Category: Uncategorized

Strange activity on the blog

Occasionally, my blog will get bursts of energy, with several countries visiting all at once — a bouquet of visitors from Japan and Ukraine and Moldova and Sweden and Moldova. All on the same type of browser. All reading the same note — which is not the current post. Usually a day or two after I’ve last posted on a slow post week.

The most obvious solution is that my post count has been increased by a bot, probably one that can spoof countries. But why? Why bother spoofing different countries? Why bother actually connecting to a post? (I’ve noticed times when my hit count has increased with no specific blog posts hit). It doesn’t seem to be an effort to disseminate porn links (which happens now and again). If it’s a DDOS attack — well, it’s too modest for a DDOS attack. 

The only thing I can think of is that something or someone is trying to inflate my reader numbers. Thanks, I think.

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Today I’m at the Graduate Hotel in Iowa City, IA, home of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (the ranks of which are too rarefied for me).  Here’s a picture, apropos of Gaia’s Hands:


Writing in Beaver Dam WI

Another day at Higher Grounds in Beaver Dam having just finished another three hours of writing. I’m at 14 hours out of 30 for Camp NaNo July, and I’m at least getting more words for Gaia’s Hands. I think it’s going to go through another dev edit because it deserves it and it’s now a much different book.

Richard has just gone through a line edit of Apocalypse, which means a couple fixes and it’s ready to go into Query Mode. It’s a very different book than the one that failed in querying. I think I’ve grown a lot from when that was the second (and third) book I’ve written.

One thing I’ve discovered: Nobody’s impressed that I’m a writer. I’m secretly amused by this, because there’s this part of me who dreams of impressing people. In reality, it’s “Oh, you’re a writer? You’re not published yet? Have you tried children’s books?” I have nothing bad to say about children’s books, but unless they involve ancient lore, preternatural bad guys, and the reincarnation of King — Oh, sorry, that’s Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising sequence. Loved that stuff.

I stay optimistic, maybe because I’ve won one short story contest and been a runner-up in another. (I’ve been rejected by three times this many zines and contests, though). 



Vacation in Horicon

I haven’t written because I am having good family time in Wisconsin, celebrating the Fourth the way I like to: bratwurst and sauerkraut, good cheese and beer.

During summer, my dad lives in a camp trailer at The Playful Goose just outside of Horicon, on the Rock River and not far from Horicon Marsh. It’s a cozy place cluttered with hobbies: woodworking tools, winemaking, a ham and bean soup in the crock pot.  

It’s a great time for family stories, with my dad and my Uncle Ron telling their adventures from childhood (and the time Uncle Ron set off illegal fireworks years ago on the lawn of the house on Beloit Avenue). Storytelling is an important part of relating in my family.

It’s much easier to be around my family since I’ve been on my mood management medications. I used to feel so much pressure to talk that it was hard for me to be there. Now I’m relaxed, and I enjoy it a lot more.

I’ll leave on Sunday with more stories and more appreciation for my family.

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I’m in Camp Nano right now, and I’m trying to maintain two hours per day to keep up. My family’s accustomed to me ducking out to write. I’ll keep you posted.

All that’s left is the bones

That scream you just heard? That was my story after I gutted and flayed it.

I am revising Gaia’s Hands — or so I thought. I looked over the structure of my story and realized it needed … a lot. The bones are solid: the unlikely couple of Jeanne Beaumont and Josh Young, their struggle against a corporate-academic partnership that threatens Jeanne’s livelihood and more, the development of their relationship with the World-Soul Gaia and their talents. The flesh on the bones — the particulars, the pacing — all off.  

In other words, the outline needs reshaping, and large amounts of it need to be completely rewritten knowing what I know now about writing. 

I really don’t know if I’m up to rewriting this story.

Sigh.

Indolent Days

Hours stretch into nothingness on a hot Sunday — no reason nor inclination to go out, no desire. But I do desire — it’s time for me to finish a long, drawn-out wrestling match with a novel.


I spend a long day writing in the corner of the living room, held in a bubble where the outside world with its triple-digit heat index doesn’t touch me. I triumph over the tangle of words I sorted out to create this story.

In this, I have privilege, a virtual room of my own and the space to be creative, an air conditioner in the heat, time enough for timelessness. 

What can I give in return? Gratitude for this moment, this place, this space in the universe. Time and heart to help those who struggle. My words, that they may comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as Mother Theresa once said*. 


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*To those who object to my quoting Mother Theresa, I agree that Mother Theresa was a disturbing figure who had the means to lift her afflicted charges rather than comfort them, yet did not because she believed that suffering glorified God. As such, she has much to answer to. On the other hand, her statement makes a great mission statement even though she failed to live up to it.

Sunday: Classical music and tea

I’m late today — just warming up for today’s reading/tweaking of Apocalypse. My last thorough pass-through, I hope. I plan to get halfway through the second half of the book; all the way through if my eyes don’t start to bleed (that’s meant figuratively; don’t panic.)

I don’t like the phrase ‘warming up’ on days like this because it’s dangerously hot this weekend in Missouri. Like 100 degrees hot. I haven’t even gone to work at the cafe this weekend because that’s too hot for me to go outside in. (Ok, fine, I could go outside in it but that much heat makes me lazy.)

The drink du jour is Ten Ren No. 913 King’s Oolong/Ginseng tea, a good solid Taiwanese tea a friend of mine gave me. It’s amazingly refreshing hot tea. My frumpy calico cat Girlie-Girl (of the six, the one most attached to me) sits on the couch right behind me, cleaning herself. 

Playing on the stereo: Concerto in A Major, Bach. In my life, Sunday mornings lend themselves to leisure and tea/coffee and classical music in a room cluttered with hobbies and cats. 

The Daily Submission

Strangely, the daily rejection submission gives me more hope than might be expected.


To those who haven’t been following my log, I have started submitting flash fiction/poetry and short stories I’ve written on a daily basis, one per day, using Submittable. This means that, given the odds of being published with all the submissions coming in, I have been receiving a rejection a day.

I don’t focus on the rejections, strangely. I focus on the fact that I, at the moment, have six submissions (counting Prodigies at DAW, a manuscript for a novel) out. 

I don’t know how much longer I can continue this exercise, because there are little readers fees nickeling and diming me — four dollars here, six dollars elsewhere. But so far, it’s given me hope. 

Updates June 28, 2019

I’ve been raising the stakes on the final battle in Apocalypse, and there’s a body count. I could be done with the big revisions by end of Saturday, and then there’s a big read-through for flow, continuity, and things I forgot to tweak. 

The book has become quite dark, but that’s to be expected given that it’s the freaking Apocalypse. I’m hoping it’s improved. I’m hoping it turns out really good. 

I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to maintain the daily entry but I wrote my first piece of flash fiction yesterday.

Not much else to say — I have five submissions out (including Prodigies) and didn’t get any rejections yesterday. 

Talk to you later!

No Excuses Today

I can’t avoid writing any more.

I had excuses the past couple days — “I’m tired from writing my final”; “I’m tired from driving down to Kansas City and back to visit my intern” — good excuses, both of them, But, honestly, I need to get back into the scheme of things.

Another excuse I’ve made to myself is that I’m used to working at the cafe, because it’s out of the house, it’s novel yet familiar, and there’s coffee (admittedly there’s coffee at home, but it takes work). I haven’t been able to work at the cafe lately because of the need for two screens at this point in editing. I need one screen to look at the  marked-up Word copy of Prodigies and the other to make changes to the Scrivener copy (I keep my work on Scrivener because I can print out manuscripts and the like as needed.) We have an office, a claustrophobic affair with two big screens, but it’s easier to avoid working there because I can quit right after I’ve started without having to pack up, pay my tab, and drive home. (Those items are disincentives to leaving, believe me.)

Richard got the idea to utilize my old (and unused) iPad as a second screen for mobile editing. It’s a great idea, as it turns out — even though the screen is small, it will show enough information for me to work with. The software to do this, which must be installed on both the iPad and the PC, is called Duet Display and the details are here: Duet Display. 

So I have no excuses today. I only have a meeting in the morning, and then I’m free. I have a system to work with to help with the dual display need, and I have a place to go.

Now to steel myself to the fact that I need to stack all chances against the poor residents of Barn Swallows’ Dance and kill a few. 

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Note: I have gotten a couple of rejections since yesterday, but I’m okay with it. They weren’t big things, and one of them was hastily written to meet a theme. I’m still waiting on big stuff.