I’ve finally gotten over my indecision and decided!
The summary: Godlike beings and the ecocollective Barn Swallows’ Dance clash, humanity in the balance. How will the pacifists in residence meet the threat to all they know?
My niece is once again creating the cover; I have a design in mind. In fact, that’s what persuaded me to publish in January; I knew what I wanted on the cover. Until then, publishing was just an idea.
This book has seen several versions, a lot of editing, and some belief in myself to make it to a viable book.
Wish me luck! Better yet, read it!
There will not be any Kringle romances for the foreseeable future; I love the Archetype books (there are more) better. If I had a following that said “OMG I NEED KRINGLE BOOKS” I might change my mind. So both of you out there need to make some noise 🙂
I’ve had my iPad Air/Logitech keyboard/Logitech mouse for over a month and have taken it on road trips. I have blogged with it, written on my work in progress, and surfed the Internet. I’ve given it enough of a workout that I can review my experience with it.
Weight and heft. Compared to a Surface Book 2, the components of my travel setup are lighter and easier to carry. They fit in the leather smaller-than-a-briefcase bag, and they’re still lighter than my Surface in a canvas messenger bag. Or least I perceive them as lighter — that leather bag isn’t light.
Screen size. The iPad screen is a little smaller than the Surface. Decently smaller, with the Surface 13.5” vs iPad’s 10.2”. Because this is a secondary setup, this doesn’t bother me. At home I have two old display screens at approximately 22”. If I need big screens, I dock to those. On the road, I’m more about function than form.
Looks. That being said about form and function, my setup is ridiculously cute. The logi keyboard and mouse in lavender lemonade match my case. Of course, this doesn’t really figure in my satisfaction with the setup. Really it doesn’t.
Function of the peripherals. How comfortable are my peripherals to use? The keyboard (Logitech K380) is responsive but sometimes needs to be re-added to Bluetooth. This is likely a Bluetooth thing. The mouse (Logitech Pebble) works superbly and is made for the hand.
Function of the iPad. I keep the iPad plugged in if at all possible, because playing with it too much will wear the battery down. I do not notice any lags, glitches, or quirks. There are glitches and quirks, but they seem more about the interaction between iPad, keyboard, and apps.
Pulling it all together. Overall, the iPad setup acts exactly like a computer, or at least exactly like an iPad acting like a computer. Where the computer would require to get rid of a screen by clicking the little x, the iPad has you click a bar at the bottom (or you could use your finger.) There is an occasional quirk where the keyboard will not scroll your screen up or down all the way (only with specific programs such as Jetpack. You can move the screen with your finger.
In conclusion, there’s a lot of good and very little trauma in using the road warrior setup of iPad and entry peripherals. I take it with me everywhere just in case I want to write, which is something I never did with my Surface. I won’t give up my Surface, because there are some things the Surface does better (like hooking up to the big screens). There are some things I haven’t tried on the iPad (Photoshop and other graphics) mostly because I can’t afford Photoshop on the iPad. Big productions will be better on the Surface, I suspect, but for everyday use I’m very happy with my iPad setup.
Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
Shrimp Creole, out of the Betty Crocker cookbook. Shrimp with minute rice, tomato, green peppers and a touch of Tabasco sauce. Now and again I run into the recipe, and I am carried back to …
My most hated dinner meal.
I’ll admit I was a picky eater. I went through a “white” period in my tastes and preferences. Cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, and tater tots. I did not like vegetables. But I hated green peppers, overcooked green peppers, olive drab-colored peppers, the most.
Add to that the overcooked, rubbery shrimp and the minute rice. The Sixties and Seventies were an area of kitchen sacrilege. My mother was a good cook, but that recipe … that recipe was evil.
There is a Tiktoker who makes vintage recipes and critiques them, B. Dylan Hollis. I would like to see him make some shrimp creole and commiserate with me. I think he’d stop at the chewy, tasteless shrimp and exclaim loudly about the bitterness of it all
I know there are good things my mother cooked, but I can’t remember any of them. All I can remember is the bane of my existence, shrimp creole.
I’ve been feeling uninspired by writing today, even in my blog. I’ve spent the morning and much of the afternoon doing laundry, writing emails to students, and drinking a Starbucks venti brown sugar oatmilk shaken iced espresso (which reminds me of this.)
I enacted one of my writing rituals, incense. Not those cute little incense sticks or cones you see (so I’m told) at the local head shop, but the real thing: frankincense tears. The kind you have to burn on self-igniting charcoal. Church incense (if that church is hard-core; most of the church incense I’ve been seeing is myrrh and rose).
It’s a fine ritual: get the goblet-shaped censer (or the thurible if you’re high church), put a puck of charcoal in it and light it, let the sparks burn through, and add the incense.
I put the usual amount of incense in, the amount that gives a small trickle of smoke, but that’s not what I got. I must have accidentally found the formula for optimizing the amount of smoke, because that’s what I got — billows of smoke. So much smoke I thought the smoke alarm was going to go off. So much smoke that the Brothers at the Abbey would tell me to knock it off. So much smoke that I was getting a contact frankincense high.
It was lovely.
Growing up Catholic, I remember the thurible brought out on special occasions by the priest. A thurible has long chains and the priest can swing it back and forth. I remember smelling the incense and wishing more would waft into the back of the church where I invariably sat. My friend Les, not a priest, had a thurible and would swing it 360 degrees, but only in my peripheral vision so I didn’t see it. (The little imp.) I got my love of incense from him, and still have a couple ounces of myrrh incense from him I only use on very special occasions.
The quality of my day has changed because of the incense. I haven’t written any more yet, but there is a softness to the day I didn’t notice before.
I haven’t been writing enough lately because I have been on internship visits all week. The first trip was Lexington/Liberty/Kansas City MO, and the other Glenwood/Des Moines IA.
Going to Mars for some coffee.
Richard and I have gotten to stay overnight because of the mileage involved in visiting 3 interns. So we explore the places we’re staying given the energy we have left. This usually means food places and coffeehouses.
Notes for the Des Moines part of the trip:
Gursha Ethiopian Grill: we ordered this Door Dash. Two drinks and one entree on my 5-item Vegetarian plate went missing. The lentil and split pea dishes were somewhat under spiced. On the other hand, Richard ate the 5-item meat platter and said it tasted exceptionally good. Consensus: don’t eat here if you prefer vegetarian.
Hotel Renovo: This is a “country” themed hotel, but does not come off like Cracker Barrel and its aggressive nostalgia. There are design elements, such as one set of sliding barn doors to shut off a conference room. There is an overall feeling of space and comfort, created by big windows and not cramming spaces with too many couches and tchotkes. One startling use of a window is where the second floor hallway opens out into the breakfast nook. Keep an eye out for the deer in the headlights — the bad pun version — in the lobby.
Waveland Café: Where has this been all my life? The café is a breakfast place. And superlatively so. The atmosphere is quirky. The walls are signed by famous people who have visited, mostly newscasters and their crews, as Iowa is a news making state during primaries. The breakfasts themselves are wonderful, although I’d rate the coffee as “ok”.
Mars Cafe — our coffee and writing stop. The conceit here is outer space, and the cafe does it well in a mellow space with joyous music. Mars has the usual fare in a coffeehouse — coffee, lattes, etc. But they have their own creations; I’m drinking a Sputnik revisited, which is a latte with browned butter, walnut and cinnamon. My husband is drinking a Space Pioneer Miss Baker, which is a non-alcoholic cocktail with espresso, sparkling water, walnut bitters, and rose water. I’m feeling inspired to write this blog!
The mini-vacation ends this afternoon, when we have to drive the 2 1/2 hours back down to Maryville and deal with four very grumpy cats. But my mini-working vacation has been a very good one.
I’m on day two of a trip to Lexington/Liberty/Kansas City visiting interns. This also means I get to hang around interesting places we don’t have in Maryville. My husband is working remotely while I go to my internship sites.
Lexington, believe it or not, has an indie bookstore/cafe with a real ambiance to it, which is better than we have in Maryville. It helps that Lexington is a town with history, although I’m not quite sure what their history is*. Liberty is more urban, given that it’s closer to Kansas City. We didn’t do much in Liberty.
Kansas City is one of my favorite places. I keep insisting if we win the big lottery, I want to move here. (Richard is pushing for a smaller town. Which is fine, but it better have an indie cafe.) We stayed in KC overnight so we didn’t have to drive the 2 hours back down to visit our third intern. So far, we stayed in the 21c Hotel (based around art), ate an entirely too expensive and utterly magnificent steakhouse (Anton’s), and ate breakfast at our favorite breakfast place (eggtc). Now we’re waiting at Broadway Cafe for my appointment today, and from there we’re going to Whiskers Cat Cafe!
After this, I am going to need a rest, and I’ll get one for one whole day. Then I will drive to Iowa and spend the night in Des Moines. And have more fun.
* Lexington history features being the first booming town west of St. Louis, and for confederates. I don’t like the Confederacy.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
Three books that have had an impact on me. Hmm… I’m glad the prompt is not “THE three books that have had an impact on you” because there have been many more than three.
The three I’m thinking about right now are all in the fantasy genre because that’s what I’ve been reading most of my life, and because I write in those genres. Keep in mind that I’m almost sixty years old, and so are some of these books. I consider them foundational in my life.
The first book is not just a book, but a series: The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Before we had categories like young adult and middle school, these books appeared in my small town junior high library. Our librarian recommended them to me, and my life changed. People my age facing mythological beings, trying to stop the forces of evil — I know, it sounds like a thousand stories. But dressed in British folk custom, with evocative descriptions, I could read it again as an adult.
The second book was one I was turned on to in college, and it has stayed with me as if I’d read it yesterday. The book is Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon, in which an itinerant man leaves interpersonal miracles in his wake. Is he the second coming of Jesus? The parallels of the narrative suggest so. The book advocates a less hierarchical, more personal relationship with God, and a view of love that transcends the restrictive culture of man. This book has informed my view of religion and spirituality and continues to do so.
The third book is, again, a series, and a lengthy one. The series is Darkover, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I cannot post this without mentioning the serious and credible allegations against Bradley made by her daughter Moira Greyland. It’s with some uneasiness that I put Bradley’s books on my list.
Darkover isn’t just a series, it’s a world. Not a perfectly realized world, but one where characters recur from book to book, where the reader can trace a family tree over a few hundred years. There’s lore and reputation and conflict — this has been as attractive to its fans as its sword and sorcery, with psychic powers substituted for the magic. Darkover fans have done genealogy with the characters, developed persona in the world, and made a role-playing society of it. I have taken my love of character development, convoluted relationships, and my dream of creating an all-absorbing world from Darkover.
So there are my three books. As I’ve said, there are many others. But these are perhaps the most influential of the fiction items.
Right now, I am in the lobby of the DoubleTree in Chesterfield, MO. I’m writing at a computer table. And I am freezing. Mind you, very seldom in my life am I cold, much less freezing. I am jiggling my foot under the table to keep from turning into an icicle.
This is a business hotel, which means they have a Conference Center, which is a fancy way to say a building with conference rooms. They have a decent cafe for breakfast and lunch and really bad coffee for guests, and they have a broken thermostat in the lobby.
I wish I had a swimsuit. The pool would be warm, right? Warmer than this lobby.
I could go upstairs to my room to write at what is euphemistically called a desk, right? That setup where my face is approximately a foot from the wall? I like a little space myself, which is why I’m out in the lobby at the computer table. It’s a nice computer table.
Eventually it will be lunchtime, and I will go into the slightly warmer cafe to have something that will warm me up.
I suppose if worse comes to worst, I can grab the duvet off the bed, wrap it around me, and sit in the lobby. Nobody would notice, right?
I have an irrational fear and have had it for most of my life, which is quite a few years. Hydrophobiaphobia (I’m told this is what it’s called) is fear of contracting rabies. I fear that someday some animal is going to bite me, or even slobber on me, and I am never going to see it again, and then I’m going to get rabies and die.
Dying is almost inevitable in rabies. Only 29 people have survived rabies ever. Even with the Milwaukee protocol, a method of supportive treatment, most don’t survive. Luckily, rabies is rare. Only one to three people in the US die of rabies each year. This is in part because of the over 60,000 preventive vaccine series given each year.
That does not stop me from my fear. I’m better than I used to be as a kid when I would pet cats and dogs and ask myself if they’d bitten me and I just couldn’t remember. I would lose sleep at night checking for brain malfunction.
Nowadays, I just worry a bit and keep an extra close eye on my cats. It’s necessary because we have bats in the house. Cute, fuzzy little rabies vectors that cats like to play with. So it’s a matter of vaccinating the cats and making sure to bring the bats in to the Public Health Department to test for rabies. I think about the actions it takes to get the treatment if it comes to that. And my fear is much better, because I have a solution.
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about living in Maryville is what I call the Silly Season. It runs from April through July, and it features little oddities that I’m not sure most college towns (or towns of any sort) have to weather.
The Silly Season usually starts on campus with art projects. Like giant rubber duckies on Colden Pond, or a doorframe set up in the middle of the sidewalk. The Northwest Yeti. Little things like that. Then it spreads to the town, with horses at the local drive-in tied to the order kiosk and a large cow in the grocery store parking lot. Not so much madness as a head-shake and a chuckle. This is our excitement. It’s slow around here.
That has not happened this year. Nothing has startled a smile out of me on campus, nothing unusual has been sighted in town, not even a Weinermobile. I am worried that the Silly Season has expired in Maryville, and I miss it.
It might be time for me to figure out how to revive the season. The trick is that one cannot try too hard to be silly. One can try to get attention, but not try to dictate what kind of attention one gets. And the most important thing, one has to do it without any self-consciousness. One gives in to the awkwardness and goes all-out. It’s the difference between wearing a mascot costume and doing that mascot dance wholeheartedly.
I have too much self-consciousness lately, and I blame my meds for that. Bipolar has a great correlation with unabashed weirdness, but it has a great correlation with other things I’d rather do without. If I had less, though, I’d consider adding some silly to people’s lives here. Set up (with the proper permits) a lemonade stand downtown. Walk in bunny ears through Walmart. Put signs on my car reading “Lauren Leach-Steffens for Whatever” in campaign style. And more.
I hope the Silly Season comes back. It’s good for some Facebook posts from home.
Words Like Me 