Delilah S. Dawson's Blog, page 47

a tree of turkeys

For Thanksgiving, I found 3 turkeys in a tree:

Today, I'm grateful for loving family, great friends, and a wonderful life.
Here's to living the dream!
Happy Turkey Day, y'all!
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now we are 3

At this exact moment in 2008, I was the only ponderously pregnant person sitting in the theater for the opening night of a little movie called Twilight. Surrounded by screaming fangirls and one tremendously embarrassed boy, I began having contractions.
Unfortunately, my water didn't break during the movie and send them all running away, screeching.
Fortunately, the next day, this happened.

"It's okay if he's kind of an uggo," we said. "He'll grow out of that, right?"
Um...

Maybe?
Fast forward to three years later.
He's about to be three.
THREE.

Looks like he's out of that awkward phase.
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Happy Almost Birthday to my favorite goofball,the guy who gives the best hugs ever,and who is also very strong because of his muscles.
When you were nine months old, I came out of my mom-coma and started writing. I haven't stopped since. Now I have a book coming out next spring. Something tells me it's going to be a lot easier to push out into the world than you were.
Thanks for stretching my mind, son.
But most of all, thanks for the hugs.
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on character

The sass. The double leopard print. The stance. The stare.
My daughter already has more style at 5 than I do at 34, and I love it.
I've been thinking a lot about character lately. I think it's been missing in a few of my books. I fall in love with an idea, and I frantically bang out the book, and I revise, and I juggle drafts back and forth with beta readers and my agent. And one problem keeps coming up.
The characters aren't real enough.
It doesn't matter how much you like the story if you don't love the characters. It can be the best road trip in the world, but if the person driving is boring as hell, who wants to go?
So I've started really trying to think hard about making my characters real. It's not enough to have blond hair and brown eyes. I need to know if their fingernails are square or round, how they hold their fork, what they think about reality TV, when they learned that Santa wasn't real. They need to be as real as people.
Part of the struggle, I think, is that I have always been so scared about being liked. As a child, I found it hard to make friends. I didn't want to be too weird or too loud or too smart or too this or too that, because I was afraid someone wouldn't like that about me. Only recently have I been able to more fully accept my quirks... and my faults.
Characters have to be like that. An absence of traits doesn't make them more likable or inoffensive; it makes them bland, and the reader feels that lack, that place where the writer holds back. Characters have to have flaws, and they have to mess up. They have to be like us, like real people, a conglomeration of good and bad and strange and gross and annoying and funny. They have to have weird stories from when they were six and almost blinded themselves with a bullwhip.
There's a certain level of fearlessness involved, for the writer. You have to give up that fear that someone isn't going to like your character. Because guess what? No matter how great someone is, there's still someone out there that can't stand them. And the characters that I've loved best have been just as broken as the real people I love best.
So that's my assignment: Spend more time crafting characters with depth.
When I was younger, I thought I knew everything.
Now I'm pretty sure I don't know squat.
But that's part of my character, too.
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twinge

Guess which movie we saw last night?
That's right. The very erudite one about a king with a stutter who falls for a mute woman battling cancer on the brink of war.
It was awesome.
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looking at my day

I think that sums up my feelings about today. Here's a rundown:
* wake up at 6:11
* grumble
* drink coffee
* moar coffee
* drive to bus stop barefoot
* deliver other child to preschool, where his Native American name for the Thanksgiving Feast will be "Indian Bear" and decide it's not worth fighting about
* enjoy a cinnamon roll and coffee at a haunted restaurant
* send an email to a lawyer acquaintance requesting book research help on proper wording for legally killing debtors
* learn they have blocked Facebook on their wireless for being "inappropriate"
* get all pissy over censorship and vow to complain loudly later, on Facebook
* get a haircut to cut off all the green but then don't actually cut it all off
* pick up Indian Bear and have lunch with Grandma Indian Bear
* pick up other child at the bus stop, where she honestly and without irony asks me WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? NO, REALLY? NO ONE WILL TELL ME.
* return home to complain about censorship and do 1000 things
* only accomplish 2 of those things
* sit anxiously in front of the computer until it's time to go see... an intellectual movie about... not vampires
* realize that I have 1 book to beta, 3 books to revise, 1/2 a book to write, and a really fantastic book to read
* it's by Meljean Brook, and it's called Heart of Steel, and it's the sequel to The Iron Duke, a steampunk romance so fantastic I actually named my car after it
* decide to ignore all the other stuff and just go read
* also, I'm hungry
* and I forgot what this list was about
* so I'm sure that's a big surprise
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New haircut:It's the same as the old haircut, but with half an inch of teal on the bottom.
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ohmygodineedthat

Hell has frozen over, and monkeys are flying out of Wayne's butt.
I saw a perfume ad in a fashion magazine and said,
OHMYGOD; I NEED THAT.

For the love of all that's holy, not the actual perfume, as commercial fragrances tend to smell like burning plastic and drunk baby whores to me.
I want her necklaces.
I'm actually kind of obsessed with them, with that look. Like when I was in middle school and thought that if I just found the right t-shirt, I would be popular.
I never found that shirt, which is why I NEED THOSE NECKLACES, PEOPLE.
I think Ive found the nuggety one, but the tasseled one with the stars is utterly eluding me. I've been all over Etsy, Modcloth, eBay, Anthopologie, Polyvore, Shopstyle, Free People, and Urban Outfitters, and I can't find it.
Any other places I haven't looked?
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tumbling

Serendipity.
In one of those amazing moments where the universe aligns just right, I fell in love with five photographs on tumblr this morning. The story is already forming in my head. The next seed arrived early.
The next book is a YA, codename TUMBLING.







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in which I get very blue. blueish.

The problem with being terribly vain about your long, dark hair is that you spend your life being too chicken to do anything drastic with it. No crazy colors. No wacky strips. Nothing that involves-- GASP!-- bleach.
Until today.

Today, I went to Sally's and bought a Manic Panic bleaching kit.
Man, oh metal man, does that stuff reek.
But now I have teal hair.
In the immortal words of Sterling Archer, JUST THE TIPS.


It's a little more teal/less green than it seems in the pictures.
I'm not sure what possessed me to do it. Much like the Great Nose Ring Debacle of 2009, I just decided it needed to be done and did it. That was green, too, now that I think about it.
I've always had an impulsive streak, and I very rarely regret the things I do... just the things I wanted to do and didn't.
Now, I wish I had played with odd hair colors years ago.
Now, I'm just thankful to be at a place in my life where I don't care all that much about being judged for wearing a silly hat or a dramatic cape or putting teal streaks in my hair.
Now, I'm going upstairs to read a steampunk YA book I've been waiting to enjoy.
Now, if you like blue hair, you should go read DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE by Laini Taylor and then head out to Sally's. What have you got to lose?
They have purple and pink, too.
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author pic outtakes

So I thought I would share some of the outtakes of my author photo shoot. Not the really, seriously awful ones. But just the ones that crack me up. Like when I was rolling my eyes in a graveyard.
Like, OMG, GHOSTS. WHATEVER.


Or cracking up against a column.
That's what I look like in real life, most of the time.
Except for the column. It's not like I carry it with me for special occasions.


Or maybe I do. But where are my shoes?
WHERE ARE MY SHOES?

Whoa. Too much gum. Way too much gum.
But putting my elbows on top of freezing columns makes me SO HAPPY.
Seriously. It was about 30 degrees and windy, and that shirt was made of... um, fake silk. Like spiderwebs. Bright purple spider webs. Next time, I need to wear a cape.

More laughing. I mess up lots of shots by laughing.
I'm supposed to be serious and important, right?
Someone suggested I borrow a spaniel and a turtleneck for author photos.
But have you ever tried to get a spaniel into a turtleneck? IMPOSSIBLE.


I think that one's my favorite. Weird monkey toes. bad angle on the shirt that makes me look pregnant. Apparently giving a speech about something.
FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN THINGIES AGO, STUFF HAPPENED. WANT TO KNOW MORE? BUY MY BOOK. IT INVOLVES VAMPIRE RABBITS AND CARNIVAL FREAKS.
THE END.
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PIGBOTTOM!

All day Monday, my son carried around a pink rubber pig from the Dollar Bin at Target.
"PIG BOTTOM SHOW YOU HIS BOTTOM!" he would shout, shoving the pig's pink bottom in my face as I did work or wrote on my book, pretending to be very serious.
"AWESOME," I would answer. "PLEASE TELL PIG TO TAKE HIS BOTTOM ELSEWHERE."
I told Twitter about this phenomenon, and Twitter responded as expected.
Pics or it didn't happen.
So my reputation was on the line. I had to find him.
He was gone.
We spent two days looking for the elusive PIGBOTTOM.
me: Son, where is Pigbottom?
son: He is napping. He is HIDING.
me: Yes, but where is he napping and hiding?
son: Pigbottom does not know where he is. It is a secret.
me: Yes, but do you know?
son: NO. He won't tell me.
Etc.
So what appeared in my face this morning?

PIGBOTTOM.
"Where did you find him?" I asked.
"He find hisself," son said.
"Where, though?"
"Behind the bookshelf. Where he live. Pigbottom like books."
A pig after my own heart.
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