My current sweetheart

My current foster cat looks like a bit of a tough tomcat (but it's a lie -- he's a playful, purring sweetheart). He survived on the streets of D.C. for a long time. He used to beg at back doors to come inside where he belonged.

Now he's inside.

 Waiting on his forever home.

Looking handsome while he waits..

He was a little bit wild at first.

But not anymore.

What Can't Be Red-Penned

One of my stories was recently published in Daily Science Fiction (a fantastic sci-fi flash fiction magazine delivered to your e-mail inbox each morning -- I highly recommend subscribing if you like sci-fi). There's a funny phenomenon that I have realized occurs for me, at least, when your story is delivered to its public forum.

Suddenly any flaw in the writing stands in stark relief, to an exent it didn't on the computer monitor or even printed on the page and being red-penned. No matter how critical I can be of my own work in creation, it has nothing on how critical I feel of it when there's no more opportunity to alter it.

Don't get me wrong; I believe in that story, and I believe it had to be good for DSF to publish it. I love the stories they select, and therefore have a lot of faith in the editors - and their decisions. When my insecurities set in I took a deep breath and told myself to stop being a nutcase. I always feel this way about my work in print, which is pretty terrifying when I think about these entire novels I write and hope to publish (and also, reason no. 1 why self-publishing doesn't seem like a good option for me, personally).

We writers are funny people. Self-confident enough to create and share our own worlds, but sometimes with our own hang-ups along the way.

(And, if you're curious, you can read my short story, Ten Speeds at the End of the World, here)

New blog design!

Like everything else in my life, my blog is a work in progress. I'm in the middle of a redesign. So please forgive my blog for being monumentally ugly and frequently illogical while we transition. :)

Wine and reminiscing for the win

My best friend visited me this past weekend.  We've been friends since college, and she's one of the few people I feel totally comfortable with. I know I can share any random thought with her, without being judged (she's like a cat that way, but a much more satisfying conversationalist). We watched trashy TV, drank lots of lattes and raspberry wine, and talked about our lives.

The ways our husbands piss us off. The ways they make us melt.
Our jobs and our schedules and our co-workers. Our medical issues. Our parents.  She let me go through the story of my miscarriage again, in grisly detail (though we were in a booth at Panera at the time and I had the car keys, so I guess she didn't really have a choice on that one...). We talked about Cam, how he died, the funeral.

We reminisced about the past -- the time my car died in an intersection and we hung out with a cop in his patrol car until AAA came two hours later, the parties, the boy-troubles, the psycho roommate who stole our stuff when she moved out. We still both really hate her, by the way. We talked about where we'll be in ten years and where we'll be next summer. We made plans to see each other in Boston and to visit Indonesia and to road-trip through the Midwest neither of us have ever seen.


And somewhere along the way, between talking about all the good times in the past, venting about the hell life's been lately, and planning the good times for the future, I really started to believe I'm going to be happy again soon. The power of a best friend is an amazing thing.

What's okay for us to say, as writers?

This question's for all of us who are trying to make it as writers.  What's okay for us to say on our blogs and Twitters?  I'm not talking about bashing other writers, or publishers, or even the ZOMG-Let's-Not-Go-There-Again book review debacle that washed over blogs & Twitter a while ago.

I've been pretty open about my recent life issues on this blog, though I haven't posted half the posts I've written.  I worry that an agent won't want to sign someone who sounds, well, miserable (For the record, I am still really normal in person. Well, my version of normal. I will never call you up and cry wordlessly into the phone, even if you send me a rejection letter, promise).

We always try to be so happy and upbeat about writing and publishing, even though sometimes the industry drives us nuts, doesn't it? So does that just apply to when we talk about writing and publishing specifically, or should we keep relationship woes, illnesses and general suckage out of our blogs -- even though those are the very things that can inform our writing?

I have no idea. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Remembering 9-11

Ten years ago, something terrible happened that changed the world we live in forever.  Today, I think we're all hurting for the families that lost loved ones.  Our country was changed, and with it the course of many of our lives.

But people also came together, on that day. There was some beauty amidst all the horror, selflessness and concern for others and love for our fellow Americans. In the aftermath, we've pulled apart again, divided by political lines, war, security measures versus civil liberties, religious prejudice, different concepts of patriotism and nationalism.

But let's remember when we came together. We can disagree, but we're still Americans together, still stuck facing the same challenges. We can never have our country back the way it was ten years ago, but we can try to come together and keep rebuilding the one we have now.

A Thought on Fostering

These guys.

They're not mine.

They think they're mine. Pepper - the little white one on the right - follows me around the house and cries most piteously when he loses me. Most of the time, he's on my lap or laying draped over my shoulders like the most alarming fur stole. Nacho, the handsome boy on the left, likes to grab my hand with his paws when I pet his head and will show no signs of ever wanting to let go. Channeling the Beatles, that kitten is.

And it sure feels like they're mine. No matter how much I tell myself I'm just holding on to them until they find their forever home,  I'm so in love with my SPCA foster cats. I'm going to have a broken heart when it's time to bring them to their new home.

But I believe in animal rescue and fostering most passionately, and if there's one thing I've gotten out of this awful summer?

A broken heart's almost always worth it, for the love that came before the breaking.

Carry Your Heart

I spent this past weekend at the funeral of one of my best friends.

Cam was incredibly smart. There was nothing he couldn't figure out how to fix. He had a dry, wicked sense of humor.  We teased him about looking like a young Wesley Snipes (or maybe Welsey Snipes looks like HIM). When I went to Iraq, he sent me a Blade DVD because he knew I'd miss him.

And now I always will.

We trained for and ran a marathon together -- 26.2 miles. You have to like someone a lot to talk through seventeen-mile training runs on the beach and a marathon itself, but we never ran out of things to talk about. He was my adopted big brother. He called me kiddo. Even though we'd moved to live far apart, we still tried to find times to talk and to get together. He was one of the first people I told that I was pregnant, and when I lost the baby.

He was the first person to read GODDESS. He gave me great feedback even though he wasn't a writer himself -- but then, there really wasn't anything he couldn't do. Except maybe teach me how to make an ethernet cable. I never quite got the hang of that.

And he was an incredibly loyal, dependable, thoughtful friend. Kind and giving, underneath his tough exterior.  He had a great heart. There's a poem by E. E. Cummings that I love, and it ends--

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

It just seems so crazy that he's gone -- at only thirty - and that the world is going on without him. A world that's a little sadder, a little lonelier, a little worse, because he isn't in it. I hate that I have to go on without him, that his family, his wife, his other friends have to go on without him. But I'm going to try and carry his heart, to be a better person for having know and loved him, and been loved in turn.

A... finished project? And other miracles.

I can't believe what a slacker I've been on this blog. Sorry! Truth be told, I felt a bit antisocial after the miscarriage (and exhausted - a natural miscarriage is not a quick or easy process).

But.  I'm now back to normal (my version of normal, anyway). I'm done with the revisions of The Goddess of Vengeance Wore Pink Galoshes, which is now absolutely the best book I can make it. I know in two or three years I'll re-read it and there will probably be things that make me groan, because I'm not done growing as a writer yet, but it's so much better than the earlier drafts. It's so much better than my writing used to be.

Honestly, I'm starting to learn to love editing. It's neat to see how much my writing's improved from just a year ago when I wrote the rough draft of Goddess. It's exciting to work my way that much closer to the story I set out to write and to telling it effectively.

So now it's time to sub Goddess, and really focus on the next things -- editing my YA novel, Recovering Sara, and rough drafting the next novel (Too. Many. Shiny. Projects).

I've been reading some fantastic books, too. I just finished Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which is not just a beautifully written modern fantasy, but an adult picture book. The author, Ransom Riggs, collected weird vintage photographs of children that form the basis for his characters. The photos and text work together beautifully, and there's something about the novelty of pictures (especially these intriguing, sometimes unsettling photographs) that I found very winning. But only because the story itself is so well told. Now I'm reading The Left Hand of God, by Paul Hoffman. I have mixed feelings about it in some ways --the religious aspects of it, the omniscient point-of-view that I sometimes find intrusive, personally -- but I'm so invested in the characters, the pacing is so quick and the story so interesting that I can't put it down. Though parts of it may not suit my personal preferences, I think it's a terrific book so far. (And I'm also reading the Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend, but that's not really so much for fun...)

What've you all been up to while I was gone?

Salve

I self-medicate with cute and furry.

Meet Nacho. Nacho is a four-month old kitten rescued by the SPCA, waiting with us for his forever home.

And, in case you couldn't tell, Nacho is adorable.  We picked him up last night and he's super friendly, the only cat I've ever seen go immediately to sleep in his carrier. Which is the only time I've seen him sleep. He is a go-go-go cat, and with all the playing we did last night I still couldn't wear him out.

I've been at a little bit of a loss for what to do with myself lately. Nacho is helping. He knows exactly what I should do - I should throw his ball again.

Gone

I lost the baby.

The almost eight hours in the E.R. seemed interminable until I found out, but really, it’s nothing when you consider what was undone when I finally left. 

Seven weeks of dreaming about the baby because even when I was asleep, he or she was on my mind. Seven weeks of telling him or her to hang in there with my hand on my tummy. Eleven weeks with this child nestled in my belly. Or the seven years now MJ and I have talked about someday, when we’re ready, when we have a baby.

The midwife who came in after the ultrasound told me, “You’re only twenty-seven. You’re young, you’re healthy, there’s no reason you can’t be pregnant again in a few months.”

Maybe in a few months, that’ll seem like something worth saying.

Right now, I want my January baby.

My walked-in-commencement-with-me baby.

My we’re-not-ready-but-we’re-ready baby.

My calling from the top of the stairs, “Um, babe” with an edge of panic in my voice and a pregnancy test in my hand baby.

I want that baby.

If you're not a pantser...

I still think 'pantser' sounds like a dirty word. But for writers it means someone who writes by the seat-of-their-pants. I'm a reformed pantser; not that there's anything wrong with it, but it's not the best method for me personally. Like most of us, I learned that from trial and error.

But. If you're an outliner, there's so much more to figure out after that. So far I've found a combination works best for me - I do a rough outline, then a detailed outline as I go, a few chapters ahead. I just can't plan everything at the start. At least, not yet. I'm still learning!

So I was looking at different outlining methods. Just like with writing as a whole, I don't think there's a good or bad process, just what works best for you.

• For a very high-level outline (that even Pantsers may find helpful), there's the 9-box or Rubik's Cube outline
• Justine Larbalestier talks about spreadsheets (though she actually uses Scrivener now, which I'm curious about). I am a finance dork and love Excel. Spreadsheets tempt me.
• There's the Snowflake method, which seems... exhaustive... but I'm interested to experiment with.
• Or you can outline primary plot points and characterization in half an hour.

I've mentioned, of course, that I already have a method that seems to work for me. At least, it's getting me to the finish line of a rough draft - a few of them, now. But I'm still curious to try these other methods.  Maybe something will make my life easier. Maybe something will make my life easier in revisions. If anyone can make revisions easier for me, I will bake you cupcakes. I'm pretty good at cupcakes. I promise.

But if that doesn't happen, well, I'm sure by the time I've ten or twelve drafts done I'll have found the perfect method. For me. This is an every-man-for-himself sort of thing.

WSJ controvery awesomeness

So I'm sure you guys didn't miss the hoopla about YA; the WSJ posted yet another ill-advised and under-reserched piece about young adult novels this past weekend. To summarize: books for teenagers are too dark nowdays! Also, there was an appropriate reading list divided into "boy books" and "girl books", which I have to admit I was stuck on myself...

Anyway, there was an appropriately irritated response from the kid lit community which included a Twitter trend of #yasaves - some of the responses are here as well as on Twitter.

There's no need for another outrage filled post, so I'm just going to say... I'm so glad we're even having conversations like these.  When I was still searching the YA section for books to read in the '90s, there was so little there. Too old for Babysitters Club and Nancy Drew? Well, there was a handful of issues books like Are You In the House Alone?, A Wrinkle in Time (which I loved) as well as L'Engle's other books, V.C. Andrew's bizarro world and... well, I remember a bunch of romances about terminally ill girls featuring prominently in the tiny YA department of the local bookstore. Slim pickings, and the reason why most of us moved straight on to reading adult fantasy or horror or whatever.

Teens today don't have to skip straight to King and Heinlein right away, though, the way I did (a point which I think the original WSJ article missed -- kids aren't stuck in the YA section, which encompasses such a wide range, from fluffy romance to violent dystopian to gritty issues, that it can now compete with the adult shelves, at least for a while).  There are YA books to hook every reader, including the ones who might not make the jump to adult fiction otherwise.

And while that might be causing some unrest in various parental camps, that's also pretty awesome.

Reason #93 I think the whole world is crazy.

Having a baby is making me feel rebellious.

Let me just say up front, a healthy baby is the most important thing to me. I'll do whatever I have to do for that. But some of the things pregnant women are supposed to abstain from aren't backed up by scientific research - there's a lot of fear-mongering.

So here's a list of things you are not allowed if you are a Good Mother, which may or may not be valid:

• No hot tubs or hot baths
• No sunbathing
• No fake tanner, either, if you're feeling pale
• No hair dye or highlights
• No nail polish and certainly no going in the salon with all the fumes!
• No alcohol
• No sushi
• No deli meat
• No soft ice cream
• No hot dogs                                                   
• No soft cheeses                                              
• No roller coasters
• No rafting or tubing
• No caffeine

I'd heard of the sushi restriction and who, of course, hasn't seen the "No preggers" warning on a bottle of booze?  But others have caught me off-guard, like when I read the no-caffeine thing while sucking down my usual caramel frappucino (for the record, while "no caffeine" is often batted about and lots of pregnant women pass it up completely, there's no reason not to drink it in moderation; too much can just be hard for the fetus to metabolize and can lead to premature uterine contractions. Fun fact!).

The perfectionism of the whole thing bugs me - the idea of trying to do everything right so Nothing Will Go Wrong. There are a lot of things that can go wrong during a pregnancy, and I think that's why we tend to resort to perfectionism. It reminds me of being a college athlete and being superstitious, knowing it was irrational but not wanting to entertain that niggling doubt if something went wrong.

And if you're really worried? Well, then you can buy belly armor to shield your unborn child from the radiation of your cell phone and laptop. Just to be safe.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it through the next 7 months with my sanity intact, y'all. And once they're born, there's so much more to worry about.

Every ending's a beginning...

This weekend was grad school commencement. 

I gave some of my Starbucks frappucino to the University of Maryland College Park turtle. I'm so grateful the whole thing is over. No more late nights doing stats & spreadsheets. No more trying to read a textbook as I bounce around in turbulence on yet another airplane for yet another work trip. No more excruciating Sunday night group meetings. 

And, most of all, another nice thing to put on my resume: M.S., Finance.

But the craziest part of the whole thing?

I didn't walk in commence by myself.

It's really too early to tell anyone (but here I am). I found out, amazingly enough, on Mother's Day. I'm going to be a mom. And I have no idea what I'm doing. We started "trying", sure, but I thought it would take time. Time to get used to the idea and come up with a new plan to replace my infamous Three Year Plan.

Maybe that's why I'm telling you, blog friends. But I'm excited. I'm hoping I can figure it out. And you know I'll blog about it all along the way.

The best cause is your cause.

Now that grad school is over, my life is so much more... orderly.

I ran this morning. I shaved my legs. I packed a healthy lunch to work. I wrote today. I talked to my husband.  My house is (relatively) clean. We made dinner together instead of running to the gyro place around the corner.  Maybe for you guys that's just another day as a real grown-up, but for me, it's a gold-sticker sort of day.

Of course, I can't help but immediately spin out with new plans now that grad school is over, though I'm trying to keep in to a minimum. The only thing I'm letting myself add into my life now is... volunteer work.

Pre-grad-school, some type of volunteer work was almost always a part of my world. I tried a lot of things: soup kitchen, first response medical team, pet rescue, homeless transitional house, scouting, outreach program for homeless teens, SPCA.  Some weren't a good fit for me and some were fun and inspiring, but I learned something everywhere.


I know there are people who think some causes are more important than others. It's a case I've heard made more than once. Breast cancer trumps animal rescue, because people matter more than animals, for instance. Or conservation doesn't matter when there are children starving to death. Or building homes isn't important when the whole planet is going to hell.  And I really don't get it.

There's lots of bad in the world. Lots of work to do. So who cares what "cause" is most important? Let's just get to work doing something, whatever we're most passionate about. It's not like we're all going to unite tomorrow and decide that, hey, today is the day we're going to cure homelessness (though that would be super).  Maybe it's a good thing we all have different passions and gifts to put to work so we can do different things to lessen the suck in the world.

That's what I believe, anyway. And I'm looking forward to transforming that belief back into action.

Photo from the awesome free stock photo site, http://www.sxc.hu. Many thanks to the photog!

L is for Losing the A to Z challenge

Well. I've disappeared for a while, which obviously hasn't been good for the daily blogging and the A to Z challenge.

On the plus side, my (current) time period of biting off more than I can chew has come to an end. I finished my last grad school class on WEDNESDAY! So no more of this:

Which is how I've felt lately.  Like I just can't get my arms around things (though I have to say, grad school was not so much with the cute and cuddly).

J is for the joke on me

I posted last month about how bad things tend to come in threes, and that was true for us (Recap here). First our car died, and it was going to cost as much to (maybe) fix it as it was worth. Our dishwasher died (in the middle of a big home reno project, too, which was a nice touch). And then, the third thing that I didn't want to post about, was that MJ lost his job.

But he got a new job! Yay! Knowing what so many are going through in this economy and job market, I recognize we are so, so blessed. And I'm really not complaining.

But that things about threes?

Yeah, my washing machine just broke.

H is for the homeless, I is for idealism

Once, when a friend and I were planning a trip into D.C., she said, "But seriously, I'm only going in without you if you promise not to talk to the homeless people."

I don't remember what I'd done before to bring that on. I have an admittedly low capacity for resistance to people asking me for food, though, which may make me a sucker. I've volunteered with homeless teenagers before, so I know sometimes people are trying to get money for things that are... not food. But still.

Yesterday I was in Baltimore by myself. I parked my car in a lot and as I walked out,  there was no one around except a young man with a beard and worn-looking clothes. He came over to me, said, "I don't know if you can help me..."

"I'll try," I said, thinking he was going to ask me for directions, which was just going to be bad for both of us. I can barely give directions to my house, forget a city I don't live in.

"I'm trying to buy some food," he said.

"Oh, sure." I pulled my wallet out of my purse and opened it, and then realized - and I'm sure he saw too - that I had around a dozen $20's. I'd just picked up cash the day before to pay a friend for a piece of exercise equipment for our home gym.

I couldn't help but think... man, this guy is probably a nice guy who's down on his luck, but the nicest guy in the world who's hungry has got to be thinking he could punch me in the face and walk off with my wallet right now, even if he never would.

That didn't happen. But I thought two things, afterwards. One, maybe I'm dumb for stopping and opening up my wallet when I'm alone and there's no one else around.  Two, I wish I'd walked around the corner with him to the Subway and bought him lunch instead of giving him a few bucks and hurrying off to my meeting. It would have been a bit more meaningful of a gesture. So what if I'd been two minutes late?

And those two thoughts are completely contradictory.

I know we all have our own philosophies - some people give to panhandlers, some only give to charities that help the homeless. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of those different perspectives.

But personally, when someone asks me for food, I don't see any reason not to give. I guess I'd rather be a little dumb sometimes.

G is for Guinevere

When my parents were choosing names, they debated between Cassiopia (for the space-prostitute-turned-nurse from Battlestar Galactica) and Guinevere, of Arthurian legend.

Neither of these are popular baby names in the U.S.

Mythologically speaking, Cassiopia was the braggart queen that claimed to be prettier than Posiedon's sea nymphs. Because Poseidon was, apparently, a psycho, this resulted in him unleashing a monster on the coast of her country. Cassiopia and her husband chained their daughter Andromeda to a rock as an offering to quell the beast. Luckily, Andromeda was rescued by a convenient hero, Perseus.  Happy ending! Your parents didn't get you killed!

So that story sort of sucks. However, according to the baby name sites, the name means "She whose words excel" (judging from the story, her words excel at starting trouble), so I do like that.

Guinevere, of course, was a great queen in Arthurian legend right up until she cheated on Arthur with Lancelot and caused the downfall of Camelot (Of course - woman-blaming is fun!). The name is translated alternately as meaning "White spirit" or "White wave" or a combination of white and smooth. I was fated by my name to be this damn pale.

The name's generally considered to be rooted in Welsh, but I've also read some argument that Guinevere historically speaking was likely French.

In the end, my parents went with Guinevere.  When I was a kid, I was the only Guinevere I knew. I was obsessed with Arthurian legend (yes, along with the forensic pathology. I was... well-rounded?). I didn't like my name as a child, though. It was so weird, and seriously, I was already weird enough.  I didn't mind when people butchered it and called me "Jen" instead (which is derived from Guinevere).

I grew into my name, though. It helped that I got to leave my childhood home, where it seemed everyone was named Crystal or Jessica. And I married a man with a very English last name which sounds lovely with Guinevere, than my rather ethnic maiden name (which was something akin to Polishlongnameoffski). And that I just plain grew up, and being different - in any way - no longer seems like the little disaster it is at eleven.

In other words, good news, Mom: I've abandoned my childhood plans to change my name to Jane!