Rachel and I are hard at work on the edits for EMERALD KEEP, which is coming soon from Torquere Press – release date is April 8th. So exciting.
Edits, though, means our brains dribble out the bottom of our heads. We’re also finishing up the submission packet for SEALED BY MAGIC and will send that off on the weekend. And I’m planning the blog book tour for EK.
It’s a full week.
And it showed today.
But I walked to work.
And that, Dear Reader, is what a writer’s brain on edits looks like. o.O….
For much of the U.S., it’s getting very cold this weekend and anticipated to get colder this coming week.
Good nap weather.
I got asked the other day, is it hard to write with someone else?
“Hard” isn’t a word I’d use. While it is a challenge to communicate, writing together is deeply satisfying and a lot of fun. It’s like any relationship, though, and it takes work and an investment of time and energy – and yes, frankly, money. I’m flying out to Nevada this coming week, for example. But the rewards are worth it.
I never know how to answer the question, what’s it like to write with a coauthor. Not because I don’t know, but because the answer wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. It’s like trying to answer the question, what’s it like to be married to so-and-so? Being married is unique to each couple, and even within the couple, two different people are likely to give two entirely different answers. It depends on context and individual personality.
I also, less frequently, get the ruder question, why don’t you write by yourself? Somehow it’s seen as bad to write with someone else, as though I’m compensating for someone. I always feel sorry for the person who asks me that question, because it misses the point so widely. Of course I can write, and I do write, on my own frequently. But I enjoy writing with a partner, and that’s why I do it.
Because at the end of the day, it’s a lot of fun.
Now, back to the subject of naps. I wonder if my laundry is done and my blanket is dry and warm and fluffy? Hmm….
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| From LOLCats – For Cats’ People Everywhere |
I’m getting ready to go visit Rachel in Nevada next weekend. As Chicago fixes to go down below zero, I’m looking forward to visiting the desert – the forecast says sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Bikini weather, man – especially today, as I look out the window at the frozen icy snow slush that now covers the ground. Bleck.
I adore traveling. I like to travel where I live, and pretend I’m a tourist in my own town. I like to travel to other places and pretend I’m a tourist there, too. Tourists have gotten a bad rap – we all have the picture in our minds, the loud, arrogant jerk in the awful Hawaiian toucan puke shirt with his wife and her teacup Chihuahua in a Gucci bag, wearing stupid shoes and complaining about the locals.
Thing is, I haven’t actually seen this ubiquitous awful traveler, and I’ve been to a lot of places. Of course, I did see the lady with the, I kid you not, twelve inch long fingernails. It was disgusting. Truly. I felt like I was looking at a living skeleton. I mentioned this to someone and they told me, “Oh, yeah, Chinese emperors used to wear their nails like that.” Wow. Beauty is relative and culturally determined, says the sociologist in me. Eww, says the awful traveler.
But I digress.
I was planning our February trip and pulled a book off my shelf, Quick Escapes Chicago. It got me thinking, maybe there’s one for Las Vegas (there is). The premise of the book is that there are twenty-six suggested escapes near the Chicago area, including one in downtown Chicago itself.
These kinds of things are easy to find, once you know what you’re looking for – and it’s not just books. There are several links to things like Chicagoist, that have suggestions for day trips. Towns and cities typically have tourist sites to lure travelers, and these can provide a wealth of information.
There’s something to be said for going off the beaten track. In fact, there’s a website called Off the Beaten Path. That’s targeting the adventure outdoor travelers, but the idea is the same: look around for things that locals enjoy, that aren’t necessarily the mainstream big tourist spots.
For example, did you know there’s a museum of surgery right here in Chicago? There’s a Superman Museum in Metropolis, Illinois. Farm stands can yield a variety of local color – even a speed trap where you can get a ticket in Dukes of Hazard style, given to you by the largest man ever birthed by woman (I swear he couldn’t have fit in the police cruiser car; I think it had to have been a Tardis).
Even walking around our own neighborhoods, when we do it with the eyes of someone who’s never seen it before, can yield amazing insights. What we see as “normal,” after all, is only normal to us because we see it every day. If you like to snap photos, there are online communities (Picasa and Imgur are two very active ones) that are stuffed to the gills with folks who like to look at the world around them, in all its mundane and glorious detail. When we start to see the world around us with the eye of a photographer, then we truly begin to see.
We are having a New Year’s mini-hop this weekend. I’m hosting it over on my Noonyblog. C’mon over and join us!
Welcome! I’m Noony, and my favorite Teacher’s Pet is Steve, the romantic lead in TIGER TIGER.
1. In high school my crush was…? The captain of the debate team.
2. The craziest thing I did in high school was join ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps).
3. Growing up I wanted to be…? A soldier.
4. On Friday nights you’d have found me… At the beach, by a bonfire with my friends.
5. The hottest teacher at my high school was Mr. Callahan and he taught…? Biology.
Remember, visit the other stops on the hop by clicking the link below. Enter your favorite teacher’s pet at the Nice Girls Writing Naughty blog and be entered in the drawing to win the grand prize.
When you grab a tiger by the tail, sometimes he bites back.
Chicagoland Shifters, Book 2
Veterinary trauma surgeon and animal empath Sasha Soskoff has found everything he ever wanted with his new partners Neal, Steve and Carlos. Life feels as safe and secure as it can be among a group of ex-Marine tiger shifters. Until a homeless man is found, gruesomely mauled and murdered, near Neal’s BDSM club.
When it’s determined a rogue tiger did the deed, the jaguars’ accusing eyes turn toward Sasha’s lovers. The precarious balance of peace tips dangerously toward war.
Neal knows damned well none of his tigers committed the crime. Someone must be in Chicago without his knowledge or permission, and they’d better find him fast before uncertainty and conflict rip the tight-knit band apart from the inside.
As Sasha struggles to heal the stress fractures forming among his tiger family, he begins to wonder if his dreams of a home, and love, were too good to be true. And it’s precisely that moment the killer strikes at the heart of the tiger clan—Sasha himself.
My husband and I celebrate our tenth anniversary this year and we decided to explore our home state of Illinois and nearby St. Louis. Right here in Illinois is the largest archaeological site in North Amercia north of Mexico City: Cahokia Mounds.
No one knows what happened to the more than 20,000 people who called Cahokia home. They disappeared before European contact. Were they destroyed by a plague? Overuse of natural resources? War?
The mounds look like little more than piles of dirt with plants covering them now, but when they were used as a city, they had buildings on top of them. The largest mound in the center of the complex is ten storeys tall – built by hand, with dirt carried in baskets on the backs of workers. On top of this mound stood a large structure, either a home of the leader or some kind of religious temple. No one knows for sure.
I found the silence of the place chilling. The winds don’t say where the people went. The mystery is there, waiting, silent. Not even the peoples who live there now know what made the Cahokians disappear into the mists of history.
Writing prompts are a lot of fun to play with, but I do get questions about them: “How do they work?”
A prompt is just something that spurs your imagination. It could be anything from “write about what you had for dinner last night,” to elaborate frameworks onto which you can put a story: “after dinner one night, a man ran outside in his pajamas and shouted, …” It’s that dot-dot-dot that’s the key – it’s the unfinished sentence, the idea that begs to be fleshed out, that gives you the magic of the prompt.
If you’re in the Chicago area and want to try it out for yourself, stop by Writer Zen Garden’s popular Saturday series, The Prompt Circle. It’s free and lots of fun. If you’re not in the area, try going to Google and type in, “writing prompt.” You’ll get lots of ideas.
Happy August! It’s hard to believe the months of June AND July are over, isn’t it?
We have some exciting news, though! EMERALD KEEP is now under contract with Torquere Press and will be out soon. Yay! And, just in time for Lughnasad, they’re having a site-wide sale for both Torquere Press and their Young Adult imprint, Prizm Books. You can check them out and pick up some great summer reads. Enter coupon code hapaug2014 at checkout and receive a 20% discount!
Woot! We have made it through the challenge. This picture is actually two summers ago, but the sentiment still stands. Hammock, knitting, a relaxing cup of tea – YOU’VE EARNED IT!
But before you go, here’s a parting thought: Rachel and I have been hard at work, behind the scenes, with several of our cohort at the Writer Zen Garden. We’ll be launching the non-profit Zen Garden Collective later this year, a place for people to collaborate, create, and grow.
In the meantime, we hope you’ve enjoyed this ride on the interwebs with me, A. Catherine Noon, and my partner in crime, Rachel Wilder. You can follow us by clicking the “follow” link on the left panel, visit our other blogs, and even join Writer Zen Garden. The Meetup group is free, and so is the online forum; if you’d like to join the forum, please email me at a.catherine.noon AT gmail – we manually approve new members to cut down on spam accounts. (We had a rash of Viagra ads one day and just decided, “Enough is enough!” 🙂
