Amy Lane's Blog: Writer's Lane, page 153

City Mouse

So, long ago-- twenty-five years, this fall actually--Mate and I had a non-fight.  See, we'd moved in together in June, but this was October.  School had started, and I was working full time and Mate was working and taking a break from school (which meant finding his reason to go to school while working, because he wasn't seeing the point twenty-five years ago) and the apartment was a disaster.

Now this was back when I still did housework--for one thing, our apartment was about the size of our kitchen and living room right now (which means it was miniscule, because our house ain't big)  and it was sort of bothering me.  I mean, I was DOING more at that point in time, right?

So I came home, sat down on the bed and woke Mate up and started telling him about my day.  He yawned, and I said, "Yeah, and I've got a paper in English and I hate taking Physics, it's making me crazy and I have to work tonight and I know you're off and if the apartment isn't clean when I get back I'll go sleep at my parents until it is."

Wait-- I was gonna what?

Yeah-- took us BOTH by surprise.

I was just so calm about it, but apparently, I'd hit my limit.  (Oh, if only I had that limit now.  You have no idea how foreign that concept seems at this moment.  Pretty much every room in the house is WAY over THAT line!)

Anyway, I got home and the apartment was pristine, and although I've never EVER threatened to leave him since, that did pretty much begin the sense of partnership we have now.  When one of us is busy, the other picks up the slack-- with the kids or with shopping or with whatever.  (Not the house, so much, alas...)

But all this partnership? It had to have it's snapping point, and that's where some of the groundwork for City Mouse came from.


Okay-- so the question you had to ask yourself at the end of Country Mouse, after Malcolm makes his grand romantic gesture, is, "What next?"

I mean, you've got the sweet American who is deceptively submissive (HA!) and the pushy Brit, who thinks he's a dom.  How exactly do you make that work in real life?  What are these two guys going to do to keep this relationship working?

Well, that's the question that Aleks and I asked each other as we were working on City Mouse , and it came down to two things:  food and work.

Sounds simple, right?  But if you think about, living together really does come down to the simple stuff: sloppy or neat?  Eat in or eat out?  Have wild passionate chimp sex when the kids are gone or go to a movie?  Or, you know, both?  So food and work?  Those are two "staples" as Owen calls them that can determine whether or not two people are going to make it.  If they can agree on a compromise, then they'll make it.  If one guy's eating hamburgers all the time while the other one is eating salads, and they're constantly fighting over money?  That's gonna be a wash.

That's the premise behind City Mouse.  We have Owen in the big city, getting a job (that Malcolm hates), becoming domestic (making food he's not wild about, because Malcolm has a pathological fear of gaining weight) and generally learning how to get on.  Like most honeymoons, it's passionate and sexy, and turbulent.

Owen's snapping point turns out to be much different from mine and Mate's, and Malcolm's pushing point is different as well--but that same idea is there.  What are the things these two people need to create a successful partnership?

And speaking of partnerships, hopefully mine and Aleks's partnership worked as well in this one as it did in the predecessor-- but we really did love writing this.  Once again, we both got together on Google docs, and the little pink cursor did it's magic dance.  I love dancing with Aleks--I hope to dance with him some more!

Country Mouse is now available at Amazon, ARe, and Riptide publishing!  We hope you enjoy!

A Grand Day Out

Okay--

So, the last two days have been sort of, well...

Oi!

Yesterday was the "sea scattering" of my grandma, and since we had all of the sadness in the tribute and other places, this was really sort of a different kind of moment.  This was a gorgeous day in San Francisco, in spite of the fact that it looked like we were driving into the foggy maw of hell at the beginning.

When we got there, we found the fog lifting, and after wandering around and shopping (and blowing a wad o'cash at the puppet store!) we connected with the rest of the family (I started calling them the family amoeba-- we gathered together, moved slowly, and occasionally some of us sheered off in an act of osmosis and went somewhere else) and a dribble and drabble at a time, made it to the gate to the ferry.

There, we met my cousin Yeshi, whom I've only ever seen a couple of times.  Once as a hyperactive six year old, once as a carefree twenty-three year old, and now?  He's a world-traveler (well, his father is Italian and my aunt Carol is a world traveler!) and in this incarnation, he was handsome, funny, had an Italian accent via five years in Dublin, (*aherm*  For the record?  Dreamy. How do you get someone with those layered accents to NEVER STOP TALKING?  If anyone has a plan for that, let me know) and looked very very Bourne Identity.  I hope to talk to him and Carol some more this week,  and hopefully some of the awesome rubs off.  (I am sorely lacking in continental awesome.  Perhaps he'd be willing to share!  I am family, right?)

Anyway-- we took a lovely ferry ride and scattered her ashes.  The older family scattered the ashes with reverence, my sons, of course, scattered them with ghoulish glee.  (This was a person?  Cool!) Big T was without his father or I as his turn came, and... well, of all of us, he's the one who dumped the ashes directly into the wind, insuring that we all got to take a bit of grandma home with us--in our eyelashes, in our hair, on our phone covers, in our clothes--you know.  With us.  Mate and I were without words for how to explain to him what he'd done wrong.  What we came up with was "don't dump ashes in the wind", but really, how often is that going to come up in a real life scenario.  Besides.  He dumped all the rest, and I think someone else wanted a turn.  There was actually some sadness and some sentiment during the ceremony--including an impromptu "hymn" of Patsy Kline's "Dream a Little Dream" led by Squish, which was really nice, and a whirlwind impression of grandma after Big T dumped the last bit of ashes, en masse, into the water.  But when the sadness had passed, we were really grateful--in one last gesture, grandma gave us a really really lovely and amazing day.

We were supposed to go for lunch when we got back, but the place we put our name in at was not really prepared for the grand lot of us.  After almost an hour, Mate said, "The kids are DONE--they need to eat NOW!" because they'd been living off of snacks and graham crackers since eight in the morning, and they were tired now.  So we said our goodbyes and ate a quick (and appreciated) meal of clam chowder in bread bowls, and then took off.  We took a brief pee break at the Golden Gate overlook, and came gratefully home to fall asleep in front of the television.

Okay.  I wish.  We came gratefully home where I wrote two blog articles for the promo tour of City Mouse, and the kids built Leprechaun traps.  And I went, OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Because Leprechaun traps mean Leprechaun droppings, and I had to put my shoes back on and drive to the store for candy and stuffed bears.  *headdesk*


But Happy St. Patrick's Day-- it would have been my grandma's 92nd birthday, but I'm pretty sure she counted yesterday as a really decent party as it was.

Things that make me happy...

Does anyone remember that book?  It was right at the cutting edge of the new age, shiny-happy-people-holding-hands part of the nineties (which went very oddly with the grunge... don't ask me to explain... I listened to R.E.M. and Pearl Jam and rode out the contradictory wave with hardly a batted eyelash...)

Anyway-- the book was called 10,001 Things That Make Me Happy-- and it was, in truth, a list, and sort of a way to count your blessings, and was, I'm starting to think, the grandmother of the blog MeMe.  So, I was finishing stuff up today, and nursing my UTI (dudes... don't ask... not the first time I've ever worked myself sick, but not the most dignified either!) when it occurred to me that A. It was time to blog, and B. I was oddly enough, out of words.

I needed to take a cue from Knittech and write a 1000 word post (you know, a picture is worth a thousand words?) but I had to get CLEVER because all of my pictures SUCKETH, and, well, I had some sort of residual horror memory of that book and R.E.M. singing "Shiny happy people holding hands!" and a bad Cipro reaction, and, well, here we are.

Things that make me happy!  (And now, with EXTRA SPECIAL EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!)

In no particular order...

Little girls in hats!












Puppies!













Kitties!












Alpacas!




















Pretty yarn and knitting!












Finishing projects!



















Little boys and face paint!











Supernatural!





















Pretty menz in general!
















Good television!















Great Movies!
























Great music!


















Books books books!











Batman!






















Parenting!



Good friends AND knitting!





Funny Pictures!




























SPRING!!!!












Mate!











Steve





New Book Releases!


















Friends!

Which includes, even without a picture, all of you:-)

Olga

 I'm still not sure I can write this post.

See, when I was a kid and my parent's split, whenever I went to visit my mom, I went to my grandparents' house.

My mom was pretty incommunicado at the time-- I spent a lot of time on their couch, watching way too much '70's shows.  (Shazaam! anyone?  And Almighty Isis?)  So when I was Zoomboy and Squish's age, I saw my grandmother every other weekend.

Saturdays, she was usually pretty damned busy.

Grandma was something of a pioneer.  Of course I didn't think of it like that, because my stepmom was working and going to school, and her mother had been a nurse in the army, so as far as I was concerned, all women worked, we were judged not just by our careers but by the way we raised our children while we had them.

I did not realize that running your own business back then was something of an anomaly for a woman.  But then, neither did my aunts and uncle, and they were living with her, so that's not the part of grandma I remember most.

I remember her smile--and although she is much older in these pictures with Chicken (again, I have better somewhere on my computer, but I'm not sure how to access them!) when she was younger, she was something of a knockout.  Yes, she had the bold Italian nose, and yes, she had a strong chin--but she was elegant and very very... stated.  She made a statement wherever she went, whether it was the red hair or the slight Italian accent or the fact that she cooked with tomatoes and garlic.

When I was knocking about in her house (and it's a big house-- she designed it and oversaw its construction-- twice, because it burned down once) she would find something-- a coloring book, jewelry, something to keep a hyperactive grade-schooler from just bouncing all over the couches unsupervised--and she would smile at me and say, "Little girl..."  And I would know something diverting was coming.  She said this to me even into my thirties, and then she said it to my own daughters.  It's something I'm not sure I can convey--how much it meant to me that grandma-- who seemed very glamorous to me when I was young--had something special, just for me.

On Sundays, we would play games.  We would play Scrabble and I sucked at it (STILL DO!) but it taught me to appreciate a good word game, even if I wasn't so good at playing it.  Almost to the day she died, grandma played bananagrams, which is a Scrabble like game.  We have a set (given to us by my aunt Teresa) and Grandma taught ZB how to play.  He plays no-points Scrabble with himself, and he's brilliant at it--and he got that from Grandma.

Grandma was proud of me--and that's something I heard from my aunts and uncle today.  She was always, no matter how bad our screw ups, proud of us.  I think that's important.  She was raising children in the middle of the sixties and seventies, and it wasn't easy.  Our world was changing, our rules were changing, and there were new and amazing ways for us to screw up.  But if there was one thing grandma believed in, it was in free will, and in going your own way.  When Chicken was getting ready for college, (and I think it was when I took this picture) grandma told her to keep in touch.

"Oh, I will!" said Chicken.  "I'll be texting my mom every day!  I'll tell her everything!"

"Well, not everything," Grandma answered.  "If you can tell your mom everything that happened when you were away at college, then you haven't really been away to college."

I was the oldest grandchild, and because of my mom's illness, I was always a little out of place.  Grandma tried very hard to give me a place.  There is a picture of the two of us--I had just gotten one of those awful bi-level cuts of the early 80's, but if you held my hair up, my fuzzy red curls matched grandma's, (hers were from the bottle by that time, as are mine now!) and our glasses were a lot alike, and she really did look like my mother.  We were that much alike.

We were alike in other ways besides the fuzzy red hair, and these also were things I passed down to my children. (I included this picture of me and my girls, because they look very much like my girls, and because that also meant they looked very much like her girls, and she was so very proud of her family.)

Grandmother loved reading.  She loved language.  She had a book published somewhere in the Library of Congress, and every so often she got a tiny little royalty check.  She told me once she was so proud of that--she loved knowing her book was read by other people.  I remember that I wanted to do that.  And, well, now I do.  And so does my daughter (although not for profit.)

Grandma was recruited for the OSS during WWII-- she was literally a spy in the war.  All of the other members of the OSS were given "code names", but not grandma.  Olga was so unusual, everybody said-- people would assume it wasn't her real name.  I seem to recall a story about how it took grandpa some time to convince, since he worked for the OSS too.  I also recall a story about how she'd been writing to her family during the war about dating a "Phillip" (grandpa's code name) and how they were all very puzzled about how she was, at the end of the war, marrying Ken.

One of the pictures my aunts and uncle had blown up has them both on a ferry in San Francisco, looking very dashing--and very Dashiell Hammett-- in trench coats-- and very much in love.  I'm glad they chose this picture-- Grandpa looks very handsome, yes, but grandma looks very much the femme fatale.  I think she probably could have been.

When grandma worked in the OSS, she said she worked for the "Office of Dirty Tricks".  When it became declassified, she told me what she did.  Do you all remember Hogan's Heroes?  The television show about the POW's who ran missions from the camp?  Well, it was based on grandma's division-- they did things like giving food poisoning to the Nazis and then moving their latrines back six inches in the middle of the night. Sounds silly?  Yes.  But do it the night before a battle or a raid, and it's the difference between success and failure.  Grandma's people thought of the "tricks" or sub-missions to run, and somebody radioed the info to the troops.  I told her that sounded very exciting, and she told me two things that sobered me up right quick. One was that the POW's had a 90% mortality rate-- and she felt horrible about that.  The other was (and this has stuck with me):

"We thought it was very funny when we were doing this, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that those boys were some mother's sons as well."

Compassion for the enemy-- I thought this showed an incredible greatness of spirit, and I'm as proud of this as I am of the things she did in the war.

And I am proud of these things.  My aunts and uncle all said that she never seemed like a pioneer to them.  But when Chicken and Big T listened to her stories, not only of the OSS but also of parenting, Chicken said, "Grandma was bad-ass."  I love that.  A real life hero--a female hero.  Our world is still so full of the double standard, that the ugliness of war was for the men--I love that my daughter has another way of looking at the world, a way in which she can play a part.

But in spite of the glamour and the OSS and the female pioneer, grandma was mostly proud of her family.  Of everybody, she was the one person who didn't spazz out or disapprove when I got pregnant with Squish.  She called me up and said, "So, how are you doing?  Like me?  Hale and healthy and ready to push this one out and finish the next row of tomatoes?"

And yes-- I was just like that.  We both agreed that we were the sort of peasant stock that could repopulate the earth.  In fact, I think some of the things that grandma did that irritated me the most (as relatives do) came from being a working mother of five.

I know that when I doze off with the kids in the house, I will wake up and automatically go, "Where's Squish!  Where's Zoomboy!"  I've done this since they were toddlers and I was working full time and trying to feed everyone and get them to their after school stuff and write on the side as well.  I know that grandma--when she was healthy-- would sometimes be all about radio silence for a while, and suddenly there would be a flurry of activity.  Thinking on it now, I sense that same sort of, "How's Amy!  Where is she?  What's she doing?" rhythm of the mother, waking up worried about her children.

I think she did that a lot.

But oddly enough it gives me some peace knowing that she was startling awake, worried about her kids (me included, sometimes, although I was very clearly the least important puppy, since I had other parents of my own) even into her nineties.  Your children are your children.  Today I saw her children come together and try to condense ninety varied years of hard work and service to country and pioneer spirit and senior volunteer work and motherhood and extremely unique perspective and singular intellect and personality into an afternoon.

It couldn't be done.

I'm sure many of the people who could have helped us do it have since passed on, which is actually perfect.  Grandma told stories of herself, because she was always the guest of honor at her own party.  This way, she was very much the guest of honor, and no one could contradict the vision of herself that she'd given her children.

For such a tiny woman, she will always be larger than life to me.  I hope my own life can be one tenth as well lived, and my children can learn as much from me as I learned from my Grandma Olga.

Watch This Space

Yesterday, I wrote nearly 10,000 words.  Yes.  You heard me.10,000.9,724 that I can measure.  But I went back and backfilled, so I'm pretty sure that 275 was in there somewhere.I stopped when the story was done.  That's Forever Promises, for those of you wondering, the sequel to this book here: 
The last sequel.  It's written from everyone's point of view.  Everyone's. Deacon, Crick, Benny, Shane, Mikhail, Jeff, Collin-- they all have a chapter.  Kimmy figures large, and so does Drew.  Does everyone remember that part from Sneakers?  Where River Phoenix crashes through the roof and goes, "It's not easy what I just did?"
Yeah.  It's not easy what I just did! 
So I'm gonna ramble a little before I get back to my editing and submit that thing I just made.  First rambling?  Chicken is making a new version of the dragon.  Now, I like the old version, but it's her art, and she seems to think I deserve a better dragon.  I can't wait to see what this one becomes:
Also, this is going into the back yard, after it gets cleaned up.  It's actually very sweet, but I've got to tell you, country people laugh at city people who put fake rocks where their pets used to go.  

And the kids went to a fundraiser tonight, where we spent a bunch of money on balloon animals.  Well, we really spent money to help send a girl's family to go visit her in the hospital where she's being treated for a brain tumor, which is much worthier than the balloon animals and face painting, but that doesn't stop the little kids from loving the other part.
And we went and shopped at Beverly's, and the best part of that is that I found a book for Chicken.  I really love this book.  If I'm lucky, she'll make me the little pencil cases and I can use them for my knitting kit.
Anyway-- so that's what my brain is like after 10,000 words.Tomorrow, my brain has to be much better.  Tomorrow I have to write my grandmother's tribute, so I can post it Sunday, in time for her memorial.  
So right now, it's pictures, and a little bit of weirdness.  If I'm lucky, I've shared a little of my exhaustion fugue with you, because I'm telling you, living it is a lot like living in pink and purple and turquoise blue.  I researched River Phoenix AND the band Oasis tonight.  I bought Wreck it Ralph AND Skyfall on a total whim.  Watch out-- I'm dangerous without a brain.  
So, in spite of the complete vacancy of today's blogpost, watch this space.  On Sunday, I'm going to tell you about my grandma, and she's something special.  

Anyone? Anyone?

So, Mary and I have been doing some marathon writing--her marathon is worse and harder than mine, I will admit, but still.  That whole writing when you're short on sleep thing is a trip, because the words are flowing--nay, GUSHING--and this thing that's been living in your head for so damned long is finally being cut loose, and glory hallelujah and pass the future edits!

You know, dragon riding.  It's all about landscape, not so much about details, and you wonder, "Oh shit?  How bad am I fucking up the details?" but you have to GET IT DOWN because, well, the dragon's calling, and so's your publisher, and you've sort of got deadlines and even if you didn't, you've actually RELEASED THE FUCKING DRAGON at this point, and life is just one WHOOSH of sleep deprivation and words!

But the (in my opinion) least cool thing about this state of being is that it makes you not such good company in almost any other circumstances.  At this point, I think even the dog thinks I'm mostly a git bitch whose only assets are a pair of comfortable boobies on which to sleep.  (Booby diving is Johnnie's favorite sport.  He can wiggle down the neck of any sweater, T-shirt, or night shirt in less than .5 seconds, especially if he remembers there's a penalty for face licking and just jumps right into the competition.)

Seriously-- my efforts at conversation are pretty much limited to "Yeah, *yawn* that sounds good.  No, *yawn*  I don't remember what you said, but you seem to be reasonably intelligent--I did spawn or marry you, and I don't think that idea is going down in flames.  Pepperoni and spinach for dinner!  It's a win!"  (Okay-- so THEY had pepperoni, and *I* had broccoli.  Close.  It was close.)

Which makes me not such an amazing blogger, you know?  My space-time perception is very whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo right now--and anything productive I do is absolutely void of grace and style.  (This fits in well with Squish's wardrobe requirements: if it goes ON, it goes TOGETHER, and every outfit that's outrageous is a WIN!)

So, with that in mind with this blogpost, I'm going to cover a couple of things bullet point style, and then toddle off to dress my children and get them to school (maybe) on time.  (Okay-- can I just say ZB does his share of late making?  When we hell at him to move faster, his entire body jerks like an eel wrapped around his spinal chord, and he starts flailing around the house like Kermit on 'rhoids.  This LOOKS impressive, but it gets NOTHING done, and thus, in order to make this not happen so much, every hurry emergency is treated like we're in Nurse Ratchet's ward, and the Percocet M&M's  have been devoured by the bag full.  It may not make us any more on time, but it DOES limit the number of papers that go scattered to the four winds, and the bruises on the backs of his hands for when he hits walls when he flails.)

Anyway, on to the bullet points.

**  There's a contest for City Mouse HERE.

** There's an excerpt for City Mouse HERE.

** The Bolt-Hole is available for pre-sale HERE.

**  And I will be posting a short little article on Tuesday, 10:00 a.m. PST, HERE.

**  I will also be cross-posting that article HERE, but there won't be any cool discussion at my website, so authors should join the RRW and make sure they can, you know.  Discuss.

And so, with all of that, I leave you with two things.  One is a random picture of Steve, because she hasn't gotten enough air time lately.

The other is the following story from my random mani-pedi last week



See, there are two salons right next to each other (which are, coincidentally, right next to my favorite yarn store, but I digress!)  Anyway, the hair and nail salon is very Russian-- we took Chicken there to get her hair and nails done for her senior portraits.  The place next to it is very... well, uhm.  Okay-- SOMEONE please tell me the cultural connection between manicurists and small Asian women.  I recognize that it's not even a stereotype, it's a truism-- it just HAPPENS-- but I like to know WHY. I'm just curious-- what is there in Asian culture that lends itself to this vocation?  Anyway-- there I was, getting my feet sanded by three tiny, friendly Korean women, when they all look up at the window, and start saying, "No.  No.  Not here.  Not here.  No no no no no... go next door!"

I look up, and there is a ginormous man with a full dark beard, who looks a little like Peter Stormare in front of the store window.  He opens the door, takes off his stocking cap, and says haltingly, "Do...you...speak...Russian?"

A deafening chorus of "NEXT DOOR!  NEXT DOOR!  NEXT DOOR!" erupts from around me, like the frantic shrieks of startled starlings, and the man backs out, looking miserable and embarrassed.

All of the women deliver a chirping smatter of Korean in familiar irritation, and then go back to my feet (and my hands... my feet weren't that bad!) and I was left wondering how many times the Russian Mafia had tried to crash their party.

And now i want to go back and find out!  (Besides, my manicure didn't last very long... apparently, I'm tough on nail polish, which makes me remember why I stopped doing my own nails a very long time ago!)

And with that, I'm off to post my stuff!

Amy's Lane and other Things

Okay-- I HAVE to write today, and my whole morning was spent doing writing business but not actually writing.  So bear with my bullet points, kay?

*  IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT....  or, rather, it's on the Coming Soon page, and that makes me VERY happy.

*  I just finished a chat en Espanol on Facebook.  This would have been more impressive on MY part if I actually spoke Spanish, but I don't, so most of the credit goes to Saura, my translator-- who made me look good.  A round of applause, if you can spare one!  Yay to the poly-lingual!!!!

*  Bought Zoomboy the paper airplane book of a geek-baby's dreams.  It's the AIRCRAFT OF STAR WARS!  You pop them out, you fold them-- he's been entranced for THREE DAYS!!!

*   Squish has been funny lately-- I was getting ready to go out with Mate and she sat on my lap and said, "You look very pretty, mommy.  Of course, not that you need it, but if you would like to put on make-up, that would be nice too."  "Do you want to put on some make-up, Squish?"  *big grin*  "Yes. I'd love to!"  Did you notice the phrasing there?  She's doing that all the time.  It's eerie.

*  I accidentally stopped for a mani-pedi.  Okay-- I stopped to make an appointment for next week, as a reward for WHEN I finish the fourth Promises book.  And there was nobody there.  NObody. Ghost-body empty.  I mean... what's a girl to do?

*  Saw the PDF for City Mouse .  Oh, guys-- it's SO purty!

*  Am getting close to the end of Promises.  I'm looking forward to working on something else, but by the same token, it's SO HARD to say goodbye!

* OH YEAH!  I almost forgot!  (Okay-- obviously not almost, because I did remember the icon, and I changed the name of the post!)  But I'm going to be doing a once a month panel-- first Tuesday of the month, starting on Tuesday, March 5th, on the RRW Website.  Look under Forums, and then look under writing-- there I'll be, Amy's Lane.  March.  I'm going to post the column there, and let the column spark conversation (my first column is on writing author bios-- I don't know if anyone's going to actually respond to that one.  I mean *zzzzzzzzz*) and I'm looking forward to FINALLY being able to contribute to my craft.

 *  We're going to see Jack the Giant Slayer.  I'm so excited-- it looks so good!


*  Oh yeah-- Mate and I went to see live music on Thursday.  We saw Wrings and The Neighborhood-- and enjoyed ourselves completely.  We also took pictures of a man who won a beard contest (and was drunk as hell) and a charming young woman who wanted nothing more than to lick the face of the head singer of The Neighborhood.  She settled for a kiss on the cheek.

*  Wait!  I got YARN!  Isn't it pretty?

ON that note, I'll leave you all...  But I sort of love the rock star kiss... it was really very sweet.

Pending

Remember Dark Willow on Buffy?

Right before she killed someone with a creepy, black-eyed snap of her fingers, she'd say "Bored now," in that sweet Allison Hannigan voice, and you know what?

Bored now.

Okay-- not really.

I just took a look at the roster of my friends' blogs that I HAVE NOT read and realized I wanted to spend all day doing THAT.  (Roxie has a post titled "Lucifer Approved"-- how can you NOT want to read that?  And I love her travel logs and need to go back for those as well!)  I can not possibly be bored if I'm not finding time to do the things I really love-- so it's not really boredom.

It's not that I don't have stuff to do-- I mean it's nine in the morning and I haven't brushed my teeth and I suspect I've had to go to the bathroom for quite some time.  I have shit to do.  It's even stuff I want to do.  I mean, I really do love my job!

It's just that everything is pending right now.

I mean, let's face it, since I've gotten back from Florida, I've had some rough moments.  There's lawyer shit (yeah.  That lawyer shit.  Frickin' BLARGH.  That's all I'm legally allowed to say.  Just fuckin' BLARGH!) And there was family shit (and you can all imagine that-- again, ouch) and then there was the dog (fuckin' dog!) and... just EW!

I was actually in the middle of writing that little political satire on the zoo (and those of you who know what that was really about will TOTALLY understand what I'm about to say) when it occurred to me that February really MUST suck for EVERYONE.  I know that Roxie goes on cruises in February--I can totally see why.  When I was teaching, February was the month I saved all my sick leave for-- usually because all my kids (and sometimes the adults) GOT sick on February.  It's like our immunity to everything-- germs, influenza, sadness, boredom, stupid political kerfluffles, impulse buys on amazon and iTunes-- is completely down.  It's a boring, restless, I-wanna-be-somebody-new kind of month, and I am fucking thrilled it's almost over.

And to that end?

I'm posting my cover art for pending projects.

First, of course, you have The Bolt-Hole.  Now, I've already posted this one, but given the complete and total drabfuckedness of February, I'm thinking that needs to go front and center.  Bolt-Hole does deal with some serious stuff-- race in America is never easy, and I tried SO hard for this to be real, and, at the same time, not offensive and not... not horrible.  Terrell and Colby do, after all, fall in love.  There must be some common ground, and for me, love always means laughter, so my guys spend a lot of time playing around in the summer heat and  laughing.  One of the things I do when a book comes out is look anxiously at GoodReads and amazon.com-- not just for ratings, although I do have an interest in those, but for quotes.  I'm hoping something I said in that book intrigued someone enough to stick with them.  I can't spend too much time on this--sometimes it takes a while (Patrick's sex rant in Clear Water, for example, just showed up on GR.)  I'm thinking that if I did my job, I'm going to get some of those quotes for this book, because T and Colby are just too... too vocal to not get quoted.  (Colby's sister has two cats named Dewey Folds and Puddin'... think about that for a minute, and imagine the hilarity that can ensue.)  Anyway, that's about to hit the Coming Soon Page on Dreamspinner, and I'll have a date in March, and I can finally be relieved February is over!

After The Bolt-Hole comes City Mouse.  

Now, I just saw this novella on a list of the most anticipated reads for the year, and you know what that does, right?

If you guessed "Makes Amy want to hide until all the hype dies down!" YOU have guessed correctly, but apparently that's not going to be able to happen.  It seems people want to know what happens to Mal and Owen after the big romantic gesture in St. Pancras station, and, well, you'll get your wish.

It's not pretty.  There is some SERIOUS sex going on in this one-- the faint of heart need not apply.  But there is also the idea that relationships take work, and that when the honeymoon dust has cleared, a a successful couple is the one still standing.  Aleks and I are going to be blog touring this one ad infinitum (nine stops on the tour so far?  OI!  I'm exhausted and I haven't even started writing guest blog posts yet!) but I think people are going to find the writing process on this one interesting.  Just like Mal and Owen, we had to work to make this happen, and I hope people like the results. (Okay-- and don't QUOTE me on this... I have heard a rumor... a RUMOR mind you, that there may be a paperback release of the two novellas in one book... not that there'd be any interest in that... no, no, not at all... not in the least... I can't IMAGINE anyone would want to see that.  No.  Forget I said anything.  Not worth mentioning.  Sorry for wasting your time.)

And finally (and this cover has yet to be unveiled on the blog-- a few of you have seen it on FB and Twitter, but this is the first real PUBLIC unveiling--

We have Racing for the Sun.  

This story will be out just in time for Romantic Times convention, and...

Well, it was (like Bolt-Hole) dragon ridden.  Ace's voice was just in my head, clear as a bell.  I could see Sonny's face in my head.  This is the first contemporary I've written first person, and you'll know why when you hear Ace in your head too.  There were parts of this one that Mary Calmes insisted I not show ANYONE until the book was released, because, she said, they were too intense to see out of context.  I'll agree with that.  I'd finish chapters of this book and my hands would be shaking.  I loved these guys, but it wasn't an easy love, and sometimes, that's my favorite kind.

So, there you go.  My solution to the February blues.  To think past February and into March.  To look at the pretty covers and think, "I hope they like them... I REALLY hope they like them."

I hope you like them.

They can't be out soon enough!

Bye Bye, Baby

I should have more pictures of her.

But I got the cell phone two years ago, and she's been part of my life for fifteen-- somewhere in this computer, I've got pictures of her from the very beginning, but not now.  (There are actually more in my phone, too-- but I was not in the mood to linger.)

See, the thing is, I wasn't all that keen on having a dog.

Back in the dark days, when I was pregnant with Chicken and Big T was an extra-large, extra challenging toddler, Mate and I tried a dog.  Or rather, I dragged a dog home, and Mate (who was working and going to school and who had to take care of his grandmother's house during the rare moments he was there) and then I...

Well, I blew it.  I didn't give that dog all the attention he deserved, and he ran away.

Yup.  I said it.  I was twenty-six years old, in charge of a special needs toddler, and I could barely take care of a dog.

So, flash forward a couple of years and some family drama, and it's 1998.  Mate has (check it!) graduated from college, and Chicken is three and Big T is five, we have a house our own and I have a job in a challenging new school in a challenging new district--and I have less time even than I did four years earlier.

And a colleague of mine (who is a whole blog post in himself) had the door open to his schoolroom, and this dog wandered in.  Yup.  You heard me.  Just WANDERED into his classroom.  He'd already rescued a gray and white cat, and now he had this big Rott-cross dog, who was gangly and spazzy and really happy to please but not too great at taking orders.

"Do you want the cat?" he asked me, and I said, "YES!"  (Poor Emmett-- he was our pre-Dennis Quaid kitty, and he met a car without a license.)

"Okay," he said, "but you have to take the dog too!"

"No," I said warily.  "I don't really want a dog.  I'm not good with them.  I don't want to let this one down."

"Well, too bad.  No dog, no cat--I'll take them both to the pound!"

"You asshole!"

"Yeah, anyway, Mate already said he'd take them both."

So, really, she was Mate's dog.

That didn't keep me from taking her on walks or feeding her.  The walks didn't last long-- she was stubborn and untrained, and she kept dragging on the leash and giving herself kennel cough.  Chicken went through a "take Chiquita on a walk" phase, and so did Big T, but for the most part, she got most of her exercise going absofuckinglutely insane in the backyard.  She ran from end to end-- one neighbor told us that their own Rottweiler (a pure bred, who weighed about 110 lbs. of muscle at the onset) lost twenty pounds once they moved behind us.  Our dogs just spent all day tear-assing back and forth along the back fence.  They were happy that way.  We got a couple of complaints to animal control, but once those people stopped doing landscaping outside, she stopped barking at them (duh!) and basically, she was a good dog-- if a little rough on the lawn.  (Aren't they all?)

For her first nine years, she slept in the garage.

We had a pallet in there of old blankets, and she was pretty happy for the most part.  But then she started getting ear infections and we felt bad-- the cold HURTS your ears, and we couldn't let that happen.  And then my parents did a hideous thing.

Seriously.  Hideous.

They bought her a dog bed.  

And she got middle aged over night.  Well, part of that was, that they got her a dog bed, and we started letting her sleep inside, and then she got middle-aged overnight.

Yeah.  That was my fault.

Because by then, I was writing, and I stayed up late, and she was my buddy.  She'd start whining and I'd start feeding her leftovers, and basically, the two of us got really fat together.  I felt bad.  I mean, she only leapt two inches off the ground when people came over to visit, and her divot back by the fence grew about two inches shallower.  She got slower.  She had to go outside and pee a lot more often.  She actually wore out chasing a ball before we did.  In a couple of years, she'd just look at the ball and then look at us, as if to say, "You're kidding, right?  Where the fuck were you when I had all the energy in the world and you were working nine hour days?  Don't answer that.  Feed me."

But she was still my buddy.  Every night, it was her and me. I'd feed her leftovers, and she'd come and stare at me until I scratched that spot between her nose.

When we got Jonnie, it was because we were pretty sure she wasn't going to be around much longer.  We figured that she was about nine months old when she wandered into my friend's classroom in 1998, and that made her fifteen this winter.  According to every scale we saw, a dog her size, even crossed, usually topped out at twelve.  She'd run her course.

The vet told us that as long as she had five things she still loved to do, she was okay.  We were okay with that.  She still barked at the mothers dropping her kids off across the street, she still barked at the turkeys, she still liked to eat, she still enjoyed sitting and panting and staring at us (she seemed to be smiling) and she still enjoyed eating.  And she really loved the little dog. One night, when we left the house, we caged the little dog.  We came home, and she was sleeping with her head next to his cage, and we were happy.  It was like her blessing.

We hope so.  She couldn't make it up the one step anymore to get from the backyard to the house after she peed.  She no longer barked at the turkeys.  She couldn't hold herself up to pant and smile.  It was time, and yesterday, we gathered the kids (we told Chicken Friday night) and that was it.  It was horrible.  HIDEOUS.  There are no words for that kind of family suckage.

Mate turned to me over the heads of our sobbing children in our arms (the giant one held back until he got home) and said, "Are you sure this was how we were supposed to do it?"

I said, "It beats the hell out of Dennis Quaid, when I got home and everyone said, 'Wait-- you did what to the cat?'"

I've been listening for the uneven click-clack of her toenails on the tile and the hardwood all day.  I'm going to be listening for it in a silent house for a long time.  It was the sound of my nuisance, the thing that needed to eat, to pee, to be pet.  It was my buddy.

Bye, baby.  The little kids don't remember when you used to chase the ball until we were tired, when you wore grooves in the turf, and when you jumped six inches in the air when friend or family came by.  They won't remember that you used to talk to every neighborhood dog, and that you had too much energy to go for a walk without hurting yourself, and that you used to sleep in the garage so you could pace in circles and not drive us bugshit.  They won't remember that your gas didn't used to be toxic, and that you could sleep without snoring, and walk across the house without panting, and that you didn't used to be blind and deaf and snappish.

But Mate and I remember--you were young, and you were awesome, and we could have spent more time with you, but you proved to us that when it came down to it in the end, we deserved a second chance with a dog after all.  Thank you, sweetheart.  I'm so glad we could give you a home.

A Political Fable From a Small Urban Zoo

One day a mother took her two children to a small urban zoo. The zoo was getting crowded-- it had, in fact, been around for quite some time, and was built back in the days when people used to dismiss or marginalize the amazing creatures inside.  It was growing now, in leaps and bounds, and the habitats were becoming much more humane.   That being said, there was some difficulties deciding exactly how to make the zoo grow, without displacing any of the inhabitants, and allowing everybody to benefit from the revenues brought in by happy people who saw happy animals in a controlled circumstance.  
The mother and her progressive children (note the young boy carrying his stuffed animals in the Baby Bjorn and the young girl who also wants to grow up to be a zookeeper) observed the animals as they visited.   Some of the animals simply shook their rattles and glared balefully, hissing and daring anybody to encroach upon their 2x2 space.  The mother grabbed her babies and hustled them past those animals.  They were welcome to their tiny cages, but their venom was frightening, and she didn't put it past them not to try to sneak out and get her.  (She may have been a bit paranoid about this-- she is willing to admit it.)
 Some of the animals sat in groups, chattering meaninglessly, and crapping where they stood.

They were very pretty there, chatting and crapping, but, the little boy noted, that did not change the fact that their little enclosure was covered in poo and they did not get anything accomplished.

The little girl thought they should fly.


The little boy thought they should fly too.  Their mother pointed out that it's easy to cast judgments on pink flightless birds, but that the birds' wings had all been clipped.  Part of this situation was what came from clipping their wings and forcing them to live in a very small enclosure.


Both children thought that sucked, but that didn't stop them from hypothesizing what it would be like to fly.  It didn't stop them from wanting to be kangaroos, either, but then, that's what zoos are for.


There were birds at the zoo--horn bills and emus and ostriches, who all paraded around very full of themselves and tried to look important.  The children were very impressed, especially because the eggs these birds laid were so very odd. Mom said that odd eggs were okay-- they often grew up to odd offspring, and she was fond of those, but not to be too impressed with exotic plumage and perfect predatory posture.  Those birds, she said, neither built nor hunted nor dug.  They were really just good for eating.  The children said that if mom ever cooked them an emu burger, they'd leave home.  Mom said that since she wasn't in the habit of poaching emu from the local emu farm, they were probably safe, and they moved on to the next enclosures.
The next set of enclosures were the predatory feline enclosures.

The snow leopard was sitting in the shade, ignoring all the hubub over larger enclosures.  Snow leopards are like that when there is no snow.  They are fairly sure the world has nothing to do with them when it doesn't look like they think it should.

The lion had one of the best enclosures.  He got to sun himself on a rock all day.  He didn't know why people gave him the best things.  His lionesses didn't know why they got the best things.  They yawned and showed their teeth and went to sleep.  They slept sixteen hours a day.  People came and admired them as they slept, and that brought revenue to the zoo, and that got them the best spot in the house.  It wasn't fair, but there you are.  Some people can get paid to sleep.  That's life.







The tiger isn't pictured here.  The tigers were very beautiful, and the zoo built an even better enclosure for them, but tigers are actually very private animals.  They did not want the better enclosure.  They did not want an enclosure at all.  They wanted to be left the fuck alone, but, given that they were one of the zoo's main attractions, that wasn't going to happen.  So the tigers paraded around a couple of times a day for form's sake, and then went and sulked in their caves and dreamt of being alone in a deserted jungle, with plentiful prey, no hunters, and the occasional film crew to reassure them that their lives had meaning.
This is a margay.  Margay's do nothing but nap in the dappled sun and/or clean themselves, while people with bad vision and prescription sunglasses try to see them in the shadows.  Doesn't he look like a peaceful little guy?  Watch out if you try to pet him-- that margay will take your hand off at the shoulder, lick the blood off his whiskers and go back to sleep.  The zoo loves him.  He needs very little in the way of enclosure, and one small child surreptitiously fed to him on the sly every couple of months keeps his predatory nature in check.  Lots of people come to see the margay.  He has no problem with that. 
This is the giraffe.  The giraffe, too, has a special enclosure made.  When asked by the other animals why the giraffe must be so tall that this special treatment is warranted, the giraffe looks at them in annoyance.  "It is not my fault I am this tall," she says.  "I reached high to feed myself and my family.  We wanted very badly to survive.  You cannot hold survival against an herbivore--it goes against nature."  Some of the animals grumbled about this, but since the carnivores had their own cages, there was really nothing to be done. These are the warthogs.  They really had not much to say, and their enclosures were a little small, but really?  The warthogs don't like to complain.  They sat and watched the comings and goings at the zoo, somewhere between the herbivores, the predators, and the primates, and made comments to each other but did not get involved.  Warthogs are personable, but they are not political--however, I suspect that would change if anyone tried to make their enclosure smaller.  In general, the children and mom agreed that you don't fuck with the warthogs, you just nodded, smiled, and kept them caught up with the news.And, of course, anything with long legs and horns needed to approach carefully.  Those creatures go bounding off into the savannah with graceful leaps, and are never heard from again.  Either that, or their enclosures (or their flesh) is devoured by the predatory cats.  They are--quite understandably--skittish.   But that leads us to the primate enclosures.   Now, we could hear the primates all across the zoo.  What we heard was these guys, the lemurs and the gibbons.  They were screeching and swinging and throwing poo.  The children thought that was fantastic-- omigod!  Poo-throwing-monkeys!  Have you ever seen something that entertaining?  They laughed and laughed, and mom stood back and grimaced.  "They're sort of gross," she said, reluctant to stomp on a good show with common sense.  "They say they're protesting enclosures, but... but look around you!  Don't you see better examples?"
The children did.  
 First there were the orangutans.

The orangutans were powerful and angry.  They did not shriek and they did not throw poo.  They had been insulted by their enclosures, and were burning with the black passion of a thousand sins.  They wanted people to understand what they had done.  They wanted the world to understand the wrongs that had been perpetrated upon the primate races--nay, upon vertebrates around the world --by the thoughtless governance of an ignorant zookeeping society.

Mom told the children to respect their principles and emulate their self-containment--but not to try to be too much like them.

Holding that much deep anger for so long has a horrible, horrible price, as you can see in the drooping eyes of the orangutan idol that the children worshipped.  The children consoled the orangutan idol with deep respect, but they said that mom was right.  You should never be that angry for so long, even if the cause is righteous and just.


 After the orangutans, there came the chimpanzees.  The chimpanzees were caught napping, but when they awoke, and realized that the zoo was all in an uproar about enclosure space, they did the reasonable thing.  They groomed and conferred.  The grooming was good--for one thing, it meant they had a snack before the discussion, and this, as anyone will tell you, is simply good management.  It also reinforced their sense of community.  They were in their little enclosure together, right?  All of the zoo animals were in this together.  They needed to decide upon an action plan and then manipulate the other animals into cooperating.

As mom and children left, mom heard them bemoaning the fact that the other zoo animals never wanted to cooperate, and that maybe, they could just make some unilateral decisions to save time and to keep the entire zoo to sinking into a backbiting morass that accomplished jack diddly squat.  The children thought that this was mean-- all the animals should have a say.

Mom said yes, all the animals should have a say, and maybe the chimps were being big dicks about this whole thing, but that really, who could blame them?  If all the other animals were going to do was sleep in the sun, hide in their caves, or bitch and throw poo, why wouldn't the big monkeys think it was okay to be dicks when they were trying to solve a problem?

The children said that made sense, and then they asked mom which animal she would be.

She said that she wanted to be the margay, because she would love to lie in the shade and eat people who annoyed her and piss to mark her territory and have people think she was beautiful.

The children said she was a good mommy and too nice to be a margay, so she tried again.

She said she was probably the warthog-- she was personable and she didn't like to take sides, just don't fuck with her cage.  (She didn't say "fuck" in front of the children.  She was a good mommy, and saved her potty mouth for snarky blog posts.)

The children said that wasn't a very attractive option either.

Mom said, "Well, there are no attractive options when everybody in the zoo is fighting each other instead of trying to make the zoo a bigger place for everybody, are there?"

The children said no, and it was a lot easier to laugh at the poo-throwing-monkeys than it was to come up with a solution.

Mom said, "That's what's wrong with politics on a global scale, my children.  Do you want to ride the carousel and buy stupid crap in the gift shop?"

Because she was a wise mom, and knew sometimes distraction from the problem really was the only good solution.

And so she bought stuffed animals, and backpacks, and binoculars, and a pretty scarf, and they came home for snacks.