Here’s to a great 2015! May all your projects come to fruition!
It’s been about three weeks since I last posted anything, so first off – Happy New Year! We’ve started a new year and it’s filled with promise for the most part.
Part of the promise for the new year is to revise the NaNo novel in January and I made that promise on the NaNoWriMo site, so I’ve been trying to get going on it. Unfortunately, January has been an extremely busy month so far with other writing projects that are not nearly as much fun and one that is kind of neat. But they’re all time consuming and brain cell burning, so it’s been a struggle to get to the revision. I even had a training course that I signed up to take this month and I’m falling woefully behind on it as well.
Nonetheless, I’ve just managed to get started on the revision of Funeral Singer. So far, I have gone through and broken the novel into smaller chapters than I had originally, so instead of 17 chapters, I am now up to 30. Some of the chapters were covering a lot of territory and I think smaller chapters are often easier for readers to tackle as well as find a good stopping place for the night. Of course, if I do my job well, then my readers won’t want to stop for the night, right? I’ve also revised and edited the first five chapters now. It has been good so far and not too many changes in them. I’ve tweaked some words and phrases in various places, deleted a few things that aren’t needed and I think it’s a tighter read. If I can keep up this pace, I just might get through the revision by the end of the month.
Next up, I am seeking Beta Readers. For those who may not know, the beta reader is someone willing to read the book, make comments on pacing, story problems, plot holes and let me know where or if they might stumble in reading due to awkward phrasing or some other reason. The book is a paranormal mystery or maybe paranormal thriller, not sure which way to classify it just yet. But I am looking for a few people who are willing to read it and comment. If you think you’d like to give it a try, email me at Lily@pynhavyn.com
That’s it for this week. I’ll catch up with you again soon with another status report and possibly a background article.
I was under the impression that I shared my house with my housemate, her dog and four cats. But it has occurred to me recently that I actually have three hobbits rather than cats in my house. Let me explain.
Milo – part Himalayan, part Hobbit
Timmy, Houligan and Milo look like cats and to some extent, they act like cats. But when it comes to food, these three old felines are more like hobbits. By that, I mean they expect certain conventions to happen every day on a schedule.
First there is breakfast. Milo, in particular, likes his to be served by eight in the morning. He is frequently disappointed, but he tries to make it clear that it is expected. He has a gravely, cello-toned voice that resembles a string being plucked on that instrument. He does not hesitate to stand on top of me and inform me that breakfast time is imminent. So, upon my awakening, I am summoned to the kitchen to prepare their repast. All felines attend, except my real cat, Jellicle, who actually prefers her meals to be served in her chamber, which is my bedroom. On rare occasion, she will deign to join the others in the dining area. Within a few minutes, there is usually not a single morsel of food left in the dishes. Practical Timmy, (think Samwise) the cleaner, ensures they are all properly cleaned up.
Houligan on the back of my chair, a comfy place. Part American longhair, part Hobbit.
Recently, Houligan has taken a penchant to running water. In his shrill, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard, howl, he demands that the water in the bathtub be turned to drip in order for him to get a drink. As soon as he believes that I have stirred a little in the morning, he runs for the tub and begins his insistent request. His Christmas present this year is a small fountain with running water. I do hope this alleviates this issue. But hobbits do like things fresh, don’t they?
cat hobbit – drawing by R. Averett
By mid-morning, Milo is now seeking second breakfast. Just a little snack, please, to tide him over to elevensies. And sometimes Houligan will join him in this request. Both Milo and Houligan are very thin cats and I can attest it is NOT from a lack of food. To be fair, Milo has only eight teeth left in his ten-year-old mouth and Houligan suffers from an over-active thyroid, which makes this almost fourteen year-old cat seem downright anorexic. But he eats at every opportunity. So second breakfast it is. Usually a little more of the moist cat food, although sometimes it might be a bit of canned tuna or a little bit of leftover chicken. Unless I keep this a secret, Timmy will join in, coming into the room as if it is his right to be fed.
Timmy getting beauty sleep. Part Persian, part Hobbit He looks deceptively small in this hobbit bed, but he’s really about 16 lbs .
Poor Timmy, another ten year-old, is not possessed of a svelte figure. He is a roly-poly hobbit with big, demanding eyes and a small voice.
Then it’s time for elevensies. Yes, they demand this also. Milo likes a bit of salmon or more chicken, if you please, but will also eat some egg, particularly if there is a bit of sausage in it. Whatever you’re having will do just fine, thank you. And this is quite literally. Chorizo and eggs are very good and a ham omelet is divine. Houli will have a little bit, but mostly he would like one of those little dry biscuit treats that I keep in pouches for the boys. Usually Timmy sleeps through this because he is partly Persian and he needs his beauty sleep.
At last, there’s a break until mid-afternoon. Usually, I eat something around this time, an omelet or salad or sandwich and that is a cue to the hobbits felines to gather for their portion once more. This is not a simple request. No, it is a command. They will surely expire if they don’t have bites of what you’re eating.
Jellickle, the princess, an American longhair. Not hobbit.
Somewhere around five-thirty, the company will gather in the dining area again and wish for their supper. All except the princess, of course, who is patiently waiting on her bed in her chamber. As one friend once said, cats work magic. If they stare at the bowl long enough, food will appear.
If the weather is nice, then Milo might request patio dining on the porch and on his particular perch on the tree. I might point out that there is always dry morsels of food available in a bowl for the on-going munching the felines sometimes prefer, but nothing is a substitute for the tablespoon of moist food that they enjoy at these meals. Frequently, there is a shuffle after the initial few bites in order to sample each other’s bowls for quality control. Houligan races Timmy to get to Jellicle’s bowl for any leftovers there.
Dinner for PK and me is usually around seven-thirty, which, of course, is also to be shared with the company, which now includes the canine, Flynn.. A morsel of meat here, a bit of cheese there. Make sure they are all getting their fair share, although Milo’s opinion of “fair share” seems to translate to a 3 to 1 ratio. Houligan has a particular fondness for gravies and sauces, so those should be left for him.
For two of this lot, a small dessert is in order around ten. It used to be whipped cream licked off my fingers, but recently Milo and Houligan have taken to simply lapping cream out of their dishes. Not that they wouldn’t like to have a bite or two of the whipped stuff if I am indulging. Who said cats are lactose intolerant? When they’re part hobbit, that is obviously not the truth. I have to say that this addiction of theirs is so bad that until they started drinking the cream, I was literally being held at claw-point to have whipped cream.
Now, lest you think that the crew is done for the day, there is still their nightly elevensies, the final petite meal of the day. I tried to cut this one out and it brought out very vocal complaints from the head hobbit, Milo. Even the small mewl of Timmy joined in on that. So, one last meal, sometimes followed by crunchy treats for Timmy and Houligan, then at last, they are ready for bed.
At times, it seems like this crowd eats a lot, but in reality, they get about one can of moist food each when the day is done, but they do supplement with extra “hobbit” food throughout the day.
Apart from the eating habits, I do need to point out that my cat hobbits all have furry feet, are curious about everything, and don’t need a ring to rule anything. Perhaps cats secretly inspired Tolkien’s hobbits.
Since we’re so close to Christmas and businesses have literally gone nuts with sales promotions, I thought I’d tackle this as a subject of today’s blog. For quite a few years, the kick-off for Christmas shopping has been the day after Thanksgiving.
I think this traditional start for shopping goes back to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, an event that was actually started by Macy’s employees in 1926. It’s said that so many of the employees were immigrants and they wanted to do something like the festivals they had back home, so they thought a parade on Thanksgiving was a good way to give thanks to their new country. In a short time, it became the symbol of the start of the holiday season and soon people began using it as the signal to begin decorating and buying gifts.
As a child, I remembered it being a wonderful time of year. The decorations downtown went up and the Christmas tree at San Jacinto Plaza in El Paso went in right after Thanksgiving. The city was filled with lights and ornaments. The manger scene was set up in the Plaza. In the downtown department stores, many of them had wondrous displays of Christmas and winter scenes. They had Santa’s toy shop in a window, the manger in another and Christmas morning in yet another window and just display after display depicting the joy of Christmas. It was a delight to children just to walk along the street peering in one window after another.
I would take my $5 or $10 dollars on the bus downtown to go shop for my presents for the family. Obviously, that money was worth a lot more in 1960 than it is now and I was able to buy something for everyone with just that little amount of money. Of course, the trip took a long time as I went down all the main streets and into the Plaza so I could soak in the beauty of the holidays. It was all very magical and people seemed to be filled with the joy of the season.
Over the past decade or so, the start of the holiday season seems to be creeping steadily forward. Thanksgiving hasn’t even started when decorations begin going up and displays in the stores come out. Gone are the beautiful Christmas windows with the valuable space being occupied by sales items with a winter theme, but not much of the holiday spirit. This year, some of it was out before Halloween, although the Halloween lights easily transitioned to holiday lights. In the past few years, shopping on Thanksgiving has come into vogue. I was pleased to see some companies refusing to open on Thanksgiving so that their families could enjoy the holiday. Other companies waited until later to open.
But why is it necessary to open at all? Does it really translate to more sales or just earlier sales for business they would have gotten on Friday, Saturday or Sunday or even the following week? Then they have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and now Green Monday. Some business had Black Friday sales all of November and are still going on. Black Friday extends to Cyber Monday, which in turn lasts all week. Suddenly, we, as potential customers, are being bombarded with sales that are aren’t really all that special.
Even my email has been loaded with sales, day after day, for the past month and a half. Any business that can possibly cut their prices by fifty cents has called it a Black Friday sale or a Cyber Monday sale, even though it has nothing to do with electronics or computers. It’s just too much. Don’t stress because you missed a sale or didn’t have the money when the sale was on. There will always be more of them coming up after Christmas.
It’s time to get back to the real meaning and joy of the holidays. It is not buying lots of gifts, getting false discounts or shopping until you’re short-tempered and not having a good time. It’s about the promise of the season. No matter what religion you are or aren’t, the holidays are about the beauty of the winter season, the rest period for your body and your spirit and the preparation for the coming promise of spring. It’s about reaching for your faith and gaining insight into yourself and your place in the Universe. It’s about being with your family and friends, sharing moments that don’t come often and being thankful for everything you have, even if it seems like you don’t have much. It’s not about material things. It’s about love, family, reflection and peace of mind and spirit.
So, take some time this December to reflect on what is truly important and wonderful about the season. Let me know your thoughts about the holidays .
Last weekend, my roommate and best friend, Patti and I went to the Wizard World Comic Con, the first one held in Reno. For those who may not have looked at their web site, it was enough of a success that they’ve scheduled one for 2015 already. If you missed it this year, it will be back next year.
Friday was a great day to attend because there weren’t as many people there and it made it a snap to get checked in and get our wristbands for the weekend. There weren’t too many panels scheduled on Friday afternoon that were what I was hoping for and of course, there were a couple that were opposite each other. That’s a given in these situations. If they were offering four panels I wanted to see in a collection of twelve panels, at least one of them would be on at the same time as one of the other three. Murphy’s Law in action. (Or is there another specific law that governs this situation?
Inspiration in the Universe
One of the panels that turned out to be really interesting and stimulating to a creative mind was the “NASA Conquers the Universe” panel, presented by Mary Louise Davie who is not only an author, but must work for NASA in some capacity because she had some great information on what was in the works and the status of their funding. They are fully funded now for future space exploration and partly because of their partnerships with private companies. So, hoorah for NASA’s future.
Where the space program is going is fascinating. Mars is not the only planet on the radar for future exploration. Moons are not left out and there are possibilities of outposts on moons other than ours. Some of the projections on how to build habitats on unfriendly worlds were fascinating and also stimulated that little creative spot that suggest possibilities to writers. It also makes you think that almost anything you can imagine might be possible at some point. So long as you don’t totally violate the laws of the Universe, whatever they might be. With so much being discovered and changing, is anything really exactly what we believe it to be?
Inspiration Around Town
Paranormal Reno was another interesting panel, although not as informative as the NASA one. Two local paranormal researchers discussed the haunted and other paranormal aspects of Reno and the surrounding areas with the audience. At some point, it became more like a case of the folks in the audience trying to stump the researchers with stories of paranormal sightings that they may not have investigated or heard about. But it was interesting and dipped into a little of the history of the Reno area.
Inspiration from People
A couple of the many great costumes worn by young and old as Hall Costumes.
Saturday was the main day for programming and attendees. We heard there might have been around 30,000 people at the Convention Center that day. It was packed! Getting through the exhibitors room was a major effort and I mostly plowed my way though looking for Patti. There were many great Hall Costumes and the ingenuity of the fans in creating these is always fun to see. Then, I made my way to the largest exhibitor room and claimed a seat on the sixth row, which was where I spent the next six hours.
First up was William Shatner who is an absolute delight. Some people may not realize that he is as intelligent as he is, but he it well-read and up on many recent scientific discoveries . He is an excellent speaker with a wonderful sense of humor. The format for all the panels was “Question and Answer” sessions, so there were many diverse questions.
“Walking Dead” panel
Next up was a “Walking Dead” panel with three of the series stars, Scott Wilson, Jon Bernthal and Andrew J. West. Very amusing and interesting panel. This continued on with Michael Rooker’s panel and more talk about “Dead” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”. Great humor and he was joined at the end by Karen Gillan who popped out to greet him. Karen’s panel was the next after they cleared out the VIP rows so that fans who’d purchased the VIP seats could claim them. She was a delight, funny and very gracious, not to mention cute as a button! There was a lot of love for Amy Pond.
Michael Rooker and Karen Gillan
The last panel, although it really wasn’t one, was Bruce Campbell. Along with Ted Raimi, Bruce came out with a “film-a-movie” approach that involved the audience and proved to be very funny. Basically, they found a writer, two actors and a director from the audience and Bruce, who was the producer, set them up to do a scene based on a story idea the writer pitched to the audience. There were three pitches and the audience voted on the one to use. Then the writer went to work writing a one-page scene while Bruce and Ted hunted for the actors. They found two with experience and “hired” those then looked for a director. A quick rehearsal, then they filmed the scene and showed it on the big screen for everyone to see – and laugh about. It was not your usual panel.
Bruce Campbell with the writer and Ted Raimi, The writer is actually a published Reno author, but I didn’t catch her name.
We did not stay for the Costume Contest, usually a favorite thing I like to do, but by this point, I was hungry and I needed to move around some. And there was this NaNoWriMo thing in the back of my mind. Even though I’d already won and completed my novel, I still wanted to add some words to my new WIP before the end of the day.
All in all, Comic Con was fun and it was worth the three-day pass even though we didn’t go all three days. For inspiration, it was great. From the intriguing panels to the amazing art, it’s one of those things that opens your mind to many possibilities.
It’s official. I can now say that I am a NaNoWriMo winner and that feels awesome! Being able to write over 65,000 words in less than a month is an eye-opening experience for a writer who’s done it for the first time. What it tells me, as a writer, is that I can get those words out there so that the first draft is complete and editing can begin.
The next phase of NaNo is to edit the words in December with an eye to publishing in the spring. There’s still a lot of work to be done though. Just writing the first draft isn’t enough to have a novel ready to go. It needs to be rewritten in places, polished, some more research done, but I feel pretty confident about the book I’ve just completed.
New Project
The Alcazar at Grenada, Spain. Isn’t this a beautiful backdrop for a romantically suspenseful novel?
At any rate, I am moving on and stepping away a little from both the October and NaNo novels to begin work on another two novels. The first is one I outlined years ago after a trip to Spain and I wanted to incorporate the beautiful Spanish setting as well as the trips to Morocco and Portugal into the story. It’s a suspense romance novel along the lines of the type that Mary Stewart wrote. I loved her books. If I am going to write romance, then I want it to be in the paranormal suspense romance or just plain suspense romance genres. So far, I don’t have a title, working or otherwise, for this novel so it is the Spanish story for now.
The second one is the one I first started to write about March of this year and didn’t get very far before the sci-fi fantasy one took over. So that story, which is the one that is moving forward right now, is a young adult urban fantasy called “Dew Dropping Hour” and is set in Ireland. Parts of the British Isles have always had a magical feel for me and the mythology of the islands have such enchantment that this is another planned series of books that really excites me. I believe, at this time, that the series will be three books, but it could go to four. It just depends on how it actually plays out while I’m writing it. The overall series is called “The Isles of Magic”.
Titles
For some reason, I have a really hard time coming up with titles for my books. I had a working title for the novel I am currently typing in from the hard copy that I had of it, but I don’t like it. It doesn’t really serve the book well, so I am hoping to get an inspiration somewhere along the line as I’m writing it.
Sometimes I find the title in song lyrics or poetry and sometimes they just pop up when I’m writing. For instance, the title of the YA, “Dew Dropping Hour” is from a poem by William Butler Yeats. But if something doesn’t present itself, it becomes a real struggle to find something that ties in, but doesn’t sound milquetoast.
Do you encounter a problem with coming up with good, enticing titles for your books or stories? Let me know.
Exploring barriers between reality and other realities… Is it fantasy or just a step through a dimension portal?
Next up, I am seeking Beta Readers. For those who may not know, the beta reader is someone willing to read the book, make comments on pacing, story problems, plot holes and let me know where or if they might stumble in reading due to awkward phrasing or some other reason. The book is a paranormal mystery or maybe paranormal thriller, not sure which way to classify it just yet. But I am looking for a few people who are willing to read it and comment. If you think you’d like to give it a try, email me at Lily@pynhavyn.com
has called it a Black Friday sale or a Cyber Monday sale, even though it has nothing to do with electronics or computers. It’s just too much. Don’t stress because you missed a sale or didn’t have the money when the sale was on. There will always be more of them coming up after Christmas.
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