Share the Love

I love receiving blog awards, but I love to pass them on even more. (It's just a matter of getting around to it, I'm afraid!)

First, thank you to Sharon, who waited a long time for me to thank her publicly for this award (so cute):

Thank you to Krista Lynne Jensen  who passed on these two lovely awards:

And a big thank you to Shallee who gave me this award:

Thank you to all three of you for thinking I'm sweet and lovely and versatile and creative (or at least for thinking my blog is one of those things). My love-cup is running over.

And now for the good part -- passing them on to some new blogging friends! So, if you are named to receive a reward, accept one that you don't already have and enjoy!

Mimi in Dublin who likes chocolate (and food) as much as I do.

Molly over atWriter Mama Dreamer who is my friend and dancing buddy from the LA SCBWI conference (and fellow Washingtonian).

Jackee over at Winded Words who is such a sweet blogging friend.

Dawn over at Plotting and Scheming, my other friend and dancing buddy from the LA conference (and fellow Washingtonian, too) ... By the way, she and Molly do have separate identities and they both have awesome blogs, so check them both out. I know I'm making them sound like clones, but they're not. Promise.

Janet Sumner Johnson who is a very cool blogging buddy.

Julie Musil who is awesome (but who happens to have a very scary picture posted on her blog today. Not of her. Of an antagonist. But still.)

Elise over at Once, Oh Marvelous Once (fantastic blog name, right?) who blogs about all sorts of cool stuff all the time.

Becky, who has a really cool history with my husband's family. She used to live in our town as a child and we randomly met through Rachelle Gardner's blog. Small (blogging) world!

And I'd like to give one of these awards back to Sharon (even though she's not a *new* blog friend), Krista Lynne Jensen (who I have a ton in common with, btw), and Shallee (who is having a contest!).

Now, I think the rules say I have to say some interesting/random things about myself. I know I already did this once long ago, but my archives are not being helpful. Sorry for any repeats. I only have a limited number of interesting things about myself.

So, here we go, in no particular order.

1. My parents live in Hong Kong. So does my younger sister. I lived there for 13 years, from age 5 to 18. I would really like to visit this summer if we can scrape together money for seven plane tickets.
2. I played bass clarinet in high school.
3. One of my favorite movies is Lady Jane, starring Helena Bonham Carter, about the historic figure Jane Grey who was Queen of England for nine days. Such a romantic movie and it makes me cry every time.
4. I am almost ten years older than my little brother.
5. I am expecting baby number five in January. Still feeling slightly overwhelmed by that prospect. All my other children were born in China. This will be my first USA-born baby.
6. When we lived in China, I had a household helper who came twice a week to help me clean and cook and do shopping. Therefore, I am very spoiled and it's hard to adjust to life in America doing all my own housework. Which is why I obsess about it on my blog. But there are some things that make American life much easier: our car, our dishwasher, our clothes dryer, and American grocery stores with American groceries.
7. I really hate canned tuna. I'm not a tuna casserole type of girl. Or a tuna sandwich type of girl.

That's all for today, my friends. Make it a great day!



Why I'm Gone

I'm heading out for a few days. Some good friends of ours from China are in our state for a couple weeks, so we're driving over to visit them (and getting in a nice family visit with my aunt and uncle, too). Yippee!

That's why the blog will be silent.

But when I return, get ready for more Story-A-Weeks (because I'm still catching up), and I also need to accept and pass on some awards. I think Sharon gave me one about six months ago that I never accepted. I think about it every now and then and feel guilty. Terrible that guilt is so often my main motivator, but there you have it.

I'll leave you with a few snapshots of our recent life to enjoy in my absence. This weekend, for instance, is our town's annual Balloon Rally. Yesterday and today the early morning sky was filled with hot air balloons. I'm not a very good photographer, nor do I have a very good camera, but I tried my best. I know they look like little dots because I took these pictures from our deck. So you'll have to take my word for it: they were really very beautiful "live."

One balloon was decorated with stars and stripes, and my daughter Olivia started all the kids on a frenzy of "I pledge allegiance to the balloon of the United States of America...." Ai-ya-ya!

Balloons!

More balloons!

The planters by our front door. Aren't they doing well? They make me happy every time I come home. I'll miss them this winter.

The sunset, taken from our driveway.

Son and cat. Gabe and Midnight seem to take good pictures together. Maybe it's the male camaraderie.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Are you doing anything special?

A Story A Week: A Visit From My Father

My father, Marshall Taylor, does not like me to be so punctilious.

He lies across the davenport as a walrus might recline across a rock.

I bend down to adjust the tassels of the Persian rug. Thank goodness for my rule about slippers within the boundaries of the house. At least my father abides by it. His muddy boots are upended outside the front door, to air. I will not have them within my home and my father knows this.

He also knows I do not like him sprawling across my davenport. However, after a quick intake of breath to calm my nerves, I remind myself that this is one point he may well have forgotten.

My father has not been within my house for two years and one-hundred-and-fifty-seven days. Within this time span I have received only one phone call from him, but it was quickly ended – by him – after he claimed a headache and hung up. I trust that this particular interview will be similarly brief. I have already planned what to do upon his departure. I will vacuum the davenport extensively and utilize copious amounts of Lysol spray.

“Got anything to eat around here?” my father asks.

“Of course,” I reply. “But perhaps we could remove ourselves to the dining room to partake. I never eat in this room.”

My father makes a snorting noise through his nostrils. “Of course you don’t.”

He sits up slowly, gripping the back of the davenport to aid his ascent. I notice there are dark lines of dirt under the beds of his nails. Perhaps the treatment of the davenport will require more than Lysol spray.

“Through here,” I say, directing him with a wave of my hand.

My father walks ahead of me, his shoulders hunched. “You don’t let a man even take the weight off his feet for a minute, do you?”

“I have prepared both spice cake and flan,” I say. “Which would you prefer?”

“Flaaan?” my father says. He stops walking, and turns to arch a bushy eyebrow at me. “You’ve got to be joking. What’d your mother torture you with all those years, anyhow, to make you turn out like this?”

I blink, only once, then puncture him with my gaze (a technique quite effective in the workplace when employees fail to file the proper paperwork on time). “I beg your pardon, but anyone who has the gall to find fault with a woman who was deserted by her spouse, and left to raise two children entirely by the sweat of her own brow, why, if any person dares to find fault with such a woman, especially when she is his own erstwhile wife, whom he abandoned solely because of his own selfish whims and desires, then that person should be ashamed, and that person will not be permitted within this house, or even within the boundaries of this property, so help me God!”

My father’s expression has not changed, except that perhaps his eyebrow arches even higher. “Good God,” he murmurs. “It’s a nuthouse around here.”

“Spice cake or flan?” I repeat.

“I’ll take the cake,” my father says. “Don’t even got a clue what flaaan stuff is, anyhow.”


Thanks to Marty (full name Marshall) who gave me the three inspirational words erstwhile, punctilious and flan. These might have been the most challenging words to date because I had to look up ALL THREE OF THEM, but, knowing Marty, his intent was to stump me. He is my pastor, after all. It's part of his job to challenge me. However, what Marty meant for evil (just kidding, Marty), turned out to be the best part. The word erstwhile actually helped me discover this female character. I wondered to myself, "What kind of person would use the word erstwhile?" ... and this lovely, OCD character was born. And, in the beautifully Christian spirit of REVENGE, I named the other character after Marty.

And I made a mistake. Yesterday was story #30. Today's is story #31. See? Serious math issues.

A Story A Week: Wild Man

He wears no shirt, tight jean cut-offs, Teva sandals with the straps frayed. His hair is a mop of dreads. I see him balanced on a one of the thick lower branches of the oak trees when I walk through the park, crouched on his haunches.

He shouts, but the people going past don’t look. Sure, you can tell they’re dying to let their eyes bulge out of their sockets at him, but only if they can do it secretly, without him seeing. Because they’re scared of him, just like I’m scared of him. I bet they have that tingle of apprehension, just like I have, that he’ll spring at them suddenly from his perch, because he’s an agile, drug-induced monkey man with dirty nails and fangs for teeth.

I walk past the oak. Now he can dig his gaze into me, but I try not to think about that. I look up at the clouds in the sky: white puffs. I know that’s what clouds mostly look like, but not always. Yesterday they were wispy threads drawn out like furrows in a field.

“And there she goes, that long-haired girl with the blue heels. She prances by. She makes no sound. Just the click of her shoes lets you know she’s a whore. Looking all nice and pretty on the outside – she might! – But underneath she weaves deception. She brings men in. One date and they’re hooked. She doesn’t care anymore who they are or where they’re from. She’ll take anyone. They come willingly enough—”

“Creepy guy, huh?” Jesalyn, my cube mate at work, jogs up next to me, ponytail swinging. Her ballet flats on the concrete path don’t make a sound.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I say. “Nice to have someone to walk with. Thanks for catching up.”

“I wish they’d put people like that away,” she whispers. “They’re so….”

His voice never stops. It’s a sacred voice, the kind you hear in church, deeper than you’d expect from anyone so skinny. “Men, you look the other way. Don’t let her taunt you with her eyes, lure you with her soft olive skin, weave a web of desire around you. Ignore the pounding in your chest, because it’ll lead you to hell, my friends. Lead you to hell…!”

I brush off the sleeves of my velvet jacket. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m afraid some of his words are stuck to me, hanging off like trails of toilet paper when you come out of a bathroom. Dead giveaways of where you’ve been and what you’ve done.

I glance at Jesalyn, but she’s talking about Friday’s office party. Could I bring a six-pack of beer, maybe a package of cookies?

“Sure,” I say. “No problem.”

My powder blue heels with the peek-a-boo toes click on the cement. Soon, I can’t hear his voice at all anymore, just the roar of the public buses on the street ahead. Our office building looms directly across the road, sunshine glancing off glass windows.

But in my chest, a dark hand burrows, clawing through the muck that used to be my conscience. And a voice rings repeatedly in my head like a broken doorbell: How did he know?


Thanks to Jesalyn for her three inspirational words: agile, deceptive and sacred. And for the record, if I counted correctly (no guarantee), this is my 29th Story-A-Week story. Only twenty-three more to go to reach my goal. Since I'm playing catch-up, I'll post another one tomorrow, so please come back to read story number thirty!

Two-Post Thursday

I have to play catch up because there's so much to blog about, but not enough days in the week.

So, today I'll be posting two posts. Can you handle it? This one and also a Story-A-Week. I wrote two stories for Story-A-Week yesterday (yay!). I think you'll like them. I'll post one later today and one tomorrow. Sound good?

And I will not post any more about being sick or about people in my house being sick because I'm sick of blogging about sickness. So there. (But thank you for all your words of encouragement! They were very nice.)

I have been reading books. I read Baby by Joseph Monninger a few weeks ago. You can read my review here. (Another great book. I love having the convenience of a book-list!)

I have also been wandering around my google reader trying to catch up on all the posts I missed when I had the thing-I-won't-talk-about. That's how I stumbled across references to a very cool competition going on over at Angela Ackerman's blog, The Bookshelf Muse. Click here to find out how you can enter to win a three-month mentorship with Angela. You can also enter a simpler contest to win critiques of smaller portions of your manuscript. So, either way, check it out.

Agent Kathleen Ortiz is having a celebration because she reached 2,000 followers on Twitter. She's giving away book packs on her blog, so check it out here.

Phew, that's all I have energy for today. Have to go downstairs and check on the puke-- er, I mean, check on the children.

Stay tuned for my Story-A-Week later today, courtesy of Jesalyn's three incredible words.

Nugget: The Virtues of Sleep

We discussed this at the Inland Empire SCBWI conference in Spokane on Saturday. It's a very small golden nugget of writing wisdom, but highly valuable.

Once you finish the first draft of your manuscript, let it sleep.

(This was from author Claire Rudolf Murphy's very awesome Do's and One Don't List. I'll share the whole list later. Promise.)

So I raised my hand (it's a small conference, so it was totally acceptable in this session to raise one's hand.)

"How long do you leave your manuscript alone?"

One woman near the front tossed up Stephen King's advice: letting your manuscript rest for six months.

SIX MONTHS?!

But Ms. Murphy chimed in with a much more (in my opinion) judicious "at least three weeks."

So, there you have it. We all knew we needed to let that manuscript sleep, but we were all wondering how long.

The point of letting your WiP sleep or brew or bake (or whatever it's doing when you walk away and leave it alone) is to give you emotional distance from the work. While it's in your face all the live-long day, it's too easy to go cross-eyed, ignore small flaws, speed read, and so on.

Time gives distance.

And this was the most interesting part to me:

Once you go back and re-read your first draft manuscript, read it twice.

And then decide: is this something in which I want to invest my time?

Am I going to go the distance with this story?

Am I going to polish this thing to death and eventually query it?

Or am I going to pick out some good parts and start with something different?

You know, I'd never thought about abandoning a project after letting it sleep.

By the end of the first draft, it seems created already.

I already feel committed.

But wow - what a great tip:

The freedom to abort mission, before you give any more of your life to something that won't go anywhere.

Give yourself the freedom to let it go, to start something new and fresh, OR to even take the excellent parts of the original idea and spin it into something different.

That's good stuff. Definitely a hunk of pure gold.

What do you think? Have you thought about this aspect of resting your manuscript before?

Two Days in Incomplete Sentences

*A post composed completely of incomplete sentences.*

Wonderful time at writing conference in Spokane. Love the Inland Empire.

Long drive home in the dark. Swerved around the freeway in the rain. Probably thought I was drunk. But no. Instead, attempting to swat large moth out the window of my car.

Back home. @3a.m. woke up with stomach cramps.

Yeah, you guessed it.

Stomach flu.

All day yesterday.

Which was my daughter's 2nd birthday.

Managed to make cookie dough cupcakes, but that's about all I accomplished.

Oh, yeah. Also wrote a card for her.

Trying to get caught up here, but might take a few days.

Your patience appreciated.

Now, stay well everyone!

The Night of Incessant Vomit

• Went to bed at 10:30.
• Woke up at 11:00 to Anna wailing.
• Brought her to bed with us.
• @ 11:30 she was throwing up. Dashingly Handsome Sidekick (DHS) assisted. Cleaned up the floor. Thankfully she made it to the bathroom and didn't puke on the bed. (Good girl!) 
• @ 11:45 I made a bed on the floor next to our bed. Bucket positioned on a towel next to her head.
• @ 11:50 she threw up again.
• I told Aaron to sleep, I'd take care of it. After all, I'm the one at home during the day. He has to stand up in front of a bunch of high schoolers and make sense.
• Every twenty to forty minutes until 6:30 Anna dry-heaved into that bucket. I know because I saw the clock every time I dragged myself back to bed.
• @ 3:30 Sophie started wailing. Brought her to bed with me, worried that she was going to throw up, too.
• Sophie fell asleep all over my side of the bed. But she never threw up. (Thank you, Jesus!)
• @ 6:30, when the DHS came in to kiss me goodbye, told me he said he'd see me at 11 tonight because he's off to Othello for a big football game, I gave in to weeping because I didn't think I could do it. Didn't think I could find the strength to get the kids off to school. Didn't think I could pull off the whole single-parent thing today, all day. Regular days are hard enough, with sleep, with DHS coming home at six.
• It's 3:30 now. I'm grateful for the people (Christina & Amy C.) who dropped off/picked up my big kids from school. I'm grateful for morning cartoons: I set my two girls in front of the TV with bucket at the ready, and dozed off on the sofa next to them. I'm grateful for an open schedule today, for not having to cancel a bunch of appointments.
• And I'm hoping for a better night's sleep tonight. I'm hoping because I'm driving to Spokane tomorrow morning to attend our regional SCBWI writing conference. Tomorrow's when I need to show up and act like a normal person and not like a psycho due to sleep deprivation. 
• Plus, I really don't want to leave tomorrow with any of my babies throwing up all over the DHS. 
• And I don't want to be sitting in a semi-circle at the writing conference, half-way through reading my first 250 words, and realize I have to throw up.
• All that said, PRAYERS are appreciated. 
• And now, back to laundry....

The Ultimate Antagonist: Dr. Doofenshmirtz

There are few villains I love as much as Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from the cartoon Phineas and Ferb. He's a bad guy, yes. He plots evil. He is the arch-enemy of Agent P. (also known as Perry the Platypus). He's a mad-scientist, even, but I totally and completely love him.

Why?

Because he's hilarious.

And he has depth.

I don't always have time to sit down and watch this show with my kids (as much as I want to), but they were telling me the other day about an episode where Dr. Doofenshmirtz was relating an incidence from his childhood. Apparently, (and this second-hand from a six-year-old boy, so bear that in mind) Doofenshmirtz's mother thought she was having a girl before his brother was born. She proceeded to knit a whole bunch of girl's dresses. Lots and lots. When Doof's sibling was born a boy instead, Doofenshmirtz was forced to wear all the knitted clothes to school. Of course, all the other kids laughed at him.

Poor Doofenshmirtz.

See, doesn't that little bit of back story help you to understand why Doofenshmirtz grew up to be a super-villain?

While he's admittedly evil, viewers have to love Doofenshmirtz: his crazy schemes, his clothes, his accent, his quirks, even the fact that his ex-wife keeps defending him to their teenage daughter: "Honey, your father isn't pure evil. We had our differences, but that doesn't mean he's a totally bad guy." (That's a paraphrase, by the way.) A big part of that love, though, comes from back story: why Doofenshmirtz is the way he is. 

We've all heard it before: when we give our characters -- even our villains -- multiple layers, we'll have a richer novel. You know you've been successful when your readers can relate to your characters. Not just the protagonist, but the antagonist -- the evil villain -- as well.

What's your antagonist's back story? What experiences shaped him or her -- made them the arch-nemesis they are in your novel? Have you ever used back story to make your antagonist actually likable, or at least relatable?

With that said, I just found the ultimate site about Dr. Doofenshmirtz, so if you're interested in an in-depth character sketch, check out Wiki Entertainment's post about him here.

And of course, spend some time watching the show. Even if you don't have kids, do yourself a favor and take half an hour to kick back and watch some seriously funny TV. (As if you don't have anything better to do! *giggle*)

Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated!

FitG Update: Ten Cents a Dance

Another excellent book! My favorite part of this one was the incredible setting. I felt like I was in 1940's Chicago. If you're interested you can read my full review here on the Fill in the Gaps project blog.

Here's a blurb about the product description from Amazon:

With her mother ill, it’s up to fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski to support her family. But in the 1940s, the only opportunities open to a Polish-American girl from Chicago’s poor Yards is a job in one of the meat packing plants. Through a chance meeting with a local tough, Ruby lands a job as a taxi dancer and soon becomes an expert in the art of “fishing”: working her patrons for meals, cash, clothes, even jewelry. Drawn ever deeper into the world of dance halls, jazz, and the mob, Ruby gradually realizes that the only one who can save her is herself.  A mesmerizing look into a little known world and era.

Read any good books lately? Or have you read this one? Share in the comments.

Nugget: Looky, Looky

I think I shared this golden writing-tip nugget already.

But I can't find it in my archives, so maybe I didn't. Maybe I'm just going crazy, which is entirely possible.

Or maybe I already shared that I had this problem, but I never shared the SOLUTION I discovered at the SCBWI conference.

Do your characters LOOK too much?

Do they glance?

Do their gazes dart up from whatever they're doing?

Do you have a fixation with your characters' eyeballs?

One solution is to use the Find/Replace tool in word to catch all those looks, glances and eyes. Then you tweek the words or change the tag all together.

But if you're using these words (and I'm the #1 culprit here) it might show an even deeper problem.

Your scenes (and my scenes) may not be active enough. It shows your (and my) characters may just be standing around chatting most of the time. Get them out there, get them doing something together, and then you'll have a ton more options for interesting tags.

Now, tell me, did I share this before? I'll feel like an idiot if I did. But I guess I'll just blame the pregnancy brain. And is it helpful? I know this is a problem that I've read about on other writers' blogs. If you already were familiar with this tip, did making your scenes more active work for you? I know in my recent rewrite, keeping this in mind really helped me (I think).

She was Ready

Today was Anna's first day of preschool.

(I have pictures, but they'll have to wait because our main computer is still waaaay down in Chico, CA being repaired.)

Her teachers asked me if I thought she'd have a hard time starting school. They wanted to know if she would cry, if she would cling, if she would pine.

I said I didn't think so.

What I wasn't prepared for was this:

Miss Anna:  Mom, do you have to walk me to the door?

Me: Well, it's your first day. I want to get a picture. I promise, you can walk by yourself tomorrow.

***

Me: (At the door) Bye, Anna! I love you!

Miss Anna: (Without even a glance over her shoulder) See ya, Mom.

The teacher looked at me. I looked at the teacher. She threw up her hands. "All right then!"

I stood outside the door for another moment, for sentimental reasons, and then returned slowly to the car.

Sophie cried all the way home about not being able to go to school with Anna.

"In a few years, honey," I said. "Soon enough...."

And then I spent a blissful, totally quiet afternoon lying in bed, reading my friend's manuscript, writing a query letter for my WiP while Sophie napped.

But the best part of the story is: Anna was ready. And she had a fantastic afternoon in preschool.

"I even wrote hundreds of letters," she told me afterwards. "Because I'm going to learn to write everything."

A Story A Week: Womble

“Mom, it’s a womble.”

“No, baby, it’s a platypus.” The cart’s wheels squeaked like a hatchling crying as we inched forward in line.

“The tag says womble and it has a nose like a duck.”

“That’s what platypuses have for noses: duck-bills.”

“No!” Krista's voice went up at the end in a whine.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Platypuses have wings. This one doesn’t have wings.”

“Platypuses have wings?”

Confused by an eight-year-old. She’d done it again. I had to get home to Google this creature, figure out what exactly I was talking about, because I honestly didn’t know anymore.

“Well, whatever it is,” I said, “stick it on the conveyor belt. Time to pay.”

Krista laid the womble down gingerly, then snatched it back. “I’ll hold her until it’s really time,” she said. “She’s scared up there.”

I unloaded groceries from the cart: cans of Friskies, tuna, Swiss cheese, two gallons of one-percent milk.

The checker smiled at me while she blipped my groceries over the scanner. Her name tag said Barbara. “How are you today?” She had a gold tooth, right in the front. Made me think of pirates.

“Fine, thanks. You?”

“Off in twenty minutes, thank God.”

I craned my neck to see the clock in the store’s play-land. I was probably pushing the one-hour time limit. The elderly play-land attendant with dyed red hair perched on a stool behind the counter, her hands folded in her lap. I tried to catch a glimpse of Chloe’s toe head through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass window.

Krista hugged the stuffed animal to her chest. It was pink with wiry fur sticking out. “Look, Mom, the fur matches the pink stripe in my tights.” She held the womble next to her leg so I could see.

“Spiffy,” I said.

She raised one eyebrow at me. “And that means…?”

Honestly, sometimes this child was eight going on fifteen.

“Spiffy just means … cool.” I reached out and pushed a strand of hair out of her face, tucked it behind her ear. “Happy with your womble?”

She squeezed it tighter. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

“So, does a womble live in the water or on land?”

Krista shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe both?” She looked down at the creature pensively. “Chloe’ll want one.”

“Chloe doesn’t have any birthday money to spend right now.” I set the last can of chicken soup on the conveyor belt. “She’ll get over it.”

I glanced back at the play area again. I could see empty chairs lined up in front of the television set behind the glass door. Finding Nemo blinked on the television screen with the closed captioning underneath.

“Eighty-four seventy-five,” Barbara said. The gold tooth flashed at me.

I swiped my card, typed in my pin, and looked back over my shoulder.

Chloe wasn’t playing with the Little People set either. I could see it all laid out in village-formation behind the window.

“Ma’am,” Barbara said. “You have to press the ‘yes’ button.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

The elderly play land attendant with the red hair hadn’t moved. She smiled at something far away.

I grabbed one of the plastic bags to load in the cart as my receipt printed out.

“Run over there, baby,” I told Krista. “Tell Chloe to get ready to go.”

Krista jogged to the glass door, pressed her face against the glass. I grabbed a few more bags and my receipt at the same time, dropped everything in the cart, forgetting there were eggs in there.

I heard Krista’s voice, muffled by her mouth being so close to the glass. “Chlo-eee. Chlo-eee.”

I was turning, setting my hands on the cart handle when she said, “I don’t see her, Mom. She’s not in there.”

“Of course she is,” I said, compulsively tugging on the paper bracelet around my wrist. Chloe wore a matching one. I’d seen the attendant put it on her; you couldn’t get it off without scissors. I picked up speed, pushing the cart so hard it thumped against the play-land attendant’s counter.

She smiled at me. “Can I help you?”

I held up my arm, the identification band nipping my wrist. “My daughter,” I said, but my eyes were beyond the attendant’s face, scanning the playroom. Empty chairs. Empty playhouse. An empty Little People village. Two glass windows, floor-to-ceiling. A smiling attendant. And no children. No Chloe.

The attendant popped off her stool. I thrust my wrist at her the same time she made a grab for it. “Well, let me see here,” she said, a funny quake in her voice. My pulse pounded in my temples.

“Don’t tell me—”

“Mom, Mom!” Krista tugged insistently on my jeans.

My head jerked to look at her, but her face was a blur. Two Kristas hugging two wombles. “What?”

“You forgot this,” she said, holding up the pink toy. “You forgot to pay for my womble.”


Thank you to Krista V. who provided the inspiring words for this story: spiffy, platypus and reinforce. The stories will be coming fast and furiously over the next few weeks as I catch up after my month novel-writing sabbatical. If you'd like to leave three words of inspiration for a future original story, click here. And just for the record, I did not write this story to terrify my mother-in-law, but I do wonder if I'll be able to leave my kids in the Fred Meyer play land without qualms after this. Have you ever been frightened by a story that came out of your own brain?

Nugget: Secondary Character Dialogue

Here's a little golden nugget of a writing tip for you on this beautiful Saturday.

This one is so obvious, when it was pointed out to me, I had a kick-myself-in-the-shin moment. One of those SERIOUSLY?-why-did-someone-just-have-to-tell-me-that moments.

But here it is, for what it's worth:

When revising, pay attention to your secondary characters' dialogue.

Read what they say, without the tag.

Is what they're saying interesting?

Can you tell it's them talking, without the tag line? Does it stand out?

This tip came from author Cynthea Liu, who was assigned my manuscript critique at the SCBWI conference in LA this summer. (Amazing critique, by the way. Motivated me to START ALL OVER AGAIN.)

My main character's dialogue stood out on those opening pages she read. But my secondary character (in this case, my MC's mother) was saying things like:

"Heather, I'm sorry, honey. Time to go."

"Get up, Heather."

"Oh, honey."

The critique was (very politely given): BORING, BORING, BORING. Spice it up. Give Mom her own personality and don't forget that dialogue is the perfect way to SHOW personality.

And, very fittingly, you can read this blog post by Cynthea Liu about Making the most out of your Conference Critique. I read through her points and prayed that I wasn't the CRAZY person who motivated her to write it.

Have a wonderful Saturday.

A Story A Week: Over His Shoulder

Roland made the mistake of looking back.


The hills spread in waves below him, silvery brown as the wind smoothed the grass blades, like someone running a hand over velvet. Beyond that, in the valley, stretched the fields, green rectangles, even and predictable. In between, he could just make out the tops of the trees where he knew his uncle’s house and barns sat.

It was Monday, with the sun hanging a little past midday. He gripped the reigns and nipped the horse in the sides to get him going again. The horse lurched forward. Roland had to dig in with his knees to stay in the saddle.

But his mind kept humming with all the things he was missing, all the things he’d never see again.

On Monday afternoons, Grandma hung the washing on the back line, letting the wind ripple it dry. The boys napped in the barn hay, the kittens curled up at their necks. And Claris, she’d be drying the dishes from lunch, having done all the washing up herself. When she was done, she’d head out back to help Grandma hang the shirts.

There was such a routine, nobody’d notice for awhile that the black horse was gone. Nobody’d expect it to be. The womenfolk and the children would think Roland was out in the field with Uncle Hue, as he usually was. Uncle Hue thought he was in the house taming a burning fever with sleep and a warm blanket. Nobody’d miss him for awhile. Not until the supper bell rang, and by then, Roland planned on being long gone. On the other side of these hills, at least. Maybe as far as Patterson if he was lucky.

But he’d looked back. Now, even though the horse kept moving in the right direction, his mind rocked back to the house with the rhythm of the horse beneath him, where Claris stacked the last dish in the cupboard, where she wrung out the cloth in a pail of water to wipe down the long, wood table. As she leaned over to reach the table center, she glanced up, just like she’d done a hundred times before, and looked Roland in the eye.

It was all imagination, of course, because Roland was sitting astride a horse, riding over the hills, and Claris was in the kitchen, five miles back, but to Roland, those eyes were real. They scourged him, the pale brightness of them harassed him, made him turn in the saddle and pull the reigns up sharp, trying to catch one more glimpse of the tops of those familiar trees.
Love.

But Hue’d been clear. “You’re her cousin, Roland,” he’d said just two nights past, when the two men were finishing up with the horses and Roland had dared to speak. “In these parts folks don’t act like that. You go find another nice girl, somebody who’s not in the family.”

He’d meant it kindly. Smiled, patted Roland’s shoulder, and kept walking, right out of the barn and back to the house. That should’ve told Roland the conversation was over, Hue’s way of saying he’d forget it'd ever happened.

But Roland couldn’t forget.

Hue might as well have plucked his soul right out of his chest and flayed it open with the knife he kept eternally in a leather holder attached to his belt.

Loss.

Roland left money for the horse on top of his pillow. His Pa taught him better than to steal. Even though Hue was a good-hearted man and would’ve given him the horse if he’d asked for it – part of his pay, probably – Roland couldn’t stomach the thought of taking off with anything as valuable as Canyon. He’d left a good price for the horse, a better price than Hue was likely to get at market. And he’d left a note, explaining himself, why he couldn’t stay around anymore. Yes, he’d mentioned Claris by name. His one last act of bravery, he thought, before he hid his face forever.

The only part he’d lied about, besides the fever, was where he was going. Told them he was heading north to Spokane, when really he was heading a different direction, maybe eventually to Walla Walla, or somewhere else. Portland, Oregon had a nice sound to it.

He didn’t want them finding him, dragging him back. His father’d try to tell him he owed his uncle work. All his kin were good talkers. And they kept the family tight, didn’t like anybody wandering off on their own business. They’d use his grandma as bait, or Roland’s own mother with her stiff, knobby fingers that couldn’t sew a lick anymore. They’d tell him he was breaking his family’s heart; he had to stay close, redeem himself.

Claris. Those eyes, the color of a ripe wheat field. He couldn’t watch her walk down the aisle some day with some good-natured farmer. Couldn’t stick around for that. Better to leave now, cut clean.

He reached the top of the ridge, reigned Canyon in, turned his head to see the valley spread out, prettier than any of his grandma’s quilts. The trees around the house were little pillows of green, tucked into a fold of blond hills. Those trees didn’t hold him anymore. Something else called him, something bigger, wider. He slapped Canyon’s neck affectionately, wiped a sleeve across his own brow, and turned away from the valley forever.


Thanks to Roland, who gave me the inspirational words for this week: love, loss and redemption. For those of you new to the blog, I write an original, short story every week as a challenge to myself. I'm hoping to have 52 stories by the end of the year. I'm a little behind after taking a month off to concentrate on a rewrite of my novel, so I'm going to write two stories a week until I'm caught up. Phew! If you'd like to leave some inspirational words for a future story, click here. Thanks again, Roland! Great, and challenging, words.

Winners! (and some extra winners)

It's Labor Day. I'm hangin' out watching the Boise State game against Virginia Tech (GO BRONCOS!), and getting psyched to announce the winners of my BOOK GIVEAWAY.

But first of all, THANK YOU to everyone who has been visiting and following my blog, both newbies and oldbies. KarenG. is hosting a totally awesome BBQ on her blog, and I know a lot of you found my blog through that event. I'm so happy! I promise to stop by all your blogs soon if I haven't already.

Today I was busy walking in our town's State's Day parade and performing in The Valley's Got Talent competition. In other words, I haven't been in front of my computer much. Our little singing group didn't place in the top three (though we did have to make the top ten to perform today), but we had tons of fun. I'm so used to rejection from my experience with the publishing industry that it didn't bother me not to win. I had a personal victory in that I wasn't as nervous as I usually am when I'm up on stage in front of people ... and I actually enjoyed myself, as opposed to feeling frozen with terror.

So, yay! Great day!!

And now for the winners of my BOOK GIVEAWAY:

FAIREST

goes to

babalou

and

IMPULSE

goes to

reidright

Congratulations!! Please send me your snail-mailing addresses at a2sonnichsen(at)gmail(dot)com.


But that is not all. Oh no, that is not all.

I also want to give away TWO consolation prizes. I have two bags of Chukar Cherries chocolates that I'm anxious to send to two lucky, consolation-prize winners.

And the winners of the chocolates are:

Krista Lynne Jensen

and

Mimi

I hope you ladies like chocolate! Chukar Cherries is native to Prosser, WA (the town where I live). They are yum, yum, yum. So, please send me your snail-mail addresses and I'll get these off to you pronto. Hopefully we'll have some cool weather so that nothing melts in transit. *fingers crossed*

I think that's all from here. Leave a comment and let me know how your Labor Day turned out. Did you do anything fun? Different? Extraordinary? Or was it a normal vacation day? One more bonus-day of summer?

WiP Saturday: Time Out

I know, I know, it's not Wednesday, but I had to share....

PHEW!

I'm really, really done with the first draft of the rewrite of my WiP. I corrected all the little nagging problems that stopped me from laying this baby to rest, and wrote a new climax. Now I'm laying my WiP aside for a month, letting myself forget it while I gorge on at least two novels my friends sent me to beta-read.

I reached 65,000 words when my goal was 50,000. I started the rewrite almost exactly one month ago, after attending SCBWI LA. It's been a totally exhausting, totally fun month. Now it's time to kick back, relax, and enjoy some other people's work.

(And, of course, I'm really excited for the month to be over so I can go back and see if my book is actually what I think it is ... maybe good? Maybe? Please, please, please be good.)

I'm attending our local chapter's SCBWI conference in Spokane on Sept 18.  Yippee! I'll resurrect the first chapter at that point so I can get some feedback, but other than that, the whole thing's in time out, in a dark and lonely corner, all alone. Poor WiP!

On a side note, don't forget to enter my contest! I'm giving away signed copies of FAIREST by Gail Carson Levine and IMPULSE by Ellen Hopkins. Deadline is tomorrow night.

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend, everyone! I'll see you on Monday to announce the contest winners.

Accomplishments

I did not accomplish anything yesterday except:

1. Making our house messier/ watching several small people make our house messier. Did not clean even a single toilet.
2. Killing two birds on our big living room windows and stunning two others (they plowed into them after we pulled up our blinds, poor babies).
3. Crashing our main computer (we still have our laptop, thank goodness). For the record, WiP is safe.
4. Getting children to and from school, lessons, and birthday parties.

That's about it. Did you have a more productive day than I did? I hope so!

And if you haven't already, please enter my contest! It's so easy to enter, you won't be sorry.