If I post on my blog, will this fact show up on facebook?

The memoir is finally finished and is now over 22,000 words, so it's BOOK LENGTH! Yay! I can't believe I almost gave up because of the misery that is ANGELA'S ASHES. Thank you Ellen for talking me into participating in the workshop.

In August we adopted 2 new cats, Sam, stripy and gray, with spots on his belly, who Social Tees said was about a year old, and Ginger, a calico kitten about 4 months old in August. They're great, but I still miss Cookie.

Make that ALMOST a year!

It's been over a year. "Being" was rejected by Analog again. It took them longer this time, and they enclosed a copy of the writers guidelines in the SASE, which I don't think they did before, so I feel encouraged. I had meant to submit it to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, since I don't think my collection will be complete until I have a rejection from them - unless! My printer, which is really old, isn't printing clean copy, so print submissions are going to be a problem.

The memoir workshop is in its 3rd iteration, and I am working on a memoir project that looks to be about 10,000 words when completed. I'm having one of those moments when I'm sick of the project I'm working on and being way too critical of all of my writing. Maybe I need to take a break and read something.

I finally finished the mystery novel I started writing for the National Novel Writing Month contest! Yay!

I am now in a class called "Write Your Life Story" taught by Ellen Neuborne so I have overcome the aversion to memoir developed while reading Angela's Ashes enough to write some.

I didn't get "Being" out to Analog before the class started, but I will. I have also been looking at/thinking about my novel & will work on it eventually. It used to be called Child of the Pretenders for a reason that I don't remember but which had something to do with the Jackson Browne song. I don't see any reason to call it that now, so until further notice it's called Cadillac Time.

I hope everyone is well!

I'm 10,000 words into my National Novel Writing Month work. It's a sequel to last year's American Goth.

Hi! So nice to return after all this time & find some posts!

Cyn, I will have to email you from home. Have been thinking of you, but have not gotten around to doing that. We must catch up!

I read the last Harry Potter book awhile ago.  I thought it was the best-written one.  Very exciting & moving, & addressed my "I am in love with Allan Rickman & am therefor a Severus Snape fan" thing I had going. I wasn't crazy about the epilogue.

I am almost done with revision of "A Singular Being" & plan to submit it to ANALOG again soon.  

After that I hope to revise "The Daily Grind" for a more mainstream/literary, rather than sci-fi/horror, market, which will involve researching that market.

After that I'll think about the novel.

Still sad about Cookie, still don't have another cat.

Love,
Linda

National Novel Writing Month is fast approaching again. Anybody game for this year?

Has anyone else read the last Harry Potter book yet? I finished it Saturday after a marathon read. I have great sympathy for J.K. Rowling and the challenge of writing 7 books where you know a secret about a character than nobody else knows.

I had a dream... An actual dream that I think will make a really good fantasy type story. I dreamt what appears to be a pretty good episode of a television series about a guy who has visions, only they're in writing that he sees on walls or on people or on the ground. It appears in type styles and colors to match the person he's getting his vibe about and sometimes it can be very cryptic. At least that's how it seemed in my dream. My Harry Potter is arriving on Saturday! I better get this down before I get distracted. BTW, I got a company award for a weather promo I wrote, produced and edited. It's posted on my my space page if you are my space inclined people.

I've recently come up with a pretty good narrative for a full blown fantasy novel via a strange and mystical route. I'm working a bit on a mystery set in 1930s Hollywood with a director as a main character. The movie he is working on is a version of Beauty & The Beast (I needed something that never existed, but could have existed to be the movie) So I've actually ended up putting together a Beauty and the Beast story from the Beast's point of view based on the movie that never existed (been done before I know, but mine is different from the ones I've read) But I think I might want to save fleshing it out for National Novel Writing Month, as it is short and I wanted to do a fantasy this time.

Today it's been a whole month since we lost Cookie.

Yesterday, I found the diskette with most of the 2nd draft of the novel I was writing back in the 80's. When I got my first computer, the 25 MHz 386, I mostly wanted to put the novel on it. I'm not sure what happened, why I stopped. It may have been the obsession I developed with starting a career in the computer field. I remembered that 2nd draft as being incomplete, but yesterday I discovered it does have a conclusion, on typescript. So, all I have to do is finish typing it up on the computer, and I'll have a real live novel ms. The part that's already on disk is 42,000 words.

And I like it.

It's full of details I wouild never be able to remember if I tried to write it now. I had forgotten about that cord you used to pull to tell the bus driver to stop, and I didn't remember that LA RTD bus windows had a greenish tint. It's probably a general rule that you shouldn't wait to write about your experiences, that you should hone your perceptions and your ability to describe them by writing about your experience all the time.

I used to do that. When did I stop, and why?

I'm pleased with that 2nd draft. By tinkering with autobiographical material I succeeded in creating characters I like, and experiences a lot more interesting than what really happened.

Hi all. March was a long month. My cat, Cookie, passed away on Monday March 19, and I miss her so much, all the time.

I'm planning a bunch of submissions to the Writer's Digest competition, including one in the memoir/essay category I hope to write about Cookie. Writing about it helps.

I hope you all are well.

Linda

I switched to the new blogger. I've been meaning to do it for ages, but I never felt like I had the time (!) to even think about something requiring a new google account... (I hope you guys don't get mad because you need to get google accounts too!)

The 2007 Nebula awards are being held in New York City! I have no idea yet if that means I'll be able to go to any of it, because it sounds like it has to be a package deal. But imagine! (Usually nothing is held in NYC because it's too expensive. Not sci-fi or horror conventions, anyway.)

Today I started the March Asimov's that came weeks ago, but was waiting because I took a break from April Analog to read Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler. (More about that some other time...) After I finished it I missed it, and felt like reading another novel... I felt like reading "All the Birds of Hell" by Tanith Lee, only longer, like novel-length. So then I looked up novels by Tanith Lee, found she's written a great many, resolved to go to B&N ASAP, finished reading "Things That Aren't" in April Analog, & went to bed. That was last weekend.

With Analog & Asimov's I usually read the editorial first, then turn to the "Short Stories" section of the table of contents. The last name on the list was one I knew: Deborah Coates. I didn't remember what, exactly, but I knew she'd written something I loved. So I read that story, "Chainsaw On Hand", first. About halfway through I knew which story I was remembering. It's a story I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've been meaning to look up which issue it was in so I could re-read it. It was "46 Directions, None of them North" in last year's March Asimov's. I've even been trying to remember just how many directions it was! The reason I've been thinking about it is I think it captures perfectly (& banishes brilliantly) a kind of bitterness and regret I'm afraid I've been falling into, a woman I'm afraid I might turn into, or would, if I didn't have some big changes planned.

"Chainsaw" turned out to be an example of one of my favorite subgenres: Tales of I Can't Believe It Will Ever Be Warm Again. "All The Birds of Hell" is probably my favorite in this category. (I've written one, called "Always Birds", but I think it needs a lot of work.) This afternoon I sat down with the cat next to the heater and read "Chainsaw" & "Directions" in turn, in between tending to Giga Pets. (Not to mention a real pet and my daugher.) It made me think about "The Daily Grind." I think maybe there's really 2 stories bundled in there, or some themes that belong to a separate story.

There's the story that's about a future in which workers NYC needs can't afford to live anywhere near it. But there's also a story about someone who feels powerless in a work situation, which is where the title comes from. And maybe that's a separate story. Both "Chainsaw" and "Directions" are about women who feel powerless because of choices they made years ago, who don't understand how their lives "turned out" the way they did. This feeling of powerlessness is what a number of "Critters" who critiqued "Grind" reacted against, because the powerlessness remains when the story ends.

The truth is, if you are still alive, your life hasn't "turned out" any particular way and you can still make choices. DC's characters learn this, in each case through someone they love who has seized on something that seems completely insane. I want to contemplate these 2 stories in the context of revising "The Daily Grind."

Cyn, check out the link (on the left, under Authors' Pages) to Deborah Coates' blog. I think the 2 of you might get along...

New in comics...
This week are Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" and an adaptation of Laurell K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter" books. The guys at the comic store say the graphic novels are drawing in scads of "civilians" to try out the books.

As I've said before, I'm terrible at writing fantasy. (Well, everything I write is technically my fantasy, but it doesn't fall into the genre of fantasy) But I had a dream last night that I almost think I could make something out of. It was about a young man, whose parents were famous garden designers/architects who is somewhat ignored by them and very into botany, gardening and nature who discovers that his long-time female friend is actually a garden fairy. I think it may be the result of reading the Dresden Files books and receiving my Martha Stewart Gardening Special Issue. Or maybe from discussing Laurell K. Hamilton and her pornographic fairy books with the guy at the Comic store.

I've been pondering the subject of translating books into good television series. I recently watched "The Dresden Files" on Sci-Fi and decided to give the books a try. Often the translation process ends up with some pretty bad TV. I like "Bones", though it really has nothing to do with Kathy Reich's novels except the main character sharing a name. Which I think is fine, since what works great in a novel does not often translate to TV. I thought the Showtime program "Dexter" was a spot-on rendering of the book, even if they did have to soften it ever-so-slightly just so they don't run out of supporting characters. I've always thought Laurell K. Hamilton's books read like a good cheapie syndicated series along the lines of Highlander. (at least until she took that unfortunate turn into what I consider to be poorly written porn) I've heard many people say that HBO's The Wire is more like a novel than a TV series. I'm not sure what my point is, as I've said. There was pondering.

Also, I got an idea for a novel, not scifi or horror but historical romance. I've written an outline. Don't know how committed i am to actually writing it.

Plus I just joined a Gigapet message board.