Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 74

Dear Mr. Card...

Dear Mr. Card (and really any homophobe out there),

First, I'd like you to know that ENDER'S GAME was, and remains, one of my all-time favorite books. I'm mildly dyslexic (I was born that way,) and it usually takes me days, sometimes months to read books that I really enjoy. I read yours in a single day.

I've known you were a homophobe for some time. I read an interview in Salon.com with you several years ago that made your rather ugly views quite plain. However, after reading this review of your newest release, HAMLET'S FATHER (Subterranean Press), I just wanted you to know that as a gay woman (I was born that way, too,) I spent this morning destroying the heterosexual world and corrupting American youth by driving my son to school, coming home and doing the dishes, baking some zucchinni bread for my partner to take to work to share at her Friday meeting, and getting pizza dough ready for tonight's dinner.

I can see why you're scared of me.

I'm off to volunteer at my son's schol right now. You should really make sure I have no civil rights. I might... I don't know... bake some cookies later.

I Should Be Writing, But...

I should be writing, but I've gotten to the end of revising everything I had saved up to this point. Now I have to write entirely new (but lost) stuff, and I'm feeling a bit discouraged. I thought I might feel up to going back to it after a short interlude on the Interwebs.

Yesterday, Mason and I went to the Minnesota Zoo with Eleanor, despite the heat. It was a lot of fun, as zoo trips with Eleanor always are, but we all got pooped out a lot quicker thanks to the brutal heat. Mason, at least, had his swim trunks so he could play in the sprinkler park by the entrance to the Grizzly Coast exhibit. The grown-up, alas, did not think to pack a change of clothes.

We saw some cool animals. I mostly refrained from taking many pictures, because I was enjoying just hanging out with Eleanor and Mason. But I did get this awesome shot of a wild turkey that wandered into the Minnesota Trail.



And, this amazing shot of a snoozing Amur leopard:



However, probably the coolest thing was watching the grizzly bear who was trying to fish salmon out of the pond. S/he walked along the bottom. Someone else watching made the observation that she seemed to be trying to kick the salmon up closer to her front paws, so she could grab them. Everyone wondered why she wouldn't just dive down and nab them, but perhaps she didn't know how (I think all the bears there were raised in captivity.) Anyway, it was utterly fascinating. Mason and Eleanor and I watched her for several minutes. I got this picture of how close she was to the glass:

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We also had an open house at Mason's school. Not much to report about that, except that Mason's new teacher seems like a winner. Fingers crossed for a good year for him in 3rd (and, because the school loops, 4th) grade!

Back in the Saddle

I'm beginning to believe in fate a bit. I mean, I lost all those words, right? Well, I've been going over the novel as I decide what needs to be re-keyed from paper drafts or rewritten entirely and I discovered several places where I can make the story make MORE SENSE! (and/or be more dramatic, etc.) To be fair, I tend to do this sort of massive revision at some point during my novel writing process, but I think that there are times when I think, "Oh, well, I'll change this little thing here rather than completely scrap the scene," you know? Now, since I have no scene to scrap -- well, I think it's all for the better.

Plus, I have this fancy new Toshiba. It was a super-cheap computer, because, well, I drop computers, but what I really, really like about it? The keys click. When I write it SOUNDS like I'm writing, you know?

That's almost as cool as getting a new pen and notebook. (Some of you know what I'm talkin' about.)

In other news, we're back from our trip to LaCrosse. We happened to be down at the same time as the Great River Folk Festival and River Pride (LaCrosse's GLBT Pride festival.) We attended neither, but, instead hung out with "the old guy," aka my dad. He's doing so much better. He's still in the recovery wing of the nursing home waiting for hip surgery, but every time I see him he's more and more like his old self. I don't think I quite realized how profoundly sick he was until I saw how vastly he improved.

At any rate, we have our fingers crossed that the hip surgery will happen in mid-September. Then he'll be singing, "Free at last, free at least. Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."

Shawn and I did drive by the Pride festival because Shawn spotted the gathering out of the corner of her eye. Let's just say I'm happy that I live in Minneapolis/St. Paul. There were a bunch of idiots with the hateful protest signs outside the entrance, so you had to walk past them to get into the fair grounds. Not very good planning on the pride people's part. I did my duty, however, and flipped off some yahoo holding a sign about the sin of sodomy. If Mason hadn't been in the car I would have yelled to him, "If you don't approve, don't engage in it!" (Since it does seem that, in the case of a lot of Republican congress critters those that protest the loudest seem to have the most to hide.)

Ah well.

The other fun thing we did was that we spent some unexpected royality moneys that came via the Germans. (I actually made a profit for them on Tall, Dark & Dead.) We bought ourselves an iPad. The best thing we've done with it so far is buy the Scrabble app. Now all three of us play a game on the iPad after diner. Nice.

I didn't end up going to kuk sool wan last night because I got hit by an awful allergy attack. I've been told it's ragweed season, and I have to believe it. I suffered the entire day, even though we had plans to hang out at Como Zoo with my friend Eric Heideman. We still managed to have a good time checking out the grizzlies and the polar bears, but I noticed the woman who sold us the snow cones was also suffering.

Today seems better, perhaps because of the impending rain?

Anyway, I should go write. Clickity-clack! Clickity-clack!

Disaster on the Open Seas

Just a quick note to tell you all how stupid I was yesterday. I was moving from one room to another while working on my laptop and.... (drum roll, please)... I dropped it. It landed just _so_ and killed itself. I destroyed my hard drive completely.

This is pretty tragic in and of itself (although, I will admit to secretly wanting a new laptop for several months now,) but the really, really, REALLY dumb part was that the last time I saved my WiP to a flashdrive was... oh, over a month ago, when the novel was half the size it was yesterday.

I lost 30,000 words.

Completely.

Luckily, there do exist a few paper copies and the older versions of the partial. I should probably be more devistated, but I'm taking this whole disaster as an opportunity to do a major revision. I was in the middle of this process before the crash, anyway. Now I'm just double-timing it.

Despite what it sounds like, I don't FEEL like I lost that much. The story was stalling and I needed some kind of a jump start. Plus, most of the stuff I was satisfied with was in the older version anyway. Now I get to revise and rewrite the later stuff that I didn't much like.

What is the lesson here, kids? Always back-up. Back-up everything, everywhere.

The other news is that the Polish edition of ALMOST TO DIE FOR came in the mail the day before yesterday.

HISHE: Potter

I only just recently found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsYWT5Q_R_w

It's a link to the "How It Should Have Ended" folk's alternate Harry Potter Ending. It's fairly awesome, IMHO. I hope you enjoy it.

What I did on my Summer Vacation...

Wow, I had a typo on my subject line at first, which read, "What I Did My Sumer Vacation" and I thought that might make an awesome historical novel or time travel short story.

But, at any rate, as I said, yesterday Mason and I went to Minnehaha Park. I'm actually still sort of recovering from the massive amount of sun we got. (Why IS it that fresh air makes a person so tired?)

Thanks to all the rain we've been having, the falls were magnificent.



Mason says of this next picture: "The sand pits in the picture, I dug with my hands. I call them the Causeway Caverns."



Now we're off to the Roseville Library to pick up all the books we put on hold. I think today is going to be a lounge and read day. I'm giving up on the book I started reading (with my dyslexia, sometimes I have to make the call that a book isn't worth the effort and time,) so I'm going to see what I can find for myself to read as well.

Into the Woods

I'll have pictures to share tomorrow, but I just wanted to record that Mason and I spent the last FOUR HOURS at Minnehaha Park. It was pure awesome. We hiked the trail to the Mississippi River and then sat along the banks building sandcastles. Only half-way through this monumental undertaking did it occur to us to wonder if it was actually "legal" to mess around with the shoreline in a city park. Uh... too late! Because mess we did. In fact, we just had to take baths to get all the sands out of our behinds.

To top the day off, we had a classic banana split at DQ.

Then we got to pick up a couple more books that had come into interlibrary loan for Mason at our Mirrim Branch Library. Ah, a perfect summer day conquered!

General Mundanity

I've been letting pictures do the talking lately partly because my life has not been terribly exciting at the moment. Mason is off school for "summer" (though he goes "year round," which means, while he gets three months off, they're not all in the summer. We only have the month of August off before he starts third grade in September.) We kicked off vacation by going up to our friends' cabin, and now we're settling into days spent at the library.

Mason has really been taking advantage of the library this year. From some friends at school, he'd heard the Roseville Library had the "good prizes" for "Bookawocky," the libraries' promotion to encourage kids to read 20 hours. We'd been meaning to go check it out for months, but we finally made it there early last week. We registered ourselves in their system (since they're officially Ramsey County and our card is only good for St. Paul,) and got ourselves a "Bookawocky" form. Mason dilligently set out to read for 20 hours. It took him three days.

He won a day pass to the Waterpark of America, a ticket to the State Fair, a free book, and a lovely, red water bottle.

During "Bookawocky" madness, we must have also checked out over 20 books, though he's a fast enough reader that he supplimented with some books of his own. He checked out a whole bunch of chapter book sized ones, particularly the Beast Quest series and Bionicles. And, he discovered the joys of putting books on HOLD. He's now become a HOLD expert --and kind of a hoarder. I think the thrill of "request it!" went straight to his head.

Even now that "Bookawocky" is over for him (the rest of you have until the 21st!), he's been starting the day asking when we can go to the library. Routinely, we've driven between both the Roseville one and our own Mirrim Park Branch. Still, it's been fun.

We also went to the Children's Museum on Monday, as it is one of the few museums open on Mondays. Consequentally, it was really quiet at 9:00 am, and Mason nearly had the run of the place. Also, kudos to the kid for checking out the "Passport to Play" from the library, so our trip was free.

I think, however, that Mason might be starting to outgrow the Children's Museum. It's really keyed for kids much younger and I noticed that places that used to entrance him, like the faux restaurant/grocery store just don't hold his interest as long. We still love the Art Park's sandbox, and managed to spend the majority of our time there building sandcastles in the sun.

Luckily, there's still the zoo...

Otherwise, I found some time to finish up Tate's copyedited manuscript for ALMOST EVERYTHING the third Ana book, and I had a very painless experience with the copyeditor. In fact, I probably got the best copy-edit everywhere when s/he informed me that the proper usage of "nom" is "nom nom nom."

Awesome.

Otherwise, I've been kind of low-energy emotionally, and I'm not sure why. Sorting LEGOs on the floor with Mason today helped some. Though I'm still distressed how many minifigs we have that are missing their legs!

Also, I have to confess that we have not been to kuk sool wan in some time because, *cough*, we've been staying home to watch "Master Chef" on Monday and Tuesdays. Probably my mood will lift when we're back on a regular schedule with them... I feel kind of puffy and out of shape. As far as "Master Chef" goes, I'm beginning to be irritated by what clearly seem to be ratings choices. The villian was spared elimination last night, I think unfairly, because he makes a good villian. I'm also really worried that they're going to go with the perky blonde simply because she makes good cover copy for the cookbook. Jaded, I know.

Xombi Love

Several months ago as I was returning home from picking up our CSA box, I noticed a curious sign that seemed to proclaim that section of LaFond Avenue in St. Paul a "post-apocalyptic green zone." So, Mason and I decided to go back an pose. Of course, were this a real emergency, no zombies would be allowed inside the zombie apocalypse green zone...

View from the Lake

I thought I'd post a few pictures from our weekend get-away. Mason LOVES the water. Even before he could swim, Mason would spend hours splashing around and generally playing in the water. Here he's found a new way to combine two of his favorite things: reading and swimming:



We also played a lot with tree frogs/garden toads. Here's one of our captives (who lept to freedom shortly after peeing on us.)