the wife

I just put my wife and son on a bus

Standard

They’re headed downtown to connect with the Link light rail and then on to the airport. My mother-in-law had a medical emergency today. I’m not going to give details because it’s not my place, but my wife threw a bunch of stuff into a rolly backpack, grabbed the kid by the ear and lit off for upstate NY. I’m not sure where things stand, but I hope it all turns out all right.

Me, I’ll probably be following on Saturday morning, if the state of emergency is still ongoing. Until then, I’ll be doing what needs doing to leave this place for a full week, namely: paying bills, cleaning, drinking heavily.

It’s a plan.

Today is my wife’s birthday

Standard

I won’t be online very much, I expect. Have a great day.

That dream I had last night?

Standard

Not a dream. I thought I dreamed that muscle cramps in my leg woke me screaming in the middle of the night. Apparently, either my wife had a similar dream (in which she woke up terrified and worked on my leg until it was better) or it really did happen.

Shit. Drinking water now. Will have a banana soon. Have already apologized to her.

Weird.

In honor of the day

Standard

Happy Mother’s Day.

Five Things for a Friday

Standard

1. After weeks of trying to figure out how to fit exercise into my schedule (“What do I give up?” and “When would I have the energy?” being the most important considerations) I suddenly realized that I could squeeze a long walk into my schedule after I finish my shift at my day job, but before I come home. This week I’ve been walking the bus route toward home for 30-40 minutes, and it’s working well. Soon I’ll bump that up to an hour. It means giving up some reading time at the bus stop, but it’s worth it.

2. My feet and leg pain is back. See number one above. I haven’t told my wife about it because it freaks her out, but it’ll soon be obvious because…

3. Our Mothers Day jaunt will be a trip to the park. Lots of walking. Lots of greenery. She loves long walks outside and considers them an essential part of her spiritual self-care. Unfortunately, our son only ventures outdoors after an hour of whining and misery. But we’re doing it, for her. I expect to be in a lot of pain, and to be stuck in the middle.

4. Also this weekend, a very good, very old friend will be in a nearby town. Will he be able to visit? Will I be able to go visit him? No clue.

5. I’m pretty much committed to making a book trailer for book three. Nothing much is going to happen to it at least until the fall, after Game of Cages (aka book 2) comes out. No rush. I will, however, be watching a ton of trailers in the meantime to see what I like and don’t like.

Surprising 6th item: The pre-writing for The Buried King is at the absolute worst part–I have all the characters set and what they want. I know how they’re going to try to get what they want. What I don’t have is a clear idea of how all the conflicts are going to play out.

Truthfully, I don’t need to know this exactly, but I have to have enough information to be sure that the protagonist is going to have conflict with each of the antagonists, and I need to know that each conflict is going to be different. I’m not there yet, which means I’m ready to start writing chapter one but I’m also not ready. Frustrating.

There was supposed to be a surprising seventh thing, too, but I can’t remember what.

Weird day

Standard

Not ten seconds ago, heavy winds out of the south have started shaking the trees on my block. It’s like a dance party out there.

A few hours ago, my back went out for no reason I can see. I’m hobbling around the apartment, trying to straighten up the place and straighten up my posture, using ice, isometrics, dishwasher, stretching, but not the vacuum. Ow. Also, ow.

My wife flies to the east coast tonight. I need to load up her iPod with TED talks before she goes In fact, I’m going to do that now, then get down on the floor and work on my core muscles.

I love my wife.

Standard

Really, I love her like crazy.

But she uses a pencil to mark her place in books. Hardbacks. Right up close to the spine.

At this point, I’ve gotten in the habit replacing the pencil with a combination of one actual bookmark and a little nagging. But I love her anyway.

Yesterday was supposed to be a day off.

Standard

I was supposed to take all of your advice and spend the day hanging out with my son, playing the new used Wii games I bought (verdict: De Blob=awesome. The Incredible Hulk=WTF were they thinking?) and general relaxing fun.

Instead I received my second round of notes from my agent on Man Bites World and spent about an hour and 15 reviewing the galleys for the last corrections to Game of Cages.

As I mentioned in my picture post yesterday, All the notes (there are only eight) are tweaks to bring out the stakes, fix pacing, or establish context. No prob. The plot and characters are solid (afaict). There’s still one important scene that isn’t quite pulling its weight, but it’s meant to be an oddball. If I can finesse it, I will. Otherwise I’ll just do what my agent suggests and shorten it.

And the Game of Cages galleys just needed straightforward correcting. After the copyedits are entered, a pair of proofreaders will read it, and I’ll have additional fixes to go over. I should have taken some notes about some of the errors they caught; I could have done another self-Thogging post. (For instance, trucks do not “skid on their brakes” omg no, not unless the brakes drop out of the bottom of the vehicle and get wedged beneath the tires.)

Anyway, my agent takes a little vacay starting tomorrow. I have a week to finish the revisions and prep the pages for Key/Egg/Remark. I suspect K/E/R has stalled out because I went off the rails. I’ll need to come up with a way to skim over the unpleasant scenes I’ve been trying to write to get to the fun stuff.

In unrelated news, my wife brought home her CPAP machine last night. I fully expect her to say it was too uncomfortable to sleep in, but I hold out hope that she had a good night.

Off to start the day.

This is the kind of nice guy I am

Standard

I’m going to give you a fantastic but easy apple gingerbread dessert for St. Paddy’s Day. Why? Because I care about you and your taste buds, that’s why.

Sherwood, you’ll want to skip right over this.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Core and peel a pound and a half of apples. Then slice them up into half-inch pieces and mix with 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp lemon peal and spread it out in the bottom of a greased 8X8 inch baking pan.

Sift 1 and 1/4 cups of flour, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp ground cloves into a small bowl. We generally use the dry powder ginger, although if you’re a purist who can’t abide the idea, you can peel and grate a tsp and a half of whole ginger and add it to the next bit.

In a large bowl, cream 1/4 cup of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar. I use the stand mixer for this. After they’re well-mixed, add one egg and 1/2 cup molasses. Not the black strap kind. Gross. Beat until smooth.

Finally, put 1/2 cup of water on to boil. When it’s bubbling strong, toss in 1/2 tsp baking soda.

Beat the molasses mixture, alternately adding the flour mixture and the boiling water. When it’s all mixed nicely, pour it over the apples and slide it into the oven. Bake for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, then cut into squares and serve warm with fresh-whipped cream.

It dirties a few bowls, but it’s so very worth it. It was even worth it back before we had the stand mixer and I had to cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon. My wife loves it and this year, because I’ll be day-jobbing during the day, she’ll be making it herself.

But that’s dessert. The main course will be reuben sandwiches; two years ago we realized we didn’t much care for the boiled potatoes and cabbage, only the leftovers the next day. Now we skip the meal I grew up eating every March 17 and went straight to the good stuff. Thank you, modern times, for helping us treat family traditions with the contempt they deserve.

Seven followup notes on previous topics

Standard

1) As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve finished my agent’s revisions to Man Bites World. I have, in my backpack, a printed copy of the latest version. My agent prefers to read on paper, so I’ll be (priority) mailing a copy to her over lunch.

2) With luck, she’ll declare it ready to submit sometime next week. Without luck, she’ll point out a glaring problem I failed to address sufficiently or introduced in this draft, and there will be more changes make. Hopefully, I’ll have luck.

3) Have I mentioned this book was due on September 1st?

4) I won’t be attending Norwescon after all. My application materials were never received (which is probably my fault, somehow), and although they generously offered to squeeze me into a panel or two I decided not to go at all. I’ve spent the last several weekends working all day long on MBW, which means it’s way past time to stop skimping on Family Day. My wife and son have been neglected for too long. I’m thinking we should go to the Air and Space Museum–I moved to Seattle in 1989 and I’ve still never been. My first sf convention will have to be some other event.

5) 1989? Jesus, I’ve been here a long time.

6) I voted for SFWA leadership, but I’ve thrown away my Nebula ballot. Of everything nominated, movies included, Boneshaker is the only thing I’ve read or seen. No, I haven’t seen the rebooted STAR TREK or AVATAR or DISTRICT 9 or whatever. The short fiction is largely online, but I don’t like reading fiction on my computer screen.

What’s more, it felt like an obligation that I just don’t care about. I find myself doing these things once in a while–a couple weeks ago I made a stab at spreading word that I’m eligible for a particular award, but I felt stupid during and after, and I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not condemning people who self-pimp for awards–that’s their choice and I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t read those posts or click those links, but whatever.

7) Having finished this latest version of book three, I rewarded myself by getting a full eight hours of sleep last night. Crazy, I know! Tomorrow I’ll be getting up at my usual Unbearable O’clock to work on the goof for Project Number Next. I have no contract for this one and no clue if it’s a good idea or not (only that it intrigues me and would be refreshingly different than the Twenty Palaces books).

You know what feels best about this, though? No one knows a thing about this project but me.