Broken Angel by Sigmund Brouwer

Speculative fiction covers a wide range of stories, and Brouwer's recent novel, Broken Angel, is fairly far out on the edge of suspense and intrigue for a reader like me.

This is one author's extrapolation of what might happen in the future if genetic manipulation is allowed free rein. In the future Sigmund Brouwer imagines, the country of Appalachia separates from the United States to protect its people within the confines of the Church. What happens in that land is anything but pure. Jordan Brown has fled to Appalachia to protect a child, but once she reaches puberty, he realizes that she has to return Outside--that her secret will never be safe. She has to be set free to become all she was meant to be.

Jordan makes the ultimate sacrifice to create a way for Caitlyn to escape Appalachia, to build an *underground railroad* for her with messages along the way. An agent from Outside has learned of her special characteristics and joins forces with the Appalachian government to prevent her escape.

What is Caitlyn's big secret? We'll talk about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, check out what other bloggers are saying: Brandon Barr, Justin Boyer, Keanan Brand, Jackie Castle, Karri Compton, CSFF Blog Tour, Stacey Dale, D. G. D. Davidson, Janey DeMeo, Jeff Draper, April Erwin, Karina Fabian, Mark Goodyear, Andrea Graham, Katie Hart, Timothy Hicks, Christopher Hopper, Joleen Howell, Jason Joyner, Carol Keen, Magma, Margaret, Shannon McNear, Melissa Meeks, Rebecca LuElla Miller, Nissa, John W. Otte, Steve Rice, Ashley Rutherford, Hanna Sandvig, Chawna Schroeder, Mirtika or Mir's Here, Sean Slagle, James Somers, Donna Swanson, Steve Trower, Speculative Faith, Laura Williams.

Writing Workshop--Thinking Sideways

A few weeks ago I signed up for a six-month writing workshop put on by multi-published author Holly Lisle. She's the gal who founded my writing home-on-the-web, Forward Motion, and I've been following her weblog A Pocket Full of Words for the better part of six years now.

I've watched from the sidelines as she's pitched novels, sold them, written them, revised them. I've watched the misses, too. The pitches that didn't sell, the books that were hard to write. I've seen the determination and drive that characterizes Holly and her absolute willingness to be transparent with us all. I've bought several of her writing clinics from Holly Shop, and while not every one of them has clicked with me for every project, I've learned a LOT from her in various formats over the years.

When she began brainstorming a full workshop, I was intrigued, though I wasn't sure I could afford to take it as the various price points were debated. When registration finally opened at just under $300 for the six month program ($47US payable via PayPal every month), I jumped at one of the few remaining seats. And I'm so glad I did.

How to Think Sideways has been worth every penny from the very first lesson. Holly started off by looking at the things that prevent many folks from giving their all in any circumstance, writing included. From there we began clustering, which is something I've resisted doing as I just thought my brain didn't work that way. It was hard at first, but because I loved Holly's recommendation of Scrivener so much, I decided to download the free trial of Inspiration as well. It's a mind-mapping tool that allows you to associate words in any number of ways. Not only words, but many can be swapped out for clip-art and photos, to grab ahold of the more visual part of the brain.

Using the skills we had begun to learn in clustering, our next task was to *call down lightning* in the form of three viable story ideas that we would be excited to write. If you've been reading much here, you'll know I've been struggling with this for several months. And while I don't currently have THREE solid ideas, I did come up with two pretty decent ones. The fourth week taught us how to refine those ideas into something we couldn't bear NOT to write.

(Yes, this is making focusing on Tempest a bit difficult, but I'm managing some words every week there, too!)

I'm really quite excited for the next few weeks as we take those ideas and learn how to transform them into novels. So far the experience has been better than I'd hoped for, and we haven't yet begun to touch on the core reason I, at least, signed up for the course.

The core reason? The thinking sideways part. Holly's good at convoluting and twisting the plots of her stories so that they are very hard to put down. If I can begin to learn how to do that, this course will be a total success. Right now, I'm very optimistic about the five months yet remaining.

She's currently planning on repeating this workshop, and I'd encourage anyone who wants to write tighter books to consider signing up.

Merciless by Robin Parrish

Merciless is the culmination of the Dominion Trilogy by Robin Parrish. The Christian Science Fiction Fantasy blog tour reviewed book one, Relentless and book two, Fearless. I took part here and here and here.

All that to say that while I've read the first two books and enjoyed them, especially the first one, I haven't read Merciless yet. I've had it on my TBR for over a week and somehow got the dates mixed up with another book I was reading for review. Sadly, I should have read them in reverse order as it turns out the other book isn't due until next week. Sigh. That is SO like my life this week.

So, what's the series about, in a nutshell? Random people who discover they have superpowers, then find each other, and then find out where their powers came from--and why they have them. The world as we know it pretty much came to an end as Fearless closed. Merciless looks to be post-apocalyptic in nature. And the first few pages, which I've read, look to put this novel in the category of reading that is not suitable for bedtime. At least not for wimpy Vals!

You can read the first chapter here.

Haven't been posting much

I guess there are a few reasons. One is that you all don't seem to be answering much!

Life is quite randomly busy. Home is busy because there is a hyper puppy who ALWAYS needs walking and attention, a garden that needs weeding and harvesting, a daughter and son-in-law who are considerably less demanding than the puppy!--but still there. I've been going to Aquafit Tuesday and Thursday evenings as Hanna is teaching. I enjoy it, but it does shoot the whole evening all to pieces. I've got book tours coming up and almost no time to read.

There've been stressy health issues in the extended family, my own recurring back and hip pain, a hubby working too much over time, and an electrical breaker that keeps shutting off in my kitchen.

At work there's been a transient camped out between the store and the building next door (moved on, with aid, this morning), lots to juggle in ordering and freight, and it seems to have been the week for bizarre and random questions.

Writing-wise, I'm slowly getting words on Tempest, teaching a workshop at Forward Motion, and signed up for a six-month paid class offered by author Holly Lisle called How to Think Sideways. Right now it's a challenge to think at all: frontwards, backwards, let alone sideways.

I needs a vacation. How come December is so far away?

Brody Goes Camping!

A little puppy I know had a great time camping. We spent three days at Frozen Lake, a little lake site with a primitive camping site (outhouse and a couple picnic tables) in the Flathead region of BC, just on the Montana border. Two and a half hour of non-pavement driving, and roads that went from good gravel to washboard gravel to pot-holes to rocks to dirt to dirt with grass growing up the middle. Very dusty and bumpy, but good fishing at the other end. Apparently that's what it is all about!

For Brody, he just wanted to romp and play with the kazillion other dogs that met at Frozen Lake for the weekend.



I did get him to stop a couple times, long enough for a photo or two. You'll find more photos at Facebook (and my hubby's Facebook).

DragonKeeper Chronicles Day 4

Day 4, you say? Why yes. Last week the Christian Science Fiction Fantasy Blog Tour also toured DragonLight. I hadn't finished reading it yet then, so I talked about some of the earlier books in the series. But Sunday afternoon I got finished with DragonLight, and therefore the entire series of five books.

Donita K. Paul has written a great fantasy series for young adults, and I've read three of the books in the last ten days, so they're the ones most clear in my mind. (I read the first two a couple of years back.)

I have to share with you the opening paragraphs of this novel. They show quite well the light humor that Paul sprinkles throughout the tales.

Kale wrinkled her nose at the dank air drifting up from the stone staircase. Below, utter darkness created a formidable barrier.

Toopka stood close to her knee. Sparks skittered across the doneel child's furry hand where she clasped the flowing, soft material of Kale's wizard robe. Kale frowned down at her ward. The little doneel spent too much time attached to her skirts to be captivated by the light show. Instead, Toopka glowered into the forbidding corridor. "What's down there?"

Kale sighed. "I'm not sure."

"Is it the dungeon?"

"I don't think we have a dungeon."

Toopka furrowed her brow in confusion. "Don't you know? It's your castle."

"A castle built by committee." Kale's face grimaced at the memory of weeks of creative chaos. She put her hand on Toopka's soft head.

The doneel dragged her gaze away from the stairway, tilted her head back, and frowned at her guardian. "What's 'by committee'?"

"You remember, don't you? It was just five years ago."

"I remember the wizards coming and the pretty tents in the meadow." Toopka pursed her lips. "And shouting. I remember shouting."

"They were shouting because no one was listening. Twenty-one wizards came for the castle raising. Each had their own idea about what we needed. So they each constructed their fragment of the castle structure according to their whims."

Toopka giggled.

"I don't think it's funny. The chunks of castle were erected, juxtaposed with the others, but not as a whole unit. I thank Wulder that at least my parents had some sense. My mother and father connected the tads, bits, and smidgens together with steps and short halls. When nothing else would work, they formed gateways from one portion to another."

Can't you just imagine a castle built by a committee of wizards? It makes me laugh.

Thinking about the fact that this is the fifth book and that it's unlikely that anyone will read it that hasn't gone through the other four (except, perhaps, for book tours like this!), I think it's easy to see who the characters are and the current situation, and even a glimpse of how it ties to the past. We know Kale and Toopka clear from book one, but we haven't met the castle before this. We see that it's been at least five years since the end of the fourth book. And we're reminded that Toopka is from a species that is short and furry...and apparently has a bad memory!

The best part of the story for me was seeing the development of Toopka's storyline. She's wafted in and out of the previous stories, but this novel brought her to the forefront. And ironically, one of the negatives for me was the same thing--Toopka's story. Though the viewpoint characters were Kale and Bardon (as throughout the series)--primarily Kale--they had little to do in the story's climax but watch Toopka pull it all together.

Another negative for me was Gilda's story line. Gilda is a meech dragon--a superior humanoid type of dragon, and very rare. (Donita, if you're reading this--what DOES a meech dragon look like?) And whereas in DragonFire (the fourth book), I got tired of Kale whining, I found that Gilda's attitude really got on my nerves throughout DragonLight. To give credit where credit is due, Gilda learns the error of her ways and gets pulled down a peg or two, so the inclusion of this character development was purposeful.

Still, I think that the series has more positives than negatives, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend all five novels to young adult readers of either gender.

Tempest

I'm making reasonably steady progress on Tempest, though not as rapid as I'd have liked. Still, it seems that it's better to think a bit here and there than to rewrite/rewrite/rewrite. Of course I'll probably still have to! It might be that this story just didn't have as long to percolate, so there wasn't a huge build-up of words just waiting for the starting gate to open (think the rush of the first hour of Nano!). It might be that my muse is a bit reluctant, being as this is definitely a bit darker story than anything I've written previously. Or it might be that this is just the perfect pace for this story!

I'm doing in the neighborhood of a chapter a week, and they're averaging over 4K each. So if I can just keep the wheels turning, it will get itself done in a few months. That's fine.

I'd been thinking that I'd go on another round of revisions of some of my older stuff once I got rolling with this story, but it's not happening yet. I'm teaching another workshop at Forward Motion in August, and I've recently signed up for a six-month writing course put on by author Holly Lisle, How to Think Sideways. Even after only one week, I'm beginning to see that this investment is quite likely to pay off in a practical sense.

So it'll be at least September before I start revising again, and it's a toss-up still whether it will be Joy Comes in the Morning or Off Beat. Off Beat (aka Squid) has finaled in the Genesis contest, but I won't have the results of that until mid September. I'd hoped to enter Joy in the 08 contest as well, but didn't have time to revise the opening pages to my satisfaction, so I'd like to enter it in '09. A whole new category for me: romance!

And if I'm going to get chapter five written this week, I'd better get rolling!

DragonKeeper Chronicles Day 3

Yesterday I blogged about the third book in the DragonKeeper Chronicles by Donita K. Paul. I forgot to say that I think DragonKnight was my favorite of the four I've read so far. On Facebook, I gave it a 3.5 out of 5 while the first two earned 3s. Once again, the tour is all about DragonLight, which I haven't read yet, but I'm getting closer! I actually started it Monday evening. But today I want to talk about the fourth book, DragonFire. Sadly, this was my least favorite (2.5).

As a series develops and the characters age, they should change. And if you start with them as young teens, then progress them to young adults, it seems that they ought to become more mature. Of course they won't be perfect, but moving forward would be good. Because I read the first two books in the series two years ago, and the third book was mostly Bardon's story, I may have forgotten Kale's personality. But in the fourth book, I found her to be petulant and whiny. I didn't much like her, and I have a sneaking suspicion that if she'd had the same attitudes in the first book, I wouldn't have been as willing to keep reading.

DragonFire takes place seven years after the first book. I'd've liked to see a more mature Kale fighting personality battles a little more suited to a 20-year-old than the 13-year-old she was. (Actually, I don't remember the exact ages, but I think I'm close!) Did Mrs. Paul make the choice she did because the series are for young adults and this way, they could identify more closely? I don't know.

I'm hoping to see a more mature Kale close out the series in DragonLight. Check back in a couple weeks and see what I think once I've read the book.

Meanwhile, some of you may recall my excitement last year that four Christian fantasy authors (Sharon Hinck, Wayne Thomas Batson, Chrisopher Hopper, and Bryan Davis) toured the east coast of the USA in July. This year, for an encore, the tour has been doubled to eight authors and is on the west coast in October. I'll let you know more about it as it gets closer, but if you live anywhere from San Diego to Seattle, you'll want to keep this in mind.

Why am I mentioning it here, today? Well, Donita K Paul is one of the four additional authors for this year's tour, called Motiv8. In fact, more than half of the authors are YA authors, so if you have kids that like fantasy, you really need to plan to attend one or more of their booksignings. They put on a good show last year, and this year should be double the fun.

Had to share!

What do YOU think of all the fonts out there? College Humor decided to let us know what goes on at a Font Conference.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

DragonKeeper Chronicles Day 2

So today we're going to have a wee look at DragonKnight by Donita K. Paul. This is book three of a five book series, and technically this blog tour is for the fifth book, DragonLight. However, I haven't read it yet. It's sitting on my bedside table and maybe I'll get a chance to start it tonight.

So yesterday I told the tale of my quest to read this series. If you are--or know--a girl in her young-to-mid teens who loves fantasy, the DragonKeeper Chronicles is a win. But it's not just for girls, for sure. Though Kale, a girl, is the main character, Bardon, a boy, is nearly as major a character throughout the series. Mrs. Paul has created an imaginative world, Amara, with lots of different species AND a bunch of different kinds and sizes of dragons. What's not to love?

I talked a bit about the basic plot of Book One, DragonSpell, and Book Two, DragonQuest, on my blog here a couple of years ago.

Book Three, DragonKnight, is mostly Bardon's tale. He is expecting some time off to meditate and plan his life...wait, let me show you the opening few paragraphs!

"People. Always too many people."

Only the leathery beat of Greer's dragon wings answered Bardon's observation. Cool air rushed against Bardon's face, blowing away the cares of three intense years of training and study.

He squeezed his knees into the riding hooks and leaned forward across the major dragon's neck. Brisk mountain air rose off the snow-topped mountain and blew his dark hair back from his pale face. Soon he should be able to spot the valley Sir Dar had recommended. He needed time alone. The first part of his sabbatical would be spent in isolation.

Bardon put a hand on Greer's purple scales and communicated his desire to locate a lake shaped like a boot.

Looking down at the forested slopes, he speculated on how many of the seven high races populated the area. A smile spread across his face. It was likely that not one civilized being walked this southern part of the Morchain Mountain Range for a hundred miles in any direction.

He saw a ropma scurry across a rocky stream.

"Don't worry, fella. I won't bother you if you don't bother me. I'm taking a break from everyone, both high and low races."

Greer rumbled in his throat, and Bardon placed a hand on the amethystine scales of his dragon's neck. "No, I'm not running away from you, my friend. And in truth, I'm not really running away from civilization. I just need a sabbatical, a long sabbatical."

Well, after all that set-up, you can be certain that Bardon does NOT get a break at all. As soon as he lands by that boot-shaped lake he discovers that he is not alone and that, in fact, he is expected to go on a quest to help an old lady and her young granddaughter to rescue the son/father. Albeit reluctant, Bardon realizes that as a squire who serves Wulder (God in that world), he can't turn these females away in good conscience so he agrees to help.

The coolest thing in the book is the granny, I think. Her name is Granny Kye and she paints, even when they are in danger and should definitely be doing something else, such as running, hiding, or fighting. When she feels compelled to paint, she sets up her easel and paints away.

What's cool about that? Granny Kye is willing to explain. Here's what she says (p. 78):

"I paint the people as I see them. But when I finish, there's more there. While I'm painting, the expressions on their faces and the colors around them become clear in my mind. Some people say that the finished picture looks like the inside of the person instead of just what is seen on the outside."

...some chitchat, then Bardon says:

"What else do you paint?"

"Landscapes, houses... They rarely turn out well." Her face brightened. "Once I painted a neighbor's house, and in the painting, we saw an odd object under a bush. We went to look, and there was the bracelet she'd lost months before."

"So you saw something while you painted that couldn't be seen just by looking?"

"Yes!"

Quite a talent, and one that is useful several times.

At any rate, the quest carries on, they find the missing knight...and many others. Who are the other knights? It wouldn't be fair for me to give that away here in this review, so I won't.

Suffice to say that it brings Kale back into the picture for the last few chapters, and that she and Bardon...oh well, never mind. Once again, too much to give away!

Tomorrow I'll have a look at Book Four, DragonFire.

DragonKeeper Chronicles Day 1

Once upon a time, about two years ago, the CSFF blog tour talked about DragonKnight by Donita K Paul. I joined in here and here.

The problem then was that I'd bought the first two books in the series, DragonSpell and DragonQuest in preparation for the blog tour for the third book. I read the two books, blogged about them, but DragonKnight never arrived. Though I liked the stories, they're Young Adult and I'm not, and my life went on and I read many other books, and I forgot that I hadn't read the third book in the DragonKeeper Chronicles until the blog tour for the last book in the series, DragonLight, was announced.

A few weeks later I had a few minutes to spare in Hastings in Couer d'Alene, Idaho, saw a Donita K Paul book I hadn't read, grabbed it and bought it. Thought, "Aha, I will now read the intervening book and be ready when my copy of the final one arrives in the mail."

Small problem that I discovered as soon as I started reading it: it didn't make sense. Yes, it had been two years since reading the other two, but I thought I'd remember if *this* major a change in the characters' lives had been hinted at in the second book.

Turns out I'd bought Book FOUR, DragonFire and that the book tour was going to feature book FIVE, DragonLight.

I was still missing Book Three. The series is five books long, not four. Time was running out, and I wasn't getting anywhere near a store that might carry DragonKnight, so I ordered it in via InterLibrary Loan. By now Donita K Paul's books are all over BC Libraries (they weren't two years ago!) and so it arrived and I read it. I've also now read book four, but the fifth book is on my bedside table, yet unread. And of course it is the one due for this week's tour.

Dilemma. What to do? I can only read so fast, and this summer has been busier than most recent ones with hubby living at home again, Hanna and Craig home for the summer, and the new puppy.

So here's the deal. Tomorrow we're going to look at Book Three, DragonKnight and Wednesday I'll post about the fourth book,
DragonFire.

None of which are the books I'm *supposed* to talk about this week. However, in a couple weeks the CFBA tour is also blogging about DragonLight, so I'll catch the final installment book then.

Whew. I have a plan.

If you just can't wait a couple weeks for me to read DragonLight and review it, check out what these folks are saying about it:

Brandon Barr, Justin Boyer, Jackie Castle, Karri Compton, CSFF Blog Tour, Gene Curtis, Stacey Dale, D. G. D. Davidson, Jeff Draper, April Erwin, Karina Fabian, Beth Goddard , Mark Goodyear, Andrea Graham, Todd Michael Greene, Katie Hart, Christopher Hopper, Joleen Howell, Jason Joyner, Carol Keen, Magma, Terri Main, Margaret, Shannon McNear, Melissa Meeks, Rebecca LuElla Miller, John W. Otte, Deena Peterson, Steve Rice, Cheryl Russel, Ashley Rutherford, Chawna Schroeder, James Somers, Robert Treskillard, Steve Trower, Speculative Faith, Laura Williams

Puppy Time

The last time we had a puppy living in our house was 1991. Kyleigh was a golden retriever and lived to the ripe old age of almost 14 before dying 4 years ago. Jim's been wanting a puppy for a couple years now, but with him working at the mines, the timing wasn't right. Well, he's had a local job for six months now, and he began looking for a puppy a couple of months ago.

Meet Brody:


There are a few more photos of him up at Facebook if you're curious.

His mommy is an unregistered black lab, and his dad...well...you know how these things go. He's part border collie and part shepherd and part who-knows-what! Brody carries a lot of the lab as you can see. He's 7 weeks old and is a fat little porker.

And he spent ALLLLLLLL last night crying. Six hours. Yes. ALLLLL night.

I'm tired.

Good writing day

I'm not sure what kept the customers out of the store today--yes, I remembered to unlock the door AND flip the sign to Open!--but I had plenty of peace and quiet for writing in.

Tempest's story is almost to fourteen thousand words, which averages out to about a thousand a day since I started writing. That isn't a mind-boggling amount by any standards and yet it proves that slow and steady will definitely get you somewhere.

For Tempest, that many words have landed her in a heap of trouble, and it's still a looooong way to the other side.

Social Networking

My friend David Bridger has been researching Social Media and shares his new wisdom here.

If there's anything you want to know about Facebook, Shelfari, MySpace, Twitter, and a whole bunch of other social sites, some of which I'd never heard of--what the heck is *Plurk*?--check out David's review.

Oh, and feel free to friend me on Facebook if you haven't already. That's the only one I'm active on! Though David may be convincing me to spread out a little more. It's something to think about.

Poor Tempest

The story is just short of 10K now, and I have broken Tempest's heart. She doesn't see how things can get any worse. But you know--80,000 words to go. It CAN get worse. I'll let her cry under the apple tree a bit longer before I show her how.

August Workshop at Forward Motion

A group of moderators has been running writing workshops every month so far in 2008. I've been involved in facilitating several of them thus far, and just completed the first draft of Interactive Description which I'll be teaching in August.

What do I mean by interactive description? In a way, it is much like showing instead of telling, providing an emotional experience for the reader instead of a bare-bones report. We'll be spending a week working with characters, a week with settings, and a week with actions. Then putting it all together in a scene. Really, we'll only be skimming the surface of the topic, but I'm hoping it will be enough to springboard the participants into recognizing when they've achieved that level of interaction in their writing.

If you're a member of Forward Motion, feel free to join in. If you're not--and you're a writer, why not? FM is the web's premiere website for writers. A great place to call home.

Tempest clears 5K

Tempest's story is up and running, though not without a couple of false starts. I'm still amazed I'm actually writing with only a couple weeks of worldbuilding and outlining under my belt!

I got about 700 words into the second chapter on Monday but it felt sluggish. I re-read it and couldn't see the problem. There wasn't an over-abundance of backstory or thoughts (two things that can grind a story to a halt in no time, especially in first person narrative), there was tension and the story was moving forward. In the evening I poked at the outline a bit to see what was missing. And the goal for the scene was too vague. I was in the right place, going the right direction (I think I only wound up tweaking half a dozen words), but with a blindfold on.

Tuesday I flew through the rest of that scene and well into the next one before the customers started coming. In the afternoon I basically designed flooring for a renovation and a whole house, so perhaps there is an excuse for not finishing the scene!

It's interesting--I'm not sure where this story came from. It's not a particularly happy tale. Sometimes when I'm working on a novel I can almost see the characters trying to hide from me--they don't want to go through what I've planned for them. With Tempest--definitely my darkest tale yet--it's like she's pushing me to tell it. It's like she knows she has to get through it to get to the happy ending, and just wants to push through.

So I guess I'd best get back to the writing!

Life on the farm

Is NOT kind of laid back. I'm not sure where John Denver got his ideas from, honestly. We've been slowly cutting back the size of our herd of cattle for the past few years, and planning further cuts. With occasional discussion of selling all the cows and finding something else to do with our forty acres.

At any rate, on Friday hubby noticed that a couple calves had pink eye. He phoned and talked to the vet, then asked me to pick up meds on the way home from work. So I did, but when he had a closer look that evening, he realized that the problem was more wide-spread than he'd thought. We bought MORE meds (basically a type of penicillin) and rounded up some help for this morning. It took a couple of hours once we got our system going, six of us working like clockwork (okay, not QUITE that smoothly!) and dosing cows and calves alike with intramuscular shots.

Hubby did get on the wrong side of a retreating cow a couple times and will doubtless have a few bruises to show for it later, if not a cracked rib. He's in a tad of pain but is also in the middle of haying, so he's back out on the tractor now, driving in circles raking the crop he cut a couple days ago.

We'll see in a day or two if the belligerent bovines are improved. Sure hope so. I don't want to do this again, or call the vet down for actual farm consultation.

Tempest begun!

I got a decent start on Tempest today: 1565 words and a complete scene. Actually I deleted the first 250 or so words and started over, deciding to introduce two other characters a bit further in. Four seemed too many for the opening scene, and left Tempest narrating instead of engaging. So now we're starting with Cadence in tears and Tempest trying to comfort her, when what she really wants to do is rail at the injustices in their lives. Trust me, Tempest's story is not going to be a ball of joy. There is a LOT of injustice in her little world. I'm actively looking for places to lighten it a bit along the way, but it's a tough story. I'm not sure why this one called to me so insistently. I'll likely find out.

Tempest's basic need is for safety and security, so I guess that tells you what isn't in her life at the beginning. But she's strong. She's a survivor. And unlike some characters who stand there wringing their hands at what the writer is planning to do to them next, Tempest is all about me bringing it on so that she can get to the other side and her happy ending.

So we've started. I'll try updating my progress in the sidebar, so keep an eye!

Tempest is ready to roll

It's only been a couple of weeks since Tempest erupted in my brain with her sort of complete story synopsis. I tried to ignore her for a couple of days, thinking I knew best. When that didn't work, I jumped in with both feet. By the time I'd fleshed out what I knew of the synopsis, built a story world that allowed this story to live in it, then expanded the outline based on the story world (leap frog, anyone?), I found myself with a full, though nasty, culture and a handful of characters with their own ways of reacting to it. And a lot of random characters who may or may not come to play in a larger way.

Of course some of that original synopsis turned out not to be accurate, but it was surprisingly close being as I've never had a story start that way for me before this.

I have quite a full Scrivener file--high five to Scrivener!!--and plan to start writing the novel tomorrow.

You know how long it's been since I've rough drafted? Nano '06 (The Girl Who Cried Squid, aka Off Beat). Yeah, it's been awhile. I hope I remember how. I never intended to have such a large gap.

At any rate, here we go again...

Cacoethes Scribendi

In doing some research on Latin terms, I came across a complete listing of Latin phrases on Wikipedia. Cacoethes scribendi means "bad habit of writing" or "insatiable urge to write." I guess I need to keep going down the list to see if there is an antidote phrase...

Sir Kendrick and the Castle of Bel Lione by Chuck Black

Sir Kendrick and the Castle of Bel Lione is the first book in a new children’s fantasy series by Chuck Black. I’d never heard of him before this tour, but it appears that he’s had six books, The Kingdom Series, published before this. The series is an allegory that encompasses the main story of the Bible and the history (and future history) of mankind in a setting of knights, castles, dragons, and lords.

The new series, The Knights of Arrethrae, is planned to be a companion series to the original in a similar setting, teaching solid values for kids age eight and up. The first novel, Sir Kendrick and the Castle of Bel Lione, was an enjoyable (quick) read following the story of two knights: experienced Sir Kendrick and the novice, Sir Duncan, whose impetuousness got them into trouble and yet saved the day. While the themes of the story are quite obvious, at least to the adult eye, they aren’t belabored.

Any parent (grandparent, aunt or uncle, teacher…) who wants to provide wholesome reading for growing kids and young teens will want to look into these allegorical novels by Chuck Black.

Tempest

Apparently switching gears was the right thing to do. I got 16 scenes jotted down in reasonable depth in just a couple hours yesterday afternoon. Today, so far, I've gotten 5 more, plus written down a bunch of background info on the commune. It's like I'm not even making this stuff up. It's all in my head and I just have to write it down. I don't think this has ever happened before. (Okay, I KNOW this hasn't happened to me before.)

Story Compost

The Matchmaker world needs to be quite complex for a couple of reasons. First, I can see several novels taking place in it, so there needs to be plenty to explore. Second, each novel should be 100-150,000 words. That's a lot of story, to the uninitiated. Longer than the average novel. Why? I figure if you're going to think at all, you might as well think big, and so this world and novel are being designed with the Luna imprint in mind. Luna is a division of Harlequin that features novels in a fantasy setting with a strong female protagonist and a romantic subplot.

The first draft of Majai's Fury (aka Marks of Repentance) came in about 93K, my longest ever. The re-re-revised version that is currently seeking its fortune is 101K. The matchmaker novels could/ should come in at one and a half times that.

Gulp. That's a lot of story. That's a lot of world.

I've been *seeing* this world for a couple years now, catching glimpses of Kaesa, the first heroine to have her tale set here. About a month ago I decided to focus on her story and see if I couldn't get her ready to write in just a few short weeks.

Insert maniacal laughter here.

I've followed my mind into whatever paths seemed to entertain it and possibly pertain to the Plan. I've played with mythical flying beasts and Yiddish matchmaking sites. I've downloaded Scrivener and created characters and twists and plot cards.

There are many layers composting in the Scrivener binder called Matchmaker. Trust me on that. There is a very cool story in there. Somewhere. But many holes remain. What I don't know is if the projected length of the project is messing with my mind or whether there's something else wrong. I'm pretty sure it's fixable, but I can't quite grasp the problem.

Metaphorically speaking, I've added layers of leaves and vegetable peelings and rotted hay to the compost. I've sprinkled it with water, and I can see the steam coming off the pile, so I know something in there is doing its job. I've taken the pitchfork and turned it over a few times. I've spread it out on the story seeds, but the sprouts are small still. Nothing can hurry growth. You can apply light and rain in the appropriate amounts--add a bit of fertilizer--but a strong story needs time to grow, to reach its roots into the good stuff in the compost and be strong and green and beautiful.

And the Matchmaker novel isn't ready to do that. Not this week, anyway. I'd welcome that flash of inspiration that would pull the threads together, but it seems it has to come to me--that going out and looking for it isn't quite working.

Enter Tempest, stage left.

She presented me with a complete, if skeletal, synopsis on Sunday and I've been trying to ignore her ever since. Today I gave up and created a new binder in Scrivener for her. It looks like her story should have no trouble coming in at 80-90K. I'll let it land there if it likes as I'm not sure it's really a Luna story anyway, though it meets the other basic requirements. I guess we'll see.

I hate abandoning projects, and I feel like I've been doing a lot of that lately. It does feel better when I tell myself that they're just composting. Let's see if I can convince myself.

Deep in the Heart of Trouble by Deeanne Gist

If I remember correctly, the very first book tour I was involved with was for A Bride Most Begrudging by debut author Deeanne Gist. If you’ve been reading here for very long, you know that my first love is fantasy, not historical romance. However, I enjoy Deeanne’s writing so much that I’ve made it a point to watch for any new releases.

Deep in the Heart of Trouble is her fourth novel, and it continues the story of Essie Sprecklemeyer of Corsicana, Texas, that was begun in Courting Trouble. While getting to know Essie in the previous novel would certainly bring a richer appreciation for this tale, I truly believe that it wouldn’t be required. Essie herself fills in just enough of her previous story as the reader needs, as she needs it.

When the book list for June came out several months ago, I knew without a second thought which books I wanted to order from it. Later that day I was working in the yard when my mother-in-law came over (they live on the same property) and asked if I’d seen the list yet. I said yes, and I’d ordered the book. She said, okay, she’d just read mine then, rather than have the publisher send two copies. I said that would be fine. Later on I realized we’d never confirmed which book--there were 8-10 selections for the month--because it hadn’t seemed necessary. I knew which book she meant!

My daughter is another avid fan. When Deep in the Heart of Trouble arrived the other day, Hanna smiled sweetly at me and said, "I’ll have that finished before you even have time to start!" And she was right. And now it is over at my sister-in-law’s house.

What is it about Deeanne’s novels that appeal to (at least) three generations of women? While her stories are historicals, they’re not the typical wagon train romances. From tobacco brides (in Virginia) to sunbonnet girls (in the San Francisco gold rush--The Measure of a Lady) to an oil baron’s daughter in Texas, Deeanne seeks out eras and locations that are not over-used in the genre. But the true appeal is in her spunky characters and her own voice.

The characters are bigger than life, full-blown on the page, not precisely typical for their era, yet believable. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed each novel thus far and expect that to continue as I watch for more novels by Deeanne Gist in the future.

Deeanne's blog link has lived on my sidebar for several years. Recently she shared with her readers how the very cool cover for Deep in the Heart of Trouble came to be. Check it out!

Father's Day

We went for a drive up the lake today in order to hike along Lockhart Creek.



This was a much easier hike than the hike we did a couple weeks ago! It was pleasant along the creek, sunny but in the shade with a bit of breeze.



Then, because we weren't ready to head home yet, we drove up another dirt road and I hollered, "Moose!" just as he disappeared into the trees. Jim quickly set the camera to continuous while I opened the sun-roof and stood up. Then he drove up the road and sure enough, Mr. Moose crossed a meadow beside the road. I took maybe 20 pictures on continuous before he disappeared. I'll just give you one.



From the top of that road we looked down, back over the lake: beautiful! A pleasant relaxing day.

Revised layout--finally!

I'm sure you all were wondering when winter was going to leave my blog! At first it was inability to log onto HasWeb, then it was lack of time, then it was lack of time to figure out how to work the photoshop on the Mac. I know Hanna's going to complain that the header is still over-running the edge. I fixed it. Then it did it again. When I don't have a headache, I'll work on it again!

She took this picture of me in Victoria about five weeks ago.

Scrivener

If you're writing on a Mac, hie thee over to download the trial version of Scrivener. Seriously. There's a decent video there to show you why you need it.

Here's why *I* needed it! I often plot/ outline with physical 3x5 notecards, but I have issues with them. I like color-coding things, but committing to writing plot points on a green card is difficult. Green cards belong to the MC. What if I later I decide to write the scene from another character's POV? Then it should have been on a yellow card! Or even a pink card. You can imagine the dilemmas this causes. Seriously. I've sat and stared at the cards, afraid to commit.

Okay, so that's silly. I can just use white ones, and once I for sure decide whose scene it is, I can run a highlighter across the header to match the character. That helps, but I still lack space to spread them out at work.

And then there is the issue of what to do with the random bits of information that I'm not sure what scene it's going to belong in. I see a setting, but what will happen there? So really, I need to know quite a lot about the story before I pull out the notecards. And then...I may as well go straight to Word or Excel, eh?

Only the cells in Excel really aren't big enough for all the information I might want to have in them--notes for each scene. And sometimes they're a pain to rearrange. I've lost stuff doing that.

Back to Word. There each scene takes as much space as it needs. I can list the POV character, the setting, etc no problem. But there still is that random stuff that might become a scene if it found the right other information to collide with.

And with the matchmaker, I've gone round and round in Word and Excel and was pulling out the notecards a couple days ago (in desperation!) when I remembered that I now have a MacBook.

You'd think I couldn't forget such a thing. I've overcome much of the learning curve and am no longer panicking every five minutes that I don't know how to DO whatever it is I'm trying to do. (That's now reserved for like once a day!) But with the remembrance that I now use a Mac, I remembered that Holly Lisle uses Scrivener. (Ha. You thought I'd never get to the point.)

So I asked around a bit and then downloaded the trial version this morning. By the time I'd gone through the tutorial I had a bit of a headache. So much information! But then it was lunch break and I went for a long walk, came back, and decided it was time to see what would happen when Matchmaker met Scrivener.

I think they're in love.

First, importing files from Word is easy-peasy. (And they're still there in Word, too, should I need them in that application.) Scrivener arranged things fairly intuitively. I only moved a few things to new locations, and it was easy to do. So on the left of the screen, it's like an organizational tree program. There's tons out there, several of which I've used from time to time and quite liked. But this does more.

It has a virtual corkboard with 3x5 notecards! :D And because I am not actually wasting notecards by changing my mind later what color I want them (lame, I know...), I can randomly type whatever I want on a given card, and change it later.

Each card has three *levels*. There's a title, which shows in the tree down the left side. Then on the actual card itself, below the title, is enough room to write a decent synopsis of the scene (about the same amount as on a physical card). BUT, for all the little details, you can add them basically behind the cut. All of these can be color-coded and rearranged to my heart's content.

Which is cool. At the moment, I'm resisting the urge to title the cards in my outline section of the file, though of course I've labeled them in the character section. I'll save the title slot for numbers when I have them the way I want them. But one synopsis section simply says *picnic*. Because I think one scene will take place on a picnic. But I have no idea what will happen there that is significant, and I don't know if it will be early in the story or late. But for now, I have a card for picnic. Later, hopefully, one of the other cards with some other random word will decide it wants to hang out with the picnic card, and I'll combine them. Eventually, I hope, I'll have 80-90 cards with actual scene synopses on them.

The few cards that I know for sure belong to the beginning of the story--ones where characters meet each other, I've tinted light aqua. I've reserved pale yellow for middle scenes and pink for climax/ending scenes, but I haven't used any of those yet.

A person can easily write the entire novel in Scrivener. (Exporting back to Word is just as easy as importing, for the final formatting and such.) I think it would be especially cool for folks who write scenes out of order, because you can rearrange all the scenes simply by moving their cards around. So far I've always written linear, but this setup loosens the cells in my brain a little and makes it okay to play. I don't know if I will, though!

So, after one day, I'm really excited about some of the odds and ends that are stuck to my virtual corkboard and how I might arrange them and add to them. I've still got quite a ways to go to have a full and complete plot, but it's really looking positive at the moment!

The Villain

So the matchmaker novel (that needs a name) is starting to pull together. I've done a few character bios the last few days, playing around with the voices of the major characters in journal format. I've learned some interesting things about them that way, though I'm planning to write the novel in a single third person point-of-view: Kaesa.

However, the villain had me stumped. Not all my stories have a clearcut bad guy, but this one will. But why? Why does he do his evil deeds? What are his history, his motivations, his quirks? I could envision him sitting in an armchair across from me, leaning back, arms crossed, a sardonic grin on his face, waiting for me to figure him out while offering no clues.

Weeks like this, the store gets a really thorough cleaning. I was nearly desperate enough to start a round of price checks. Definitely time to break through Petrek's shell and figure out some things.

He likes power. He doesn't like to gamble, but goes for the sure thing with as little risk as possible. Once we got going (this one I wrote as a Q&A instead of diary) I quickly had over 1K in notes.

The villain ticks.

All I need now is an outline and a little more worldbuilding. I have a rough synopsis, so it should be possible to build an outline out of it. Maybe tomorrow.

Book needs a name. It's driving me crazy.

My girls' inspiration

My daughter and daughter-in-law have started a new blog for the two of them called Divine Inspiration. Both of them are interested in all things sustainable and green, which is leading to some interesting discoveries, which they're sharing on the blog. The current post is all about canning Asparagus Pickles, which Hanna and I did on Friday afternoon. She includes the recipe and photos for those interested.

Marketing Novels

In case you wanted to know how to promote your new novel, should any of us be so lucky--here is the latest wisdom out there.



Oh, did I forget to mention you shouldn't be eating or drinking while watching this? I found this over at Pub Rants.

A May Hike!

Since hubby started geocaching a few months ago, we've gone on a few excursions and want to do more. The last couple caches were practically beside the parking lot, and we wanted to find places that required a hike-in. We sure found one of those today!

First we drove up the mountain near our house, a forestry road with many switchbacks. Finally we came to the trailhead and started climbing a 2.5 km very steep trail. Several places there were really good views of the valley below, though. Our farm is in this photo.


I took photos of a lot of flowers along the trail (an excuse to take a rest break a few times!) This is one of my favorites:


Hubby will be posting up photos of the geocaching itself, so check it out! But here is the proof we made it to the top:


And proof that he figured out how to use the timer on the camera!

On dragons...

I came to the realization yesterday that there is a reason dragons are over-done in fantasy literature. Sure we think they're cool, but there's more to it than that. Really, there are only so many mythological beasts that are willing to transport humans, so if the writer is looking for something beyond horses and sailing ships, most animals slink off into the distance, unwilling to do the job.

The current short list for this novel includes dragons, gryphons, hippogriffs, and centaurs. I'm not extremely wild about using any of them. But this world deserves something beyond horses. No offense to my friend Flicka.

a bit of backstory...

I couldn't decide which was more stare-worthy--my brother Lann or the jewel he'd casually placed in my hand. The jewel won. I'd seen Lann before, though this might well have been the first thing he'd ever given me.

"Father wanted you to have it," Lann said, and I realized he'd said other things, too, that I hadn't paid attention to.

The deep purple stone glowed from its depths, every facet gleaming as I turned it. I'd always thought a jewel would feel cold to the touch--if I should ever have the opportunity to touch one, which had seemed unlikely, poor as we were. But not only was it not cold, but a pure warmth emanated from it, spreading down my fingers and up towards my elbow.

"Kaesa. Are you listening to a word I've said?"

I should be, I knew. I had no memories of my father, who had died when I was but a babe. But it was difficult to tear my attention from the jewel. I leaned closer, fancying I could smell the fragrance of a heady wine.

Lann's fingers closed over mine, blocking the gem from my sight. "Kaesa."

Keeps on coming...

Been a busy week since we got home from Victoria. We've finally got Hanna and Craig moved home for the summer. They're hanging out in the folks' motorhome and using our spare bedroom as an office. Yesterday we got all the rest of their belongings moved into storage in their college town, ready for them to find a new abode in September. Craig's working at the local wildlife center for the summer and Hanna is taking time off from lifeguarding to develop her web and graphic design business. Need anything done? I have the gal for you!

We've also gotten the yard mowed--huge job. It was barely turning green when I left for Victoria and when we got home, it was 8-12 inches high. Even the riding lawn mower argued about the task, and the yard is large enough that it takes several hours. Hard on the neck too as the thing doesn't have power steering and a lot of maneuvering is required. (Whine, whine...I know). So we've all taken our turns at raking up the mounds of shorn grass and stacking it between the raspberry rows. Might as well get some good mulch out of the deal.

Much of the garden has now been planted--all the tomatoes and squashes are in. It was hot over the weekend but cooled off considerably yesterday and is raining today, which ought to make the little plants happy. We still have more planting to do, but it's a good start.

On the story front, I've tried to get back into the worldbuilding for the novel I was working on in April, Puppet Prince. I've been fighting with the story line on and off for a couple of years and apparently it still isn't composted enough to grow a decent plot. I don't know. It makes me yawn, which can't possibly be a good sign!

So I'm poking around with the matchmaking novel, which ought to get a name someday, I suppose. If this one pulls together, I can see several novels in this world. At any rate, this concept feels like it has some promise. Perhaps even a promise it would like to fulfill this year. However, it wasn't as far along as the Puppet Prince novel, so I'm further back on my timeline of getting something ready to start writing.

And when I'm this tired and my life is this busy--and I'm THIS out of practice at plotting and writing--it seems easier to take a nap than push myself to work on it. Not that I'm...er...napping at work or anything. Really.

Home Again

We got home late last night. Saturday morning my hubby and my son-in-law flew into Victoria and we all spent the afternoon at Beacon Hill Park and the waterfront. It was quite windy and cloudy, but not pouring rain so not a problem. We enjoyed wandering the shore and even saw a sea otter, as well as many kinds of birds.

This may have rated as one of my best Mother's Days ever. My daughter-in-law made a yummy breakfast for me (well, for all of us, but it was a Mother's Day brekkie!) Our big plan for the day had been a sailing trip for the whole family, but the weather was too poor. There had been gale force winds all night and it was still plenty windy all day Sunday, so that was rather disappointing.

However, we decided to go to the Royal BC Museum instead. Jim and I hadn't gone for over three years and enough exhibits had changed to make it worthwhile. The Victoria kids get to go relatively often, but Hanna hadn't been since she was little, and her hubby had never been to this one.

The special exhibit this time was War Brides: One Way Passage. Very cool.

We had a picnic at Beacon Hill Park, then returned to the museum for the IMax: Wild Oceans.

Later Jim cooked fresh scallops and halibut filets for us all.

Wonderful!!

We drove home Monday, long day, safe and sound. And back to work today. Time to settle into our spring routines.

Busy Days

It seems I should have more to say here. We've been keeping really busy. In fact, yesterday (Wednesday) was our only low key day thus far. It was Jen's first day of her summer co-op job, and Hanna and I did some laundry and cleaning, watched a movie, and dropped the car off to the VW dealership to get repaired.

Tuesday the girls and I went to Saltspring Island. That required a 45 minute bus ride to the ferry landing, then a 35 minute ferry ride. Once on the island, it was another half hour by bus to the main town where we hung out for about four hours (lots of walking! That day tallied up to 7.9 miles) before setting off on the return journey. Saltspring is a place of arts, crafts, and organics, and one of the main reasons we went was to buy organic heritage vegetable seeds. Sadly the rack was well picked over and we didn't come away with as many varieties as we'd hoped. Still, we plan to try some of these in the garden this summer.

The girls did a lot of shopping earlier in the week--clothes, fabrics, etc. It's been fun traipsing around with them, even while I am definitely not attracted to the same styles as they are!

Today looks like rain, and I think Hanna and I will be picking up the car after a bit, then wandering out to do some shopping ('cause we like need more stuff). Well, I guess we're in need of a bit of groceries at least. There are a few other things we'd been meaning to see/ do while here also. Tomorrow we are planning to see Butchart Gardens (supposed to be mostly sunny tomorrow). And then Saturday our hubbies arrive :) That will be nice.

Anyway, much randomness here. I'm still learning to use this machine and the thought of re-figuring out how to load up photos is a bit daunting. Guess I'd better get that firm in my head while we're still here, though, and Joel can walk me through it yet again. I have a fair investment now in saying *I can do this*!

Greetings from Victoria :)

So here I am, writing to you all from my brand new (happy) MacBook! :) Ah....here's hoping for a long, content relationship.

Friday we started out on the road beforae six am, me and my girls. The road trip was going along nicely, let the (sedated) kitty out for a walk at Osoyoos. She wasn't all that impressed with harness, leash, or the walk.



It was very pretty along the lakeshore there, though!



The trip become much more interesting after that. We heard a funny sound, like tearing rubber, maybe, shortly after Osoyoos. We pulled over but couldn't see anything wrong (we were thinking tires), so assumed we'd run over a stick or something that got tangled for a sec before being flung off. We went merrily on for another three hours. Jen was driving up the last summit (Hope Princeton) when she mentioned seeing a flashing light on the dash. I got her to pull over and leave the car running for a few minutes to cool down while I dug out the car manual to double-check what was wrong. Indeed, coolant light, which I had met before last year or so. We popped the hood. Yes, could see the coolant container low. Popped the trunk, yes, we had a jug of coolant. (Thanks, hon!)

The three of us stood by the car with the manual out making sure we were doing the right thing when a semi pulled over in front of us and a guy in a pickup did a u-ey and came back to see if he could help. The coolant issue was relatively quickly solved, but one of the guys noticed that we had belt problems. One belt (I'm forgetting the names here--water pump, I think) had come right off, and the alternator belt had torn--we were missing almost half of it (must've been that rubbery sound by Osoyoos! Oops...) The one guy went digging in my toolbox, then in his, came up with the tools to put the dislodged belt back in place and tightened it back up. The other belt was deemed *good enough* to get us the rest of the way down off the mountain and into the town of Hope. We took it easy and made it down.

Once there we were finally back in cell service and I called hubby to report our adventures and ask for advice. Should we try to have the parts replaced in Hope or did he think we were safe to carry on. He figured we were okay if we took it easy. So we started out on the last couple hours of the drive to the ferry landing. I must say taking it easy on the freeway is almost the same thing as a death wish. Some of those semis swerved around us with inches to spare. Nasty stuff.

Made the 7:00 ferry and on into Victoria in the evening. The car made it! Yay!

The next day I lost power steering while driving but made it back to the house alright. There it sits until further instructions from hubby, who will call Victoria Volkswagen and see if they can fix it this week. Otherwise he *gets* to fix it when he flies in on Saturday.

More adventures have followed those, but none so traumatic. More later!!

ROAD TRIP!!!

Me? Excited? Not in the least! :P

Hubby's changed jobs a time or two too many to get significant vacation time this year, so I'm getting a week with my girls. Jen has been in our general neighborhood for the past week or so and has a summer co-op job that starts next week in Victoria. Her hubby (my son!) Joel is in Victoria right now, just landed himself his own co-op job. Hanna had her last working shift yesterday so we are stealing her to come along for a little vacation too. So Friday Jen, Hanna, Lelu-the-cat, and I head for Victoria. (I've got sedatives for the cat--it's a long drive, so hope it helps enough!)

I'll be checking in from time to time, no doubt. My hubby and Hanna's will be flying down on Saturday the tenth to have a couple days on the Island, and the four of us will drive back on the Monday.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to good times with my girls--and lots of walks by the ocean. Oh yeah.

Christy nominations

Christy Awards are designed to "recognize excellence in Christian fiction written by contemporary authors and highlight the breadth and diversity of Christian fiction".

Nominations have just been released for the publication year 2007, with final decisions to be made by July '08. Now, of course, there are many categories, and you know me well enough to know that I don't care a toad's toenail about most of them. However, there are a couple of categories I'd like to mention here.

Visionary is the category name for anything speculative. The three nominations are:
Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet (WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group)

The Restorer by Sharon Hinck (NavPress Publishing Group)

Scarlet by Stephen R. Lawhead (Thomas Nelson)

Pop any of those titles up in the search bar of this blog and you'll see that I've read and enjoyed them all. I am a particular fan of Sharon Hinck, having loved everything she's written (haven't gotten my hands on her sixth novel yet.) But Jeffrey Overstreet's debut novel was also very strong, very beautiful, and quite different from anything Sharon has written. I'm glad I don't have to vote.

The other category of interest to me is First Novel:

Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet (WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group)

Demon: A Memoir by Tosca Lee (NavPress Publishing Group)

The Stones Cry Out by Sibella Giorello (Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group)

The only book here I haven't read is the third one, which apparently is a murder mystery. But a closer look at the first two reveal that Auralia's Colors is up for TWO awards! Way to go, Jeffrey!! The other nominee here is Tosca Lee, who ran the contest that I won recently. I've only read the first chapter of her novel (definitely speculative!) and was impressed by the writing standard there as well.

So I'm definitely interested to see the results come July!

Fun Workshop!

I got back Sunday afternoon from a fun weekend in Couer d'Alene at a writers' workshop hosted by Idaho Writers' League. Had a lot of fun with my car-and-room-mates, Viv and Bonn, listening to Randy Ingermanson instruct on various writing and web-building skills, and just hanging out.

Here's Randy with *The Canadian Contingent*



We also had individual critiques on five pages (which we'd sent in ahead of time). I've found a few good ideas to tweak up the opening scene of Quest to Be Queen, thanks to the discussion with Randy.



Good times. Now I have a few days to re-group before heading out to Victoria.

Off to a Writers' Workshop Weekend

I'm headed out right after lunch on a weekend getaway in Couer d'Alene, Idaho, for a workshop put on by the Idaho Writers' League. The instructor is Randy Ingermanson, physicist and author of several speculative fiction novels as well as renowned writing teacher.

I was happy to discover that one of Randy's faithful blog readers lives not far from me, so I am driving down with her and her friend. I'm looking forward to a weekend of shop talk, new friends, eating out, and writing immersion.

Hubby's job is going well.

I'm in Hot Water Now! :)

Once I thought being in hot water was a bad thing, but I'm not convinced any more. Hot water when we want it is a luxury not to be taken lightly. After eight and a half days without it, trust me...I'm in touch with my thankful side today.

Also having much thankfulness for hubby's new job. Day one went well.

Now to focus on the rest of a very busy week.

Language Creation

Sometimes you think you can slide by with a few made-up words and other times you know you can't. Puppet Prince would be one of those novels where I know I can't.

I have an empire, which is made up of at least 20 smaller nations, most of whom are not going to feature in this story--I hope. But at least two of the minor nations will, and of course, the empire itself will. The most recent nation to be overtaken by the empire is Tainn. I decided on its name a couple years ago and I still like it. Just looking at that one word and the three people from Tainn that feature in this story, whom I also named a couple years ago, already gives a pattern for this language. I'm expecting this to be a *pure* language, with pretty much nothing borrowed from anyone else's.

The other absorbed nation has been part of the empire for much longer, so it will have taken on some words from the empire as well as, most likely, words from other languages in the empire. I have a rough idea of what their base language sounds like, but I only had one name ahead of time to work around.

And the empire, bless them, has been cheerfully overtaking the known world for a couple hundred years. They are swallowing languages, cultures, art forms, and religions whole, mashing them all up, and spewing them back out. So THAT language can be as messy as English, at the other end.

What to do?

Well, this is what *I* did! I pulled out an e-book I bought quite awhile ago, read, but did not yet have occasion to put to use: Holly Lisle's Create a Language Clinic.

The Tainnish language now has some missing letters, some common consonant/vowel combinations, and a wee bit of structure to hold the thing up.

Next on the hit list: the other language, which will soon have a name!

Where to begin?

I'll try to keep this short, but I'm not sure I'll succeed. Regulars to In My Little World may recall that my hubby, a heavy duty mechanic, worked out of town for several years at the mines. He worked four days away, then was home for four days. In January he began a new job here at home at an automotive dealership. We really hoped this change would work out, though it was obvious from the beginning that it wasn't quite perfect. As time went on, the hours began to shrink a bit here and there and we got nervous. Long story short, he began looking for another job. Not finding anything, he contacted the mines near the beginning of April with the intention of returning to The Great Commute.

As with all large companies, this took a bit of time to arrange and this past week saw us still waiting for the final clearances to come through and an actual start date to be assigned.

Last Monday one of my bosses told me about an unadvertised local HDM job opening a friend of his had told him about (when boss had told him my hubby was heading out again). Hubby zipped over to drop off his resume and then we had two phone calls to wait for.

We got the start date for the mines late in the week--hubby was to be there this coming Monday. Thursday the other company phoned for an interview. After a great deal of discussion, hubby agreed to go in Friday morning to talk, with the understanding that everything would have to be perfect AND they would have to offer him the job that day. At 2:30 they phoned to offer him the position...and he took it...and phoned the mines to say something had come up and he would not be returning.

This new job--man, I hate to get my hopes up, but I can't help it. I'm sure there will be a downside or two, there nearly always is. But honestly, to quote Mary Poppins, it's "practically perfect in every way". Good wages, good benefits, good holidays, good pension, 40 hours a week (some overtime, which is okay), a bit of driving as they have two other plants in the area (hubby loves driving). He'll be working 7-3:30 Tuesday to Saturday with the option of taking some Saturdays off. (I, of course, have the world's BEST bosses who don't know yet that I'll be looking for an occasional Monday off now! :P -- but will be fine with it.) He'll be the one-and-only mechanic on site, also responsible for the millwright position (fixed machines as opposed to wheeled ones). Oh, the position is at a small dolomite mine and stucco manufacturing plant that has been in operation for 45 years. Email me if you want the link to their website.

As with many stressful weeks, something else also happened: our water tank died on Monday. Because it is sits in our bathroom (and is natural gas) it requires special venting and had to be ordered in from Vancouver. It took a few days to arrive. Then hubby discovered that though the tank is rated the same (40 gallons) as the old one, the actual size is larger, due, I suppose, to increased insulation. At any rate, it doesn't fit without modifications, some of which have to be done by a metal-worker. I hear that will be done tomorrow, Monday. Meanwhile, I've been showering at the in-laws' place across the yard, heating water in a kettle for doing dishes, and washing clothes in cold water (which I usually do anyway.) I'm sure you noticed up there hubby's new job starts TUESDAY, which means he'll be able to do the tank tomorrow so long as the part gets manufactured as promised.

Meanwhile, many of you know our son and daughter-in-law spent three months in South America and had a great time except for getting their passports and camera stolen. However, they landed back in Vancouver this week and we'll be seeing them in a few days. Jen has landed a good summer job and Joel is still looking, then back to University of Victoria in September.

Our daughter and son-in-law are also in transition. Craig has landed a summer job HERE and they will be staying kinda with us. By that I mean in their grandparents' motorhome here on the farm, and in and out of our house as well. Hanna still hasn't heard back from the job she applied for here.

(In fact, if you're counting people in my family, you'll see that five out of six of us are starting a new job in the next couple weeks or are still looking! I'm the only one keeping my job...)

Still with me?

This weekend I'm going to Couer d'Alene, Idaho, for a workshop with Randy Ingermanson (aka The Snowflake Guy) put on by the Idaho Writers' League. The workshop is Friday evening and all day Saturday, with a consultation with Randy on Sunday. No, he's not an agent or an editor, but he's a multi-published author who teaches writing at a number of large conferences, so I figure it's worth it! I also get to meet a few people that I've only met online before, so that will be fun.

And then I'm off to Victoria for a week with my kids. The benefit to KEEPING my job? Paid vacation! So there's one week of it.