C. L. Norman

• Water cooking in the sun on a concrete sidewalk smells like my childhood.

• Annie and Auggie need to begin a romantic subplot on Covert Affairs. Their chemistry is my favorite part of the show so far.

• Writing outlines is hard. I usually am a seat-of-my-pants-type writer. A challenge/assignment for my writing group has us writing an outline for a novel due next Thursday and my brain keeps resisting it. I will do it!

• Abbie on NCIS is cool.

• Having my oldest child out of the country for the Fringe Festival makes me feel old. The first faint feelings of empty next syndrome are stirring in my heart.

• Cast in Chaos by Michelle Sagara is a great book. My one complaint with it had to do with the part just before the ending. Something about the way it was written made me feel almost like things went into slow motion. Can’t wait to hear more of Kaylin’s adventures.

• As Lie The Dead by Kelly Meding kept up the pace of the first book. Coming back from the dead never was so cool.

• Step Up 3D was a good movie but gratuitous 3D effects are annoying.

• Visiting amusement parks on a Saturday in August is not as fun as it may sound.

• And finally, keep your eye on the blankie. If you don’t, your son will make you go to extraordinary means to get it back.

        

This week can be summed up in one word “Busy”.

I don’t have much to report unless you are interested in hearing about all the mommy duties and extra hours I worked this week. However there are a couple neat things to report.

Work

I work at the nook desk one to three times a week and this week was no exception. Monday the news came down that the price on “nook original” was being dropped and a new “nook lite’ was coming in and it’s price was even better. So lots to learn about at work and now nook is even more tempting. I find it incredibly easy to spend money and my job is one big temptation and they keep sweetening the pot.

Proud of my Brother

My baby brother graduated from Perry Technical Institute on Thursday and I am so proud. He has always struggled with school and to see him walk up in his cap and gown; receive his certificate; and walk with a smile on his face  was a great moment. My baby sister graduated last month and now the youngest of us (and there are 8 in the family) has made it through some form of higher education. It is a very cool moment for the family.

Hopefully next week will be a bit more interesting to share. At the very least I’ll be wishing you a Happy 4th. Have a good week.

        

Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads and Dad-like folks out there. I hope your loved ones showed you their appreciation today with cuddles or food or a phone call. I just finished making my husband breakfast for dinner; I worked this morning and wasn’t able to make him breakfast in bed. He eyeballed the bacon and promptly made himself a bacon sandwich. <shrugs> At least he enjoyed the food.

Reading

Eat, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss: I’ve been reading this book during my breaks at work for the last few weeks and I finished it up today. I’ve been told several times “you should read it” and I finally did. It is a hilarious look at those pesky punctuation rules, trends, and history. I found myself laughing out loud, literally, many times. As an American, I also found it very interesting to look at writing from a British perspective. To sum up, you should read this book.

Writing

Writing group met this week and, while it wasn’t my turn to submit, I learned some things from the critiqued pieces. Both of them were too heavy on backstory, in my opinion; my stories have been lacking on the world-building, or at least on communicating the world building. I detest info-dump-type sharing of the setting and history of the story. I suppose in response to that I have been leaning too far the other direction and not sharing enough of the details of the setting with my readers. Seeing the other end of the spectrum was helpful. Maybe my writing will improve.

        

Hi, guys. Another week, another post.

Reading

Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge. The fifth in the Nocturne City series and another heroine shapeshifter. Luna Wilder is the main character in these books and she heads up the Supernatural Crimes Section of the police department. In this book, (despite the mistake on the cover blurb) Luna gets caught up in an investigation into a Russian sex slave ring. Young supernatural women are going missing and Luna is compelled to help them. An ex makes an appearance and her new boyfriend asks a question complicating Luna’s already full plate. This book is one I could not put down, and why would I even try? It is that good.

Revenant by Phaedra Weldon. Mental note: Ask Zoe Martinique how she keeps track of all her mental notes. Zoe Martinique started off this series as a plain old investigator who just happened to have the little talent of being able to go Out of Body (OOB) and spy on people incorporeally. Handy trick that. By this time, as a result of a connection with a certain Vin Diesal look-alike from the Abysmal plane, she is now Wraith. Wraith with a capital W, complete with scary black wings and killer bunny slippers on her feet. Irreverent and funny, Zoe’s friends are being threatened by a series of attacks on Revenants AKA vampires (but not the kind you’ve been reading about) and is off to save them. By the way, you can blame Zoe for my Sunday post being posted on Monday morning.

TV

Lie to Me. Cal is back in business, rooting out the liars and having fun doing it. In the season opener, Cal is after a serial killer. Everyone else doesn’t see it, but Cal pushes forward and proves himself right, again. Doctor Johnny Fever saw a UFO and his career was saved. Ok, so maybe it was the actor, Howard Hesseman, playing a professor who saw the UFO and as everyone thought he was crazy his career was in jeopardy. This show is one of my favorites. The team dynamic, the irreverent Cal, and the “who-done-it” aspects of this show hit all the right notes with me and I am happy it is back for the summer.

Good Guys. I’m on the fence about this new series. On one hand it is a cop and partner show. Two partners who are completely different are out there solving crimes. On the other hand it is a tongue-in-cheek spoof of a cop show, poking fun at the genre with a lot of strange, but funny, flashbacks.  ”I finally figured out how to use the computer machine.”–Dan Stark as he wedges the laptop into the car to hold down the accelerator.

Stargate SG-U. Wow. Season finale and it won’t be coming back until October. I think there were tears in my eyes when I knew how long it would be before I FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE! The season finale has the potential for new faces (and another faction) to be added to the Destiny. It also has the potential for several favorites to be leaving. I am loving this show and I am going to be counting the days until the next season starts.

Writing

You might think with all this reading and watching of the TV, I didn’t have time to write. You would be wrong. While my word count might not be that impressive, I did make progress on my current story. I am also seeing the path I want to start down with the next scene or two which is always nice. The path is fog shrouded and murky, and I think I hear some creepy music playing, but there is some excitement down there I can’t wait to explore.

Movies

Karate Kid. I told you that I wanted to see this movie and so I took the family with me to celebrate the kids’ last day of school. I really enjoyed it. There was enough of a balance between the familiar and new, that everyone could have fun with this movie. Jaden Smith has a lot of his dad in him (or at least a lot of what his dad shows on the screen) and Jackie Chan is, as always, awesome. Fun, fresh, and most importantly, this movie teaches kids to do their chores and respect their elders. You should see it.

How was your week? Any summer plans you are jumping into already?

        

I took yesterday off from the computer. I needed a break from my normal routine and so this post is a day late.

Reading

I read Ilona Andrews‘ Magic Bleeds, fourth in the Kate Daniels series. I enjoyed this book, as I did all the others, greatly. The pacing, the voice of the character and author, the setting; all these things suck me in and keep me reading until the last page. And then looking for more pages and being disappointed when I couldn’t find any.

Writing

I turned in the first 10 pages of my rough draft for group and it was critiqued last week. I was hesitant to turn in something unfinished and so rough but I am determined to finish a novel length project this year and so I didn’t want to write a short story just for group. My critique raised a bunch of questions and pointed out some holes in the story so far that are helping generate new ideas. I will have to remember how that helped and try showing some pages to a close friend or two when I get stuck in this story.

Movies

My daughter begged for some time with me, asking to go see Letters to Juliet. Y’all know I wanted to see that movie and to spend time with my oldest daughter just sweetened the deal. Together we went and laughed and cried and enjoyed the story. The movie is fun and watching the relationships between Sophie and Claire, and Sophie and Charlie, develop was very entertaining. The one sour note for me was that I couldn’t believe Sophie had ever been in love with Victor, her fiance.

That was my week. How was yours?

        

Howdy Friends. It has been a slow week of writing and watching the clock and wondering when my husband is coming home from work. He was putting in A LOT of extra hours and so I spent extra hours with the kids to give them more parent time.

Reading

I am trying out an ebook for the first time this week via the B&N eReader app for my PC. I prefer the print book still but the ebook was free and I like that price so we will see.

Writing

Speaking of ebooks, Barnes & Noble announced pubit! this week and everyone is buzzing about it at work and in my social networks. My writing group is considering trying to publish an anthology using that technology. There are a lot of things to take into consideration and decisions to make but it is still exciting all the same to have that option out there.

I submitted some stories this week and in the process I accidentally submitted the same story twice. I used the right word counts in the cover letters but the same title and the same file attachments. Seconds after hitting that send button I knew I had done it and then I panicked. How do I let them know I made a mistake and sound professional at the same time? I am such a worry wart but it was a small but good experience. I learned how to say Oops! like a professional.

Spider Tracks

Another great post by Dean Wesley Smith on Talent as a Myth. I like what he has to say about it and in fact, had already come to the conclusion that the hard work he talks about is the next skill I need to develop to continue in the writing field. My problem though comes from everyone telling me how talented I am but not believing them. My self esteem is very weak and I always think that when folks praise my writing clearly they are just being nice and they mean the opposite.

Discovered the site Adventures in Children’s Publishing and the character worksheet series. I found them interesting and while I am not sure I will actually use the sheet, I did find reading through the questions with my current MC in mind helpful.

J. A. Konrath’s press release for Shaken by Amazon got me thinking. I am still too new to this business to know all the ramifications or even be able to guess them but this is a neat development. So many changes coming down the line, it makes a writing career seem like a sandbox full of possibilities as long as one has the imagination to pursue them.

So my week went well, how was yours?

        

Salutations, friends. Hope your week went well, mine did.

Graduation

My littlest sister has graduation Magna Cum Laude from WSU with a Psychology degree. We are so proud of her and I had the pleasure of watching her walk the walk and hide from the cameras after as much as she could. I am so excited for her future and where it will go from here. So many possibilities.

Writing

I am still feeling my way to a process for the novel I want to write. I have a protagonist I adore speaking incessantly in my mind’s theater. He struts about ranting and bragging and occasionally revealing bits of his story to me. I see a little bit of a couple subplots and the start of the main one but the rest remains shrouded. This time I won’t give up. I will write and finish a novel no matter how much it sucks.

Write on the River

I attended the Write on the River writing conference for the first time yesterday and I am very glad I went. Terry Brooks was the keynote speaker. I have adored his work since I was 13 years old and I am so glad I had the opportunity to speak with him face to face. He and his wife are wonderful people.

Samuel Ligon hosted a workshop on Novels: Launches and Landings and while I have never heard of him before I greatly enjoyed learning from him. One thing that I took away from his lecture was the idea that writers need to maintain a balance between ego and failure. Ego so we have the confidence to submit and keep writing. Failure so we realize that we need to keep improving as nothing is ever good enough. I myself have a healthy dose of the failure side of things, I am working on the ego part.

Randall Platt workshopped on Character Etching. She handed out a nice poem about all the wonderful things that are accomplished only after a lot of failures. She also handed out the interview sheet she uses to get to know her characters and in the workshop we created Wendell Hopscotch, age 37, born in an abandoned fish hatchery to unwed teens. From there he only got more interesting and real and he touched something in all of us.  She also posed the question “why spend your life fighting for other peoples dreams?” A question that I feel in my soul and am looking forward to acting upon.

The last workshop I went to was given by Anjali Banerjee about Avoiding the Pitfalls of the Middle Grade novel. She taught about having your protagonist “save the cat” in the first few pages to make them redeemable and sympathetic to the reader. She also highly recommended finding a mentor that is further up the trail, they will teach you so much more than writing groups.

If things work out right next year, I hope to return. It was a wonderful experience and I recommend it to any writer, aspiring or not.

        

Good morning all. Another week is drawing to a close and it is time for my weekly post.

Happy Mother’s Day

Today is mother’s day. A day for spending time with your kids and the mothers in your life. My grade school kids have special things they have made for me and my teen daughters will hold in their attitudes long enough to mumble “happy mother’s day, mom”. It is a family day. Hope you enjoy yours.

Reading

This week I read Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris as I promised I would last week. I have to say I enjoyed it. I have heard some people complain that it is slower paced than the previous novels. I agree with this but it felt right for Sookie and Co. to have that breather. To me it feels like the lull before the storm. This book is all about family. Sookie and her brother get close again. Sam is still worried about his family and their reaction to the Great Reveal. Even Eric has some relatives come to town. There is still a lot going on but more of it has to do with relationships. There is even an appearance by Russian nobility. Fun.

I also read The Sweet Scent of Blood by Suzanne McLeod. I can’t rave about this book quite as much. It is the first in the series and all the different things that were introduced in this book were confusing in places. I did enjoy most of it and found it interesting take on vampires and fae. Also the character of Finn is a satyr and you just don’t see many satyrs in fiction these days. I like him. The vampire nobility that involve themselves with Genny’s life are darkly mysterious and their motives remain in the shadows. That said I will be reading the next one in the series. Now that I understand (or think I do) what is going on with Genny and her past, I am ready to dive forward in her world and see where things go.

Movies

I saw Iron Man 2 on Friday with my husband and two boys and I loved it. My 7 year old has dubbed it the third best movie of all time. Tony Stark has more snark than can fit in that suit and Vanko was sufficiently smart and creepy to be a worthy adversary. The action was eye-popping and fun, the way superhero action movies should be. I recommend this movie to comic fans, action fans, and comedy fans. It even has a bit of something for fans of romance.

Writing

I am still working on that “sitting down and writing everyday” thing that I need to progress further in this dream of mine. I have a conference coming up on Saturday where Terry Brooks is the keynote speaker. I have been a fan of his since I was in high school. In particular I have a soft spot for his character Allanon from the first Shannara series. Allanon had that black cloak that obscured his features and his motives wonderfully well. The first time through the books I didn’t know if he was just pretending to be a good guy or not.

 I also will be heading to a convention and participating in a writing workshop May 28th through the 31st. I found out who is critiquing my submission and now my husband is begging to pretend to be me and go. I will share with you who it is after I hear what he has to say. I can say that I am totally looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

How was your week? Are you enjoying your Mother’s Day?

        

With my top hat (10% off) on my head and a clean cup for tea in front of me, let me ask you a question:

Why is a novel like a child?

Answer: Neither comes with an instruction book.

I have always known this in a vague, intellectual way but that didn’t keep me from sitting at the back of writing panels and hoping that the authors let loose the secret method for writing a novel. I took notes and studied what they said, how they said it, and even what they wore, hoping that I could glean that little thing that would lead me through the door into novel land.

One of the things I want to hear the “right answer” for is when to do the research and/or worldbuilding for a particular project. Raising my children I wait until something comes up before doing the research. When my second daughter developed allergies to tomatoes, potatoes, and peanuts, I researched into how to help her and what to cook for her. When my youngest son took an interest in trains, I spent some time learning about trains to help him out.

When I am writing I waffle back and forth between researching before or after. If I research before, I’ll have the information that might help shape the story. If I research after the first draft is done, I won’t be researching things that I won’t need.

I am heavily influenced by school and my attitudes towards school when it comes to writing. I am determined to be ‘right’ and follow the directions and get that A. The A in this case standing for an Acceptance letter. I need to treat my process more like raising children; spend time with it, guide it in the direction I want it to go, and have fun doing it.

I am attending two conferences this month; Write on the Rivers and MisCon. I need to go into the panels looking for advice on the craft of writing and use them as opportunities to network. It is a time to make friends with my co-workers (at least someday I hope to be their coworker) and not a time to grill them about the how-to’s of writing novels.

Even if there is an instruction book out there for writing a novel, it won’t be written with me and my ideas in mind. I’ll have to write my own.

        

I attended a funeral today for a grandmother I will miss terribly. I gathered together with family I hadn’t seen in ages. Isn’t it funny (and not in a good way) how the passing of a loved one can bring folks out of the woodwork to gather together? My grandma would have loved it.

After the service I was talking to my grandfather and discovered that this particular cemetary holds the graves of a lot of his side of the family. I loved hearing him talk about it. So very interesting and almost old world feeling. A family cemetary.

Of course there are a lot more than VanHorn’s here but still it felt like I was a part of something and that was neat.

The pictures I took and am including here are of the older parts of the graveyard. There is a newer section with the flat (can I say boring without offending?) headstones. Headstones which are easy to step on as you walk through the grass and give my sisters the heebie-jeebies when they do (have to tease when I can, it is my job as a sister). These older sections with the worn stones of all shapes are sizes always capture my attention.

I look at them and I think of history and all the people who have gone before. I wonder about their lives and their deaths and who they left behind. I wonder about their stories. I wonder if anyone knows their stories still or if they have been forgotten and all that is left to remember them in this world is the stone at the head of their grave.

Morbid, much? It may sound that way but to me it is more like seeing a shelf full of dusty tomes with faded writing on the covers. I want to know what is on the pages and learn the stories contained inside. I want to know who last read and loved the story.

A stone with a name or two carved on it with some dates, maybe a caption as well, is a story waiting to happen. Of course it is also a story that has already happened but unless it is someone I know, chances are I will never know it. This is when having an imagination is a wondrous thing.

I make up stories for the cluster of stones over to my left. I see ghosts of people walking and talking for the stone standing lonely to my right. To quote a movie, “I see dead people.” And at the risk of sounding morbid again, I love it.

If I could find the time to grab my notebook and/or my laptop, I would head to the nearest interesting cemetary, one with stones old and new, standing up and flat in the grass, and use that as a place to write. Time to write in which I think of heading out to the cemetary. I would have a ready supply of names for my characters. The tactile sensations of the grass and stones and trees to ground me in the world-building. The weight of history around me to pull the stories from my soul and write them down to share with the world.