Back when I lived in NYC, one of my favorite places to hang out was the Cloisters. Wandered around the galleries, paid tribute to the Unicorn, and sat in the gardens writing poetry and letters (actual hand-written letters with a fountain pen, of course). On a day like today, grey and chill, it fed my soul.

Yesterday I found the Cloisters Garden blog. I'm afraid I feel the urge to redo my back yard coming on. Though I'll have to let go of the unicorn concept. Even if I had the heart to capture one, I'm not much of a hand at making animal pens.

Re the problem with chix in chainmail, chilled chix,* and so on...

You get what you pay for. If you shell out the bucks for a message from our corporate sponsors, that's what you'll get. One size fits all, or at least as many as possible.

If you want depth and complex characters--for example, if you don't want characters who are chix--you have to make an effort to watch/read a film/book that is more deep and complex. And don't pay for stuff that you think is crap unless you want to nurture and support it.

*Still, I'm glad people are ranting about it.

We took a trip to West Virginia last week. Its haunting beauty made me realize that however much I love the Southwest, these ancient hills have their own magic.

We hiked to Seneca Rocks from our wonderful B&B, North Fork Mountain Inn.



( more WV pics )

I'd hoped that the two cats that have been hanging around lately belonged to our neighbor, but she told me today they're strays. Her old mom is a magnet for strays, and they spill over into our yard. I love 'em, but can't take them in due to allergies. And now her mom is heading for hospice so the cats might have to go to SPCA. That makes me sad (even though our SPCA has a no-kill policy).

via style.com

Not to mention the spring 2010 barnyard RTW collection

Just got my copy of Kaleidotrope with my VP story "Please share my umbrella" in it!

I love RWA as a super supportive writer's trade association, but with one main gripe: their definition of romance:
No, in a romance, the lovers are not necessarily "rewarded with justice and unconditional love." Romantic comedy is great, but not all romance is comedy. Just look at that romance of all romances, Romeo and Juliet. And what about The Time Traveler's Wife? Its ending is way more complex than RWA would like, but it's about the most romantic novel I've ever read.

I love me a happy ending, but tragedy or plain old sad is "emotionally satisfying" in its way. Otherwise, the star-crossed lovers would have stayed dead after the first performance. To exclude sadness, bitterness, grief from romance is to stunt romance (and oneself) emotionally.

Defining romance as having happy endings trivializes and limits a genre that already is trivialized and limited in the minds of many people. We're looking for respect, and this doesn't help.

bogwitch64 's post on reading reminds me that I haven't posted my reads for a while. (PS You're welcome re Mythago Wood!)

Me, too for The Magician's Assistant, by Anne Patchett. Satisfying, yes.

More Michael Chabon. That guy just kills me. He's so talented, he's a freak of nature.

A couple of Regency romances, which I'm sort of getting addicted to. I enjoyed Liz Carlysle's Wicked all Day alot. Didn't like Georgette Heyer (These Old Shades.) In fact, yuck. This is my second round with Heyer, so I guess I'll give up on her.

Dreaming Anastasia, a lovely YA by Joy Preble.

Fast Ships, Black Sails, ed Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. Arrrrrh! Favorites: Skillet and Saber, by Justin Howe. Not your usual foodie story, but still satisfying to a foodie. 68 07/ 15"N, 31 36' 44"W, by Conrad Williams.

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini. It's taken me way too long to read Sabatini!

David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I was at the airport on the way to Las Vegas for our family bash to welcome my sis back from Iraq. I bought this book to while away the flight. I knew it would probably embarrass me by making me chortle away to myself, but what the heck.

The cashier asked, "It's about smoking?"

"Well, not really," I said. "It's funny."

He gave a polite smile.

"Funny. Supposed to be funny. Looks like it's about smoking but not really. Funny."

I found myself speaking pidgin English because the guy, who spoke ESL, obviously did not get what was funny about an image of a skull smoking a cig and the title "When you are engulfed in flames."

"Supposed to be funny," I said again. He smiled politely and told me to have a nice day. 

It really is funny, though, despite appearances. 

I love public libraries. My life has been colored by girl crushes on various librarians. I've also been terrified of various librarians. About half the books I read are from the library. A good chunk of the other half are books the library makes me buy by introducing me to new authors or getting me hooked on a series then not having all the books in it.

Here's Deborah Schneider, RWA librarian of 2009, on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, interviewed on promoting authors. "The “Reading” is probably the most boring thing an author can offer me," she says. So true! The Signing, too, I think. They work only with well-known authors, or maybe authors who have a lot of friends living near the bookstore. Janet Evanovich mentioned at RWA how pitiful it is to see a lonely author waiting for people to come up to their table. (An author recently made the best of it by interviewing the two people who showed up at his reading, but I can't remember who and can't find the link.)

I did an author event at a few bookstores when my book Cosmic Tarot came out. I signed but the main thing was I did tarot readings (which I rarely ever did for other people and now do only for myself). The line was almost out the door, even though I didn't know anyone there. Okay, the poor bookstore only sold two or three books out of the big stack they had there. However, I think if the book had been about a more popular deck or better if it had been an interesting looking novel the store would have done well by them.

I hope some day I'll have another chance to put into practice this lesson on how to promote books, and to use Deborah Schneider's and SB Sarah's great creative ideas. 

Yippee! Over halfway through the WIP.



This one a romance with paranormal elements. Not sure I could call it a full-blown paranormal, even though evil witches are involved.

I think second draft of this will demand more rewrite for language and style than for chunky elements like plot and character development. It started as a screenplay, then I realized I really like writing novels better. But I want to try to keep the sort of rawness of a screenplay, while adding in a lot of emotion (no internal emotion or thought in screenplays; camera can't see it).