Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 42

Best of June 2018

June included three driveways, one independent campground (a KOA), and four state parks, three of them in Ohio, one in Michigan. Three states, too — Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.

Lots of family time, including three different birthday celebrations. Some of it with family where the relationships require multiple hyphens and lots of apostrophes. (I.e, my sister-in-law’s sister’s husband baked some nice gluten-free bread for one celebration; my stepmother’s stepdaughter’s son was a fun conversationalist at another; I very much enjoyed meeting my stepsister’s daughter-in law; and so on.)

But plenty of quieter family time, too: walks with my niece and my aunt; video games with my nephew; gluten-free, healthy lunches with my brother; baking conversations with my SIL.

My favorite campground was definitely Maumee Bay — a beautiful place. But my favorite place to be was definitely my brother’s garden house. I went to sleep Saturday night admiring the sparkle of fireflies against the silhouetted trees, and woke up grateful to be here.

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And yes, the blueberries are ripe and delicious!

Proud Lake State Recreation Area, Michigan

My blueberries were rotten this morning. I bought them yesterday, carefully scoping out the packages for one that looked good, but it was wasted effort. They were tasteless, some already soft and squishy. I didn’t see any positive signs of mold, but I was highly suspicious.

I decided to take it as a sign from the universe.

The reason I was looking for signs was this:

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That is literally the view from the window by my bed. To say that it makes me cranky would be an understatement. To say that it makes Zelda uneasy would also be an understatement. I am fairly sure she can hear the hum of the lines, especially at night when they sizzle a little because of the moisture in the air. She wanted to go out over and over and over again last night, but every time I took her out, she wanted to stand and stare into the darkness.

It was pretty impressive darkness, actually — fireflies, a full moon, stars. I should give credit where it is due!

But this campground is one designed for family parties with lots of kids in tents. My site has the most extreme slope of any site I’ve ever tried to park on, so much so that my water jug actually slowly slid off the counter last night and landed on the floor. A tent camper might be able to find a slightly level patch, or a big trailer with levelers might be able to cope, but for me, it’s quite unpleasant. Plus, it’s in full sunlight — no shade at all, just a grassy patch — and it’s supposed to go up to 96 degrees today. The van is going to be an oven.

All that added up to me trying to decide what I wanted to do this morning. I’ve hated looking for campgrounds in Michigan. There’s a specific campground layout — straight lines all in rows — that after two years of camping makes my lips curl back in distaste. Give me some nice cul-de-sacs any day.

I’m also extremely wary of big campgrounds — once you’ve got 150 campsites all lined up in rows, you’re basically looking at traffic, people, crowds, noise, barking dogs… I think for the people with boats and kids, it can still be a nice way to vacation, but I’m not on vacation. I’m looking for quiet campsites, privacy, solitude, and beautiful views. I love the trees and the birds and the starry nights, but I don’t need good places to let the kids run around with their cousins while the grown-ups sit by the fire and drink beer. The Michigan State Parks — at least the ones with availability for people who don’t plan their destinations six months in advance — have all looked like family vacation spots, not comfortable writing nests.

And meanwhile, I have a comfortable writing nest. One that comes with fresh blueberries, excellent company, lots of privacy, and the chance of fun with my niece. Oh, and where my electricity is given to me freely instead of costing me $28/night.

The only problem with it is that it’s 10 hours away.

I think, therefore, that I should stop writing and get on the road. The universe, after all, gave me lousy blueberries this morning and the message came in loud and clear.

Maumee Bay State Park

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Deer and bunnies and redwing blackbirds, lush green grass and huge campsites, trees and terrific hikes and an enormous lake nearby… of the four Ohio state parks where I’ve camped, Maumee Bay, near Toledo, is by far the nicest. I could happily stay here for weeks, I think.

The one negative is the bugs. There are tons of them. I try to remind myself that bugs are a symbol of a healthy eco-system and no bugs would mean no redwing blackbirds, but still… not a bug fan.

And alas, one of the bug problems turns out to be a problem that it’s too late to worry about, at least to some extent. There were warning notices at the front desk about ehrlichiosis — a tick-borne disease — and how to avoid getting it and what symptoms to watch for. Unfortunately, Zelda was diagnosed with the disease an hour earlier at the vet. So I guess I can worry about catching it myself, but I don’t have to worry about Zelda getting it. She’s on antibiotics and I’m trying not to obsess too much. Or to think that if I’d never moved into a van, never started traveling, she would never have encountered whatever tick made her sick. Those thoughts are not useful thoughts.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Michigan. Still not done with Grace — I’ve spent hours and hours of writing time on a single page in the past week. I thought I knew how something ended — thought I knew it for a long, long time — but when it came down to it, it just didn’t work the way I wanted it to. Or I couldn’t make it work the way I wanted it to. But I think today I finally let go of that section and moved on.

And now I’ll do the same with this blog post.

Van Buren State Park

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Yesterday, I was midway through an entirely reasonable drive — three hours or so — when I decided I was too tired to keep going. So I didn’t.

I stopped at a rest stop, took a quick nap, then looked for a different, closer campground. I told myself that stopping early meant that I would have plenty of time to do useful things: work on Grace, write a blog post, sort my photos from the past several (busy) days, clean the van, wash the dishes, plan my next week’s destinations, walk Z, talk to R…

On that list of things, I walked the dog. That, I assume, is because she’s the only one of those things capable of nudging me in the leg and saying, “seriously, get moving now.”

Apart from that, I… honestly, I don’t know. Used up my time, anyway. I think I finished a jigsaw puzzle that took me far longer than it should have, and I know I made guacamole and salad dressing for my dinner. Oh, and I defrosted my freezer, which was urgent, because it had frosted over so heavily that I couldn’t get my chicken out. I then didn’t wind up eating the chicken, because it was so very frozen, but hey, it’s good to remember that I did something useful, however minor it was.

I did want to sort my photos, so I could post some pictures of the weekend, but I’ve used up my data plan for the month, so it would have been tedious to try to post pictures anyway. That’s to make me feel better about the failure.

Random memories

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Zelda under a blueberry bush

In another week, there will be so many ripe blueberries on the bushes that picking them will start to feel like an exhausting, never-ending chore. But I have basically missed them. Yesterday, my brother and I picked one small leftover container’s worth of the first ripe berries, just before a nicely torrential thunderstorm hit. Today, I’m headed off. I’m trying to remind myself of all the things that I’m looking forward to in the next week — family, friends, a birthday celebration, a state that I’ve never visited before. I know once I’m on the road, I’ll feel more excited. But it’s hard to say good-bye. It’s been a lovely few weeks in PA, perfect weather, great company.

Random memories that will make me smile:

Last night, we all played Exploding Kittens[image error]. Each of us, upon going out, made some sort of melodramatic sound of despair/explosion noise, and when my SIL lost, leaving my brother as the winner, she said to him, “I hope you’re happy, sitting there all covered in cat guts.”

One night last week, at the dinner table, we somehow wound up in a discussion of bears, and my brother told my niece that if she was ever trapped in a corner with baby bears and the mom bear was charging her, she should just pick up the baby bear and throw it. Just remembering the look she gave him — half serious consideration, half “what??” — makes me want to laugh. I don’t think she was worried about the impossibility of picking up a real baby bear, I think she thought throwing an animal would be cruel. But hey, she’s got a plan in the event she’s ever hanging out with some random baby bears and their mom gets upset.

My nephew invited me to play a video game and said he’d watch. It was a game about droids and Detroit and within the first twenty minutes, it had me cleaning a bathroom. I only lasted a few more minutes before saying, “yeah, no, I can do this in real life if I want to,” and went back to playing a game that let me shoot kobolds in a sewer instead.

In other news, not as much progress on Grace as I wanted to make. But! On a day when I was writing myself notes that included such constructive criticism as “abysmal,” instead of starting major revisions, I walked away. In some sense, I think I can call that progress. I actually wound up reverting to the previous day’s version that day (minus mean notes, therefore) before leaving it alone for a couple of days. But today I am going to try to get at least a few hundred words written before I start driving. I hope they won’t be words that I later label “abysmal.”

Not quite ripe

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In 2017, June 13th was the first day of picking blueberries and by June 19th, they were getting ripe faster than we could eat them. Much, much faster!

Alas, this winter was colder so the blueberries are slower. I’m counting the days and watching the calendar — I’m going to be seriously dismayed if I miss them entirely. Not so much so that I would change my plans: I’ve got campground reservations already paid for until after the 4th of July, so I’m going to be doing the things I’m planning on doing. But I do love blueberries right off the bush, warm from the sun, and specifically, from the fifth bush in the first row in my brother’s blueberry patch. I will be sad if I miss them this year.

Meanwhile, though, I’m having a lovely time with my niece and nephew.

My nephew’s playing PS4 games with me: we’re spending a lot of time in a game called Monster Hunter, which has both a story and much wandering around an interesting environment. I’m never going to be good at PS4 controls — the days of building that kind of fine-tuned muscle memory are probably long gone for me — but I’ve been having fun anyway, and he’s very tolerant of my incompetence.

My niece is walking the dogs with me and talking about books, friends, stories, words. On our most recent walk, we searched for synonyms for “walk.” I started us off with “stroll” and “saunter” and “mosey” — her dog likes to mosey while Zelda strides. My favorite was one of hers, “amble.” So we ambled along, building memories.

And when they’re at school, I’ve been writing. I suspect my first draft of the ending — the only part of the book that is going to be a true first draft, given how many revisions the first 2/3rd of the book have gone through — is going to be seriously underwritten. Every time I open my file and read my previous day’s words, I shake my head and spend the first hour of my writing time adding some context and setting, tweaking my descriptions and re-organizing chaotic dialogue.

But I really am in the ending and it really is pretty close. The scene I’m currently writing is turning out much longer than I expected it to be — despite or maybe because of the underwriting. But after this… two more scenes? Given that I’m not going anywhere for a week, if you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s because I’m writing Grace and picking blueberries, with nothing much to blog about besides those two things.

The garden house

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I have reasonably complicated plans for the summer. In less than two weeks, I’m heading west to Ohio, for my stepmom’s birthday party. Then I’ll go north to Michigan, where I’ll visit at least one friend, maybe more, and perhaps explore the upper peninsula, which I hear is beautiful.

After that, I’ll head to Toronto, to deliver some of R’s miscellaneous possessions to him. (It is incredibly nice of a person with storage space as limited as mine to offer to transport belongings: I am never, ever, ever going to do it again.)

From Toronto, I’d like to head east to Vermont and spend some more time there, then swing down the east coast to visit friends and family in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

But honestly, right now, I’m writing all that and really thinking that I am in a perfect place, and I’d like to spend my whole summer here. I’m parked at my brother’s garden, the blueberries are getting ripe, the grass is green and lush, the weather is perfect, the company is great, and the writing is going well. Why do I keep moving again?

Oh, right, because that’s what people who live in vans do. But it is seriously, seriously lovely here right now.

A Gift of Ghosts available as an audiobook

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A square cover equals an audiobook!

I made the appropriate professional(-ish) announcement about the audiobook of A Gift of Ghosts[image error] on my business blog last week, but I wanted to share some of the background details about it in my less professional(-ish) space. (I admit, I don’t consider myself terribly businesslike, even in my official business space. My former employers would not have been impressed by the low-key, un-marketing-speak nature of the announcement. :))

I’ve wanted to make an audiobook for a while. I think the first time I considered it seriously was probably sometime in 2013, so five years ago. At that point, I looked into doing a royalty share production. That’s when an audiobook producer creates the book for 50% of the proceeds rather than being paid upfront. At the time, I listened to some auditions, but I just wasn’t sold on it.

One of the problems I’ve had with creating an audiobook is that I really don’t like audiobooks. I sometimes think the one life-skill I learned in high school was the ability to tune out completely when someone is talking at me. Audiobooks trigger that ability for me. I find it very hard to pay attention to them, even when I want to.

But back in 2013, I listened to some auditions and I just didn’t feel it. I wound up abandoning the idea.

In 2014, I decided to take a different approach and I invested a few hundred dollars and several weeks of my time trying to create a home studio and do it myself. The folks at Audible were nice enough to tell me that my delivery was great, but unfortunately, I couldn’t get rid of the air-conditioning noise in the background of my recordings. The guy I worked with suggested turning it off… in July, in Florida, in a closet with no ventilation. Yeah, no. I thought maybe I’d try again in winter, but I was busy with other things and it never happened.

Last year, I again looked into the possibility of doing an audiobook and I listened to a bunch of auditions. Somehow none of them quite did it for me. The thought of having to listen to any of the probably perfectly adequate narrators read my own words aloud just seemed torturous. I wanted the end product, but I didn’t want to go through the process of making it happen.

Then, this year, I got a tax refund. I’ll skip the details — no one wants to read about taxes! — but for Reasons, I felt like I wanted to do something for R with part of my refund. About the same time, he was deciding on graduate school, so I decided I would invest in an audiobook and split the proceeds of said audiobook with R.

Logical decision, right? Ha. I’m sure it makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t experienced the unexpected delight of small amounts of passive income. But one of the projects I did, the wedding anthology, seemed like an entirely quixotic, pure marketing investment when I first did it. I didn’t expect to earn any money from it. For a while, though, it made $20-25/month, and it was awesome. It wasn’t money that I counted on, it was just an unexpected small windfall every time. I almost always moved it straight to a Starbucks card and turned it into treat money. Obviously, I have no idea if the audiobook will earn anything — reports vary wildly about the profitability of audiobooks and I know people who don’t make much of anything from theirs — but I liked the idea of giving R at least a chance of windfalls.

Still, making the decision didn’t mean that I would be able to bring myself to act on it. But I went back to Audible and posted my project, this time not as a royalty share arrangement, but paying upfront, Screen Actors Guild rates.

Wow. I received over fifty auditions. It was a really surreal experience. I spent a weekend in Arkansas listening to various people read the same section of Ghosts over and over again. After about the first ten, I noticed every mistake. But some of them were really good. Others were really good, but not at all what I’d imagined for the characters. And some were not so good, of course, but really, there were at least a solid dozen that were better than anyone I’d heard before, maybe even more than that.

It was not an easy decision.

But I kept coming back to one of my early favorites. I think she was the third narrator I’d listened to and the first one where my eyes widened and I thought, “Oh, yes, this could work.” Not just that I could get an audiobook made, but that I could listen to someone read Ghosts aloud without cringing inside. I actually laughed out loud when she was reading Rose’s lines.

And I sort of felt like the universe had drawn a big red arrow pointing toward her, and lit it up with shiny neon: her name is Sarah Grace, and the name of her company is GraceWright Productions. Ha. Given that I’ve spent three years trying to write a book with Grace in the name… well, it’s superstitious of me, but I did feel like the universe was all but jumping up and down, saying “this one, this one, this one.”

Since I don’t entirely trust the universe, eventually I made several friends (thank you, A, J, L & T!) listen to my top five candidates. All of them approved, and so GraceWright Productions it was.

And the process was not torturous! I chose to have Sarah team up with her partner, Tristan, to do the narration so Zane’s POV sections and all the male dialogue are in a male voice, and Akira’s POV and all the female dialogue are in a woman’s voice. I think it works really well. I admit to both laughing and probably blushing during the seduction scene, but I also started to cry when Zane talks to his mom and didn’t stop until that chapter finished. I was surprised at how moved I was.

If you’re an Audible subscriber, I hope you’ll take a chance on Ghosts and let me know what you think. If you’re not an Audible subscriber, but have considered trying the service, I should let you know that I (and by extension, R) get a bounty of $50 if Ghosts is the first audiobook you try and then you stick with the service for two paid months. The service costs $14.95/month, so you’d eventually get three ebooks for $30, which is a pretty good deal, but obviously not worth it at all if you don’t think you’d want three audiobooks.

And you can also, of course, just buy the audiobook directly either from Amazon[image error] or from iTunes.

Of course, if you hate audiobooks, don’t feel obligated. But I will say that I, an affirmed audiobook hater, really quite enjoyed this one.

PS Privacy? Europe? Something-something mysterious abbreviations, crazy expensive laws? I guess I will write a privacy policy and add it to my site, but the only information I “collect” is whatever you enter when you comment. And I use the term “collect” quite loosely, because even though it’s probably sitting in the backend of the database somewhere, I would have no idea how to get it out, nor would I have any interest in doing so. I don’t use that information for anything, I don’t plan to ever use it for anything, and the only emails you’ll ever get from me, unless you’ve signed up for my mailing list, are entirely personal and individual. I was going to say that I’d never email you, but that would be silly, because I can think of half a dozen people offhand that I’ve emailed directly who will read this. But yeah, privacy — I respect it?

Best of May 2018

Seven driveways, three parks, and plenty of miles. Four states with overnights (Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania) and another four drive-throughs (Georgia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland). Lots of good friend and family time; some good work (including a fun non-writing project that I will tell you about tomorrow, I hope); and some unexpected pleasure playing with graphics software which reminded me of how satisfying it is to be learning.

Also — for the truly honest reckoning of the month — a tremendous amount of worry and fear about Zelda.

But the highlight, the “best of”, can only be one thing: R’s graduation. It was joyous and beautiful and fun and memorable. I’m not posting any pictures of my beloved lobster, because I don’t think he would appreciate it if I did, but here’s another shot of that incredible sunset:

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Salthouse Branch Recreation Area

Why is driving so exhausting?

I guess that’s a rhetorical question: the answers are sort of obvious. But there’s a reason most people don’t spontaneously say, “Hey, let’s go for a three hour drive today, won’t that be fun?” Or a four-hour drive, or a seven-hour drive. And driving slowly — with breaks of a day or two between chunks of long driving days — doesn’t make the experience any better. Crazy ten-hour days of driving require recovery days but so, apparently, do five-hour driving days. At least for me.

But I broke my drive from South Carolina to Pennsylvania by stopping for two nights at Salthouse Branch Recreation Area in Henry, Virginia. It was about five hours from Santee — albeit closer to seven with stops for gas, dog walks, and lunch, so I got there on Friday with plenty of time to relax. Along with all the rest of the people in the state who wanted a nice relaxing Memorial weekend Friday. I believe I complained that at Santee I could see my neighbor’s trailer instead of a nice view? At Salthouse Branch, I could see eleven trailers from the van door. At that, it was still nicer than a typical independent parking-lot style campground: my site was small and not level but at least there were grass and trees and beautiful water within walking distance.

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Also some nice looking trails, but I did not take advantage of them. It was a bad combination of circumstances. First, I was tired — long driving days do that to me. Second, it was hot enough that I didn’t want to wear long pants and socks and hiking boots. And third, although also relevant to the second point, there were ticks. So many ticks that I was literally flicking them off the water hose and steps. Given the number of tick-borne diseases that I’m scared of, bare legs in the woods felt like a no-brainer level of stupid thing to do. So we admired the above path, but we didn’t go very far on it.

Also, there were dogs. Not on the trails, but in the campground. Lots and lots of dogs. Oh, my gosh, the dogs. I like dogs (obviously.) But at least some of these dogs’ owners had given up on keeping their dogs quiet and there were so many dogs in the campground that there was a continual dog chorus going on. Two brown labs behind me needed to say hello to every passing visitor and the little black dog across from them felt compelled to respond. The park was completely full, so there were a great many passing visitors.

Zelda never barked once. I would be a smug dog owner about that — my good dog! — but she’s losing her hearing (sadly, another symptom of canine dementia), so I think she probably just didn’t hear them. She’s also gone back to being ridiculously picky about her food. Yesterday, she declined steak for breakfast in favor of a couple bites of my niece’s breakfast cereal. I will seriously feed this dog anything that she wants, but she changes her mind about what that is on an hourly basis. But her energy level is great and she’s been enjoying playing with toys again, so I’m not worrying too much.

And I’m now in Pennsylvania, where I will be staying for the next three weeks. Less driving, more family time, yay! And hopefully some writing (finally!!) of an emotionally satisfying romantic ending. I’m as close as I’ve ever been with finishing a first draft and I have no impulse to go back and start re-writing, so that’s good news. Now if I could just get on with it!