Soup

Sometimes when you don't feel so good, you just need some soup. We're back from NY & Orlando, safe and sound, if a little tired. So, we're having some soup, and we'll post more once feel better. Meaning, probably tomorrow.

What was I thinking?

The car comes in about fifteen minutes to take us to the airport. I volunteered to combine several trips in one. My agent, who knows me, asked if I were sure. Weeks ago, I was sure. Now -- what the fuck was I thinking? I will have three to four plane trips in that many days, if you count lay overs, more. What was I thinking? I was thinking, well, I'm getting better. And wouldn't it be better to combine trips so it doesn't keep disrupting our lives, my life. Once this is out of the way not another trip until the end of October. It sounds like a good plan, but it is not. Because, if I hadn't decided to be brave I would go out, and come back tomorrow to my home, my family, my dogs, my office, my schedule, and my stuff. Now I won't be back for days. I won't do this again. I ran it up the flag pole of bravery, and the artillery of phobias is kicking my butt. Help. Shit. I've gotta to go and finish getting ready. AAAAH!

Minimize this

Jon and I are about ready to leave out tomorrow for businessy meetings in several states. When I last went out on tour I made one compromise to the t-shirts and jackets. I wore a minimizer bra under it all so it didn't ruin the line of the shirt and jacket. Ruin the line of the t-shirt and jacket? Why should my body conform to the clothes? I've also been watching a little more current television. When I was a young girl a woman did not wear a shirt that strained across her chest. It was considered slutty. Now, everyone on television seems to be straining the buttons on their blouses. And most of these women have small chests. Those are push up bras under there, because most do not have enough body fat to have enough chest to threaten their clothes. But nothing fits my curves without straining a little unless I tame those curves. I was actually happy that I'd found some under stuff that allowed my curves to fit into the ever smaller and narrow shirts that seem to be out there for women, but no more. I'm striking a blow for women with curves. I'm tired of clothes making me feel like I need to hide some of me. No more. No minimizers on this trip. Maybe some designer out there will take pity and actually make clothes that fit and look good on someone that has a chest, and has arms, and thighs, and calves. All of me is round and bodacious, and I am tired of the fashion industry making me feel like I should apologize for that.

Fever

We didn't get to go to the Pirate Festival here in St. Louis. Saturday it rained hard, and Saturday night I came down with a fever. Apparently, I've caught a bug. The fever is finally below a hundred this morning, but I feel like crap. I did not sleep well at all last night and nothing I took broke the fever. It was like it just had to burn itself out medicine be damned. I have an appointment to get my nails done because we're going to be flying out on Wedsneday for a lot of business meetings. One of those meetings will include an on camera interview commercial sort of thing. Please do not bother Darla about when this will be on. I don't know. She doesn't know. This is a first time for this, and when we get details we'll let you know. You now know almost as much as we know. Okay? God, I do not want to get my nails done. I never want to get them done, but when I feel this bad, I really don't want to use up my energy doing primping stuff. Trinity was sooo excited about Pirate Festival She had an outfit ready to go on Friday night. Then it rained. Then I got fever that night and we couldn't go. I asked her be grown up about it, that I was disappointed to. She rallied and we decided to make Sunday a pirates party at home. We picked out pirate movies here at home, and found we had more than we thought we had. Started Sunday with her choice of Haunted history's Ghost Ships. Pirates of the Caribbean next, then I had to take a break. I tried for a nap, couldn't sleep. Finally, a soaking bath with lavender and salts in it, helped. She waited the movies on me which I told her she didn't have to, but she wanted to. Very sweet, especially after my being sick ruined her fun. We watched the live action Peter Pan, that is my favorite version, the most recent one. We still have a stack of pirate movies to go. Blackbeard's Ghost, several animated Peter Pans, Treasure Planet, and if we can find it, The Crimson Pirate. I hope everyone had fun at the Pirate Festival, sorry we missed it. I look forward to it next year, and hope they have better weather. Now I'm going to go lay down, just doing this has made me feel not so good again. Damnit.

St Louis Pirate Festival

The St Louis Pirate Festival starts this weekend, and continues next weekend. Laurell and I plan to attend sometime while it is going on, but we're not sure when. Reguardless of if you see us, go and have fun on your own. There's nothing like a Piratical Day, and her's an oppertunity to have one.

Feeling better

As a writer you often agonize about a decision to rewrite especially before the first draft is finished. Sometimes it is the kiss of death. A way to tell if the decision that you made the day before is in actuality the right one, is how you feel the following morning. I felt great. I felt more eager to get to work than I had in days. So many things that I'd been struggling to include in the end of the book were being delayed or made almost impossible by the addition of hordes of police. No police, and we can do a lot of things that would wreck Anita's reputation among the police. Okay, wreck it more than it already is. She's sleeping with vampires and lycanthropes, to some of the police that's like sleeping with the enemy. Anyway, I'm happy with the rewrite. Twenty pages, and a little over, two chapters lost, and I'm okay with it. Cool.

Rewrite

I'm doing the rewrite. Two chapters down the drain. I think we'll keep this to vampires and shapeshifters, and Edward and his friends, for the back-up. I talked it over with Jon and Darla, and I think the bad guys are more likely to kill hostages if the police show up. I think the vamps will think they have more options if they believe Anita is there in her capacity as Jean-Claude's human servant. Afterall in Anita's world there is only one penalty for vampires that harm humans - death. If they see police they'll know that death is all she can offer them. If they see other vampires and shapeshifters, they may believe they have other options. It would at least give them hope. Hope is important in a hostage situation. You need the bad guys to believe there's a chance they can walk away. If they don't believe in that chance, they have nothing to loose. You don't want people with hostages to feel they have nothing to loose.

Hostages

Today, so far, knock wood, is a better day. No one had to go to the emergency room. Strangely, I've actually gotten fewer pages, which I didn't think was possible, but I did finish up a piece of editing. I got the dedication for MISTRAL'S KISS off, as well. The original one I wanted to use turned out the poetry was not in public domain. It would take weeks to get permission for use and we're down to the wire. I actually held the advanced reader's copy, ARC, in my hands today. So the dedication can't wait for weeks. I am sitting here in my beautiful new office, with one pug snoring beside me. The rest are in the main part of the house, probably snoring over there. Anyway, I'm in an exceptionally bad mood. I've been in a good mood for days. I've managed not to be my usual moody self. A new attempt to clean up those murky areas of the psyche. It's been going well, until today. Nothing big, if I had a back slide it should have been yesterday when the injured list around us kept growing. But I was cool yesterday, took it in stride. Today something small set me off, so small in comparison. Darla asked me, "What are you mad at?" It seems like such a simple question, but I couldn't answer it. I don't know. Why am I this angry? When you over react to something small it's not about the small thing, it's about something else. Something that may not even be related to what seemed to trigger it. I've thought off and on while I worked for two hours, what am I mad at? I still don't have an answer. Anita's anger issues are very close to home. Would shooting up people on paper help? Would doing some violent scene help this anger? I don't know, but I do know that the scene I'm in isn't about violence. It's about thinking, about using our resources in an intelligent manner. Anita and the police have hostages to deal with, and that means the whole shoot first, ask questions later, is not a viable option. I'm wishing Anita hadn't called in the cops. I could still rewrite it, so that she doesn't. We have Edward with us, and his back-up, so could we go in just us? Would that work, or would it be putting the hostages at risk? That was the original call, that Anita didn't trust her and Edward to negotiate for hostages. I mean, they're great at killing, but saving lives . . . Sometimes not so good. We don't want to endanger the nice people, but including the police is a major hassle for Anita. This is a problem that might be easier to solve without the law looking over her shoulder. Yeah, she has a badge, but being an executioner means that her idea of law enforcement can be pretty simplistic. Bad guy, have warrant, dead bad guy. Simple. Once you invite in too many different flavors of police you loose control of the situation. It becomes complex. I don't want complex today. I want simple. If Anita didn't call in the major back up, would we be able to keep the damage to the civillians lower? Hell, would Anita be in too much danger without the police back up? I'm not sure. I'm really not. I guess it's a matter of deciding are we going to negotiate for hostages, or just kill these bastards. Wait, I know the answer. Kill them. Okay, can we kill them before they take innocent lives? Answer, no. And that's with or without the extra police help. It's a situation that if the bad guys want to take hostages down, they can, and there is no way to stop them completely. Do I rewrite it so that there are fewer people in danger? One of the nice things about only playing a federal marshal on paper is that if the situation gets too out of hand I can rewrite it tomorrow. In real life police work doesn't have a rewrite button. I can be brilliant on paper because I have days to plan it, redo it, until it works. My hat is always off to the real police, who react to impossible situations every day, in the blink of an eye, because that's how fast real life happens. I like fiction, you can always fix it later. I'm outta here for the day. I don't know what to do with the bad guys, or how to save the hostages. I don't like the idea of there being no way to save all the hostages, but if the situation remains as I've written it, then some will die. If I'm going to do the police work on paper, I'm not going to cheat. If it's a bad situation then it's bad, and it will be as realistic as I can make it, except for the vampires. But other than the vampires, I'll do it right. But right, sucks sometimes.

What a day

I managed to get three pages of new stuff done. This is the finale in many ways. The end to the big chase and stuff, but yet there are issues I've raised so I know that this can't be all there is to the book. So after the big scene there will need to be at least one, or two scenes, that answer some questions. I'm going to hand this blog over to Jonathon to explain the title.

Jon here: Its been a day. Food poisoning, Broken bones, sick dogs. To calm everyone down, none of the principles in the house are sick, or injured. And Darla didn't break anything and should be back tomorrow. One of her dogs got sick and so she stayed home. My parent's dog also had an emergency trip to the Vet, but the prognosis looks good, and we'll know more in a few days. (the joy of owning an older rescue can sometimes be hard to see.) That was the cloud. The silver lining was that we've had a chance to implement a slight change and improvement in our inventory system here at Ma Petite, and soon the orders that go out will have a (in my opinion) slightly more professional feel to them. Not to say they haven't been professional before, but that the professionalism is going to increase. Enough of my yammering, I'm going to sleep.

Comic Confusion Cleanup

News from Derek Ruiz, Marketing Communications Mgr., Marvel DBPro: 1. All the original orders have been canceled. 2. If you preordered at a shop go there with the new order numbers and tell them you still want the comic... 3. If you Pre ordered the 3 original covers tell them you want to put your money toward the issues after one instead of a refund...Since the comic only has one regular cover and 2 incentive covers (Which some shops will sell for more money). Please use the folowing Item numbers in your new order: REGULAR COVER BY: Brett Booth (JUL068380) INCENTIVE COVER (1:10 RATIO): GREG HORN (JUL068380) SKECTH INCENTIVE (1:50 RATIO) BRETT BOOTH (JUL068381) The Ratio is how many regular covers a retailer needs to order to receive a given incentive cover. e.g. an order for 50 regular covers gets the store 1 sketch cover and 5 Greg Horn Covers. Hopefully this will clear up any and all confusion regarding the Pre-Orders since the Marvel announcement.

Comic News

This is a Dual Effort Post© Laurell and I are going to split this blog. so anyway: the Comic better covered in the following links: http://www.dabelbrothers.com http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=83670 http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/001633111.cfm http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=8340 http://dabelbrothers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=293 or http://forum.laurellkhamilton.org/showthread.php?p=392459#post392459 All in all, this is the news that we haven't been sharing about the comic. We've known for a while, but were told not to share until the official announcement. Now that the official announcement is done, we can say how excited we are about the news. The deal with Marvel will get the comics out to a greater audience that was possible before, and there will be a bigger push on the business side to get the word out. So, I'm done and I'm going to let Laurell Type now. I tried to do a blog last night about the comic news, but realized that it's a comic, so the visual is important. Jon had already gone up ahead of me, so instead of dragging him out of bed to do all the links above, I thought, we'll do it tomorrow. It's tomorrow. I hope you enjoy the art work as much as we have over these last months. We've been seeing Brett Booth art across our desks for weeks. Now you can see why we've been thrilled. The Greg Horn cover is new to us, just got to see it this week, but again an exciting new take on Anita. Sorry we couldn't share the news earlier but they made us promise not to tell. The flash trailer I found particularly cool. Maybe technology isn't all bad, after all.

Quick note

Twenty plus pages yesterday, fifteen today. The book is barreling towards the end. I'm to bed, Anita and I have vampires to kill tomorrow.

Anniversaries.

I grew up with my grandmother not exactly celebrating, but remembering, my mother's death. Early August was her annual depression, her anniversary depression. I grew up knowing that it was coming, and being forced to wallow in the pain of it. I don't like anniversary depressions and I refuse to participate in this one. 9/11 has come again, and we are still here. We are still America. We are still the home of the brave and land of the free. Don't let anyone take that away from you, from us. Remember who you are. Who we are as a people. Don't let the terrorist take away who we are, and don't let other American's take away who we are. The terrorist do it with fear, and the American politicians do it with fear, too. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said, "The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither."

Twenty-Seven pages and bird news

Twenty-seven pages today. Wow. I've actually made an outline for the rest of the book. We topped five hundred pages today. We, at the end of a book I usually start saying 'we', because I've spent the day writing first person narration. I've spent the day writing, I and we, and it's hard to stop. Nearly thirty pages and I am fried. I had this blog planned where I'd talk about the red tail hawks that have taken up residence in our yard, but I'm too tired to do it justice. It's a parent, we think female, and her baby. The baby is a biiig baby, but he has spent days sitting in trees crying for her to feed him. Like any baby bird he's been trying to follow her around and beg for food. I'm just used to seeing songbirds do it, not birds of prey. It's been very cool. I'll try to do a more complete hawk blog later, maybe Jon will help, since the hawks have become a group activity. If Darla, or one of us hear the hawks outside, work sometimes stops and we go out to see if we can spot them. We saw a female oriole this week, and the hummingbirds are really loving the feeders. The goldfinches have almost decimated the sunflowers in the flower garden. Mockingbirds, Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, are just a few of the birds that are visiting the Choke Cherry. The House Sparrows have come back from where ever they vanished to, and are looking over the purple martin house, which has never held a purple martin. It's held starlings and sparrows, and at one point wasps, but never what it was intended for. It was up when we bought the house, I knew the martin condo was doomed. It wasn't close enough to a body of water for one of many problems. I hated the sparrrows when they took over our bird feeders but the sparrows will at least share the feeders with everybody else, the starlings chase everybody off, but themselves. When I saw the cloud of sparrows dash past my windows and land on the martin house, I was actually happy to see them. They hopped around the house talking back and forth, looking for all the world like a family that left the summer cottage and came back to find it trashed by wind, rain, and neglect. Can we fix it up? How much work will it be? Can we get it ready in time? You can complain about sparrows and we do, but they are such unremittingly cheerful birds. There are moments when I actually understand how a homesick Englishman could want to bring them over, so he'd have some sounds of home.

Good-bye Steve

It's 2:00 in the afternoon and I've just gotten to sit down at the computer. It's just been one of those days. I've tried to do several blogs and they have been so depressing that I just couldn't inflict them on you guys. I am deeply saddened by the death of Steve Irwin. I know that some of my emotion is because I've had my own losses. I more than sympathize with little Bindi and even littler Bob, at the loss of their father. I lost my mother at six, so I know some of what's going on for them. I have no words to express how terrible I feel for Terri to be without Steve. This idea of soulmates causes more problems than it fixes, but I, like much of the world, truly felt that these two people were soulmates. That they are separated at such an early age breaks my heart. My heart goes out to his family, and friends, the people that truly knew him. I am a stranger, just one of his many fans that watched a truly loving man doing what he was meant to do. I'll try to write about something else next time, but this is what has come to me every time I've sat down for the last few days. Look at this way, imagine how depressing the two blogs I didn't post were compared to this one. Scary, isn't it. Good-bye Steve, Goddess Bless.

On a lighter note

So this morning, I woke up humming the '93 song "Informer" by the Canadian Rapper Snow. so I did a google search for it and found a interesting cover of the song. So now I'm looking for any way to get a CD of "Chori Chori" by Arash featuring Aneela or Aneela featuring Arash. And yes, I'm beginning to like Wikipedia.

One less Light in the Darkness

Many of you know that I read a lot of Webcomics on a daily basis. I read at least four different titles each morning, usually before my first cup of tea. One of these is David Mogen-Marr's Irregular Webcomic. Which is how I got the news.

Steve Irwin is dead.

The news hasn't really sunk in for me. I 'm positive I'm still in shock, but I needed to pass the word on.

How are we going to tell Trinity? He is (was) one of her heroes.

Our hearts go out to all of Steve's Family and Friends. And to all those out there that, like us, will miss the cheerful cry of "Crikey!"

We miss you, Steve.

The grumpy worm gets the bird

Jon and I planned a long, lazy Sunday morning. Our first kid free Sunday in ages. Yeah, we'd have to let the dogs out and see that they got fed and medicined, but other than that we were going to take it easy. Jon took the dogs out while I worked on tea. When he came back in the morning plans changed. There was an injured mourning dove outside. Jon had kept the dogs away from it, but he wanted my opinion, was it just a feathered baby that the parents had kicked out of the nest and were still feeding, or was it injured. (Many of the baby birds that people see in their yards are still being fed and cared for by their parents. Leave them alone and watch, and you'll see. If the baby is mostly naked, no feathers, then you've got a problem and the birds may need your help. But most of the time nature is pretty resilient.) The dove was by the water garden, and we had put out seed for it, just in case. Unfortunately, the dove was injured. It was like a small replica of it's parents, but when it flapped it's wings to try to fly, it got no lift, and when it folded it's wings one wing trailed and seemed stiff going back into place. We called the Wild Bird Rehabilitation Center, and asked their opinion. They thought it had broken one of the bones in it's wing. Easily fixed, and the bird would be ready to release in two to three weeks, if we'd bring it in. If? Jon and I caught the dove and transported it in a brown paper bag (the Wild Bird Center suggestion) and away we went. While we filled in the paperwork, we got a glimpse into the bird nursery. Baby cardinals, baby barn swallows, and some that I wasn't certain of. It was very cool. The nice lady thanked us for bringing the dove in. Jon said, "It's what you're supposed to do." Apparently, there are people who call in about injured birds, but when they find out that the bird center does not pick up the bird, but that they must bring the bird to them, they refuse. They leave it to die. Evil bastards. Is that too harsh? Let me say that I understand not wanting to put out the effort. I admit that my first thought after realizing the bird was indeed injured was not, oh, yeah, I have the opportunity to help out one of my fellow creatures. Nope, my first thought was damn. No time for that leisurely cup of tea. No relaxed breakfast. I saw all my plans go up and smoke and I resented it. But . . . we did it anyway. The bird filled my hands, and was so soft. The bird center warned me that the bird might struggle in the bag, but it didn't. It was very calm. I could feel the weight of it on one side of the bag on the drive over. I admitted outloud in the car how I'd felt about the trip, and Jon said, him too. He'd seen the bird and thought, damn I have to tell Laurell. When all was said and done, we were glad we did it. We were glad we overcame that first grumpy impulse and helped the helpless. The wing is very fixable now, but if left it would have healed wrong and the bird, if a predator didn't get it, would be flightless for all it's life. Let's face it once winter set in a flightless dove wouldn't survive long. I doubt seriously whether it would have made the first snowfall. Now in less than a month it will be flying and doing the things doves do. We gave it that chance to be the best dove it can be. We're supposed to help each other, that's the way the system works. It's only when we forget that kindness is the rule, not the exception, that everything goes wrong. We lost our leisurely morning, but one little bird got it's life back. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning.

A sea, a bull, and is it soup, yet

I am at sea with the next step in the book. I was hoping that if I slept on it, I'd wake up and see my way clear, which does happen. But not this time. This time I woke up still puzzled. There are two ways to get past something like this: one, you bull your way through like a tactical team knocking down a door; two, you walk away from the desk, the book, all of it for a few hours or even a day. You let the book sort of cook on the back burner like simmering soup. Anyone who has made homemade soup knows that it's not soup until it's fully cooked, sometimes the subconscious needs simmer time, too. I'd forgotten the second method. I'd been under the deadline gun for so long that I'd been like a bull in the china shop, and forgotten that sometimes that method just doesn't work. Sometimes all you get is frustration and broken dishes. Today I remembered that sometimes you need to walk away and let your mind rest. Even if you don't come up with a brilliant solution, your mind is better rested when you go back to tackle the book. I mean if the gentle solution doesn't work, you can always revert to something more forceful later. I let myself walk away for a little bit. Went to the wild bird store and the metaphysical shop. Came back feeling better, a little more relaxed. Jon asked me, "Did you enjoy yourself." My reply, "Finally, yes." He said, "Finally?" I nodded. He hugged me and said he loved me. If you don't understand why he said he loved me at that moment than I'm not sure I can explain it. Jon and I love each other sometimes because of our faults, or we at least find them charming. We did lunch, went to the bookstore. And somewhere I just let it go, and relaxed into the concept that I would not work today. A hard concept for me, but I finally managed it. I invited my daughter to go on the last errand of the day but she was with a friend, and school will soon part them for the year, so she opted out. That was okay. I hadn't been by myself anywhere for almost anything except work, and not for anything else that was supposed to be fun for months. Alone was okay today. In fact it was nice. I went to the coffee and tea shop and picked things out instead of sending someone with a list. I got teas and coffees that were new to try, as well as what I would have listed. It was nice. They asked after Richard, who used to be the one who went to the shop for me. Maybe I've farmed out too many things that I enjoyed to others. Maybe. Anyway, I feel refreshed, and have hopes that tomorrow I'll either see my way clear, or be ready to play bull with this particular brick wall. Either way, the day off makes me feel better able to do it.