Get Your Shit Together

So I was on the phone with my not-Boyfriend last night, and, to put it bluntly, I kicked his ass. You can only put up with so much emo whining before you just crack.

You know what, everybody?

Life is hard.

Really fucking hard.

Getting what you want out of life?

Even fucking harder.

I have had a shitty couple of years. Let's be honest. I got a chronic illness that cost me 30K and 4 days in the hospital and takes up a staggering amount of time, money and energy to manage on a daily basis (not to mention self-control, discipline, and plain fucking hard work). I've been in four relationships, two of which ended in smoking ruin, been dumped twice (three times, actually, two people). I was laid off from my cushy but (let's face it) dull Chicago job, blew through my 401(K), fucked up my friendship with my best friend, rang up 17K in credit card debt (16, 17, 18? Really, who can keep track?), and had books rejected by agents and publishers across the board.

And you know what? I could have chosen to deal with any and all of these things: chronic illness, job loss, fucked relationship(s), the usual rejection, with giving up. With hiding under my bed and feeling sorry for myself. I could have denied the whole chronic illness thing and continued to subsist primarily on carbs and sob into my brown sugar oatmeal in the morning and run around wacked-shit crazy because my sugar levels were all over the fucking board, running around with crazy depression and weepiness and tell everybody "poor me! Poor me!"

Fuck that shit.

Why the hell would I choose to hide under my bed and cry all the time? What's the point in that? What does it accomplish? Lying around feeling sorry for myself doesn't change the situation.

I hate that I have to work my ass off just to feel "normal" now. I need an hour of exercise a day and a low-carb lifestyle to feel my best. And just to keep that up takes not just willpower, but fucking work. I have to adjust all my insulin levels and correct for lows and test all the time, because sugar's easier to manage if you have a set routine - sugar's always easier to manage when I'm sedentary, cause then I'm not having lows all the time and feeling like I want to rip people's heads off and unable to concentrate at work for 20 minutes while I even out again.

Ridiculous.

Instead, to be at my best, I have to go through a calibration phase every time I mix up my routine. So for the first week of a new workout routine I'm adjusting my sugar. Oh, sure, it gets easier once you have the new formula down, but the reason I like routine - eating and exercise - is because it's just so much fucking work to change it up. And I still have to change it up sometimes. And it sucks.

Also, having a fucking budget sucks. It really sucks. It sucks that I have to cut out all the fucking cheap-ass food (because it is, of course, full of carbs) but can't splurge on expensive cheese - the only stuff I can eat totally guilt free that I adore! - because, again, it's fucking expensive. it really sucks. It sucks to live on fajitas and spinach salad. It sucks not going out to eat all the time and buying diet cherry coke. I hate it.

But what I hate more than ANYTHING, more than any of this fucking WORK, is being a fucking loser. Is falling down and not getting the fuck up again. Everybody gets to whine and bitch and moan sometimes, you know? But when you're done bitching, you get the fuck up. You take it a step at a time. You figure out what you want and you start to build it, one block at a time.

You get your health together first, because if you're mentally wacky, you can't do shit. And that's pretty fucking hard, too. Not everybody has health insurance or people in their lives to love and support them through the hard shit. It's called fucking privilege, to have health insurance and a support network. So if you've got it, shut the fuck up and stop bitching and get your fucking shit together.

Get your shit together, not-Boyfriend.

24 Hours of Daylight

People would often ask me what 20 hours of daylight looked like in Fairbanks, or 20 hours of darkness.

Well, it's a lot like this 24-hours of daylight, only the sun does actually dip beneath the horizon for those four or five hours during the Fairbanksan summer.

One For the Road

Save Yourself

Artist here.

Life Expectancy

Life expectancy in Botswana is 33.

Damn.

Budgets

Wow, I hate budgets. I hate not getting what I want. I hate living like a lower middle class person instead of an upper middle class person. I hate having to think about money.

Grocery shopping is like fucking pulling teeth. I have to say no all the time, me, who's been getting by in life by saying "yes" to all the adventures and the risk taking and the traveling and the wacky relationships.

"No," now to what I want and desire but do not need is a fucking kick in the ass.

I hate growing up.

Steph and I were at the grocery store talking to the checkout clerk who said, "Oh, you're roommates? We've been having a lot of girls coming in today who are roommates! Oh, well, I guess you're not girls. You're ladies!"

Sweet gawd.

Ladies.

And I used to wish somebody would start calling me "ma'am" and showing me some respect when I was 15.

Thing is, I wouldn't go back to being 15 for just about anything, unless I knew everything then that I know now. I've worked really fucking hard to get where I am. Growing into it, now, making everything else work... well, that does imply that I'm more lady than girl, for fucking sure.

Being a girl was fun. Being a girl got me here.

But letting go of that break-neck freedom, that not-knowing, that not-caring, yeah, that's the part that sucks.

Being a tech writer, paying my own way, owning my own place? Well, you don't get something for nothing. You have to make a trade. I'm trading credit-card poverty and junk accumulation for an IRA and a yard of my own.

Looking at it that way, it's not a bad trade.

But fucking hard to get there.

Stuff to Do Today

1) Make pancakes
2) Finish reviewing tDW series synopses
3) Update full series character database from tDW appendix completed yesterday
4) Pay Verizon bill
5) Write 1000 words of Black Desert
6) Go grocery shopping (stay within $90 budget)

Things I have already blown off today:

1) Eye appointment. I really need to stay in-network. Money issue. Will reschedule at another place.

Things I might still blow off today:

2) Hair appointment. Is getting highlighted hair really worth all the extra time and expense? I certainly need an updated look in this a looks-obsessed culture, but I can afford the one-time cost, not regular maintainence. Do I want a house in two years or lighter hair?

Perhaps I can solve my need for an updated look with new glasses from above-mentioned in-network provider.

We'll see.

Blah blah.

Can't Sleep

Can't sleep, too much in my head. When does this bullshit go away?

I have a million things to do tomorrow, and I need to fucking get over this.

I wish a million things.

When I wasn't ready, I had to end relationships because they were ready. Now that I'm ready, they're ending relationships because they're not ready.

Not ready for what, I don't know. I just know I was happy. We were happy. Two people. Us? Having fun. I have never laughed so much in my life. I could always make him smile. I loved to see him smile.

But I don't want to go back to being a distant, cold-hearted bitch, you know? I don't want to go back to hiding from the world. You get hurt, you get back up again.

I guess I just really miss my friend.

I miss him.

Robin Hood

So, sometime back, Susan blogged about the BBC series, Robin Hood. And I checked out some fan clips on You Tube. And then the episodes were available on Netflix and I'd finished Rome, so really, why not...?

Tonight, I watched the first disk of Robin Hood.

Oh my!

The Old Man, drawn by the inexplicable power of the camp, sat and watched it with me, and we giggled the whole way through. Stephanie came in later and the three of us kept up a steady stream of laughter and banter and merry men jokes. Ohhhhh was this series up to merry men jokes.

Random slow motion, jump cuts, absolute CHEESE dialogue.

I was giggling with pure 14-year-old glee, the same way I do whenever I watch The 300.


The dialogue is just this side of cheesy, the situations and particularly the fight scenes more than a little ridiculous, but oh, I love all of these characters! I love them love them, every one.

Upon realizing my giggling was not at the badness, but in glee, the Old Man said, "This show is almost as bad as Flash Gordon! You'll watch this show but not Flash Gordon!"

"This show has way hotter guys than Flash Gordon," I said. "The only reason you watch that show is for those chicks with the bouncing boobs."

"OK, that's true."

"And I'm watching this show because Robin is hot and Marion shoots people!"

Mmmm.... Robin Hood guys: sly, scrawny, witty little tricksters.

Not at all like geeky hardware guys.




Shut up.










In any case, it's a wonderfully campy show.

Glee, I tell you. Girlish glee.

Latest Pony Mods

It must be winter....

Stephanie thinks my pony mods should be more "brutal." Brutal takes a lot more work, as it turns out. Isn't that always the way? Pretty and fem is easy. We have a script for pretty.

But I'll see what I can do.






As an aside, Jenn once asked me if there were any black or brown My Little Ponies you could actually buy off the shelf. I had to think about it a minute, and consult my collection... and you know what?

There aren't.

Blue, green, purple.... and white, of course.

But black and brown?

Good luck.

Another reason to make my own.

Tonight's Song, Stuck on Repeat

"Chasing Cars"
Snow Patrol

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Spending Your Spoons: Or, What it's Like to Manage Chronic Illness

"Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions... The difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn't have to."

She handed her friend a bouquet of 12 spoons, explaining that unlike healthy people -- who have an unlimited supply -- those of us living with CI (chronic illness) have to always monitor the limited number of spoons we possess, and think carefully about how to "spend" them.

Christine then asked her friend to list the tasks of her day, whether chores or fun activities. Each item would cost her one spoon. And if you didn't sleep well the night before, or skipped your medicine, or dosed it incorrectly, or caught a cold, that would cost you even more precious spoons. "You do not want to run low on spoons, because you never know when you truly will need them," Christine explained.

In general, I have three parts of my life that I just can't get to all go well at once: work life, writing life, personal life.

There are a lot of spoons involved in making all those things work, in doing that much, in doing it well, in doing it all. We all have a finite amount of energy. I just have fewer spoons than most people.

I try to spend them wisely.

City at the Edge of the World

Life Instructions

Dreams

I dreamed about Wiscon last night. All sorts of fuzzy things, too many people, tricky social situations, obsessive concern about my own presentation, doubt, worry, panels, people.

It's not that I'm overstimulated these days. I just have too much time to think.

Too many changes all at once, the last couple of years.

Geekery

I find it vaguely embarrassing that I have an epic fantasy series that requires a detailed character list.

Not just to keep myself straight, but to unconfuse confused readers.

I hate these things, because I feel like your characters should all be fleshed out enough that nobody gets them confused, even if you've got a cast of thousands.

This is the last big push to finish the tDW package, and it's annoying. Why is it so annoying? Because I've gone through tDW and cut out, combined, renamed and tagged characters over several revisions (about seven thousand revisions. I "finished" this book in 2003), and I have to go through the whole fucking book again, compare it to my current list, fix my current list, and then format and organize my current list. As of the last pass, I still had an industry pro who's major gripe with the book was getting all the characters confused.

I'd say this was getting Jordan-like, but it's only going to be five books.

Really.

No, no... REALLY.

For the Roommates

If you lived in my house, this would be HILARIOUS.

Work and Workout: the Good, the Bad, the Just So

I've upped my evening workout times from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, and will soon be moving from 3-4 days to 4-5 days (next week, when the new health & wellness program starts at work).

The good news is, I have more energy when I get home, so I'm not collapsing into bed at 9, but dawdling around reading, writing, or working on pony mods until at least 10 (this is quite reasonable. I get up at 5:30 am for free weights and breakfast).

As said, we're starting a health & wellness thing at work, which means 90 min workouts twice a week with one of our health & wellness trainers at the YMCA next door. I figure these are a great way to break up my gym time, so I do these ones twice a week and the regular 60 minute ones at my own gym 2-3 times a week.

It's a lot of effort, not so much in actual exercise time as commuting time. It eats an extra hour a night, but to be dead honest, what the hell was I really doing during that hour anyway? Surfing the internet? Going to bed early?

Gymming keeps me busy, keeps me from spending more money, keeps my mood stable. Like anything worthwhile that requires effort and a time investment, it's annoying, but ultimately satisfying. I remember how I felt in Alaska when I was working out 6 or 7 days a week, those long summer nights, miles and miles of bike rides. I felt better that summer than anytime since. I wouldn't mind feeling that way again.

And so.

P.S. work is also insane, but satisfying. Those training videos I scripted turned out a lot better than I thought. That videographer did wonders. My first scripted work! OMG!

Satisfying.

Will, Desire, Bravery, and Shit Like That

When I was twelve or thirteen, I started getting these prescient dreams. I'd start dreaming about things that ended up happening a couple of weeks later. Not big things, but certain situations, events. I'd dream in snapshots. They weren't terribly useful sorts of dreams, because how can you prevent or prepare for the arrangement of bottles or boxes and where people sit in a room? Why would you want to?

These days, the prescient dreams are more emotional than situational, and have veered away from fortunetelling to pure subconscious anticipation. I had them a couple weeks before relationships ended this year; they're more about relieving emotions I must know, on some level, are coming down the pipe. They deal with fears I already have, situations that are yet to be that I'm sure some part of me can see coming.

But at twelve or thirteen, back when they were situational, what concerned me about was that I seemed to be living the same life over and over again. If I was predicting situations - people sitting in certain arrangements, objects situated in particular ways - then I must have already lived this life. I'd been here before. And if I was living this life over again, it probably meant it was because I'd done something wrong the last time.

We all create belief systems based on our experiences, and in my experience, I was reliving the same life over and over again.

I wanted that to stop.

I didn't want to know what was going to happen before it happened. I wanted big, bold, uncertainty. If I took enough risks, maybe I'd do something right this time around.

So I decided, in my later teens, that what I needed to do was live my life differently. I needed to take risks, follow my heart, do things I was afraid to do, live a life I could not predict.

This is the life I've lived since then. I left the house three days after turning 18, moved back home six months later, bought a one-way ticket to Alaska eight months after that, went to grad school in South Africa, moved to Chicago on a whim. All the choices I've made - relationships, living situations, world jaunts, have been things I've done on a whim, risks I've taken, because they felt right in my heart, in my bones (this gut-feeling system went severely haywire for a year when I was dying - you can't listen to a gut-feeling properly when you're crazy, cause you can't sort out which is which. Another reason I take really good care of myself these days).

When I take too long to think about things, I get scared and cowardly. I want to hide under the bed. It takes an active effort, everyday, to live a life that's worth living, to me. Most days I want to stay home, eat something full of carbs, and feel sorry for myself.

But the more days I get out from under the bed and get out and do what I need and want to do - despite the fear - the better I feel, the better I am, the more I'm the person I want to be.

I read once that the first step to becoming the person you want to be is to start acting like the person you want to be. You say, "What would a strong, confident, kick-ass woman who was incredibly brave and intelligent do right now?" She would not hide under the bed. She would not settle, would not lead a dull, stale life.

I don't always succeed. Sometimes I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to write. I don't want to get my heart hurt. Sometimes I want to eat donuts and drink beer and hide out in my room watching "Titanic" all night.

But, as with all things in my life, I come back. I'll break down and give up for a night or three, and then it's back to writing and gymming and French and low-carb tortillas that don't give me headaches, and building something to get me to where I want to be.

I've reached a point in my life where I honestly don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know how things will turn out.

I do, however, know what I want. I know the sort of person I'd like to be, and I consistently take the steps to get there. I act like the person who already is there.

Most days.

One of my favorite shows to watch while gymming is MTV's "Made." Pick something you want to be. Do that.

Not everybody has the ability or force of will to get there, but you know what? Aim for the stars, and you'll hit the moon. Aim for the moon, and you're still just stuck here back on Earth.

Not that it's a bad place to be... I just want something more.

Always wanting something more. Knowing what I want. Stubborn desire.

Persistence.

Yeah. I Write This Stuff. Sue Me.

My Favorite New Year's Poem

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

- lucille clifton

Black Desert (Excerpt)

Nyx put her hands on the edge of the well and looked down. The water was glassy black; she stared at her darker half, gazing up at her from the bottom of the well. There was nothing but water and her reflection and the stir of the water around the rope.

The rope.

She reached out and gave a sharp tug on the rope. The rope stayed taut. There was something on the other end.

Nyx ran to the pulley on the other side of the well and took hold of the lever. She began rotating the wheel, and grunted with the effort. The best way to poison a well was to tie a body to it. She had one long stretch of time to think about who it was on the other end of the rope; Inaya, Khos, no, they would have tied the children here. Their bodies would be sodden and blue, and perhaps even a little stiff.

Prepare for the worst. Always prepare for the worst, because if you see anything less than that, it will be a prize, a relief. If she saw Khos there, perhaps, it would be better than seeing dead children.

Fuck, I’ve gotten soft, she thought, and then she heard something splashing in the water.

Nyx let the lever catch and leaned over to peer into the well again. There, at the other end of the rope, was the bucket, and two pairs of hands desperately clinging to it. Two cold, went faces peered up at her, shivering; their expressions shadowed and terrified.

“It’s Nyx!” Nyx yelled at them, stupidly, but it was dark, wasn’t it, and how could they know her in the dark? “I’m getting you up, come on now!”

She turned back to the lever. A stiff wind buffeted her from behind, and she heard a scattering of dead leaves roil along the dirt drive. She heard the wind stir the tree. She raised her head. She saw a hundred cicadas crawling along the trunk of the tree, flitting among the branches, and as she wind stirred, the cicadas stirred as well, flew outward around the tree like a cloud, and she began to brace herself, squint her eyes, prepare for a swarm.

But something else happened.

The tree began to tremble. The wind died and the tree still trembled, and the cicadas swarmed and then pulled toward the tree, pulled toward a tree that was rapidly condescending, becoming smaller. The dead leaves moved along the ground, drawn back up into the tree’s branches. They melted together like butter, merged with the cicadas. Nyx had a dizzy moment of vertigo. The world seemed to twist. Something in the air around her twisted, tore, and the tree and leaves and cicadas became a liquid thing, like mottled, melted cheese. Something screamed, something inside the tree, the cicadas, maybe, dying.

Branches flung up, a crown of leaves, branches became hands, the crown of leaves elongated, shuddered.

“Oh God,” Nyx said, and the breath left her body. She knew what it was becoming, what the tree, the leaves, the air, the bugs, were becoming. Were shifting into.

“Oh God,” she said again, because she was suddenly sick, because it was like something in the world had been distorted; something very, very wrong was happening.

And as the tree’s color paled, the melted shape took on a more human form, and the gaping hole in the face, the half-formed mouth, vomited a black cloud of flies, and with the flies came another scream; not from the bugs this time, but a true human scream; the rage and pain and terror of birth.

The figure stumbled toward Nyx, shaking and shuddering, slinging off long strings of mucus and leaf pulp, and the black eyes grew lashes and the irises formed and focused, and the cascade of hair and leaves went black, black and long as Inaya’s hair; Inaya’s face, round but still slack-eyed, and the fingers at the ends of the new arms were held in tight fists, oozing mucus and blood and something else that had the tangy smell of oak hybrid sap.

Flies and leaf pulp, dirt and the shimmering wings of cicadas, stuck to the slick mucus covering her naked body as she stumbled toward Nyx.

Her fists reached out, made open hands, and she clung to the edge of the well, and then her eyes focused, and she was something more or less human, more or less Inaya, and Nyx knew her then, really knew her, and nearly lost her stomach.

Nyx felt a deep cramping in her stomach, sudden nausea, and she backed a half step away.

Inaya screamed into the well, and as she screamed, she coughed and a handful of flies escaped from her nearly-formed lungs.

“Up!” was the word she screamed, or maybe that was just some grunt, some noise, but the next words were her children’s names, and not even Nyx could mistake those.

“Are you all right?” Inaya yelled at them, and the children cried up at her.

Inaya raised her head to Nyx, her damp, mucus-crusted head, and her eyes were so very fucking black, and the look on that face, in that face...

“Haul them up!” Inaya snarled.

And Nyx grabbed the lever and hauled them up like some other woman, someone far younger, far stronger. Sweat beaded her brow, ran between her breasts, her shoulder blades, long before she was tired or spent. She was trembling, she realized, with fear.

When the bucket was close enough, Inaya reached into the well and hauled up Isafan first, and then Tatie. The children hit the dirt and then clung to her.

Inaya patted them down, asking after hurts, looking for any they’d missed, and when she was done, she turned her face again to Nyx, opened her mouth to speak, and stopped. She turned to the blazing house.

It was like watching some kind of phantom or demon, something so Other than Nyx had no real name for her.

Inaya took in the burning house and said, “Khos,” and then, “Watch the children.”

And in a breath, an instant, she seemed to blow apart, piece by piece, and each piece disintegrated into another piece, another, smaller and smaller, until there was only a pale mist, a fog, and the mist blew across the yard and into the burning house like some contaminated wind over the desert.

The children gathered around Nyx and gazed with her, open mouthed, toward the house.

Nyx’s mouth was dry. She tried working some spit into it and, “She do that often?”

“Never,” Tatie said, breathless.

“Holy shit,” Nyx said.

“Holy shit,” Isafan said.

Nyx grabbed them each by the hand. “Let’s go, come on,” and started walking toward the blazing house and the demon.

Randomosity

Too much writing. Not enough boyfriend.

Silly sadness.

One For the Road

Thought of the Day

"90% of achieving anything is about not quitting."

That is, 90% of accomplishing anything is taken up in keeping ourselves from quitting, fighting through the urge to quit, convincing ourselves not to quit, distracting ourselves from quitting, not giving in to excuses for quitting, and convincing ourselves we still want to continue.

10% is the actual work of continuing.

Which, if true, says a lot about how much effort it takes us all not to sabotage ourselves.

Life, success: persistence.

Ringing in the New Year....

... with pancakes and snow.

At Least I'm Consistent....

I had the same typing speed for the last five years.

82 words

Year-End Wrap Up

1) Rang in new year with new distance boyfriend in California

2) Sent out BioWare writing application

3) Started a receptionist temp job after losing full-time job

4) BioWare writing application rejected, rewritten, resubmitted

5) BioWare application rejected... again

6) Quit receptionist temp job

7) Moved to Dayton

8) Turned down job offer that would require me to move back to Chicago

9) Went to Spain

10) Lost my best friend after lying about dumping distance boyfriend

11) Finished and sent out God's War to a couple agents

12) God's War was rejected by an agent

13) Got hired as a temp tech writer

14) Went to the emergency room

15) Joined a martial arts gym

16) Got hired as full-time tech writer!

17) Got health insurance!

18) Went to the emergency room (again)!

19) Did some revisions of God's War for a publisher

20) Broke up with distance boyfriend

21) Went to Switzerland

22) Started dating Dayton boyfriend

23) Went to the emergency room (again)

23) Broke up with Dayton boyfriend

24) Got back together with Dayton boyfriend

25) God's War got an agent

26) Stopped going to martial arts classes

27) Got new health insurance!

28) God's War got rejected by first publisher

29) Started a new gym

30) God's War got submitted to another publisher

31) Went to the beach for Christmas

32) Broke up with Dayton boyfriend (again)!

33) Started a new financial plan that'll get me a car in a year and a house in two years

34) Signed up for new personal training health & wellness sessions at work

35) Put together a submission package for my Dragon's War series.

35) Ringing out the old year with roommates. Will probably laugh a whole lot.

Fall down seven times...

You're going to fall, you're going to fail. The trick is to learn from your mistakes and not give up. Life is a persistence game. And boy have I been persistent. Maybe stupid. Certainly stubborn. But always persistent.

I've laughed a whole lot this year. Cried a lot, too.

But, mostly - laughed.

Keep on keepin' on.

My Actions Could be Seen as (Offensive)(Annoying)(Selfish)(Hurtful)

Formal Apology fill-in-the-blanks template!

For all your formal apology writing needs!

Putting it all Together

The Old Man and I sat down over my finances today and went over what it's going to take to get me in a place I'd like to be, financially, by the time I'm 30.

He and Steph are my age and have two cars, a house, an IRA, and money in the bank. I had a great time traveling around the world and getting all these degrees, but the roaring twenties are just about done, and it's time I focused on getting some of the things I want to have in my 30s. A house, a garden, some money in the bank. Financial freedom. A place to put my books. It takes planning, and hard work. You don't just wake up one day living the life you want.

Boy, do I know that.

A lot of my whole "where" I'd like to do my life thing depends on if I still have a job in April, but if the job works out, the two year plan that the Old Man and I put together gets me a car in a year and a little house the year after that and pays off all of my staggering credit card debt in about the same amount of time. That's not factoring in raises or book/freelance writing money.

To be dead honest: it's not a fun budget. It is not happy in the least. I've been working with a budget that makes me happy and comfortable the last few months, but it's also meant blowing $400 on going out, eating out, coffee, books, and other misc. items.

This budget cuts out prepared meats, expensive cheese, most of the gourmet nuts I eat, and $300 worth of coffee and going-out money. Chipotle money. Ohhhhh... my Chipotle money.

It also means I'm putting nearly half my paycheck toward credit card debt. If I want it paid off in two years and I want a garden of my own, that's how it has to be.

I hate math.

At the same time, I'm ready to grow up, you know? Pushing thirty, living paycheck to paycheck, even if you're living quite comfortably, isn't worth it if you're still renting out a room somewhere and taking the bus at 30. It's just not the sexiest thing in the world, and not the life I want to have at 30.

It's a really tight fucking budget, dammit. There's going to be a lot of cabbage-eating and tuna fish the next two years.

You have to decide what you want out of life and take the steps neccessary to get there. It's not always fun, not always easy, and it takes a great deal of courage and discipline, but it's worth it.

I wanted to make a living as a writer my whole life: right now, I do. I wanted to travel around the world. I have. I wanted to sell books: I'm working on it. I wanted a house and a garden and a couple of dogs. Now I need to build that, too.

Pick what you want, and go there.

Elevator Etiquette

Things I Would Like to Do Today

Take a spoon, cut out the part of my heart that hurts, and throw it away in the trash.

This is the first relationship that ever ended where I feel that ending it is a really, really bad idea. But it takes two people to manage a relationship. Both people have to be willing to fight for it, and grow up together. I can't do it by myself. He's got to meet me halfway, but he's afraid; afraid of me, of himself, of failure, of what it means if we're together. And when you're really terrified, there's a lot you'll sacrifice to fear, and all sorts of ways you'll justify it.

There are a lot of people whose lives are ruled by fear. I know how hard it is to overcome that fear, that lack of faith in one's self, in other people; fear of failure, fear of life, fear of self and self-doubt, fear of change, fear of what other people think of you and your choices, fear of making big decisions, fear of making mistakes. I used to be that person. I fought a long, hard road to be somebody different. I didn't like who I was. I didn't like having a life controlled by my fears.

I'm going to take some time off again from dating, I think. I have a lot of grown-up things I need to accomplish (career(s), house savings, fitness). It's the cutting away that's the hardest. I made the Boyfriend a big part of my life. Now I have to take him out of it again and rebuild it.

Spoon to the heart.

Fall down seven times. Get up eight.

Quote of the Day

As ever:

"Fall down seven times.
Get up eight."

It's how you get through the rough stuff.

Damsels, Reimagined

(click to enlarge)

Holidays With the Hurleys

Our annual Chistmas beachtrip commenced once again this year....



Dad, Mom, and my nephew the Cheetoh-head at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Mmmm cheese.



My sister Jackie-o and the Cheetoh-head.



Great view of Haystack rock from our hotel in Cannon Beach, OR.



My mom, my brother and I pose with our coffees at the Funland gameroom in Seaside.



Don't feed the birds! View from our hotel balcony. I love this hotel.



Cheetoh-head loves this hotel, too. Even when he's not feeding the birds...



My sister, nephew, and brother all pretend they like each other. No small feat!



Cheetoh-head cozies up to the scenery at Camp 18, where we stopped for a great Christmas-eve breakfast. Mmmmmm omelettes.



Christmas morning!



You, too, could get your *second* Nintendo DS at four years old (he broke the one he got last year. Yeah. Spoiled Cheetoh-head).



Snow! We got a rare Chistmas-day snow dusting this year. Cheetoh-head loved it! And I thought it was pretty neat too.



Jackie-o and Cheetoh-head enjoy the snow.



The Hurley kids: youngest, oldest, middle.



The Hurley kids and the Cheetoh-head, kickin' back with the holiday cheer.



Happy holidays to all... and to all a great night.

On a jet plane... With a hipster toy

I'm writing this post from the Dayton airport on my new iPod touch. Hell no - I didn't buy it myself.. I can't even afford to buy beer. Our exec team handed one of these out to all of us at our holiday lunch yesterday. I've never gotten a holiday bomis or gift before. It was incredibly generous and surreal. Sure, I could have used $300 more, but I know my company doesn't have any cash this time of year, either. Let's be thankful for small miracles, yo.

Also, this screen does get annoying to type on, but yo, I can watch youtube videos,check my email, and blog all directly from the airport wifi without pulling pit my bulky laptop. It's pretty slick. Anyway, I'm already delayed into Houston, so it's fixing to be a long night. Nice to have so many different toys available to pass the time.

Wow, I'm really glad this keyboard screen has an automatic spelling correction feature. Oh wow! It moves the cursor wherever I tap my finger in the post - it moved the cursor there! Mmmmm gadgetry.

Ok, I need a drink. Later, peeps.

One For the Road

Quote of the Day

Someone once asked Jean Cocteau, "Suppose your house were on fire and you could remove only one thing. What would you take?"

Cocteau considered, then said, "I would take the fire."

Cutting Out Love

A lot of my fiction deals with characters who try to stifle or completely eliminate strong emotion. This is a theme I come back to quite a lot, as I tend to hate feeling - and especially exhibiting - strong emotion. Especially strong emotional attachment, like love.

As you grow up, you realize that strong emotion - if you're somebody who feels it - is just something you have to come to grips with and learn how to live with. But there are some folks out there doing research that would, in effect, allow us to turn it off.

I find the idea terrifying and fascinating. It's stuff like this that keeps me writing fiction.

That raises the question of whether it is possible to “treat” this romantic state clinically, as can be done with OCD. The parents of any love-besotted teenager might want to know the answer to that. Dr Fisher suggests it might, indeed, be possible to inhibit feelings of romantic love, but only at its early stages. OCD is characterised by low levels of a chemical called serotonin. Drugs such as Prozac work by keeping serotonin hanging around in the brain for longer than normal, so they might stave off romantic feelings. (This also means that people taking anti-depressants may be jeopardising their ability to fall in love.) But once romantic love begins in earnest, it is one of the strongest drives on Earth. Dr Fisher says it seems to be more powerful than hunger. A little serotonin would be unlikely to stifle it.

(warning: there are some very non-chemical "women are this way and men this way" assumptions stated as fact right after this paragraph that are incredibly, incredibly annoying. I love that the chemical stuff is backed up with studies, but "women prefer rich men, naturally" and "men prefer youth over money" is just stated fact. Excuse me while I laugh. Let me tell you how that works in other societies)

As far as innate vs. learned behavior goes, I found this interesting, too: "Rats can be conditioned to prefer particular types of partner—for example by pairing sexual reward with some kind of cue, such as lemon-scented members of the opposite sex."

Or preferring a tall, rich, old man to a skinny young skater boy. Or preferring a big-boobed blond to a geeky lab tech.

We get far more social points, as women, for marrying rich, and far more social points, as men, for marrying Barbie dolls.

Mmmmm lemony.

Just In Case I'm Tempted to Mope Around This Holiday, Some Perspective

Number of queries my agent received this year: Approximately 8,000

Partial manuscripts she requested for review: 49

Full manuscripts requested: 18

Number of new clients signed: 5

One of those five was me.

I think I'm going to take myself out to dinner tonight and just take some time to appreciate that.

My Kind of Valentine's Day Card

One For the Road

Um. Tax Season. Yeah

This morning, I was pushed into our mock store and given the task of assisting in the direction of the training scripts I wrote a couple weeks ago. I got to feed lines, read off-screen dialogue to get scenes moving, check off scenes and setup folks for the next shot, and track what we were filming and what still needed to be done.

It was a humbling and educational experience. The best part was watching people change and morph the scripts as we went in response to the constraints of the shots/resources and based on their actual experience ("She's not going to say return. She's going to say "check."").

It was really clear just then why the dialogue in film scripts is kept so minimal, too. They start waxing on for long paragraphs - particularly when you're not working with pro actors - and people get lost, out of breath, start to sound like Babylon 5 monologuers. I think it really is true: you can have great dialogue and crap actors or bad dialogue and great actors, but not both at once.

The stuff that was short and choppy, that was written with just the right store-appropriate lingo and that the support folks got to have fun with? Yeah, that came out the best.

I learned a lot.

I love my job.

If They Can Only Make the Real Thing Look Even Half This Cool

Then... squeeeeeeeeeee!

This is why I love fans. And mashups. And fanfic.

HBO had better fucking make the series look even half this cool.

For serious.

Merry Christmas

Insurance won't cover my pump.

$2,180 up front, and $281 per month after that.

Oh well, it was a nice idea.

I can't even afford a new mattress for Christmas.

Tra-la

Things I Wonder About

1) It's not the cold I mind so much, it's the dark. I always hit my lowest point during this time of year, and it has a lot to do with all that dark, overcompensating with too much eating (used to be pizza and nachos, now it's cheese-covered broccoli and sausage), too much brooding, and lots of meaningless arty projects and reading. When I get back from the holiday break, it will be getting light again! I always feel better when I get back from holidays with the family, because I know we're coming out of the Long Dark.

2) Is it really worth continuing to write books that nobody reads? How many years should you be writing books nobody reads? I mean, really. And even then, it's not like you're in it for the money. I'm starting to think I might feel *worse* having sold a book for 2K than not selling it at all.

3) Is is possible to have a boyfriend that you never see? I suppose that's a rather redundant questions, since I was in a year-long relationship with somebody I only saw, like, 5 times, and a year-long relationship with someone I only saw, maybe, a grand total of 14 or 15 weekends. It occurs to me that I've spent more time with my current boyfriend - real time - than I did with either of those folks. Sad.

Have I mentioned I'm bad at relationships?

I guess it's possible to be dating, but hard to have a relationship. Though I'm not exactly sure what a relationship would look like anyway. So it's best to just stop thinking about it?

And yet, here I am, stuck without seeing The Boyfriend, properly, all week, and faced with another week seeing him briefly (once), and then another week with the folks where, of course, I won't see him, and here I am, missing him stupidly and hating myself for it. I hate feeling like some kind of weakling woman. Truth is, no matter who it was, no matter the gender, I'd feel stupid and weak for missing them. I hate wanting people around, especially when it's one person in particular. I always feel about eight kinds of stupid, and it feels, always, always - like such an incredible weakness. I want to cut it out of me like a cancer.

I miss him. I miss hanging out with my friend.

And I hate myself for that.

4) The problem with eating so much cheese with my broccoli is that I'm about three more cheese-broccoli encounters away from having to buy new pants. Have I mentioned I can't wait until the Long Dark is lessening? Summer is going to be so lovely. Oh, the bikerides! The jogging! The trips to the park! Oh, the freedom!

5) Can kick-ass heroines really be physically kick ass if they suffer from a physical disability? How do you make a really physically strong, compelling, kick-ass heroine who has, say, no legs, a gimp leg, or, for the sake of argument, something like diabetes? So she can't really get very far without a handful of lifesavers. And why don't we write about more heroines like this? Is it really because it's so hard to imagine (it's not - the idea of a heroine crawling out of her wheelchair scrambling for a gun and popping sombody off comes to mind) or is it because, as SF/F writers, we're much more likely to write stories about people who are physically free? Because so many of us suffer from allergies, disability, poor health, etc? We read to escape our bodies; we game to escape our bodies. Why would we write about broken bodies? Don't most of us write to escape those?

6) Why isn't there a deragatory term for a man who has sex with prostitutes/only has sex he has to pay for? Really, that's pretty much something you'd assume would get the lowliest of losers tag. But then, is it just that a woman's worth is measured in how hot men find her and a man's worth is measured in how many women he can force (or convince - through money, looks, whatever) to fuck him?

And how do we change this perception? What would a society that had as many deragatory terms for johns as we do for prostitutes look like?

7) I didn't end up doing any of the work-writing I figured I'd do this weekend. I didn't have to do it, but I figured I *should* do it. I'll have time to do it in the morning, but for some reason, I feel guilt.

8) I want to buy my own house. I'll be taking steps to finally do this after the holiday. Paying off credit cards is all well and good, but I need savings in case I get laid off in April. And if I don't get laid off - well, it's time to start planning for the future. No one's going to do it for me, and I have to stop hoping that something great is going to happen that will solve all my problems. I would like my writing to start paying off, yes, but I'm starting to push 30 here, and it's time to put some security measures in place in case it's another 10 or 20 years before that actually happens.

9) I miss being around other writers. I miss talking to people about books and writing - not just online, but in person. I miss my friend Jenn. I miss us dissecting books and movies. I miss talking to David about SFWA hijinks and the latest jaunt to some foreign locale. I miss intelligent academic discourse. I miss having people around who I had so much in common with. Sure, I love learning all the new stuff, but most of the time, I feel like I'm trying so hard to learn about all this other stuff, but I've got nobody else around who's interested in what I find most interesting. It's time to hit up the SF book club at The Greene and the writer's group, even if it sucks. There are important parts of me that need some exercising, cause there's a big hole in me without them. It feels so lonely.

10) For serious, that was too much broccoli and cheese.

Headache

I think I'm ready for the holidays to be over.

No Country For Old Men

Disappointing for those of us who really like the good (or at least the "better") folks to live, but a thrilling, bloody, suspenseful, incredibly well-acted and wonderfully scripted little movie. It's a darker, grittier, smarter version of Unforgiven.

Also: blood and guns and assasins and drug deals gone wrong!

Great performances all around; smart, tough, engaging characters (again, if you're not going to give me films focusing on female heroines, then the least you can fucking do is write female characters that Don't Suck. This film succeeds there).

A film to watch, but not something you're going to buy and keep around for comfort food.

Presents for You!

I got this from Karen Meisner.

I will send a gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment here on my blog.

I don’t know what that gift will be yet, but you will receive it within 365 days (likely sooner than later). This may end up being almost anything (but probably books or pony mods, depending on your preference. OK, really, it could be anything).

The only thing you have to do in return is “pay it forward” by making a similar agreement on your own blog/journal.

Snapshots from the Writing Life

Snapshots from the life of a tech-writer-working-for-health-insurance (who also happens to be a freelance-fiction-author-working-to-pay-off-credit-card-debt-and-maintain-sanity):

5:35 am: Wake up, test sugar and check email. Take 15 u Lantus shot and breakfast bolus. Shots always come first thing.

5:35-5:50am: morning free weights and situps routine. I don't wake up properly until I do this.

5:50-6:05am: Make today's lunch, brew coffee, and defrost 1 cup blueberries for breakfast. Yup, same thing every morning. Keeps my sugar regulated.

6:05-6:20am: Eat breakfast, drink coffee, catch up on blogs, reply to email.

6:20-6:40am: Shower, brush teeth, etc.

6:40-7:10am: Dress, pack up gym clothes and etc., do hair, wash dishes (if I don't do dishes now, there will be a huge pile when I get home. The roomies do not own a dishwasher. *I* am the dishwasher)

7:10am: depart the house and go wait for the bus. Catch up on any midnight text messages from The Boyfriend and reply with something snarky.

7:40am: arrive at work.

7:40-8:00am: Make coffee, check intranet portal and email, put out any fires from the night before.

8:00-8:20am: First of the IT guys arrives. Bitch, catch up on gossip, discuss any fires from the night before.

8:20-12:00pm: "Work" of various sorts. Mostly organizing intranet stories, formatting and editing SOPs, playing Gold Miner and Turret Wars, writing 800-1000 words of Black Desert and surfing the internet if things are slow, writing up at least one emergency last-minute "OMG we needed this two weeks ago!" project, and throwing things at the hardware guys in the other room.

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch. Sugar test and shoot. Again, usually pretty standard cause of the sugar issue. Low-carb wrap, spinach salad, string cheese, almonds.

1:00-5:00pm: Meetings, retooling people's emails, uploading documents to the library, posting and replying to franchisee questions in the Forum, getting into arguments about politics and call routing systems with the other IT folks, texting The Boyfriend to see what his schedule is for the day and if we're going out for burgers or movies. If we are, the schedule below is all off. If not, the rest of the day goes like this:

5:00-5:45pm: Waiting for the bus and on the bus, either to the gym or home, depending on my mood. Twice a week to the gym, three times a week, back home, but I don't yet have set days.

5:45-6:30 or 7:00pm: Working out, either at home or at the gym. Sugar test and correction if necessary. 30-40 minutes of that is cardio while watching a Netflix video. If at the gym, I also do about 15-20 min worth of weights. After working out, catch up on text messages from The Boyfriend and reply with something snarky.

7:00-8:00pm: If at the gym, I'm getting dressed and commuting back home. If I'm at home, I'm making dinner and catching up on dishes and blogs. Test and shoot insulin before dinner, natch. If at home, catch up with Steph about her day or field snarky comments from the Old Man.

8:00-9:30pm: Finishing up whatever scheduled work on Black Desert that I didn't get done during the day. Catch up on blogs if I was at the gym, dinner if I was at the gym. Watch Netflix video, read, work on my French, work on pony mods.

9:30-10:00pm: Get ready for bed. If I haven't been reading, I'm certainly reading now, or just sitting in bed thinking about all the stuff I have to do tomorrow, angsting about various things, wishing I was having sex, and plotting through the next day's work on Black Desert.

10:00pm: Send a text message to The Boyfriend telling him that if he's still at work, it's time for him to go home.

10:01pm: The Boyfriend texts back that he's leaving work.

11:00pm: The Boyfriend texts me saying that no, really, he's really leaving work now.

12:30am: Text message from The Boyfriend about how he just did something really cool in Halo, nearly got pulled over/hit a racoon/got into an accident or how some piece of hardware just exploded. I am not likely to wake up and read any of this until I'm at the bus stop the next morning.

1:00am (twice a week or so): Nighttime sugar test and correction. I set my cell phone alarm and test for these if I've eaten something non-standard for dinner (that is, something with more than 30 grams of carbs - my sugar tends to rise alarmingly overnight when I do this).

And, now that I've written all that down, it looks incredibly regimented. To be honest, it is, but not in a bad way. I have no problem doing other things when stuff comes up, but this is the standard I default to when there's nothing else going on, and you know - it's kinda nice to have a set default. I do a lot better with a routine, especially now that I'm diabetic.

I also tend to get a hell of a lot more done.

Rome: Finale

Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect.

At least they realized, the second time around, to keep their time in Egypt short. Whoever the fuck cast that chick as Cleopatra should have been fired. She's the weakest part of the show. Dump her for somebody who's actually interesting, and it would have been a perfect show.

But really, if that's my only complaint?

And Attia, there at the end?

Oh yes, perfect.

Perfect arc, perfect return.

Why can't all television be this good?

Book Love & Book Buying 101

150 pages into Undertow, they were still having tea and discussing plot.

There’s nothing inherently WRONG with having tea and discussing plot, but you know, you do it enough times, for enough pages, and it gets really dull.

Also, I had a tough time connecting with any of these characters. The assassin is dull and whiny. Cricket gets interesting 2/3rds of the way through, but by then, it was all just random explosions and quantum physics over tea, and I didn’t care enough about the people it was happening to. I mean, it was Neat Idea SF, but no really dynamic people I cared about fueling the story.

I also don’t know why the setting never resonated with me. I mean, it’s a lush, humid, watery world, and there are bugs and smells and things, but it wasn’t… it just never connected with me. I didn’t feel like I was there.

I’m always interested as to what makes the difference, for me, between actually being immersed in a setting and feeling like I’m looking at it through a window. Do I need to have the emotional connect to the characters before I can feel it? Do I need to have the characters more immersed in the setting, that is, do I need to connect with them and they need to connect with it, so I feel some kind of connection to it? Or is it all just writing trickery, some kind of magical combination of words, some writerly technique that does this? No idea.

This reading experience left me rather desperate to read about characters I cared about running around in a fully realized setting that I connected with. I’ve had a hell of a time finding good fiction these days. I picked up the Kushiel book about Poor, Abused Imriel Who’s Only Third in Line for the Throne, and I just wanted to vomit, the kid was so damned annoying.

So I went to the bookstore and actually started looking for another Bear novel, Dust (my experience with Undertow was with the book, not the author, as I did enjoy Carnival, though it had some of the same general issues for me), but alas, Dust’s official release date isn’t until the 26th, so finding it is a bit like a treasure hunt.

So I went through other books. Books after books.

After much browsing, it came down to KJ Parker’s Devices and Desires or Daniel Abraham’s A Betrayal in Winter.

Now, I read and more or less enjoyed Abraham’s first book in the series, but did not Love it, so I wasn’t totally sold on the second. I like the setting, and some of the characters, but I never really fell in love with anyone, and when I’m reading, I tend to either need to fall in love with a character or feel some kind of emotional reasonance while reading. I did neither of these with Abraham’s book, but you know: it had good women characters, an interesting setting, and a new fantasy world with an interesting magic system and dynamic landscape.

The KJ Parker book was quite lovely, beautifully written, and had some really interesting concepts. It was also half as much as Abraham’s book and twice as long. More for my money, and all that.

So, what decided me?

Well, I opened up KJ Parker’s book several times at random and read big sections. All three places I opened to were full of situations, conversations, and fights between and among men. Every single scene was 100% full of male characters. There was not one woman to be seen (this may be one reason I haven’t finished Jonanthan Strange and Mr. Norrell, either).

I opened up Abraham’s book several times at random, and you know what? There were women characters in there who TALKED and EVERYTHING. Some of the chapters were even ENTIRELY FROM THE POV OF A WOMAN!!! IMAGINE!!!

And, to be honest, I’ve gotten tired of stories All About Men. I’ve gotten tired of stories that ignore me or tell me I’m stupid or are, merely, indifferent. It’s as if the author didn’t even deliberately ignore, they just forgot. I read stories about men all day long. Mostly, stories about men doing terrible things to women (it’s called The News). I’m tired of reading about nothing but men all day long. Your book doesn’t even have to be, you know ALL women. Just acknowledging that women exist in your world may even be enough! That’s how desperate I’ve gotten.

So I sat down with A Betrayal in Winter, and ah yes, here it is, the difference between books that I remember and books that I don’t. Though he does that annoying Martin thing where he introduces a character in the Prologue and makes you care for him and then kills him, well, you know, he proves up front that he can write characters I’m interested in. I may not fall in love with them, you know, but they are interesting, and I’m invested in their adventures.

And, you know, as ever, the women characters Don’t Suck. Honestly, you have no idea how rare it is in SF/F just to find more than one woman character, and have her Not Suck. Abraham’s women characters don’t suck. I may be annoyed that most of them are defined by their relationships to men, but you know, when dealing with some of the societies he’s built, that’s how they’re defined in those societies, and it’s not like the men aren’t defined by their relationships to other men, either. Just sad that all those societies are like that. In, you know, fantasy.

You gotta mix it up sometimes.

In any case, I’m enjoying the Abraham book, even if there still aren't any women chopping off people's heads.

I'm sure they'll get there. Maybe there will be a Rome-like network of women playing politics behind this big brothers-who-kill-each-other-for-the-throne thing? I mean, maybe not all of them shuffle home in defeat when they're husband is toast, but become active players. Like women do when all the men are off at war all the time. I don't buy that we all just sat around sewing, or that all that sewing was totally benign.

I'm just saying.

UPDATE: pg 57 of A Betrayal in Winter. Yes, indeed, we do get to the Rome-like female politicking and backstabbing... yay!

Well, That's Done

Registered for Wiscon today. I'd been back and forth about going for awhile, but Jackie was looking for a roommate, and *I* was looking for a roommate, and it started to seem like a good idea again.

So, it's on.

22 Days

I stepped out of the elevator at work this morning and was confronted by a big countdown paper sign that said "22 Days."

Ah, yes... It's now 22 days until Tax Season.

If you didn't know that, well, then, like me, you've never worked in the tax business before. It's like a whole other way to live, an entirely new seasonal model. "Christmas is in February" is my new mantra.

Things are balls-to-the-wall (tits to the wall? I like that expression much better) from now until February 20th.

And if I still have a job in May, it means I did well and we made money. If I don't, we (and/or I) didn't.

Tra-la.

1500 stores open January 2nd.

Wheeeee!

Actually, I Think I'm... Bored.

Wrote 1500 words today. Tonight, there's nothing to clean because I caught up on all that on Saturday. Bills are paid and filed. Ate some cheese. Watched the first half of "Out of Africa." Just reading the last 50 pages of Undertow. Already modded two ponies this month. I guess I could could go back to threading the hair on the third. Once I finish Undertow I could start reading Acacia, I guess...

But mostly, after realizing I was nearly done with Undertow, I've been wandering around the house, wondering where all of this time has come from. I'm caught up with work at work. And yes, the cleaning, again, is caught up. The sheets are washed. I'm stocked up on neccessary drugs. Black Desert is on track for that March completion date. Supplies are bought.

This is why I have that gym membership, because these long, cold nights in Dayton start to get realllllly long this time of year. Back to the gym tomorrow, it appears.

I guess I could always work on my French.

I should be happy I'm caught up on everything, but mostly, there's this sense of loss. I always need to have eight projects going on at once, or I start to feel empty.

Also, for some reason, I have a headache.

Gym tomorrow.

I should go bowling Saturday.

I should join a book group.

I wish real writers lived in Dayton.

Also, that there were better places to eat.

And I wish I made more money.

And had a car, so I could just up and drive somewhere for the weekend.

I miss the ocean.

Tra-la

Black Desert (Excerpt)

So I've got a new writing soundtrack. I'd forgotten how great the soundtrack to The Fountain was, and now that I've got it, it's great to write to.

That said, here's another excerpt:

---------------------------------------

7.

The night train to Beh Ayin took Rhys southeast, across some of the most contaminated habitable wilderness in the world. Unlike the interior, much of Tirhan was vividly green and verdant, so full of color it hurt Rhys’s eyes. The abundance, however, was deceptive. The blue morning laid bare groves of giant, twisted mango trees draped in ropy clematis and pink-budded coral vine. Swarms of giant flying assassin bugs clotted the air above the groves, and though they were too small to see, Rhys could feel hordes of mites and scalebugs chewing at the mango grove, ladybugs and mantids eating at the pests, and more – mutant cicadas, wild locusts and wasps; giant, pulsing wasp swarms with nests so big he felt their heartbeat from the train.

As the second dawn swallowed the first, the train passed through the mango groves and into the sprawl of the jungle. Rhys watched the tangle deepen, the color of the wood darken, the light change as the train pushed on. The trees here were monstrous, three hundred feet high, and the world went dusky violet. He caught the smell of wet black soil and loam, sensed the stir of leaf beetles and mutant worms. Giant orange fungus, bleeding yellow pus, cloaked the bases of the trees, and the swarms here were vibrant, more alive than anything else he’d felt outside of a magician’s gym. It was a beautiful world, and dangerous. Nothing human lived out here. Not for long.

The train went on.

They pulled up out of the dense jungle sometime around mid-afternoon and ascended into the more habitable part of the southeast, up into mist-clouded hills shorn of their undergrowth. Rhys had never been to Beh Ayin, though he knew it was once a political and cultural center for the Ras Tiegans before the Tirhanis invaded and burned it out. The flat black plain of Beh Ayin was not a plain at all but the top of a low mountain, shorn smooth. The mountain was called Safid Ayin, after the Tirhani martyr who died there while trying to burn out the Ras Teigans. In the end, the last of the Ras Tiegans had thrown themselves from the sheer walls of the mountain rather than face death at the hand of infidels. Not so long ago, by Chenjan or Nasheenian standards – a hundred and thirty years before, perhaps. The city walls were fitted stone, no filters. Tirhani magicians were in short supply, and they did not have enough to maintain filters around most cities, even those prone to contagion like Beh Ayin.

The train moved into Beh Ayin from below, curving into the dark recesses of a smooth tunnel bored out of the mountainside. They ascended into the belly of the train station - an airy, amber-colored way post made up of delicate arches.

At the station, a thin Tirhani woman immediately approached Rhys as he stepped off the train. She introduced herself as Tasyin Akhshan, special consulate to the Minister of Public Affairs.

“And what exactly is it that a Special Consulate does?” Rhys asked.

Tasyin smiled, but her jaw hardened, as if she clenched her teeth. She was, perhaps, forty or fifty, difficult to say this far from the filters and opaqued windows of the cities. She could have been far closer to his age, though by the look in her eyes and the set to her shoulders, he doubted it. She dressed in simple, professional Tirhani garb; long loose tunic and loose trousers, pale gray khameez. But out here in the jungle, she wore boots instead of sandals. She wore a deep purple wrap around her dark head, and it made her eyes stand out all the more, the pale whites with dark centers.

“We spend too much time on mountaintop train platforms,” she said, “wondering why we’ve been sent a Chenjan for the translation of Nasheenian.”

“I spent six years in Nasheen,” he said. He was always a foreigner and a Chenjan, even – or perhaps especially – among the Tirhani. He’d spent his entire adult life proving that being foreign did not make him incompetent.

“Explain that to the Nasheenians,” Taysin said. “Come, it’s warmer at the hotel.”

The hotel was a squat, white-washed residence at the top of one of the city’s artificial hills. A rolling curtain of dark clouds obscured the sky, and the wind was high and cold. They passed through an old Ras Tiegan gate and up a cobbled way that dead-ended at the hotel.

Tasyin buzzed him through the gate and into the courtyard, a tangle-filled garden with broad palms and heart-vines dressed in leaves twice the size of his head. Giant yellow lizards scampered through the undergrowth. The house staff had prepared a late breakfast on the porch.

Rhys sat down with Tasyin and ate a light meal of lizards’ eggs, burst toast, and cinnamon squash while she explained why it was she needed a Nasheenian translator at the edge of the civilized world.

“You’ve done work with the Minister before, so I trust you are discreet,” Tasyin said. She crossed her legs at the ankle and stuffed a pipe full of sen. “I want you to convey my words exactly, and if that means it takes you extra time, fine. The client is sensitive, but I need to be clear about their intentions. Do you know anything about Nasheenian culture?”

Rhys considered telling her that he’d once spoken to the Queen of Nasheen, but thought better of it. “I’m familiar with several different strata of Nasheenian society, yes, and the social mores of each. Are they First Families? Magicians? Or a lower sort?” He was more comfortable with the lower sort. He’d been a member of the lower sort for eight years in Nasheen.

Tasyin cracked the carapace of a fire beetle and lit her pipe. “What do you know about bel dames?” she said.

Rhys choked on his toast. He covered with a mouthful of juice, and took his time recovering. Why were Tirhanis doing business with bel dames?

“You know something of bel dames, then?” she asked.

“I’ve known a few, yes," he said, and drank again. More than a few.

“Excellent.”

“You do realize that bel dames are not representative of the Nasheenian monarchy? Your negotiation with a bel dame won’t be honored by the Nasheenian government.”

“We’re well aware of how the Nasheenian government operates,” Tasyin said. “This is a personal negotiation of goods and services.”

“Of course,” Rhys said. “I meant no disrespect.” Whatever he said and did would be relayed back to the Minister. Remember that you’re an employee, he thought. It’s not your place to question.

But there it was, tickling his mind, nonetheless: Tirhanis were doing business with bel dames.

“They’ll meet with us here for high tea,” Tasyin said. “If all goes well you should make the evening train back to Shirhazi. I’ll ask that you don’t make any calls or outgoing transmissions while you’re here. We’ll be filtering the hotel in an hour.”

They sat out on the porch for a few minutes more while Tasyin finished her pipe and Rhys finished breakfast. She had one of the house staff, a veiled Ras Tiegan girl, show him to his room. High tea was a Ras Tiegan custom, and generally occurred in the early afternoon. He had at least four hours. If he could not contact Elahiyah and the children, his time would be best spent working on some of his side translations for local merchants and friends of Elahiyah and her family. But Tasyin’s invocation of Nasheenian bel dames had put him on edge, and there was an old Tirhani city to explore. He wanted a mosque. A cool, quiet, mosque. Sanctuary.

Rhys exchanged his sandals for sturdier shoes and asked to borrow a coat from one of the house staff. He pulled it on under his khameez and walked back through the old Ras Tiegan gate and into the city center. The big red sandstone Ras Tiegan cathedral had been converted to a mosque, and much of its somber, image-heavy exterior had been defaced and resculpted into images of magicians and shifters, half-human forms.

It was still sometime before the next prayer, so he walked into the mosaic-tiled courtyard, across brilliant crimson and green figures of thorn bugs and fire beetles and glittering yellow farseblooms. He stepped into the covered promenade and then under the archway that led into the deep mouth of the mosque. Inside, the air was cool and dim. He waited just inside for his eyes to adjust. Before him stretched colonnade after colonnade, staggered like pawns across the sandy red floor. They supported a peaked ceiling so high and shadowed he could not see its end.

As his eyes adjusted, he began to walk further into the mosque. He saw light there, at the center of the forest of columns, somewhere just ahead of him. He followed the column of light, drawn to it like a thirsty man to water. The light fell into a small round courtyard, by accident or design, he wasn’t certain. As he approached, he saw water bubbling up from the center of a smooth layer of red pebbles. A single thorn tree grew there, scraggly and thin, clawing toward the bruised sky.

He heard the far-off scrap of footsteps on sandstone, the low whisper of the wind outside. But as he stepped into the light he heard another sound: the rustle of wings; a bird taking flight. He turned his head up, too late, to look at the top of the thorn tree. He saw no bird. Instead, he saw a single feather float down from the top of the tree there along the edge of the open roof.

Rhys watched the feather settle there on the crimson stones at his feet.
A single white feather.

Something inside of him stirred. Old memories, a place better forgotten. And there, somewhere deep - an old, aching, missing piece.
He reached for a pistol at his hip that he no longer owned.

“Rasheeda,” he said aloud.

And suddenly the mosque was dead stone, cold and dark. No sanctuary.

He knew who waited for him back at the hotel.

What he didn’t know was why it had taken so long for them to find him.

"Chances Are, You Will Die in Poverty." But...

"If you are any kind of an artist at all, somebody somewhere is going to hang his or her life, emotional well-being, and/or recovery on your work. It’s a sacred trust.

Try not to screw it up."

One for the Road

It Only Took Me 27 Years to Get There... But I Sure Do Feel Better

The Minnesota research suggests that girls who felt good about themselves were more likely to be physically active and pay more attention to what they ate. They didn't lose much weight, but they made healthy lifestyle changes that at least prevented them from gaining more weight. Meanwhile, the researchers found that the girls who were the most dissatisfied with their size tended to become more sedentary over time and paid less attention to maintaining a healthy diet. Those who were unhappy with their bodies were, in fact, more likely to gain more weight.

Really, we've gotta stop with the "fat is an indicator of health, happiness, and quality of life" thing.

Like so many of the bullshit "truths" of life, this one really heads people down the wrong road.

The Whole World Goes Dark

Hit a vien this morning with my insulin shot.

Man, I hate that.

Sugar crash, whole world starts to goes flicker-dark, 45 minutes after shooting up.

Really hate that.