Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! To those outside the United States of America its just another Thursday, but for us it’s Turkey Day! A day for family, food, and gratitude. What are you thankful for, is the question asked around our table each year. I try to pause frequently and make lists of what I’m grateful for, so I thought I’d share some of that list with you today. 
I’m thankful for:
My sister, Pilar, who is with us this year, but will be moving out of the country soon. We don’t know when she and I will be together again. We’ll SKYPE and text, and call, but its never the same, so I am very grateful that my little sister can be with us for a few days.
Our daughter, Trinity, who is in college now. She’s with us this year, and doesn’t have any plans to move out of the country, but I’ve learned that plans change, and we’re happy she’ll be with us this year for sure.
My husband, Jonathon, who keeps making me believe that maybe there are romantic soulmates, after all.
Genevieve and Spike, the other halves of our domestic arrangement. We’ve lived together over a year now, and I think we’ve all learned more about ourselves, about love, and about what it takes to be in a committed relationship.
That I am polyamorous and have the chance to try for relationships as complex and rich as the ones I have in my life.
That I am a writer, and earn my living doing what I was born to do. I am even grateful for my deadline, because it helps keep me focused and motivated.
That it is a sunny, warm day after so many cold and wintry ones.
That Jonathon’s family is going to be able to join us for the meal today. We will think of those we have lost, but do our best to be truly grateful for those that remain.
For friends close at hand, and those faraway, who make life richer and more bearable.
For my best friend, he knows who he is, we are each other’s 3AM call, and have seen each other through divorce, the loss of parents, lost loves, found loves, illness, injury, and the dreams that get us through.
That I am healed enough to be back in the gym.
For the health and safety of those I hold dear, for as one professor in college used to say, “We are all just temporarily able bodied.”
I hope today finds you surrounded by people you love, and that includes yourself. If you are alone today enjoy your movie marathon, or your book of chose. For those who are into sports, enjoy the game, as for me and mine we’re watching the dog show. Okay, they’re recording the dog show so I can watch it later, because I have to keep making pages on the new book, so you can all read it next summer. May we all be truly grateful for the blessings in our lives.
Author: LKH
Happy Veterans Day 2015!
Happy Veterans Day and thank you all for your service! A special thank you to all the veterans who have helped me with research over the years. You men and women have helped make my fiction stronger, more believable, and made sure I got things right. Without your willingness to share your experiences and stories Anita Blake wouldn’t be the character she is today, and neither would Edward aka U. S. Marshal Ted Forrester. Thanks for the gun information, the weapons training, the helicopter simulator time, and just showing me a glimpse into a world that I would never have known existed without being able to call you friends and family.
Me with a few of the novels that wouldn’t be the same without my veteran friends and family.
Writing Your First Novel; or Good Luck, all you November Writers
It’s November and most of us in America are getting ready for Thanksgiving at the end of the month, but about 300,000 people aren’t worried about cooking the perfect turkey, or the on-going family debate of raisins versus no raisins in the stuffing. They have a very different goal this month – to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It’s National Novel Writing Month, affectingly known as NaNoWriMo. These literary adventurers will either have a rough draft of their first novel by November 30, or at least a good sized chunk of it.
That’s approximately 1,700 words a day for the month. If you figure about a 12 point font, double spaced, that’s about three to four pages a day for 30 days. If the page is dialogue heavy there may be fewer words, but if it is description heavy then it may be more words per page. Like a lot of things in writing, it depends.
I applaud everyone who’s taken up the challenge. When I wrote my first novel, Nightseer, I wrote two pages a day, every day before work. I was in a cube farm in corporate America and I’d found that I was too exhausted by day’s end to do anything creative; so I got up early before work and did my two pages. Let me add that at that time I was not a morning person, by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted to write my book badly enough to find a consistent time to write, because consistency is what it’s all about when you’re writing novels. I’d written short stories for years but never had the guts to tackle a book length project. I’d been writing since I was twelve, decided I wanted to be a writer at fourteen, started sending stories out and collecting my rejection slips at seventeen. I was twenty-one and had graduated college and landed my first job, but I still wanted to be writer. I knew that if I hoped to make a living as one I had to write novels, short stories weren’t going to pay enough, so I put my butt in a chair at least five days a week and did two pages every morning. Two pages didn’t seem like much at first, but doing two pages day after day meant in three hundred days I had six hundred pages and at the end of two years I had even more pages and a first draft. I honestly can’t remember how many pages the first draft was, but I know I’m one of those writers that writes long and cuts a lot, always have been, probably always will be. Other writer’s first drafts are far shorter than the finished manuscript, so their second drafts are all about adding stuff in, instead of cutting. I would do seven drafts of Nightseer before I sent it off to an agent, who sent it around to publishers. I would do another draft to editorial order, mostly the editor pointed out that I hadn’t described a single piece of clothing in the entire book. I added clothing description and more physical description at the editor’s request, and I never forgot again (some may say I’ve over compensated).
Here are the most valuable things I learned in the two years it took me to write my first novel, that would eventually sell and begin my career:
1. Don’t revise as you write first draft.
Why, or why not? Because the greatest danger to any first time novelist is getting bogged down and not finishing the first draft of the first novel. Write your word count a day and just keep adding to the growing pile of pages; if you stop to revise as you go, perfectionism will catch you and sink you. You certainly won’t make the word count per day if you try editing while writing the first draft, or I wouldn’t. Even after writing 40 books, I still have to be careful not to start editing too much during first draft, because I’ll get stuck too. Once you have a draft finished, you can polish in the second draft, that’s what subsequent drafts are for, polishing.
2. Don’t stop writing your first draft to do extra research.
I’m going to assume that you wouldn’t have sat down to write a book without some background, or interest in the topic, so you’ve done enough research to do a first draft. Wait on extra research until you have hundreds of pages beside your computer and a finished draft. Why wait? Because if you’re anything like most writers that I know, including myself, sending us to a library is a dangerous thing because we’re surrounded by BOOKS! We have good intentions of looking up only the specific topics we came to research, but it’s a library, it’s like Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders, and just like Aladdin if we touch the wrong treasure we’ll never get out alive, or at least not out in time to make our deadline. The internet is equally deadly for research, maybe more so, because it’s always at our fingertips. Do not do extra research until the first draft is finished unless the fact you need is absolutely essential to writing the current scene, but usually it’s not. Beware that research doesn’t become a procrastination tool. I still type all caps – NOTES; WHAT DOES FIFTEENTH CENTURY UNDERWEAR LOOK LIKE? or, NOTES; WHAT FOOD WOULD BE AT A MEDIEVAL WORLD BANQUET? These were both notes I had in my first novel, but I didn’t need to know the answers to get my heroine undressed for bed or to have her confront her sister over dinner. My second draft was just filling in the notes, and my third draft was where I started polishing the language. You might say my second draft was research questions only.
3. Do not get caught up in the perfect opening sentence in your first draft.
You can start the draft with gibberish for all it matters, because the important thing in a first draft is all those hundreds of pages after that first sentence; without them, the first sentence doesn’t matter a damn. What? you say, The first sentence is very important! You’re right, in fact it’s vital. Your first sentence, first paragraph, will sell the entire book to the right editor and to readers after it’s published. But I’ve seen too many writers get caught up in making the beginning of a book perfect, to the point where they polish the first chapter over and over, and never finish the book. A great first line may sell a book to an editor, but it won’t sell a few chapters to anyone. The day’s when editors would buy an unfinished manuscript from a first timer are decades past. To sell a book, you have to finish it first. Even today the opening lines/paragraph is often the last thing I revise, not the first. I’ll agonize over the first sentence, but only after the rest of the book is polished and singing.
4. Write your idea, and don’t worry if it’s good enough to sell.
Your ultimate goal is to sell, but if you start worrying about selling before you have ever finished a single book, you aren’t just putting the cart before the horse, you’re buying a saddle before you’ve taken riding lessons. I don’t know if your idea is good enough to sustain a book, let alone good enough to be your first selling novel, but I know you have to start somewhere, why not this idea? Maybe it’ll suck, but maybe it’ll be great, you’ll never find out if you don’t take the chance and write it.
5. Last piece of advice that helped me write my first five novels, all of which sold.
The 70/30 rule. I found that seventy percent of my first drafts were garbage, but thirty percent was gold, but I had to write all one hundred percent of the draft to get that thirty percent of shining gold because it was scattered among the seventy percent of unusable garbage. My garbage quotient has gotten lower as I’ve gained more practice as a writer, but it’s still a good rule of thumb if you’re one of the writers that writes long and then revises like I do.
Good luck all you November writers! Happy Hunting!
A Not So Scary Halloween Birthday!
I’m a horror writer, and back when there was a horror section in the bookstores, that’s where I was shelved. I’ve been called mixed genre, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, paranormal thriller. I’m still shelved in science fiction and fantasy, because thats where horror goes now. We horror writers hang out on the street corners with the science geeks, and the Tolkien fans, teaching them about the darker side of their fantasies. Muhahaha! Because I usually write a darker version of whatever I’m writing, I get invited to a lot of Halloween events. Not as many as I used to get invited to, because I have a reputation for turning them down. I could have made a lot of press and publicity over the years if I’d been wiling to attend more Halloween events on All Hallows Eve, itself, so why refuse?
When my daughter, Trinity, was three I went to either World Fantasy Con, or World Con in California. I honestly can’t remember which con it was now, but they are both good cons for networking, finding agents, publishers, getting invited into anthologies, interviews, and a host of other things that are good for a writer’s career. If you are starting out as a writer I especially recommend World Fantasy Con for making good business connections. It was a smart business move so my friend and fellow writer, Deborah Millitello and I went. My ex, who was at that time still my husband, stayed at home like many spouses do for their other halves. Trinity was going to be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and her best friend was going to be Glenda the Good Witch. My ex promised to get lots of pictures and our good friends and parents of the Good Witch were going to get video. My ex promised to get video, too. I hated to miss it, but I’d see the pictures and video later, and there would be other Halloweens. I was still searching for enough writing contracts to keep me busy and grow my career and that might not be able to wait for another year until next World Fantasy, so I chose and I went.
It was a very busy and fun convention in many ways. I had a lot of meetings with editors, publishers, agents, and even had an interview with a new magazine. It was potentially a very productive convention, if any of it panned out. Just like you have to send out a lot of stories to a lot of different markets so you can up your chances of getting a professional sale and getting paid, so the more meetings you have with more publishing professionals the better your odds for new contracts. But it’s a bit like fishing, you put a lot of bait in the water, you don’t always catch a fish.
As it turned out, not a single meeting turned into an actual paying contract for me. No new book sales, no new series sales, no anthologies that actually took off and became a reality. It was a lot of promise but no follow through, and . . . I’d missed seeing Trinity dressed up as Dorothy with her best friend as Glenda, but there’d be pictures and video.
Nope, both cameras and both video recorders broke. I had one fuzzy picture in the dark where I could see the ruby gleam of my daughter’s shoes, but that was it. Literally every tech device we had to record that memory malfunctioned. I missed that Halloween and I could never even see it.
That was my wakeup call from the universe that Halloween with my daughter, my only child, might just trump business even for a horror writer. I made the promise to myself that I would never miss another one with Trinity, and I have kept that promise.
Her birthday is in October and one of her very favorite holidays is Halloween. She’s always been disappointed that I couldn’t hold out so she could be born on the actual holiday. For her birthday this year she wanted to go to Disney World for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.
It’s not a typical twenty-first birthday request, but it is very Trinity, so Jon and I went about making it happen. We told her to invite a friend, which she did. Jon, who has been Daddy Jon since she was quite small, and I, plus Spike and Genevieve, the other half of our poly foursome set about making Trinity’s birthday wish come true.
If you think that because I write horror and hard boiled mysteries that I don’t enjoy Disney, you would be wrong. In fact, all four of us are the type of adult that will watch our favorite Disney movies without a child as an excuse. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re too old to enjoy the movies and things that make you happy, because they are killjoys that want to steal the happy-shiny from the world, and the world needs all the happy-shiny it can get. If Disney is one of your happy thoughts, then rock your bad selves!
If you go to Disney World for Halloween be absolutely sure you get tickets for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. It was awesome! Don’t miss the parade, either! The Headless Horseman rides out first, and the rest of the parade was equally fun. I particularly liked that the dancers from the Haunted Mansion had shovels and caused sparks to fly against the ground; it was a very cool effect. But make sure and get good viewing for the show at the castle, because this year is being hosted by the Sanderson Sisters from the movie, “Hocus Pocus.” It was one of Trinity’s favorite movies and one of Genevieve’s, too. The show is fabulous and the actress they have playing Bette Midler’s part as Winifred is spot on! The other sisters are very good, too, as was the whole cast. I can’t compliment the rest of the cast individually without giving away the surprises so I’ll wait until November to say anymore, but it was amazing! If you can go to this year’s party, do it, because all six of us loved it.
So, Trinity is twenty-one, and she’s trying to arrange with work so she gets Halloween off because she’d still rather spend it at home with us and the dogs. Someday maybe she’ll grow out of wanting to be with us for the holiday, but until she does, I’m home for Halloween. I learned my lesson, even horror writers should take Halloween off and play with the kids.
Choose Joy
Choose joy
Yesterday was a hard day. I had a serious fight with someone I love. No fight gets as vicious as one between loved ones because we know each other’s weakness, and the painful spots, so we can drive the knife in deep where it counts. Fights with people we care about are the worst for that reason and because if it’s bad enough you can irreparably damage the relationship – forever. There came a moment of decision.
I could hold a grudge and make things worse, or I could choose joy and give the person who hurt me a chance to redeem the relationship. I chose joy, they worked their issues, and it was good. It was so much better than holding onto the resentment and anger would have been. A grudge leaves no room for joy, or healing. I chose to try and to believe we could work things out and today is a much better day. But I did not choose blindly and it took the other person, who was part of the negativity, to work their issues and risk being vulnerable enough to come to me with renewed effort. I did the same, because no matter who is right, or wrong, it usually takes both people in a fight to cause it – even if only a little on one side. Don’t keep score; heal, do better, talk, communicate the shit out of how you got into the bad moment and what you can do to get out of it and onto something better.
Please, notice above that I didn’t forgive and just accept the apology and go on. We both worked the issues that had led to the fight and talked about it. We talked about it until the discussion is almost as hard as the fight, but without the talking and the willingness to work the issues involved, forgiveness doesn’t work. Yes, you read that right. Forgiveness is empty if the person you’re forgiving keeps doing the same hurtful things over and over again because that means they didn’t mean the apology. Or, if they only mean the apology when they are in the middle of the fight, or see the pain they’re causing their loved ones, but then they go right back to the bad behavior – they aren’t sorry. Or they’re not sorry enough to change the behavior causing the problem. If that’s the case, then you’re screwed. Your only choices are to either settle for being dragged into their painful drama forever, or to walk away. If people won’t work their issues, you can’t work them for them. You cannot carry another person’s burden without depriving that person of the lessons they’re supposed to learn to become the best possible THEM, they can be. Look at it this way, if you keep rescuing the princess, she never learns to rescue herself. Or, if you keep putting up with the ogre’s horrible behavior, he will never turn into the handsome prince, because you’ll stay with the ogre. Its hard work to become a prince, or a self-rescuing princess, or a princess if your ogre runs to the feminine sort, or a self-rescuing prince – its freaking hard work to change yourself. People seldom do it for real, they do just enough to get by and then the old habits come back. Old habits, even self-destructive ones are strangely comforting, because they are the known, the familiar. The unknown and the unfamiliar scare the hell out of most people, but if you let the fear of the unknown stop you, your life is automatically limited. Is that what you want, a limited life? No? Then you have to forge ahead into the unknown, explore new worlds, new possibilities, because when the old habits lead you to the same bad places, bad relationships, dead end jobs, unhealthy bodies, the only way to find a better place to be, better relationships, a job you love, or one that supports you and your family better, or both, and/or a healthier body, is to try something new. Don’t let old habits, old pain, old issues, old fears, old unhappiness win! If you and your loved ones are willing to do the work you can find new, healthier habits, heal the pain, work through the issues that are stopping you, conquer the fears, and find yourself happier!
Choose joy, but understand that joy takes work. Decide to be happier, healthier, more productive, whatever you need in your life, and then be willing to do the work to make it happen. Choose Joy, and then work your ass off to get it, and keep it.
My Three Best Pieces of Writing Advice
My best advice about writing is – write. Writers write. The more you write the better you’ll get at it. Writing is a skill and like any other skill from basketball to knitting, the more you practice the actual skill the better you get at the game, at making sweaters, or at writing stories. People treat writing as if it doesn’t require as much practice and dedication to craft as other things; why? I believe it’s because anyone can write. Anyone can sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and write. Anyone can sit down at a computer and type. The physicality of it is available to everyone who is literate and can read. If you know how to read, you can write something. It may not be a great piece of literature, but it’s words on paper and they’re right there in front of you. See – anyone can write, but not everyone can write well. That takes practice, dedication, and a lot of perseverance.
The above is the primary piece of how to be a writer, without it nothing else matters. But I’m about to give a second piece of advice that I’ve never put in a writing blog before because I didn’t realize how big a problem it was until recently. What is this new piece of advice? Stay off the internet. Yes, you read that right, stay off the internet. It’s a great tool for building a social network and promoting your work, and can be a good jumping off point for research. Never use other people’s websites as your only source for research, because most sites have no one policing them for veracity. Start on websites if you must, but don’t end there. That’s lazy research, which leads to lazy writing. It’s obvious that too much social media is like talking to your friends on the phone or having too many “business” lunches. It may all be helpful, even talking to friends can refresh you so you go back to writing with renewed vision, but if you do too much social anything it can hurt your productivity. Most writers can avoid picking up the phone and making a call, or going out the door to see people in person, but online socialization is harder to resist. It’s so easy to tell yourself, well I’ll just get on line for a few minutes; half an hour later and you’re still on line. I’ve done it myself. I’ve found that Pinterest and YouTube are especially time consuming for me. Twitter is easier, because there is a limit of 140 characters and then I’m done, or that’s how I felt at first. Now, I’m not so sure, because it’s also easy for me to think Twitter isn’t that big a time use, because of the individual messages being so short, but if I do too many short messages in a row, then it can add up to a lot of time. But what about promoting yourself and using social media as a business tool? It can be a very effective business tool, but not if you’re so busy trying to promote yourself and gain a larger online presence that you don’t get time to actually write. FaceBook was such a problem for me that I hired a media minion to post there, because I felt FB was too important to ignore, but it was also a huge time use that took away from my actual writing. I still do my own Twitter, but I’m trying to police myself better, because if I think its also taking too much time and attention, I may have to stop posting personally, which would be a shame since I enjoy Twitter.
I said time and attention above, and that second part is the other danger of the internet. I have found myself thinking, this, or that, would make a great tweet, or that would be a good blog. Now that’s all well and good, but if I find myself thinking about how to tweet, or Facebook, or blog, etc . . . and not about writing my novels, then something has gone wrong. The online media is supposed to support and promote my writing, not be more important than the writing, and if my first thought is what I’m going to tweet, Facebook, or blog, and not the novel I’m writing, then the social promotion is taking too much of my subconscious, and that part of my brain needs to be concentrated on writing my book. One of the most important tools for any writer is their subconscious. I know I’m in the zone for a novel when the book wakes me up early loud in my head with notes and the first few lines of the day. If I wake up thinking about any of my social media instead, then it hurts my ability to immerse myself in my novel, and immersion is what I need to be productive and make my deadlines. This leads me to the third piece of writing advice: Protect your prime writing time.
It will take some trial and error to figure out what your prime writing time is, and bear in mind it may change as you get older, or even with different books. Most writers have a time of day, or night, that they work best, once you find it, treat it like gold, because it is the time when your muse is talking the loudest to you. I work best first thing in the morning, let me add I wasn’t a morning person when I started writing like this, but over the years I’ve become one. I need to wake up and just go straight to my desk, if at all possible. I’m one of those writers that needs to not have anyone talk to me, or distract me in any way before I sit down at my desk in the morning. Anything more than tea before the first pages hurts my page count for the morning. The smallest interruption can disrupt me, and hurt, or even ruin, my morning writing session. I knew to avoid actual, in person people. I even wait to feed the dogs until after I’ve got a few pages for the day because if I take the time to take the dogs out, feed them, and then wait to take them out again, then I’m derailed. It’s the difference between sitting down at my desk ready to set the keyboard on fire, and sitting down at my desk with some of my energy spent, wasted on mundane things that could have waited for a few minutes. The dogs get a treat in my office while they wait for actual breakfast, and the dogs think that the office treat drawer is awesome. I’ve found that most of the mundane things that distract me from my desk first thing in the morning are all happy to wait until later; after I get my morning pages done.
So, in a nutshell: Writers write. Stay off the internet. Don’t let mundane things interfere with your prime writing time. Now, stop reading this blog and go write stories that only you can write.
First Dog and First Book
The picture with this blog is of my original copy of Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. As you can see it is a much loved book. I’ve had the book for about forty years, but that’s not why the book looks so beaten up. I bought this book through the Scholastic Book Club in junior high. I think I was twelve. I got off the school bus with my new book in my armload of school things. I ran towards the house eager to start reading this new adventure, but when I got inside the house I couldn’t find it. I searched every inch of what I’d been carrying in my arms, including my sweater, but the book was nowhere to be found. I finally looked outside and found my dog, Jenny, chewing on something in the yard.
I ran out and, of course, Jenny was chewing on Charlotte’s Web. I grabbed the book from her and I was furious. The cover was ripped off, there were tooth marks all over it. The book was ruined! I yelled at the dog, and can still remember how angry I was with her. I marched back inside with my damaged book and she stayed out in the yard where she always was because my grandmother didn’t believe in indoor dogs, or indoor pets for that matter. I was able to read the book, but every time my fingers touched the tooth marks it made me angry all over again. I was livid about the book being damaged for a long time. Fast forward a little to the serial dog poisoner that was killing in our small town. The coward even put poisoned meat inside fences and cages where the dogs never got out to bother anyone. If I’d been the grownup in my life, I’d have brought Jenny inside to live with us and put her on a leash – always – until the poisoner was caught. But I wasn’t the grownup in my life, and my grandmother only allowed Jenny inside the house one day a year, on Christmas morning to get her presents. You can guess the rest, one morning we discovered Jenny stiff with her body stretched out in a painful bow. I know enough about poisons now that it was likely strychnine, which is a painful way to go.
I dug the grave for my dog in our yard. I ground was hard, or maybe I’m remembering other pets and other graves dug. It all sort of gloms together in my mind, digging in the dirt of the yard to bury something I loved.
In the years to come I would value this copy of Charlotte’s Web all the more, because it holds the toothmarks of my first dog, the only dog my mother would ever bring home to me because she would die the summer of my sixth year. The marks that had irritated my fingers when I touched them before were a touchstone that comforted me and reminded me of things I had loved. No, I suppose in the end this book reminds me of things I still love. You never forget your first dog. The one that was beside you on the first adventures out of the yard. The one who roamed the woods at your side. Jenny even risked her life to protect me, taking on the most fierce dog in the town. One so dangerous that even his owners knew it and kept him on chain, or caged, except with them. He got loose one day and tried to attack me, but she threw herself at him. The other dog was almost four times her size but she never hesitated. This was her child, her pack! The big dog’s owners heard the dog fight and my screams and came running. They dragged the other dog off and miraculously Jenny wasn’t hurt. He’d gone for the throat and her thick wooly coat had saved her. But I can still taste the fear on my tongue when the dog attacked and the surprise when my little dog that had never picked a fight in her life launched herself at the other animal. Ironically, the other dog would be one of the first victims of the poisoner, who put meat into its outdoor caged run.
Would I have read Charlottes’ Web so often if touching it hadn’t reminded me of my lost dog? I don’t know, but I do know that this was the book where I first began to figure out how a good sentence was constructed, how a descriptive paragraph worked, how a story is built. For decades I would read Charlotte’s Web once a year in the autumn. Eventually this, my first copy, got so fragile that I bought other copies to read so this copy could be saved. But when I think about reading Charlotte’s Web, this is the book I think about reading. This texture of toothmarks, and tears, that one rip. I know the feel of this coverless book in my hands better than almost any other book I’ve ever read, save perhaps one. This book helped make me a writer, and those precious teeth marks helped me learn another invaluable lesson. That there is no anger, no fight, worth being truly enraged at someone/something you love. It’s not every book that can teach you two life lessons, and its not every dog that can help you learn them.
You never forget your first dog. I’ve had other dogs since, but once I got to be the grownup in my life and had a way to make choices, all the dogs have been indoor dogs. I would never lose another pet because I could not protect it. As I trace the bite marks on the pages, I wonder would I have loved this book so much if Jenny had not chewed it up, and then died, so that it was my remembrance of her? Since this book was the first one that began to teach me the trick of being a writer, would it have happened without everything that I think of and feel when I touch this book? What goes into making a writer? How does the magic happen? I don’t write about dogs much, or pigs, or clever spiders, and I certainly am not a writer of children’s stories, but I know, absolutely know, that this book was critical to my development as a writer. For the first time, I wonder if maybe my first dog, Jenny, was more important in that development than I thought. I’ll keep this book forever, because a writer never forgets that first important book, and a girl never forgets her first dog.
Missing Ireland
This week we had one of the hottest days of the summer so far, which means over 90F, very humid, and miserable for running outside, but I came downstairs with a jacket over my arm. I was convinced I’d need it. Why? Because the book I’m currently writing is partially set in Ireland and I’d have needed the jacket. In fact one of the working titles for the book is simply, The Irish Book. We actually flew to Ireland to research it. We were there for almost two weeks and then we flew to England to research another book. I’d never tried combining research on different books before; it was a little odd, especially because the book set in England isn’t the one I’m working on, or the one after that. It was especially jarring to have to take my head out of the Irish book, which I am currently writing, to a book so far down the road. It made sense to piggyback the research since the two countries were geographically so close, but as a writer it was harder than I thought it would be to try to juggle such different projects and different kinds of research.
The ferns in Ireland were almost as tall as I am.
England was having a heatwave while we were there: 70F with some days reaching 80F, unheard of there. Ireland ran between 40F to mid-60s. I don’t think it even reached 70F the entire time we were there. It rained, at least a little, every day in Ireland. The sun would come out and it would feel warm but if you stepped into the shade it was suddenly much cooler. We had to buy rain gear because our good rain coats were at home. It was wet, drizzly, and very autumn there every day. This was high summer, and the locals assured us this was summer weather for them. It was even a little sunnier and nicer on some days than typical for the season.
Lough Tay in the Wicklow Mountains.
Air conditioning didn’t work well the entire time we were traveling this trip, except for one room in England. In Dublin we left the windows open and ran fans, sometimes it was okay, but one night it was so hot and muggy in the room that it gave me a migraine. There are no screens on the windows, so if you sleep with them open to help with temperature you have to risk wildlife flying in, and if on a low enough floor, people maybe creeping in – not very comforting. In fact, when I first realized the window challenge I was quite unhappy with it, but once I was up and writing at the desk the damp and autumnal chill worked for me, worked for the book. One morning in Dublin I wrote 18 pages. The book was going well, and then we had to leave for England.
This is my fourth trip to England, to London, and I can finally say that I’m not a city girl, not even for London. Unfortunately all our business kept us in the city, and we only had one day to escape to Somerset, Glastonbury in particular, which is my favorite part of England. But I didn’t escape to the countryside until after I’d been a guest at my first European SF Convention, done an amazing 4 and half hour signing at Forbidden Planet, and finished the research for two books down the way. I’ll probably be blogging in more detail later about the convention and the signing. Thanks to everyone that helped make both a great experience! When work was done we could take a day to truly play, and we did, but one day didn’t make up for nearly three in the city. Though the research at the British Museum did its best to make up for anything and everything. Its my favorite museum on the planet to date, and the wonders on display take days to see. I felt very privileged that it was part of my job to roam about in such a magical place. There will be a blog just about the British Museum, but it will have to wait until this book is complete.
A tankard carved from amber. Just one treasure from the British Musuem.
I made notes and outlines for the book that will be set in England, but I was still trying to write on the Irish book. I’m not sure I wrote more than five pages at a sitting the entire time we were in Britain. Partly I was having to think of a different book altogether to do this research, and partly . . . a lot of things, but I only figured out one problem this week.
Do you remember where I said I wrote 18 pages in a morning in Dublin? When I hit that kind of page count the book is set and going well. Its very unusual for me to hit that high and then fade down to almost no pages. We were traveling, and that can make it challenging to write, and I was still making progress on the current book. We got home from Europe and I was making pages steadily, but never to the point I’d been in Dublin. Then, two weeks later we had DragonCon in Atlanta to attend, and though a wonderful and fun event, it was too soon after a month away from home. So tired, not even DragonCon could really fire me up. I enjoyed it, but not like usual. I wanted to be home for longer than two weeks. I have never been so tired of staying in hotels in my life. It ranked right up there with the 26 cities in 28 days tour of Narcissus in Chains in October of 2001. Yeah, not a great time to be flying. Hands down the hardest tour we’ve ever done.
This week Jonathon and I had to drive out of town and stay in yet another hotel, because of family illness. The family member is out of the hospital and back home, but it was serious, and accordingly stressful and scary. Normally, that kind of event derails me for days on a book, but not this time. I got up the next day and wrote ten pages. Yay! I did it again the next day, and the next, and the next. It’s not eighteen pages, but ten is a good daily page count. So I’m finally back into the swing of the book after nearly a month. I know I am, because I brought my jacket down to wear on a day that was so hot I didn’t need it. I brought the jacket downstairs with me because I was thinking about Ireland. I’d have needed the jacket there.
Stream in the Wicklow Mountains. Flower is a wild foxglove.
I’m missing Ireland because the book had settled into being written there. When a novel hits a certain productivity for me I need to stay put. I need to finish writing it where I am. Which means I should have stayed in Dublin with the rain, and the autumnal mist, and the trips to the mountains where everything was so green and lush, but not a tropical kind of lush. Ireland is different than I thought it would be in some ways, and in others exactly as I’d dreamed. Maybe if I wasn’t writing a book set there, and reading tons of books I bought there for more research, I wouldn’t be missing a country that I visited for less than two weeks; but all the above has combined and I’m homesick for a country that isn’t mine.
When I explained that to Jonathon he offered to bring a hose to my office, so I could have the constant rain. I said, thanks, but no thanks. *laughs*
When I type ‘The End’ on this manuscript I think this strange nostalgia for an alien land should pass, but I’m already making a list of things I didn’t get to see/experience in Ireland, so maybe not. It didn’t feel like home when I was there, Glastonbury, England feels more like home, but it’s not Glastonbury that keeps calling me back.
I have stood on the Hill of Kings and touched the Stone of Destiny at Tara! Amazing energy, amazing moment! I have walked inside Newgrange with its swirls and spirals, which is hundreds of years older than the Great Pyramids. We saw both on the same day, and it deserves a blog to itself soon. I have seen the mummies of St. Michan’s Church in Dublin, which was probably one of my favorite things we did there. I’ll talk more about St. Michan’s in a different blog. We walked around Dublin until we began to know the city and were able to find our way around. I kept mishearing St. Stephen’s Green, as St. Stephen’s Gallows, which gave the beautiful park in the middle of Dublin a very different meaning. I’ve seen Irish deer and watched two tiny, spotted, fawns play fight as if they already had a rack of horns atop their heads. I’ve seen lakes, forests, or what’s left of them, peat bogs, moors, and more streams and waterfalls than I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve stood on the cliffs above the Irish sea, and found caves there, and then watched the tide fill them back up and make them too dangerous to enter. I could not have written this book if I hadn’t gone, or I would have gotten it wrong, and every person who knew Ireland would have known I hadn’t walked the streets, eaten the food, drank in the pubs, listened to the stories, seen the people, touched the bullet holes in the post office. Ireland isn’t something you can fake. It’s not the travel ads on television. It has nothing to do with American St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not sure how to explain it all, but as I write the book I’m figuring it out, because part of why I write is to discover, to clarify, to understand, and finally to share the adventure.
In Honor of Patriots Day
Fourteen years ago today America was attacked, but whatever their goals were, they failed. We’re still here, enjoying our freedom, our modern life, and just being us. Having recently traveled to Europe, I am more aware than ever that our country has a personality, an energy, that is unique to us. I’ll be blogging about that in more depth later, but today is about Patriot’s Day.
In honor of the fallen we have lowered our flag to half mast.
In honor of the constitutional freedoms we have in America I am carrying concealed, because I can. The very different attitude about guns here and in Europe will be part of that other blog. For me and my household, we are armed and proud to say that our founding fathers wanted the populace armed because they understood that armed civilians make for a much more polite government.
In honor of the fact that I have the freedom here to disagree with my government, let me say this, “I think the deal with Iran is wrong.” I won’t argue most of the details, but I’ll say this, as long as they are still holding American citizens prisoner they shouldn’t get their money back. The fact that our sitting president didn’t even try to negotiate for the Americans held shows a lack of caring for the citizens he’s supposed to be leading. But then, every time I visit Washington D.C. I think that most of the politicians there have very little understanding of much of the rest of the country.
Unfortunately, the cities most likely to think they are in charge of our country are the ones that know the least about the majority of it. Washington D. C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York are horribly out of touch with the most of the rest of us. I travel the country, I talk to people in all those cities and in the rest of the country. We are a very diverse nation in every way, and I wish that everyone understood just how diverse we are and didn’t assume that their city, town, neighborhood, was the whole world of opinion. That D. C. is on that list is truly troubling since that’s where our Federal government resides.
I can say the above and not get in trouble with my government because in America you’re supposed to be able to state your opinion. You can disagree with me, because you’re entitled to your opinion, too. It doesn’t make either of us right or wrong, it’s just a freedom we have here.
To all the women and men in emergency services here, armed forces, police, fire service, paramedics, doctors, nurses, and all the people that are on the front lines for us when things go wrong: thank you. You are all heroes every day of the year.
Writing at DragonCon 2015
Dawn came in with pink, cotton candy clouds here in Atlanta today. The book I’m currently writing was too loud in my head for me to sleep in, so I took everything out to a less crowded part of the rooms, opened the drapes for the view and wrote. We’re here for DragonCon again, and for those who don’t know what it is, well . . . DragonCon is Geek Carnival, Stan Lee called it Geek Mardi Gras, but my husband, Jonathon, said later, “Any town can have Mardi Gras, but there’s only one Carnival.” He’s right, and for anyone that loves Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, whether it’s short stories, books, television, or movies, this is the place to get your geek on. They’re expecting 65,000 attendees, but it may run higher. Normally this is a break from the everyday routine for me, but this year it feels more like an interruption than a vacation. 
Me at my Q & A panel
We went to Ireland and Britain for a month, we got home two weeks ago, and now we’re at DragonCon. The research trip was fabulous and absolutely necessary to the new book I’m writing, because at least half the book is set in Ireland, which I’d never visited. I’ve had this book idea for a few years, but kept putting it off because of the amount of travel and research that was needed, and there was another book set in England that I kept putting off because I needed a second research trip for it. Two books that I kept shoving back down the creative que, because I didn’t want to take time out of my actual writing schedule to travel for the research, but finally my imagination said, “The Irish book is next. Get your ass to Ireland, its time.”
I’ve tried to argue with my muse in the past, and I’ve won. I have successfully talked my muse and myself out of writing books in a certain order, not this plot, but that plot. I’ve done it and the books themselves are good, but after I’d forced my muse to write a book that it wasn’t ready for my writing process would be fucked up for months. The closest to true writers block I’ve ever had is when I don’t write the book, or short story, that my muse says is next in the creative pipeline. I can force my muse into harness and make her help me write the book that is due, the book I think should be next, but once that book is in New York then she turns on me, or I turn on myself, or my imagination does. Whatever you want to call it, that thing that makes me a happy, working writer balks like a huge draft horse that you need to pull your wagon. The horse holds up its hoof and says, “I’m hurt, can’t you see that? I’m lame. You’ve forced me to work when I wasn’t ready, on a road that I wasn’t ready to walk on, and I hurt myself. See?”
No, my muse doesn’t come to me like a horse, or talk that directly to me, but the metaphore is accurate. Sometimes my muse pushes me from behind like the hand on a swing sending me higher and higher into the cloudless blue sky – those are days of gold and joy when the words flow like magic. But most often the muse pulls me along, or we work together picking our way through the rocky field of a book, while the plow blade catches on rocks, old tree roots, and other nameless debris. When it works well my muse and I are a great team. We work well together she and I, or he and I, though muses in mythology are traditionally female, so I usually say, she. I am not referring to real life muses, as in a person that inspires an artist to create, that’s an entirely different topic, and not the kind of muse I’m referencing. When I say, muse here, I mean that spark inside an artist that helps them create and finish a work. Lots of people get good ideas for stories, even great ideas, but very few actually write the story down, finish it, rewrite it until its ready to send to a publishing house and an editor, and then send it off. My muse doesn’t just inspire me, she helps me work, or maybe helps me be inspired day after day. Now, there are days when she doesn’t show up at work on time, but I’m still at my desk typing and eventually she hears the activity and comes to look over my shoulder. Sometimes she thinks, “Good enough, and sometimes she thinks, we can do better.” Ray Bradbury once said, “The muse cannot resist a working writer.” He’s right.
Normally DragonCon is something that refreshes me and my muse. We come to play, but this year the trip to Europe was so long and full of so much information that I haven’t finished processing all of it in my mind. I have a stack of research books that I found in Ireland that is probably taller than me if we could safely stack them atop each other. I need time in my office to write the front end of the book set here in America, as I read and go over my research notes and pictures from Ireland. I’ve never tried to do this much research at the same time I’m writing the book, but it seems to be working for this particular book. I have a process for each book and most of that is the same for each project, but every book is a little bit different, too. It’s like dating, people can take you to the same restaurant, but the experience is totally unique, because the person beside you is totally unique. From dinner table conversation to whether you’re both comfortable holding hands, or if there will be sex afterwards, or not. Books are like that, too, each one unique, though it all has to be researched, written, rewritten, edited, and published, so the process is the same, but different. Again, like dating, because if all dates were the same you’d sleep with them all, or marry them all, and you don’t. The difference with writing books as opposed to dating is that you have to cross the finish line with each book, so you have to come across, or get engaged, or walk down the aisle, or whatever you feel is “finished”. On a real life date you can have dinner, shake hands, and go home alone, because that’s all you want to do, but with a book – I have to find a way to like my own book enough to want to do a hell of a lot more than just shake hands at the end.
For me, even a day off from a book when it’s going well can derail me for a week, or more. I was so tired when we all finally went to sleep last night here at DragonCon, but I woke early with the book demanding to be written. I wanted to finish the scene I’d been working on yesterday, which I did. It is the first time I’ve ever worked successfully at DragonCon, because like I said, it’s usually a welcome break, but not this year. This year my head is full of Ireland and everything we saw, did, and learned there. I keep thinking about all the research books. Some I absolutely need to read before I get to the second part of the book, but others maybe useful, or may just be more information that doesn’t directly impact the book I’m writing. There is even a third kind of research that never makes it visibly onto the page, but is important to have in my head, because it helps me write this book better. I can’t explain the difference in the types of reading, or research, but I know it is different, and I know that sometimes the difference is slim, but incredibly important to me as a writer.
Now I’m in the room alone with all my loves out doing different things. They are enjoying being in costume, getting their pictures taken, or visiting with friends that involves panels, parties, LARPing, and other things that I don’t really do, or understand. I’m in something cool and bed worthy with the lights down low so I can look out at the spectacular view of nighttime Atlanta from the room’s desk. Its a great view to write to, and that’s what I’m doing. I’ve got headphones in listening to the same music that I’ve been listening to at home as I write the book. (I always pick music for a book and listen to it until I burn myself out on it. It can take me years to be able to listen to an album, or artist again, and sometimes the music is so wedded to a particular book that I’m never able to listen to it for simple enjoyment again.) The moment that music comes on my muse and I are ready to go, because that is the music for this book. Some writers work better to silence, but for me, I need music most of the time. One thing I am doing differently is writing on my iPad. I wrote most of Dead Ice, the last Anita Blake novel, on my iPad because we weren’t home for the winter last year, so my main desk top wasn’t with me. It was the first book mostly written on the iPad, and now this book is also being written mostly on it, because I knew I would be traveling a lot while I wrote it, and I thought that keeping the same computer would help. It has, and its reminded me that I wrote most of my early books on some of the first portable computers. It was how I could write at restaurants, or playgrounds, when my daughter was little. It’s helping me a great deal to write on the same instrument on planes, in hotels, everywhere. Same music, same computer, same book, the continuity is helping me a lot.
I tried to go down and play with my people tonight, but the crowds got to me. Too many moving parts, too many things to keep track of, its just too much chaos tonight, so I kissed them good-bye and went back to the room. My security has me tucked in for the night, and I am content with that. I got plenty of attention today at the signing and panel. It was great seeing everyone, and thanks for everyone who stood in line for hours for the signing. You guys rock!
So at one of the biggest geek parties of the year I’m sitting in a darkened room by myself typing. The book is thunderous in my head, and I’m hoping to get another chapter done tonight, before my people get back from their panels, parties, and costume fun. I’m just not in the mindset to play, I need to work – I want to work. But then if I didn’t actually enjoy being alone in a room with just my imaginary friends and me, I wouldn’t be a writer, and I certainly wouldn’t be a Best Selling novelist with over forty books to my credit. I’ve been trying to learn to play, and I’m better at it than I was when I started, but in the end writing is my play. I think I forgot that for awhile, and I got confused with deadlines that were punishing, so that I began to see the writing as a punishment and not a reward. If you do anything too long and too hard, you can take the joy of it, and I did that to myself and my muse. We worked in harness far past our ability to plow a straight line and take care of ourselves. Now, I’m remembering that books are my play, whether its reading them, or writing them. My muse and I sit in the darkened room together, we are writing, and we are content.