Author: Jonathon

Just a quick note before we go upstairs to bed. Wanted everyone to know that we survived the rewrite. Yea! Well, I guess you guys knew that. Jon tells me he posted something earlier today about our down time tomorrow with the electricity. Sherry helped us clean the dining room and my office. The two rooms where we divided up the time for the rewrite of A Stroke of Midnight. All the used sticky notes are thrown away. All the ones that didn’t get used this book have been moved away from the computers. The area above my main computer is clean and pristine. Empty wall space, wow. Haven’t seen that in awhile.
I must have given Sherry two hundred pages or more to shred. Old versions, different decisions than actually went into the book. I do save out takes, but sometimes I do more than one version of a scene, and I take the one that works better.
An empty office, an empty white board, an empty wall. God, I love it. I love the empty waiting. I used to be like most writers and feared the blank page, but when a book is ready to go and has been chomping at the bit as hard as this newest one, there’s no blank page to fear. There’s just recovering enough to give myself over to the muse, and let ‘er rip. Once I’m past the point that I’ve got copious notes, then it will slow down, but it’s going to be one hell of ride until then. Ride ’em cowboy.
Where does the new hobby part come into play? Jon and I had our first ballroom dance lesson. I’ve wanted to do it for years, but my first husband would not dance with me, as many husbands will not. Jon and I have always danced together from the beginning of our dating, but we just didn’t seem to have the time for lessons. I’d forgotten a very important lesson; you don’t find the time to do things, you make the time. So, we made the time. We found something new that working with our trainer has made us better at. Cool. Physical fitness translates.

OK, Tomorrow, February 25th we are going to be without power. Its part of the addition we’re putting on. If you order late today or tomorrow, it probably won’t get shipped until Monday. The websites will be up, as will our email. We just won’t be able to get to them.
I’ll post some new pictures of the progress, today or Saturday.
Late

After a long, long pregnancy and labor, finally, Jonathon and I are thrilled to announce it’s a bouncing baby book. Weight: eight pounds. We put the little sucker in Fed-Ex. It’s off to New York, and I don’t think we will be seeing it again until it is ready to go on the shelves sometime close to April.
We worked until three A. M. one night. Next night I called it at midnight because anytime I stopped pacing, I swayed in place. Between nine and ten o’clock for last night. We’d so hoped to be done before we went to bed, but we left the last go through for today. I honestly don’t know what we would have done if Jon’s parents, Art and Mary, hadn’t been able to take Trin for Friday night. In fact, she’s spending tonight with them, too, because Jon and I are just done. Not stick a fork in me, honey, done, but burnt to a crisp, the roast has been in the oven for hours, and is now a little black brick done. I’m so tired I’m crying at odd moments, for no reason. Jon’s doing his pacing through the house thing. He’s too tired to do anything, or to think, but once you get him going this hard, he has trouble letting go of the push of it. The book goes out the door and I’m ready to hibernate; Jon has to do a restless marathon before he can finally collapse. What does Jon do to help with the rewrite? He writes notes to save my hand. He types up my long hand notes, again to save my injured arm. But, he also checks me when I’m too tired to know if I’m right, or wrong, about a note the editor made. He helps me test my understanding again and again. Especially when I’m too tired, or too close to the book, or both.
Darla was out most of this week, so Jon really took the brunt of this rewrite. The fact that we haven’t found a reason to argue, or have a fight this week is either a testament to how much we love eachother, divine intervention, or both.
I’m going to fetch my husband, and we’re going to bed.

This is a thank you to everyone who sent in positive messages last weekend. So many positive messages that the e-mail crashed three times. This is not a complaint, guys. Darla explained to me that the crash happened because of the overwhelming number of positive messages. That apparently, everyone in the silent majority got together all at once and decided to let us know how much they love the books and how shocked they were at how rude some people have been. One message we got several times was, if I had been that rude to anyone, they’d be screaming about it, and rightly so. But they feel justified in being that rude to me, to us. I can’t explain it guys. If I could I would. It is a puzzlement.

Happy Valentine’s Day to Everyone! We thought we might give a list of romantic stuff we did this year. No, it won’t be a complete list, I don’t know you people that well.
My favorite romantic gesture this year from Jon, has to be the fuzzy stuffed toy black plague bacillus from Giant Microbes. Why is this my favorite? Because I didn’t know they existed, and because Jon knows how much I love scary cute stuff. You gotta love a fuzzy black microbe with huge blue eyes, and a tag that has an electron microscope picture of the actual organism. Our personal trainer, Keath, was here that day, and when he saw it, he said, “Way to be romantic, Jon.” (We’ve helped him improve his sarcasm skills.) I was hugging and kissing Jon, so I had to come up for air to say, “Romance is all about knowing your audience, Keath.” Then back to kissing.
{Jon Here} My favorite Romantic Gesture is a more distributed one. I love it when Laurell pays attention to me and actually listens to me prattle on about some bizarre, tangential and/or unrelated gaming fact/story/thingie. I am a gamer. Laurell knew this when she met me, and still married me. The fact that she listens, and even remembers some of the stuff I yammered on about means so much to me. It still amazes me that she lets me talk and talk about things that hold little interest to her. In a recent White Dwarf magazine article, there was a list of things to get/do for your gamer valentine. One of the items on the list was to listen to them talk about their hobby. This is a good bit of advice for anyone. If you really do love them, then spending a little bit of time listening to them talk about something they enjoy isn’t a hardship. You might even be surprised and find it more interesting than you expected. {Back to Laurell}
How can I not listen to him talk about gaming, when he lets me talk endlessly about dogs. Not only does he listen to me, but he’s actually absorbed some of the knowledge. Just as
I can now talk semi-intelligently about Warhammer, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Halo. It helps that I gamed years ago. As it probably helps that we have four dogs.
{Jon again} A more traditional romantic gesture that we have both done for each other is, for no other reason than we love each other, we have gotten roses for each other. No special occasion other than a day ending in “y”. It helps that both Laurell and I like getting flowers. {Back to Laurell again}
We’ve also gotten orchids for eachother. One of our favorite romantic gestures that we do regularly is still reading to eachother at night. Cuddling down together in bed, and listening to the voice of the person you love read some wonderful story to you, what could be better. Well being naked while you do it, but then that’s a given for us. (This only works if you lock your bedroom door. You are adults and deserve your privacy. Do not let your children invade it. Or at least it would drive me mad. And one of our goals in life is never to have Trinity walk in on us when we’re doing anything we would have to explain.)
Our jacuzzi tub fits two, and I love to cuddle with Jon in the tub. Of course I like the tub when it’s just me, too. Baths are always a nice way to end the day, with or without company. (Yes, we have covered the bath water in rose petals. Romantic, sensual, but skim the petals out before you pull the plug on the drain. You do not want petals in your drain, your pipes, or other parts of the plumbing.)
This hits the romantic highlights that we’re willing to share on the blog. Romance for us is made up of a thousand small gestures all year long, not just one day of the year. It is Jon’s arms sliding around me when I’m feeling down, or the feel of his breath against my neck as we fall asleep. It is dividing the kid duties so it all gets done. It’s forgiving eachother when we’re grumpy, and loving eachother even when the day was a scramble, and bed time just means sleep and nothing else, because we’re too tired or too sick. Romance is what you do everyday to remind eachother and yourself, why you chose eachother. Real romance means that a smile across the dinner table in the midst of a hectic family meal can mean more than a roomful of roses.

Thanks to everyone that’s given us advice and sympathy for the recent illnesses. To the advice of eating more fruit, especially oranges. The kiddo adores the clemantines. She was eating two to three a day, until her tummy let her know that was a little too much. But at the time of her first virus she was averaging one a day. We’ve all been taking vitamins, eating fruit, eating healthy. I guess sometimes, you just can’t fight off the germs.
Gotta go eat lunch and get back to work. I’m in the rewrites for A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. Which means first filling in a couple of scenes I left blank. I didn’t realize how blank until I read back over the notes for the first area. I did not realize how little was there for that particular scene until I went back. Sigh.

Well it’s official, the kiddo has the flu. Whether Jon and I are going to get it remains to be seen. Ah, well.
Am I the only one that when my schedule is blown to hell for almost a week that it’s hard to get back to work? Darla is much more adaptable than Jon or myself to changes in routine, or interruptions. I’ve noticed a pattern with friends that are the oldest of a large family, three or more. They all seem to roll with changes better than those of us who are only children. Jon and I are both onlies. I was raised by an elderly parent(grandparent). There was very little change in our routine from day to day. Few if any visitors. It was very quiet, very isolated. It has left me with few coping skills for lots of people, lots of interruptions. I’ve talked about this with other onlies, or with people who are more than eight years apart from their nearest sibling, and find that we all have problems with this sort of thing. Darla, as the oldest of five, is so much more placid about all the changes and activity around here in the last year. The construction hasn’t really bothered her. It’s driven me nuts.
I’m finally getting a little used to all the people moving back and forth that I can see from my office, or on the roof near my office, that was fun. No, not really. But having both Jon and Trin sick at the same time has just really thrown me. It isn’t that I didn’t have chaos in my childhood, my grandmother and I both have a temper, but it was the usual chaos. It was the same problems, not new situations to adapt to, but the same routine stuff, good or bad. So you adapt to the usual, but as a child if you don’t get a lot of different situations, then, as an adult, you seem limited in your response to changes. Or, the people I know from similar circumstances seem unable to adapt to the degree that the people from homes with a lot of new and different experiences adapt.
So for all of you that mourn you didn’t have a peaceful childhood, think how much better it may have made you be able to adapt to changes, and breaks in routine. To all of you out there like myself that are still having trouble adapting, my sympathies. It has only recently been brought to my attention how much a prisoner of our childhood we are, the only way to change it is it to be aware of it. Be aware of why we do things, or why some things bother us so much more than they seem to bother others. Until you know why you react to something, you cannot control or change that reaction. You must know why, before you can change the how.
I’m off to try and roll with the vagaries of life. My usual response is to come out of my corner fighting. When there is nothing to fight against, only the disruptions of normal life, that’s when I am most often at a loss.

I’m not sure if this is going to be helpful or not, but I’m the kind of person to throw gasoline on a fire. sometimes it puts the fire out, sometimes it just makes it worse. In other words, this is proably going to offend most of you.
The Guest Book. It was originally intended to be a place for people to leave comments or little messages for us while we were out on tour. It served its purpose, and we are greatful for it. But then something happend. It became a hotbed of negitivity and name calling. If this was in the official forums, the offending parties would have been banned, the post moderated and everything kept nice and civil.
But it isn’t part of the official forums. Its on the blog site, and that makes it mine and mine alone. I don’t have to run things by anyone else to make a change in the background of the page. And the guest book is most definalty background. I’ve been considering for over a month if I should just trash the guest book, and point all the commenting over to the ofical forums. Make everyone play by the rules over there. I think it would be a little more pleasent it you had to deal with the fact that the bords are moderated and dseverly enforced. Mostly by the other memebers, long before one of the moderators has to step in.
I don’t know what I’m going to do right now. but expect a change. and proably one that is less pleasent for you, the readers.
later

Ok, two things well, maybe three.
one. I’ve got an auction up on ebay. The procedes are all mine and I’m not giving them to charity. The fan club dose that. This is mine.
two. One of Laurell’s Fellow Alternate Historians has a web-page and blog up at her site. www.rettmacpherson.com Darla and I set up the site and the blog. So enjoy.
Three. The Kid and i are sick again. 🙁 I with a Sinus Infection, and her shortness with some kind of cold virus. Hopefully this is the end of the illness for the forseable future. I know its getting old for me, so it must be very trying for Herself.
l8r

It’s not a school; its a germ factory. Trinity has her third virus in less than a month’s time. She’s never been this sick this often. Jonathon has finally succumbed to the sinus infection that he’s been fighting off. He’s on antibiotics. Trin, unfortunately, hasn’t got something that antibiotics will effect. I thought she was over it, when this morning her temperature was 98.something, but her temp spiked in the late morning back to 101.something. It is an improvement over the 103 she had at my ex-husband’s house. He informed me how sick she was, and when her fever went down a little, he’d be dropping her off. I could say more about that, but I’ll just leave it at the bare facts.
So, I’ve got Jon tucked up in our bed, and Trin is downstairs with grandma. There’s homework to do, no matter that she’s sick. The school warned us last year that the difference between second and third grade is big when it comes to the amount of work, but boy, they were not kidding. She’s missed two days, which means she’s got more homework than I remember getting until somewhere about fifth or higher grade. Has anyone checked out that as we force our kids to learn facts earlier and earlier that our test scores as a nation are going down, as compared to other industrialized nations. More is not always better. Earlier is not always the way to go. Sometimes letting kids be kids a little longer would not be so bad. Sigh.
Anyway, I’m going to try and work on the rewrite, because the deadline is past and everyone’s panicking in New York. I might panic, if I had the energy. I’m oddly calm, or maybe I’m just tired. If I make it through this third bunch of sickness without getting it, I will have beat odds Vegas wouldn’t take. Roll them dice.