Category Archives: Books

Monday Again

I’m tired. That’s pretty much all there is to say about the weekend, apart from the fact that I spent time with very good friends celebrating various things like graduation and moving away and belated housewarmings and spiritual milestones, and now it’s the week again and I didn’t get to rest at all. I deliberately spent this morning away from the computer and wrote longhand in the living room. It was good for my back and my state of mind. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m really tired.

Here’s something of interest for all you author-types who write short novels: the Miami University Press Novella contest.

Submission Rules and Guidelines:

* Winning entry receives $1000 and book publication.
* Postmark by October 15, 2006.
* Reading fee $25, payable to MU Press.
* All entrants receive copy of winning book.
* Submit manuscripts, 40,000 words or less, two title pages, one with author’s name, address and phone number, one without. Author’s name must not appear elsewhere.
* The minimum word count is 60 pages times 300 words or 18,000 words.

Constantly And Unwittingly

Argh! Been tagged by a meme!

I rarely do this sort of thing, but here you are:

The Rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest, then tag three people.

The book is The Witch’s Goddess by Janet and Stewart Farrar, because I’m working on references.

“The lover’s unveiling of a woman’s body is a sacred gesture as old as man himself. In our rationalized world, which no longer believes in ritual but which constantly and unwittingly re-creates it, this act has become the strip-tease, an aberrant form of religious worship debased to the level of commercial spectacle” (Markale, Women of the Celts, p.144). We mean it here in the original sacred sense.

If I had arranged my stack of current reference books differently, you might have gotten information on a species of swan, or on medieval technology.

I don’t think I’ve ever tagged anyone in my life, because I’m not fond of being tagged for time-consuming things myself so I don’t do it to others (this was fun, though, which is why I did it.) So with no imperatives involved, I’d be interested in knowing what Meallanmouse is reading, and what books are near Sandman7‘s computer, and I’m always interested in knowing what volumes Dr. Anne has on the go because she is Terribly Smart, and Witty to boot. And frankly, if any of my Gentle Readers are interested in sharing sentences six through nine on page 123 of the closest book, consider yourselves tagged and share!

ESTC Update

Total words, ESTC: 8,054
Total words today: 1,707

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8,063 / 50,000
(16.1%)

Yes, of course I’m having a mild panic attack at the thought of being almost a fifth done, why do you ask?

I had forgotten the joy of typing information into the bibliography when my brain temporarily runs dry. It has to get done at some point, it keeps me typing and looking at books, and has the added bonus of increasing word count.

For the first time while writing a contracted book, I’m not writing directly in the master document. I open a new document file and type the day’s work into it, then copy and paste it into the master at the end of the day. I like it: it frees me up to write whatever I need or want to write without wondering if it’s in the right place, or without being afraid of the permanence of it. I also save the daily file in another folder, so if I need to go back it’s there.

I finally finished reading the contracts and sent them back this morning.

And look, I have enough time before I have to fetch the boy to go lie down on the floor and try to straighten my lower back. It’s really been aching this past week. Perhaps I shall read some more of Son of a Witch as well. Also, I do believe there’s a frozen Mars Bar in my immediate future.

Pleasant weather we’re having.

In Which She Admits How Much Of A Fraidy-Cat She Truly Is

Thank you everyone for your expressions of support and sympathy for the tree massacre. We’ll be planting the crabapple this fall, and in the meantime we’ll be putting up eight-foot strips of lattice and planting fast-growing vines to screen our yard from the one behind us, and to provide some sort of shade so that Liam and I can play in the yard again. If the lilacs don’t die, they’ll take about four years to come back properly, and provide privacy and shade.

Liam is off at daycare again today. He woke up four times last night after we got home around 11.30, one time enough to need to be picked up and cuddled back to sleep. Oddly enough, the loud electrical storm we had didn’t seem to bother him when things were crashing and flashing right above the house for a good half hour. But he woke up roughly every couple of hours, which meant that we did too, to lie in bed and wait to see if he’d wake up completely or just half-awaken and cry a bit before self-soothing back to sleep. As a result we didn’t sleep that well, either. Good thing we had an excellent evening out relaxing beforehand.

We think his molars are coming in, because the random biting has started up again and he sticks anything and everything into the back of mouth to gnaw. That might be one of the reasons he woke up so often, too.

I ran around and did errands this morning after dropping Liam off, and one of them involved going to the Chapters on the West Island to kick around for an hour until the shop I needed to visit in Fairview mall opened at 10:00. (And the only thing I’m going to say about the second shop is that I seem to have reached a pants size that’s smaller than I wore before I was pregnant. Smaller than I’ve ever worn, actually. I’m not sure how that happened.) And while I was in the bookstore, I did something that absolutely terrified me: I asked a clerk about their policy on authors signing shelf stock.

I am incredibly shy. To admit in person, in real-life public, that I wrote not only one book but three is a huge thing. A huge, terrifying thing. I have been in dozens and dozens of shops that carry my books, and I just kind of see them there on the shelf, then smile a bit and look away quickly, because heaven forbid anyone sees me and somehow intuits that those books were written by me, because then people will make a fuss and look at me, and I will melt from confusion and embarrassment. Not because I’m ashamed of my books, you understand. I’m very proud of them. Just not in a loud “look what I did!” sort of way. (Journal completely aside, of course. Writing about it is different. And even here I tend to worry about the flaws and the challenges more than anything else.) This is the main reason why I still haven’t done an event or a signing.

I managed to not ask this question of the five friendly staff members who paused to wish me a good day and ask if I needed any help while I wandered around. There was just something so calm and kind about Jessica (nametags are so helpful) when she was scanning the books I was purchasing, so I asked her. And she said that often they had authors in for events, or they dropped off consignment copies, and was I looking for a signed copy of something in particular? And then I had to say that no, I was, um, an author, and they had three copies of my books on the shelf, and did they want them signed? She said then that she was pretty sure the store would love me to sign them, took my name, and called the manager to verify. The manager was indeed thrilled, and said yes yes yes, and so off I went to fetch the two copies of Solitary Wicca and the single copy of Spellcraft (no Green Witch, alas), and I signed them.

The Indigo chain puts stickers that indicate signed books on autographed copies.

So there; that was today’s terribly big adventure. Hurrah to Jessica. I hope she has an excellent day.

Now I have fourish hours in which to work on Swan Sister, do a draft outline of a table of contents for a book I proposed in case someone asks me for it, and practice the cello for a bit in prep for this weekend’s rehearsal.

Concert News And More

This has been one of those days where you feel like it was a bad day but can’t really put your finger on why. There were things that kept it from being good, but nothing that made it bad, really. Liam was out of sorts too.

Breaking concert news: Yes, there are only eight days until the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra Canada Day concert! Go put another star on your calendar so you don’t forget! No, actually I’m just here to tell you that the time has been confirmed, and everything will begin at 20h00.

We have an encore prepared should everything go supremely well. I don’t know if we’ll be able to play it after two hours of intense music. I think, honestly, that after we pull off the kick-ass final piece on the program, our bows will fall from limp hands. Wednesday night’s rehearsal saw me aceing the stuff I’d been messing up till then, and messing up other stuff I could play before. After a night like that I never know if I should be impressed or find something blunt with which to bludgeon myself.

I got an email from a fellow Daughter of the Flame today telling me how much she’d enjoyed my books. I didn’t realise how much I needed to hear something like that. Every now and again I get an unsolicited email from a stranger sharing this with me, and it surprises me every single time.

Writing tomorrow. A date with an old friend who still hasn’t met Liam on Saturday. Band on Sunday this weekend. Two Solstice rituals, one on Sunday, the other on Monday. I wish I had more energy to look forward to it all, let alone work up the energy to do it.