's in my query letter:
Malcolm Grey is a professor of comparative religion at University of North Carolina in Charlotte. He's an incredibly normal guy, smart mouth sometimes, but well liked, lives a quiet bachelor life. At least that's his cover story. Actually, he's named Maltharius, and he's a Fallen Angel. He took Satan's side in the Big War, and was kicked out of Paradise when the war was lost. He spent the next few millennia as one of Satan's inner circle of reliable Evilmongers.
Then he had a change of heart, and asked to be let back into Heaven. God answer was a qualified "yes." He has now spent nearly a century on Earth, serving out a term of probation, living in a human body, and occasionally running "errands" for his angelic parole officers. Those "errands" include exorcisms, spying on his fellow Fallen and their minions, and doing good works, which is pretty hard, considering he was really good at being Bad. He has some of his old Fallen powers (he can shoot lightning from his hands, he can summon darkness, he can create homunculi, among other things), but mostly, he tries to downplay that and stay off Hell's Radar. All he wants to do is score enough brownie points to get back into Heaven, and he's getting tired of waiting.
Then he gets tangled up in a series of ritual murders being committed in the churches of Charlotte. At first he's a suspect, but then, once he's cleared, he gets called in as an expert. And oh, is he an expert: the rituals are summoning an old Hellside enemy of his. Meanwhile, he's also being stalked by one of his former minions who wants his old position in Satan's inner circle, and has decided that eliminating Mal is a good way to fast track that ambition. On top of that, he's trying to hook up with a lovely Math instructor at the college, with whom he shares a powerful mutual attraction.
All without blowing his cover, getting noticed by Hell, breaking his parole, or getting killed.
Writing The Fallen was the culmination of a steep learning curve for me. I have written, gosh, seven novels in my life, counting this one. They were all terrible. The last one was in 1993, the year my father died. That novel was -- how do I put this gently? It sucked monster balls. It was painfully bad, and I trunked it. Okay, I didn't trunk it, I burned it. Yes, it sucked that badly. I spent the time between then and now writing non-fiction, writing short stuff, starting novels and not finishing them, writing online, and basically teaching myself the chops I obviously didn't have. I sold a few things, fiction and non-fiction, had some rejections, had some close calls, and basically learned a hell of a lot.
Do I have the chops now? Is this project the one that's going to be my breakthrough into larger markets? I think so. If it's not salable, it's still the closest I've ever been. I know it's a good story. I firmly believe that. The question is, are my writing skills enough to tell that good story.
We'll see.
Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the project I'm working on now.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Broken Hearts
My daughter Faith had her first real broken heart today, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I am so angry at the boy that I really REALLY want to hunt him down and hurt him as badly as he hurt her. But I am not going to do that, so don't worry. I hurt for my baby girl. I feel helples in the face of something that is entirely out of my control.
The thing is, Faith is somebody I have always envied. She is SO loving and SO trusting. You know how little kids never meet strangers? Anybody who is kind to them is immediately The Good Guys, and they give their absolute trust? Faith never really outgrew that. She loves and trusts so purely. I envy that, because I can't do it.
And now this "man" (and I use the term loosely) comes along and takes advantage of her. Emotionally and physically. She gave him her greatest treasures, and he shits all over them.
How am I supposed to live with that? How am I supposed to help her?
She deserves to find a man who will love her and take care of her the way my husband has done for the past 25 years. She deserves better than this.
I ache for my daughter's pain.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Feeling Better
Yesterday I was cranky and down and depressed and hurting. I'm still hurting -- that bit never goes away -- but today was better, otherwise. I got to do a little writing. Writing always makes me feel better.
Rough couple of weeks
I'm going to whinge a little bit. If you aren't up to hearing it, then skip this entry.
The last two weeks, it feels like NOTHING has gone right. I've been in a constant tug of war with both my daughters (over boyfriends), and I feel like I'm losing touch with both my sons. Jim is working, thank God, but money is so tight that each check is spent before it even arrives in our bank account.
Two things in particular have triggered this particular malaise. First, the stupid bit. My little Acer, my connection to the outside world, and to my interior world of writing, decided to have a stroke on me. It didn't die, precisely. But I tend to be hard on keyboards, and this one finally gave up the ghost on me. No, I didn't spill anything into it. I blame it on the fact that I learned to type on a manual typewriter; I have a very heavy hand on the keyboard. It wears them out fast.
Adam thought he could replace it, but it turned out he couldn't. So I've gone a whole week without writing, and it's driven me half insane. I NEED my writing time; it's my escape, my safe place. Today, Jim took some money (that we couldn't afford to spend), and bought me a USB keyboard that I could plug into my little netbook. It's an awkward solution, but, as you can see, I am typing, and therefore writing, again.
It was just math. Replacing my Acer is nearly $500 and an afternoon of transferring files, getting it up to where I need it to be. This awkward arrangement was $20 and thirty seconds to do the plug and play interface between computer and keyboard. I'll buy myself a little Toshiba or something when next April rolls around, or I sell this story. Until then, I can survive.
Second, and more important. I'm tired of being crippled up. Osteoarthritis sucks. It takes away your independence. I'm 44 years old, and even with medication, I can't do my own laundry, I can't clean my own house. My husband gave me a gift this past weekend, and I both love and hate it. He got me a cane. I hate it because it's a constant reminder that I'm helpless, and it makes it obvious to everybody else that I'm helpless. On the other hand, it HAS improved my mobility a little bit. I can go to the grocery store and actually go in myself, not send in one of my daughters.
It is frustrating. Moreover, it's fucking EMBARRASSING. My 75-year-old mother can get around better, and stand up longer than I can. I have gotten back into the SCA because being housebound was not mentally healthy for me, and because, thanks to meds, I do have SOME mobility back. But these people I knew before, they knew me when I was hale and healthy. To have to turn up to meetings and events and have them laugh at me because I walk like an old woman? It hurts. It's humiliating.
The last meeting I attended, I had a sunburn (my doctor has me swimming to try to help my mobility). They were laughing and teasing because I was walking so funny. "You must have really been burned bad, Cecilia! Try a stronger SPF the next time!" I laughed, and let them think it was the sunburn. But it wasn't. I was having a bad day with my back, and that was as good as I could manage.
Most of them are at Pennsic war right now, and the rest of them don't know about this blog, so they won't know how I felt that night, and that's only right. It wasn't their fault; they didn't know. But what am I going to do when the winter comes, and there won't be any hiding it anymore?
At least I have my writing back, my blessed escape hatch. And the doctor has me on my crazy pills again. The sadness will pass off soon. The osteo won't; it is progressive, and degenerative.
I can ride this out. I know I can. But sometimes the nights seem so long.
The last two weeks, it feels like NOTHING has gone right. I've been in a constant tug of war with both my daughters (over boyfriends), and I feel like I'm losing touch with both my sons. Jim is working, thank God, but money is so tight that each check is spent before it even arrives in our bank account.
Two things in particular have triggered this particular malaise. First, the stupid bit. My little Acer, my connection to the outside world, and to my interior world of writing, decided to have a stroke on me. It didn't die, precisely. But I tend to be hard on keyboards, and this one finally gave up the ghost on me. No, I didn't spill anything into it. I blame it on the fact that I learned to type on a manual typewriter; I have a very heavy hand on the keyboard. It wears them out fast.
Adam thought he could replace it, but it turned out he couldn't. So I've gone a whole week without writing, and it's driven me half insane. I NEED my writing time; it's my escape, my safe place. Today, Jim took some money (that we couldn't afford to spend), and bought me a USB keyboard that I could plug into my little netbook. It's an awkward solution, but, as you can see, I am typing, and therefore writing, again.
It was just math. Replacing my Acer is nearly $500 and an afternoon of transferring files, getting it up to where I need it to be. This awkward arrangement was $20 and thirty seconds to do the plug and play interface between computer and keyboard. I'll buy myself a little Toshiba or something when next April rolls around, or I sell this story. Until then, I can survive.
Second, and more important. I'm tired of being crippled up. Osteoarthritis sucks. It takes away your independence. I'm 44 years old, and even with medication, I can't do my own laundry, I can't clean my own house. My husband gave me a gift this past weekend, and I both love and hate it. He got me a cane. I hate it because it's a constant reminder that I'm helpless, and it makes it obvious to everybody else that I'm helpless. On the other hand, it HAS improved my mobility a little bit. I can go to the grocery store and actually go in myself, not send in one of my daughters.
It is frustrating. Moreover, it's fucking EMBARRASSING. My 75-year-old mother can get around better, and stand up longer than I can. I have gotten back into the SCA because being housebound was not mentally healthy for me, and because, thanks to meds, I do have SOME mobility back. But these people I knew before, they knew me when I was hale and healthy. To have to turn up to meetings and events and have them laugh at me because I walk like an old woman? It hurts. It's humiliating.
The last meeting I attended, I had a sunburn (my doctor has me swimming to try to help my mobility). They were laughing and teasing because I was walking so funny. "You must have really been burned bad, Cecilia! Try a stronger SPF the next time!" I laughed, and let them think it was the sunburn. But it wasn't. I was having a bad day with my back, and that was as good as I could manage.
Most of them are at Pennsic war right now, and the rest of them don't know about this blog, so they won't know how I felt that night, and that's only right. It wasn't their fault; they didn't know. But what am I going to do when the winter comes, and there won't be any hiding it anymore?
At least I have my writing back, my blessed escape hatch. And the doctor has me on my crazy pills again. The sadness will pass off soon. The osteo won't; it is progressive, and degenerative.
I can ride this out. I know I can. But sometimes the nights seem so long.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
I miss my Daddy
The week after my father died, the preacher at my church, down in North Carolina, his wife told me, "No matter how long, you never get over it."
And she's right. It's been seventeen years this past January since Daddy died, and there's not a day that passes that I don't think about him. Sometimes, it's just like it happened yesterday, like a knife in my heart.
I'm not going to go into paragraphs about how special he was. A whole book wouldn't do him justice. He was nobody, a scientist and a school teacher, a cripple and a poor man. And he was so much more than that.
"He was a man, taken for all in all; I'll not see his like again."
Those of you whose fathers are still alive, whether you love him or hate him or ignore him or worship him, remember: he won't be there forever. Treasure him, flaws and all, because one day he'll be gone, and your chance will have passed forever.
And she's right. It's been seventeen years this past January since Daddy died, and there's not a day that passes that I don't think about him. Sometimes, it's just like it happened yesterday, like a knife in my heart.
I'm not going to go into paragraphs about how special he was. A whole book wouldn't do him justice. He was nobody, a scientist and a school teacher, a cripple and a poor man. And he was so much more than that.
"He was a man, taken for all in all; I'll not see his like again."
Those of you whose fathers are still alive, whether you love him or hate him or ignore him or worship him, remember: he won't be there forever. Treasure him, flaws and all, because one day he'll be gone, and your chance will have passed forever.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Writing (Part Two)
A word about fan fiction. I don't have a thing against fan fiction. It's a good place for a young writer (like I was) to learn their chops. I still read fan fiction sometimes; some of it sucks, some of it doesn't. But that doesn't mean I disapprove. I mostly wrote Trek fiction (because I have always been a huge Star Trek fan), though, thank God, none of it saw the light of day; nobody ever read them but me (and my sister Lil, who would sometimes sneak into my secret stash and write nasty little comments in the the margins, the little snot! Big sisters suck sometimes). I did self-insert fic, but luckily, I never often fell into the Mary Sue trap, thank God, but that was because my fantasies had always been .... well, not odd, but just different. I was never one to fantasize about having somebody -- real or imaginary -- fall in love with me. Even then I knew, on some instinctual level, for girls, lovers could be had without too much effort: all you had to be was willing, and not too picky (which is not a criticism of my husband; I can't believe how lucky I got there!).
No, I fantasized about the one thing that I didn't have, and couldn't figure out how to get: friends. I didn't want Captain Kirk and Spock to fall in love with me. I wanted them to respect me, to accept me as I was, and be my friends. And my stories reflected that.
My dad was the one who got me over fan fiction, and in the oddest way, when I was about twelve. We were driving through Catlettsburg one time, and there's this one little place in town where the local garden club had planted a bunch of flowers and a dogwood tree, city beautification, you know the game. In the middle of this tiny little garden, there was a stone monument saying something to the effect of "the work of the Gate City Garden Club." To my twelve year old eyes, it looked like a gravestone, and, being a smartass, I said, "Does that mean the Gate City Garden Club is buried there?" My dad, God love him, laughed his ass off at that, which was like applause to me and my imagination. It set off a story idea in my head.
I ended up writing a very silly story about the Catlettsburg Garden Club (in my story, they were all a bunch of old ladies who spiked their tea with brandy and were pretty damned snooty, which may be true, for all I know, I've never met a member). In the story, they buy a plant from a stranger, and it ends up being sorta like "Little Shop of Horrors" (which I had never heard of at the time): the plant is actually from outer space, eats all the members of the club, and transforms into a sort of vegetable vampire, taking human form and leaving town to go find new Garden Clubs to eat.
Come on, I was twelve.
My daddy LOVED that story, laughed his ass off at it (maybe he knew some of the actual Garden Club members, who knows), and to his dying day, admonished me with, "I don't know why you don't clean that story up and send it out to a magazine."
From there, I was off and running. Why write fan fiction, which I felt like I had to hide, when I could write stuff that my dad and mom could read and love? I wrote and wrote and wrote, anything I could think of: horror, sf, more horror, fantasy, even a little erotica (as I got older; I got over that fast, and I NEVER showed that to Mom and Dad). Mom spent thirty years teaching literature and grammar, so she would bloody my pages, correcting grammar and spelling, teaching me how to form good paragraphs and control the language. My dad was an even more rabid reader than I was, so he taught me how to control story, pacing, what constituted good story versus cliche, etc. Luckily, I had always had a good ear for dialogue (my mom says it's from having been trained as a musician. But then again, as a musician, she always thinks that anything good I do has something to with being trained as a musician).
However it happened, I had a good education. I sold my first piece, a non-fiction article on the Lewis and Clark expedition, when I was seventeen. Wow! People can make money from writing? Whoda thunk? That's when I really dug in and started educating myself, beyond what Mom and Dad could do for me. I bought books on writing, I took classes, and I wrote and i wrote and I wrote. From the day I turned about fourteen, I have written a thousand words a day, every day. I'm forty four now; think about how many words I have generated. I don't even want to try to do the math on that.
I didn't have a lot of success with my short fiction, but my non-fiction was enough to get me a position on a "little" magazine as a contributing editor. Mostly my job was to do reviews of gaming systems (I've been a D&D player since I was about fourteen), but I managed to slip a few pieces of fiction in there, too. I did that for a while, but I had four children by this time, the oldest about ten, the two youngest still in diapers. I had to prioritize my life. My writing was not going to earn me a living right now, and I had other responsibilities. So I stopped trying to "be a writer." But I never stopped writing. I think i wrote five novels in that time frame, and dozens of short stories, stuff that I never even TRIED to market; they were just to keep my hand in, and to keep learning. Writing is a never ending learning process.
Part of it was confidence, too. I know I made my mom and dad laugh, and my friends loved what I wrote, but the few times I did submit to professional publications, I got shot down. There's only so much of that you can take before your confidence takes a nosedive. And so it was with me. I couldn't stop writing; it just wasn't in me to stop. But submitting was just too painful.
Then, in 1999, I discovered the Internet, and joined a PBEM (that's Play by E-Mail) Trek RPG game. It's called Borderlands, and here's a link if you're interested http://pbem-portal.com/trek/borderlands/. It hearkened back to my old fan fiction days, and it was a comfy place to write and let strangers read my work. I have played with these guys off and on for the last ten years, and it was very good for me. I made some incredibly good friends, it helped me learn about character, and it helped build up my confidence, which had been so very shattered.
Which more or less brings us up to today. My confidence was back where it needed to be, my children were old enough that I was less a mother and more a referee/adviser, and I felt like I had learned enough about writing to really give it another go. And that's what I'm doing now: writing my fingers off, submitting, sometimes with success, sometimes not.
I'm working on another novel now, and I feel really confident about it. I feel like I have the chops, I have the right character, the right plot, and it's the right time. It's been a long time coming, but I think I might just succeed with this one.
But even if I don't, even if I never ever sell another piece of writing again for as long as I live, I do NOT regret all those words I've written in my life. Writing has been and still is the most satisfying, gratifying, FUN thing I have ever done in my life, and I hope I'm still writing on the day I die.
No, I fantasized about the one thing that I didn't have, and couldn't figure out how to get: friends. I didn't want Captain Kirk and Spock to fall in love with me. I wanted them to respect me, to accept me as I was, and be my friends. And my stories reflected that.
My dad was the one who got me over fan fiction, and in the oddest way, when I was about twelve. We were driving through Catlettsburg one time, and there's this one little place in town where the local garden club had planted a bunch of flowers and a dogwood tree, city beautification, you know the game. In the middle of this tiny little garden, there was a stone monument saying something to the effect of "the work of the Gate City Garden Club." To my twelve year old eyes, it looked like a gravestone, and, being a smartass, I said, "Does that mean the Gate City Garden Club is buried there?" My dad, God love him, laughed his ass off at that, which was like applause to me and my imagination. It set off a story idea in my head.
I ended up writing a very silly story about the Catlettsburg Garden Club (in my story, they were all a bunch of old ladies who spiked their tea with brandy and were pretty damned snooty, which may be true, for all I know, I've never met a member). In the story, they buy a plant from a stranger, and it ends up being sorta like "Little Shop of Horrors" (which I had never heard of at the time): the plant is actually from outer space, eats all the members of the club, and transforms into a sort of vegetable vampire, taking human form and leaving town to go find new Garden Clubs to eat.
Come on, I was twelve.
My daddy LOVED that story, laughed his ass off at it (maybe he knew some of the actual Garden Club members, who knows), and to his dying day, admonished me with, "I don't know why you don't clean that story up and send it out to a magazine."
From there, I was off and running. Why write fan fiction, which I felt like I had to hide, when I could write stuff that my dad and mom could read and love? I wrote and wrote and wrote, anything I could think of: horror, sf, more horror, fantasy, even a little erotica (as I got older; I got over that fast, and I NEVER showed that to Mom and Dad). Mom spent thirty years teaching literature and grammar, so she would bloody my pages, correcting grammar and spelling, teaching me how to form good paragraphs and control the language. My dad was an even more rabid reader than I was, so he taught me how to control story, pacing, what constituted good story versus cliche, etc. Luckily, I had always had a good ear for dialogue (my mom says it's from having been trained as a musician. But then again, as a musician, she always thinks that anything good I do has something to with being trained as a musician).
However it happened, I had a good education. I sold my first piece, a non-fiction article on the Lewis and Clark expedition, when I was seventeen. Wow! People can make money from writing? Whoda thunk? That's when I really dug in and started educating myself, beyond what Mom and Dad could do for me. I bought books on writing, I took classes, and I wrote and i wrote and I wrote. From the day I turned about fourteen, I have written a thousand words a day, every day. I'm forty four now; think about how many words I have generated. I don't even want to try to do the math on that.
I didn't have a lot of success with my short fiction, but my non-fiction was enough to get me a position on a "little" magazine as a contributing editor. Mostly my job was to do reviews of gaming systems (I've been a D&D player since I was about fourteen), but I managed to slip a few pieces of fiction in there, too. I did that for a while, but I had four children by this time, the oldest about ten, the two youngest still in diapers. I had to prioritize my life. My writing was not going to earn me a living right now, and I had other responsibilities. So I stopped trying to "be a writer." But I never stopped writing. I think i wrote five novels in that time frame, and dozens of short stories, stuff that I never even TRIED to market; they were just to keep my hand in, and to keep learning. Writing is a never ending learning process.
Part of it was confidence, too. I know I made my mom and dad laugh, and my friends loved what I wrote, but the few times I did submit to professional publications, I got shot down. There's only so much of that you can take before your confidence takes a nosedive. And so it was with me. I couldn't stop writing; it just wasn't in me to stop. But submitting was just too painful.
Then, in 1999, I discovered the Internet, and joined a PBEM (that's Play by E-Mail) Trek RPG game. It's called Borderlands, and here's a link if you're interested http://pbem-portal.com/trek/borderlands/. It hearkened back to my old fan fiction days, and it was a comfy place to write and let strangers read my work. I have played with these guys off and on for the last ten years, and it was very good for me. I made some incredibly good friends, it helped me learn about character, and it helped build up my confidence, which had been so very shattered.
Which more or less brings us up to today. My confidence was back where it needed to be, my children were old enough that I was less a mother and more a referee/adviser, and I felt like I had learned enough about writing to really give it another go. And that's what I'm doing now: writing my fingers off, submitting, sometimes with success, sometimes not.
I'm working on another novel now, and I feel really confident about it. I feel like I have the chops, I have the right character, the right plot, and it's the right time. It's been a long time coming, but I think I might just succeed with this one.
But even if I don't, even if I never ever sell another piece of writing again for as long as I live, I do NOT regret all those words I've written in my life. Writing has been and still is the most satisfying, gratifying, FUN thing I have ever done in my life, and I hope I'm still writing on the day I die.
Writing (Part One)
I recently got into a conversation about how and why I write. Though I've told the story a lot, I've never really written it down. Weird, huh? so I thought, now's the time to talk about it.
My parents were both teachers, and both BIG BIG BIG readers, so our house has always been full of books. I mean thousands. Even today, we have multiple bookcases in every room of the house, there are boxes of books stored out in the root cellar, boxes of books in the barn, anyplace we can store them. My mom, being an English teacher, loved the classics: Dickens, Trollope, Milton, Balzac; you know, the good stuff, the long hair stuff. My dad, God rest his soul, loved science fiction and thrillers: Doc Savage, Ellery Queen, Michael Crichton, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, the lot.
I started reading when I was four. The first book I ever read (and still qualifies as my favorite book of all time) was Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I actually came at things backwards. Most people start with crap, and move up to the classics. I started out with the classics, and ended up in speculative fiction. Like I said, I read Alice when I was four, Jane Eyre when I was eight, Shakespeare over the course of ages six to ten, etc. It wasn't until I was about ten that I got hooked on the James Blish novelizations of Star Trek, and from there moved into Dad's realm of reading. I got hooked, particularly when a friend of mine in junior high turned me onto Tolkien and fantasy in general.
OK, that's not strictly true: I had always had a bit of a fetish for horror. I read Dracula when I was seven, and got really hooked on that. But it was a weird thing for me. I read horror, but not the gore and Stephen King popular horror. I was reading Guy de Maupassant's short stories, H.P. Lovecraft, John Polidori, Turn of the Screw, rather than the more modern, gory stuff.
When I was eight years old, our TV died. My father refused to have it fixed. According to him, TV was rotting our brains, and we could do better things with our time than sitting in front of the idiot box. I think we went three years without a TV, and at first, it was rough. Bear in mind, we lived WAY out in the country; it's not like we could go hang out in the mall. Our nearest neighbors were a mile away, and most of the people on our road didn't have children our age. And we were weird children (teacher's brats, remember), so the kids that did live in biking range didn't want to play with us.
All we had were each other -- I have three sisters -- and a big old farm. So we did a lot of exploring of the farm, climbing trees, wandering the woods, catching snakes and frogs and fireflies, that sort of country thing, and it was good. My mother STILL doesn't know that my oldest sister (ten years old, and always absolutely fearless) -- at the time, I was eight, Margaret was seven, and Sarah was FIVE -- taught us all how to free climb on the forty five foot cliff face on top of one of our hills. I sometimes wonder how we survived our childhood.
We also became pretty sharp little card players (ask me one time how a ten year old and an eight year old KICKED ASS at cards on a couple of grownups at a family reunion; it was a hoot). I learned to play checkers, chess, backgammon. I had always known how to sew, but I started making most of my own clothes. My sister started painting and drawing. We discovered things about ourselves that we never knew existed. It was an amazing time.
And I did a LOT of reading, more than I had ever done in my life. I read every book we had in the house (including three entire sets of encyclopedias). And then, when they were done, I re-read them again. There's only so many times you can re-read books before you start craving something new. The nearest library was a forty minute drive away, so that was not going to be happening a lot, and, as some of you know, teachers don't make squat for money, so buying enough to feed my addiction was also not going to happen.
So where does the writing come in? OK, my sister Lillian and I shared a bedroom, and she had a radio that was never ever turned off. One summer day, I was in the bedroom, looking through the bookshelf for something to read when this one song came on. "Devil Woman" was the song, by Cliff Richards. Remember when I said I had always had a horror fetish? Well, I fricking HATED THIS SONG. It had all the good horror tropes that I loved, but I didn't understand the song, the sexual innuendo -- come on, I was like eight or nine, what the hell did I know? -- so I found the song really disappointing. It didn't pay off the way I wanted it to, damn it!
So, I had an epiphany! I would rewrite the song as a story, and "fix" the ending. I spent the whole day lying on my belly in my bedroom floor, rewriting that song as a story. I don't recall how I ended the story, or what has happened to it in the intervening years, but an obsession had started. don't have anything to read? Just write something. Writing was like reading, only BETTER! I wrote stories, I wrote plays that my sisters and I would put on for Mom and Dad, I wrote fan fiction, I wrote everything I could think of.
My parents were both teachers, and both BIG BIG BIG readers, so our house has always been full of books. I mean thousands. Even today, we have multiple bookcases in every room of the house, there are boxes of books stored out in the root cellar, boxes of books in the barn, anyplace we can store them. My mom, being an English teacher, loved the classics: Dickens, Trollope, Milton, Balzac; you know, the good stuff, the long hair stuff. My dad, God rest his soul, loved science fiction and thrillers: Doc Savage, Ellery Queen, Michael Crichton, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, the lot.
I started reading when I was four. The first book I ever read (and still qualifies as my favorite book of all time) was Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I actually came at things backwards. Most people start with crap, and move up to the classics. I started out with the classics, and ended up in speculative fiction. Like I said, I read Alice when I was four, Jane Eyre when I was eight, Shakespeare over the course of ages six to ten, etc. It wasn't until I was about ten that I got hooked on the James Blish novelizations of Star Trek, and from there moved into Dad's realm of reading. I got hooked, particularly when a friend of mine in junior high turned me onto Tolkien and fantasy in general.
OK, that's not strictly true: I had always had a bit of a fetish for horror. I read Dracula when I was seven, and got really hooked on that. But it was a weird thing for me. I read horror, but not the gore and Stephen King popular horror. I was reading Guy de Maupassant's short stories, H.P. Lovecraft, John Polidori, Turn of the Screw, rather than the more modern, gory stuff.
When I was eight years old, our TV died. My father refused to have it fixed. According to him, TV was rotting our brains, and we could do better things with our time than sitting in front of the idiot box. I think we went three years without a TV, and at first, it was rough. Bear in mind, we lived WAY out in the country; it's not like we could go hang out in the mall. Our nearest neighbors were a mile away, and most of the people on our road didn't have children our age. And we were weird children (teacher's brats, remember), so the kids that did live in biking range didn't want to play with us.
All we had were each other -- I have three sisters -- and a big old farm. So we did a lot of exploring of the farm, climbing trees, wandering the woods, catching snakes and frogs and fireflies, that sort of country thing, and it was good. My mother STILL doesn't know that my oldest sister (ten years old, and always absolutely fearless) -- at the time, I was eight, Margaret was seven, and Sarah was FIVE -- taught us all how to free climb on the forty five foot cliff face on top of one of our hills. I sometimes wonder how we survived our childhood.
We also became pretty sharp little card players (ask me one time how a ten year old and an eight year old KICKED ASS at cards on a couple of grownups at a family reunion; it was a hoot). I learned to play checkers, chess, backgammon. I had always known how to sew, but I started making most of my own clothes. My sister started painting and drawing. We discovered things about ourselves that we never knew existed. It was an amazing time.
And I did a LOT of reading, more than I had ever done in my life. I read every book we had in the house (including three entire sets of encyclopedias). And then, when they were done, I re-read them again. There's only so many times you can re-read books before you start craving something new. The nearest library was a forty minute drive away, so that was not going to be happening a lot, and, as some of you know, teachers don't make squat for money, so buying enough to feed my addiction was also not going to happen.
So where does the writing come in? OK, my sister Lillian and I shared a bedroom, and she had a radio that was never ever turned off. One summer day, I was in the bedroom, looking through the bookshelf for something to read when this one song came on. "Devil Woman" was the song, by Cliff Richards. Remember when I said I had always had a horror fetish? Well, I fricking HATED THIS SONG. It had all the good horror tropes that I loved, but I didn't understand the song, the sexual innuendo -- come on, I was like eight or nine, what the hell did I know? -- so I found the song really disappointing. It didn't pay off the way I wanted it to, damn it!
So, I had an epiphany! I would rewrite the song as a story, and "fix" the ending. I spent the whole day lying on my belly in my bedroom floor, rewriting that song as a story. I don't recall how I ended the story, or what has happened to it in the intervening years, but an obsession had started. don't have anything to read? Just write something. Writing was like reading, only BETTER! I wrote stories, I wrote plays that my sisters and I would put on for Mom and Dad, I wrote fan fiction, I wrote everything I could think of.
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