Redefining city centers in the wake of COVID.

The New York Times ran a column by Ginia Bellafante this week called, "Wait, What if People Did Just Stay Home in Their Pajamas?" 

Bellafante writes that big-city mayors who are pushing the return of workers to their offices in central business districts -- in this case, New York City's Midtown and Lower Manhattan -- to "get back to normal" may be missing a different, and more sustainable, renaissance. 

Downtown office districts have been virtual ghost towns for the past two plus years, and city officials are pushing people to return to work in their high-rise office buildings, or else small businesses -- coffee shops, lunch places, food trucks, and so on -- won't survive. In essence, people are being guilt-tripped into returning to the office.

But people have become comfortable (for the most part) with working from home. Not only do their commutes no longer suck, but with the savings they've realized from sitting home in their jammies, they've been able to support businesses in their own neighborhoods. Bellafante cites as proof the hundreds of restaurant openings in Brooklyn and Queens over the past couple of years.

Hybrid work isn't going away, she says, and in fact the trend has been shifting in that direction for several years; the pandemic shutdown simply hurried it along. But city planning and governmental policies haven't yet shifted to support it.

I maintain that a big reason for it money. As alert hearth/myth readers know, I used to work in an office building in downtown Washington, DC, and I have some idea of how much corporate money has been sunk into the pricey real estate in city cores. It's a lot. A lot. If businesses largely abandon those buildings, city real estate tax revenues will crash, and we may end up with a lot of cityscapes that resemble the picture up top. (It's the background I used for the original cover of Scorched Earth, by the way.)  All those post-apocalyptic stories in which the characters poke around in abandoned cities? That scenario could be closer than we imagined. Already our suburbs are dotted with derelict shopping malls and big-box stores. Why not skyscrapers, too?

But it doesn't have to be that way. Some commenters observed that empty office buildings could be repurposed -- as housing, for one thing. Maybe the whole idea of a downtown business district needs to be rethought, to cater to people who live there, instead of office drones who only spend eight hours a day there, buying coffee and eating lunch out.

I recognize, too, that this whole discussion centers around only the lucky folks who can work from home, and not the people whose jobs have required them to show up to a physical workplace all along -- those "essential workers" who we loved when they were risking their lives to bring us groceries and teach our kids and save our family members when they were hospitalized, and who we maybe haven't thought much about since then. Even if downtown office buildings were renovated into apartments, what are the odds that essential workers could afford to live in them? I mean, does anybody build any apartments that aren't luxury units anymore?

I don't have a solution. I don't think anyone does -- not a practical one, anyway. But we're going to have to grapple with this at some point. We might as well start thinking about it now.

***

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

That fraudulent feeling.

First, some bits of news:

• This past Friday was Lughnasa, and to celebrate, my pal Kriss Morton let me play on her blog for my fourth Fourth-Wall Friday. In this one, I got to tour the NWNN studios on a crucial day during the plot of Scorched Earth. I love writing these things. Figuring out a way to insert myself into my books is just a ton of fun. Kriss, bless her heart, posted links to my other three appearances on this Friday's post, so if you missed one of the earlier ones, feel free to click on through and read 'em all.
• Next weekend's post will be going up early, on Thursday the 7th, as part of Zoe Brooks' second annual Magic Realism Blog Hop. She has about 20 bloggers signed up to participate in this year's hop, including one of my co-minions at Indies Unlimited, Yvonne Hertzberger. Reading everybody's posts last year was fascinating, and I'm looking forward to having another great time this year. I hope you'll join us on the hop.

***
This week, Bob Mayer posted at Genreality about feeling like a fraud. He tailored his post to writers, but almost anybody who's high-achieving can fall into this trap.

Impostor Syndrome is a legitimate psychological condition. Sufferers believe that their achievements aren't due to skill or brilliance. Instead, they feel that they simply lucked into their success, and someday somebody's going to figure it out and humiliate them. As you might imagine, anxiety often goes hand-in-hand with Impostor Syndrome, and depression sometimes does, too.

When first identified back in the 1970s, researchers thought the syndrome only affected women, but more recent research has shown that men can suffer from it, too. And minorities are somewhat more susceptible -- which makes sense when you think about some of the opinions on affirmative action floating around out there (i.e., the feeling that minorities are unfairly being given jobs that ought to go to whites).

This syndrome often hits when the person is thrown into a new situation and expected to perform at a higher level than previously -- like, oh, say, writing the first draft of a novel. But it's not just a feeling of being in over your head; any sane person will have some doubts when tackling a new project. It's the sense that you never should have been given the project in the first place.

The American Psychological Association recommends some coping skills for those suffering from Impostor Syndrome -- among them, recognizing that nobody expects you to be perfect (since perfectionism also can accompany the syndrome), and building up your confidence by acknowledging what you've already achieved.

Mayer suggests stepping away from the space inside your head to view your achievements as if they belonged to someone else, and then asking yourself the likelihood that an impostor would have been able to amass such a resume.

Personally, I think that above all, you should avoid comparing yourself with other people. No matter how good you are at what you do, there will always be somebody who's better at it -- someone who wins more awards, sells more books or widgets, or makes more money. Comparing yourself with others can motivate you, sure. But if the comparisons tend to make you feel like you'll never be any good and what were you thinking when you got involved with this and maybe you should just quit right now -- just stop. Better to keep your head down in your work, and remind yourself of all the things that make you the fabulous person that you are.

Because, as I've been known to tell my kids, you're unique -- just like everybody else.

***
These unique bloggy moments 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.)

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

Land, Sea, Sky: the blog posts, vol. 4.

I have three bits of business to get out of the way first:

1. Crosswind is here! It's now available as an e-book at Amazon and Smashwords, and as a paperback through CreateSpace. I expect the Smashwords edition to migrate to Kobo, B&N, and other retailers shortly, if it hasn't already. And I just noticed the paperback is up at Amazon! It should be available from other retailers within the next couple of weeks.

2. I'm making good progress on Undertow, my NaNo novel and the second book in the "Land, Sea, Sky" trilogy. I was at 42,205 when I went to bed last night. That's not quite as far along as I'd like to be right now, but I'm still ahead of the curve, and the last 8K is definitely doable before the 30th. But I tell you what: Doing NaNo in the same month as a book launch has been pretty darned stressful. I'll be glad when November is over -- as long as I win NaNo, that is....

3. Don't forget about the big Master Koda Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotion coming up next weekend on Facebook. I'll be hosting on Cyber Monday (December 2nd) from 7pm until 9pm Eastern time, and I've got some fun stuff planned. But the best part for you guys is that the authors participating in the event are marking down some of their books to 99 cents for the weekend. You can click here to get to the event page on Facebook. Hope to see you there.

***
I promised to wrap up my "Land, Sea, Sky" posts this week by explaining the structure of the series. That's not all that complicated, so I thought I'd throw in a few Fun Facts to Know and Tell, too.

When I first started thinking about a follow-on series to the Pipe Woman Chronicles, I knew one thing for sure: the Morrigan was going to be in it. I don't know why, other than the fact that She is generally perceived to be one of the darker goddesses in the Celtic pantheon, and I expected this series to be a little less lighthearted than the Pipe Woman Chronicles (if you can call Naomi's story lighthearted).

Anyway. Once I'd settled that, then I realized three books would be the perfect size for the series. The Celts, like a lot of Indo-European cultures, considered 3 to be a sacred number. A whole bunch of Celtic sayings follow a "three things" formula. Here are three examples:

• Three words of counsel: know thy power, know thy wisdom, know thy time.
• Three candles that illume every darkness: truth, nature, and knowledge. 
• Three things it is best to leave alone: a strange dog, a sudden flood, and one wise in their own eyes.

Too, many Indo-European cultures developed a belief that the Universe has three realms. For the Celts, the three realms were -- wait for it -- Land, Sea, and Sky. They held these three so sacred that they would swear oaths upon them:

If I break this oath, may the sky fall down and crush me, may the earth open and swallow me, and may the sea rise up and drown me. (link)

On top of all that, the Morrigan is a triune goddess, comprised of Badb, her warlike aspect; Macha; and Anann, her Earth aspect, after whom twin hills in County Killarney, Ireland, are named the Paps of Anu.

Having gotten this far, it made sense (to me, if no one else) to have each book in the trilogy dedicated to one of the sacred realms. And it also made sense to have three main characters, with each sort of representing one of the three realms.

That's why I've been saying cryptic stuff like, "I consider Crosswind to be Tess's book." Crosswind is the Sky book -- hence the wind turbine on the cover -- and it's Tess's book because she is a journalist, and communication is related strongly to the element of Air. Also, the book is set in and around Washington, DC, which, as we all know, is chock-full of hot air.

Undertow is the Sea book, and it's Darrell's book both because he is a sailor, and because Water has always been important to the Potawatomi way of life. And not just for fishing: the Ojibwe, another Anishinaabe people, still harvest wild rice by rowing their canoes into a stand of the plants and beating them until the seeds fall into the canoe. The plot of Undertow takes place in Hampton Roads, VA -- mostly Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The "roads" in the name Hampton Roads refer to the Elizabeth, Nansemond, and James rivers, which join there before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay.

Which leaves Sue, the realm of Land, and Scorched Earth. Sue is the Right Hand of the Earth goddess Gaia -- 'nuff said. (To be honest, I haven't gotten much farther than that with the planning for this book. When I figure it out, I'll let you know -- how's that?)

Okay, so, Fun Fact to Know and Tell #1: We used to live in the townhouse where Sue, Tess, and Darrell live. It's in Alexandria, VA, in a complex called Brookville Townhomes, which is bordered on the south by Holmes Run Park. In one scene in Crosswind, Sue walks over to the park to sit by the creek and do some thinking. Here's a photo of the creek that my daughter Amy took. It was taken downstream from Sue's vantage point, but it should give you an idea of the setting. Amy took lots of pictures of Holmes Run when she was in high school, and I've got a few of them on a Pinterest board here.

Fun Fact #2: We lived in two different townhouses in Brookville; for this series, I put the kitchen (and its pass-through) from one into the other one. The teeny-tiny bedroom that Darrell rejects? That was my room. But one detail I did not change was the infestation of spider crickets in the basement.

And Fun Fact #3: The Potawatomi own and operate several casinos. One of them is in New Buffalo, MI, which is about 15 minutes from the house where I grew up.

So there you go. Hope you like the series. I think I'll go now and try to knock out a few more words on Undertow.  Happy Thanksgiving!

***
These bloggy Fun Facts to Know and Tell have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Land, Sea, Sky: The blog posts, Vol. 3.

Welcome to any of you who are stopping by following my five-week free promotion for the Pipe Woman Chronicles! I gave away hundreds of e-books each week, and so it stands to reason that at least a few of those folks have read the books and are here for the first time. So, hi. I hope I don't bore you.


A mess of publishing notes: Over at Amazon, you can now find an omnibus e-book of all five of the Pipe Woman Chronicles. If you missed one, or if you think someone on your holiday list would enjoy the series, I hope you'll think about picking up a copy. There won't be a paperback version of the omnibus, mainly because it would be about 500 pages long and I would have to charge at least 18 bucks to break even.

I intend to sell the omnibus exclusively at Amazon for now. But I'll be putting the individual books back up at other retailers by the end of this month.

Also, I've gathered together the three "Land, Sea, Sky" prequels into an anthology, which went live at Amazon this morning.

And speaking of "Land, Sea, Sky" -- drum roll, please -- Crosswind will be out at Amazon and Smashwords this Wednesday, November 20th.

***
So this week, I'm supposed to talk about Sue Killeen, our third and final main character in "Land, Sea, Sky."

On the day of the Second Coming, Sue was a senior in high school. She and her best buds, Heather and Moira, skipped school that day to go to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The three of them grew up together in Fairfax County, Virginia -- not far from where I live now -- and Rehoboth is only a few hours away.

Anyway, Heather has always been the ringleader for their little clique, and Sue has always felt like the ugly, awkward one, as she's taller and stockier than her friends. But during that day at the beach, the girls stop at a New Age shop, and Sue has a Tarot reading that indicates she will be important to the Earth goddess Gaia. With that, the balance of power in the group shifts, and the friendships don't survive the young women's transition to college in the fall.

Fast-forward ten years. At 28, Sue is coming into her own as the Right Hand of Gaia. She has become comfortable in her Wiccan religion and can do some pretty unusual magic. And she is indispensable at her job as a project manager for a nonprofit called Earth in Balance.  But she has never reconciled the feeling that she's awkward and less than pretty. It doesn't help that Tess, whom Sue met in college, is tiny and adorable, and is on TV, and has guys falling at her feet all the time. Tess -- who has her own problems with intimacy (see my post from two weeks ago) -- ignores those guys. And then sometimes the guys come to Sue for commiseration and advice about how to get Tess to notice them, which makes Sue feel like she's always sloppy seconds.

You would think that by now, five or six years after finishing college and moving on, she would have gotten over this feeling of always being second best. Alas, she and Tess got an apartment together with another friend right after graduation, and even though Sue and Tess no longer run in the same circles, Sue still sends out the sort of desperate vibe that guys run from.

The thing is that the gods want Sue, Tess, and Darrell to become a team -- and if Sue's self-esteem issues keep her endlessly jealous of Tess, it's not going to happen. In Crosswind, Sue gets a bit of a wake-up call about her behavior. In Undertow, which I'm writing now, she'll get an external boost to her self-esteem. But in Scorched Earth, which I consider to be Sue's book, she's going to have to figure out how to believe in herself.

Next week, I'll talk about the structure of the series, and why I'm calling it "Land, Sea, Sky."

***
Speaking of Undertow, it's coming along. My goal for this weekend was 35,000 words, which I reached last night. I'm now at the point where I'm hoping that I have enough plot left for the final 15,000 words. Don't worry -- I had the same freakout at the same point when I wrote the first draft for Crosswind and it all worked out fine.

One more thing: Don't forget that the really big Master Koda Black Friday/Cyber Monday Bash is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 29 through Monday, Dec. 2. Thirty-five authors will be offering their e=books that weekend for 99 cents. The party starts on the Facebook event page on Black Friday, but we're prepping now, so do stop by. It would be a shame if you missed this event. Just sayin'.

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