How to Write a Query Letter

Finding good examples of query letters and synopses online can be tough, especially when you're an SF/F writer. I returned again and again to this one by Lynn Flewelling when I started writing mine.

And lo, look, now here's a whole bunch of them.

For those working on Queries, I also recommend Elizabeth Lyon's book, The Sell Your Novel Toolkit. It has a ton of great synposes and query samples, and it was just the book I needed to read when I started seriously trying to sell books.

Here's my contribution to the collective wisdom of the free internets. The Query that got me my agent, who subsequently got me my deal. Personally, I still think it's a little dense and wordy, but hey, it piqued some interest:

April 23, 2007

Dear Jennifer Jackson,

God’s War is a 90,000 word SF novel of faith, betrayal and submission played out in the contaminated deserts of Nasheen, a matriarchal nation engaged in a centuries-old holy war.

Nyxnissa “Nyx” so Dasheem is a bel dame, one of the brutal women engaged in hunting deserters. After getting caught selling out her womb to gene pirates, she is stripped of her bel dame title and forced to make a tenuous living as a less-than-respectable bounty hunter. Nyx’s luck appears to improve when she’s offered a bounty on an interstellar gene pirate who’s fled – or been kidnapped – from the royal compound. While trying to keep together her ragtag crew of mercenaries, Nyx pursues the elusive alien across Nasheen’s parched interior and over the war-torn border with Chenja.

There, under the dim lights of Chenja’s underground fighting rings, Nyx must face a black market boxer, a traitorous magician, and the betrayal of one of her team members. As her crew begins to unravel, Nyx finds herself hunted by her former bel dame sisters and a notorious war veteran. If Nyx can salvage her crew and outwit her rivals, she could hold the key to ending Nasheen’s centuries-old conflict in her bloody hands.

My educational background is in the political history of southern Africa, with an emphasis on the experiences of female guerilla fighters. I am a Clarion West graduate, and some of my work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Talebones, and the upcoming Year’s Best SF 12.

The partial or full manuscript and synopsis of God’s War are available for review upon your request. I am currently drafting a sequel, Black Desert, and a third and final volume is in outline form.

Thank you for considering this proposal. I have enclosed an SASE, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Kameron Hurley

How (and Why) to Turn Your Info Dump into Conversation

Infodumps bore the living crap out of me.

It's probably one reason why I don't read a lot of hard SF. Hard SF loves the infodump. The trouble with infodumps is that all they do is get you information. It doesn't expand on character. It doesn't move the plot forward. People aren't moving forward with it.

It just sits there.

Dumping.

There's a good example of the total word-waster that is the expository lump in Black Desert round 2, below.

This is just authorial dumping. It's me figuring out this character, this story, and just blabbing on and on about pretty much everything, even stuff that's completely not relevant.

Please fix your expository dumps. They're unseemly.

If you have to write an "As you know Bob"-like conversation, fine. This is what most folks do. Joss Whedon dumps in the form of a classroom discussion in Serenity. I use the same technique in The Dragon's War. If you're going to get information to the reader, please do it in a way that's believable.

In Black Desert round 3, the Expository Lump becomes slightly more engaging dialogue. Also shown below. It's just a first pass fix, and there's still some dumping there at the end, but you can already see what a big difference it makes.

Here's the original:

ORIGINAL (blah blah blah blah blah. Please don't do things like this!)
_____________________

Alharazad had retired from the council back when Nyx was still a bel dame, and the bloody story of her leave-taking had been popular gossip in and outside bel dame circles for year. Alharazad had opposed a coup against the former Queen, Zaynab’s mother, Abayyd. Abayyd had limited the sorts of notes bel dames could collect, just one more erosion of power, the sort bel dames had been fighting for centuries. Abayyd had restricted the bel dame council to notes for war criminals, draft dodgers, and terrorists. No longer was the council to take out notes for petty officials who wanted their sister’s head in a box because she stole some locusts, or bring back an old man who’d fled a marriage contract. They could police war veterans who escaped the breeding compounds, sure, but private notes could no longer be accepted. It was another limitation on bel dame power.

The council discussions went on for days. Alharazad and two of the others on the nine-woman council argued that the bel dames had taken an oath centuries before to uphold the laws of the Queen. To disobey the Queen’s edict was to break that contract. The penalty set down in the contract for the breaking of that agreement was the dissolution of the bel dame council. The oath kept the bel dames from running rogue like the magicians before them, making and breaking their own laws. The rest of the council argued that the bel dames had been around longer than the monarchy or the caliphate before it; they had hunted down rogue magicians and petty thieves equally. Back when bel dames were the only form of law in the desert, no one had had any problem with that.

The story went that once everyone had cast their public vote – three for the upholding of the Queen’s edict, six for civil war – Alharazad had strode out into the middle of the floor, drawn her sword, and decapitated three of the six women who’d voted for war.

As the others took arms and came at her, Alharazad quoted from the old code of the bel dames, the one carved into fiery red metal flanking the entry into the council chamber.

Bel dames in violation of code must be brought to justice by their sisters.

Breaking oaths, she reminded them, was a violation of code.

“You can’t pick and choose from the old laws,” she was said to have told them. “If you vote to break an oath in favor of an older law, I have the authority to met out justice as laid down by those laws. Knowing now that a vote for oath-breaking is a vote for the penalty for oath-breaking, vote again.”

The six remaining members of the council voted to uphold the Queen’s edict. Six months later, the last of Alharazad’s daughters died, and after assisting in the nomination and election of her replacement on the council, Alharazad had retired to Faouda, the birthplace of all of her children.

Alharazad had sent all twenty of her children to the front over the years – fourteen boys and six girls – and she’d given birth to them the old-fashioned way, in groups of three or four instead of the ten or eleven the magicians manipulated now. Only three of her children had come back from the front; a crazy girl who got drunk and drown in a gutter during a flash flood a few months after finishing her six years of service, and another daughter who was so bug-crazy after a year in the trenches that she was sent home and locked up in a mental ward in Mushtallah. The only boy of hers to survive came back from the front at forty after completing his mandatory service, but he came back a radical. He had his own ideas about how to police Nasheen. He became a bounty hunter and started hanging around the magicians’ gyms in Faleen, recruiting boxers and girls fresh off the front before the bel dames signed them. He was known for his strong moral and religious arguments against the mandatory drafting of men for the front, and his heated desire to disband the bel dame council, which he saw as an unregulated army of bloodletters who answered to no Queen, no Imam, no God.

His name was Raine al Alharazad, and he’d recruited Nyx after she paid off her debt with the magicians at the morgue. He had taught her how to bring in a bloodless bounty, how to kill with her bare hands instead of munitions, and how to drive a bakkie like a bel dame on a blood note. What he taught her had given her an edge when she joined the bel dames, but he’d never forgiven her for going over to their side.

Ten years later, Nyx had put a sword through his gut and left him to die in a gully in Chenja.

So she was really looking forward to meeting Alharazad.
____________________________________________

And, the first pass of the fix:

FIXT VERSION (first pass)
_____________________________________________

“So tell me something about this Alharazad,” Suha said, capping off the tank.

Nyx peeled off a note and gave it to Eshe to feed into the big central money depository. “She retired when I was still a bel dame, back before Queen Abayyd abdicated. There was a big shit in the bel dame council after Abayyd restricted notes to terrorists, draft dodgers, terrorists. Made the bel dames more an arm of the monarchy than an independent force, you know?”

“And she didn’t take to that?” Suha said.

“Alharazad goes by the old code. Nobody fucking liked it, but bel dames take a blood oath to the Queen. That’s new since the monarchy, sure… we didn’t swear to shit before that. But we all swear that her word’s God’s law. You break a blood oath, you know what happens?”

“Bel dames kill you,” Eshe said. He gave her her change. Nyx pocketed it, nodded.

“Yeah, bel dames kill you. Alharazad reminded the council of that, watched them vote on whether or not to split from the Queen. The ones who voted yes? She chopped their fucking heads off.”

“Must have made her real popular,” Suha said.

“To some people, sure. You can’t pick and choose from the old laws. You break your blood oath in favor of some old Caliphate law about bel dames running their own show, you still get taken out for breaking a blood oath.”

“Is that why you keep taking the Queen’s notes?” Eshe asked.

Nyx peered at him. She was wearing the hat she’d gotten at the coast, to keep the sun out of her eyes. He went uncovered, as usual, burnous flapping loosely behind him, no hood, shoulders bare.

“Cover up, would you?” she said. “You’re going to get cancer.”

He rolled his eyes, pulled the burnous back over his shoulders. “Is it? Is that why you took the note?”

“I took the note because it’s my job,” Nyx said. She shuffled back toward the bakkie.

Suha opened the door for her. “I bet Alharazad thought it was her job to kill half the council, too,” Suha said.

“No shit,” Nyx said. “My bel dame oath? The part about protecting the Queen is the only part of it I haven’t broken yet. I’d like to surprise myself in my old age by sticking with that.”

Suha shut the door.

Nyx leaned out the window. “Let’s have you drive, Eshe.”

“Why?” he said.

“Cause Alharazad won’t shoot a boy unless she’s provoked.”

She saw Eshe lose some color. “This is why I taught you how to use a pistol,” she said.

“And we’re lucky he’s a better shot than you are,” Suha said.

Nyx sat up front and watched the pitted landscape roll by.

She have any kids, Alharazad?” Suha asked.

“Why, you planning on pissing her off?”

“Just wondering if she’s on her own,” Suha said. “I don’t want to face a fucking kid army like that Anneke women’s breeding.”

Nyx grunted. “Naw, nothing like that. Heard Alharazad had twenty kids. Fourteen boys, if you can believe it. All twenty went to the front. Three came back. Crazy girl got killed in a flash flood, drowned in a ditch. Another girl went so bug-crazy after her year in the trenches she got locked up in a ward in Mushtalluh.”

“What about the other one?” Eshe said.

“Did you get any food when we were back there?” Nyx said.

“Nobody asked me to,” Eshe said.

“We didn’t get any fucking food?” Suha said. “Shit.”

Nyx let them bicker. Alharazad had one boy come back from the front, too, at the end of his mandatory service. He was forty by then. He came back a radical and took up bounty hunting, started hanging around the magician’s gyms in Faleen, recruiting boxers and girls fresh off the front before the bel dames got them. He was known for his strong moral and religious arguments against the mandatory drafting of men, his passionate desire to disband the bel dame council, and his uncanny ability to hunt down terrorists. He believed bel dames were an unregulated army of bloodletters. They answered to no Queen, no Imam, not even God.

His name was Raine al Alharazad. He’d recruited Nyx at the magicians’ gym and taught her how to bring in a bloodless bounty, kill with her bare hands, and how to drive a bakkie like a bel dame on a blood note.

Tens years after leaving his crew, she put a sword through his gut and left him to die in a gully in Chenja.

So she was really looking forward to meeting his mother.
_____________

Welcome Kaylee Rae Clark

My neice, Kaylee Rae Clark, was born via planned Cesarean September 9th around 1pm PST.


Kaylee! I want to get her overalls with a teddy bear patch and teach her how to remake a Starship engine. Sadly, my sister doesn't get that joke... but it amuses the hell out of me.

Mom and baby.

Mom, Dad, and baby!

My mom and Kaylee.

My mom, my nephew Christopher, and Kaylee.

Robin Hood: Season 2

Oh my God. I think this is even cheesier than the first season. It's gone from campy fun to PAINFUL.

PAINFUL I TELL YOU.

Training Daze

I hurt today from yesterday's weight training workout with the work trainers... and what did I do today?

25 min run (5 min warmup) followed by a 15 min swim. Came home and ate some baked sweet potato fries (rosemary paremesan!), chicken sausage, and cucumber slices.

I'm tuckered out.

I'm not sure how I'm still doing this. I think it just lends a nice structure and sense of purpose to my days. I feel a lot better, I'm stronger, less fuzzy headed. It gives me some direction.

I like that the swimming time is staying constant for a bit here, too. I don't think it kicks up to 20 min until next week. It gives me a chance to concentrate on my form, which still sucks. Have I mentioned I sort of have this latent claustrophobia? It's terrifying when you're putting the breathing together with the strokes, and you're going along just fine and then it's like - BAM - I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I'm going to die!

I was fine when I was keeping my head above water, but now that I'm doing proper strokes again - stroke, stroke, breathe - there at the beginning and the middle I lost it a couple of times and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

Oh, yeah, I thought - that claustrophobia thing. Yeah.

See, I went down into the catacombs in Rome? Paris? when I was 17, and I flipped the fuck out. During the same trip, they packed six of us into one of those night train sleeper cars, and I was hysterical sobbing all night long.

I realized then that if I wanted to travel, if I wanted a big adventurous life, I would have to get over the claustrophobia thing.

I think that the secret to facing any fear is knowing that you're not getting over it, getting past it it, or even overcoming it. You're just facing it. You sit and acknowledge it and look it over clinically and go, "OK, I recognize what this is. This is a crazy thing. Now that I have acknowledged it and poked at it a bit I am going to move on."

Then you take some deep, calming breathes and force yourself to think about other things.

This is why I love the fear mantra from Dune, and the "Pain is just a message" mantra from Griffith's Aud books. You're not ignoring your fear. I think that's the misconception that kept me from being able to function before that. I thought that I could just ignore it and it would go away. But that's not true. It just builds up then. It sneaks up behind you.

You've got to face it like a fighter. Hit it head on.

So I acknowledged my crazy swimming claustrophobia and kicked out those last two laps hard and fast. Then I came home and put hydrogen pyroxide in my ears to fend off the tricky infections. My ears don't like me swimming, tho the new ear plugs sure do help.

And here's the thing, you know?

This shit is not easy. It's not pleasant. I'm scared of running. I'm scared of saying I'm doing Triathlon training, because how silly is that? I'm absolutely terrified of failure all the time. But the alternative is not to try. Never to try. And I could use any old excuse to not get to the gym - "Oh, I'm sore from working out yesterday," "Oh, you know, I have a history of ear infections, I can't swim," "Oh, I've never been good at running," "Oh, I've never really been an athletic person," - these are all excuses I've used to not do things before. They seem like perfectly valid excuses to me. And they will seem like great excuses again.

But for now... for now...

Sometimes, when your life has calmed down and things are good, you realize you have the strength and courage to do things that paralyzed you before.

Going to Peru? By myself, even with my chosen tour group? Scares the living shit out of me. Publishing books that could totally fail and bomb? Scary shit. My job? The thought of losing my job? Scary shit. But you do it, because the life where you don't do it is way fucking scarier.

Waaaay fucking scarier.

OmniPoddery: Always Backup

My OmniPod has been working pretty wickedly for the past few weeks. I haven't seen a morning, noon, or night "hit" number above 150 in nearly four weeks (just correction numbers), which is why I was suprised this morning to wake up at 178.

I was even more stunned to see my noon number hit 248 for no reason.

Was I getting sick or something? What the hell was going on? I realized that I'd changed the pod out yesterday, which is when the wacky numbers started (I thought I was way higher than I should have been during my 1:30am test, too).

But hey, maybe I'm just getting sick, so I just keep on keeping on. I popped down to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription.

As I walked back from the pharmacy, I stepped into the elevator and heard this high pitched whine.

That's a weird elevator whine, I thought. It's that high dog-whistle radio noise type whine that's really, really annoying.

And then I had a thought.

I put my hand over my pump.

The noise lessened.

Oh, shit.

When I stepped out of the elevator, it became very clear that I was the one emitting the high pitched whine. I made a beeline to my office with my hand over the pump and grabbed my backup from my bag.

In the bathroom, I went to change out the pump with my PDM. But the PDM said it couldn't communicate with the pod...

Which meant -

The pod kept beeping.

I peeled it off and replaced it with my backup without any issue, but...

THE POD KEPT BEEPING.

So here I am, standing in the bathroom at work, and I have this continuously beeping pager-sized device in my hand. I pulled off the adhesive backing. I pulled at the edges of the plastic backing. It wouldn't budge.

I checked to make sure I was the only one in the bathroom.

Then I started throwing my beeping pod as hard as I could against the bathroom floor. I did this at least three times. Thank God nobody walked in on me trying to destroy a piece of medical hardware.

My next thought was to throw it in a sink full of water, but these things are waterproof up to 8 feet for 30 min. I'd have to let it soak - batteries and all - for 30 min.

These fuckers are really well made.

And here's the deal: you can't just throw away this beeping thing at work in a high rise building. It looks like a mini-bomb. I knew that if I tossed it and it kept beeping, there was a chance somebody was going to call in the police for bomb sweep. No, seriously. If people are willing to call the cops about half empty bottles of water left in elevators, they're going to call about a pager-sized device beeping in a bathroom trash can.

My next thought is that I have to somehow pulverize this thing into small pieces. I need to get the fucking battery out, but I don't have anything on my desk to hammer this thing.

So I went to the experts in demolition.

I went downstairs to the IT hardware guys.

The infrastructure manager pulled out his tools and said, "So I can destroy this, right?"

"Yes, I already replaced it."

"So basically, I can destroy it and just tear it apart?"

"Yes. Please. It wont. stop. beeping."

"OK, I'm going to totally destroy it then!"

"Excellent!"

He pulled out some regular pliers and some needle nosed pliers and pried off the plastic backing after a couple of tries (I told you these are well made!). Then he popped out the batteries.

The pod went blessedly silent.

It was then that he asked me, as he handed me the neatly destroyed remains, "What is this, anyway?"

"My insulin pump," I said.

He just shook his head at me.

I mean really, what do you say to that?

Fun Facts to Know and Tell

There is apparently a Sled Dog Rescue group in Indianapolis, IN.

Also, a Home for Huskies. I'm curious as to why Indy is so full of huskies.

Benefits to Biking a Mile and a Half to the Dematologist's Office in the Rain

Man, that doctor was HOT. Seriously.

Better, tho - well, marginally better; he was SUPERhot -was learning that my itchy leg was not, in fact, yet another chronic condition. Just itchy, and will clear up in a couple weeks with some topical cream. Seriously? I guess so.

The hilarious, part, however, was when he asked me if my slightly splotchy face "bothered me."

Um???

These must be things hot doctors ask about. I have never considered myself to have an acne problem. A couple of zits never killed anybody, but ah, yes, this is America, land of perfection!

He suggested that I could totally go on birth control pills, which would clear my face right up!

AHA HAHahaha ha ahaha ahaah ha aha....

Let's see.... chronic weight gain and severe depression or a couple of zits? Chronic weight gain and severe depression... or a couple of zits? (not to mention the $40 a month that would cost. Why did I get an IUD again?)

Let me think really hard about that..... thinking... hrm... thinking.... hrm... math is hard.

These are some of the wacky things that happen when doctors get overzealous. Please don't get overzealous, doctors. There are bad, bad consequences.

His suggestion did also make him slightly less hot, which was a shame.

Poor, pretty doctor.

The Writing Life

Book checks.

They are a tricky thing.

Everybody tells you not to rely on them coming on time -or even at all! -but there's this part of you that's always planning and scheming and hoping and budgeting, regardless.

I've been putting off some purchases for awhile because I keep thinking, "You know, it would be better to wait for my next book check." These things, at various points in time, have included: a digital camera, a home elliptical machine, a printer, an HD television (not seriously, but it's fun to think about), $100 in books from Amazon.com, and a dog (yay!).

Thing is, with the way publishing works, well, this isn't going to work. That is, if I want these things within the next, let's say, 2-4 months. So I continue to budget and accrue these things piecemeal as money allows.

See, I got my first book check when I signed the deal, which arrived roughly 30 days after I signed the contract, which arrived roughly 30 after the offer was made (this was blazing fast, in my opinion). That was pretty awesome, and that's how I was able to move into my own place and pay off a credit card. Have I mentioned how awesome that was?

In any case, the next one is due "on delivery" of GW. But though I have actually delivered GW, it's not "officially" considered delivered until my editor gets back to me with edits, I fix all the edits, she approves and is happy with the edits, the check goes through the check things it does, the check goes to my agent, my agent sends me the check minus commission, and tra-la. This could be a really long, drawn-out process. Probably 2-6 months from the time I see edits to the time I see a check (based on what I've heard from other writers).

Back in May, the plan was that I would have edits for GW from my editor in July. My sekrit wish was to then have a check by September. And then, you know, put half toward the CC and the other half toward a digital camera and Amazon books and.. and...

Yeah, I know. Ha ha.

It sucks when you realize that all the things people told you about being a writer are basically true.

In the meantime, I'm going to go buy a cheap printer.

The Cutting Will Continue Until the Book Improves

I'm not much for books that ramble. Some may argue about the short attention span of the internet age, but really, look back at something like Zelazny's Amber books, or the pre-90s Stephen King novels:

They're pretty short.

They are not 1500 page epics. They do not hem and haw and circle and backtrack and spend 10 pages talking about underwater farming in Australasia while the protagonist repeatedly tugs on her braid. Mainly, this is because folks were writing on typewriters. I'm also thinking short books sold better. These days, you pay $30 for a hardcover, and goddammit, you want 900 pages, because, seriously, $30 for a hardcover??

I haven't been able to get through Hobb's sequels to the Assassin books because Fool's Errand just goes on and on and on. It's two characters having long conversations about their bitter lives and regrets - this is how the book opens! It's like a hundred pages of the author trying to figure out what the characters are supposed to do during this book, and summing up the boring 15 years of their lives between this book and the last, which I really, really doubt is ultimately relevant to the climax of the novel.

I don't write like this.

Usually.

I mean, yeah, OK, I write first drafts like this. They are long, and wind-filled, and people are always drinking tea (I was delighted when I realized that they actually had a high tea in my fictional Tirhan. Nobody in Nasheen in the last book actually sat around and drank tea. You have no idea how many stupid, pointless scenes this eliminated in GW. I had to be careful about my tea scenes in BD).

When I'm writing a first draft, I'm generally bouncing around trying to figure out where the characters are going to go, and - if they're new - what the hell they're about.

So there are these long, pointless passages about trauma and heartache and growing up in a farming community at the edge of the desert, and the economics of the Bashinda River. And when I revise a book, the first thing I do is say, "OK, do the economics of the Bashinda River have anything to do with this plot? No? Cut it out." And out it goes.

It is incredibly satisfying, after you murder the first few darling paragraphs, to watch paragraph after boring, clunky paragraph recede into the wastewater that was your first draft.

Ultimately, I'd like to cut about 10K-15, which would get this back to 95K at the most. 95K feels like about the right length for the bel dame books. I can't tell you why that is, but it is.

Different books tend to have different lengths and styles that just feel more appropriate. I've had to go back and chop up a lot of the long sentences and rambling paragraphs I wrote in the first draft, too. Nyx books are short sentences books. Curt, snappy dialogue. Bleeding roaches. Sand-caked wrinkles. Calloused feet. And, of course, heads getting chopped off.

And revision time is when you get to make sure all the shit that was supposed to be there is there. And all the shit that's just shit... well, that's what you chop out.

Officially Printerless

The printer gifted to me by the not-Boyfriend finally bit it on Monday. It was having trouble picking up paper, which I had to reload after every 10 sheets. Then I overloaded it and it made a horrible grinding noise and when I pulled the tray out, several plastic parts came with it.

Alas.

I loved this printer, and it was probably the best present he ever gave me, so I'm actually a lot more sad than I should be. The thing was a fucking beast for printage. It must have printed like 32-35 pages a minute or something crazy like that. I think it retails for $300+ (it was gifted to me refurbed and quirky, so it wasn't actually worth $300 anymore, but still).

In any case, I never could get it to work on my new machine anyway. However, when Steph brought over my old $30 printer to replace it, which I'd left at their place, I noted it was missing a cable. I realized I had used said cable on my old printer.

So I went out to the dumpster behind the building to fish it out of the old printer. But, alas, somebody was dumpster diving last night, because my old, awesome (but broken) printer is no longer there.

Sucks to be me.

I could order a new cable and have a working (but crappy) printer for the month, or just use next month's meds money to purchase a new printer all together.

I'm thinking that I don't need to print anything here immediately, so I guess I can wait to try and purchase something good next month. But man, I'm sad.

And now I don't know why I've written all of this about printers, except that when you're a writer, printers are a big deal. I loved mine. And I'm sad that - quirky as it was - it bit it. Sadder still that I was stupid enough to toss it out without retrieving the goddamn data cable first.

Arg.

Low Carb Enchilada Goodness

6-8 Low Carb Tortillas
2-3 Boneless, skinless chicken patties
2 cups spinach leaves
1 avocado
1 clove (or 4 tablespoons, in Kameron math) garlic
1 large onion
1-2 fresh jalapenos
1 15 can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sour cream
2 cups mozz cheese
olive oil


Chop up your onion and jalapenos. Put in a bowl to the side. Cut up your chicken. Get ready to combine all this goodness!


Heat up a frying pan. Add olive oil. Throw in the garlic, onion, and jalapenos. Simmer those babies for 7-8 minutes, or until the onion is soft but not brown. If it's a little brown, tho, don't worry, no one will die. I didn't. But then, I have a high tolerance for death. Or is that, a high intolerance for death? No matter.

Add oregano, chicken, tomatoes, spinach, and salt. Mix this all together until it is well stirred, or until the spinach is slightly wilted. It's OK that the chicken isn't really cooked. This made me nervous at first, but have no fear: it will cook nicely inside of the torts.

Put about a scoop of the goodness into a tortilla. Add a slice of avocado. Roll up just like a Chipotle burrito and start layering these packets of yum into your greased (Pam is great!) baking pan.

Top your torts with the remaining avocado and a dollop of your sour cream (all of my dairy now is low fat, sad to say, but still quite tasty).

Now for my favorite part! Slather the whole thing in mozzarella cheese and pop it into a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese is nice and brown on top.

They taste like real enchiladas! Like, seriously, I ate it and it was good! It's a miracle! A miracle!

Next time, I'd like to add some cilantro for a little more zing. I also forgot the can of green chili peppers I was supposed to add, which may have spiced things up. All in all, tho, this turned out really well.

I should have a second blog called "The Yummy Diabetic."

This is a variation of a much prettier looking recipe which you can find here.

Conversations with the Crack Hooker

Steph: So, what have you been up to?

Me: Oh, you know, working out a lot.

Steph: Yeah, I could tell. Your flat ass is flatter than usual.

Oh, the love.

Dayton Greekfest

That was basically one big orgy of food, yo.

Quote of the Day

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
-Stephen Hawking

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If we've been exchanging emails, or if I owe you emails, and you haven't received a response in the last 2-3 days, let me know. I have been experiencing technical difficulties, but all email should now be caught up on.

Thanks!

Training Tonight

Tonight was 25 minutes jogging followed by 25 minutes biking. I'm starting to up the jogging by .1 miles per session to kick it up a little. I'm only jogging at 4.2 right now, and I think I can get that up to a proper running speed of 6 (::gulp::) in the... um... foreseeable future?

I've also realized I can't follow the original training schedule as written, which is apparently OK so long as I get the time in (hence the biking and jogging in one day). I was supposed to do biking yesterday and jogging today, but doing my Mon/Weds hour and a half training session at work and then *another* session after work is still a little much for me to think about.

As it is, I'm currently working out 6 days a week, one of which is weight training only (my Monday training session at work). I've been working really hard to get up to a 5-6 day a week workout schedule, so this makes me pretty happy. I'll be a little more joyful if I'm still at it in 6 weeks. It's the consistency that's key.

So far, my "mix it up with different cardio exercises and a set schedule" thing has worked really well. I'm at nearly three weeks, and I can notice a huge difference in strength, form, and endurance, particularly when it comes to the swimming. That's definately the event that I'll show the most improvement on.

And yes, for those curious, I have started training for a Triathlon Sprint. Whether or not I will actually run one (the events they do have are quite a hike from Dayton), has yet to be seen. However, in 12 weeks I should have the *ability* to run one if I can find one.

If nothing else, there should be a duathlon at Kettering Rec. Center near my house sometime in January/February, which is a running/swimming event.

One of the big problems I've always had with working out is that it seemed to have no end purpose, no end goal. I need structure and something I'm building toward. Seeing some of the folks at work, who run marathons and half marathons, and, of course, reading this blog made me wonder what I could physically do if I actually applied myself.

I've been working my whole life to be a writer, and yeah, it's fucking tough and it's still tough every day to keep at it, but it means I do have the drive to accomplish things. I've just never applied that drive to anything physical, because I always felt I just didn't have the body/stamina/inherent whateverness for it. Mainly, I just didn't have the drive to try it. I'd rather stay home and write.

Now, after that whole almost dying thing, I've become a lot more interested in what I can do with my life. And I know my time is not infinite. Better now than... possibly never. You just don't know what's going to happen around the next bend.

It's a part of the big projects I've been working on the last year and change. Being better at relationships, getting control of my finances, finding real strength and security in my life. These are really fucking tough things for me, and training for a triathlon is no less tough.

But these are attainable things. Yeah, it's hard fucking work. Just like writing, you have to do it every day, and you have to plow through the hard stuff, and people will make fun of you and some days you'll hate yourself, but if I can write books, why can't I do this? If I can travel around the world, why can't I run a Triathlon?

If I can keep on breathing, despite having a condition that will kill me within about 12-36 hours of ceasing my medication (being a zombie is my secret superpower!), really, I should be able to do anything.

Also, while I'm at it, I'm going to have a level 70 in WoW.

And learn Arabic.

But anyway, first: novel writing and event training.

Yeah.

Murder Your Darlings, or: Move it or Lose It

I hate cutting out cool characters who it turns out you just don't need for the book. One of my walk on characters from GW got a fairly lengthy scene in BD in a chapter that, well, doesn't really need her so much anymore (she doesn't show up later in the book, so doing a lengthy intro only to have her disappear seems silly). It's such as shame, really, because then all this has to go:

"Sometimes Nyx invited Husayn to drive up with them. Nyx had met Husayn at the magicians’ gym in Mushtallah back when Nyx was training as a boxer and bel dame, sometime after Nyx had been recalled from the front and reconstituted. Husayn was a stocky old fighter with a mashed-in pulp of a nose. Her left eye drooped a little, and was going a tad misty. She’d lost her peripheral vision in that eye at thirty, and now, at fifty, she didn’t see much out of it at all....

Nyx and Husayn sat out on the hilltop the morning after Nyx sent Mercia home with a bellyful of buni-flavored rum. The blazing orange disk of the primary star had just swallowed the blue sun, and Eshe was lying prostrate on a prayer rug on the other side of the bakkie, his fingertips stretched toward the base of an old thorn tree that clawed at the sky with barren, charred branches."

Eh, it wasn't doing much anyway.

The Burka and the Bikini

Discuss.

Things Could Always Be Worse

Fun with Revisions

I seemed to have some confusion about whether or not Nyx's kid clerk was a Ras Tiegan refugee, a half breed orphan, or a full blooded Nasheenian from the coast whose mother was a career breeder.

All of these conflicting historical details appeared within the same 12-page spread.

Next Project

I've been contemplating what project to take up after I finish Babylon, mainly because it's never too early to start doing book research and working out plot points.

Basically, I can work on the 5-book fantasy saga about genocide, polyamorous matriarchy, and the end of the world, or I can write the standalone book about genocide and gender roles (or, what I think of as my "far-future Rwanda with four suns" book, or more elegantly, my "burning cane fields" book).

The upshot to the fantasy series is that book 1 and several chapters of book 2 are already finished. The downside is, it's a trunk novel, and to my eye, it reads like a trunk novel. I don't want this to be my Banewrecker. So I'm thinking I would do a ground up rewrite (but then, I've rewritten this book so many effing times that I honestly have no idea if it's good or not and requires a ground up rewrite. A ground up rewrite just seems like the least lazy thing to do).

It's also five books, which, if the bel dame books do well, means regular pay checks. And all five books have outlines. Which makes for a much easier writing process. Also - it's a more marketable little package than anything else I've written (I think. I have no idea when it comes to marketing anymore).

The downside is: it's old, and I feel like some of my 19 year old self who wrote the original version back in the day is still seeping through the cracks on occasion. Also, though 5 books mean steady paychecks, it also means... 5 books in that world. Roughly 5 years of my life all dedicated to writing those books. Not that that should bother me, since I've been working on that world on and on since I was 12. So, that may not be a drawback, just a fact to think about.

No doubt they would be easier to write.

I'm also thinking that the burning cane fields book may not have reached fruition yet anyway. I love the concept and the world, but the worldbuilding isn't done, and more importantly, the character building isn't done. I have an idea of who these people are, but I don't have their names yet, and they aren't real people until I have their names. That's just sort of how my process works. Until I have solid characters, I can't get very far.

The upside is, it's just one book. The down side is, it's a very big and complicated book with a complex world and a lot of stuff going on.

Maybe I can just work on both. So during the 5 years I'm punching out Dragon's War books, I'll be slowly twindling around with The Burning Fields. That gives me five years to write shitty drafts of it!

And then I'll deliver the last book of the Dragon's War series and have tBF ready to go.

I would like to be a lot more prolific than I am. Lots of people have families and day jobs and are producing two books a year, or a book and a ton of shorts (OK, not a *lot* of people, but some people). I hate the short form, so I'd prefer to do like, say, a book and a half a year.

I have the ability to do it. It's a matter of scheduling my time properly, and fitting in all the other stuff I want in my life (professional life, social life, fitness, traveling, etc.).

Hey, I can be ambitious.

At the same time, I want to make sure I'm writing good books, which is why Black Desert isn't due until May but I have a draft in August. I need all that time for rewrites and revisions and revisits.

I don't want to write books that suck.

And now I need to figure out what other books I need to write that don't suck.

30,000 Steps to Peru

So, as many of you know, we have a health and wellness program here at the day job. It includes two hour and a half long training sessions a week, diet and nutrition advice (should you choose to solicit it), quarterly fitness assessments, and monthly fitness challenges.

It's all voluntary, of course, and one's participation does *not* affect one's health insurance premiums, so I'm all about that (we pay $5 per pay period for our health insurance, have a $100 deductible, and then it's all expenses paid 100% after that - seriously).

Anyway, this month those of us who wanted to participate got free pedometers and we're all tracking our steps in a big spreadsheet. Pedometers are incredibly easy to hack (as one work colleague said, "I'm just going to hook mine up to a vibrator."), but it's a neat little toy to pass the time with while trekking up and downstairs to the main floor to get some diet Coke (granted, having one more piece of hardware hooked up to me, small as it is, is kind of annoying. I'm glad it's only for a month).

It's considered a "team" challenge, so individual results aren't supposed to matter (as a group, we need to have 5 million steps at the end of the month, and then, like, we all get a free water bottle or something), but it's interesting seeing what everybody else logs in.

According to the chart:

Less than 5,000 steps a day = Inactive
5,000 - 7,499 = Slightly active
7,500-9,999 = Moderately active
10,000-12,499 = Active
12,499 or more = Very Active

Really, I don't think this chart goes high enough. Because, you know, I don't have a car and I work out regualarly, so logging in 10-18,000 steps a day really isn't all that difficult for me (tonight's scheduled workout will be just under 10k by itself).

On the other hand, one of our personal trainers is training for a half marathon and is averaging over 30,000 steps a day.

So at least there's a high bar.

Teheran

In order to help me with some of my lazy city and dwelling descriptions in the fictional country of Tirhan (capital, Shirhazi), I've been browsing photos of the real (city of) Teheran today, and this is all I have to say about that:

I'd do just about anything to live in Teheran for a year.

Fuck our fucking governments and their inability to get the along.

Money, Money

Man, somebody needs to send me some money. I have a sudden urge to buy mad numbers of books.

I knew I shouldn't have opened my wishlist.

OK, Srsly

25 minutes running, followed by 15 minutes swimming last night. After my eye appointment. Which meant I didn't get home until 8:30pm.

Ate some pre-made dinner that I made Sunday, logged into WoW for some weird reason for an hour. Spent two hours alternating ears on my heating pad (I'm going to need to get real earplugs and a swimming cap if I'm going to keep this up).

Woke up at 1am, adjusted my sugar. Woke up at 3:30am with low sugar. Corrected. Still low when I woke up at 5:30am. Puttered around the house wondering why I'm so bloody tired.

Got Dirt?

When you google an author you like, what are you looking for?

I mean, sure, I'd like to know other books that they've written, so I can buy more.

But mainly, these days: I'm looking for dirt.

Oh, sure, if I'm in love with their world, it's nice to have maps and characters and forums and such, but these days, being a writerly type and all, I want to know if they went to Clarion, what cons they go to, who their friends are, are they from the mid-west? Do they travel much? Basically, all that google-stalker stuff that you want to know about everyone you went to high school with, except for those dirt bags in junior high who you're just going to assume make a living as gas station attendants trapped in loveless marriages.

I just realized today that I'm not so much interested in the bookishness anymore as much as I'm interested in the author as a person who I could potentially meet at a con. Maybe this is because I'm sort of done with the writerly advice. I'm not so much interested in advice on how to get an agent or a book contract. How to build a career, yes, but what I reeeeaaalllly want are answers to the hard-hitting questions, like:

Do you like Chipotle burritos? What's your favorite Buffy episode? What would happen if you were trapped on a desert island with Chuck Norris? Where did you grow up? And why did you pick that stupid LJ handle?

I'm not sure why I suddenly find this stuff more interesting than the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow, but I do.

Maybe it has something to do with being trapped in the cultural wasteland that is Dayton, OH? Maybe I'm just interested in the lives of other writers, cause living in a wasteland is pretty much full of, you know, waste.

It gets kinda lonely on the writerly front.

Babylon, Revisited

As I was reviewing the synopsis for book 3 of the bel dame books (Babylon) I realized that I accidently killed some folks in book 2 that were supposed to be in book 3.

Oh well.

They weren't very important people anyway.

And That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is What We Call a Draft

A very long and bloated draft, but a fucking draft nonetheless.

I think I may actually be missing half an Inaya chapter somewhere, but I'm too tired to look. I'll save that for the rewrite.

And now I get to turn off The Noose, which has been on repeat for the last 40 minutes.

P.S. I am so having a beer right now.

Nasheenian in Training

But how's her aim?

Lunch Break

I'm not sure how I'm going to finish this, but I'm going to finish it, dammit.

The Bitch is Back in Town

And that, my friends, is what happens when Nyx finally shows back up.

Damn, that was rough going for awhile.

I'm thinking it may end up running a tad long. Will print out what I've got tomorrow, but I think I'm through the worst of it.

Problem

The problem is, the book stops when Nyx is out of commission. These people can't slap their asses with both hands without her. Or, rather, there doesn't appear to be any narrative without her.

Once I push past this part, it's smooth sailing (which is why I skipped ahead and wrote those parts already), but this whole Nyx being out of the picture thing just fucks up the whole book.

I'm going to need to do a lot of revision once I have a draft. But I guess that was expected. Still.

I fucking hate this book, haven't I mentioned that enough times yet?

Got another 300 words. I need at least a thousand before I'm allowed to sleep tonight. That leaves me tomorrow to print it out and pull the last of it together.

I'm going to need more pancakes for this in the morning, seriously.

When this fucking book is done I will have seriously earned that month of WoW reward.

Blah blah blah emote emote emote

This book doesn't have enough fight scenes.

Parasite Induces Host to Suicide

Ways our behavior is altered by parasites, starting with the humble grasshopper.

Guns of All Sorts

Guns, quirky.

An Open Letter to Baristas Everywhere

When I say I'd like sugarfree syrup, it's not because I'm being an annoying hippie. Please do not give me regular instead and tell me it's sugarfree.

The next time I test my sugar and it comes up, inexplicably, over 200, it's you I will thank, vociferously.

Thank you.

Molasses

That was a bloody hard-fought thousand words, man.

The problem with getting to the end of this book is, I've already written all of the big fun scenes, and now my entire word count consists of all the boring but necessary transition scenes and touchups where I'm stringing them all together.

It's like swimming through amber.

More words will be written shortly. Time for a pancakes-for-dinner break.

Sunday Swimming

10 minutes of swimming sounds really easy when you see it on your training schedule, especially when you've done 20 min jogging followed by 20 min biking twice the week before.

But whoa boy, seriously.

I haven't done more than the 5 min of lap swimming I did last week since... since... I was about 11 years old and still doing swimming lessons. Biking I do everyday, and I'm not a total stranger to jogging. But lap swimming? Damn.

I subtracted 2 units of insulin from my morning pancakes dose, which I though might be overkill because, hey, 2 units is what I kick off when I'm doing 40 minutes of cardio. But better safe than sorry, right?

I forgot that swimming is a full body exercise, and there's a reason that Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day.

After clawing through the last of my laps, I came home and tested my sugar, expecting that I would have to do a correction.

Oh, no.

I was a perfect 95.

After only 10 minutes of swimming.

When I get up to 20 minutes I'll be subtracting *4* units of insulin from breakfast in order to get through it. That's pretty awesome.

I love that I can judge energy output entirely based on how much or how little insulin I have to shoot myself up with.... heh heh. My life measured in units of insulin.

So: swimming was embarrassingly tough this morning, but I got there, I did it, and the ear plugs made a big difference. As did the moment when my old swimming instructor's voice came back to me, "Kick kick kick!" and I realized I wasn't kicking enough. Things went much more smoothly and quickly after that.

I also need to figure out how to rotate instead of just plowing through while horizontal, which is one of the reasons why it's so fatiguing right now. I'm wasting a lot of movement and losing my balance.

It's been a long time since I've done this, seriously.

Stuff I Fucking Hate

I cut a bunch yesterday, so this is about another 2k.

I fucking hate this book. Must mean it's almost fucking done.

Weekend Training

Working out on weekends is new to me. At least, I haven't done it since Alaska, when I had a lot of time and very long summer days.

According to the training schedule, Mondays and Fridays are my off days, so today was 20 minutes on the bike and 20 minutes jogging. It's easy enough now that I'll be upping my jogging speed, which is cool. It's fun to be stronger than you thought you were.

Tomorrow is swimming. Let's get in the full 10 minutes this time, OK? For serious. I'll also be bringing my ear plugs (the ones I use for when I go shooting, funny enough). I've always had trouble with my ears, and just one swimming session was enough to remind me of them. I spent two days shaking water out of my head.

So. Onward.

Snip snip

Cut about six pages of crap that wasn't working, which pissed me off.

Then dithered around writing bits and pieces of personal emails and rants. Those, at least, did not piss me off.

Where's my whiskey?

Things I Need Tonight

Loud music and whiskey.

I don't have any whiskey around, but oh yeah, we've got the loud music in spades.

And I think I have two beers in the fridge.

Burn Notice

This is a smart, funny little show that does a lot of things I want to accomplish with Nyx and co.

You've got the gun-toting former IRA member ex-girlfriend, the alcoholic FBI-informing best friend (played by Bruce Campbell. Seriously!), the chain smoking hypochondriac mother who's really bad at being a mom, and the ex-spy who's gotten a "burn notice" i.e. been kicked out of spy business by a mysertious 3rd party.

There's the overarching story - the spy wants to find out who kicked him out and get back in - and then there's the story in each episode where our spy does good works and solves little mysteries, runs local jobs, blowing up cars and saving key witnesses and little old ladies and etc. for cash (all of his accounts have been frozen).

So you get to watch him and his quirky team - who have their own history together - work stuff out and screw up jobs on occasion ("Here's what happens when you attach the bugging device to the gas tank instead of the electrical system"), and best of all, the ex-spy is incredibly good at what he does, but woefully bad at relationships. Not just with his on again/off again love interest, no, but with, well, everyone. He just doesn't get it. The scenes where he's trying so hard to say the right thing during an emotional situation just make me laugh. He's far more comfortable blowing shit up.

It's also set in Miami, and hey, sun, sand, and surf are pretty nice. Thus far, there's been no "new chick he could possibly be romantically involved with" per episode, the way you see even in stuff like The Dresden Files series. Which wasn't done so badly there - there was more a possibility than an actual inevitability that every chick in every episode would be a damsel in distress he'd get it on with - but it's a noticeable difference here in the first three episodes that I do like (this could change, but I enjoy it so far).

I like that he's got no money, he likes guns and hitting things, he's terribly short on friends, and he's really bad at connecting with people.

Basically, I like that he reminds me of a way cooler version of me.

Now, give me a chick hero like this, folks. Cause though Fiona is a pretty awesome character, the actress who plays her looks hungry and terribly breakable most of the time. I keep thinking she's going to trip over her feet and snap her spine or something.

But: her character doesn't suck. Nor does the mom. And if you look at the "main players" ratio, it's an even split between male and female main characters. You've got Campbell and the spy, and Fiona and the mom in primary, recurring roles. And mom and Fiona are powerhouse characters who take active, strategic roles in every episode. They aren't one-off or passive, and they get and give just as much as the guys.

Now, tell me how often that happens?

(and then: make a show like this with a chick lead! Until then, I'll be waiting around for Sarah Conner to show up again)

Well, you know...

... if McCain dies in office, things might get interesting. Less interesting than if Obama dies in office (hey, she's Alaskan! When is *she* running for president? Crappy about the pro-life thing, tho). And is this really only the second time in 20 years that somebody's run with a woman VP?

Indeed it is.

But at the end of the day, we're voting for the prez... and not for the VP. Crappy chickens.

Note: I can also tell you honestly that this is the first time in eight years where I haven't been like, "If so and so is elected, it will be like electing SATAN!!!" Either way it falls, I'm feeling pretty positive.

Here We Go

I actually wrote the last scene of the book tonight, which was weird. It's so strange to write a book so completely out of order. I did the same with GW, but not to this extent. It's funny to be so close that you can taste it, but you still have to write about 5k of transition stuff to get you from one big scene to the next.

So close you can fucking taste it, but so much fucking work still to go. Frustrating as hell.

I'm taking a four-day weekend to finish the book. I'm off tomorrow through Monday. This fucker needs to end.



I cut 1K of what I had last time, so this is actually slightly more progress than it appears.

Tra-la. Early morning tomorrow.

Training

Did 20 minutes of jogging followed by 20 minutes on the bike. I skipped the bike yesterday because my weight training session at work was brutal. Not physically brutal, oddly enough, but mentally brutal. That whole almost crying because I had to do three sets of pushup rows and squat jumps thing was pretty demoralizing. I just couldn't stomach getting back into the gym after that.

But today ended up going really well. The jogging is already getting easier, and this is just my third session. It's fun to feel myself getting stronger, getting back into that old Chicago jogging mindset. It's funny to remember that I used to do 3 (and, when I was feeling cranky, 4) miles back then, before I got sick.

I keep trying not to look ahead at the schedule. At the end of week 11 I should top out at 30 minutes swimming (right now I'm thinking: 30 minutes of laps holy jesus), 45 mnutes of running (HAAH AHAH AHAHahah ahaaha ahah um ha umm hrm), and 55 minutes on the bike (now *that* I can do, seeing's as a bike is my primary mode of transit, and I was commuting an hour and a half to work on a bike [3 hrs a day total] in Chicago for several weeks there at the end).

And now, you know, looking at what I just wrote, it's funny. I forgot about the jogging 3 miles thing. I forgot about the 14 mile roundtrip bike commutes.

You know what?

I still have it in my head that I'm a totally doughy, unfit geek. Isn't that funny? I just had this thing in my head that was like, "Well, you're a doughy person, so this is going to be HARD." But then I remembered biking to work in 25 degree weather with crashing lake water splashing up at me and a brutal headwind and not being able to feel my fingers while I biked merrily home, and I'm remembering... dude. I can do this stuff. *Sticking* with it will be the challenge. But the actual, physical ability to do it?

Shit, I *have* that. I just need to fucking *do* it.

Like I said: just trying not to look too far ahead. It's the vertigo that's the killer, not the fall. It's the fear of failing that keeps you down, not the physical doing.

I just keep telling myself that.

Lost Highway

Continuing my Twin Peaks-inspired Lynch kick, I watched Lost Highway last night.

This is a Lynch I'm a much more comfortable with. The obscure cyclical story. Messages to yourself from the future. Dopplegangers. Body jumping. Choppy, nonsensical narratives. Creepy fellows. And, also, whores who get slaughtered. Ho-hum (I'm thinking that one of the reasons I liked Mulholland Drive is that it's a Lynch movie that actually passed the Bechdel test. Thus far, I have not found any others that do. Maybe Inland Empire? I'm thinking Dern talks to the gypsy about something other than a guy. Maybe). Though at least this one wasn't a damsel in distress.

I think what I like about these whacked-out jump narrative dream-logic movies is that they force my brain to try and make connections between things that just aren't connected. Our web designer tells me this movie was apparently Lynch's way of sorting out the whole OJ trial fiasco, looking into how a guy can live with himself after committing an atrocious murder.

I admit I was struck dumb at that event as the catalyst for this movie. The only connection I see is... guy kills his wife and is set free... um, but he's set free because he literally transforms into somebody else. And then goes and has an affair with his supposedly dead wife, who is now somebody else's wife, only not really.

Um.

It's a Lynch movie, all right?

In any case: dream logic. It's why I like these. It's a crazy brain exercise, which is likely good for my plotting muscles.

This one is a typical Lynchian brain-exercise.

Artifacts

Bees at war.

Kewl.

Reasons to Make Supplemental Income

What you can get for 135K in Portland, OR (price reduced!).

What you can get for 135K in Dayton, OH. Or, if you want something more contemporary. Or something with a bit of land.

Must... write... more... books. And etc.

Fan Art (No, this is not my work!)

Someone has apparently created a pony mod based on Jay Lake's novel, Mainspring.



I've seen a lot of mods inspired by movies and television characters, but I think this is the first I've seen inspired by a book.

Death to Personal Trainers

This was the last day of this quarter's brutal upper body routine with the personal trainers at work. I received relief a couple of weeks ago on the lower body workout (which was primarily walking lunges, squats, and one-legged lunges, all weighted), which made going to the gym bearable (we're now doing drop sets).

Today was my last day of this routine (they change them every 4-6 weeks, depending on how we're performing). I admit that I nearly cried there a couple of times at the beginning, because I fucking hate, fucking hate, fucking hate pushup rows, and knowing this was my last day of them made me hate them even more. And then I hated myself for hating them.

No pain, no gain?

The routine:

Pushup rows: set of 12 with 15 lb weights
Squat thrust jumps: set of 10

Repeat X3

Assisted pullup: set of 12
High knee jumps: set of 15

Repeat X3

Lateral raises with band: set of 15
Jumping jacks: set of 12

Repeat X3

And then:

Tricep extensions with 30lb weight: 12 reps
X3

Bicep curls with 20 lb weight: 12 reps
X3

And finally:

Medicine ball situps: 45 sec
Knee tucks: 45 sec
Plank: 45 sec
Oblique crunches left: 45 sec
Obligue crunches right: 45 sec
X2

It was the first time I wanted to kill my personal trainer.

I'll find out next week what new torturous routine he's cooked up for us for the next 6-week cycle.

2081

Or, Harrison reimagined.

This is one of my favorites. Can't wait to see what they do with it.

Find of the Day

Reel Music, a streaming radio broadcast of movie soundtracks.

I do about 95% of my writing while listening to movie soundtracks. This radio station is full of awesome.

Training

Try half an hour of jogging followed by ten minutes of swimming.

You wouldn't think this would be that bad - I mean, there's a 5 min warmup and cooldown attached to that half hour, so it's really only twenty minutes of jogging, and the swimming is only ten minutes - but, but... I only managed four laps before I started seriously worrying about my sugar. It's been so long since I swam laps that I forgot what an incredibly intense exercise this is. I figured, hey, if I can jog, I can do anything!

Oh no it ain't so.

Turned out my sugar was fine at a respectable 148 after exercise. I had plenty of wiggle room to finish out my set.

This week is mainly a fitness test week for me. How much can I do, how hard can I work, etc. I think I'll be able to knock out the swimming part much more easily next time, knowing that my sugar is on track.

Next week, the miles start counting toward Lothlorien.

Where I Was At Tonight

Toby and Scalzi were reading at the Books & co. at The Greene! (don't worry, somebody else got much better pictures). So it was straight from work to the gym to the reading (these guys make a great couple).

Man, I miss the SF/F crowd.

When's Wiscon, again?

Sometimes Synopses are Awesome

I'd been knocking my head against a plot point here at the end of the book the last couple of days.

Today, in preparation for my big weekend push, I printed out and re-read the synopsis I had to write for Black Desert in order to sell the series.

"Ohhhh," I said aloud, "so *that's* how they do that."

Sometimes you get so tangled up with plot threads at the end of a book that you forget that you did, in fact, figure out a way to write yourself out of them.

Putting it in Simple Terms

Hollywood is not creating female heroes.

"Kameron, why do you write what you write?"

Because I want to live in a world that actually tells the stories of female heroes.

Doc Says...

Man, I'm an overanxious freak every time I'm due for a doctor's appointment.

Turns out I have not, in fact, gained any weight since starting the pump. In fact, I've lost two pounds. And my a1c is 6.1, which she says is a pretty incredible a1c for somebody who just started on a pump (for those keeping track: the target a1c for a diabetic is less than 7.0. A non-diabetic a1c is 6.0 or less). My blood pressure, as usual, is great, reflexes all great, etc. etc. And my doc didn't yell at me for anything (I think my first experience with a diabetes doctor in Chicago has just scarred me for life. Why do I always expect to be yelled at and told I'm doing things wrong when I'm, like, a model t1 diabetic?)

Why do I freak out right before every appointment?

You know one of the big reasons I'm not good at math or budgeting? Because I don't believe in it. I don't believe that's it's an unshakable, inevitable truth, like gravity. I keep waiting for some magic.

After the last two years, dramatic weight loss/weight gain is something I've been overanxious and freaked out about, understandably. I keep waiting for some bizarre, nonesense thing.

But here's the deal, yo: I'm using less insulin on the pump. I'm working out three days a week. In a normal world, that would equal a steady to lowering weight and a very nice a1c.

But, you know, I've never lived in rational land. I'm always preparing and expecting the out of the ordinary.

This is probably why I'm a fantasy writer.

But it makes for a pretty overanxious life.

Quote of the Day

“Community approval isn’t the motive for a hero anyway. It’s the motive for a politician. A hero does the right thing because it’s the right thing.”
- Frank Miller

Science

Are you doing it right?

Every year, I go to Wiscon. If I were to go to one other SF/F convention a year....

... which con should it be?

Line edits, how I loathe theeeeee....

Typo of the day

vile - for - phial

I seemed to be absolutely convinced of this spelling. I wrote it as "vile" four times.

Lazy phrase of the day (used at least four times in forty pages)

"His eyes looked too big."

Seriously?

What I Hate About the End of First Drafts....

... is that during the last 1/4 to 1/5 of the book, I'm focusing mainly on tying up plot threads and loose ends. This takes all the fun out of writing, for me, which is why squeezing out the last 10K of this book holds about as much "fun" for me as the idea of running a marathon.

In the next draft, I'll be adding in all the cool scenery and worldbuilding stuff and cleaning up all the dialogue, but for now it's thread, thread, plotpoint, thread, and hunkering down and getting everything to make sense is just no fun at all!

I'm sure David Lynch feels the same way.

I should just throw in some red curtains, backward talking dream sequences, and have my heroine turn into a blue box at the end.

That'll keep `em guessing.

Wishlist

Somebody needs to make a caffeine-free version of Coke Zero.

Then my life would be complete.

Pump Weight

I go in to see my endo on Tuesday.

It also so happens that the last couple of days, I've noticed that the dreaded pump weight seems to have caught up with me. I'd actually thought I'd avoided this, as it appears to me that I'm using *less* insulin than I did before I switched to the pump. Maybe I really am eating more than I was, pre-pump?

I don't think so, tho.

I do honestly think a matter of better control - and eating too many of the work lunches instead of the lunches I bring from home. I haven't had my latest A1c yet, but my last one was 6.5. Not too shabby. A 6.5 a1c corresponds to an average blood sugar reading of 138. My current average is 122, which would be an a1c of 6.0. Still not as good as my 5.9 (which I got while being, what 5-10 lbs lighter?).

As usual, my concern with the weight gain has more to do with the fact that I can't afford new clothes than it does with the "OMG I'm Fat!" rant.

I've also finally gotten comfortable enough adjusting basal rates that workouts more than twice a week are starting to look less annoying. I'm hoping it's just a matter of getting back into my regular eating and workout schedule.

For the record, though, I did finally stop buying peanut butter. Those flourless peanut butter cookies, paired with all that WoW playing, is when I first started noticing that my jeans weren't fitting as well. I needed to ditch those bad habits and pick up some better ones.

Eternal vigilance sure does get annoying, but when I stop paying attention, I go to seed really quickly.

It's a bitch.

Blue Velvet

The robin in the opening credits of Twin Peaks? It's apparently supposed to symbolize love.

Also, watching Blue Velvet will help you win a lot more rounds of the Kevin Bacon game.

Blue Velvet is a David Lynch murder mystery that came out in 1986. It's set in a small 50s town, where Agent Cooper and Laura Dern get mixed up with a weird drug dealer/kidnapper/psycho (a la Bob of Twin Peaks).

This wasn't a great movie. In fact, it was kind of boring, mainly because I could never figure the main character's motivation out. Agent Cooper is looking slightly younger and just as pretty, but he's not Agent Cooper, just a small town boy whose motivations, again, are just... impossible to figure out. He comes home from college after his father suffers from some weird heart attack/bug bite/neck injury and proceeds to sort of woo Laura Dern (who I just can't stand in any movie. She's incredibly annoying, and she doesn't work this role at all either, even with the little she's given).

Now, truth be told, I ended up with a terrible crush on Agent Cooper while watching Twin Peaks, but in Blue Velvet, he lost a lot of his niceness and intelligence, leaving not much for wanting but a couple of great ass shots and pleasant but brief full frontal. Neither of which were all that exciting, as, again, I couldn't connect with his character in any way (if there was ever a doubt that it's largely a guy's inherent "niceness" that's one of the big factors in my attraction, this was a good example of that. I was terribly keen on Cooper, but when the actor switches roles, I had trouble sustaining interest. This is my big problem with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I was first introduced to him in Bend it Like Beckham, in which he plays the good guy girls' soccer coach. I literally could not sit still in my seat I was so hot over him. In every other thing I've seem him in, he's played a totally creepy, whiny, asshole, and I've just never been able to get all that excited about him again).

In any case, my interest in the hero aside, the dialogue is pretty poor, there's that stunning lack of character motivation, the ending is syrupy sweet in a totally inexplicable way, and most of the movie's weirdness consists of a single bizarre sex scene.

I'd recommend the movie mainly to Twin Peaks fans interested in some of David Lynch's themes and imagery. You can see his interest in small towns, diners, logging towns, red curtains, and that incredible fake looking robin that, in this movie, symbolizes love (which did make that robin in the Twin Peaks credits far more interesting in its fakeness). You see the beginnings of the Agent Cooper character, Bob, and there's even a cameo by another Twin Peaks actor.

Annoyingly, there's also that damsel-in-distress thing going on in this movie, much as it was in Twin Peaks. And there's the black-haired temptress/crazy woman vs. the good/blond woman (and Cooper goes around sleeping with the temptress and the then the blond totally forgives him because really, why not, we couldn't have a happy ending otherwise! And hey, she was technically still dating that Mike guy while romancing Cooper, so all's well that ends well. Hey, it's like that foursome in Twin Peaks - Nadine, Ed, Norma, and Hank!). I'm not sure what the whole madonna/whore thing is about, except maybe it's the only way he can think to give women the same monster/hero battle that he plays up between men. It's annoying and lazy.

It's an interesting artifact movie, but if you're looking for neat, brain-twisting David Lynch weirdness like Mulholland Drive, well, skip this and just go watch Mulholland Drive again.

Have I mentioned that I find Laura Dern totally annoying (maybe it's just that she ruined Inland Empire for me? She comes across as so completely flat and fake and devoid of... anything)?

Ok, I'll stop now.

Quote of the Day

"Stay away from people who belittle you ambitions. Small people always do that. It is the great that know that you too, can become great."
- Mark Twain

Twin Peaks: Final

Dude, that was a silly ending. In no small part because that's what should have happened back at the beginning of the season with the owls, and the end of the season should have been bringing him back.

Srsly.

EDIT: And you know, there's only so many damsels in distress you can take before it just gets old. Not one of them fought back. Heather Graham is a foot taller than that guy, he has no weapon of any kind trained on her, and he's got her with one flimsy hold on her wrist, dragging her through the woods. Seriously? Come on. All she'd have to do is sit down.

Plotting My Way Out of a Paper Bag

As somebody who's incredibly bad at plot, I must say I'm ridiculously proud of myself for the triple-cross that plays out at the end of this book.

It fills me with glee.

Magic Number

I wanted to start a training program that required me to be able to jog for 20 minutes in order to start with it, so tonight I figured I'd see about where my jogging ability was. The days of the 3 mile night run in Chicago were never picked up after I got sick, so I was interested to see about how I was.

I hate running more than just about anything else, especially post-diagnosis, because it's the exercise that will drop your blood sugar the fastest (pre-diagnoses, I just hated it because it felt absolutely dreadful and made me incredibly self-conscious). I remember jogging after lunch for a few months after getting diagnosed by going right after lunch and just shaving 2 units of insulin off my lunch bolus.

The great thing about a pump is that I don't have to experience a really high post-lunch number in order to make it to working out after work. But I had yet to find the right combo. It's one of the reasons I've avoided most of my post-work workouts since I got the pump.

But today was the day, so I decreased my basal rate to .15 for the hour and a half before I exercised and during the hour of exercise. I ended up jogging (at a verrrry relaxed pace, let me tell you) for about 25 minutes, with 5 minutes of warmup. It really wasn't bad at all, and my post-workout sugar was a comfortable 133, which means I have wiggle room to extend the time/up the pace and still not bottom out.

Looks like that basal rate schedule is a keeper, for now. Which makes me so happy you don't even know. Man, I hate figuring out new sugar tricks when I switch up routines. I hate lows. I hate feeling so awful during them. They just suck all the strength and willpower out of me.

So, hey!

The protagonist is jogging again.

How many miles to Lothlorien, again?

The Trouble with Black Desert is...

The first two-thirds of the book is all narrative. The last third of the book is all dialogue.

Oh, for serious.

Quote of the Day

"I worshipped dead men for their strength,
Forgetting I was strong."
- Vita Sackville-West

Mirror Lessons

It occurred to me tonight while I sat in bed doing line edits of the last 50 pages or so of Black Desert that I've been struggling with a real blow to my self-esteem for some time now. It started when I fled Chicago, and got worse in December, despite a book contract, my own apartment, and a now manageable credit card debt.

I've spent the last few weeks corresponding with folks online, looking to setup more dates, but instead of feeling like it's a fun thing, it feels like a chore. Like I'm desperate for people to like me. And all the ones I really like don't like me back, and then I run around in a tizzy, running through all the bullshit stuff I was told during my last breakup, and I beat myself up. I tell myself that if I was just thinner, or hotter, or even more accomplished, at this point, that I would be loved and desired.

The funny thing is, it's not that I'm *not* loved and desired. I certainly am. Just not by the folks I desire. And that's a tough thing for anybody. That's life.

I've spent the last couple of years in a perpetual state of dating. I forgot what it was like to just be me, funny as that may sound. I got used to playing the part of me, of being strong, wise-cracking Kameron in the frumpy clothes, the one who made up for her bad haircut with her great personality. I got used to giving the appearance of being strong and self-reliant and gung-ho all the time.

And you know, it gets tiring sometimes, being me. Especially when I don't know who me is anymore.

I was talking to Stephanie about how I think I'm ready now to get a dog, and she quoted something from a movie about these recovering addicts who were asking their counselor when they could start dating again, and the guy said, "First, get a small plant. If you can take care of the plant for 6 months and it doesn't die, get a small animal. And if you can take good care of that small animal for 6 months, and you're plant's still alive and in good shape, then you're ready to date."

Provided, of course, that you don't live in Ohio.

And you know, I have a lot of living plants, many of which I brought from Chicago, and I'm taking care of myself again, and soon I'll start looking for just the right dog. But here's the thing, I think.

I was in a relationship when I got sick. Bounced into another one immediately after that, then stumbled into another immediately after that. No breaks. No "just me." It was a crazy, wild time after taking six years off from dating all together. Suddenly there was all this dating, and then craziness, sickness, all rolled into one.

There hasn't been a lot of "let's just think about the future that has just me and my chronic illness in it." I haven't spent a lot of time on that future, really. I don't know what it will look like. I still don't know what I can do. I'm still struggling to understand a lot of the secondary shit that comes with being a t1 diabetic. I have nightmares now about my eyes bleeding. I wake up some mornings terrified because there seems to be poor circulation in my leg, and does this mean it's going to be chopped off? And afternoon exercise often terrifies me to the point of inaction. I hate having low sugar. I hate that it makes me weepy and full of self-hatred.

When there's something rotten inside of you, you tend to bash at things on the exterior, things you can actually see. It didn't help that I dated somebody who bashed me about how I looked, too, and used it as one of the lame reasons we should break up, and when I'm weepy and full of self-hatred, it all comes rushing back, and I want to claw myself apart. I'm too fat, I'm too tall, I'm too ugly, I'm ill-shaped. I hate myself in all the ways I've taught myself not to hate myself. And then I hate myself for hating myself.

What I want, instead, are long, warm summer nights. Line edits. Book contracts. Projects. Leisurely bike rides. I want to just not think. I want to stop thinking all together. And for me, that generally involves socializing very little with strangers for a good long while, so I don't look for the measure of my worth in their eyes, thinking they're a mirror, making me up, reflecting me back.

I don't look strangers in the eye very often. People think it's rude. But I do it because I'm afraid of what I'll see. I'm afraid I'll see how they look at me, I'll see myself, reflected back, and I'm terrified I won't like what I see.

I don't know, sometimes, what's rotten inside of me, what it is that I hate so much. I try so hard to be good, to be better. And the default, it seems to me, is just so rotten. I want to tear it out.

Things That Make Me Happy

Trust me. This is an amazing improvement. Budgeting sucks, but the results are pretty tangible.

Things Which Are Retarded

Downloading OpenOffice on a pirated wireless connection. I just don't have any interest in unplugging my hardline from my shiny desktop.

But my pirated printer won't work on my Vista machine (without a lot of canoodling by the not-Boyfriend, and I haven't heard from him in three or four weeks), and my OpenOffice training schedule won't print from my laptop, so we find ourselves in this situation.

Silly rabbit am I.

My Kingdom for a Cookie

They've had boxes and boxes of cookies leftover from the company picnic this weekend, and today I finally gave in and snatched two of them.

The carb count was 26. I figured that was what, a serving size of two cookies?

Oh no, that's for just one cookie. A whopping 52 carbs for two cookies.

Seriously, why did I just eat this?

Also, seriously, I'm frickin' tired of thinking about what I'm eating all the time.

Cheap Night Out

Biked over to the park, ate my pre-made rice and veggie dinner and some mixed berries. Continued reading The Stand. Got eaten by some mosquitoes and nearly run over by the folks playing frisbee golf.

Came home, finished up some more Twin Peaks, tended to said mosquito bites.

Would not have been a bad night, if not for the mosquitoes.

It occurred to me tonight that I'm starting to make singleton plans again.

And you know?

It feels good.