When my brother Peter and I were kids, we would camp in the backyard (the best way, since there was a bathroom just inside), and Dad would tell us stories of the Lone Ranger, and about Captain John Carter, who got mysteriously transported to Mars. And then, when Pete and I got older, he would start the tale and then turn it over to us. We would round robin the most amazing stories. (At least, we thought they were.)

Peter and Me, Christmas 2010

Peter and I would also play Star Wars action figures. We never stuck to the movie stories. Our Star Wars aliens landed on Earth, where they could interact with our Adventure People (who were conveniently all the same size).  Sometimes they fought, sometimes they joined forces. I always wanted a romance. Peter always had to have car/spaceship chases.

I am a writer because of my Dad, my Mom, and my brother.  I am the person I am, good or bad, because of my brother. I accidentally broke his arm and he never ratted me out. (I confessed on my own; I’ve never handled guilt very well.)  He was the R2D2 to my C3Po, the Eomer to my Eowyn, and the Pinky to my Brain. (Only much smarter.)

Today we gathered, friends and family, to celebrate Peter’s life, and mourn that he left us too soon. Peter was a wonderful father, husband and son. He was my brother, maybe a better one than I deserved, but the type of guy who didn’t measure people that way.

He was part of my story, and you are my friends and readers and I want to let you know about this latest plot twist. The story goes on, and so do we.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. — 2 Corinthians 4:18

Puppies and Books and Babies, Oh My!

What I’ve been doing when I’m not writing (and rewriting and throwing out and writing again)…

Penny got a haircut.  She’s hard to snap a photo of because she’s never still.  But she was looking like a yeti, so it was time.

More pomeranian, less yeti.

And speaking of babies…

Me and my new cousineice. (That’s a word, right?)

And no, I haven’t had a baby, but if I could mail order one like B. I totally would.  Or at least I’d think very seriously about it. She’s the sweetest thing. Okay, it might be a contest with her older sister, but it would be a close one.

Here’s an assorted list of reminders and stuff that’s coming up and what not:

This Thursday from 7:30 to 8:45, I’m speaking at the Arlington (Texas) Central Branch Library. It’s the Teen Creative Writing Club, and you don’t have to register. I’m talking about writing and stuff and I’ll probably read something from SPIRIT AND DUST. Here’s the website for more details.

And speaking of SPIRIT AND DUST, remember you can preorder it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers. You can probably even pre-order it from your brick and mortar, too. (It seriously took me four tries to spell ‘mortar’ right. Five if you count “Mordor.”  Nerd, yes. Spelling champion, no.)

If you like to read grown up romance novels, you might want to grab DATE BY MISTAKE, available in e-book from all the e-book places (including Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBooks).  It’s four novellas, including one  from yours truly.  It’s not a book for teens, unless you, like I was when I was 16, are already reading Harlequins and stuff.

Places I’m going to be this spring:

The Texas Librarian Conference in Fort Worth, April 24-27.

The RT Booklover’s Convention in Kansas City, May 1st-5th, but in particular the Teen Day on that Saturday.

More (Mordor?) to come soon.

This time I swear…

Next week I will….

Start blogging twice a week again.

Tweet about things that are not book promo (expect to hear a lot about my dog).

Figure out what the heck is up with my email.

Answer all the emails I haven’t answered because of whatever is up with my email.

Do my taxes. Or at least find all the receipts for my taxes.

Catch up with friends who think I’m dead.

Apologize to friends who wish me dead. (Look, no one ever MEANS to be an insensitive ass, but it happens sometimes.)

Order swag for Spirit and Dust.

Post about ways that you can get swag for Spirit and Dust.

And, oh yeah, write about fifty-kajilion words, which might mean that some things on this list might roll over to the NEXT next week.

Or, you know, all of the things. 

You would think that someone as…. let’s call me particular… would be less of a procrastinator. I swear it’s not on purpose.  It just happens. The roll over falls into two categories:

Stuff that can wait (until it can’t anymore)

Stuff I really dread doing (like taxes and doctor appointments)

This is probably the trait that drives me the most crazy about myself. So you would think that I would have FIXED it by now, wouldn’t you?

Yeah. I know. But I keep putting it off.

Some days I’m very optimistic. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to stay on top of things. Let’s make this happen.

Some days I look at my list, realize how behind I’ve gotten, and figure I’ll never catch up so I might as well just crawl back into bed.

Then I remind myself that the dogs need kibble, and if I don’t want them to eat me, I’d better get my rear in gear and tackle the stuff that can’t wait. And the stuff I dread. And the stuff that CAN wait, before it turns into the stuff that can’t.

I’ll let y’all know how that goes… next week.

In the meantime, here’s a few things coming up.

Next week (for real) I’m speaking at the Creative Writing Club for Teens at the Arlington (Texas) Public Library central branch.  It’s Thursday, March 28th from 7:30 to 8:45pm and I am REALLY looking forward to it. You don’t have to register, but the website suggests coming early. I hope you’ll join me if you’re in the area. (You can ask me how my To Do List is going.)

 

 

Eat (All) the Ice Cream

When I was at YAKfest the other weekend, one of the student’s asked, “Do you ever take on characteristics of your characters while you’re writing?” Specifically, I think she said, if your character’s a crabby person, do you become more crabby, and so on.

Let’s ignore, for the moment, the larger problem that if your character is so unpleasant that your friends don’t want to be around you while you’re writing him/her, is anyone going to want to be around that character for a whole book.

The deal is (as I expounded in my Wise Mentor way) that it might not be the character making you crabby. It’s easy to fall into the stereotype of the reclusive, absentminded, cranky and iconoclastic writer.

Why?

1. Aren’t writers and artists supposed to be eccentric?
2. A lot of people who like to write do so because they like their own company best, anyway.
3. It’s annoying to have to come out of your fantasy world and interact with real people, people who often want you to Do Things, when you’d rather be slaying Orcs with your Dashing Hero in your head.
4. Your friends and family don’t always understand that just because you’re up and walking around the kitchen physically doesn’t mean you’re not still in Orc-land trying to solve The Riddle of Eternal Riddleness in your head. So when they talk to you and you don’t answer, or worse, you answer in Orcish, or worse, you snap at them for distracting you when you almost had the answer… it can lead to hurt feelings.
5. If your writing style is to fully immerse yourself in your book, where you basically go in your cave for three weeks and don’t emerge until the thing is done, then the people on the outside–the ones you turn down for dates or parties, or ignore when they want to go out for ice cream–might not be there when you come out of your writing hibernation.

I speak from experience. I have been guilty off all these things. (Except number two, which is more of being most comfortable with myself more than liking myself best.)

My advice to the student with the question was this:

First, if your character is a douche, that’s not an excuse for you to be one, too.

Second, take time to eat the ice cream so that you will still have friends when you’re done with your book. Writing is a lonely endeavor, but don’t make your life more lonely by forgetting there are real people in the world as well as imaginary ones.

Wise Mentors are sometimes good at giving advice that we need to give ourselves most of all.

The Stuff I Said

So, this weekend was YAKFest, the YA Book Festival in Keller, Texas.  I would be remiss if I didn’t start off by saying that this was a great event and the organizers treated us authors really well, and the volunteers that made things happen were teh awesome.

I also have to say that I was on a panel with a super group of authors: Victoria Scott, Cory Putman Oakes, Mary Lindsey, moderated by Jenny Martin. (Never underestimate the worth of a good panel moderator.)

Mary, Me, Victoria, Jenny, and Cory. Note that, as usual, I am the one doing my own thing, looking in the wrong direction.

So, anyway. During the panel someone Tweeted that I was hilarious (or maybe it was just that I was funny, but this is my blog so I can remember it the way I want).  I got home and Mom, who reads my tweet stream asked, “What did you say that was so funny?”

Now, here’s what’s messed up about that question:

1. The fact that my mother reads my Twitter stream, including the @replies.

2. Her general tone of surprise.

3. My mother does not assume I am just naturally charming and all-around amusing without trying. She assumes I must have said ONE FUNNY THING.

So I answered, “I don’t know. I was just myself.”

Mom: “Which self?”

A valid point. See, Mom knows that I’ve always been a smart-ass. But for the first 18 or so years of my life, this was a closely guarded secret.

A few years ago, I went to a reunion of drama school friends and I gave some of the Maggie Quinn ones to my former teachers. One of them said, “I had no idea you were so funny. You were always so polite and quiet…”

Well, of course my characters are droll (or smart, or whatever)—I give them great set up lines and have plenty of time to think of the perfect response. No character is ever reduced to “I know you are, but what am I?” in a book.

As for real life, I’ve always been smart and funny…

Wait, let me amend so that doesn’t sound so arrogant.

I made my family and close friends laugh, and I made good grades (when I actually did my homework). But I was in theater, and I was in honors classes, so I was surrounded by kids who were smart and funny and actually able to voice these things in smart and funny ways. Whereas I was introverted, dorky kid (or at least I felt like one) who was content to let my extroverted friends do their thing. (Then come out like the dark horse at audition time, ha ha!)

So what happened between then and now?  I’m still an introvert (even though no one believes it); I’ve just learned some good coping strategies. I’ve always had private confidence (obviously, given the raging egotism in this post). But I’ve had to learn to externalize that confidence. I had to start to value my own voice enough to show it to other people. And I had to learn not to be afraid of what would happen when I did.

You have to learn this as a writer anyway, because you send your words out to be rejected, then edited, then remarked upon by the whole world, or at least the percentage of them on Goodreads and Amazon.com. That’s terrifying enough. But here’s the secret of letting your voice be heard in public. Strangers are WAY nicer in person than online. (Usually. There’s always that one…)

As for being “funny.” I’m not. I just like to laugh. So once I got the confidence to actually SAY what I THINK… Well, it just happens that I’m almost always thinking absurd things. It also happens that my life is full of crazy situations and I am always doing ridiculous things, and once you get over the fear of looking foolish, you realize that laughing at yourself is the best feeling in the world, second only to letting someone else in on the joke.

So, that’s the answer to my mother’s question. What did I say that was funny?  Nothing. I just laughed at myself and the audience laughed with me.

(Well, not all of them, obviously. But the third greatest feeling in the world is to realize you can’t please everyone, so why sweat it.)

Of course, it could also be because I accidentally said s*** in front of a bunch off teenagers. And when you’re a teen, nothing is funnier than adults who accidentally say s*** they’re not supposed to.

Let Them Knit Cake

I am a knitter.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I liked knitting long before hipsters started doing it.

Free time? What’s that?

I started when Mom broke her leg, which meant hours and hours in doctor and hospital waiting rooms. My first project was a scarf. It was pretty awful–eight inches wide at one end and five inches at the other. The scarf, not her leg. Though that was pretty awful, too. Poor Mom. She’s been through a lot. And I’ve gotten a lot of practice knitting in hospitals and doctor’s offices.

So, silver lining and all that, I have progressed beyond horrible scarves to pretty good scarves, plus gloves, shawls, hats, purses and sweaters.  Okay, sweater and a half. One was for my niece, who is only two.  I figured that would be a good one to start with, because my attention span is–

Squirrel!

Which has always been my crafting downfall.  I–like just about every knitter/quilter/crocheter/stitcher–have many many projects in many stages of completion because there’s always some new and bright and exciting project that catches your eye right when you’re in the tedious middle of the current one.

I might mention, this also happens with books. A new idea is always exciting. You can’t wait to start banging out words. And the end is great, because you have momentum on your side. You can see the shape of the finished project! All it needs is a few more rows. But when you’re in the middle, that’s when shiny new ideas for other books appear to tempt you.

Or sometimes it happens with books and knitting BOTH.  I’m working hard on my next book, but I picked up a knitting magazine when I drove Mom to Jo-Ann’s this afternoon. Now I want to knit a sweater.

This sweater:

Source: loveofknitting.com via Love of Knitting on Pinterest

 

I want to knit this sweater, to give to some hypothetical guy on some hypothetical future date when the hypothetical he will be able to wear a wool sweater in Texas.  Which is about five days a year. Non-consecutive days, I might add.

What are the odds of this?

I totally bought this magazine because of the hot guy modeling this gorgeous colored sweater.

Clearly we have entered a new era of knitting. No longer are doilies and old lady caps and mittens enticement to shell out for a knitting pattern magazine. Now the target audience is women (or men, I guess) who like to picture themselves knitting a sweater for a hot guy.

And I have succumbed to the siren call. I want to be a girl who knits sweaters for cute guys. I want to wear adorable lace wristlets and skinny scarves and not look like dork. I want to refinish flea-market furniture and repurpose antiques into quirky jewelry… Oh my God, next thing you know I’ll be baking CAKE POPSICLES.

Actually, none of that is true.

Except maybe the cake part. I’ll take cake in pretty much any form it comes in.

Mmmm… Cake.

Are you a crafter? What are your hobbies (besides reading)?  Do you have a favorite online resource? What are your feelings on Cake Pops?  Delicious bite sized treat or bakery anathema?

PS The pattern for the knit cake above can be found here.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

(Read all the way to the bottom for a chance to win a copy of Brimstone, which comes out next week!)

Whenever I go too long without Tweeting, my family and friends call or text to make sure I haven’t fallen down the stairs and/or been eaten by my dogs.

This says a lot about how often I tweet. It also says a lot about how I get distracted and forget to tweet. Or, you know, blog.  My Friend Kate (this is an official title, because friendship with me incurs certain privileges and responsibilities) pointed out that I haven’t blogged in two months and since my last post concerned a Potentially Life Threatening Incident, maybe I should put up an entry to say I wasn’t dead yet.

(See how smart my friends are? They have to pass a test. Also, this is the kind of responsibility that falls to them: Remind me of the passage of time. Tell me when people think I’m dead. Dynamite me out of my cave now and then.)

So, here is the recap of my summer since I last posted:

• Did not die from idiopathic angioedema. (Or as we call it in my house: swelling up for no good reason. And also: take two Benedryl and cancel your plans for the day.)
• Did not die from bug bite that turned out not to be a bug bite but a staph infection. Did not die from humiliation that a clean freak like me got a staph infection. (Right after being in the hospital. Coincidence?)
• Had to cancel going to RWA National Conference and presenting the Golden Heart Award. Tragic because I had the most adorable dress. Also tragic because I was supposed to spend the week afterward hanging out with My Friend Kate.
• Turned in final revision of Spirit and Dust. (Yay!!!!!)
• Made a playlist and a Pinterest board for Spirit and Dust.
• Was called for Jury Duty. Was not picked, possibly because I write for teens (case concerned teenagers), or because I have a Twitter and blog, possibly because I’m a smart ass.  (During the selection questions, the defense counsel asked what I did that I had a blog. I answered that I wrote books for teens. Counsel: So you tell lies for a living. Me: I’ll bet people say that about your job, too.)
• Celebrated the paperback release of Texas Gothic!!!  (If you’re too cheap (like me) to buy it in hard cover, now is your chance.)
• Did not die from a recurrence of the not-bug-bite.
• Managed to keep my plants alive all through the summer!  This is a record for me!
• Received a ginormous box of copies of BRIMSTONE which comes out on September 11^th. That’s next week.  OMG THAT’S NEXT WEEK!

 

Tell me in the comments what you did with YOUR summer vacation. It doesn’t even have to be true. I will randomly draw one name from the comments to win a copy of Brimstone for your very own.

Rosemary vs. the Unknown Substance

I am a sensitive delicate flower, as much as I would like to reflect the hearty Dutch stock of my maternal ancestors, or the paint-yourself-with-woad-and-evict-the-Romans-from-your-country ferocity of my paternal lineage. Really, I would. But mostly I just inherited a propensity for sunburn and a love of cheese.

That said, I’m sensitive to a lot of things: perfume, chemicals, artificial sweetener, the heat, direct sunlight…  But I’m not actually officially allergic to much. THAT I KNOW OF.

But Thursday I woke up with a swollen spot on the side of my mouth that spread across the rest of my lip until I looked like a refugee from a collagen implant clinic.

Then Friday morning, I woke up with my tongue swollen. I mean swollen like Harry Potter’s Aunt Marge. (Not all of me. Just my tongue. And just one side.)  So I sit there thinking, “I wonder when my doctor’s office opens. I think I might should go in and see him.”

No, really. I think this. Because I don’t want to make a big fuss. Also, because I know they’re going to ask me what I got into, and I don’t know, so they’re just going to think I’m crazy.

Then Mom came into the kitchen and said, “How are your lips, Angelina?”

And I replied, “Mmmph ughng ishhh shhughn uh.”

And Mom said, “HolycrapgetinthecarERrightnow.”

(Actually, Mom stayed very calm, which is funny because she’s kind of high strung. You know how mothers can lift cars off their children or fight off bears or whatever? My mother’s version of this is to become absolutely calm and rational in any crisis where her children are threatened.)

So, ER. They were very impressed with the size of my tongue, and various shades of amused by my attempts to articulate words like “blood pressure” and “anaphylaxis” and “tracheotomy.”   They were also baffled by what caused it, when I added nothing new–no new foods, drugs, toothpaste, cosmetics… nada.

Best quote of the day:

Physician’s Asst. (eyeing my lips):  So, these days I have to ask. Is this a normal look for you?

Me: Argh oo eereeughs?

PA: Yes. You’d be surprised what people will pay good money to do to themselves.

Anyway.  Twelve hours in the ER and a whole lot of Benedryl and steroids later, they sent me home, content that no one was going to have to perform a kitchen tracheotomy with a steak knife and a drinking straw.

Of course that meant I slept for, like, two days and I’m crazy behind on EVERYTHING and I’m going to California next week and OMG so much to do.

But hey.  Like everything else that happens in my life, there’s got to be good material in there somewhere.

How can work this episode into my next book?  Rowling already had the engorgeo charm. Allergic potion reaction?  Failed Plastic Sorcery attempt? Post your brilliant ideas in the comments.

 

Define "Interesting"

I’m really thrilled to get to present an award at the RWA’s Award Ceremony at the National Conference in July.  It’s kind of a big deal. Everyone wears fancy dress, there are multi-media presentations and jumbo screens and teleprompters. (Then there’s the RITA award itself, which is quite beautiful. Mine lives on my desk next to my action figures.)

Me and RITA in 2009

In a way, being a presenter is even better than being an award finalist, because you get to have all the fun of dressing up without the stress. But there’s this voice over that happens while you’re walking to the podium, and it says things like “New York Times bestselling author of 150 books” or whatever.

My intro doesn’t say that. It says some cool things about awards and how much librarians like me and stuff.  But not that.

When I was filling out the form about it WOULD say, the last question is “Can you tell us something interesting about yourself that we might put in your introduction?”

Which is a conundrum.

What, exactly, would other people consider interesting?  I can quote 90% of the libretto of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and sing at least five of them. Is this what they mean?

Pink, purple and green are my favorite colors. I love dogs and also otters and foxes. I’m sort of obsessed with Russell Crowe when he’s in fighting trim and kinda even when he isn’t. I won’t sit in a seat that’s warm from someone else’s body heat and I hate my food to touch.

Which doesn’t even factor in this: What is interesting about me… that I would want people to know.

So I asked my assistant what was interesting about me. There followed a text exchange of escalating ridiculousness.

Here’s what we came up with. Some of these may even be true.

Rosemary Clement-Moore is…

• An acclaimed beekeeper and, on a related note, bear wrestler.
• Guilty of stealing JK Rowling’s seat on an airplane.
• Living in a half completed Skull Mountain Fortress.
• Currently building a replica of Easter Island in her backyard.
• The bass guitarist in world renowned garage band Chain Mail Bikini, formerly known as Teenage Mutant Musketeer.
• Understudy to a Tina Fey impersonator.
• Perfecting her archer skills to prepare for the the Dystopian future.

Add your own ideas in the comments. Points for creativity and absurdity. If you make me snort coffee through my nose, you win a prize.

Girl vs. Lawn

Recently, I have become responsible for mowing my own lawn.

This probably doesn’t sound like a big deal to a lot of you. Or maybe it sounds lazy or sexist (after all, I can clean house like nobody’s business). But it is what it is… Or was. I have never had to mow the lawn before.*

It didn’t start well. It didn’t start at all, because the first thing I discovered was that the lawnmower was kaput and would take an Actual Lawnmower Repairman to fix.

Since the Home Owners Association won’t let me get a herd of goats (even a small one), I had to get my hands on a functioning lawn mower. And since an Actual Lawnmower Repairman costs money, and I am going to be the New Mower of the Lawn, I decided to get a rechargeable electric mower because it’s:

• Better for the environment
• Not dependent on my filling it with gasoline, which is icky and smelly.**

But the situation is getting dire, because the grass is now two weeks long. And I have small dogs. I’m worried I’m going to lose one of them.

Worse, I’m worried what might be taking up residence in my lawn. My suburban back yard could turn into a scene from Death in the Long Grass.

Or there could be gnomes. Or velociraptors.  This could happen:

So I look up what I want online and go to Home Depot. They have rows and rows of mowers: riding mowers with cup holders, push mowers with air conditioning… It’s a car lot of lawn mowers, but there is only ONE electric mower model in house. And it’s out of stock.

So the Home Depot Associate says: Well, I do have one in the back. It’s a return but it works perfectly well.

Me: Sold.

We get the thing in the Jeep and get it home and I call @peterthefencer to come over and help me get it back OUT of the Jeep, and then I charge it up and I read the instruction manual and I look up online How to Mow a Lawn.

Apparently there is a Great Debate over side to side mowing versus a spiral patterns. I mean a Great Debate. It’s like the Big-Endians and Little-Endians. I went with: However the heck I can manage to push it.

Because my bargain basement returned-but-working-perfectly electric rechargeable lawnmower is not self-propelled (none of them are). It’s RCM propelled.

And here’s what else I found out. My yard only LOOKS flat. That five degree slope is like freaking Everest when you’re trying to turn a lawnmower on it. Especially when one’s small stature puts one at a severe leverage disadvantage.****

The first time took me an hour and a half and a couple of breaks. There may have been pointing and laughing from the pothead teens across the street. There may have been some swearing. There may have been gnomes.

Not My Lawn

But at last it was done! It looked (mostly) great. I felt such a great sense of accomplishment!  I was high-fiving the dogs and doing a victory lap around the yard (a slow, tired victory lap).

And then I realized I was going to have to do it again the next week.

And the week after.

And twice a week in full summer. You can’t give those gnomes an inch, or they’ll encroach right back in.

I think I hear them singing their Elton John war chant right now.

Maybe I’ll clone some velociraptors to keep them out. That would take care of my home security as well. Though I suspect if the HOA objects to goats, they won’t go for genetically engineered dinosaurs, either.

But if I had velociraptors, I wouldn’t have to worry about the HOA, either.

Jurassic Security System

*Ironically, I have mown a pasture before, but that was on a tractor. Not the same thing as wielding a Toro in the suburbs.
**Mostly this last one.
****This is why I’m in equal danger from gnomes as I am velociraptors. Also, gnomes are creepy.