Song of the Day

.... the lyrics of which were IM'd to me by the Not-Boyfriend, for some brain-addled reason. Sometimes I think he doesn't make connections in his head about why he sends me stuff like this.

Oh well. It's a good song, in any case.

Buckcherry - "Sorry"

Oh I had alot to say
Was thinking on my time away
I missed you and things weren't the same
'Cause everything inside it never comes out right
And when I see you cry it makes me wanna die.

I'm sorry I'm bad, I'm sorry you're blue
I'm sorry about all the things I said to you
And I know I can't take it back
I love how you kiss, I love all your sounds
And baby the way you make my world go 'round
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry.

This time I think I'm to blame
It's harder to get through the days
We get older and blame turns to shame
'Cause everything inside it never comes out right
And when I see you cry it makes me wanna die.

I'm sorry I'm bad, I'm sorry you're blue
I'm sorry about all the things I said to you
And I know I can't take it back
I love how you kiss, I love all your sounds
And baby the way you make my world go 'round
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry.

Every single day I think about how we came all this way
The sleepless nights and the tears you cried
It's never too late to make it right
Oh yeah sorry

I'm sorry I'm bad, I'm sorry you're blue
I'm sorry about all the things I said to you
And I know I can't take it back
I love how you kiss, I love all your sounds
And baby the way you make my world go 'round
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
I'm sorry baby.
I'm sorry baby, Yeah.
I'm sorry.

Conversations with my Coworkers

Coworker 1: "Wow, Kameron I like your new haircut! It's really... edgy."

Me: "Edgy?" If someone would have said this in any other place in the world but Dayton, OH I'd think it was a compliment.

Coworker 2: "No, it's really great! It fits you really well. I mean, you're not normal. I mean, a usual sort of person, so it really fits you. It's very hip and edgy!"

Me: ....?

Edgy. My haircut is "edgy."

General consensus is that the haircut is, indeed, a good one, but it does make me look a lot more like a young, hip professional. It's short and highlighted, and add that to the naturally curly crazy effect, and I look like I should be painting huge canvases with buckets of pain downtown or walking around at art shows with glasses of wine in hand.

Ok, so, I did go walk around an art gallery last night on date #3, but that's beside the point.

Yeah, I suppose the haircut suits me.

The Apartment Hunt is Over!

Got my new digs a few hops from the The Greene (no, not *at* The Greene as some of my coworkers believe. I can't afford to live *at* The Greene). I now have a "Beavercreek" address instead of a "Dayton" address, which I think also makes me feel better.

One bedroom, dishwasher, air conditioning, balcony, onsite laundry. The only drawback is that it's more than I wanted to spend and no utilities are included. My commute also goes from 15 min to 35 min.

But, yo: it's my own place! It's big! It has a walk-through closet!

The first month is free. I sign and pick up the keys on the 12th. Photos to follow shortly thereafter.

April

There have been a lot of seriously not funny April Fool's jokes today.

The one at work was the least funny of all.

Stop, people. Just stop. When you've had a lot of wacky, crazy shit happen to you over a very brief period of time, you're primed for more wacky badness. It's like mild PTSD.

I don't like it. I start getting jumpy and twitchy.

Please stop.

Thank you.

As the World Turns

My parents worked for a local PNW (Pacific Northwest) burger chain, Burgerville, for 25 years. They were both fired about ten years ago within 24 hours of each other during a big muckity-much shakeup.

For the last five years or so, my dad has owned a Pizza Schmizza franchise, also a local chain.

Today, my mom sent me this e-mail:

"Yesterday Figaro's Pizza bought out Pizza Schmizza and
today Starbucks bought Burgerville."

Damn.

It's a changing world, yo.

To Do

For today: Made a list of things I'll be buying from Ikea to furnish my new place. Suddenly an actual possibility now that I don't owe $1133 in taxes. Also, new workouts with Health & Wellness program at work started today! yay!

For tonight: another apartment showing!

And then: homework! My Econ and Marketing classes from Sinclair start today.

For Tues: catching up on all my novel writing

For Weds: Date #3!

Some weeks, I really love being busy.

The Benefits of Working for a Tax Company

I've done my taxes about four times, and went from getting back $900 to owing $1100. I had finally resigned myself to giving $1100 of next month's book check to taxes when I finally gave up staring down the cold, hard tunnel of multiple State returns and brought it in to work to take advantage of my free tax prep benefit.

I went from owing $1133 on Federal to owing $107, I'm getting $8 back from the city of Dayton, $80 back from Ohio, and $2 back from Illinois.

This means I went from owing $1133 to owing, all told: $17

I'm never going back to doing my own taxes.

Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat

"Coconut Skins" by Damien Rice
(this guy is lovely. See also here. Another of my favorites)

You can hold her hand
And show her how you cry
Explain to her your weakness
So she understands
And then roll over and die

You can brave decisions
Before you crumble up inside
Spend your time asking everyone else's permission
Then run away and hide

Or you can sit on chimneys
Put some fire up your ass
No need to know what you're doing or waiting for
But if anyone should ask
Tell them I've been licking coconut skins
And we've been hanging out
Tell them God just dropped by to forgive our sins
And relieve us our doubt
La la la la la la la...

Oh you can hold her eggs
But your basket has a hole
You can lie between her legs and go looking for
Tell her you're searching for her soul
You can wait for ages
Watch your compost turn to coal
Time is contagious
Everybody's getting old

So you can sit on chimneys
Put some fire up your ass
No need to know what you're doing or looking for
But if anyone should ask
Tell them I've been cooking coconut skins
And we've been hanging out
Tell them God just dropped by to forgive our sins
And relieve us our doubt
La la la la la la la...

Resident Evil: Extinction

There's no need to think at all during the course of this movie, and that's a good thing, too, cause thinking would much diminish the experience.

Instead, the filmmakers have happily allowed the viewer to forget all that plot nonesenese alltogether by making Milla Jovovich JUST THAT KEWL:



There are zombies, and some kind of council, and clones, but it doesn't really matter at all because, THERE IS MILLA JOVOVICH AND SHE IS JUST THAT KEWL!!!!!



No, look, there, Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass!!!



OK, it needed more Jedi and less cloning, and, um, an actual plot and story BUT I DID NOT CARE. At least, not when I was watching it.



At some point, I turned to my date and said, "Someday I will be as cool as Milla Jovovich."



OK, actually I said this about three times. Why he agreed to a third date, I do not know.



Maybe because someday I will BE AS COOL AS MILLA JOVOVICH!!!!!



And yes, this is exactly what the God's War movie poster would so look like, only without the Las Vegas sign, and she'd be wearing a billowing burnous, and would be broader and buffer:



Also, the God's War movie would have plot and character and no lame clones.

And somehow, against all odds, all comprehension NYX WOULD BE EVEN COOLER THAN MILLA JOVOVICH!!!

Hard to believe, I know.

The end.

Date

Well, I'll definitely be seeing *him* again....

Pacing

I'm always curious to see how other people write books. Mainly because mine are always such a damn mess.

When I hit the 3/4 mark, I have to go back and hack apart all the pacing. It's all about timing action scenes and shuffling POV scenes into the right order. Putting in additional POV scenes where necessary, adding foreshadowing elements. I like to do this right before the last quarter because if I'm prepared for it properly, the last quarter flows like a dream. But you have to get the pacing right first, and everybody's plot threads, before you can tie them all up at the end.

Yeah, yeah: details.

And then there's chapter length, varying sentence length (there's a lot of rambling in this one. Cutting commas is going to be one of my biggest projects when I do the first pass of rewrites).

Books are like any other type of writing, on a grander scale. It's putting everything in the right order, in just the right way, to produce just the right emotional effect in your readers. Marketing writing is like like. Technical writing is drier, but you're still trying to take complex concepts and make them comprehensible to the greatest number of people possible.

And you do it in fiction, too. You organize it in a way that gets you the emotional reaction you desire. You want people to connect with your characters. You want them to care. You want to show them a complex but (mostly) comprehensible world.

And you do it all with letters and punctuation.

And pacing.

Fucking pacing.

Sex Change

The fact that the two primary folks who put Nyx back together again are men really bothers me.

So one of them will be getting a sex change. I mean, not within the book (though that certainly would be something interesting to explore in this weird body-swapping world... hm...), but an authorial one.

Sometimes I think what the difference is between feminist science fiction and everything else is just being aware of what you're doing. I've got a lot of heavy cultural biases. I work hard at being aware of them when I'm building worlds, and seeing where they drive me off track. Not every world is like this one. I love reading about places where things are really different. Not just the gadgets, but *everything.* There's so much we just automatically assume, stuff that doesn't fit into the worlds we build. It's the Martian husband reading the paper and the Martian wife serving him tea.

Come on. Really?

Stupid things, like the assumption of a nuclear family (yes, I defaulted to a couple of these, too), the assumption of a supporting cast and background characters that are 95% male (it was a struggle to reverse this for GW, but writing anything else would have been portraying a totally different world than the one I built), het love as the penultimate in intimacy (reeeeeeaally trying to break out of this one, but it's hard), boys who move and shake the world while the girls hold their hands, one-way racism, and governments in total control (we like to think ours knows what it's doing; most governments, though, are pretty incompetent).

Things are a lot more messy (and a lot more interesting) than all that in the worlds I'm building (and, in fact, in real world; the world as assumed is much duller than the real thing). And yes, it's a pain in the ass to go back and fix it when you screw something up.

But the world is better for it.

My Own Ineptitude Sometimes Baffles Me

I'm applying for an apartment. I need my old landlord's phone number. Do I have her phone number? A copy of the lease? Why, no, why on earth would I have that information! Jenn handled all that!

Yeah.

This is why relying on other people to handle stuff explodes in my face. I tend to rend my personal relationships with an unforgivable sort of finality that bites both ways.

It's why I'm so terrified of trusting people. If they don't ruin it, I probably will. It's probably one more reason I'm happy to be moving out now instead of a year from now so I can actually stay friends with Steph and the Old Man...

Sometimes I think the person I really don't trust is myself.

Daytonism of the Week

Was at an apartment showing tonight, and the subject of Dayton and why I moved here and my job came up.

"I'm a copywriter," I explained. "It's really great, I love it. I write all of our brochure copy, promotional stuff, web copy, that sort of thing."

"Oh, you're kidding!" the bubbly leasing agent exclaimed. She was a couple of years younger than me, plump and pretty, with a daughter in daycare. I was kind of surprised at how much she seemed to appreciate what I did.

"That's really wonderful!" she went on. "I'm writing a children's book, and I'm trying to figure out how to copyright it. It's so great to meet a copy-righter!"

No, I didn't correct her. I neatly changed the subject.

All of my roommate's stories about people here are true.

Finally Caught Up

Finally on schedule again. I'm going to go collapse now.

Officially Through the Middle

I've officially passed through the Dreaded Middle of the book. This isn't so much a word count thing (I thought, until I did the word count) as a scene thing. The worst is over, and now we're going out to kick some ass.

This fact does, however, neatly dovetail with this afternoon's wordcount (still 2500 behind schedule):



Now comes the long pause while I clean up the first 3/4 of the book so I can write one long, smooth end-tying, ass-kicking ending.

Yes, this means line edits.

I'm slashing at least twelve pages and going back to get in some foreshadowing and more clearly tying folks and events together. I'd like to avoid dog-sized holes in the plot. Let's keep them roach-sized, please.

Strange Days

Why is it that the happiest scenes are always the hardest for me to write?

Maybe because, in my books, happy scenes always mean the worst is about to happen.

Back to School

I'm officially signed up for my first Economics class and my first Marketing class, paid for part and parcel by the company. How could I not take advantage of that?

I'm so thrilled to be in school again, I can't even tell you. The plan right now is to just go ahead and get the AA in Marketing Management. I mean, if they pay for it, why not? Helps me diversify and keeps my brain busy.

These two are online courses to start, since I have moving and wacky schedules and writing deadlines and most classes were full cause it's the last week to register. Next quarter I'll do one or two more, real-world classes this time. I need to socialize more, and school's a good excuse.

Gets me out and about.

Also, more apartment hunting today! I have three more lined up for the weekend.

Life: it's not bad, yo.

Things I Find More Than a Little Embarrassing

Standing in line at Chipotle tonight, the one right around the U of Dayton, minding my own business....

... and then!

Some jocky 20-something college kid gets in line behind me. I did not notice him at all when he walked up.

Oh no, I did not notice him until I smelled him. I recognized the scent immediately, not because it made me want to gag, but because the smell made me want to turn around and tear all his clothes off, just like in the commercials.

Yes, indeed: he was wearing Axe body spray.

Seriously. It triggers my crazy-attraction Kryptonite response like nothing else besides the Real Deal.

I find my stunning physical reaction to this body spray - so ridiculously like the commercials - to be incredibly embarrassing.

Seriously. I had to turn my back to him. I had to force myself not to turn and look, because I knew he was just some kid and certainly not All That, but gawd was I feeling otherwise... heady scent-drunk.

Sometimes I'm just so damn easy.

Yum.

Perspective

One of my coworkers announced today that he and he wife officially paid off their house yesterday. They've been scrimping and saving ever since they bought it to get rid of the payment.

He's 26 years old.

He's now doing research into investments.

DIE PUNY HUMAN!!!!

Um... next month, I'll pay off a credit card?

Damn.

Ridiculous Amounts of Writing

20 pages today, to catch up. I accomplished this by skipping some filler scenes and going straight for the good ones. Sadly, it means tomorrow I get to write a bunch of filler scenes.

Still about 2500 behind the schedule, but that ain't no thing. I'll have a draft of Black Desert by the end of April.

No, really! It's like a spring miracle!

Note I did not say it was going to be a *good* draft, but it'll be a draft nonetheless. My first drafts are always pretty wild.

What $425 Rents You in Dayton, OH

Really, it wasn't all that bad. The kitchen was smallish, the closet space was minimal, and the bathroom was the size of an NYC bathroom (ya'll from there know what I'm talking about), which gives me panic attacks.

But it was right down the street, reasonably clean, and the rooms were, well, adequate.

But that's all it was, really: adequate. It was like the apartment I rented in South Africa. It was... enough. Adequate. But wandering around, looking at the panic-attack-inducing bathroom, I realized it just wasn't enough for me.

I mean, hell, I'm 28 years old. I have a good job. I'm not a student anymore, and though I want to live frugally, do I really want to live like a cockroach? There's living frugally, and then there's panic attacks in the bathroom.

So I'm upping my limit to $525 instead of under $500. I want closet space, a balcony, and a decent sized bathroom in additional to my dishwasher and air conditioning. Call me high maintenance.

Call me old.

But you know what? It's about damn time I lived like an adult and not a college kid in a fucking dorm room.

The Contract Arrives!!!!!

Happy author~~!!!!!


Happy contract!



Description of the future goods to be delivered.... For those who can't read the smallish text, it reads: "Each work shall be a Middle Eastern-inspired fantasy novel featuring organic technicians, brawling mullahs, swarms of magician-trained locusts, and a former government assassin turned bounty hunter."

Yes, yes they will.

I love my job.

Results of My Fitness Test

As part of our health and wellness program at work, we do fit tests every three months.

The results?

My weight = the same

My body fat percentage = the same

Resting heart rate = improved

Pushups = 8 more than last time

Situps = the same

Measurements = lost almost two inches around my hips and half an inch around my waist.

The rest?

You guessed it.

About the same.

This is why I don't use a number on a scale to measure my progress. I measure progress by pushups and heartrate, honestly.

Another One of Life's Little Ironies

Since it looks like I'll have my own place May or June 1, I started shopping online for my old French perfume. Afterall, living on my own means that I can, once again, use scented products without slaughtering one of my roommates! Huzzah.

Arielle, my longtime favorite perfume since highschool made by Fragonard, the wonderful French perfumerie, has, sometime over the last year, been discontinued.

I had half a bottle left with Jenn at the old apartment. I'm sure it has since been pitched at some point during the horrific endgame that was our friendship (and yes, totally my fault. Much more was lost than half a bottle of discontinued perfume, but it's one more thing lost during that time in my life that cannot be replaced).

I guess I could get some Soleil or Capucine or Reve Indien, but... but... Yeah.

One more thing gone.

It's funny how sometimes it's the little things that get to you.

Equilibrium

How come I'd never heard of this movie? It's worth it for the gun kata alone! Wheeee! It's like Gattaca meets the Matrix, with Christian Bale! I mean really, how could you go wrong? Or Maybe Harrison Bergeron meets the Matrix meets Gattaca meets Christian Bale.

Anyway, it plays with old themes, but they're old ideas I enjoy: classic SF dystopia. What happens when you try and make everyone the same? What happens when we all look the same, feel the same... or don't feel at all?

What it does do, however, is fall into a lot of old traps. This "new" and "revolutionary" society is still based on the nuclear family structure. Babies are still made and raised the same way, which seems a little silly when you remember that these folks aren't supposed to have feelings. Why raise your children? Out of a sense of duty to the state?

I'm always amused to find that the future looks a whole lot like the 1950s.

There are also only about 4 women in the future, apparently. Seriously, check out all the group scenes. I made the assumption, early on, that women and men were segregated. Turns out that wasn't the case, the filmmakers were just too lazy to find a reasonable number of women extras.

It also falls into an old trap that I'm trying to break in my own work. A totalitarian society is overthrown by... killing its leader. We just need to destroy the head and blow up the prozac plants and then people will be free!

Well, you know, fighting the Man with the same hatred and violence the Man uses against you... isn't all that revolutionary. You get another cycle of hate and violence. A small group of people chooses to "liberate" many through an act of violence.

Can't we think up different ways to build new societies? How effective is it, really, to kill a dictator and magically remake a country? Look at South America. Africa. Iraq. The US has been killing dictators for years, and it's made a hell of a mess. You don't just slaughter a dictator and expect things you change. It's a lot tougher than that. It's changing people. It's finding new ideas. And you can't do that with a bullet.

Killing people is easy. Real change is hard.

Slog, slog, slow

I think doing back-to-back chapters of Rhys-and-Nyx-expositing-over-tea to Nyx-and-Khos-expositing-over-beer is going to be just a little exhausting.

Time to break and re-group.

Building a(n) Different Alternative Femininity

Sometimes what I suspect I'm doing - the way I live my life, what I write - is building an alternate version of femininity.

I was at the coffeeshop today working on Black Desert, and at the the next table over three skinny, blond 14-year-old girls were drinking waters and frappuchinos, gossiping about boys and discussing the total calorie count on the container of fruit they were sharing.

And as I was sitting there, the old despair started welling up in me again. That certain knowledge that I never have and never will look like that or live like that. I spent my pre-teen and teen years trying to conform to that mold, and it didn't work. The problem with having one dominant femininity is that not only does everyone start looking and acting the same, but you've got this vast majority of women who - even with the help of loads of plastic surgery, strict diet control, and abstaining from all things non-trivial - will never, ever conform to that mold, no matter how hard they try. And they'll spend their lives hating themselves for it.

Note that I'm not about complacency. I'm not about giving up and hiding under your couch and eating bon bons for the rest of your life. I love watching succeed, find power. But most people can't get there by reaching for the 21st century American ideal of "femininity," or skinny blond bauble in heels. It's an incredibly transitory ideal (as all of them are). You can hit it from 16-35 if you're genetically blessed or spend loads of time and money on it, and then you're pretty fucked or very rich (and even the very rich will only get another 10 years out of it).

We have no Amazon ideal. We have no Tough Matron ideal. We have hot Britney. And when Britney has kids and loses her teen popsicle image and goes wacky and has real problems like most folks from her end of town, she's nothing. That's all of us: we're nothing. No worth; not worth looking at, not worth noticing.

Youth and beauty have always been sought out and valorized, but there are alternative role models, alternative ways to find strength. When did we stop worshipping heros and start worshipping youth? In fact, real strength can often be found only outside of our narrowly-defined version of femininity. Young, thin and air-headed only gets you so far. "Hot," if used in tandem with "smart" can get you called a bitch or send you right to the top... so long as you have the strength and financial ability to maintain it.

So what about all of us who'll never be blond, thin, and believe youth should be left happily behind along with bad sex and credit card debt? Cause honestly, there's very little I miss about being young. Perhaps I miss being invincible, but the bad sex and credit card debt? Yeah, that I could do without. I much prefer life on the downside of 25.

I remember throwing my first punch and how amazing it felt. All of a sudden you realize that this big clunky body that you thought was worthless by virtue of its so-not-hotness is actually *good* for something. You channel 200 lbs of strength into knocking over a 200 lb punching bag, and for the first time in your life, you feel strong. You have worth. Worth not measured by the width of your ass.

If fact, there were all sorts of things my body was good at. I just never had the courage to give it a try. If I wasn't worth looking at, what kind of worth did I really have, as a bag of flesh and blood? Oh, sure, I had a brain. My dad always told me I was the sort of girl guys married, not the sort of girl they fucked around with. Problem was, I didn't really want to get married. And I had a real problem with my worth as a person being decided by what it was guys wanted or didn't want from me.

How about the world? How about, what can I, physically and mentally, as a whole person, give to the world? What am I worth to myself? What can my body, my mind, do for *me*? .... Besides attracting or repelling a bed partner?

And when I sit down to write I write about women whose sense of self-worth is defined by what they know, what they've done. Asses and breasts and hips and legs are tools, body parts, stuff you trade off and shuffle around, shit that gets you from here to there. It's not who you are. It's not what drives you.

In my world, you look for a friend and/or bed partner based on what they are, what they can do, strength and reliability and skills and flat-out usefulness. Beauty is lovely. Beauty is fun to look at. Beauty can stop your heart. But it's a passing thing, candy, no more permanent than its component parts.

I build worlds where strong, scary women build and control the world. That's not to say that there's not a place for other kinds of women, for men of all stripes, in those worlds, but the people running the show have a different set of values. There's no cult of youth and beauty there. There's no 24-hour news channel. There's no roadside advertising. There's nobody in your face telling you to measure your worth by the width of your ass.

Thick or thin, doesn't matter out there.... question is, when the shit hits the fan, will you stand and fight, or cower and die?

That's the real question out there, the only one that matters.

And with those kinds of odds, nobody gives a shit about how many calories are in their goddamn fruit cup.

Med Expenses Paid Last Year:

$2620.73

This is the amount I actually paid out of my own pocket, not how much I was charged or what I still owe. As of last count, I owe about $1700 more, $700 of which has been tied up with my insurance company and which they should hopefully pay.

If we counted how much insurance paid, the number is easily twice that. Easily.

Writing

Seriously needs to happen tonight. I'm behind 5500 words again. Blast.

A Train Wreck of a Day

God, today was awful.

It has to do with a lot of stuff, including the fact that my health insurance doesn't work and I have to run around the office begging for money. Then there were loud coworkers, fighting down hysterical responses, being asked to get coffee for one of the IT guys (it was an innocent request, it just brought up my lingering animosity toward being a useless secretary), first official meeting with a new supervisor in a new department. It was a poor to terrible performance during our Zumba class (I move like a stone; the only part I felt confident with was when we punched). It was waiting too long for meds at the pharmacy. It was being overbudget on fun money for the month. It was not enough workouts. It was moving departments. It culminated in me spending an hour waiting for an apartment showing... in front of the WRONG apartment complex. By the time I called the guy a second time and sorted out that I was in front of the wrong place, he'd gone home, and I felt so stricken and stupid - it was so much the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day - that I just walked home and cried the whole way.

It's change. It's terror that I can't actually hack it on my own now, after getting sick. It's terror that in fact, I am crazy and incompetent, and once I'm on my own, that will become abundantly clear. I have a lot of really fantastic stuff going for me right now, and now I have to bring it, and after failing to fucking find the right apartment complex absolutely killed me tonight. Look at the level of my incompetence! I can't even show up to an apartment showing! What if being sick has permanently fried my brain? What if I can't make it?

I hate relying on health insurance to live, and relying on an employer for health insurance. I hate being so crazy-busy that my brain just... stops. That I can find the right apartment place, circle the block and *stand outside the wrong apartment a block away because they look alike for an hour.* I should have, at the very least, re-called after half an hour. I should have - duh! - seen that I was now standing in front of a complex that was in the middle of a street, not a corner lot like the one I passed while doing a loop around it. What the hell? How did I not see that? I just stood there like a sheep, like my brain saw it, and clicked and all reasoning power turned off.

And this is who needs to hack it. This is the one who's corp copywriter, building sales projects, has a three book contract, and lives or dies by how well she can calculate her insulin/food/exercise percentages four times a day each and every day. And, of course, that's the rub, isn't it?

How many things can you keep in your head? How much can you do until your brain shuts off what it considers non-vital? How much until you just overload and have to shrug everytime you blow a gasket and go, "OK, well, shit, I guess that was one thing too much."

I hated almost everything about today.

Tomorrow will be better.

I can do this, but I'm scared as hell, and until I prove to myself that I can do all this in the face of... all of this, everything I carry along with me, I'm going to be a little freaky about it all for the next couple of months.

Man, I want it all to come together.

Man, I want to shine.

The Crazy

I'd never realized what a powerful thing it was to take control of your own emotions and reactions to things. What's the quote? "Life is what you do with what's been done to you."

You can't go back and change how things went. You can't change people. You can't change the past. What you *can* change - right now, this minute - is how you react to those things. How much or how little you allow them to eat you up, consume your life.

It's hard. It's fucking unfair, especially when you feel you were in the right, or you were the one abused, or you were the one treated unfairly or fucked over.

Yes, you were.

Now what are you going to do about it?

Because I can't change other people. I can't change their reactions to me. I can't be more loveable. I can't be more than me. All I can be is the best I can be. The only thing I'm in charge of is my own reactions.

Life is what you do with what's been done to you.

There's this bitter, cynical guy at work who comes in every day and every day there's some new way that he's been screwed over, that life is unfair, that his life is crap, that it's not going his way.

In fact, he's pretty successful, I think. He has a spitfire wife he seems to get along with quite well, two absolutely gorgeous children, a great opportunity with this young company, great health insurance, tons of friends around here and back on the east coast where he's from. He owns his own house. They have two cars. I'd bet they have an IRA, too. They're in a good place. His life is in a good place.

But that's not how he chooses to take it. He comes in and everything is hell, everything is bad, everything is doom and gloom. It's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And you know, though I have some fear and trepadation about losing everything in the back of my mind, I don't live that reality. I don't have nightmares all night about losing everything (OK, not usually!). Sure, sometimes I'm afraid I'll lose things, but what drives me is hope. Hope that I'm building toward something more. Striving to be better. Hope and faith.

I've done some terrible things to people the last couple of years, and I've had crappy things happen to me, but you know what? Shit happens. You can hate somebody for breaking your heart and scream at them to fix it, or you can fix your own damn heart. You can patch it up yourself. No one's going to do it for you. You can choose to figure out how to live the life you want - chronic illness and all - or you can lie in bed all day screaming at the unfairness of the universe and sit around feeling sorry for yourself. You can bitch and moan about losing your job and being stuck in Dayton or you can thank your incredible friends for giving you the opportunity to start over in a new town.

You can drive yourself with hate and fear and a deep sense of persecution by God or the Universe or whatever. Or you can say, "OK, this is what I've been dealt. Now what the fuck can I do with it?"

I think the thing that pisses me off about it is that it tends to "absolve" others (or the Universe, or whatever), for their actions. It's like saying, "So what, you were mugged in the street, get over it!" But what's the alternative? Sitting around waiting for the mugger to apologize and give your money back or watching him strung up for theft?

In this scenerio, whose actions/reactions do you have control over?

You're damn right I want the assholes to get their just desserts, but when I'm sitting around waiting for that day, on those nights when I'm not out campaigning to get them incarcerated or trying to change gun laws or whatever, what am I doing to take care of myself? How am I looking out for my own emotions? Cause nobody else is, especially not the person or external force that hurt you.

One of the things I hate the most is being dependent on other people. I hate having my well-being so dependent on the actions of someone else.

There's something incredibly freeing when you stop yourself, when you clutch at all the hurt and pain and say, "This isn't about that crazy fucked up person who hurt you/fucked up thing that happened to you. This is about how you choose to handle it."

Some people do things to you that are hurtful because they're wacky or crazy or completely fucked in the head. And that's something they have to deal with. What can you do about that? Just run after them, screaming?

So I work hard to let it go. I remind myself that all the stuff that changes is going to change within me, not inside of someone else. I can't change other people. I can't change situations. I can't change screwed up genetics.

But I can change how I deal with it.

I can take control of it now, this moment.

And that's how I live my life.

That's how I keep going.

That's how I succeed even in the face of catastrophic failure.

Fall down seven times. Get up eight.

Tomorrow

Cthulu is on Second Base

Tonight

Collapse. After our second day of video shooting tomorrow, I'm hoping things at work will slow down (ha ha).

Apartment viewing Friday! Yay!

Decided

I've finally decided.

You don't get people like this every day.

Life

Work writing. Fiction writing. Chipotle. Looking for apartments. More work writing. Work socializing. Fiction plotting/planning. Some reading (not enough). Some working out (not enough).

I need to go bowling next month and get the hell out of the house, but there's so damn much going on right now and so many deadlines that I'm having trouble getting my head unstuck.

Good news is: things are good.

Black Desert

I get really irritated when the Plot gets in the way of the exploding heads.

Life, in General

Behind at work. Behind in fiction. Behind with workouts. Too much Chipotle. Not enough time.

Dear Hobb

Um. Two words: Time management.

Writing is writing. Manage your writing in the way that makes the most sense for you. If you're bleeding all over blogs and not bleeding enough in your fiction, stop blogging.

If you get satisfaction from both, manage both. If you write about insurance and tax prep at your day job in return for health insurance, write on your blog about writing, and fulfill your three-book contract on the weekends while taking kickboxing classes and working out four times a week and eating pancakes, awesome.

There's this fiction that we can have one thing and not another, that we're all or nothing. I write to survive. Health insurance, yo. I blog to reach to different sort of audience and fill a different need. It does completely different things for me than fiction writing does.

And I write fiction because it's what I love, what I've always done, because the pleasure I get out of that keeps me sane.

Survival. Socializing. Sanity.

I need all three.

And so I manage my time really, really well.

Grand Revelations

Working on writing up website text about insurance, revising a bunch of scripts for work, then come home, use up some more Chipotle money (carnitas fajita burrito, no rice, no beans, no sour cream, no cheese - wow, this has suddenly become a full-on "healthy" meal. "Only" 745 calories!), off to bookstore, crank out the requisite 1500 words of Black Desert:



Home now, time for line edits and reading and packing up gym clothes for tomorrow (they apparently have kickboxing at the Y downtown on Thursdays. Our membership is free through work, so really, why not go? We'll see how it goes).

Another day, another dollar.

It's all a step at a time. Sometimes there are no grand revelations, just hard work.

Black Desert: Still Behind

...but gaining. Am about 7K behind schedule, but that's 3K less than I was this morning, so that's something. This week is more relaxed at work, so I figure I'll be able to catch up a bit before falling behind again next week. Heh.



As you can see, I am not the world's fastest writer. But I'll have a draft by the end of April, come hell, high water, and sales season.

Also, Rhys sure is long-winded. I think I wrote 2K of pure internal self-introspective narration. Whine, whine, whine.

See, I like unreliable narrators, but I believe that there are these moments when some of us really do truly see our actions for what they are. These moments of lucidity are fleeting, and immediately after we realize them we tuck them away again and hide from them, cause if we lived with the truth for too long, well, then we'd actually have to DO something with that truth.

So I do enjoy putting in those moments when we stop hiding our motives behind our actions and see them for what they are. It's nice to capture it in print. Doesn't mean they're any more reliable. We just got to see a brief moment of lucidity.

Nyx and Rhys are incredibly different, but they both lie to themselves with the same incredible desperateness of ingrained self-preservation and perpetual self-hate. It hurts them. And it hurts the people around them.

Also, this printer the not-Boyfriend got me months and months ago? It kicks ass beyond all measure. It's like 30 pages a minute, yo. It's amazing.

It's like, the sort of printer a WRITER would have.

And yeah, if you wonder where I get all of my material from? You don't read this blog. It's all sillily transparent.

But hey: the blog inspires folks on one end, maybe the books will inspire folks on another. I actually like the idea that they'll reach totally different audiences, and I'll get totally different sorts of fan mail for each (yes, I've gotten my fair share of blog-related fan mail. It's why I post things here that are so personal. Sometimes it *does* help people. Other times, yes, I'm just ranting).

Mostly, ranting.

I'd like to say I should be ranting a little more in fiction and a little less here, but they tend to feed each other. When I'm writing, I'm writing, no matter where it is. When I'm not... well, I'm not.

Anywhere.

So.

Now I'm just drifting, so I'll stop. Good night!

Black Desert: Excerpted line of the day

"Her name was Azizah, and she ran with a crew so hard-bitten and bloodlusty that they made Nyx nervous."

I can't wait until I finish this book. Not because it's a BAD book. It's actually a pretty GOOD book, but I feel like I've been working on it, like, forever.

And yes, I decided on my own that "bloodlusty" was one word.

Sue me.

Wanted

Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat

It's been stuck on repeat for two days, actually. This may have something to do with reading and (thus far) enjoying Armor over the last couple of days, too (full rant to come).

For some reason, these fit together in my head. Though this one's more upbeat.

The Decemberists - Sons & Daughters

When we arrive
Sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our lives with cinnamon now

These currents pull us 'cross the border
Steady your boats
Arms to shoulder
'till tides are pulled
Hold our grounds
Making this cold harbor now home

Take up your arm
Sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirrigible
We'll leave our tracks untraceable now

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our lives on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths cinnamon

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths cinnamon
(when we arrive sons and daughters
We'll make our homes underwater
When we build our walls of aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon)

Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away

Deal with the Devil

One of my coworkers has offered to pay my 6-month Wow subscription if I do his resume and he gets to run other characters on my account when I'm not logged in.

These guys are serious addicts, yo. This could be my future.

Honestly, tho, you know: I'm sick of being better. I would like to hide in pixelated goodness for awhile.

There are no broken hearts in pixelated goodness, just rending the flesh of my enemies with my mighty fists.

But really, I should be doing that in kickboxing class.

Whine Whine Whine Bitch Bitch Bitch Moan Moan Moan

I find my ability to be full-up with self-loathing even when my life is full of awesome to be incredibly annoying and certifiably silly. Which just goes to show you that happiness has nothing to do with external stuff. It's not that you just need a new house, a new car, a new significant other (OK, yes, sometimes that's the case, but sometimes you're just full of self-loathing), it's that what needs changing is so often on the inside. It's the rotten, poisonous core that needs to be given a shot of antibiotics, right there at the heart of it.

Cause the hate and self-loathing, though fleeting now and merely something to gnash my teeth about on a Monday night, never go away. I have to change something inside. Some key part of how I see the world, see myself, see my place in it.

I'm not sure where that change needs to come in, or even if it does. After all, I get down on myself far less often now than in the past. But still... something inside needs to change. I need to let myself be happy with what I have, what I've accomplished. I need to stop focusing on what I don't have, what I could lose.

Now is all we've got. External "fixes" won't change it. It's all about me. I'm the one who has to change. To let go.

Other things I discovered today that are silly: Chipotle burritos without sour cream and cheese. I mean, really, what's the point?

Life

I think some days you just get tired of trying to be better all the time and you have to just hole up and say "fuck it" for awhile.

Another of Life's Inexplicable Truisms

The dates you WANT to call you back?

They do not call back.

Le sigh.

At least I still have my brutal bounty hunters cutting off people's heads in Tirhan? And World of Warcraft? And Chipotle? And Zumba on Fridays? And a killer job? Yes.

Yes, indeed.

Hard Heart

There needs to be an ambush scene.

And then, the infamous Meeting.

And then: HORROR.

Writing books is full of teh awesome, really. It's writing all the in-between stuff that's so fucking tedious.

Ways to Spend a Snowbound Weekend

I now have a level 10 WoW warrior... and no additional words on Black Desert.

Hey, my Cossaks disk finally went kaput on me. I needed something to fill the void.

Also, I don't think you can write off your WoW subscription even if you name your characters after your book characters. Thank goodness I can't afford a subscription. Free trials are just the thing for a snowbound weekend.

BUT I WILL NOT GET SUCKED IN.

IT IS MONTHS OF MY LIFE THAT I WILL NOT GET BACK!!!

Quote of the Day

"Sometimes bad things happen, but life is good."
- T.A. Pratt

Wonder

Here.

You Just Can't Make This Shit Up

I mean, seriously.

The Devil, it is full of Wireless

The Starbucks where I do my writing is now in-range of a free public Wifi hub.

Dammit, people, if I thought writing with distractions would get anything done, I'd be writing at home. Fucking A.

Reality-based Valentine's Cards

Front:


Inside:


heh.heh.heh.

Black Desert

Dammit, man, I want to crack 60k!

Currently running about 5500 words behind.

This is what putting together sales conference presentations all week and working on resumes (mmmm extra Chipotle money!) will do for your book.

Guess who'll be writing this weekend?

Smart, Sexy, & Successful... in Dayton, Ohio

One of the biggest enemies I struggle with is myself.

I've been aware of what I'm good at - and what I'm not - for, well, since forever. Or, you know - what I *think* I'm good at, what I am; and what I'm not.

These two categories didn't just include things that you could physically do, but also things that I *am.* Too tall, too big, too strong - for a girl. Too loud. Too outspoken. Too self-conscious. Not pretty enough (but for what, exactly?), not fast enough (who am I running from?), not good enough (again: for what, exactly?). When you put all that down it looks pretty silly, but when it's mowing through your head, it's deadly serious.

Never enough. Not enough.

Enough for what, I don't know.

All I know is that I've got a great job, a great writing career, as much health as a T1 diabetic can have, good friends, a roof over my head, and soon - a place of my own.

I have all the tools and goods for incredible success. The key is to keep going. To not defeat yourself. To remember that yes, of course, all things shall pass and for every up there's a down, but here, right now, things are good and have the potential to be incredible.

Stop focusing on what you don't have. Stop focusing on the "not enough"s. I have enough. That "enough" got me here, and will get me much more.

There's enough.

Everything we lose, we lose for a reason. One lesson ended, another opportunity begins.

You just gotta make sure you're ready for it.

No more self-defeating talk. That's how people fail.

And I've certainly had enough of that.

I'm ready to have enough of something else entirely.

There are parts of my old life, things that change, that I'll miss. So many people I miss. Some of them choose to come along with me. Some of them don't.

Sometimes, it's best to go it alone.

Sometimes, there's someone waiting for you at the top.

Sometimes, there's somebody struggling along right there next to you.

I hope those folks have enough, too.

Way of the Wolf, by E.E. Knight

Wow, that was really terrible.

Inexplicable Attraction

... it's my Kryptonite.

Brilliance

And now I will go home and be brilliant.

You are always stronger than you think you are.

Funny.

Nyx

It occurred to me tonight that if Nyx had a blog it would be really awesome.

Thing is, Nyx is a really shitty writer.

Also, I have too little free time to assist with such endeavors.

Blast.

Little Bastard

Just got an email from my brother, who's in Japan right now. Then he'll be in China for a couple weeks as part of his MBA in International Business.

I'm insanely jealous. My little brother beat me to the far east.....

I'm pretty proud of the little bastard. heh heh

Today

It almost felt like it wanted to be Spring or something.

Quote of the Night

"Whenever you lose something, it just means that you've lost it so you'll have the opportunity to get something better later."
- The Old Man

Conversations with my Roommates

In conversation about the shortcomings of the not-boyfriend, the Old Man said, "Really, what you need to do is find somebody who's rich and not fucked up."

"Oh gawd," I said, "how BORING. Somebody rich and tortured, how about that?"

"Rich and depressing?"

"It would be a lot more interesting," I said, and thought about it for a moment.

And then it occurred to me, in one shining moment of pure brilliance:

"I need to marry Bruce Wayne."

Life By the Numbers

Saw my endo on Thursday for my every-three-months checkup.

My A1c is a respectable 6.2, which she was ecstatic about, but which I still found rather deflating. I'm aiming for 6.0 or less, cause 6 and under is a "normal" person's blood sugar. Yes, I'm being obstinate (the goal for diabetics is to have an A1c under 7.0. What can I say? I have high standards. I also had a 5.9 six months ago, so I know it's possible).

She found my reaction hilarious, because she'd just congratulated somebody for having an A1c of 8.6 (down two points from their previous one!).

Eh.

Anyway, we went over the bloodwork that I had done 3 months ago as a part of trying to get my pump. Everything looks lovely except... well, I knew this one was coming at some point.

My "good" cholesterol numbers are high (which is good), but my "bad" cholesterol numbers are borderline high (which is bad). If I wasn't diabetic, she said she wouldn't have been concerned about it, but I need to drop about 30 points to get to where I should be, optimally.

Horrific cholesterol runs in my family (I think I remember hearing I had an uncle with numbers in the 400s). She wants under 200. I'm at 219. She knows what my diet and exercise schedule is like, and once I told her about my family history she was like ahhhhh... you know, I know you'll hate to hear this, but I really think we should go with a low dose of Lipitor.

And yes, I do hate to hear it. I knew it was coming, of course. Bad cholesterol runs in the family, and it was only a matter of time before somebody did a blood test where mine showed up. Taking action now means fewer complications in the future. Diabetics die from complications - organ failure of one type or another, heartattacks in particular. So doing what I can to avoid placing undue burdens on my heart would be, you know, a good thing.

I asked her what I could do, dietwise, to help this along on my own. Ideally, I'd do the lipitor now, alter my diet, go off the lipitor for six weeks, and see if I'd managed to get it under 200 on my own. She gave me the name of a nutritionist that I can work with up in Centerville. Dropping 30 points through diet alone - after looking at what I eat already - probably isn't feasible. At best, she said I could likely drop about 10 points through diet alone. But let's be honest here, people: I eat a shit ton of full-fat dairy products and meat. Sure, I eat lots of vegetables, too, but meat and cheese and other dairy products are a mainstay of my life. These are foods I let myself eat as much as I want (and it likely the reason that, though I work out regularly, my weight stays the same).

Eliminating animal fat is going to be a big part of the diet change. That's going to hurt. I went ahead and took out butter, red meat, and took out all cheese but low-fat mozzarella on my own, and I'll be switching to egg whites over time. I'm using up the last of the whipped cream in the fridge, and will need to keep to my 0% fat yogurt religiously. This will also mean dumping sour cream.

I'll be replacing some of the meat I'm eating with beans and tofu and fish, which I don't mind. I already have turkey bacon on the weekends, and you know, there's some stuff I'm just not going to give up completely. Like bacon, yo.

So I'll be working on moving that over over the next few weeks and then seeing the dietician sometime in the next few weeks as well.

I need to make a habit of cutting out some of that animal fat on a regular basis. Cheese and steak should be treats, not everyday fair.

Ug.

And don't even get me started on the Chipotle burritos.

Blast.

Diabetes: not fun, people.

8PM on a Friday Night

... and I think I'm headed to bed.

This has been a long week.

Diabetic Rockstar

Diabetic Rockstar appears to be a social networking site for diabetics (primarily, it appears, T1s).

There's a forum where folks can show off their tattoos. Also, I can buy a t-shirt that says "I'm an addict."

Heh heh heh.

Training Sessions

For those of you keeping track at home, our twice-a-week training sessions at work this week consisted of:

5 mins running on the track at the Y, 1 min strength training, 3 minutes running, 1 min strength training, repeat for 40 minutes.

Yum.

Writing Weird Shit

One of the things that always interested me when I was reading Really Weird Shit (like, say, a Mieville or a VanderMeer or even a Catherynne Valente), is this:

Do they come up with all the weird shit in there the first time through, carefully working it all out, or is there just this made dash through the tangle with the occasional cleanup as they go?

Cause what I've discovered is that writing weird, really weird, and staying consistently weird (it might be weird to us, but not the world), isn't something I do on a first pass (and still not something I do well. I'm young. I have a long way to go yet). My drafts sometimes have the rough outline-feel of, say, Titus Alone vs. the fully-formed crackpit that is Gormenghast.

Sure, there's some stuff in there the first time through. I mean, I knew the bakkies would be powered by bugs. I knew there weren't going to be a lot of big animals and most of the protein was just bugs. But it wasn't until the very last couple of drafts (*after* they'd been seen by my crit group and at least one editor) that the chickens got scales and the bakkies belched and got organic guts.

And there are about a million places where I could push the book more than it already is. One of the biggest challenges of Black Desert is knowing that I need to push the level of weird and newness to another level. You can't just write the same shit in the same world over and over again. That defeats the point of having a series. You write a series because the world's so big and cool and weird that you want to open it up and reveal it even more than you did last time. And, ideally, I want to reveal it in a way that doesn't necessarily make it more knowable, but makes it weirder and more interesting and more fucked up. You aren't going to get any hard and fast answers.

One of the things that annoys me about a lot of SF is that there's this need to explain exactly how the world got to be the way it is. Here's the ship's name, where it came from (oh the mystical EARTH!!). But I like writing SF that's so far future it's become fantasy again. I like the Gene Wolfe idea where the world's so ancient they don't really remember anything before it. Sure, they came from the sky, but from another planet? A seed ship? A multitude of worlds? Who knows? And, honestly, within the context of the stories I'm telling on the world, it's not terribly relevant. Who cares? Suffice to say, here's the world they made it, and it's wacky.

The thing with pushing yourself every book is that you push harder every time, and if your head's not hurting, you're not trying hard enough. I sat down last night to clip off my draft and described Tirhani houses and landscape and knew even as I did it that I was going to have to go back over it several times to flesh out the weird. Because most writers, I think, are lazy.

First pass through, all my folks have living rooms and kitchen nooks and mailboxes and happy 50s social pairings, and as I go further, dig deeper, draft after draft, the whole landscape starts to change. There's the ubiquitous Ras Tiegan servant in every house, the bug pillar for collection of message swarms, the organic flooring, the prayer nook, the spider garden, the stairs that no longer lead anywhere. And then you go over it again, and stuff starts breathing and sprouting wings and the kitchen's not black and white anymore, it's technicolor, and you're not even sure it could be called a kitchen now anyway.

Thing is, if I concentrated on the weird shit during my first drafts I'd lose 1) the plot 2) the character relationships.

First run through, it's all about the relationships, with an eye for keeping myself on track with plot everytime folks try and sit down over tea and over-explain themselves. Pieces of the world that are already in place, I can weave those in and they hook up with the plot and the folks, but as I start to push it on the second and third and fourth pass, what happens to the scenery and mechanics does change the character interactions and plot somewhat.

First time through, though, I'm lazy. Lazy writing, lazy ideas. A great example of this was, in God's War Nyx and her team need to cross the war-torn border, so, you know, I have them get in their bakkie and, um... drive across. Cause I needed them to get across the border, yo. Oh sure, there was a brief run-in with some wasp swarms, but it didn't mean anything, didn't add anything, and it made the border a lot less messy and scary that it should have been.

It wasn't until I watched an episode of Aeon Flux where she infiltrates Bregna by getting dropped over the border with a big load of dead in metal coffins raining from the sky that I realized that a fun way of getting over a border would be to smuggle yourself in with the dead.

Yummy. And not quite ordinary. Is the scene the best it could be? No. I think it could be weirder. But it's a long way from the lazy place it started out, and it means a lot more to the characters and the world. You learn a lot more about how it all fits together with this scene than you do when they just drive across the border (not to mention the sheer suspension of disbelief you'd be requiring of your reader for that one, and I say that as somebody who's writing books about chicks with swords and bad aim who come back from the dead and practice magic with bugs).

There are all sorts of assumptions we make about other worlds, other places, as writers. It's easier that way. Easier to go with our assumptions. And lots of times, we'll look at the impact of a technology on the way lives are lived, physically, but not the way lives are lived, emotionally. What happens to our families? Our friendships? If you take us out of our time and place, who are we? What sorts of morals do we have? Are people really basically born good? What's "good"? What makes us all the same? What makes us different?

It's these questions that really got me writing SF/F. If we strip everything else away, what are we? Who are we, if things are really different?

No, really:

What if things were REALLY different?

And the questions I ask are very personal questions, ones that I've run into in my own life, of course. What if women were measured by strength instead of beauty? What if we could manipulate the fabric of the world? What would it be like to BE the law, and then lose that privilege? What would it be like to feel no fear, no shame, no self-consciousness, about your body? What would a world where the nuclear family was unknown look like? How does changing the nature of the family change the society?

What if cutting off heads was a respectable way to earn a living?

You know, real important shit like that.

But when you ask those questions, you can't be superficial. When you answer those questions superficially you end up re-writing somebody else's book. Your book sounds like every other feminist dystopia of vampire bounty-hunter bodice ripper, and you're just another jelly bean; a thousand flavors, one type.

There's nothing wrong with different flavored jellybeans. The trouble comes when all you have is eighteen flavors of vanilla and not one strawberry, because look at how much everybody likes vanilla! They eat vanilla up! We sell 8 bazillion vanilla-flavored jelly beans a year!

It doesn't mean vanilla's the best jellybean. It just means we haven't tasted anything else yet.

I write the books I write because I wanted this flavor jelly bean.

The hope is that a lot of other people wanted it too.

I guess we'll find out.

And until then, hey, even at this pay rate the writing keeps me in bread and boys, and I, at least, find the books terribly tasty. Can't knock that.

Note

I do not ever want my author bio to read:

"Kameron now lives in (insert small midwestern town name here) with her three cats."

Call me crazy, but I want more than that. At the same time, I also don't want it to read:

"Kameron now lives in (insert small midwestern town name here) with her adoring, supportive attorney husband Walter and their three adorable children, Minnie, Mickey, and Mike."

I think my bio should just say:

"Kameron Hurley subsists primarily on the blood of her enemies and should not be allowed out in direct sunlight. She prefers fucking in Marrakech to boxing in Madrid, but it depends on the time of year. When she's not shooting up in service to her life-sustaining drug habit, she can still drink small children under the table. She lives with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a substantial number of Chipotle burritos and occasionally sees a boy whose name she can't remember, but right now she's probably out at a bar learning French from a one-legged prostitute named Bruno."

At least it's more memorable, and has less of the "inevitable boring death" slant to it.

The inevitable death of us all could at least be spiced up a little.

Oh, the Glamorous Writing Life

Up this morning at 5:30 am, morning weights routine, green tea and a cup of frozen raspberries. Out the door at 7:10, catch the bus at 7:27, at work at 7:45.

Script writing in the lobby from 8-10, com meeting from 10-10:30 to communicate assignments and deadlines. Shift from scripts to design changes for company intranet at 11. Lunch is cabbage and pulled pork in a low carb totilla wrap and a spinach salad eaten while reading tips on how to write good web copy.

Intranet & sales process meeting from 1-2, revised sales process up and sent out by 2:30. Approved sales letters given over to intranet manager by 3:00pm.

4:00pm, finalized change process doc done for intranet home page redesign submitted to project manager. 4:30pm, finalized sales brochure mockup sent to graphics designer. 4:45pm, finalized sales brochure sent to videographer.

5:00pm, out the door to catch the bus.

5:11pm on the bus.

5:30pm at home, pack up stuff for a writing night, realize the Starbucks within walking distance is closed.

Steph drops me off at the Books & co down the street.

6:10pm stop by Chipotle across from Books & co. for a quick dinner (steak fajjita burrito, no rice, no beans).

Hole up at Books & co. from 7-9 and squeeze out 1500 bloody, misbegotten words on Black Desert while researching some new fitness routines, bringing me within 500 words of where I'm supposed to be according to my writing schedule.

9:05pm cell phone alarm goes off telling me to pack up and walk to the bus.

9:18pm bus arrives right on time.

9:23pm arrive home. Eat half a dark chocolate bar in the fridge. Roommates tell me pilot light on the furnace went out, so don't try and take a shower or do dishes until morning.

9:25pm unpack computer. Repack gym clothes for personal training session at work.

9:40pm write blog post while reminscing about my glamorous writing life.

This is it, folks.

And you know what?

I love it.

I love my job. Both of them. All of them.

Now somebody needs to start paying me real money for them.

10:00 collapse into bed.

Write Night

Went out to the coffee shop down the street tonight to catch up on my Black Desert writing. Finished up nearly 5K, getting me back within 1K of where I'm actually supposed to be according to my writing schedule.

It was an intense little session. I haven't been that deep in the book in awhile, and when I came out of it I had one of those weird periods of dissonance, where five minutes ago I was in bed with Rhys and his wife in balmy Tirhan in the bloody moonglow, and suddenly I'm trudging down the snow glutted streets of Dayton at 9 o'clock at night wondering where in the hell I am.

Man, I'm a cruel bitch, too. This is that happy jump the narrative takes just before it all goes to hell. This is where you realize just how much the protagonists have to lose, and how hard they fought for it. There are some ichy scenes coming up, and after writing what I did tonight, I have a feeling I'm going to cry through them when I write them. Maybe after.

A whole world, all broken down.

Such a bloody bitch.

I like writing about characters who are drawn to each other but aren't necessarily good for each other. Nyx walks back into your life and you see everything you love destroyed, but some vital piece of you, something you can't name, something you didn't even know was missing, is somehow there again. Whole. Full. Like a missing piece of your heart that chokes you.

Yes, I know: I'm a bloody bitch. But why else would I be a writer?

Stevia

Tastes like concentrated saccharine.

Yech.

Movin On Up

Steph and the Old Man and I had a chat tonight about where we're all at with the living situation. They're happy to have me if I need to stay, but honestly, me and the Old Man have been itching to have our own places for months now. They're not as neat-freaky as I am, and I'm getting tired of picking up dirty dishes and he's tired of me playing loud music. It's not like we want to murder each other, but we both really like our own space, and I've been dying to get my own - he's been dying to get his back.

What triggered the conversation was that they wanted to remodel the bathroom this summer, and to be dead honest, I wanted the hell out of the house before that happened. I've been in the house during major remodeling before, and this one is going to take even longer. I really don't want to be here when it happens.

So I'm pretty much bouncing off the walls right now because oh man do I want my own damn place. Oh man oh man.

If I wanted to live in Ghetto Dayton, I could pay $325 on the north side or downtown, but for $450 I can get a one bedroom near the U of Dayton (OK neighborhood, not ghetto). Take the $350 a month I give over to the CC that'll be paid off when I get my first book check and $250 I currently pay for rent and viola! You have $450 for rent and $150 for utilities.

We're looking at a June 1 or July 1 move out/move-in date, so I'll start my planning accordingly. By the end of March/April I'll be doing serious apartment hunting (it's also a great time of year to pick up apartments near UD cause the students are leaving for the summer). We can do all the moving with the truck and car they've got, so no rental van necessary. I haven't bought, well, pretty much anything since I moved in, so the actual moving of stuff will just be a couple big pieces of furniture and lots of books.

Waiting for the summer means waiting for the book check and a little more job security at work (as of June, I'll have been there a year). And also means I'll move before the bathroom remodel (OH THANK YOU GOD).

I'm so frickin' happy to be in a place where I'm actually, you know, physically and mentally and financially capable of being on my own again. It's been a fucking rough two years. Steph is broken up about me going, but I was like, um, yo: that's how you know you did a good job. The busted up bird is able to fly on its own again.

You guys did good.

(OMG I GET TO BUY MY FRENCH PERFUME AGAIN!!!! AND LIGHT SCENTED CANDLES!!! AND USE APRICOT FASHWASH!!! OMG!!!!)

Recipes that Should be Illegal

Seriously, yo. This is one of those "cruelty to diabetics" recipes.

Also, they're selling Girl Scout cookies at work next week.

God's War Posters

Make your own!

Dating 101

If you go on a date with a girl and:

1) she does not contact you for a week (no call, text, e-mail)
2) you do not contact her for a week (no call, text, e-mail)

She will likely make the assumption that you're aware she is not interested, and has already happily assumed you are not interested as well.

So when you do call, a week later, she will be very Perplexed.

I have book deadlines now. Tra-la.

At this point, it'd take a pretty swoon-worthy date to pull my attention away from the book deadlines.

I have yet to have one of those.

Bowling, Beer, & Brutal Women

Steph and I went bowling tonight for free with a bunch of her coworkers. She works for a fairly large medical practice, so they'd reserved 26 lanes for their annual bowling tournament. Because the weather was icy, the other folks who were supposed to be in our team didn't show up, so it was me and Steph bowling, badly, in lane 26, drinking beer, calling out insults, giving each other high fives and snark for 3 games.

I dressed in one of my most comfortable, relaxed outfits. Long flared jeans and green T-shirt with a black zip up vest and hemp necklace choker, and I spent a lot of time with my thumbs hooked in my pockets and sidling up to the lane and being all cocky and walking tall, and oh man, it felt good. And as I bowled with Steph I realized, again, how good it feels to just act like myself. To swill beer and snark and walk like somebody who has her shit together. I actually haven't done that in awhile. People find me intimidating sometimes, and out here, I just feel.... well, this just doesn't feel like a place I can be me, sometimes. A lot of this came from the not-Boyfriend, I realize, who was terrified of the fact that I talked too loud and walked too confident, terrified of how I presented myself; not because he didn't like it (oh indeed he did), but because he was terrified of what other people would think of me. There's a lot of that "but oh God what would the herd think!" mentality out here.

And as I looked at the assembly of Steph's coworkers, I realized, again, how obviously and absurdly we just don't fit in here. Or, at least, in this subset of Ohio. These people have completely different values. They consider different things when they pick a spouse. Lives are run on guilt and obligation more than independence and commitment. It's like, you're supposed to have a life that's a certain way, and that's the life you make, even if you want something completely different. You build what you're supposed to have, even if it makes you miserable.

It's the weirdest thing out here that you get people my age who are on their second marriage or divorced and already have 3 or more kids. The "starter marriage" thing gets started early out here. You pick somebody based on... I don't know. I've always been incredibly picky about that. You build a life based on... I don't know. Not what I base mine on, that's for sure. Your goals, hopes, dreams, aspirations... nothing at all like mine. Interests, passions... I have so little in common with anybody out here, and I realized how odd and out of place that's made me feel.

I like my strong, butch personae. Not only has it gotten me pretty far, but I physically feel better when I step into it. When I try to quiet down and fem up, I feel stupid. I feel like a liar, and I feel weak and completely powerless. I'm just not me. But at least I "fit in" right?

Fuck that.

As I bowled, badly, and swilled beer tonight, I realized how far I'd come from where I'd been. I liked who I was (also, I really miss drinking, but I digress). I miss feeling safe, among folks who accept me for who I am. I don't trust anybody here to accept me for me. Not one bit. Everybody I've met out here wants me to change to fit their conception of what a good little girl should be (except Steph and the Old Man, of course).

And you know what?

That's not me. I don't accept your religions blindly. I don't agree with your politics. I don't agree with a lot of your hypocritical family values. I don't believe your gay son is going to hell and I don't believe your daughter only has her looks and breeding potential going for her. I don't think the height of refinement is beer and pizza on a Friday night, but it sure can be fun. Now let's discuss some literature and do explain to me why you think Bush's foreign policy is making friends and influencing people. Show me you can use your head. Demonstrate to me that you're not a sheep. I don't care what you believe so long as I know you got there by actually thinking about it. Do you just accept things that people tell you? Is what you have always enough?

Because it's never enough for me. And I realize that, out here, that makes me weird. It also means I'll never be as happy as most of these folks. Will I live a more interesting life? Maybe. Depends on your definition of interesting. One life isn't any better than the other, but I'm clear that the life that's OK for most folks out here isn't OK for me, and I get tired of feeling like I'm in the figurative closet all the time, trying to figure out how I can dress better and fem up and lose weight and dumb down my conversation so people take me seriously.

Fuck that.

God, you know, sitting there swilling beer and trading insults with Steph, I realized how much I miss being me. I miss being the me I was before I got sick. The whiskey-drinking, risk-taking nomad who never got attached to her lovers and ran around the world writing books. I liked that. And you know, when I came here, and my body had betrayed me and my world fell apart and it didn't look like the books were going anywhere, I built another life for myself, in my head. A life that would be different than the one I had. Not better or worse, but different. I found somebody I loved. I had a job a loved. I could get a little house and a garden and a dog and put my energy into building a life and a family and doing all those things that folks out here did. Not better or worse, just... different than what I was.

And tonight I realized just what I was planning to give up, how much of myself was getting lost along the way. Not better, not worse: different. A different self.

Did I like that different path? I don't know. Again, it was just... different. It wasn't what I had. It wasn't who I was tonight.

My dad said that my blog sounded a lot different since I moved to Dayton, and it's true. When you get hit with a shovel, when your whole world gets turned upside down, you have to decide where you're at, what happened, what needs to change. I wanted the boy and the dog and the garden and the house, not necessarily in that order.

Now I have no idea what I want or who I am, because all I want to do is swill whiskey and fuck the night away and chain smoke and get on a plane to Marrakech... and then I realize I already did that, and it brought me here.

So where do I go from here?

I don't know. I feel alive on nights like tonight, yes. But I was happy with the boy and the garden and the dog, too. Maybe they aren't mutually exclusive.

When somebody loves you, they love you for everything you are, good, bad, butch, brutal, bad bowler. And I'm all of those things and a lot more. Pretending I'm not, hiding it, covering it up, pretending that *all* I want is the garden and the house and not the midnight fucking in Marrakech, is a lie. It's gutting half of myself. It's sacrificing one to get the other.

I shouldn't have to sacrifice it. Those parts of myself should make each other stronger. Gutting one guts the other. I can't live a life that's half a person. I can't live half a life.

Now how do I get the house and the garden and the fucking in Marrakech?

This is the real question.

Shit

I feel like it.

Since last Friday when we agreed to the book contract, I've been allowing myself to eat pretty indiscriminately (there have been Chipotle runs, beer and cake, frosted cookies, chocolate cream pie, nachos, and more), and I've only worked out once this week. Some of this also has to do with a lot of work and lingering personal life stress, and the stress and unhealthy eating habits feed one another. The more stressed I am, the more I want to eat shit. The more shit I eat, the worse I feel. The more shit I eat, the more I don't care that I'm eating shit and feeling like shit. I haven't eaten so much shit the entire time since I got diagnosed as I have this week.

I've spent the whole week feeling up and down, mostly eight kinds of down, and now I'm just kind of weepy and exhausted.

I hate that I have to be so hyper-vigilant about food and exercise all the time. I hate that I can't eat what I want. I hate that I feel like shit, and the only way to get feeling level again is to tighten my control back up again and practice that hyper-vigilance.

I think that sometimes I just get tired of living under that tight control all the time. Sometimes I just want to bust out. Then I do, and this is where it gets me. I have to keep myself under control if I want to live any kind of life worth living.

Whine. Whine. Whine.

Quote of the Day

"A useless life is but an early death."
- JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Iphigenia in Tauris

Revelation

Man, it's been awhile since I got behind on e-mail. My day job is eating my life. In a *good* way, mind. It's keeping my brain busy, challenging, rewarding, but yeah, after this big sales project is done I'll need to slow down a little.

Because the Spice Must Flow

"She found him in the magicians' gym, where she should have expected him all along."

Which then explains why I was stuck for two months while she stood there waiting at his door. She was looking in the wrong place.

And just like that, the words come purling down the pipe once again.

Funny how that is.

Classic