Tempted

I’m writing this blog first thing, rather than going to my desk for writing, because I’m still tempted. Tempted to do what?

To write a scene that I know would be cool, but doesn’t work with real world physics, or explosives. I’ve tried to use modern explosives for the last two, or is it three books? Maybe three? Two Anita, and this Merry, so three. But, my lack of understanding of explosives keeps making me choreograph scenes that don’t work. Now, some people think that because I’m writing about fairies, and princesses, and magic, that I can’t mess with physics any way I like, but no. My rule is that the more fantastic a thing you want your readers to believe, the more real your real-life stuff has to be. Because the moment the reader catches you out in something they know about, you’ve lost them. If they know you’re wrong on your guns, or cars, or bombs, then they won’t believe immortal warriors, vampires, and werewolves. You’ve got to make sure your reality is as real as you can make it. Make the ground your reader is standing on so real, that when they look up and see fluttering fairies, they don’t hesitate to believe.

Now, we have a explosives expert that’s been helping answer questions, but this particular problem is not about explosives, so much as the place I’ve set the scene just doesn’t have the room. It’s a real road, and a real place, and there just isn’t enough space. But my expert is in another part of the world, and time zones being what they are, I called Charles yesterday. He gets a lot of these kinds of calls from me. But for this one, he’s been off to parts of the world where they really do this stuff, so I knew that though not a explosives expert, he could give me a general thumbs up, or thumbs down, or send me to a book or web site so I could check. He told me what I feared, that the kill zone for a blast like this is too big. There’s no way to get out of the way, where I put Merry and the gang. Explosives are very impressive in that scary kind of way. The more research I do, the more I understand why there is so many innocent people killed with every bomb. The blast radius on most of this stuff is just too large. Even a shaped charge is a chancy thing, unless you don’t give a damn who else you kill.

So, I must give up this really cool idea, and find another way for the bad guys to try and kill Merry and her men. I think I actually understand explosives so little, I’ll have to do more research before I can even begin to put them in a book. Usually, I can fudge things until I do my research, but every once in awhile I find something so out of my experience, that I need my experts to explain to me in very small words, before I can even begin to understand how to use something in my books.

Strangely, the last thing that I started to research and put in a book that the research changed completely how I would have written it, was the bondage and submission stuff. If I hadn’t gone out and talked to people, visited events and some clubs, I would have gotten it wrong, like most books and movies get it wrong. Hmm, bombs and BDSM; what other writer would have that as her two most challenging research topics?

Okay, I think I can go to work now and not use the nifty idea that won’t work. But it would have been really, really cool if explosives worked less well, and were a lot less energy out put. Real world physics, you can’t change them just because it would cool in your fiction.

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The Harlequin is # 15

The Harlequin is number 15 on the New York Times list and Publisher’s Weekly list! How cool is that?

What, you didn’t expect me to be excited about hitting number 15 when I’ve hit number one in paperback before? Well, that was with MICAH, and that was a paperback original. THE HARLEQUIN is a paperback of an orignal hardback, and we’ve never made the printed list with any of the Anita paperbacks that followed their hardback counterparts. So, this is way cool.

Thanks to everyone who bought a copy of THE HARLEQUIN in paperback. You helped make us number 15. Thanks.

Mother's Day 2

I usually hate sequels. They're never as fresh, or enjoyable as the original, but this is one sequel that I'm happy to have. The blog that I did in the morning for Mother's Day was dark, but by evening it was better. Why?



Trinity gave me one of those Hallmark cards that you record your voice and it plays music. When she is very grown, I will still have her voice as a little girl, and that's pretty cool. Since my bad mood had made me unable to come up with anything I wanted for a gift, Jon was on his own. Oh, dear, as any husband knows, you always want a clue. It's just safer that way. But Jon did fine. He got me the collector's edition of SWEENEY TODD. A gift I wanted, and one that my progressively grumpy mood had made me forget was even coming out. So, it was a good surprise.



Then I got to do what I wanted to do with the day. I wasn't forced to cook a huge meal for everybody and work on my holiday. I didn't have to go out to one of those huge, impersonal, restaurants where you get food cooked in huge vats. What's with that, anyway? Eggs, and most meat need a little more of a personal touch than that. Vegetables, well, my grandmother was a Southern cook which meant all veggies were cooked within an inch of their life, so cook it in a vat, all the same to me. Jon and his family have introduced me to steamed and grilled veggies, and it's good, but soggy works for me. I grew up on it. Except for okra. Slimy, over-cooked okra is evil. Oh, and black-eyed peas, there's nothing you can do to them to make me want to eat them. Yuck!



We went out and saw Iron Man with Trinity and our friend Richard. Neither of them had seen the movie yet. Why had we seen it without Trin? Because, she's still a little iffy on some of the violence or sexual content, so Jon and I preview movies. Just in case. You know the rule, whatever goes in their minds, sometimes makes a home, so be careful what you allow inside. Does that sound weird coming from me? Why? Just because I write about sex and violence doesn't mean I write for children. I most certainly do not write for children, and I've never pretended otherwise. The few times I've been informed that my books were discovered shelved in young adult weirded me out.



And, please, do not ask me if your teenager is old enough to read my books. I don't know your kid. By my daughter's age I was reading some very scary stuff, but she is not me, and stuff like that bothers her. Every child is like every adult, an individual. Know thyself, know your child, work from there.



The movie was so packed we had to split up. Jon and Richard sat together and Trin and I sat farther down. Uncle Richard would have taken the kiddo, but it seemed wrong on Mother's day to not sit with my girl. Besides, having seen the movie once, part of the fun was watching Trinity's reactions.



After the movie we ran home, rescued the dogs. Okay, let them out so they didn't have any accidents inside. Then we went out for dinner. We went to one of our favorite sushi restaurants. We all love sushi. Okay, good sushi. Bad sushi is like some of the worst food you will ever try to scarf down. I lived in Los Angeles when sushi first hit big, and I had some really bad stuff at dinner parties. Sushi, like most everything else in Japanese culture is an art, and you can't fake art. I've only recently been brave enough to retry, and found that I like sushi just fine, if it's prepared well.



So, the four of us sat, ate, visited. We drank really good green tea, salmon rolls, a lot of nigiri of various kinds, and a few appetizers. It was good, and getting out to a nice restaurant was exactly what I needed to cap the day off.



I think we'll make a movie and dinner out a Mother's Day tradition for the kid part. Uncle Richard went home, and once the kid was in bed, then Jon and I had more grown-up plans. I'm sorry, it's my holiday, I may not have known what I wanted him to buy me from a store, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do with him afterwards. I may not be easy to buy for, but I'm easy to please, okay, scratch that. I'm not, but I do try to make it worth the effort. I'm all about rewarding for good behavior.

Mother's Day

This was the blog for yesterday, but when we discovered that the podcast hadn’t uploaded properly, we decided to fix that and let you guys enjoy it, before I shared with you how I was feeling early on Mother’s Day.

If what you want is a happy Mother’s Day message, then skip this post.

Everyone skipped? Okay, here goes.

I started noticing that I was getting depressed. No reason for it. I mean everything is going swimmingly. In fact, everything is wonderful. So why was I down in the dumps? I finally made the connection at the end of April. April 29th is, or was, my grandmother’s birthday. Anniversary depression, who me? Maybe.

I saw the perfect gift for her in the bookstore. I actually reached out for it, held it in my hand with that well of satisfaction, that flush of pleasure at how perfect it was for her, then there was that drop of the heart. All of you who have lost someone important to you, know the drop I mean. You forget for an instant, you react to something as if . . . as if . . . Then reality hits, and it’s like your heart just fell out of an airplane without a parachute and ends crashing into your feet. (What was the perfect gift? A book of odd, or famous obituaries. My Grandmother kept two Whitman Sampler chocolate boxes, gifts from other grand kids in the past, full of obits. Some of people she knew, or we knew, but mostly strangers. She’d cut out obits that were particularly pitiful or horrible and keep them. She liked to read them to me when I visited.) So the book would have pleased her, and she could have spent hours pouring over the sad contents and enjoying herself. But, she’s past needing birthday presents.

Now it’s mother’s day, and I realized that three years ago, her funeral was on Mother’s Day. One of my uncle’s, joked that Granny finally got her wish. I asked, what was that? To get us all together to visit her on Mother’s Day. There were about eighty plus of us from all over the country, there to pay our final respects.

I have the cards and presents from Jon and Trinity. We’re all going to see a movie later today with our friend Richard. We went out yesterday plant shopping with our friends Kari and Pili, and though we got wet and cold from the rain, it was a good day. I had to go back out this morning and make sure that the wind hadn’t done too much damage to the pots waiting to go in the ground. Pili came up with a garden design, and I just picked anything that caught our fancy. I stopped worrying about whether it’s supposed to grow here, or not. I just picked what I liked and we’ll plant it, and see what happens. I’ve spent eight years planting my front yard carefully, and it looks like crap, bare and too formal for me. I want the front to look like the pond area, lush, and a riot of color and shape.

I bought any plant that pleased my eye, or Pili’s. Jon and Kari totted and fetched. Trinity wandered around finding this plant or that, or just helping the basket lady plant new mother’s day baskets. She has an eye for putting things together that I would never have thought could match, but they do. It was a good day, other than the rain, and even that got us a huge rainbow in the sky above the second garden center, the one where we got the most roses. It was a round, fat rainbow, with several layers of violet in it. A good day.

It’s a mother’s day when I have no mother’s left. I’ve lost two in my life time, that seems plenty. I guess Jon’s Mom will just have to live to about two hundred or so to make me happy.

Podcast

OK, We’ve done another PodCast. Its available here. Its big. 26 MB big, but download it and let it play. Laurell answers a dozen questions from the message board.

Enjoy.

Saving my Sanity

I’m still in a bad mood. I’ve begun to figure out some of the reasons. Mostly to do with the fact that apparently my lesson for the year is patience, and dealing with ambiguity. Neither of these is my best thing. I’m very impatient and I like things very black and white. No waffling; thank you. But, if I already knew how to deal with it, it wouldn’t be a lesson, would it? Sigh.

But one thing I do when I’m feeling blue, or just overwhelmed by all the many blessings in my life. Yes, you read that right. One of my lessons is to allow myself to enjoy my success. My Grandmother raised me that God was a sort of cosmic loan shark, or hitman. If you got too happy, then God would get you! It meant that my grandmother didn’t let herself enjoy much of anything, because if you enjoyed it, then bad things happened. So when good things happened, she made herself miserable to keep God from doing it, and when bad things happened it just confirmed her dark view of the universe. Most of the time I’m all right, but every once in awhile my Grandmother’s voice fills my head, and I’m filled with fear. Things are going too well, so bad things will happen. This kind of thinking leads some people to sabotage their lives so that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t do that. I work hard, and try and make things better. But sometimes, the darkness in my head, just overwhelms. Not the fun dark, but the night sweats. That 3:00 A. M. waking up in the dark, stare at the ceiling, with your heart pounding, and your pulse filling your throat. Nightmare, or did you really hear a noise? Or the worst of the 3:00 A. M.s; you just lie awake, convinced that everything has gone to shit, and there is no help for it, or even worse, nothing is wrong, everything is wonderful, but you are filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. I’ve been having those kinds of feelings in broad daylight. By my grandmother’s rules, I should have something horrible coming. I know the universe doesn’t work the way she seemed to think it does. I know God and Goddess is about love more than punishment, but old habits die hard. I think, three years after her death, I’m finally starting to let myself grieve. You’d think that would be healing, but it’s not, it’s raised old demons, and I walk through my day haunted.

What to do when stuck in therapy hell with your inner demons seeming to gain ground? When all else fails, I donate to a rescue group, and try and help one of the pups. Today’s happy recipient of my dismal mood was Delia.

The Mid-Atlantic German Shepard Rescue has been hit pretty hard just recently with a lot of high needs dogs. So, if you’re wondering what you can do to make a difference in the world, donate a dollar. This is my charity for today, but pick a different one if you want to. You don’t have to be rich to make a difference. Remember that every million is made up of one dollar at a time. We can do more together than alone.

It's a grumble-bunny day

Woke to a rainy, messy, chilly, day. Maybe it’s the weather, but I’m a grumpy-bunny. How grumpy?

I’m wearing my badger shirt, my bear pentagram, drinking out of the mug that reads, "Psycho Bitch from Hell,", and wearing a new button I got yesterday. What does the button say? "I haven’t had my coffee yet. Don’t make me kill you."

I was only showing the new buttons to my mother-in-law this morning, but when she came to this one, she said, "Oh, that’s you." Gotta love family that knows you well, and still loves you.

So, I’m wearing the button, and I’m trying not to embrace the less pleasant aspects of badger and bear. But this is the sort of day when I want to go into my den, cover the entrance up, and sit and brood. It’s okay to go into your hidey-hole and think about things, but brooding is counter productive. I know that, but as I cling to my Psycho Bitch mug, with only my third dose of hot, caffeine for the morning, I fight not to brood.

I don’t want music. I don’t want to cheer up. I bought a second button yesterday, that sums up my thought on cheeriness right now, button reads, "Well, aren’t you just a ray of freaking sunshine?" And no, the original button doesn’t say freaking, but I can’t remember the rules for everywhere the blog goes up, so I’ll err on the side of caution.

I feel like a grumpy bear today, and I just want to sit in my cave and be left the frak alone. How do you spell frak? Does it need an "e" on the end, or not?

All right, I’ve made myself put up the Psycho Bitch mug, and I’m drinking tea out of a fine, china mug. It has a badger on it, but also squirrels, rabbits, fox, and even cats. It’s all drawn like a wild life scene, in fact, I believe it’s from the Dunoon wildlife collection. I tried to make myself break out the Brambly Hedge mice teacup and saucers, but I’m not quite ready to be that happy. Baby steps.

I’m going to try and work now, though, God, knows, I don’t want to. I just want to wrap this bad mood around me like a well-worn blanket, sit in my big, comfy chair, nurse my mug of tea, and stare out at the rain. But deadlines wait for nothing and no one, not even my moods. Curses, to quote one of my favorite cartoon villains. Who am I quoting? Mojo-Jojo, of course. Power Puff Girls rule, and Buttercup kicks ass.