Sharon Lee, Writer

Author Archive

. . .printing out Trade Secret as I type, today will be spent immersed in the Jethri-verse.  The interwebs seem to be carrying on as usual without my participation.  Carry on, interwebs, carry on.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

77,938/100,000 words OR 78% complete

“I’m afraid that you’ll have nightmares, even if I do finish it,” she said. “I’ve had my share of them, since we started down this path. But, even so — even now — I can’t see what else we could have done; and it was certain that we had to do something.”

“Now you’re just having fun with me,” I said.

Gran glared — then laughed.

“You’re right. If I’m going to tell it, I ought to tell it properly, from the beginning.”

Look what came in the mail!  Thank you, Woodchucks!

New Sampler from
Woodchucks’ Revenge

Those who have read Carousel Tides will recollect a shout-out to Woodchucks’ Revenge on the acknowledgements page, for a song called “Voices in the Hills,” which was part of the inspiration for the trenvay.

The Woodchucks do blues, old folk, new folk, cowboy songs, and anything else that takes their fancy, and you haven’t discovered them yet, you should give them a listen.

Here’s their website.

And here’s the website of their producer, featuring sample songs from a wide range of artists.

Have fun!

So, let’s see…Day before yesterday — that would have been Wednesday — I needed to describe Carousel Sun (by which I mean to say, the book I submitted in February, and God, She Knows what it’s about because I’m three-quarters of the way through the sequel, and I surely don’t) in a couple paragraphs (aka 150-300 words) so that the spring sales tip sheet will have something on it that will make book buyers eager to stock the book.

This is one of those things that writers do which are double-edged, to say the least.  On the slicing edge, you’re glad the publisher has asked you for this input because they’ve got dozens of books on their plate, and you-the-author have only the one, and, presumably, you know your own work best (insert laugh track here).

On the thrusting edge, though, there’s the sad truth that I, at least, am a Lazy Writer and by gum if I could’ve told Carousel Sun in 300 words, I certainly wouldn’t have used 104,000 of the little beasts.  I’d've knocked the book out in an afternoon and then played for four months, until it was time to start the next book.  Trust me, at this point in the proceedings, I know myself.

So, it took a ridiculously long time to craft those words (this despite the fact that I had asked a long-suffering beta reader to help me define the principle storyline), but by the end of Wednesday, I had something I thought would work, sent it off, and got ready to do, yanno, work.

Except that the next section of story stalled, and no amount of pointing at the outline to show the characters what they were supposed to do next elicited anything more than yawns and a conversation among themselves about whose turn it was to send out for pizza — which long-time readers of this blog will recognize as a sure sign that — yes, you in the corner wearing the pink flamingo t-shirt. . .

Yes, exactly that.

It means that The Author Screwed Up.

So instead of writing any words, I went back over the last 75 pages of manuscript, looking for the place where I turned left when I should’ve turned right.

Fortunately, it was easy to spot — a case of the sub-plot moving along quicker than the main plot.  It’s also fairly easy to fix, if frustrating for a writer who is trying to make words and have a complete draft done in twelve days.

Yesterday, then, I pulled 2,490 words of sub-plot out of the book, and carefully saved them for later use; then I wrote 2,252 brand new words.  Today, I hope to write very many more words than this because I have news of two things that will be landing on my desk in the next couple days which will have precedence over this book.

So! another chapter in the exciting life of a writer.  I know, I know. . .not for the fainthearted.

And now?  I’m going back to work.

Everybody take care.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

73,706/100,000 words OR 74% complete

I looked up.  “My point is that any sentence that starts off with, No, but Bel – really needs to be finished, so I don’t have nightmares.”

So, I think I failed to mention here that, after research and consultation with the resident cats, and some really hard shopping, we ordered in a cat tree, which arrived today.  I have already declared it a success, as Mozart immediately jumped onto the box and declared himself the King of the Cats.  I will note that the cat tree is still in the box, because I need to do stuff like move the sofa and take down some pictures before I can actually build the tree.  This may happen tomorrow.  Or it may not.  Pictures will be posted, when and if.

Mostly though, I’ve been writing.  I really, really want to finish this draft before we head off to BEA, and, barring something Tragic, it looks like I’ll be able to do that.  Phew.

Sometime in the last. . .month or so, I received a mailing from Planned Parenthood that included a “membership card” — has anyone else gotten one of these things?  It has my name on it, and an ID number and states that I’ve been a “member” since 2001, which is apparently as far back as their database goes.

Here’s the thing, though.  I don’t consider myself a “member” of Planned Parenthood.  I support their work, but I didn’t join; I wasn’t aware that Planned Parenthood was a club.

Am I alone in being annoyed by this?

To top it off, Planned Parenthood has been calling (and calling and calling) for the last few weeks, because they have this matching grant thing they’re trying very hard to qualify for.  I wish them well, but I really resent it when they tell me that my “usual” donation amount is $150 and can they put me down for $300 this time?  All said in the perkiest voice imaginable.

First of all, my “usual” amount is more like $25; the $150 was the result of the fundraiser Pinbeam Books did for Planned Parenthood when they were hosed by the Pink Ribbon People.  We donated the proceeds of all sales of The Cat’s Job, for a month, I think it was, to Planned Parenthood.

Also?  Here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, three hundred dollars is Serious Money.

So, yeah, I’m annoyed on a couple of fronts, here.  And I’m also saddened that they feel they have to adopt hard-sell tactics, which are going to lose them donors like me, who don’t want to be manipulated, and who have limited funds, and more than one charity worthy of those funds.

Sigh.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

73,968/100,000 words OR 74% complete

“This just come in — express, Kate.  Ain’t nothin’ comes in express.”

Physical therapy continues.  It would appear that the heart of the problem is my left shoulder, which got messed up in a car accident back in the day, when a guy in a hurry to get to a party ran a red light, broadsided my little green Maverick, and I shot cross-car, striking my head on the windshield on the passenger’s side, shattering the safety glass (insert hard-headed woman joke here), and lost consciousness.

It’s been quite the epic, this shoulder.  At first, I was told that I would never use my arm again.  That was a non-starter, given that I typed for a living.  So the doctor and I went ’round a couple times and he finally buckled and gave me a reference to Kernan Hospital’s Sports Medicine Unit, which at that time did all the therapy for injured Colts and Orioles and other Baltimore-area wildlife, with the dire prediction that therapy was going to hurt.

Which, to be fair, it did.  The guy who was my therapist did brutal things to me, including hanging me by my neck to stretch the locked muscles.  “I will hurt you and you will hate me,” he told me during our first meeting.  “But then I’ll give you heat, and we’ll be friends again.”

And that’s pretty much how it went.  I got the use of my arm back, the shoulder never really stopped hurting, but I’d been primed to expect that outcome, and with familiarity, I was able to largely ignore it and get on with things that mattered.

Except that, like many folks I’ve talked to, all my stress from those days to this goes to live in the most vulnerable place — the shoulder that never really healed.

Thirty-four years of compensating takes its toll on the whole body — that old ankle bone connected to the leg bone thing — and this is what I’ve brought to the physical therapy table.

The presenting problem — the hip pain — has been addressed, but my body’s out of true, and it feels like my left shoulder (by which I, neither a doctor or a scientist, mean the area bounded by the occipital bone and the trapezius and down to places I don’t know the names of) is made of cement.  It really seems as if getting in a street drill would be a good thing, here.  Failing that, it looks like lots of work ahead to get things properly aligned, and hopefully to prevent any more new problems caused by this old problem.

So, what I’m saying here, long-windedly, and not very elegantly is — if you have a health issue that you’ve been…oh, just putting up with, say, either because it’s been with you so long it’s familiar, or because you don’t think you can afford to get it fixed — and believe me, I know all about not being to afford to get something fixed, but?

That’s one of those false economies.  Because whatever isn’t right isn’t only going to continue in its not-rightness, it’s going to take other, perfectly healthy, bits with it into not-rightness.  And eventually, it will all have to be looked at, anyway, when it’s become a large, entangled problem.

So, take care of yourselves, right?  You really are worth it.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

70,044/100,000 words OR 70% complete

“It’s a strong curse, Kate; it will not fail.”

As I mentioned elsewhere, yesterday, I need to write eight scenes (now seven-and-a-half) and a wrap-up in order to finish a Compleat Draft of Carousel Seas.  I spent some time yesterday mapping out those scenes (which is how I know that the number is eight), and everything seems solid, all the way to the finish line.

In other news, we need to go to town today, to take on groceries.  We had been going to go to breakfast, but suddenly! realized! that?  Today is Mother’s Day.  So, Steve is prepping for Omelets at Home, which will be very pleasant, and then we’ll go grocery shopping.

Fans of Mozart will be pleased to know that he’s back on the case.  Here he is, already at work on the pages I wrote yesterday:

Mozart is on the job
May 12 2013

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Progress on Carousel Seas

67,842/100,000 words OR 67.84% complete

I felt it then, the weight on the land.  The same weight, I was certain, that I’d felt before.  Slowly, I turned toward it.  As before he-or-she was located in the blackness of the alley between the Sun Wheel and the carousel’s storm wall.

“I’m glad you came back,” I said softly, while I sent warm tidings and promises of safety through the land.  “Please don’t run away.  I’m Kate Archer, the guardian.  I’d like to see you, and to get to know you; to serve you, if I may.”

As on the previous occasion, the weight shifted on the land.  I had the impression that whoever it was had come one or even two cautious steps in my direction.

Which was approximately when all hell broke loose.

You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, Tom Gauld
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (e)
Hellspark, Janet Kagan (re-re-re-re-re-re-&c-read)
The Year of the Dog, Grace Lin
The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi (e)
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (a mostly true memoir), Jenny Lawson
How Dark the World Becomes, Frank Chadwick (e)
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
French Fried, Chris Dolley (e)
My Father’s Dragon, Ruth Stiles Gannett (read aloud w/Steve)
Fair Game, Patricia Briggs (e)
Nymph, Francesca Lia Block (read aloud w/Steve)
Oh, Myyy, George Takei (e)
Hunting Ground, Patricia Briggs (e)
Cry Wolf, Patriacia Briggs (e)
Alpha and Omega, Patricia Briggs (e)
Miss Buncle, Married, D.E. Stevenson (read aloud w/Steve)
Agatha Heterodyne and the Hammerless Bell, Phil & Kaja Foglio
Moonrise Kingdom screenplay, Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola (e)

So, 3501 not-anywhere-near-perfect words written today on Carousel Seas.  Amazing what you can do when you turn the internet OFF.

Tomorrow, we have an early business phone call, then I will once again turn the internet OFF and see what happens.

I did skip over a scene because I need to think about where and how it supports the rest of the narrative.  God, She knows, I already have too many extraneous scenes in this book.  Or maybe not.  A cold read of a complete draft will tell me for sure.

Hope everyone had a good and productive day.

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Progress on Carousel Seas

64,279/100,000 OR 64.28% complete

“And just who the hell are you?”

My intention is to be off the interwebs today, so that I may beat feet on Carousel Seas.

However, it occurred to me that I failed to update Mozart’s Fans regarding the results of his blood work, yesterday.

Everything is normal, normal, normal.  Kidney values are high normal, which means Keeping  A Close Eye, but even these aren’t unexpected in a fifteen year old cat.

The sadness is probably just that; he misses having another guy around to help him “know his place,” as the vet put it.  We pointed out that Scrabble keeps him in his place, but apparently that wasn’t exactly what he meant.

I did just drop by the cat hammock to ask if Mozart had a few words for his fans, but Mozart is not granting interviews today.  Below is a picture, illicitly taken by a paparazzi.

No interviews, please

And, now?  I’m turning the internet OFF.

So, yesterday was a previously-arranged Day in the South to do the accumulated Southern errands, and, ohbytheway to stop by Pine Point and Old Orchard Beach, Camp Ellis and the Great City of Saco, to make sure everything there was all right and tight.

I’m pleased to report that we look to be in good shape to meet the summer.

Tide’s REALLY out. Old Orchard Beach
May 7, 2013, about 4 p.m.

This morning, we took Mozart to the vet.  He has not recovered his spirits since Socks left us, and even though we’re giving him lots of Mozart time and flying mouse (Mozart is not a fan of the Red Dot; Scrabble, however, is a Mighty Red Dot Hunter), he clings and cries and is clearly unhappy about something.

On examination, the vet finds him to be in pretty good shape, for an Elder Cat; his teeth are good, his heart sounds strong, lungs clear.  There’s what might be a touch of arthritis in his right hip, but, really, at 15, you can expect to be a touch stiff.

The vet did do blood work, and we’ll hear back about those results this afternoon.

In the meantime, we have an email interview to finish up for the BEA, and I’ve gotta get some  work done.

Hope everyone is having a reasonably enjoyable day.