News

Low day, today, listening to THE BEST OF POOH AND TIGGER. I thought I could sink no more cutsey than THE VEGGIE TALES CHRISTMAS ALBUM, but I was wrong. When I feel stressed I listen to musicals. The book tha I’m having to leave in the lurch for tour is the third Merry Gentry book, SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT. The muscial for the book was the newest Broadway version of THROUGHALLY MODERN MILLIE. On the days when muscials don’t do it, I turn to Christmas music. This book’s Christmas album has been THE VEGGIE TALES CHRISTMAS ALBUM. When I haven’t felt stressed and the writing has gone well, I’ve been listening to Tori Amos, Sarah McLaughin, Garbage, Sheryl Crow, a variety of music. Merry for some reason always needs to change music for either her mood or mine. Anita will pick an album and we’ll listen to it until I never want to hear it again. Though lately, I’ve found that as the books get longer, my patience with any one album grows thin. I can listen to the same music day in, day out for four hundred, close to five hundred pages, then I start wanting to hear something different. The album for this Merry book that’s come the closest to fitting my good days has been Nine Inch Nails,——. I especially like the song “Closer”. My husband, Jonathan, and my friend and assistant, Darla, know that when they hear Nine Inch Nails, it’s a good day, but when they hear musicals or Christmas music, it’s not a good day. Today is not a good day. We are only three days from the start of tour and I have intervies yet to finish; the afterward for the hardback version of THE LAUGHING CORPSE . . . oh, a dozen things like that left to do. I am great with a few hundred pages ahead of me. I love to stretch my legs and just write, but I am terrible at writing very short. Short stories when the muse comes striking, but short answers, essays . . . I struggle. It seems silly that a person who can write nearly a thousand manuscript pages of a book finds writing a few pages of afterward a chore, but it’s true. I am also a terrible letter writer. The journal for this trip will force me to be better at this last difficult writing task. To be able to write sort, pithy, and not to whine. I hate whining in others, so I’m not allowed to either. Damnit. I think without Jonathon to spell me on some days when I am not feeling particuliarly upbeat, the journal would not be possible. But that is what a spouse is supposed to be, a help-mate, a partner, in the truest sense of the word.

Sasquatch, our youngest pug(he’ll be two this year), has just joined me at the computer. He sits infront of the keyboard, and looks out the window mostly. But sometimes he looks at the words as they dance across the screen, and I swear that he knows that they mean something more to me. He can’t read, not yet anyway, but he knows that I’m doing something with those funny black marks. He knows they mean something to me, like the smells in the yard mean something to him, that I cannot understand.

When I set down, I was feeling stressed. Now a little of THE BEST OF WINNER THE POOH AND TIGGER, a little rambling typing. I hope not too rambling for your sakes’s. A good positive thought about my hunny-bun. And the last ingredient to change my mood, a puppy to cuddle. I would add my daughter’s hugs on this, but trying to work with a very active eight-year-old in the office, is not exactly relaxing. Besides, I’m not sure you should use your children as a stress relife. They are going to grow up and leave you, and have live’s of their own. I’m not sure it’s good to become too dependent on that wonderful brightness. Dogs are safe. They’re never going to end up in the therepaist’s office saying mummy and daddy smothered me with their need. Dog’s like being needed, especially if there’s a chance of food. Sorry, if this has moved hither and yon. All my friends will recognize how I think and I usually carry on a conversation if I’m not watching myself. Random thoughts, strung together. Sometimes I’ll hit a profound thought, sometimes not. Today, I’m going to hug my dogs, and that’s as profound as I want to be today.