So I’ve moved house, into our new and beautiful home surrounded by woods and fields, and nature just drips from the eaves with redolence. Our first morning in the new house, we spotted an 8-point buck that had come to the stream to drink. Memo to self: do NOT mention to any hunter friends, else I might discover blinds in the trees in the near future. Two days later, we spy his harem of five does a-wandering in the empty lot next door. One of them, with a black stripe down her back, I recognize later when she’s sauntering across the road I’m trying to drive on. Two days after that, when we go stomping through said woods on a family walk, it becomes a Very Special Episode.

There are many times in my life where a freezing walk has resulted in a major life event. The first night Mr. Xandra and I spent together was in rundown, ought-to-be-condemned student housing in college during a snowstorm, without functioning heat. We didn’t really notice though, as we were young enough and randy enough to make our own heat. :3 Then in another February, eleven years ago in fact, Mr. Xandra and I took a walk out onto a frozen fountain where he got down on one knee and asked me to set a date.

But this year, in addition to giving me a beautiful home with enough closet space for all my old manuscripts and a woods full of natural inspiration for my muse, Mr. Xandra gave me magickal communion with nature. And that magickal communion with Nature just wouldn’t be complete without a confrontation with the far curve of the Circle of Life in the form of a half-eaten-down-to-the-bone DEAD-ASS CARCASS!

“Holycrapwhatthehellisthat!” says Mr. Xandra while on our walk. Attracted by the bleach-white bone and bright red bloody meat, he plunges off the path and into the brush by the stream, brandishing a convenient and hastily acquired hunk of tree branch, because you just can’t have a dead body around without wanting to poke it with a stick. Number One Son goes haring off after him, and I’m left on the path with The Girl, both of us staring down at the severed and frozen-bloody limb I just noticed I was about to step on before the detour, and me noticing the tufts of bloody hair and tissue dotting the trail like an amateurly-plotted CSI episode, showing how the body was, at one point, dragged downstream, only some parts seem to have made it further than others.

“Wow, neat! Look, Dad!” shouts Number One Son excitedly. He’s just been given a precious gift of Something Really Gross that will keep the entire preschool class enraptured for weeks. Poor Miss Debbie. I don’t envy her this. I can only imagine the parent-teacher conferences resulting from the artwork generated by this one. Every mother in the class will undoubtedly hate me for this.

“Don’t let The Boy near that thing!” I shout. “It’s full of germs!” Even though attending preschool has pretty much inoculated The Boy against most forms of rampaging creeping crud out there. But I still don’t want him dragging dead carcass cooties into my brand new house, where his little sister will likely think the Best. Game. Ever. involves putting something of it in her mouth.

“It’s too cold for germs,” Mr. Nanook of the North says.

“It ain’t too cold for gross,” I retort.

“It’s the circle of life,” the Mister insists, then proceeds to show Number One Son just how the ribcage protects–or in the case of dead things and highly motivated and hungry scavengers, fails to protect–the innards of an animal.

I’m really grateful that we decided to take this walk in the below-freezing temperatures. At least when your nostrils are frozen shut, you can’t smell how old the dead thing might be. Or how fresh.

I’m sure that Elton John sure as hell wasn’t thinking about this when he was writing for the Lion King. Although I bet with lions around instead of just coyotes and raccoons and the occasional carnivorously feral squirrel, that carcass would have just been a skeleton and a lot less…meaty.

I love Nature!

So…I’m moving to the Boonies (TM) next week. We didn’t originally call it The Boonies, and it really isn’t as full of Boonie-goodness as it could be. I mean, we still get city water and the trash gets picked up. Plus, we got us one of them indoor-outhouses. More’n one, in fact.

Now, life in a small town just outside a major city is a pleasant dichotomy of rural practicality and easy access to big-city culture. I can get sushi in my local grocery, along with farm-fresh bacon that still oinked last week. And within city limits, my town was one of those rare small towns who wanted to attract the exurbs, so in addition to having little old ladies who still give you free trashbags when you pay your utility bills, and an automatic subscription to the weekly newspaper, we also had a killer telecommunications department, which included digital cable, HDTV channels, and broadband internet through the city utility commission.

Now it is exactly five miles from my old doorstep to my new doorstep, two and a half of which are still within city limits. So last week, when I arranged for Internet services at the new address, you can imagine my surprise when I was handed the welcome package of two Dixie cups and a string. It’s kinda scary to realize that even the Borg Time-Warner won’t really venture out to where I’ll be living. My nights are now being filled with nightmarish scenes from “Scream” where I’m the big-busted babysitter who’s just discovered that “ZOMG the killer is in the house!” and I have no way to Instant Message anybody about it.

But perhaps I should count my blessings. I saw someone else leaving, who lives further out, carrying firewood and wet blankets…

I think that soy ginger noodles that come in little plastic, nukable bowls are probably one of the nicer things in life, especially when they come with their own fork.

Sharing them with a half-pint who slurps them up and makes kissy noises at you makes them even better.

Okay, that title’s probably a more provocative title that necessary. What can I say, though…it sounds dirty and since my brain is kinda cluttered today, it’s appropriate enough for the post.

What makes a good story good? Who do you write for? Where do you get your ideas?

These are all questions I get asked a lot, as an author. Simple questions, really. And they can be answered with nice, quotable sound-bytes, humor, or positive and encouraging expression. But they deserve to be answered with something more, at least when a writer asks herself these questions. They also need to be asked and answered repeatedly. Not doing so is an easy way for a writer to get sidetracked by outside influences…like rerun marathons of “Xena: Warrior Princess” or reading shoujo manga until your eyes bleed. But making the time and effort, freeing up the brain cells to really think about the answers, can mean an evolutionary growth spurt as a writer.
Around three-quarters of the way through a story, it’s not unknown for me to hit a bad patch. Much like “transition” is in childbirth–those last three centimeters between contractions and pushing, it’s the darkest dark right before the dawn. I lose track of the momentum I had in the first quarter of the book and the still-emerging discovery that got me through the halfway point, and end up sitting in front of my WIP, scratching my head, and going, “WTF was I thinking?”

Immediately the doubts and bad habits start coming out. I should change the heroine into the current incarnation of an archetype that’s popular (plucky wacko, kickass babe with a destiny, fashion-obsessed socialite, etc.). I should put the plot in a Yoga class so it can bend and twist around some element that some editor in some publishing house thinks is the Next Big Thing or a Perennial Hit (bride-baby-cowboy-etc.). Or I have to stop and put in yards and yards of exposition and backstory. Rambling tangents are the order of the day–anything to avoid the main story. It’s then that I know I’ve somehow lost the focus of the story, whether it’s from time passing, other elements of Life Intruding (TM), or something completely off-the-wall (like the fact that I recently discovered that having a B-vitamin deficiency makes me forget things that I shouldn’t forget).

I know from talking to other writers that I’m not alone in this. Quite a few of us seem to hit that crisis in confidence somewhere between the time we start noodling on a story and right around the time when we’re too invested in it to just put it aside. It’s then that asking hard questions comes in handy. Questions about the basics of the craft–not just “WTF was I thinking when I plotted a pitstop on a planet of sentient panda bears?” but the questions that ask, “Why am I doing this again, when I could be making a lot more, a lot easier doing something simple, like particle physics?”

The answer to this kind of question often triggers something about the themes in my stories–not just the one I’m working on, but the underscoring themes through all of the stuff I write. It reminds me of why I write and what I’m trying to express through story. Having that reminder of why we do what we do sets me back on track, and often prompts me to a deeper understanding of a specific story. The questions are still hard to ask, though, when I can’t accept a pat answer from myself. But I do it because I love what I do. If I remember that, I can get over any hump, any day.

Over at the SEx blog, I started something I feel compelled to continue. Unlike everyone else, who’s ready to share all the great holiday memories, and how much they love the holidays, I’m providing a haven for Grinches everywhere. There are all sorts of reasons to suffer through the holidays, and if you’ve ever felt like giving someone an eggnog enema when they tell you to have a great holiday, I’m your gal.

Seasonal greetings themselves have become a battleground. I have heard Ann Coulter being quoted as saying she enjoys wishing people a Merry Christmas because it’s like saying a little “Fuck you” to people who don’t celebrate Christmas. Now I have several reasons to loathe Ann Coulter besides this one, but since it’s seasonally appropriate, it’s a great reason to not be able to stand her for the months of October, November, and December. Coulter’s reasoning makes me think of a dorm-mate I had in college, whose deep West Virginia accent (although since we were attending West Virginia University at the time, I was the one with the accent) made her holiday greeting of choice sound like “Merry Kiss-my-ass,” which I loved and promptly stole from her. So Jessie, wherever you are, bottoms up for that one. But apparently, not wishing someone a Merry Kiss-my-ass means that you’re a terrorist. Bill O’Reilly even claims there’s a War on Christmas (TM).

When was the last time Bill O’Reilly went to a mall? Hell yeah, there’s a War on Christmas (TM). It’s on all the days leading up to Christmas, too, starting from Black Friday. The battlefields are in malls and shopping centers, and being waged by guerrilla troops, who cruise slowly up and down the rows of parked cars, stalking shoppers laden with bags and going the appropriate direction away from the center of commerce.

These automotive vultures drift in and out of the normal shopping traffic, turn signals flickering madly and incessantly as they creep by, hoping for the Big Score–the first parking space after the handicapped spaces. As elusive as the dream of the perfect orgasm, they nevertheless pursue it, edging their way in front of the people who are just trying to get through the damn parking lot to the spaces way out in BuFu just so we can engage in a simple exercise of basic provisioning (I needed a new bra, and JCPenney has those nice old ladies who will measure you). Yet even in BuFuland, the slots are scarce and the vultures are circling. I spotted a slot and headed for it, only to be stalled by a woman who chose to shake her pop-up stroller out in the middle of the lane. Ordinarily, I don’t feel much irritation at these folk–I tied my children to my torso when malling when they were light enough and small enough to stay put–now I make them walk–so I have sympathy with someone who needs to wrangle kids in the Toylands of Consumption. But you can bet I went into combat mode when the woman finally got kit and caboodle situated only to stop in her tracks and wave ahead the person coming from the opposite direction, who swung conveniently and tidily into the spot I’d been eyeing, and lurking, and waiting patiently to access many long moments ago.

It was then I decided that The Girls would have to be happy with sports bras and swinging free like Tarzan for another few weeks. I gunned the gas and with a cheery wave, mouthed a hearty and very clear, “Fuck you” to the couple getting out of the car.

It’s just my little coded way of saying, “Merry Christmas.”

Well…it’s December 1st. I’m no longer chained to my NaNo WIP, and no longer on the hook for 50,000 words in 30 days.

Bet you’re wondering how I did? Ahh…I didn’t think so. But I’ll tell ya anyway. Last night, around midnight, I clocked in at 30,077 words. Considerably less than I hoped for, but hella more than I expected. Having a week of null-computer time cut me deeply–not having my familiar setup made me just a little compulsively nutty. Adding a 14-hr round trip roadtrip over Thanksgiving probably didn’t help, either. I took my laptop, thinking (somewhat foolishly) that family time with the kids in tow meant I could sneak away and get some work done. I should have known that Mr. Xandra is consummately better at sneaking away from family than I am. Of course, he did most of the driving, so I could hardly begrudge him a nap. I may be mean, but I’m not totally heartless.

But every year I participate in NaNoWriMo (and this will make my fourth year now), I learn something new about my writing process. NaNos, BIAWs (Book In A Week, with no word count goal, simply a week where every waking moment you can spare is spent writing new materials), goal-setting challenges (a big shout-out to my local RWA chapter, which runs a goals list that’s incredibly supportive and has come in very handy for me–our list mistress, Jennette Powell, deserves a huge cheer because she has a gift for knowing when to push and the right thing to say to encourage us to keep forging ahead), they all teach me just a little more about my writing process and its constant evolution. Last year’s NaNo taught me that I could make serious progress in world building if I just let my imagination go and not worry about whether or not it fit into the story. As a result, I have a story with a rich world and even if much of the material never makes it into the finished product, it’s still there, and making the world more real to me, and hopefully more real to the readers as well. This year, I learned something that I suspected prior to November’s efforts–if I don’t have a beginning, I’m not going anywhere. I spent about 20,000 words in set-up. It was useful–most of it, anyway, as it has given me possible glimpses into the lives of the characters prior to the inciting incident. But it took me about 23,000 words to come up with a convincing beginning to the story. I got so sick of trying to push my characters together that once I got an inciting incident (and it by no means is a great one, but that’s what this POS…er, Discovery draft–is), I jumped ahead and had to work on something else. The ending. From the ending, I finally figured out what the story should be. So now I can get the characters into a story that will fit them, and fit the ending I’ve written for them.

But not, I think, today. It’s funny, but the WIP I’d been working on up until then (my pet WIP), I’d just started getting into the next level with it when NaNo came up and I had to put it aside (the rules of NaNo say that you have to start on something new and try to write through to the end of the story, the idea being that you have a 50,000 word story framework that you can edit and revise at a later date). Periodically during the month, I’ve had the strongest urges to get this WIP going again, but had to control them in favor of building up word count for the NaNo. Free of that, I can now return to my blond hunk of a telepath who can read the minds of women everywhere–their most secret desires, their most passionate longings…

Okay, so what am I still doing here?

I’ve been grilled!  Over some Smokin’ Hot flames.  :D  Actually, by a Smokin’ Hot erotic romance writer.  Fellow LSB author Kate Willoughby regularly interviews authors at her blog, and to celebrate the release of “Hounded” from “A Witch In Time,” Kate put me to the grill. :D  Hop on over and check me out, along with some of the other intriguing authors of sensual and erotic romance Kate interviews, as well as the books she’s releasing and stories she reviews.

In addition to being on the barbie, I’ve been participating in National Novel Writing Month.  Not that I don’t write every other month in the year, but for November, I use the “blast through and write like crazy” technique characterized in NaNo participation.  I turn off my internal editor and write just to start and end a story within the allotted time.  Since my laptop’s wireless card unexpectedly died last week, though, my great start fizzled out.  I’m still operating at half-impulse as I get things straightened back out (for the g33k squad out there, my old laptop used Gentoo Linux and Gnome desktop, my new lappy had a great start with Ubuntu linux and KDE desktop.  Long story short, I like Kdesktop, but Ubuntu just had too much of a learning curve.  Its package management system just wasn’t as robust as Gentoo’s is.  So back to Gentoo, but this time with dual-boot KDE/Gnome, for whenever I’m in a mood for a change of environment.  Thus endeth the g33k segment of our show).  So for the past week, I’ve had to choose between trying to catch up my story-writing, or doing internet things like blogging.  And since my internet time was exceedingly limited, I wrote…

…and yes, kept serious tabs on the midterm elections, because I have this inner political junkie that loves to watch how politics plays out.  I still love the first four seasons of The West Wing and could watch them for hours when Bravo runs the marathons.  I so wish Martin Sheen was president for realz.

But after the edge-of-the-seat night of watching CNN’s tallies scroll endlessly across the bottom of the TV screen, I realized I’m in Week 2 of NaNo, which is traditionally when people drop out of NaNo, because life intrudes, or they think their story sucks (of course it does–it’s in draft form…you’re vomiting words on the page at a reckless pace about twice as fast as a prudent person would–the idea is to revise and edit later). So the words are coming more slowly, and the time ticks by, and a rare summery day in November just can’t be wasted.

I’m a big sucker for goalsetting. Sometimes I’m an addict–I set so many goals and micromanage them that I don’t actually get anything done. However, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is different. There’s such energy–such knowledge that about 70,000 other people are doing the same damn thing as you–that you just can’t help getting caught up in the crazy.

Being a writer is a lonely business, by and large.  If you are lucky enough to write full-time, your life consists of long stretches of solitary effort, populated by nothing more than the voices in your head and a persistent low-grade carpal tunnel ache.  And not that I don’t think it’s the best damn job in the world, but there are times when the presence of friends means more than words can express.

This week was one of those times.

I had surgery (never something you want to do by your lonesome) on Tuesday.  I’ll spare the gory details, but suffice it to say that Percocet is my best friend, and trying to do anything without your abdominal muscles is damn near impossible.  Add to that two small and very physically affectionate rugrats who drag their poor mother through a very active lifestyle and things get ugly.  About as ugly as all the bruising on my abdomen.

But if you’re damn lucky like me, you have a posse of angels who swoop in to your rescue.  Mr. Xandra hauled my poor, wounded carcass home and tucked me into bed to recuperate, and no sooner did he get me situated than my homegirls came to the rescue.  My son had rides to school and afternoon adventures that kept him active and occupied (and less prone to worrying about Mommy or forgetting that he couldn’t head-butt me with affection as is the norm around here).  My daughter found herself with new toys to keep her occupied.  The Girls brought me dinners and pie (pie!  pie rules!) and not a day went by without at least two calls to check and see if I needed anything from the store, or needed some company to help move around.

My mother-in-law (a voracious reader herself, and the woman who kept my kids in clean laundry, bless her) witnessed this, and asked me if I knew how much of a gift I had in these women.  I answered her truthfully - from the start of my friendships with them, there has been a genuine bond between us that has been unexpected, but not in the least unwelcome.  We are five very different women, and we’re constantly amazed at how our diverse backgrounds led us to form such a wonderful circle.  And we’re very much aware at how we really found something special.

You know who you are, ladies. But I wonder if you know how special you are to me. Even though words are my stock in trade, I have a hard time finding the right ones that can express how powerfully blessed I feel because of your friendship. If you were a bra, you’d be sold in an exclusive boutique for more money than a car, and you’d be the kind of bra a girl would wear on the outside, because she needs to share with the world how great that bra is. Jane Russell would be green with envy at the girl who wore that kinda bra.

Yeah, I know–that was demented. But heartfelt. I love you guys.

Something beautiful happens to a book when it gets a cover. Cover art is often the last thing on a book’s production cycle, and if not the very last, then at least it becomes the point of critical mass, where a book goes from the potential of a manuscript to the reality of a book.

Covers attract readers, and entice them to pick up (click on) the book to learn more. No savvy reader judges a book solely by its cover, as the old adage goes, but the cover sure does play a part, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

When I was a teenager, enamored of the teenage romances (back in the dinosaur age the first time the YA market was hot), I used to stare endlessly at the covers of the books I was reading. I read so fast that my mother encouraged me to slow down and enjoy the story (probably so she wouldn’t have to keep buying me new ones so fast!). I’d slow myself down by taking frequent “cover staring” breaks. I’ll never forget the book whose cover didn’t match the inside. It was about a girl who was stranded in a haunted house with her boyfriend and his mother, and her quest to solve the mystery of the ghost girl’s murder. In the book, the heroine had dark hair and the ghost was blonde, but on the cover, the model in the diaphanous robes surrounded by mist (supposed to be the ghost) had dark hair, while the girl dressed in the modern clothes was a blonde.

I don’t remember the title or author of that book, but I do remember the error on the cover, and how angry it made me. Of course, back then, everything made me angry, but having a cover that didn’t fit the story was somehow upsetting enough to stick in my mind long after the lava of teen angst has cooled in my veins (didja like that imagery?).

One thing that has really, truly impressed me about Liquid Silver (and was a deciding factor in my choice to submit to them in the first place) was the classy professionalism of their covers. That’s why I’m pleased to announce the cover of the anthology featuring my second story with them is ready to roll.  This beautiful cover brought to you by April Martinez, who is an art goddess.