Erika Mitchell's Blog, page 10

Cover-age

I’ve been fortunate enough to have self-published one book and had two books traditionally published. I’m far from an expert, but I know generally what to expect. Where the potholes are, the bodies are buried, and ambushes are likely to come from, so to speak.

The one part of the process I simultaneously look forward to and dread the most is getting my cover. Even when I self-published PWNED, I knew better than to design my own cover. Just because I wrote a book didn’t mean I was automatically qualified to design its cover. Designing covers is a real art and takes experience with layout, marketing, and genre norms. The best covers are the product of collaboration between the author, editor, publisher, and designer. What looks so simple on the shelf is probably the hundredth iteration of an idea that probably started its life scrawled on a cocktail napkin after a late night strategy session.

I respect the crap out of a good cover. It’s no mean feat and, if you pull it off, the results are well worth the trouble.

That said, cover reveals are difficult for the author (or they are for me, at least). By the time you get your cover, you’ve spent hours upon hours upon eye-crossing HOURS editing, revising, promoting, writing, and revising some more and now, here it is. The cover you’ve waited so long for. The cover for this book that you’ve devoted significant chunks of your time and sanity to, and here’s the cover that will represent everything that this story is, and what it means, and what it will do.

Seriously, unless Michelangelo himself came down from Heaven and designed your cover with the help of Jesus and all His angels, what cover could possibly live up to those expectations?

On the rare occasion that you actually like what your publisher sends to you, high-five a stranger and hug a puppy, because blessed are you among writers. From what I’ve gleaned over my years of rubbing elbows with fellow authors, liking your cover is kind of like spotting a purple unicorn: You’re either high or very, very lucky.

I would count myself as one of the lucky ones. I thought the cover for Blood Money did the job and I actually happen to like the new cover for Bai Tide. Oh, what’s that? I haven’t shared it yet? Here you go!

Bai Tide is coming out April 7 and here’s everything you need to know about it: Spies! Gun fights! North Korea!

Not bad, right? It’s spy-o-riffic, it gets the point across, and it’s eye-catching. I like it.

What do you think?

Thanks for sharing!

California Schemin’

Just one of the many lovely California beaches wee baby Wesley never played on.

Wes and I have a longstanding disagreement between the two of us and it goes a little something like this: When asked, Wes will say he is from California but grew up in Washington. I disagree, and so like two mature adults we’re going to let the interwebs weigh in on this important, meaningful issue. Here’s the origin story of the wee Wesley Mitchell.

Wes was, in fact, born in California, but his family moved up to the Seattle area when he was three weeks old. At the time he was born, his father had already accepted a job up here and they were packing things up and figuring out moving logistics. California was just a way station for the wee baby Wesley.

My contention is that he lived in California for three weeks, as a newborn. Obviously, he remembers nothing of his time there and it was very brief. Therefore, it is misleading to say he’s, “From California” because being “From somewhere” means that is where you grew up and learned the ways of the world. Where you’re from influences your cultural identity, and Wes is definitely not from California.

(I know this because, unlike him, I actually am from California.)

Wes’s argument is that he was born in California, therefore he is from California. He is a California-issued product and, as such, is from there.

So I guess what we’re arguing over is the idiom of being “From somewhere.” Please weigh in on this won’t you? Tell us what you think.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Thanks for sharing!

Furry Little Ghost

I bet the Rabbit of Caerbannog ate a crap ton of flowers in his day.

I used to have no problem with rabbits. Truly, other than being an occasional wildlife sighting during a family walk, I never used to spare them a single thought. Why would I? They’re quiet neighbors, their poops are small and inoffensive in smell, and they’re cute. Who doesn’t like watching a fuzzy little butt going lippity lippity through their yard?

Me, apparently, because I now have a legitimate problem with my lapin neighbors.

It all started two weeks ago, when I talked Wes into buying me some pretty flowers for the yard. He was hesitant to do so, citing his No Spending Money Improving Our Rental House policy. I convinced him by saying it was like he was buying an outdoor long lasting bouquet of flowers for his wife. He was happy to do it when I put it that way and voila! Pretty flowers in my front yard! We loves them, precious!

I was hustling my kids into the car the morning after the flowers were planted when my son called out from the front yard, “Mama! Something happened to your flowers!”

Sure enough, some creature had eaten the flowers right off their stalks, leaving nothing but green stalks and exposed roots where they’d ripped my pretty, pretty flowers clear out of the ground. I felt violated. These were like a present to me from my son and husband! How could something destroy them in less than twenty-four hours?!

The lack of hooved tracks led me to believe the culprit was small and lippity rather than tall and sprightly, and hence my dislike for bunnies began. Now when I see them around the neighborhood, I want to pull over and chastise them soundly for their inexcusable snacking.

Fast forward to Friday, when I was driving my kids to school and noticed a cluster of crows, heads down, pecking intently at something in the middle of the street. My approach frightened them off, and when we rolled closer I saw the object of their interest had started its life off as a flower-munching rabbit. Except now, it was providing a tasty snack to someone else.

By the time we got back, someone had mercifully removed the corpse from our street and the only sign of what had happened that morning was a few drifting puffs of what I can only assume used to be fluffy white tail. It made me wonder: Did any part of the rabbit’s animus linger? Is it wandering around in constant bewilderment in search of ghostly flowers to rip out of the ground?

Who knows, maybe my whole neighborhood is host to droves of phantom bunnies, all restlessly searching for absolution amid the brightly-colored pansies.

Ignore me, I’m letting my mind run amok. The salient point of this post is that I did have a problem with bunnies, and now I’m sort of okay with them again. It’s hard out there for tiny animals with no self-defense skills. I suppose I could stand to be a little more supportive…

…after I spread some slug repellent granules around my flowers. I can be supportive of them when I’m sure they won’t be eating my flowers again.

Thanks for sharing!

Creating Universes

Those of you who know me in real life have probably heard me talk about my deep and abiding love and respect for Joss Whedon’s work. I haven’t written much about it, probably because I’ve been pretty busy blogging about pygmy goats and all that, but it’s definitely there.

Firefly? Yeah, I loved it. Dollhouse? You bet, that show was awesome. Avengers? I’ve seen it about a million times. Much Ado About Nothing? Cabin in the Woods? Serenity? Yes, yes, yes.

If I can be said to have a writing hero, it’s Joss Whedon. And why? Because the guy gets dialogue. He gets heroes. He has perfected the art of marrying real feelings with real people, but then making all of them so much more than they should be. He weaves these intricate tapestries with complicated, terribly likable characters, but then makes it fun to watch.

And his dialogue. I could seriously study his dialogue, with a pen and paper, and never get tired of it. He writes dialogue that sounds natural, and yet it’s always so much better than what real life sounds like. He can do with five words what most writers can’t even do with an entire movie, and he always knows exactly when and where to use them.

He is, in short, darn good at his job and I respect him for it.

Anyway, I read a quote of his about working in the Marvel universe recently that sums up pretty well what I’ve been feeling as a writer lately:

“I would never rule anything out, because I like working here. By the same token, the biggest thing for me is that I need to do something that I create myself. It’s been way too long since I created a universe. The last thing I did before The Avengers was [directing an episode of] Glee, and in between I did Much Ado About Nothing. So I haven’t created my own universe for over five years. That feels wrong. You know, my own universe might be a book of haiku. I’m not necessarily saying I’ve got a grand scheme.”

I relate to this. I mean, not on an equivocal level, but it hits home for me. I’ve been revising and editing for months, and I haven’t written anything new since May of last year. Since then, it’s been all conferences, querying, revising, and promotional stuff. The part of writing I like best, the writing part, has been absent for too long.

Granted, when Joss Whedon says he creates universes he actually creates his own universes (see Firefly and Serenity for reference), but even in my own small way working on my own small stories, that need is there. Maybe it’s plain old escapism, or just the thrill of peeling back the layers of a new story to see if it holds up, but the appeal of losing yourself in a new world of your own making is too sweet to resist for long.

I started something new on Saturday, completely unrelated to Bai and his adventures (even though I should be working on book #4 like a responsible author-under-contract). It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s challenging. But most of all, it’s scratching an itch I’ve been carrying for months now.

As for whether it’ll ever make it all the way into a completed novel? I have no idea, it’s too soon to say. All I can say for sure is it feels good to brush off the cobwebs and somewhat reassuring to know I haven’t forgotten how.

Thanks for sharing!

Mr. Bean for No Reason

No joke, this picture sent me into a fit of giggles for, like, ten minutes. It’s even sort of tangentially related to the topic of this post!

Remember when I wrote about how Wes and I are both excited about life settling down? Well, we’re one week in to the whole settled-down-life thing and it. is. AWESOME.

I made it to the gym three times last week. I was so not-stressed, I didn’t even eat any junk food, despite its presence in my pantry. I even managed to lose 3.5 pounds (of what I’m going to assume was pure water weight but still!).

I’m getting some traction in getting ye olde promotional machine turning for Bai Tide, I wrote a couple guest posts that will appear on big writing blogs in a few months, I booked a speaking engagement at my alma mater (!), and started getting the urge to write something new again. Mmmmmm, I can almost smell that new-manuscript smell now.

You guys? This whole living with less stress thing? Fantastic. A-plus. 10/10 would recommend.

I’ve even got a goal going that I think I can realistically attain: I would like to lose fifteen pounds by my birthday. My birthday (the dreaded 30th birthday *shudder*) is at the end of May, so I think losing fifteen pounds between now and then is definitely realistic.

You see, I have hair plans, of the cut and color variety, that simply will not work with a chubby face. I mean, it’s not like I’ll end up looking like a potato wearing a wig or anything (or, um, Mr. Bean I guess), but trust me when I say that my plans will look about a thousand times better if I can drop this stress weight beforehand.

And the longer my hair gets, and the more aggressive my roots get, the more motivation I’ll have. As I said, I worked out three times last week! I lost weight! I’m feeling good about my ability to keep it off! Because 30 is coming. It’s coming for me, and I’ll be darned if I stare that beast down with a whole bunch of low self-esteem circling my waist like an inner tube of failure.

Thanks for sharing!

You Sad, Bro?

In case you’ve been living under a rock, don’t like football, think Americans are weird for calling their main sport the same name as what the rest of the world calls a different sport, or, y’know, maybe an alien, the Seahawks did not win the Super Bowl. It was a nail-bitingly close game, the final fate of which was only decided during the last painful twenty-some-odd seconds.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what it was like to live in Seattle after the championship game. It was a rush.

Too sad even to caption properly.

What it’s been like to live in Seattle after a Super Bowl loss is not a rush. Not at all. I can’t remember ever feeling so frustrated and just plain ol’ sad as I did after I turned to Wes after the fateful last interception and asked him, “Is that it? It can’t be! That can’t be it!”

So many times during the season, the Seahawks were somehow able to turn things around when they were at their most dire and pull miraculous wins out of nowhere. It just simply would not sink in that that wouldn’t be happening this time. Surely this couldn’t be the end. Not after all this excitement?

Yet it was, and you know what? It was actually pretty cool in a way.

He’s super in, like, every way.

Yes, there was definitely finger pointing, but you know what sticks out for me most? Marshawn Lynch telling reporters after the game that the reason he wasn’t mad he didn’t get to run that particular ball was that football is a team sport. Russell Wilson being back at Children’s Hospital two days after a crushing loss, all smiles and encouragement for the kids getting better there. The die-hard fans I know who, rather than turning away or renouncing the team, offered words of kindness and thanks to their team for a great season.

Monday was definitely a hard day. It was rainy and I’m pretty sure everyone in the Seattle area was just plain dejected. Wes has a friend who was so upset about the whole thing, he wouldn’t even talk about anything even tangentially related to the Super Bowl.

But it was a great season, and a lot of fun to watch. So for my part, even though I’m not terribly knowledgeable about football, I want to offer my thanks to the Seahawks for a really great season. You gave us lots to be proud of, and played the Super Bowl well start to finish. We’re all proud of you, and can’t wait to watch you do what you do so well next year.

Thanks for sharing!

Granite and Stainless Steel Dreams

No, this is not my kitchen, but I really really wish it was. Egads, but that’s beautiful.

I’ve mentioned before that Wes and I are renting the house we currently live in. Our landlord is very nice and the neighborhood is lovely and the house is fantastic. We have no complaints.

Lately, though…We find ourselves transitioning to a different state of mind, one that only makes sense in the context of our housing history.

When Wes and I got engaged, we decided to buy a house to live in together once we were married. I was still in college at the time, but Wes made decent money as a car salesman and so we looked at a bunch of condos and houses in search of a good starter home. The real estate bubble hadn’t yet burst, which meant all the advice we were getting was, “Buy a house! It’ll increase in value and you’ll be able to sell it for a down payment on a bigger house farther on down the road!”

So we found an adorable (yet tiny) little house, got married, and moved in. We loved that house. It creaked and it was intolerably hot during the summer, but it had a gigantic yard with all kinds of exotic flowers planted in it and we had big dreams for it.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. The real estate bubble burst and we were upside down on our mortgage (meaning we owed more on our house than it was worth), Wes and I both lost our jobs within a week of each other, blah blah blah life happened.

Fast forward a couple years. Our son is almost one and we need a bigger house, so our next move is to rent a bigger house. Renting is an incredible break from the at-times oppressive responsibility of owning a house. There’s nothing that’ll keep you on your toes quite like wondering how you’ll pay to replace your furnace, which is making increasingly more noise as it ages, when you’re living paycheck to paycheck and can barely budget out a single trip to Starbucks each week.

This is only slightly relevant, but whichever house we end up buying someday, we WILL be installing this sink in the guest bathroom. This is happening, it is not a drill, the ammonite sink is happening. I deeply adore this sink. Don’t you want to wash your hands in it???

We’ve been renting this house for four years and have loved it here. It’s a great house for entertaining, we can have tons of people over without waking any kids who might be snoozing upstairs, and it’s AIR CONDITIONED so we can actually enjoy the summer. It’s great.

But it’s not ours.

We can’t paint the walls, or make landscaping changes, or get a newer fridge that doesn’t hum all the time. We can’t replace the outdated dishwasher that sounds like a rocket is taking off in my kitchen every time I run a load through. We can’t swap out the tiled kitchen island for granite, or refinish the cabinets, or raise the counters in the bathroom so we are able to use the sinks without bending ourselves into right angles.

And you know what? After four years of not having to fret about replacing our furnace, we’re ready to start thinking about that kind of stuff again. It’ll take us a long time (read: years) to save up a down payment for a house, but that’s our new goal. It feels nice.

Unlike when we were twenty-nothing newlyweds, this time we’ll actually have a slight inkling of what we’re doing and what we’re looking for. I can’t wait.

And until that day comes when we’re doling out our life savings for what will likely be a fixer upper, I’ll dream about color schemes, silent appliances, and yards and yards of colorful flowers and various bushes that grow fruit for my kids to pick in the summer.

Thanks for sharing!

The Enigma

I don’t know about you, but I grew up with animals. Like, a lot of animals. We didn’t quite run a farm (on account of living in a duplex in southern California) but you guys, we had a lot of animals.

At one point or another, our family cared for and sheltered the following:

Two ball pythons
Two Iguanas
Four lovebirds
Two hamsters
Countless rats (to feed the snakes)
So many mice. So very, very many mice
A flop-eared rabbit
Three dogs
So many cats (lot of coyotes in southern CA, and we didn’t really cotton to the idea of keeping cats indoors against their will. Hence, we went through a lot of cats and loved them all dearly)
Fish. At one point, my Dad had a tropical fish collection, including a Lion Fish that stung him once and sent him to the hospital. The rest of our fish were considerably less exotic. Mostly Betas, a few goldfish, those sucker fish that eat the algae off the sides of the tank, a few salamanders, that sort of thing

(You’ll note in that list, by the way, the distinct lack of a horse, despite my repeated adamant insistence that all I really needed to be happy in the world was a horse.)

Anyway, I’ve always found it odd that, despite my animal-centric upbringing, the only animal I’ve ever had as an adult was a dog named Doc (whose story, for the uninitiated, it quite sad). It’s not that Wes and I don’t like animals, it’s just that we’ve lived in a rental house for the last four years and our lease is quite clear: No animals.

Spoiler alert: The cat was not content to stay outside for long.

Enter the cat. Our first meeting with the cat was last week, when this huge orange cat suddenly appeared on our back patio. He stared at us through the window, watching the kids and twitching his tail, and then hopped the fence and left. I thought nothing of it. “It’s a neighbor’s cat,” I thought. “No big deal.”

The cat came back the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Every day for a week this cat came back, and every time was the same: He’d sit there and watch us through the window, flicking his tail and occasionally meowing.

One day, at my son’s request, I let him open the door to say hi to the kitty. Fully expecting the cat to dash away (for outdoor cats are notoriously skittish), this cat strolled right in as though he had been living here for years. He took a moment to familiarize himself with the layout, let the kids pet him, and then plopped right down on the carpet for a quick bath.

We left the door open and after a little while, he showed himself out, only to come back later that night for another visit, and so forth and so on. The other day, he curled up on my lap while the kids were asleep and took a nap.

I’ll be honest: Despite my many years of cat ownership, I’ve never seen a cat do this before. He tolerates the kids and he’ll let Wes pet him, but mostly he wants me. He follows me around the house, purring up a storm, and seems to love any and all affection I give him.

He’s an enigma. I’m pretty sure he’s neutered, and he seems well fed and cared for, but I’ve never, in my life, had a cat just decide it wanted to be with me. Pretty flattering, if you think about it. But baffling.

Who is this cat? Where did he come from? And most importantly: How long before he tears up my couches and I have to kick him out for good?

Thanks for sharing!

Stress Ball

Not gonna lie, it’s been a stressful week. No, scratch that, a stressful month. No, wait, just kidding, it’s been a stressful winter. Let’s just go with winter. The whole darn thing has been a no-hitter streak of high-stakes waiting, with a few regular ol’ life stressors added in here and there for extra flavor.

Well looky here, it turns out you really CAN find just about anything online if you look hard enough…

Here’s something you may not have known: Shutting down a business is, how to say this delicately? It sucks. It sucks a lot. It sucks so much, it’s enough to convince me that anyone foolish enough to consider starting a business should be taken out back and shaken vigorously until their crazy ideas fall right out of one or both of their ears.

Not that Wes’s business has been all bad. It’s afforded him a ton of opportunities and growth and was undoubtedly a net positive. We are, however, knee-deep in wrapping up loose ends and as such the positives are more or less intangible while we finish everything up.

So we did the waiting and the interviewing thing for a few months, and that was stressful. And then one of Wes’s closest friends passed away and that was stressful. And then Wes got food poisoning right before his final interview for the awesome company, and that was stressful. And in between that was Thanksgiving, Christmas, baby showers, car trouble, deadlines for me, deadlines for Wes, and, you know, typical parenting stuff.

I spent all day on Friday getting everything together for our personal taxes. Wes spent all day doing the final bookkeeping for his business so he can file those taxes and be done with it. We are pushing hard to get everything done so that when he starts his new job at the awesome company on the 30th, we’ll have a clean slate and life can go back to normal again.

Because wouldn’t that be nice? Wes can’t wait to dive into his new job, I’m excited for him to get to talk to real, actual people every day, and who can say no to incredible health insurance, paid time off, and interesting work with high-caliber people?

Here. Have a daffodil. Daffodils are like the anti-stress. They’re sunshine flowers. Soak it up, guys.

And of course Bai Tide comes out in a few months, and I just figured out how book #4 is going to start, and the weather is going to start improving here any day now.

Things are looking up. Here’s hoping for a respite from the stresses we’ve been hosting like house guests so we can take a few deep breaths and try to collectively ratchet down our blood pressures a bit. The hope is that by doing this final push to get everything done before Wes’s new job starts, we’re giving ourselves the chance to start fresh. I think that’ll make Wes’s Herculean effort to finish his To Do list worth it.

As for me, I’m going to keep stress-eating M&M’s, getting my notes together for the various workshops I’m leading soon, and grinding out marketing and promotional stuff for Bai Tide. Fingers crossed that I get to see my cover soon. CAN’T WAIT.

Thanks for sharing!

The Day All of Seattle Suffered a Simultaneous Heart Attack

I gotta tell you, living in Seattle yesterday when the Seahawks surprised the crap out of everyone by winning an improbable victory against the Green Bay Packers during what looked to be a no-scoring shut-out loss was…singular. The kind of thing I doubt many of us will live to see again.

While not every single person in Washington state was tuned in to the game, when I looked at my Facebook feed it seemed like that was the case. And for the first half, everyone I knew was livid. Where were the Seahawks? they asked. How could this be happening?

I’m sure this guy, who Google has told me is named Clay Mathews, is a super nice guy.

I was fairly busy chasing my children around Wes’s parents house, and even I (normally not prone to getting swept up emotionally by sporting events) was getting pretty irked by how good of a time those Packers seemed to be having while they stomped all over CenturyLink Field. There was one guy in particular who kept grinning and tossing his long blond hair behind his shoulders and I just couldn’t help but wish he’d stop smiling so dang much and also that he’d cut his hair already, my GOSH.

Half time began on a dejected note. Wes came upstairs to where I was playing with the kids and started tossing our daughter into the air because he needed her giggles to allay the stress he was feeling. When I asked how he was doing, he replied, “We’ve come back from worse.”

I will say this for my husband and his father: They never once considered turning the game off, even when the third quarter passed and a victory was looking more and more impossible.

I put the kids down for naps and joined them, resolved to experience whatever came with my husband so at the very least he wouldn’t have to re-live it later when I asked him what happened. We watched, rapt, as the impossible began to happen.

The Seahawks scored! And then they scored again! And all kinds of other football-y stuff happened and we all cringed and growled simultaneously in frustration when the Packers used the last few seconds to even the score. Over time?! How could we have to go into over time? We just scored oodles of points in, like, five minutes!

And so we all gripped blankets, arm rests, or, in Wes’s case, his own head, and held our breath until the Seahawks scored that last touch down and we knew, but couldn’t believe, the game was over. And WE HAD WON.

The game that seemed doomed to end poorly was turned on its head and all of Seattle (or, at least, the grand majority of us who were watching) had a collective heart attack. All of us who were watching at my in law’s house just looked around, dazed, as we struggled to comprehend the incredible truth that, despite a terribly disappointing first half, we were going to the Super Bowl.

Amazing. And now I have to bring a blood pressure cuff to watch the Super Bowl with Wes because I’m fairly certain if I don’t he might end up suffering a stroke or something. I’ve never seen him get so red in the face about something before.

If, on the very slim chance that one of you readers happens to be a Seahawk, will you please think of my poor husband and crush the Patriots outright in a couple weeks? The game yesterday was a hoot in retrospect, but I’m worried about what will happen to my husband if that kid of thing happens again. Also? Good luck!

My goodness, you guys. My goodness.

Thanks for sharing!