Why Haven't You Heard From Me?

Lily: I'm in trouble with this damn play, and you don't care.
Dash: Lily, it's your first play.  It's not like anybody's gonna miss ya.

--Julia

If you've been hanging around here long enough, you've probably wondered why I haven't written a book, or a play, or Something Of Substance.  If you've really been hanging around here long enough, you know that I've actually written three of them, thankewverymuch, and that's not counting one I self-published that sold about twenty copies and another one that I wrote, uh, basically for my mother.  (Everybody writes stuff for their mother.  Just ask Elvis.  Oh, wait, you can't, Never mind.)  Three of them even ganged up on each other and formed a trilogy.  (Ah, trilogies.  The word sounds like a lost Asian nation, doesn't it?  "Hey stlanger, wercome to Trilogy!  You be here long time, yes?"  Oh God, somebody smack me for being a racist.)

Anyway, they're called Mindbender, Spellbinder and Soulmender, and they're still hanging around my house like lazy post-adolescent children, too fond of the free food and the clean laundry to move out and get their own place.  Which is to say, they're not published yet.  I had a literary agent once, but he quit the business to run for Congress and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.  (He didn't win, either.  Actually he didn't have a chance, and the only one who didn't seem to know that was him, but never mind.)  So I've been kind of orphaned ever since.  I'm looking for a new agent, which means I've been writing lots of goddamned earnest letters to total strangers asking them to take me on as a client for their eighty-hour-a-week mostly unpaid job convincing some publishing house that I'll sell like Suzanne Collins when in fact I might sell more like David Moody.  And if you haven't heard of David Moody, well, that kind of makes my point, doesn't it?  (To be honest, I'd love to sell like David Moody.  Hi, David!  How's it going?)

So anyway, I've written all these letters, and I haven't really gotten anywhere, although I have had some responses, so it's apparently not hopeless.  I just need to keep on writing these darn letters until I get a yes.  Considering that I have anxiety the size of a large nervous T-rex when I'm writing one of these things, that is no small feat. (For more information on all the fun I've had writing query letters, click on the label "angsty query letter crap", below.  Yeah, and meet Scaley and Fang, my dinosaurs of anxiety and sudden panic.)

A reasonable person might very well ask why bother, anyway.  Literary agents take on something like .001% of the people who write to them as clients.  By the time I'm in the right place at the right time with the right letter on the right day, I could be a hundred years old (or maybe even dead; by the time I die I'm sure that querytracker.net will  be able to send query letters for you in perpetuity, pursuing the dream of publication beyond the physical realm.) Well, it's like this (and here comes the Buddhism again): Being published, or not being published, isn't anywhere near as important as writing.  Writing is everything.  Publishing is business.  It's a good business if you can get it, but it's still only business.  Sooner or later you have to leave business and go home and eat some fresh butter-flavored tortillas from the Kroger Bakery.  And then you can write something.

Another way of putting this is an old OA saying:  "I'm chairman of the planning committee, not the results committee." I do the right things.  I write a lot. I rewrite a lot.  I read a lot.  I hang around with other writers a lot.  I go to seminars, I show up at open mic events (though I've never actually said much more than "Good evening, and this is so and so."), I've even been to the occasional conference.  In short, I live like a writer's supposed to live, minus the alcohol binges and the frequent trips to rehab (that's the Buddhism again).  The fact that nobody's paying me for it doesn't make it any less important.  The fact that I have a "day job" doesn't make it any less important.  The fact that I"m not where I wanted to be by now doesn't make it any less important.  The only person hovering over me with a stopwatch is, uh, me.

That is to say, I had constructed this whole theoretical timeline, based on nothing more than conjecture, of What I'd Be Doing By The Time I'm Forty-Five.  I got plenty annoyed with myself when I failed to meet just about every conjectural deadline.  Which was ridiculous.  Plenty of people don't produce stunning masterpieces that change the face of fiction for all time by the time they're forty-five, and no harm comes to them.  (And plenty of people who do come to bad ends.  Look what happened to Truman Capote.  And he wasn't even writing fiction.)  The point is, I'm responsible for the process, not the outcome.  I'm not responsible for how long the process takes.  I'm also not responsible for getting paid.  Some of those things we just need to leave up to God.

Yes, I know I don't believe in God.  But I do believe in something.  So sue me.  And if you know a literary agent, send him or her my way, willya?  Thank you.  And have a nice day.  

I Got Nothin'.

Oh, of course I got somethin'.  I always churn out a blog post while I'm sitting here at Afrah, munching on pita bread and drinking lemonade while I type--usually very fast--on my laptop or my Nook. (Tonight: Laptop. And the fingers were happy.)  I just sometimes don't know what I'm going to come up with until I'm already here.  I went looking for an update on the Alicia Beltran case, but I couldn't find anything.  Not sure there's even a hearing set.  Now that the government's reopened, there's no point in airing my plan for all the furloughed employees to march into Washington armed with, I dunno, brooms and mops and stuff and shutter every single restaurant and pizza-delivery location within 10 miles of the Capitol Building.  (That'd be interesting, watching John Boehner chow down on a PBJ he'd made in his kitchen that morning.  Or that his houseboy made for him, more like.)  And I guess I could brag that @rubenagency favorited my tweets about how much it must suck to be a literary agent and have to actually READ all those hundreds of earnest letters that arrive from aspiring authors every day, but since I kind of had him in particular in mind, it's not that far of a stretch.  

Then, on the way here, the DJ on 98.7 gives me an idea: Misquoting Shakespeare.

People, you can take the English major out of Arizona State before she Makes the Big Mistake and goes to grad school, but you can't get the Bard out of her head.  No way.  Nohow.  Never.  It's too late by then.  And the next time I hear somebody say "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" or "Money is the root of all evil," I'll probably blow a blood vessel.  I mean, I get it, okay?  When you make that statement about killing all the lawyers, it sounds really cool, and hip, and, I dunno, reactionary, somehow.  But when you throw in the context and realize that the guy who said it, Dick the Butcher, was saying it to impress the rebel Jack Cade, and that Jack wanted to break down law and order and create chaos where there was once a civilized society so he could crown himself King, well--not as hip, is it?  In fact, killing all the lawyers starts to sound like a bad thing.

And "Money is the root of all evil"--puh-lease.  Numero uno, the quote is "The love of money is the root of all evil,"  which makes a lot more sense in the context of the story that follows.  Numero two-o, that's not even Shakespeare.  It's Chaucer, you illiterate moron.  Chaucer died about 160 years before Shakespeare was even born, and left us with the Canterbury Tales and a lot of other weird stuff that's written in Old English and is harder than hell to understand.  Fun when translated, though.  Also, Chaucer was to literature what Michelangelo was to painting and sculpture.  Chaucer's original plan for the Canterbury Tales assumed he'd live at least ten thousand years and be writing right up through the last day of the last one.  Unfortunately, he died at the age of 46, like a lot of people did in his time.  

Speaking of the love of money, I would love some money.  In fact, if somebody wanted to give me an Ativan, a cup of very strong hot chocolate and, oh, money, that would be awesome.  (I'd settle for the hot chocolate.)  Last year, we were clobbered with a new roof (our share: $3,500.00), new pipes under the house ($3,700.00), a new transmission thingy (I never know the names of these thingies; just how much they cost.  This one was $2,500.00), a washing machine, a stove/range, and I forget what all else but none of it was cheap.  And yeah, we had a savings account, but had. Past tense.  Is gone.  And unfortunately, it's not like life's little disasters stop pouncing on you just because you are broke.  

Take the pipes under the house.  Please.  Seriously; we had a leak in our new pipes, and when the guy came to fix it, he told us that we had a Serious Problem with our sewer line that went out to the city system.  As in, dig it up, yank it out and put in a new one.  Cost:  Around $7k, not counting however much it costs to stay at a hotel for a few days because we don't have water.  Well, that was a fascinating conversation.  Then a few weeks ago we had another leak, another guy came out, and told us we had an equally Serious Problem with the water pipes that came in from the city system.  They, too, need to be dug up and replaced, and the price just went up to $12k (maybe only 11 if we have both that and the sewer line done at the same time).  Apparently the new pipes under the house are having trouble holding on to the old pipes that come and go.  The fault lies in the old pipes, which, let's face it, are pushing 60.  

For the record, we only paid $94k for the whole house.

So I guess I'm, I dunno, getting a Saturday job or something.  Maybe I'll turn tricks on Harry Hines Boulevard.  Maybe I'll use my exacting knowledge of chemistry to make the best crystal meth in the DFW metro area, and it'll quickly become popular and sell well and--

Hey.  That'd make a good TV show.

It's My Birthday! And On June 12...

...Joan of Arc leads the French army to victory in the Battle of Jargeau.  (1429)

...Death warrants are issued for Samuel Adams and John Hancock by British general Thomas Gage, who also declares martial law in Massachusetts. (1775)

...the United Irishmen fight the Battle of Ballynahinch. (1798) 

...Ulysses Grant pulls his troops out of their positions at Cold Harbor, giving the Confederacy a victory. (1864)

...The Phillipines declare their independence from Spain. (1898)

...One of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history kills 117 people in New Richmond, Michigan. (1899)

...The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, NY. (1939)

...German troops liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Brzezany, Poland, and kill 1,180 men, women and children at the city cemetery. (1943) 

...Medgar Evans is murdered in front of his house by a Ku Klux Klan member. (1963)

...The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. (1967)

...and then I come along.  Pretty cool, huh?  And since I've been around...

• I played in a bagpipe band for eleven years.  Well, okay, I was in one bagpipe band for six years and the other one for five years.  Booze, drugs, wild sex, constant travel, loud music--it all kind of runs together, ya know?
• I bought a condo in San Diego, California with Joan, and then sold it for twice what we paid for it, after I exasperatedly told our real estate agent that there was no way on earth anybody would shell out that much money for an 800-square-foot space with high ceilings. 
• And so I was rich for about five minutes.  After which student loans and cars and credit cards and moves to Texas got paid for, and I was no longer rich, but that was okay.  
• I went to England one summer and followed Big Country around.  And here it is, twenty-something years later, and I'm getting ready to follow Big Country around...three dates in Texas.  (Well, hey, I'm not a wide-eyed kid anymore.) 
• Despite several attempts, I never got arrested for civil disobedience.  For some reason, by the time the police showed up and said "You have five minutes to clear the area," I always figured the point had been well made.
• That, and there were maybe ten liberals on campus where I went to school.  And they weren't very good company.  If you're going to be locked up overnight, you need good company.
• I went to music school for two years.  It's John Lennon's fault I didn't graduate. 
• I've been through ten-plus cats.  There must always be cats.
• I worked in a public law library for seven or eight years, during which I contended with:
• A guy who was sure that the copy machine was reading his mind and transmitting his thoughts to the government.  He came in every Tuesday.
• A man who stated that the CIA had bombed his town with nerve gas that caused everyone in the town to forget that this had ever happened, and that he needed to file a Freedom of Information Act request but he couldn't remember the name of the town, and the CIA kept denying that this had ever happened.  
• A sweet little old lady that would come in, walk around the whole building and sprinkle holy water on everything while whispering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like "motherfucker."  
• A guy who'd been ticketed for having a dog at the beach, and was trying to prove that since he was actually in the water at the time, he was not "at the beach," and if that failed, that he was in "international waters," where the police had no authority.
• I was born in Texas.  I live in Texas.  I want to die in Texas, and have my ashes buried under a live oak someplace because I ought to provide some nourishment for something, after all those trees went through all that fruit growing to nourish me.
• Okay, I was born in Laredo and left almost immediately, but I still count as a native Texan.  That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
• Since we moved to Texas I was unemployed three times in five years, and never once did we fall behind on the mortgage payments.
• Why? Because we bought a house we could effing afford, that's why. Imagine.
• I wrote a trilogy of thriller novels that are called the Mindbender books while I was unemployed, and they're really good, so if you're a literary agent or a publisher or something, or if you know a literary agent or a publisher or something, drop me a line so we can both make a few bucks. Thanks.
• I was a little manic while I was unemployed. Just a little.
• I have a Garfield bowling ball that's bright orange and says, "Let the Fur Fly."
• I can't bowl. Well, I can throw the ball down the lane and occasionally hit something, but so can your average chimpanzee.  
• Bowling is a lot of fun, though.  I like it a lot.
• I play on the law firm softball team, the mighty Law Dogs.  We are the worst team in the league by a comfortable margin, but we have a good time. 
• I took a writing course once from the mighty F. Paul Wilson, which is kind of like taking a painting course from Vincent Van Gogh.  Totally awesome.
• I've been married to the lovely Joan for the last 18 years.  Yep, that's long enough we could've had a baby and raised it to adulthood.
• I have no interest whatever in having a baby and raising it to adulthood.  
• I sometimes have dreams I have a son, though.  And he's a teenager, and he's taller than me. I have to look up at him to shake my finger under his nose. 
• Joan and I actually got married three times.  I think the third one was "legal."  At least it was at the time.  What's the Supreme Court said lately?
• I was really kind of disappointed that we couldn't get married in the church, but the pastor didn't want to get into a fight with the bishop and Joan didn't want to get married in the church anyway. 
• The next same-sex couple that the pastor married, got married in the church.  About which I have no comment. 
• Since October 2007 I've been dragging myself awake at five a.m. to swim a mile in the morning before work.  
• If you added up all those miles I bet I could've swum to Hawaii by now.
• I enter a swim race every year, a 2k distance race, which I sometimes manage to finish in under an hour. Dead last, I might add. 
• Joan's ex-husband and his wife are friends of ours. It's very Noel Coward, no?
• Just this afternoon, Joan scored us tickets to The Book Of Mormon. Sweet!
• Joan got me a meditation cushion and mat for my birthday. Best. Gift. Ever.
• I paint a little.  My favorite painting is one of a school of fish, swimming through the air in a desert landscape.
• I used to have dreams that my fish could swim around in the air, that it did them no harm.
• I miss my fish, but I think aquarium fish are incompatible with one of my cats.
• Someday I wanna go tornado chasing.
• I have a bad feeling I might actually catch one, and then what would I do with it?
• I became an "official" Buddhist about two years ago.
• Who ever thought that Buddhists would dig tornadoes?
• Despite my occasional bitching, life is actually pretty good.

Cheers, all!

It's November! And That Means It's Time For...

NaNoWriMo!

What?

Oh, you know.  National Novel Writing Month.  There's that crazy guy, Chris Baty, who lived in San Francisco in the 1990s.  The last year of that decade, he and 21 of his closest friends decided that they'd have a better chance to get dates if they were also writers, so they got together in November 1999 and set out to write novels--one each--in a month.  True story.  And it worked so well that they did it again the following year, with more friends, and the year after that, and then they got onto the fledgling Internet and November hasn't been the same since.

Write a novel in a month, you say?  Impossible, you say.  Hogwash, I say.  All you have to do is sit down in front of a keyboard (or a notebook, if you're old school, with a handy pen) and write 1667 words a day.  That's it.  That's all.  Do that every day for a month and at the end of the month you'll have 50,000 words.  A short novel is about that length, so it's entirely possible, if you're diligent and type/write reasonably fast, to write a novel in a month.  I looked back at the stats on the Web site and discovered that I've iu fact done this four times; 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.  I actually finished the novels from 2006 and 2007, though to be honest, they weren't much to write home about.  2008 yielded No Accounting for Reality, which is still for sale right here and here (and yes, proceeds still go to Children's Hospital). 2009 started off badly and didn't end well, but I got half a manuscript out of it, and maybe something'll still come out of that.

So when Kevin reminded me that NaNoWriMo was about to start, it occurred to me that I wasn't exactly doing anything else at the moment, apart from moping around and not exactly writing.  So I figured what the hell, and on Halloween Night I signed up for the 2012 edition.  I solemnly swore I would show up, write my 1667 words a day, and just keep going no matter what.  So far it's a jangled mess of long rambling statements about birthday dinners, Buddhism, the existence of God and running into Muslim men in awkward situations (in short, a lot like this blog; hm, could there be a connection?)  but maybe it'll start making sense as I get further into it.   As Julia Cameron said, many times in many different quotable ways that I can't call to mind right now, just show up and start typing.  God fills in the rest.  Good advice for life, too. 

Anyway, if you're interested, check out the Web site and if you feel like jumping in, it's not too late.  A friendly warning, though - don't start writing to publishers and agents in December.  They pretty much aren't taking queries the whole month because of the holidays, and what with the hurricane and all, most of them are probably shut down until next year sometime.  Always check the agents' Web site to see if they're taking queries before you send 'em, folks.  Meantime, here's my cute li'l Writer Page link.  44,751 words to go!

Talk Thursday: Jealousy

This is Lyn's topic, and I'll get in big trouble with the grammarians of the world if I don't immediately point out that when most of us say "jealousy", what we really mean is "envy."  "Envy" means wanting something that someone else has, and being righteously p.o.ed when you don't get it.  Jealousy, on the other hand, means resenting someone else's success or advantages.  So unless Bob symbolizes success or advantage, you're not jealous of Susan for dating Bob. You're merely envious; you want to own Bob.  (I don't know if anyone's checked with Bob as to how he feels about this.  Bob?  Are you there, Bob?)  Still, the words get used interchangably enough to where if you say you're jealous of Mitt Romney because he's so open-minded, most of us will get that you're really envious (and slightly out of touch).  Most of us will probably also want to follow you around on Election Day, to see if you actually vote for the clown or get lost in a supermarket somewhere and end up spending the night in the produce section, engaging in constructive dialogue with a bunch of zucchini.

That said, however: My first experience with the-kind-of-jealousy-that-is-really-envy came about when I was a little tyke, and it worked like this:  If you had chocolate, I was jealous of you.  If you had more chocolate than I did, I was jealous of you.  That was pretty much it.  If you didn't want me to be jealous, you would hand over all of your chocolate immediately.  That rarely happened, however, and even when it did, the chocolate didn't survive long enough to make peace in our time, or even Mountain Standard Time.  Still, everyone has a price and it's good to know mine was, at least once, nice and low.

Fast-forwarding to adulthood, I was once in a band.  Actually I was once in several bands, but this particular band was in Arizona and the primary instrument was bagpipes.  One of the other bagpipers always made me feel a little funny when he was around.  He was an engineer--engineers always make me feel funny; it's probably the tinfoil hats--and he had a nice house outside of Gilbert, a pretty wife and two twin daughters that were, I think, about eight years old.  I think it was the daughters that got me.  If I were ever to have children, which I'm not because I haven't the slightest idea what I'd do with them and I have a sneaking suspicion it's too late now, twin girls would have been the way to go.  Get it it all done in one pregnancy, zip, zop, you're history.   Anyway, one day I finally figured out that I envied him his life.  Which was strange, because I actually didn't want it--I'd be a crummy engineer, and what would I do with a wife and twin daughters?--but I envied him for having it, if that makes any sense.

Well, you know this story's gonna have an O. Henry ending, and it does; the engineer and his wife split up, it turned out their home life was a disaster, they fought all the time, they spent their money as fast as they made it, the house had to be sold, they fought over custody of the girls for years and, well, it didn't end happily.  But from the outside it all looked so nice and, you know, Norman Rockwell.  You just don't know as much about people as you think you do.

People have asked me have I been jealous of other writers.  Answer:  Yes, on very rare occasions. Usually I'm only jealous of something somebody else is doing until I start doing it, too, and then I'm fine.  In the case of writing, that's just writing, not publishing.  Would I like to be the next Stephen King?  Sure, but I'm busy writing over here.  Yeah, he got the multi-bazillion dollar book contract and the high-powered agent and all that good stuff, but he got all that for two reasons.  One, he really is that good.  Two, he was really, really lucky.  I only have control over one of those factors.  Anyway, I'm busy writing over here.

But, again, there are exceptions.  Let's talk Hunger Games. Not only was that the first book in years that made me cry, it's the first book in years that I've put down and wished I'd written it.  I don't think that's happened since Very Far Away From Anywhere Else, and that was in high school, just to give you an idea of the time span.  Oh, sure, there's books I think I could have written better (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, for one; I'd have knocked out the first fifty or so pages, lost that chunk in the middle about the multibajillionaire, moved the stuff about Lisbeth's first guardian closer to the beginning--Jen rewrites Larssen) but that's different.  That's playing armchair editor, which is kind of like playing Monday-morning quarterback.

Hmm, maybe I missed my calling in life.  Maybe when I was a kid staring out the window at the distant stars, I should have said, "And when I grow up, I'll be an editor at Harper & Row" instead of "And when I grow up, I'll be a paralegal at Jackal and Jackal."

Actually, I said, "And when I grow up, I'll be a high-powered political assassin," but I don't think the stars ever took me seriously.  Which is too bad.  The health benefits aren't as good, but the pay scale rocks. Or so I hear.

Sebastian, Nicholas and the Talking Heads

I'm not what you'd call superstitious, exactly, but I do sometimes see things happen that seem to link together with other things that happen. Which is a roundabout way of saying I'm superstitious. Kind of. Let's put it this way: If a black cat crossed my path, I wouldn't turn around, but I'd probably start humming that song by the Stray Cats. Which is why I shouldn't gamble. Well, one of the reasons. The other reason is the Fifth Precept, under which I promised to do my best to avoid alcohol, mood-altering substances of various kinds, and, uh, gambling. Pretty explicitly, in point of fact. Well, Buddha said "horse-racing," but Buddha didn't know they were going to build Las Vegas and frankly, I think he'd be a little appalled if he had.

I dunno if you live in a state where this goes on, but around here everybody was nuts for the Mega Millions Lottery, for which the pot got up to a ridiculous half-billion dollars last week. I don't know what one would do with a half-billion dollars--buy Namibia? Feed India for a year?--but nobody I know seemed to be able to resist trying to find out. We even had an "office pool" at the ol' law firm, into which $5 bills were flung. I got around the "no gambling" prohibition by bringing in Joan's $5 bills, but really, is karma dumb enough to be fooled by such a cheap trick? I think not. Obviously we didn't win, and I think part of why we didn't win was that I joined in. I mean, not only was I gambling, but I was knowingly and deliberately gambling, in violation of the prohibition, and using a cheap excuse (come on, it wasn't Joan's money any more than it was my money. It all comes from the same place) to boot. That's GOT to be bad karma.

Yes, I know. The other reason we didn't win was that our odds were half a billion to whatever number of tickets we bought. But, like I said, I'm a wee bit superstitious. Which was why getting introduced to someone's cats yesterday became an adventure in not getting completely startled. I was over picking up a couple of cat traps that belong to Kittico, and the nice man who'd been using them to trap, neuter and release some of the scads of stray cats in his neighborhood invited me in. Two big fluffy Siamesels came up to greet me and sniff fingers. "JoAnn," said the man (I don't know why he thinks my name is JoAnn, but I'd decided not to argue with him), "meet Sebastian and Nicholas."

For the uninitiated, Nicholas is the name of one of the bad guys in my novel. San Sebastian is the city where it all happens. That this guy would have cats named Sebastian and Nicholas is like the weirdest coincidence ever. The only thing that would be weirder is if his cats were named Nicholas and Roland, and then I can promise you I would have bolted out the front door and never come back, not even for the cat traps. (Roland being the other bad guy. And a lot worse than Nicholas. To say nothing of fluffier.)

When it comes to the stupid book, things just seem to happen in a weird coincidental sense. Yesterday morning, before I met Nicholas and Sebastian, "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads came on the radio. Which isn't significant, either, except that I quote it all the way through the book. Whenever that song comes on the radio, something good tends to happen. What with the Talking Heads and Sebastian and Nicholas, pardon me if I was expecting maybe some good news from a literary agent or other all day yesterday.

I didn't get any. But hey, the week is still young. And I sent another query letter this morning. Hi, Ms. Lyon, I'm cute, quiet, housebroken, amenable to the editing process and I like the Talking Heads. Into the blue again, into the silent water, under the rocks and stones (there is water underground...)

Talk Thursday: Fruit Basket!

I suck at getting people presents. Not the shelling out money for them, wrapping them up and sending them in the mail; I'm good at that part. What I'm not good at is guessing what someone might want. To actually know what someone might want, you have to pay attention. You have to catch subtle references to this and that in everyday conversation, and latch onto those moments of "Boy, I wish I had a _____ because that would sure solve that problem" when they come up.

Well, of course I'm no good at that part. Half the time I'm not even sure other people exist on Planet Jenster. I've been known to run right into solid walls that don't happen to be there in whatever reality I currently inhabit. So you see the problem. To be good at getting people presents, you have to be good at people. I sometimes have to call my sister, the anthropologist, to explain some situation that just happened at work. I am not good at people. I'm nice to people, most of the time, but I just don't get them on some fundamental level. Sooner or later, they always need explaining.

Joan, on the other hand, is an unacknowledged master of the art. I can't tell you how often I've opened a package and found not only something that's exactly what I wanted, but something I've completely forgotten is exactly what I wanted, until the moment I opened the package, and then I remember and am thrilled to bits. She does this with other people, too. She not only knows that my dad would love a pound of pistachios for Christmas, but exactly what flavor he'd like best and what grower in Arizona has the freshest this time of year. I would be in deep trouble on many levels if not for Joan. Oh, heck, I'd probably be dead by now. I hate grocery shopping, you see, and our stash of canned goods can't last forever.

But, there comes that time in life when one has to get a gift for someone without the luxury of consulting one's sweetie first. What's worse, one sometimes has to get a gift for one's sweetie. In such dire circumstances, I fall back onto the only refuge that seems to have something for everyone: My two best friends, Harry and David.

Okay, yes, they are a little pricey, and yes, paying three dollars apiece for apples that one can't really tell from any other apple is slightly insane. That aside, it's really hard to screw up an H&D gift. Need to go as healthy as possible? No problem; just send fruit. Need to comfort a chocoholic? Not an issue; they have chocolate-dipped practically everything. Got somebody on the list that goes for the savory over the sweet? Throw in nuts, crackers, cheese, sausage, and something called Milk Chocolate Moose Munch (how can you possibly go wrong?). And not only do they have all these nifty products, they've already arranged them into lofty gift packages called Towers of Treats, so you don't even need to think about it. Just point, click and send. Gotta love that. Last time I was on there they even had wine. If I ever find out they have My Sweet Nancy I might seriously reconsider swearing off alcohol. Maybe. Possibly.

Okay, this is as far as I can take this particular Talk Thursday topic without starting to sound like an advertisement (H&D aren't paying me for this, which is good, because if they were I'd insist they double my salary). Bear this firmly in mind, though: I don't send Harry & David because I'm a generous person. I send Harry & David because I'm a coward who lacks imagination. And that's about enough of that for now.

Agent alert! I've had another nibble from another agent. Sent the package last week. Maybe we'll get past second base this time. Typing with crossed fingers. We'll see what happens...

Mini-Post: It's All About The Stubborn

Ya know, I used to think getting an agent/getting published was all about Believing In Yourself And Your Work. (I think somebody told me that.) Now, two years into the grand adventure, having battled bipolar disorder, the twin dinosaurs of anxiety and sudden panic (though Caesar does a good job of keeping them out of the kitchen most of the time) and of course a parade of rejection slips, I have come to believe that getting published is all about being stubborn. Quit after eight rejections? Hell no. 80? Certainly not. 800? Maybe. 8,000? Okay, at 8,000 it's time for another project, but until then, soldier on, soldier. Oh, and it wouldn't kill you to Believe In Yourself And Your Work but that's hardly a requirement. I'm living proof.

I Should Be Working.

It's the last week of Joan's classes, and therefore the last Tuesday night I'll have an excuse to sit at a Starbucks for three hours, snarfing caramel macchiatto and writing stuff. Which is good, because at the moment I'm not writing stuff. Well, I've been not-writing stuff for the last hour and a half, unless you call trolling the CNN chat boards on the stories about Prop. 8 and birth control writing. I guess it involves some typing, usually in short choppy sentences like "You're an idiot." That's writing like Dr. House's dialogue is talking.

Note: Trolling CNN chat boards is nothing a decent Buddhist, or a decent human being, ought to be doing. I'm a little embarrassed that I do this. It's the intellectual equivalent of throwing rocks at a hornet's nest. Well, a very small hornet's nest, populated by intellectually challenged hornets that tend to pop out once in a while and yell at you versus flying over to sting you. Yes, I know I should stop. Well, I will when I'm ready. I can quit whenever I want.

For the record, I wasn't terribly surprised by the 9th Circuit's decision on Prop. 8. I also wasn't terribly surprised to find out I'm still married, which, apparently, I am. And I'm not terribly surprised that the usual people raised their voices and made the usual arguments about judicial activism and blah blah blah, and that the Supreme Court will correct this critical error in jurisprudence, and besides, Mitt Romney can use the whole thing as a talking point. Well, just for the record, I don't think the Supreme Court's even going to hear it. All the lower court decisions went the same way, there's no other circuit court ruling that goes against it (no "jurisdictional split," as the expression goes) and basically, there's no controversy. Nothing for them to do, really. Besides, it's about marriage, which is a state court issue. Federal courts hate state court issues. That's why they didn't hear the Terri Schiavo case, even after Congress told them they had to. (And their answer was basically, "No, we don't. F___ off.") I think it would be fabulous if everybody who's been waiting for this big smackdown with John Roberts and the Supremes got this little scrap of paper that said "Certiorari denied." It would serve them right. People always think their controversies are such a big deal. Twenty years from now we'll be trying to explain to our grandkids why this was such a big deal, kind of like how my mom and dad tried to explain to me why it used to be illegal for black folks and white folks to marry each other.

Anyway, I should be working and I'm not. I've kind of ground to a halt again. Today I got a rejection letter from an agent I don't even remember writing to, and when you're getting rejected by total strangers, brother, you have Issues. Gesundheit. Okay, one might point out they're all total strangers, but I write them nice letters. Usually. I'm not sure about this one. I don't remember writing her a nice letter.

There's also this whole birth control thing. It's 2012, is it not? (Yes, all of history is happening all at once, but that's just theoretical.) I realize I live in Texas, but I thought it was at least the early 1990s here. Would somebody please explain to me the problem with birth control being freely available to anybody who wants it? Isn't that, like, a positive development? Plenty of stupid people are having children (trust me, I've been on airplanes with them). Putting a stop to that should get somebody the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead we've got those other guys, the ones I'm not voting for, ranting and raving. The one guy, Obamney, er, I mean Romney, is saying that it's a "violation of conscience" to make Catholic hospitals cover birth control for their employees. To which I say, look; you want federal money, you play by federal rules. You don't want to accept Medicare and Medicaid, you can do whatever you want. And don't get me started on Santorum; he's just a psychopath, and the less said about him the better. Newt Gingrich--Well, Rick Redfern from "Doonesbury" said it best; "What if we wake up one morning to a country run by Newt Gingrich?" His wife said, "Sounds like a creature from 'Dune.'" And Rick said, "Honey, if anything happens to me, you must tell our son about Adlai Stevenson."

But, as I mentioned, I'm supposed to be working. This isn't exactly getting any work done.

Um. Unless blogging counts?

Talk Thursday: The Christmas Letter

Is it just me, or has the whole year been stuck on fast-forward? I'm positive by this time last year it was just barely August. Now here it is December, and all kinds of things that I was counting on haven't happened yet. I haven't dropped forty pounds, for one thing. I don't have an agent yet, for another (came really, really excruciatingly close, though. Damn, I hate the near misses.) Haven't taken off on a six-day cruise down the Volga River between St. Petersburg and Moscow, with a two-day stop at the Hermitage to, you know, take in some art. (Well, realistically, that's one for a fatter budget year.) And now all of a sudden it's about to be Christmas and I haven't (gasp!) written the Christmas letter yet.

(Do Buddhists write Christmas letters? Heck, do Buddhists even celebrate Christmas? There's a question that you can ask ten Buddhists and get twenty different answers, never mind forty deep discussions. As far as I can tell, there's one big Buddhist holiday and it's in the spring. The rest of the year is pretty much holiday-free. Or, as I like to think of it, every day is a celebration of life. So Buddhists celebrate everything. Which I guess makes us the anti-Jehovah's Witnesses. If one of those folks knocks on my door and we happen to shake hands, will we explode? Somebody needs to tell the people at the Large Hadron Supercollider.)

I don't know why so many people have a beef with Christmas letters. I like them. There are plenty of people in the world that I used to hang around with a lot but since more or less lost touch with, used to be good friends but our lives went different directions and we drifted apart but I still care about them, that I'm tied to by blood but haven't seen in a long time, and so on, and I really don't think hearing from them once a year is such a huge imposition. Maybe I would mind if the Christmas letters I got were all about their kids winning the Tri-State Spelling Bee with their rendition of psychoichthyspaliadosis while their husbands were busy getting promoted to junior partner at Jackal Jackal Jackal Hyena and Slug, but they're not, usually. Most of the people I know are pretty ordinary. Some of them have some pretty extraordinary stuff going on (like living in Trinidad, or with twenty-six rescue cats, or with stage-four lung cancer), but they, themselves, are just ordinary folks. The older I get, the more I appreciate ordinary.

I try to write Christmas letters that are funny, engaging and (most important) true. By nature I'm basically incapable of lying, but I can (and sometimes do) shamelessly exaggerate. So I need Joan to keep my feet on the ground. She has the ultimate thumbs up or down on whether something gets included in the Christmas letter. She also rules on cute, which is a much harder quantity to, uh, quantitize. I mean, it's adorable when the tuxedo cat with only one eye climbs up onto one of our chests and buries her face in an armpit, but to other people, is that cute or just gross? I wouldn't have any idea, see. That's where Joan comes in. (And...expecting a thumbs down on that one. Just in case you were wondering.)

There's also the picture issue. We try to send a couple of pictures along, so people can see that we're aging gracefully. Or not. What few pictures we have of us tend to be on our cell phones, though, and apart from emailing them to myself (which takes ages) I still haven't figured out a good way to get them off. Yes, it's a little faster on the new BlackBerry than it was on the old one, but it still crawls along at a glacier pace. (Obviously I need a Torch. Somebody who has $400 bucks to spare needs to get me one for Christmas. Of course, if I knew anyone who had $400 bucks to spare, I'd probably talk them into donating it to Heifer International for a couple of water buffaloes. I've always wanted to give someone a water buffalo. It just seems like a good thing to do.)

Well, anyway, the Christmas letter isn't gonna write itself, nor is it gonna copy itself, stuff itself into envelopes and mail itself to households in North Dakota, Arizona, Oklahoma and, uh, Trinidad. So wish me luck. Who knows, maybe next year at this time I'll be writing from the Hermitage. Between reading emails from my agent. And forty pounds thinner. Hey, it could happen.

Talk Thursday: Frustration

I have to be honest with you: I laughed out loud when that topic rolled out of the Talk Thursday topic-o-meter. Because frustration doesn't even begin to cover it. Pounding my head against the nearest available brick wall is more like it. People, you don't know frustration until you've been me. (Once again: Grandiosity -- common symptom of bipolar disorder.) But, yeah. Frustration? Let's talk about that.

Remember the unnamed literary agent who requested the fifty pages? And then the hundred and fifty more pages? Well--that's where the story ends. It Didn't Work Out, as they say. Which, really, is not something to lose any sleep over; most of these relationships don't work out, which is why it's so worth celebrating when they do. All, the same, this is a lot like being out on a date, parking somewhere, getting to second base, starting to wonder if you might need a condom, hoping you in fact have a condom someplace, trying to discreetly check purse pockets without interrupting the main event, and then suddenly the other person says, "I just remembered I have to be someplace. Sorry, it was nice meeting you," and gets up and leaves. No matter what you do next, you feel about an inch high and covered in mud. And--oh hey, you did have a condom, right here next to that couple of useless pens that always make their way to the bottom of your purse. Too bad you don't need it anymore.

Seriously: The whole getting-an-agent thing is exactly, exactly like the more perverse parts of dating. Both ways. It starts out with letters, like love notes back and forth. Then, if you get past that phase (and I did once! I did, although it was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away), you start exchanging presents. Then phone calls, and sooner or later you have to sign the pre-nup. (That's the contract of representation, in case this analogy's breaking down.) Having signed that, everything's grand, right? Wrong. You're just getting started. There's still the taking-on of the various monsters of relationship hell (this would be the editors at the publishing houses of choice, ha-ha), more presents, more phone calls, and, if you are incredibly lucky, you sell a book to somebody. That's the saying I-do part. Now you're joined at the hip by money, a far stronger force than love if ever there was one. Now you've managed to get each other into bed. (Yes, you waited for marriage--not out of morality but just because that's how this analogy rolls, kids. You don't like my analogy, write your own.) Hope you like each other, because it's just going to get more interesting from here. Sometimes it all works out. Sometimes your agent dumps you (and his entire client list) to run for Congress. And sometimes it all fizzles out at second base, leaving you frustrated as hell and looking for a brick wall against which to pound your head.

So what do I do now? Well--so far I'm doing what I was doing before. Writing query letters, dodging Scaley and Fang,* and hoping to get another hot date again soon. As a dear friend of mine pointed out this very afternoon, there has to be something there, because someone saw it, and if there's something there, than someone else will see it too. It's just a question of who, and when, and so I'm not supposed to stop submitting places until I've submitted to everyone in the world. Tall order, considering we hit seven billion humans yesterday, but I figure I can probably scale it down to the ones who speak and read English, just for, you know, simplicity.

*For those of you who haven't been introduced, Scaley is the T. Rex of Anxiety, and Fang is the Velociraptor of Sudden Panic. They live in my kitchen and love to hang around when I'm writing query letters. Why query letters are of any interest to a dinosaur, I have no idea, but all I have to do is type the word "query" and there they are. If anybody wants them, they're for sale. Cheap. Free, even. Call me.

Talk Thursday: Do-Over

The only thing more boring than writing is writing about writing. That is, to the person outside it. To the person inside it, writing about writing makes perfect sense; after all, it's not like you can talk about writing. Well, I mean, I guess you can, but it doesn't go over very well at parties. Probably because there's not much happening. If y'all could see me now (and one of these days I'll hook up my webcam and blog Live! From Afrah!), all you'd see is a fat chick hunched over a table near the counter, typing like mad on a laptop that's perpetually in danger of having baba ganouj smeared all over it. You'd probably also notice she's one of the few white chicks in the place, and that she's not wearing a hijab, but other than that, unremarkable. Just woman, pita bread, baba ganouj, laptop and much typing. Yeah. That's exciting.

But, anyway, I do like to write about writing. I think the expression we're looking for here is "getting it out of my system." Today in particular I'm practically tearing my hair out because I can't talk about writing. Not to my peeps at work, anyway. I've been working very hard at keeping my working life separate from my personal life, and for the most part I think I've succeeded. I mean, my cow orkers know I have a partner, and that I live in Far East Dallas with some cats and hang with a Buddhist street gang and swim a lot, but that's about it. That I write stuff has not intruded into the office consciousness, at least as far as I know. Course, if it had, I probably wouldn't have noticed; to paraphrase Luke Skywalker, if there's a bright shining center of office gossip, I'm in the cube it's the farthest from.

Which meant there was no one to tell when I got an email from the agent that had requested the first fifty pages of Mindbender. Last week, when I got the first email, I was so busy that all I thought about was where in the world I'd find the time to get together a package to mail and when I'd be able to get myself to the post office. And of course how I'd evict Scaley and Fang, my fraternal twin dinosaurs of anxiety and panic (respectively) from my kitchen so that I could somehow make this happen. But I did evict the dinosaurs and I did get the package together and yes! I even got myself to the post office. And I wasn't expecting to hear anything for a while, but now it's what, about a week later, and here's another email.

It took me a really long time to open this email. I darn near forwarded it to Joan, unopened, and asked her to just read it to me, but that would have been cowardly. I may be crazy, but a coward I ain't. I took a deep breath, stretched my shoulders and my fingers, told myself it was okay no matter what it said, and when I was momentarily convinced, I clicked on the email.

The guy was writing to say he wanted another 150 pages. And I about fell out of my chair.

Uh, what? Another what? He wanted what? I had to do what? How was I supposed to do that? Scaley and Fang immediately materialized in my cube and started making a big mess. Then it occurred to me that this was actually good news and I should be celebrating with the Spirit of Happy, not chasing around the Dinosaurs of Angst. But I couldn't. Celebrate, that is. Because I was at work and no one at work knew anything about this and--then the phone rang. It does that. Often at the most inopportune times.

When I got rid of the annoying insurance adjuster on the phone and the smoke cleared and the dust settled and I'd managed to convince Scaley and Fang they'd be much more comfortable in the conference room, I suddenly realized I was going to have to do it all again. Head back to my kitchen. Get to work. Put another package together. Convince Microsoft Word 2010 to number pages without drawing a cute little border around each one (Whose idea was that? Bill Gates, I hope somebody tattoos a black outline around your face). And do it all in the next couple of days, no later than Monday for certain. Eesh. My first thought was to skip my usual meeting tonight and head home immediately, but Joan (who, seeing as she lives with me, does know about this writing thing) told me no, I'd better go to the meeting. Something about when I get all angsty and start bouncing off the walls, a meeting helps. It's probably safer for any ceramics she might have around, anyway.

So I go forth for a do-over, or a do-it-again, or a same-task-different-pages. Or something like that. Wish me luck. And yes, I know I'm a little manic right now. But be honest; can you think of a better time? And do you think I should take out all that smooching on page 137, or should I just leave it there and let the lips fall where they may? And why am I asking you, anyway? Have a nice evening, y'all.

Talk Thursday: Harried

I just reread my post about writer's block and thought: Wow, I'm not bipolar or anything, am I?

Anyway. This is a great Talk Thursday topic because it perfectly describes the last month of my life. At work, at least, I've been positively slammed. I've had eight sets of discovery responses due this month. For you non-legal people, sets of discovery means that both parties have asked the other side in the case a set of formal questions, which need to be answered in Proper Legal Language according to a strict set of rules (the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, in case you're curious). Discovery sets usually come in threes, which means three documents to which to respond. Each response can take upward of a couple of hours by the time you sit down with the client, get their answers to the questions, go over the questions themselves, object to anything that might be objectionable, turn the client's answers into Proper Legal Language, and then take the whole deal to the attorney for review. (After which, of course, it comes back with lots of changes, which can then take another x number of hours.) One set of discovery can pretty much knock down your timetable for the week. Two sets of discovery can pretty much become your week. Eight sets of discovery--well, that's two sets a week for four weeks in a row, folks. That's--that's just insane.

Now, here's the rub. While the sets of discovery are getting done, nothing else is. And it's not like everything else understands that there's discovery due and politely waits in the background for its proper turn. Oh no. Life and the law firm moves on. There are still motions to write, chronologies to create, records to order, filings to file, letters to crank out, depositions to schedule. In your copious spare time, of course. Because discovery trumps all. Miss a deadline for a set of discovery and you've "waived all your objections," which means, in short, that you've totally screwed up your case and are probably looking at a malpractice lawsuit. Miss one of those other deadlines, though, and you're at least in big trouble, and maybe fired.

So it's been an interesting month. I've tried to refrain from running around like a headless chicken trying to do everything at once, but hey, I get manic as hell sometimes, so it does happen. And then right in the middle of all this, when I was wrapping up Set of Discovery No. 8, I got The Call.

Okay, it was actually The Email, but The Call sounds ever so much more religious, doesn't it? And this being a religious blog and all, I couldn't help it. The Email was from a literary agent, asking for a partial on Mindbender. And everything came to a screeching halt for about five minutes while I stared at this email and said something that contained numerous swear words. Hard to say what this felt like, but I guess the best analogy is that I went fishing, fell asleep on the dock, and woke up to find that I had a bite on my line, only to discover I had forgotten my net, my cooler and some other vital piece of equipment fishermen need for when they actually catch something (the last time I went fishing, I was fifteen, so please pardon me for not having a clue). In short, I was utterly emotionally unprepared. I was off in discovery-land, remember? I mean, I'm not complaining here, but it was the apotheosis of bad timing. Five minutes after I stepped off an airplane in Thule, Greenland, without my laptop and miles from electricity would have been a better time. For serious. I think they have electricity in Thule, though.

And so a mad scramble ensued. First, I had to evict Scaley, the T-Rex of Anxiety, and his adopted older brother Fang, the Velociraptor of Sudden Panic, from my kitchen so that I could at least try to get some work done. Then I had to tell Joan I loved her every five minutes so that she wouldn't strangle me for muttering ceaselessly about how sucky this narrative was and how a reasonably well-trained chimpanzee could have written it and that obviously it wasn't worth mailing to an illiterate troll living under a bridge in Zaire, never mind a literary agent in New York. Then I had to figure out how to number the pages (curse you, Word 2010) after the first attempt left this fine-line border around each and every page (nice, kind of decorative, even, but, no. Just no.) Then I had to get myself and my pages to Office Depot to pick up a couple of big envelopes, get myself and my envelopes to the Post Office, and get back to the office before my lunch hour expired so I could get back to the discovery before I blew my deadline. And, oh yeah, get something to eat. I think I scored an apple and some string cheese.

Pant. Pant. Gasp. Whew.

So that's how I spent Tuesday and Wednesday. Some fun time, huh? But, pleased to announce, the package got mailed, the world did not crack asunder, Scaley and Fang are afraid of Ativan and today at four P.M., the last of the eight sets of discovery left the building. Which means I can relax and, uh, concentrate on that huge pile of mail that's about to fall on me. You know, from all the other cases.

October will be easier. I keep telling myself that.

Talk Thursday: Rewards

As I hump my way through this obstacle course called life, or rather, this one called my life, I frequently call to mind the Big Question. No, not the one about whether or not there's a God (no) or what is our purpose in life (to be servants and built-in heated mattresses to house cats). I'm talking about the other Big Question, the one that occurs to me when I'm about to snarf down a piece of extremely decadent dark chocolate cake (thereby giving my psychiatrist apoplexy; large quantities of sugar and Topamax should never be combined in one's bloodstream) or after I've spent the hour from three a.m. to four a.m. sorting the screws in the junk drawer because the fact that they're all different sizes bothers me. This is the ultimate Big Question, the one I never seem to answer to anyone's satisfaction, least of all mine: Why Am I Doing This, Anyway?

The Big Question arises in all kinds of contexts. At five a.m. when I crawl out of bed to make my way to the Baylor Tom Landry Pool (and I try very hard not to think about it very much, because if I thought about it I'd never do it). At four o'clock on a Friday when I'm sorting all the junk I've been dealing with during the week for the purpose of, eventually, filing it. When I'm churning out query e-mails (queermails?) to agents, a lone snowflake in the blizzard being swept across the Internet in hopes I won't melt before I land in the right agent's snow shovel. Well, there must be a good reason. I must, on some level, expect some kind of reward. The answer, then, is what kind.

At this point I could sniff somewhat self-righteously and announce that virtue is its own reward, but my bullshit detector is way too sensitive to put up with this for even two seconds. In the case of getting up before dawn to get mostly naked and throw myself into cold water, it's pretty much gotten to the point where I can't not do it, at least for very long. Two or three days away from the pool and I start getting all twitchy. I seem to have a minimum chlorine requirement. I suppose there's that whole post-exercise glow and that warm satisfaction of knowing I've done something good for my body, too, but for sheer unadulterated rewards it's hard to beat the jaccuzi and the heated towels afterward.

In the case of filing stuff, I get the reward of a clean desk, at least for a few nanoseconds. We office workers take our moments of clean deskitude where we can get them. Currently I have at least five different piles of papers, in priority order, taking up space on my admittedly huge desk. Just seeing formica once in a while is its own little miracle.

And in the case of the query emails--well, here the analogy just falls apart like a badly strung necklace.

Okay, I admit it: It's been over a month since I sent any out. I don't know why I stopped and I don't know how to get started again. It just started seeming like a complete waste of time all of a sudden. I usually didn't get a response, or if I did it was one of those "Sorry, but buzz off" replies. No "Sure, kid, send me a couple of chapters" or "Hey, can't use it, but nice use of the word 'the' in the second paragraph." In short, no reward. If there's no reward, is there any point in doing it?

Yes, I know; I'm never going to get the silly thing published unless I write a lot more letters. I haven't written nearly enough to give up or even slow down. The Help was rejected by over sixty agents -- over sixty! Be impressed immediately!--before it was accepted and became a runaway best-seller (that I still, for the record, have no desire to read). Wait, hold it, let me channel Linus of Peanuts here: "Just think, Charlie Brown, (Mrs. Tolstoy) wrote ('War and Peace') seven times with a dip pen! And you're telling me you can't read it once?"

Still, same problem. No reward. No pats on the head for getting query letters out. No one says "Good job!" or gives me an extra smooch. I'm just supposed to keep plodding along, churning them out like a highly sophisticated riveting machine on an automobile assembly line someplace. But honestly, most of the time I feel more like Mrs. Tolstoy with a dip pen.

Talk Thursday: Drought

Yes, I know we're in a drought. It's about the only thing they talk about on KEOM radio's Texas State Network News, after they get finished talking about Governor Goodhair running for President. (About which I know very little because I refuse to listen. The reporter gets as far as, "Governor Per--." and I've changed the station to the 24-hour classical channel.) I don't exactly need reminding. My entire backyard is dead, even the very stubborn asparagus. I'm doing what I can to keep the trees alive, and the front yard still has a little green here and there, but pretty much this is the year that lawn care became moot. A neighbor of ours is losing his magnolia tree. It's falling down, limb by limb, in a spectacle that's both ghastly and heartbreaking. And us North Texans are really getting off easy compared to the rest of the state. Lots of farmers have lost their entire crop, cattle are dying all over the place and there are wildfires - of course there are wildfires - chomping through all the dead vegetation, taking out homes and businesses and just in general destroying things.

So it seems kind of ridiculous to use up my allotment of cubic Internet inches whining about a drought of the mind, but that's just what I'm gonna do. You see, while y'all weren't looking, I went and wrote another book. Okay, some of you were looking. That's okay, I forgive you. That makes a total of five (count them! Five!) since I started this blog. This last one is called Taken by Storm, and it was all about the daughter of the heroine in one of the earlier books realizing she has some of the same problems Mom has, as well as some new and different crises that Mom never got around to. This one was remarkably short (72k words), definitely YA, and kind of a departure from my usual stuff. What's more, my mother liked it. No, she really did. And I started writing query letters and I started getting the usual rejection slips and then--

Nothing. I dried up. It was like somebody pulled the plug, and all the good words went straight down the drain.

When you're used to writing for about an hour a day, every day, at home or at a Starbucks or at Afrah or maybe the back room of Half Price Books, and you're used to churning out a page or two at least, and you're used to having two or three projects going at once, all in different stages of done-ness, and everything just comes to a screeching halt one day, it tends to throw you off your stride a little bit. The first thing I did, after a few days had gone by and the words still weren't coming, was panic. Oh dear God that I don't even believe in, what if this was forever? What if I'd said everything I had to say, and told the tales I had to tell, and the rest was just silence? What would I do for the rest of my life? Where would I go when my brain needed a vacation? Would I have to start doing drugs? Play video games? Find a real-life version of being wired, like in Strange Days?

Well, that's why I write. I dunno why anybody else does.

As the days trickled by and the words still didn't come back, I got depressed. Easy to do if you're bipolar - in fact it happens on a regular basis, like day follows night - but it's easy to forget that, too, when you're in the middle of it. So I moped around and spent ridiculous amounts of time trolling the CNN chat boards - yes, I know I'm not supposed to do that - and just in general felt sorry for myself. Washed up at the age of 42. Done in by a drought of the mind and left to wander the earth as one of the walking dead. Well, only about 40 more years and I can die for real, I guess. Obviously I'm not gonna have anything to show for having been around, so I might as well just be quiet and not upset anybody. I started to avoid the computer during my regular writing time. I started eating sugar again (yes, I know, don't lecture me -- I'm getting back off it; my psychiatrist was livid) and just in general did everything I wasn't supposed to do. Except swimming. I kept swimming.

Then, a couple of days ago, something happened. I dunno why, but I sat down at the computer and wrote a couple of pages. This morning I did it again, though it was only about half as much. Who knows if this is the rain returning after La Nina or just a rogue low-pressure zone; the result is the same--productivity. And perhaps the first little glimmer of hope that things might possibly get better.

(Attention literary agents: This would be the perfect time to throw me a bone. I'm soft-spoken, housebroken, won't bite and have had all my shots.)

So we'll see what happens. If things keep getting better, great. If they don't--well, let's just not go there. Meantime I hope it keeps raining in North Texas. I hope we have a hurricane, in point of fact, and a wall of water floats away a DART transit bus, just like last time.

Especially if I lay off the sugar.

Talk Thursday (on Friday): Time Changes Everything

You guys wouldn't have liked me very much when I was younger. Really, I was a whole different person. Long ago and far away, when I was, oh, about twenty-six, I had some very definitive ideas about the world. I had opinions, and by God, you had better listen to them because they were right. If you had different opinions, that was fine. You were entitled to them, just so long as you understood that they were completely wrong.

Time changes everything. These days, I don’t even know if I have opinions, much less if they’re right or not. I was in the Company Lunchroom a couple of weeks ago listening to a group of people shoot the breeze about Some Topic of Supreme Importance (I think it involved a heavy metal band) and someone asked me, “You’re pretty quiet. What do you think?” I said, “I don’t know. I guess I’d rather hear what other people think.”

Well, smack me upside the head. Are we sure that was me talking?

I realized not too long ago that I don’t yell at other drivers anymore. I stopped doing it at some point. You gotta understand here, I’ve been yelling at other drivers since I started driving a car. Usually it was not-terribly-polite commentary on their style of driving, their parentage, what they might and might not have lodged up their rectums and certain acts of intercourse they might wish to perform in the future. Then one day I stopped. Just stopped, and now I don’t do it anymore. I dunno if it’s the Buddhism or the Twelve Steps or what, but somehow some maturity has crept into my system. Only took forty-two years.

One of the things that annoyed me the most about a certain person that annoyed me at work was that she reminded me too much of myself. She was just like me when I was twenty-six, and I couldn’t talk to her or give her any advice because I remembered being twenty-six and how I would take no advice from anybody. So I didn’t even try, which was frustrating beyond all reason because I used to love giving advice as much as I used to love telling people what their opinions should be. But somehow I’ve stopped doing that, too. Giving advice, I mean. Well, I still do it once in a while. But not nearly as often as I used to when I was twenty-six.

Time changes everything.

Back about 2001, the Twin Towers were still standing and my mother-in-law was still alive and I went to see Warren Zevon on the opening date of a new tour in downtown San Diego. He had a new band and you could tell they were still working out the kinks with each other but sooner or later they were going to be great. It was just a question of when. I remembered happily noting that the band was going to be back in San Diego again on the second leg of the tour, and I put the date down in my date book (this was before BlackBerries) because I really wanted to see them again when they'd pulled it all together. I thought they would be fantastic. Then Warren got diagnosed with a rare, particularly lethal lung cancer, the tour was canceled, and I never saw the band again. And of course 9/11 happened and my mother-in-law died and Stuart killed himself and with all that going on who knows if I'd have ever gotten back there, but I like to think I would have. Because it would have been fantastic. Rest in peace, Warren.

When I was twenty-six I had written some pretty good stuff and I actually (gasp!) had an agent and I was just moments from literary glory and bestsellerdom, so there was no real reason to worry about my career (though I went to paralegal school, anyway, just in case) and I drank heavily and freebased chocolate. Then I got really sick and my agent dumped me to run for Congress (he lost) and I never did find another one (or at least I haven't yet). It's now 2011 and I'm sober and (mostly) abstinent and I've written some more cool stuff but it has yet to attract any official attention. I work for a law firm. I'm a paralegal and I'm pretty darn good at my job, thank you. I hang around with a Buddhist street gang and I'm married (15 years and going strong!) and if you'd asked me where I thought I'd be when I was forty-two, when I was twenty-six, I'd have told you something else. I don' t know what, but something else. That was before time changed everything.

Even me. No, especially me.

Book O'The Decade: The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans

Y'all may not know this, but I'm rather partial to New Orleans, even though I've only been there like twice. The first time was for this big Mensa hoo ha, right before Hurricane Katrina (in fact Hurricane Cindy hit while we were there; only a Cat One, but saying "only" and "Cat One" in the same sentence when discussing hurricanes is like saying "only" and "Hurricane" when discussing alcoholic beverages). The second time was for the big Pen to Press Writers Retreat, where I got to hang out with the inimitable F. Paul Wilson, stayed with good friend Marcia and maybe possibly met my new agent (which is to say he hasn't rejected me, yet.) And of course there was that stint with the Small Business Administration, in which I talked to scads of people every day on the phone, and gave them directions to places I'd never been all over Orleans, Metarie and Plaquemines Parish to meet with loan adjusters, appraisers and other trustworthy government officials. So I kind of have a hankerin' for the place in a not-sure-I'd-wanna-live-there-but-it's-awesome-to-visit kind of way.

(And were they ever hiring paralegals after Katrina. Wow. Every old firm in Louisiana had like three or four positions open because people had been evacuated and just couldn't make their way back for whatever reason. After the SBA laid me off I was saying to Joan, "Seriously, we could do a lot worse," but apparently libraries weren't hiring at the same prodigious rate. So we stayed put. But it was a thought.)

Anyway, this and the blog and my extreme fondness for things made from the essence of ground beans made me a natural to review The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans, a novel in three parts by David Lummis. Click on that link and it'll take you to Amazon.com, where you can get a copy in both Kindle and paperback. You can also get it as a vastly cooler and more technologically efficient NookBook, about which I'm not the slightest bit biased. (Nooks rule! Kindles drool!) I just knocked off Part One, and I'm not sure when Part Two is coming out but you'll hear it here first.

Coffee Shop Chronicles is the saga of B. Sammy Singleton, the gay, agnostic, eight-years-sober son of a preacher man who came to New Orleans from New York looking to become a real writer. The first person he meets is Catfish, who runs a shop that sells architectural salvage and rehabilitates low-income housing. Catfish has recently been sprung from jail, accused of tomb desecration; when he promptly disappears, Sammy sets out to find him. Along the way, he learns that Catfish's family is old New Orleans, and their fortune was built on the backs of slaves. As Sammy learns more about what he begins to call the American Holocaust, he finds out more than he ever wanted to know about Catfish, and more to the point, how a person might hate his family name so much that he might consider irreversible alternatives to separate himself from his history.

Coffee Shop Chronicles is not without its flaws. It's too long, for one thing; at least seventy pages too long, and probably more than that. It shifts back and forth in time in a way that made me dizzy and didn't really tackle the meat of its subject until the very end. But when it got there, it really got there, and packed most of its emotion into the last forty pages in a way that can't be described as other than gut-wrenching. I'm very much looking forward to Part Two, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if this is one of those Hunger Games Trilogy type deals where Part Two's going to end on some massive cliffhanger that practically begs to have Part Three already purchased and in hand. So go check it out. (And if you have a Nook, as opposed to a proprietary Kindle, you really can check it out, from your local library. So there. Nyah.)

Talk Thursday: Who, Me? Already?

My friend Kevin asked me an interesting question the other day. He asked me why I wanted to be published, anyway. He wanted to be published, he said, so that other people would get a chance to read his stories. Why did I want to be published? And in the grand tradition of wordsmiths everywhere, I stared blankly at the screen (this exchange took place through e-mail) and could think of not word one to say.

For me it was a question rather like “Why do you want to continue breathing air?” It had never occurred to me that there was an alternative. I write stuff; therefore I want to get stuff published. Why wouldn’t I want to do that? I mean, what a strange question. But the more I thought about it, the less I could come up with any grand all-encompassing Reason. Fame? Ha! Fortune? Ha! A Jedi craves not these things. Which is good, because they’re frickin’ scarce. Median annual income for a writer the last time I checked? $20 grand. Which is not bloody much, and since that's the median, half are making more and half are making less. Dem ain't good odds. So eventually I agreed that, yeah, I wanted people to read my stuff, too. Which is basically true. But it’s not the grand, all-encompassing Reason. Which is good, because I’m not sure that I even have one.

Anyway, all of a sudden the prospect became kind of daunting. After all, neither of us know what lies beyond this, the Land of the Unpublished. So, although in general I don’t have a decent prognosticating bone in my body, I took my brain forward in time to that unknown when; when I’ve found an agent (or rather, another agent; I had one once), when the agent’s pronounced the manuscript salable, when the salability has been conclusively proven by the advent of a contract; when my lawyer (likely Boss Dave, if he’s up for it) has pronounced the contract signable; when I’ve signed it; when somebody’s written me a check, I’ve cashed it, it hasn’t bounced and I’ve paid the light bill with the money. Oh, and when I walk into a bookstore and see Mindbender sitting on a shelf someplace, hopefully not clear in the back underneath Dear Abby's Keepers: Columns To Live By but I'll take whatever I can get. So what’s that time like? What if it’s not like the movies? In short, what if it sucks?

“Working two jobs, for one thing,” Kevin points out. There’s always that. Both of us have been through multiple jaunts of unemployment and are doing pretty good to have one job apiece. And neither of us are quite crazy enough to quit our day jobs; not even Dan Brown-style runaway bestsellerdom would convince me to do that, and the last time I checked, I didn't even look like Dan Brown. Them publishing contracts don't exactly come with health insurance (though there’s a persistent, unsubstantiated rumor that Lloyd’s of London has insured Stephen King’s brain.) So, yeah. Working two jobs. One might point out we’re already doing that and just not getting paid, but that’s quibbling. Deadlines, phone calls, Big Discussions, meetings and more meetings. I had a dream once that Joan called me at work and told me I needed to call the production assistant right away because there was some kind of problem with Chapter Fourteen. "Okay, I'll call at lunchtime," I said, and Joan said, "No, you need to call right away, it's an emergency." Wondering what in hell kind of publishing emergency could possibly be more important than whatever legal emergency I was currently wrangling I agreed to call right away. Just then my alarm went off and I woke up, reaching across to my nightstand for the phone. What's it called when your night job starts interfering with your day job? Daylighting? And here I don't even have one yet.

Then there's all the other stuff. I mean, very few people make a living at this writing thing, and I sure don't expect to, but even if you don't, sooner or later you're going to have (gasp) fans. Or people who like your stuff, anyway. What happens if they start showing up on your doorstep at two a.m. because you said something in Chapter Fourteen (which is always a bitch) that reminded them of something their best friend's mother's aunt said in high school? What if they, you know, recognize you in public, when you're doing your level best to hide behind your laptop at Afrah and turn out your frick'n Thursday blog post? I mean how embarrassing. I get wigged out when people recognize me outside of OA meetings, and there's for Godsake rules about how to handle that. Here there be no rules, and what if they start bothering your wife? Believe me, the Stephen Kings and Dean Koontzes of the world have nothing on the utter scariness of a bothered wife. I will go to the ends of the earth to avoid bothering my wife.

Interesting questions, all. Are they problems I would like to have? I don't know. Are they problems I am going to have eventually? Yes, one way or another. My prognostication bone may not be decent, but about that I believe it absolutely. And I will probably find some way to deal, just like I do with every other weird situation I stumble into/get invited into/walk into/get thrown into. But the Big Question of why I want to get published, which I still have not answered to either Kevin's or my satisfaction, continues to hover over all this and ask me if, in fact, I'm even ready. If the right agent were to suddenly materialize at this very moment, and my reaction would be something like, "Who, me? Already?"

Talk Thursday: Six Months

Well: I made it to Afrah but my laptop is not talking to the server this evening, for some reason. I can only bonk heads against the server for so long before it gets old, so tonight’s blog post is being composed on Word 2010, which I’m grudgingly getting used to. Okay? Okay.

Six months ago, in September 2010, I was engaged in a losing battle with some famous backyardigans, procyon lotor (the common North American raccoon). I'm pleased? Somewhat? to report I'm still on the losing end of this battle. I recently ran into another of the critters--or maybe it was the same one, I don't know. They look a lot alike. This one spotted me, hid behind the cat food bin, and stuck a paw around the bin to grab a handful of food out of the bowl. He (she?) did this repeatedly, despite having been told that he (she?) wasn't fooling anybody. I mean, the paw was a dead giveaway. White bin, grey paw, you know what I'm sayin'? So it appears the 'coons are back. Not surprised, me. There's no way to get rid of them apart from not feeding the feral cats, and the feral cats and I have a handshake deal on that one. Okay, a pawshake deal.

Let's see, what else was going on: I'd just been packed off to a neurologist to find out why my hands were shaky and my head had developed this interesting lateral wobble. The verdict: Because you were born that way. Get over it. This was infinitely cheering, and it would be months before I wrangled with posterior iritis. One thing about my brain, there's always something happening even when there's nothing going on. (John Lennon. Nope, sorry, it wasn't original at all.)

Big Country, despite its lead singer being about nine years dead, shocked hell out of everybody by announcing its resurrection and its, get this, northern European tour dates. If I had more money and less sense, I'd have flown over there, followed them from town to town and done the whole Greatful Dead thing. That having a responsible job and wife and family thing kind of puts a damper on that sort of behavior, though. Hey, this is interesting; yesterday at work somebody asked me who my favorite band was, and when I said, "Big Country. You've never heard of them," all three people sitting at the table actually had. It must be fate. It must be destiny. It must be--well, it was one hell of a coincidence, anyway. One of the people at the table was actually born after "Restless Natives" hit no. 1 on the U.K. charts, and she'd still heard of them. I mean, wow. I was blown away. Somewhere in Beijing, a fourth-grader just got chills down his spine for no apparent reason.

Labor Day weekend, Joan and I flew to Salt Lake City and spent several days with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law. That was pretty cool. There was a baseball game involved, some nice dinners out, a ride to the top of Mount Baldy in the Snowbird tram and Oktoberfest, which isn't the same without the beer but was interesting, anyway.

Oh, and six months ago, I was seven pounds heavier. A minor point but I thought I'd throw it in there.

Now then: Where would I like to be six months from now?

Well, look, people. I've been really patient on this point, but it's been long enough and I want a frickin' literary agent. A decade and two years (and a trilogy) is really way too long to have one's career on permanent hold. So let's get this ball rolling again, okay please? Throw me a bone, already, people. Like a request for a partial or a full or something. You might even like my stuff and decide you want to work with me. You'll find me relaxed, even-tempered, open to suggestions and pretty darn agreeable. Also, I make excellent sourdough bread and yes, I do ship.

I'd also like to have some money saved. The two kind of go hand in hand, but you'll notice I didn't say I wanted a publishing contract, just a literary agent. One thing at a time, folks.

Six months from now it will be late August/early September. I would like to have the trim in the front of our house repaired and repainted. I'd like the trelliswork in the back fixed, too, but I'd cave on that point if I could have the much more important covered rain gutters. I want 'em all the way around the house. And a new water heater. Preferably before the bottom falls the hell out of the old one.

Hmm, where do I want to go for Labor Day weekend this year? Maybe nowhere. Maybe I'd like to just hang around the house and watch the leaves fall. Or maybe New Orleans. Yeah. New Orleans sounds kind of nice, actually. And it's within driving distance, so no untoward groping from TSA agents.

And last but not least, I'd like to be twenty pounds lighter still. I'd like to be. Don't know if I will be. But I just thought I'd throw that in there.

Talk Thursday (on Saturday): Sticks, Stones, and Words That Stab Much Deeper

Significant words in the life of Jen:

Reading an email from a literary agent on a crowded elevator on my way to work one morning quite recently, I suddenly exclaimed, "GODDAMMIT!!" Uh, it was kinda loud. And everyone turned around and stared at me. I was pretty embarrassed. The email wasn't good news, either.

My ex broke up with me, she said, because she didn't want to be in a relationship "just because it was convenient." Yep, it happened about seventeen years ago and I can still hear it. That's "convenient" with a sharp "c", a long "e" and a pointed "t". I didn't want to hear the word "convenient" for years. Still don't, in all honesty.

When I was about nine, my mother, in an odd fit of prescience, took me to a psychiatrist. I told her I didn't want to go back because the doctor asked lots of questions and I felt invaded. My mother said that when she took her car to the mechanic, she had to answer all his questions or he wouldn't know what was wrong with the car. I didn't get past the word "car." Great. I was now equated with a motor vehicle. I'd better be good or I'd be recycled for spare parts. Or worse, recalled to Detroit. (Or Tokyo.)

Joan, my wife, is often referred to around here as "Pi." While this is a common Southern nickname for a woman, it's not often spelled out as a mathematical formula. It came about that I was abbreviating "pie" as "22/7", which is, "3.14285714...." or the radius of a circle, in a note. Joan read this literally as 22/7, meaning 22 hours, 7 days a week - because everybody deserves two hours off. So now "Pi" means two hours off, the radius of a circle, 3.14285714...or a fine pastry that often contains fruits, nuts, or both. And sometimes it just means Joan.

Back in the Middle Ages, people used to get sick and die of various diseases that involved facial lesions, all of which were lumped together (for lack of medical knowledge) under the general heading of "the pox." Since then (and I've been alive since then; indeed, I've been alive for ages and ages) I've discovered that the word POX!! pronounced exactly that way, with at least two exclamation points, makes a fine, satisfying fake swear word in circumstances where FUCK!! would get you in big trouble. Another satisfying fake swear word is GEORGE W. BUSH!! but that can be taken wrong in certain circles. You have been warned.

"External" is a word most often applied to something that is, uh, not internal; unless, of course, you live around here, in which it means a certain kind of cat. There are two kinds of cats in this house; the internals and the externals. The internals are the spoiled rotten house cats. The externals are the feral cats, who live in the back yard and share food, however unwillingly, with Madame Raccoon. We think rather highly of the externals around here, so much so that we named our external hard drive "Clan External" in their honor.

And this post is going nowhere fast, so in closing, I leave you with the word "ay-yow." This word comes from a cat dialect, most commonly spoken by all black and tuxedo cats. While it is most often used to express the concept, "Give me some tuna," the word literally means "heart's desire." Should one's heart's desire be thwarted, beware of the "maaaaare," which in most cat dialects means, "I'm going to smother you in your sleep."