I've been trying to come up with a concept for the Midsummer Nightmare call for submissions at Dreamspinner due mid-March, and I've been drawing blanks for weeks now. Finally today I sat down and made myself start, and because I couldn't think of a single word, I started with pictures. It took a few hours, but I found some, and thought it cost me my date on the couch with Dan and Anna to watch The Simpsons, I now have a Curio page, three characters (with names!) and a plot outline.


This one is weird, but fun at the same time. The Sherlock Holmes soundtrack features heavily in the playlist, to give you some idea of tone. But it's kind of creepy too. And sexy, I think. We'll find out soon.

But not tonight. I've been at this work thing all day, and now I'm beat. Time to go see if I can talk a little backrub out of my husband....

 Special Delivery is out on February 15. You remember that story, right? The one with this hot cover?


To celebrate (and to spread the word and get buzz and all that stuff), I signed up for a Goodreads giveaway. I'm giving away two paperback copies on February 20, and you can sign up to win one of them here. I have to say, so far I like this giveaway. It's been up for a few hours and there are already twenty people requesting the giveaway. Best of all, so far I can ID exactly one of them. 

There will be more contests coming, so watch this space. 

 At the end of March I decided that the last week of that month and the first fifteen days of the next would be my big push to get a lot of writing projects done, because as I've noted here, I have quite a few. I suppose at the time I should have acknowledged what an invitation that would be to the universe to fuck everything up. I have certainly learned my lesson on that score.

The first round of disruptions was due to weather. After the climatologists assured us this year would be a mild winter, we have had record snow and record cold temperatures. I've lost track of how many days Anna has been off school this year; I think we're well over five now, and for an entirely urban district, this is a huge number of days. We've had at least double that many late starts and early outs, and several of them (and one more of the no-school-at-all days) fell into that last week of January. I can work with Anna home, but it's not the same as eight hours of total house silence and focus. It cut into my goal.

But I soon learned this was nothing compared to Anna home because she was sick. Last week she started complaining of a stomachache, and though she went to school like a trooper, she was home before noon. By mid-afternoon she was bent over the toilet and returned to that position several more times that day. The following day was, of course, recovery. She rallied for the weekend, though, only to fall sick again on Sunday late, and after staying home again Monday got sent home from school on Tuesday. But she was good enough to go on Wednesday.

Which was when I picked up the baton.

I was supposed to substitute teach. It was a complicated assignment where I'd been requested personally, and I'd gone largely out of affection for the students and teachers of that school. But when I woke at 3:30 that morning feeling like something a dog had crapped out, I was fairly sure I wasn't going to be able to make it even on a stretcher. By seven I'd called in, and at eight I was so bad that Dan had to come home from work to take Anna to school. I slept most of the morning, then rallied a bit at noon enough to go to the store, get a few sickie comforts, and pick Anna up. That outing wiped me out so bad that I had to go back to bed as soon as I was in the door. I slept there until ten minutes before Dan got home. But he hadn't even been able to come upstairs and say hello before I was in the bathroom, and then the party really began.

I do not do vomiting well. Nobody does it gracefully, but I really, really don't. Once I start, I don't stop. When I was a kid, it was almost always twelve hours before the retching ceased--I'd kick out everything, then just heave for a long, long time after. There's a magic moment where I actually improve if I eat a tiny bit of something, but it's hard to find, and I always fear starting too early, so I tend to wait. But this was my first time being this sick with my body weirdness, and I have to tell you, it completely kicked my ass. I mean, I was sobbing. I couldn't walk, I could barely stand, and I kept saying to Dan, "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." And he, God bless him, kept telling me I could, and kept cleaning up after me, and kept bringing me clean clothes and doing my laundry, all while reassuring Anna because I was really freaking scary sick. He got tough, too, when I wouldn't eat, and told me it was that or I went to the ER. I almost chose the ER, but I was so tired I didn't know how I'd get to the car. So I tried a cracker, thinking if it came back up I'd end up in the hospital anyway, so at least this was worth a shot. I tried it. It stayed down.

But for added fun, in addition to being horribly sick, I have fucked up my body like nobody's business—again. To start, I threw out my lower back. By six PM yesterday I couldn't stand upright and could barely carry my tray to have supper with Dan at work. A trip to the chiropractor fixed that, thank God. But today the joy is of my upper body, specifically my neck, shoulders, and arms. Every muscle in that area feels like someone has poured cement within it, but they don't respond to muscle relaxants because I'm special that way. Dan gave me an intense massage there last night, which helped some, but this morning I'm still fighting it. Some of it is pain from being horribly abused in all that retching. But some of it was something I'd been fighting pre-sick, and now it's just awful. It's not chiro-fixable either, because he's tried. So today, if I can figure out how to get Anna's horse lesson rescheduled or get her there early, I'll do some reiki, which has helped before.

Needless to say, I am not getting much done. I got part of a required synopsis written yesterday and a scene for TTT drafted, but that's about it. I did send in the revision of Double Blind, and now that's in editing. Oh, and I sold Miles. I should give it more of a party post, but I'm too tired. I am very happy about it, because I still think it's a weird story, but I was told that I kept the submissions editor up two hours past her bedtime with it, so that's a good sign. Lately it seems if I think the story is very strange, it's almost guaranteed to be one that people love. Not sure how I got there, but okay.

So today is lots and lots of heat wraps, Vicodin, and working like hell to get in to that energy therapy appointment at four. It's also, unfortunately, canceling on the lunch date with a friend I really, really want to go have, but the thought of getting dressed and going to Panera is just too much. Except it sounds really yummy. Maybe if I move very slowly....

The good news is that Anna is due to go to my mom's for the weekend, and Dan and I could get a lot done, including just being with each other. Of course, this assumes that Dan doesn't get the plague as well.

What I can tell you is that someone who will clean up the toilet and the floor after you throw up so hard you empty not just the contents of your stomach but your bladder as well is someone to be cherished beyond what words or actions can convey. Usually Dan and I take a pass for Valentine's Day because we're out of money, but this year we'd decided we'd do a "small gesture" because it had been awhile since we'd marked the holiday. As far as I'm concerned, Dan is covered. Anybody who will do what he did for me in the past twenty four hours has more than proved his love. Because even as sick as I was, I could tell he wasn't caring out of duty. That was love, the kind you can't put in a box of chocolates.

Love you too, baby. I hope someday I can show you that kind of devotion right back. I just hope you don't have to feel as rotten as I did while it happens.

There's always a song that breaks open a novel for me. It comes at different times for different stories, and sometimes it morphs with the acts. This weekend I got the song for Two to Tango: "The Book of Love."


This is the original version, by The Magnetic Fields, sung by Stephen Merritt. It's one of my favorite songs by TMF, and I got to hear him sing it a few years ago life in Minneapolis, which is incidentally where TTT is set. But it's not the above version that's sparking me. It's this one:


I heard this version the other day in the film Shall We Dance, which is where the above clip is from. It's a film which is beautiful and moving and made me bawl like a baby, as did this clip once again as I previewed it before posting, because it is NOT what the cover and bits I've seen hint at, which is that Richard Gere has an affair with J-Lo, but rather it's a story about love and finding yourself both in mid-life and in mid-marriage. It's about how to pick yourself up after a hard knock, about how to be brave enough to seize the life you want, and yes, it's also about dancing. And the above sequence uses the above song to great effect.

It's funny to me, because that movie has absolutely no resemblance to TTT except that it's about dancing, though Laurie and J-Lo have some similarities. And okay, it works too because TTT is also about what you do when your life seems to stop and how sometimes you have to pick up in a direction you never saw coming, and how scary that can be. TTT is a lot more about processing the little paper cuts of hurt that accumulate over the years than is SWD, but the thing they have the most in common is that boy does "The Book of Love" work for the stories, especially when Peter Gabriel sings it. iTunes says I've played it 43 times since downloading it yesterday, but that doesn't count the times I didn't have it on loop and kicked it back before it hit the very end. So probably at least sixty. 

The song runs in my head wherever I go. It rides over the music playing in my headphones as I work in the Double Blind edits. It plays in my head while in the car while Anna and Dan are giggling about "booty shaking songs" playing on the stereo. It plays in my dreams, and in the shower, and pretty much anywhere it can wiggle in. And every time, somebody's dancing. Sometimes Laurie, sometimes Laurie and Ed. They're dancing all the time.  All the time.

What I find most interesting is that of all the stories I have written, it is probably the most romantic, the most Big String Symphony, get-a-kleenex emotional syrupy. It also has the least sex. If Ed has anything to say about it, that's going to change soon. But I guess that's what writing a book about dancing will do for you. The beauty is in the tease, in watching the dancers move in and out of an embrace, more connected and emotional than anything you've ever seen, doing it boldly right in front of you, inviting you in.

This book wants out like nothing else. I hope very soon I'm able to let it turn completely loose. Less than seventy pages of the DB edit left, and then hopefully Ed and Laurie can finish their dance.

This was our street on Monday.

Prior to the blizzard that came out of nowhere, we had somewhat warm temperatures (all the way to 35!), but we also had this intense shellac of ice which meant you ice skated everywhere you went. Pretty much since December it has either been a) snowing b) really fucking cold or c) really fucking icy. Sometimes you get all three at once.

I'm a winter lover. I love hiding out in my office and cuddling under blankets, and I love wearing my sweaters. But this year even I am crying uncle. I think I cried that last year too. It's just so wearying, this endless snow and cold, and the ice can just go hang itself. We're back to cold now, the kind of cold where you never really get full use of your fingers. Really Dan and I should spend the day putting the rest of the plastic up on the windows, but something tells me we'll find an excuse to skip it again. He's reading the Special Delivery galley, which is due Monday, and I'm fussing with the formatting and clean-up edit of Double Blind, which is due Friday. Tonight we're running away to Jan & Sarah's to make pizzas and have family fun, but today will be full of work. (Unless we give in and run down to Costco for Veggie Straws & that huge chocolate cake.)

Since I can't make winter go away and since the plastic only does so much, I've attacked the cold with one of my favorite weapons: curtains. If you've been to my house, you know how you come in the front door off the porch to a cozy little foyer beside the stairs with an entryway to the living room and to the kitchen, and of course the family altar. (We have statues of Ganesh, Bast, and Buddah, and a poster of Anna's 6 year-old admonition that "God says we should love one another." The Cullinans are Unitarians for a reason.) Well, that entryway now looks like this:

Ultimately that quilt will be replaced with the same fabric that's going into the kitchen (the narrower entryway), but I haven't gotten the sewing machine out yet, and to do the quick and dirty cut & hang I did on that one would require me to run a stitch down the center or live with a gap. To give you the full sense of my lack of glamor: that quilt hanging there? In addition to being in tatters, it was lying on the floor of the living room because it had cat barf on it and needed to be washed until I turned it into a curtain. Yes. The barf is still there somewhere. 

Why did I do this? Because despite the fact that we have a porch on the front of the house and weather stripping, that door leeches cold like nothing else. It makes the kitchen and the living room cold, and worst of all, the thermostat is in the living room. That barrier will help keep the thermostat more sane while at the same time keeping the heat in the living room and kitchen. As a consequence, the foyer is fantastically cold. It hasn't yet crept up the stairs (if it does, I'll just hang a curtain at the top of them as well), and I am feeling very pleased with myself. And once again, I am the queen of bargain curtains. The poles, the hardware, and 14 yards of fabric were under $100. Dan and his father installed the poles for me on Monday when Dan's parents were stranded here by the blizzard, and last night we picked up the rings at Lowes. The poles can come down during the off-season, or the curtains can slide neatly to the sides. And yes, it's already warmer in here.

By the way: if you were wondering what the Cullinan altar looks like, here it is.

The pink cat is something Anna made at a birthday party. The androgynous figure bearing up Ganesh is something random I found at Hobby Lobby; usually I put pennies in her lap. The feathers, birch strip, and rocks are Anna's latest nature treasures she brings home and deposits there. Usually we have pine cones as well, though I dislike them as they pick up dust bunnies. The snowman is art by jtaddy , our friend and Anna's godfather. The necklace is Anna's, a present from her uncle and her aunt-to-be. (The altar is also the place where people put things randomly, and this is the current offering. I moved a fairy book, a juice box, and a cookie from church for the photo.)

Now I'm going to go back to work, snug in my bathrobe and a lap blanket, my feet over a heat vent and kept from a draft by the barrier of a barf-laden quilt and an unfinished length of fabric.

Technically I guess that should read 12 because I didn't include the Special Delivery galley I'm doing right now. Oh, and there's another short I need to prep and send. Oh well. I'm leaving the title like it is because it makes me feel better. The important bit is that I just sent in a submission for the Necking anthology at Dreamspinner, so that's one thing off my list. Here is the blurb I came up with:


Here's the kicker: that story? IS IN FIRST PERSON. I don't do first person. I will read it, but I admit, I approach it tentatively every time. I don't know why, but I like third better. This said, some of the best stories I've read lately have been in first person, so let it not be said I turn up my nose at everything in FP. I never, though, thought I would write it. In the past I've tried, and it was so awful I swore it was the last time. But this one woke me up in the middle of the night and came out in a day. And it wanted to be in first person. I suspected, then, that it was really awful. So I gave it to a few people and said, "Well?" Everybody who read it said the same thing: "Shut up. Don't mess with it. Just fix these type-os and send it now." So I did. I just emailed it now and erased it from the board.

Oh, it's Tuesday. Let's give a teaser of that one. I called it "Down the Middle." It's from a song title, but I don't know if anyone can guess from where. 



God, it still feels weird to me. Oh well. It's over. It's sent. YAY.

I am also working on edits for TSV. S-l-o-w-l-y. I haven't done any today, which I should remedy. If you've read the story, Charles is going down the tower stairs to face Smith and Timothy is giving him a goodbye kiss. That's where I'm at.  

Oh, why not. A teaser from that too:


I mentioned that I'm working on the galley for Special Delivery, which is true. So is Dan. We're neck and neck on getting through it; right now he's at chapter five and I'm at chapter six, but give him time after work tonight, and that will change. It's going well, but I keep finding really dumb continuity errors that I can't believe I didn't catch until now. Dan has found several misspellings which weren't caught because they're other words and very subtle, but his greatest outrage came when I misspelled Judy Bernly. I added an e, and after reading this thing about fifty fucking times, he just now caught it. Nobody tell him he's the only one on earth who would have noticed.

(Now I wait for sixty lurkers to show up and declare themselves 9 to 5 fans who would have seen it too.)

I'm blurbing everything else. Why not this?



Lastly, I'm working on Two to Tango. Amazingly, I have 25,000 words on it, feel like I'm just getting started, and here's the kicker: they just now kissed. They have teased like all hell, but nope, this is the first kiss. And there's a twist on it as well. It's a story much, much more about the romance than any m/m I've written yet. But I'm enjoying it very much, and it is insistent on being written right now, and it has no patience whatsoever with my million things to do. If I don't write enough on it during the day, it wakes me up in the middle of the night.
 
It's set in Minneapolis, and I take them to a real place called Matt's Bar. And yes, Juicy Lucys are real.


And yes, here you see that I am still recycling names. It's Parker in the menage short and Laurie Parker in TTT. I also had to change "Ed" in Special Delivery to "Craig" in the copy edit because I realized I'd used Ed again in TTT, and I couldn't bear to change it. I have a lot of creativity, but not when it comes to names. It's how I roll.

So this is why I am not blogging. As ever, if you want to know what the hell I am doing, why I am not answering your email or catching the feed on FB or possibly even returning your phone call, it's because of the huge and impossible list. Though for whatever reason you can still catch me on twitter. It's my water cooler and often my nexus point.

There are other non-writing things I could update, but this has already gotten long. I will try and do that tomorrow, when I also need to call my grandmother, because I'm realizing I have forgotten to do so, again. I guess I'll just put it on the list....

Today I turned in the copy edit for Special Delivery, which I hated much less than the copy edit for Hero. However, now in addition to my comma problem, I'm aware of my "then" problem. I maintain some of it is style and some of it is unavoidable, but I also admit that I overuse the word. Also, the copy editor didn't catch this one, but I did: knead. Everyone was always kneading everyone else, and it worked in rare instances singly and totally clunked cumulatively. So that's fixed. I also lost the battle with God. I hate it capitalized in what has become banal swearing—"Oh my god!"—but can't bring myself to leave it uncapped in occurrences of "Thank God" or "I swear to God." It's not because I'm afraid I'll be smitten; it's that God is the most political idea going, and I hate to add fuel to the fire. I even had permission to use the lower case, but I had to be consistent. In the end I caved and went with Gods all around. But what are you gonna do.

In health and fitness news, if you follow me on twitter you already know that I have been in more pain than usual lately. It's manageable, and if you hang out with me for an afternoon you're unlikely to even know about it because I don't advertise (except on twitter), but I'm popping a lot of Vicodin and in general unhappy. All this time at the computer isn't helping, but it's also not really negotiable. I should probably get the Macspeech headset back out and try and make it work. Except I don't have the time to figure it out....

The issue right now is that I don't have time to get to the gym, and when I do, we get an ice/snow/fuck-all-apocalypse storm, and even if I can leave the house (which frequently I can't), Anna's school gets called off, and in addition to screwing with my schedule, I have no childcare. There's also a full half hour of travel/parking/gear switch added total to any workout out of the house, and the end result is that it's not been happening. At all. Which is why I gave in to something I've been dithering over today and got this:


Only a small portion of it is coming out of my pocket; my in-laws promised me "some kind of weight/exercise equipment" last August for my birthday, and after lots and lots of fail at finding a system that will fit in our low-ceilinged basement, we gave in and went with an elliptical, and even though it's more than I thought they were willing to pony up, they're covering more than the lion's share. Yes, it's in the TV room. Yes, it wrecks the ambiance a bit. No, I don't care. I used it already today, and it was so damn easy. I just stole a half hour on it before we went to dinner with Dan at work tonight, and I plan to do more tomorrow. From now on when I'm stuck on plot, I'm going to get on the elliptical and burn calories and strengthen my body in general while I think.  Thanks, Tom and Nina. Again.

Current work is slogging through the edit of TSV and working on the draft of Two To Tango. (Miles and the Magic Flute got submitted today, but I still have to submit a synopsis.) Soon I'll start the shorts, but this week is all about Etsey and Laurie, which, yes, they're odd bedfellows. Oh well.

Next, though, is getting ready for the release of Special Delivery, which this time I'm determined to promote a bit better. With Hero mostly I just hung out and waited to see what would happen. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for Sam and Mitch, but I intend to be a bit more proactive now that I've been once around the block. I will be ordering more paperback copies, so I can do like I did with Hero and sell them directly, which means you'll get my little scribble in the front if you want it. Watch for that later.

But I wanted to do a contest too. Maybe a few of them. My trouble is I want to do things that are cute but impractical. Like I want to give away Sam's dinner he has while watching Dancing with the Stars before Mitch calls and they have phone sex. But mailing a bottle of San Pelligrino, pot stickers, and Newman's chocolate alphabet cookies is not going to work well. Even if I gave it to someone local, they'd need to be able to run quickly to a freezer. I can't afford to give away an iPhone. There are plenty of sex toys, I suppose, but I don't think that's going to happen, either. So I'm still coming up with something other than "free book." I mean, I'll do that, but I was hoping I could come up with something you'd want to get even if you already have a copy of the text itself. So if you've got ideas, Internet, I'd love to hear them.

And that's where I'm at today. I've been remiss with the blogging. Statcounter says several of you are still visiting. What are you wanting to hear? Random updates like this? Pontification on writing? Pontification in general? Snippets? What's your pleasure, people?

Off to refill my coffee and do more work. 

Sometimes I don't think that story characters are real; sometimes I know.

Yesterday on the Dreamspinner author's loop Elizabeth (the owner) posted a cover and a request. She was looking for an original fairytale (not a retelling) between 15,000-55,000 words. This was the cover.


I saw it and thought, "Ooh!" Then tried to sit on my hands, because, my god, I'm so behind right now I can't even tell you. Then I took a shower. Big, big mistake. Because anybody who gets these story people in her head knows damn well that water is a conductor.

I'm in the shower, and I find myself with soaping hands paused as I think, "It's not glass. It's ice. And it's on a hill, and enchanted hill. He's gone up to find something, like a quest, but he finds this instead, and it distracts him. And it confuses him. But what's with the horse?"

And then I said, "Oh!" and the story ran off like crazy and I watched the movie until soap ran into my eye.

I thought, nope, somebody probably already claimed it. I thought I should shut up and not take this because TOO MUCH TO DO OMG. But then I had to email Elizabeth about something else, and of course I said, "By the way...."

It's my cover. I have to have it done by May or so. Actually, I potentially have until July, but I'm saying May because at the rate I'm going, I'll get to start it in May.

Or so I thought.

Let me explain to you the level to which I am behind. Right now I am doing an edit for hire, of which I have 75 pages left.  After that I have many zillion pages of my own copy edit of Special Delivery. Then I need to submit Miles because apparently the slots are far out and I need to grab one fast. Then I need to fix the bits in Double Blind I knew I had to fix and resubmit it before it goes to edits. Then I need to deal with TSV, to say nothing of Temple Boy. Oh, and Two To Tango is pounding at my head and has about 12k. I want to try for at least one of those anthologies; my preference would be both, but I only have a bunny for the horror one right now. Oh, and there's the trial balloon story I'm writing with another DSP author.

This is if course why, as I sit down to hammer on that paid edit, I end up chosing a writing meditation soundtrack I made years ago which turns out to be a perfect soundtrack for the guy-in-ice story. And I keep finding myself stopped in the middle of a paragraph as I watch the movie. It's a good movie. I'm all intrigued.

BUT MY GOD. At this rate I'm going to have to train the cats to help with some of this. At the very least I feel they could do the laundry and the dishes.

In three ways.  First of all, have a contest: Follow Dreamspinner Press's fan page on Facebook for a chance at an iPod touch, not to mention news about upcoming releases and calls for submissions. Tell them I sent you so I get to look cool. And speaking of calls for submissions: if you're an m/m writer or wish you were, consider submitting for one of the two upcoming anthologies from Dreamspinner. 

Finally, speaking of releases, a friend of mine, D.W. Marchwell, has a new release today: Sins of the Father. I read it in beta, and as always his books are full of heart and truth and bravery. He can make you melt and make you cry all in the same book. Check out all of his works, while you're at it.

And now back to work on the scene I have been working all day on and cannot seem to find my way out of. Can't tell if I'm stuck or just plain tired.

Apparently out this spring. So, so, so, so much win.

I'm writing this post knowing full well I should be doing something else, but I've reached the cranium deterioration point where I don't know what the hell I should be doing, so I suppose blogging is as good as anything else. I think I blame my to do list. It's got two columns, one of huge umbrella things that need to be done, and another of more local, urgent things I need to do. I'm not getting much of either column done, and it's making me batshit crazy. Last night Anna stood beside my desk and read the list.

Anna: Why are there stars by some of them?
Me: Because those are the things I really, really need to do.
(Pause)
Anna: But they're all still up there. 
Me: Yeah. I didn't get them done.
Anna: There are a lot of stars, Mom.
Me: Yes.
(Another pause.)
Anna: What's this "1hr Anna's room"?
Me: We're supposed to be sorting out your room.
Anna: We didn't do that.
Me: Nope.
Anna: There's no star on that one, though. But there is on "Blair meds."
Me: Yes. Because his medicine is almost gone.
Anna: But you didn't order it, because it's still on the list?
Me: Yes.

I am the Very Modal Model of a Major Modern Fail.

It's all my own fault, too, because yesterday I dared to browse for an elliptical machine, which I very much need, and to have lunch with Dan and with Jan and Sarah. It was supposed to be Sarah and I, but then I invited Dan, and once it became a Spouse Lunch, Sarah invited Jan, and it was great, because it was just the four of us, no kids, just a nice adult meal at a deli. And I bought yarn to finish my hat, too. In short, I took a bit of time out of the schedule. But I thought I could do it no problem, because even though we got back at a little after 1PM, I still had a few hours  before I went to pick up Anna. So I sat down and started working. I had a good rhythm going when the phone rang at 2:40. The caller ID said it was Anna's school, and I braced, wondering what had happened.

The secretary says, "Hi, I'm calling to let you know that Anna is here in the office, and she needs a ride."

I look around in confusion, then looking at time on the clock again. Then I remember, finally, what day of the week it is. It's Wednesday. Her school has early out on Wednesday. I've just left her standing there for forty minutes, waiting.

I apologize profusely and tell her to tell Anna I am coming right away and to stay right there. I rush to school, park in front of the building, and go inside.

The secretary is gone. Anna is not there.

I hunt down some people, who help me look, but no one has seen her. I go outside, thinking maybe she is waiting on the other side of the building where I usually pick her up, but I don't see her. I call to her, but no one answers. I go back and look for her again, thinking she'd gone to the bathroom while I was looking. She's not there.

It's now past three. 

Now I'm panicking, and the music teacher takes me under his wing. We hunt a bit, but we also call her best friend who lives down the street and see if maybe she went home with her for some odd reason. No.

"But we can see Anna from here. She's waiting on a snow hill by _____ St."

This is where I had gone and shouted for Anna and gotten no answer.

I get in the car and drive around to that side of the building, and yes, there is Anna, far enough down so that she hadn't heard me call from the playground. She is crying quietly, looking like she is scared to death. She was waiting in the usual spot, because to her that made the most sense. She hadn't heard the secretary say to wait at the office. 

We hug, we both cry a little, and then we went for chocolate, because THAT is what you do.

But that ate an hour, and then the chocolate and shopping ate another one, and then we had only one hour left before we were supposed to have dinner with Dan. He'd emailed to ask me to bring coffee, but when I looked up from working it was the time we should have been walking into the door to meet him, so we tore off in a hurry again, no coffee in hand. By the time we got back, my brain was a mess. On twitter I tweeted simply, "brains...." and actually got some interesting responses. Somehow my zombie tweet got me an interview with Accessline Iowa.

So I guess the moral of the story is this: remember what day of the week it is, idiot, and social media works, but only with zombies in.

Now I am going to refill my coffee and close down the damn internet and work on my list. Starting with the things with stars beside them so my daughter doesn't flip me more shit tonight.

When I tried to type the title to this post in, LJ offered to fill in "We Love Randy" for me, since I've used it before. Clearly I have no imagination.

Well, I do indeed love Randy, but today I love Laurie, too, and Ed. Who are they? They first appeared in this post, born out of a plot bunny I got when an aerobics class's music pumped through my weight room last week. This morning before we left for a family reunion in Cedar Rapids I knocked out the opening bits, then tapped out a few more  on the way there, and a lot more on the way home. Now I have 4500 words, which blows my mind a little bit. I'm going to get stuck fast, because this is a dancer and a former football player hooking up to do some competitive ballroom dancing. Don't know a thing about ANY of this. 

Of course, in October I knew nothing about Poker and even less about Las Vegas, and now there's Double Blind. So.

Right now it hardly matters, because I'm just letting Ed and Laurie play. And play they do. It turned out that Ed wanted to lead (story-wise, but he'll lead for the dancing, too), and he completely surprised me. I didn't know what his personality was going to be, but he turned out to be like nothing I expected. Bouncy. Ed is very bouncy, and cheerful, but also devilish. Far more upbeat than anything I recognize in me. I recognize a lot more Laurie in me. Laurie, who is a little too exacting and beats off the world with an acid tongue. Except he's not quite as acrid as I thought he would be.

Here's an exchange. Hopefully you love them as much as I do already.

(And yes, I am still starting TSV tomorrow! But that's edits and synopsis, and so is TB. I was going to go mad if I didn't draft at least a little something new. This will be the dessert I get for fair progress on Etsey.)

*

A Lady Gaga remix was playing when Ed pushed his way through the doors to the gym, some re-do of “Paparazzi,” and it might even have been half-way decent if he hadn’t been screaming over the top of it. The cry “And one! And two! And one!” once again found its way to the base of Ed’s spine and made his teeth ache.

This was not the first time the PA system had failed to work the way the maintenance people swore it was wired to. This was not the first time, either, that Ed had complained, not the first time Vicky had said there wasn’t much she could do, and not the first time Ed had tried to take matters into his own hands. On other nights when he was just in the weight room with a client, he’d been content mostly to vent his spleen and get the aerobics instructor as worked up as he was. Sometimes he’d managed to get the volume turned down, but that was it. Tonight was different, and so tonight he planned to make his approach differently.

But since no one had informed the aerobics instructor of this, he gave Ed a decidedly hostile glare as “the neaderthal” wove his way through the throng of sweaty, flailing middle-aged women.

“No,” the instructor said as Ed approached the stage, flipping up the mouthpiece of the mic so his sharp retort did not carry through the PA. He didn’t so much as miss a beat, either, his petite, lithe, lycra-clad body still stepping from side to side and pumping his arms up and down in time to the music. “No, I will not turn down my music. No, it is not my fault the system keeps screwing up. No, I will not use a CD player, because I can’t. No, I will not at least listen to ‘decent music’ because this is the music that I have chosen and that I like. And yes, I have to count because that’s the way we do it in aerobics class.” He jerked his chin down and gave Ed a withering look. “Did I miss anything? Or have you thought up some new idiotic questions for our weekly duel?”

“I’m teaching a class too,” Ed said, as patiently could. And loudly, so there was a hope of being heard over the damn music. “In the weight room. In five minutes. Where right now no one can stand to be for more than ten seconds because it sounds like the aerobics class from hell.”

Ed would admit to taking pleasure in the way the jab made the instructor miss a beat.

“It’s not my fault—” he began through gritted teeth. But this time Ed interrupted him.

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “But you’re the only one who can do anything about it right now. I’d cut the wires to the PA in the weight room, but Vic wouldn’t like that, so I’m talking to you instead.” He put his hands on his hips. “I want to know what it takes to get you to use a different sound system just for tonight. I’ll even help you set it up, and I’ll tear it down myself. Just for tonight. Vic says she’ll have it fixed by next week, and believe me when I say I’m going to hold her to it. But this isn’t like training somebody where I can go out to the hall and explain something and then use sign language to communicate in the weight room itself. I need them to hear me.”

“Tell them to come back next week,” the instructor said, and Ed shook his head.

“No. I have as much right to be here as you do. You get your way every time this happens, dude. It’s your turn to bend over.”

The look the instructor gave Ed could have cut glass. “I am not—”

“And so am I,” Ed said, quickly, because he honestly did not want to piss him off anymore. Not until he got what he needed. “So I want to know: what is it you need? Because everybody has a lever. Something here at the center, something outside of the center, something at your job: you name it. Your car washed and waxed while you direct me from a lawn chair, your flower bed dug up—hell, I’ll dress up in a monkey suit and deliver flowers to somebody, if that’s what does it for you.”

The instructor still didn’t so much as slow down, but he did regard Ed thoughtfully for a few beats. “You really want it this time, don’t you.”

“I need it,” Ed corrected. Then he held out his hands. “Come on. Surely you can think of some suitably degrading task you’d love to give the meddling neanderthal in exchange for one half of one night on a sub-par sound system.”

That made the instructor blush, and he looked away. Then he shook his head. “Hold on,” he said to Ed, then lowered the mic. He shouted out some new commands, leading his flock into a new move, took a minute to encourage them, then pushed the mic up again and turned back to Ed. “There’s one thing I need,” he said, “but you won’t want to do it.”

Ed gave him a winning grin. “Oh, I’ll do it. Just tell me, and I’ll head over and get the other system out of storage. I know right where it is.”

“What I need,” the instructor said pointedly, “is for you to come, one night a week for six weeks, and be my assistant at my dance studio.”

Ed blinked. That was it? “What night?”

“Thursdays,” he said. “Seven to eight.”

Ed shrugged, then grinned. “Consider it done,” he said, and turned to make a beeline for the supply closet.

“There’s more,” the instructor said, his voice full of warning.

“Then tell me already,” Ed said, starting to lose his temper. “My class is about to start.”

“As my assistant,” he said, looking Ed right in the eye, “mostly you’ll be dancing with me.”

Ed’s eyebrows shot up, briefly. Then he shrugged. “Okay. Is that all?”

The instructor looked at him with extreme suspicion. “You will dance with me. Just like that?”

“Do I have to do it naked, or something?” Ed asked. “Or recite French at the same time? The French would be a problem, but I could get it if you gave me time.”

“I seriously need this,” the instructor said, starting to sound tart. “So if your plan is to just agree now, get your way and then stand me up—”

“I will get your phone number after class,” Ed said, “and you can give me yours. But if I’m not there, you can go to Vic to get your pound of flesh. You know she’ll be good for it, too. But there won’t be a need. Now.” He jerked his head at the back of the stage. “Can I get you the damn sound system now?”

Last night I finished the revision/editing, and today I shipped it to two betas. Dan did not get it yet because he is still reading Double Blind. This one I'm holding off on submission until I get some feedback, and thank you to those of you who are manning that ship. (If you regularly read and I have not asked, do not be offended. I only asked one directly and the other offered, and this is because I had to ask for it fast. If you're one of the usuals and want to, holler.)

Miles turned out to be trickier than I thought, even when I thought it would be tricky. It is less romance and more fantasy, and it is also a lot more like The Seventh Veil than anything I've written for Dreamspinner. Well, I say that having not yet submitted it to DSP. I sure hope it's published there, but we'll wait and see. At any rate, it's darker, it's weirder, and it has a lot of magic in it. 

I'm starting to catch myself recycling, but I think there's only so much of that I can escape. I realized while I was writing the blurb last night that Miles gets chased by a forest just like Charles gets chased by a lake. The dream themes in M&TMF are a lot like those in "Kissing the Dragon." But you know, it is what it is. At any rate, if I'm going to write this fast I don't think it's all going to be original.

In other news, I told One Iowa I'm going to host a house party and merge it with a book signing. Trying to figure out where and how to do this. Could do my house, but that could get crowded. Plus, I'd have to clean it. Could do church, but I might be too Lutheran. (It's a Unitarian fellowship, but my soul is thinking about somebody asking me to read aloud from Special Delivery in a place where my daughter attends religious education and is flipping out.) Could do somewhere in Des Moines, but then it starts to feel complicated. Still musing on that one.

Other than that I'm behind on two beta reads and still need to write a synopsis for Miles. I also have an editing job to finish ASAP. After this stuff is off my desk I start some of the research for Two to Tango in earnest, but for those of you who have been sharpening your machetes and other lynching apparatus, next week I get the submission materials together for this


so that once it's out there I can return to the revision/rewriting of this.


And yes. I will post teasers. And when it's time, the whole of it will go in That Other Place until it's sold, just like TSV. Am considering doing that with Miles, too, but haven't yet made up my mind.

Christmas ate my attempt to get Miles and the Magic Flute revised by the end of the year, and consequently I'm working on it now. I'm also pulling out my hair. I blame Double Blind. Though it was written after M&TMF, it was finished and sold first, and meanwhile Miles is still tying nots into the plotline and refusing to lie flat in general. It is a darker and more complicated story than DB, which is interesting as it is probably half the length. Highly, highly mystical and more on the lines of Hero than Special Delivery. But it has the best antagonist ever. It has a very circular plot, though, with lots of trap doors and tricks. It reminds me of TSV in that you think it's about one thing, and then, no, it's about another thing, and then, whoops, no, it's about something different than anything you've thought yet. I can also see that I am chronically pulling my punches. I'm writing things I'm unwilling to look at, and different levels of my subconscious are battling one another. Meanwhile the conscious me just wants to get the damn thing done because there's a lot on my desk. I was supposed to be incorporating the changes to TSV and sending it out to publishing houses by now, but I'm still stuck in fairyland....

In much less aggravating news, I got the draft version of Double Blind's cover, and I absolutely love it. Once again it is by Paul Richmond, who did the Hero cover.


Cannot wait to see this in color. Those of you who have beta read for me will notice what cards he used, and I know those dice will be red, because I told them that's what casino dice are.... And holy crap, but that is so Ethan and Randy.

So this is where I am at just now. Mired in Miles and trying to keep up with beta reads and editing/copy editing and oh yes, at times having some fun. Of course, copy edits on Special Delivery will be here anytime....

Which is to say, everything is pretty much normal around here. If I can get my left shoulder and left hip to shut up, I really won't be complaining much.

The Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie, I'd heard reported, is full of slash. Then I'd heard panicked retractions that it wasn't. Then I heard bloggers say, "Oh, it is." Then I heard other bloggers say, sometimes testily, "No, it isn't." I'd seen the trailers, and there's enough in those teasers to promise some decent undertones, which was what made me so determined to get to the theater. I'd hoped for a slash gold mine, but I got something else, too.

Yes, there is slash in Sherlock Holmes. There are buckets and buckets if you want to look for it. Yes, you can read very easily another layer to the story, where the men get engaged to or flirt with women like beards they need to don while always being loyal to each other. You can read Watson's impending marriage and departure (which of course never quite manages to happen) as his need to be socially acceptable, and Holmes's chaotic lifestyle as the homosexual playground Watson secretly longs to return to, no matter how exhausting and difficult it can be. Yes, you can read all of that in without much work and have yourself a Slash Field Day.

But what there also is in this film is something deeper, more intricate, and far more beautiful than simple slash, fun as that is, and now that I've seen it, when I hear that the studio is backpedaling and freaking out over all the slash hints, I'm disappointed. Because what this movie is even more than the slash is the beautiful portrayal of a deep, affectionate partnership: without sex. Whether or not you want to imagine them having sex offscreen is not the point. These to men are partners to the core, working together in a synchrony few of us can know or understand. They know each other's minds, they know each other's weaknesses and strengths, and they accept them all because they are part of the partner. You can read the slash there because usually only in such parings do you get to see this kind of union, at least in men. I don't think it used to be this way, but it certainly is now. If two men are emotionally intimate in any way, eyebrows rise. The only exception to this is if they are soldiers, but if they're contemporary at all they must be emotionally constipated, holding their breath and clutching awkwardly at shoulders as they declare their love. 

What does it say about a society whose males have become so stiff they cannot bend to one another in affection, sexual or otherwise? Why is male sexuality a threat? More importantly, why is male intimacy a threat? Ritchie has given us a story of two men who love one another deeply, who are strong and blisteringly intelligent and beautifully fallible and above all are one of the best on-screen couples I've seen in awhile. The relationship between Holmes and Watson reminds me that true love is not about sex, that it can happen between men and women and women and women and men and men and any combination of any orientation. There is nothing to backpedal about here and nothing to deny.

Where our concern should be instead is in the putrefaction of a society so afraid of its males it cannot stand them. What we should fear is a decay of a society which cannot allow males to love, which cannot let strength blend with weakness, which cannot let men blossom and bloom and shift and expand into whatever it is they need and want to be. Holmes and Watson are men. They are strong, they are sharp, they are grace and wit and fire. They may or may not be sleeping with one another, too. But they are better models for all of us than the cardboard offerings of masculinity Hollywood pumps out for us, safe and sanitized from any emotion except for when their plastic girlfriends die and need avenging. 

There is nothing rotten about Holmes and Watson's relationship, and there is nothing constipated, either. Go and see it at once, with or without your slash goggles. You'll be in love with a charming couple no matter how you want to view them.

 Dan has already declared that he'd like to give 2009 one last good kicking before he shoves it to the back of the closet, and you know, I would definitely give the first half of this year the backside of my hand if that were all there were to it. But I can't discount the bizarre ride that August onward was, and so I while I'm not going to outright hug this year, I'm not going to abuse it, either. I think I will just thank it for coming the way I would any guest, and give it a polite smile, and focus on 2010. 

It was a year like an abusive partner. One minute it was beauty and light, the next it was full of knives. Pain like I've never known before and continue to feel off and on. But on the flip side of that, a peace with and understanding of my body like nothing I've never known. We also took an epic trip west as a family, and I am no longer interested in any trip that does not involve my husband and daughter. I also prefer a car to all other methods of travel. I had a lot of interpersonal ups and downs, too, all year, but I also saw several returns that I did not see coming but welcomed very much. I didn't just sell one book; I sold three. I met new peers and made new support groups and saw old ones change, some of them fading, some of them becoming like rocks that only a sea change could uproot. (Can you use uproot with rocks? What else? Unbury? Such a horrible ring.) The year was up, the year was down, in huge waves in both directions.

I suppose that's the zen lesson in this year. If I'm honest, the intense pain and rage and anger it unearthed in me gave birth to Hero, put the heart in Special Delivery, and helped me tap into both Ethan and Randy's ghosts in Double Blind. I keep trying to turn around and give that same thing to The Seventh Veil but every time I think I get settled another m/m story blows up in my head. Soon, though. (cryslea , you have an ally in tmelange, who has started following here just to make sure I get back to Temple Boy. Which I'm grateful for and will hold you both to.) I guess that's what I'll take out of this: I entered 2009 with my jaw set, tired of things not working determined to triumph by sheer force of will, got my ass kicked so hard I very nearly came unglued, and, as I let go because I could hold on no longer, found all the success I was looking for and more. The pain sent me into therapy early in the year, and the thing about pain as I've said is that if you're burying anything at all, it will bring it out of you, and in addition to talking about how bitterly my body had betrayed me, I talked about relationships and writing and everything else under the sun. And at some point (I know because she just reminded me) I told Maura that all I wanted was someplace small and intimate with low politics, that this wasn't settling, that this was what I wanted, to find a publishing house where I felt at home, where I felt supported, and it wasn't about money (though I'd take it), it was about a safe place to put my stories and to nurture my professional self.

And this is exactly what I got. Admittedly not yet for TSV, but it's like I always say to Dan: now that I've had a good partner, I'm not ever settling for anything less, ever. I no longer look at finding a publisher for the fantasy stuff with such angst; I'll just keep putting it up on fictionpress if I have to, and if it ends up on Lulu, it ends up there. I still would rather have an editor and a team, because now that I've had them I know how important they are, but if I can't get that, I can't get that, and we'll just carry on. This peace would not have come, though, without the journey of this year, both the pleasure and the pain.

When I boil it down, I end up simply declaring that I have learned a lot this year, most of it about myself. I will also say that yes, there is an incredible value in achieving success. It does feel very good, even in tiny doses. But I'll also admit something I could not have understood at this time last year: success is sweeter after release. Had I come to where I am now without having gone so low and feeling so awful,  I think my hands would never completely unclench. Had it come too fast I would never have known how good it was. I would have felt it was my due, not a miracle or a gift. And that "due" part is key: this success is mine, and it always has been, but it's not something the universe owes me, much as I joke about that sort of thing. This success was not something that I got because I was good or bad or because I had a bad run. My happiness is a direct result of my own actions and also the result of pure luck and good timing. There's a part of me that still panics over a world which cannot be controlled, which is not ruled by order and reason, but chaos. I find that funny, and surely anyone who has read the Etsey stuff is thinking, "Isn't this the chick who wrote about the godless Void?" Well, yes, but part of me keeps hoping that isn't true. Part of me keeps hoping if I am good or clever I can win, that I can maintain control. Part of me is still very, very uncomfortable with the idea that the only way to "win" is to surrender. Over and over and over.

So here's to 2009. Thank you, year that was, for all that you were. I'm not going to hug you, but I'm not going to curse you. I will nod respectfully, and I will hold the door. And I will welcome your brother 2010, not as my savior or judge, and not either as anything I can manipulate or control. 2010, if you care to take my hand, we will dance for 365 days. Let us do our best to partner with grace and mutual respect, me for what I am and what I desire, and you for the same.

See you on the dance floor.

Tentative title: Two To Tango

Concept: ???? Guys fall in love. Kiss. Stuff. Weight training. Same-sex ballroom dancing. 

Characters: Laurie & Ed (I'm still not sure about the name Ed. We'll see.)

Soundtrack: Lady Gaga (lots! Hurrah!), some Cheryl Cole, some Britney maybe. Also, STREISAND. I do not like Streisand. The muses are cruel.

The Curio page:

(Go here for big 'un.)

And now I can sleep.

Plot bunnies. I think I first saw the term on LJ somewhere, and I was pretty sure I understood it from context, but to make sure I looked it up on the lingo websites where people explain slang. Basically it's a term for the story ideas that keep hounding you until you go and write them. Except when you call them "bunnies," the ideas immediately become cute or charming, and even though it makes no sense, they conjure the image of a serene elderly woman in support knee-highs rocking gently on a porch on a sunny summer afternoon, knitting idly as she smiles off into the distance. Presumably the bunnies are hopping around on the lawn. However you slice it, it's a lovely, calming image.

This is not what happens in my head. Not even fucking close. Allow me to give you tonight's "bunny" encounter as an example.

Between blizzards and Christmas and a general whirlwind of chaos, I have not been able to get to the gym and have only managed the barest minimum of exercise at home. As a result I am in all manner of body hell, constantly high on Vicodin, and wake up crying in the middle of the night from pain. So I declared that today I would get to the gym, end of discussion. I had to wait until Dan came home as Anna is on vacation, and I went at 5:30, even though I didn't want to go.

But when I get there, the gym is screamingly loud. The entire gym—a whole full size basketball court—is crammed with middle-aged women and pounding with techno beat, which wouldn't be so bad, but over the top of this the most shrill, screamingly insane woman is belting out encouragement, and from the pinched nature of her tone I can only assume she is doing this exclusively through her left nostril. My GOD, it was a circle of hell. I hurried into the weight room to escape the sound.

The music and nostril screamer were being piped into the weight room through the speakers at four times the volume of the gym. 

It was some sort of technical glitch (hi, Mercury in retrograde, you fucker), and the front desk apologized, but they couldn't turn it off and there was nothing they could do until maintenance came the next morning. I could get my credit back on my punch card and come back at 6:30 or another time, or I could suffer through.

I chose to suffer, but I was really pissed off. I wanted to go back and demand they turn it down, because I swear they could hear that shit down on Highway 30, but I didn't go and stewed in my fury instead. I imagined the wires in the speakers breaking, imagined the whole system bursting into colossal flame, but of course that did not work.

That was when the bunny showed up.

I don't know how or when exactly it happened. All I knew was that suddenly the nasal screamer was not a woman but a man, and it was not me but a big hulky guy in the weight room, and both were gay, and both hated the other for living the stereotype or resisting it, or something, and then it just started exploding. Same-sex dancing, a dare, a contest, something—there was a brief flicker of trading places, the aerobics instructor learning weights and the body-builder attending a class, and then the same-sex dancing kept coming back, and it got so bad that even though I was reading a really great book on the treadmill (normally I can't do this, but I really, really wanted to read, so I jacked up the resistance and tried to make my eyes move with the movement of my legs), even though it was a really hot sex scene, I stopped reading and started watching in-flight movies of The Exercise Instructor and Weight Room Guy Story. By the time I got off the machine I had rabid urges to run home to You Tube and start looking things up, to find names, to get out Curio and make a page. It didn't matter that I am seriously banging up against the deadline for the short story, that I need to get back to Miles, that I have editing work, that I hadn't even started dinner and needed to do some shopping first. Didn't matter. The bunnies had arrived.

My "bunnies" do not sit and look adorable. They do not nuzzle my feet and lure me to their plots. They attack. They bite. They dig in their teeth and do not let go. I will be making notes tonight on this story whether it's a good idea to do so or not. There was a moment when I could have let it go, a nanosecond where I could have walked away. I could have just thought "That's nice" and let the bunny roll by. But I made eye contact. And then I fed it, and then I let it in. Oh, I can sit there like the lady on the porch, and it can be sunny and pretty and serene.

JUST SO LONG AS I DO WHATEVER THE BUNNY SAYS.  Because unlike Monty Python, there is no running away.

This is the time of year when jtaddy  begins to mourn the fact that Christmas has ended and I begin dancing in the streets for the exact same reason. I do love the lights, I do love seeing friends and family—a lot–but I also love very much the return to my normal life. I especially love it this year as I love my normal life very much.

My Christmas was good, though hassled by weather. Four of my Christmas visits were cancelled or postponed due to weather and/or illness (no illness on my part before some of you ask), so we actually stayed here more than we went anywhere. This year I got a lot of money and gift cards because I had no idea what I wanted and nobody else did, either. Except for Dan. Dan got me ALL the books I really wanted (Wicked Gentlemen, The Englor Affair, and even one I hadn't told him I wanted, The Tin Star.) Dan also got me my very favorite present of all, which he and Anna made:

 The Iowa grocery store chain known as Hy-Vee never closes. It is open at Easter, open on New Year's Day, open even on Thanksgiving. In the middle of your turkey dinner and realize you forgot the cranberries? Send someone out to Hy-Vee. Middle of the night and you need cough syrup? Hy-Vee. They are open all the time, a constant security blanket of Stuff, some you need and some it's just nice to know is there.

Except for today, and tomorrow.

Hy-Vee will close today sometime in the afternoon or evening. It will stay closed until Saturday morning. This is Christmas Eve, and tomorrow is Christmas Day, and employees want (and deserve!) to be with their families. I'm not against this at all, and in fact, I'm all for it. It's good, really.

It's just... I MIGHT NEED STUFF. AND THEY WON'T BE OPEN!!!

And so begins my annual freakout about food, groceries, and other sundry stuff. It does not help that this year all is chaos, and I am not organized, and there may or may not be a snowstorm, and my sister may or may not make it up here today, and people may or may not make it up here tomorrow night. I need my security blanket of the grocery store that is always willing to trade money for stuff now more than ever, and I'm not going to have it.

AAAAAAAHHHH!

Add to this that Dan just gave me the checkbook total, and buying milk would be tough. Apparently we bought gas and went to the chiropractor and bought groceries once or twice or three times already. Huh. So maybe it's good the stores are closed.

I think—no, I know—that this is actually not about food or Hy-Vee, and it isn't any year. It's about my need to try and prepare for every and any eventuality, to be able to face the onslaught of life with the calm serenity that comes from being prepared. I am always the one on every trip who will have packed every medicine you might need, the one who thought to bring the article of clothing nobody else considered, the one who always, in short, has everything. No surprises, no gotchas.

This year I am a particular fail on many fronts of preparedness, and this year I really do need to double check and make sure I don't need anything at the store, because I could easily have overlooked something vital. Like cat food. We have enough until Saturday if they skimp. I'm not sure about milk. Dan wanted some soda... Yeah.

My grocery store panic always comes out of my unwillingness to accept the loss of a support system in my scheme to maintain control. This year it's more like the temporary closure of an artery. It's in these closures, these changes where the magic happens, where the creativity thrives. I know this. I just don't like it. And really, I approach this the same way when I write. Yes, the good stuff comes out when the story throws a curveball at me, when my nice and tidy plans get chucked out the window and I have to invent on the spot. Yes, that's true. It's just also true that I'm going to whine.

Merry Christmas Eve. May your grocery stores be open, and failing that, may your cupboards and refrigerators be full, and may all your surprises be good ones.