M.K. Wiseman's Blog, page 3

All those posts we mean to write; or, Happy New Year!

Oh, look, we’re a month into 2019 and I already broke my new year’s resolution …over 3 months ago.

On Invisible Stresses

Here’s a weird one for me: Let’s talk about stress!

But somehow while also sidestepping any potential Real and Honest details of my life and emotional makeup.

Pffffft to that, eh?

We’re coming up on the gauntlet of the Holiday Season. I’ve Facebook reports from friends that one of the local radio stations has switched to Christmas tunes already. (Their post popped up mere moments after the news broke. Ah, social media.)

I’m in a new house–my first–and am planning the family Thanksgiving feast. One I begged, insisted, “Dibs”ed to host. My husband and my birthday’s straddle Thanksgiving itself so there’s the extra festivities (read: small bits of planning) there, too. It’s NaNoWriMo. This November, we’ve managed to have a couple snowfalls already. (Again, I think this might be because we’re new home owners and have to do the sidewalks etc ourselves.) Heck, we’re still unpacking bits and bobs of boxes.

I’m writing book 3. It’s not done and was due in to the publisher, oh, last summer.

But, this isn’t meant to be a laundry list of ‘look at how busy I am and arrrrrgghhh!’ I am well aware that many of my stresses are also my blessings.

I have a house to clean, to unpack and ready for the holidays. I have family that I love who are coming to visit and have a wonderful dinner… Heck, I have a family that worries and stresses on my behalf!

That’s really where this started out with this post. I looked outside this morning at the light overnight snowfall and congratulated myself for having covered the patio furniture but yesterday afternoon. (I had checked the forecast. Yay, me! See? I do have my s*** together some days.) And as I considered my small triumph of foresight, I wondered if my mom would call or text later with an “oh, phooey! your patio furniture will have snow on it again!” (Our first snow was a bit of a surprise.) And then I considered how, not knowing I put up the tarp, she’ll feel stress for having not given me a timely reminder to cover the furniture. And then I laughed. What an odd cycle of concern we create!

This blog is an invisible stress. It sits in the back of my mind, a gremlin I cannot feed past midnight, unwritten but fully planned posts damming up the river of my creativity and compounding my anxiety.

Where am I going with this? Good question. I think I just started out in one direction with no aim as to a route or finish line. I have no wisdom on this point. Mayhap I am merely doing a finger dance on the keyboard, the writing equivalent to going for a long aimless walk.

And yet, typically I find I cannot write during periods of major stress. My brain gets fuzzy and confused. Like quicksand, the more I struggle, the more I’m caught up in it. Perhaps you’re agreeing with me even now, dear reader. (“Yep. I can tell she’s stressed. This post? Nuh-uh.”)

I leave you now with no conclusion.

#seewhatIdidthere ?

#BlogTour #BookReview for The Kithseeker by M. K. Wiseman @FaublesFables @rararesources #TheKithseeker

Never tried the ‘reblog’ before… Giving it a go here with Donna’s part in the ‘Kithseeker’ blog tour.

donnasbookblog

France, 1680

Liara’s defense of the Wizard Nagarath has rendered Anisthe incantate–bereft of magick–but even this cannot guarantee her safety. Because the death of her father-in-magick would seal the girl’s fate, necessity demands she and her wizard maintain a watchful eye on the war mage, while protecting her from his dark designs.

Anisthe has embarked on a journey across Europe, aided by his half-fey manservant with an agenda all his own. They search for a legendary mirror that contains the world’s most powerful magick. Although the stuff of fairytales, the possibility of its existence compels Nagarath and Liara to seek the artifact themselves. Both know that should Anisthe lay claim to that power, Liara would be at his mercy and not even Nagarath could save her.

Thus, the pair find themselves at Versailles, surrounded by agents who ferret out magick users and destroy them. Uncertain who is friend and who is…

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The Things We Use for our Art; or, On the Death of a Hummingbird

I’ve been plotting the death of a character. (And, no, I won’t tell you for which book. Only know that I work on several things at a time so, no spoilers either.)

So. I’ve been plotting the death of a character.

…

Today I saw a hummingbird die. (This is related, I promise.)

In our yard are two hummingbird feeders. One I just put up, having heard that there have still been hummingbirds spotted in the area this late into the summer. (The larger flock buzzed through here pretty early this year.) So far? Nada. Ništa. Zilch.

And then this evening? I happened to look out and witness a little hummingbird land on a branch of the tree over our patio. I grinned and rose to my feet, approaching the patio door.

“Hi! Welcome! Ta-da! We’ve two feeders for you here; one in that bush below you and this other one on the window. Take your pick, we’ve an all-night buffet of sugary sweet–” A crow came and just scooped the lil’ guy up. Right while we were talking. Well, while I was talking. Idiot me.

Too stunned to react, my first thought was to disbelieve what I’d seen. And then the crow winged away, a limp little body in its claws. I Googled it. Sure, a crow’ll happily eat a hummingbird. My vision filled with a list of predators as my heart floated in remorse. That little fellow had come for the feeders I put out. I had, effectively, baited him to his death.

I cried. Like a fool I sat at my kitchen table and ugly cried. Over a hummingbird. That I had killed.

And then that dark corner of my writer’s heart whispered: Remember this. You’ve been staring at the blank page all week, searching for such a scenario to play out in your mind. The emotional capsize; the tragic surprise. Remember the tears and the pain.

I’ve been plotting the death of a character…

Road Trip Music; or, The Things we Lose to Time

The passage of time is cruel to cassette tapes.

This is, oddly, where my brain went about six hours after hearing of the death of Oliver Dragojević, Croatian recording legend. In the intervening quarter of a day, I tried to dig through the dustier corridors of my memory, wondering why oh why my favorite song of his simply did not appear to exist in any internet search I could formulate. Was I dreaming? Was I simply mistaken? But no, I could sing an entire song from memory that I could not find where/when it had been recorded. Such knowledge had to come from somewhere . . .

And I was pretty certain I knew where.

In the 80s and 90s, a family road trip necessarily consisted of ‘stuff to do in the car’ (hand-held water arcade games, anyone?), snacks, rest stops at awesome places (“Where the heck is Wall Drug?”), and . . . cassette tapes.

Each family, I am sure, has their own mix of analog magnetic magic and the attached memories. My memories are punctuated with soaring John Denver, intricate tamburitza, uplifting Peruvian pan flute, and the aforementioned, soul-piercing, plaintive vocals of Oliver. To this day, I get a knee-jerk reaction on certain songs. Last song on this side? My hand is ready to hit the FF button so as to hasten Side B. Song I don’t much care for? I twitch, thinking of the days I could just flip the tape with a button (super lazy) rather than risk forwarding through the start of the song I liked that came next. (To this end, I still also know what songs are exact opposite one another on certain cassettes.)

When I bought my first car that had no tape deck, I felt the loss. My current car? Well, the man at the dealership thought my attachment to my old car’s 5-CD player quite odd considering I could just bring with ‘every song I own’ on a tiny little USB drive.

But with such gains we have loss: Crystal clear sound lacking the warmth and warp of tapes that play the love they’ve received; The complete and utter surprise of not knowing what song may come next in the playlist . . . Just last week, I found myself skipping through a dozen songs before moodily turning off my radio and just opening the window to birdsong. There’s a danger to having it all, all at once. My shiny little USB drive is the short airplane ride when, some days, I’d rather have the drive.

But, I digress. As usual.

For, six hours into my puzzled dive into my memory banks, I concluded that my question may well be unanswerable. After all, we had just received clear evidence that things wear down, time being the great silencer of all. This road-trip-memory of mine may well have met the dust bin years ago.

I called my mom. We chatted a bit and I oh-so-casually dropped to her my puzzling hunt for answers. (read: I totally was direct but she was cool about the idea of my asking-without-asking that she dive into old boxes in search to tapes she might or might not have any more in search of music we might or might not be able to play on an old deck that might or might not eat said fantastic treasures without so much as a how-d-ya-do)

20 minutes later:

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An array of the ‘most likely’ collection of leads. (Pic cropped to avoid the orchid that photobombed in the back.)

Ah-hah! The two tapes on the right? Never came up in my (al)most careful discography searches. I had a lead. And said lead led me to a fascinating drive down memory lane. 8 ‘potpourri’ mixes of Oliver songs. Re-released in various combinations over the years . . . and available for easy instant purchased on iTunes!! And, look, one of said mixes has my elusive ‘Ljubav Je Bol’ in its midst! Eureka! Victory!

. . .

So. Either my memory is faulty, or I did not find what I sought. Phooey. However I did find something else. These songs? Oh how the memories came flooding back. (‘Split ’89 in the above photo? I already had purchased the digital of that a few months ago. Said memories that these trigger? Yep. One and the same. So . . . victory, still.)

This post has become rather long. My apologies. But I also cannot sign off of this idea without somehow attempting, in vain, to convey–

The precious heart-treasure of sitting in the back of a sedan, practically melting in the glare of the hot sun coming through the window at midday. Wadding up my pillow in 20 different ways to try to make sleeping against the slope of the seatbelt comfortable (When you’re 10? There are ways, I assure you.) Leaving an intricately made silly-putty sculpture on my infinitely-useful clip-board while we stop for lunch . . . and coming back to discover it has pulled a snowman-in-April trick on me under the unforgiving death-stare of that same aforementioned hot sun. The sight of the Rocky Mountains really really far in the distance and watching them – unblinking, I swear – for at least an hour before determining it’ll take a lot longer than that for them to get better and then discovering, after a very short nap, that they’ve inexplicably grown up around the car. Stretching back-seat cramped legs in a gas station parking lot and taking a long look at the massive wall map at a designated rest area, pretending like it really matters I know what it is I am looking at and marveling how big the world is.     . . . And taking every single one of those memories with me through my life and waiting for the day the tape deck in my own head winds down.

R.I.P. Oliver.

#BudiPonosan

As I sit here penning this post, I am keeping half an eye trained to my Facebook feed in case my friends in Zagreb post any more live videos of the Trg. The team, our Vatreni, have just landed and the parties (and flares) are still lit. People are still singing in the streets by the thousands. And this for having come in second in the World Cup. (May God help our livers if we ever win the whole thing.)

In case you’ve never noticed before. I’m Croatian.

As I munch on a slice of potica (sure, the Croatian for it is, technically, povitica, but the other is what I grew up hearing for whatever reasons. My best guess here is that you can see Slovenia from my grandpa’s childhood home. Ah, those south slavs like to complicate things.) I find myself finally get around to posting my own newsy news and thoughts on these last several weeks. While the World Cup was on, it was almost like life was on pause. A never-ending party of hope, excitement, and pride. But now I’ve got to actually go in here and write the post I was intending to share a couple weeks ago after the annual CFU Tamburitza Festival in Zagreb.

I did not, myself, go. I stayed home and concentrated on juggling all the details that go into the lead up of a book launch . . . sending and receiving emails, mailing things out, yelling at a website that goes down for inexplicable reasons, working on my wizard’s robes for ExpectoCon, fretting over digital proofs, memorizing my own character stats (again, for ExpectoCon), and following the cultural tour of Croatia from afar.

As I said above, I planned on writing this post and then football happened. For, you see, The Bookminder went to Croatia.

 

And stayed!

If there is magick enough in the world…

Last night I experienced a Sublime Author Moment.

 

Sunday morning 6:25 am local time: I wake up to a gift. An email. My audiobook narrator has uploaded the final go-around on the recordings for The Bookminder. A kid on Christmas morning, I now have to wait patiently until such time as I can actually sit and give a proper listen to the files. (For when your manuscript cracks 100K in length, you end up with nearly 12 hours of audiobook.)

My weekend comes to a close, full of all those weekend-things one inevitably fills their time doing. Exhausted, I stumble into bed at around 11 pm after glancing wistfully at the waiting chapters.

Monday morning 10:45 am local time: I begin my marathon listening session. I pause not even seven minutes into the whole to shoot off a quick email of tears-in-eyes gratitude and praise to said narrator for making my story sparkle with unexpected life.

The day continues, full of listening, chores, occasional breaks to tackle bits of a looming To Do list.

Evening approaches. As does Chapter 7 — my own personal favorite. It is then that a thought strikes…

(Sunday evening 8:45 pm local time: Bonfire. First of the season. And the moon is peeking through the trees to the east. We end up having a quick debate that ends in a Google search. The full moon is actually tomorrow.)

Monday evening 8:45 pm local time: I run around the house having a giddy fit as I realize the timing has lined up just about perfectly. I can quite literally listen to my “moon gazing scene” while gazing up at the springtime moon.

9:15: But I’m too early. So I run back inside to make myself a warming cuppa. A mug of steaming hot peppermint tea (also from said favorite chapter 7 scene) accompanies me back outside for my vigil.

I wait. I wait some more, noting nervously that there appear to be thickening clouds to the south and east. And I’m still too early.

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[Screenshot from Spotify playlist. Song is “Wiseman’s View” by Ken Bonfield]

Rather than risk getting through the chapter before I see my moon, I decide to listen to some tunes. I turn on my Spotify list for the series. The first song plays and my breath catches. At 70º it is not particularly a winter night — even with as much efforts as that season made to stick around in Wisconsin this year — but the song is oddly fitting. Well played, universe. Well played. 

A couple more soft and atmospherically appropriate tunes round out the waiting. Feeling the moon more than seeing it behind the tangle of black and bare branches that shade our yard from the surrounding, I turn to my work.

“Chapter 7. Nagarath stood in the garden reading the wind…”

 

Somewhere further away, the high school’s field lights are extinguished. House lights off; stage is illuminated and the audience sits hushed and ready.

And then a glint, a piercing whiteness within the darkened skies. Within seconds it grows. The moon doesn’t even manage to clear the cluttered tree line before the clouds claim her. But I sit in the early springtime silence and polish off the last of my tea, drinking in the words from a scene that has come to life for me in new ways. It occurs to me then that, perhaps, if I were brave enough, I could start a series of public readings in the park– summertime evenings, when the fireflies dance. No, that might be altogether too grand an attempt. The moon has bobbed to the surface of the clouds again. I discover for a second time that my phone camera does not take good photos of a nighttime moon. But that’s fine. This is mostly for me, anyhow. And it is magnificent.

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[Also: Because the world is a funny funny place and I am a clumsy clumsy person. I might have broken a toe on my left foot during this adventure. Pride goeth?]

What’s with the website, M. K.?

All this ‘coming soon’ nonsense from you, M. K.!

First your blog, now the site… what’s going on with you?

Well.

I’m homesick.

Wait what?

Yep. Well, to address that I’m better off explaining the answer to a question you have not known to even ask: 

Who is Archmage Cromen?

Archmage Cromen, the wizard from whom Anisthe of Vrsar and Nagarath of Parentino learned their craft — he is so named due to my eternal regard and respect for a professor I had at the University of Wisconsin-Madison over a decade ago. Some folks are aware that I began writing The Bookminder in 2004 while recovering from a rather major surgery. (That’s its own story– I might expound upon it in print at a later date. Folks do ask from time to time.)

This strange surge in writing as my creative outlet happened at a pivotal point in, what I thought would be, my development of a budding career in animation. The Fall of 2004 saw not only the abandonment of my Pixar dreams (cold practicality won the day–one does not move to California with a pre-existing heart condition and no health insurance) but the passing of the recently-retired Professor George Cramer. A part of me still wonders if the two were connected. It was a very dead autumn for me even though I’d recently been given my new lease on life. 

Time moved on, as it tends. I eventually found my way into authorship by luck, happenstance, and with a pinch of persistence. Storytelling, it would seem, ran hot in my veins. I have embraced the words, the concept of the rhythm of print on a page transferring into echoes within one’s head and heart. I like it, I do.

But to this day, the art of animation haunts me. It calls me, draws me in like a campfire on a cold night. It was a different sort of creation and I’m not even sure I know what it is I miss. But I miss it all the same.

And so I’ve come back around, goofing off by making little blinky coffee cup gifs for my blog, imagining the places of my stories made real through pixels and Blender animation software. A homecoming of sorts. The last thing–the last thing–Professor Cramer ever said to me on the final day of animation class, the last course he’d teach, was this:

“You’ve got It.”

Just that. “It” it. To me. To me.

I scoffed, the words too big for me. He persisted, insisting (in words I don’t fully recall, sadly) that he was serious and such was not a pronouncement made lightly or even all that often. 

Now, granted, Archmage Cromen is not Professor Cramer by a long shot. The names are a stretch, the personalities not even close. But I would say that all art contains a sort of magick. Which makes Professor Cramer a wizard in his own right. And makes my foray into writing books not untrue to the heart of where I started even if I do miss long hours scrubbing forward and back over a sequence of frames, finding eighty ways to break a program before finding the solution I seek. (There. I’ve contradicted myself having already claimed I didn’t know what it was I miss.)

I find I haven’t the right words to close this post. And so I’ll say this. Dear reader, if you ever find yourself in Madison Wisconsin on the University campus. Go say ‘Hi’ to the Professor for me.

Coming Soon…

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

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Coming soon
A new blog from author M. K. Wiseman

 

Lenten practices and ‘geek culture’

There’s much to be said about the so-called ‘geek culture’.

Think about it:

Emulating heroes, championing the cause of right over wrong… Even those who cosplay the “bad guys” often do so with a mind that they’re there merely as a foil to those serving the side of Good.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’ll back up.

It’s Lent. I’m a practicing Catholic. So I’m in extra-conscientious ‘thoughtful and prayerful’ mode this month+

Some days it’s hard, some days it’s easy. Some days the state of my heart depends on whether someone cut me off in traffic or was inconsiderate at the store. You know, normal human-ness.

But Lent calls us to be a bit super-human. Not in that we need special powers to be good people. But our base instincts, our laziness, our selfishness, sneak out when we lose concentration or are tired or, maybe, just a bit sad.

This post comes out of an interesting moment I had last week. It’s been on my mind every day since. Here goes:

I pulled into the grocery store parking lot and grabbed an out of the way spot. I’m young and hearty, I can take the extra steps into the store on a chilly day with my warm coat and scarf. But there was a big ol’ truck parked 2 spots away from mine out there in the far reaches of the lot. A woman was just leaving. And in preparation, she was rather carefully trying to ‘lock’ the wheels of her shopping cart against the lamppost that stood on the edge of the spot between our two cars… you know, rather than taking it back to the corral for carts at the end of the aisle.

Without hesitation–without hesitation!!–I walked past and, with a smile, simply said, “Hey, can I take this with me? I’m just going in so the timing’s perfect.” No scold. No sly judging passive aggressive glance. My heart was light and helpful. I meant it. It was . . . weird. And so, so easy.

It was easy to be kind.

It is easy to be kind.

Now, back to where I started this post & the conclusion I came to this morning when I went shopping again for my weekly groceries.

I have a vanity plate that declares my car to be the Tardis. I wear a 4th Doctor long scarf when it’s cold. I like to call it: casual cosplay. And I absolutely love getting thumbs up and secret smiles from other ‘geeks’ in public.

This morning, as I parked in my far corner of the lot and turned by collar up against the cold, the biting wind whipping the long tails of my scarf in dramatic fashion, I recalled the words of the 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, my Doctor:

“Never be cruel, never be cowardly. And never ever eat pears! Remember – hate is always foolish…and love, is always wise.

Always try, to be nice and never fail to be kind…

Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.”

 

Simply donning a scarf, I represent The Doctor. Amazing what a fandom can give rise to within our hearts, yes?

I’ll repeat: It is easy to be kind.