Who would have thought it?

      No Comments on Who would have thought it?

Last weekend we went to my mother-in-law’s house to spend the night. It was a pleasant time, spent chatting, laughing, and eating. Then, in the morning, we took a drive to Mt. Rainier.
Now, first I should probably explain that although I have lived only about an hour from Mt. Rainier for the past 20 years, I’ve only visited there a handful of times. If anyone asked me why, I’d probably answer that I don’t like to visit the mountain, that I’m not much of an outdoor person. Which shows what an idiot I can sometimes be. (It’s beautiful!)

Our first stop on the mountain was the location of a spring that had at one time been a health resort. There was an easy 1 mile trail we could follow, which led us into the forest and past a cabin that had belonged to one of the first Europeans in the area.

We walked along, enjoying the quiet among the trees, until a movement just to our right caught our eyes. What a surprise to find a mother deer and 2 youngsters following along beside us! They showed no fear whatsoever, and as we progressed along the trail, so did they. They followed us for about 20 minutes, until we finally reached the point where we needed to head back to the parking lot.

Lucky for us, we had our cell phones with their handy-dandy cameras. I think the deer even posed for us!

But the magic of the mountain  didn’t end there. We continued to head up the mountain, toward and area appropriately called Paradise. There we stopped at a picnic area to have a quick lunch.



   

If you wonder why quick, just take a look at the ice!

Here it is, late August, and Mt. Rainier still has many feet of snow left on the ground! We were prepared for summer weather, and were only wearing lightweight jackets.

Brrrrrr.

Now that I think about it, that white stuff on the ground is probably the reason I haven’t visited Mt. Rainier too often. I am much more a warm weather person than a cold one.

Crazy?

      2 Comments on Crazy?

When I write, I have this strange procedure I have to follow.

I wake up as early as I can, make a cup of coffee, and then go to my office and close my door. I have to be very, very careful to have no interaction with anyone.

If I successfully begin writing with no human interaction, I usually have a great writing session. If there is a glitch and I cannot escape before some chipper morning person wishes me a good morning or tries to engage me in conversation, it usually takes at least an hour to get back into the proper frame of mind to write.

I thought I was crazy. I mean really, who in their right mind needs perfect solitude to write? I’ve read story after story about famous writers who penned their most famous novels in the most chaotic environment.

But me, I cannot speak to anyone, or have anyone speak to me, if I want to write.

So I thought I must be on the choo-choo to Looney Land, until I found this article titled “The Introvert Writer” by Dianne Christner.

What a relief to find I’m not crazy after all!

Hmmm. In that case, where exactly is this train taking me?

What a mistake!

      No Comments on What a mistake!

Wow, what a mistake that last post was, the one about exposing email scammers.
The Internet is so wonderful, so powerful, and so creepy!

I just got an email from someone, to my personal email account, that claimed to get my information from my fraudulent email blog.

I set up that blog anonymously, using an email I created just for that purpose. The blog never lists my name, location, or even gender. There is absolutely no connection to me.

Until I was thoughtless enough to post that I was the owner of the blog.

Well, I’ll be changing that post!

I will leave the link to my hobby blog on my site, just in case anyone is interested. I just don’t want any more creepy emails from strangers who claim to be young, and pretty, and really want to get to know me.

Exposing email scammers

      No Comments on Exposing email scammers

I guess it is time to come clean.
I have a hobby.

It’s not your typical hobby, like stamp collecting or flying remote control planes. My hobby is exposing email scams.

You see, I am one of those special people who has the good fortune to be on a list that is being sold to every scammer in the world. No, scratch that–the universe.

I couldn’t stop the seemingly unending flood of scams from going into my inbox, so I decided to do the next best thing and share them with the world. My theory is that since most people will do a quick search before contacting the scammer I might be able to save a few people from heartache, heartburn, and humiliation.

If you care to see a few of the scams I receive–and I say few because I only post the ones I can absolutely identify as scams–visit my blog at (see “Email Scams Blog” link).

It is a very satisfying hobby. I feel that I’m doing something positive, something that gives back. You wouldn’t believe the number of comments I receive thanking me for my postings and telling me that I helped them not fall victim to a scam.

I’ll add a link so you can return to it as often as you wish. Some of them are pretty funny. (Not laugh out loud funny, but “do they really think I’ll fall for that” funny.)

Epiphany

      No Comments on Epiphany

As I wrote this morning I had a breakthrough. An epiphany. A shooting star of an idea.

There had been a problem with my plot. I had not been able to figure out how something I wanted to happen could happen. And then this morning as I wrote, it came to me.

I don’t know why I had not thought of it before. Now that I’ve thought of it, it seems so obvious.

What a wonderful feeling! I love the way that a book seems to come together, a little at a time. The way problems with the plot resolve themselves (with a little help from the writer). It is one of the things that makes writing fun.

Of course, it did mean that I had to go through the rest of the book and make changes so I wouldn’t forget the new plot change.

Lucky for me the rest of the book is still pretty much just an outline, so the changes were easy as pie.

Note to self: what exactly does “easy as pie” mean? Does it mean baking a pie is easy, which is kind of true, because pies are much easier to make than cakes? Except for the crust. Or does it mean that eating a pie is easy, which I don’t think is true, since pies can be very messy? Hmmmmmmmm.

Patience and thick skin needed

      No Comments on Patience and thick skin needed

And so it begins again.
That painful, tedious, humiliating process of trying to find an agent. With my first books I skipped this step, and went straight to the publishers. Since then, I’ve discovered the multiple benefits of having an agent, and I want to give it a try for this new book.

The process goes something like this:
A. I open Google and begin to research for literary agents.
B. After about 10 minutes of searching, I find a list of legitimate agents on a trusted site. I specify legitimate, because there are a lot of scam artists out there that I want to avoid. People who don’t care about introducing my book to publishers, but only in lightening my wallet.
C. I begin the slow process of going to each agent’s site, one at a time, and read about the agent. The purpose of this step is to find out if the agent handles the type of book I just wrote. The problem with this step is that every agent puts the information in a different place, and I have to spend precious time digging around each site.
D. At about the 5th site I find a winner, an agent who is accepting new clients and who wants to represent young adult books. (Gray Zone is a YA novel.)
E. I then go to the “How to submit” page and read what I need to do.
F. I follow the submission guidelines to the letter. Most times the agent wants a query letter, a biography, and a synopsis (oh, the dreaded synopsis!). Most agents also usually want an exclusive submission, so once I submit, I have to wait before I can contact another agent.
G. I wait the required 2-3 months, anxiously hoping that the agent will want to see the manuscript I’ve slaved over for the past 2 years. If you haven’t had a reason to chew your fingernails to the nub while you worry that a person you know nothing about might not validate the belief you have in yourself that you have something valuable to say, you should try it sometime. It will either make you cry with frustration, kick and scream, or make you want to be a nicer person, depending on your personality. (I’ve done all 3, so I don’t really know what that says about my personality.)
H. If I am lucky, an agent will ask for the manuscript. If I am very lucky, he/she will want to represent my book.
I. If I get a rejection letter (which is where the need for thick skin comes in), or no response at all, I start the process all over again.

Now, doesn’t that make all of you want to write a book, just so you too can have the pleasure of shopping it around?

Mistaken a-dewity

      No Comments on Mistaken a-dewity

I’m reading this great book about Information Architecture right now. Not exactly light reading, but informative.

It’s a well written book, with just enough humor to keep it from becoming too dry a subject. I was rather enjoying myself–until the Dewey reference.

The librarian in me cringed. How could they make a mistake like that? Doesn’t the entire world know that it was Melvil Dewey, not John Dewey, who created the Dewey Decimal System. I mean really, if Wikipedia knows, shouldn’t everybody?

I guess the two authors of the book must have been absent when their elementary school librarians taught the history of the system used by practically every school in the country.

Come to think of it, they must have been absent a lot, since the DDS is often a favorite subject of librarians. And when I say favorite, I mean favorite! Most kids tell me that they learn about good ol’ Melvil Dewey 4 or 5 times a year, every year.

Sigh. Sounds like fun, don’t you think?

Part of the process

      No Comments on Part of the process

I woke up this morning (at 6:30 on a Sunday morning) with the realization that my last post, the first draft of the first scene, had been a little unfair.

I should explain part of my process for writing a book.

A. First I write a short paragraph so I won’t forget my story idea.
B. I write an outline to provide a little structure for the overall story flow. At this beginning phase the outline doesn’t really tell a lot of the story. It just basically sets up the beginning, middle, and end, broken up in chapters with a few key elements put in their proper places.
C. Then I begin at the beginning and write. I don’t care how it sounds at this point, or if it is even cohesive. I just need to get something down on paper. I realize that I will do about 5 rewrites, so it really doesn’t matter what I write, I just need to write. It is not quite as unstructured as free-writing, but it is close.

So that last part, part C, what what I posted yesterday. It was only when I went back and reread it that I realized that an explanation was necessary, since I never explained that I know the writing is bad and don’t care. (I should probably also warn you that I took a class in mind reading so I can hear you thinking “it’s not just bad, it’s really, really, really, bad”. Get over it! At least I was brave enough to share the process with you! You don’t have to get nasty about it!)

Enough said about the subject. We should each go about our business.

And by the way, have a great rest of the weekend!

DTA-2 begins

      2 Comments on DTA-2 begins

I wrote the opening scene of my next book, which will have the same characters as the Department of Temporal Adjustment. It will be a stand-alone book in that I want people to be able to read this one without having read DTA.

As you read, please keep in mind that this is the very first draft, and when I write first drafts I don’t worry overly much about little things, like grammar, punctuation, etc.

But I will try to be brave and share.
********************
“Hello,” I rasped into the phone, my voice still as asleep as my brain had been ten seconds before. It was 10 o’clock in the morning, and for the first time in years my children had decided to let me sleep late.
“Is this Mrs. (last name)” a man’s voice asked.
“Yes, this is Mrs. (last name). Who is this?”
“This is Dr. Brown at Madigan Hospital. Did you know that your husband was in a car accident, that he was hit by a semi this morning?”
“What!” I yelled, finally fully awake.
“Now don’t worry, he’s going to be okay. He was brought in to Madigan at 6:30 this morning.”
“How is—“
“Excuse me ma’am, but has anyone called you this morning? Did anyone call to let you know about your husband’s accident?”
“No! How’s he doing? Can I come down?”
“He’s in Intensive Care, but conscious. We think he’ll be fine, but you should come right away.”
“He’s conscious? Thank goodness!”
“He’s not out of the woods yet though. He has internal injuries that are causing internal bleeding. You should be here.”
“Bleeding? Internal bleeding?”
“We’ll have to keep him her a few days. You could stay in a hotel nearby while you wait for him to be released.”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll be there…oh my goodness, it will take at least an hour to get there! Why is he in Madigan? Why was he taken so far from Seattle? Where was the accident?”
“The accident happened in on I-5 near Federal Way.”
“That’s right by Seattle! Why was he taken to Madigan? Madigan is an Army hospital, he’s not in the Army.”
“He was wearing his Air Force uniform, so he was taken to the nearest military hospital.”
“But—”
“It’s protocol.”
“Protocol! But—“
“Ma’am, maybe you should just come.”
“Right. Thank you doctor. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
As I hung up the phone I could hear the sound of my children playing quietly in the other room. The sound should have comforted me, but instead made me shiver uncontrollably. Tony, my wonderful husband, the father of those four beautiful girls playing so innocently in the other room, had been in an accident. My husband, the man I planned to grow old with, was in the hospital. My Tony, my strong, dependable, fearless husband, was lying, hurt and injured, in a hospital bed over an hour away. My darling husband had been in an accident with a semi.
The image of an eighteen wheeler barreling down the road popped into my head as I suddenly remembered which of our two cars Tony always drove to work. It was the cute little red Honda, a little bitty, teeny tiny, lightweight Honda.
Fear gripped my heart and wrung it like a two-year-old squeezes play dough. That doctor had gone on and on about how I needed to get to the hospital fast. What if Tony was hurt worse than the doctor had let on? Tony was in Intensive Care, after all. Didn’t Intensive Care mean—
“Mommy,” a voice interrupted my thoughts, “who was on the phone?”

Christy Tyson

      No Comments on Christy Tyson

Life certainly can throw a curveball.

Every so often I have the desire to look up old friends or coworkers. Sometimes I want to reconnect, but other times I just am curious about how their life is progressing.

Christy Tyson was a person I wanted to reconnect with, since it had been a couple of years since we last spoke.

Christy was one of those bosses who was more than a boss. She was a mentor, a friend, a person worth emulating. I had worked for her at the High Point Branch Library for a year back in 2004-2005. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

But my heart dropped like a rock after a quick search brought up the title “West Seattle Loses Another Treasure” and a Seattle Times Obituary page. I was too late.

Christy Tyson, you will be missed.