Tales from the Raven

My words are all taken with writing projects, so you’re getting pics instead.  Consider it my 1,000 word gift of eye candy to tie you over til your Friday comes.

The parrots who are the cause of all the trouble.  If in doubt, blame the parrots.

The lucky blueberry surprise–I could’ve sworn this pot was taken over by weeds!

The Australian crash potatoes that saved the day.

And the paint silkie chick who told the parrots off and restored our home to order!

Or, anyway, the controlled chaos we choose to call order.

Guess what I found in the incubator this morning?  Mind you, this was NOT the hatching bator.  This was in an incubator that is dedicated to incubating eggs for all but the last three days before they hatch.  For those days, the sweet little egg’uns are moved out of the crowded topsy-tipsy bator and into a hatching bator.  In the hatching bator they have peace and quiet for the last few days before hatching, as well as the correct humidity needed, no turning, etc.  So, what did I find in our not-for-chicks-to-hatch-in-bator?

This.

Peeping.  And yelling.  And generally making himself or herself very clear on several points.  First, that it is awfully hard to push out of your shell when there’s another egg ON TOP OF YOU!  (had to adjust for picture, but yes, an egg was resting directly on top of the one that hatched)  Second, that it’s very hard to get your hatching legs when the ground keeps rotating under you!  And, third, that it’s very lonely to hatch when all your roomates are a good week away from busting out of their shell!

I have to admit, I left him there a minute longer while I ran and grabbed my hubby and the camera.  If he was strong enough to push out of his egg with another egg pressing down on him, he’d last another minute.

I’ve also decided that this little guy (or girl) isn’t getting sold with the other chicks.  Aside from the fact that he’s adorable (don’t mind me, I always seem to call newly hatched chicks ‘hes’) and has great foot-feathering, which a silkie should have if they can possibly manage it, he has become my new mascot.  In a week which included a fried-out computer plus major chicken losses from both heatstroke AND hail stones the size of golf balls–

–for reals, golf ball-sized, I tell you!  In a week like that, it came as no great surprise that I also got a rejection letter from the very last agent with a full of 13 Demon Days.  An agent who I’d met, and connected with, and who seemed really excited about the book when she requested the full.  In such a week, it’s nice to have a cute and fuzzy reminder that we have to hatch where we find ourselves, even if someone screwed up and left us in the wrong incubator.  After all, it’s not like we can ask for a do-over!

I hope you’re having a great week!

The roses are blooming, the bees are buzzing, and we topped out at 90 degrees today.  Sounds like a good time to curl up for a nap, right?

Well, you might want to hold on to your tail!  I think we’re officialy flown past spring and are hurtling toward summer at about, oh, 90 miles an hour!  And that seems the general pace of life, around here.  I’m working on scrubbing up an old manuscript.  It’s a ein]rux suspense novel*.  Since this is always a tryng process, I appreciate Laura’s timely post on the cabinet, and I’m working to strike the right balance between cutting and keeping!

What happened to The Mysterious Chicken Novel, you ask?  Well, it’s still in the works.  I got stuck on chapter five because the plot as I’ve outlined it felt off, and I’m taking my time working out the kinks.  However, I’m pretty good at juggling projects and know I can’t push 3×5 plot cards around forever, so I’m sure you’ll see an update to the word count sometime this year.

In other news, our silkie chicks have survived their first big scare.  They contracted a nasty disease call coccidiosis, and gave us concern for a day or two.  Thankfully they’ve all fully recovered, and have inspired us to rearrange how we run the outside brooders.  Now all the chicks will be up on wire and away from any possible contact with the adults until they’re ‘of age’ and have a little more fiesty immune systems.  We’re grateful that these were super healthy chicks and we didn’t lose any!

Lastly, our younger splash silkies are growing in nicely.  They’re getting so big, I can just barely tell them apart from their older sister.  Here’s Tempest, strutting her stuff and striking a pose.

She gorgeous, but she does live up to her name!  In fact, if you have any freak weather or severe storms–as we are–you might want to offer her some treats because you’ve clearly offended her.

Last week I was tagged by my writing friend, Pat Esden in the latest of the blog chasers going around.  If you get the chance, check out the snippet she posted from her gothic novel, Moonhill.  I’ve read snatches of it, and it’s a lovely blend of complex family tensions and lush setting.

Here’s the 7-7-7 Challenge:
Flip to page 77 or page 7 of your current WIP.
Find line 7.
Post the 7 sentences that follow.
Tag 7 more writers.

So let’s see what I’ve got!

A pair of half-grown chicks came in carrying a wood platter between them.  It was laid down with tea things–a small kettle, an oat cake for each of us, and a fat worm already diced.
Great.  This was going to be a longer talk–otherwise known as a lecture.  Couldn’t Sensei just say ‘Congratulations, Jackson.  You’re the cock of the year and we’re grateful to have you fighting beside us?’
I waited while the chicks left and Sensei poured the tea.  I thought I did pretty good at hiding my impatience, but maybe I was a little too quick in reaching for my share of the worms.
“Always the impatience, Jackson.”  Sensei shook his head.　 “The soothsayers should have named you ‘restless one’.
I didn’t say anything.  What was wrong with being restless?  Hadn’t I just finished the agility and enemy terrain test in record time?

And there you have it!  Seven (or so) sentences from my Mysterious Chicken Novel, and now I’ll bet you feel the overwhelming urge to serve your tea with finely diced worms.

I’m tagging:
Mary Robinette Kowal
Alex Black
Pam Zollman
Ada Brown
Steve Stewart
Kat Otis
Maureen Power

I chose you all for purely selfish reasons–cause I am curious what you’re up to and would love to see a snippet of your WIP.  No worries if you don’t keep up a blog, or can’t participate in full.  Just give me a teaser in the comments and I’ll be satisfied.  Otherwise, I might have to pull out my chicken mind skills and give you a look!

Friday the thirteenth is always one of my favorite days.  It just feels like anything should be possible, you know?  Kind of like a blue moon actually taking place.  But in order for such a wondrous day to occur, there has to be a bit of quirky in the week building up to it.

I guess that’s what this chick was thinking when he stuffed himself in the feed bottle.

Don’t worry, I got him out with nothing hurt beyond his pride.  His feet feathers were showing around the bottom, so the other chicks would get curious about these fluffy black bits in their food and give them a tug, making the chick startle and cheep.  Not a dignified position for a chick to find himself in.  On the upside, that’s how we found him!

The truth is I’ve had a pretty good week.  Worked out the design knots for a new coop system we’ve been needing to finish, made our first ever very-own spicey curry chicken–

and hatched an adorable bunch of silkie chicks and guinea keets–

who have sat down to successful peace talks and agreed to stop eating each other’s toes!  Yep, a pretty good week…if you’re not looking at word count:

Which really hasn’t budged.  On the upside, I figured out a few chicken-worthy weapons, such as their super versatile egg grenades!  And, who know?  Maybe I’ll have a hyper-awesome writing-on-Friday-the-thirteenth day, to make up for it?

How was your week?  Got anything worthy of Friday the thirteenth in the works?

Gooey nutty pies, gorgeous peanut butter mousse, molten peanut butter cake, darling peanut butter pops, and of course, anything made with the classic peanut butter cookie.

I’m sure it looks gorgeous to you, but it makes me want to gag.  Literally.

There’s no getting away from peanuts, no matter how hard I try.  That was the point of an article I wrote and published in Living Without Magazine‘s 2006 winter issue.  It was called Fighting Back, and was more about fighting back my fears than fighting the omni-prevalence of peanuts.  It was my first glossy sale, and I sent my Grandpa a contributer’s copy of the magazine–only to spend the next several years wishing I had a copy for myself.  It sold out early, and was impossible to find.  I finally had to have the editors xerox a copy of the pages so at least I had something to use as credits.

That all changed today.  Yippee!

In honor of cleaning out my basement and finding a long-lost copy of the magazine that I didn’t know I had, I’m putting together a top five list of things you should know about someone with a peanut allergy:

1. No, I’m not making this up.  You’d be surprised how often this comes up–and it makes me laugh every time.  If I was going to pretend a food allergy, you can bet I’d choose brussel sprouts or cabbage, not peanuts!
2. Yes, I carry an epipen.  Yes, I’m still going to ask you to put your peanuts away. In all fairness, this one probably only comes up cause people don’t understand what an epipen does–and doesn’t do.  They think that if I have my epipen, I can still be around peanuts and I’m fine.  And that’s true.  I’m fine so long as I quickly stab myself with a elephant-sized needle and call 911, then spend the rest the day twiddling my thumbs while they pump benadryl into me through an iv.  So…yeah.  You still might want to hold off on the peanuts til I’m gone.
3. Sure, eat peanuty treats on the plane.  But don’t blame me if we have to make an unscheduled landing. This is the one that bites the most, and I apologize to anyone and everyone who packed their kids a peanut butter sandwich and then got on a plane with me.  But, the truth is, if you eat peanuts or peanut butter on a plane you are raising the risk that your plane will have to make an emergency landing if there is someone on board with a peanut allergy.  Sorry about that–I don’t like my flying either.
4. Isn’t a peanut allergy kind of a kid thing?  What’s with you? Wellll…haven’t you noticed yet that I’m not exactly grown up? lol  Seriously, not everyone outgrows their peanut allergy.  Mine has gotten worse the older I get.  Go figure.
5. Don’t you realize how annoying you are? Umm, yeah.  I kinda picked up on that the first sixteen dozen times I had to push myself into other people’s lives and ask them to put away their child’s snack or clear the class/plane/conference of peanut foods.  I get it, I really do.  But, I’ve also made up my mind that I have a right to live and move safely in public and you can choose a different snack.  So, I’m not going away, but I will smile and I will apologize and when possible, I’ll offer a snack of my own as an alternative.  Preferably clean dark chocolate!

There you have it.  And just to show that the peanut eaters and the peanut allergic can live peaceably and coexist, I’m dedicating this post to the fabulous folks at my daughter’s school, who always make me feel welcome and watch my peanut-free back, and the good people of Guinea Fowl International, who recently showed grace and ingenuity under pressure when I sprang my peanut-allergy surprise on them the first day of our conference.  They and so many others have shown me sympathy, understanding, and an open mind, for which I am grateful.  Thank you so much–and enjoy!

Some people get wiser as they age, but all I’ve gotten is more superstitious.  When I comment on how nice it’s been that I haven’t got the flu this year, I fully expect to get the flu–just because I said something about it.  If I’m waiting for something good to happen, I try to distract myself because I know that a watched pot never boils–and a part of me believes that the pot truly will take longer to boil just because I’m watching it!

I can feel it watching me watch it, see, and I know the stubborn little thing will hold back on boiling til I give it some space.  Honest!

So maybe it’s not such a surprise that as I launch myself into my new middle grade writing project, I find myself reluctant to talk about it.  Cause of the possible jinx, you know?  And even though I’m a reasonably educated person with a nice little framed degree and way too high a sense of skepticism to ever fall for such nonsense as jinxes–I still shy away from talking too much about this particular writing project.

Of course, since superstition isn’t a part of my mental identity, I’ll go all rational and tell myself it’s just that I feel the need for a different approach.  That since this novel is so different from the last–written in first person, much shorter, strong on voice and concept rather than quite so much plot–I just want to give myself room to approach it from a different direction.

And you know?  That sounds good!  So forget all that stuff I said above about my regression into superstition, okay?

What I am going to do is post a weekly word count update, with a nifty little updaterthinger, so you guys can cheer me on and keep me motivated.  Cause it’s so much easier to feel I’d better eck out another couple hundred words when I’ll be reporting them somewhere!  And since the novel’s title isn’t quite decided yet and I’ve gone all secretive writer on you, we’ll call it:

The Mysterious Chicken Novel.

Yep, that means it’s about chickens.  Silkies, to be exact, though I’m pretty sure the actual birds wouldn’t recognize themselves in what I’ve done.

Here’s the word counter, outfitted with my teeny tiny end goal of 25k words cause this is a shorter middle grade.

And here’s a commemorative pic of our new silkie chick, cause you knew I couldn’t resist posting a chick pic!  To me he looks like an Ewok so we’ve named him Wicket.

Sometimes it feels as if we run through our days just one step ahead of a very hungry dragon.  He feeds on the stuff of life–time, love, laughter, tears–and if we ever slow down he will feed on us, too.  Once in awhile we turn and face the dragon.  With great daring, we fight him back and win ourselves a little breathing room to enjoy the things of life ourselves.  But since no one can hold off an insatiable dragon for long, soon we are once again racing to get out of its reach.

Todays dragon picture is a reminder that facing the dragon can be a good thing.

Of course, I’ve paired it with a favorite anonymous quote, because I’m contrary and it’s funny–

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

We were thrilled yesterday–seriously doing a happy dance–when we caught our guineas laying their eggs out in the woods behind our pasture.  They’d chosen a very nice spot, one we’d missed when doing egg search walkabouts.

But, there they were.  Eleven eggs, tucked into a hollow between two trees and protected by brambles.  The brambles especially were a very good idea, as my scraped up arms can tell you.

Aren’t they gorgeous?  After collecting one egg a day–if that–and turning away a half dozen wannabe guinea owners cause we didn’t have enough keets, it was such a triumph to find an overflowing nest!

But we knew better than to just collect the eggs.  Guinea hens are notorious for abandoning a nest they’ve seen you near, or where you’ve collected.  So we copied the burglaring Indiana Jones routine and swapped clay eggs for their real ones when they weren’t looking.

Pretty good clay eggs, eh?  Well…they’re a bit lumpy, not exactly symmetrical and they probably stink of paint.  But, they’re egg-ish!  And the guineas thought so, too.  We spotted them out by the nest in the afternoon, and there were already two new eggs in the hollow.  Success!

Or, not.

This was what the nest looked like when I came back later to collect.  Those three little white spheres are not eggs–oh, no.  Those are golf balls.  I slipped a few of those into the nest, as well, just to fill it out.  And apparently they didn’t pass muster.  The guineas have moved their eggs and egg-laying selves–including my clay ones–to a new and as yet undisclosed location.  All my tramping through the woods couldn’t turn it up, and neither could the troops I called in for reinforcement.

And if, by any chance, it was not the guineas who did the moving and was instead a predator, I have only one thing to say.  I hope you choke on it!

After our last trip to the St. Louis zoo, the kids were really begging for some flippery friends in tuxedos, but I held firm.  Or, I thought I did.  Then our Black Copper Marans chicks showed up today, and I wondered if they’d somehow slipped their penguin chicks past me!

This guy is still deciding who he is.  What do you think?

These being penguin chicks would explain why the post office had such a hard time delivering them–and why the chicks were so exhausted from their journey!  But I don’t smell anything ‘fishy’, so I’m going to assume everything is aboveboard and I’ve just got the cutest little Marans chicks known to man!

In fact, I’m thinking I’ve got the lion’s share of fabulous fowl and sensational silkies, too.  I mean, really, what’s not to love in a face like this?

So, I’ve decided to give them their own page, or pages, on the blog.  Aside from how much easier this will make selling chicks and birds, chickens play a role in most my books.  In fact, they’re the stars of the show in my latest as-yet-to-be-revealed middle grade.  It’s time to give them their own page!  That way those of you who come here for all things chickens and guineas will have info and pics collected in one place.  And the rest of you won’t have to be quite so patient with my endless supply of chick pics.

Look for updates to the blog soon, and in the meantime, cross your fingers that our ‘penguin chicks’ put a stop to any talk in this family about getting a zoo license!