Let me describe to you my now: my shadow, and my light.

I'm standing at this moment, this place with shadow on the one side and light on the other, and it fractures in so many ways.  The shadow is that I am behind and disorganized.  I say "behind" as if this is some race or that something is looming, but it's become so gross that I feel incredibly accomplished if I DON'T wait to email back until the other party is furious with me for lack of response, or that Dan and Anna do not come to me wanting to know if I EVER intend to launder anything, or if not would I please stop doing it half-way so they can find the things I've cleaned, or sorted, or washed but not dried.  My shadow is that somehow I cannot find even an awkward rhythm in my life at this moment, and I am inside an increasingly chaotic whirlwind of "not done" and "out of time."

The light is that I am happy.  Blissfully, quietly happy.  I do not walk around in euphoria, and I am not Snow White singing to the birds as they flit outside the kitchen window, but I am happy.  I feel good.  I feel . . . not content, but good.  I am working on too many projects at once, yes, but what I get done on all of them give me joy.  I know part of the reason everything is so messy is because I am perfectly willing to put down just about anything to go take a bike ride with Anna (who has just learned how), and will let the ride go on a bit more, and then a bit more, and then a bit more.  I want to sit on the couch and talk with Dan, or linger in the kitchen, or watch one more episode of Lost, or nibble on his ear, or bury my face in his neck, or just feel him breathe.  I'm not savoring up my family in some big dramatic scene; they're just here, and they're a happy distraction.  I get caught up sometimes in just looking at them, watching Anna's easy grace or catching Dan in an offhand moment and thinking, goodness, but he's just more handsome with every bit of grey he takes on.

The shadow is that I have too many writing projects, too many ideas, too many things to sort out.  I need to research the things I need to do for THE SEVENTH VEIL.  I need to submit HERO.  I want to write, both the other one I've picked up again and SMALL TOWN BOY, to say nothing of TEMPLE BOY.  I want to practice writing short.  I want to write more in my blog, and in my journal. I want to join forums.  I'm lucky, some days, if I get anything done at all.  But the light is that so much is happening, and so much might be happening soon, and more important than anything else, I feel at peace with everything that is and will be and might be.  I don't feel anxiety or anger or helplessness.  I feel curious, and eager, and I even manage patience sometimes, too. 

The shadow is that I am in a lot of pain, again.  I'm maxing out on all the therapists, and leaning hard on the Vicodin (for me, that's a pill and sometimes two a day, but that's more than I want, and more than I've done in some time), and sometimes at the end of the day I have to just sit still and ride the hell.  Sometimes it's sharp, sometimes it's dull, but it's always stealing my focus, to the point that at the end of the day I have to say things to myself, like, "Now we are shutting the doors and locking them.  Now we are going to the stairs.  Now we are washing our face.  Now we are taking all the pain pills we can take, and something extra to sleep as well."  It is part of the loss of organization.  It's part of my utter fail on my exercise program, because I know a long session will make my head spin.  It saps my energy, and means that the one bike ride will wipe me for the day.  Some days it is every damn weird condition I've ever had all packaged into one.  And it's all because I hunched when a car hit me at less than 20mph.

I can't say "I don't care," because it's a pretty big shadow.  But I'm not unhappy, and this is actually the easiest light to find.  Tonight I finished a book, not my favorite in the world, but it was fun to read, and while I read it we cooked steak on the grill: free steak from my inlaws, and they were huge, big-as-a-cakepan steaks we knew we could never eat all in one go, so you could pork out and there would STILL be leftovers.  We had green salad with it, mixed greens with spice and crunch and walnuts, mandarins, red onion, garlic ginger wontons, crumbled feta and white wine vinagrette.  I made it myself, so not only was it the best damn salad since the last time I made salad, but it was my salad, that I made myself.  While the steak cooked and I read, Anna flitted from the deck to the house and Dan went out for the ingredients to s'mores and a bottle of Pelligrino for me.  I drank from the bottle, the whole bottle, while we ate steak until we were stuffed, then made s'mores and roasted marshmallows until we seriously had the most packed-in stomachs in the state.  I finished my book, then read a book to Anna, then watched more TV with Dan while he, quite without even a hint, picked up my feet and rubbed them.

So that's my zen.  It's hard to hold and it isn't a life of roses and wonder, or at least not without the thorns and some parts you'd rather skip if given the choice.  I always wanted peace, but never much liked the idea of a peace that looked mostly like someone being stoned.  This is not stoned, nor bliss, nor anything more than it's ever been.  I am not finding beauty in the fact that my neck feels very swollen and sore, that I just can't seem to shake it.  Those marshmallows are going right to my belly.  But I'm okay with it.  Not loving it, but I'm down with it.  There are just too many good things, and even when those pale a bit, there's too many good things that might be coming, some I don't even know about yet.

It's just addictive, feeling good.  You want to hold onto it, and you learn to milk whatever you get to find it.  And after so many, many, many MANY years of whispering, "when this happens, I'll be okay," to myself, over and over and over, for some reason the past three months have been "it's okay right now," and pardon me, but I'm extending that out as long as possible.  Life, lately, makes me want to laugh.  Not in a Julie Andrews spins on a mountaintop way.  Not in a let's-tell-everybody way, except I guess for right now.  But I'm not shouting and throwing rose petals.  Actually, I'm feeling like my muscles down the front of my throat are heinously swollen, and I'm going to take the fully drug monty in two shakes.  And I'm going to go to sleep telling myself, sternly, that tomorrow I WILL finish my PT exercises.  No matter if it takes all day and if it hurts a bit.  But I'll also take photos of Anna and the school rabbit she's babysitting until Wednesday, and take another ride on the bikes, maybe all the way to the swimming pool, and I'll swim with Anna even though I don't much care to swim most of the time, and I'll take her to Target and buy her an aluminum water bottle like mine, and we'll do some shopping, and Dan and I will finish that disk of Lost, and hopefully I can write a few more bits of the submission material for HERO, too.

So that, for me, is zen.  Maybe not Zen, but it's got a z on it at the very least, and it's enough for this Iowa farm girl.

'Night.

We have lived in this house for five years.  There has always been an opening for a laundry chute in the upstairs, but I thought it was closed off in the remodel, that it had gone down to the basement in previous lives but not this one.   But we had the plumber guy in now to ask about the air conditioner, and in a hunt for return air vents we discovered that the laundry chute is not closed off, and empties into my kitchen!

Where, you ask?  Well, if you've been to my house and thrown away anything into the kitchen garbage in that weird pull-out area, that's my laundry chute receptacle.  Or, it's MEANT to be my laundry chute receptacle.  And it will be again, once I disinfect the hell out of the bin and buy a new garbage can with a lid on payday.

I HAVE A LAUNDRY CHUTE!  I've always wanted one.  And now I have my very own.  

I had a post half done, and then I tried to put in a picture and LJ barfed, and now it's all gone.  And I've decided it doesn't matter, that it was probably all just natter anyway.  So, to take you into the weekend, I give you Enrique Iglesias, who for some reason I cannot get enough of listening to tonight.



Pretty much I just want to reach over and tug those shorts down.

Have a happy Saturday.

I've heard it said that stupidity (and, alternately, insanity) is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, but I think after some reflection I have to disagree.  At the very least, I would argue that doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results is ALSO stubbornness.  And honestly, I think somebody who was nothing more than a quitter thought up the insanity/stupidity argument, and other quitters everywhere have taken up the mantra so that they, too, will look cooler when they give up and go turn on the TV, leaving we who are still ramming our heads into the wall to look like utter fools.

The doggedly determined, the iron-willed, and, on our less glamourous days, the pig-headed: that is what we are, we who, in the face of all logic and an inviting distraction, keep doing something we shouldn't.  Sometimes even we can see the idiocy of it.  For example, right now, I'm drinking a cup of coffee.  I shouldn't be drinking it, because my stomach is upset and has been so for days.  It's working through something, or my colon is collapsing under the strain of poor workouts for two weeks over a month (they really are related, which blew my mind), and every few hours I experience white hot pain and go to embrace the patiently waiting toilet.  Well, I say embrace, but it's my ass doing the embracing.  (The toilet, bless its soul, will accept you in whatever way you come, including whatever noises you chose to make.)  Coffee is a bad idea just now.  It should be nice soothing herbal tea, and hot water bottles, and maybe a gingersnap.  But the trouble is, coffee smells so good.  I drink more coffee than I should--far, far more.  People love to tell me how I drink too much coffee, all except my husband and my father-in-law, both who spy the empty pot and ask, hopefully, "Does anyone want any more coffee?" to which the answer is always "Of course!"  (The king of too much coffee is my father, but he has an unfair advantage: he runs a cafe.  Can you imagine?  Coffee, on spigot, all day.  This is the stuff of heaven.)

I shouldn't have coffee, but I am.  I'm drinking some now.  I have a huge mug of it, hot and wonderful, brewed from beans in my fancy, free from a posh coffee club machine, with lovely beans roasted right here at home, and there's a full pot downstairs.  Twelve cups.  I'm capable of drinking that, all of it, in the space of an afternoon.  The only time I can't drink it is before a workout, and believe me, I was pig-headed about that, but there's something about feeling your heart race in your ears that makes even the most determined mule back down.  But right now?  Right now, coffee is good.  Right now coffee is warm and thick and bitter, and it makes me go ping, and as my digestive system sends up alarms, my brain in the shape of a pig is saying, "Look, you can just bloody well cope.  (My brain thinks it's a bit British.)  The coffee is good, and honestly, aren't you bigger than this?  Don't you enjoy coffee?  The rest of us do.  Suck it up."  It turns a deaf ear as my intestines try to explain that this, actually, is part of the problem, and my brain shuts its ears completely as my stomach sends up memories of the sharp pains felt less than half an hour ago. That's past, my brain says.  Ancient history.  We live in the now, in the Zen of now, and now is coffee and determination!

The thing is, sometimes pig-headed works.  Yes, sometimes we're the sad sots other people shake their heads at as we bang ours against the wall for what seems a shocking amount of time, but what most people fail to notice is that, every now and again, the wall cracks first.  And the true tragedy is what they miss when the wall doesn't crumble.  When they see us stumble back, bloody, dizzy, and vomiting, or when they see us clutching our gut as we run to the bathroom--again--what they miss is what goes on in the head of the pigheaded.  Only those who truly don't understand "quit" and who would never demean their favorite activity by calling it insane understand what it's like to pull back from the immovable object and realize that, honestly, they don't want it anymore.  Not at this price.  It isn't quitting: it's leaving.  There's a big difference. I suppose some people just get their faster than the pig-headed, but I suspect a lot of those people never really wanted it in the first place.  The true beauty is in clawing to attain something you want enough to abuse your soul to get it, only to discover during the abuse that actually, no.  At this point it isn't a loss.  It isn't a cowed defeat, a sad surrender to a greater force.  It's a loss of interest.  Abandonment.  If you fail to quit, you don't lose dignity or pride.  You just change your goal.

But really, most times, being determined lands you far more in some grey area between.  You don't walk off consoling yourself with platitudes or abandoning, but you achieve a different sort of success than you'd imagined.  For example, if you put a bit of milk in the coffee, this somehow helps.  If you only drink one cup, this helps a bit more.  If you make sure you had something heavy in your stomach first, the problem is nearly solved.  It's the little things.  If you just keep going, even when most people would be folding up and heaving a sigh, you learn the ways around, the modifications, and myriad other adjustments.    You stop caring, even, about the quitters glowering down at you from the peanut gallery, fingers itching at the rail as they track your every movement, waiting for a mistake, because you're too busy watching what happens when you keep trying, when you do it anyway, when you ask for the impossible and find sometimes that you get it, but most of the time, actually, that you get something even better, that only you can see.

I am a pig-head, a mule, and probably, a fool.  You should see the things I see.

Also, the coffee's just fine so far.  You see?  Sometimes even your colon is wrong.

Or maybe putting in Dan's copy edits on HERO.  Or researching self-publishing for TSV, or putting together a synopsis and such for HERO.  Or anything, really, except writing new story.  So I guess that's why I'm publishing a Tuesday Teaser (this time actually on Tuesday), even though it's raw and new and worse, the BEGINNING, which means it will not, under any circumstances stay.  At all.  And yet, I kind of like it.  And since I wasn't supposed to write it anyway, and since I'm feeling feisty:  Here are the 300 words I wrote tonight, so they would stop bugging me.  (Except it didn't work.  If I weren't so tired I'd be writing more right now.)

Sorry, jeffreyjingles .  If the toilets are gross when you come tomorrow, it's all Sam & Mitch's fault. 

This one might actually keep its name, but for better or for worse, right now it's SPECIAL DELIVERY.  It has about 40k in bad draft sans antagonist which I am shelving, and as soon as I did that, this had to come out.

Sam was staring past Aunt Sharon’s head and out the window as she lectured him, which was why he saw the delivery man as he pulled up to the back of the pharmacy.  At first he just noticed him in the same way that he noticed the truck he was driving, and the tree across the alley, and the clouds above the tree, and everything else that he could see beyond the glass.  Well, everything within a four inch radius of Aunt Sharon’s head.  He had learned, over the years, that if he went any further than four, he was liable to get jolted by a sharp, “Look at me while I’m talking to you!”  And at first, the man was just another Something New Going By, and Sam didn’t think anything more of him—until the man got out of the cab.

Sam shuddered.  Mostly inwardly, he hoped, and from Aunt Sharon’s failure to comment on it and perceive it as “more laziness and ingratitude,” either it was, or she wasn’t looking at him at that particular second.  But Jesusgod, the delivery man was worth more than just a shudder.  Ripped was such a gross word, and he hated it, but this guy was.  Sam thought (and hoped) his thin grey t-shirt was going to peel away from him in shreds as he pushed up the rolling door in the back, but it only stretched to its maximum, revealing muscles that said to Sam, “This man you are looking at could lift you in the air and bench press you with no problem.  No problem at all.”

Sam swallowed and sat back in his chair, letting the air go out of his lungs in a silent sigh.

There was a sharp rap against the desk, and he jumped.

“What are you looking at?”

I picked this book up because I'm trying to suss out where I want to submit HERO once Dan is done giving it a once-over, and in so doing I have been very heavily surfing publishing sites for places that publish m/m fiction, reading submission calls and weeding out publishers by their formatting/presence/type of work offered.  I'd seen A Strong Hand reviewed on a few sites, so when I found it again on Dreamspinner I decided it was time to give it a try. 

Obviously from my garbled squee last night, I was blown away.  It isn't so much that this is some amazing, earth-shattering book that the whole world must read, but more that it hit all the right spots for me and succeeded in doing what mainstream NY published romances have utterly failed to do for me for years: carry me off.  Ford has a beautiful, easy style: she knows how to use words, but she doesn't beat you with them or pause to bask in her own power (the reason I usually retch when I read lit fiction).  Nice, clean, sharp style that gets the hell out of the way and lets the story shine.  But more important than this (though I do adore clean style) is that she just nailed, nailed, nailed character.  

The two heroes, Nick and Damian, are real people, with real motivations and real reservations, and the plot is, essentially, their navigation of their relationship.  Ford pulls off what is so damn hard in a romance: the reader knows the whole time that these two belong together, knows they both love the other, but we have to wait until the end to see it happen.  And it works.  The distance between the two men is something that needs to be navigated, and it needs to take the time Ford gives them.  My favorite part is that Damian's fears regarding Nick's potential affection are particularly spot-on: Nick didn't even consider that he might be gay before Damian, and he is a lot younger.  There's a lot of sense in thinking that while the relationship means a lot to Damian, it might just be a stepping stone for Nick.  And so the novel feels like the space and struggle the two of them need to find themselves, and one another.

I am a sucker for well-explored vulnerabilities, and this book is full of that.  But the real treat in this story is the BDSM angle.  I have run into a few BDSM stories in my day, and generally I have needed to run away.  I hesitated on this book because I was afraid of that element, but one of the reviews I read made it sound like it was very BDSM-light, and since the premise was that we would be watching a young man's exploration of this lifestyle, I hoped I would be able to "experience" a bit of this without feeling unsafe.  This is, very much, what A Strong Hand was for me.  The story took me right to the edge of my comfort zone, but never pushed me over.  My favorite parts, actually, were when Nick used their safe word, "London," and when (even better) Damian prompted him to use it, recognizing when he didn't that it was time to stop.  The thrill here wasn't the danger or naughtiness of BDSM but the beauty of it, and the display of love and trust that the heroes' relationship revealed.

A Strong Hand is an incredibly sensual story, but the most erotic and exotic aspect of it is the exploration of the two male characters, who, after two hundred pages, we leave quite convinced they are a solid and nearly perfect match.  Along the way we get a titillating, thrilling, and satisfying ride.  

What more do you want?  Buy it here.  And consider her backlist.  I know I am.

 I will post a more coherent review tomorrow, but in the meantime GO AND BUY THIS BOOK.  Well, unless you don't like m/m romance and/or don't want to hear anything, at all, not even a little, of BDSMish stuff.  Except I hate to say even that, because what I want to say is, if you secretly want to read/learn/know about BSMish stuff but are scared to death to even read it, but still wish you could, then get this book NOW.  This book is a goddamned safe word.

And I am in love with Catt Ford, a bit as a writer, a whole heaping ton as a reader.  I threw my writer hat off into the fire in chapter one, and I soared to the end with my heart pounding.  Thank you, Ms. Ford.  I only thought of London when you mentioned it.

(That will make more sense tomorrow, when I actually review.)

Anyway.  I bought it in ebook because I couldn't wait.  I'm going to buy the hardcover because I want to have it in my hand.  And I will tell you why tomorrow, because now the book is over and I can finally get to bed.

ETA: Link now actually goes to the book.  

60,602 words, which is 600 more than what everyone seems to want. So now I print it out, make Dan read it, and do a copy edit/logic sweep. Then I have to figure out where and how to shop this sucker. I would gladly take suggestions.

I think I schmaltzed out a bit on the end, and I definitely dragged on too long, but I LOVE books that drag on, so long as it's either entertaining or wraps up unfinished stuff. So I'm leaving it. For now, anyway. I really like this story, actually. When I finished the beta draft, I liked it too, but it felt a bit off. I like it a lot more now. And thank you again to those of you who gave me feedback.

It's not Tuesday (and it wasn't last teaser, either. Oops.), but I'm posting chapter two anyway.

Happy Fourth of July!

 

( chapter two behind the cut )

 

So, I won't get ANYTHING done on that list today, not completely. Well, if I included "get stuff for neighborhood potluck" on there, I did that. I did SOME exercises. Not enough. I also worked on HERO. And in doing so, I am listening to "Gimme More" by Britney Spears, over and over again.

I understand that there's a lot of retching going on as I say that, but I have a few things to say in reply.  First of all, grow up.  Second of all, you don't fuck with the muses.  When they want it, they want it, and you give it to them.  And they want this song for the chapter of HERO which is, so far, called "The Dangerous Human."  I think the beat is a lot of it, but the lyrics (so complex!  so deep and full of meaning!) are part of it as well.  The spirit of Britney probably has a lot to do with it, too.  People pretty much treat Morgan like they treat Britney.  And yet, like her, he's pretty down with his sexuality.  Oh, and for everyone but the hero in this scene, he looks like a girl.  So, a lot in common.

I found two videos for "Gimme More," both on Youtube and both without embedding, which is frankly dumb as hell.  I like the deluxe better than the official version, though the official is more set like the scene.  I like the dancing in the deluxe, though.  Anyway, you can check these out, if you're inclined.  Or not.  Whatever you do, I'll be off listening to the song over and over and over while a male shapeshifter lap dances and makes out with his lover, a very shy Catholic boy who, at this moment, looks like a satyr.  

Good times.

Or a time-turner, or something.  Because this is my list today:

1.  Finish editing HERO.  I only have three chapters left, but these are the chapters that need the most revision, and I'm just now arriving at them.

2.  Do all my PT exercises, especially the hip/leg/ab ones.  I haven't been, and I'm starting to pay.

3. Write up some information I said I would get out to someone today.

4.  As Joan would say, CLEAN UP THIS MESS!!!!


Only number two is a necessity, but I really want the other three, especially number one.  I want to keep my word on #3, but I am really thinking it's going to get bumped to Monday.  If it weren't the Fourth of July tomorrow, I could do it then, but it is, and Ames is full of parades and picnics and fireworks, so it will not happen tomorrow.  And I feel horrible about the house.  But it really isn't going to happen, either.  Sigh.

I guess the most important thing is that I get HERO off my desk.  I am very serious about shopping that one, and I can't do it until it's edited.  Well, until it's edited, checked again, and some submission materials are created for it.  But at any other part I could do it while I was working on another story.  And that's the bottom line for me right now.  I want to move on to SOMETHING ELSE.  Either TEMPLE BOY or SMALL TOWN BOY, probably the latter.  But I want to move forward.  Desperately.

So I'm going to go downstairs, eat, and do two exercises, then come up and write.  Except I think I may have to extricate someone's bike from the garage first.  And something else will probably happen, too.  That's okay.  I'm a tree, I can bend.

You may recall I had a car accident in the middle of May.  Very minor.  Bad for the car, but I had no troubles.  This, it turns out, is not so true.  There is this damn neck issue.

Something about the SCM muscle.  Something about scalenes, and C-5, and first ribs.  All I know is that it started hurting a few days after the accident, got a bit grisly on the road, and has been a right bitch since we got home.  I go to chiro.  I go to PT.  I take a damn lot of Vicodin, which is irritating because I was nearly off the stuff before this happened!  And now I'm back to a bazillion appointments.

I just got home from PT, and there was also chiro earlier in the day.  The chiro adjusted me, I think everywhere there is to adjust in my neck.  (Likely an overstatement, but wow.)  It felt good, for an hour.  I went to PT.  She worked on a few things, then did some energy work, then made for me to go.  And when I stood up, I felt my scalenes.  Though they were fine before the appointment, somehow the work on the other areas has made them swell.  There are three distinct, swollen lumps on the side of my neck.

"Are they supposed to be like this?" I ask.   She feels them.  "Huh," she says, and then, "No."  

So I'm going back next week.  I keep hoping this will even out.  I'm irritated at the scalenes, because they WERE fixed.  It's like she squeezed one part of the balloon and it went somewhere else.  I'm trying to be patient, but I'm getting tired of it.  I cannot believe such a minor, no-big-deal wreck could do this.  Obviously, I am wrong, but still.  Arg.

That's it.  This post was just a whine.  And now it's over.

I do not normally do these, because I change my drafts so much and because I don't like to post things until I know they're done. But I have so many things I want to work on that I am CALLING this one done so that I can get through and finish. I have a plan for the whole of this story, and I'm going to finish it, then try to shop it to five or six places, and failing that, I'll add it to the SP kitty.

This story is formerly known as SHINING LIGHT on this blog. It's still that in my head, but I think that's a terribly unmarketable title, and if I keep up the way I'm going in revisions, it's not going to make a ton of sense with the story. So, for now I'm calling it HERO. It's a short novel coming in at around 50k at the moment, but it could go a bit longer as I shift things. Or shorter. It has romantic, paranormal, and urban fantasy elements. Mostly, though, I think of it as an m/m fairytale.

For those of you who've read former teasers here or the beta draft, you won't recognize much of this at all. Maybe none of it--I've already lost track of what was what draft. There's also been a shift in the protag. I am a huge, unabashed fan of what is apparently called "gay for you," but after some consulting with Hal, it worked better for his character to be gay but quite closeted.

Anyway, don't get too attached to teasers, but for today, there is one.

( behind the cut. )

Actually, it's more what a scattered Heidi looks like.  Dan was off today, but only today, and so today had this faux-weekend feel to it, though it wasn't.  Anna had a friend over, too, and I went to the gym and a chiro appointment, and I did laundry, so it's one of those days when I sit down at 5:30 and ask myself what I got done today, and the answer is "chores and errands."  Which always makes me want to drink.  Today, however, it isn't true.  Because today I did this.

As whiteboard outlines go, it's pretty wimpy (it's also backwards), but this story is blissfully short (for me) and straightforward (for me).  It used to be called Shining Light, and it still sort of is, but I'm thinking of calling it "Hero."  Not sure if it can hold up the one-word title, but I might give it a try.  (Gilly, that's the one I sent you notes on.)  I want to send it here.  I think.  Not yet, though, because I'm still sorting it out.  jl_merrow  and munchkinian beta'd for me, and thanks very much to them again, and now I am chewing on it.  I got all the way to act three, had a eureka moment, and now I know everything that needs to happen, almost, and I just have to do it.  But now I have to tweak, here, and there, and elsewhere, and I have to stew.  So what I need is a nice long, quiet day where I do nothing but wrestle with it until I get another rhythm going.  And then a bit more beta-ing, and then proposal, and then: submission!  Because this one is going to a publisher.

THE SEVENTH VEIL, however, is at an editor.  It is still going to be self-published, possibly with a bit more oomph than I previously thought, but that cake is still in the oven.  More on that later.  The editor stopped by today to drop something off, and from the sorts of comments she made, little things she's caught and that she's noting, I got excited.  So that's good.

But I need to email/call my brother, and I need to finish this book, and I need to clean the house, and  the list goes on and on, and in the meantime, I am just itching to get back to drafting.

What I'd like out of this week would be to get a handle on my schedule.  What I hate about the way my life works is that while I'm here all day, I often get nothing in particular accomplished, just lots of bits of lots of things.  I really hate that, and I want it to stop.  And this is something that I can stop.  So, I'm going to make this week the Week I Figure It Out, and if I fail, I will make next week the Week I Figure Out Why I Couldn't Figure It Out Last Week And Then Will Get It Right Now.  There's probably more I should be blogging about.  Well, "should" is a strong word--there's more I'd like to be recording here.  But I will put that on the list of things to work in, and away we will go.

I think. I'm still watching on Hulu, but so far I'm liking it. Interesting situations, interesting characters. Maybe you all know about it already and I'm the last person on the blue boat to know. But, in case I'm not:


Learn the deets here. And enjoy! I'll update this post with a verdict when I finish. So far it's winning out over Sims 3 and editing. Apparently, if we like it we're supposed to lobby Fox for it to be a series.  There's a Facebook group or something.

(Found out about this from erastes , and I will admit that I started watching because she said that 1: that it was like Firefly and 2: there was a gay couple in it.)

UPDATE:  Just finished.  Verdict is that it's quite good.  Reminds me of Lost in that you don't quite know what's going on, and that's part of the premise.  What's real, what isn't?  It seems like a show that would have a lot of cool risks and interesting character development.  Great situations.  So far I'd say the writers are smart, but not so sharp they cut themselves, and the premise would get me to turn in again.  This is the Facebook fan page.  There's something about sending postcards to Fox.  I think Twitter and just general net viral exposure is a good start, too.

 I've been meaning for awhile to write a six-month reflection post, since it's now officially six months since my body blew up on me, and I felt the blog deserved a marker for that.  Right now I'm feeling like the blog deserves so much more than I am giving it in general, but more on that later. For now, I'll do the body stuff, because it's time.

This is actually hard to break into, this round-up.  It's too easy to lapse into clichés like "six months ago everything changed" or something else that's borrowed or pat, or overstated.  That's been the trouble with this gig all along.  I didn't get cancer.  I didn't have a debilitating accident.  I didn't contract or express a disease with a sexy name or high profile or even really visible symptoms.  Essentially, I just folded in on myself.  I hurt, but I could fake it and look okay.  I couldn't really function, but I could move around appearing like most people.  It was like this condition I went and had in secret.  The pain very rarely came on in a hard bite; usually it came (and still comes) like a slow fog, until all of a sudden it's everywhere, and you realize the fog is poisoned, and oh shit, where are the pills?  

I have learned a lot in the last six months, and I have changed a lot more both physically and mentally than I have in any other six month period.  I was not able to do much work that paid, and in fact I was a serious drain on the family purse.  But I did a lot of work in my body, and a lot in my head.  A lot of work in my head.  I have come to a few conclusions, most of them not terribly profound, but they're nice and centering, and I'm happy with them.  I'll share them here.

Maintaining a body isn't something you can do for a little bit.  You have to do it forever.  I took two weeks off to go on the trip, and I was very active on the trip. I also did a lot of sitting in the car.  The cost for those two weeks off and all that sitting is amazingly big.  I lost a great deal of my core, and my stamina is way down.  I've spent a week trying to get back, and I'm not yet where I was when I left: I'm guessing in another week I might be close.  Today I'm feeling for the first time almost like I want to feel again, but not quite, and it's really hitting me today that it is not that I will work out and do weights and train until I'm at an ideal point and then I can slack off.  This is what I will do forever.  All my trainers and therapists have said as much, but today I fully grasped what a marriage this endeavor has been.  

Fitness and health are addictive.  I was upset a lot on the vacation when I couldn't exercise, and I got frustrated at the realization that while I was willing to stop and do the work, time didn't often allow it, and so it had to be put aside.  This week I have been rabid about getting my workout in.  Yesterday I got caught up in revision and didn't get to the gym, and this morning I didn't even let myself open the document.  The gym had to come first.  Quite simply, I like how I feel when I exercise.  Or, rather, I like how I feel once I have exercised.  And there really is a zen to my routine.  I have come to find the time on the elliptical comforting, and I look forward to it.  I'm sometimes cranky about having to push myself, but I like the feeling I get when I complete a set.  Not only is it helping my body, but it made me feel I accomplished something.

Getting fit takes so much more effort and so much more work than anybody ever told me it would, and losing weight is even harder.   I work out at least six hours a week.  I spend half an hour on the treadmill.  I do weights and pushes and planks and all manner of tightening, strengthening, and firming exercises.  They do work.  I have gone down a bit in size--but not much.  I still see pictures of myself and feel like I look way, way too big.  I still have thighs that alarm me when I put on a bathing suit.  I still look at other women and feel jealous and angry because I don't understand why they get to be so much thinner than me when they don't even work out.  I get mad sometimes because all that work didn't make me in a size twelve by this time.  I can't decide if I wish people would have told me it took this much work, or that managing food is even harder, or if I'm glad they lied and told me how great this was going to make me look.  It has made a difference,  but it's a lot slower.  My trainer last fall told me she gets frustrated with how easy our culture paints weight loss, and I'm starting to agree with her.  It's not something you can cheat on.  It has to become your religion, or you need to make peace with where your body is and be done with it.  

The work is hard, but what it gives your mind is worth even more than what it gives your body.  I have learned that when a pain bit hits me, I find out fast what issues I have been avoiding in my life.  If there's something I haven't dealt with or processed, it will surface, and it will be ten times worse.  If I'm feeling upset or low or vulnerable, a pain episode will magnify it.  It's those moments that are the most dangerous, because it's then that it's so tempting to hide behind the pain, to use it as an excuse for not doing things.  It gets tricky, because sometimes the pain means that I truly can't.  It's hard to know when I'm rationalizing and when I'm recognizing.  I'm not always good at sorting the two out.  But when I chose to examine what the pain dredges up, when I accept where my body is, I can often find it easier to accept where my mind is.

There is a zen to pain.  I can't really say that I'm glad or sorry that this condition happened.  This is, actually, how I have always been, but for whatever reason, this is when it's chosen to go critical.  This pain, this weakness, this condition: it is who I am.  It is me, and I am it.  It is my teacher.  It is my demon.  It is my lover, and it is what I fight.  It is as much a part of me as my arm.  It is something that I can use to change myself and mold myself and discover myself, or it is something that I can use to hide and make excuses.  It is, as my physical therapist says, my gift.  

I'll end this by saying that I'm happy.  I'm good with where I am.  I do not resent my condition.  I want to keep working with it.  I want to keep exploring and challenging, and changing.

And that, pretty much, is where I'm at.

Every day I read Shelf Awareness, an email newsletter put out by the executive editor of bookselling at Publisher's Weekly. I learn more scanning this daily document than I do any other industry info, and this sucker is free. (And advertising in it isn't so high it's impossible either, though it is high.) Sometimes I read, sometimes I skim, but I always enjoy it. Today, though, they interviewed an author and gave a book quiz as part of it, and I'm pretty sure they've done this before. This is the first day, though, that I've decided to steal it and answer it here. There just aren't enough quizzes about books.

Here are the questions if you want to pimp it for yourself. Answer in the comments if you want to play, or even better, on your own blog and spread it virally.

SHELF AWARENESS READING QUIZ:

On your nightstand now:
Favorite book when you were a child:
Your top five authors:
Favorite book of all time:
Book you've faked reading:
Book you're an evangelist for:
Book you've bought for the cover:
Book that changed your life:
Favorite line from a book:
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Earliest book you remember:
Favorite book read to you by your parent:

( My answers )

I did not get into Michael Jackson during the Thriller era. It had something to do, I think, with the fact that the rich girl in school (the only one in town who had cable) had a tape made of the huge video special of the lead song and brought it to class to show. For one, the video scared me a bit (I was eleven, but still a wuss), and for two, I was really jealous of Patricia for having the attention. But I knew about the songs, because you couldn't not, and I knew about parachute pants, and I'm pretty sure my little brother (very little at the time) had a red jacket with eight zillion zippers on. However, it wasn't until Bad came out that I got into MJ, and it was entirely because of the "Smooth Criminal" video. I liked the visuals of it, and I liked the sound of the song. I liked it so much that I bought the whole album, and checked the Thriller LP out from the library and listened to it over and over. Then I saved up my money and bought Moonwalker.

Moonwalker is the weirdest "movie" you'll ever see. It's nothing more than ego masturbation, but it is so disjointed and weird and full of such oddities that it becomes good in the same way that Mommie Dearest is good. No one in my family can hear "It's just a plug" with out doing it in MJ falsetto, and we all laugh, and anyone not in the family wonders what drugs we're on. (Go here, and scroll to 9:20.  Or watch the bizarre transformer/ascension bit too.  No one will know.)  If I got rid of the VCR tape, it was recently, which means I have hung onto that thing for close to twenty years.  

Jackson has been, though, since those days when I was eleven until now, a strange, surreal persona.  I didn't understand him in my adolescence, enjoyed him (with a bit of hesitation) in my mid-teens, and then watched him drift out into stranger and stranger waters as I aged.  For a long time now I've seen him as someone very, very talented who is also quite likely the most surreal person I've ever seen.  I'm sure he was a very real and true friend to many people and that a real man is being mourned today, and my thoughts are with them.  I'm also relieved for him, though, that after all these years he is, finally, free from that gargantuan persona.

Everyone is posting concert footage video or classic cool stuff.  I of course am going to post one of my favorite bits from Moonwalker.  This is the "Speed Demon" sequence, where Michael, after running away from many too-adoring fans, dons a rabbit costume and runs off into the desert.  Hijinks ensue, as does extreme oddity.  My favorite is the rabid grandmother.

Good night to the prince of pop, and may you rest, deservedly, in peace.

This is Grace Jones, singing "Slave To The Rhythm" as she hula-hoops. Through the entire song.


It's a sign of how body-focused I've become that after I got done being amazed, I found myself thinking, "Hula hoop. That's good, cheap core exercise."

This does not mean, however, that there will ever be Youtube footage of me singing anything while hula hooping.

Probably.

 I just realized that the 10:30 hair appointment I thought I had is actually at 12:30; it's telling that my reaction to that was not, "Oh, good, now I have time to write this morning after all" but "Oh, shit, I have time to write now after all."  I'm in that hard place where you want to write but haven't returned to a groove, and worse, whatever I'm picking up right now is a start: start back into redrafting STB, which has sent me back to the beginning, AGAIN, or begin revising SHINING LIGHT, which is what I think I'm landing on, but it's the starting bit, and I'm angsty.  All I want to do is play Sims 3, which I will do at some point because it's good brain release, but it needs to be a reward for two hours of work, not the avoidance of two hours of work.  And even when I make that resolve, I think of the dirty house (cats make a hella mess after two weeks alone, largely in hair tumbleweeds with some sick for accent) and mountain of laundry, and the yard that should be weeded and the scrapbook I should start.  Ah, so many things I could do besides write.

This morning I did make it to the gym, and by morning I mean six AM.  This is because I don't want to try and go with Anna along, but because she's home from school, I need to go before or after Dan goes to work.  I went after on Monday, and it was a real disaster, one because it was my first day back and two because I'm more tired at the end of the day.  Today was much better.  I still feel like my midsection is made of jello, though.  Thinking seriously of purchasing a medicine ball for now and a Bosu very soon.  My arms and shoulders are already happier, and my hips/glutes are slowly groaning back into place, but my belly is still just lost.  It was this way before I went, and now it's just awful.  I became so uncomfortable on the trip, largely because of my middle area.  Once you're accustomed to feeling some strength there, it's truly awful when it goes.  Thus the motivation to wake at 5:15 and get to the gym.  I would do it again in a heartbeat: it's truly wonderful to feel like your body can hold itself upright.  I plan to make this state continue and improve as much as I can.

The rest of my brain that isn't trying to write or get out of writing is thinking very hard about publishing.  At this moment I am leaning on trying SHINING LIGHT on some small presses I've been seeing hither & yon on the net while at the same time preparing THE SEVENTH VEIL for Lulu.  I've done a lot of research on self-publishing and the current market, and while I'm convinced SP is the way to go unless you're feeling very lucky or have golden connections (and even then is no sure thing for more than the next few months), I'm not comfortable with the investment portion.  It would take several thousand of capital, possibly up to ten, and I do not have that.  I waffle on whether or not having the pressure to perform would help push me if I did have it, but since I don't, it's a moot point.  I'm going to keep educating myself, and if I get any traction on book one of the Etsey series, I'll consider fully self-publishing in my own press for subsequent books.  In the meantime, I will learn more by trying through other publishers and hopefully build up some sort of visibility through the same.  In an even deeper portion of my hindbrain I'm toying with marketing strategies.  Watch this space, because it will probably involve freebie things via this blog.  Also, by the end of the summer, I'm going to have a website.  

That's me.  And now that I've procrastinated another half hour, I should really hang it up and go write.

Someone aimed me at this numerology link, and for fun I plugged in my full name and gave it a whirl. Jesusgod, it is freaky.

This is probably only a fun game to read the whole thing if you know me, via this blog or real life, with some depth, but if you want to play, click under the cut.

( Read more... )