Saturday Conversations with Family

We'd just finished buying pet supplies and I closed the trunk, while my husband and son got in the car. The trunk popped open again, and I closed it. It happened again. And again. Finally it stopped popping open and I got in the car.

My husband said, "I'm sorry, the release button got stuck and it just kept popping the trunk."
Me: "I thought you were messing with me."
Him: "No, I value my testicles too much."
Son (finally noticing one word in the conversation): "What are you saying about testicles?"

Later, after teasing my husband about various things:

Him: "You know what? I was messing with you. Retroactively."
Me: "I hope you enjoyed your testicles while you had them."
Him: "I'm sleeping in chain mail speedos."
Son: "That would chafe."

Yes, we have conversations like this all the time. (Ok, maybe not about testicles.)

My son loves his new job, even if he is working near Uranium 238 (which he assures me is the bad kind, to which I think, "There's a good kind?"). He says his big problem is that one of the guys he's working with isn't psychic. Evidently having conversations with me has spoiled my son for having conversations in the real world :)

Fan Girl

I am a total fan girl of Seanan McGuire. (Click here to read her periodic introduction post.) Even in the years when I stopped blogging/LJing and wasn't doing much on the internet (I was depressed, but didn't know it), I still had her LJ as my start up page.

I own her three CD's and will pre-order the fourth as soon is she puts it up for pre-order (which should be soon). She's recently become a published author and has come out with three books this year. (Let me just stop for a minute an reflect on that. Three books. This year.) Two of them (the October Daye novels) are under her name, and the third (the first of the Feed novels) is under the name Mira Grant. (I'm assuming it's because they're different genres, and to avoid giving people zombie stories when they really wanted urban fantasy.) She's under contract for three more October Daye novels and two more Feed novels.

So, yeah, I'm as impressed as all heck by her talent and productivity, but what I really love, and fell in love with back before she'd made any cds or published any books, is her voice. She's funny and she cares about everything. Plus, anyone that loves a good plague has got to be great, right?

And I don't hold it against her, not one little bit, that she's writing a book about cryptozoologists that is going to be really amazing. Nope, don't hold it against her at all. (Kicks my unnamed cryptozoology piece into the corner and whistles quietly.)

Optimise Your Opener

Editor Devil has a deal right now. Post the first two paragraphs of your first chapter, and she'll give you her feedback.

I love the advice on her website. After my revision is done, I've given a lot of thought to hiring a freelance editor to go over my book before I submit to an agent. I haven't decided yet (it will really depend on cost), but if I can afford it, I'd like her to be the one. I really loved her post about question marks, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".

Update

A couple of weeks ago, we had an earthquake. My son didn't feel it because he was eating cheetos and according to him, "You can't feel an earthquake when you're eating cheetos." Fortunately tonight he was not eating cheetos, so he felt this one. (In fairness, this one was a lot closer, so it was easier to feel.)

He also got the internship he wanted. He's now part of a very select group: people that have used an electron microscope. He's also part of an even smaller group: people that have used and adjusted an electron microscope. He's very happy.

genre: Please Don't Be Paranormal Romance

I have a new WiP on my "works in progress" list on my blog. The tentative title is "The Selkie Lover". (I hate that title, so it will undoubtedly change.) The genre is "Please Don't Be Paranormal Romance".

Now, I have nothing against Paranormal Romance. In fact, some of my current favorite books are PR or could fall into that genre, even though they're being marketed as Urban Fantasy or Steampunk or whatever. The reason I'm don't want this story to be paranormal romance is that I don't know how to write love stories.

The love story aspect to "The Selkie Lover" is paramount. (And, since it doesn't have a Happily Ever After, I guess it can't be classed as a romance.) That being said, I have avoided writing this story for years, because it's a love story written from the point of view of the man (selkie), and I don't have the skills to write this. Yet.

But, since the story won't go away, I've decided to add it to the list. The bottom of the list :)

Wonky comments

There's something wonky going on with my comments right now. People are commenting on my posts (I know, because I get a copy of the comment emailed to me), but the comment isn't showing up on my blog.

If you've made a comment, and it's not showing up, please don't think I removed it! It's just being swallowed by Blogger. I will try to find out what's going on and get the comments back.

Conferences?

I look at some of the posts about conferences, and they sound fun and interesting. (They're probably more fun for people that aren't introverts, which would leave me out, but they still sound fun.)

I'm trying to decide if I should go to one or not. I probably can't afford it this year, but there's one called Southern California Writers Conference that sounds interesting.

So, have you been to a conference? Would you like to go? If money were no object, what conference would you go to?

How to make your one freebie work for you

Yesterday, I posted about the idea of "one freebie". Once you figure out what your one freebie is, how can you make it work for you?

For example, my one freebie is world building. Why am I good at it? I like the research, I like the brain storming, I like making fantastical things seem realistic.

Now, I'm afraid that character voice is one of my weaker areas. So, how can I use the things that work for me in world building in creating character voice?

Research my characters. What kind of backgrounds do they have? Educational level? Personal traumas or quirks? Myers Briggs type?

Brainstorm about my characters. Fast talkers, slow talkers, use of slang, etc. Oubliette, for example, comes from a different era and has a background from a faeish culture that doesn't exist any more. She's incredibly angry at humans. She feels alone in her outrage about what humans have done to faeish and wants to win faeish (specifically Troll Wife) over to her side of the fight. So, she would sound archaic. She would use faeish (rather than human) idioms. She would speak compellingly.

Make the fantastical sound realistic. Who was someone that is famous for speaking compellingly? Winston Churchill. How did he do it? He wrote his speeches, and then in his final edits he rewrote them into blank verse. So, maybe Oubliette would speak in blank verse.

Oh. My. Gosh. Now I need to research blank verse. But at least I have a handle on how to take my strengths and use them to deal with my weaknesses.

Dylan's tale

Dylan and his brother were just about two weeks old when they were found in a lawn mower. Dylan was named after the little boy that found the kittens and turned them over to Lily at Cats At The Studios.

He came to our house on Friday (my day off), and our two cats were Not Pleased to have small kitten with belled collar running around the house. Now we knew Pooka, our 11 year old cat, wouldn't like this, but I was pretty sure that Morgan, our 1 year old cat, would come to love the new kitten. I assured my husband that in two weeks everything would be fine and the two of them would be playing together.

Both cats hissed and growled at Dylan, and he received at least one thump from each of them on Friday. He didn't cry, so we knew no claws were used. He seemed fine, though his puzzled expression seemed to say, "What is this hissing thing you speak of?" (Since he was a bottle fed baby, he's not as aware of cat rules and language as a mother raised kitten would be.)

On Saturday, we took his belled collar off, and the cats seemed to instantly accept him. (Well, Pooka would still rather he stay off her couch.) Now he and Morgan are playing together, climbing the cat tree together, sleeping together (sometimes) and even grooming each other.

The cat tree has a story, but that's for another day.

One Freebie

Years ago, when I was kind-of-but-not-really studying yoga, I first heard of the concept of "one freebie". The idea is that every newbie has one pose in yoga that they can do as though they had been studying that pose for years. You just have a natural gift for that pose.

Recently, I'd heard the concept applied to writing skills as well. Every writer has one thing that they can do effortlessly. The trick is to know what the one thing is. For me, I think it's world building.

I love world building, so even if I weren't any good at it, I would still end up doing it well because I love it and spend a lot of time on it. I'm all about being internally self consistent, so that when my stories have something strange in them, the reader can have a sense of how it all fits together.

What's you're one freebie?