winding down

It's the tail end of December now, and I've barely said a word here all month. To be fair, the lead-up to the holidays was CRAZY, all freelance and long hours at work and holiday gift shopping and apartment stuff. So, to clarify a couple things from previous posts:
We did not go home for the holidays. I am currently on staycation. I was bummed at first, but now am really enjoying reading and writing a lot. I survived all the freelancing, so everything I'm doing this week is really just for me, which is nice.
We got an apartment. It's in Williamsburg, and we're moving January 15th. I'm really excited about it. My partner-in-crime is on the fence, so to speak. I'm going to have an apartment with lots of windows, and more than one room! It has a backyard! And laundry in the basement!
I'm over seventy-two thousand words in my novel. Still hoping to finish this draft by the end of the year. Well, by the end of staycation, which is approximately the same. Still feeling pretty good about where this one is going.
I've managed to read a few books in the last week or two:
51) Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey. This is one of the first sci fi/fantasy books my dad suggested to me when I started really getting into genre fiction, and I chose to reread it recently in homage, I suppose, since Anne McCaffrey passed away a few weeks ago. I always enjoy her books, and the trilogy this book belongs to is no exception. The world if Pern is such a vivid, well-fleshed-out creation, and the characters are interesting. And, of course, the dragons . . . I love her work.
52) Graveminder by Melissa Marr. I've read her YA stuff; this one is her first adult book. I got a copy at BEA and have been wanting to get around to it ever since. It was seriously worth the wait; this book is REALLY good. The world-building is fresh and interesting. The characters are complex and empathetic. The slow reveal of what it means to be the Graveminder, and what's going on in the town, was great. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a good read.
53) Bone Gods by Caitlin Kittredge. This is the third book in the Black London series, and it's another solid entry. I've enjoyed watching Kittredge grow as an author over the last few years. I can't wait to read the last two in this series, and see what she comes up with next.
54) A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin. Third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. I enjoyed this one . . . but I don't know that I'll continue with the series. Several big characters died in this one. Kingships keep changing hands, everybody's angry all the time, the Stark family is really getting the crap beaten out of them by life. I just don't know that I want to read several thousand more pages full of bloodshed and abuse. I don't mean anything negative about the book in saying that. I just don't know that it's really my thing. Epic fantasy is a hard sell for me these days, and while the basic plot is interesting (and convoluted), there's an awful lot of secondary plot to wade through. We'll see.
That's it for the books, and the life update, really. Things are quiet this week. Lazy brunches and late dinners, reading and writing time and a bit of hanging out with friends. It's nice.
Happy holidays, everyone!

just another Monday

Happy Monday, everyone. How's this week looking? Mine is going to be quiet but busy, I think. My to-do list at work is pretty light, so I'm hoping to get caught up. I accidentally took one too many freelancing projects, so there will be a lot of that happening in the evenings, along with packing. (No, there's no update on the apartment. Yes, I'm frustrated. No, I don't want to get into it right now.) No social plans for this week except a possible one tomorrow night, which I think depends on how much work I get done tonight.

A few books to catch up on:

46) Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow. It took me a bit to get into this one. but once I was in, I was hooked. I really enjoyed this. It's sharp and dark, with interesting characters and a fast-paced plot. I'm definitely reading more of this series when I get my hands on them.

47) Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol. What a fun, quirky graphic novel! Anya is a Russian girl who doesn't fit in at the school she goes to. Then she falls down a well and makes friends with a ghost. And from there . . . well, no spoilers. It's fun. Definitely recommended.

48) Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon. I loved this book. A lot. Anna Koval is a librarian who can't get over the boyfriend who left her over a year ago, and creates a semi-fictional blog under the name that is an immediate success. Anna is sharp-witted and broken and fun, and watching her attempt to walk the fine line between reality and her blog life is great fun. I think everybody should read this book!

49) The Walking Dead Book 1 is intense. That's definitely the best word for it. It's hardcover survival fiction. And I can't wait to read more of it!

50) The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge. This is the first YA book from Caitlin Kittredge, and it's definitely among the top five YA books I've read this year. This is steampunk plus fey folk plus Victorian-influenced America, and I love it. It's gloomy and sharp-edged and caustic. LOVE IT. I can't wait for the next one. February can't come soon enough!

Besides that, a dream to share . . . The beginnings of the dream are vague. I think my younger sister was a queen, and her first baby was stillborn. She was marked with a small B carved into her throat with the tip of a knife, and then there was something about the fey folk. Maybe they took the stillborn? The dream solidifies when the huge wooden gate to the fey world closes, and for some reason there is a group of us who want to go in after them. The gate is locked. Defeated, we turn to go and see a second gate that wasn't there before. This gate opens beneath my touch. We go down a gravel drive, take a sharp right onto a steep muddy path, and find ourselves on the semi-abandoned grounds of a mansion. The house is all boarded up and locked but we keep exploring. There is a huge chair behind the house, a huge cement slab with a backrest and arms placed on the back, and in the middle of the chair is a hole. We clamber up on it to take a better look, and realize that there are children watching us. Each of them is wearing a horizontally striped shirt and white shorts. Most of them are very young, but there are a few who look to be ten to thirteen or so. then a woman appears. She is very small, with long brown hair and huge eyes. Her face is alien and a little frightening, small chin and many teeth and broad forehead, but somehow beautiful still. She speaks to us; we adjourn to a nearby round metal table to talk more. My younger sister looks very uncomfortable. I sit down next to a boy who I am somehow involved with, my hand casually on the back of his neck. The woman sits down and challenges us to a tennis game, since we have trespassed in her kingdom. One of us points out that we were in the fey world just an hour previous, and since we were welcome then aren't we welcome now? The woman clarifies: those were the good fey. She's the other kind. It's clear that she has some sort of special interest in me, but I refuse to acknowledge it. She goes back to discussing the tennis game. . . . And I woke up.

I wish I could've stayed in that one longer. Ah, well . . .

And now, off to work I go. I've certainly spent plenty of time here this morning. Have a good week, everyone!

right around the corner

Do you know what tomorrow is?

It's December.

That's right. Already. How did that happen? Where did November go?

I wish I had more to tell you, but honestly, life is pretty much the same as it was the last time I posted. Still working on the novel. still behind at work. Still trying to sort out a new apartment; yes, there's one in Astoria we want. No, we don't have a signed lease yet. If that doesn't happen this weekend I am going to start looking again.

because the apartment hunt is taking longer than I originally anticipated, I don't know if we're going home for the holidays. Which, frankly, really bums me out. I like spending the holidays with my family. I like seeing my friends, and my godchildren. I like shopping at my favorite bookstore, and having long evenings of board games and Christmas movies. But this year . . . we'll see. I need to have the apartment thing done before I can go anywhere. With each passing day, it's less likely that I'll make it home this year. . . .

Sorry for the glum entry. That's really about all that's going on. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Maybe next week will be a more optimistic one.

this book

I realized, the other day, that while I have occasionally mentioned word counts and such for the novel I'm writing, I haven't really told you guys much about it. So I thought I'd share.

It's adult paranormal fiction. I'm envisioning it as the first book of a five-book series. It takes place in Eugene, Oregon, particularly on and around the University of Oregon campus. It's about a coven of four witches--what happens when they come together as a coven and how that affects things in the city, especially in terms of the heavily ghost-populated cemeteries.

So yes, the paranormal aspect of this book is all witches and ghosts and magic. No vampires, no weres of any kind, no fey folk. No mermaids or angels or ogres.

It's been an interesting process to write this one so far. Parts of the book are loosely based on experiences I had while living there, and some of the characters are certainly based on real-life friends of mine. So instead of spending a lot of time figuring out where the story is going, etc., I decided that this draft will be an exploratory draft. It's for me to figure out how to fictionalize myself and my friends and the city I basically grew up in. It's for me to figure out how I'm writing this book. The story line? Well, right now it moves too slow, then too fast, then too slow again. I'm not sure where it's going yet, although I'm starting to have some ideas. But I can sort out the plot arc later. What I'm doing right now is making myself comfortable with things. I've never written something based on people/places I know before. It's fun, but it's different! It raised a lot of questions in my mind. Were there couches or just benches in the halls of the English building, or am I imagining entirely that there was hallway seating at all? What is really at the intersection of 13th and Lincoln? Is it okay if I model ghost characters on real names from the campus cemetery? Etc.

I'm really enjoying writing this one so far. And I'm hoping to finish this draft by the end of the year. Then I'll probably take January to do a couple other things, and dive into serious rewrites in February.

There you have it; that's what I'm working on these days.

Happy Thursday!

brambles and briars

My head is full of fairy tales and impossibilities this morning. The restless feeling just grows and grows in these cold autumn days. . . . Some days it is all I can do to drag myself to work, to deal with my responsibilities. I want to write. I want to take long rambling walks in the park, to stay up late drinking wine by candlelight, to give in to temptation.

And this is exactly the wrong month to do so.

Sigh.

How is everybody else doing?

this life is just flying by

Man, it's November already. I feel like I blinked and a week and a half went by! I wish I had something exciting to tell you all about, some reason for not posting for a while, but the fact of the matter is . . . I'm just busy. We're apartment hunting in earnest now, I've got multiple freelance jobs, I'm a week behind at work, and I'm 40k into the first draft of the book I'm working on. The holidays are coming so I really should be thinking about planet tickets, gifts, etc. I'm in the middle of reading four different books but am not really making headway with anyway of them.

We did do ritual for Samhain (Halloween, for those of you who don't know the pagan holidays) and that was nice. Two nights ago we saw Blind Pilot play at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. That was a great show!

How about you? Anybody do anything exciting in the last couple weeks?

I've got to get to work, it's nearly 10 am. Happy Wednesday, everybody!

would you take my candlelight

October has flown by in a whirlwind of work, freelance, writing, social life, and the beginning of the great apartment hunt. Work has been pretty intense due to a crash book. I've been taking more freelancing again so my bank account won't be totally wiped out by moving. I'm really trying to hold myself to an end-of-year deadline for this draft. Things are just busy! And on top of that, one of my neighbors is a drummer and is into jamming as soon as I get my bass out of storage, so I'm itching to start that too. Busy busy. I know, someday I need to learn to slow down and take more time for myself. . . .

Two books:

44) Storm Front by Jim Butcher. This is the first book in the Dresden Files series, and I loved it. Sharp, snarky urban fantasy with a gritty edge. I'll definitely be sucking down more from this series in the near future.

45) Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke. This is a graphic novel aimed at a younger audience about a girl named Zita who follows her friend Joseph through an interdimensional portal to rescue him from the aliens who kidnapped him. this is a totally fun, whimsical romp through a world populated with robots and aliens. Definitely recommended.

And now, a dream I had a few nights ago. I was at someone's house somewhere. My ex-girlfriend was there, trying to convince me to sleep with her, but I didn't want to. There was a hurricane coming, so I left that house to go to the store for supplies and then beat the storm home. I wore galoshes. There were large puddles at the intersections with golden koi in them that I avoided walking in. My ex followed me to the store, where I picked up some bottled water, batteries, snacks, etc. Two or three bags of supplies. Then I headed home. To get there I had to walk across this ridgetop, and when I got up there I saw that many people from my neighborhood had come out with lawn chairs and picnics to sit on top of the ridge and watch the storm blow through. I followed the path through the crowd and finally got home. My impression of my house is many windows and heavy wooden beams. The windows were open, as were the doors. The storm was picking up. I could see the water rising outside my house, so I ran around frantically closing windows. Then I sat down near a glass door to meditate and watch the storm. My sister came over with an arrow bundle in her hands and said something to the effect of, "This should help you focus," and rammed the arrow through my right shoulder, diagonally down through my torso, and out my left hip. I remember gasping in shock, but not crying out. I remember the inside of my torso feeling strangely hollow as the arrow passed through. I remember holding as still as possible so it wouldn't start to hurt, and trying to meditate around the hollow feeling. then my mother walked over and pulled the arrow out. That hurt. She handed me the arrow and a towel and told me to clean myself up. Then she walked away, leaving me bleeding on the hardwood floor.

Weird, right? I know, my dreams are usually weird.

And now, I have a lot to do. Happy Tuesday!