Hear, hear! To the commenter who said that About.com is generally shallow and I'm too good a writer for that <grin>. Hear, hear!
Guess you can tell, I don't feel so bad anymore.
I have to comment on that. I really have to put down my present peace of mind to the progesterone creme. Despite being PMSish and despite having a couple career disasters last week, I didn't spiral down into despression. Yeah, I was sad. Of course, I was sad. I felt bad for a day or so, but then just kind of went on with my life. It doesn't seem so much like a major setback as another challenge to overcome.
Oh yes, and I have forgotten to watch figure skating every day this week except for last night, where upon some idiot basketball game went into TRIPLE overtime making it so God damned late that I went to bed rather than watching the skateing which was SUPPOSED to be live but was actually OVER before the coverage ever even BEGAN.
So much for Nationals coverage. I hear that Johnny Weir was just magic and that my sentimental fave Matt Savoie missed his first jump but was otherwise simply sublime.
I have really been enjoying my tax classes with the AARP. Every year, the AARP runs the Tax Aide program. They provide free tax preparation and e-filing for people over 60, and low to moderate income people. I am going to become a preparer for them this year. The class is really intensive. Boy-oh-boy, I am not used to paying attention that much for that long a period of time! I come home from class exhausted every day! I just finished the first full week, with 3 class days and 2 days for working on the practicum on the computer systems. I actually finished after the sacond day (there are 4 more days available before you HAVE to be finished.). I finished up right at the end of the day and I go to the fellow in charge and say:
"I'm done."
"You mean for the day," he says.
"No, I'd done. Finished. I need to hand this in."
"You need to hand it in? You're done?" he asks me. Turning to the other trainers, he says, his voice heavy with incredulity, "She's done."
Okay, so I shouldn't brag about how good I am with computers, or how I came into the class with a lot of tax prep experience. I've been doing our taxes, which are always MONDO complex for the last decade. But I can't help it. One of the training guys even asked me if I had been a paid preparer before. I can't help it. I always enjoyed being a good student. But it's really nice to be appreciated. Dan, the retired fellow who sits next to me in class, even called me this morning to make sure that I knew that we didn't have class on Monday because it was a holiday. Wasn't that NICE of him?! I try to help him in class with the computer and with some of the arcane stuff.
Speaking of arcane stuff, it NEVER ceases to amaze me how the US tax code heaps complexity on the people LEAST able to cope with it. I am speaking specifically about the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit. I have a heck of a time figuring out of a child is "qualifying" or not, which is not the same for both credits. Then, on top of that the Earned Income Credit is hopelessly byzantine and difficult to calculate. The Earned income Credit is specifically for the poor and the Child Tax Credit is for moderate income people at most, since it phases out when income rises over a certain value. My point being that the poor, though not uniformly uneducated, are often ill equiped to deal with the MAZE of rules and cases and situations.
Why does this have to be SO DIFFICULT?
For example, on my test, there was a question about a man, who lived with his mother and his two children, both made $23K in earned income (which is NOT AGI or anything you normally calculate for the return itself, it's something TOTALLY different). Both adults could take the EIC if they had a qualifying child. Who can and should take them? The choices were: a) the man, b)his mother, c) either the man or his mother, d) the man and his mother can each choose a child and both take the credit, e) any of the above. The correct answer, of course, is "any of the above." Sheesh!
Anyway, I am enjoying the class. I hope that I do as well when faced with the average client as most of the information used to file the return has to be elicited from them and they are not always equal to the task. I suppose, at worst, I could be a quality reviewer and go over returns to double check them.
The other thing is, I know a lot of my friends are not totally well off. If you have the time, you can get your taxes done and filed for free. This page SHOULD provide a directory of sites when it starts to work. It was supposed to work on Jan 13, but it doesn't yet.
So now on to my musing about what to do about my book On the Edge...
If you were reading last week or so, you know my agent dumped me. It's not like I ever had much interest from agents, despite querying 130 of them and getting read about 60 times. The Olympics is coming up... but I'm not going to have About.com as a platform. My site, Private Ice, despite being well known for a small site, really doesn't get all that much traffic. If EVERY regular visitor to the site bought a copy, it would still be only 600 or so books sold. It would be relatively profitable, but it wouldn't be enough sales to make BNYP's sit up and take notice. And frankly, I don't see every one of the 600 people stepping up with the bucks, despite visiting the site twice a week for the last 8 years.
On the other hand, I don't think BNYP's are going to sit up and take notice anyway. OTE and sequels were ALWAYS written for adults. They were never intended to be for 11-15 yr olds, which is where BNYP's peg them based on the SOLE FACT that Elayne is 17 at the beginning of the first novel. Okay, so like 60% of teen aren't virgins by age 17... what about the 40% that ARE? Regardless, OTE was always for women who remembered being young, not for girls who don't know what it's like to be a woman yet. If that makes any sense. At least, if I published the book myself, I could market it to whomever I wished in the manner in which I wished.
So color me not knowing what to do. Also color me VERY busy! With the tax course and still having at least one feature to write this month, I am feeling kind of overwhelmed. Yet at the same time, once the Olympics is over, interest in figure skating will gradually decline over the next year until it craters some time in the end of 2007, where it will stay until the next Olympic build up begins in December of 2010. In short, it's do it NOW or wait another 4 years.
Now... or wait yet ANOTHER 4 years...
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Monday, January 09, 2006
Well, not this time...
I got my final review for the figureskating.About.com Guide. I didn't get it. Here's the GFY:
Oh well. It WAS a great site... but, you can't win em all. I guess, somewhere, deep down, with my copious writing experience and knowledge about skating, I really expected to get this one. I didn't get over-confident, but I didn't see where they could fail to love me. But they obviously didn't. And being a good writer and knowing about skating and the web was not enough. I didn't write in the "About.com manner." So maybe they're right. I always regarded About.com with derision for several good reasons.
I probably don't belong there.
Your Prep site has recently come up for review, and we regret to inform you that it will not be promoted to the live environment.That was a BIG waste of about 100 hours of my precious time. It certainly WASN'T a valuable experience, but for a while there, I really enjoyed putting the site together... and thinking about what I might do if it was my site. I am sad about not getting the job. It would have been an incredible platform. It would have allowed me to be heard. And most of y'all know how I like being heard.
Below are some comments from the editor that will further explain how we came to this decision:
=======================
We thought you had a great site, but after much consideration decided not to go with it. You have excellent Internet skills and a vivid enthusiasm for figure skating, but some of the content just wasn't written and organized in the manner used on About. Thanks for all of the work you did on your site and we wish you best of luck in your future endeavors.
=======================
Thank you again for your interest in About, Inc. We hope that your experience was pleasant and valuable and we wish you the very best in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Guide Prep Administration
About, Inc.
Oh well. It WAS a great site... but, you can't win em all. I guess, somewhere, deep down, with my copious writing experience and knowledge about skating, I really expected to get this one. I didn't get over-confident, but I didn't see where they could fail to love me. But they obviously didn't. And being a good writer and knowing about skating and the web was not enough. I didn't write in the "About.com manner." So maybe they're right. I always regarded About.com with derision for several good reasons.
I probably don't belong there.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Figure Skating Orphan
Well, after being ignored for six months, I finally got a contact from PMA, my agent. It follows:
I have one more agent looking at OTE. I don't know what she will say, but I do know what I will do. And it's about time I do it.
It's been a pretty tough week. I'm having client problems in my magazine work. Two of my majors may go away for one reason or another. Both of them would go down owing me a fair chunk of money. The agent dumping me is just the latest.
However, there are a couple bright spots. An acquisitions editor at a major tech publisher liked my most recent book proposal. It goes to the board on the 17th. Wish me luck.
And the publisher who didn't like my last proposal and bought someone else's is not finding someone to finish that book... author crapped out on them, I guess <smug grin>. Guess who they thought of to finish it? Another <smug grin>.
And a widely advertised blogging job might just be mine. I really wowed the site owner during the phone interview... maybe even set myself up for a promotion later on. As pay goes, it's not great, but I think I'll enjoy it and it's regular per monthly thing. More info if I get hired (or not hired).
And then of course, I am prepping to be the About.com figure skating guide. Which only goes to prove that yes, one CAN eat one's words. PLEASE send good thoughts my way for this one. I could really use this job... not for the money, but rather for the platform. About is one BIG megaphone in figure skating.
So while not everything is roses and rainbows, some things, at least, are looking up.
From what I can find, ***** sent out your book to publishers back in late 2004 and early 2005. Unfortunately, this was her project and seeing as it has been submitted to several publishers, I feel that it may be best to allow you to start the new year fresh and to release you from your contract with PMA at this point if you wish to pursue other agents/managers. I would definitely be thrilled to read any other project you have in the works, but I do not see much more that PMA can do for On the Edge at this time. Please contact me again if you have any questions or any new projects. Thank you and best of luck!I've been dumped.
I have one more agent looking at OTE. I don't know what she will say, but I do know what I will do. And it's about time I do it.
It's been a pretty tough week. I'm having client problems in my magazine work. Two of my majors may go away for one reason or another. Both of them would go down owing me a fair chunk of money. The agent dumping me is just the latest.
However, there are a couple bright spots. An acquisitions editor at a major tech publisher liked my most recent book proposal. It goes to the board on the 17th. Wish me luck.
And the publisher who didn't like my last proposal and bought someone else's is not finding someone to finish that book... author crapped out on them, I guess <smug grin>. Guess who they thought of to finish it? Another <smug grin>.
And a widely advertised blogging job might just be mine. I really wowed the site owner during the phone interview... maybe even set myself up for a promotion later on. As pay goes, it's not great, but I think I'll enjoy it and it's regular per monthly thing. More info if I get hired (or not hired).
And then of course, I am prepping to be the About.com figure skating guide. Which only goes to prove that yes, one CAN eat one's words. PLEASE send good thoughts my way for this one. I could really use this job... not for the money, but rather for the platform. About is one BIG megaphone in figure skating.
So while not everything is roses and rainbows, some things, at least, are looking up.
Monday, January 02, 2006
A Figure Skating Magazine quotes ME
and other miracles...
I am so excited today. One of the major figure skating magazines did an article about skating fiction this month. I know the author of the article from the skatefic mailing list. She interviewed me because Private Ice is still the biggest skating fiction site around. And my quotes made it to the magazine!!! Whoo hooo! They even gave out my web site. Yipppee!! And traffic yesterday was up about 30% from normal. I am hoping with this issue on the stands during the Olympics, Private Ice might just draw some of the skating fans who have never even heard of skating fiction.
In other good news, traffic at skatefic.com DOUBLED to over 42,000 unique visitors this year. Almost 1300 people set bookmarks. In 2004, there were about 800 over the 6 months I was with the new web host. Not too shabby. Granted, it's hardly 1998 when we did 400K pageviews, but it's twice last year, which was twice the year before.
So, you know what my agent said when I told him I'd be quoted in a magazine with a 50,000 circulation?
NOTHING!
He passed it on to the associate that is supposed to be managing me, who does not return my calls or emails and you know what she said?
NOTHING!
No. Don't say it. I know, but it was damned hard to find THIS agent.
In other news...
So, I finally got back to the doctor about the hormone tests. They really ran me through the wringer. After finally connecting with a doctor who took me seriously, said doctor gave 2 weeks notice AND LEFT. Quit her job with the military clinic to take another job that paid more. The military doesn't move fast at the best of times and there was no way they could hire a new GYN (for the pittance they pay) in 2 weeks, so instead, the CLOSED THE CLINIC! Now, when you close a medical clinic, what do you do? You call everyone and cancel and reschedule their appts. You make sure that people who are supposed to get test results w/in 2 weeks get them. And you generally do the right thing.
Nope.
When I finally tracked THEM down a month later, it was the receptionist from the regular military clinic next door that told me how women had been coming for weeks, for appointments at a clinic that no longer existed. These women wasted time, money, took time off from work, some of them were probably sick, or pregnant and NO ONE TOLD THEM ANYTHING. Needless to say, the aide in my congresswoman's office got an earful. I told him that someone needed to get their wee-wee slapped over this. It was unconsionable to just DUMP those patients with no warning. What if someone had been seriously ill and waiting for test results?! Tragedy!
Then, to add insult to injury, since the original doc had not bothered to file referrals for her patients before she left, I COULDN'T SEE A GYN about my test results!. No matter how much hufifng and puffing I did. It was no use. So I made an appt with a physicians asst that was available to me. After saying that there was nothing wrong with the test results <sigh of relief> SHE had the TEMERITY to tell me that I should SEEK COUNSELING!!! Of all the patronizing, condescending, annoying bullshit... I am NOT CRAZY. I HAVE SOMETHING PHYSICALLY WRONG WITH ME THAT THESE ALL KNOWING DOCTORS CAN'T FIGURE OUT.
Do I sound angry?
So anyway, ANOTHER 3 weeks after that, I FINALLY get a call from the GYN on base who has been detailed to call patients and check with them on how things are going. I told her about the situation with the clinic and my unhappiness with my treatement by the PA, you can be sure. However, I also told her about something else.
As it turns out. I'm not crazy. I was having physical symptoms that the doctors couldn't recognize. The first cause of the constant pain I was in was a cracked tooth. Yes, those daily, increasingly awful, debilitating, PAINFUL, migraine-level headaches were from a cracked tooth. I got the tooth fixed. The headaches went away. After about a week, I began to feel more like my old self. The idea of working didn't seem to overwhelming. I actually got some stuff done. I still couldn't focus, but at least I could survive.
But there's more.
For the last seven or so years, my health has been declining. I've lost a great deal of my hair. I gained a LOT of weight. I had little energy. The last 18 months or so, I stopped being able to focus as well. It was like I was in a fog all the time. There were so many tiny symptoms. No one seemed to know what it was. A couple friends suggested that it might be premature menopause but those tests, as I just said, were negative.
Well of course they were. They were testing for the wrong thing. They were testing for lack of estrogen. Except that it appears that I DON'T lack estrogen. So, what is it that has been plaguing me for the last SEVEN YEARS?
Well, seven years ago, I stopped taking Depo Provera. I gained a LOT of weight. I started having thyroid like symptoms that weren't. I started losing my hair. Depo Provera is progestin... an synthetic progesterone that suppresses your body's ability to make progesterone. I was suffering from something that a small number of medical researchers call "estrogen dominance" ...lack of natural progesterone.
Now, if you don't know me very well, you won't know how INCREDIBLY skeptical I am of alternative medicine. My mother dragged me from one quack to another when I was a kid, seeking relief for my panoply of allergies and weird not-quite-there health problems. She said those things helped, but the truth is, I never really felt any better after being poked, prodded, stuck and experiemented on.
So I grew up with this distrust of both doctors and of the people who would foist their poorly researched miracle cures off on me and a bunch of unsuspecting saps in an attempt to get their money. Because these cures ARE always really expensive. And it seems like everyone who makes great claims about them is out to make money from it. I REALLY distrust people who are out to make money from an expensive and unproven "cure."
But, on the recommendation of one of those friends who suggested 2 years ago that I might be in premature menopause, I joined this yahoo list called HormonalBalance. As hard sell cure lists go, this was pretty tame. The list owner, though she was selling something did her best to really respond to questions with what information is available. She was at least about to convince me of the safety, if not the efficacy of this particular cure... natural, bio-identical progesterone made from wild yams in creme form.
After seeing the PA and not getting any help or answers, I figured, what the heck. It's ONLY $20. The other women on the list raved about it... only SOME of whom were selling it. Granted, as a respected colleague says, "the plural of anecdote is NOT data." These were only isolated stories. But they were convincing, because they were real people that I knew, not people who had been filtered or press-release-ized. I thought, "If it doesn't work, then I've only lost $20 and I can be smug about being right." I do, occasionally, like being right <grin>.
Except...
I was wrong.
On the second day after I started rubbing this natural progesterone creme on twice a day, the brain fog retreated. I could concentrate again.
After 4 days, I had energy... more energy than I can remember having... well, EVER. In fact, I was MOTIVATED again. I actually began to want to do things... even work.
After 6 days, I no longer woke up soaked in sweat and freezing. Night sweats, GONE. And the hot flashes were gone, too.
On the evening of day 6, the brain fog closed in, I felt tired, unmotivated, unenergetic. I had forgotten my evening dose of creme. I rubbed it on and about a half hour later, I felt GREAT. I picked up a feature article that had been languishing since October, and FINISHED IT.
It's been about a month now. I'm sleeping better without those damnerifous night sweats. I have energy. I am motivated. I am WRITING! When I was ovulating sometimes I get kind of... well, manic. And it had been getting worse. Not this time. I felt fine through that phase of my cycle. No high anxiety, no restlessness, nothing. There's more... more intimate changes, postitive changes that would be Too Much Information(TM) so I won't share them, but believe me, it's different and BETTER. And they say it may... indeed... make my hair grow back. I will no longer be the Amazing Bald Woman.
Oh, please! oh please!
I told the women on HormonalBalance that I was the most skeptical of all skeptics, but if this stuff worked for me, if it was the miracle they promised, then I would sing it from the rooftops.
Well THIS is me singing.
From the rooftops.
It works! IT REALLY WORKS!!
Natural progesterone gave me my life back.
I AM ALIVE!
In other good news, traffic at skatefic.com DOUBLED to over 42,000 unique visitors this year. Almost 1300 people set bookmarks. In 2004, there were about 800 over the 6 months I was with the new web host. Not too shabby. Granted, it's hardly 1998 when we did 400K pageviews, but it's twice last year, which was twice the year before.
So, you know what my agent said when I told him I'd be quoted in a magazine with a 50,000 circulation?
NOTHING!
He passed it on to the associate that is supposed to be managing me, who does not return my calls or emails and you know what she said?
NOTHING!
No. Don't say it. I know, but it was damned hard to find THIS agent.
In other news...
So, I finally got back to the doctor about the hormone tests. They really ran me through the wringer. After finally connecting with a doctor who took me seriously, said doctor gave 2 weeks notice AND LEFT. Quit her job with the military clinic to take another job that paid more. The military doesn't move fast at the best of times and there was no way they could hire a new GYN (for the pittance they pay) in 2 weeks, so instead, the CLOSED THE CLINIC! Now, when you close a medical clinic, what do you do? You call everyone and cancel and reschedule their appts. You make sure that people who are supposed to get test results w/in 2 weeks get them. And you generally do the right thing.
Nope.
When I finally tracked THEM down a month later, it was the receptionist from the regular military clinic next door that told me how women had been coming for weeks, for appointments at a clinic that no longer existed. These women wasted time, money, took time off from work, some of them were probably sick, or pregnant and NO ONE TOLD THEM ANYTHING. Needless to say, the aide in my congresswoman's office got an earful. I told him that someone needed to get their wee-wee slapped over this. It was unconsionable to just DUMP those patients with no warning. What if someone had been seriously ill and waiting for test results?! Tragedy!
Then, to add insult to injury, since the original doc had not bothered to file referrals for her patients before she left, I COULDN'T SEE A GYN about my test results!. No matter how much hufifng and puffing I did. It was no use. So I made an appt with a physicians asst that was available to me. After saying that there was nothing wrong with the test results <sigh of relief> SHE had the TEMERITY to tell me that I should SEEK COUNSELING!!! Of all the patronizing, condescending, annoying bullshit... I am NOT CRAZY. I HAVE SOMETHING PHYSICALLY WRONG WITH ME THAT THESE ALL KNOWING DOCTORS CAN'T FIGURE OUT.
Do I sound angry?
So anyway, ANOTHER 3 weeks after that, I FINALLY get a call from the GYN on base who has been detailed to call patients and check with them on how things are going. I told her about the situation with the clinic and my unhappiness with my treatement by the PA, you can be sure. However, I also told her about something else.
As it turns out. I'm not crazy. I was having physical symptoms that the doctors couldn't recognize. The first cause of the constant pain I was in was a cracked tooth. Yes, those daily, increasingly awful, debilitating, PAINFUL, migraine-level headaches were from a cracked tooth. I got the tooth fixed. The headaches went away. After about a week, I began to feel more like my old self. The idea of working didn't seem to overwhelming. I actually got some stuff done. I still couldn't focus, but at least I could survive.
But there's more.
For the last seven or so years, my health has been declining. I've lost a great deal of my hair. I gained a LOT of weight. I had little energy. The last 18 months or so, I stopped being able to focus as well. It was like I was in a fog all the time. There were so many tiny symptoms. No one seemed to know what it was. A couple friends suggested that it might be premature menopause but those tests, as I just said, were negative.
Well of course they were. They were testing for the wrong thing. They were testing for lack of estrogen. Except that it appears that I DON'T lack estrogen. So, what is it that has been plaguing me for the last SEVEN YEARS?
Well, seven years ago, I stopped taking Depo Provera. I gained a LOT of weight. I started having thyroid like symptoms that weren't. I started losing my hair. Depo Provera is progestin... an synthetic progesterone that suppresses your body's ability to make progesterone. I was suffering from something that a small number of medical researchers call "estrogen dominance" ...lack of natural progesterone.
Now, if you don't know me very well, you won't know how INCREDIBLY skeptical I am of alternative medicine. My mother dragged me from one quack to another when I was a kid, seeking relief for my panoply of allergies and weird not-quite-there health problems. She said those things helped, but the truth is, I never really felt any better after being poked, prodded, stuck and experiemented on.
So I grew up with this distrust of both doctors and of the people who would foist their poorly researched miracle cures off on me and a bunch of unsuspecting saps in an attempt to get their money. Because these cures ARE always really expensive. And it seems like everyone who makes great claims about them is out to make money from it. I REALLY distrust people who are out to make money from an expensive and unproven "cure."
But, on the recommendation of one of those friends who suggested 2 years ago that I might be in premature menopause, I joined this yahoo list called HormonalBalance. As hard sell cure lists go, this was pretty tame. The list owner, though she was selling something did her best to really respond to questions with what information is available. She was at least about to convince me of the safety, if not the efficacy of this particular cure... natural, bio-identical progesterone made from wild yams in creme form.
After seeing the PA and not getting any help or answers, I figured, what the heck. It's ONLY $20. The other women on the list raved about it... only SOME of whom were selling it. Granted, as a respected colleague says, "the plural of anecdote is NOT data." These were only isolated stories. But they were convincing, because they were real people that I knew, not people who had been filtered or press-release-ized. I thought, "If it doesn't work, then I've only lost $20 and I can be smug about being right." I do, occasionally, like being right <grin>.
Except...
I was wrong.
On the second day after I started rubbing this natural progesterone creme on twice a day, the brain fog retreated. I could concentrate again.
After 4 days, I had energy... more energy than I can remember having... well, EVER. In fact, I was MOTIVATED again. I actually began to want to do things... even work.
After 6 days, I no longer woke up soaked in sweat and freezing. Night sweats, GONE. And the hot flashes were gone, too.
On the evening of day 6, the brain fog closed in, I felt tired, unmotivated, unenergetic. I had forgotten my evening dose of creme. I rubbed it on and about a half hour later, I felt GREAT. I picked up a feature article that had been languishing since October, and FINISHED IT.
It's been about a month now. I'm sleeping better without those damnerifous night sweats. I have energy. I am motivated. I am WRITING! When I was ovulating sometimes I get kind of... well, manic. And it had been getting worse. Not this time. I felt fine through that phase of my cycle. No high anxiety, no restlessness, nothing. There's more... more intimate changes, postitive changes that would be Too Much Information(TM) so I won't share them, but believe me, it's different and BETTER. And they say it may... indeed... make my hair grow back. I will no longer be the Amazing Bald Woman.
Oh, please! oh please!
I told the women on HormonalBalance that I was the most skeptical of all skeptics, but if this stuff worked for me, if it was the miracle they promised, then I would sing it from the rooftops.
Well THIS is me singing.
From the rooftops.
It works! IT REALLY WORKS!!
Natural progesterone gave me my life back.
I AM ALIVE!
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Tag, I'm It...
Okay, there's this thing called a meme. And I've been tagged with this meme by one of my closest friends, author Natalie R. Collins. The meme I have to blog to is "10 Reading Secrets." Then I get to tag 3 other people. Let's hope I can get to 10.
1) I don't read grown up books. Without fail, my favorite books are the same ones I loved as a teen... or even as a child. I have a life-long love affair with Newbery Medal winning books. My favorites: Adam of the Road, Jacob Have I Loved, My Side of the Mountain.
2) Despite making up 40% of the market, I hate romance books. Most romances are silly, predictable, insipid and boring. The heroines drive me bonkers with their shilly-shallying and I find the men mostly unattractive. Yes, I realize it is supremely hypocritical and ironic considering the over-the-top romantic content in On the Edge. Let the flaming begin.
3) I read books over and over and over and over. The ones I like best, I read again and again. I had more time to read as a kid, so books I have had since then are more likely to be read a zillion times. My "Most Read" books are probably C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader which I have read around 37 times and My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George which I have read at least 33 times.
4) I read when I'm sittin'on the can. It's warm; I can close the door and it's the only place I can ever get any peace. My husband and oldest daughter also read in the bathroom, but what you may find amusing is that my 4-year-old ALSO "reads" in the bathroom and has since she started potty training at two and a half. My middle child doesn't read on the toilet. Go figure.
5) When I was in 5th grade, my teacher had a contest for who could read the most books. I read 538. I was TIED with Christian Bauman, a new boy (whose mother was my doctor when I was a teen. Small towns!). The only reason I tied him? I spent the last 2 weeks of 5th grade in the hospital with peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. I read 11 books during those 10 days, but since school was over before I could return, I never got to write them down. Counting weekends and vacations, 538 books over a 272 day school year (180 days + 36 weekends + 20 vacation days) is not quite 2 books a day.
6) I had trouble learning to read. I will never forget the humiliation. When I get stressed out, I can't think. My first grade year, my dad was drinking (used to have to go into the bar to get him), my mom got PIDs from her IUD. Some people died, but my mom was only in intensive care for weeks. She only NEARLY died. And of course, I was too little to go in to see her, so I couldn't even speak to her. Anyway, I fell apart and things just would not click. I went from the highest reading group, to the middle one, to the lowest one, to sitting alone with the teacher while the other students sniggered about how smart I thought I was and how smart was I really? If it hadn't clicked in the last half of the year, I might have been illiterate.
7) I'm a writer. As you see above, I had trouble learning to read. I am a volunteer at Peninsula Reads, a local literacy organization. I tutor math.
8) I named my middle child after Anne of Green Gables, but it's my oldest girl who is the most like the Anne from the book... except without red hair. She is heedless and wild, sensitive and caring, she means very, very well, but gets into awful scrapes. She reads and reads and reads. I find that my very best friends are "kindred spirits," women who grew up with Anne of Green Gables and still love her.
9) I read very, very fast, but I am not a speed reader. I read about 2 to 3 times as fast as most other people. I don't read every word... more like every third word. I get my eye around a word, seeing the first part of it and then infering the rest from context. I'm seldom wrong. As a result, and because phonics never meant a darn thing to me, I tend to badly mispronounce longer words... because I never actually read every letter, never see every syllable. It's embarrassing.
10) My house is overflowing with books. I have books on the stairs. I have bookcases everywhere. I have books in my kitchen. When I first got married, we had to move right away (military crap) 3/4 of what was moved, not counting furniture was books... that was 11 years ago. My dream livingroom has shelves, floor to ceiling, on at least one wall--the one that's 24'. THEN I might have enough room for all our books.
11) Phonics sucks!
Now, to tag people...
Miss Snark - a very snarky (and amusing) literary agent. Miss Snark just wrote me back, declining to participate. She's got a bad backlog. But visit her anyway.
Martha O'Connor - author of Bitch Posse
Barb Huff - a prolific and talented writer of Christian young adult fiction.
Okay, I cheated. I tagged 4 people. Maybe one of them won't answer. here's #4.
Janet Elaine Smith - a very prolific authoress of hard to genre-ify fiction.
For all the new people who come to my blog (I hope), you won't find any of my books in print. Some of my very early work is at Private Ice along with various other heroes of skatefic. As for the actual good stuff, it is in a hidey hole hoping that someday my agent hires an assistant who gives a darn about it.
ta ta!
dej
1) I don't read grown up books. Without fail, my favorite books are the same ones I loved as a teen... or even as a child. I have a life-long love affair with Newbery Medal winning books. My favorites: Adam of the Road, Jacob Have I Loved, My Side of the Mountain.
2) Despite making up 40% of the market, I hate romance books. Most romances are silly, predictable, insipid and boring. The heroines drive me bonkers with their shilly-shallying and I find the men mostly unattractive. Yes, I realize it is supremely hypocritical and ironic considering the over-the-top romantic content in On the Edge. Let the flaming begin.
3) I read books over and over and over and over. The ones I like best, I read again and again. I had more time to read as a kid, so books I have had since then are more likely to be read a zillion times. My "Most Read" books are probably C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader which I have read around 37 times and My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George which I have read at least 33 times.
4) I read when I'm sittin'on the can. It's warm; I can close the door and it's the only place I can ever get any peace. My husband and oldest daughter also read in the bathroom, but what you may find amusing is that my 4-year-old ALSO "reads" in the bathroom and has since she started potty training at two and a half. My middle child doesn't read on the toilet. Go figure.
5) When I was in 5th grade, my teacher had a contest for who could read the most books. I read 538. I was TIED with Christian Bauman, a new boy (whose mother was my doctor when I was a teen. Small towns!). The only reason I tied him? I spent the last 2 weeks of 5th grade in the hospital with peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. I read 11 books during those 10 days, but since school was over before I could return, I never got to write them down. Counting weekends and vacations, 538 books over a 272 day school year (180 days + 36 weekends + 20 vacation days) is not quite 2 books a day.
6) I had trouble learning to read. I will never forget the humiliation. When I get stressed out, I can't think. My first grade year, my dad was drinking (used to have to go into the bar to get him), my mom got PIDs from her IUD. Some people died, but my mom was only in intensive care for weeks. She only NEARLY died. And of course, I was too little to go in to see her, so I couldn't even speak to her. Anyway, I fell apart and things just would not click. I went from the highest reading group, to the middle one, to the lowest one, to sitting alone with the teacher while the other students sniggered about how smart I thought I was and how smart was I really? If it hadn't clicked in the last half of the year, I might have been illiterate.
7) I'm a writer. As you see above, I had trouble learning to read. I am a volunteer at Peninsula Reads, a local literacy organization. I tutor math.
8) I named my middle child after Anne of Green Gables, but it's my oldest girl who is the most like the Anne from the book... except without red hair. She is heedless and wild, sensitive and caring, she means very, very well, but gets into awful scrapes. She reads and reads and reads. I find that my very best friends are "kindred spirits," women who grew up with Anne of Green Gables and still love her.
9) I read very, very fast, but I am not a speed reader. I read about 2 to 3 times as fast as most other people. I don't read every word... more like every third word. I get my eye around a word, seeing the first part of it and then infering the rest from context. I'm seldom wrong. As a result, and because phonics never meant a darn thing to me, I tend to badly mispronounce longer words... because I never actually read every letter, never see every syllable. It's embarrassing.
10) My house is overflowing with books. I have books on the stairs. I have bookcases everywhere. I have books in my kitchen. When I first got married, we had to move right away (military crap) 3/4 of what was moved, not counting furniture was books... that was 11 years ago. My dream livingroom has shelves, floor to ceiling, on at least one wall--the one that's 24'. THEN I might have enough room for all our books.
11) Phonics sucks!
Now, to tag people...
Miss Snark - a very snarky (and amusing) literary agent. Miss Snark just wrote me back, declining to participate. She's got a bad backlog. But visit her anyway.
Martha O'Connor - author of Bitch Posse
Barb Huff - a prolific and talented writer of Christian young adult fiction.
Okay, I cheated. I tagged 4 people. Maybe one of them won't answer. here's #4.
Janet Elaine Smith - a very prolific authoress of hard to genre-ify fiction.
For all the new people who come to my blog (I hope), you won't find any of my books in print. Some of my very early work is at Private Ice along with various other heroes of skatefic. As for the actual good stuff, it is in a hidey hole hoping that someday my agent hires an assistant who gives a darn about it.
ta ta!
dej
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Figure Skating Off the Edge
That's the edge of the earth, not a blade.
I can't believe I haven't posted since July. Well, yes, I can. I've had a bad case of busy and a worse case of completely unmotivated. I've been blue on a daily basis since about September, not so much depressed as not wanting to work, unable to focus—an absence of will.
I've been tested for low thyroid about 3 times in the last 4 years and nothing is ever wrong. I asked my general practitioner (GP) for some hormone tests—a friend mentioned I might be going through the change of life kinda early. The freaking GP told me he did the tests, but he didn't. He treated me like some kind of stupid, imaginative housewife and didn't listen to me at all. It's gotten so bad, that I finally called for a GYN appt.
And a MIRACLE OCCURED.
Normally, I can't get in to see the GYN without a trip to my GP (the jerk) unless I needed my annual poke and prod. I did happen to need one. And there was an appointment... if I left in 5 minutes. Usually, it takes two to three months to get an appointment with a real GYN. But I got one that very day!
Anyway, sorry if this is too much information, got my poke and prod and then talked to the GYN for quite a bit about what was bothering me. And surprise, surprise, she LISTENED. She is now doing the tests that the GP said he did. Which reminds me, I need to go get blood drawn tomorrow before breakfast.
It would be really nice to be able to link all these niggling, demoralizing health problems together. It would be nice to know what the problem is. It would be really nice to feel better!
We'll see.
So, back to September...
I got the kids back to school. My eldest is struggling through 5th grade... her first quarter interms were 2F's and 3D's. Turns out that she had not been doing her homework... and then lying about it that she had. So, we had a shit-hit-the-fan few weeks. Now, she's mostly doing her work... I guess. She is still sneakier than I have the presence of mind to ferret out. But I keep hoping that she will learn that it is easier to do it when it's due than to do it late, take the hit on grades, get in trouble at home and feel bad.
Sigh.
Some days, I really hate being a parent.
My middlest started kindergarden. Most days she does just fine. Some days, like day before yesterday, she shouts, disturbs the class, has tantrums, and throws her shoes. So, after my own health problems, my littlest's, making sure my oldest doesn't fail 5th grade, and laundry and dishes for 5... oh yeah, and being a successful journalist and author, I need to do something about my middlest.
Does your five year old throw her shoes in school?
God help us, mine does.
Now, on to my littlest. If you've been reading the blog, you know that she's not been well. At first they thought she had some really scary kind of muscular dystrophy. Then they weren't sure she had anything. Now... the question marks are only more questiony and marky.
I took her to the neurologist yesterday. He saw her get up from the floor, run, picked her up (to see if she slipped down, a sign of poor core strength)... and so on. She did well. But at the same time, something is not right... at least from my point of view. I worry that I'm being paranoid, but the doctor is taking me seriously. "There's something I can't put my finger on," I say. "She's not overtly weak, but she's not 100%"
I kind of wonder if I am so anxious about another "episode" (as the Neuro calls it) that I see weakness where it is just normal development. Littlest DID regress significantly... back to early toddlerhood as far as her physical abilities go. It's been a good six months since it was really clear that she was gaining ground on the muscle weakness. It wouldn't be abnormal if she was still a tiny bit behind in places.
Anyway, the doctor was clear. He trusts me not to be hysterical... he is always saying what a "cool customer" I am. I think he means it as a compliment... but it's hard. Because I know he thought ill of me when we missed seeing him in May because of galivanting off to a funeral, cross country on a moment's notice. Though I DID leave a message on his nurse's voice mail, it's obvious he never got it. He teased me about it yesterday. He's hardly in a position to know it's a sore spot, but it was... anyway, he could see why it wasn't such a big deal, because she had been steadily improving in May.
I am, I guess, a cool customer. I deceded in the beginning that if I didn't maintain some sort of serenity about this, that I was going to go crazy and be completely useless to everyone. Getting all upset was not going to make me more effective! I DID get all upset. You all saw it. I got completely hysterical and cried for days... but it was nearly two months before she saw the neurologist. I had come to terms with the worst possibilities and accepted that maybe all I could do was fight a losing battle. I couldn't stay freaked out for that long. I have a family to take care of!
Sigh.
I'm getting behind myself.
The upshot of this is that the Neuro doesn't think I'm hyterical and paranoid—even if maybe I think I am. "Trust your intuition," my friend Adele whose son has Duchennes says. The Neuro feels sure that Littlest has some kind of either mild muscular dystrophy or mild metabolic muscular disorder. With her CPK (the measure of muscle fluid leakage that is a primary indicator of MD) being normal now, there is no point to doing a muscle biopsy. Doc wants to see her next summer. He said we should continue to keep an eye on her through out her childhood, and be vigilant in case she has another episode. We're here through 2010 and he's here through 2008, both of which are good things.
So beyond having Doc's orders to maintain a healthy level of paranoia, there are only a couple other considerations. When Littlest is no longer little and wants to have rug rats of her own, she may need genetic counseling to make sure that none of hers are born with whatever she has. If she has another episode, we'll need to pursue it to finding out what's wrong... but she may never have another episode. Finally, if she needs surgery, the anesthesiologist needs to know that she has some kind of non-specific dystrophic or metabolic muscular disorder. Doc says weird things can happen under general anesthesia when there's a muscular disorder.
That's it.
After everything we've been through, it doesn't seem all that bad.
Oh wait, I almost forgot!
I went to Skate America this year (Oct 18-23). I stayed with my friends Ruthie and Trudi and had an absolute BLAST. I took a ZILLION pictures with my new camera (a Canon EOS 20D for the curious and now insanely jealous). I'll post the URL later when I get more of them up.
Sigh, I will also post a very funny story about Aaron Parchem, Julia Obertas, and Tamara Moskvina. but, now I have to go to a book fair at my kids school.
I can't believe I haven't posted since July. Well, yes, I can. I've had a bad case of busy and a worse case of completely unmotivated. I've been blue on a daily basis since about September, not so much depressed as not wanting to work, unable to focus—an absence of will.
I've been tested for low thyroid about 3 times in the last 4 years and nothing is ever wrong. I asked my general practitioner (GP) for some hormone tests—a friend mentioned I might be going through the change of life kinda early. The freaking GP told me he did the tests, but he didn't. He treated me like some kind of stupid, imaginative housewife and didn't listen to me at all. It's gotten so bad, that I finally called for a GYN appt.
And a MIRACLE OCCURED.
Normally, I can't get in to see the GYN without a trip to my GP (the jerk) unless I needed my annual poke and prod. I did happen to need one. And there was an appointment... if I left in 5 minutes. Usually, it takes two to three months to get an appointment with a real GYN. But I got one that very day!
Anyway, sorry if this is too much information, got my poke and prod and then talked to the GYN for quite a bit about what was bothering me. And surprise, surprise, she LISTENED. She is now doing the tests that the GP said he did. Which reminds me, I need to go get blood drawn tomorrow before breakfast.
It would be really nice to be able to link all these niggling, demoralizing health problems together. It would be nice to know what the problem is. It would be really nice to feel better!
We'll see.
So, back to September...
I got the kids back to school. My eldest is struggling through 5th grade... her first quarter interms were 2F's and 3D's. Turns out that she had not been doing her homework... and then lying about it that she had. So, we had a shit-hit-the-fan few weeks. Now, she's mostly doing her work... I guess. She is still sneakier than I have the presence of mind to ferret out. But I keep hoping that she will learn that it is easier to do it when it's due than to do it late, take the hit on grades, get in trouble at home and feel bad.
Sigh.
Some days, I really hate being a parent.
My middlest started kindergarden. Most days she does just fine. Some days, like day before yesterday, she shouts, disturbs the class, has tantrums, and throws her shoes. So, after my own health problems, my littlest's, making sure my oldest doesn't fail 5th grade, and laundry and dishes for 5... oh yeah, and being a successful journalist and author, I need to do something about my middlest.
Does your five year old throw her shoes in school?
God help us, mine does.
Now, on to my littlest. If you've been reading the blog, you know that she's not been well. At first they thought she had some really scary kind of muscular dystrophy. Then they weren't sure she had anything. Now... the question marks are only more questiony and marky.
I took her to the neurologist yesterday. He saw her get up from the floor, run, picked her up (to see if she slipped down, a sign of poor core strength)... and so on. She did well. But at the same time, something is not right... at least from my point of view. I worry that I'm being paranoid, but the doctor is taking me seriously. "There's something I can't put my finger on," I say. "She's not overtly weak, but she's not 100%"
I kind of wonder if I am so anxious about another "episode" (as the Neuro calls it) that I see weakness where it is just normal development. Littlest DID regress significantly... back to early toddlerhood as far as her physical abilities go. It's been a good six months since it was really clear that she was gaining ground on the muscle weakness. It wouldn't be abnormal if she was still a tiny bit behind in places.
Anyway, the doctor was clear. He trusts me not to be hysterical... he is always saying what a "cool customer" I am. I think he means it as a compliment... but it's hard. Because I know he thought ill of me when we missed seeing him in May because of galivanting off to a funeral, cross country on a moment's notice. Though I DID leave a message on his nurse's voice mail, it's obvious he never got it. He teased me about it yesterday. He's hardly in a position to know it's a sore spot, but it was... anyway, he could see why it wasn't such a big deal, because she had been steadily improving in May.
I am, I guess, a cool customer. I deceded in the beginning that if I didn't maintain some sort of serenity about this, that I was going to go crazy and be completely useless to everyone. Getting all upset was not going to make me more effective! I DID get all upset. You all saw it. I got completely hysterical and cried for days... but it was nearly two months before she saw the neurologist. I had come to terms with the worst possibilities and accepted that maybe all I could do was fight a losing battle. I couldn't stay freaked out for that long. I have a family to take care of!
Sigh.
I'm getting behind myself.
The upshot of this is that the Neuro doesn't think I'm hyterical and paranoid—even if maybe I think I am. "Trust your intuition," my friend Adele whose son has Duchennes says. The Neuro feels sure that Littlest has some kind of either mild muscular dystrophy or mild metabolic muscular disorder. With her CPK (the measure of muscle fluid leakage that is a primary indicator of MD) being normal now, there is no point to doing a muscle biopsy. Doc wants to see her next summer. He said we should continue to keep an eye on her through out her childhood, and be vigilant in case she has another episode. We're here through 2010 and he's here through 2008, both of which are good things.
So beyond having Doc's orders to maintain a healthy level of paranoia, there are only a couple other considerations. When Littlest is no longer little and wants to have rug rats of her own, she may need genetic counseling to make sure that none of hers are born with whatever she has. If she has another episode, we'll need to pursue it to finding out what's wrong... but she may never have another episode. Finally, if she needs surgery, the anesthesiologist needs to know that she has some kind of non-specific dystrophic or metabolic muscular disorder. Doc says weird things can happen under general anesthesia when there's a muscular disorder.
That's it.
After everything we've been through, it doesn't seem all that bad.
Oh wait, I almost forgot!
I went to Skate America this year (Oct 18-23). I stayed with my friends Ruthie and Trudi and had an absolute BLAST. I took a ZILLION pictures with my new camera (a Canon EOS 20D for the curious and now insanely jealous). I'll post the URL later when I get more of them up.
Sigh, I will also post a very funny story about Aaron Parchem, Julia Obertas, and Tamara Moskvina. but, now I have to go to a book fair at my kids school.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Figure Skating through the Dashboard
I can't get any further from figure skating this month. I still have a pair of unmounted boots. I am still way over-weight. Now I'm all wet. See, I've lived about 4 blocks from the Midtown Community Center, which has a BIG pool, for about 2 years. Finally, I got down there and joined. Thanks to grandma for the cash, because God knows, I still seem to owe in every direction and that never ends!
At any rate, I have been going with GG (my oldest) to swim and take water aerobics every morning. At least we did last week. The end of this week, they had a swim meet that went the whole freaking weekend. No swimming or water aerobics for us.
Water aerobics?!
Yeah, you know, I like the same things about it as I like about skating. You stay cool while doing it. I HATE to sweat and I hate feeling as heavy as I am. The water bouys me up and makes me not feel so heavy... I mean, even whales can swim, right?
Unfortunately, my record for lap swim is 2. No, not 2 miles... 2. Laps. That's up from the beginning of the week when I swam 1.5 laps and then quit from exhaustion. The fact that it takes me 20 minutes to swim those 2 laps.... Don't laugh, at least I'm out there. It's not so much swimming as controlled drowning.
Yeah, that's it, controlled drowning.
As of last issue (I have delusions of magazinehood), I was wondering what I should do about this tech book deal on wifi. The original author dropped to 20%. Then he dropped out altogether. It was a few days before I heard back from my agent, and only because I asked, that the project had been canceled altogether. What a GREAT vote of confidence from the publisher! Ye ha!
Well, it's not so bad as all that. There's another orphaned book that wants to be written and I've tentatively signed on to it. For any of you familiar with Macs, there's a new feature in Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) called the Dashboard. It's basically a layer that holds little one purpose programs... desk accessories. Anyway, thse little buggers are simple to make conflagurations of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Yes, I realize I just started speaking g(r)eek.
Anyway, they are looking for someone to write this book on how to program these little things and I am thinking about taking it on.
Somebody shoot me now.
He does not so have to shoot me now.
He can wait til he gets home.
So the next installment in the saga of On the Edge. I called my agent after the 4th like he asked. I left a messsage. No response. So I waited a week and called again and left another message. No response. I waited another week and left a rather terse and kind of unhappy message with the new assistant that this was my THIRD call, and there has been no response to the other two.
And he claimed to be reading my book. He said that as a new assistant, he got to read a LOT of slush pile tripe&mdahs;please don't stone me if your masterpiece is languishing in a slush pile somewhere, been there, done that, got the freaking t-shirt. Anyway, they wanted him to get a chance to read something that came in the door that DID make it through. It was a tiny boost to my ego to be the one who made it... at least to be shown to assistants to say, "Now, THIS is what we're looking for."
The kid—he DID sound like early 20's—said he was about half way through the MS and really enjoying it. I didn't test him to see if he was actually reading it. I was too flattered. I suppose, that if he was leading me on, that he did a darn good job of appealing to my vanity.
Not that writers are ego-pigs. OH NO.
So this is a good thing, right? At least someone is reading OTE. Maybe it means I am not completely dead in the water yet. I would like to think I wasn't. I really, really, REALLY would. At any rate, the boy himself called me back and said that the Man Himself was out of town and would call me Himself towards the end of next week.
We'll see. I'm not planning any victory parties.
Am I the only person just slightly depressed about the release of Harry Potter IV. Oh, of course, I am slavering to read it with the other 10.6 million US fans. As an author, it depresses me....
Not that writers NEED a reason to feel depressed. OH NO.
We used to say, "There's only one Stephen King," by way of saying that most of us were never freaking going to make it anyway, so not to get crushed by having high expectations dashed against the hard ground of the book business. Well, old JKR has indeed raised the bar, don't you think? Having become richer than the Queen of England on her books. It should be inspiring... but there is only one JKR. And I don't see it being me any time soon.
Did I just depress you? Awwwww, poor baby. I try not to think about it too.
Exactly. I'll go buy my copy sometime next month. I have deadlines on top of my deadlines and can't afford to take the two solid days to read The Tome without sleeping. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the new Rug Rats All Grown Up movie about herded ostriches.
Okay, so I'm trying to think of some more self-deprecating and snarky things to write today and can't quite come up with any. It's not that things are going so bad, it's that i feel so freaking awful.
A good part of that is strictly physical. In VA, July is high season for Crepe Myrtle. Supposedly, these showy bloomers grow as far north as Massachusetts, but I've never seen one north of Maryland. And damn, I'm glad! I am so allergic to these things, I spend the better part of June, July and August as a basket case with sinus headaches that get so bad I wanna puke. I spend the majority of the summer alternatley pushing myself to work and wishing I was somewhere else. Ie yi yi, I hate being so sick every year.
The good news is that we really only need to live here for another 6 years or so. Then Dh will retire from the Navy and we get to leave and go live where WE want to live. Of course, where we want to live is Tennessee... which has worse allergies and makes me sicker than ever despite not having crepe myrtle.
I think I'll just make myself a plastic bubble and live in it.
Well, I guess it is time to go get supper out of the pressure cooker. Hope y'all feel better than I do.
At any rate, I have been going with GG (my oldest) to swim and take water aerobics every morning. At least we did last week. The end of this week, they had a swim meet that went the whole freaking weekend. No swimming or water aerobics for us.
Water aerobics?!
Yeah, you know, I like the same things about it as I like about skating. You stay cool while doing it. I HATE to sweat and I hate feeling as heavy as I am. The water bouys me up and makes me not feel so heavy... I mean, even whales can swim, right?
Unfortunately, my record for lap swim is 2. No, not 2 miles... 2. Laps. That's up from the beginning of the week when I swam 1.5 laps and then quit from exhaustion. The fact that it takes me 20 minutes to swim those 2 laps.... Don't laugh, at least I'm out there. It's not so much swimming as controlled drowning.
Yeah, that's it, controlled drowning.
As of last issue (I have delusions of magazinehood), I was wondering what I should do about this tech book deal on wifi. The original author dropped to 20%. Then he dropped out altogether. It was a few days before I heard back from my agent, and only because I asked, that the project had been canceled altogether. What a GREAT vote of confidence from the publisher! Ye ha!
Well, it's not so bad as all that. There's another orphaned book that wants to be written and I've tentatively signed on to it. For any of you familiar with Macs, there's a new feature in Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) called the Dashboard. It's basically a layer that holds little one purpose programs... desk accessories. Anyway, thse little buggers are simple to make conflagurations of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Yes, I realize I just started speaking g(r)eek.
Anyway, they are looking for someone to write this book on how to program these little things and I am thinking about taking it on.
Somebody shoot me now.
He does not so have to shoot me now.
He can wait til he gets home.
So the next installment in the saga of On the Edge. I called my agent after the 4th like he asked. I left a messsage. No response. So I waited a week and called again and left another message. No response. I waited another week and left a rather terse and kind of unhappy message with the new assistant that this was my THIRD call, and there has been no response to the other two.
And he claimed to be reading my book. He said that as a new assistant, he got to read a LOT of slush pile tripe&mdahs;please don't stone me if your masterpiece is languishing in a slush pile somewhere, been there, done that, got the freaking t-shirt. Anyway, they wanted him to get a chance to read something that came in the door that DID make it through. It was a tiny boost to my ego to be the one who made it... at least to be shown to assistants to say, "Now, THIS is what we're looking for."
The kid—he DID sound like early 20's—said he was about half way through the MS and really enjoying it. I didn't test him to see if he was actually reading it. I was too flattered. I suppose, that if he was leading me on, that he did a darn good job of appealing to my vanity.
Not that writers are ego-pigs. OH NO.
So this is a good thing, right? At least someone is reading OTE. Maybe it means I am not completely dead in the water yet. I would like to think I wasn't. I really, really, REALLY would. At any rate, the boy himself called me back and said that the Man Himself was out of town and would call me Himself towards the end of next week.
We'll see. I'm not planning any victory parties.
Am I the only person just slightly depressed about the release of Harry Potter IV. Oh, of course, I am slavering to read it with the other 10.6 million US fans. As an author, it depresses me....
Not that writers NEED a reason to feel depressed. OH NO.
We used to say, "There's only one Stephen King," by way of saying that most of us were never freaking going to make it anyway, so not to get crushed by having high expectations dashed against the hard ground of the book business. Well, old JKR has indeed raised the bar, don't you think? Having become richer than the Queen of England on her books. It should be inspiring... but there is only one JKR. And I don't see it being me any time soon.
Did I just depress you? Awwwww, poor baby. I try not to think about it too.
Exactly. I'll go buy my copy sometime next month. I have deadlines on top of my deadlines and can't afford to take the two solid days to read The Tome without sleeping. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the new Rug Rats All Grown Up movie about herded ostriches.
Okay, so I'm trying to think of some more self-deprecating and snarky things to write today and can't quite come up with any. It's not that things are going so bad, it's that i feel so freaking awful.
A good part of that is strictly physical. In VA, July is high season for Crepe Myrtle. Supposedly, these showy bloomers grow as far north as Massachusetts, but I've never seen one north of Maryland. And damn, I'm glad! I am so allergic to these things, I spend the better part of June, July and August as a basket case with sinus headaches that get so bad I wanna puke. I spend the majority of the summer alternatley pushing myself to work and wishing I was somewhere else. Ie yi yi, I hate being so sick every year.
The good news is that we really only need to live here for another 6 years or so. Then Dh will retire from the Navy and we get to leave and go live where WE want to live. Of course, where we want to live is Tennessee... which has worse allergies and makes me sicker than ever despite not having crepe myrtle.
I think I'll just make myself a plastic bubble and live in it.
Well, I guess it is time to go get supper out of the pressure cooker. Hope y'all feel better than I do.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Now, we watch and wait...
This has been a crazy couple of months. When last I blogged, my youngest daughter had just had an MRI to pinpoint where a muscle biopsy should be done and to see if there was any indication of inflammation (which would have lead to a firm diagnosis as dermatomyocitis of polymyocitis). The day that I was supposed to call the doctor to schedule a follow up, the paternal grandmother of my husband died.
So in 24 hours, I packed up the 5 of us to make a 4000 mile road trip to New Mexico and back. We took 3 weeks, visited a lot of family, drove like maniacs, had our little dog get mauled by a 60 lb chow-mix, and got home in one piece though considerably poorer in wallet and ruffled in spirit. Three days later, dear husband's other grand mother passed. We didn't go to this funeral though.
The next couple weeks were concerned with getting school finished for the year and bidding adieu to my spouse who deployed with the Navy for a couple months. With all the stress, my middle and littlest began wetting their pants like 4 and 5 times a day. Being away for three weeks pretty much trashed my oldest daughter's report card, but she finished out the year. My middlest, the drama empress, graduated from pre-K with flying colors and an award for "Most Creative." My littlest... well, it was just weird to notice how strong she was, how she could climb, and didn't waddle when she ran, how she didnt fall so much. I went to pick her up from daycare one day in May and she just stood up off the floor without using her hands. I nearly cried.
So then in June, we go away to my mother's shore house where I normally work my ass off and get very little in the way of appreciation. This year was not much different, except that I could tell mom was at least trying to be appreciative. I wallpapered the bedroom, made new curtains for the living room, a new bedspread, and pillow covers for the day bed, fixed a miriad of small things etc and so on.
We get back and FINALLY I take my littlest to the neurologist to follow up her MRI. She shows almost no sign of ever having a muscular disorder. I can still tell she's a little weak, but she runs without a waddle, and you can lift her without her slipping. She has reflexes. She climbs stairs. She pops off the floor without a hint of Gower's Maneuver. And the neuro's eyes just keep getting bigger and bigger and he keeps smiling wider and wider. The poor man doesn't know what to think. "She's better!" he tells me. Well, I can see this already.
The neuro says there's no hint of inflammation on the MRI, so that rules out the 2 -myocitises. And seeing as she is doing so well, he doesn't want to do a muscle biopsy either. As far as he says, there really aren't any forms of muscular dystrophy that have points where a child will improve this much over this long a period of time.
So, the bad news is, we still don't know what it was that made her sick. It could have been a virus of some sort--one that had a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGG recovery arc. There is an unknowable possibility that the weakness might return. I try not to think about this. The good news is that she is very nearly well, and is catching up with her age peers as far as physical ability. For now, the neuro says watch and wait. If she stays well or improves, he wants to see her in October. If she gets worse, back she goes.
Let's hope this is the first rays of the dawning and not just a bright flash before the storm.
So, last entry, a tech book contract just fell into my lap. This entry, that too is on thin ice. The co-author completely dropped out, even of just doing 20% of the book. He did this right before the holiday weekend, so I am not sure what kind of effect it's going to have on the project. On the one hand, it's a book deal. On the other hand, I've seen better money... only $3200 advance and 9.5% royalty. I still have to give up 15% to the agent, which pays me a bit over $2700 to write a 250 page book... like $12/page. Now, I'm not greed—ok, I am—but that seems like a lot of work for not much moula. Did I also mention I'm kind of lazy? I'm also not the subject expert for this book. That was the other guy.
If the book retails for $25 (not unusual for a tech book), then they'd have to sell like 1350 to earn out the advance and make me any royalties. A best-selling tech book might sell 10K copies, a moderate seller might sell 2K-5K. So at best, I don't expect there to be a lot more money coming in from this. It's the advance or naught.
Now, for what my editor at NewsForge told me. His name's Robin (he's a guy Robin not a girl Robin) and he's a real mercenary sort of fellow, having come to journalism from a background in... limosine driving. He says, "you don't write books for the money, you write them for your career." So I am left pondering. There really isn't a lot of money in this. There might not even be enough to make up for the income i'm going to lose working on it. But I wonder, is it time to do something "for my career?"
This year, I've been able to put two things on my resume I didn't have before "contributing editor" and "senior writer." It seems that those things get a little bit of attention. My buddy and former colleague at About This Particular Macintosh writes for MacWorld (the #1), while I write for MacAddict (the #2). I've watched him publish 3 books in the eighteen months since I wimped out of my first book deal.
Truth was, I was spooked... scared. I didn't pursue the books deals because I was afraid that I couldn't write a whole book--despite having written 4 novels and a 240 chapter serial. It was too big, too intimidating. When publisher #1 strung me along for 6 months and then dumped the book with a lame excuse, I didn't pursue the second publisher.
So maybe it's time. Is it time?
Oh, and incidentally, I finished Fall from Grace, book 5 of the On the Edge series. I finally found an ending, or really, the ending found me. That does seem to be how the muse works. She comes in her own time and pours magic into my hands.
Anyway, while I was in RI, I tried to figure out which of my works-in-progress was going to get the nod. As usual, after poring over the saleable, the light, the amusing and the profitable, I chose the one that will be hardest to sell and won't make me a dime if I do. There were a few I was scared of, a couple that didn't really interest me, one I still don't feel equal to, and then this one, which makes my muse sing.
The working title is The Barunian Incident and it's a socio-political space opera sci-fi—okay, "speculative fiction" if we MUST. As per my usual, there is a triangle of doomed lovers and lots of angst. As per not my usual, there is also political intrigue, social upheaval, sword fighting and explosions. I get to create whole civilizations... it's kind of fun. I'm enjoying it, except that since I came back from RI and got buried under work and other administrivia of being a mom and a jouralist, I haven't had a single fictional thought at all. Too much stress makes me very dull and DULL is what I am right now.
So we'll see. It took 3 years to write Unison and Counterpoint. It took 16 months, on and off, to write Fall from Grace. With OTE essentially dead in the water, I promised myself that I would write something different when I finished FFG. So now I am. If I got any more different, I'd be writing horror.Tune in next week for the upshot of my discussion with my agent about the future—or lack of the same—of the OTE series.
So in 24 hours, I packed up the 5 of us to make a 4000 mile road trip to New Mexico and back. We took 3 weeks, visited a lot of family, drove like maniacs, had our little dog get mauled by a 60 lb chow-mix, and got home in one piece though considerably poorer in wallet and ruffled in spirit. Three days later, dear husband's other grand mother passed. We didn't go to this funeral though.
The next couple weeks were concerned with getting school finished for the year and bidding adieu to my spouse who deployed with the Navy for a couple months. With all the stress, my middle and littlest began wetting their pants like 4 and 5 times a day. Being away for three weeks pretty much trashed my oldest daughter's report card, but she finished out the year. My middlest, the drama empress, graduated from pre-K with flying colors and an award for "Most Creative." My littlest... well, it was just weird to notice how strong she was, how she could climb, and didn't waddle when she ran, how she didnt fall so much. I went to pick her up from daycare one day in May and she just stood up off the floor without using her hands. I nearly cried.
So then in June, we go away to my mother's shore house where I normally work my ass off and get very little in the way of appreciation. This year was not much different, except that I could tell mom was at least trying to be appreciative. I wallpapered the bedroom, made new curtains for the living room, a new bedspread, and pillow covers for the day bed, fixed a miriad of small things etc and so on.
We get back and FINALLY I take my littlest to the neurologist to follow up her MRI. She shows almost no sign of ever having a muscular disorder. I can still tell she's a little weak, but she runs without a waddle, and you can lift her without her slipping. She has reflexes. She climbs stairs. She pops off the floor without a hint of Gower's Maneuver. And the neuro's eyes just keep getting bigger and bigger and he keeps smiling wider and wider. The poor man doesn't know what to think. "She's better!" he tells me. Well, I can see this already.
The neuro says there's no hint of inflammation on the MRI, so that rules out the 2 -myocitises. And seeing as she is doing so well, he doesn't want to do a muscle biopsy either. As far as he says, there really aren't any forms of muscular dystrophy that have points where a child will improve this much over this long a period of time.
So, the bad news is, we still don't know what it was that made her sick. It could have been a virus of some sort--one that had a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGG recovery arc. There is an unknowable possibility that the weakness might return. I try not to think about this. The good news is that she is very nearly well, and is catching up with her age peers as far as physical ability. For now, the neuro says watch and wait. If she stays well or improves, he wants to see her in October. If she gets worse, back she goes.
Let's hope this is the first rays of the dawning and not just a bright flash before the storm.
So, last entry, a tech book contract just fell into my lap. This entry, that too is on thin ice. The co-author completely dropped out, even of just doing 20% of the book. He did this right before the holiday weekend, so I am not sure what kind of effect it's going to have on the project. On the one hand, it's a book deal. On the other hand, I've seen better money... only $3200 advance and 9.5% royalty. I still have to give up 15% to the agent, which pays me a bit over $2700 to write a 250 page book... like $12/page. Now, I'm not greed—ok, I am—but that seems like a lot of work for not much moula. Did I also mention I'm kind of lazy? I'm also not the subject expert for this book. That was the other guy.
If the book retails for $25 (not unusual for a tech book), then they'd have to sell like 1350 to earn out the advance and make me any royalties. A best-selling tech book might sell 10K copies, a moderate seller might sell 2K-5K. So at best, I don't expect there to be a lot more money coming in from this. It's the advance or naught.
Now, for what my editor at NewsForge told me. His name's Robin (he's a guy Robin not a girl Robin) and he's a real mercenary sort of fellow, having come to journalism from a background in... limosine driving. He says, "you don't write books for the money, you write them for your career." So I am left pondering. There really isn't a lot of money in this. There might not even be enough to make up for the income i'm going to lose working on it. But I wonder, is it time to do something "for my career?"
This year, I've been able to put two things on my resume I didn't have before "contributing editor" and "senior writer." It seems that those things get a little bit of attention. My buddy and former colleague at About This Particular Macintosh writes for MacWorld (the #1), while I write for MacAddict (the #2). I've watched him publish 3 books in the eighteen months since I wimped out of my first book deal.
Truth was, I was spooked... scared. I didn't pursue the books deals because I was afraid that I couldn't write a whole book--despite having written 4 novels and a 240 chapter serial. It was too big, too intimidating. When publisher #1 strung me along for 6 months and then dumped the book with a lame excuse, I didn't pursue the second publisher.
So maybe it's time. Is it time?
Oh, and incidentally, I finished Fall from Grace, book 5 of the On the Edge series. I finally found an ending, or really, the ending found me. That does seem to be how the muse works. She comes in her own time and pours magic into my hands.
Anyway, while I was in RI, I tried to figure out which of my works-in-progress was going to get the nod. As usual, after poring over the saleable, the light, the amusing and the profitable, I chose the one that will be hardest to sell and won't make me a dime if I do. There were a few I was scared of, a couple that didn't really interest me, one I still don't feel equal to, and then this one, which makes my muse sing.
The working title is The Barunian Incident and it's a socio-political space opera sci-fi—okay, "speculative fiction" if we MUST. As per my usual, there is a triangle of doomed lovers and lots of angst. As per not my usual, there is also political intrigue, social upheaval, sword fighting and explosions. I get to create whole civilizations... it's kind of fun. I'm enjoying it, except that since I came back from RI and got buried under work and other administrivia of being a mom and a jouralist, I haven't had a single fictional thought at all. Too much stress makes me very dull and DULL is what I am right now.
So we'll see. It took 3 years to write Unison and Counterpoint. It took 16 months, on and off, to write Fall from Grace. With OTE essentially dead in the water, I promised myself that I would write something different when I finished FFG. So now I am. If I got any more different, I'd be writing horror.Tune in next week for the upshot of my discussion with my agent about the future—or lack of the same—of the OTE series.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Figure Skating Urges and Ice Blue Moods
Can I admit to being a tiny bit blue?
It's just a delicate shade of azure. Really. It's hard to be too upset surrounded by lovliness as I am. I am on a working vacation at my mother's shore house. The Cottage, as we call it, has been in my family for over 40 years... which explains why regular people like us can afford to have a house on the water. You can see pics at Tyler-Cottage.com. The panorama at the top of the page--I'm looking at thge real thing right now. Hard to be too blue, no?
The bad news is, the assistant at PMA who was my contact is leaving the firm. Now technically, I am signed to Peter Miller, the principle, but I haven't talked to him since the initial call in January. When I called roughly once a month, I got the assistant. You do the math. So I get an email at 5 PM Friday from said assistant saying basically "well, bye! It was nice to know ya!" And this leaves me wondering—okay, PANICKING—over exactly what is to become of me and On the Edge. I emailed Peter and his response was "remind me who you are." Oh THAT makes me feel good!!! Sigh. Another set back.
There is good news. After getting bounced from failed agent to promoted agent at Studio B (my tech book agent) over the last two years, I ended up with a new agent Laura Lewin. I say her name because this chick I can recommend. She comes back at me every couple months with this or that opportunity that she's heard of and am I interested in. A couple of them have not panned out. Finally, one has. A Studio B author pitched a book, sold the proposal and then couldn't commit to the writing schedule they wanted. So he's going to write about 20% of the book and I'm going to write 80% of the book. His name goes first on the cover and mine goes first on the check <grin>.
So, last but not least, an update on my daughter. Over the last several months, my three year old has grown markedly stronger. The muscular dystrophy was almost like a bad dream. we took her to Children's Hospital of the King's Daughter's in Norfolk to be a case at the Friday symposium the neurology department has for all the doctors and residents and student. The upshot being 4 different possibilities from the 4 doctors there, none of them anything that we had heretofore tested for. All of them proscribed the same treatment though, an MRI to pinpoint where a muscle biopsy should be done. So they did the MRI, and then we had two deaths in the family and made a 4000 mile road trip to the funeral, finished the school year and Dr Neurologist is not returning my calls. SIGH.
This would all be fine, except Joyah's teeth are rotting again. We've had troubles with her teeth in the past. At age 12 months, she had 8 cavities, despite having dental care similar to my other daughters who have had two cavities between them in their combined 15 years of life. By 18 months when she was old enough to get filled, she had 2 more. They filled 10 cavities and we undertook a very ambitious regimine of brushing and flossing—well, ambitious for us. It's done wonders for the whole rest of the family... except Joyah, who has at present about 3 new cavities in the last month. Inability to metabolize calcium is related to certain forms of muscular dystrophy. And a spate of cavities preceeded her last episode of weakening. in short, unless this is unrelated, and it might be, we are in for another round of weakening.
I was hoping that it was over.
Okay, maybe I do have reason to be a little blue.
It's just a delicate shade of azure. Really. It's hard to be too upset surrounded by lovliness as I am. I am on a working vacation at my mother's shore house. The Cottage, as we call it, has been in my family for over 40 years... which explains why regular people like us can afford to have a house on the water. You can see pics at Tyler-Cottage.com. The panorama at the top of the page--I'm looking at thge real thing right now. Hard to be too blue, no?
The bad news is, the assistant at PMA who was my contact is leaving the firm. Now technically, I am signed to Peter Miller, the principle, but I haven't talked to him since the initial call in January. When I called roughly once a month, I got the assistant. You do the math. So I get an email at 5 PM Friday from said assistant saying basically "well, bye! It was nice to know ya!" And this leaves me wondering—okay, PANICKING—over exactly what is to become of me and On the Edge. I emailed Peter and his response was "remind me who you are." Oh THAT makes me feel good!!! Sigh. Another set back.
There is good news. After getting bounced from failed agent to promoted agent at Studio B (my tech book agent) over the last two years, I ended up with a new agent Laura Lewin. I say her name because this chick I can recommend. She comes back at me every couple months with this or that opportunity that she's heard of and am I interested in. A couple of them have not panned out. Finally, one has. A Studio B author pitched a book, sold the proposal and then couldn't commit to the writing schedule they wanted. So he's going to write about 20% of the book and I'm going to write 80% of the book. His name goes first on the cover and mine goes first on the check <grin>.
So, last but not least, an update on my daughter. Over the last several months, my three year old has grown markedly stronger. The muscular dystrophy was almost like a bad dream. we took her to Children's Hospital of the King's Daughter's in Norfolk to be a case at the Friday symposium the neurology department has for all the doctors and residents and student. The upshot being 4 different possibilities from the 4 doctors there, none of them anything that we had heretofore tested for. All of them proscribed the same treatment though, an MRI to pinpoint where a muscle biopsy should be done. So they did the MRI, and then we had two deaths in the family and made a 4000 mile road trip to the funeral, finished the school year and Dr Neurologist is not returning my calls. SIGH.
This would all be fine, except Joyah's teeth are rotting again. We've had troubles with her teeth in the past. At age 12 months, she had 8 cavities, despite having dental care similar to my other daughters who have had two cavities between them in their combined 15 years of life. By 18 months when she was old enough to get filled, she had 2 more. They filled 10 cavities and we undertook a very ambitious regimine of brushing and flossing—well, ambitious for us. It's done wonders for the whole rest of the family... except Joyah, who has at present about 3 new cavities in the last month. Inability to metabolize calcium is related to certain forms of muscular dystrophy. And a spate of cavities preceeded her last episode of weakening. in short, unless this is unrelated, and it might be, we are in for another round of weakening.
I was hoping that it was over.
Okay, maybe I do have reason to be a little blue.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Does that make me a grand-mother, a troop leader or a pastry chef?
So, our promiscuous adolescent cat Smores had her litter in my closet last night at about 3 AM. I was having this weird dream that I was in an abandoned building trying to save some kitten stuck in a pipe. I finally woke to realize the mewing was REAL! Here are some pictures:
There are 6 kittens (not 7 as I had originally thought): one black, one orange tabby, two orange and white, one orange tabby and white, one white with orange and black patches. Since smores are an invention of the Girl Scouts (betcha didn't know that) and my oldest girl is a Scout, we decided to name the kittens after Girl Scout cookies.
Black: Double Dutch (because "Thin Mint" is a dumb name for a cat)
Orange Tabby: Samoas
Orange and White: Trefoil and Do-si-do
Orange Tabby and White: All-About
White with Orange and Black patches: Tagalong
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