E.M. Prazeman's Blog

When I release a new book, there are so many feelings. Excitement. Hope. A kind of silent whimper whenever I wonder if anyone will like it. Relief, because a lot of hard work has finally come to fruition. Doubts about some choices I made. Eagerness to find out which characters are reader favorites, and what they think of the world.

But enough about me.

This is a big world, with a big map. Part of the reason I write 'long' books more often than short ones is because of the vastness of the worlds that I play in. I need lots of space so that the reader can experience not just the adventure, but the scent of a man's incense, the humidity (or dust) in the air, the startling colors of birds as they flit amid a thick canopy of trees, and the textures of sacred symbols that form protective patterns in cities that are under siege during the darkest hours by demons, devils, and monsters.

I'm so fond of these characters! Billie's toughness and tender heart. Aliiren's thoughtfulness and discipline. Larani's sisterly warmth and practicality. Edrion's child-like curiosity and honesty. Temric's intelligence and generosity. Jasmine's insightfulness and confidence. Roorah's puppy-like vulnerability and fierce loyalty. I can go on and on, but these that I've mentioned are the characters that will shape the future of this strange world. They're up for the challenge. But it's not going to be easy. Bad things are happening, things that might lead to the end of everything they love.

Sometimes I miss writing about the characters of the Lord Jester's Legacy and The Poisoned Past. For that reason, among others, I'm really glad that True Dawn will be a big series, so that I will have lots and lots of time to spend with these characters that I've grown to love just as much. It's going to be at least six books, if not more. Probably more. The second book is written to the end, and is going to go into another round of edits right after the print version of The Kilhellion comes out. So much to do! So much.

Thanks for reading this, and for the silent-but-still-present support I feel whenever I post, especially about my writing. Because I live with a writer, and because of my beta-reader process, I'm not as alone as other writers. But even under my circumstances it's primarily a solitary thing to do. For someone who loves people as much as I do, it can feel a bit lonely. So, again, thank you for being here and easing that feeling that I'm all by myself here. I'll post again soon.

It's the second time I've been bitten by a black widow. The first time I was bitten on my arm. This time, it's on my back. When I first began experiencing the pain, I had just taken a bath and I thought, wow, this is the worst gas pain and why is it focused on my back, below my shoulderblade? And I thought gas first because gas pain is weird and I was burping like I'd just had a soda. 

So I took some antacid and hoped I'd feel better soon. Nope. And as I tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in, the pain got worse. It was worse when I took a breath. Every time. Blood clot in the lung? Not impossible. It happened to a friend of mine. But the pain moved. And then it started traveling up to spasm in my neck.

Heart attack, I thought, but everything felt steady, and despite the pain, it hung around my right side. Also, I was starting to get back spasms. Aha! I thought. I have a rib that's not positioned great. Maybe I did something to irritate it. I normally feel it in the front. But maybe it's irritated in the back. The fact that it would get worse when I took in a breath seemed to support this idea. 

Of course I wasn't feeling it up against my spine. 

Maybe it's just low back pain, I thought to myself. I've been typing in bed a lot. Not a great idea. And now I was paying the price. The breathing thing was weird, but whatever.

I probably should have woken up my husband at this point, but I wasn't convinced anything other than back strain was going on. So I finally dozed off for an hour here, an hour there, and got through to morning. My husband agreed yeah, probably back pain, and brought me things, and was supportive. The pain came in waves. So weird.

I emerged from bed in the afternoon and sat a while, watching tv with him. "Hey, it's really bad right now. Would you mind rubbing my back gently to see if you can calm those muscles down?"

I love my husband. He doesn't always when he rubs my back, but he lifted my shirt.

"Hey," he said. "This looks like some sort of bite. And there's a rash."

It all came to me at once. The spasms, the shooting pains going up into my neck, the cramps, the gassy feeling in my gut. Black. Widow. Spider. Bite.

The call to an advice nurse was fine. The emergency room, not great. Bad, actually. I got checked in super fast, they did blood work, raised eyebrows at my blood pressure (another gift from the spidery widow--high blood pressure) and called me back to give me a room. The wait in the room was super long. Hours. Turns out they'd sort of lost me. And the doctor--I really liked her as a person. She was kind. But she was not hearing me, and not explaining things well, and I think she may have actually fallen asleep on shift and wasn't entirely with the program. She should have talked to me about antivenin. I probably wouldn't have taken it, as my blood pressure was already coming down, but I qualified with my bp and pain levels and muscle spasms, etc.

Anyway, I'm better now, four days later. I'm still affected. Random spasms. Got a rash on my neck a few minutes ago, randomly. I can take full breaths without setting off a pain/cramp reaction, but yawning is still dicey. So is coughing and sneezing.

All this to say, if you're cleaning out a little-used area, it doesn't matter if you can't see them, and they might not bite you then and there. No, once they're disturbed, they leave their dark corners and wander around your house, or they might hitch a ride on your clothes after you've been messing around a wood pile, an old stump, or a pile of rocks, and end up someplace indoors. A place you use. A place where they want to be left alone, but unfortunately it's not as ideal as the place they used to be, so they're less protected. And they're cranky.

And they'll bite you. You might never see them before, during, or after the bite. But that bite stays with you a long time.

Stay safe out there!

Sometimes dreams can be frustratingly beautiful. Most commonly, when I have a dream with a backstory and a context, I experience the dream as a piece of that wider context. It almost always falls apart on waking. That's often because what feels complete and interconnected with that contextual past doesn't actually make sense. 

Painting works like that too. My usual example is this: in my mind I can imagine a painting with a tree, a mountain, and a rising sun and compositionally it seems perfect. But when I try to set it down on paper, immediately there are conflicts. The slightly-off center tree interferes with the mountain in ways I didn't 'see' in my mind. And the sun rising to one side of the mountain, so ideal in my mind, suddenly has a sloped bottom edge that I didn't 'see' and is much farther to the side that I realized. Also, how is the tree rooted? Is the ground that the tree is rooted to below the canvas, unseen, or on canvas? Is it flat? Is it sloped? How does that related to the mountain, and the rising sun? And what are the actual proportions (sizes in relation to each other) of these objects?

In other words, the reality of the tree, the mountain, and the sun can never express what I imagine in my mind, because my mind arranges things in more than two dimensions and with a lot of wibbly, wobbly (to borrow from BBC's Dr. Who circa 2007) composition-y stuff, where edges, interactions, intensity of colors, and shapes are constantly moving and changing depending on where in my mind I 'look'. But when I put them on canvas, they can't move or adapt anymore to suit my aesthetic vision.

That didn't happen in this dream. Okay, it did, a little, but the context (one year after my father died, which was actually 34 years ago this last Christmas) and the background, that I was still heavily in grief and writing with a creativity and intensity that I'd seldom experienced before, didn't have any wibbly, wobbly parts. They were clear and made sense in relation to the dream-as-experienced, even after I woke up.

I feel compelled to write as much about it as I can now, while I can, so that I can preserve the background, context, and content. This dream matters to me.

I was somewhere public in a building hall with chairs and tables lined up on one side, intimate and a little dim, with light coming down from high windows. I had written something really intense. 

It was a poem. I'm not great at poetry. I have to wait around for one to come along, instead of composing poetry like I would any other writing I do. Often my poems are missing parts, because of the fact that I'm trying to pin down something slippery and elusive. I haven't developed the skill set to do something with these broken, ephemeral things, so I usually leave them as-is. Sometimes I include them in my books as a bit of song heard in passing through a city, or part of an opera, or an intimate letter, etc.

In the dream I was sharing the poem with various people in this hall, having them read it silently individually. Every single one reacted powerfully, usually silently or just with a few quiet words. Well, word got around in the dream world. An accomplished musician-writer-poet came up to me asking to read it, as he'd heard a lot of people raving about it. 

I could tell that he was skeptical. He saw me as an amateur that was getting praise because people were being nice, not because I'd written something that was actually good. 

In the dream, I didn't mind. Normally in the conscious world I often react with a 'oh, they found me out, because I know deep down I'm a fraud' feeling, and nod, or shrug, or both. What can you do, after all? Most writers I know have similar feelings, and the ones that keep writing just accept that the feeling is part of being a writer. It's very common to suffer from imposter syndrome sometimes, or even all of the time. Sometimes it hits hard and makes me doubt everything I'm doing, but most of the time it's something that disappears when I'm actually creating. It's essential to ignore or better yet get rid of that feeling, or I'll write self-consciously and write a lot of crap while trying to not be a fraud. The more I've practiced writing, the less often imposter syndrome appears. It usually turns up when I'm trying out something really difficult or new that falls far short of my hopes and expectations, criticizing me at a subconscious or semi-conscious level.

This time, in the dream, I didn't get the feeling, or accept that the poem was probably crap. As far as I was concerned, I didn't write it. I explained to him, as best I could, that my grief is the author of the poem, not me. In the dream, I loved my grief's poem, and I knew other people loved my grief's poem. I didn't explain, but I felt, that the poem didn't have to be a great work of art to affect the people who read it. It just was itself. The fact that people were reacting to it didn't mean that it was a really good poem, but maybe, it was a sign that it expressed something, either perfectly or imperfectly, that people embraced and related-to. 

He asked to read it, and instead of handing him my journal, I said, "follow me." I took him to a long, narrow room with a small bed, some wibbly wobbly furnishings, and it was quite dark and unkempt, with laundry scattered about and nothing put away in its proper place. 

I had painted the poem on the wall. 

In the dream, over and over, I had read this poem, and sometimes the people I handed the poem to read parts of it aloud. 

It was stunningly beautiful. The words, the almost calligraphic expression of it in pain, the way the words flowed on the wall, and how they could be read like the lines were ripples on a creek flowing over smooth stones.

It also came with music in my mind. I didn't paint the notes of this music, though. Apparently, when anyone read it, the music was implicit in the poem. According to the dream's logic, this was the only music that fit the poem, and everyone who was musically inclined would hear the same music while they read it.

He read it silently while I watched him. I could tell that he was moved. At one point I quietly said, while he read the poem, that the music suggests itself, and he seemed to realize that as he read on. But he shook off the feeling on the last line of the chorus, which changed from 'in the heart of desire' to 'in the eyes of the lord.' 

He said that the rest of it had no religious context and that this line threw him out of the poem. And then he started to rant about Trump and people finding religion and how people outside the religion react badly to this sort of sermonizing, etc.

Wakeful-me thinks of the gorgeous song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen as an immediate way to refute this thinking. The dream guy was so wrong on so many levels. I mean seriously. You don't have to be religious to love that song. In fact, many say that it's about sex. I wonder if that idea came from a Rolling Stone magazine article, or the artist himself (who was Jewish), and if this idea was more of a defense mechanism than the reality. And what would the meaning of 'the reality' matter anyway? It can be both. Embrace the power of 'and.' It can be a song about sex, and lovers coming together and/or breaking apart, and a criticism of casting every aspect of life in a context of religion, or a declaration that even 'profane' parts of life are, in many ways, religious. Maybe Cohen didn't want to be boxed in by religion while his soul wrote that gospel-inspired song, either because he was repulsed by the politics associated with religion, or because he thought he'd be judged. Or maybe he just didn't want the song to live in that box, as he'd written it to be something that was more, or both, or barely touching it.

The dream-me was non-plussed. I told him that I was pagan, and the lord in the poem was Death. 

It shattered the dream guy. He staggered away, overwhelmed, his attempt to pull my grief's expression down into the realm of the childish, unskilled, and deeply flawed thoroughly exposed for what it was–petty arrogance and an attempt to feel superior. He realized he was the one exposed as an imposter as a critic and expert.

Then I woke up.

I tried so hard to remember the poem. Almost as if the dream was on a loop, I had read and reread that poem, and it was absolutely consistent. As usual, even in the dream, it was a piece of a work, partial, but that partial poem/song, written by my grief, was stunning. I thought I had that piece memorized, thanks to repeatedly reading it during the dream, but it began to melt away, like frost exposed to a dawning light. I couldn't hold onto it. Except the two lines that I wrote above.

But I had the music. 

So, frantically, I printed out some sheet music, and got the melody down on paper, as well as the two lines of poetry and the unusual way they interact with the music. I'm hoping that, later on, the bits around the melody will remain obvious to me, so that I can finish it. Honestly, the music is going to sit in the real world the same way that the fictionalized Salieri's music compared to Mozart's in the movie and (again, fictionalized) plays written about their relationship.

Maybe it will end up in the second book in the True Dawn series I'm working on. (The first book is almost ready to publish!) I know exactly where it will go. And, if I can put the music together properly, I may include it after the cast of characters and glossary.

It's dark and raining, and the wind is sounding the usually-silent gong wind chime. The house is quiet in the way that only settles in when everyone else is asleep. It's not insomnia keeping me awake. It's a holiday-induced restlessness. Too many activities, and at the same time, not much work. 

And yet...

The scent of roasted meat, buttery bread, fresh fried fish and citrus lingers after two days of feasting. That was a lot of work. I started to think, 'but that's not lasting work, not like writing,' but that's wrong. We have memories from that home cooking, and from sitting around the table with loved ones that we never see enough. Those memories last in our hearts and minds longer than any story I've written. Even if they didn't, the effort behind holiday celebrations are worth it. They're life-affirming.

When I was a child the aftermath of Christmas was like the warm glow of a mature fire. I still get that feeling sometimes, but it doesn't linger for days anymore. My father died on Christmas Day, just a few days after I married. And, like other winters prior, sad things weigh on me this year too. 

Don't worry. Christmas isn't ruined. 

I personally observe Yule, but celebrate throughout the season with family, embracing each feast and gathering as they come. I don't have to brace myself for the holidays. Grief doesn't shadow me. At the same time it's a serious time of year. We celebrate life and birth and the hope of what may come, while appreciating that life doesn't last. We light up the house and the garden, but the cold and darkness is all around. We hold each other close. We welcome guests with smiles, and give gifts, and say I love you, and it matters so much, maybe matters more right now because of the wind and rain and darkness, because life is short, because there is suffering and cold and the waiting to see if life or death will prevail.

When I was a child all I saw was the light, and I was embraced by warmth and love. Now those lights, and the warmth and love feel fragile. It's all beautiful, so precious, no longer taken for granted. Now I light the lights, cook the food, invite people, find or make and then wrap gifts, make sure the house is warm. I make, as much as possible, a place of love and safety, a little shelter while the awe-inspiring winter roars outside. When I was a child, Christmas was powerful. As an older adult, I'm aware that without work, there might not be a celebration. Sometimes those celebrations are small, subdued, and laced with pain. But they're worth creating, like so many human endeavors, especially if they're created with love.

Time to rest. Tomorrow, there's more work to be done.

The cover is embossed with gold foil, artwork of an ancient Persian garden with a pair of deer. I open the new journal. The spine crackles faintly, and the scent of crisp, virgin paper wafts up. The pen is a gift too, meant for journaling on paper like this. I smile as I begin to write, but there's a tender sadness too.

At this beginning, there is an end to a garden journal I started on 6 January, 2019. We've been through a lot together, that faux red leather journal with its inconvenient clasp and I. It bulges from taped-in empty seed packets, pictures of the garden that I printed on my HP and glued onto the lined pages, and fliers from gardens and garden centers I've visited. That last entry on 25 October, 2024 felt triumphant and bittersweet. I have a lot of journals, each with its own purpose, and so I rarely finish them. This one was the first over a long dry stretch where I had to say goodbye.

I also got a burst of energy from it. I wanted to write more in my accomplishments journal (also a gift, the large, sky-blue version of the "I'm Kind of Awesome" journal by Knock Knock) , the writing journal (a small Princess Mononoke journal I found at Kinokuniya) , the house journal (a thick, leather hand-bound, hand-made paper book with a green stone inset in the cover), the creative flow journal (Nature's Whispers by Angela Hartfield, art by Josephine Wall), the mother of pearl star patterned research notes book. I'm looking forward to adding notes and pictures to my plain gray international travel journal, or the subtly bronze and rainbow colors of my domestic travel journal. 

Finishing a journal feels good. Finishing a journal didn't end a chapter in my life, though. It just ... trails off. It's a pause while I reflect. There's peace. There's stray thoughts about what to do with it, if anything. Let it be, or compile the same dates across the years to find things in common, and to see the changes across those years at high speed? 

While that journal rests, maybe for a long, long time, there's this new journal to tend to. My handwriting is awkward at first. My hand has to get used to the new pen, the subtle tooth of the new paper, the hard, high edge of so many empty, tightly-packed pages under my hand. I hadn't realized how comfortable writing at the end of my old journal had become, with the edges of the pages worn soft, their thin profile a slight pressure under my hand, or under my wrist when I scribble on the versa pages. I refer to the old journal frequently, reminding myself of which spring bulbs I'd planted in which planter, of where I placed the new hyacinths and crocuses alongside our gravel country driveway.

It's autumn. In a way, it's the perfect time to begin a new gardening journal. The only things I have left to harvest are the pumpkins and, assuming that they dry out before they rot, luffa sponges that are hanging like weird cucumbers from a mulberry tree that the vines climbed over the summer. Leaves are turning color and fall to blanket the ground with red, yellow, orange, brown, and purple. Time to fill up the bird feeders. Time to watch the rain through the picture window beside my desk. Time to dream of future gardens while I tidy and ready my vegetable beds for winter, while I wait for the pumpkin vines to dry off, while I wait ...

While the veil between the living and the dead thins, and surprise frosts sparkle on the edges of leaves in the early morning by the light of a sleepy, wan sun.

The first entry is complete. I place the new gardening journal next to the old one. Time for bed. Tomorrow is a new day.

I think that in my same situation, most other people would have been upset. I wasn't, and I guess I'm posting about it because I want to work out, on the page, why that is.

After a substantial drive and a smooth ferry ride on a gloriously beautiful day, my family and I arrived in Victoria and settled into our condominium-style rooms overlooking the bay. From my window in our bedroom I could look out at a little marina where a lovely, old-fashioned wooden sloop floated along with a handful of modern boats. My husband had been feeling poorly but he'd improved enough that he had no trouble eating the hamburger, rice and grated cheese (all bought locally at Thrifty Foods) I made for everyone. Dessert was scones and tea. The men planned on touring on foot downtown while my daughter and I had reservations to have high tea at the world-famous Buschart Gardens. 

I woke up super early, bothered by a nasty but not overwhelming headache, and watched the sky gradually lighten over the water. It was the 'off' season, so a lone sea plane puttered along by before revving its engines and taking off into the glow of the morning's first light. When we've been here before during the peak season, the seaplanes would take off frequently all day, and it was part of the pleasure of staying at this particular place to watch them during those times when we wanted to just sit and relax. My husband woke soon after and we chatted about our plans.

Suddenly, I felt the tell-tale pressure of nausea rise, and my mouth began to water. I hadn't felt these things in decades, but I've been sick just often enough as a young woman to know the signs. I was lucky to reach the bathroom without making a mess. Afterward, shaken but feeling slightly better, my husband and I talked about whether or not I'd feel well enough to keep my plans. He consulted with our daughter and good friend/housemate while I isolated in our bedroom and tried to figure out what was going on. And then I had to run to the bathroom again. There was literally nothing in my stomach either time except some fluid. I did some math in my head while trying not to think, because my head was really hurting. I dismissed the idea that this was some kind of migraine thingy. I'd actually felt this before, and the timing and route of infection seemed pretty clear.

Somewhere, my husband had picked up norovirus, probably a few days before when he went to meet a friend and eat at a restaurant (we rarely eat at restaurants because we love our own cooking) and he promptly infected me on one or more of the many occasions that we kissed. By the time he was symptomatic (during our drive, during which his iron stomach never yielded a thing), I hadn't any idea that anything was going on except maybe a bit too much fun on the night before (which I didn't participate in, as I was driving the next day).

I shooed everyone out, cancelled high tea, and spent the day sipping water and trying (with limited success) to alleviate my symptoms with everyone's favorite pink stomach-soothing liquid. After confirming that this helps with norovirus, I persisted with the meds and water while everyone else went out and had a grand time. The next day I felt well enough to have a few saltines in the early morning. By the afternoon my husband, who returned early and alone from running around town with the rest of our group, took me by the hand and walked with me (him protectively, me a bit wobbly) for a twenty minute stroll around Fisherman's Wharf. I had a real dinner that night. It was just a baked potato with a few mild fixings, but it tasted like heaven.

The next day, the day before we left, I finally felt 100% good*, and went on adventures with my daughter, not to Buschart, but the glorious Horticultural Center of the Pacific for the first time in my life. I had such an amazing time! After a long tour around the many featured gardens, and after saving a bird's life (long story), we went to Charlotte and the Quail Café where we had incredible food and had them pack oatcakes with huckleberries and clotted cream to take away for dessert later than night. We then picked up the men and all of us went to Hatley.

Quietly, my husband confessed to me that it was one of the best vacations he'd ever had. He felt so guilty for saying it! I had a confession too, though. 

I had a really, really wonderful vacation.

How?

Thinking back, I think there's a lot of layers to it.

First, the place we were staying was scrupulously, spotlessly clean. Our bedding had that bleached scent to it, and the blanket was as soft and light as down, though it was most likely a down alternative. There was not a bit of dirt or dust anywhere. This is not the case at home, where I rarely use bleach. Our bathroom at home, I have to admit, is not spotless, and there's a mold problem behind the tank. I would have been miserable smelling the less-than-perfect demi-cleanliness of our bathroom, to say the least. It would have been a lot of work to clean up after myself and then clean around our toilet at home with bleach, etc. not just for sanitation purposes but also so that the smells as I knelt before the porcelain altar wouldn't make my nausea a million times worse. 

I also ran a lot of laundry in our rented room, because it would help keep the virus contained and protect my family and friend from the evil working its way around inside my body. We have laundry machines at home too, but they're downstairs, not a few paces from the bed where I sat up, wondering how long this would go on. 

The view outside the window of the condo was amazing. I was a sad kitty, but not so sad that I couldn't appreciate how lucky I was.

My husband faithfully walked all over creation fetching things that would get me over my illness as quickly as possible, and didn't flinch or complain as he slept in the same room as the disgusting mass I had become. Of course I tried to make myself as tolerable and minimize my virus shedding by not waiting until the last minute when I felt something pending, and showering afterward. Yes, I took a lot of showers, but it was worth it to me, and having wet hair actually helped a LOT with the headache. I'm pretty sure the headache was from a low grade fever, and it's nice and cooling to have wet hair without the pressure of a wet washcloth. Anyway, my iron stomached beloved was loving and stayed by my side except when I insisted that he go out and have fun enough for both of us and so I could rest in a perfectly quiet place.

Oh, the bed ... it was so comfortable, and I had a million pillows at my disposal. Did I mention the view? And I had the balcony sliding door open so that I could enjoy the sea air as well as the view. At home, we can't leave the door open like that, because we have indoor only cats, and screen doors and screens over windows interrupt more airflow than most people realize. It was great.

I feel less weird about it now, now that I've put it into words. We totally had a fantastic vacation. I wouldn't change a thing.

Well, okay, maybe one thing...

* The fact that I was feeling better after two days is another reason why I believe that my husband and I contracted the dreaded norovirus. Our friend and my daughter, thankfully, did not contract it.

While my cover artist is working on the spectacular cover for the first book in my new series, I'm finishing up the edits based on comments from my editor and two readers. Then, I go through again (argh!) and read the whole thing start to finish out loud.

I've heard the reading aloud advice before, but it really hit home when a friend of mine won a Hugo award for one of his amazing short stories. Shortly after, the magazine that originally published the short story decided to produce an audio version. Yay! Read by the author. Yay! Applause all around.

Then it came time for David to show up at the studio and read the story. This is a time consuming process, btw. I don't remember how long it took him to read it, but I remember it was quite a few hours, and might not have been done in a single day. Remember: this was a short story. You'd think that he'd be done in an hour, but no. Some parts had to be re-recorded because of a stumble or because his voice cracked, or he moved so that he wasn't in the sweet spot in front of the microphone, and so on. Plus, it's tiring, and pausing for a sip of water--so natural and unobtrusive when you're reading in front of a live audience--can complicate things.

Voice actors for books don't get enough credit. Just saying.

Anyway, David did plenty of prep work. Despite that prep work, it was still a difficult process. One of the things that he mentioned was that some of the sentences didn't read well. They were awkward. Neither he nor the editor caught this awkwardness when the story was accepted for publication. This shouldn't be surprising. When we read to ourselves, and we're engaged in a story, our minds mush around the words and make sense of things in context, and so an awkward sentence might not read as awkward in our heads. 

During the production of an audio version of a story, though, there's nowhere to hide. 

David really struggled with this. I'll ask you the same question he asked himself, and later our writer's group. When you're reading a story for audio production, and a sentence doesn't work, do you rewrite it so that it does work, which obviously deviates from the original (award-winning, remember!) story as-written, or do you fix it so that it's as close to the original as possible, following the same feeling and cadence, but a different structure or even different words as-needed so that it reads well?

I'm not saying that I expect that my new series will be produced into audio books. In fact, it's difficult to produce my books into audio books because they're very long, and my book sales aren't so awesome that a voice actor would be willing to do it on spec. At minimum, they might do it on a cost-share/royalty-share basis (I believe it was around $200 per hour at the time for my share, because studio time and sound editing is not free) or they might prefer to just be paid up front for the entire thing and then I would get all the royalties. If there aren't enough audio book sales, that would mean I would be in the red for the project in that case. That's not only fair, but I would prefer that second option. The problem is that the first book in the Lord Jester's Legacy is almost fourteen finished hours of audio book. If someone else is doing all the work, which includes reading, editing, and any additional sound work (like balancing, special effects, transitions, or even background music for some scenes) I might expect to pay $500 an hour or more. Anyone got $7000 sitting around? Sadly, not me.

But that's actually not important. What is important is that until a book is truly and actually read aloud, it's likely that there are going to be a lot of overlooked awkward sentences. Sure, the reader might overlook those same sentences. But, they might mentally stumble on them. For sure, the flow wouldn't be as good. Other than the time, there is no down-side to reading my work aloud before I format it. And after I format it, I'll probably read it again, because formatting often reveals typos and repeated words and all kinds of other things. 

It's incredible how complex writing is, how complex reading is, and how complex listening to the words being read is. That complexity is where the actual words on the page may deviate from the writer's intent. So anything I can reasonably do to make sure that I mean what I say, and say what I mean, I will do.

So tired, but happy. I had a wonderful time at Radcon (a convention celebrating speculative fiction held in Pasco, WA every year.) Lots of thanks to the organizers, volunteers, attendees, staff at both the hotel where I stayed and the convention hotel, and anyone else I might have missed. Oh yeah, the fantastic bartender at Sterling Restaurant. The folks making mad amounts of coffee at the Black Rock coffee stand near the Red Lion Hotel. You're all amazing.

Sometimes I do an overview of the panels I was on, but I was on fourteen this time. Plus, on Sunday, I sat in for my husband, who was double booked. So actually, that makes it fifteen. My husband had twenty three scheduled. Going over all of that would take a book rather than a blog post. So, instead, I'll just highlight a few things. Because the next time I'm writing on a book, it's going to be to make progress on my sword and sorcery series: coming within my lifetime, ideally, and hopefully pretty soon.

If that just made no sense, it's because I'm really, really tired. I think I mentioned that already.

Anyway, on the Where Do Writers Get Ideas panel, we talked more about how to figure out which ideas are worth pursuing and what to do when you get stuck than on how to get a story idea. Because really, there's only so many hours in the day, so it's best to write on a great story idea rather than merely a good one. Also, the time you might need an idea the most is not when you're trying to write a story from scratch, but when you're stuck in the middle and need some idea of how to proceed. We all agreed that walks and showers and/or hot baths work really well. And getting out of the house. And combining things that don't normally go together, like honey and stencils.

Things got lively in the dynamic side characters panel. Because characters aren't just characters when you're writing a story. They mean something. If you're writing about them, they must have a purpose to the story, and some sort of meaning beyond being a best friend's boyfriend or a barista. I particularly like the idea of characters that seem to be friends and helpers but are actually trying to keep the main character stuck in their rut, or even causing them to fail. Because they care? Maybe. Or maybe they're secretly evil.

On the how to write/film a fight scene panel, things were quite lively too. Not many people attended, which was too bad because the three of us panelists really worked well off of each other. There was a concept of dials, for example, where on a scale of violence intensity from silly early Batman tv is at one end, John Wick might be at the other, but it's all 'cartoon' violence with just a difference in gore and how gratuitous the violence is. You can have another dial where at one end there's 'clean' and 'bloodless' death where an invisible wound drops a character dead, and at the other end, death includes more suffering and potentially more realistic things like the fact that the body doesn't just go completely still right after someone dies (at least not every time.) Figuring out where to set the dials for your fight scenes involves knowing your audience, and also, honoring your story. 

So that's just three of my fourteen/fifteen panels. I made new friends, visited with old friends, had great conversations with people between panels, and saw lots of great costumes and art. I didn't have time to dance this year, sadly. Maybe next year! Thanks again Radcon, and you too Pasco. As tired as I am, I'm also inspired. If I work hard, and think hard, and plan well, hopefully I'll have at least one new book to show around next year.

Several times a year, when there aren't travel/socializing restrictions, we have guests that come stay with us. It's a great excuse to go see local sites and I very much enjoy experiencing these quasi-familiar places through the lens of someone who hasn't seen them before. 

This times a million when there are kids involved. So this time around I got to run around with a toddler and an older sibling along with their mom. And it was amazing.

It's hard to pick a favorite experience, but I'm going to go ahead and almost arbitrarily pick the visit to a small river within a 150+ acre regional park. I could have spent even more time than we did, wading around in the warm, briskly-moving water that wasn't fast enough to push the kids off balance, but swift enough to thrill the skin as it poured around our legs. The kids threw rocks, played with sticks, splashed, and discovered the pure bliss that is a living, flowing water space. 

We picked the park because it was a hot day and the river would be not only safe, but help keep heat-related injuries at bay no matter how hard the kids wanted to play. And it was great for them, but really, I felt a bit selfish because I think our time in that river was even better for me. It was peaceful. There was something about the happy babies, and the giggles, and the other families around us enjoying the river too, the rush of water, the sunlight, the warmth and humidity that kept us from getting too cold, and the cool of the water that kept us from overheating. And of course there were the trees, the fish, and snails, old leaves, water skippers, smooth river stones, and the slightly muddy sand that's the perfect softness and roughness for human feet on the shore. We even had a little excitement while moving around because of the uncertain footing on the pebbled, rocky river bed. The risk of falling was ever-present, but knowing that all you're going to get is wet keeps it from being truly frightening.

It's hard for me to imagine time spent in a more pure, honestly human way. 

I especially loved how the toddler was so enraptured with wet leaves--the way they squished, the way they moved when waved about, the way they would sort-of float and then slowly sink, and how drops flew off of them when they were dipped and then whipped through the air. She objected to standing on the pebbled riverbed until we figured out that she didn't like having her feet press into narrow, hard gaps. I had a visceral reaction when we stood her on a large, smooth stone and she smiled, relieved that she was on stable, comfortable ground. Her furrowed brow smoothed, her eyes lit with joy, and her mouth curved into a gap-toothed smile. My body, through no intellectual decision making on my part, mirrored her and I was so happy ...

Yes, there was a little whining here and there, but that didn't bother me, which I guess is a bit strange because that sort of thing did bother me sometimes when I was the parent. I guess at the time I was more focused on how my kids weren't appreciating the cool things we were doing together. I didn't notice as much as I should have that they were appreciating the things we were doing, but that they hadn't learned how to accept and let go of the little irritations that can (if we let them) ruin an otherwise perfect moment. And I, simultaneously, was letting my irritation with the whining ruin an otherwise perfect moment. My so-called maturity and advanced education didn't keep me from making the same mistake that they were making.

I heard it at the time, but didn't understand the observations of wiser people when they tried to tell me that maybe I should appreciate my time with my little ones as-is just a bit more. Those wise people didn't mean that I should ignore the whining, or bad behavior, or pretend that I had perfect little angels that could do no wrong. Rather they understood that patience and grace and calm, but most of all appreciation for what I had, would lead to greater happiness for me and them. I would, whether I was playing with them, teaching them, or disciplining them, show my love for them more clearly. In turn they would respond by playing with less concern about losing, learn more quickly and happily even if the lesson was on the edge of what they could comprehend, and accept boundaries with less protest if they felt that love coming through. 

Weirdly, it goes back to that writing true-ism: showing is often better than telling. Telling is a good shorthand when dealing with fairly unimportant or easily understood parts of a life, but for the rest, showing is going to be felt more deeply, understood more widely, and enrich a reader's (or a child's) experience in a nuanced way. 

And really, I don't think it's realistic to think that if a parent does this or that strategy consistently that there will never be whining or tantrums. So, given that a dog will bark and rain will fall, are we going to scream at the dog and shout in protest at the sky? I think that you can do some training and carry an umbrella, but also accept that sometimes a dog will bark (maybe at something that might really need your attention like a raccoon in your garbage can or rats in the garage) and that sometimes, even with an umbrella, you're going to get wet. And that's okay. That doesn't make dogs and rain awful. Dogs and rain are awesome, and the world would be a much more desolate place without them. So love the dogs, and the rain, and the sunlight, and rivers, and show the love for them and kids and butterflies. Because showing love is pretty much just revealing the love that's inside of us. Letting that love stretch out nurtures it, and nurtures our souls.

So anyway, I had fun, my guests had fun, my husband had fun, and that day will live on as a textured, glorious memory that will make me smile every time I think about it. I wish that day could have stretched on and on, but that's not how days work. Maybe, though, on future trips, I can draw on this experience to remind me to embrace future ones with less apprehension and more anticipation, less futile engineering to try to create a perfect moment*, and more appreciation for the moments that unfold as I experience them.

*Trying to create a perfect moment makes me think of weddings. I wonder if embracing the process and appreciating the joy of being in love and all the symbols of that love that gets wrapped up into a wedding would make wedding planning less stressful and a lot more fun. It might even make the wedding itself more fun!

It's springtime here in the Pacific Northwest. Living on a hill--which might be tall enough to count as a mountain if it were some other places--I get to enjoy the flowering plum trees and daffodils in town well before my own flowers open up. It's gorgeous, with the bright yellows, hot pinks, sultry purples and snow-like white petals on display during moments of sun and blue skies crowded with fluffy clouds. And the next moment a shadow falls and then there's hail rattling on the roof and jumping around on the ground, forming pockets of crystalline white that rapidly melt away. 

As beautiful as all that may be, my mind is still back in the Bahamas. I was invited to stay on a gorgeous sailing boat, a Catalina 350. I jumped at the chance. During my week on board I was essentially camping on the water. Meals were canned foods, pasta, boxed meals. Snacks were protein bars and landjaeger. I shrugged off the fact that the water on the boat didn't taste great, because we were in the Bahamas on a sailboat. I felt lucky. I was very, very happy. I was with my husband again--he'd been on the sailboat for months, helping his friend get to the Bahamas--and we were in love and we were in paradise with our friend on his amazing, magical boat.

There was some weather during some of our time at sea. Fortunately I had brought with me some anti-motion-sickness patches and never once felt unwell. I thought the bouncing around might keep me awake at night, but it never got rough enough to throw me against the ceiling (the ceiling in the berth we had was pretty low so I wouldn't have had far to go) and I slept really, really well. And, of course, when I woke up I was still in paradise with the man I loved.

Pictures try to do the waters of the Bahamas justice, but they can't. Sometimes the water looked iridescent, with violet, green, gold, silver and navy tones shimmering over the classic aquamarine waters. The gradient from the soft white sand to the pale blue green near the shore, to aquamarine, to rich, warm blue to deepest navy held me mesmerized. And then at sunset, or sunrise, the colors glowed over all those blues. I'm shocked I didn't go blind from staring at it so long every morning and evening.

It was winter (hence the storms) and so it never got really warm. I didn't have a single sweaty day, though I don't mind sweating and basking in the heat. It was warm enough for my purposes, though. I'd get up, dress into a bathing suit, brush my teeth, have a protein bar and some tea for breakfast, and then swim. I did some snorkeling, which was awesome and I got to see parrot fish and surf perch and loads of tropical fish that I couldn't name, and conch, but just being in comfortably cool water was awesome and I wouldn't have cared if I never saw a thing. Just floating in the sea near the boat, just being there, was enough.

So I felt really spoiled when I saw wild dolphins making a run toward a storm front where there would be good fishing for them. And I felt spoiled when we were invited to another boat hanging out in the same bay on the same Cay (there were about a half dozen of us) for cocktails, and spoiled when we went to another boat for a birthday party. We were invited for dinner, too. We were part of a little community that watched out for each other, took care of each other, and played together. Three of the boats, including ours, had dogs, and so at times a dingy would pull up to our boat and ask if Arya (the dog on our boat) would want to go play on the beach for a while with their dog. Of course she would. Everyone was just so nice to us. I felt like I couldn't possibly be nice enough to them to repay their kindness.

When I wasn't swimming, I was writing, or reading. But writing on a computer wasn't something I could do just any time. We relied on solar. Which meant I could only replenish my batteries during the day. If I stayed plugged in at night, I'd be depleting the stores the boat needed for critical operations. And I couldn't just plug in first thing in the morning. The batteries had to be charged to a certain point before we could afford luxuries like charging up computers and phones. So I had to pay attention to my battery use. But I didn't mind. Because the owner had so many interesting books to choose from, and I had only a week to finish the one I picked. I managed to do it just in time.

Our time there went by so fast. So fast. And now it's gone. All I have are a few pictures and some memories. And yet the experiences linger in my heart and have soaked into my soul. 

This is why I love travel. It isn't even about unwinding or getting away from it all. It's about experiences.

More please. More. Because life is too short, and it goes by so fast. So fast. And then it'll be gone, and all that will remain of me are a few pictures, and some memories ...