I finished Mary Balogh's Simply Unfogettable today. I spent the first chapter or so depressed because I am not Mary Balogh, and then, as always happens with her books, I forgot the world and just kept turning pages until the end. Ah, my kind of book.

I think I've given up on the other book. Interesting that I so recently ranted about modifier-itis because this book could win a prize. The narrative is overly detailed and so thick with adjectives and adverbs that if you put a spoon in it, it would stand up. Not only that, but there are not 1 but 2 chapters that functioned as prologues. I got to page 20 before there any of the main characters appeared. I hardly ever give up on a book so early so I might try to plow through a few more pages, except that because of not 1 but 2 prologues, I already know what's going to happen and so far I don't care enough about the main character to think why I should bother...

So, what to read next? Hmm. What a luxury. It's a long weekend. Probably I should start on one of the biggies. Harry Potter maybe. Or GRR Martin. Or Jordan.

Today I finished The Cuckoo's Egg, Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Cliff Stoll I started it yesterday after I finished Mitnick's book. I could hardly stand to put it down. Not only that, but despite the title, there's actually a romance in it! The book is about a Berkeley astronomer who ends up tracking a hacker, just as the title suggests. It's his very readable account of what happened. First, the easy reaction - the events took place in 1986 and 87, when I was living in Berkeley, so as I read about the places he names, I'd think oh, yeah, sure, I had classes in that building or, sure, I only lived a few blocks from there. I was in LBL once. Did I ever see him riding his bike to or from the Lab? And that part about him sitting down and being joined by Louis Alvarez, well, wow! I wish I had a job where nobel laureates would just walk up and talk to you!

All this took place over 20 years ago. The technology he talks about is now old (1200 baud modems?) and many are no longer acceptable. Telnet? That's enough to make a Network Admin want to pass out from the gaping security hole. VPN baby. But what gets me is that all those years ago, the government couldn't get its act together to take over and put a stop to the guys who, by the way, were selling their info to the KGB. The problems were apparent to everyone and really, if not for Stoll's persistence, the guys would 1) probably never been caught and 2) eventually gotten someplace that would have been deadly. Nothing's changed.

Anyway, it was really fun reading and kept me turning pages. What will I read next? I think I'm ready for some fiction. Maybe the prologue trouble book...

I finished Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Deception. Very interesting book and a rather interesting approach to structuring the book so he doesn't admit to having done anything that would get him into more trouble. It's a scary book for anyone in Info Sec. All their PIX Cisco routers are useless against someone like him. I think my favorite story was the one where he and a friend were at a tradeshow and saw a reward offered to anyone who successfully "hacked" an unhackable box sitting there on the floor. So instead of doing keyboard hacks for OS or other security holes, they waited till the booth was not appropriately manned and then picked the lock on the cabinet that gave them access to the cables. Once appropriately switched around, they had full privileges to the box and access to the source code, which they were printing out when the guys came back from lunch.

And now, I will brilliantly bring this around to writing. The trade show guys assumed their box would be attacked by someone sitting at a keyboard somewhere. They never thought of the physical security. Assumptions will keep a writer in slush forever. Assumptions make you blind, deaf and mute to what's really needed in your story. What have you assumed about your story? For me, I often find that I have assumed that certain events MUST happen in a certain order. But, is that true? Really, really true? Once you permit yourself to question your chronology, sometimes you see another way. What about your characters? What have you assumed about your characters? I am so tired of writers (always unpublished) who have, in fact, solicited my opinion and then get upset when I question an event in their story. "Oh, no, Hero Hunk has to do that because fill in some overly sensitive over-explained in the narrative emotional crap. Same for the heroine. OK, so maybe that's not really an assumption unless you count the assumption that lack of real motivation can be cured by sufficient narrative explaining why the motivation isn't really weak. B.S. Since I'm on a roll, I also get irritated by writers who won't even try to give up adjectives and modifiers. Lazy, lazy lazy. (Originally, I had six "lazys") You deserve to be in slush you modifier addicted hacks! Try it. Watch what happens. Sometimes (hell, often!) the writing pops. Do without so you can tell when to use them so it counts.

I started another of the books in TBR, but the opening is a thinly disguised prologue (see this about prologues) and it's doing just about all the bad things prologues do to otherwise good stories. It's not diguising gender, thank goodness, otherwise I'd just throw the book away. But I'm only on page 2 and I know that the little relic a character just put back in the box while he thinks in flashback, will be the cause of havoc to come. Oh, man, why? Why? Anyway, I'll give it a few more pages...

And, here's what's in the TBR pile:

• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini


• A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin


• Simply Unforgettable, Mary Balogh


• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling


• The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd


• Just Peachy, Jill Winters


• Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child


• Knife of Dreams, Robert Jordan


• The Cuckoo's Egg, Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, Cliff Stoll


• The Code Book, The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, Simon Singh


• The Art of Deception, Kevin Mitnick


• Hacking, The Art of Exploitation, Jon Erickson


• Undead and Unreturnable, MaryJanice Davidson

That's not all of it, but most of it. I can't find the rest. I moved a bunch of stuff around when I was making room for school reading.

P.S. I hate that blogger can't figure out that hmtl lists shouldn't have the stupid extra line breaks. God knows what my hack will do when I publish this. Let me know if you can't read the list.

edited to fix the stupid list. IE can't handle it.

General Status:

1. Material is in the mail to my agent scheduled for a Friday delivery


2. It was not pouring down rain when I went to mail the above items


3. The printer repair person is coming sometime Tuesday

In light of the above, I have no idea what to do with myself. I'm home early because most of town is out of power and the gym was closed. I could read, and maybe I'll do that, just to kind of refresh after spending so many intense days freaking over trying to get draft material less lame than it is.

First, I had to go back to work today. Ick. I hate 5:00 am. Just on principle. Then today I really really really HAD to put the stuff into the mail to my agent. It's a lot of stuff. I'm not happy with it, but she supposedly understands that most of it's draft. More on that later, because I really don't want to miss out on the rant that has me most upset. I have a LaserJet 4200 that I've been slowly falling out of love with. Today, with 77% of the toner unused it is not printing clean pages. Yes, I cleaned it. Via the paper procedure and the manual procedure. Twice. I admit, it's been doing this for a long long time. Back when I had a window of opportunity to get it serviced, I couldn't find anyone who would come to the house (which I have done in the past) So now I must find someplace to DRIVE to with the stupid printer. I had to apologize for the crappy print outs in my cover letter. And now I have to find someplace to take the printer to get fixed. (any one tempted to point out any of the glaringly obvious things I should have done to prevent this is missing the whole point so please, just make those comments in some other blog. Thank you for taking pity on me.)

PLUS! I do not have mailing envelopes large enough to send the material so tomorrow I have to go do that, too. This is worse than it seems. I know you're thinking, so what, Carolyn? You have to go to the post office in the drug store anyway. Well, there's a difference between going to the Post Office (in the drug store) with stuff ready to mail and stuff that isn't even in an envelope. Normally, I only send synopsis and three chapters. My regular Tyvek envelopes are more than sufficient for that. But this package is two synopses, plus chapters, three short erotic things (short as in 20 pages each) and two "project descriptions."

And now you're asking, Carolyn, what is a Project Description because there is nothing in the Manual for Neurotic Writers that describes the format and requirements of a air quotes Project Description end air quotes. That's because I made it up. She asked for a description of the projects that are not in proposal form. Writers have been known to be sucked into an alternate dimension and beaten with old typewriter ribbons for failing to follow TO THE LETTER the format requirements for sending materials to a literary agent. I'm already a client, so I guess they won't use the typewriter ribbon. Probably I'll be pelted with empty bottles of white out.

Which seques into the stuff that I will put into an envelope of the required size sometime tomorrow, probably in a driving rain because that is the kind of weather we have here this time of year. I read the chapters for Shift and parts were awesome but the parts that were not just need to be cut and there just wasn't time to cut and make the appropriate adjustments. When I read the synopsis, I hate the whole thing. I sent the synopsis and the first chapter. I expect to be told to resend when there's more. Well, she whine said end whine. Today at the gym I ripped apart the synopsis for Possession and decided that the chapters were far too passive in effect (not grammar) and that it needed A LOT more of my heroine's baggage in it. I have the synopsis fixed, I guess. But again, the chapters need work. That's why there's the concept of DRAFT. The PD's are OK I guess. I like Dark Elf. It's cool.

It's the 3 shorts that have me worried. Last night I read the massively revised one and, setting aside any personal issues I ought to worry about from the story I wrote, damn it was good. And I think the 2nd one is good, too. The third made me laugh while I was reading it. But here's the thing. Not one of the 3 is like anything I've ever read before. Seriously. There's sex and stuff, which was the whole point, but the people involved have issues and they don't necessarily resolve them. Well, I appear to be babbling. I think that's the precursor to getting sucked into the alternate dimension.

Darn. Back to work tomorrow. At least it's casual week. Got practically no writing done today. My son and I spent most of the day eating our gingerbread house and doing a puzzle. It's holographic and blinding. But we finished it and it was really fun.

I guess slippage has occurred. Maybe stuff will go out Wednesday...

Last night I printed out all the stuff I intend to send to my agent. I figured I'd do a read through, maybe fix a few things and I'd be good to go. Alas and sigh that is not what happened. The first thing I started reading was one of the short stories (which I'm hoping can be more novella length) and I made massive changes. Huge, enornomous, ripping out scribbling in the margins and on the back of the pages changes.

Overall, I've had a lovely day. The box of "Mystery Stuff" for my son (from American Scientific Surplus was a hit even beyond my expectations. This is in large part due to the fact that my son is quite a joyful boy. How many 10 year old boys would be thrilled to get pink birthday candles, plastic happy birthday signs, ballarina gift bags (for his cousin Hannah, he said) garage organizer stuff, Memo pens (actually, those were cool) size 7E shoe extenders, candle holders, cards, a clock, thumbtack holder/sticker-inee things and on and on. He gave the garage organizing material to his grandfather and the candle holders to his grandmother.

There was a lot of mystery stuff and he had great fun going through it. Then we went to my brother's and my son got to play with his cousins and get and give more gifts. Then home, etc. Fortunately, I am not in charge of cooking. My other brother came over for Christmas dinner and he had fun playing his his uncle. My son and I worked on a jigsaw puzzle. From a very early age, he was killer at puzzles. We were up to 1000 piece puzzles by the time he was three. I thought I was good until I saw him in action. It's humbling for an adult to get shown up by a 3 year old, and it happened until I just learned to shut up and let him put the pieces together. He has a freaky (for me) spacial ability. He used to do Blair Witch Project type sculptures (If you haven't seen the movie, don't ask) as soon as he could safely hold a hammer. They were life size and larger.

So, now the kitchen is clean and the dishwasher is running. I got a very small amount of writing done. I think I've narrowed my short storis down to the best three to send. I have a sneaking suspicion nothing will get mailed until Tuesday. Most is ready to go, I think. I hope.

My son's better, thank goodness. I've finished almost all my shopping. Then, my son and I took a very long walk, an hour and a half with the border collie who behaved herself wonderfully. She's very high strung, but at least she's no longer freaked by every car that goes by or every dog or person she sees which she used to be when we first started taking her for walks or runs. We had a fun day and now I feel less like a slug for the nice long walk.

I've been going through the material I'm supposed to send to my agent. I think it will have to wait for Monday to go out. I'm trying to get the best shorts ready. The problem is that at least one of them is completely and utterly politically incorrect, but it's got the most interesting and unique voice I've ever had. I think I can tone it down a bit and maintain the twistedness. The WIP chapters are simply not ready to go yet, so they'll have to wait. I may send the synopsis which I pretty much got done last night. Shift needs some fixing, too. But now I have only the weekend plus Monday to crank out a lot of work. I'd been counting on my son being in day care or at soccer camp Wed-Fri. This morning, he decided he wasn't up to the soccer camp and then came back to me crying because he wasn't sure he'd made the right decision. The poor kid. Day care was closed, but I took him shopping with me as noted above and we had an excellent time. It's just as well he didn't do 8 hours of soccer.

So, that's where things stand going into the holidays.

Got an email from my agent this morning. We talked a couple of days ago about my various projects. So, without saying too much, she has had a request to see all of it. All of it. I need to get it in the mail today or tomorrow.

My son is sick, the poor kid. For some time, he's been hoping to get sick and stay home from school. But he's too healthy and never cracks a fever. Tonight he finally had a fever and he smiled when I told him. Then immediately complained that he didn't feel good, followed by "I finally get sick and it's winter vacation!" As I said, I feel for him. We finished our gingerbread house today. I have learned a lot about construction now, so next time it won't take (I hope) quite so much icing to hide the flaws. Luckily, the point was to have fun and that we did. It's a several day project, but worth it. We had a really good time.

I didn't work on the WIP today, but instead put together the description for Dark Elf. It actually came together quite well. It's almost (but not quite) a synopsis. I also did one for the historical after The Rake, which for lack of a better idea I am calling "The girl who asked for Help." That refers merely to the notion that I want to write a story about a heroine who gets herself in trouble and instead of stupidly trying to get out of it herself, asks for help. From the handsome rich sex god hero, of course.

We'll see how much gets done on these days off. Hopefully my son continues with just a mild fever and will recover quickly.

So I went and worked a bunch on the WIP. Did OK. The new chap 3 is closer to what I want. All to the good. Then I broke down and read the 1st three chapters of The Rake, and hell if it isn't pretty damn good! So, then I started freaking about being able to maintain that for the rest of the book. Ok, so then I went and read Shift, and considering how fast I wrote it, it was actually darn OK. I kept thinking, whoa, this could be really cool. Can be, too. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll have time to try to pull together some sort of something or other about Dark Elf and Historical Alpha Man Help Me. (I'm laughing at that, but it's an inside joke, as in totally inside my head and it would be embarassing to explain it to anyone.)

This is me, trying hard to enjoy the moment without spoiling it by freaking out. OK. Moment over. Freaking.

I don't have to go back to work until 12/27! Yay!!!! Not that I'm excited about that or anything. Last night after wasting far too much time doing anything but writing, I sat down and wrote the new chapter three. It's OK, I think. Needs more work. Doh.

Today, Paige Wheeler called me and we talked about the status of projects Lisa had with me and etc. So, the upshot is that I am feeling less nuerotic about that. She wants to see the rough proposal I'd sent Lisa for Shift, which I will get into the mail to her shortly and is looking forward to seeing the proposal I've been working on. She would also like to see even a rough description of what I'm planning for Dark Elf and the next historical I'd like to do. She likes the chapters for The Rake and I do believe she'll be sending that out in the early new year, plus she said my writing style is very different (well, yes, that's so) but that it's fresh and she likes it a lot. All of which makes me want to go back and read the Rake proposal. So, from having nothing going anywhere, it now looks like she'll be shopping three books! I told her I could probably do two books a year and she said good, that's what I need to be doing. Yikes. I knew that, though.

I get all nervous and even upset when people say I'm different. At my orals (yes, becoming but a distant memory!) they said I was an independent and original thinker. Instant upset. Oh no! They think I'm weird and difficult. So, when people mention the way I write, well, OK. I guess it's true. Whatever. I do get nervous and worried about it, but then I think, so what? I don't really want to be like everyone else. Limits are there to be tested and I believe in transgression as a way of thought. That's why some people get pissed off at my books. Right. I didn't do it YOUR way. Too freaking bad.

The problem is whether any of that will get me out of the day job.

I wonder if that huge bunch of cash from the chain blogging thing is on it's way to me now? I have to go Christmas shopping tomorrow and I'm not exactly sure there's money in the bank. Transgression as a way of thought, denial as a way of life. Hey, Horatio, how's that for a philosophy?

So, there's this blog equivalent of a chain letter and since I want to be wealthy beyond my wildest imagination I dare not ignore the tag. (That's what will happen, right? I'll get rich, or meet the centaur or something? Right? Can whoever's in charge of this let me know?)

Seven Things to Do Before I Die:

1. Make enough money writing to quit the day job
2. Write an indisputably really fantastic book
3. See my son set for a happy life
4. Travel and visit friends
5. Check out 1-6 of the "Seven People I Want to Join In" and take a wild guess
6. See the aurora borealis
7. Relax

Seven Things I Cannot Do:

1. Sing
2. Stay organized
3. Write comedy
4. Finish stuff that doesn't have a deadline
5.
6.
7.

Seven Things That Attracted Me to My Spouse/SO:

1. Intelligence
2. Humor
3. Musical ability
4. Physical Fitness
5. Parisian Accent
6. He seemed to like me (of all people!)
7. The letters he wrote to me while he was in Paris and I was in Berkeley.

Seven Things I Say (Or Write) Most Often:

1. Oh, for crying out loud
2. What idiot came up with that [database] schema?
3. No wonder it doesn't work
4. Well,
5. Oh, shit, I forgot __________.
6. I mean, shoot.
7. Arghh!

Seven Books or Series That I Love:

1. Mary Renault's Alexander the Great series
2 George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series
3. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
4. William Faulkner, Absolom! Absolom!
5. Toni Morrison, Beloved
6. Mary Balogh, The Famous Heroine
7. Charlotte Bronte, Villette

Seven Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again:

1. Lord Of the Rings (all 3)
2 Contract Killer (Jet Li, Hong Kong version)
3. The Defender (Jet Li, Hong Kong version is Bodyguard from Beijing)
4. Easter Parade
5. American in Paris
6. Singing in the Rain
7. Turning Point

Seven People I Want to Join In (Be Tagged):

1. The Centaur Warrior in Narnia
2. The Uruk-Hai in Lord of the Rings
3. Ioan Gruffudd
4. Colin Firth (dressed as Mr. Darcy)
5. Adrian Paul
6. Johnny Depp
7. Jade Lee (guess that means you better get a blog, huh?)

So, Friday I went to bed a 9pm and slept until 9:30 the next day. Pooped out early last night, too. Two soccer games today... I got a decent amount of writing done, but my head is still polluted - I'm not fresh. There's something missing from the work just yet. It's wonderful, though, to have time to write!

I've read Mary Balogh's Secret Pearl (FAB!) and am now reading Laurel K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams.

Oh, and the this always happens to me: I ALWAYS think I have one more weekend before Christmas and then discover to my horror that I do not. As I realized yesterday, says she who has NOT finished all her shopping.

Off to soccer.

I hab a cod ib my noze. I could fall asleep now and I might. Might or might not get some writing done. I just want to sleep. My brohter is over with his kids and I should be social. Ick.

Today was my long day, but the last one. Until next semester, I suppose. We had a nice time chatting about writing, TV, SciFi and stuff. I hope they all finish their books and let me know when they sell them.

Got a fair amount done on the WIP. Made a couple of small but crucial changes. I split off most of the back half of chapter 3, stuck it in a chapter 4 and am plowing through finishing off 3 with the adjustments for the changes made. I'm feeling better about it. I've yet to do a full read through of what I've got, but soon, and then we'll see if it seems worth anything. I hope so. Then (ick) polish the synopsis and get it off to my agent. (That, of course, is assuming I still have an agent. Lately, I'm stressing about that, too. I'm told I'm now with Paige, but hey, for all I know she's read the chapters for The Rake and decided to send me a no thanks after all letter.) Sigh.

Getting some work done. I'm winging it right now which I think is OK. We'll see. I want to fix chapter 3 and have something to polish and right now, I'm spending too much time wondering what will happen 200 pages from now. The thing is, it's pretty certain that the chapters I have now will have little to do with the story I end up writing, and that is OK. CK just needs to have something in hand plus a pen to sign a really big check. ROTFLMAO

Confession: I'm more interested right now in the elf thing. I had some fab ideas about that and at the gym I worked on that mostly. But that is not the story to follow up with, though that is the proposal that I'll do next.

Also, I'm bored with everything. Tired. Bored. Afraid to read any of the books I've been drooling over reading because I don't want to end up feeling like a talentless hack. The scorn seems to have worn off.

Projects that I want to get to and turn into projects that pay:
Dark elf
Help me Alpha Man historical
Shift
Possession world stories
A novella kind of thing that was my recent guilty pleasure when my brain was busting from the Lit-traw-chure.

That second one there is a neat idea for the next historical. Totally cool. It will rock totally.

I'm still adjusting to no Lit-traw-chure (pronounce with snooty accent) reading. As mentioned in a previous post, I tried to write and found myself reading my work as if I was going to to quizzed on it. Which, interestingly enough, has made me think that a lot of modern lit is pretty short on story telling. This is based on a bunch of personal essays I had to read in which virtually all of them ended in this vague kind of aren't-I-a-great-writer sort of no-conclusion. I refer to it as the "mumble ending." There's no satisfying ending because that's hard work and low brow apparently. With a "mumble ending" you can pretend you're being meaningful and artsy when really you're just being lazy. Get a life you essayists! Go read some Mark Twain. He wasn't afraid of a real ending.

I had the laptop with me at soccer practice, but I read instead. Not a good book. Ah, yes, Megan (see comment in prev. post) was right. I've found scorn to be quite refreshing.

Anyone who has scorn for my writing can just shut up about it.

Thank you.

Crud. I started working on my proposal chapters (I like the first two paragraphs pretty well) and I realized my mind has been polluted by 2000 years of Literature. I need to write like me, not anybody else. Urk. How does one cleanse one's mental palette? I already read Einstein, for crying out loud.

Sigh

I passed the oral exam (which, by the way, is pass/no pass.) Perversely, I'm now feeling completely without direction. I don't know what to do with myself. Yes, in just a bit, I will tear into my proposal, but the TBR pile beckons.

A big thank-you to everyone who sent me good wishes. They worked!

You know, the good thing is that I haven't looked at the proposal for days, so I can come at it fresh(er). I'm going to go do that for a bit before I go pick up my son from school.

0 days left to my exam. (not counting today) It's tomorrow. Yesterday I read some essays on Melville's Piazza Tales which made me feel stupid. Read some poetry today, may try some more later. But mostly, I'm sick of reading. What's the big fat deal with poetry anyway?

. . . Poetry . . .
I don't get it
    the stuff
Flies right over my head like
a puff in a
             a HOWL of protest.
(and I didn't have to read Ginsberg, I only read about him)
    NOOOOO!
It doesn't rhyme
There's all kinds of slime time rime
    in my head from
Not counting the dumb
Sill
Lab
Ells
in the right order
Free Verse? I think not.
    (in-- out-- passé-- or avant garde?
oh for a bit of the Bard, any bard
pick one)
The bills
from all those books
caused ills pills gills dills
from the looks
I bought on line
Hook and sinker
What a stinker
I hate poetry.

Ah. Yes. My brain has turned to mush slush.

Updated to add: So, for a change of pace I pulled out my materials on Einstein's Theories of General and Special Relativity. Read them plus a little Newton thrown in just to start things off on the right foot, and now my brain is completely (well almost) empty of poetry. Ah, nothing like being distracted by physics. I'm sure that actual physicists would but laugh at me, but since they aren't likely to be avid enough readers of romance to find my blog, I think I'm relatively safe from ridicule. What's important is that I feel much better. I don't feel like reading literature, though. Or that other stuff that sometimes rhymes but often doesn't and never just comes out and says what it's about.

1So, I have done no reading. Sooooooo moving right along, while engaging in avoidance behavior, I was checking my weblogs and found some interesting things. The following words are leading people to my site: demon sex possession incantation. Interesting, no?

Went to see Narnia last night. It was good, my son LOVED it. But somehow, it was missing something for me. Harry Potter was better. Lord Of the Rings was a lot better. For me, the Narnia books did not hold up upon a later reading, by age 12, the religious themes were far too obvious to me. I could not get that out of my head for the movie. However, I will say that the centuar warrier totally rocked and whoever played the White Witch was brilliant. The house looked like the same one used for the BBC Narnia (which was hideously bad, I thought) and was totally cool. Definately a go see movie, but see Harry Potter first. I guess I found Narnia to be lacking in complexity, but the books lack the same complexity, being, as they are, allegories. Which, for me, explains why, say, Milton's Pardise Lost is far more interesting to read than Spencer's Faerie Queen. Allegory, by it's very nature, seems to require simplicity without moral complexity. In the end, kind of boring.

2 Ok, back from book signing at the Waldenbooks at Northgate Mall in San Rafael. Very well organized. The raffle was inspired. Am taking son and sister to see Narnia in a bit, so for now, only short bits of reality for the blog.

Last night, well, this morning, I guess, I woke up about 2am and opened my eyes to the sky seen through my sliding glass door. It was crystal clear and very very dark. The stars looked impossibly bright and close enough to reach out and take a few just to have in my pocket. I dozed for a bit with stories on my mind.

There are downsides to where I am right now, but a view of stars in the sky makes up for a lot.

3 This is my long day and it was long. Finished the essays book, and now concentrating on finishing Perloff. Then reviewing, thinking and thinking and oh, probably some panic, too. Have been thinking about the current proposal and dark elf. Had some interesting thoughts about structuring that. I am SO looking forward to 12.13...

Also, my agent called me yesterday, she's leaving the agency to start an MFA program. So, now I'm with Paige, apparently, which should be a good thing. Right now, I'm too worried about school. Too much stuff going on.

4 days to the exam (not counting today). Nearly done with the penultimate book, halfway+ with the last.

Met with my prof today. She seems to like my draft chapters. I can't wait for 12.13 when I can concentrate on this.

Mostly, I am reading for school. Damn those books with small print! Calvino is out of the way. Am working my way simultaneously through Marjorie Perloff essays on poetry and a collection of personal essays. As one who is poetry impaired, Perloff leaves me mostly feeling stupid and panicky for not having time to track down any of the interesting poets she mentions (but they're not on the list, so the heck with them!) I've found I'm irritated (again) with the modernists who had wacko numerology theories -- Now, I am an admirer of H.D. and think Pound may not have been quite the mentor he told her he was --snarky comment from Carolyn -- but her Hermes Trismegestus stuff is just baloney and so, for that matter is Pound and his numerology AND Yeats's, too. So there. Perloff alerts me that this business was by no means isolated. Anybody paying attention to recent mathematics and network theory can see that the mysticism they took from supposed "numerical coincidences" are, in fact, completely explainable in the math. Or imho, just plain bullshit. I forget who said "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" But more or less that's what happened to those poor souls. They were poets, but that doesn't excuse a lack of intellectual rigor elsewhere.

Just got back from The Book Ladies in Corona CA, which is about 500 miles or so south. Boy, I feel like royalty. They picked me up at the airport and gave me a ride back, too! I sold 19 copies of A Darker Crimson! I'm still mulling over the experience, because it was a retail eye opener for me. Yes, 19 copies of my book were sold and I signed that many, but only one or two were in person. All the rest were either pre-orders or phone orders. Yes. There was a stack of books for me to sign when I got there, names indicated, and then the phone would ring and one of the Book Ladies would come around with a slip of paper with names on them for use to personalize the autograph. This tells me they have awesome service, and they hand sell. They know what their customers like, too.

I can see how compelling that can be in an area that's traffic congested. There are towns here that would be 20 minutes away if there were no traffic. But it's 45 minutes. It's horrible. I never go to those towns. Traffic is turning California back into the never-leave-the-village of Medieval Europe (says the woman who flew 1000 miles today.)

I got some good work done on chapter 3 last night. Few words, good progress. I have to get up early for soccer games tomorrow... I was going to work tonight, but I'm bushed. I left the house at 7:45am got home at 7:15pm. Urk. Tired. Have headache.

Went to the movies with my son tonight. I can't even remember the name of it anymore, but he swore that everyone at his school (he's in 5th grade) was talking about it and had seen it. Dreadful movie. He laughed at all the parts that appeal to fifth grade boys. I tried to talk him into Pride and Prejudice, but no go. Falling down and burning holiday decorations pretty much did it for him. Sigh.

Tomorrow, Dec 03 2005 starting at 1:00 pm, I'll be signing A Darker Crimson at The Book Ladies 511 N. Main St. Suite 103, Corona CA. There will be lots of other authors there, too, so it'll be fun. I'm flying down and back in the same day because my son has two soccer games on Sunday. If you live in the area, drop by!

Am going to go work on chapter 3.

My long day seemed slightly less long than usual since there was no soccer practice. But I've only just got home and it's nearly 11:00! Yikes. Tired, naturally, but mentally hyped. Since my school book is in the car, I think I'll go work on chapter 3.

How on earth did it get to be December? OK, so my son's soccer practice was canceled tonight because it's raining pretty hard. Am I working? Not exactly. I get these emails from Leonides Chocolates in New York because they're Belgian chocolates to die for (it's cheaper to order them from NY than from the EU) and sometimes I splurge, usually around this time of year. So, for some reason I'm irritated that the images in the email are blocked "for my privacy." Yes, I know that images often hide all sorts of nastiness, but not images of Belgian chocolate! That can't be! Yes, I also know that I can display them easily. But I'm just annoyed at all the baddies out there wrecking the experience for chocolate lovers like me. I'd rather just have the whole email show up in all it's Belgian chocolate glory. Ooh, pralines. Marzipan. Dark chocolate. What will I order? The little chocolate Santas are kind of hokey, but there's three kinds of chocolate there! White, dark and milk. Will they taste hokey? I think not. Plus, the boxes are totally cool and they come all wrapped with white paper and a ribbon and packed in styrofoam blocks.

So, I guess I should go do some reading or something before it's time to leave for school. Except, I'm kind of hungry.