Cultural appropriation and the spirits of the land.

I don't want this to be a political blog -- or a food blog or a dieting blog or a Pagan blog, although I've blogged about all those topics over the years. hearth/myth started out as a blog about writing, specifically about writing my books (and, y'know, trying to sell a few). I'm not doing much writing these days, so my posts about writing have been few and far between. But today's post is a little bit about writing, and about Paganism, too.

I'm going to try to keep the political stuff to every other week or so. There's a fresh outrage every day (a recent example: I'm concerned that we're going to end up at war with our NATO comrades over Greenland, all so that Trump and his superrich cronies can lock up the wealth in natural resources that will reveal itself as the Arctic ice recedes due to climate change), and I simply can't cover them all. 

Anyway. This week's post is about writing and Paganism and cultural appropriation. 

JosefKlopacka | Deposit Photos

I can't remember whether I've mentioned it here on the blog, but I've been attending a Pagan group once a month for almost a year now. I don't want to go into too many details about who's running it, etc., because I'm going to air some misgivings I've had about the founders since pretty much the first meeting, and I don't want to trash them. Paganism is a big tent, and everybody has a place under it.

Anyway, I've quit the group. I have several reasons, and it took me way too long to put my finger on one of them.

I've mentioned to the group's founders in passing that I'm an author. They are also authors, although they don't write fiction. But I could never get a conversation going with them about the writing process or publishing or anything else, which struck me as odd. Usually, when two or more authors get together, they inevitably start talking shop. Never happened with these folks. But then, over the holidays, it dawned on me that while they haven't come right out and said it, a couple of times they have mentioned cultural appropriation while not quite looking my way. And maybe I'm wrong, and if so, I apologize for jumping to conclusions, but it made me wonder whether they'd actually looked me up on Amazon and read a book or two and, well.

It's not the first time I've had cultural appropriation aimed at me for what I write. I'm a white woman, after all, and a lot of my books feature Native American characters and Native American deities. I did a whole bunch of research into myths, traditions, and tribes in the process of writing The Pipe Woman Chronicles, but it was all arm's-length research. I don't have any lived experience as a Native American because I'm not one (other than that family legend that has yet to pan out). 

But nobody with any authority on the subject has ever approached me and said, look, what you're saying is all wrong and you need to take these books off the market. The criticism has always come from politically correct folks who believe that you shouldn't write about a minority group or another culture -- or anybody, really -- if you're not a member of that group or culture.

I mean, tell that to men who write female characters. Or women who write male characters. Hardly any humans have been in space, but that hasn't stopped authors from writing science fiction. Tolkien never went to Middle-Earth, but it didn't stop him from writing The Lord of the Rings. Storytellers use their imaginations. 

Anyway, I'm sympathetic to those who are concerned about cultural appropriation, but I decided years ago that I was okay with what I was writing. My characters, to me, are people first, before any society-derived labels are loaded onto them; I imagine their humanity, and that's how I write about them.

Now, a bunch of my characters aren't people, precisely; they're gods and goddesses. I'm a polytheist, and while a lot of Pagans, including this group's founders, believe that all goddesses all over the world are aspects of a single Goddess, and all gods all over the world are aspects of the same Horned God, I don't. That's not how I experience them -- and now we are talking about my lived experience. Heck, I wrote Morrigan into a series of novels, and then She approached me. And enlisted me into her army.

If you think that last sentence makes me sound crazy, I don't know what to tell you. It's a thing that happened to me. And Morrigan didn't complain about me writing about Her, either. In fact, none of the gods and goddesses I've written into my books have ever shown up on my ethereal doorstep, seeking vengeance. 

You would think They would if They were mad, right?

That segues, more or less, into this: The group's founders have been living here in New Mexico for many, many years. One of them said something at one point about how they hadn't heard anything from the spirits on their land -- except, "well, there was that one time...". 

I was quietly incredulous. You got a message from a local spirit and didn't respond? That, to me, is crazy. I got the sense that they didn't want to start a relationship with gods or spirits who weren't, y'know, theirs. But you have to be on good terms with the land spirits, wherever you live. If one of Them approaches you with a message, it seems to me like it would be a good idea to listen -- and even say hello from time to time. That's not cultural appropriation; that's being neighborly.

Anyway, bottom line: The group is not my cup of tea. I'm going to get through this year's legislative session and then look for another Pagan group. Or start one myself. All I really want to find is folks to observe the Sabbats with.

***

I mentioned my day job a second ago. This year, we have a 30-day session; our department started working seven days a week last Monday, and we'll be done February 19th at noon. I am hoping to keep blogging every Sunday night throughout, but we'll see how it goes.

***

These moments of slightly politically incorrect blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Take care of yourselves. We need everyone at their best for what's to come.

We have winners!

It's nearly moving day for us here at La Casa Cantwell, and we have all hit the stage where we are so totally over it.

The old place looks like a disaster area, but nearly everything is packed. Today (and yesterday -- long story, don't ask) we finished assembling the wardrobe at the new place. The movers will be here bright and early tomorrow morning.

And you, my friends, are the most awesome ever, because I will not have to move those two sets (13 books each!) of the paperback editions of the books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe.

Please help me congratulate Stephanie Grant and Amanda Smith, the winners of the giveaway! Ladies, I've emailed you for your addresses so I know where to send your books. (If you don't see my email, please check your spam folder.)

I'd love to write more tonight, but I still have to pack up the kitchen (aieeeee...). Thanks to everyone for playing -- you're the best!

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

Moving sale.

Moving. Ugh.

I mentioned last week that we're moving to a new apartment. Along with the usual packing and sorting and packing, we spent several hours yesterday at IKEA. I spent most of today at the new place, assembling the wardrobe I bought yesterday. Good times.

Anyway, there's a lot of packing still to be done, but one thing I would like to not have to pack are a bunch of paperback books in inventory. I bought several copies of each of the books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles last year, intending to run a giveaway on Goodreads...and forgot. The good news is that I now have two -- count 'em, two -- full sets of the three series to give away to you, faithful hearth/myth readers.

Sorry that the photos of the prizes are so awful. The lighting was bad and I've already packed my book stands. But all the books there! In order, they are:

The Pipe Woman Chronicles
Seized
Fissured
Tapped
Gravid
Annealed

Land, Sea, Sky
Crosswind
Undertow
Scorched Earth

Pipe Woman's Legacy
Dragon's Web
Firebird's Snare
Spider's Lifeline
Turtle's Weir

And the second edition of A Billion Gods and Goddesses: The Mythology of the Pipe Woman Chronicles.

The fun starts tonight and ends Saturday night, May 5th, at 7:00pm Eastern time. Unfortunately, I can only afford to ship these sets to folks in the US and Canada. (I also have a couple of sets of the Transcendence series that I meant to give away in this contest, but I realized I'd already packed them. So I guess I'll be giving those away next month -- and since there are only three books in that series, I'll be able to ship them anywhere.)

Of course, the usual and customary rules apply:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am not moving these books!
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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

Hats off to intrepid journalists.

I've had my head down in the first draft of Maggie in Moonlight all weekend (which is at just about 22,000 words right now, thanks for asking), while most of the United States has been watching the progress of Hurricane Irma, our second major hurricane this year. Irma follows Harvey, which caused massive damage to southeast Texas just a couple of weeks ago. Still mostly offstage is Hurricane Jose, which forecasters now say will probably meander off the East Coast for most of this week.

At the same time as these storms are drawing a bead on the southeastern United States, much of the West is either battling wildfires or coughing from their smoke.

As often happens, many folks are fighting their anxiety with gallows humor, liberally laced with references to the End Times. I spoke to a friend in Michigan the other day. She was saying how her state looks like a pretty good place to live right now, and I said, "Don't get complacent. You guys are on deck for the boils."

Among those who employ gallows humor are journalists, because they're so often in the thick of things, and sometimes humor is the only thing that will get you through a horrific event. I remembered earlier today that I wrote about a news network's hurricane coverage in Undertow, the middle book in the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy. This book is one of my favorites. So in lieu of a post, I'm presenting to you the planning meeting where Tess Showalter, investigative reporter for the New America News Network, volunteers to help cover Hurricane Hubert in 2023.

***
The air in the newsroom felt even more frantic than usual. More people than just the standard weekend crew were bustling around. Every so often, someone would stop and stare at the monitors at the producer’s desk; then they would walk away, shaking their heads.

Tess made her way around the desk to see the monitor. One look, and she knew exactly what was making everyone pop-eyed.

“Is that the hurricane?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“Oh, hi, Tess!” said Schuyler, who had stopped next to her. “Yep, that’s Hurricane Hubert.”

“Somebody drew that thing, right?” she said. “It can’t be real.” The ring of clouds was very nearly a perfect circle, with what appeared to be a small, round hole in the center.

“Oh, it’s real, all right,” the producer on duty said. “It’s the biggest storm to hit the U.S. since Katrina in ‘05. Or will be, if it makes landfall here.”

“Do we know where it’s headed yet?” Schuyler asked.

One of the writers popped her head up over the console. “It’s still pretty far out to sea. NOAA says it looks like it’s heading for the Caribbean right now. But it could always turn and make a run up the coast.”

The producer punched up a graphic from the NOAA website. “Here’s one scenario.”

Tess gasped. “We’re right in its path.”

“Nah,” Schuyler said. “If it makes landfall south of here, it’ll break up a lot before it gets to D.C. We’d get a ton of wind and rain, but nothing like the lashing those poor suckers at landfall will get.” He glanced at the producer. “Have we sent any crews out yet?”

The man hooked a thumb down the hall. “Ash and Antonia are setting it up now.”

Tess and Schuyler traded a look, and took off together for Antonia’s office.

“Tess!” Antonia called as soon as she spied them through her open door. “I’m glad you’re here. I was just about to call you at home. Hello, Schuyler.”

“Hiya, boss lady,” Schuyler said, perching on an end table. Seats were at a premium; Gil, Antonia’s producer, and Ashton, the newsroom manager, had commandeered the guest chairs, and all the unit producers were crowded onto the couch. Tess took a seat on the arm of the couch next to her producer, Tracie.

Ashton was running down a list of personnel on his tablet. “As far as stringers are concerned, I’ve contacted Boz Jaegers in Houston and Ebony Jackson in New Orleans.” At Antonia’s nod, he went on, “And on the Atlantic side, we’ve lined up somebody in Charleston.”

“The same one we had last time?” Gil asked. “Fred Michaels? He was good.”

“He was,” Ashton agreed. “We need to think about bringing him on board permanently, if he’s as good this time.” He looked at Antonia.

“Noted,” she said. “Let’s see how he does, and then I’ll see if there’s room in the budget. What about Florida?”

“I want to send Heela Shahin to Miami and Stu Levinson to Jacksonville,” Ashton said. He nodded to their respective producers. “That should cover the Atlantic side of the state, if Hubert takes a right turn. And if not, they can both get across to the gulf side pretty quickly.”

“So Heela in Miami, Stu in Jacksonville, Fred Michaels in Charleston….” Antonia was ticking them off on her fingers. “We need somebody at Hatteras.”

“Jeff Donohoe,” Ashton said, as if it were obvious. His suggestion met with groans of approval. The joke was that if there was a street sign in the path of a hurricane anywhere on the East Coast, you could count on Jeff to do a live shot hanging from it sideways.

Antonia’s lips twitched. “Of course,” she said dryly. “I don’t know what possessed me to ask. And in Virginia Beach?”

“We’ll go,” Tess said. In response, Morrigan’s crows raised a ruckus in her head. Ashton simply shrugged and typed her name in.

Antonia shot her a what the hell? look. Tess gave her what she hoped was an I’ll tell you later look.

A few minutes later, the meeting broke up. “I’ll go and see about travel arrangements for us,” Tracie said. “Hotel rooms ought to be easy to get. They’ll have a bunch of cancellations as soon as people get a load of the weather forecast.”

“I hope you guys aren’t mad that I volunteered us,” Tess said.

“Are you kidding?” Schuyler crowed. “You picked the best possible place. Hurricanes almost never come ashore at Virginia Beach. If they get that far north, they do a right turn at Cape Hatteras and head out to sea. We’re getting a vacation on the network’s dime.”

“Yeah, well, don’t pack your boogie board,” Tess said. “I have an ulterior motive for picking Virginia Beach.”

“Oh?” asked Tracie.

“Darrell called last night,” she said. “Quinn is in Virginia Beach. And something is definitely going down.”

“Spectacular!” Schuyler said with a happy grin. “We get a big story either way!”

“That sounds promising,” Antonia said as she came up behind them.

“Wait’ll you hear!” Schuyler said.

Tess rolled her eyes. “Come on in,” she said to her boss, and led the way into their office.

Antonia’s reaction was more muted than Schuyler’s, but just as enthusiastic. “Go get ‘em,” she said, grinning from ear to ear.

Tess grinned back. Don’t worry, Darrell. The cavalry’s coming.

***

Tess, Schuyler, and Tracie end up getting more hurricane than they bargained for -- although Tess never actually gets to cover the storm's landfall, because... 

Ohhh no. I'm not going to give away the story. You can buy it and read it yourself here. Or buy the whole series here. 

***

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

What would Naomi do?

eric1513 | 123RF.com

Like most of you, I've spent the last 48 hours alternately outraged and horrified by what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend.

To catch you up: Three people died and 26 were injured in connection with a protest conceived by alt-right groups to protest the Charlottesville city council's plans to take down a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. One of the dead is Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old woman who was attending a counter-protest when a car plowed into the group. The driver, 20-year-old James Alex Fisher Jr. from Maumee, Ohio, is being held on charges of second-degree murder, malicious wounding, and hit-and-run. The Justice Department is investigating and may file additional charges against Fisher. His high school history teacher says Fisher was enamored with Nazis even then.

The other two dead were Virginia State Troopers whose helicopter crashed on landing in a wooded area not far from downtown. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Reaction to the events has been almost unanimously against the neo-Nazis, white nationalists, KKK members, and fellow travelers who conceived of the event. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have condemned the groups' actions. About the only people who have spoken out in support of these groups, in fact, are other white supremacists.

And then there's President Trump, whose remarks could most charitably be described as noncommittal. Instead of condemning the march's organizers, he spoke against "the egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides."

He also tweeted condolences to the family of the dead woman and "best regards to all of those injured."

"Charlottesville sad!" he said in another tweet.

I keep saying I'm not going to turn this into a political blog, but that guy in the White House, who has at least a couple of white nationalists on staff, keeps testing my resolve.

However, I will forbear. Instead, I'll risk turning this post into a shameless plug for my own books by dreaming aloud about how the characters in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe would react.

As it happens, the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy -- which is part of that universe -- is set in DC, mostly, and not too far in the future. Thanks to the return of the gods to Earth some years before, a powerful coalition of military, industrial, and legislative leaders has been watching its power slip away. The co-conspirators are organizing what they believe to be a foolproof plan to defeat the gods and put themselves on top again. (You may see a parallel here with the white nationalists who would like to claw back majority control of the United States by staging protests like the one in Charlottesville.)

The good guys in Land, Sea, Sky include Sue Killeen, who works as a project manager for a nonprofit called Earth in Balance; Tess Showalter, an investigative reporter for the New World News Network; Darrell Warren, a Potawatomi healer turned Navy SEAL; and their gods. All the gods, actually. And I included cameo appearances by some of the main characters from the original series: Naomi Witherspoon Curtis, Joseph Curtis, and their children, Sage and Webb.

Any of the humans would give the alt-right a run for their money. But I'd especially love to give Naomi a crack at them. Her special talent is pushing people to do the right thing, and she would have a field day with the boys of the alt-right. And in the White House, too. If Naomi could get hold of President Trump, his tweets would sound very different. Believe me.

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

We come from the future?

Jonas de Ro | CC 3.0 | commons.wikimedia.com

I mentioned last week that I've begun work (at last!) on the final book of the Pipe Woman's Legacy series. One of my misgivings about writing about Naomi and Joseph's kids is that I'm having to think about their world as it will be then -- which is hard, because I kind of stink at writing science fiction.

My final project in grad school -- my novel-in-place-of-a-thesis -- was a sci-fi work called Information Overload. It was set in the near future -- I forget which year -- and the main character was a woman who worked as a journalist out of her home. Her job entailed keeping tabs on about a billion news sources at once, primarily by watching video news feeds on a grid of multiple virtual monitors that took up an entire wall of her home. I was told that wasn't futuristic enough.

Now, twenty years later, I'd argue the point. Home theater has evolved, certainly, with split screens and multiple windows open at once. But we're not yet to the point of having our video screens embedded in plaster, with the ability to show maybe a hundred live feeds at once. Think of the bandwidth that would require!

Maybe I just didn't explain it well enough.

Anyway, that experience kind of soured me on writing sci-fi. Post-apocalyptic fiction, maybe; ships zipping around in outer space, maybe, as long as nobody expects me to give a plausible explanation of how the FTL drive works. But near-future stuff? I'm not sure I'm imaginative enough.

And yet, here I am, writing sci-fi that's trying to pass itself off as urban fantasy. I've pretty much been writing near-futuristic stuff since the first Land, Sea, Sky book. That whole series was set ten years ahead of where we are today. And with Webb's half of the Pipe Woman's Legacy novels, I'm writing about events that are supposedly happening in 2051 -- thirty-five years from now.

That doesn't seem like much of a stretch, does it? Seems like technology then will be about the same as it is now -- that is, until you think about where were were technologically thirty-five years ago, in 1981.  MS-DOS had just been invented and IBM rolled out its first PC. Cellular phones were regular-sized handsets attached to a battery the size of a briefcase. Almost nobody had a fax machine. NASA launched the space shuttle Columbia -- the first reusable space vehicle -- that year. And not only was cable TV the big thing, but MTV was brand-new -- and it showed nothing but music videos.

So for the Legacy books, I've been thinking of what we have now, except a little smaller and a lot faster. Skype calls are holographic; laptop computers have given way to tablets. And cars can fly, although my characters have to pay a toll to use the levitation lane.

Am I missing anything? What do you think day-to-day technology will look like in 2051?

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

Plotting by squirrel.

Alert (not to mention long-time) readers of hearth/myth may recall this post from four years ago, in which I went into some painstaking detail about how I created the overarching plot of the original Pipe Woman Chronicles series. To review: I originally planned four or five books, each corresponding to a cardinal point on the Sioux medicine wheel. Seized corresponded to the East, where things begin; Fissured, to the South, the home of youth and passion; and so on. And I stuck to that structure when plotting the series, which eventually did end up being five books.

When I got to Land, Sea, Sky, I was a little less structured. I did come up with three main characters: Sue was allied with Earth goddess Gaia; Darrell was the Sea guy, by virtue of being in the Navy; and investigative reporter Tess was Sky, which can also be air and which is generally considered to be about communication. Each one got a book, nominally, although their stories were sufficiently intertwined that it might have been hard to tell whose book was whose from the outside, unless you knew what the author was trying to do. (Hint: Crosswind is Tess's book, Undertow is Darrell's, and Scorched Earth is Sue's.)

Peter Trimming | CC 2.0 | flickr.com

And then I began plotting the Pipe Woman's Legacy series, and all my careful plans went out the window.

Originally, I intended to write just two books, with Sage as the main character in both. She was, after all, conceived by a couple of god-possessed humans. And White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman had meddled sufficiently in Naomi's life that it seemed logical to me that she would also lay claim to Sage in some way. So Earth's savior Sage, together with her pals, got their duology. That rounded out the whole Pipe Woman Chronicles story arc to ten books.

But then people asked me, "What about Webb? Doesn't he get a book?" The more I thought about it, the more I realized he should. He had enough magical power to presume that the circumstances of his conception were probably similar to his sister's (without, one hopes, Joseph going walkabout for a couple of weeks afterward this time).

At that point in my planning process, things got a little squirrelly. The plot of Webb's duology is different from the rest of the series. For one thing, the gods are largely absent from Spider's Lifeline (and getting to Them is going to take up a chunk of the next book). For another, this is the first time I've handed the reins of the narrative over to a Trickster, and in some respects he's leaving me guessing. I was surprised, when I went to draft the outline for book 4, to discover just how far afield the story had gone in book 3.

But fear not. Webb and I have had a chat, and he's promised to stick to the plan in the next book. We'll see how long it lasts.

***
Hugs and big thanks to those of you who have purchased a copy of Spider's Lifeline so far. You're all my new best friends. For those of you who have not yet grabbed a copy, the eBook will be available at Amazon for just 99 cents through the end of this month. That's not exactly forever -- so go get it now, before you forget. Thanks!

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

Killing one's darlings, book cover edition.

Book covers have been on my mind lately. It's mostly because I'm getting ready to publish A Billion Gods and Goddesses, but also because other indie authors are also readying their fall releases and looking for feedback on the drafts of their covers in various Facebook groups.

Despite what you've heard about stuff that's been designed by a committee, soliciting opinions on cover design can be a useful exercise. I'm no artist (I'm still pretty proud of that C I got in art class in eighth grade), but now that I've been doing this indie-author gig for a few years, I'm getting better at seeing problems in my draft designs. 

Even so, I like to run my ideas past others before I pull the trigger. Moreover, I think it's a good idea for everybody. Other authors will see flaws that you've completely overlooked. The biggest problems usually surface when the image is reduced to thumbnail size, or the size you see on Amazon. Oftentimes, particularly with newbie authors, one or more important elements of the cover will fade into obscurity when reduced to thumbnail size. Like the title. Or the author's name. Or people will pick a boring font for their cover, instead of one that says something about the genre and what's going on in the story. 

Anyway. Sometimes you can get it all right and design a kickass cover that gets everybody's seal of approval, and still the book doesn't sell.

Which brings me to the Land, Sea, Sky books. When I started to envision the cover for Crosswind, I decided I wanted to differentiate this new trilogy from the five Pipe Woman Chronicles books. So I stepped away from the glowy-animal concept that I'd used for the first series, and went for something more realistic. Crosswind got a wind turbine silhouetted against an ominous orange sky; Undertow got a bridge under a roiling cloud bank; and Scorched Earth got a menacing seedling growing in the parking lot of a bombed-out apartment building. Each cover said something important about the plot of that book.

Unfortunately, sales have not been great, and I've known for a while that I need to swap out those covers with new ones -- especially after I went back to the glowy animals for the Pipe Woman's Legacy duology. And with the god guide's imminent release, I knew it was time to make all the books look like they're part of a whole -- because they are.

Now there are authors who will change their covers at the drop of a hat, like they're rearranging the living room furniture or something. But I've been digging in my heels partly because wrestling with GIMP is not at the top of my list of things to do for fun, and partly because I really like the old covers. The one for Undertow, especially.

Anyway, enough whining from me. Here are the new covers for the Land, Sea, Sky books. (Bonus points if you can tell me why there's now a cat on the cover of Scorched Earth. Anyone? Bueller?)

You should be seeing these live at Amazon and Smashwords tomorrow, and at other retailers within the next few days. 

I'll probably be designing a new cover for the Land, Sea, Sky box set pretty soon -- even though I really like that cover, too.

***

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

A word on climate change.

I've been nattering on for the past couple of weeks about my real life stuff -- to the point where I've managed to bore myself. So enough of that junk. Let's talk about Sage and Webb's story.

If you've read the Pipe Woman Chronicles or the Land, Sea, Sky books, you know that I have a habit of using real-world problems as a springboard for my plots. Well, one of the springboards. My brain is kind of complicated, as it turns out, and weird stuff gets associated with other weird stuff when I get going on plotting a book.

But I had a bit of a problem when I started thinking up a plot for the Pipe Woman's Legacy duology. I  wanted to write these books for adults, which meant Naomi and Joseph's kids had to be at least 20, or pretty close to it. I mean, I guess you can write an adult book with a kid as a protagonist -- but the kid had better grow up in a hurry or the grownups reading the story are going to get bored pretty fast. (Yeah, yeah, Harry Potter. But think about it: when did the series really start to get interesting? When the kids got older and the tone of the story got darker, right?)

So okay, Sage has to be at least 20 years old at the start of Dragon's Web. Which makes Webb, oh, 17 or 18. (Sage's birthday is May 25th or so, but I never have picked a birthday for Webb. Maybe I'll let you guys do that.) But that posed another problem: the gods would have been in charge on Earth for 20 years by then. They brought most of the recalcitrant humans into line ten years before, when Darrell, Sue, and Tess took on Lucifer. So what could possibly be left for Them to fix?

Then I read Mayan December by Brenda Cooper. And on the very first page of that novel was my solution: climate change.

Earth is a closed ecosystem. Moreover, even if we took our lifestyle back to the Stone Age right now today, and stopped spewing any manmade pollution into the atmosphere anymore ever, it would take something like another hundred years to get greenhouse gases back to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. I could very easily see the gods saying to us, if They came back today, "Yeah, well, We're really sorry, but there's nothing We can do to clean up the mess you guys have made. There's a natural system in place that takes care of that, and it's hardwired in. We can't modify it to make it work any faster." And then They'd leave it up to us to figure out a way to fix it.

I can hear the howling from the tinfoil-hat brigade -- about how the 97 percent of scientists who agree that we should be worried about climate change isn't 100 percent, and anyhow scientists once agreed that the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around us, and so on. While I acknowledge their right to be skeptical, I also think it's foolish. When 97 percent of experts tell you, say, that your car needs a new timing chain or you're going to find yourself at a dead stop on the expressway in 55-mph traffic, you'd be an idiot not to shell out for the new timing chain -- even if the car's working fine right now.

In any case, what I write is fiction. So I've chosen that the premise of these two books is that climate change is, in fact, underway; that we're 20 years closer to disaster at the start of these books; and that it's up to humans to figure out a lasting solution.

In reading a little bit about the subject, I've discovered that there are a number of proposals for getting greenhouse gases out of our atmosphere. Some of them are really pretty simple. But we're not going full-tilt on them because it's hard to get funding. Why? Well, because the people who could fund them want to develop projects that would make them more money. Never mind improving and sustaining life on Earth -- if they can't make money at it, it's not going to happen. Is it me, or does that seem short-sighted?

I hope we can get to a point soon where saving humanity is more important than making money.

***
These moments of pie-in-the-sky blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Catfish, anyone?

We'll get to our top story in a moment. But first, the news!

The Land Sea Sky Trilogy is free through tomorrow at Amazon. Thanks to everybody who has downloaded it already -- you're all my new best friends. And a note to those who don't have a Kindle: if you'd like to read the series, drop me an email or leave a comment here at the blog, and I'll do my best to fix you up.

Also, watch this space next week for some very interesting news about Seasons of the Fool. I'd tell you now, but...well...aieee...no. No. Next week. Come back then.

***

Since becoming an indie author, I have learned many new things. One of them is a new definition for catfish.

Back when I lived in Huntington, WV, the only kind of catfish I knew about was the kind that lives deep in rivers and streams. They eat the junk on the bottoms of such waterways (which is not always the healthiest stuff -- hence, the term bottom-feeder). Catfish also taste good, or so I've been told. I don't think I've ever tried one.

Anyway, thanks to the advent of teh intarwebz, catfishing has taken on a whole new definition. According to the Urban Dictionary: "A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances." Or, apparently, to post book reviews.

This is not to be confused with an internet troll, who purposely posts incendiary statements to get people riled up. And it's also not the same as a stalker, which is defined, in internet terms, pretty much the way it is in real life.

I'm making the distinction among these terms for a reason. This week, an article popped up in the book section at The Guardian by a trad-pubbed YA author named Kathleen Hale. In her article, Hale admits to stalking a reader who left her a one-star review. At first, she simply checked her Twitter feed obsessively for tweets from the woman. But eventually Hale went so far as to contact the woman repeatedly by phone, and even -- creeper alert! -- traveled to her house to confront her. (The confrontation apparently didn't happen; no one answered the door, so Hale left a book on her doorstep. The book was Anna Quindlen's A Short Guide to a Happy Life, a copy of which, Hale said, she just happened to have in her purse.)

The story takes a side trip to "Stop the Goodreads Bullies" Land. Hale says she landed on their list of Badly Behaving Authors simply by writing about tough subjects in her book. But she also makes an oblique reference to having responded to the one-star review, and to being attacked online thereafter. She appears to use this as justification for her subsequent behavior.

I was not involved in any way, shape, or form with any of this; I am simply an outside observer who is coming to the whole thing very late in the game. But these, for me, are the takeaway points:

1. Reviews are for readers. Reviewers are (ideally) giving their honest opinion of the book. Some readers look at the one-star ratings first, because the reviewer's deal-breaker might be a deal-maker for the reader. As the author, yes, it sucks to get a one-star review. But the smart author either reads them, takes any honest criticism to heart, and uses it to do better next time; or doesn't read them at all. The last thing an author should do is respond to a bad review. (In fact, I make a point of not responding to reviews at all. It's not that I don't love the good ones -- I do! and I'm grateful for them! -- but I just think it's best to leave the reviewers to their reviewing and to keep my mouth shut.)

2. Using an alias online is not a crime. In some instances, it's necessary -- just as it's prudent for some authors to use a pen name. The use of an alias doesn't make you a catfish, even if you use that alias to post pictures of pets you don't actually own and vacations you haven't actually taken.

3. Stalking is never okay. No justification for it will ever pass muster.

4. Maybe I'm cynical. But it occurs to me that Hale writes fiction -- dark comedy, according to the blurb for her novel -- and so there's an outside chance that she meant for her tale to be darkly humorous, and perhaps not completely factual.

Moreover, her article appeared just as we're beginning the run-up to the big holiday book-buying season. Coincidence?

I really hope that's what's behind this -- that it's either an attempt at humor that fell flat, or a bald grab for eyeballs for Hale and her book. Because the only other alternative I can think of is that the author has some personal issues. And if that's the case, then I hope her publisher is getting her some help.

***
This moment of bloggy definition has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

WFC dreaming, or: the weekend I was nearly famous.

We'll get to our post in a moment. But first, the news:

• The Land, Sea, Sky Trilogy is now live at Amazon. This omnibus edition includes a new author's note and the first chapter of Seized, just in case readers get to the end of the book and want to know why Antonia treats Naomi like a rock star. If you enjoyed the Land, Sea, Sky books -- or if you have been meaning to get around to reading them -- now's your chance. And not that I'm encouraging anyone to wait...but starting this Thursday, the omnibus will be on sale for 99 cents. I hope you'll check it out, and tell all your friends, too.
• The fractal jaguar is having his moment in the sun this weekend. The book trailer for Fissured is featured at Indies Unlimited today. Click through if you haven't seen it -- or, heck, if you'd like to see it again.
• I received an e-mail this week from the organizers of this year's World Fantasy Convention, notifying me that "A Man's Got to Do What a Man's Got to Do" has been selected for inclusion in Unconventional Fantasy: A Celebration of Forty Years of the World Fantasy Convention. The anthology will be recorded on a thumb drive and given to everyone who attends the convention next month. I happen to know that a whole bunch of my fantasy-author heroes also have pieces in this anthology, so I am fairly giddy about being included. 

Which segues nicely into this week's post, in which I reprise (with a tweak or two) a thing I wrote for Indies Unlimited a few weeks ago.

***

I don’t mean to brag, but I had 850 people show up at my first book signing.

Okay, they might have been there to see Gene Wolfe, or Stephen R. Donaldson, or Elizabeth Bear, or Peter Straub, or Patricia McKillip, or…well, you get the idea. But I was there, too!

“There” was the 2010 World Fantasy Convention, in Columbus, Ohio. This annual convention travels to various venues around the world – last year’s was in Brighton, England – and is geared toward speculative fiction in general and fantasy in particular. Membership is capped at 850, and many of the attendees are authors, agents, and editors.

Watchers with SRD in 2010.

I went with some friends from Kevinswatch, and we all went because Donaldson was going to be there. But one of the questions on the sign-up form was, “Are you an author?” This was right after Calderwood Books had published The Maidens' War, so I checked “yes” and put in the Calderwood Books website since I hadn't really started blogging yet. Not only did the WFC organizers believe me, but they put me on a panel. And they let me sign books with the big guys on Friday night.

I've mentioned the mass autographing session here at hearth/myth before. It's a World Fantasy Convention tradition, and it’s pretty crazy. They set up long tables in a ballroom-sized conference room, and they give you a table tent with your name on it. Seating is first-come, first-served, and the lines to get a popular author to sign books can be long. When Neil Gaiman was an honoree in San Diego in 2011, the line to see him wrapped around the ballroom. There were, in fact, so many people in line that he couldn't get to everybody; the convention organizers had to set up a second signing later in the weekend just for him.

Then there are the dealers, who set up outside the room with crates of unsigned books and send runners with stacks of books into the autographing session. The runners stand in the lines, get the books signed, and bring them back to the dealers – who, of course, charge more for autographed books.

There was no line in front of my table, alas, and none of the runners had The Maidens' War in their stack. But my friends gathered around my table, had me sign their copies, and chatted as if I was an actual somebody. One of my buddies even took my picture as I signed his book. I caught at least one passer-by eyeing my table tent to try to figure out who the author was who had attracted such a crowd.

It was really hard to go back to the day job the following Monday, let me tell you.

I'm not expecting such a rousing success this year. For one thing, I won't be a starry-eyed newbie. Well, okay -- I'll still be starry-eyed (I mean, jeez, Guy Gavriel Kay is a guest of honor!), but at least I won't be a newbie. Still, I'm looking forward to this year's shindig. For one thing, my travel and hotel costs will be minimal, as it's happening ten minutes from my house. For another, I get to be in an anthology with Donaldson. "Nearly famous," indeed!

***

This post originally appeared in a slightly different form at Indies Unlimited.

***

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

My own Fool's Journey (writing edition).

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been talking about various aspects of my new book, Seasons of the Fool. And in an aside a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that at one point, I embarked on my own Fool's Journey via a series of meditations with the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and that's what convinced me to start writing seriously.

I remembered that comment earlier this week, when my IU pal Laurie Boris talked about her own journey as a writer on her blog. Her post was sparked by a couple of questions Kim Emerson posted in the MasterKoda group on Facebook: Where were you as a writer ten years ago? How about five years ago?

Those questions had made me think, as well. (They made me do math, too -- darn it, Kim!) And I realized how far I've come in the past ten years. So let's set the Wayback Machine to 2004, Sherman....

Ten years ago, I was a single mom with two kids in high school. I had the same day job I have right now -- legal secretary at a big law firm in Washington, DC -- and way more education than anyone should ever need: a journalism degree, a creative writing degree, and a paralegal certificate. And I wasn't using any of it. I'd bailed on broadcast journalism five or six years before. The business had changed a lot since I'd started in it, to the point where there was less of an emphasis on news that mattered and more on news that would boost the ratings. And neither the crazy work hours nor the every-two-years-like-clockwork layoffs were conducive to raising kids.

I wasn't writing any fiction in 2004, either. Right after grad school, I'd tried marketing some of my short stories to various magazines and literary journals, but I didn't get any takers. In hindsight, I can see that the business was in transition (and still is, come to that); mass-market magazines had pretty much stopped publishing fiction, many smaller journals were succumbing to financial pressures, and e-zines weren't a thing yet. It had gotten to the point where your best option for getting published was to show up at writing seminars and schmooze with editors and agents, so they'd recognize your name when you sent them your work. And I had neither the budget nor the time for that sort of thing (see "single mom," above).

But by 2009, things were very different. I'd had two short stories published by Calderwood Press and was putting the finishing touches on The Maidens' War, which Calderwood published later that year. What had happened in the interim?

For one thing, my kids were both away at college, which freed up a lot of my time. For another, we published the Kevinswatch anthologies in 2006-07; for the first time in years, I was writing fiction again -- and I was writing fantasy, instead of trying to shoehorn my style into realistic fiction. I met Joy Calderwood at the Watch. E-publishing was becoming a thing. And I did my first NaNoWriMo in 2008.

I was beginning to think maybe I ought to do more writing. But it wasn't until I did the Fool's Journey exercise that I committed to it. You see, I'd always been under the impression that you couldn't make a living as a fiction writer. I kept thinking I needed something else to pay the bills. And too, I wanted to "pay it forward" -- to provide some way to help others write, too. So I thought maybe I'd start a writer's retreat B&B, or some kind of office-space-with-daycare facility, or something.

But when I posed the question to the Universe, the answer that came back was that I was supposed to be writing. The Universe wanted me to be a writer. All this other stuff was just a distraction.

So I began to concentrate on writing. Now I've got ten novels published, and another one in the slot. And as for paying it forward, I'm doing that by writing for Indies Unlimited. Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Where do I see myself five years from now, in 2019? If the Universe is kind to me, I'll be making a living from my books; I'll have another 15 novels published then, at my current pace. And in any event, I'll be eligible for early retirement at the end of that year. So one way or another, I'll be on the verge of writing full-time. No fooling.

Where were you ten years ago? And where do you see yourself in five years?

***
This week, I'll be putting the finishing touches on a Land, Sea, Sky omnibus. And come to think of it, it's probably time for another newsletter. Stay tuned....

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

Remembering Dad.

First off, I want to thank everybody who came to my Facebook party yesterday in honor of the launch of Scorched Earth this past Tuesday. Everybody seemed to have a good time, and I gave away all the prizes, which makes it a successful event in my book.

Congrats to the winners of the Rafflecopter here on the blog. Vi Pieske won the $25 Amazon gift card, and Shelly Hammond and J.r. Barker each won a $5 gift card. Ladies, I hope you enjoy them.

I admit that I was curious about what the contest entrants wanted me to do for my next project. The majority told me to take the summer off -- aww, thanks, you guys! Next most popular was a new series with new characters; then a short story collection; and finally, a book about Naomi's kids. I don't know whether I'll follow the advice to the letter, but I do appreciate knowing what my readers are interested in. So thank you.

And yes, Scorched Earth is out! It's available in paperback and for the Kindle at Amazon, and in multiple formats at Smashwords. It's also been shipped to B&N.com, Kobo, and iBooks. So if those are your ebook-buying platforms of choice, you should be able to get it there shortly. Big thanks to everyone who has already bought a copy. You're my new best friends.

***
Today is Father's Day: the day when we give our fathers ties they'll never wear and change our Facebook pictures to a snapshot of dear old Dad.

My father, John Cantwell, died in 1984 at the age of 69. He was the oldest of five kids. His own father died when he was nine years old; my father had to drop out of school in the fifth grade and get a job to help support the family. Sounds crazy now, but this was in the 1920s, and attitudes about child labor were different then.

Dad apprenticed to a tailor first, and then he got into what was then the hot, new field of auto mechanics. He worked as a mechanic until he retired at the age of 65. And like many young men in the '40s, he served in the Army Air Corps motor pool in World War II -- Belgium, Germany, Iceland. Most of his war stories revolved around goofy stuff he did with his buddies; like most vets of that era, he never talked about the battles he had been in.

US troops crossing the bridge in 1945

But he did admit to one thing. Whenever the movie "The Bridge at Remagen" came on TV, Dad would say he was among the soldiers who crossed the bridge (which is actually the Ludendorff Bridge) just days before it fell.

In 1994 or '95, when I was in grad school, I wrote this factoid into a story that I dedicated to my father. When I workshopped the story, both my professor and another student informed me that the battle over the bridge had actually happened in World War I. I got angry and said, "If you guys want to argue with a guy who was there, be my guest. My father wouldn't have lied about it." They shook their heads sadly at me (well, actually, the professor smirked -- he was kind of a jerk) and we moved on. But I don't mind admitting that the dispute stuck in my craw.

See? It's just to the right of the Battle of the Bulge.

Years later, the National World War II Memorial opened here in Washington. A few months later, I walked through the memorial with friends. And there, chiseled into the granite on the Atlantic side of the memorial, was a list of battles that had occurred during the war -- among them, Remagen Bridge.

I felt vindicated -- both for myself and for my dad.

So Dad, here's my gift to you on this Father's Day. As usual, you were right.

***
These moments of bloggy vindication 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


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

Meet the new knitting chair.

I know, I know: you guys have been on the edge of your seats since last Sunday, wondering about the verdict on the new knitting chair. ("Edge of your seats" -- heh. I see what I did there.)

Anyway, and without further ado, here's the chair in its new habitat. It's in exactly the same place in the living room as the old chair; my daughter Kitty took this from the opposite side, I guess so she could show off how it swivels.

The delivery process went off with a minimum of complications, and the chair itself is just as comfy as the one I tried in the store. I'm very pleased so far. The real key will be how it holds up, but of course we won't know that for some time yet.

The rest of the week has been a mixed bag of this and that. I started a Google Community for Indies Unlimited last week so I could write a how-to post about the process of creating one. It was easy, so since I was on a roll, I went ahead and made my own fan page at Google Plus. Feel free to head over and put my page in your one of your circles, if you're on G+. There's a widget in the sidebar that will get you there, too.

I'm looking for alternatives to Facebook that don't arbitrarily limit the number of people your posts are shown to. I'm not yet ready to give up on the Book of Faces -- too many people still go there. But a lot of indie authors -- and other small business owners, too -- are frustrated with the site. Here we've got hundreds of likes on our pages, yet only a tiny fraction of our followers see a post unless we pay Facebook for an ad. Anyway, G+ is one of the places I'm evaluating. We'll see how it goes.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's move on.

June is going to be a rockin' and rollin' month here at hearth/myth. I've received Scorched Earth back from my editor, and it looks like we're on track for release around June 11th. The book trailer was posted at YouTube last night. You can go there to watch it, or you can see it right here:

 
I'm planning another Facebook party to celebrate the release of Scorched Earth, since we had so much fun last time. Save the date, if you would, for Saturday, June 14th, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern time. I'll have more info about the party next week.

And if that's not enough: Two of my stories have been accepted into the newest BookGoodies Authors' anthology. It'll be called Summer Dreams, and once again, all proceeds will be going to charity. Our editor released the cover today. That's it over on the left.

Neither of my stories in this book is set in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe -- they are completely new. In "The Door into Summer," I tried my hand at magic realism. You'll have to let me know whether I hit the mark.

If all goes as planned, Summer Dreams will drop for the Kindle next Sunday, June 8th.

We've also begun planning for our second Halloween anthology, to be called 13 Bites, Vol. 2. More on that as we get closer to October. I'm not sure what I'll be writing yet for that book, but I'm thinking Nanabush might get up to some mischief. We'll see.

And thanks to those of you who downloaded The Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus when it was featured at Free Kindle Books & Tips yesterday. I hope you enjoy it!

***
These moments of scattered blogginess 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.

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.

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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.