Tales from the Raven

I want to duck my head under my wing and hide when I see how neglected my poor blog has been.  That, or stand up and sqwak.  Which, come to think of it, may give you some insights into where I’ve been!

Here’s another clue:

Yep, we got those guinea keets I was debating about–and they’re so cute!  And so sweet!  And so much trouble!  Lol.  We bought twenty from two (mostly) local hobbyists, ranging in age from about a week to a few hours old.  You can see how much variation there is in the bunch, and we’re super excited to see what color they grow up to be.  Guinea fowl genetics can be a bit complicated, but we’ve got a good group of blue, brown, and recessive genes represented in this group.  We’re hoping for a rainbow flock!

I’ve also spent some time like this:

Which is a highly productive way to get lots of reading in, I’ve found.  And in doing so, I discovered the thrilling stories of my fellow Hillsborough writer John Claude Bemis.  Tall tales, magic, coming of age and discovery–what a great read!  The Clockwork Dark is one series that you’ll want to clear your calender and settle in with, so be forewarned!

In writing news, I’m back down to three fulls of 13 Demon Days out with agents, but still feel hopeful as the misses are very close calls.  I’ve also this week discarded a half dozen beginnings to my new YA novel, Siren’s Scream, and tossed around characters ’til they’re dizzy.  I’m feeling really excited about this novel, and the story that’s growing in my mind as I work through the early kinks.  Yay for inspiration and the right doses of perspiration!  Now if only I can harness the flighty energy of my new guinea keets while keeping a steady hand on the creative spark, I’ll be full-steam ahead!

Or, rather, to ADD guineas, that is the real question!  I want some–lovely little tick eaters running around keeping my yard free of pests.  But, do I want to deal with raising the keets (babies) just now?  I’m thinking yes.  We’ve got a ‘room’ in the barn that’s baby-proofed and has a brooder light so I wouldn’t have to keep them inside.  The kids aren’t too busy with school yet, so they could help.  And our single surviving adult guinea is really desperate for some company that isn’t chicken-faced.  Plus, they’re super cute!

On the other hand, no one I know personally has had much luck raising guineas.  I think the success ratio has been something like one in five or less.  That’s mostly cause the little buggers are really wild and tend to escape before they’re old enough to be out.  And, it’s kind of annoying to have an adorable little ball of fluff that hates the sight of you, even when you’ve been patient and hand fed it from day one.  But, that’s guineas for you.  Definitely not so domestic as chickens or other birds.  What do you think?  Jump in and hope for the best, or hold off for now?

You know all the buzz about ebooks?  Indie authors, and the latest way to make $$ on the internet writing what you love?  Well, get ready cause I just finished an interview with Sarra Cannon, indie author extraordinaire!  It’ll go up on my group blog, the cabinet, this Friday morning.  Come check it out, and bring your questions about ebooks, demons, or anything Sarra!  She’ll be dropping in throughout the day to answer questions and I can tell you from experience that Sarra is super fun and a real wealth of information!

I picked Friday partly ’cause I will be home all day–the first time in two weeks! 

Eight states, seven YA books (including Summer of the Traveling Pants, which just seemed appropriate!), three swimming pools, one lovely old abbey, and countless desserts later, I feel ready to wave the kids off to school and dive into my new project.  Seven apocalyptic seals, a group of girls marked by fate and a cursed island.  I can’t wait!

Facebook, email, texting…if you’re anything like me, sending letters in the mail as a form of communication sounds really, really sloooow.  But what if you couldn’t even use the good old red flag on your mailbox, and had to send your messages by bottle and cork?  What would you say?

Me, I think I’d write a blog.  Why?  Because obviously anything that was meant to be ‘current’ or newsworthy wouldn’t be by the time it was received.  What’s that, you say?  You’re stuck on an island and feel certain the turtles are in cahoots with the sharks and negotiating your demise?  Well, the message in the bottle isn’t going to help you–you’ll have moved on from that crisis, led a revolution in Atlantis and settled down to raise mer children by the time help shows up.  But a blog, now, that’s intended to be a timeless shout out from one human being to the rest the two-legged population, and it’s okay if the message gets picked up by a beachcomber in Texas instead of your Aunt Lucy in Maine.

So, here’s my message in a bottle:

The beach is great, the water’s even warm!  And we’re making friends.  Meet Alexias, an Entwife.  She’s enjoying the sun and sand, but would like to send word to Treebeard that she’s here.  Maybe he’d like to visit sometime.

We’ve also made friends with birds, crabs, and even dolphins, but we’ve spent the most time with the sun.  We’re actually becoming quite chummy.  We have a deal.  I wear my sunblock (even on my feet) and the sun promises to make an appearance every day so we can play.  He even posed for his picture the other morning, which I found very considerate.

Of course, he made me get up at the uncivilized hour of 6:00am for this shot, but I love the pic so much I’m not holding a grudge.

Lastly, a few words of advice from one islander to another.  Don’t let anyone pee on your jellyfish sting–even if they line up to help.  Never believe your children when they tell you they’re heading to the beach in their street clothes but ‘won’t get in the waves.’  And if you see an alligator, climb a tree.  Preferably higher and faster than the guy behind you.

Have a great week, and send me a reply by bottle when you finish off your coke!

Question: What’s the common thread between a dorky tent-camp manager, a traffic cop, and a shark?

Answer:  They’re all inspiration for characters in the new series I’m working on.  They’re also all proof you should think carefully before inspiring a writer.  People often get excited when they meet a writer–they love the idea of having a character based on their very own self and being made famous in fiction.  But in my fiction at least, they’re more likely to be infamous!

Take the traffic cop, for example.  I’ve known lots of great cops–I’m even related to a few.  And in a general sort of way, these law enforcement officers will make it into my books.  But, good guy characters quickly take on a life of their own and become a whole person in the book, seperate from the real-life person that was their jumping off point.  Villains will change, too, but often don’t need to change as much.  This is probably because the person that inspired the villain wasn’t someone I knew well and yet is someone I can readily associate a lot of emotion with.

Emotion is a writer’s best friend.  And who doesn’t feel emotions of one kind or another when looking at this?

The emotion I feel is outrage, and I associate it with the cop who will be immortalized as one of my new villains.  When I looked into my rearview mirror as he walked away, the emotion was strong.  I knew he had speculated my speed based on my having passed a slow moving trailer.  He drove behind the trailer for awhile to see how fast it was going, then figured how fast I must have been going when I passed it.  Except the trailer had slowed down and pulled half off the road when I passed it, asking me to pass, so the cop was wrong.  And he didn’t care.  He didn’t even pretend he’d actually clocked me going the speed he ‘wrote me down for.’  But outrage is a great emotion to pull from when developing a character, so I’m grateful to the cop for providing me such an easy building base for my next villain.  He’ll make a good one.

I don’t have as much emotion to pull from when thinking of the tent-camp manager.  For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that if an entire campground is bedding down for the night and the children are trying to sleep–after all, it was midnight–the manager really shouldn’t join the one rowdy group that won’t shut up and turn down the radio.  Not the best thing for business.  But, while he was thoughtless, and bumbling, he’ll only make rude-guy or henchmen status.  As for the shark?  He’s inspired a whole new race of shark-men hybrids that can come out of the water, and he’ll be immortalized as a truly scary cold-blooded killer with the desire to annihilate.  I hope he doesn’t mind.

I am in denial.  Every day I pretend I have a life, and the reason I check my emails seventeen times an hour has nothing to do with the three requested fulls I have currently under consideration with agents.  I act cool, casual.  Pretend patience.  But I’m not fooling anyone.  The truth is, I’ve been bit by the querying bug, and the prognosis isn’t good.

I’ve heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, with the expectation of getting different results.  I’d say that’s the definition of of querying, too.  Can the fact that the two share an identical definition be coincidence?  Nope!  So, what is one to do when bit by the querying bug?  There are several options.  The first, as we’ve just established, is to go crazy.  Let me provide a few tips on that:

• Use a magnifying glass if you’re trying to tell if that paper rejection letter has been hand signed.  The ink will blur and bleed into the paper and appear uneven when compared to printed letters.
• If the letter seems so courteous as to be almost encouraging and you’re sure it’s personalized, check query tracker.  You’ll probably find someone else who’s posted the letter–hoping it’s a personal rejection!
• If you’re still not sure and can’t rest ’til you know, simply make up a fake novel (preferably with a really bad premise) and a pseudonym, and query the agent again.  If you get the same encouraging letter, you know it’s a form.  If you get a request to see pages, start writing.  Fast.
• A rejection letter with the title of your book mentioned has been slightly personalized, but doesn’t have the same rejection clout as a letter which mentions your characters by name.  The first can be pulled off with a merging program (or so I understand) while the second requires an overworked assistant or exhausted intern to actually glance at your pages.  This is real rejection currency, my friends.  Use it wisely.
• The highest form of rejection letter is of course a letter which suggests editorial changes in case you’re inclined to do a rewrite.  However, this most worthy of all rejection letters is closely followed by a one-line note from the actual (real live!) agent that’s been added underneath the standard form rejection.  Rejection letters like this are good for a batch of home-baked brownies, or maybe even a carefully casual brag at your next writing group meet up.

Another course of action when out on submission (or, if you’re like me, an option to pursue in and around the crazies) is to try your hand at actual writing.  You know, the thing we do when we’re not critiquing, blogging, networking, guest posting, mentoring, organizing writing get togethers, editing, reading books on writing, researching, reading fiction (to keep up with the genre!), perusing publisher’s marketplace, researching agents, writing query letters, obsessing over rejection letters and fantasizing over bestsellerdom.  Here’s a handy scale to put this writing project in perspective:

1. The worst writing project is something like a short story.  You finish it too fast, and will have to come up with a new project.  What’s more, if you send it out on submission you’ll just add to your rejection woes.
2. The second worst project is the sequel to the book out on submission.  You will either discover that you don’t really have anything more to say and catch a deathly fear of series, or you will find yourself even more invested in the sequel than the first book, and each rejection letter will sound a double death knoll to your beloved books.
3. A medium level project is a companion novel set in the same universe/place as your submitted novel, but not dependent on it.  This will allow you to pretend you’re not obsessing, while enjoying the writerly euphoria of developing back story and creating a world building encyclopedia.
4. One of the best projects you could work on is a new, standalone novel that is independent of your submitted book but still works well with the ‘brand’ you’ll establish when (note my optimism!) you get the first book published.
5. An almost ideal best project is one you can kid yourself into believing needs to be completed before agents get back to you on the submitted book.  For example, that lovely (but impractical) story you promised your nieces you’d write.  Once you’re ‘real’ book is under contract/agented, you won’t have time for fun projects, so you’d better get it done now while you have the time.  If you can make yourself really believe this logic, you can make the time waiting to hear back on those Fulls really fly.
6. The ideal project is one which combines  4 and 5, so you’re not only working productively, but believe you have a compelling need to finish this project before the agents get back to you.  And this must be done without falling into the sequel trap of project 3.  Good luck with that!

The third way of dealing with the submission willies is to cultivate optimism.  You are going to get an agent, it’s only a matter of time.  Since the deal is as good as inked, there’s no reason to feel anxiety or lose any sleep.  You can spend your time doing sensible things and enjoy the contented feeling of knowing that your agent is out there–they just haven’t found you yet.

Of course, if you master that last, uber-optimistic method, odds are good you fit nicely into the definition we started with–crazy!

Just a quick note to say I posted on the cabinet, a discussion about plot pacing.  And different paces of pacing.  Because apparently I’m still living up to my childhood nickname of Speedy Gonzales,

Only now it’s in my writing!

Is another man’s treasure, right?  That how the saying tells it.  So I guess it’s no surprise that the recent heat wave that’s had most of us moaning and groaning that even the pool was too hot would be heaven for someone out there.  Some one prickly, pineapple-shaped…and presumed dead.  My Cycad, to be exact.

I ‘inherited’ it at a Christmas party in December.  It was a white elephant gift, one that no one else wanted.  I brought it home and read up on it.  Great for beginners, hard to kill, very tolerant of neglect–perfect!

Not.  The one thing it wants is light, and that’s the one thing we haven’t got in this house.  Not a single window that can truly claim the title of sunny.  So I pampered the Cycad (translate–tried to drown it) and moved it from window to window, but it still dropped leaf after dead brown leaf on the floor.  When the weather warmed up, I gave up and stuck it outside where the cat curled up around it.  Before long, the poor Cycad was thoroughly dead and I had to remind myself every time I walked by its carcass that the thing needed throwing out.

But what it really needed was a sauna–and that’s what we’ve had for the last few weeks.  Behold, the newly rejuvenated Cycad!

I’m thinking of naming it Lazarus.

I’ve discovered something better than forks, knives, spoons, chopsticks or even fingers for eating food.  It’s lettuce!  It started one day when I wanted the mandarin orange chicken my husband was cooking, but not the rice that went with it.  I remembered how much I love PF Changs lettuce wraps, and, Ta Da!  One lettuce mummy later the problem was solved.

The next morning I wanted eggs, but was feeling hungry for veggies, too.  Well, we eat spinach greens in omelettes, so why not wrap my scrambled eggs up, I ask you?  A few snips of the scissors and our garden was minus one head of leafy lettuce, while I was one breakfast wrap richer.

And so it went.  I’m sure by now you’ve figured out where this is going…

Pizza-lettuce wraps!  I just slice the pizza into strips, and lay it in the lettuce.  Yum!  I’ve also tried spaghetti-lettuce wraps, which were quite good.  I plan to branch into desserts this weekend, as a fitting way to celebrate the happy things happening with my 13 Demon Days queries.  The world is my lettuce wrap, and I am its connoisseur.  What would you be willing to try wrapped up in a piece of lettuce?

P.S. I’ve also posted over in the Cabinet this week!

When we got back from the beach, our fish tank had sprouted a leak (down in the sump) and was leaking salt water all over our living room.  Guess our fish wanted to come with.  I can’t blame them for trying, but I’m afraid that turning the living room into a massive salt water tank just isn’t an option.  So let’s say it one more time:

No ocean waves allowed in the living room!

Okay, glad we got that straight.  Ocracoke island was fabulous, as predicted.  The lovely ponies were kind enough to share breakfast with us–but we begged off and told them we just ate.

The ghost crabs also posed for a picture, which was especially generous of them given that they also had an ocean wave showing up in their living room.

When we hiked out to Teach’s point, we found the remains of a greek city that Blackbeard had stolen and tossed overboard in the fighting.  Unfortunately, no buried treasure.  Here’s a pic of the ‘ruins.’

I brought home books about the island, but have been splitting my time between the nonfiction books and Sarra Cannon‘s fantastic demon series.  Congrats to Sarra on the release of number four, Shadow Demons, this weekend!  And in further links, if you’re heading out to the beach for the Fourth and hunting for books, Becca Fitzpatrick’s got a few she’s recommending on the Cabinet.  Happy reading, and happy travels.  Have a safe Fourth!