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Coming Titles, Sand of Bone, writing

More of What Ends Up In the Book

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Once upon a time, I lived near deserts and I loved them. It was natural, then, that deserts became the living and breathing setting for Sand of Bone.

When I was a kid, my grandparents owned a piece of desert property outfitted with a one-room cabin outside Apple Valley, California, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Apple Valley was a little tiny place at the time – less than a tenth of the population it is now – and for a kid raised in the suburbs of Orange County, it was about as middle-of-nowhere as I could imagine.

Our family spent a few weekends every year up there. It being the late 70’s, my parents let me roam the desert at will for hours as long as I promised to never try to catch a snake or explore the abandoned mineshafts.

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Life

Pictures Because I Have Little Brain To Spare For Words

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I’m revising. And teaching karate and overseeing Dev’s school and scheduling another visit from my folks and coordinating meetings and getting the rest of the garden in and battling ants that seem immune to anything and everything I’ve used to be rid of them before.  And it’s less than ten days to Wiscon!

Hence, pictures!

Gambit and Ty in front of my lovely lilac bush.

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Gambit wondering why Ty ran away when Mommy was saying, “Staaaaaaaaaay!” (Hint: rhymes with “funny.”)

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And the view from my front yard this morning.   The mustard bloomed suddenly on the riverside field. I’m guessing it’ll be mostly under water by late tomorrow, of forecasts are correct.

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Life

Field Trip Day!

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For weeks, my son Dev and I have been scheduling–and having to cancel–a trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Today, we finally made it, and I definitely needed the break.  For writer-me, it was a research day as well.  For Dev, it was a school day.  We win!  🙂

The museum is both restful and stimulating. We spent a huge amount of time appreciating the African Art galleries, but somehow completely missed the North American collections. We wandered the galleries of European and Asian art, sometimes with great seriousness, and sometimes laughing as we created dialog between the paintings.

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In the Contemporary Design gallery, I found the desk that fits my personality.

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And we both want this knife block for our kitchen.

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The weather was fine enough we spent an hour walking the grounds. Alas, the combination of melted snow and un-melted ice made most of the trails more of an adventurous slog than we were looking for, but we enjoyed what we could.

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And Dev wanted to take a happy picture of me:

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Then, on the way home, Dev asked about Sand of Bone, and helped me talk through a solution to a long-standing issue. It’ll make revisions a tad more complicated on one hand, but it does indeed solve the issues while at the same time enhancing the story and opening possibilities for future storylines beyond this and the sequel. I have such a cool kid!

Uncategorized, writing

Frost On the Remnants Of Summer

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100_2193That’s my outdoor solar lamp. (Frost is covering the little panel on top.) The citronella candle is hiding behind it.

The boy has taken himself off to work, packing Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner. The remaining leftovers are packaged and/or frozen for future meals. The turkey carcass is tucked in the freezer for future soup, and the dogs are mightily disappointed they weren’t allowed to take it outside for themselves. (Raw bones are okay, but cooked bones are not.)

Now I’m settling in with warm cranberry wine, goat cheese and sourdough. I’ve a little noveling to do today.

Making the 50K NaNo goal isn’t going to happen, but I did get 20K of first-draft fiction down.  This is a big deal, since my fiction projects since Viable Paradise have been all about revising previous works that were salvageable.  That 20K of this month is all brand-spanking-new and shiny.  Yes, I stumbled around, wrote and deleted at least as much as I kept, and wandered down some research roads when I should have been pounding out words.  But I am having fun, so screw the wordcount. 🙂

Besides, a bunch of other cool things happened this month, and I wouldn’t have wanted a miss a single one of them.

(Okay, maybe I’d have wanted to tinker with some of the events, but not miss them altogether.  Hee.)

Life

Up At Dawn

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June Sunrise

 

That’s the view from my back door, just before the sun slipped above the horizon.

I’m not a morning person. I’ve been saying so since my teenage years, when theater and parties and exciting books kept me busy until midnight and beyond.  My night owl ways were reinforced by parenthood, when I couldn’t possibly get up earlier than my “up with the sun” son but could manage to write in the dark hours after he’d gone to bed.

But over the last two years, I have somehow transitioned into a morning person.  Waking between five and six has become common, and sleeping past seven is the rarity.  Evidence of this change can be seen in the numerous sunrise photos I’ve taken since last spring.  As someone who usually saw the sun come up only if I’d stayed up all night, the novelty of awakening to rosy-gold light hasn’t yet waned.