K.B. Inglee's Blog: The Shepherd's Notes, page 15

No Resolutions This Year

I’m skipping resolutions this year. For years my writing goals have been about how much I wrote and how much I submitted. When I tallied my score at the end of the year, I was shocked by my success. My nest set of resolutions will be heavily revised.
But let me brag a bit first. My short story “Joseph’s Captivity” was published by Untreed Reads. Two stories in my Victorian forensics line were picked up. “Rule of Thumb,” about fingerprints, was published by Mysterical-E. “The Magic Bullet,” about rifling lines, is in Death Knell V coming out sometime this spring. Both are set in the late 1800s. Since I had six works accepted this year, my resolution to submit six short stories a year is out the window. I have to up my writing quotas and I would like to finish the novel I am working on, but I am not making those goals into resolutions. Yet.

Justin does his job

I have always believed we should know where our food comes from. I have raised and slaughtered chickens to provide a meal. Thursday I got to do something that I had been wanting years to do. I slaughtered a sheep. OK, I helped slaughter a sheep. He weighted maybe two hundred pounds, and had become a menace in the field. Few were sad to see him go. We had decided he was too dangerous to pass on to someone else. He was not breeding stock, though he was a magnificent animal. We don't usually name the lambs. Who wants to eat Wendy or Oliver? In this case, both he and his twin sister had names. They were bottle fed since birth and were more pets than livestock but when he began knocking people over and threatening to break bones, he became a liability. It took four of us to get him onto the truck for a ride a few miles to where he would meet his fate. It took three of us to get him off the truck and up to the spot where we would do the deed.
I was home before noon with very mixed feelings. Three of us had taken care of them as lambs and he still trusted us, but no one else. How many times have I told school kids that farm animals have to work for their living? Sheep give wool and meat and baby sheep. He couldn't breed. His best wool was last year's crop. That left meat. He did what he was born to do, and he did it well.

Down Time

A woman who came to Newlin Grist Mill for a tour was so taken by the Miller's House that she told me she would like to live this way for a month. No electricity, no running water, no heat, no internet. I told her she could probably do it for a weekend but not a month. She assured me she could.
This morning another friend told me she had spent a weekend at a Quaker retreat house by herself. She probably had electricity and running water but no internet.
I have often thought about renting a hotel room to write for a weekend.
From time to time writers I know have organized a "retreat," but these have felt to me more like writing parties than work sessions. Knowing the people involved, I suspect there is some competition to provide the best food and drink. And revelry is a must.
Now I am seriously looking for a place to go by myself and write. Maybe I could rent the Miller's House.

Starting up again

I have started writing again after taking six weeks of to be sick with a mysterious illness. I missed several important events as a result, a weekend conference and a local meeting where I was supposed to give a presentation. I still tire easily, but since I write early in the morning, I manage an hour or two. I have never been able to write after lunch.
When I went to feed the sheep the other day, I saw how the split rail fences came together at the perfect angle to support a dead body. So, there sits Benjamin, wearing someone else’s clothes, dead as a door nail. What’s next? Not a clue. In a week or so I will have the whole thing worked out and it will make sense. I hope.

Harry Potter Grows Up

I just finished JK Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy. I loved it, though I realized not everyone would. Her writing is so good that I read many pages a second time just to savor them. I wish I could write a plot as twisted as this and still keep everything straight. She has a huge cast and I wished she has put a list in the front. I had to stop after a few pages and make my own. Once I got to know them, I found them true to themselves.
I don't imagine this will become as popular as her Potter books, but it was certainly a good read.

What do I know, Anyhow?

I thought I knew what my writing was. I can name the genre, the sub genre and tell you how it fits with other works of the same type. So when I got a call for a short story about Thanksgiving that included a crime and traditional holiday food, I thought it was just my cup of tea. The one possible drawback was that it had to be funny. I can write funny but I can't force it.

I thought the finished product met the criteria, and the story was a farce. I sent it in on deadline with scant hopes and settled in for the wait. I was shocked to get a reply the next morning. The editor liked the story but didn't find it funny enough. He offered to publish it as a stand alone short story.

Do me a favor and read Joseph's Captivity, and then read The Killer Wore Cranberry, the anthology for which it was intended. Both are published by Untreed Reads. Let me know what you think. If nothing else you will get some good holiday reading, and you might figure out what to pass up when the plates are passed at the big feast.

odd things about being a writer

A week or so ago I got an email from someone saying they would like to publish my story A Rule of Thumb. I hadn't sent the story out for a long time, two years it turned out when I checked my records. So I wrote back and said sure. Well it went up today on Mysteriacl-e, an ezine. Rule of Thumb deals with early use of forensics. I wrote the story first for a contest where the setting had to be a cruise ship and when it didn't make the cut, I sent it to a regional publisher where it was also turned down. Well it has finally found a home. Look for it at: http://mystericale.com/index.php?issu...

My new novel

I really am writing a novel. I started it so I could say I was doing it; then I got caught up in it. The town in Delaware is fictional as are all the characters. I had great fun constucting a fake town between New Castle and Delaware City. You can look those up on a map, but you won't find Cobbs Crossing. It had to have a population around 500 with the appropriate businesses. It now has the Sweeds Head Tavern, a blacksmith shop, a farm market, two places of worship and a cemetary. What else would I need to make a go of a town in 1752?

reading vs doing

This weekend I attended a book signing at my local independent bookstore. I hit it off with the author and can't wait to sit down with the book. The work is historical but with an element of supernatural, while mine are straight historical. I asked him how he got the daily life stuff right and he gave a few suggestions. But I have a suggestion for him. Get thy self to a reenactment. Any time period before electrified houses works. Knowing that you can't cook until you have chopped the wood is fine, but trying to build a fire when you are hungry, and you know you still have to wait until the food is cooked is quite another.

Wearing wool in the hot spell

The sheep have hated this hot spell. They have been hiding in the barn where is it a few degrees cooler.
I have been trying to write, but my mind is as wooly as their bodies. It is supposed to be cooler today. Maybe my creative abilities will come back if it does cool down. The sheep surely will be more comfortable.