All Smoke and No Fire

I knew who was at the door before I answered it. I'd hoped they wouldn't come, that the message not to had gotten to them in time. Apparently not. Or maybe they just felt like coming anyway. Because I'm sure it's awesome fun to put on fifty pounds of protective gear and ride around in hundred degree heat.

“Hey...” I gave the firemen on the porch a nervous smile. “I'm so sorry.”

“Is everything okay?” the oldest one asked. I assumed he was the one in charge and focused on him, even though the one beside him was cuter.

“Yeah. It was a false alarm.” Which, you know, explained why the building wasn't on fire. “I canceled it as soon as it went off and called, but they'd already alerted you... I'm really sorry.”

“It's okay,” said the cute one.

The older one nodded agreement and took out a pen. He looked like he expected me to say something else.

“Yeah, um... I burnt lunch. There was a lot of smoke. But just smoke.”

They all smiled like it happened all the time. Which it probably does. It's actually kind of amazing that I'd gone as long as I had without the fire department making an appearance considering how bad I am at cooking.

When I told my husband he'd have a message on his phone from the alarm monitoring company, he asked, “What were you cooking? Water?” Which wasn't very nice of him but wasn't all sarcasm either. I actually did set off an alarm boiling water once.

So... First item on my People Not To Confuse With Andy list:


Julia Childs
Or anyone else who can competently use a kitchen

Lost: One Profound Thought

The sun was blaring down on the car as my beloved drove our little family across the desert to dinner. I was huddled in my seat at an awkward angle, trying to keep my skin from getting singed. (If you know me, you probably know I have PMLE. So when you think of me crossing a desert, think of the non-sparkling kind of vampire trying to do it.) Between the sun and the motion, I was starting to feel pretty queasy, yet I still managed to have a Profound Thought about the park rat novel.

I had a mini notebook in my purse. I had my Blackberry. I could have recorded the thought. But I didn't, so now I don't know what it was. But like all thoughts that a writer fails to jot down, I'm certain it was The Best Thought Ever.

It had something to do with why I'm retelling Persuasion from the point-of-view of Wentworth. (I'm switching the genders, so Freddie the Park Rat's a girl. But she's still Wentworth. :) It was something beyond the obvious reason I'm doing that, which is that Anne spent most of the novel reacting to things whereas Wentworth was evolving and, eventually, acting. It's not fair to say Anne was completely without growth, but the whole setup behind the story is that Anne listened too much to the wrong people. She had to learn to trust herself. But she never had to do anything based on that new trust unless you count responding favorably after Wentworth summoned the courage to tell her he still wanted her. And it wasn't like it was a big deal to accept him at that point, now that he had rank and money and Anne's acquaintances had all been gushing about him for months.

There was possibly something in the thought about how Wentworth is the more sympathetic character to a modern reader. Anne had practical reasons for rejecting him but it's always been hard for me to go as far as saying she was right to do it. I think if I were to write from her side, there would be a lot of angst about how silly she'd been in the past, misery that he's all flirty with other people now, and just whining in general. (Remember I'm recasting Anne and Wentworth both as teens...)

Whatever the reason, I'm doing it this way and wish I could remember that thought. If you see it floating around, let me know.

This Week in Andyland

Friday, I finished the second draft of The Curling Novel. It wasn't all that much different from the first draft, but I'd fixed everything I then knew to fix and it was time for my first run of betas.

So there are people reading my book. If you've ever hit send on a manuscript, you know how scary that feels. I remember being told it would never get better. For me, though, it actually has. Maybe it's because this is such an early draft. It's okay if people don't love it. Particularly if they're able to tell me why they don't love it. Which isn't to say that I don't want them to enjoy the book, I do. But if they don't, the world doesn't end, I just have stuff to work on. If they send me twenty pages of “Why I hate Andy's curling novel” then I'll have twenty pages worth of inspiration for revising.

The initial responses have been positive. None of the reviews have been too detailed yet but I already have a few ideas for things to alter in the next draft thanks to them and I have hopes I'll have some more to play with soon. It's exciting.

While waiting for my feedback to come in, I started plotting a new story. It's about park rats. (The kind who play on snow, not on concrete. Not that I have anything against the skate park type, I'm just a terrain park person. :) And it's about Jane Austen's PERSUASION.

So... Not going back to paranormal, at least not yet. And no curling this time. But staying with people who play in the cold and with Austen.

Yesterday, I wrote the first chapter of The Park Rat Novel. I hadn't meant to. I was supposed to be waiting and plotting and working out how the themes of PERSUASION translate to modern high school kids. But the main character's voice started going on and on in my head and she wouldn't shut up, so I had to type.

I think The Curling Novel proved that I don't have to be as fast and obsessive as I'd taught myself to be in the past. I can finish something in a reasonable time frame without sprinting to get it out in two weeks. And that's what I'm going to try to do with my park rats. I'm not sure how well my new MC's going to play with that idea, but we'll see.

The Naming of Names

So the winner of the New Name for SHADOW poll was... Write in candidate I'D RATHER NOT BE DEAD. There was a discussion about this over on my Facebook page with people arguing both in favor of and against the inclusion of 'not' in the title. I was against it. "I'd rather be dead," is something I can hear my main character say. It conveys her voice better than any other title I've ever considered. But then a friend of mine made the graphic below and I said, "OH!" It works perfectly!


Sadly, saying that I want the title to look like that is probably a cover choice and hence not something I'm supposed to be expressing at this point. Which bugs me because if 'not' isn't shoved in like an afterthought I still don't like it all that much. But I can stand putting it there because I do agree with the people who maintained it makes you go "Huh?" and maybe look twice.

So, I hereby announce that The Novel Formerly Known As SHADOW is now to be known as I'D RATHER NOT BE DEAD.

Now... Can I think of something I like better than PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND CURLING ROCKS for the work I'm editing this week..?

What's In a Name?

Okay... So... There are apparently fifty million dead-girl books being queried right now. Mine's having trouble standing out. (Seriously? After I spent years on it because everyone was saying not to bother with my Weres or my vampires because those are too common? Good grief!) I don't think it's helping that the title's pretty overdone. No, I can't think of anything named just plain SHADOW but there are a lot of books out there with that word in the title.

So... Not saying that changing my title is going to solve all my problems, but I'm thinking it can't hurt. So I'm looking for something that conveys some of my MC's personality. I asked her opinion and she suggested I'D RATHER BE DEAD.

When I asked Facebook and Twitter, folks seemed to like it. But then my sister suggested I'D RATHER NOT BE DEAD, presumably because the MC isn't all that stoked about being in the ghost realm. (Which is called Shadow, that's where the old title came from.)

My sister made some suggestions. Her favorite was SLIP KNOT, which is cool but more of a thriller title. One of her other suggestions struck a chord with me though and that was DEAD AND CONFUSED.

So... I ask the world, what do you think?

+++Thanks for your interest, but the poll has been closed. Please see next entry for the winner.+++

See You in September...

I slid smoothly from the hack, balanced and confident I'd gotten the weight right. It was a big contrast from the deliveries in my first game, when my knee slammed onto the ice so hard and so often that I had a bruise covering the entire thing for two weeks.

The rock glided down the sheet, right on target. It landed exactly where I'd been asked to put it.

I'd gotten better over the season, but not by enough that I wasn't pleasantly surprised.

I didn't shoot anywhere near one hundred per cent in my final game of spring league curling, but my weight was more consistent than ever before. Weight, for the non-curlers reading this, is what determines how far down the ice the rock has the potential to go. The sweepers can affect ultimate position by many feet but sweeping alone can't take a rock thrown far too light into play and it certainly can't keep a rock thrown too heavy from sailing out the back of the house.

Right up to the end of the league, I improved just a little every game. And while I'm still a very inexperienced novice player, I do feel like I've grown a lot over the last few weeks. (There was even some talk that I outplayed my beloved in that last game. He claims it wasn't the first time, though he's had many more impressive shots than I have.)

I will be back in fall, though it might not be easy. The club's two hours away and getting there involves going over a mountain pass that is prone to seasonal closures. But the beloved and I are determined. And, well, we bought a broom. So.... :)



I'm very sad the league is over, both because I had a lot of fun and because it leaves me one less activity during summer. Summer is a hard time of year for me. My solar allergies keep me locked inside and, honestly, I have difficulty thinking straight if the temperature is above seventy. That's a problem since I feel it would be highly irresponsible of me to set my thermostat quite that low. Losing my nice building full of ice until fall is a blow.

I'd like to tell you that I'm going to spend the next few months being incredibly productive, but historically summer is my least productive time of year. Like I said, I have a hard time thinking when it's too warm. And everyone has a hard time doing much of anything when they're depressed, which being trapped inside tends to due to humans.

I'm nearing the end of my curling novel's rough draft. I have a list of things to revise before letting betas look at it, then I'm sure I'll have a new list. I have other things to revise. I have new things that want to be written. Maybe the memory of ice will motivate me enough. We'll see...

Twisting the Cat's Tale

Last Friday I went to a presentation of artwork done by the children of the art program my son just finished. A friend's daughter was also there, though she wasn't in my son's class, and I got to look at her work. Her group did a day where they created an Eric Carle style picture to be the cover of a short story they wrote.

My friend's daughter's book had a brightly colored, mostly pink, cat on it. It was all sorts of cute. But the thing that got my attention was the story... When she showed me the book, the girl said the story was really bad. This may be evidence she's destined to be a writer because she was wrong about that.

The tale was about a girl who wanted to be a cat. She goes to a farm run by a magic user and makes her wish. And now the farm is guarded by a cat statue.

Yep, that's right. The girl gets turned into a statue of a cat.

Isn't that awesome?

I really wasn't expecting such a dark twist there in the last line. Which is, of course, why it works.

Part of the surprise came from the cover, which was very pink and girly. If it had been dark and Goth and looked like something I'd wear on a t-shirt, I wouldn't have been as delighted by the ending because I wouldn't have been expecting things to turn out well. And part of the surprise came from knowing the author, who feels I shouldn't wear so many skulls even if they do have heart-shaped eyes. But a large part came from the story simply seeming innocent and happy right up to the closer.

There's a lesson there about reader expectation. Defying it can seriously strengthen the impact of a story's ending. But one has to be careful. A lot of people wouldn't have liked the ending of the cat story and would have felt betrayed rather than delighted. I think it's easier to pull this kind of switch in shorter fiction than in novels because the reader's invested less time in it and thus are less tied to their notion of how it's going to end. Rather than saying, “I spent a week reading this and you end it like that???” they're out only a few minutes of their time. It gives you a lot of freedom.

I've never felt drawn to writing short stories, but I have to admit my friend's daughter has me feeling inspired.