Author: Jonathon

Hey, everybody. It’s my first solo stab at a blog since the change in viewer interface. Jonathon is off gathering breakfast, and I sit alone staring at this alien looking little box. Technology is like fire. Tamed and well cared for it will make our lives better, safer, easier, but neglected, it is a danger that could destroy all that we love.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what to put in this blog. It will take me a few more weeks to truly be comfortable with the interface, so until then, it’s a nervous thing to do a blog. So what to say?
Let us pretend it is merely a typewriter, one of those old fashioned ones that made that nice, comforting clack sound, and that was hard enough to use that you worked muscles up in your forearms and hands. Let’s pretend that I’m writing on a summer’s day with no plane trip tomorrow. Did I mention that? Did I mention that Jon and I are getting on a plane tomorrow for vacation? I suppose I didn’t. We will be flying, and I don’t like flying. Nope, not one little bit. I suppose that’s part of the nervousness today. Yep, probably.
Okay, if I wasn’t stressing over the interface, the dawn plane trip, what would I write?
The rewrites went away, and the front end of the copy edits came back. Jonathon and I did a record turn around so that they were back in New York Friday morning. Yea, for us! The back end of the copy edits will be waiting for us when we get back from our five day vacation. We tried for a week, but there just wasn’t a week in the schedule. But, hey, five days off is five days off. Five days away from the office, and all the business. One of the few downsides to working in your own home is that you never really get away from the office. Your office is right there so you think, well, I’ll just make a few notes. It’s almost never just a few notes and quit once I step through that door.
Some books are harder than others, I’m not always sure why. I know that the last few books have been hard, progressively harder. I realized that even my love for my work, my writing, my characters, everything, cannot survive finishing a book one day, and starting the next book twenty-four to forty-eight hours later. Starting with Cerulean Sins, Seduced by Moonlight, and now Incubus Dreams, that’s about what my downtime has been between books. No wonder I’m tired.
If Jonathon had not sat up here in my office with me, making me work, or rather being there to reassure me on the rewrite of Incubus, that it was alright, I was alright, I don’t know if it would ever have gotten done. People ask if he’s my muse, but that’s not it, he’s more security blanket, and touchstone. I had so many different notes on the rewrite that went in seemingly everywhere, that I was overwhelmed. He helped me make lists and put them up on the big white board (one of my newer office thingies). A list for what was in the research folder, a list for what was in the rewrite note folder, a list for sticky notes. Three big columns, numbered, so I could look up and cross them off as I went. We take turns helping each other make order out of our individual chaos. Working through the rewrites, I would call from my smaller rewrite desk, “Did I use this phrase twice in this book for two different character’s?” He would be at the big desk with the computer on it, and he would search for the phrase and tell me yes, or no, and I’d do a change accordingly. Without him to help me do that kind of thing, it would have taken twice as long, even if my nerves and courage had been up to slogging by myself through the mess.
So we’re almost packed. We are getting ready for Trinity’s very first ballet recital. We did the dress rehearsal yesterday, complete with full stage make-up. The skills I learned both in my brief youth in theatre, and doing my own make-up for tour, most of the time, came in handy. She looked great, and grown-up, too grown-up for our comfort. She’s only nine, but there are moments now when she turns her head a certain way, or says something emphatically, that we get a glimpse of what she’ll be like at sixteen or twenty. The shadow of who and what she will be is already there. That shadow grows more solid with every passing day. It is the way of things, and we are not parents that mourn her growing up. I applaud it. I want her to grow up happy, healthy, full-filled, whatever that will mean for her. But there is a certain sadness to the process, watching it, a nostaglia as she vows never to leave us, and asked last year to bring her husband home to live with us, too, when she gets one. When she is all grown-up and has that husband, I doubt seriously she’s still going to want to live at home, but I did not disillusion her. I do not argue with her. I merely say, we’ll see when the time comes, how you feel. Or if she’s feeling particularly emotional about it, we just agree. But Jon and I both know the days of her seeing us as her very best friends, and thinking we are cool and smart and wonderful, are most likely limited. Some kids never go through that phase where they’re embarrassed by their parents, I didn’t, but I’m trying to prepare myself for the day when she’s more embarrassed than pleased at what I do for a living.
Though let me say this, there will be no taking her to the mall, and dropping her off, so no one sees her with me. There will be no walking behind her and her friends in the mall, only to be spoken to when the kid wants money. I see mothers and fathers doing this, and I am shocked. The level of disrespect that the children are showing their parents is just unbelievable, but what’s more unbelievable is that the parents are allowing it. You are your child’s parent before you are their friend. They will have friends their whole lives but you are their only shot at a parent, remember that, and act accordingly. And may I just add the whole movie theatre thing. If I drive someone to the theatre to see a movie, yeah, they have to sit with me. Them and their friends, or they can simply not come to the movie with me. They’re teenagers, they’re old enough to sit home while mom and dad go to the theatre without them. Shame on the parents for allowing the kids to get away with this, and shame on the kids for even asking. No such disrespect of my elders would have been tolerated when I was young. Going out for movies or the mall, or shopping is a privilege not a right. Remember parents as you send your kids off into the world what messages are you teaching them? That the world owes them something? That people will cater to them, and give them things even when they are behaving badly. Will these messages help them get jobs, go through college? Will it help them keep working hard when the work is very hard, or are you preparing them to give up, unless it’s easy?
Life is hard folks. Life isn’t supposed to be easy. You don’t get a free ride. You have God given gifts, but what you make of them is your choice, your move, your decision.
For the teenagers. I recently met one of the teens I grew up with. She disrespected her elders, and did the whole I’m embarrassed to be with you bit. She made fun of me for reading so much, for turning down trips to the beach, the mall, because I owed myself a story. I had a deadline, self-imposed, to meet. I was collecting rejection slips in high school. She recently saw where I am in my life, and she said, “Maybe I should have read some books, too.”
When you hit your late twenties, or thirties, are you going to look back and wish you’d, read some more books? Are you going to wish you’d been more serious about where you wanted to go in your life? Where do you see yourself in five years? If you don’t know, then most likely, you will end up somewhere you don’t want to be, doing something you don’t want to do, married or divorced from someone you found out you never loved, or who never loved you. Plan your life, and don’t blame anyone else for how it turns out. This last goes for the adults, too. I am tired of people blaming others for why their lives don’t work. I know a handful of people that truly do everything right, and make good choices, and their lives go to hell through outside forces, it does happen. But the vast majority of people are where they are through bad choices. Make good choices, and realize that it’s never too late to decide to turn it around. It’s never too late to start making good choices. Just decide, and do it. Make a difference in your own life, because if you don’t, who will?
A passing friend has pointed out that some parents do not want to sit near their teens in a theatre, because the teenagers’ conversation is boring to the adults. they are happy that there are seats between their kids and them, so that neither party is bored by the other’s company. To those adults and children, be happy in your coexistence. But this is not what I’m seeing at the theatres, for the most part.
Well, I’m off to finish packing. Maybe when we get back from vaction, I’ll be a little less grumpy.

It seems that there has been some confusion as to why we named the hermit crabs “Otto” and “Ken”. Though there are character named Otto and Ken in the movie A Fish Called Wanda that is not why we named them Ken and Otto.
Ken is one of our daughter’s favorite names, and has been since she could talk. So she named the Crab, well… Ken.
Otto is short for Doctor Otto Octavius, Doc Oc of Spider-Man fame. Because when the lady went to pick him up, he splayed his legs out like the like the scene from the new movie. It was too appropriate and I couldn’t help myself.
We even have names picked out for the next set of crabs we get. Zoidberg and Frankenstein. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why. Whoot whoo toot toot.

Hey all,
   This is a note to let everyone know what has been going on with us since Incubus Dreams was “finished”.
Basically, we’ve been doing rewrites on ID so that it is not full of holes in the plot or story.
Also, we’ve done two appearances in the past few months. Not to mention having the Kiddo home from school for the summer.
First off, we did the Massachuttes Library Association conference in Falmouth, MA. It was a blast. We got to meet so many nice people, and I have to say that you’ve never partied ’til you’ve partied with Librarians.
Second, we did Marcon, in Coloumbus, OH. Another great time where we got to see lots of fans.
That’s about all that we’ve done of late, so I’ll let Laurell fill in some of the gaps I’ve left in the blog.
Oh, Yeah! I forgot!
The Kid brought home a pair of Hermit Crabs from school, as the teacher really didn’t really want them any more, and Trin was the one in her class that took the most care of them. So, Gabrielle and Rainbow came home to us. After a bout a week, Laurell and I added Ken and Otto to the mix, on top of getting them a bigger tank to run about in. I hope to get pictures of them up in the not to distant future.
l8r
Jonathon

Hi! Just wanted to let everyone know, the archives should be working again!

My husband, Jonathon, is sitting in the chair at my other desk, just behind me. He’s spotting me. I actually wanted him to type this blog while I simply dictated, but he made the screen come up, showed me how to get to a new post, then went to the other chair, and said, “I’ll be right here.” But he wouldn’t do it for me. He’d help me, support me, but he won’t let me hide behind my fears. Every once in a while I need that. But knowing he’s in the room, ready to take my technicalogically challenged hand, helps. It helps a great deal.
Also I now know the interface has been changed. Nothing throws me like my tech being changed without me knowing it.
Enough about phobias and other things, on with the blog.
Let me start by saying we all loved the mummy movies with Brendan Fraser. They were fun, told a good story, characters you cared about, a nice mix of fun and chills. The Egyptology wasn’t the best (one of my friends has a degree in anthropology, and cannot watch the first movie at all, and has never seen the second.) Their use of Anubis as the bad guy in the second movie was an odd choice if you look at Egyptian religion, but I still enjoyed both movies. They are also movies that all of us can watch and enjoy, including Trinity, who is nine, and was younger when she first saw them. Wonderful movies, and they have about as much to do with real folklore and myth as the early mummy movies did in old Hollywood. But it still works, and I love the old monster movies.
Having said all that, Jonathon and I saw Van Helsing.
We’d heard mixed reviews. Two of our friends loved it. Two of our friends hated it. We got a night to go see a grown-up movie, without the kiddo. With such mixed reviews, and both of us being such fans of both action movies and monsters movies Van Helsing seemed a good choice. We thought, we’ll go and see for ourselves.
First, if one friend had not prepared me for what the movie was going to be like, I would have been really unhappy. If you just embrace the fact that Van Helsing is like an early centuary James Bond, then you’re happier. It’s not such a shock.
But . . . How many of you have acutally read the novel DRACULA by Bram Stoker? Those who have probably know where I’m going with this. I was okay that they changed the name of the character. In the book it’s Abraham Van Helsing. Gabriel Van Helsing is still close enough, and someone probably thought Gabriel was a sexier name. Okay, fine. But why take a character that is somewhere between fifty, close to sixty, small in stature, German, with the accompaning accent; ex-holy man, metaphysician, a learned scholar, a thinking man; if what you’re wanting is a six foot, or more, cowboy, who never seems to think, only react, and shoots and kills his way across Europe? I don’t use the cowboy comment loosely, have you seen the coat and hat, it’s so cowboy, if they had better tailors. Don’t get me started on the Ana, the female lead, and the leather corset that left her breasts and thus her heart so it would be exposed to any sharp talon, or the high-heeled boots. You know a lot of people complained about Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a lot of things, but you never saw Buffy running around in crap like that unless she was caught out doing something else, and the monsters just showed up, the corset and heels seemed to be Ana’s day gear.
On the plus side, the Frankenstien’s monster was incredibly well done, well acted, the best part of the movie for us. Also the movie did give Dracula and his brides something to do besides bite necks. It was one of the first times I’ve seen a good motive given to Drac and his lovers. Cool. Unfortunately, without giving too much away, let’s just say that the biology sucked. My biology degree often spoils movies for me, but I just couldn’t even figure what the deal was with this some of this part of the plot. Good idea, the execution of it, left me puzzled.
But my personal biggest complaint was that as my books get more and more attention from Hollywood, I’ve started watching movies differently. This movie, Van Helsing, would have been as if they bought Anita, then cast a nearly six foot blond, blue-eyed, skinny model as Anita. But at least Anita does kick-butt and take names later. We do have enough violence to keep Hollywood happy in the books. Van Helsing was so different from the orignial character, that it would be more like they took Anita and made her a quiet retiring bookworm, who thought her way through, and never touched a gun. That is how different the book, Dracula’s Van Helsing and this cowboy were. I’d have been happier if they’d have changed more than the first name. Just don’t pretend that this is Abrham Van Helsing. Let this character be Gabriel Something Else.
Movie’s like Van Helsing help make me happy that I havn’t signed a movie or t.v. deal. I do not want to leave the theatre to my book on screen, shaking my head, and saying, “Well, it was pretty.” It’s gotta be more than just visually pretty. Do not even get me started on how the vamps and werewolves walk and crawl up the walls. Everyone does it in the moves. I know it’s stunning visually, but it’s not logical. It’s not good biology. Yeah, spiders, flies, bats, rats, mice, can climb walls, and sometimes across cielings, but not by magic. Their biomechanics allows it. They have claws or little spiny hairs on four limbs, or more. Geckos have sticky pads. You gotta have a way to stick to that wall. My vamps levitate and sometimes fly, but I see it as a type of energy use, that acts as lift to push against gravity. You don’t just stroll along the wall and cieling. It is bad biology.
So many movies of late, just can’t seem to resist a good visual, to hell whether it makes any sense. What happened to logic? What happened to research? What happened to thinking, why, or how, a thing works, not just can I do it. LORD OF THE RINGS were thinking man’s movies. Of course, it was based on books where someone thought, but they could have been ruined so easily, and they weren’t. I would love for someone to bring that kind of time and attention to my books. I would love to sit in a movie theatre in the dark and see my vision that closely followed on the screen. But I fear, greatly, that it will be like Van Helsing, pretty, visually appealing, and with the best of intentions, it will get away from the person who promised so much, who had every intention of doing the ‘right’ kind of movie, and I will come out of the dark, shaking my head, and saying, “Well, it was pretty.” I don’t think I could bear it.
There are only two ways to let Hollywood take your book and work it up to a movie or television show. First, you take the money and put the entire project out of your mind. It does not effect you. Second, you find someone that will put in writing in a contract what you want and need to feel secure. I’ve actually had one person willing to do that, but was told no studio would bank-roll it, because they wouldn’t trust me, a writer, not to flake, and pull the plug if I had that much power. I am almost pathologically incapable of the first way, so number two, it is. But even if I could find someone to agree to it, and we could jump all the hurdles, it would mean that I would have to be much more involved in the movie process than any writer ever is, which no one will like, or allow, and I don’t know if I could ride herd on a movie project and write my books. I might have to concentrate on the movie and put the books on hold while the movie got nursed into existence. My schedule doesn’t really allow that kind of time off. I also don’t know enough about the different jobs and skills that go into a movie. It’s so much more complicated than most people relize. (Yes, I have started researching movies and how they are made, and how parts of them work. It’s like writing a book by committee, but with other people doing the writing. Very odd.) I guess there is a third way. Someone in the movie business could convince me that they share my vision, will give me the written contract to prove that they can be trusted. It would have to be someone who had enough clout to protect the project all the way through the process. What I’ve learned is that no matter how sincere the movie people are, most of them do not have the clout to protect the baby. They mean well, and they will fight for it, for “our vision”, but if they aren’t a thousand pound gorilla, then someone else who is a thousand pound gorilla, will come along and force their vision on ours. Movies are ruled by the strong, or the lucky, or the rich. Strong is not the same as rich, though a lot of people in a lot of businesses mistake the two. I can’t imagine how anyone would convince me to trust them. My background taught me at a tender age, to trust no one, and that the person smiling at your face, usually has something painful behind their back. More than a decade in the publishing industry sort of finished off my basic cynisim. Dealing with even the edge of Hollywood has sort of solidified it. Oh, well.
I let Jonathon read this over, and I’ve missed his biggest complaint about the movie Van Helsing. It did not tell a complete story. We got to the end of the movie and thought, so, or so what? We needed more background on this new character that they called Van Helsing. We needed something explained. We both came out of the movie, puzzled. It was one of those movies that should have worked, but didn’t. Should have been satisfying, but wasn’t. Having said that, as we are coming out saying how horrible it was, we overheard other people saying how great it was. It was lovely to see all the omage’s to so many old movies, but that wasn’t enough to sustain us through the film. I’ve heard from another friend who loved it, so make up your own mind, as for us, sadly, we came away feeling like someone missed the point, or we did.

Hey, everybody. They changed the mechanical or physical set up of the blogger we use and I am freaked. More than almost anything else in the world when I’m working, I hate for people to change my tech on me, especially without asking, or notifying. The note said, they hope we all like it better. I bloody well don’t. Changing my tech in any way that is remotely visible to me, stresses me a great deal, and I did not need more stress, right now. Damnit.
Enough of that. I will do my best, but in truth, the changes in the format are literally causing me anxiety flutterings. I don’t joke when I say that I am a technophobe. This will be a shorter entry because of the changes, because I simply cannot bear to look at the changed screen.
Saw Ella Enchanted on Mother’s Day. Great movie. Great date movie. Great family movie from the littlest to the oldest. Was going to wax more poetic about it, but I literally must get off this screen so I no longer have to look at it. Our page is the same, but the mechanics, or format for me getting you the blog entry is changed out of all recognition on my end. If I don’t get off this new format screen shit, I’m literally going to have an anxiety attack. Bye for now.

Hey, everybody. I finished the read through of INCUBUS DREAMS on Saturday morning. We went to the ballet the night before. Trinity was entranced, but it was a three hour show that began at eight, so she was sacked by the time we got home. That boneless, child sleep, where you can put them in their jammies, tuck them in, and they don’t even move. It had been a long time since I’d seen her that hard asleep. Ballet West’s THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, beautiful costumes, and that impressive physicality that I always come away with from almost any dance company. The show was at the Fox theatre one of my favorite venues ever. Trinity’s main complaint was that it differed from the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. Jonathon’s mom, Mary, went with us, as did our friend Andrew. We got in late, and slept in the next morning, as much as the dogs would tolerate, but I finished the read through the next day.
I know the book works, because I kept having to make myself stop reading and remember to edit. When a book is this fresh in my head, and I’m still caught up in it, I’ve done something right. The book manuscript, pages stacked is almost six inches tall. It is the longest book I’ve ever written. It came in just shy of 1000 pages, but I’ll be adding two small chapters and a few pages here and there, so we might get closer to that 1000 mark. I’m not trying for it, just aware of it.
I have lots of sticky notes on lots of pages, but most of them are small stuff; typos, spelling, some grammar. A lot of the more serious sticky notes are during the police scenes, because I took Anita outside her area of expertise, or mine. I’ll be trying to set up an interview with someone who can answer my questions. Appoitment will have to wait for next week, because tomorrow Jonathon and I are off to a business conference. Since it’s not open to the public, it seems cruel to tell you where we’ll be, because you won’t be able to get in. The professional guests are only allowed one guest a piece. But we’ll be gone until the end of the week.
So going back through the sticky notes and talking to the experts will have to wait a few days. Which is sort of frustrating. It means instead of getting the rewrite done at the beginning of May, it will be more like the middle of May. Okay, it’s like one week later, but the thing is, I am taking two weeks off. I really am. Which means that once I put INCUBUS DREAMS to bed, then I take the break, and only then do I start on the fourth Merry book. Right now the titlte is, A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. It may, or may not, be the final title.
I need the break between books. I need to relearn how to relax, or at least do other things. But I’m impatient, as always. I want this book done, really done, so I can take my break with a clear conscience. I want the break, and I want to know when I’ll be going back to work so I can start working on the schedule. I always feel better when I have a schedule to work from. There are other side projects that I’m wanting to start on, and I need to figure out how to work them in. Anyway, got to go. Talk to you guys in a few days.

Done. I was half-tempted to just type the word done. It feels like anyone reading this blog would know what I meant. The book, INCUBUS DREAMS, is done. Yea! I’ve got a week, or so, of clean-up and final research questions. As always I find that I need at least one complete draft before I know exactly what questions I need to ask my experts. Though you do have to have enough earlier research to write that draft or two, before hand. Always a fine balance, research.
I did a marathon session on Friday night that finished around 10:30 at night. Thirty-one pages at a shot. Good pages. I was pumped when I went to bed. Phyiscally tired, but pumped. At four A. M. I woke and realized that the thirty-one pages was crap. To try and make my plot work out as planned I had made the villian be stupid and Anita be less then her usual competent kick-ass self. One of Hamilton’s rules of writing is, “Though shalt not make your hero stupid to further your plot. Rewrite the plot not the character.” Another rule is, “Your villian has to be more than just mean, sadistic and stupid. He’s got to have his own motives that make sense to him.” So that glorious rush of pages had to be thrown out, completely. No saves.
But getting all those pages out of the way, unstuck something. As if that false trail were some kind of boulder stuck in the way of the water of creativity, or whatever less poetic phrase you like. I got up bright and earlier next morning, since I’d been awake since four A. M. though I didn’t get out of bed ’til about six or seven. But by the time I got out of bed, I’d made my notes, and thought it through. By around noon on Saturday I was done. Done, gloriously done. We celebrated by going out to lunch and contacting our friend, Richard. (He had earlier called and requested that if we had time this weekend to call him.) And no, this Richard has nothing to do with the Richard in the books. I did not even meet our friend Richard until years after the character exisited. Sorry to all those who wish to make more coallaries between the books and my life than actually exisit. And sorry for all those who wish the men in the books were real, I sort of understand that part. Anyway, we did dinner and a movie. We saw LadyKillers with Tom Hanks. It is the first movie I’ve seen in a year or so, that was totally guilt free. I was done. I earned that movie.
The movie was wonderful. Funny, dark humor, wonderful acting all the way around, great cimetography, costumes, and a sure hand at the directing, that left nothing to chance, and yet, was only heavy handed when it was funny and worked for the film. The writing was brilliant, and I’d love to know how much of the dialogue was ad-lib, and how much was scripted. The three of us had nothing but praise for the film. The three is my husband, Jonathon, Richard, and myself. We wanted to see the movie before we took Trinity to it. I’m not sure the kiddo would enjoy it. I’m not sure she’s old enough to get the jokes. The violence is mostly benign and hilariously. I haven’t seen this many people die, and laughed this hard in years. Maybe ever.
We took the entire rest of the weekend off, and it was wonderful. I was pumped. That euphoric rush that always follows the end of a book. It lasts for around two to three days, then comes the two to three days of moping. Moping around the house like a lost soul, because I’ve spent months and months knowing exactly what I had to do every day, and now suddenly, it’s gone, over, finished. There’s always a certain amount of unsettledness to the completian of a big project for me.
Added to my usual mood swings after a book, there is the fact that it’s not really finished. I have to print it off and reread it. God, I do not want to do that, but I’ve already found a few things that were in my head but never made it to paper, in just a quick run through on the computer. Most writers miss more things if they write too fast, I miss stuff if I write too slow. I think this book took longer than any other Anita book ever. Well, it is the longest one I’ve ever written that’s part of it, but also, well, enough of that. I’ll give stuff away if I don’t shut up. Let’s just say that the next book will be the test to see if certain themes slow me down every time or if this was just something about this book. But as always when I’m slow at a book, I don’t seem to hold it all in my head as completely, so I have to reread just to be certain what choices I made outside of the main mystery plot, and main character action. It’s always the small stuff that will come back and bite you on the ass. Throw away lines are notorious for catching you out in a series of books. You make one line somewhere in some book, no note about it to yourself, because it’s just a throw away line, not important. Then three or four books later you’ve forgotten you wrote that one line, and you write an entire book that contradicts it. I haven’t done that yet, but I know some fine writers that have. But I’m a fan of their work, so I’ve reread the book with the line, so I knew that they’d forgotten it when the other book came out. Writers don’t reread their own stuff, mainly because once it leaves the house for that final, final time, you’re so sick of it that you never want to see it again. You try rereading your own words over and over, while you and about a half dozen other people edit them. The best test for me whether a book works is do I get so caught up in my own writing that I forget that I’m supposed to be editing. If I do, then I know that I’ve done good.
Well, got to go. I’ve got to sort through my sticky notes. The ones I’ve used get thrown away. The ones, a growing mass, for future books get moved to a wall space that is not above my computer. I’ve got so many future Anita sticky notes that I’m going to have to rearrange my office walls, so that Anita has a bigger permenet chunk of wall away from the computer like Merry does. I am running out of walls, which is one of the reasons that we’re building on new offices. Though don’t get me started on that. I think I’ll move the sticky notes that don’t have to do with either current series out into the hall just before the door of my office, and put Anita where those were. Merry has the biggest wall in the back, because I knew from the first book what the last book would be about. Though, no I do not know who will be her king or how she will get to that final climax. No pun intended.
I am going to finish putting INCUBUS DREAMS to bed, then I’m taking some time off. A couple of weeks. With my schedule I’ve finished one book and started the next one within a day or two. I need a break, and everyone is okay with me getting one. Cool.
I need a few days to sit around and do nothing for a change. Not spend the week frantcially doing errands, and catching up on stuff, but actually taking some time off. I think I’ve forgotten how to do that. I need to relearn. Recreation means to re-create yourself. We all need time for that.
On one of the days I was most frantic and most convinced this book would never die, two little birds came to the tree outside my window. Warblers. For all you birders out there you’ll understand that I grabbed my binoculars and my bird books and tried to look at the warblers while I was talking on the telephone to New York. I am a cautious birder, so I would not say what birds they were though, I’d narrowed down both to two or three possibilities. Warblers are tiny, smaller than most sparrows, and fast. They seem to always be moving, especially if you want them to hold still. Many of them are also very nearly identical to eachother.
I had never seen warblers in my trees before. I had forgotten how excited I used to get with the spring migration. It’s been years since I went birding. The allergy shots are helping. I might acutally be able to go out in the woods without being sick for hours afterwards.
Walking Pippin, our big puppy, I saw one of the little birds again, and this time it held still. A Bell’s Viero, not exactly a warbler at all. And the other little bird came back to my tree and let me have another chance at him. A yellow-rumped warbler. They are both new birds to me, never seen them before.
I took their coming as a sign, that I need to remember how to enjoy myself. I need to rediscover the things that helped me re-create myself, outside of books and writing. I think so many of us get so caught up in our work, and just surviving from one family activity to another that we forget ourselves. Forget who we are as individuals, because the real world swallows us up. I finished the book weeks ahead of where I’d pessimisticly aimed. I finished in time to take a pair of binoculars, some books, a back pack, and go out and see the spring mirgration before it all goes away for another year. I think it’s a message that I need to look up more, out more, and remember that life is not narrow, but very wide.

Hey everbody, its me. I’m all most afraid to say it, but I think, finally, I’m truly almost done with Incubus Dreams. Almost done means that I’m hoping to be done by the end of this month. I’m not going to get sucked into a big blog entry. I am going to work now. Talk to you guys later. Bye.

Hi all!
Just a note to let you know that I’ve added some pictures to the galleries. Please note that I’ve given the dogs their own gallery. Their volume of pictures has grown to fill more than a screen on my monitor.
Look for additions to the LKH Misc. gallery in the next few days. I’ll be adding shots from the St. Louis Botanical Gardens’ Annual Orchid Show.
That’s all for now.