Music, music everywhere, but nothing to listen to

Okay, so A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT is finally put to bed. The last calls from the editors came today. The last e-mails. The copy editors caught something that I had totally missed. It had Rhys simply vanishing from a scene and then using magic to call in and talk to Doyle, as if he was still outside the fairie mounds talking to the police. There'd been two different versions of this scene. One had Rhys there through out the section and one had sent him out and kept him out with the human police. When I glommed them together, well, oops. Thanks again to my copy editors for the save.

I always write to music. But this book takes the prize on how many different albums got used. I thought you guys might find a list of everything that got used interesting. If you aren't interested, then stop reading now.

Musicals: Jekyll and Hyde The original Broadway cast recording, The Complete Work Jekyll and Hyde the gothic musical thriller, 1776 original Broadway cast with William Daniels, and 1776 with Brent Spiner. A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD is also a musical, but it seemed to fit the need that is usually filled by Christmas music. Frog and Toad did have some Christmas music on it, but it was mainly just a very feel-good album for days when the writing was moving slow.

I found Thornley's album COME AGAIN, first, and loved it. Three Days Grace came that same week. I found both through listening to a local radio station 105.7 KPNT, New rock for St. Louis. They played the singles and I went searching for the album. The two albums came when I'd almost given up on finding any music to write A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT to. I mean I was recycling music from the last Merry book, but it wasn't satisfying. I find that each book seems to have it's own personality, and mood, and needs music accordingly. Then when we were on tour a fan gave us two album mock-ups by a group called Breaking Benjamin. He said, "If you like them, please buy the albums." I promised I would. The mock-ups were not great quality, and it almost sunk them, but by that time I needed a music break, so in desperation I bought one album to see if it was better in higher quality. Oh, my, God! Yes, it was. The first Breaking Benjamin album that I got was SATURATE. I think I went out the next day and got their album WE ARE NOT ALONE. I loved them both. Thanks so much to the gentleman who gave us the dubs on tour. If you hadn't handed them to me, I might never had discovered this great band. Thank you so much. I am embarrassed to say that I cannot recall your name. Thank you again.

Late in the book I'd exhausted four great albums, nine if you count the musicals, too. Nine wonderful albums, and the book was not done, and I needed new music again. Like I said, a record. Then I heard a truly disturbing version of John Lennon's of IMAGINE by a band called A Perfect Circle. The album was EMOTIVE, and there were a lot of other great songs on it.

But even A Perfect Circle's EMOTIVE could not get me through the home stretch of MIDNIGHT. What's a girl to do when she exhausts great band after great band? Well accident, and my lack of technological no-how was about to come to the rescue. Jon had put Thornley, Three Days Grace, and both the Breaking Benjamin albums on an mp3 player. A Perfect Circle's EMOTIVE had gone on the player, as well. One day I was trying to find a specific song instead of just playing the play list beginning to end, and I hit the wrong button at the wrong moment. Suddenly the play list was in shuffle mode and I was listening to Thornley's Falling to Pieces followed immediately by Three Days Grace's Burn, and A Perfect Circle's Peace love and Understanding. At first I was horrorified, and a little angry. Damnit, I didn't need my music to get screwed up. Then I realized that by shuffling all these songs that I liked in a very new, fresh order, it made all the music fresh again. I liked the songs, that hadn't changed, I just needed a little bit of a change. The accidental shuffling did the trick. These songs on shuffle are what got me through the end of A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. The music got me through the end game, and all the way through the rewrite, and the return of it from New York. It takes some damned good music to live in my head for that many months, and still make me smile. Or, make me dance. Yes, when I'm thinking really hard sometimes a little dancing around the office, using the body really hard, will shake something loose, and help me get back to work. Any way, that's it. That's the play list for A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, Merry number four.

Thanks to all the bands that kept me going. Thanks to everyone who recommended music to Jon and I.

A new hobby

Just a quick note before we go upstairs to bed. Wanted everyone to know that we survived the rewrite. Yea! Well, I guess you guys knew that. Jon tells me he posted something earlier today about our down time tomorrow with the electricity. Sherry helped us clean the dining room and my office. The two rooms where we divided up the time for the rewrite of A Stroke of Midnight. All the used sticky notes are thrown away. All the ones that didn't get used this book have been moved away from the computers. The area above my main computer is clean and pristine. Empty wall space, wow. Haven't seen that in awhile.

I must have given Sherry two hundred pages or more to shred. Old versions, different decisions than actually went into the book. I do save out takes, but sometimes I do more than one version of a scene, and I take the one that works better.

An empty office, an empty white board, an empty wall. God, I love it. I love the empty waiting. I used to be like most writers and feared the blank page, but when a book is ready to go and has been chomping at the bit as hard as this newest one, there's no blank page to fear. There's just recovering enough to give myself over to the muse, and let 'er rip. Once I'm past the point that I've got copious notes, then it will slow down, but it's going to be one hell of ride until then. Ride 'em cowboy.

Where does the new hobby part come into play? Jon and I had our first ballroom dance lesson. I've wanted to do it for years, but my first husband would not dance with me, as many husbands will not. Jon and I have always danced together from the beginning of our dating, but we just didn't seem to have the time for lessons. I'd forgotten a very important lesson; you don't find the time to do things, you make the time. So, we made the time. We found something new that working with our trainer has made us better at. Cool. Physical fitness translates.

Down Time

OK, Tomorrow, February 25th we are going to be without power. Its part of the addition we're putting on. If you order late today or tomorrow, it probably won't get shipped until Monday. The websites will be up, as will our email. We just won't be able to get to them.

I'll post some new pictures of the progress, today or Saturday.

Late

It's a book!

After a long, long pregnancy and labor, finally, Jonathon and I are thrilled to announce it's a bouncing baby book. Weight: eight pounds. We put the little sucker in Fed-Ex. It's off to New York, and I don't think we will be seeing it again until it is ready to go on the shelves sometime close to April.

We worked until three A. M. one night. Next night I called it at midnight because anytime I stopped pacing, I swayed in place. Between nine and ten o'clock for last night. We'd so hoped to be done before we went to bed, but we left the last go through for today. I honestly don't know what we would have done if Jon's parents, Art and Mary, hadn't been able to take Trin for Friday night. In fact, she's spending tonight with them, too, because Jon and I are just done. Not stick a fork in me, honey, done, but burnt to a crisp, the roast has been in the oven for hours, and is now a little black brick done. I'm so tired I'm crying at odd moments, for no reason. Jon's doing his pacing through the house thing. He's too tired to do anything, or to think, but once you get him going this hard, he has trouble letting go of the push of it. The book goes out the door and I'm ready to hibernate; Jon has to do a restless marathon before he can finally collapse. What does Jon do to help with the rewrite? He writes notes to save my hand. He types up my long hand notes, again to save my injured arm. But, he also checks me when I'm too tired to know if I'm right, or wrong, about a note the editor made. He helps me test my understanding again and again. Especially when I'm too tired, or too close to the book, or both.

Darla was out most of this week, so Jon really took the brunt of this rewrite. The fact that we haven't found a reason to argue, or have a fight this week is either a testament to how much we love eachother, divine intervention, or both.

I'm going to fetch my husband, and we're going to bed.

Thanks

This is a thank you to everyone who sent in positive messages last weekend. So many positive messages that the e-mail crashed three times. This is not a complaint, guys. Darla explained to me that the crash happened because of the overwhelming number of positive messages. That apparently, everyone in the silent majority got together all at once and decided to let us know how much they love the books and how shocked they were at how rude some people have been. One message we got several times was, if I had been that rude to anyone, they'd be screaming about it, and rightly so. But they feel justified in being that rude to me, to us. I can't explain it guys. If I could I would. It is a puzzlement.

Romance

Happy Valentine's Day to Everyone! We thought we might give a list of romantic stuff we did this year. No, it won't be a complete list, I don't know you people that well.

My favorite romantic gesture this year from Jon, has to be the fuzzy stuffed toy black plague bacillus from Giant Microbes. Why is this my favorite? Because I didn't know they existed, and because Jon knows how much I love scary cute stuff. You gotta love a fuzzy black microbe with huge blue eyes, and a tag that has an electron microscope picture of the actual organism. Our personal trainer, Keath, was here that day, and when he saw it, he said, "Way to be romantic, Jon." (We've helped him improve his sarcasm skills.) I was hugging and kissing Jon, so I had to come up for air to say, "Romance is all about knowing your audience, Keath." Then back to kissing.

{Jon Here} My favorite Romantic Gesture is a more distributed one. I love it when Laurell pays attention to me and actually listens to me prattle on about some bizarre, tangential and/or unrelated gaming fact/story/thingie. I am a gamer. Laurell knew this when she met me, and still married me. The fact that she listens, and even remembers some of the stuff I yammered on about means so much to me. It still amazes me that she lets me talk and talk about things that hold little interest to her. In a recent White Dwarf magazine article, there was a list of things to get/do for your gamer valentine. One of the items on the list was to listen to them talk about their hobby. This is a good bit of advice for anyone. If you really do love them, then spending a little bit of time listening to them talk about something they enjoy isn't a hardship. You might even be surprised and find it more interesting than you expected. {Back to Laurell}

How can I not listen to him talk about gaming, when he lets me talk endlessly about dogs. Not only does he listen to me, but he's actually absorbed some of the knowledge. Just as
I can now talk semi-intelligently about Warhammer, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Halo. It helps that I gamed years ago. As it probably helps that we have four dogs.

{Jon again} A more traditional romantic gesture that we have both done for each other is, for no other reason than we love each other, we have gotten roses for each other. No special occasion other than a day ending in "y". It helps that both Laurell and I like getting flowers. {Back to Laurell again}

We've also gotten orchids for eachother. One of our favorite romantic gestures that we do regularly is still reading to eachother at night. Cuddling down together in bed, and listening to the voice of the person you love read some wonderful story to you, what could be better. Well being naked while you do it, but then that's a given for us. (This only works if you lock your bedroom door. You are adults and deserve your privacy. Do not let your children invade it. Or at least it would drive me mad. And one of our goals in life is never to have Trinity walk in on us when we're doing anything we would have to explain.)

Our jacuzzi tub fits two, and I love to cuddle with Jon in the tub. Of course I like the tub when it's just me, too. Baths are always a nice way to end the day, with or without company. (Yes, we have covered the bath water in rose petals. Romantic, sensual, but skim the petals out before you pull the plug on the drain. You do not want petals in your drain, your pipes, or other parts of the plumbing.)

This hits the romantic highlights that we're willing to share on the blog. Romance for us is made up of a thousand small gestures all year long, not just one day of the year. It is Jon's arms sliding around me when I'm feeling down, or the feel of his breath against my neck as we fall asleep. It is dividing the kid duties so it all gets done. It's forgiving eachother when we're grumpy, and loving eachother even when the day was a scramble, and bed time just means sleep and nothing else, because we're too tired or too sick. Romance is what you do everyday to remind eachother and yourself, why you chose eachother. Real romance means that a smile across the dinner table in the midst of a hectic family meal can mean more than a roomful of roses.

A quick note of thanks

Thanks to everyone that's given us advice and sympathy for the recent illnesses. To the advice of eating more fruit, especially oranges. The kiddo adores the clemantines. She was eating two to three a day, until her tummy let her know that was a little too much. But at the time of her first virus she was averaging one a day. We've all been taking vitamins, eating fruit, eating healthy. I guess sometimes, you just can't fight off the germs.

Gotta go eat lunch and get back to work. I'm in the rewrites for A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. Which means first filling in a couple of scenes I left blank. I didn't realize how blank until I read back over the notes for the first area. I did not realize how little was there for that particular scene until I went back. Sigh.

Adapting

Well it's official, the kiddo has the flu. Whether Jon and I are going to get it remains to be seen. Ah, well.

Am I the only one that when my schedule is blown to hell for almost a week that it's hard to get back to work? Darla is much more adaptable than Jon or myself to changes in routine, or interruptions. I've noticed a pattern with friends that are the oldest of a large family, three or more. They all seem to roll with changes better than those of us who are only children. Jon and I are both onlies. I was raised by an elderly parent(grandparent). There was very little change in our routine from day to day. Few if any visitors. It was very quiet, very isolated. It has left me with few coping skills for lots of people, lots of interruptions. I've talked about this with other onlies, or with people who are more than eight years apart from their nearest sibling, and find that we all have problems with this sort of thing. Darla, as the oldest of five, is so much more placid about all the changes and activity around here in the last year. The construction hasn't really bothered her. It's driven me nuts.

I'm finally getting a little used to all the people moving back and forth that I can see from my office, or on the roof near my office, that was fun. No, not really. But having both Jon and Trin sick at the same time has just really thrown me. It isn't that I didn't have chaos in my childhood, my grandmother and I both have a temper, but it was the usual chaos. It was the same problems, not new situations to adapt to, but the same routine stuff, good or bad. So you adapt to the usual, but as a child if you don't get a lot of different situations, then, as an adult, you seem limited in your response to changes. Or, the people I know from similar circumstances seem unable to adapt to the degree that the people from homes with a lot of new and different experiences adapt.

So for all of you that mourn you didn't have a peaceful childhood, think how much better it may have made you be able to adapt to changes, and breaks in routine. To all of you out there like myself that are still having trouble adapting, my sympathies. It has only recently been brought to my attention how much a prisoner of our childhood we are, the only way to change it is it to be aware of it. Be aware of why we do things, or why some things bother us so much more than they seem to bother others. Until you know why you react to something, you cannot control or change that reaction. You must know why, before you can change the how.

I'm off to try and roll with the vagaries of life. My usual response is to come out of my corner fighting. When there is nothing to fight against, only the disruptions of normal life, that's when I am most often at a loss.

The Guest Book.

I'm not sure if this is going to be helpful or not, but I'm the kind of person to throw gasoline on a fire. sometimes it puts the fire out, sometimes it just makes it worse. In other words, this is proably going to offend most of you.

The Guest Book. It was originally intended to be a place for people to leave comments or little messages for us while we were out on tour. It served its purpose, and we are greatful for it. But then something happend. It became a hotbed of negitivity and name calling. If this was in the official forums, the offending parties would have been banned, the post moderated and everything kept nice and civil.

But it isn't part of the official forums. Its on the blog site, and that makes it mine and mine alone. I don't have to run things by anyone else to make a change in the background of the page. And the guest book is most definalty background. I've been considering for over a month if I should just trash the guest book, and point all the commenting over to the ofical forums. Make everyone play by the rules over there. I think it would be a little more pleasent it you had to deal with the fact that the bords are moderated and dseverly enforced. Mostly by the other memebers, long before one of the moderators has to step in.

I don't know what I'm going to do right now. but expect a change. and proably one that is less pleasent for you, the readers.

later

Shameless Plug

Ok, two things well, maybe three.

one. I've got an auction up on ebay. The procedes are all mine and I'm not giving them to charity. The fan club dose that. This is mine.

two. One of Laurell's Fellow Alternate Historians has a web-page and blog up at her site. www.rettmacpherson.com Darla and I set up the site and the blog. So enjoy.

Three. The Kid and i are sick again. :-( I with a Sinus Infection, and her shortness with some kind of cold virus. Hopefully this is the end of the illness for the forseable future. I know its getting old for me, so it must be very trying for Herself.

l8r

Sick again

It's not a school; its a germ factory. Trinity has her third virus in less than a month's time. She's never been this sick this often. Jonathon has finally succumbed to the sinus infection that he's been fighting off. He's on antibiotics. Trin, unfortunately, hasn't got something that antibiotics will effect. I thought she was over it, when this morning her temperature was 98.something, but her temp spiked in the late morning back to 101.something. It is an improvement over the 103 she had at my ex-husband's house. He informed me how sick she was, and when her fever went down a little, he'd be dropping her off. I could say more about that, but I'll just leave it at the bare facts.

So, I've got Jon tucked up in our bed, and Trin is downstairs with grandma. There's homework to do, no matter that she's sick. The school warned us last year that the difference between second and third grade is big when it comes to the amount of work, but boy, they were not kidding. She's missed two days, which means she's got more homework than I remember getting until somewhere about fifth or higher grade. Has anyone checked out that as we force our kids to learn facts earlier and earlier that our test scores as a nation are going down, as compared to other industrialized nations. More is not always better. Earlier is not always the way to go. Sometimes letting kids be kids a little longer would not be so bad. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm going to try and work on the rewrite, because the deadline is past and everyone's panicking in New York. I might panic, if I had the energy. I'm oddly calm, or maybe I'm just tired. If I make it through this third bunch of sickness without getting it, I will have beat odds Vegas wouldn't take. Roll them dice.

Auction for Granite City APA

Just a quick note to say Hi! and let everyone know about our current auction for Granite City APA! I know, we haven't had one in a bit and this one is special. :)
It is at eBay so you may have to sign up before you can bid.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4525572047

Ends Feb-11-05

Laurell K. Hamilton Fan Club Pet Charity Auction We have a very unusual item: a dust jacket. This dust jacket has the original cover copy for Stroke Of Midnight - Merry Gentry #4. The cover copy has since changed. So we are offering one of them up for auction! Very unique item and Laurell has signed it! All monies generated will go to Granite City APA (www.apagc.com) for their wonderful animal shelter. We ask that the winning bidder make their check or money order out to Granite City APA. But we will accept Paypal. This can be worked out with the high bidder. The fan club will pick up the costs of postage. Priority Mail in the US. Whatever is most reasonable for International.

Darla

No rest for the wicked

My grandmother had a saying, "No rest for the wicked, and the righteous don't need it." It was one of her favorite sayings. Along with, "I'll give you something to cry about." Anyway, the no rest part is prompted by the e-mail I got today. The rewrites will be back in two weeks, but that's not my complaint. My complaint is they aren't coming back next week. I need this book to be well and truly dead, not looming into the horizon. I don't know about the rest of you but I can't go on my mini-vacation until the project is done. The long weekend is, for me, a cleansing away of the old, and a preparing my mind for the new. The new being the next Anita book. A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT missed it's original deadline, so that means that Anita book 13 is probably going to miss it's deadline, too. It's like dominos, one falls, and they all start falling. So I need this book done so I can start clearing the deck for the next one. I just want it done, so I can relax, instead of waiting tensed. It's the difference between the war being over, and only the battle being over when you know that there is still more ground to be won, more enemies to be defeated, more dangers to be lived through. I need to drive a stake through this one's heart and move on.

I did finally realize that maybe there was more than one reason for A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT to be harder to write. It's the fourth book in a series. I know I've written somewhere in here that when my daughter was a small baby I was exhausted, and I was, but I also wrote THE LUNATIC CAFE, as the first book back in the saddle after Trinity was born. LUNATIC is the fourth Anita book. I remember feeling that LUNATIC was one of the best of the books so far, and that I really knew the world and the characters, at last. But I think, maybe, that baby exhaustion mixed with another kind of exhaustion. Fourth book exhaustion.

For Merry and her gang, this was the first book where I cried for them. I cried when Galen got hurt. I cried when Doyle finally found something that made that calm captain-of-the-guard exterior crack wide open. I wept with and for these people, which I had not done before. For me, it's as if the fourth book in a series is when I finally give myself up to the world. It's like the first three books are foreplay, or dating, and somewhere in the fourth book, kicking and screaming that I don't feel that way about any of them, I finally give it up. I finally, for better or worse, fall in love. Not with a male character. So many of you keep asking who are my favorites, who would I date. That's not quite how I feel about any of them. I am, in some way, in love with most of the characters. For me, I have to be a little in love, to write about them the way I do. Not the sex, I mean the caring. To care about them the way that I eventually do, I need to be in love with not one character, but all of them. Or most of them. The continuing characters become like old friends, or steady dates, people you know and love, and enjoy spending time with. It's been a decade since I began the Anita series, longer maybe, so I had forgotten the rhythm of a series. Or it had gotten all mixed up with the new baby exhaustion. Both, I guess.

The fourth book is the place where the lady doth stop protesting too much. The place where I finally cuddle down between the sheets and admit that I love them all, and I want to keep them safe, and that the thought that eventually, for Merry, we are going to loose someone we care about . . . I cannot bear it. I struggled with my cast of thousands in MIDNIGHT, and complained loud and long that there were too many men. We've actually added some new ones, again. It is a lot of characters to try and play fair with, but there is no one that I want to loose. There is no one that I am willing to sacrifice to make my job easier. They have, in a way, become real to me. I have shed tears for them. I have feared for them. I have watched them grow as characters, and Merry and I both are sorry that all of them can't win the prize. When you care about someone, you want them to be happy. I realize now that not everyone is going to get a happy ending from all this, simply because there is only one girl, and far too many men. They can't all be king. They can't all win her heart and her bed. Sigh.

And please don't ask me who will win and be king, because I don't know. I've told people before that I don't know, but please believe me, I really don't. I know the overall story arc, but some mysteries I do not try and predict. Anita has taught me that if I push too hard for any one man romantically the story is almost certainly going to diverge and go in an opposite direction. So I try not to push. As I writer I need to be fair to all the men, so again, it behooves me not to pick anyone. Besides, it's Merry's bed, and she's got to sleep in it. I'm going now, call New York see if I can get this rewrite process speeded up.

So much for relaxing

I did get my bath, but beyond that it has not been a relaxing few days. The stomach flu hit. It got Jon first, then about three A. M. Trinity knocked on our door, and I knew. Let's just say that there was no sleep that night, and that I got to mop the bathroom floor. I put Jon on one side of me and Trin on the other, and just kept running first one then the other in and out. It was one of those moments when I was just thankful that I hadn't gotten it. So thankful. I don't know what we would have done if we'd all had it. Who would have taken care of us? Jon, later, said, "We would have called my parents." I said, "No, no we wouldn't," because it just wouldn't have occurred to me to call for help at nearly four in the morning for the flu. It turns out that even if we had needed help that badly it wouldn't have been helpful, because Mary and Art had it, too. Which means sometime while we were all out having a celebratory lunch, about finishing the book, we were all exposed to the virus. I had a very mild upset tummy earlier in the day, the rest of them worshipped the porcelain god for a couple of days. I got off very lucky.

Sometime around 4 A. M. of that first morning my comings and goings for mop buckets and garbage bags woke the dogs. If I didn't get them out I'd have dog crates to clean on top of everything else so there I was, cold winter dark before dawn, in my jammies, my robe, a winter coat over it all, and hiking boots on my feet, waiting for the dogs to do their business. People ask me why doesn't all the fame go to my head, well . . . Family, small child, dogs, it'll all keep you humble, as in down to earth. How can I possibly buy my own hype when I'm out in the cold and the dark in jammies and boots with four dogs, waiting for them to find the perfect spot in the yard. Straining my ears, as if I could possibly hear if my husband and daughter are being sick again. Real life, it keeps things in perspective.

For all of you fans that keep wanting my life to be more like what I write, well, sorry, if you don't want the truth, you gotta let me know.