Christmas is coming...

Holy moley, where did September go? It's almost October, and we're starting to gear up for the holiday season in my house. Thanksgiving, as we'll be having guests and both Christine and I like to be prepared well in advance for such events, and of course, Christmas. And before everyone jumps on my back about planning for Christmas this early, I should explain that the reason we’re talking about it now is because neither of us want a repeat of last year. Last year was crazy, which was all my fault.

Every year at Christmas I do what amounts to an epic amount of baking. I make hard candy, peanut brittle, fudge, cookies, church windows, party mix, spiced nuts, and a couple of other things I can’t quite recall right now. There’s a master list somewhere, I’ll have to dig it up. Or rather, I would have to dig it up if I was going to do that again this year. I have decided, much to the relief of both my roommate and my boyfriend, that I will not.

See, I don’t do all this baking just for me. There’s a list of about thirty people who are the recipients of my efforts, and the list keeps growing every year. I started doing this when I was too poor to buy gifts for everyone, and it was such a hit that I kept it going. But with that big a list of goodies, and over thirty people to hand them out to…well, things can get pretty crazy, pretty fast.

Last year I baked nearly non-stop from mid-November up to Christmas. I had boxes filled with goodies that had to be taken to the post office for weeks. And I don’t remember much of that six weeks – it’s a blur of sugar and extracts and piles of pots and pans in the sink. It was miserable for me, miserable for Christine, and while my boyfriend much enjoyed the fruits of my labors, he didn’t much like how crazy it was making me.

So this year, in an effort to enjoy the holiday season more, I am limiting myself to three recipes. I will make peanut brittle, because it was my grandfather’s recipe and a family tradition to make at Christmas; I will do the chewy chocolate ginger cookies, because they freakin’ ROCK; and I’m not sure of the third. Maybe the party mix, maybe the church windows. Either way, once the third is decided, that’s it – no more.

This way I get to satisfy my need for Christmas baking, but I’ll still get to enjoy the season. Maybe we can even get a tree this year. I'll sleep in on the weekends, and enjoy the holiday specials on TV. Hell, I’ll just be happy to remember the month of December!

and now here's something we hope you'll really like

Neither Christine or I have much to say right now. Me because I'm battling a killer case of writer's block, her because she's on narcotic painkillers (dental work, you know).

So in lieu of our writing talents, we give you a picture of her dog, Levi.


I snapped this with my cell phone when he was draped across my lap (which accounts for the crazy zombie eyes), all hundred furry pounds of him. He's a belly rub slut, and has taken to crawling into a lap when he wants some rubbin'.

He's also taken to dragging my good shoes outside. But he's still cute, don't you think?

Too many choices!!

My younger sister is expecting her first child in January, an event which has caused a great deal of excitement in my family. Mainly in my mother, who has been subtly hinting that she would like to become a grandmother for at least fifteen years, not so subtly hinting for ten, and outright begging for the last five. She is beside herself with excitement, and I credit my sister’s pregnancy for helping my mom get past her recent bout with colon cancer. Not that the baby gave her “something to live for” or anything dramatic like that; my mother has plenty to live for, and knows it. But it did give her something to look forward to, and to focus on, while she was dealing with her disease.

For myself, I’m not quite as ecstatic as Mom, but I’m excited. My sister’s wanted children for a few years, and seeing her joy makes me really happy. I’m looking forward to being Auntie Hannah, and let’s face it, shopping for baby clothes and baby toys is just fun!

To that end, I’m getting ready to give my first gift to my nephew – a baby quilt. No, I’m not making it myself. My craftiness runs to counted cross stitch and mending the occasional hem; quilting is beyond my ken. But I have a co-worker, Bonnie, who is an avid quilter. Bonnie has made quilts for a lot of the folks around the office, so she’s putting one together for me. I’m charged with picking out the fabric and the pattern, and she’ll do the rest. Sounds like a cake walk, right? Wrong.

First, I had to pick the pattern. Bonnie had shown me a few of the finished baby quilts she’d done, and I picked a circle pattern that I thought was great because it was a departure from the traditional square pattern you usually see. Then I gave her some direction on the fabric, which I wanted to match my sister’s nursery colors of chocolate brown and Tiffany blue. We picked out some fabrics, and I figured I was done.

Nope. Bonnie put the pieces together and brought it to me for approval. I hated it – the colors that looked so great in the swatches were hideous put together in the pattern, and lucky for me Bonnie agreed. So back to the drawing board. And in the meantime, my sister changed her nursery decorating plans, so the brown and blue went out the window. Now there is a world of colors and patterns for me to choose from….and it’s too much!

Do I go with pastels? Primary colors? What fabric pattern? Should I stick with the circles or go with squares? An animal theme, or maybe cowboy? Aliens or spacemen? Prints or solids? I'm not kidding when I say my head spins with all the possibilities and the decisions I have to make.

I might just buy the kid a drum kit instead.

Carrie Fisher is my new hero

This morning I was looking at my Twitter page, catching up on all the goings on that I missed while I was asleep, and saw that one of my good friends had twittered: "Carrie Fisher should get mad more often" and he included a link to a blogpost in which Carrie responds, somewhat vehemently, to an anonymous comment she stumbled across on the web in which someone stated that she used to be hot, but now looks like Elton John.

Now, you have to wade through Carrie's sometimes confusing stream of consciousness writing style, but it's completely worth it. The widely held notion that a woman in her 50s should look exactly like she did in her 20s is, in my opinion, one of the things that defines the society we live in as "fucked up, yo".

I've struggled with my weight through most of my life, sure that what I weighed would define me as a person. The number on the scale would tell me if I was a good person or not, if I was worthy of love, if I could enjoy my lunch that day. This warped idea was reinforced every day by magazines, television shows, and society at large.

And it's bullshit. The number on the scale? It's just a number. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with my worth as a person, or as a woman. It's taken me too many years to realize that, wasted years. I wasn't enjoying life, I wasn't having fun - I was too busy worrying about the amount of dressing on my salad, or the fact that I didn't make it to the gym that day, to have any fun.

I don't do that to myself anymore. I go to the gym now because it makes me feel good. I watch what I eat because I have a family history of heart disease. But I enjoy my food, and I enjoy my life. And, like Carrie, if anyone has anything to say about that? They can blow me.

The Burden of Imagination

People are always asking, once they hear that I am a writer, how I get my ideas; the honest answer is that I really have no clue. Most of them come to me during the hour or so that it takes me to fall asleep after the lights are off and before I slip out of consciousness, but I have a hard time tracking the process of how it all happens. The ideas just seem to appear, either in the form of "What would happen if a certain type of person ended up in this situation?" Or sometimes, "I think that these characteristics would make for a really interesting person. Now what kind of trouble can I cause for her?" Or him. From there, but mind just spins like a wheel-running hamster on meth.

What all my ideas seem to have in common is their near pathological persistence. They stick in my mind like burrs smeared with Krazy-Glue, refusing to be dismissed no matter what bits of logic I use against them. It doesn't matter to the idea currently percolating in my mind, for instance, that I just got back edits for the latest book in the Others series and have only about 3 more weeks to turn them around. The New Idea wants to be written, damn it, and to hell with contractual obligations, scheduling conflicts, and my need to do silly things like earn enough to pay my bills.

As a professional writer, I have an obligation to stick to the agreements I've already made and ignore the new idea until my edits are in, of course, but exerting that kind of discipline is never easy. In this case, I think it's going to be particularly tough. Which is one of the many, many, many reasons why proofreaders are so darned important. Otherwise, there's every chance that my heroine might call out the wrong name in the heat of passion.

That could be embarrassing.

Why Rejection is a Good Thing, or, Those Bitches Will Pay One Day!

In my email last night I had a response from the big NY publisher I’d sent my most recent manuscript to. It was a rejection, though probably the nicest rejection I’ve ever gotten. A sort of “really like your voice and your writing, not so hot on the story” thing.

I made Christine read the email first, which she begged me not to make her do. But she is a good and loyal friend, so while I guzzled half a glass of pinot grigio for courage, she did. And I think she was as sad as I was when she gave me the news.

Except that I’m not really that sad. Oh, I’m certainly disappointed – a rejection wasn’t what I was hoping for, after all. I was hoping for a multi-book contract that would allow me to walk into work and quit on the spot, but that’s not the point. The point is that rejection is sometimes a good thing.

How, you ask, can that possibly be good? I’ll tell you.

First, the story I sent in? It’s not my best work. I knew it wasn’t my best work when I sent it in (even though both Christine and I think it’s better than half the stuff out there). And though I did rewrite large sections of it to tighten the story and strengthen the characters, I simply wasn’t willing to put in the weeks and possibly months it would have taken me to really revamp things properly. I started writing this story in the fall of 2007, and it’s really been the only project on my plate since then. Frankly, I was sick of looking at it, and wanted it gone.

And really? I think my fatigue and apathy for it showed. So it deserved a rejection.

The other reason rejection is good? It strengthens me – eventually. It’s a multi step process:

• Step One: mope for about twenty minutes, during which time I’ve been known to wail and cry out to the heavens: “When will it be MY turn?!”

• Step Two: When sanity returns, I take a good look at the rejection, and what exactly the editor was saying – in this case she said she liked the voice and writing, but the story was a bit weak. Hmm…okay, that’s something I can work with.

• Step Three: Talk to Christine. She is my compass, my sounding board for all things author related, so I dump everything on her - all my fears and worries and anxieties about my work, my career, etc. And she, bless her generous soul, tells me what she sees as the problem with the manuscript, what she thinks I need to do to get it back on track, and anything else she thinks I need to hear. She tells me the truth, even when I don’t really want to hear it. And after I’ve digested all that, rehashed anything I was unclear on, maybe had a little time to mull things over, I’m ready to move on.

• Step Four: Go back to work. I take all the things Christine and I talked about, all the good points from the editor, all the things I know in my gut need to be fixed, and I go to work on them.

They say the best revenge is living well. My best revenge is writing well. I am a good writer, and I will eventually sell to New York. And when that day comes, I’ll think fondly of all the editors who rejected me, making me better and stronger in the process. And I’ll smile, and think, “I told you bitches you were going to pay one day.”