Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 117

THE PRINCESS AND THE SNOWBIRD IS OUT TODAY!

You know that I don't do much self-promotion, but please go out and buy this if you have loved the series. I think that this book is more like the first one than the second, if I can say that as the author. I also love the fact that I finally wrote a book where a main character who has no magic at the beginning of the book also has no magic at the end of the book. And he is still heroic, without magic. Maybe more heroic. Because, let's face it, we all have to face the world without magic...

April 2010 monthly stats

Books Read and Recommended:
Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb
Changes by Jim Butcher (Yes, even so)
The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg
How to Draw the Human Figure
The Figure: The Classic Approach

This is not a very long list. I don't know whether to blame it on the Ironman or just embrace it as part of a new life in which I do not finish books that are perfectly well written, but which I personally do not love, of which there might have been six more on this list. But then, what to do with them? I am tryi...

what an Ironman is like--super long

I woke up at 4:30, got up and dressed in my tri gear: tri shorts with a little biking pad, a sports bra and a tank in bright fuschia and black and a bit of turquoise. I put my hair back, grabbed my wetsuit bag, a banana, a granola bar and a bottle of gatorade and hopped in the car. Everything else (bike, helmet, running shoes, etc) had already been set up the day before in the various transition areas. Wonderful 16 drove me and my husband to the buses where my husband realized he had forgo...

Can I take her?

I knew a man once who said that whenever another man entered a room he sized him up to see if he could "take him.". I find myself doing the same thing in race situations, with the variation of trying first to figure out if the woman is in my age group ( tricky) and then if she is better (also tricky). Women who look skinny may be good or not and muscles are not always an advantage. So why do I do it? Evolution?

off

I am off to St. George to do my Ironman, so I won't be posting more this week. By all reports, the weather should be horrific, and the course itself is the most brutal in history. I have no idea if this is true, but I am suitably terrified since I haven't gone down and ridden the course myself. Hopefully I will live through it all and be happy I did it. I try to remind myself each time I do a race how fortunate I am to have the capacity to do so, both physically and financially.

character questions

I wrote these down for a WIP with a character who dies early on, but turns out to be a really important part of the plot and so I have to build in a lot of backstory.

What is the worst thing that ever happened to her?
What illnesses has she suffered?
Who does she miss most/grieve over?
What surprises her?
Who has betrayed her?
Whom has she betrayed?
What does she have in storage?
Former boyfriends?
What are her biggest secrets?
What is her job? How did she get it?
What did she study at college?
Where di...

risk and writing

14 was talking to me about a competition she is entering this weekend locally. She wanted to know my opinion about the piece she was planning to sing, which is "Good Enough." It is quite difficult for her, as there are sections that land right in the middle of her second bridge (I think this is the right term, though I am musically impaired, so I am not sure). She has been working for about an hour a day going through that section again and again and has made some significant progress. Ho...

more writing time

I hear a lot of people complain that they do not have enough time to write. Strangely enough, I do not think I have complained of that in the last three or four years, since my youngest started preschool. Now, I spent many years juggling little kids and writing time, and I've written plenty of posts and articles on the topic of finding more time to write. But it's just not a reality for me anymore. And even when it was, I tended to find all the time I could use to write.

The reality is, yo...

why I hate Rush Limbaugh (and Glenn Beck)

I am sometimes accused of being a conservative, I think mostly because I am a Mormon. I do have some conservative beliefs, which I will not go into here. However, I am considered pretty liberal out in these parts, so I get to be in the unenviable position of being too liberal for Utahns/Mormons and too conservative for lots of other people.

Today I am screaming about how I do *not* want to be associated with Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. I have listened to both of them. I used to listen to ...

good enough

The best part of being a writer has to be when you go back through a novel before sending it off to be read/macheted by your editor and thinking how great it is.

The worst part of being a writer is that even while you are experiencing all this joy, you also have a sinking feeling that you must be completely delusional and there is something terribly wrong here that you just can't see because you are completely, utterly blind and stupid.

But you send it off anyway, because how else are you goin...