Author: Jonathon

Today was one of those days that I wish everyday could be at the computer. I finished the days writing before lunch. Not just five pages, which is the goal, but sixteen pages. Sixteen pages written in a glorious rush. The demi-fey court was on stage, and to satisfy me about the moths, butterflies, insects, and such being accurate, I’ve used seven research books. Mostly identification books, so that I can pick insects that are native to Europe, and primarily England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. I found a wonderful book called, NIGHT VISIONS, which is this wonderfully coffee table book with fantastic close up pictures of moths. I’ve found it’s much harder to find really good pictures of moths than of butterflies. We’re at the Unseelie court, so we need more moths than butterflies. We have some butterflies among the Unseelie demi-fey, Sage for one, but I wanted more moths here. So NIGHT VISIONS was a great find. It’s amazing how different the moths look up super close than from the normal pictures, where all you see is more surface and color. As a writer, I like the small details, and most insect photography just doesn’t get up close enough for me. I’m allowing some of the demi-fey to be American fauna, because the fey have been here for over two hundred years. That’s bound to have an effect on a type of fey that tries to blend in with the local flora and fauna.
Yes, my biology degree is showing. My bio background is one of the things that pushes me to get those realistic details that seems to make all the fantastic stuff so much more real.

Getting in the Mood
It?s usally a good thing to wake up in the morning and know exactly what you?re going to be writing for the day, but not today. I?m supposed to do a sex scene today. Usually it?s not a problem, but today was one of those rare days when I?m just not in the mood. A lot of people across the country have asked me how do you write those scenes. Most of the time the biggest problem with writing a sex scene for me is the fact that with real sex you have the actually sensations, the immediacy of your own bodies reactions. In a book you have only words, black and white, only words to try and convey so many amazing experiences. Words seem so inadequate for it sometimes. But on one of the rare days when I get up and sex just isn?t the first thing on my mind, then a sex scene becomes a different kind of challenge. How do you get in the mood when you aren?t? How do you capture that mind set when what you?re doing in real life is refinacing your house, or walking the dog. How do you stay in the mood when the mundane world is so busy you aren?t even thinking about your own sex life let alone a fictional character?s love life?
When I worked alone at my house, and had only one small dog, Pugsley, I had put on lingere, lit candles around the computer, and tried to treat it almost like a romantic evening with a real person. It actuallly did help. There?s something about slipping on the thigh highs and black satin and lace, with some unhealthy but kick-ass shoes, that just does it for me. I enjoy dressing up, if I have the luxary of the privacy and the time. Those days are long past. There are days when we have close to thirty people in, out, and around the house and yard. I am not parading around in even a silk robe near windows where people can see me. Nope. Besides, now I have four dogs, and one of them is tall enough to look me in the eyes. You do not want to be wearing lingere when the big puppy decides to jump up on you. We?re working on the jumping up problem, but unless you?re absolutely consistent he falls back into bad habits. He is half boxer and they just love to be right up in your face. Besides, dog claws tend to catch in lace, and snag on silk. Nope, not dog safe. I?ve also got a ten-year-old daughter. I?m not sure what message I?d be sending if I paraded around the house in silk, and lingere. Think of the therepy bills when she grew up. Also, it tends to distract Jonathon, and when he gets distracted so do I. We might get a lot of ?research? done, but that doesn?t get pages made. Besides, Darla is here every day. Some days we have Darla, Mary, Sherry, and Lauretta. It?s just rude to keep disappearing up to the bedroom. Bear in mind that Mary, though an employee, is also Jonathon?s mother. Just think of the therepy bills.
So how do you get in the mood without bringing out the silk and candles? How do you get in the mood when the day is full of some very unsexy stuff? Well, I treat it like it?s not a sex scene. I treat it like it?s stage blocking. I break it down to the mechanicals. Where are we going to have the sex? What room you choose certainly effects how it?s going to happen. For today, bathroom, bath tub to be exact. I glanced back and discovered that Merry had never had a bathtub sex scene. An oversight on my part, Anita has had at least two. So the bathtub. First I need to decide how big the bathtub is. Most modern tubs don?t even hold one short person, let along two. I think that?s why we see so many shower scenes, because the tub just won?t work. So Merry?s tub is an over-sized one. It?s fiction, it makes it so much easier to change the props or set dressing. Not the orgy size tub that Jean-Claude has, or the gigantic one that I know the Queen of Air and Darkness has, but one that could hold two or three people with a little squeezing, and depending on the size of the people invovled. Okay, so we have our place. Now doing it in a bathtub limits some things. Missionary postiotion is out. That whole drowning thing. According to the sex therepaist from Canada there?s also a problem with having full intercourse in water, something about maybe getting infections from driving water into places it?s not supposed to go. The body is wonderfully protective, and unless you intrude in it, the body keeps water out of certain places. Intercourse changes that. So now I have to decide if I do my public service announcement, or pretend I didn?t know. Or just get carried away during the heat of the moment and thing, why not. It happens. If the scene starts working well enough that I?m no longer worried about logistics I won?t fight the scene. I?ll be happy that it?s working and let it find it?s own way. In fact, it would be ideal if the sex scene became like good sex itself, you get carried away sometimes. If you think this an awful lot of planning and it seems cold-blooded and not spontaneous enough, then all I have to say is spontaniety is for children. Good sex whether on paper or in real life takes planning. Especially if you want the sex to be good year after year, book after book. You got to put some thought into it.
Thought about who your character will be having sex with. Yes, the mechanics of love making are the same, but there are variations, and love making is like everything else it speaks to the personality, the intelligence, the creativity, of the people invovled. We?re doing Galen, and he is gentler energy than many of the men that Merry has in her life. So many people treat their character?s sex lives as if you always want the same intensity, same kind of sex. Not true, not for the most of the people I know. It would be like saying you always want to eat the same meal in exactly the same way every time. Sometimes a little gentle love making is exactly what the doctor ordered. One of the reasons that so many of the first times with the men has been rough, or lacked more foreplay sometimes, is, well, after a thousand years of celebacy I?m just not sure slow and gentle would be the way they?d want to go, or even be able to go. I went on the idea that the need would be so intense that it would have to be satisfied at least once before you could move away from that almost harsh need. Galen, as in so much else, is the exception. So, we have our man, and his personality. Now, in real life some very gentle people are not always the most gentle in the bedroom. Sometimes you get that reversal, but generally love making is an outgrowth of character. So, gentle. Gentle and poignant. We?ll also be including at least one other of the men. I haven?t decided who, yet. So many to choose from. But someone that compliments Galen?s personality. I?m not sure that any of the new men qualify. I just don?t know them that well yet.
So, I?ve got my physical location. My staging. By putting it in the bathroom, you know some of the props available, and some that are not. No nice roomy bed, no sheets. You get water, smaller spaces to use, so mostly none standard positions. You have soap, but you have to be careful on the soap, someo of it is simply not meant for internal use. Lubricant and soap are not always interchangeable. I know that we?re going to include a second man, and most of the men are on the tall side, so I think only two in the tub at the same time. Hmm. Okay. I think I?m ready to go make pages now.
This blog was written over a two to three day period. By day I finished the mood was better, and so was my mind set. I realize now that it wasn?t the sex that was making this one hard, but the emotional content. This next sentence is a spoiler, so if you don?t want it spoiled, stop reading now. You ready? You?ve been warned. Okay, spoiler coming. Galen almost died. Very near thing. Merry thought she?d lost him. Lost him for politics, and she?s beginning to realize what we all know, if we are thinking human beings. We may hold a political ideal, or a religious belief, or something we truly believe in, we truly believe it is worth going to war over, or defending with violence, but when we hold those we love in our arms; our children, our husbands, our wives, our fathers, our mothers. Nothing and no one seems worth loosing so much as a lock of hair from their heads, let alone their lives. Nothing is worth that, not really, not if you believe that it will cost that much. You may still pay the price. You may still run the risk. But in your heart, in the place where you live deep inside yourself, you know that the hand you hold, the body that falls asleep in your arms, is worth more than that. That letting them die for a cause, or a belief, or anything, is wrong. It is why it is so hard to win a war that has the people on the ground defending their homes and families. It doesn?t matter who is right, or who is wrong. People fight harder when their families are at stake, whether by the accident of a bomb hitting civillians, or by design. An invading force that does not truly feel that they are defending home, hearth, and family, is simply not going to fight as hard. We?re not wired to fight as hard for anything but the people we love. That we are hardwired to defend, to do anything to save. Merry is going to make love to Galen for the first time since she nearly lost him. And she has the knowledge now, not in the abstract, but in the blood he spilled, and that they are washing off of their bodies, that he almost died. That her bid for the throne almost cost him, his life, almost lost her, Galen. Powerful scene. Hard scene. Hard to pull off, and hard to write.

Finding Neverland (2004)
We just got back from seeing it, and we all (Myself, Laurell, and our friend Richard) thought it was a good movie. Richard also pointed out that it was a bit of a Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) reunion. At least two of the cast were in both movies.
All in all, it was a good Non-kiddo movie. Too emotionally charged for her, or even me on a bad day.
Well that’s all I have to say for now. I’ll post something more tomorrow, maybe even dog pictures to their galleries as I’ve been promising….
later

Just got back from getting pictures with Santa for all four dogs. Yes, all four of them. We even have one picture with all of them in it at one time. They aren’t all looking at the camera, but you can’t expect miracles. The pictures were to benefit Impact for Animals. A local animal rescue group. They once talked us out of a puppy. I like a group that will tell you a rescue dog, or cat, is not for you.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in on suggestions about how to help Jimmy and Pip get along better. But, sorry to say, we already feed Jimmy first. We supported Jimmy in his attempt to retain alpha position. What happened was that Jimmy started growling and bitching at all the dogs, not just Pip. It was like with our backing, he became a little tyrant. So we then had to make him get along with the other dogs, too. Jimmy came to us hoarding toys, and has always been food aggressive enough that he is fed separtely and first from all the other dogs. Us backing him seems only to have turned Jimmy into a bully. Pip is more tolerant than he was, but eventually no self-respecting adolescent male dog of a dominant breed is going take being bossed around, or having toys stolen out of his mouth. He?d play with Jimmy in tug of war, but Jimmy doesn?t want to play. He simply wants to have the toy, and not let anyone else have it.

OK, we’ve been without reliable connectivity for the better part of a week now, and so a lot of the things we’ve been meening to put up on the Blog have not happened. In fact, I’m out at Bread Co. with Laurell, so that we can both have some kind of reliable connectivity to put things up. I’m going to paste in a blog Herself wrote the other day but never got posted.
Jonathon

Five times I tried yesterday to put up a blog. Five times. I had a nice big blog and the computer ate it. All blogger says, is that it?s not their fault that our connectivity isn?t stable. All I know is that unless the connection is perfect it will not let me save to draft, or post, or even try to cut and paste it out ot a word format. All these methods have ended badly. A very frustrating day for a technophobe like me. We had tons of rain yesterday, and everytime it rains the connectivity is up and down. We need a business cable run not a home cable. We have a business account, but not the hardware we should have, some technicality about the people who do the installation don?t have access to the right kind of cables. How stupid is that? But wait, it?s so they can charge you more to get a specilist in. Method to their maddness, but very irritating for me, and everyone at the house that tries to use the internet. Which is, all of us. Internet businesses need a stable internet connection. But I still think there must be some software change that blogger could make so that things automatically save in some way, so that I don?t keep putting up on the title of a blog, and nothing else. That?s why you guys got some line about, not light or pithy. I guess this one isn?t either. I?m writing this one in word format, so Jon can just keep trying until it loads.
Our friend Greg flew home yesterday. The visit went very fast. Jon and I spent Saturday night at the vet?s, with Jimmy. He?s okay, though not happy. He?s whining near me right now, because he hasn?t been fed. He won?t be allowed food until this evening, and if the symptoms return then we?ll be taking him back in to the vet. He?s on a very strick diet, not for weight loss, though he does need it for health, but for what amounts to gout of the pancreas. Too much rich food, too much weight, not enough exerscise, and being old. We?d been told no people food which we had adhered to, but the vet hadn?t explained how much richer different dog foods are, from what he?s on. Jon and I felt stupid for not realizing, that even a little bit of something else might hurt him. So no more getting treats from Sasquatch?s and Pippin?s food bowl. It was so quiet and calm while he was gone. There wasn?t a single dog fight. We never even had to use the squirt bottle a single time. Which let us know that Jimmy is starting most of the fights. The younger dogs will be playing and he esculates it to a real fight. He?s also got arthritis, and various other aches and pains. He?s just a grumpy old man, and he wants to be left the hell alone. Pip is still under two, so still a puppy, especially the larger dogs mature later. Pip maybe this happy and bouncy for years to come. Jimmy really hates all that bouncy energy. I used to think if Jimmy were younger he?d have put Pip in his place early and it would be settled by now. Now I believe that if Jimmy were younger the fights would have esculated to true violence by now. Jimmy won?t back down, and after he pushes so far, neither will Pip. And Pip is double his height, and nearly twenty pounds heavier, all of it lean muscle. We?ve planned to give Jim more alone time without the younger dogs bothering him so much. He gets mornings in my office just him and me usually, but we?ll try and give him some more alone time. Though the three younger dogs went to the groomers today, and when they all left without him, he howled so loud I heard it upstairs. So riddle me this Batman; why does he growl at them constantly, start fights, hoarde toys, not want to share anything anymore, but yet, howls like his heart is breaking when they leave? I don?t get it. The three younger dogs did not react badly to him being gone. They did not do what they do for eachother. They did not search the house for their missing pack member. They did not stare forlornly out the window. They did not whine, or howl, or otherwise act like they wondered what we?d done with him. They do this if any of the three of them is missing. Which let?s me know that they?ve about had it with the grumpy old man. Sigh.

OK, lets hope that this makes it to you guys.
I also hope to add some pictures of the dogs to their pages, and some of the construction as it progresses. but for now, this is the primary update.
Jonathon again

This is a test to see if we are able to get anything up on blogger. We’ve been unable to post for four or five days. If this works Jon will try to post some of the blogs I did in word documents later today.

We’ve got about an inch of snow on the ground. It may be the first snowy Turkey Day that I remember here in Missouri. In Indiana where I grew up snow was more the rule, than the exception.
Jonathon’s step-father, Art, is doing the cooking. He’s a very good cook. He’s borrowing our kitchen and our dining room. But I still don’t have to cook, and neither does Jonathon. Mary and Art are coming a little early to do the last minute cooking thing. They are going to be moving up closer to us soon. One of the pluses for that is we’ll get to have more of Art’s cooking. Jonathon still counts loosing Art’s meals as one of the downsides of leaving home. Darla and her family are coming. It’s so nice to enjoy the people you work with enough to want to see them on days when you don’t have to. Very cool. Richard will be over, and Andrew, Jon’s long time bud, will be over after work. Greg is already here, having been the only one who had to fly in out of state. Great Grandma Helen will also be joining us. I added this paragraph after I’d read the rest of this blog over. I feel good after writing this. I will be seeing only people I like, love, and enjoy today. Read the rest of the blog for some of my other feelings on this joyous holiday.
When I married for the first time I could cook a turkey or ham dinner for forty to sixty people, but I couldn’t fry a hamburger or boil soup. How was this possible? My grandmother started out having big family dinners, as she got older and less able to lift and carry a twenty pound turkey, and heavy dishes, I took over. I did the cakes, the meat, some of the vegetables. Granny did green beans (I have yet to make them taste as good as hers, though I’ve watched her make them a thousand times), macaroni salad (again I can’t duplicate it), a cherry desert that I never cared for, but that the rest of the family loved. The pumpkin pie we took turns on, or bought. But I was the one who did the meat, frankly because it was heavy for her. To this day I’m not sure the family understood how much I did to make “Granny’s Thanksgiving Dinner” possible. Sometimes it’s hard for people to realize how fragile a person is getting. Maybe they didn’t want to see it, or maybe Granny and I had worked out a way to hide it. Who knows. Happy thoughts Laurell, happy thoughts.
Sasquatch is lying infront of my keyboard, his upper body on one of my arms. He’ll actually sleep this way. I find it very comforting. I think I will always want at least one dog small enough to be my desk buddy. Pippin did it as a puppy, but he just out grew the space. He does take over my lap if Sasquatch doesn’t get there first sometimes. Pip’s head weighs almost as much as Sas’s entire body. Pip is downstairs with Jon, Trinity, and Greg. Uncle Greg for Trin. Family of choice, rather than blood. Though interestingly Jon and he look enough alike that we’ve had people ask, or assume that they’re brothers. Actually Greg was my friend before he was Jon’s. Just as Jon brought Richard into the marriage, I brought Greg. It’s been one of the cool things about our marriage that our friends like eachother. So often in marriage people seem to have to give up their friends, give up who they are. A good marriage makes you more of who you truly are, not less. Having real trouble holding onto those happy thoughts today.
I did not want to go to Indiana and do thanksgiving. So I didn’t go. But I feel guilty about it. I am hoping the book will be done before Christmas so I can go around then. But don’t even get me started on how I’m doing twenty plus pages a day, striking off points on my outline, and still am hundreds of pages out from the end. Very discouraging.
Today makes me want to do the book where Anita goes home to her family for thanksgiving. It makes me want to say all the things I think, or feel, about those family obligations that can be both wonderful and suffocating. Those familial demands, that are truly demands, not requests, unless you police your emotional boundaries with high powered rifles, and attack dogs. But still the guilt sneaks past, so you’re left damned if you go, and damned if you don’t.
To all of you that find Thanksgiving with your family a blessing, untouched by confusion, my most sincere wish for a very happy day. To the rest of us, who find it both a blessing and a curse to be forced to be in close proximity to our blood relatives, my sympathies.
You walk in the door of that house where you were raised, and find that no matter how much therapy you’ve had, that you’re married, and grown, and have children of your own, a life, a job, everything that makes you who you are now, just falls away. Unless you fight it tooth and nail, the house, the memories, the people suck you back into issues that are old, and painful, and never ending. Old grievances that people have against eachother. Old stories that were horrible the first time. Stories about how Papa beat Granny for twenty years, how he almost killed her a couple of times. How he abused the children mostly emotionally, but some physically. The memories of the physical abuse I witnessed as a child. Not a lot, but enough. I am by nature a person that remembers the negative before the positive. I have worked for years to be as positive as I am. My daughter is a very positive person, and I worked so hard to try and not be negative around her. I’ve succeeded overall, but the inside of my head where she cannot see is still a very dark place.
I realize that you, the readers, get to see that dark place. Not all of it, but some of it. As I strip the layers off my issues, and look at them naked and raw, I realize more and more why I write what I write. I hate knowing that much about my own motives. It leaves me feeling squeamish and almost embarrassed. Like doing therapy in public. Anita has some of my issues, but not all, and she’s managed to find her own issues that I don’t even share. Is that the proof of how real she is, that she’s found new and different ways to be damaged? Merry, I wanted someone who didn’t have a lot of my hang-ups. She pushes me so far outside my comfort zone sometimes, that it is exhausting. Maybe that’s what’s up with this book. So much of it pushes me outside my safe zones. My subconscious is always doing that, racing ahead of where I am in therapy, giving me subject matter that forces me to work my issues. My muse seems intent on my getting healthy, whether I like it or not.
My apologies that I can’t hold onto the happy thoughts today. I’m going to get Jon to look at this and see if it’s too dark, or too personal to go up on the blog. I’m going to either walk the dogs, get on the tread mill, or watch a feel-good movie. Gotta drag my butt out of the dumps before I get stuck there. The holidays, ho, ho, freaking, ho.

I’m going to try and write a blog entry directly into blogger, instead of first making a word file, then transferring. We’ll see if it works.
Wretched weather here. We woke to wind gusts that sent our outdoor furniture skidding around. The electricity has been up and down about four times, only for minutes, then it kicks back on. Somewhere there are tree limbs smacking into power lines. But not in our yard, we’ve got it all underground now. The rain is mixed with sleet. The dogs don’t even want to go out in it. Can’t blame them. The temperature is supposed to fall all day, and sometime today — snow.
It’s not supposed to stick, the ground is too warm, but it’s still snow the day before Thanksgiving. It reminds me of childhood in northern Indiana. I remember Thanksgiving blizzards at least twice. Always on a year when my grandmother and I were traveling with other family to out of state family. Fun, fun, fun.
This is the kind of day when Jonathon and I are glad we work out of our home. All you commuters out there, be careful, and good luck.