I Know When I'm Licked. We're Going Dark Here For A While.

An older family member's health took a turn for the worse this past week, and she's been hospitalized. (Which beats having a sick, elderly family member home during a hurricane, actually.) When this kind of thing went on two years ago, with two ill family members, I tried to continue working for months. I got nowhere with the work, anyway, and wasn't satisfied with what I was doing for some of the relatives. I've spent, I'm guessing, three and a half years on elder care of some sort, and I recognize that I'm not one of those powerful people who can do all kinds of things. So I'm just giving up on work for a while.

Fortunately, I do have a completed draft that I just finished self-editing so some day I can step up to the plate again. In the meantime, I just don't have the energy and will power to deal with work and family anymore. If I have any free time, I'm going to spend it reading trash and exercising. Maybe I'll try meditating again.

See ya later.

Hey! I've Heard Of These People!

A couple of weeks ago, I was clearing off the dresser in my bedroom when I found the June, 2006 issue of The Writer. I truly thought, "What the hell?" I had no recollection of putting it there, and, no, it hadn't been there since June, 2006 because I clear off the dresser every month or two. I took it with me while we were doing a little traveling last weekend (that's pretty much all we were doing--two days in the car in order to attend a wedding for four hours), and so I learned that the cover article, Fiction & Nonfiction for Kids, was written by Melissa Stewart, someone I know. I actually know someone. Sure, we're not best friends, but she would recognize me if we passed on the street.

Then this morning, I was on the treadmill reading a magazine article about a movie called Anonymous that's coming out in October. It's a historical film built around the idea that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays. Well, I'd heard about that because Shakespeare's Secret covers the same ground.

Though the trailer for the movie looks as if it has a nude scene, which would make it different from the children's book.

Am I Sensing A Move Away From Personal Blurbs? I Hope So.

I've read three books recently that didn't use those "I am a famous person so you should care what I think" blurbs.

The back cover of Sidekicks used three quotes from professional reviews (and one from Jeff Kinney who is, okay, a famous person), all relating to the author, Jack D. Ferraiolo's, first book. The back cover of The Romeo and Juliet Code also used quotes from professional reviews relating to an earlier book by the author. What these kinds of quotes tell me, a reader, is that people who critique writing professionally have read these authors' work in the past, and here is what they think of it. Whereas the quotes from private individuals may be from friends of the author or from writers who were asked to blurb and felt they had to do it. And, in my experience, such blurbs are often way over the top and gushy, or witty rather than accurate. Whereas people who are paid to review may still be wrong in their assessment of an author's skill, their professional work is being quoted. They aren't doing anybody any favors by blurbing so we readers can hope that they're calling it as they see it. I find this kind of quote far more accurate and far more enticing.

My favorite back cover, though, is still Dust City's. No quotes from anyone. Instead, you just see the line "WHEN YOUR DAD IS THE WOLF WHO KILLED LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD LIFE IS NO FAIRYTALE." It's hard not to pick up that book after seeing that.

And They Say Self-Published Books Can't Get Media Attention

According to Do Little Girls Need Diet Books? at Salon, Maggie Goes on a Diet is doing okay that way.

I'm Not The Only One Whose Schedule Is In Flux

I'm embarrassed to say that usually I'm not that interested in reading about writers whose work I haven't read yet, especially if they're new writers whose work I'm totally unfamiliar with. Time is so short. I can't read about all the new writers out there, so I usually like to go the other way--read the book, search out info about the author.

But I was totally hooked by the Cynsations New Voice post Joseph Lunievicz on Open Wounds. Why? His talk about the way his writing schedule keeps changing, depending on family demands and day job. Recently, he's only been working two or three days a week for twenty to forty minutes a day.

He got the book written. His story left me feeling pumped up. Plus, the guy is a competitive fencer. There's something I don't see every day.

Just Who Are The Bad Guys Here?

I am a big fan of Jack D. Ferraiolo's The Big Splash, which my twelve-year-old niece also enjoyed. (And which I am now going to start referring to as "junior noir," having seen the expression somewhere in the last couple of weeks.) Thus, I picked up his new book, Sidekicks.

Sidekicks is definitely not noir, and I admire a writer moving among genres. What genre is this? Superhero? Is that a genre? Fantasy/scifi? Beats me. I gave up reading superhero comic books when I was in my teens, so I don't know what's been going on with them recently. I can't say that Sidekicks is covering new superhero ground or riffing on any particular kind of superhero theme, because I just don't know. But Ferraiolo does come up with some reasoning for superheroes being super that doesn't involve being exposed to radioactivity. Their existence is a little mysterious the way many physical conditions are a little mysterious, but the medical community in Sidekicks' universe does know about them.

I think most readers will figure out fairly easily that the uberhero Phantom Justice, for whom our main character, Bright Boy/Scott Hutchinson is a sidekick, is more than just controlling of his young ward. However, no one else in this book is who they seem to be, either. The story opens with Bright Boy experiencing the classic teen boy nightmare of being caught responding to the presence of a really good looking young woman. Only in his case, he's caught by a TV camera, and he becomes the laughing stock of a population accustomed to the presence of superheroes.

Bright Boy believes his hokie Spandexie outfit that leaves nothing to the imagination is the greatest problem in his life. If only that were true.

I will admit that Ferraiolo took me by surprise with the secret identity of one character who I had actually forgotten about. I was very pleased. This is an entertaining read that ought to attract readers who aren't interested in realistic fiction.

Sidekicks is a complete story without a cliffhanger, though it does seem to have the potential for a sequel. But, then, superhero stories always do.

The Definition Of The Word "Schedule" Should Include The Words "In Flux"

For years I have believed that if I could just find the perfect schedule, I would be able to crank out work in a Yolen-like manner, live in an orderly home, and reach some kind of spiritual and physical state of satisfaction, if not bliss. Work, creating order, and training all take time. The hours in a day remain the same, so determining how to use them becomes crucial.

I have yet to find that perfect schedule, which means that my schedule is always changing while I look forward it.

This past year my taekwondo training schedule has been changing because of changes at my school. I was on what I'll call the "winter schedule" in the spring, which involved training one evening a week with an occasional second evening class added when I could. Then in mid-June I went on the "summer schedule" when one morning class was added at the school to accomodate the kids who were out of traditional school. Then I could go to the one evening class that I could tolerate, but the morning class as well. I did two morning classes a week for something like eight years, so getting back to two classes--very, very good. Next week I go back to the winter schedule.

On the one hand, I need to train more than once a week to maintain my skills, but a lot of evening classes involving heavy sweating are hard to get into when you are more than eighteen years old, which I am. This means, by the way, that I have to try to find some time at home to add taekwondo to my personal workout/training mix. On the other hand, without the morning classes that I took for around eight years, I can now do a little writing before visiting the elders, which was added to my schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays about a year and a half ago. So we're definitely talking a glass half full situation.

I'm also thinking, as I write this, that perhaps I should think about creating seasonal schedules, with goals for the season.

Hmmm. Hmmm.

The Gatekeeping Problem

Author Robert Lipsyte had an essay in The New York Times Book Review this weekend called Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?.

Now, I've always felt that there is a bizarre thing going on with children's literature because the only literature available to kids is created and vetted by adults, who are a totally different beast. I'm not saying children should write children's books, by any means, or that they should work as editors and reviewers. Still, I accept that children are in a very odd position because every image and thought that comes into their heads by way of books, magazines, Internet, TV, movies...you're following me, right?...is controlled every step of the way by people who are totally unlike them.

In discussing the position of boy readers, in particular, Lipsyte points out that their reading is controlled not just by adults, but by female adults. He writes of novels that "are bought by female editors, stocked by female librarians and taught by female teachers." I suspect that raising this point is going to bring down a storm of outrage upon him because we're a very polarized culture and one camp always feels it's being attacked by the other and is quick to respond. But there is an abundance of women in children's publishing, on every level. And, traditionally, there have been lots of women educators on the elementary and middle school levels where boys' reading habits are presumably being formed.

I wish Lipsyte's essay had included some suggestions about how the adults of either gender working in publishing and education could do more to help connect readers with books that don't, as he describes it, "split along gender lines."

I May Be Beginning On Another Obsession With My On-line Mentor

Years ago, I had a bit of an obsession with Jane Yolen's Journal and began thinking of her as my on-line mentor. What attracted me was her ability to churn out incredible amounts of work and maintain a very active social life. For a while I thought that reading of her exploits would improve my own output. Eventually, though, I began to think that I wasn't modeling myself on her, but comparing myself to her, which wasn't at all good for me because the woman is a freaking machine that appears to exist to write, publish, and go out to eat with interesting friends.

For whatever reason, I decided to start dipping into her journal again. The old Jane work ethic might be a kick in the pants, which can only do one good. So I was reading this post filled with all kinds of exciting work news about book sales and revisions and the ins and outs of editors, and thinking, Yes! Yes! OMG! I am like a plant and Jane is the sun! This is wonderful!

Then I got to the end of her post where she starts talking about having a dessert party for fifteen friends. I couldn't scrape together fifteen friends who would come to my house for dessert, and if I could, I don't know what I'd do with them while we were eating. Then she had four houseguests for five days. Come on! Five days! I wouldn't even want to be someone's houseguest for five days, forget about having someone stay with me that long. And four people? That would take my guestroom and both the sleeper sofas. (Why do I have two couches that turn into beds if I don't want houseguests, you may ask? I cannot be trusted in a furniture store.)

So now I'm feeling anxious again, which is only compounded by the fact that I'm going away for three days and taking one of the elders with me. I need to relax tonight and not be thinking about making dessert! And I know I'm going to go back to Jane's journal when I get back home, drawn like a moth to the flame upon which she will expire.

By the way, I call Jane Jane not because I am being forward but because once during a conference Q&A I asked her a question, and at another conference I had her sign a book for me, so it's almost as if we know each other.

Hey. I wonder if I should friend her on Facebook.

Character Certainly Helps With Plot

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that Character = Plot, but developing character definitely helps a writer to sort of work her way into a plot.

Liz Gallagher at Cynsations.