The vampire is (nearly) loose.

Are y'all tired of me talking about The Atherton Vampire yet? If so, sorry -- I'm doing it again.

But this time, I have excellent news. Amazon announced a few days ago that Kindle Vella will launch this coming week. And Jerry's tale is in the queue and ready to go. If you're in the US, and if you have a Kindle app on your phone or iPad, try this: Open that Kindle app, go to the search function, and type in "atherton vampire" (yes, in quotes; no, it doesn't need to be capitalized). You should get a result that looks like this (although the resolution should be better):

Clicking the link gets you an error message right now. But sometime this week, I'm told, it'll work. And then Jerry Atherton will be released upon an unsuspecting public, muahahahaha.

Well, you won't be unsuspecting because I've told you about it. 

Oh, you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'm making outstanding progress on the second Atherton Vampire story for Vella. My goal is to write one episode per day for Camp NaNo this month; today I'm at almost 17,000 words. So I should be able to start publishing episodes of the second story as soon as all of the episodes of the first story have been released. 

It also means the first Atherton Vampire story will be published as a regular Kindle ebook around the fall equinox in September, with the second story released as an ebook just before Halloween.

All this, and I've started a part-time job, too. I'm working for the New Mexico Legislature as a legal proofreader again, but the hours are a lot more forgiving right now than they were during the legislature's session last winter. Which it looks like I will be doing again this coming winter. Which is good, actually, because I'm buying a condo and the extra money will come in handy.

To be honest, a lot has been happening lately. And the rest of this summer is going to be busy, too. This is how retirement is supposed to work, right?

***

I hope you haven't forgotten about the hearth/myth Summer Reading Challenge. There's still plenty of time to increase the number of books on our list that you've read. You can find the list and the rules here. Good luck, and happy reading!

***

These moments of anticipatory blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

A moment of serendipity.

Sometimes a scene just comes together. 
Lynne Cantwell | 2021

Earlier this week, Big Al's Books and Pals re-ran a review of Spider's Lifeline, the third book in my Pipe Woman's Legacy series, which came out in 2016. It was a moment of serendipity for me, as I'd been thinking about the book just a few days before. And that reminded me of a moment of serendipity that occurred while I was writing the fourth and final book, Turtle's Weir. 

You may have heard the term "Easter egg" in relation to movies. An Easter egg is a scene in which the filmmakers have included an inside joke, or a moment that makes a reference that only diehard fans would understand. Here's an example of one that occurred in Raiders of the Lost Ark: Hieroglyphs cover the walls of the room where Indiana Jones finds the Ark of the Covenant -- and among those hieroglyphs are drawings of R2D2 and C3PO, two of the most beloved droids in the Star Wars movies. It makes sense when you realize George Lucas both invented the Star Wars saga and co-wrote the story on which the Indiana Jones movies were based, and Harrison Ford starred in both movie franchises.

Writers include Easter eggs, too. Often, it's intentional, but sometimes the moments write themselves. The latter was the case in Webb's half of the Pipe Woman's Legacy. 

There's a scene in Spider's Lifeline in which Webb and his mother, Naomi Witherspoon Curtis, attend a reception hosted by former President Brock Holt and his wife, Antonia Greco, in honor of an Icelandic princess named Ingrid. Brock and Antonia's sons, Rex and Roman, are also there. Roman is a free spirit -- a musician who is as much of a Trickster as is Webb himself. There's a moment where Webb goes to the bar to get himself and his mother something to drink. Roman joins him there, and while they're chatting, Naomi shakes hands with the princess and then drops to the floor.

Antonia and I reached her at the same time. I helped her to a sitting position as Antonia clucked over her and called for her husband to get their physician. Cameras clicked again; I expected we’d be the top story on tonight’s news.

“No doctors,” Mom said crossly. “I’m fine. I just took a tumble, that’s all – it happens when you’re old. Thank you, Roman.” She took her drink from his hand and sipped.

“Yeah, thanks, buddy,” I said, accepting my own from him.

“I’m here to help,” he said, in a more serious tone than I’d ever heard him use before. “Remember that.”

What caused Roman to turn serious right then? I had no idea at the time.

But then in Turtle's Weir, Webb made a return trip to the moment via time travel get a better view of what had happened, and Roman's reaction became a little clearer.

As Webb-in-the-timeline broke from the bar to scramble toward Mom, I glanced around the room. Ingrid watched what she had wrought with satisfaction in her eye. But then she glanced up from the tableau on the rug at me – not Webb-in-the-timeline, but me, Webb-the-observer. Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth dropped open. Then her forehead creased in anger.

I covered my own shock with a jaunty little wave. Then, as I got ready to spring up out of the timeline, I noticed someone else in the room was watching me: Roman Holt. He was crouched next to me on the floor, holding my drink and Mom’s. And of the three of us – Roman, Ingrid, and me – he was the only one who didn’t look surprised that I was there.

In real life, right after he’d handed us our drinks, he’d told me, I’m here to help. Remember that. The comment had seemed to come from out of the blue at the time. Now, at least, I had a little context.

I gave him a shrug and a grin, and got out of there.

Thanks, Webb, for clearing that up for all of us. And thanks to Big Al and the pals for the reprise review.

***

I'd like to say I've made progress on the second Atherton Vampire story this week, but I'd be lying. Real-life events have sucked up much of my focus for the past few days. But serendipity strikes again! The next session of Camp NaNo starts Thursday. So all I have to do is draft an outline for the story by then. Piece of cake.

***

These moments of bloggy serendipity have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Notching another Camp NaNo win.

I know, I know -- I was supposed to do a blog post on Sunday. Sorry, but I didn't have time -- I foolishly put off starting work on Book 3 of the Elemental Keys series, and then dawdled some more, and... The point is that I've just now validated the project.

The working title is Molten Trail, and thanks again to those of you who helped me brainstorm a title for a novel featuring a volcano that didn't make it sound like porn.

Camp NaNoWriMo lets you set your own goal -- unlike the November event, it doesn't have to be a whole 50,000-word novel -- and so my goal for July (after I futzed around for the first part of the month) became 25,000 words. I expect I'm about half done with the first draft. I have at least 20,000 words of plot left, and then the final scene or two. But for now, I can hit pause. And maybe sleep.

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These moments of Camp-conquering blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Everything you know about haiku is wrong.

I know, I know -- the title is clickbait. I'll get to that in a minute. But first, some news:

• Rivers Run got a lovely review this week at Big Al's Books and Pals. My favorite part is the reviewer's last line: "However, then she lays down a sentence like this, 'Her mournful rasp sounded like the barest trickle of moisture in a desert creek bed.' And minor imperfections are quite forgiven." Did I really write that? Huh. I guess I'm not half-bad, after all...
• The first draft of Treacherous Ground, the next book in the Elemental Keys series, is very nearly in the can. I have fewer than 1,400 words to write in order to win Camp NaNoWriMo, and I'm pretty sure I'll wrap up the story line at that point, too. Hoping to do that tonight before I go to bed. We'll see how it goes.

And now, about that haiku thing.

Every year, the Golden Triangle Association in DC runs a haiku contest. The Golden Triangle is the designation for the part of downtown DC that the office for my day job happens to be in, and so every spring I see some of the winning entries posted around town. This year, I posted a photo of one of them on my Facebook timeline -- and several people complained that the poem wasn't really a haiku, because it didn't have the 5-7-5 syllable scheme we were all taught in school: five syllables for the first line, seven for the second, and five for the third.

Turns out we were taught wrong. That format is not what makes a haiku a haiku at all.

Just as fiction writers have National Novel Writing Month, haiku enthusiasts have National Haiku Writing Month, or NaHaiWriMo. And they have covered this very topic on their blog, because it comes up every year. It stems from a misunderstanding about the Japanese language -- which counts sounds, not syllables, when crafting a haiku. For example, as I learned at the link above, English speakers consider the word haiku as having two syllables. For a Japanese speaker, though, the word has three sounds -- ha-i-ku. In fact, most Japanese words have more sounds than we would count syllables. So a five-syllable line in English would have far more words than would a five-sound line in Japanese. 

Moreover, haiku's emphasizes the content of the poem, not simply its form. A proper haiku, or so the article says, includes a kigo -- a word indicating the season in which the poem occurs -- and a kiregi, or cutting word, that divides the poem into two parts. Ideally, one part of the poem will be a juxtaposition of the other, and both parts will focus on concrete images that allow the reader to feel what the poet felt when viewing the event.

Here's the photo I posted on Facebook earlier this week. It doesn't look like a haiku under the rules we were all taught, but with our new understanding of the process, I think it qualifies. And I think blackbird is the kigo and turn is the kiregi. What do you think?

One more bit of housekeeping: I'll be on vacation for the next couple of Sundays. Alert hearth/myth readers know two weeks is an unusually long hiatus for me. I'll try to put up a post on one or another of those days, but I can't promise, as wi-fi access is liable to be spotty.

And now I'm off to put a lid on Treacherous Ground. Wish me luck!

***

These moments of multisyllabic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The run-up to Rivers Run.

I've just a quick post tonight, as I've been working on Rivers Run all day and I'm kind of tuckered out.

The good news is that we're on track for publication this Thursday, as promised. I still have to finish the formatting and write the author's note. But here's the cover, which I finalized today:

And here's the description:

The last thing Raney Meadows needs is more notoriety. She has come east from Los Angeles to escape her life as an actor by getting back to nature. But while hiking the Appalachian Trail, she finds a body in the Shenandoah River -- a drowned kayaker who was neither a kayaker nor a drowning victim -- and the river's goddess tells Raney she has to make it right. Why Raney? Because she's a Water Elemental. Her mother is an undine.

Before long, Raney discovers she's not the only Elemental in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia – Earth, Air, and Fire are here, too. Moreover, these four Elementals have been brought together for a purpose: an ancient evil has awakened, and only by joining all of the Elements together can the earth be saved.

Raney wants to help, but she is torn, because getting involved would put her mother in danger. Her very human father has been looking for his undine – and he may be involved with the ancient evil that aims to destroy the earth.

Once the Kindle version is live, I'll put notices in all the usual places: Facebook, Twitter, and my mailing list. I usually aim to get the paperback out at about the same time as the ebook, but I suspect it will be next weekend before I can get that done. I will let you know.

***
The other good news is that I signed up today to do Camp NaNoWriMo next month -- during which I'll be writing book 2 of this series, which now has the working title of Treacherous Ground (oooh!). Stay tuned for more on that.

***
These moments of bloggy publishing madness have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Maggie's crazy old ladies.

Alert hearth/myth readers will recall that last week, I mentioned that all the older women in the Transcendence trilogy have memory problems. And I promised that this week, I would talk about why that is.

So here we are -- and here I sit, wishing I'd left myself a few notes about the topic. Ironic, right?

Pixabay | CC0

I could try to jog my memory by talking about what a growing problem dementia is. In 2015, the World Health Organization said more than 47 million people worldwide live with dementia -- and Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO's Director-General, said that number is expected to triple by 2051. "There's a tidal wave of dementia coming our way" as the world's population continues to age, she said. The WHO is advocating for a worldwide plan for dealing with dementia, treatment for which is projected to cost upwards of $1.2 trillion by 2030.

I could also mention that Alzheimer's Disease, which gets most of the press, isn't the only type of dementia. There's also vascular dementia, which can occur following a stroke; Lewy body dementia, which happens when abnormal proteins appear in nerve cells for reasons as yet unknown; and frontotemporal dementia, which happens when certain regions of the brain shrink, causing behavior and emotional changes as opposed to memory problems. In fact, any disease or condition that damages brain or nerve cells can cause dementia.

And some other things cause memory issues, too. Stress is a big one; drug interactions, particularly in older people, are another. The good news is that those conditions can be reversed. Others can't yet, though. So the trick is figuring out what's causing the memory loss -- and in the case of Alzheimer's, where the cause is a buildup of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, you can't know for sure without an autopsy.

But I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking of all that last week. So let's talk about Maggie's crazy old ladies for a minute. (Hey, I made them up. I can call them crazy if I want.)

I mentioned Granny last week. She is a kindly but mysterious figure in a pastel track suit. She travels around the country with Zed, her assistant, in an ancient VW bus. She keeps calling Maggie by the wrong name, which she says doesn't matter because "it's not your real name anyway." She claims to be channeling a Shawnee Indian creator spirit, and she believes she's supposed to rescue or renew or reach 1,054 people before the next major lunar standstill in April 2025. (I talked briefly about lunar standstills last week.) Granny seems to have made peace with her occasional lapses of memory, maybe because Kokumthena is filling in the gaps for her in Her own way.

Ruth Brandt, Maggie's former mother-in-law, is a pill. She believes she knows best how to live everyone else's lives, especially those of family -- and she still considers Maggie family, even though Maggie's been divorced from her son for ten years. Ruth is stressed out because of her cancer treatments, but that's only part of her problem. She's been keeping a big secret for decades, and the stress of that is also wearing on her. In Maggie in the Dark, it falls to Maggie to bring that secret out into the open.

The third old lady in Maggie's life is her mother, Shirley Muir. Maggie talks about her at the beginning of Maggie in the Dark; then we meet her at the end of the book, when Maggie returns home after a couple of months at Ruth's. Shirley's memory issues are a crucial element of the plot of the second book, Maggie on the Cusp, which I'm writing now, so I won't say much more.

Maggie herself is no spring chicken, and the stress she undergoes while she achieves her transcendence is bound to have an effect on her. I don't think it will make her crazy. But then, I'm only partway into Maggie on the Cusp. Our heroine still has a long way to go.

By the way, if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Maggie in the Dark, here's where to go to get one. And thank you!

***
Camp NaNo progress: I had a great writing day yesterday -- Maggie on the Cusp now stands at about 15,000 words. I hope to add to that tonight, as I'll be out of pocket for a good chunk of the next two weekends, and I won't be able to employ my usual strategy of slacking off during the week and catching up in a marathon weekend session. The advantage to Camp NaNo is that in case I fall really far behind, I can adjust my goal so that I still "win". But that would mean finishing the first draft in May, and I'd really like to have it out of the way by the end of this month. Time will tell...

***
These moments of memory-addled blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Practicing patience.

(copyright greg, flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0)

There's this thing I sometimes do when life gets frustrating (such as now, when I'm fighting with writing my weekly blog post on the iPad). I tell myself that I am practicing patience.

This does two things. First, it reminds me that patience is a good quality -- a virtue, even. And second, it underscores that patience does not spring full-blown and perfect from most of us, most of the time. That's why it's called practicing, right? Because practice is how you get good at it.

For the past several years, I've had plenty of opportunities to practice patience. I talked about one of them last week, when I mentioned that I've been temporarily back in DC for 16 years, waiting for my chance to move back to Denver. Well, I'm here now, and I'm still having to practice patience -- I don't know yet how long this current visit will last, and I don't know for certain whether I'll be able to make the move permanent this year. (Divinatory signs are telling me that this is my year to make the move, but I'm not willing to stake anything on that. I'm well aware that any divination is a snapshot, and things could -- and often do -- change.)

There's another situation that I haven't talked much about in public up to now. It has to do with my mother's estate, and I'm still not comfortable going into many details. But suffice it to say that I've been practicing patience on that for a number of years, as well.

And of course, there's your garden-variety indie-author patience practice: Will the next book be my breakout book? Will I sell any books today? Will I ever sell another book, ever again?

The thing about being patient is that at some point, you have to question whether it's not doing you more harm than good. It's one thing to put off having a cookie until after dinner, and another thing entirely to be so patient that people take advantage of you, or even forget you exist. At some point, you need to set aside your patience practice and do something.

***

I have good news for those of you who have been waiting (patiently?) for my next book. I finished the first draft of Firebird's Snare this morning. I need to go back and do some tweaking on Dragon's Web, including making a cover for it. (That kind of took a back seat to writing the second book and, um, practicing patience about whether I was going to get to make this trip to Denver.) But I am confident that we are still on schedule for publication of the first book in the Pipe Woman's Legacy duology in late-ish May. Stay tuned, as they say in broadcasting....

***

These patient moments of blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Knitting and drafting and contests, oh my.

Last week, I alluded to a sweater I was working on. As you may recall, it was almost finished and I was just dying to get it off the needles. Well, I succeeded. This is it.

It looks complicated, but really there were only a couple of rows of the chart that made me pause and go, "What the what?!?" The rest of it wasn't that bad. Really. Honest.

Anyhow, it's done, and I've now moved on to a knitting project that's much less of a head-scratcher.

What I'm not doing, unfortunately, is going gangbusters on the newest book. Camp NaNoWriMo started this past Wednesday, and usually by the end of the first weekend I'm comfortably ahead of where I need to be. This time around, however, it hasn't happened. I keep getting distracted with other (mostly) necessary duties. But I have promised myself that before I go to bed tonight, I will be caught up to where my word count ought to be today. That means I have to put another 1,300 words or so on virtual paper tonight. So this blog post will be a little shorter than usual, so that I can get to that. I'm assuming you guys would rather read a new book from me than read my bloggy blathering about this and that, anyway.

So let's see...that covers the knitting and the drafting...oh, right. Contests. First, thanks to those of you who voted for Scorched Earth in the Big Al's Books and Pals Readers' Choice Awards. Unfortunately, we couldn't pull it out this year. But I'll keep trying if you will.

The other thing I wanted to mention tonight was the kerfuffle over the Hugo Awards, which are handed out every year at Worldcon. Nominations for this year's awards were announced yesterday, and the science fiction world is up in arms over them. It seems that last year's winners included several younger women and writers of color. This angered a contingent of sci-fi's old guard, and prompted them to stage an insurrection of sorts to take back the Hugos for the kind of sci-fi they like to read (and write). They called themselves the Sad Puppies, and they drafted a slate of nominees and encouraged all their friends to nominate their slate. Some people reportedly went so far as to buy a non-attending membership to Worldcon so that they could vote for the Sad Puppies slate. And it worked. This year's list of nominees is chock-full of Sad Puppy favorites.

Does this amount to stuffing the ballot box? I'd say so. Should these conservative guys who don't like women and people of color winning their awards get over themselves? I think so, yeah. But do they have a point that Hugo voters have tended in recent years toward selecting winners based on literary merit, rather than popularity? Sure, they do, and I don't think that's a bad thing. There's a lot more going on in speculative fiction these days than pure entertainment. Personally, I like books that give me something to think about. I guess these guys don't. Whatev.

The one thing I think is guaranteed is that the committee responsible for the Hugos will make some changes in the nomination system between now and next year. I hope the Sad Puppies are enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame, because I have a feeling it's just about over.

And now I'm gonna go write.

***
These moments of bloggy blathering have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Finding balance.

James Jordan | flickr.com

Last weekend was Ostara, the Pagan celebration of the vernal equinox. Spiritually, at least, if not in reality, the spring and fall equinoxes are the two days of the year on which daylight and darkness are of equal length. On those two days, the dark is supposed to be balanced with the light.

Pagans take that as a signal to try to find balance in their own lives. And I'm trying. Really, I'm trying. (All together now: "Yes, you're very trying.")

I'm working on a sweater right now that I'm dying to get off the needles. It's short-sleeved but tunic length, and so I won't have many more opportunities to wear it this season. (Although if the weather keeps shilly-shallying around about turning springlike here in the mid-Atlantic, I could get another month or so out of it. Thirty degrees at 9:00 a.m. today? Really?) But see, the problem is that I'm also supposed to be editing Dragon's Web, and drafting a rough outline for the book that comes next. And cleaning the house. And so on.

I've mentioned before that when I get into first-draft mode, I seem to work best by holing up in my apartment and writing for long stretches of time. If the writing is on fire and the words are coming easily, I can knock out a 50,000 word novel in three weeks this way, even with a full-time job.

But that practice doesn't leave much time for participating in real life. I tend to surface after doing that first draft and blink owlishly at the world, as if I've been in a dark cave and am just now coming into the light. And then I'll pick up a knitting project while the first draft ripens, and go at that every night until it's done. And any marketing I end up doing for my books is more or less an afterthought.

So with Dragon's Web, I decided not to set myself a hard-and-fast deadline. I decided to start the writing when I started it, avoid pushing myself to write every day, and finish whenever the book was done. Yeah, well, that gave me a little too much latitude. I found myself writing only every couple of days, together with one really long session on the weekends, and a lot of frittering around in between. It felt like it took me forever to get that book done. And even though I've had the edits back from my editor for several days, I've been stalling on addressing them.

I guess some people can live like that, but I hate it. I hate having stuff hanging over my head, undone. Whether it's a book or a sweater or some other project, I want to get it done and get it off my plate.

Which is why this sweater is driving me crazy right now. It's almost done -- all I have to do is knit the buttonhole band and the sleeve edgings, sew on the buttons, and weave in the ends. I could have finished it today -- but I had the edits for the book, and the outline for the next book, and this blog post to take care of first. The good news is that once I hit "publish" on this post, I'll have all of that done.

All of which is to say that I'm still trying to find a balance of writing, knitting, and real life that works for me. I know I'm task-oriented and deadline-oriented, so I've signed up for the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo. The structure should help me stick to the task better, and the deadline should keep me working toward the goal. But with any luck, I'll remember to come up for air once in a while, too.

It also means that I need to have the sweater done by Tuesday night at the latest. So if you'll excuse me....

***
Oh, right. I guess I should tell you that I'm aiming to release Dragon's Web sometime in May, with the follow-up book of the duology then coming out in June. I've never released two books back-to-back like this before. It should be interesting.

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These moments of bloggy balance have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Scorched Earth is coming. Now what?

As promised, the final installment in the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy, Scorched Earth, will hit virtual bookshelves sometime mid-week. I'm aiming for Wednesday, June 11th, but it might be a little sooner than that, depending on how quickly Amazon and Smashwords can process the file. I'm still putting the finishing touches on the manuscript, but I fully intend to upload the e-book files before I go to bed tonight.

As part of the celebration for finishing the series, I'm throwing a little party on Facebook. Consider this your invitation to stop by on Saturday, June 14th, between 1:00pm and 3:00pm Eastern time. Just like with the party for the Undertow launch, we'll have some games and music, and there will be prizes. A whole bunch of my indie author friends have given me copies of their books to give away -- I'll be previewing them on the event page all week -- and I have some other prizes lined up, too. Hope you can join us.

Of course, I couldn't leave my blog readers out. So you will see below a Rafflecopter for a $25 Amazon gift card and two $5 Amazon gift cards.

You will notice that one of the entries is a poll question. You see, I'm not the kind of writer who has a drawer full of writing prompts. Instead, I start one book and pursue it to completion, and then cast around for something else to write about. I used to feel like I was doing it wrong. But then I found out Stephen R. Donaldson, who's been writing novels for a lot longer than I have, is the same way. If the system works for him, I decided, it can't be all bad.

But here's the thing: once I pull the trigger on this book, I will need something else to work on. This is why I like writing series -- I don't have that floundering feeling when I finish a book because I've always got the next one teed up. Unless, that is, it's the final book.

I wouldn't be dithering now, but my editor asked me the other day whether I was interested in doing Camp NaNo with her in July. I hadn't planned on it, but if I can come up with an idea before July 1st, why not? 

I have come up with a couple of not-even-half-formed ideas. I could write about Naomi's kids, Sage and Webb, but I'd like for them to get a little older first. I could also do something else with Tess, Sue, and Darrell; originally, I'd planned to be done with them after these three books, but they are all moving on to new chapters in their lives at the end of Scorched Earth and Darrell's new gig, at least, could be pretty interesting. I could also write a completely new fantasy series that I've just started thinking about. Or I could try writing a novel of magic realism; I don't have any more to go on than that at this point, but heck, Seized began as a challenge to myself to write an urban fantasy, and you see where that's gotten us.

Or I could take the rest of the summer off.

Anyway, feel free to give me your opinion. Vote in the poll and/or leave me a comment below. Thanks, and good luck!

The Rules (sorry, gotta have 'em):

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners from my previous contests may win again.
3. Someone will win.
4. As always, the judge's decisions are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

P.S. As promised, the Kindle edition of Summer Dreams is now available at Amazon for 99 cents. Just as with 13 Bites, we're giving all the proceeds to children's literacy programs.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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These moments of bloggy celebration have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Tiny house porn.

I have a new obsession: looking at tiny houses on teh intarwebz.

The definition of a tiny house varies, but it's basically a dwelling, 1,000 square feet or less in size, that's meant to be lived in full-time. The form varies, but the cutest ones look like regular stick-built houses -- except they're tiny.

from npr.org

Take, for example, this Fencl (since renamed the Cypress 18 Overlook) by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Inside, it has 176 square feet, including the sleeping loft. Yes, it's built on a trailer chassis; no, it's not a glorified RV. Well, maybe it is a glorified RV. You can get RV financing for it, and local building codes don't apply because it's not a fixed structure. But it's designed and built to be a four-season permanent dwelling. And if you get tired of the view out the windows after you've parked it, you can hook it up to your vehicle again and move the whole house. You can buy the plans and build it yourself for about $27,000 worth of materials (the designers' estimate), or Tumbleweed will build the whole shebang for you for $66,000.

fourlightshouses.com

Then there's the Marmara, a slightly bigger model -- 284 square feet -- offered by Four Lights Tiny House Company. You can put this model on a trailer, too, or you can build it in a fixed location. This one's got an Arts and Crafts-style feel to it, doesn't it? Four Lights won't build it for you, but they will sell you the plans so you can build it yourself. Their estimate for materials only: $24,800 if you build it on a foundation; $29,500 if you build it on wheels. Labor, of course, is extra. But many of these places hold workshops where they teach you how to build the house yourself.

And note those price tags. If you've done any sort of real estate shopping in the US recently, you may be beginning to understand the appeal these little houses have for some folks. Yes, there's downsizing involved; yes, you'd be living in a space the size of an RV; no, it's not for everybody. But you sure can't beat the price.

Of course, there's more to the tiny house movement than the cost. Environmentalists may appreciate the small ecological footprint. And too, the smaller the house, the less upkeep it will require, and the smaller the space to clean. Of course, it also means you'll have less storage space; if you're a packrat, you'll have a tough time making it work.

Michael Dean Photography, http://www.mikedeanphoto.com/

But you don't have to go all that small. A couple in Oregon hired an architect to design an 800-square-foot home for them. Here's a shot of the interior. The kitchen is in the rear of this photo. Looks pretty spacious, doesn't it? And I wouldn't even have to downsize; my current apartment is 850 square feet.

It would, however, take a lot of downsizing -- probably more than I'm willing to do -- to move myself into one of the truly tiny houses. And I can see the whole sleeping loft thing becoming a problem, the older I get; I would want a place with a bedroom on the first floor.

But those little houses on wheels sure are adorable.

***
It's official: the first draft of Scorched Earth is done. I finished it on Tuesday, but Camp NaNo validation didn't start 'til Friday and it's been a busy weekend, so I didn't have time to validate the book 'til tonight.

The official word count, including the section of the first chapter that I wrote before the start of April, is 61,611. I expect that will change in the final draft. But in any case, it's done, and it's already begun ripening. Barring any really stupid plot holes or other crises, I think we're looking at publication toward the end of May or in early June. As always, stay tuned for more info.

***
These moments of tiny-house blogginess
have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

A day late, but 5K over.

I'm still pretty well fried from this weekend's marathon writing session, so I'm going to keep this short.

Alert readers of hearth/myth know that I (almost, nearly, pretty much) always post on Sunday nights. And I knew last night that I needed to write a blog post. Then I sat down and started working on Scorched Earth. At 1:00 a.m., I forced myself to set the manuscript aside and go to bed. It wasn't until the alarm went off this morning that I realized I'd never written a blog post.

Ack. I'm sorry.

On the other hand, I was somewhat shocked this morning to discover that I'd written more than 18,000 words on the book from Friday night through 1:00 a.m. today. (I did wonder yesterday why my butt was sore....) That means I've written 55,000-plus words, total, since April 1st -- more than enough to meet my Camp NaNoWriMo goal.

But the book's not done yet. I have one more pivotal scene to go, and then the mopping up. So I expect this first draft will top 60,000 words, but not by a lot. I hope.

Um, so that's pretty much it for right now. What else, what else.... I know! I'll fill out this post with a video! That won't take much thought, right?

I saw this on Peter Tork's Facebook fan page last week. It's the Monkees in concert, before Davy's death, doing "Shades of Gray." I've always loved the song, even when I was a kid. But as you get older, some things take on a new resonance, and I wonder whether that wasn't the case for the guys with this particular song.

***
These moments of foggy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Camp NaNo, Day 13, or: My head is filled with Scorched Earth.

I have had to drag myself away from my new book in order to write this post. You may take that as an indication that the first draft of Scorched Earth, the third and final Land, Sea, Sky book, is rocketing along.

As I mentioned last week, Scorched Earth is my Camp NaNoWriMo project for this month. I am more confident than I was last week at this time that I'll finish the first draft early. I wrote 10,000 words last weekend, give or take. And I've done more than 12,000 words this weekend, even if I don't write another word tonight (which is not guaranteed -- I haven't closed the Word file yet).

I posted the cover on Wattpad, so I might as well share it here, too:

The plant in the foreground that looks like corn is called ayalendo, and yes, it plays a significant role in the book. This is the "Land" book, after all, so you can bet the bad guys will have it in for the Earth before it's over.

Speaking of having it in for someone, although maybe not deliberately, I would draw your attention to this blog post by my IU colleague Chris James. In it, he talks about a new contest sponsored by the Guardian, a newspaper in the UK, that's aimed at honoring indie books at the rate of one per month. On the surface, the contest looks like a huge step up for indies: the Guardian is a pretty well-respected newspaper with a decent book section, and a review there might be helpful to an indie's career.

But it turns out the Guardian is co-sponsoring the contest with Legend Press -- a publishing conglomerate with five imprints, one of which offers what amount to vanity publishing packages. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that Legend Press will be collecting the email addresses of everyone who enters the Guardian's contest and will thereafter spam them with "helpful" emails, suggesting they spend hundreds or thousands of pounds to buy services for stuff they can do themselves.

I've said before (although perhaps not here), in my best world-weary voice, that I'm probably in the wrong end of this business. Authors, by and large, don't make a lot of money from their work. The stars do, of course, and the star machine (read: the traditional publishing industry) pumps up that possibility to everyone who's ever written a book; it keeps the tap flowing, so that they never run out of material to publish.

In addition, there are plenty of ancillary service providers out there who are out to make a quick buck from authors who dream of hitting the big time. Many service providers are legitimate, and most authors who go indie will have to hire at least some help -- editors and cover designers in particular. And I've worked with blog tour operators and publicists who I would hire again in a heartbeat. But it's so much work, any more, to separate the wheat from the chaff. It seems like a new "helpful" website pops up every day. Even NaNoWriMo got into the act last fall, offering winners (among other prizes) a 30% discount on an "ebook publishing package" at Book Country, Penguin's vanity publishing arm, which is tied closely to vanity publishing megalith Author Solutions (which Penguin also owns). And it's so easy to convince yourself that you need to hand over cash to somebody because you don't know what you're doing or can't possibly learn how to do it yourself.

That's why I'm so pleased to be involved with Indies Unlimited. One of our missions is to encourage indies to learn how to do-it-yourself -- and, if you're dead set on hiring someone, how to spot the good guys from the "service" providers who only want to fleece you.

I didn't mean to turn this post into a commercial for IU. But seriously, if you've written a book and you're thinking about self-publishing it, start there. We have a wealth of information on how to do it, and it's all free.

Now then: should I write some more? Or knit? Decisions, decisions....

***
These moments of cautionary blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Works in progress.

Welcome to April. It's only day 6, and it's already been kind of a crazy month.

For starters, you'll be glad to know (I hope) that I have indeed started on Scorched Earth in earnest. As of right now, I'm more than 12,000 words into the first draft, which is ahead of where I need to be today. (I find it's a good practice during any NaNo event to write ahead when the opportunity arises. It's insurance against the inevitable days when real life gets between me and my work-in-progress.) I'm hoping to finish before the end of the month. Let's see if the writing gods cooperate.

Also, thanks to a follow-fest yesterday at Indies Unlimited (and a bit of gentle nagging from K.S. Brooks), I've joined Wattpad. The first draft of the first chapter of Scorched Earth is now posted there. It's slightly revised and lengthened from the back-of-the-book sample in Undertow; feel free to click through and read the new version, and leave me a note to let me know if you think I'm on the right track.

I got a nice surprise yesterday, when Carol Wyer featured me in a new thing on her blog called "Have You Read...?" I really appreciated her thinking of me.

But there's more than one kind of work-in-progress in my life. And since I can't say much more about the new book, I thought I'd fill out this blog post with some pictures of my knitting.

I finished the Celestarium shawl a couple of weeks ago. Here's a shot of it while it was being blocked. The little whitish dots scattered about are beads, and the whole thing is a re-creation (in yarn and beads, yet) of the night sky as seen from the North Pole. I did not chart this myself, thank you very much -- I found the pattern on Ravelry, and I only agreed to do it because my daughter Amy was leading a knit-along for the project for the yarn store where she works. And it turns out I've got a couple of places to wear it this spring.

Once that was out of the way, I started tearing through some other projects. The pattern for the shawl on the right is called New Edge. I've dubbed mine the New Edge Alpenglow because the colors look a little like sunrise in the mountains, when the sun is hitting the snowy peaks and turning them pink and purple, but the valleys are still in shadow. That's my story, anyway. (Side note: This shawl is only supposed to have 4 wedges. I didn't realize that the pattern started at the top edge; if I had, I would have begun knitting with the purple yarn. By the time I figured out my mistake, I was already into the second wedge of the shawl. Instead of frogging the whole thing and starting over, I decided to add a small extra section of the multicolor variegated yarn at the bottom, which in this picture is at the top. Hence, the knitter's motto: "It's not a mistake -- it's a design element!")

The New Edge Alpenglow took me only four days to knit -- which meant I then needed to find another project. Luckily, Amy gave me a skein of yarn for Yule. So I used it to cast on for a shawl called the Canyonlands. It's still a work-in-progress, as you can see at left. The top part of the shawl is garter stitch and the bottom edge is a seriously textured knit-purl design that's meant to mimic the flowy sandstone formations in the Southwest. You can't see it as well in this picture as I'd hoped, but there are traveling curves throughout, and the bottom edge will be wavy when it's done. I'll post a pic of the final result, if I ever get it done. This border is taking way longer to knit than the top part did. (Side note: Typically, knitting patterns put all the shaping stitches on the right side of the work. This one, however, has just as much shaping on the wrong side. You've never lived 'til you've had to do a slip-slip-purl stitch; I didn't know my wrist could bend that way....)

So that's a preview of my April in a nutshell: Whatever free time Camp NaNo doesn't suck up, the bottom edge of the Canyonlands shawl will.

(For the yarn geeks: I used Dragonfly Fibers Djinni Sock in Solstice for the Celestarium; Dragonfly Fibers Djinni Sock in Rocky Top for the Canyonlands; and Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend in Purples and Stellar for the New Edge. More details on my Ravelry project page, if you care.)

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These moments of progressive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Writing Process Blog Tour.

I've been tagged by Yvonne Hertzberger to be one of the next stops on the Writing Process Blog Tour. Thanks for the opportunity, Yvonne. And a hearty hearth/myth welcome to any newbies who have found their way here from her site.

By the way, Yvonne writes some pretty awesome epic fantasy; click on the Rursday Reads tab above and look for my reviews of her "Earth's Pendulum" series. She's also a fellow staffer at Indies Unlimited.

Now then, to the main event -- which is for me to answer the following four questions:

1. What are you working on?

Alert readers of hearth/myth already know that Scorched Earth will be the third and final book in my Land, Sea, Sky trilogy. What they don't know (because I just signed up yesterday) is that I've made this book my Camp NaNoWriMo project for next month. My outline is already done; I still need to fill in the pertinent dates on my dry-erase calendar, which I will do before I go to sleep tonight, and then I will be ready to kick this thing into overdrive on Tuesday.

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?

This question assumes I've settled on a genre. The Pipe Woman Chronicles were easier -- Native American mythology + handsome shapeshifters = urban fantasy/paranormal romance. Land, Sea, Sky has some Native American mythology, but none of the sexy Plains tribes are involved; instead, Darrell is a Potawatomi Indian, a tribe which almost nobody has heard of, and his sponsoring deity (if you will) is the Ojibwe culture hero Nanabush. I've also got the Morrigan, who's the Celtic goddess of war and who is allied with Tess (to Tess's dismay); and Gaia, who is more or less a Wiccan Earth goddess, and whose human avatar is Sue. The plots of all these books involve a fair amount of intrigue and political maneuvering. So I'm calling the series contemporary fantasy.

If pressed, I'd compare Land, Sea, Sky to Neil Gaiman's American Gods, or to some of Charles de Lint's books. But my books are not enough like those to make a fair comparison. I don't really think anyone else is doing what I'm doing.

3. Why do you write what you do?

Because it interests me. I began studying various Pagan pantheons as part of my own spiritual journey several years ago, and I'd been reading up on Native American spirituality for many years before that. As a news reporter and editor, I spent a couple of decades covering politics (along with a whole bunch of other stuff). I've lived in all the places where the books in both of my series have been set (so far...).  And I read a lot of fantasy.

4. How does your writing process work?

I have discovered that I work best on deadline -- a holdover from my years in journalism. So the NaNoWriMo template seems to work best for me: I churn out a first draft of 50,000 words or so in three or four weeks. It's an intensive process, obviously. I don't have much of a life during the weeks when I'm writing the first draft; I typically spend several hours each night and all day on the weekends at the keyboard.

I do work from an outline, although it's a general, beat-style outline rather than a really detailed one. I write that, and I put the big events of the narrative on a dry-erase calendar that hangs above my desk, before I start writing the first draft. I also collect my research notes in a OneNote notebook. But that's pretty much it for my "writing process." Other than that, I just write.

Tag -- you're It!
The next thing I get to do is tag three authors to be the next stops on the Writing Process Blog Tour. They have all agreed to post their stuff by April 7th. Do stop by and visit them!

1. Laurie Boris

Laurie is a freelance writer, editor, proofreader, and former graphic designer. She has been writing fiction for over twenty-five years and is the award-winning author of four novels: The Joke's on Me, Drawing Breath, Don't Tell Anyone, and Sliding Past Vertical. When not playing with the universe of imaginary people in her head, she enjoys baseball, cooking, reading, and helping aspiring novelists as a contributing writer and editor for IndiesUnlimited.com. She lives in New York's lovely Hudson Valley.

2. John R. Phythyon, Jr.

John wishes he were a superhero or a magician, but since he has not yet been bitten by a radioactive spider or gotten his letter from Hogwarts, he writes adventure stories instead. He is the author of the Wolf Dasher series of fantasy-thriller mashup novels, as well as several short stories, a two-act comedy, and numerous game manuals. He won awards for the latter and hopes to make millions with the former.

In the meantime, he lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, their children, a dog, and a cat. His current projects include the next novel in the Wolf Dasher series, world peace, and desperately wishing for the Cincinnati Bengals to win a Super Bowl before he dies.

3. Alesha Cary

Alesha Cary grew up reading mysteries and she still loves a good who-dunnit. But she's also a romantic at heart and believes we all deserve our own happily-ever-after -- we just have to find the right person. She writes her books with a bit of romance and a bit of mystery ~ and sometimes a splash of paranormal.

The mixture is different for each book, but you can expect to find some of each in every story.

Just like her characters, Alesha lives on the Pacific Northwest Coast with her husband and two cats. Their neighbors are deer, raccoons, skunks, foxes, mountain lions and bear, and far too many birds to list. From her window she gets to watch the whales playing as they migrate.

***
These moments of bloggy process -- or maybe it's processed blogginess? Anyway, here they are, brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

It is time, once again, to honor book bloggers.

It's April, and that means my fellow indie author Terri Giuliano Long is sponsoring a little celebration of book bloggers.  The celebration only lasts through today, which is why this week's post is a day earlier than usual.

Long-time readers of this blog may recall my post on this subject sometime last year.  That is, you may recall it, and I certainly seem to recall writing it, but now I can't find it.  Maybe I posted it at the Indie Exchange.  Hmm.

Anyway, no harm, no foul.  Let's talk about book bloggers, and why they are crucial to the indie author ecosystem.

Traditional publishing wisdom asserts that one of the benefits authors get from signing with a publisher is help with promotion and marketing.  (It's not true, by the way, or it's not true of every trad-pubbed author; these days, only the mega-star authors get a marketing budget, and the rest have to bump along, doing their own promotional efforts, just like we indies do. Tell me again about the benefits of being trad-pubbed....  Sorry.  Off-topic.  Refocusing.)

Indie authors, however, don't even get that much (minimal) help.  No, we are stuck with making our own noise.  And besides personal appearances and chatting up all and sundry on social media, one of the best ways for us to get noticed is to be featured on someone's blog.  The blogger's audience becomes our captive audience, and if we can manage to be charming or entertaining or both, we might sell some books.  Those new readers, if we're very lucky, will become fans, and recommend our books to their friends, who may also become fans, and so on.  Indie authors are on a slow but steady career trajectory, and a lot of our growth wouldn't happen if it weren't for bloggers featuring us or our books.  My thanks must go here to the Cabin Goddess, who twice this year has let me visit with my characters in the Pipe Woman Chronicles in her Fourth-Wall Friday feature; and to Allison Bruning, whose virtual cruise stopped at both Naomi's condo and Swan Island last fall.

Many bloggers also review books, and their reviews can boost an author's visibility.  I am particularly grateful this year to my friends at Big Al's Books and Pals, Leanne Herrera, and Love of the Goddess for giving the Pipe Woman Chronicles such glowing reviews.

I'm sure I'm leaving some folks out, and for that, I apologize.  Dear blogger buddies, even if I didn't mention you by name, know that I am grateful for your help and support this year.  Thanks to all of you -- you rock!

***
This week's news is mostly Camp NaNoWriMo-related.  The first draft of Annealed is proceeding apace; as of this writing, I am at 20,170 words of my 40,000-word camp goal, and 30,251 words for the whole book.  The first drafts for each preceding Pipe Woman Chronicles book have clocked in at somewhere around 52,000 words, so I'm comfortably past the halfway point.

No, I'm not going to tell you what's happening in the book right now.  Nice try, though.

***
This moment of bloggy gratitude is brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

GoodZon, and promoting e-books.

First, let's wrap up some old business.  Congrats to the winners of autographed sets of the first three Pipe Woman Chronicles books: on Goodreads, Ebonique Knighton; and on LibraryThing, Kristy Choi.  Thanks for entering, ladies!  Here's hoping you like the series.

Also, many, many thanks to those of you who have already purchased Gravid!  It does my heart good to know that you like the Pipe Woman Chronicles well enough to get the fourth book the minute it came out.  However, I was dismayed to learn that some folks didn't know Gravid was out until this weekend.  I've been resisting the setup of an e-mail list because I know how I feel about marketing e-mails -- i.e., most of them go straight to my spam folder, where I never see them and never miss them.  But I'm learning that I just can't rely on posts on my Facebook page.  So I think this week, I'm going to succumb, if only so y'all will know when Annealed is released.  I'll post signup details, uh, multiple places, including here.

The big news in the world of indie publishing this week was the purchase of Goodreads by Amazon.  There was a lot of doom-and-gloom speculation about how this will ruin Goodreads, how this will ruin indie authors' hopes of success, etc., etc.  I was less inclined to believe it will hurt us after I learned that Amazon also owns 40 percent of LibraryThing -- as well as IMDb.  As far as I can tell, the Zon hasn't really changed anything about the day-to-day operations of either of those websites, and so I doubt that much will change at Goodreads, either.  In both of those acquisitions, as well as in the acquisition of Shelfari, what Amazon was after was the sites' databases of ratings and reviews.  I suspect that's what Amazon really wants out of Goodreads, too.

David Gaughran opined about the deal in a blog post about the purchase earlier this week.  He thinks the acquisition will help indies in the long run, mainly by giving us more opportunities to advertise on Goodreads (color me skeptical about that) and by boosting the visibility of Amazon links (which definitely will help).  I think as long as Goodreads doesn't implement the same draconian review policies as Amazon -- and Goodreads's CEO has said that won't happen -- then I'm cautiously optimistic that indies will be okay.  But time will tell.  In any case, I'm going to take Gaughran's advice in the meantime:  Keep writing.

***
There's always a moment in any live event -- interview, public speaking engagement, whatever -- when I feel like I've lost the plot. So, of course, I had one during my talk on e-publishing in Indianapolis last weekend.  Toward the end of the discussion, someone in the audience asked me whether I ever did any book signings or talked to book clubs, or did any other promotional events.  And I confessed that I do almost none of that stuff, and that in fact I kind of suck at self-promotion in general.  So the kindly people in the audience then began giving me tips about finding venues and so on.

It didn't occur to me until I was on my way home (awake and sitting up in coach in the middle of the night, which is another story entirely) why I don't bother with it:  I'm selling e-books.

I thought about Cheryl Tardif (whose latest book you read about here a couple of weeks ago).  In her book touting her KDP Select success, she talks about how she spent years doing exactly what these kindly souls suggest -- running from personal appearance to personal appearance, more than 40 per year, and endlessly flogging her books. But after she put her books up on Amazon, she made more money than she ever had by making all those personal appearances.
I do make paperback editions available for all my books, as a convenience for people who don't have an e-reader.  But I sell far more e-books than I do paperbacks, and I earn more from each e-book than I do from each paperback.  So tell me again why I should make myself crazy by running hither and yon to sell dead-tree books.  I can reach more potential readers with a Facebook ad, or even a blog post, than I can with a personal appearance.  And I don't have to sit up all night in coach.

***
Oh, there is one more thing.  Camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow (no fooling!), so I'll be pretty busy working on Annealed in my spare time for the next few weeks.  I don't plan to miss any posts here, but just...well...fair warning.

***
These moments of lame, promotion-free blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

"Luuuke, I am your..." "Ack! No! Spoiler!"

I have a friend who, bless her heart, hates spoilers.  Hates 'em.  We were talking at one point about Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next books (which are hilarious, by the way) and I happened to mention that in one of the books, he includes one of my all-time favorite jokes.  "Don't tell me," she said.

"Well, but I'm just going to tell you the joke," I said.  "It doesn't have anything to do with the plot -- it's just a joke."

"Please don't do it," she said.  "If you do, I'll be waiting for the joke and it will spoil the book for me."

That seemed like an extreme case to me.  But there are a whole lot of people who don't like to be spoilered before they've had a chance to read a book -- or see a movie.  My daughter Kat says friends told her everything about "Rise of the Guardians" well before she had a chance to see the movie -- and in fact, she still hasn't seen it.  Even today, there are probably people who would be angry at me if I told them Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, even though "The Empire Strikes Back" has been out for thirty-three years.  (Gods.  Thirty-three years.  Here, let me sit down for a sec....  Okay, I'm better now.  Thanks.)

Interestingly, though, it's been shown that spoilers can actually add to your enjoyment of a work of fiction.  Researchers at the University of California-San Diego did a study in which they found that readers who knew what was coming at the end of a story enjoyed the story more.

If you've ever re-read a book, you might have experienced this.  Did you find yourself lingering over the book the second time?  Savoring certain favorite passages?  Maybe it was because you weren't racing headlong to the end to find out what happened.  Because you already knew the ending, you could relax on the re-read and stop to smell the flowers along the way.

A lot of authors complain about spoilers in book reviews.  Some reviewers will retell practically the whole story, as if they're doing a book report.  Some authors are livid when that happens because they believe it will spoil the book for new readers.  Me?  I'm just grateful for a review -- any review.  Just don't totally give away the ending.

***
I hope you guys enjoyed the Tapped travelogue this week on my Facebook page.  (Pretty sure the pictures didn't spoil anything....)  I happened to glance at the calendar on Monday and think, "Hmm, this is the week that Naomi and Shannon are in South Dakota, isn't it?  Hey, I could post some pictures!"  And it was off to the races.  If you missed it, or if you're not a fan of my Facebook page, click here and head on over to take a gander.  (And feel free to click "like" while you're there.  Thanks!)  I had fun finding the pictures and I sure hope none of the copyright holders track me down and sue me for using them....  If you'd rather not go hunting all over my timeline to find the pictures, I've also got them pinned to a board on Pinterest, which you can view by clicking here.

Gravid is greenlighted (yes, it's a verb -- leave me alone) for publication on March 20th, give or take a day.  More details to come...

Yes, I've signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo next month.  I need to get moving on writing Annealed and this should light a fire under my butt.  I've set 50,000 words as my goal, but I'm hoping to start writing the book well before April 1st.  If I manage that, I will probably adjust my NaNo goal downward -- which, it turns out, you can do during Camp NaNo.  Who knew?

Finally, welcome to anybody who made his or her way here from Smashwords' Read an Ebook Week!  I hope you enjoy your stay.

***
You want to hear the joke?  Okay, but don't complain to me that I spoiled the book for you by telling it here....  Fforde presents it in a slightly different way, but the punch line is the same.  Here's how I heard it:

A reporter was doing man-on-the-street interviews -- you know, where you poke a microphone in a random stranger's face, ask him or her a question, and then record the answer.  This particular day, the question was, "What's the most amazing invention you've ever heard of?"

This one fellow stops and thinks for a moment, and then he says, "The thermos."

"Really?" the reporter asks.  "Why's that?"

"Well," the fellow says, "it keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold."

"Okay.  And?"

And the fellow asks, "How does it know?"

(rimshot)  Thank you!  I'm here all week!

***
These moments of unspoilered blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.