Hooray! VHV is done!

Yay! Pete & I finally managed to squeeze in a few minutes to finish up Variety Hour V, which I believe has taken us longer to write than all 4 previous Variety Hours combined. Of course, at that time, I wasn't working a job outside the home, and Pete didn't have the adorable little guy in the post below.

I'm relieved it's done and posted, and I feel bad that it took so long for us to finish it. Hopefully our beloved readers find it worth the wait. :o)

I'm really excited to have that done now, so I can work on my new WIP. I'm really excited about it, because it's evolving nicely, and because I'm writing it in first person... something I haven't done before. I did get some work done to it over this long Labor Day weekend, but not as much as I wanted. Unfortunately, the tops of my curtains were all dusty and the windows desperately needed washed, so that took a huge chunk of my weekend.

I hope I can keep ahold of the excitement. My last novel was written when I didn't have this *job* thing hogging up my time.

Ugh. And I have a PTO meeting on Wednesday. Meh.

Maybe if I just don't show up for work... or the PTO meeting... they'll all just fire me. :oD

Doin' the Happy Dance!

I don't know WHY I'm doing the happy dance. Well, I know, but it's ill-timed. School is starting next week. Which means my PTO involvement is about to ratchet up about 185 notches. That's on top of the job and the whole being a wife and mother and not letting the cats starve thing.

So what does my traitorous brain do?

It gives me a fabulous idea.

For a freaking NOVEL.

*sigh*

I'm alternating between the Happy Dance and the What The Hell's Wrong With You Dance.

I'm also doing this novel in first person, which is new for me, but it seems to be the way to go.

Gak, I soooo don't have time for this right now!!!

~~Happy dance~~

>>deep despair<<

~~Happy dance~~

>>deep despair<<

~~Happy dance~~

>>deep despair<<

I think I need a refill of my PHENTERMINE. :oD

Fairies Wear Boots

So, I saw on the Entertainment Weekly web-site (why I was there, God only knows) that Stephen King had done a list of his favorite rock and roll songs. It was a good list. I mean, it capped out with the Sex Pistols, and that's a good way to end any list.

So I says to myself, I says, "Self, why don't you do one of those lists for both your loyal readers? Won't that be fun?"

Except...

I have no idea how to do it.

It occurred to me that my musical tastes, varied though they be, tend to wander through different phases which affect what I listen to, or what I consider popular. Thus, I have no idea how I'd write a decent "definitive list."

So instead, I'll arbitrarily name off some songs that, if I were stranded on a desert island for today only, I wouldn't mind spending the day listening to. Bear in mind that this list is probably influenced by the fact that Black Sabbath's We Sold Our Souls for Rock 'n' Roll hasn't left my now playing list in three days.

Here we go. My top twelve.

12. John Lee Hooker, "Boom Boom"
Honestly, how can you ever NOT want to listen to that song? It's one of the best blues songs ever done. And John Lee Hooker is a good person to look to for inspiration as a writer, too. This is the man who said, "I don't need no three days to record no album." Go and do thou likewise, the next time you feel the almighty writer angst tickling your throat. Go watch him do it with Van Morrison.

11. Black Sabbath, "Black Sabbath"
This isn't their most popular song, nor their most catchy, but the guitars do some truly amazing things, and this early in his career, Ozzy's voice is full of texture and emotion in a way it lacked, later in life. And the way the guitar suddenly attacks toward the end is just stunning. Here's a video, but since it's weird 1970's stuff, just think of it as enhanced audio.

10: Metallica, "Master of Puppets"
Although really, it could be the whole entire album. You can have an argument with any Metallica fan about what their best CD was (and each argument will end with "they blow goats now") but for me, it's always been "...Puppets." The songs are solid, the writing is powerful, the guitars line up beautifully, you get Cthulu references, and "Orion" was a great instrumental. The song "Master of Puppets" was just brilliant though. They still rock live, long as they steer clear of the new stuff. Which blows goats.

9: Lonestar, "Walking in Memphis"
I know, I know. What the hell's country doing on this list? And I don't know. I don't like country, but I like this song, and I like their particular version of this song which is better than, say, Cher. It's a good song, and it's one of those songs that I listen to over and over again and think "there's a story here." There probably is. I just don't know it yet. I like songs that nudge me into thinking that, though. Here's an Elvis Montage with Lonestar singing. Give it a shot. A final weird detail: whenever I listen to this song, I and my visual mind always see...a rainy, blue-tinted window. I don't know why.

8: Credence Clearwater Revival, "Down on the Corner."
This song sounds like a John Lee Hooker party, and I love it. This is another one where you could very nearly put in any song that John Fogerty wrote. The man's one of the greatest rock 'n' rollers we have. The band broke up. The rest of the guys are now Credence Clearwater Resuscitation, or some dumb shit. John Fogerty is still going, all by himself. Guess which one still rocks? You got it. Here's a video lesson in why, even as rockers, we need to get away from the seventies really fast. A final note: John kind of looks like Harrison Ford, doesn't he? He Steve Martin. It weirds me out, watching him sing.

7. Cradle of Filth, "Nymphetamine"
I realize I just took a fairly blues-rock list and steered it headlong into heavy metal, but that's sort of how I am. This is a pretty typical list for me so far. This song is one of CoF's best and I never get sick of it. The female vocals counterplay wonderfully with the lead singer's alarming voice. I've been a CoF fan for a long time. This isn't going to change that. Their new CD isn't as good, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it. Here's the short version of the song, and it's video. Please watch it, even if it's not your sort of thing. I think you'll enjoy it. The lyrics are a good thing to find too. Dark, but it's poetry.

6. Rufus Wainwright, "Hallelujah"
This is another one of the songs which I listen to and have large parts of my brain saying "This is a story," over and over again. I haven't written anything about it yet, and I may never do so, but it always leaves me thinking like a writer. There's an umpteen million versions of this song by all sorts of people, but I like Rufus's other songs ("In the Graveyard," for example) and so I chose him. Plus, he was the first person I heard do it. I first heard it during Shrek, and it caught my attention and distracted me from the movie. Here's him doing it live, and rather well.

5. Alice Cooper, "Bed of Nails"
Again, this could be the entire "Trash" Album, which is one of my absolute favorites. I'm a big Alice Cooper fan in general. I can listen to this album, or "The Last Temptation" or "Brutal Planet" over and over again and be happy. "Trash," though is a particular favorite. Here's a really cheesy video for it. What do you expect? It's the eighties, which were like the seventies, but with fewer mutton chops.

4. Ozzy Osbourne, "Road to Nowhere"
Another one where it could be the whole album. "No More Tears" is my favorite Ozzy album ever. Aside from fairly perplexing middle-songs like "Zombie Stomp," which are still catchy, it's a great CD. But the particular favorite for me is this last song on the album. I think it's Ozzy's best, ("Blizzard of Ozz" didn't catch for me, I like it but this CD's better) and I'm happy for anything that has Zakk Wylde tearing up a guitar. Here's the old music video for it.

3. Thea Gilmore, "Mainstream"
This one was tough, in that it could've been a half dozen different Thea Gilmore songs. She's the best British songwriter and rocker that we have right now, and she makes me very happy. Her last CD, Harpo's Ghost, is great...but I come back to this song, which was one of the first I heard. Failing to find anything about this song online, I give you Thea's MySpace page, where you can hear some of her stuff from Harpo, all of it good.

2. My Chemical Romance, "Welcome to the Black Parade"
When they released "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge," I was very impressed. I called them -- and I stand by this -- the current Alice Cooper. They don't sound anything like Alice, but they embody some of the same things that Alice Cooper did and still does. I was proven dead right when they released their concept album, "Welcome to the Black Parade," which has crawled up my list as one of the most solid rock albums I've heard in ages. It's wonderful. I could have listed a lot of songs here instead of the title track (I could have done "Teenagers, Famous Last Words, Blood or Mama...") but I thought this song was a good starting place. Even if you have the good common sense not to listen to Emo music, you should pick this CD up. They've gone past that now, they're just a solid rock band. With this CD, I hear the same story of tone and story that with other songs has made me want to write a story about it. Here, I'm just content to listen. I have no Black Parade stories (well, I do, but I have no desire to write them.) Here's the video for you.

1. Nightwish, "Ghost Love Score"
This is another song that tickles me as a story. It has since I first heard it. It's epic and powerful and beautiful and, and, and...Actually, the whole CD ("Once") is really stunning, and I'm looking forward to their next album, the first single from which we get on May 30th. For this song, I've written four different stories, all called "Ghost Love Score," and with each one, when I go to sell the story, I've changed the name to something else. (e.g., I sold "Ghost Love Score" to Coyote Wild and changed the name to "Only Time"). This is because I feel like I still haven't gotten right. I still haven't written THE story that belongs to this song. Here's a video for you.

...

So. There's my list. It could be changed tomorrow. I can look at it now and think of what I've left off (Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, Coheed & Cambria, Bowling for Soup...) but it'll do for now.

With the songs that are tickling me as stories, I should mention that it's not the lyrics in any of those cases (except "Hallelujah") which keep moving me to stories, it's just the emotion, the tone, the color of the song which I go for it. If I were just translating lyrics into a short story, that'd be easy. The songs resonate something within the creative parts of my brain, and I'm trying to get them out and written. That's all.

...

This week, through midnight on May 31st, I'm in a race against Lori Basiewicz (Birol to you, chum) to see who can get the most written on our respective novels. This is a terrifying race, in that she's got an iron willpower where I have the willpower of a small floppy fish. Loser buys the winner an interesting variety of tea.

So, this is my last blog until June, while I go write until my fingers fall off. And the reason I'm SAYING that this is my last blog post until then is so that I don't do what I'm doing now...which is waste writing time (this race has been in progress for two days now) by sitting here writing an ****ing list of songs.

So, now I vanish and stop writing just like

Boring bits, plus MATING!

I was going to do a long and musing post about how the writing of my novel is going, and then I remembered that there are few things quite as boring as listening to a writer who is Great With Novel talking about the novel in question. Either it's going good, or it's going crappy. Most everything else is just bubbling excitement, or bleeding angst.

It's going very well. I'm at 15,000 words, all handwritten. I'm happily averaging about 300 words a page. This says a lot for my handwriting, which has improved leaps and bounds in the past year. I use letters, for a start. It's also typed up, because since I don't always have access to a uniform form of writing, the novel has the first page written in a journal, pages 2-12 written on white legal paper, pages 12-20 written on yellow longer legal paper (folded up from living in my pocket) pages 20-34 are in another journal, and so on. I have this folder with more or less all the pages in it neatly, and it is the messiest folder ever. I dropped it yesterday, and it was practically a natural disaster. Thank god for page numbers.

My main character continues to surprise me, which makes me happy. I thought he'd have a beard and longish hair. Instead, he keeps shaving his entire head. He also has a penchant for knives. Very odd, and delightful.

And that's all I'll say. You can wake up now.

Here's the MATING promised in the title: The secret origins of Elmo (look closely, at the end.)



Right. Off to write. Right.

Naughty Bits

Because this just seemed like the sort of thing that belongs on this blog

Girls outdo guys at ogling

Women are worse oglers than men - despite the widespread belief they are less physically focused.

Scientists used eye-tracking technology to pinpoint what people looked at when shown a series of sexy photos, reports The Sun.

They expected women to be more interested in faces and men in the naughty bits - but it was the other way round.

Dr Heather Rupp of the US-based Kinsey Institute said: "Men looked at the female face much more than women and both looked at the genitals comparably."

So, there you go.

...

Today is a beautiful day, with temperatures approaching seventy degrees. This would almost be too warm for comfort, except there's this cool breeze blowing now and then, just to cool things off. What else could you ask for?

I am therefore going out onto the balcony with a comfortable chair, a notebook, a freshly-filled fountain pen, and a bag of pretzels that no one will care if they leave crumbs on the ground.

Last night, I typed up about half of what I'd hand-written for the Rome novel so far, and was pleased to see that it was around four thousand words of text that I enjoyed reading as I typed.

Even later last night (something I paid for when I got up very early this morning) I kept writing where those handwritten bits left off. Earlier in the week, failing to remember the gist of where I'd left off when I wanted to do some writing (and was not at home) I picked a scene that I knew came a little ways ahead and I started writing from there. I got about fifteen pages handwritten from that point. So last night and this morning, I wrote the bit that bridged the two scenes together, and it worked very well.

It also, without intending to, solved a minor problem that I was expecting in another ten pages or so.

I noticed that with my last novel as well, now I come to think about it. I'll anticipate a problem ahead (Problem: I know why Our Hero goes into the hold of the ship; I don't know why the guards and the crew let him) and mostly ignore it, because I'm busy with the actual writing stuff. By the time I approach the problem, something has happened in the text which explains it away perfectly, and I don't have to consciously do anything to try and fix it (Solution: The guards think he's going after the guy who tried to kill Our Hero, failed, and was thrown in the hold with other people; the guards are wrong, that's not the reason, but they let Our Hero down anyway and hope for a good brawl).

So, off to the balcony to write. I already said that. Time to find out what happens when Our Hero's fever breaks and he is approaching sane for the first time in a long time (how long? He'll find out shortly.)

Creative Creativity

It's probably just me being chronically restless, which I tend to be, but I love experimenting with different methods of writing things. I learned to write by hand, advanced to a manual typewriter, then electric, and then eventually found these computer things. I was very impressed with how fast and efficiently a computer could garble up and lose something I'd written. Way faster than a typewriter!

I never really switched modes because I had to. It wasn't Gee, I'd best start typing my stuff up so I can send it out. I just switched because I was curious, I wanted to experiment, and I eventually found a groove on each device and continued to use it until a new groove came along. I was always content in the knowledge that if computers irked me enough, I could go back to typewriting, and if that irked me enough, I could revert all the way back to handwriting. The versatility was important to me.

One thing I always do in art stores is ogle the sets of calligraphy pens which comes in attractive little packages. I like the pens with their fountain pen like points (being a sucker for fountain pens) and I like the little bottles of various inks. I always dream of scratching out a short story like this. I just never got around to buying any.

Fast forward to tonight. My sister, who has heard about this several times, comes out with a little bottle of black ink and a set of calligraphy pens and points and sets them down in front of me. I am busy sitting like someone in a coma, practically drooling, with a Hulkbuster of a headache and pain caused by the Brownian motion of air molecules brushing against each other.

Still, I'm delighted to try it. You're never too old to try new things! So I set aside my manuscript that I'm working on, by hand, and I put down a blank piece of paper and I go to try it.

I have no idea why I thought this was a good idea.

I scratch out one little line. And then, in the process of going to dip the pen into the ink again...I catch the pen tip on the edge of the bottle, upend it, and spill three fourths of the bottle of ink.

I spill it in a pretty puddle all over the table, two of my fingers...and three of my manuscript pages.

I haven't typed up any of this manuscript. I promised myself I wouldn't type it up until I'd finished chapter one. So you can imagine my screaming.

Fortunately, I only lost a handful of words, most of which I can probably guess. It's not like it blotted out half a page, said half containing such words of brilliance as to move the readers of the world to tears. I just have sentences that now go "You cannot be said with a flush.*

So, this proves that experimenting is a Very Bad Idea indeed, and I will now stick safely to the modes of writing that I learned when I was younger. No more of this crazy boat-rocking for me. Nossir. For one thing, it took me five minutes to scrub the ink off my fingers.

It did make me appreciate my cartridge-based fountain pen all the more.

And I think I should probably buy my sister a new bottle of ink, since her old bottle of ink is currently a large black stain (but it's on a large black table, so that's all right.)

* This is not an actual sentence. For one thing, this sentence is terrible, which is exactly the sort of sentence I don't write. So never fear.

It's SPRING!!

At least until later this week, when we are to once again be subjected to nut-freezing weather. Not that I have nuts, unless you count the can of dry roasted peanuts in the cupboard. *grin*

I'm insanely busy right now. Work is maddening - there are eleventy billion end/beginning of the month reports that have to be done RIGHT NOW!! RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND OR THE BANK WILL IMPLODE!!! Yeah, right. If that were the case, I'd "lose" my files in the shred bin. OOPS.

This working thing sucks. (Yeah, I know. I get no sympathy but this is MY half of the blog and dammit I'm going to have a pity party.) I've had to almost completely eliminate my volunteering, which sucks. That was a part-time job in itself. The house is going to hell, and you want me to... what?? Did you say cook? Yeeaaaaah. I wouldn't be holding my breath for a home cooked meal.

My time online is ridiculously limited - it's even affecting poor Pete!

Not to mention I haven't been able to spend as much time polishing my shrine to RT, the object of my undying and insatiable lust. (He thinks I'm kidding because I confessed my secret desires on April Fool's Day. I couldn't wait any longer!) *grin*

A-hem.

Anyway.

So I've got spring fever in the worst kind of way, and I almost wish I didn't have the damn window in my office. I sit there, drooling on loan files, staring out the window at the sunshine (not directly at the sunshine, I'm not an idiot!) and thinking of the shitload of work I need to get done at home, but I can't because I'm stuck at work.

On top of all the work crap, there's my school volunteering which I'm still obligated to do, and I'm doing a piss-poor job at it, which is like nails on a chalkboard to my anal retentive self.

Oh, did I mention Little League?

And then hours of babysitting angst where my sitters (who happen to be close relatives) decided they didn't have time to babysit??????? It turned out ok, we hired a teenage girl who doesn't know we're ripping her off with the pittance we're paying. LOL

What? Did someone say writing? *convulses on floor, consumed by hysterical laughter* No, I don't think my book will get edited anytime this millennium. All my mental energy is being drained out of me. *poof* there went the last of it...

Doing "it"

You're all filthy, because of course, I meant writing.

Carrie (the other person who writes on this blog, obviously, do try to keep up) and I were discussing the AbsoluteWrite Writer's Retreat that's happening next year, and what we're actually going to write during the whole stay.

I made the comment that the thing about writer's retreats is, it's the only place where two people can come out of a darkened room looking messy and exhausted and very happy and people whoop and cheer and catcall...because they assumed they finished a book.

Carrie, who is wiser than I, pointed out that it's much more likely that they would believe it was sex, pure sex, regardless of if we brought out three hundred pages of manuscript and were stained with ink. She's right, of course.

TSUKI: Whoa! The bare-backed tango!

PETE: The what...?

RLLGTHUNDER: You got it on!

CARRIE: Yeah! On paper! Finally!

SPOOKY: Neat! How did it feel!

PETE: Great! It was like a big release! It was good to finally get it out!

HAGGIS: You dog! You DOG! Way to go!

CARRIE: It was longer than I expected!

PETE: Me too!

TSUKI: .....what?

PETE: But we got it where it needed to go, in the end!

HAGGIS: That tends to happen!

SPOOKY: WHOOO!

CARRIE: Now we just gotta figure out who else wants it.

DEAD SILENCE.

HAGGIS: Um. Er. Um. What?

CARRIE: Silly. We can't keep it all to ourselves. It's too good for that.

TSUKI: Neat!

PETE: I know! Now we just have to find a publisher!

THE RETURN OF DEAD SILENCE.

SPOOKY: Well, I mean, Hugh Hefner might know some...

PETE: Yeah! They put out a magazine after all!

THE SON OF DEAD SILENCE.

TSUKI: That magazine is hot!

DEAD SILENCE AND LAUREL & HARDY MEET THE WOLFMAN

PETE: So anyway, who wants to get their hands on it first! You guys got first crack!

CARRIE: I'm just glad to be done writing!

DEAD SILENCE IN 3-D

Quick note

BBT Magazine has a new web-site online which is very impressive and cool and built by yours truly, so you'd better love it (because I failed to go to sleep last night in the process of building it).

www.bbtmagazine.com

Check it out.

My robot serial is going through weird formatting issues which changes how I have to write it. It's still going ahead, though, so that makes me happy. I should have the first 'issue' (which will be three episodes long) done in the next hour or so. Released sometime in May, I think.

I have some interesting ruminations to share, but no time to share them! So they'll have to wait for a day or two.

It's thirty degrees and sunny outside, and it feels like summer in my deluded mind. I have all the windows open. I'm going to die thinking it was summer but with pneumonia anyway. You just watch.

Writing in Death

This post is an announcement.

We here at CarrPeeDiem are pleased to announce that, with Carrie no longer on the internet, what with having friends and a job and a life, all of which she loves more than us, we have decided to bring fresh blood into the blog in order to keep the synergistically fast-moving energy of our community outward intentions active.

You heard me right.

I would like to welcome our new blogger...Nora Roberts, everybody! Say hi!

Hello.

The other day I was writing a novel dilligently. I was working quickly with my hands a blur of motion like rain over the keyboard that I typed on sparingly when I received a phone call from Pete. I cradled the phone to my ear.

"It's Pete!" Pete said gustily.

"I thought I told you never to call here," I said angrily.

"I know," Pete mused thoughtfully, "But I had to. We need someone to talk on our blog!"

"I don't do blogs," I enunciated clearly, "Blogs are for wannabe writers."

"Don't you keep a journal of some sort?" Pete inquired questioningly.

"Yes," I replied informingly, "But I write the entries on hundred dollar bills."

"Oh," Pete muttered murmeringly. "I see."

ANd he hung up.

An hour later, there was a knock at my door and Pete asked me to smell this rag, which I did, and that's how I woke up groggily in this basement where no one is feeding me and I have to post or --

Sorry folks, Nora had to run! What a great gal! She'll be back with further tidbits in future weeks, though! Ha! Ha!

Spring! I say thee, spriiiiing!

Except it's not spring here yet, but my body's decided it should be. Today, despite the temperature being below zero after the wind chill, I opened all the windows. It was wonderful. You don't realize how stale the air is getting until you let it all out.

(The fact that I made fried chicken a couple nights ago, and we have all manner of cats in the house does not help the air-getting-stale business)

It got chilly eventually, but it felt wonderful. Now if only I could go outside in something besides eight layers of clothes...

So.

Writing.

(that's nearly all I ever talk about, I realize, but to be fair...that's nearly all I ever do. It's like being a fish who's preoccupied with swimming and looking goggle-eyed. No one should be surprised.)

I missed my deadline, but I knew I would, and it's not by much, and it doesn't affect anything too badly. I still got a serious lot of fiction written in short order, something I'm pretty proud of.

I kept saying that when I was done with this first batch of episodes, I would take a break for a few days and sleep a lot (since last night I went to bed by 2am, and it felt like I'd gone to bed incredibly early) and I would hang out with friends and such.

Except...

...except that as I wrapped up the last of the episodes, I realized that I have a short story which has been waiting patiently to be written which I really want to write. So I'll work on it slower than I worked on the first four episodes of the serial, but I think I'll work on it anyway.

And between episode's 2 and 3, I started to write the beginning pages of a comic book script, for a one-shot story which I showed to an editor. He read the story, and suggested that it would work much better as a single issue comic book. He's right. It does. So I'm re-writing that.

And...I'm itching to write the novel that Carrie and I dreamed up (remember? set in London? with zombies? Carrie? Hello?) but which I'm patiently waiting to start writing until she and I can work on it together.

I've done so good this time. My collaberations usually fail because I stat wirting something with somebody else, and then I fail to run out of ideas and wind up writing the whole damn thing, and thne I have to go to the co-author and say "er. Sorry. I wound up doing the story myself."

Trying not to do that here.

For my next post, I hope to show off a piece of concept art for my serial, and maybe give some information about it. I raelly want to, I just have to make sure it's not too soon. We shall see.

Right. It's above zero now, time to break out the shorts and go work on my tan!

(or, huddle inside and try to stay warm)

Deadlines, shattering of

This morning, I woke up fast, despite having been up until four in the morning last night. This was because the sound waking me up was not the melodious sound of my wife's voice, nor the persistent sound of my cats' voices, but the slightly unhappy voice of the bookstore owner, wondering why, if I was the one opening the bookstore this morning, the bookstore was unopened and I was not present.

Not the best way to get up. It got me up, though.

I discovered with a sick thud, once my brain had turned into a working component and not something I just carry around, that today's February 12th. That means I have four days to make The Deadline. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that I still have 22,000 words to go. Half of one episode and the full text of the fourth episode.

Normally, when I get this crunched against a deadline, I just go without sleeping much. This is only marginally helpful here, since I'm already up until three or four in the morning.

I'm going to come very close to making it. I really am. Heck, I might still make it. Episode four might come to me as a gift from the gods, pre-wrapped and flowing onto the paper. But the odds are better that I'll have to stop now and again during writing to figure out where I'm going, and how close it is to where I intended to go. I can't be quite as free to wander when I'm writing serialized fiction. Or at least, I can wander all I want, but it has to be accounted for, so I don't wander myself into a corner with no escape. Serial fiction is, essentially, writing in the public eye. I'm less willing to just head off blindly and face the possibility of breaking the whole thing. I don't want people reading episode 25 and it ends on page 12 out of nowhere with"...sorry folks, I'm out of ideas. Hey, remember episode 15? Boy that was cool! Please do not try to make contact with me. My mail is being screened. Yours, the Author."

...

I also discovered, yesterday, that while sitting inside, I had to remind myself that if I stepped outside, it was going to be sub-zero weather with snow on the ground. In my mind, it's sunny and warm and green, with a gentle cool breeze. This means I'm either going a little bit nuts (a distinct possibility I haven't ruled out) or else I've had enough of Minnesota winters and I'm ready for spring (more likely.)

So.

That's where I'm at.

To The Back Burner With You!

It appears that my writing will once again be relegated to the Back Burner O' Life.

Here in Carrieland, 2007 has been very, very rude. From Mr. Carrie's company being shut down, to my mom spending two days in the hospital with heart troubles, let's just say my stress level has been off the charts.

Mr. Carrie found another job, started it, and... it's horrible. "Hostile Work Environment" is a gross understatement. So we're back to Square One there. In the interim, I was told about a job opening, interviewed for it, then waited five stressful days before they called to OFFER ME THE JOB!! YAY! They even offered me more than the posted starting salary, and a boatload of perks and benefits. So I only have three more days left of being a Stay At Home Mom. (Not that I'm home much anyway...)

Right now I'm stressing about clothes. As a SAHM, my typical outfit is jeans and a sweatshirt. Unfortunately, while comfortable, it's not appropriate for a professional environment. I wander through the aisles of clothes and feel like an orangutan in a jewelry store. I've never been good at shopping for clothes, particularly when I have to stop and try them on. Ick. (I don't collect purses or shoes, either.)

But I am excited about this new job! It seems like it will suit me, the hours are good, the pay is good, the benefits are outstanding, and I'll have my own kick-ass desk that I can put my favorite pictures and flowers on. Yay.

So yeah, it looks like my writing will be taking a back seat, which really isn't a big deal to me. It's taken a back seat before. Writing's something I've always done, something I'll aways do, but I've never been consumed by this fiery passionate need like some writers are. Once I get the hang of my new schedule (and getting used to being paid for working instead of spending an obscene amount of time volunteering), I'll get back on track. But until then, it's not looking good for novel edits. (Which is pure drudgery anyway...)

Hmm... last chance to take a mid-week nap...

"...and not even Nate the Great can find my tea."

This is just a quick post, to let those of you in the world who read this blog know that 1) I am still alive and 2) I'm still deadline-racing. It's getting tight. The writing goes well and most of the ideas I need are still there (and the ones I don't need will come shortly.)

Some of the artwork and concept sketches coming in for this series are absolutely gorgeous. There's nothing to boost the flagging energy of a tired writer like checking the e-mail and finding pictures of the people you're writing about.

(I will talk to editor and artist alike and see if I can get permission to post some pictures here and there, for people to look at. It may have to wait until the project's official announcement. We'll see.)

I'll be finished with this four-episode batch by February 15th. Then, I have a stand-alone short story that needs to be written and gotten out to an editor. After that, I'll try to be a little more conscious and useful-like in this great, fuzzy, internet world.

Why I Do Not Get Iced Tea, by Pete Tzinski

Here's a Jambalaya picture.

Because I'm in a Jambalaya mood today. I think we may have to have that for dinner tomorrow. If the vast readership of this blog will inundate me with recipes, I'll pick one and try it out. Otherwise, I'll just do what I normally do, which is make it up as I go until it looks like A) Jambalaya and B) Something I want to Eat.


If this post were a conversation, and it were taking place in my house, then right now you'd be hearing groans and complaining of "Oh ye gads, he's going to go on about tea again..."

Yes I am. And the house is empty today, so there's no one to tell me to be quiet and go back to my writing. Hah!

Iced tea is a staple of the rest of my family, be it my wife or me mam, or what-have-you. Everyone likes iced tea! Whether it's sun-tea, or just sitting in a pitcher in the fridge tea, it's iced tea and it's welcomed...except...by...me...

I've tried it. Several times now. Some of those attempts were made under duress, I'd like to add, but nonetheless, attempts were made.

Mostly, the reason I don't like it is, it tastes like cold hot tea. That is to say, when I drink iced tea, it tastes like when I've been writing for a long time and suddenly remember my teacup and I take a drink, and it's long since gone cold and started to separate into base layers of sediment. Any muse-like haze of creative bliss is instantly shattered by that old, cold hot tea taste, which is like having your teeth knocked out with a big stinky fist, to pick a phrase.

Iced tea tastes like that, except it's made and drunk on purpose!

And that's why I don't get iced tea.

Now give me hot tea! Yes! A good Earl Gray loose leaf tea is nothing to be sneezed at (or in) and while I have some Irish Breakfast tea (also loose leaf; always loose leaf) I tend to drink that less frequently. I drink my tea black, thus far, and it's too potent. It needs something (lemon? Milk? Cream? I have no idea.) to turn it into something I could drink and not try to run a car off of.

I have two fairly deep shelves of a cupboard devoted to tea in this house. All sorts of things, from the above mentioned Earl Gray, to my beloved Empress of China, to a surprisingly delicious Strawberry Pur-eh tea, which I avoided drinking for a long time (because I generally don't like fruit teas). Once I tried it, it was gone in a week. And I'd bought a fair bit of it, mind you.

Black Raspberry (another exception, but a rare one), Ceylon Kenilworth, Rose of Shozu (FIFTEEN DOLLARS AN OUNCE FOR THAT STUFF. Ye gads.) African Rosebush, several other Rooibos teas I can't remember, and so on, and so forth. Lots of tea.

I'd end this post with a plaintive whine for someone to get me some tea, only I've got a very good pot of Earl Gray tea in front of me that's slowly vanishing, so I'm content.

I'll end it with a plaintive whine for about six more hours built into each of my days, so's I can not only make my robot series deadline, but also get a few hours sleep each night (by few, I mean more than my current three)

Right. Off to bang out a few more thousand words!

This is not bragging.

No, it isn't.

It's just me saying that I got a copy of The Frost-Haired Vixen by John Zakour in the mail this evening, and am happily devouring my way through it. If it were gloating, I'd point out that I got it from the author himself. So obviously, it's not gloating.

I finished episode 2 of the robot series last night. Thank God. That one was a hard one to write. Episode 3, probably coming at me tomorrow night. For now, I let my brain uncramp a little. Although oddly enough, I don't go into "Stop writing" mode, I go into "I have this great short story idea that I'd love to write all by itself, and I just realized I understand how to write the script for the first three pages of my long-delayed comic book Dark and --"

The hamster's stepped out for a coffee break, but the wheel is still spinning.

...

Most of this week, my wife was sick with the plague. I would mostly write while she did sick people things such as eat ice cream without guilt, watch daytime soap operas without guilt (I don't know how, either) and compete with the cats in the house for who could spend the longest portion of the day curled up on the bed, asleep.

I would then leave her sick and go to work where...everyone had come down with the plague.

Everyone is better now, thank you.

And because I'm two weeks and 30,000 words away from a deadline, means that it's now the time when my body takes stock of things and decides to come down with...the plague. I assume this is what's happening anyway. I'm sore all over and stiff, and I can't find a comfortable position to be on the computer that doesn't involve being slothful on the couch.

So! That's my end of the world!

Oh My Head.

The good news: Yesterday, I wrote a total of seven thousand words.

The bad news: I was up until three in the morning to do it.

The good news: I only started at a little after midnight. Go me!

The bad news: I was up until three in the morning to do it.

The good news: One more scene, and episode 2 of the robot serial is done. That makes me halfway finished!

The bad news: I haven't got a pot of tea.

...

I just made two boxes of macaroni and cheese. "Oh, he picks exciting things to blog about." They are pretty good when you add in extra cheddar cheese and bacon bits. "Oooh, aaah. What a loser." As my wife and I were wolfing our way through it all, "Yes, yes, maybe I'll watch paint dry after this," I jokingly checked the box for an expiration date, since these boxes have brand names that don't exist in the midwest. "Er...hang on. What?" As it turns out, they were Best By Febrauary 1st 2002. "Oh my God. Yikes."

We shall see what happens. Happy Birthday, Mac & Cheese Box.