Another Book Already?

Did I mention that I’m working on another book? I don’t remember whether I did.

Anyhow, it’s another book in the Hidden in Plain Sight series, which is already full of stories, but I thought I’d write another. This one, which does not have a title yet, happens in 2015, before any of the other books so far. It is the setup for the collective Hearts are Mountains featured in Whose Hearts are Mountains, which has not been released yet. It’s an origin story about how a bunch of Archetypes, beings who are usually solitary, form a commune in the Nevada desert.

It’s going slow, especially as there are necessary conversations that have to drive my main characters to where they actually contemplate such a crazy thing. I feel like I’m doing too much talking as I write, but I’m in the “getting the words down” stage. I’m thinking, though, I’m thinking of how to get more action in the first three chapters.

There’s also a love affair between an archetype and a human, which results in a Nephilim who is not brought up to understand her heritage, who also becomes important to the plot of Whose Hearts are Mountains. So the events of twenty years later have their roots in this story.

I love the process of watching a story take shape, even one that presents a struggle such as this one.

Exercise? No Fun

Daily writing prompt

What’s the most fun way to exercise?

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There is no fun way to exercise, according to my overweight, 60-year-old body. Unless typing is a calisthenic exercise, I doubt I can call any exercise fun. And yet …

I think fun exercises are ones where you don’t feel like you’re exercising. Walking is a great exercise if you have some place to go, like an ice cream parlor. Or if you’re bird watching. Someone is going to tell me that walking slow is not vigorous enough to be exercise, which means they want to turn walking into a less than pleasant exercise.

Playing sports is a fun way to exercise if you like competition and mastery and you’re good enough to not be a liability for a team. I am slow and painfully uncoordinated, and have not found the competitive sport that will not shame me. People get hurt when I play softball. I can’t even play miniature golf.

Gardening is fun exercise, if you have fun pulling weeds. I don’t. I garden because there’s food at the end of the process, and I plant unusual herbs just for the joy of tasting something most people don’t use fresh. The exercise is just an unpleasant side effect of bending down repeatedly to pull weeds.

My favorite exercise, in other words, is accidental.

Daily writing prompt

What animals make the best/worst pets?

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I once visited a place called the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Crown Point, Indiana. The man there rescued big cats like lions and tigers, previously owned by people. The owner kept them behind chain-link fences, where they had enough room to roam in their pens. If it weren’t for people who would adopt cubs, only to find out that once they got big, they were not cute, but dangerous, the place would not exist.

Big cats think they’re playing, but they’re far too rough for a human to withstand. A friend of mine got knocked down by a half-grown lion who stole her hair bunchie and started playing with it. She had strained muscles down her back from the tackle. She was lucky it was only that. Sometimes big cats turn on their owners.

I don’t know why anyone would keep a big cat except to invoke fear and admiration. To have a status symbol. But the cat can strike back, cost a lot of money for their carnivore diet, and propose a big problem if one wants to get rid of it. I don’t think anyone should keep a big cat.

Over and Over

Daily writing prompt

What book could you read over and over again?

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I wish I could say the book I would read (and have read) over and over was a high-brow book, like The Return of the King. I wish it was a staple of fantasy, something that would give me geek cred. But the book is as mass-market as any book selling at the grocery store, and it still captures me every time.

The novel is Origin in Death, by JD Robb. JD Robb (alternative pen name for Nora Roberts) writes futuristic crime novels. She’s written a lot of these, perhaps 40. Reading them is like eating popcorn — tasty, addictive, and a little more nutritious than you might think. Her protagonist is a police lieutenant, Eve Dallas, who runs the murder squad at Cop Central. She’s excellent at what she does, and she’s a bit curmudgeonly. She’s married to one of the richest men on earth, a former jewel thief who goes by the name of Roarke. Roarke, with his larcenous ways, makes a perfect partner in fighting crime.

The specific story, Origin in Death, involves a father-son pair of doctors who are killed within a day of each other. The murder trail leads to a network of underground hospital wards and a conspiracy to supply men with the perfect lover/wife. How the doctors manage this is part of the light science fiction that JD Robb trades in. There are twists to surprise, and a big chase scene at the end that made me wish for a version for the screen.

I read this novel now and again. It’s quick to get through, and I know all the plot twists. But it remains entertaining, and perhaps the best of JD Robb’s In Death series.

Daily writing prompt

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

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If I could be a character from a book, I would be Mary Russell from The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R King. The beekeeper, in this case, is a retired Sherlock Holmes, and Mary becomes his apprentice. She is a renaissance woman — she is a student at Oxford in chemistry and religion, she takes up acting and other escapades, and she helps Mr. Holmes solve crimes, often in disguise. I would love to be the sort of person to attract the attention of Sherlock Holmes.

The best compliment I have ever gotten is from my friend Celia, who told me once that I reminded her of Mary Russell. Wow, how could I live up to that? I wasn’t an adventurer, but I had an encyclopedic knowledge of a lot of disparate things. Not deep, per se, but wide.

I don’t think I could live up to Mary Russell, but I can sure fantasize about being her.

Is cat-petting a job?

Daily writing prompt

What job would you do for free?

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To be honest, there’s probably not a job I would do full-time for free, because I like to be able to afford food. But part-time? I would take care of cats and dogs at the humane society for free. I would pet them and give them lots of pets and hugs.

I would walk the dogs and play with the cats. I’d like to walk the cats, but cats generally don’t go for that sort of thing.

I would do this for free, and have done it (minus the litterboxes — they don’t have guests doing the litterboxes). I had a student who would now and again stop by my office and proclaim, “kitty therapy time!” at 4:00, and we would go to the humane society to play with cats. The humane society welcomes this because it helps socialize their cats.

This is a job I would do for free.

Contractual Obligation

I don’t want to break my writing streak but this morning has been discombobulated. Back to normal tomorrow.

My Relationship Mistakes

Daily writing prompt

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

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The experiences that helped me grow the most in my life were my relationship mistakes. When I was younger I had what is called in the literature an anxious attachment style. It comes from a childhood with an overwhelmed mother who used threats of abandonment as discipline. So I developed anxious-attached relationships with my boyfriends.

In common language, I was anxious and clingy. I chose people with avoidant attachment styles, which means they did not necessarily want to be in relationships. The males were ambivalent, distant, or otherwise not committed. This made me more anxious and clingy, which made them more noncommittal and distant, and … it was a total mess.

It took me a long while to break this cycle. One of the best things I did was spend many years outside of a relationship, to the point where I didn’t need a relationship anymore. And when I no longer needed one, I took the risk that found me the right one.

Daily writing prompt

How would you improve your community?

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In a workshop I participated in, my town was described as two towns united by a football team, This is most certainly true, even today. One town can be described as the college campus with its more liberal professors and staff, and the other is full of what are called ‘townies’ elsewhere. The football team is the six-time Division II national champion Bearcats.

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Maryville is a town with a streak of hatred. In the Thirties, we had a lynching. In 2013, a fourteen-year-old’s rape was blamed on her. Confederate flags occasionally fly, and black students report getting harassed in town businesses. This is not happening from the University side. I don’t want this to happen here.

It’s hard for me to live in Maryville because of this, but as this is where I work, I stay here. I would like to live in a bigger town with a kinder presence. I am not sure anything like this exists in the US; we are a mean country.

If I could, I would make Maryville nicer.

Skipping to Another Chapter

One thing you can do when writing a book is to skip to another chapter when you’re stuck on the one you’re currently writing. This is done so you can continue to write the book rather than bog down into writer’s block. I’m doing this right now, because I feel my first three chapters (or maybe just the latest chapter) are writing the same thing over and over. Not much action, too much expository.

Wouldn’t it be nice if real life were that way? If you could just skip over a day gone wrong and go to the next activity? If you could slide past the boring parts and get to the more interesting ones? I could skip a work week and make it to the weekend early.

It doesn’t work that way. The work still needs to be done. The boring parts are necessary to enjoy the good parts. Life is supposed to flow rather than happen in fits and starts. We can’t skip any of it — not the aggravation nor the grief. No skipping chapters in real life.