I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.
Which do I prefer — beach or mountains? If I had to choose between those two, I’d say mountains. I loved the Catskills when I lived out in upstate New York, and I used to stay near the Adirondacks in a campground.
But I really prefer forests. I want the cabin in the middle of the woods where I can have a writing retreat. I want trees outside my window and the possibility of deer in my backyard. I want misty mornings and rain through the branches. I want the fire in the fireplace against the chill outside.
This might be why I like to go to Starved Rock State Park so much. We stay in a cabin; although it is not in the middle of the woods, trees surround the cabins. The park’s trails and sandstone bluffs are wooded. The park is one of my favorite places on earth.
I guess I’ll go to the mountains if the opportunity arises. At least it has trees.
I usually trust my instincts. They have kept me out of bad situations for all my life. That gut feeling — literally in my gut — signals that trouble lies ahead, and I listen to it.
I don’t always trust my instincts toward something good. I find that, if I’m not careful, I use instincts as justification for something I personally want. Or I mistake impulse for instinct. So good instincts go through a reasoning process, which makes them not instinctual, I guess?
I think instincts exist as a survival mechanism, which means I need to refine my belief in the positive ones. I just have to figure out how to recognize instinct from impulse or justification.
Some mornings I can’t seem to wake up. I’m out of bed, I’m upright, I’m typing, but I am not awake. There’s a cup of strong coffee next to me, but I am not awake.
I woke up at 4 AM from an annoying dream in which my mother (a compulsive clothes shopper) left me a truckload of clothes that were 1) in the wrong size, and 2) profoundly ugly. Instead of taking them to my home, my sister brought them, racks and racks full, to a shopping mall and I was left to gather them all. And my sister started yelling at me because I had misplaced a supposedly valuable hot pink wool suit. I was trying to get it back from the store clerk who found it. At least I saved the glow-in-the-dark suit. There were at least 20 pale pink cotton shirts and matching polka-dot pants. I decided I needed to lose weight to fit into all these clothes I didn’t even like. An old friend walked by and held up a stretchy skirt saying I could never lose enough weight to wear it. I bet her I could wear it right now and put it on over a long black matronly skirt. A sales clerk from another store tried to persuade me that these clothes were, in fact, breathtakingly ugly. I got mad at him because I knew he was just trying to sell me more clothes.
I’m awake now and wondering what the heck that dream meant.
Just checking something. Nothing to see here; move along.
So I gutted the Kringle book and started it again. My female protagonist is now a writer who can spend a bit more time at the lodge and start her stay early enough that they might actually progress to a “breakup” before Christmas.
The romance novel has a structure. I use a Scrivener template called “Romancing the Beat” based on Gwen Hayes’ book of the same name. This lays out the romance in terms of four parts: Set up, Falling in love, Retreating from love, Fighting for love. Each of those parts has five steps that progress the reader through the story. (If you think that romance novels are too formulaic, there are beat sheets for your favorite form of literature as well. We have expectations when reading a story).
The problem with my original story is that the happy ending has to happen by Christmas (it’s a Christmas romance, after all). As the romance started less than a week before Christmas, the plot had no time for them to pass through the stages between doubt and breakup. I suppose I could have collapsed them, but part of the fun for the reader is to pass through those stages. It’s not only part of the plot, but gives the reader a satisfying emotional roller coaster.
So I am rewriting the story with a protagonist who can stay a little longer. Not even that much longer — she’s got two more days to be there. The days are important, not only for the timing of the novel, but for what can happen during those days. Because their getting together time is not as close to Christmas, they have time to do things together before the male lead (an executive chef) has to buckle down for the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day buffets. This is in closer keeping with the original plot. It’s not romantic if they don’t get to enjoy some courtship.
I wrote the first thousand words yesterday. I think this will be a better book, although I won’t be done by the end of November. At least I won’t spend all my writing time grumbling about how it’s not working.
I’m having to abandon the current Kringle (Christmas romance) story because of encroaching improbability. The way I set it up, romantic developments are supposed to happen in hours rather than days, which is just too rapid. There is no way to stretch out the time the book covers, because the female protagonist is a schoolteacher and would not get to the Lodge sooner than she has. Nor could she afford to stay there for two weeks; a week is expensive enough. The relationship needs to be resolved by Christmas. There’s just no time for the two of them.
This has been happening to me lately; stopping in the middle of a book and not feeling it. Here, I’ve not been feeling like writing for a very good reason: The book is untenable. I can resolve this with some plot tweaks, including a protagonist who can arrive at the lodge a few days earlier. Maybe a writer on a writing retreat. That would be writing what I know. I already have someone from the last book in mind.
Today I have to keep writing, even if I’m not doing NaNo, even if I’m having to start from scratch. This is my flow activity; I need to keep it in my life for my health.
In the American midwest, our summers are too hot and our winters are too cold. Our springs are rainy and last little time at all. But we have autumns, which have fiery trees and comfortable jacket weather. And the highlight of autumn (or fall, as often said in the US) is October.
Autumn colors peak in about the second week of October. The skies on a cloudless day are a clear blue, a backdrop to the orange-red maples and the rusty brown oaks. Time seems to stand still as one looks at the trees.
The tempermental rain in October pelts the ground with abandon, or mists the pavement. The fallen leaves turn sodden underfoot. They smell of endings, of which October is a glorious reminder.
I will release Reclaiming the Balance on January 1, 2025 as I had hoped. My sensitivity reader came through and I fixed all issues (mostly proofreading!) The book is now in the hands of KDP (Amazon’s self-publishing arm) and ready to release.
Reclaiming the Balance is in the Hidden in Plain Sight series, book 3. Janice Wilkens escapes from an abusive, non-human Archetype boyfriend. She takes refuge at Barn Swallows’ Dance, a haven for those who don’t fit ordinary reality. Amarel Stein, an androgynous half-human Nephilim, challenges her about her own Nephilim son. They plot to rescue her son from the boyfriend’s clutches and fight prejudice against the Nephilim at Barn Swallows’ Dance. Their success depends on their working together and giving up their preconceived notions of reality.
I don’t know if it’s clear from the description, but it’s contemporary romantasy, closed-door (not spicy), and very much a story for this time.
What first impression do I want to give people? At professional conferences, I want to give the impression of gravitas, like the learned person I am. Most times, though, I like to give the impression of a softer person who is enthusiastic about life.
This is the first impression I prefer, because this is who I am. I don’t enjoy pretending to be someone I’m not. I highly value authenticity (as a Quaker, it’s one of our values). I also want to disarm people of their natural hostility toward someone with a higher level of education and status.
The truth, though, is that I’m more complex than this first impression. I am not always enthusiastic about life. At times I can be sarcastic. I am often stubborn. Yet, I don’t bring these out as first impressions. I make a choice to be one particular me.
This question is altogether too easy for anyone who has bought a laptop or a smartphone in their lives. Other than a house or a car, these are likely to be the most major expenses, at least in the US.
I was relatively late to computer ownership, having gotten my first computer as I was finishing graduate school. As a grad student in the late 80s — early 90s, it was not assumed we would have our own computers. There were computer labs all over campus, and I availed myself of those when typing up my dissertation. Knowing that computer labs would not be part of my future as a professional, I bought my first computer, a Macintosh IIvx. In 1993 the computer cost me $2500, which is almost $5k in today’s dollars. I bought it with part of the proceeds from getting hit by a car, otherwise graduate student me would not have been able to afford it.
Technology has gotten more powerful and less expensive. I could buy a Mac Mini today for $500, and this little puck of a computer is much more powerful than the IIvx I bought in 1993. The only reason I haven’t bought it is because the form factor isn’t convenient, and I already have a powerful laptop that cost me $1300.
Even today, my computers are the most expensive purchases I make outside of a car or house, even though they have gone down in price. But their utility makes them worth the price.
Words Like Me 