nearly a week without a post? unprecedented!

Well, except for when I go on hiatus.

It's just been really busy here. Cody is completely recovered from his abscess. We had a ton of rain. The local weather station posted a story that our area is still in severe drought. I invite anyone needing water to come siphon off our excess.

Friday the wonderful H. came to massage Salina, with even better response this time. Although we were having light rain that morning, I put the geldings out of their stalls and opened up the arena so they could experience footing without mud. Within minutes the three of them were trotting and cantering around, including Cody. Keil Bay looked ready for at least a second level test. Meanwhile Salina nuzzled my hand with her lips and alternated between closing her eye and chewing as H worked. Rafer Johnson was highly indignant that while he earns the massage money, someone else gets the massage!

And this was writing group weekend. D. arrived and we hit the ground running. On Saturday we went into town and ended up discovering a steampunk gallery and coffee house that has been there for 9 months and I didn't even know it!  The young woman who owns and runs it turns out to be a home schooler who moved down here and is following her dream. And while I know not very much at all about the steampunk genre, I admit I was intrigued by the artwork and the toys and the ambiance.

Even with all the exploring we did on Saturday, the weekend was wildly productive. I finished my final edit on The Magical Pony School: Jane's Transformation. It's the first book in my middle grade series, and at any moment it will be available on Amazon!

I'll do a big announcement when it's live there, but for now, I'm just thrilled that this book is so close to being out in the world. A secret: although it's aimed at early middle grade, I suspect moms and grandmoms of middle graders and younger pony girls and boys might also enjoy the story.... :)

We're back in the 50s as we begin the week and once again I am in hopes of major drying out happening. Between grooming the mud and walking in it, I am just plain tired of soggy, wet earth. The donkeys have nowhere to take their dust baths, and I think even the most deeply-rooted trees have had their fill.

And that is all I can say because I swore after seeing some fellow bloggers' photos recently that I would never complain again!

I hope we all start the sweet shift to spring, soon.

No Kindle? No Problem!

If you're interested in reading the November Hill Press titles I have available on Amazon but don't have a Kindle, there's a free and easy way to access them on a number of electronic devices, including;

your iPhone

your Windows PC

your Mac

your Blackberry

your iPad

your Android

or your Windows Phone 7

All you have to do is to GO TO AMAZON and download the appropriate free software that will work for you.

It's free, it's easy, and the software will enable you to buy not only my books, but many others, including  including friend and fellow writer Dawn Deanna Wilson's wonderful collection of short stories: Welcome To Shangri-La, North Carolina.

Thanks to Dawn for allowing me to use the "No Kindle? No Problem!" phrase. She's brilliant. :)

crazy day, writing retreat, November Hill Press calendar

The day went slightly sideways when I opened the new bag of beet pulp pellets and found they were both coated in molasses and slightly burned. This is the second bag like this in a month's time, and while our feed store is wonderful about taking things back, it's a real pain to take a 50-lb. bag you've opened back down to the truck, especially when it's necessary for Salina's lunch tub, the day is already short due to daughter's riding lesson and my Proust group, and I really, really wanted to ride Keil Bay this morning.

Things got more complicated when I got to the feed store and discovered all their bags were from the same batch and were all unsuitable for feeding.

I went to the other feed store and got a different brand, which was fine, but all this took a big chunk out of the day.

I enjoyed watching my daughter jump the big horse though! And Proust group was its usual great self.

Now I'm home, nearly 11 p.m., trying to do laundry and otherwise get organized for my writing retreat, which starts tomorrow. You may remember some photos I shared of the place I usually go:

While I always look forward to my writing time away, I also find it very difficult the day or so before, and usually some little crisis occurs that makes me want to can the whole trip and stay home. It's hard for me to leave the animals, especially the horses and donkeys, even though I know they are in good hands with my husband, son, and daughter.  If I could teleport home to check on them once a day I'd be much better off!

And in other good news, my November Hill Press calendar, Partners in Zen 2011, arrived today, and it is beautiful. The quality is very good and although I must confess I'm partial to the wonderful animals featured, it will be a treat seeing them each month all through the new year.

You'll find the link to the November Hill Press store at Zazzle on the sidebar. (and eventually, links to the books at Amazon!)

I'm looking forward to starting a new novel this trip. It's been awhile since I embarked on a journey with not one single sentence in my word file. Actually this one doesn't even HAVE a word file yet - but it has a new blank book that has a couple of things taped in, and somewhere, my black Moleskine has some initial research and ideas jotted down. I seem to have lost that Moleskine! Which normally would be very upsetting, but for whatever reason, it isn't bothering me much at all.  I'll do the research again, and hopefully the black book will turn up.

November Hill Press announcement

November Hill Press is pleased to announce that the first photographic calendar, featuring many of the November Hill family, is now available in our brand new Zazzle shop.

You may see and buy the calendar via the link on the sidebar to your right.

The calendar is in advance of the nonfiction title, Partners In Zen, which is forthcoming in 2011.

new series at November Hill Press blog

You can read it HERE.

letting the acorns fall (cross-posted from November Hill Press blog)

I want to take a moment to talk a little bit about November Hill Press and why I decided to launch it at this point in my writing life. I've been writing novels since I was around 3 years old. The early novels were a toddler's version of cursive writing in blue ballpoint on yellow legal pads. I would meticulously put my scrawl on every centimeter of every legal pad line, filling page after page. There are pictures of my toddler self sleeping, pen in hand, with my pad filled with writing. That I was wearing footed pajamas adds to the charm. Sadly (for me, only) I don't remember what it was I wrote, and so those early works are lost!

But the point is, from that very early time in my life I was driven to write. My mother still has a few novels in which I scratched out the author's name on the title pages and tried to write my own name there. I have no memory of that, but it seems even before I could write, I wanted to be a writer.

I've spent years reading and writing. I have an undergraduate degree in English and a master's in clinical social work. I've written poems, short stories, feature articles, papers, and novels. I went through the usual channels with the novels, and although I met wonderful people and had generally good experiences with agents and editors, the process was slow. I am impatient. And the years roll on.

One evening last summer I walked down to the very back of our farm, November Hill. I was standing on the slope looking across at the "hundred acre wood" that lies behind us, when a huge herd of deer came from behind me, leaping together in such a way that it seemed they never touched the ground, their brown bodies arching away from me, down the hill, up the other side, and into the forest. White tails were flashing as they went. The herd was so large this took awhile. I stood, feeling like magic was happening. And then the last deer passed. She slowed and stopped. She turned and looked at me, and then leaped out of sight, hidden instantly as she entered the tree line.

Ted Andrews in his beautiful book, Animal Speak, says that deer often symbolize a call to adventure. An invitation to a journey that might take several years to come to fruition. For days after that encounter, I kept seeing the image of that deer who stopped and turned back. I kept feeling the call.

And that's how November Hill Press was born.

The journey is taking longer than I thought. When we hand our novels into the hands of editors, we hopefully trust them to make the books better. The first novel that is slated to come out under the November Hill Press umbrella has been edited and commented on and reworked. It's been ready to go for several years, if only it had a place to go TO.

And yet, now that I am singly in charge of its publication, I am obsessed with reworking it yet again.

This week I read Michael Cunningham's  NY Times Op-Ed piece,  "Found In Translation:"

Here’s a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent, it’s brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire. 

But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it’s never the book that you’d hoped to write. It’s smaller than the book you’d hoped to write. It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire. 

It feels, in short, like a rather inept translation of a mythical great work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03cunningham.html?_r=1

As I read the above passage, I breathed a sigh of something close to relief. It's true. The cathedral made of fire is getting ready to be put into something concrete, an e-book, and then a paperback. Will it lose its brilliance in that translation? That's what we all fear, I think, and it's certainly part of what I'm struggling with as I try to get my manuscript, which has long been titled "claire-obscure-final" in my document file, to the point where I am able to send it on to the next phase.

Beyond this first title, there are four more ready to go.

It's a big leap, just like what the deer were doing last summer, when I stood and watched in awe.

Earlier this week I had another encounter with the November Hill deer. It was evening. They were standing in the arena, a place I've never seen them. There were five of them. They were eating acorns under the big oak tree.

Ted Andrews says in his book Nature-Speak that the oak symbolizes strength and endurance winning out, and opening to new spirit forces. He says the acorn is a symbol of fertility and fruition and the manifestation of creativity, and that the presence of acorns in a meaningful way can be a sign that the fruit of our efforts over the past year or two is about to be harvested.

Bear with me as I deal with these cathedrals made of fire issues. It's part of this process, and I'm trying to honor it while keeping to my original goal - which is letting these acorns fall.

writing group weekend, the new blog photo, noveling, and Backseat Saints

Somehow, writing group weekend has rolled around again, and while I'm excited for all the usual reasons, I'm extra so this time because I have been on a nice roll editing this week and will move into the weekend with some momentum, which is nice.

Otherwise, horses are good, donkeys are good, cats are good, Corgi is good. We are all good, although we are also all sweating. Last night I woke up to a thunderbolt that shook the planet, or so it seemed, and husband dashed out into the night to let horses in.

It thundered and there was much lightning and we lost power, which stressed me out off and on until I decided to trust that it would be back on in the morning and it was. But the internet was out until this afternoon.

All that lightning reminded me that I'd promised to share why I chose the background photo for the blog. A few years ago, a writer friend, Joshilyn Jackson, wrote something to me about hoisting my metal umbrella and marching around on a golf course waiting for lightning to strike. This was about selling my first novel, which had gotten an agent in no time flat and when that agent didn't quite work out, it got another one in even less time flat. And there was nothing I could do at that point but wait, while the new agent shopped the book and I wrote the next one.

Hence the talk about metal umbrellas and golf courses and lightning striking.

Although I keep writing bits and pieces about November Hill Press and Kindle and the first novel, claire-obscure, being close to available, this is not yet an announcement to that effect. But it IS getting closer, and I AM working on it, and so when I saw this background photo on Blogger I felt I needed to put it right up, as an emblem of lightning striking and this book gaining some reader momentum when it gets out there in the world.

As it turns out, I did not have to march around on golf courses but I have been marching about the fields of November Hill, and have been quite happy doing so.

And, as an added bonus, I won Joss's newest novel, Backseat Saints, which she signed for me and sent, and it is right here by my keyboard where I am hoarding it a little longer, as I have heard from reliable sources that once I start I will not be able to stop reading until the very end.

Thanks, Joss - for the very sweet inscription, your books, and all those good words over the years on the working novelists' email list. It was fun and it kept me writing. And may lightning still strike!