covered in mud, but grinning

The Sphinx of the Seashore, Elihu Vedder

Broke 35,000 this morning. Once finished, The Key to Chaos will likely sit on Mac’s hard drive for years, untouched, in all its muddy glory. It is 90% dreck, 10% good stuff with good ideas speckling it like pecan bits in a not so great cookie, burned at the edges, too much salt. Good ideas. Very good ideas. Execution–not so much, but that’s okay. It can soak and simmer in the swamp for a while. Maybe it’ll surface shining and alluring like Excalibur.

But not in 2010. In 2010, one of my novels is going out the door agent hunting. Not sure which one yet, but I’m thinking A Haunting of Roses–it’s my December project, getting it ready. But possibly one of the others–Sweet Taboo or even Loose Daddy (Hah! Fat chance!) or I may blow the dust off Shadow Walk, and there’s also Silk River. Not lacking for choices. Just need a little backbone.

30,000 ahoy!

A Maid in the Kitchen, David Emil Joseph de Noter

Day 18, and I’ve reached 30,000. I want to be as far along as I can before the Thanksgiving break ’cause I really don’t know how I’m going to fit in the writing time between food, my sisters, and jaunting off to see NEW MOON–again! (Can hardly wait until Saturday for my first viewing.)

Yesterday, for the first time in what seems like ages, a wonderful thought about Sweet Taboo popped up from the swamp. I’ve now got a theme for Deidre’s arc, and a starting point for a whole sequence. I have not had a thought, wet or dry, about Sweet Taboo in…months? It’ll have to keep until December, when I’ll have a chance to squeeze it alongside A Haunting of Roses.

the words!

Prezziosa, Warwick Noble

As of today, 27,371!
My Nano counter doesn’t seem to be updating as it should.

winter light

Bacchante, William Bouguereau

Last week, one morning as I sat down at Mac to write the day’s Nano pages, my brain was dry as the inside of an old well. I could see calcified mud on the sides, but there I sat, a little after 4 in the morning, wondering what the hell was I doing. Still, regardless of my empty mind, I found the words and soon I had my 1667 and a bit more. Oops, I did it again.

This year’s Nano novel, The Key to Chaos, I’m calling it, is going down haphazardly, absolutely no sense of direction to it. It’s a discovery draft–by the time November 30 arrives, I hope to have found the story. I had a story in mind on October 31, but somewhere between midnight and the dawn of November 1 that story fell back into the chasm and a whole different story tapped out on the glowing white page. Now I’m more than 20,000 words in, and I’ve got some good stuff, lots of not so good, and a dash of hope that it’ll all shake out right in the end.

Yesterday was Nano break day. Michelle and I joined another friend and took a day trip to the Temecula wine country. We stopped at The South Coast Winery. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so no picture of the Tuscan villa design of the winery amid its vineyards. At the tasting bar I enjoyed several wines that I’d never had before, and bought a bottle of Old Vine Zinfandel–berry-rich, a bit spicy–absolutely delicious. Of the wines I tasted that one made me dance a jig. Thought of having a glass of that when I get home will surely ease the irritation of the nightly zombie run.

Then we scooted up the road a ways to the Temecula Olive Oil Company where I stocked up on olive oil goodies. Last night’s dinner was a salad of mixed greens with thin circles of leeks and tomato crescents drizzled with California Balsamico and Roasted Garlic Reserve olive oils. Some crusty Italian bread would’ve been nice, but I didn’t have any. Dessert–a glass of that zinfandel, and I managed to confine myself to just one.

The break was wonderful; today I’ve got to catch up with the words, but first a trip to the Sunday farmer’s market at the marina ’cause that green salad was the end of my edibles. It’s bright white winter light outside this morning and the air’s snappish so I’m dressing warmly for those snippy breezes at the marina.

nota

Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects, Tissot

Just a note–have reached a little over 18,000 words on the November novel for Nano. When I have a moment I’m going to try to place a Nano counter so I can update here.

And, one more milestone, finished reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer during lunch today. Wow is all I can say. That’s one down and 99 to go on my 5 Year, 100 Books reading project. I can now remove Neuromancer from the list, which will shrink as I read my way through it, book by book.

Carnival of Harlequin, Joan Miro

So, today’s post is by my very good friend who shall remain nameless, guest posting incognito, who discovered that starting up her new iMac meant more than plugging it into the wall and hitting the ON button. There were issues…

ISSUE NUMBER 01:  The Mac power cable is only about 6 feet long which was about 2 feet shorter than how I wanted to configure it.  So I went to Target, fought my way through their parking lot, hunted down their surge protector power bars (why it needed to be next to shampoo, I’m still puzzling over), and, between the two models they had, chose the one with the 6 foot power cable, because You Never Know.  Fought my way out of the parking lot and went home.  Hooked everything up.  Took me 30 minutes to find the iMac ON button; okay, I had to resort to the manual as everything on the computer is designed to be transparent visually and tactilely.  And it didn’t turn on.  Brief meltdown while I thought that I had to repack the computer and get it to the Apple store.  Since I bought the power bar model without the ON button and light, I hooked up Boeing PC and it didn’t turn on either.  Time out for some cussing.  I returned to Target, fought my way through the parking lot, after a brief skirmish with someone unhelpful nabbed a 2 foot bus with light and ON switch, took it to Returns and made the clerk test it although she wouldn’t till the exchange was made, fought my way out of the parking lot and returned home.  iMac powered on immediately and joyously took me through a few profiling procedures, and then we arrived at the next snag.

ISSUE NUMBER 02:  A video screen appeared and showed an unflattering video of a woman who had ‘tired from Fantasy Con and November Novel’ bags under her eyes, hair in all directions from trying to tear it out over the power bus, and a wild look in her eyes from skirmishing with Target personnel and bad parking lot drivers.  Took me a minute before I realized it was Me.  Then iMac told me brightly it wanted to take my picture.  After four very bad takes, I allowed it to take a picture of the back of my head and we were finished.

Other than these two major issues, the installation was a breeze.

sweet november

A Pompeian Beauty, Raffaele Giannetti

Doing the Nano two-step with a jig or two in between. It’s early days yet, but I’ve passed the 8,000 word count mark.

Have decided to send out Auno’s Widow again to a new market since I’ve not heard at all from the last place, and it’s been many months since it winged its way through cyberspace.

I think that room outshines her!

woohoo!

Just a quickie post, as I’ve got to get to the writing. Back from the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose–it was fabulous. The panels were excellent. I took many notes and walked out of each one with much food for thought. I got to speak to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro who writes the Saint-Germain vampire series and she kindly autographed my copy of A Dangerous Climate. I was so delighted to see her I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper! I attended a panel where Ellen Kushner was one of the speakers, but I had not brought my hardback copy of Swordspoint, unfortunately. It was great to put faces to the names of the movers, shakers, and lights of the fantasy genre–Ellen Datlow, Ellen Kushner, Peter Straub, Michael Swanwick, Anne and Jeff VanderMeer, Guy Gavriel Kay (whose intricate historical fantasies are wonderful reads), Jane Lindskold, Tim Powers, and so many others. I’ll post a bit more later, and I’ve got a couple photos too.

San Jose is a charming city with a more artistic than business air about it, and Michelle and I had fun getting slightly lost in the streets while looking for this or that restaurant, but everything was relatively close so it was just a matter of turning in the right direction–a bit of a problem for the direction dyslexic.

Congratulations to the winners of the World Fantasy Award.

Today is Day 2 of Nano, and the last day of my vacation, and I’ve got to get busy with the November novel–soon as I have another cup of coffee and rustle up some sort of breakfast.

Day 1 count: 2,059.

oh boy!

The Green Lizard, Charles Perugini

One day to go! I’m mostly packed, must print my boarding pass tonight, set up Levi’s food and water, and oh yeah, get directions to the overnight parking lot ’cause I’m leaving Junior there–usually I take a shuttle to the airport but since I’m leaving from Long Beach’s, my little Yaris can wait for me to come home. For some reason, I don’t mind leaving the car at LB’s airport but I won’t leave it at LAX’s overnight parking.

Spent the past couple days editing A HAUNTING OF ROSES and getting it ready for fresh writing in December–that’s going to be my end of the year project after NaNo. I’ve got 2010 partially planned out, already thinking about the GDR’s for next year.

Yesterday the winds gusted strongly through the Westside, sending rough billows through the building garage, strong enough to ruffle and buffle the potted palms.

Five days, zombie run free–yay!!  Hope the weather’s nice in San Jose.