In Costume

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Halloween Comes

Get ready for some fun! This is my first virtual... cyber... online Halloween ever.

We'll start at The Wild Rose Press at Midnight EST with the 24hr Halloween Ball. Check out the WRP Chat room!

And we'll go from there.

13 Ways to Mark the Time

I happen to be one of those strange people who are not afraid of passing time. There was high school, and I survived. There was college, and it was interesting. There was graduate school, and I thrived.

I'm always looking forward to new challenges, and I still feel like I'm growing up, not growing old.

The downside of it, is that I tend to forget my own age, too. So sometimes, it's a good thing to look back and compare who you were to who you are. And it's not a bad thing to learn from your own life in order to infuse your characters with the potential for change.

In no particular order:

1. Lessons Learned. In a very practical and material fashion: degrees, grades, or certifications. Or just courses or workshops you took. "Remember, that was the year we got together and plotted 9 books in one weekend." Now that's a milestone. And yes, it happened, and what fun it was!


2. Children. "The year when.." or "The time when..." Children offer dozens of milestones. First day of school ever. First graduation. First, er, disciplinary action.


3. Movies. How did seeing a certain movie change your way of looking at storytelling, or your perception of a certain book, actor, or even an entire genre? Was that the summer when you started reading (or writing) a new type of novels?


4. Music. Did you go to a concert? Did you discover a new artist? Did you meet someone the month when a certain song was playing on the radio all the time?


5. Celebrations at work. It's a good time to see how your attitude towards people has changed, and how co-workers have become close friends. How you once saw the very place where you spend your days, and how you see it now. Even your daily commute: how was it when you prepared for the Christmas (or whatever) party last year? How is it now? What's changed?


6. Holidays at home. They never seem to change. That's the whole point of holidays. It's the comfort of continuity. But it's also the knowledge that we can maintain this continuity while we change. What are the small differences that we admit within the sameness of our traditions?
   


7. Changing bodies. Changing health. From infant children to elderly parents, and diabetic needs, and everything in-between.
   


8. Birthdays and candles on the cake. That was rather obvious.


9. The tree in the front yard planted the first year you moved into your new house.


10. Old photographs of things you see every day.


11. Schools your youngest children, or your friends' youngest children, don't go to anymore.


12. A growing library and books stacking two and three deep on your shelves. Moving because you need room for books.


13. Learning something new you never thought you'd be interested in.

What's your way to mark time?

The A/C saga continues, but not all's bad...

We thought we had it fixed.

We were wrong.

I ought to have known there was a reason my inner procrastinator bulked at posting the issue resolved, and the saga ended.

The A/C is still on the fritz.

Fortunately, we're not under a F100+ heatwave, and we can actually enjoy cool morning temperatures.

I just wish they would discover WHAT the problem is, so my husband can finally settle down and enjoy life, instead of worrying about the house crumbling down around him.

He worries enough for all of us.

In other news...

I have a date!

I mean... I have a release date for The Joining.

February 11, 2009.

Mark your calendars!

It's been in the works for a while. It's a fun little story, sci-fi, of course. Coming out at The Wild Rose Press.

In the meantime, you can visit my website to watch the trailer (it's the first trailer I ever made).

If that wasn't enough news, I spend most of the day yesterday at a workshop organized by our local RWA chapter, SARA. It was the first of our Build-A-Book workshops, and I had so much fun giving a talk on "plotting as pantser," or how do you keep your wits about you when all the plotting schemes seem to go awry? Or something like that.

And I'm still offering online workshops, so check out my website: Otter Creations for more information. There's one coming in October for those who are brand new to the Internet: I'll help you get comfortable with all the terminology, figure out where to start with your web presence, and get you ready to start on the basics of HTML, which comes...

The November workshop!
It's all about image tags and links and colors... Just to give you a taste and get you started. Nothing scary. Nothing major.

Finally, when you're ready to put something up, you'll need to write up something quick to grab your visitors. That's when you'll want to try the December Blurb Workshop. It's short, it's intense, it's hands-on.

And yes, I'm still writing. I just have to finish something. I've had a problem with attention span lately...

Hot... hot... Hot...

... and it's not the writing!

After a quick trip to visit our longtime friends, we came back yesterday to a house that felt too warm. In South Texas, that's a Very Bad Sign. The good side: it was late in the day, and the house wasn't TOO hot yet. The bad side: yep, you guessed it, the A/C wasn't working.

Now, anyone who hasn't lived in a hot climate might think that it's no big deal. Just open the windows and turn on the fans. Eat some ice cream and drink cold drinks.

Not when the night temperatures don't drop below the mid-seventies, the morning is humid, and the daytime heat flirts with the 100 mark. There's just no time for the house to cool down. And you never know when the 100-mark will be reached or passed. Don't count on the official reports to give you an accurate estimate of the temperature in your neighborhood.

I mean, official readings in the shade at the airport?? Come on! How about off the roof of my house? I'll even take a reading in the shade on the northern side of my house.

So, all right, I've weathered heat. I've camped in heat. I can take it for the day or so it will take for the A/C guys to come and fix it.

The real problem is my 82-year-old oh-so-European mother, who is still baffled by the South Texas climate, even after 10 years of living in it. She really doesn't do well in the heat.

I guess this won't be a good writing day for me.

They all have stories

One upon a time, your mother probably told you not to listen to gossip. Or to spread it, either.

What did you do?

If you're a nice person (and I have no reason to doubt it), you didn't spread any malicious rumors. But did you walk away when you heard juicy ones? Did you look the other way when you noticed body language that contradicted what was commonly known -- or belied the way things should have been?

Of course not. Because whatever your age was, you were a writer. And everyone, and everything around you told a story.

One of the most common questions authors are asked is "where do you get your ideas?"

We might as well answer -- where do we not?

Anyone takes a look at the grumpy expression of a neighbor--co-worker--classmate, and most people will think: "what's her (his) deal today?"

A writer will think: "I wonder what his (her) story is? What drove this person to such a bad mood that she (or he) can't hide it from the world? What traits of character make up someone who feels the need to spread their mood around? How would I show that in a story?"

If you're a visual artist, you walk around noticing details of shape and color and line. If you're a fashion designer, you notice draping and color and, again, line, but with a different emphasis. If you're a writer, you notice all of that, but instead of thinking how to render it all in pencil, color, or the drape of cloth, you start looking for the one word that will convey the essence of that single instant when you experienced the precise and fleeting emotion that stopped you.

Is it harder? I don't know. Easier? I don't know either. Is it like being a poet? I still don't know!

Everything is a story for me. It's the story of the teller as much as the story of the told. It's the story of the artist as much as the tale in the image. It's Vermeer painting the image, it's the brush that touched the canvas and the hand that held the brush, as much as the colors and the light and the shadows. It's the wealthy patron commissioning the work as much as the subject of the painting. It's the person who sat for the portrait as much as the image in the frame.

A trip through time. A passage into a different world. A glimpse into another person's mind.

A story. A tale. A marvel.

And going home to write a story of my own.

Workshops

It all started because I missed teaching. It turned out that teaching helps me focus my own thoughts and organize my knowledge. But it continued because I'm having fun.

What? My workshops.

To date, I have two set up, and one more in the works.

• A basic introduction to the Web
• A workshop on writing blurbs
• An upcoming second-level workshop on editing Web pages

The Websites workshops are very basic, and they're geared towards people who are good with words but bad with technology. And don't have the inclination to wade through technospeak.

After years and years of struggling to communicate with my husband about our websites on the same advanced level as we do when it comes to our lectures, to literature, and to everything else, I realized that some people can think computers, and some people can't. It's just the way you organize your thoughts. And no, it doesn't make you a machine-like zombie. Just odd in a different way. But then all writers are a bit odd, right?

I'm geeky. I love computers. I love to play with them. Using the computer to write is as much delight as composing sentences and finding the right word.

Strange isn't it? When the story flows, the act of typing the words gives me as much pleasure as seeing the resulting text align itself on the page. Doing it with pen and paper just isn't the same.

I wonder how it would work with pen and quill...

Nah. Too messy.

Anyway. Too many projects happening at once, as always. But if you're curious, check out Otter Creations for the next upcoming workshop and join me for the fun. The more participants the merrier. And if you do join in, don't hesitate to ask questions! That's what I'm doing this for. How do I know what you really want to know if you don't ask?

Oh, and if you have any ideas for future workshops, I'm listening. I'm not saying I'll do them (assuming I can do them), but I'll surely think on it.