Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 70

Hello, Tuesday, Lookin' Good

Once again, I have been a poor correspondent and have much to catch you all up on. Probably the most exciting news (for me), is that I have completed the revisions for Tate's Precinct 13 (which will be out in August of 2012).



It took me a surprisingly long time to get through these revisions, but I'm happy with the results. Yesterday, as part of the celebration of finishing, Mason and I went sledding with a friend of mine from KSW and her brother (who is about Mason's age). Even though there's only a dusting of snow in places, we discovered a section of the hill at the St. Paul Country Club's golf course was still plenty slippery. We had a blast going up and down at speed for an hour. They had one of those innertube sleds, so we all had to take turns on that, while trying to avoid the "pit of doom" as we dubbed the sand trap that was just at the far end of the hill.

Good times.

Plus, then we invited everyone back to our place. The boys watched "Bleach" and the ladies all gathered in the kitchen to make a batch of fleischkuechle (a German from Russia meat-filled pastry that's DEEP FRIED.) So good! It was so much fun, in fact, that Kate returned to hang out, chat, and nom fleischkuechle while I continued to fry and fry and fry.



Speaking of kuk sool wan, on Friday I also participated in a jumping class wherein I MOSTLY didn't embarrass myself. It turns out, however, I FAIL standing on one foot.

Also, I got an invitation to participate in programming at Chicago's WorldCON this year, and it seemed too much like an offer I couldn't refuse. So I filled out their participant form AND registered myself as attending. So, guess who's goin' to WorldCon this year?? That's right: Yours Truly!

Otherwise, I'm looking forward to doing all those things I neglected while working on revisions! Interwebs, here I come!!

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th!

I've got a surprisingly busy day ahead of me. I have lunch plans with a friend this afternoon, a book that still needs some revision (though I've been making steady progress,) and this evening we've got both Mason's school's carnival (a fundraiser), AND a special topics class at KSW on "Jumping" for me.

I'd actually forgotten that Carnival was going to conflict with my Jumping class, so this means that the clausterphobic and crowd wary Shawn will end up having to accompany Mason at the Carnival.

So while I don't expect any disasters today, it's certainly set up for some.

Wish me luck.

Monday, Monday... La, La....

Yesterday was the kind of Monday for me that you might see featured in a Garfield strip. I didn't quite get a pie in my face, but it was a lot like that in spirit.

I should say, though, that it wasn't AWFUL. It was... inconvenient, frustrating, a little messed up -- though never seriously, which kind of made it that much more annoying, you know?

It started the moment after I dropped Shawn off at work. I had a sudden flash of insight. "Uh, Mason," I said. "Did we remember your lunch? Your backpack?" Nope. So we had to make a quick trip back home before getting to school, which we did, with time to spare before the first bell.

As I was leaving school, I thought to myself. Well, that was entertaining. I should call Shawn and tell her all about it. I opened my phone and watched as the battery blinked out. Phone was dead.

At the coffee shop, Facebook decided to flake out. It pulled up, but decided that I'd read everything of interest. At the top of the status update section it proclaimed, "No new updates" and refused to give me anything, not even so-and-so's latest Farmland purchase. I decided it was a sign to go home and work on my revisions (which I did.)

Everything went along fine for a while, but then at lunch I thought I might like some tomato soup. I grabbed a can and pulled the top off. I looked down at it and realized, "Oh crap, it's cream of chicken." I shrugged and added some turkey bits from the freezer, and it was really pretty tasty. Just not what I'd been looking forward to.

I'd been hoping to go to kuk sool wan last night, but Mason came home with a headache.

See, like I said... not TERRIBLE, just sort of "meh."

Last night as I was falling asleep, however, I decided that I'm going to make another New Year's resolution. I'm going to try to get ebook versions of the AngeLINK series out in time for CONvergence. Considering I'm planning to pay to have someone else to most of the putzy work for me, this shouldn't be an impossible task. The big thing I need to do is fix the messy file of Archangel Protocol that I got from Torrent.

It just seems like I may find a few new readers at CONvergence, and it would be nice to be able to point them to e-copies of the out-of-print books.

Also, I'm going to try to be better about having promotional items on hand for my Tate books.

I Should Be Revising, But...

I should be revising, because I find myself with a bit of unexpected free time. Mason's teacher called about a half-hour ago to cancel my usual volunteering gig. It seems that they had an awesome math test, so he was planning on giving them extra snow-play time outside this afternoon, as a reward. Apparently there are only a couple of sheets that need to go into the folder, and he thought I might like to just skip this time. There just wouldn't be that much for me to do. Since tonight is the first time I'll be volunteering for chess club, I thought that seemed like a pretty fine idea.

I'm looking forward to chess club. Mason has been kind of into chess for a while. Since we started watching Hikaru no-Go, actually. I'm... okay at it. I played chess in high school, though never seriously. The point is, it will be nice for him to play with people who are probably not only better at it, but more INTO it.

But because we knew we'd be going to chess tonight, we went to KSW again last night. (Two nights in a row!) I had a surprisingly great time. The "game" at the end of class was a friendly competition to see who could do a running snap-kick over a string of knoted belts that was risen progressively higher and higher. I surprised myself (and possibly the head instructor) by actually being in the group that lasted all the way to the end. This was particularly surprising to me because it wasn't just about jumping (which I normally am not good at) but it was also required that the motion with which we went over the barrier actually RESEMBLED a kick, not just a jump (or, as I would have expected of myself, a flail.)

When time-over was called, there were two brown belts, a red belt and puny little yellow-belted me. (Also, I would like to note that we were all girls, and I was at least twice the age of the oldest one.)

Cool, huh?

I thought so.

If nothing else, it bodes well for my year-in-excercise.

The other really funny thing was that when we got home, Mason talked me into going downstairs to row on our rowing machine for almost another hour. Yeah.... see, we have this new rule, which is, if I'm going to waste time watching TV, I have to be rowing. Mason really, really wanted to watch some more Bleach. How could I say no to that?

We ended up watching two episodes, which is about an hour.... I should be so sore today, but I'm not. I have a bit of stiffness in my legs here and there, but I'm happy to say that I'm not crippled with muscle soreness. Weird.

All right. Enough of that. I'm going to try to get more work done on the book. I have to say that revisions are taking more time than I might have hoped. Part of that is because the beginning is a bit drafty, as it were. There are holes that need patching, and. in some cases, re-BUILDING. I spent a good part of the morning rewriting.

To be fair, I had a hard time starting this book, so it's not that surprising that the beginning is the roughest part.

Resolutions

I will admit that I kind of like the idea of making New Year's resolutions. I do it every year. I think the key to enjoying the idea is not to stress too much if you break them. This year I am resolved to find some fun new excercises.

Thing is, my gym membership expired. I normally would just have Shawn renew it as part of my holiday present package, but my gym got sold to another larger corporation and I would have to start going somewhere new and/or hassling around to get a new membership card, etc. That made it ridiculously easy to JUST QUIT. Obviously, I would like to continue to be fit in some way beyond kuk sool wan. So, what I decided to do this year is to take the money I normally would have spent on a gym membership and apply it toward fun community education classes that are excercise related (as, clearly, cooking classes are fun, but sort of the opposite of what I'm trying to acheive.)

I have already signed up for two! Starting in February, I will be taking a hula hooping class! Then, in April, I will take "Bokken: The Japanese Sword," which sounds super-awesome. The biggest trauma so far, is deciding which of the cool sounding classes to take. I had an awful time trying to decide between all the things on offer this semester. I can only hope some will be repeated the next time the catalogue comes out. The only other bummer is that most of these classes are conveniently scheduled for people with REAL JOBS, which means they're in the evening rather than during the day. I wish that more people were loser-layabouts like me so that these sorts of things would be offered in the middle of the day.

Still, should be fun. Plus, kuk sool wan is offering "topics" classes on Fridays so, I've signed up for a couple of those as well. I will meditating on Friday. When we went to class last night, I did warn Nicki Jo Kyo Nym that I meditate on a regular basis already and I have an AMAZING knack for falling asleep. Actually, I must go into some kind of sleep/meditative state because I can hear the words, "relax, close your eyes...." and then I wake up just as she's saying, "open your eyes slowly..." It's kind of amazing, because sometimes, I will wake myself up in the middle with a loud snore and be very aware that I was DREAMING, rather than meditating.

But they're also doing things like a topics class on jumping and falling another other things that are much more likely to be strenuous. :-)

I'm also resolved to be a better, more published author. But that's kind of the gimme resolution, you know?

Happy New Year

I see that I haven't updated since before Christmas. Yikes! Shame on me.

Let's see... perhaps I will try to work backwards to recount all the goings-on at chez Morehouse-Rounds. The New Year was quite lovely. We broke with a long-standing tradition of an early night and snoring before the ball dropped and actually decided to be down right social on New Year's Eve. Our friends, seanmmurphy and his wife, invited us out for a candle lit walk at Snelling State Park. Unfortunately, we were having a no-good-rotten day from almost the start. Shawn woke up with a killer migraine and Mason woke up... a teenager. (He was amazingly whiny, sullen, and angry about nothing and everything all at once.) Even though Shawn was feeling better by evening, I wasn't sure I wanted to inflict Mason's mood on the Murphy-Carlson's so, I volunteered to hike in the woods sans the rest of my family.

It was actually very lovely. If my family was more energetic and athletic, I would try to make it a family tradition of our own. There was no snow, of course (the storm blew in just as we were headed back to the car), but the park volunteers had lit the trail with lovely ice and plastic bucket candles. We walked and talked about mainstream fiction vs. science fiction and people we knew and our genetic/ethnic backgrounds and all sorts of things that one rambles on about with good friends. We had such a lovely time that Sean's wife offered to bring the wine and cheese over to Shawn and Mason, rather than having me have to fetch them over to the Murphys'.

When I called Shawn, the overall mood in the household had improved dramatically, so it was a go. We had munchies (added to by the things in our fridge, and I am please to report we could even offer a few fancy cheeses ourselves,) and sparkling juice for the majority of us, and bit of wine for those that wanted. We talked until nearly midnight, when the Murphys decided to head home and we rushed upstairs to watch Dick Clark and the ball.

The day had turned around quite nicely. I should say too, that in an effort to try to have a happier day, we had gone book shopping earlier. Uncle Hugos needed more copies of the AngeLINK books and so I brought what I had, and we made a nice trade. Mason got a ton of those punny MYTH books by Robert Lynn Asprin (I LOVED those when I was a tween,) and I even walked out with a book or two for myself. Then, since it was the one day when the shops were still open for a while, we zipped back to St. Paul with the plan of hitting Kowalski's for last minute food supplies before the holiday wasteland. We drove past our other favorite bookstore: Sixth Chamber, and we decided to drop Shawn and Mason off for a look-through and I went and fetched the milk and eggs and other sundries. When I came back to retreive them, they were just ready to walk out. I asked Shawn if she'd remembered to try out the secret password. On Facebook, Sixth Chamber had a deal that the first five people to walk in and say "hedgehog" would get a gift certificate. Shawn said she hadn't, so I marched up to the counter and said, "hedgehog!"

I won.

I was the very last person to offer the secret password. I got a t-shirt, a Japanese eraser (kitty!), and a 20% off coupon.

Then I came home and discovered a royalty check in the mail from Penguin for Tall, Dark & Dead (the book that continues to sell, sell, sell!)

So, I'd say that New Year's Eve was pretty auspicious. Money and fabulous prizes galore!

Speaking of TD&D, one of the things I did over the holiday was read the page proofs for the mass-market paperback edition. They sent it as a .pdf, and so I mailed it to Shawn's fancy new Kindle Fire, and spent a day reading my book on the Kindle. I found several typos, much to my surprise. But, the good news is that they'll be corrected in the paperback version. The other thing that was kind of awesome about that is that I discovered that one of my best selling books is also one of my quirkiest.

I don't know if you noticed, but Garnet is kind of a slut. There is a LOT of sex in that book, and sexiness. Sebastian is also surprisingly dark, and Parrish is... a total hustler, like literally, in that book. It's kind of amazing... and Garnet's friends are odd, a lot like my real friends, and the interactions in that books are very *me*.

Thus, one of the things that re-reading that has done for me is made me a bit more confident about my quirkiness as a writer. You see, in most cases, I have no idea if my personal brand of weirdness was a plus or a minus to sales. The AngeLINK books, which are very *me*, are all out of print.

This "failure" has caused me to believe that maybe I had no idea how to write to a popular market. But, TD&D is going to mass-market. It's the only book I've had that's changing format like that. As a trade-size book, it's well into its sixth or seventh printing. I've easily made as much money in royalties from that book as they paid me in an advance, probably twice as much... if not more.

My point is, I can now say, with confidence, that my quirkiness is _not_ a detriment to sales. IN FACT, a person could make a pretty strong case that... maybe, just MAYBE I know what I'm doing.

Well, we probably shouldn't go THAT far. But, at least, it seems to be true that a book that has a lot of my extra special weirdness smeared all over it isn't automatically headed for the remainder pile.

This was kind of an epiphany... during the Epiphany and everything.

Meanwhile, yesterday was our traditional day to take down all the Christmas decorations. You might not expect this of a couple of pagans, but we kind of go all out for Solstice/Yule/Christmas. There is tinsle! Bells! And all the other things that the Grinch absolutely detests. So, that was kind of the main event for the day. We hauled the tree out for recycling, put everything away into boxes... and, because it was the last REAL day of vacation, all this was interspersed with lightsaber battles.

Mason, I should warn you, is a dark sider. Which forces me, the Slytherin, to play the good Jedi. Mason, too, likes to make up the various Darths that he portrays. Yesterday, each Darth had the added power of the elements, a sort of Elemental Force power, so there was Darth Terrus (Earth) and Darth Inferno (Fire) among others. Probably the toughest guy was the one with water power because a touch of his lightsaber froze me with ice. In the Masonverse, too, the good guys do NOT automatically triumph, either. So, I died a lot.

Let's hope that old idea that how you spend New Year's Day is how you spend the rest of the year isn't true, or I'm going to be run through with a lot of lightsabers.

Cookie Craziness

Mason is home sick today. He's got a scratchy throat, and, while he probably could have been alright at school, I thought I should keep him home so that he can be well enough to attend the end of the year party on Thursday. (Also, his grandparents are coming up to celebrate Solstice with us on Thursday, so hopefully he'll feel better by then.)

This has, alas, delayed my holiday shopping. I still have quite a bit to do, actually. I have gotten Shawn's Soltice gift, but nothing -- absolutely NOTHING -- for Christmas. But, I decided that I will not be defeated. Today... I shall bake even more cookies!!!

This house will be overrun by cookies. It will be awesome.

Bleach or... KSW??

I watched this scene the other day and was weirdly reminded of the head instructor at KSW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAcWlmjoNNw

I mean, okay, they're both bald and awesome fighters, but when Ikkaku Madarame's zapakuto turns into a pike... I SWEAR I saw that at the dojan the other day!!!

A Sunday Report

Sitting at the Coffee Grounds listening to some Crossroads poets strut their stuff. It's nice to be in a familiar place with familiar folks. Mason, who came to see his friends, also brought along his DS because there's some kind of Pokemon give-away. He's listening, but he also has a Big Nate book. It's very cute to see some of the kids stammer through their poems. I feel a bit guilty being here because I was meant to take part in this afterschool program, but the day they chose to have it on was Thursday -- my already busiest day (AND, perhaps more importantly, Mason wasn't that keen.)

This weekend has been all about cookies. We made rosettes and spritzes and sand tarts (so far. When I left for the poety slam, Shawn was making pecan tossies...)





We may kill ourselves with cookies because there is no snow here in Minnesota. We've been listening to a LOT of Christmas music (yay, "Beep-Beep-Bye-Bye, Santa's Got a Semi") and trying to force cheer with a lot of powdered suger as substitute.

Bleah!

I probably just need more coffee, but I'll tell you something for nothing, pal: I don't feel like doing anything today. I just want to curl up in a corner and sleep!

Alas, that's not really on the agenda. I did manage to decorate the porch for the holidays. There is tinsel! Ornaments! Light! F*cking Cheer! And the entire time I struggled with the lights and such, I did, in point of fact, swear like a sailor. Not exactly in the spirit of the season... well, I suppose it depends on what season of which I speak. Since the days ARE getting darker, perhaps my equally darkening mood is completely within the realm of "seasonal."

:-)

We had a great time at kuk sool wan last night, which we did finally make it to. I love the kids/adult classes because we got to run an obstical course last night. I really, really wanted to get to the part where you had to throw yourself on the mats, but, alas, it turns out I can not walk backwards on a balance beam/straight line. Very sad! :-)

However, I always have a great time trying.

Trying and failing is FUN in the kids/adult classes.

I don't feel the same way when I go to the adults only classes. I don't know why anyone would go to them. The parent I talked to last night explained that he's "addicted to the adrenaline rush," which makes absoultely no sense to me. Perhaps, he's better at KSW than I am. Perhaps he gets a thrill from his own phsyical prowess. I'd have to be someone else entirely to experience that, however. I need, instead, to be happy being dorky. Luckily, this has always been my personal relationship with my body.

Well, I should go eat a little lunch and then try to get some revising done after all. I got through the first chapter! Yay, me.