The Great Transcendence giveaway.

I promised last week that there would be a giveaway this week. So here we go.

It's hard for me to believe that so much time has passed since the idea for the Transcendence trilogy germinated in my mind. It started with a random stop at the Great Circle Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, in the summer of 2016, and ended at my desk in our old apartment in October of last year. During that period, the events I wrote about in Mom's House came to a head. You could say the Transcendence books were as transformative for me as they were for Maggie.

But enough about me. Here's the scoop on the contest:

I'm giving away two -- count 'em, two -- sets, signed (naturally), of the trilogy, which is comprised of:

Maggie in the Dark
Maggie on the Cusp
Maggie at Moonrise

Down below is the Rafflecopter thingy, which you all know how to operate by now. The contest is live as we speak; you have until midnight Saturday, July 7th, to enter. I'll announce the winners next Sunday, July 8th, at the usual time. Anybody anywhere can enter -- I'm pretty sure I can front postage to wherever in the world you are.

The question I want everyone to answer is a sort of preview of the next series, which is on my mind because I wrote the first words of the first draft of the first book today. Alert hearth/myth readers know this series will have something to do with river gods. But my initial idea is expanding as we speak, and may end up involving more than just the element of Water. So please let me know in the comments what your favorite element is -- Earth, Air, Fire, or Water -- and maybe a little bit about why, and I'll see whether I can work any of that into this next series of books.

Oh! The prizes!

One each of these can be yours! Enter below!

As always, 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 getting these books out of my house, one way or another.
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

We have winners! and a knitting post.

First off, thanks to everybody who participated in the giveaway for the launch of Maggie on the Cusp. I've emailed all the winners, so check your inbox -- and don't forget to send me your street address if I don't have it yet (you know who you are).

I got a ton of good ideas for Maggie's road trip. In case you were curious (because I was), here's how the vote broke down:

Serpent Mound, Ohio: 3 votes
California: 2 votes
Cahokia: 1 vote
Mexico City: 1 vote

And for the "tell me where to send her" option, I received votes for the following destinations:

Bear's Ears National Monument, Utah
Canyon de Chelly, Arizona (Spider Rock)
Witch Mountain (see below)
Mackinac Island, Michigan (a.k.a. Turtle Island by the Ojibwe Indians)
Sedona, Arizona
Pacific Northwest

Witch Mountain sounds intriguing, but I'm going to need more info. I found a reference on this page to a Witch of Cedar Mountain, in Georgia. Maybe that's what the contestant was thinking of.

In any case, the suggestions are all awesome and much appreciated. And the timing couldn't be better -- I'm about 7,500 words into Maggie in Moonlight and she'll be hitting the road pretty soon. I may not get Maggie to all of these spots, but I'll definitely keep them in mind when I'm location scouting for future books. Thanks again, everyone!

And I keep forgetting to mention that Maggie on the Cusp is just 99 cents right now at Amazon -- as is the first book in the series, Maggie in the Dark. I'm going to leave the first book at a buck, but the price for book 2 will go up on Tuesday -- so if you don't have a copy yet, now's the time.

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And now to the knitting portion of this post.

You may recall that I was working on a very cool shawl called a Fire Dragon Wing, but I was running out of yarn. Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the maker of Lemonade Shop yarn did send me another skein -- yay! And the project is finished -- yay!

The bad news is that the colors aren't a very good match. Here's a shot of the part of the shawl with yarn from both skeins. The red from the new skein is pink and the orange is MIA.

But hey, it's done, and I'll wear it, and it's all good.

And I have moved on to another project. This one is called the Main Street Shawl. It's constructed very much like the Eden Prairie, which is still my favorite thing I've knitted. Here's what I have done so far. The lighting is bad in the top left corner of the photo, so I'll tell you that the square that looks maroon is a deep rose, and the triangle that looks black is actually purple.

My next step is to pick up stitches along the inside edges of the big V where the white yarn is sitting, knit a few rows of black for a border, and then fill in the empty space with the white yarn. Then I'll pick up stitches along the left side of the rainbow strip, do a black border, and knit a big chunk using the lavender yarn. Then I'll pick up and knit a black border around the whole shebang and it'll be done.

This one, I have plenty of yarn for. As long as I don't run out of black...

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

The Big Maggie Giveaway.

First, let me say that here at hearth/myth, our hearts go out to the folks in the path of Hurricane Harvey. For those of us who are too far away to help in person, the Red Cross is taking donations of both money and units of blood. You can give online, and look up the location of a blood drive near you, at redcross.org.

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Seems like a bad day for frivolity, but Maggie Muir Brandt -- the main character in the Transcendence trilogy -- has had experiences that are anything but frivolous over the course of the first two books. In Maggie in the Dark, her ex-mother-in-law practically ordered her to Rockville, Maryland, to help her recover from cancer surgery because the woman was so horrible that no one else would come. In Maggie on the Cusp, our heroine is back home in Indiana, but her mother seems to be losing her grip on reality and her brother wants Mom's house. To make things right for everyone involved, Maggie has to expose family secrets and navigate her own emotional minefield. And as a reward, she gets to renew the Earth. Which, to be honest, doesn't sound like much of a prize.

So in the final book of the trilogy, Maggie in Moonlight, she gets to hit the road.

I haven't started writing Book 3 yet, but I have a rough outline, and there are a few places Maggie is going to have to visit in order to move the plot along. But other than that, her itinerary is up for grabs. So I'm appealing to you guys: What should Maggie not miss on her road trip? She's going to be in an RV, so let's keep it to continental North America. Click the road trip question in the Rafflecopter below, and leave your suggestions in the comments.

Of course, contests offer prizes, and we have a few (photos in the Rafflecopter below):

• A commemorative Canadian quarter featuring Mishepeshu, the Underwater Panther, in its original packaging. (The Mishepeshu on this coin seems much nicer than the one in the Transcendence books.)
• A turtle hand puppet from IKEA for your favorite kid. Or for you. No judging here, no sir.
• Five lucky people will win a deluxe Maggie in the Dark bookmark, each adorned with a festive ribbon and a removable turtle charm hand-beaded by Yrs Trly.

So that's seven prizes total. Which means I need at least seven entrants. So step up, y'all.

The contest will run for a week, until 6pm Eastern Daylight Time next Sunday, September 3rd. But don't wait to enter. The prizes aren't going to get any better (trust me -- this is all I got).

The standard hearth/myth contest rules apply, and they are as obnoxious as always:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am getting this stuff out of my house, one way or the other.
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Thanks for playing, and 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.

Maggie's on the cusp at last.

Yes, that's right -- Maggie on the Cusp: Transcendence Book 2 is out at long last.

I strive to publish three novels a year: the first in March or April; the second in May or June; and the third around the middle to the end of November. As you know, the first book in the Transcendence trilogy, Maggie in the Dark, came out in March. This one should have been out in late May or early June -- but it wasn't.

For starters, the themes in this book are tough. Maggie's mother is losing her memory, and it's happening very fast. And then, too, Maggie is being forced to deal with her brother Sandy, who has verbally abused her for as long as she can remember.

We hear a lot about physical abuse -- primarily, I think, because it's so obvious. If someone regularly roughs you up, you're going to have bruises and broken bones. The damage from sexual abuse may be less obvious. Psychological -- verbal and emotional -- abuse often accompanies these physical acts. But it can stand alone, too. Gaslighting is one form of psychological abuse; bullying is another. And the wounds from any sort of abuse run deep.

Here's how Maggie describes her relationship with her brother:

I know a lot of people are rotten to their siblings when they’re all kids, but as they mature, they grow closer. Well, Sandy never grew out of it. I was always the dumb kid sister. His greatest joy, when we were kids, was to tease me until I cried; among his greatest joys as an adult was to find something to needle me about until I exploded. When I was a teenager, it was my hair or my weight; then, later, it was my marriage. “Why did you marry a guy named Eugene?” he would ask, laughing derisively. “What a stupid name. And he’s such a poser. For God’s sake, Maggie, couldn’t you find somebody normal to screw around with? And what the hell were you thinking, letting him knock you up? Don’t you know anything?” 

Given Sandy’s opinion of my husband – which, it galled me to admit later, wasn’t far wrong – but anyway, you would think my brother would have been thrilled to learn that I was divorcing Gene. But no, that was my fault, too. “So you’re just gonna give up? Marriage is supposed to be ‘til death do you part, Maggie. Did you miss that part when you said your vows? Or maybe Jews don’t believe in that sort of thing. Is that it?”

I’d grown up enough by then that I refused to let him see me cry when his barbs sunk to the bone. I would sit there and take it, poker-faced, with my nails digging into my palms, until eventually he would give up and go away. But I internalized the abuse. His comments became the nagging soundtrack in my head – the voice that told me it wasn’t worth going back to finish college, that I might as well work at the casino with the other high school graduates who’d never made it out of our little town, because after all the things I’d screwed up in my life, that was all I deserved. 

Abuse doesn’t always leave a visible mark.

Maggie needs to get on with the business of renewing the earth, the task Granny -- who's the human avatar of the Shawnee creator spirit Kokumthena -- handed her in Maggie in the Dark. But she needs to settle her personal relationships first. And that means resolving her conflict with Sandy -- and with their mother, too.

Anyway, you can click here for the Kindle version. The paperback was just approved; if you absolutely can't wait to order one, it's available from CreateSpace here. Otherwise, it'll be available from Amazon and other major online booksellers in a few days.

I hope I haven't put you off from reading the book -- it's not all grimdark. And I'm planning to inject a little fun with a contest here next week. Stay tuned...

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

Oh, what a tangled...

I have news!

1. The latest anthology from Five59 Publishing dropped this week, and I have a story in it. The book is called Free for All because there's no theme; some folks wrote short stories, some wrote poems, and some wrote creative nonfiction. My offering is a bit of my work-in-progress memoir -- a shaggy dog story about getting my mother to the eye doctor. I've already posted part of the story here, but the version in Free for All explains why I had to take Mom halfway across the country to get her eyes checked in the first place. Anyway, the ebook is only $2.99, or free to borrow if you have Kindle Unlimited.

2. Maggie on the Cusp is in the hands of my editors. And in a burst of inspiration, I began plotting the third and final book of the Transcendence trilogy this week. The next book is going to require more research, but I'm confident I can get going on it shortly. By the way, have any of you ever driven to Mexico City? Asking for a friend...

3. You'll recall that last week, my latest knitting project had stalled out because I was running out of yarn. Good news! The indie dyer who makes the yarn I'm using is going to make a skein for me. It won't be an exact match, but that's okay.

The bad news is that it'll be at least another couple of weeks before I get the new skein of yarn in the mail, since she has to spin it and all. So I've been casting about for something else to do in the meantime. I picked up an afghan project I started months and months ago -- but summer is not the best time to be working on an afghan, air conditioning or no. So I picked up on another project that's been on hiatus for a while: my first real attempt at weaving.

When I was a kid, my mother bought me an E-Z Weaver loom. Here's how Marx Toys advertised it on TV:

Looks like a piece of cake, right? Eh, not so much. I got two or three inches of my very first project done before Mom yelled at me for pulling the yarn too tight. Then some kid who came over took the loom out to play with and broke it. It sat in its box in my room for years before we finally threw it out.

A few months back, my local yarn shop sent out an email saying they had some very simple looms in stock, for people who wanted to try weaving. You can spend big money on a loom; the one Elsie uses in Seasons of the Fool probably cost a couple of thousand dollars. It sits on the floor and takes up a good-sized chunk of her living room. In contrast, the loom I bought cost $30. It's about the size of a piece of notebook paper -- and it came with how-to-weave directions!

I sketched out a design on notebook paper and started weaving. The fringe along the bottom -- they're called ryas in weaving -- turned out okay, so I pressed on. By the time I was four rows into my design, though, I realized it was way too complicated for a first project. (Diamonds? Really? What was I thinking?) I set the project on a corner of the dining room table -- and there it sat, silently rebuking me, for several months.

Yesterday, seized with determination, I pulled it out. Using my original sketch as a rough guide, I finished weaving my design -- yay! Unfortunately, the woven piece was very much compressed from the drawing. Six or seven inches of design-on-paper made about three inches worth of weaving. Rather than make myself completely crazy, I decided to fill in the top with stripes. Also, by the time I got that far, I was sick of weaving in ends and decided to just braid the tails from the stripes.

Here, then, is the finished product. Feel free to laugh. A third grader could have done a better job.

I have no earthly idea what I'm going to do with this thing. I'm thinking I should shorten the fringe, at least -- but why? I'm not going to put it up anywhere.

Maybe I should stick to knitting.

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

Playing yarn chicken.

I was going to do a knitting post this week because I thought I'd have a cool, new project done. Alas, the project is not done because I'm running out of yarn.

See, there's a game knitters (and crocheters, too, I imagine) play. It's called "yarn chicken" and it goes like this:

1. (a) You see a pattern that strikes your fancy and dive into your yarn stash (or your favorite yarn shop) to find something that will do it justice; or (b), you fall in love with a skein of yarn at your local yarn shop, bring it home, and then head to Ravelry to find a pattern that will show it off to its best advantage.
2. The pattern calls for a little more yarn than you have in your favored skein, but you go for it anyway. Everybody knows designers factor in an extra ten percent when they figure yardage for their patterns, right?
3. About halfway through the project, you begin to eye what's left of the pattern and what's left of your yarn, and you get nervous. Very nervous.

Sometimes the designer really did factor in that ten percent extra, and you're good. Sometimes you're not good.

Which brings us to my current project. The yarn is Sparkle Sock by the Lemonade Shop, an indie dyer -- which often means that when a colorway is gone, it's gone. Fire Pit is the colorway I lost my heart to: it's gray, with short stretches of yellow and red (and a little green for variety), and it has stellina spun into it so that it sparkles. The pattern I chose is called Fire Dragon Wing, and it calls for 100 grams, or 430 yards, of fingering-weight yarn. My skein of Sparkle Sock had 100 grams and 428 yards. Totally within the ten percent fudge factor, right?

So I cast on and started to knit. And I was so pleased with the way it was turning out that I posted this photo on Facebook a few days ago. Looks cool, doesn't it? With the wedges of varied widths and the bits of fire here and there? It put me in mind of the dragons in the Pern novels. I could envision it as the wing of an ancient dragon -- a blue, maybe, the color of her hide faded with age, and battle-scarred from fighting Thread.

Then I kept knitting, and watched my yarn dwindle. The photo below is from tonight. I have three more wedges to go, plus a final wedge. Oh haha. It ain't happening. I've been weighing my yarn after every wedge completed to figure out how much yarn I've used and comparing that to how much of the shawl I still need to knit. I'm going to be about 25 yards short.

All is not lost. The company is still making this colorway, but not with the stellina wound in. I have a message in to them to see whether they might have a skein of the sparkly kind still laying around (though it's highly unlikely). I've also messaged someone on Ravelry who has a skein in their stash, on the off-chance they'd be willing to part with it. I could find another gray yarn with stellina in it -- Amy has one, but it's not really the right color gray. Or I could buy a skein of the non-sparkly yarn and mix it in, row by row, and hope nobody notices the diminished sparkle (and likely the gray in the new skein would be a slightly different shade, too).

Another option would be to frog the whole thing and re-knit with a needle that's one size smaller. That, also, will not be happening.

In any case, the shawl will not be ready to show off tonight. Sorry, guys. Maybe next week. But don't hold your breath.

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In other news, I am preparing to hand off Maggie on the Cusp to my editors directly, once I fix a continuity issue. I'm hoping to get the book on sale before summer is over, but my window of opportunity is closing fast. Sales of novels historically tend to slump after Labor Day -- people are busy getting back to work and school, and marketing folks begin aiming for holiday promotions -- so the timing isn't ideal. But I need to move on and get going on the final book of the trilogy. More news as it happens...

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

Why you should write what you know - with a caveat.

One of my fellow minions at Indies Unlimited, Gordon Long, posted an article this week about how, in his opinion, scientists shouldn't write science fiction. You've heard the saying, I trust, that you should write what you know. Gordon's argument stands that saying on its head.

His premise is that scientists tend to geek out over their subject matter and include way too much detail -- which, while accurate, will bore the reader to tears. He does allow for the fact that sci-fi readers expect infodumps of technical information about the way things work in the story's universe. That's pretty much a given in sci-fi. But he says it's too easy for overly enthusiastic new authors to include too much information in an infodump, or too many infodumps in a story, or appendices (in a novel!) with an excruciating level of detail.

Gordon's got a point, and it doesn't happen only in sci-fi. Years ago, I wrote a horror story that was set in a TV studio. I spent a lot of time in that story describing the layout of the studio, down to the position of the lights hooked up on the racks above the set. It was way, way, way too much detail -- so much detail that on a re-read years later, I was embarrassed I'd written it. (No, you can't read it. I think I lost it in a move -- and good riddance.)

The thing is that there are good reasons for scientists to write sci-fi. Regular readers of the genre do expect infodumps -- but they also expect the science behind the whiz-bang special effects to be plausible. The fiction part can't violate the rules of the science part; if it does, readers will call you on it. Or they'll call you an idiot. Or both.

What Gordon is arguing for, I think, is moderation -- authors should include only as much description and background information as is necessary to tell the story. Some authors resist the temptation to include too much detail by not inventing an extensive backstory at all, although that can get you into trouble in other ways (say, in book two).

Perhaps the best way for an author to avoid tedious infodumps is to enlist a layman or two (or more) as beta readers. You're looking for the holy grail here -- somebody who not only knows just enough to realize when the author is heading off into the weeds, but who is also willing to tell the author that those weedy bits need to be excised. An author could also trust their editor to tell where to cut, but editors cost money. Beta readers can help with the rough polishing before an author sends the book to the editor.

At the end of the day, I don't think Gordon's view is far from mine. Feel free to write what you know -- with the understanding that all those details that are so fascinating to you may bog down your story for your readers.

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Good news on the Transcendence front: Today is the last day of the first session of Camp NaNoWriMo this year, and I was able to "win" last night by topping 45,000 words on Maggie on the Cusp. While camp is over, the book is not; I have a handful of scenes yet to write. But I expect I will wrap that up here in the next week or so.

Also, and speaking of sci-fi: Plan 559 from Outer Space Mk. III is out! I had a little fun with the characters in my story, "Shreeg." See if you can tell who Captain Lodestone is based on. First person with the correct answer wins an autographed paperback of Maggie in the Dark. Good luck!

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

My tiny house adventure.

Three years ago, almost to the week, I posted about my then-new obsession -- looking at photos of tiny houses on wheels (THOWs for short) on teh intarwebs. Just because I haven't mentioned it since then doesn't mean I've given up the habit. In fact, I have found a couple of manufacturers whose websites I sometimes visit just to drool over the new models.

To recap: A tiny house is a dwelling that's less than 500 square feet in size. A THOW is a tiny house built on a trailer; these rarely run more than, say, 350 square feet. Much bigger than that, and you need a semi to tow it.

One of the most drool-worthy (in my opinion) THOW manufacturers is Escape Homes in Wisconsin, and as soon as I found out they were opening a dealership in Virginia, I started looking at my calendar. Because it's one thing to drool over photos, and another thing to stand inside a tiny house and decide whether you could live there.

Yes, I said "live there." And yes, I do think I could downsize from our current 1,150-square-foot apartment (which I share with my two daughters, so that's less than 400 square feet each...) to 350 square feet or so. And now that we've established that many of you will think I'm nuts, we can proceed.

I've had my eye on the Vintage XL and Traveler XL models in particular. Both are in that 350-square-foot range; both have a ground-floor bedroom, full-size kitchen appliances, and a washer-dryer. The bedrooms are basically just the bed (which is true of nearly every THOW floor plan I've ever seen) and the living/dining space is, well, tiny. But most people who live in these units consider the outdoors an extension of their living space.

Anyway, this weekend, I drove five hours to southwestern Virginia to see what this new dealership had on offer. And I found I liked the Traveler XL better than the Vintage XL. Here are a couple of shots of the Traveler XL interior. The first one is from the bedroom doorway, looking toward the bathroom. To the left, out of the shot, is an electric fireplace with a TV above it. You can see a corner of the optional couch, which folds flat for extra sleeping space. And yes, there's a loft, which you can use either for more sleeping space or an attic (ding ding ding).

This next photo is of the bedroom. On the right, out of the photo, is a closet that's maybe 24 inches wide, tops. Clearly you need to keep your wardrobe very basic if you plan to live in one of these. The little nightstand is built in, and there's a shelf above the windows with LED reading lights built into the underside. They had a TV hung on the wall to the left of this photo, but I think two TVs in 350 square feet is overkill. Although maybe that's just me.

The problem with any THOW is where to park it -- especially if you plan to live in it year-round. Cities and counties have a strong bias toward permanent improvements to real estate, because that way they can collect more in property taxes. THOWs are not permanent structures -- they aren't attached to the property. So the authorities are okay with you buying a 500-square-foot condo in a high-rise, but they are generally not okay with you parking a THOW on a parcel of land and living in it -- even if you paid as much for your THOW as you would have for the condo.

Some cities are coming around, but they're eyeing THOWs mostly as units for homeless people, or for low-income workers who can't afford to live in the city where they work. Retirees are mostly out of luck. I've read many comments on various sites from people nearing, or in, retirement who would love to live in a THOW (or its 400-square-foot cousin, a park model RV) full-time, but they can't find a place where zoning regulations would allow them to do it. Even rural counties are getting cranky about it.

So as cute as these units are, I would need to have a site lined up before I bought one. Which is to say that I'll probably end up with a condo.

On the way back, I drove part of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. This weekend and next weekend are fee-free days at all national parks in the US (so get out next weekend and find a park!). Skyline Drive was a little crowded today, but not as crowded as it usually is in the fall when the leaves turn. When I was there today, the deciduous trees hadn't really begun leafing out yet. Still, it's not a bad view.

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I'll be back in the Camp NaNo saddle this week, continuing work on Maggie on the Cusp. I was far enough ahead on Friday that I was comfortable with taking the weekend off for my little jaunt.

Have a great week, everybody.

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