Author: Jonathon

One of the things I’m most often asked is how do I keep the productivity and the quality of the ideas so constant. Well, I thought today was a good day to show how you work through a bad day. If you’ve read the first two blogs of today you know the spider crisis has upped it’s anty. I also had allergy shots today; three shots every time I hit the door. Not my favorite thing. Then I had a second appointment in the early afternoon. My schedule was in tatters.
But the Jason book is going really well, and I know from past experience that if I take even a whole day off when the book is at this heat, that it will cool, then I’ll spend days struggling to get back to where I am right now. So, I had to work today. God, I did not want to work, but I knew I’d regret it tomorrow if I didn’t. So, how do you work when you don’t want to? How do you write when you feel totally uninspired? How can you be creative when all you can think of is the mundane crap that has drowned your day?
First you have to go to your desk, put your butt in a chair, and try. You have to write first. Put your fingers on the keyboard and type. I was lucky this time I knew exactly the scene that I was doing, and the characters in that scene. Another plus was that it was neither a sex scene, nor a fight scene. Both of those are harder for me on days when the muse is not happy. Okay, sitting down, trying to type, now music. I have my ipod with it’s music line up. Admittedly, today music that normally works for Anita, had me hitting the remote and passing up song after song. Somewhere between Seether and Strata the music started to work. Or, I started to work, and the music no longer irritated, but helped oil the gears as it’s meant to do.
I also chose one of the cups we bought on our last trip to Disney World to drink tea out of. The cup is something that reminds me of a very relaxing day, where there was no pressure, and I needed to remember a day like that. I highly recommend that you have a few things in your office that remind you of relaxing moments. Whatever that means to you, so that on days when the pressure is freaking high, so high you feel buried in it, you can touch that object and go, ahh, I remember what it’s like not to feel this tense. Some people call them comfort objects but it’s more than that for me. It’s literally that touching that piece of china, or whatever, brings back that memory. With the memory comes the peace, or joy, or happiness, that I associate with the memory, and I am back in that moment. It’s not perfect. It’s not exactly that moment, but it’s a shadow of it, and a shadow of joy is enough sometimes to get you going again. By the way, don’t let anyone talk you out of your object of joy. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you and your muse. In your imaginary world it’s all about what works for the inside of your head, don’t criticize it, embrace it. There is almost nowhere on the planet that you are more yourself than in that special piece of yourself where you create. Don’t cheat yourself, enjoy it.
I hope this helps those of you who are struggling with your own avalanche of mundane problems, and helps get you to that happy place where the muse is waiting. She really is waiting; you just have to meet her half way.

Darla called. The hospital isn’t sure it is a brown recluse bite. Which is good, but they wouldn’t even look in the container once they found out the spider was alive. Darla explained, “But if we squished it flat you wouldn’t be able to identify the spider.” Apparently, the nurse was unimpressed with this reasoning. They’ve told her to put ice on the bite and rest. They say, that’s all they do for any spider bite. If tomorrow the bite is more red, hot to the touch, or hard in the middle then they’ll give her some antibiotics.
With all the near hysteria we’ve been getting from the exterminators and others, the hospital’s attitude was interesting. And yes, interesting to me in this case means less effort than I would have wanted them to put out.

Darla got bit. Her husband, Jack, came and they are on the way to the emergency room with the live spider that she think was the culprit in a container. The bite is already red and swollen. Dammit. It may not even be a brown recluse bite, but there’s just no way that we are waiting to find out. Everything has to be treated like it is until we know it’s not. If the spider is a brown recluse it’s much smaller and more house spider looking than the last two that were definitely identified as brown recluse.
Darla reached under, or behind her desk to check a cable and that was that. She’ll be calling later from the hospital. Again, dammit.
The exterminator came yesterday and put out sticky traps, and sprayed the outside foundation, but, of course, I am allergic to anything that would work on these critters. I will need to be out of the house for five days and nights. When we get back from ComicCon, Jon and I, will have to spend at least one more night at a hotel rather than be able to sleep in our own bed. For most ordinary human beings six to twenty-four hours would be plenty to make the house safe for humans, but my reaction to it in college was severe enough that the exterminator didn’t want to chance it. Me, either.
We thought we could wait until we were gone for the five days of comiccon. The only alternative is to leave the house for five days now in the middle of one of the most trip filled months I’ve had. Okay, short of a multi-city tour. But either way I’d really rather not leave the house for five extra days this month. But I’m beginning to wonder if I need to do it anyway. Crap.

Well, I guess the muse wasn’t too tired today, after all. Thirteen pages of the Jason book. It’s officially a novel not a novellite because I have now hit over two hundred pages and we are nowhere near done. On one hand, cool; on the other hand, damn. Done in two hundred pages or under was pretty cool with MICAH. I guess we’ll have to wait for another book for another novellite.
This afternoon Jon and I are working on edits on the original comic script for the second half of ‘THE FIRST DEATH’, the prequel to GUILTY PLEASURES. Our artist needs to see if the edits will effect his end of the job.
The hardback collection of the first six comics of GUILTY PLEASURES will hit stores on July 5th. For those who don’t already know there is a bonus story that is brand new Anita never before published anywhere. More of Brett Booths great artwork to look at.
Then the first comic of ‘THE FIRST DEATH’ will hit stores on July 11th. This comic is a prequel to the book or comic of GUILTY PLEASURES. But more than that this is a story where Anita truly is the rookie. Back in the day when Anita was still not sure how to do the police work, and Manny Rodriguez was a better vampire hunter than she was. This truly is Anita before the hard edges got carved into her flesh. You get to see where most of those scars came from. It’s Anita’s first serial killer case. One of the first times Edward shows up for Anita. The first time Anita meets Jean-Claude, or goes inside his club, Guilty Pleasures.
These are the firsts you, the fans, have been asking for. I couldn’t figure out how to do them in a book. But the comic has opened up a wealth of possibilities to explore earlier things. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, they’re wrong, it’s worth about a million. At least, that’s what I’ve found. So cool.

The Frost scene is finished. It took another ten pages to do it, plus some bits of transition work to smooth out the scene that followed after in the first draft of the book. God, I am tired.
When the muse is pushing, you can do thirty pages, and feel good afterwards. But when you’re tired and you push because of deadlines, you just feel drained. I’m drained. But the scene works, and it’s good, and it goes seamless into the next part. So, mission accomplished.
I fear me that I will be too wasted to work tomorrow at all, because of pushing, but that’s okay. The exterminator comes tomorrow, and that probably would have distracted me from work anyway. I’m off to do something mindless, television or staring out a window is about the speed I’m left with for awhile. Man, I am beat.
I hope the next interviewer that asks me, if I only work when I’m inspired reads my blog. Of course, if they read the blog they’d know the answer to the question, wouldn’t they?

I meant to work on the rewrite of A LICK OF FROST, honest, I did. But, Jason was really loud in my head, so I thought well, I’ll just do a few pages and get it out of my system. You know what happened, don’t you?
I did twenty-one pages on the Jason book. I have yet to do a page on FROST, and that is the book that has the tightest deadline. Of course, when my editor asked for an extra scene she didn’t really understand what she’d asked. By the time I’m done I think the book will be close to forty pages longer. You know, you make a change and that makes you think of another change. Way leads onto way. Anyway, so I still need to do some work on FROST today. Because I really, really need to turn that in finished, or at least ready for copyediting tomorrow, which is Monday. Eek.
I’ve also forgotten to eat lunch. Damn, good work session. Trin is off with grandma seeing the Nancy Drew movie, and having lunch, so Jon and I can work. He’s doing something techie in his office. Funny, I had Jason and Anita eating, but forgot to feed ourselves. Go figure.

I just finished thirteen pages for the day, and Frost told Merry a story from his past. It made me cry. Every once in awhile a character will do something so romantic, so emotional that it will break my heart a little. I mean all the men in her life have centuries of background. There is so much story left untold about the men and their lives before Merry, that I despair. So much back ground, and I can only use a fraction of it in the books themselves. But I guess it’s fitting that in the book that bears his name, that we get a glimpse into some of Frost’s early life. I just didn’t expect him to make me cry. I mean it’s my imagination, right? So, did I make myself cry, or did my imaginary friend make me cry? Both? Neither? All the above? When you figure out how the magic works, let me know. Until then, let’s just enjoy the results.

I managed six pages on the new Frost scene yesterday. Which was pretty darn good considering everything that’s been going on here. I feel like I’m in one of those bad horror movies. You know, the ones where you have the main character try to be reasonable. “We’ve had these spiders here for awhile and nothing bad has happened. I mean we only have to hold out until Monday. On Monday we get help. What could possibly go wrong in less than three days?” Which is about the time the horde of flesh eating spiders come swarming out of the woodwork.
Again, I try to be funny and it just doesn’t feel funny. EEEH! That sound comes complete with full body shiver, and not a good shiver. Thanks to everyone who has written in to let us know that they, too, would be totally freaked. It helps me feel less wimpy.
Though everyone who wrote in stories about brown recluse bites, well, I could have done without some of that. Wow. Thanks for sharing, but wow. Bad stuff.
I have a degree in biology, I’m a big believer in knowledge is better. So I I’ve been reading up on the spiders. I know more than I wanted to know about brown recluse. First, they are tough suckers. They can go six months without food or water. Impressive. We are in the middle of mating season for them. Oh, joy. They do build webs but don’t necessarily spend a lot of time there. They are active hunters. The males hunt for the females, no site said the other way around. Some articles said they prefer carrion; already dead insects. Which is another reason not to let those old fly carcasses hang around. They like cardboard boxes, clothes that haven’t been moved in awhile; in fact any undisturbed and dark place outside or inside. We’re going to have to buy like a gross of large rubber maid containers, and get rid of every box in the house. That’s a lot of boxes.
The females make an egg sac that contains about fifty young per. She can do around five egg sacs a season. We are in the middle of mate and make little spiders season, until the end of July or into August. How quickly the little spiders hatch and grow depends on temperature, weather conditions, and food (though I guess that’s for the spiders on the outside of the sac not inside it.). It can take up to a year for a brown recluse to reach maturity. They are shy and most bites occurr because they’ve been touched, or accidentally squished. Again, check all clothes, shoes, gloves, anything that has been sitting around for awhile. Jon and I are going to get the plastic bags we take on tour to help pack, and put everything inside. Towels, clothes, you name it, it’s going into plastic.
All this reading up on the spiders hasn’t really made me feel any better. I mean it’s nice that they aren’t going to hunt us down and bite us on purpose. I even understand that to the spider biting us is a waste of time. We’re too big to eat, and we probably don’t’ taste like the desiccated carcasses of insects which is yummy to them. I know that biting us is a last resort to protect themselves from being squashed. I understand that, but it makes no difference. I’m still freaked out.
Oh, and on the forum people asking if anyone else got chigger bites at the Wolf Howl, oh yeah. It seems to have hit Jon, Charles, and Richard hardest. Not sure how Darla has fared. I am almost unscathed. I think me sitting in the smoke and ash from the fire kept them off of me. Here I was sort of not liking smelling like wood smoke but after seeing my husband’s legs and all those red spots, well, smoke me, baby, smoke me. The alternative is way too itchy.

I’ve written two blogs and I can’t post either of them. I over shared in both about different things. I’ll hit the highlights.
First, we learned yesterday that we have an infestation of Brown Recluse spiders. They are in the walls according to our exterminator, who made an emergency trip to look at the spider we had caught. All right, our friend Richard had caught the spiders in the guest room. He was manning the camera at the wolf howl. For some reason I always seem to forget to introduce him at an event where he’s working with us. Don’t know why, and he doesn’t mind. He’s the photographer who took my latest pictures that are on the books. He’s very good at what he does. Anyway, he had found several spiders in the house, and squished them. I could not identify anything from the remains. The last spider he bought intact was a wolf spider. Harmless, and okay to have in the house. But these two were not harmless, and not okay to have in the house.
We kept them for the exterminator to confirm, I mean spiders aren’t my primary area of biology now or ever. He confirmed what we’d learned from on-line pictures. Brown Recluse. We’ll be taking steps to do something with the problem, but I have to say I am unnerved by it.
I have an extra scene to put in A LICK OF FROST, that my editor and I both agree need to be there. I can’t seem to concentrate on it. You know how if you see a spider crawling on you, or step through a web, that you have the sensation that it’s still on you even when you know it’s not? Well, it’s sort of like that. I now know that we have all these dangerous spiders in the house, everywhere, and I feel like they are everywhere, even places I know they are not. I think I am seriously creeped. I feel like I’m wimping out. Jon says I’m not, that it’s normal. Sherry, our Chief of Domestic Operations, says I’m reacting normally. She is one of the most practical people I know, so I guess I am, but it still feels weak. I don’t’ like to feel weak. It makes me feel, well, weak.
I had one day of doing nineteen pages on the Jason book, then I got sick, and now we have an infestation of spiders that can cause rotting flesh eating sores to appear where they bite. I had an uncle that got bitten years ago. The bite went deep into the meat of his leg until you could glimpse the faintest gleam of bone. That memory is probably not helping steady my nerves. No, probably not.
I’d rather work on the Jason book if I was going to sit down, but it seems like every time I get going, some other responsibility interjects itself, and derails me. I feel quite derailed today. Like derailed by some giant spider sitting across my tracks. Brown recluse, why did it have to be brown recluse. You know I tried to make that last sentence sound funny, but it doesn’t sound funny. It just sounds like bad news.

The wolf howl was a howling success. (Sorry, I just couldn’t fight it off.)
We sat in the clearing around a camp fire (atmospheric, but it was hot for a fire) and did our Q and A. Then I read from A LICK OF FROST as I said, I would. The uncorrected pages that I read from will be up on e-bay. I’ve signed and dated the front page, and I think it comes with a signed copy of THE HARLEQUIN, as well. All proceeds from the auction go The Wild Canid Survival Center. By the way, we just finished finalizing the plans yesterday that the release date for A LICK OF FROST has changed. It will hit the store shelves on October 23, 2007. So, you guys get it early.
The wolves started howling during the reading. I had to stop so we could all listen to them. It was amazing. This is the second time they’ve howled during the reading almost as if they’re getting used to hearing me read. Sitting in a circle around a camp fire with a group of people reminded me so much of Bible camp, you know. With the wolves singing, I had these urge to say, “Let us pray.” What is it about the sound of wolves that moves us in a way that other sounds do not? I don’t know, but I love the fact that all of us there last night were helping take care of the very animals that were singing so beautifully.
On another religious note; today is Summer Solstice. It’s a big holiday for our faith. We celebrate the coming of summer and the sun coming into his greatest warmth and power. This is the longest day of the year. From this point on the days will grow gradually shorter until Winter Solstice when the process is reversed.
It was great seeing everybody at the signing last night. We saw a lot of familiar faces, and a good number of new ones. To all of you who flew or drove from out of state thanks for making the effort. I think the farthest was Orlando, Florida. She’s flown in twice this month, earlier for the Science Center signing.
We saw a lot of people from the LKH Forum. We did a group shot at the end of the signing with all of them, and Darla, Charles, Jon, and me. It’ll be up on-line somewhere soon.
We inducted two new members into THE ORDER OF THE PENGUIN. Pili and Carri were two of the people who made the Science Center Signing go so well. You can thank Pili, especially, for all the comic art work and memorabilia in the MARVEL SUPER HEROES exhibit that are from us. When the exhibit moves on, our stuff does not. It’s not part of the main exhibit, but Pili really wanted a St. Louis connection and she got it.
To all of you who don’t know what in the heck THE ORDER OF THE PENGUIN is, let me explain. It’s an honor awarded to fans that have gone above and beyond the call of duty at some point at a public event, or done some other service for us, the fan club, or just been a good all round egg. I think we have twelve members so far. You get a certificate suitable for framing, though you don’t have to frame it. You get a real medal with a penguin on it. Jon made the design and found a company that would make it for us. The medal even comes with ribbons which is the small bars that people wear on their uniform when they are not wearing the larger more conspicuous metal. We decided if we were going to do it, we’d do it right.
We actually had two fellow inductees at the wolf howl last night. Thanks again to Missy and Ann, you guys rock.
I’m going to go get breakfast now. Everybody be good, and enjoy the longest day of the year.