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New book contest for Happy Snak

Marjorie M Liu gave her blog readers a heads up about a new book coming out next year called Happy Snak by Nicole Kimberling. It look hilarious, sexy and fun - three of my favorite words. If you are interested there is a contest going on at Literary Escapism for a free copy. Good luck!

Here is the description...

A little uncivil disobedience is good for the soul…

Gaia Jones is on A-Ki space station for one reason, and it’s not to ogle the hermaphroditic aliens. She’s out to make a name for herself and her line of intoxicating human snacks. Not easy in A-Ki’s tightly controlled society. Her task gets even more delicate when she rushes to the aid of a dying alien—and finds herself the unwilling guardian of a shunned alien ghost named Kenjan. And the new owner of his slave.

The danger mounts when Kenjan’s grieving lover, the powerful leader of the Kishocha, offers her a dream and a nightmare rolled into one: a new store all her own with a strange double purpose—half snack bar, half shrine. The catch? She must spend the rest of her life there, tending Kenjan the Heretic’s ghost. Or the entire station will be destroyed.

There’s only one way to gain both her freedom and justice for Kenjan—teach both the powerful government elite and the Kishocha theocracy a lesson in uncivil disobedience…

Intentions

Okay, I have sat down and written the first sentence of this post three times this morning so apparently I am busy. Well, I might have lots to do but I am putting it all off to write for awhile today. So far I have bombed on my goals. (No way!) I have blogged but not gotten any writing done because life gets in the way. Well, life and recovering from life. I take time for down time and refuse to apologize - it keeps me going.

So what I have been thinking about this morning, besides all of the stuff that I should be doing, is Lynn Viehl's blog post from yesterday. She says that when she is writing that she considers marketability and is not ashamed to admit it. Awesome, I'm not the only one!

When I talk about writing and whether or not a book will sell everyone, including my Hubby who makes a living drawing pictures, will tell me that I should never write a story with an eye on money. It kills creativity (true) and makes for a poor story (not necessarily). The thing that I never seem to be able to make anyone understand is that if writing is to be your career than you do indeed need to look at what you are writing with at least a small amount of interest in whether or not it is marketable. Am I trying to kill the soul of my story? Nope. Do I need the money and want others to pay me to read what I wrote. Yes!

It's a fine line, to be sure. But any writer who wants to be successful needs to at least consider for a moment if the story that they are writing is worth the time. If you are writing just for the joy of it then good for you, but writing with the goal of making a living requires intention.

And I intend to make a living doing something that I love.

Cancer free is the way to be.

Just found out today that my blood work and scans came back as 100% cancer free. Before now, when the scans were clean but the blood work was questionable, I still called myself cancer free but knew that there was an unseen asterisk next to it. Now, there is no asterisk and I can claim a clean bill of health with clear conscience.

I feel good but a little numb, like when I found out that I was pregnant all those years ago. It's great news and I did a happy dance at first but now I feel like I am absorbing and healing emotionally.

But in a good way. And man, it's good to have something good.

The benefits of structure.

I've been thinking a lot about structure lately. Being one of those people who are not dominant on either side of my brain I both crave the beauty of balance and symmetry and cannot follow a detailed plan for my time to save my life. Visual structure, yes. Lifestyle structure, no. I have no concept of time and am incapable of fooling myself onto believing that following a schedule is important.

Well, unless it is following my autistic son's schedule, then life depends on it! But even that is only important because of the effect that ignoring the schedule has on him and therefore the rest of us. No one cares if I waste hours of my day and I can't seem to care either, even if I have a detailed schedule sitting next to me on my desk. As a matter of fact, I can waste lots of time making schedules and plans. I feel very mature and proud as I gaze upon my list of intentions but ultimately feel irritated as soon as it begins to try to dictate my time.

I like to follow my muse as much as possible when the kids aren't around. So much of my day is spent taking care of them and seeing to their needs and the needs of the house and such that when they are not home I want to do what I want to do. It seems like the structure that I tried, with good intention, to put into my day is demanding that I give up more of my time instead of helping me to manage what I have.

I think that this is the artist in me, the part of me that wants to follow the flow of the universe around me and see what I find. It's easy and fun, relaxing and refreshing. As a matter of fact, I think that spending some of my time this way is very healthy for the mind, body and soul and highly recommend it.

But I have noticed that no steadily published author does what they do without structure. As a matter of fact, they all say that until you find a structure for your day, the way that you pursue your career as a writer and for the writing itself that you will never succeed.

Damn, but I think that they are right.

Case in point, I have a tendency to sit and write whatever is in my head. Most of the time I sit down and wonder what I want to write about at that moment. I have paragraphs and pages from all kinds of stuff on my laptop. Now that's okay, but how many of those have I finished? One. How many times have I approached an editor? Once. An agent? Once. This is not how a career is started. I am just way too scattered.

Luckily I consider two wonderful authors to be mentors to me. They are both extremely generous and have talked with or emailed me and I kind of hang on every word that they say about writing. The coolest thing about this is that they seem to represent the two sides of my brain. The first is Marjorie M. Liu, she is the creative side. She comes up with a situation or a great first sentence and then follows the story from there. Organic, she calls it. This is wonderful because she writes with the same process that I do and is so good at what she does. But she is able to sit and write in the story that she is working on. There is method to the madness in the fact that she does what she needs to do and finishes her stories. This is what I learn from her - to allow myself to write the way that I do but to temper that with just enough structure to be dependable as a writer.

The other author is Lynn Viehl. She is so structured that it's almost a military operation, which is fitting since she used to be in the military. Lynn likes to make a notebook about her characters, their world, pictures and plot. As a matter of fact she has even done posts about how to log what you do in a day, figure out how much time you spend on what and then make a schedule for the day, week, month and year to maximize your writing without taking too much away from the rest of your life. I confess, I didn't even read those posts too closely since being that detailed about that much structure made me bored. That is probably a large part of my issue with structure, I don't like to be bored. Structure is sooo boring! But Lynn is a prime example of why structure can work, she has a full and seemingly happy family as well as work life - a goal that we all strive for.

So I've been thinking about what structure can do for me if I find a way to make it workable. A way to combine Marjorie and Lynn's philosophies, as it were. For me, it seems to boil down to daily and monthly goals. One or two of each only - let's not go crazy! I want to blog daily and write for 2 hours on non-work days. There, daily goals that are accomplishable. Monthly goals will be set monthly depending on my status and involve the business side. Since there are only two weeks left in the month and it's the holidays, I've set my goal for the end of January. Right now it is to finish revising my book and send it to the Knight Agency. That means I need to do a whole new synopsis and query, so the monthly goal does have some writing to it but will involve submissions and followups.

There! I feel more organized and structured already. Success is mine. For today.

The confidence to be confident.

I'm a friendly introvert. It's equally common for me to be described as open, friendly, funny and a person that's easy to talk to as it is arrogant, standoffish and weird. Actually, even people who think that I'm friendly usually eventually get to weird, I just can't seem to escape that one. Not that I'd want to. I think that weird is usually a short hand way of saying that someone is unafraid of being who they are. If I like comic books and zombies (even though most zombie movies are too scary for me and I only read spoilers about them) but still claim that my favorite movie is Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightly, then so be it. If I can top most people with my knowledge of vitamins, exercise and healthy eating then say that I am 5 pounds away from obese because I just love pizza and beer too much, then what of it? I just jumped from one socially acceptable box to another instead of staying where I was. My response to people who don't like that kind of thing and lose interest in talking to me after tidbits like that is simply "Neener neener".

There is another thing that drives some of people crazy about me - I'm outwardly confident. Well, most of the time. I'm just like anyone else and have good days and bad day, times when I will grin and declare that I rock and times when I cry and insist that I am the worst wife, mom, friend, woman, human, carbon based life form in the world. But I usually save the insecurity for at home with just the hubby around and cling to my confidence when I'm out in the world. And why not? I am an intelligent, beautiful woman who has a great marriage and two wonderful kids that are thriving. I have every reason to walk with my head held high and so do most women. But I have noticed that very few do.

And those who don't are sometimes offended by me. At my last job two fellow employees went to the manager and asked that I be fired because I was an "arrogant bitch". It was two weeks in on a job that I had done before. I had kept my mouth shut to learn their procedure but jumped in to help on day one because I knew the job and saw no reason to sit by and watch. They took exception to the fact that I considered myself able to do the job that I had several years experience in. I had the audacity to think of myself as an equal when I had more experience than all but one of the women in my department. Did I think of myself as better? No. Did I question how they did things? Not unless I didn't understand. Was I arrogant? Looking back with total honesty...no. I was doing the job as I knew it and I had confidence in my abilities. Horrifying, I know but I'm weird that way.

Understand this, I'm not just concerned about how any of this affects me. I've got my standard "Neener neener" response and don't sweat the petty stuff. Or pet the sweaty stuff. But I worry for young girls and the fact that for many, the only examples that they see of 'confident' women are half dressed surgically enhanced sex toys on legs that dominate TV and movies. In real life those women are the opposite of confident since they starve themselves to be thin and get surgery to stay young. That's not self love or acceptance, that's eternally seeking the approval of people who don't even know you.

Here's a good example of what I mean about the examples that most girls get at home. Last night I went to a school function for the holidays at my daughter's school and we wore a matching set of deer antler headbands with little jingle bells and fluffy tufts in the front. It's silly and fun, but we were making gingerbread houses out of empty milk cartons and graham crackers so it seemed like a great idea. And it was - lots of kids pointed and laughed, my daughter hammed it up by shaking her head and it was an instant visual signal that the little girl sitting next to me was my daughter even though her warm brown skin is so different than my ghostly paleness. Good times!

At one point in the evening one of my daughter's friends came to our table and they hugged and squealed and acted like 5 year olds. After a little while the girl's mom came up and we started to chat. She was a perfectly normal woman wearing a holiday sweater and looking like the mother of two energetic girls. Nodding toward the area over my head she said that the antlers were cute and that she wished she could wear something like that. Good news! I told her, they are a buck for the pair at Dollar Tree. But she sadly shook her head and said that she had been called a cow in high school and could never wear anything with horns or antlers. Feeling a little desperate I told her that they also had snowmen headbands but she only shook her head again and informed me that only beautiful people like me could do things like that and walked off with her two girls who had heard the whole thing.

Let me tell you that I was as sad for her girls as I was for that mom.

I was raised with the example that it was my duty as a female to hate everything about myself. That accepting a compliment gracefully was "having a big head" and that your only hope in life was finding a guy who could look past your many feminine flaws and try my hardest to keep him. In middle and high school I wore clothes so big that I was asked more than once if I was hiding a pregnancy. I was told at times by students and even some family members that I was not very pretty and not very slim, which wasn't really a put down since it was always preceded by stating what a shame it was. Usually a thing about you that's a shame is not really your fault, it's just a shame that you have to bear that particular cross. At least that's how my young mind perceived it. Thank God.

The biggest factor in all of that was really seeing the women in my family and their example. They hated themselves and judging everyone around them, including me at times, was the best way to make them feel a little better. If you feel fat then make sure to point out people fatter than you. Or point out someone not as large as you and declare that you will never be as fat as that and watch the awkwardness levels soar! Not pretty enough, just check out the clown make up on that lady at the grocery store. Now describe it in greater and more elaborate detail to everyone you see for a few days. Because for those few days and those few conversations you are better than someone else in your own eyes and it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that the person hearing the story feels that same way.

What nonsense.

It took many years and a lot of looking at causes, fears, preconceived notions and ugly things inside of myself to realize that I am a human being just like everyone else and as such I have equal standing with others. This is the secret that confident people know. I have seen and known more than one person that was truly unattractive on any and all physical beauty scales. But when that person walked into a room and started talking they were seen and heard in a totally different way than even a physically beautiful person with no self esteem. (And there are a ton of those.) As a matter of fact, the longer I knew these people the more I realized that that I saw them as beautiful and would be hard pressed to point out physical imperfections. Confidence is amazingly beautiful, sexy and easy to follow when that person is a leader. It's a gift that is cultivated by seeing the world less as a group of people judging you and more as fellow inhabitants on a wonderfully varied and amazing planet.

This is the gift that a confident parent can give to their child. And one that is easily denied when you forget that no one who matters cares about how you look, they care about who you are.

10 Things that kept me from the blog this time...

1. The fact that I was taking a pouting break after my lousy critique. BTW, it turned out that there were two judges for that contest and the second one loved my story! Huzzah!

2. Got a little overwhelmed taking care of house and family stuff while Hubby's leg was healing. He's doing much better now and doesn't even need crutches anymore, just the plastic boot. : )

3. Didn't know what to write and don't know how to post one of those sticky note things that look so cool on other blogs. You know, the kind that is usually signed by Alfred the butler - I love those.

4. Alien abduction. It was only for a week, but what a week it was...

5. I'm just kidding!

6. It was for a week and a half.

7. I started eating the low iodine diet that was part of the preparation for my six month scan to make sure that my thyroid cancer stays good and gone. It's an amazingly restrictive diet and literally seems to take over most of my life for a couple of weeks.

8. Dealing with the emotions that come up every time this cancer stuff comes around again. My poor husband has to listen to the same 'deep' discussions every six months and he does it very well. Then again, this was the first time that he told me, "I don't want to talk about anything deep or serious. Let's just watch a movie." I must admit that I was a little peeved because cancer should give a person a free pass to get melancholy all they want any time they want. But we have been doing this for two years and I was preparing to go over familiar ground anyway, so I conceded that his part of my cancer stuff gives him certain rights as well. One of them being that he does not have to participate in every wallowing session I have.

9. Thanksgiving freakout. I don't like the holidays. They are stressful and upsetting and horribly mandatory. Someday I hope to form our own traditions that allow our kids to come and see us with genuine smiles and excitement. But until then we have to deal with the holidays as usual and that means freakouts.

10. Laziness. Genuine distilled 100% pure laziness. I didn't wanna and I was busy so I didn't! (How's that for illness induced self importance?)

So, does anyone else have anything that they should have been doing the last few weeks that ended up being avoided? What's your excuse?