The Writing Life – Sharon Lee, Writer

What on earth is the woman doing, part sebenty-leben

When last we saw our heroine, she was doing Shameless Self-Promotion, as one does, signing bookplates, and starting to work on the next book, by which I mean, staring out the window, and making Cryptic Notes™.

That changed back toward the end of last week, when the edits for Diviner’s Bow landed in my inbox, and I spent the next While dealing with that, doing my own chilly read-through, and making a (few) more corrections.

Of course, in pre-apocalyptic times, Steve would have taken half the manuscript; I’d’ve taken the other half. We’d have talked over the editorial suggestions — and anyway, that’s not how we do things in this Brave New World, and it took me a good chunk of time to go through the ‘script and consider the suggested changes. I have only just today returned the manuscript to the editor.

In-between reading, correcting, considering, and inputting, I had the Waterville Fire Department come in and replace the 20+ year old smoke alarms in the house, which they did for free, because the Waterville Fire Department is Just. That. Cool.

I also went to the last meeting (for some number of months) of the book club, and did the 120-mile round trip to the cancer center, to chat with my oncologist. I’m fine, though they took me off of the drug I’d been taken to help reduce the risk of a recurrence because of the still-inconclusive outcomes attached to my June Health Adventure. Said drug being known to cause blood clots. That whole thing was much more upsetting than I had planned for, but, hey — it was a nice morning for a drive.

I also went to a writer meetup and met writers, which is something I haven’t done in a while. I honestly don’t know that I’ll ever feel up to traveling to science fiction conventions again — too very many people knew Steve, and Steve-and-Sharon. OTOH, one does like to talk with people who Get It, so after much waffling, I went, and had a pleasant evening. So — four stars out of five: may do again; encourage others to attend.

Somewhere in all there was also meeting a friend for coffee, grocery shopping, and hitting Home Depot up for paint (one of the smoke detectors had been painted (many times) to the wall, and brought paint with it when it finally was persuaded to let go.

Today was about cooking for the freezer, and making a loaf of cheese bread because I wanted cheese bread. Tomorrow and Sunday will be about laundry, and dealing with all the things I let pile up while I was concentrating on the edits for Diviner’s Bow.

Next week will be a bit pear-shaped due to the US Thanksgiving. On Wednesday afternoon, I’ll pick up a Feast For One from a local restaurant to reheat on the day, and expect that I’ll be doing something low-key and enjoyable, like laying out a chapbook. No, really; that’s low-key and enjoyable. Also, I need to get back to staring out the window and making notes.

As I’ve been walking up and down in the world, I’ve noticed the wreaths, and the greens, the trees, and the decorations, and — I will be sitting the holidays out this year. This includes the sending of the traditional Yule letter and cards. P’rhaps next year.

And that? Catches us up.

Everybody have a good weekend.

News you can use

This is an all-in-one-place news list. Some items have been mentioned before; others are, er, New news. Consumers of audiobooks and signed editions may wish to pay especial attention to the below.

1 As reported earlier this week, Sea Wrack and Changewind, by Sharon Lee, collecting all of the Archers Beach shorts into one convenient ebook, is now up for preorder at All the Usual Suspects. Here’s the Universal Link. Here’s the Amazon Link

1a Publication date is December 17. On that date, you will be able to purchase the ebook from Baen.com.

1b There will be a trade paper edition; there may be a hardcover edition.

1c There will be an audio edition from Tantor. It will be available for sale on January 28, 2025. Narrator is Alex Picard. Here’s the page to watch

2 Uncle Hugo’s intends to start accepting preorders for the hardcover edition of Diviner’s Bow, the 27th novel set in the Liaden Universe® created by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, in January 2025. Those who preorder will receive a signed bookplate with their book. I have just this morning signed the first 20 bookplates, and this is what it looks like, uncut:

What I did on my autumn vacation

Because this blog has not been updated consistently lately, and some people drop by infrequently, a brief What Has Gone Before.

This has been a . . . challenging year. My best friend and writing partner, in many ways the better half of our partnership, died in February, very suddenly. A little later down the timeline, I had what was at first thought to be stroke, and is now just a sort of shoulder-shrug and a mutter that sounds like “stress.” One of the elder coon cats died of cancer. Of those remaining, one slid into a very deep and worrisome depression from which she’s only recently roused. I added a kitten to the household, which is of course it’s own sort of challenge. And, as has been a fact of my life for many years now, there was a book under contract.

The original turn-in date was September. My agent negotiated a mid-November extension, but, for Reasons, sooner was said to be better than later, so the end was completed with a bang and a rush; submitted before Halloween.

At that point, I realized that the book had propped me up in several ways: It was Business as Usual in a suddenly strange world; and it gave me something to think about. The last is key. I have a very busy brain, and if it doesn’t have something productive to think about, it will turn on itself, which is undesirable at the best of times, and held the potential of producing disaster in current circumstances.

So, I needed something to think about, and it couldn’t be a book because my creative writing brain was mush.

Pro Tip: Creativity is not a limitless well. You can draw it dry. It is therefore important to rest between Large Creative Efforts. If you just keep pushing, you’ll dry up, or, if you like, burn out. You really don’t want to burn out.

So, I needed something to occupy my brain that ideally tapped into another creative facet.

I thought of auditing a course at the local college — which may still be in the cards, down the road — but time was short. I thought about the other creative kinds of things that I do — embroidery, crochet, baking — baking. I’ve been making bread off and on for most of my life, but I wanted to get more consistently good at it. And I remembered that we here in New England are privileged to have King Arthur Bakery right in our very own Vermont; a mere 200 miles away by car — and who can resist a pleasant drive through autumnal New England?

I looked on the KA website, and the gods were good; there was room in the three-day bread baking workshop that started on November 4. I signed up, and was accepted by return mail.

Then, I cast about for a place to stay, and located the Norwich Inn, about a mile from King Arthur, which among its many other charms offers a discount to King Arthur students.

Allow me to pause here and praise the Norwich Inn. There has been an inn at what is now 325 Main Street, Norwich, Vermont since 1797. An excerpt from a review in the Hanover Gazette, dated February 7 1891 (quoted on the back of the matchbox I brought home, as one does) states: “. . . it has been called by several travelers the handsomest little hotel in the Connecticut Valley.” In addition, the staff was friendly, and efficient; the continental breakfast was more than generous; and the dinners delightful. The restaurant is not open for lunch, and only open from Wednesday through Sunday for dinner, but these are the times we live in.

My room had a Queen-sized bed, a gas fireplace controlled by a switch on the wall, television, a desk set nicely in a window, a comfy chair set in the window opposite, a chest of drawers, closet, and a modern bathroom. The only thing it lacked were cats.

One final touch — there’s a guest register on a stand in the expansive parlor. It asks each guest for name, arrival time, hometown, and how many horses they have with them.

So! King Arthur Bread School was awesome. I had such a good time! No, really, I did. The Official Name of the three-day course I took is: Bread Principles & Practice. Class was from noon to 5 every day.

On Monday, we spent a good chunk of time on the Science of Bread. We also made a loaf of white bread, and six dinner rolls; and a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Tuesday we worked with wet doughs and poolish. This was a challenge. The wet dough is VERY wet, and was very messy to handle. Happily, the resulting batards and focaccia proved the effort was well-made, but there were a couple minutes there that I was questioning my desire to learn any more about these particular kinds of bread.

Wednesday we made a tender sweet bread dough, which was also rather damp, but Tuesday had prepared me. We divided the sweet dough in half, and made chocolate babka with one half, and cinnamon rolls with the rest. Then, to relax, we made pita.

My fellow students were interested, motivated, and cheerful.

Our teachers were uniformly positive, helpful, and informative. They clearly loved what they were doing — each one was a professional baker employed by King Arthur, who start baking at 3 am and then stay on to teach.

Honestly, this was the best call I could have made for that awkward end-of-book time. I am so very glad that I decided to do this thing, even though it was nothing like — especially because it was nothing like — anything I’d ever done before.

The King Arthur campus houses professional kitchens, a cafe, and a store. They also display local art on their walls. Artists were hanging rug-hooked pictures on Tuesday afternoon. Everyone I had contact with during this adventure was positive and cheerful, and I can’t say enough good things.

If you’re of a baking bent, you could do worse than take a course at King Arthur.

Warning: There is the store, with all the Cool! Things! and flours! and kits! and — just be aware that this is Dangerous Territory, OK?

And, that’s what I did on my autumn vacation.

Now that I’m back home, and the cats placated, I have some finishing work to do for the release of Sea Wrack and Changewind, and some Real Life stuff to tend to, including trying to decide what I’ll be doing for Thanksgiving, if, indeed, I do anything for Thanksgiving.

It will perhaps surprise no one that I’ve already started making notes toward the next book.

The week that was

When last we saw our Hmbl Narrator, she was about to interview a person to clean her house every other week, the previous occupant of that post having quit due to Pressures of Life.

The first bid was well beyond what I could afford, but the second was on the money, so to speak. She came by and did her first clean on Thursday, and all went well. She’ll come back Thursday after next.

No sooner had I solved the cleaning problem when the lawn/snowplow guy let me know that he’s getting out of the lawn/snowplowing biz. He’ll finish mowing this year, but he won’t be doing Fall Cleanup or snowplowing. Eek. I made calls; two people answered, both came out to look. One gave me a quote on the spot, the other promised a quote after thinking about it, but never called back, so — the first guy gets the job, starting with Fall Cleanup.

In-between all that, I finally tracked down and canceled the last account that needed to call Steve’s cellphone for two-factor identification. This meant that I could take Steve’s phone off the account, which I tried to do online, but Verizon insisted that I had to cancel my phone, too, and — no.

On Wednesday I went to the Verizon store where Josh very efficiently and kindly made all the virtual paperwork disappear, including calling Corporate to tell them why we were doing what we were doing (“The account manager has passed on.”).

Josh also found that I was “eligible” for a new Pixel 9 (XL Pro, it says here), so I came home with a new phone, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, my beautiful red Edge was living on borrowed time, and has run through its updates; and you can’t beat “free” for a new phone with 7 years of updates guaranteed. On the other hand, the new phone is a little heavier and broader than the old one, and despite being an Android phone, Google does some things differently than Motorola, which is a little disorienting, but I expect I’ll get used to it. I did order a sparkly case, so all the important details have been taken care of.

My next trick is selling Steve’s guitars. There are only two of them, and I expect I’m stressing about it more than I should. Despite Josh’s help, cancelling Steve’s cell account was … kind of exhausting. Maybe the guitars can wait until next week.

In Coon Cat News, Fans of Trooper will be pleased to learn that the lack of appetite and lethargy that had me taking him to the vet on Thursday morning is diagnosed (after an exam and a “perfect” blood test) as Kitten Exhaustion and allergies. Fans of Rook will be happy to learn that he has been scheduled for The Operation on September 24. And! Fans of Firefly will be pleased to know that she seems to have worked through her depression and is wrasslin’ the kitten, and playing tag.

In Writing News, Diviner’s Bow currently weighs in at 96,600 words, and I am frantically writing the scenes that I know so I can reach An End, and put out a call for beta readers while I take a breather. I am at the point of being Very Tired of this book — which is a good sign; it means we’re on schedule.

And that’s the week that was at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.

Looking forward to next week, I see a Stoopid Number of medical appointments, and, at the end of the week! I’ll be (virtually) at AlbaCon, doing a reading and two panels.

Everybody stay safe.

The Call of the Running Tide

So, suddenly, it’s been a busy week.

On Tuesday, I drove to Old Orchard Beach, then across to eat lunch on the causeway at Naples. Total mileage was 282; about 8 hours away (not all on the road, but most). Weather conditions were varied — rain, clouds, bright sun. Really, I couldn’t have asked for a better day to practice driving.

It looks like my Practice Driving Day is going to be Tuesday, for the foreseeable. I am going to have to remember to bring along a sandwich with my drinks; catching lunch on the road is more expensive than I can justify.

Driving/being away from the computer had an unexpected benefit: I figured out the solution to something that had really been bothering me about the WIP.

Yesterday, I had to go to Augusta to renew my license. I was able to make an appointment online, so the actual renewing license portion of the day was fairly stress-free. What was stressful was that my phone stopped working. By which I mean that the screen was unresponsive. It really is too bad how much I depend on that device, not to mention that I really like this particular phone, for reasons both technical and sentimental.

Two Verizon stores later, the problem was fixed, and now I know how to turn off my phone when I don’t have access to the touchscreen, so — yay. At the second store, where I found the person who could actually solve the problem, I was informed that I have “an old phone” — purchased in May 2020 — and that I can expect things to start failing. She did try to sell me a new phone, which she was liege-bound to do, which I understand. But I’m going with Fingers Crossed for now.

Steve’s day lilies finished blooming a couple weeks ago, which meant that it was time for me to get the severely overgrown gardens at the front, sides, and back of the house Dealt With, and the shrubbery that had grown up in front of the basement door knocked down. I called a landscaper, who came by yesterday to look things over. He made suggestions, provided an estimate that was, err, steep, but less than I had expected. He arrived this morning with a crew of about twelve young people, wielding every gardening tool imaginable from shovel to backhoe, and they set to.

As of this writing, the old garden/overgrowth/weeds are gone. I can get to the basement door again. All of the opportunistic maple trees are gone. A new garden of perennials will go in the front — I see a flat of orange coneflowers out resting under the maple trees planted on purpose.

I didn’t have time to take a picture of the situation, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was not only overgrown, but becoming dangerous. I’m unhappy that the rose bush Steve gave me when we moved in is gone, along with his beloved lilies. Actually, the rose bush may have been strangled by vines; I didn’t see any news of it this summer at all.

The cats are pretty sure they didn’t sign off on all this excitement, and they have been watching it all Very Carefully from various windows around the house.

Just to round out the week, I called to make an appointment with a new cleaning person; my previous person having quit somewhat suddenly. Hopefully, we can come to an agreement.

Absent the continuing work of the landscape crew, I’m in for the weekend, and looking forward to writing the scenes I’ve mapped out, and fitting them into the WIP.

Here are some pictures from Tuesday’s adventure.

Boring writer is boring

Been a while since I checked in. My excuse is that writing is a very boring occupation, spectator-wise.

In the Before Time, Steve and I would have been doing some traveling around the state, possibly gone to the NASFiC (though not to Glasgow; we were never globe-trotters). In These Times, I have a new kitten, and a book that I’m learning to write, not to mention the early summer health scare and an on-going bad back.

So, not only is writing boring, so, in this case, is the writer.

Diviner’s Bow, the book I’m learning to write, the sequel to Ribbon Dance, is, oh, let’s say 85,000ish words along, and earlier in the week I reached the point where, in those same Before Times, I would have said to Steve, “Would you please read this and tell me if it makes sense.” And he would do that, and then we would talk, and eventually I would sit down at the keyboard, energized by both the couple days off and the creative high of brainstorming, and start in writing the last third of the book.

What with one thing and another, Steve wasn’t available to read the book-as-it-currently exists, so I’m doing that — about half-way through and hoping to finish the read-through tomorrow night. So far, I’m encouraged — by which I mean that the story doesn’t suck. I’m hoping that trend continues.

Fans of the coon cats will wish to know that Rook has adopted Trooper as his grandpa, and Trooper has risen to the role. Firefly took Sprite’s passing very hard, but she’s beginning to show interest in household matters ago. She and Rook have been seen playing together, and I even caught her cleaning his ears.

Rook has also been studying the work of the house, and has achieved the title of Editorial Assistant IT (ln Training). Here —

Sorry. Interrupted by Firefly coming into my office, voicing her “I caught something” — and I went to look.

In fact, she had caught something — a pad of yellow sticky notes — and those things are hard to catch.

As I was saying, here’s a picture of Rook, hard at work (and a Very Tired Writer):

BSFS Renames Poetry Contest for Steve Miller

Before Steve was a globally acclaimed science fiction writer, he traveled in poetry, which was a thing you could actually do, back in the last century. To the best of my knowledge, he never stopped writing poetry, though he did stop trying to publish, and many people just don’t know about this side of him.

Which is why it’s especially pleasing that the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (Steve’s first and lasting home in science fiction fandom) has chosen to name its poetry award after him: Steve Miller BSFS Annual Poetry Contest.

Read all about it at File 770.

Sad news

I let Sprite go this morning.

Before Steve died, he noticed that she had a lump on her back, right next to her spine. The vet excised it, and it came out clean as a discrete lump. Lab tests were inconclusive.

Shortly after Steve died, Sprite was sitting on my lap, and I noticed that the lump was back, only larger. In the three days it took me to get her to the vet it had grown appreciably. It was so close to the spine that more surgery was not an option, so we opted to keep her comfortable. Yesterday, she let me know that it was time.

She was such a good cat — she took care of all of us; was Steve’s copilot, and mine, and she leaves a very large hole in this household which is already in tatters.

Sprite was attended by her vet and tech of many years, who eased her way with care and grace.

Princess Jasmine Sprite of Kelimcoons, July 6, 2012-July 17, 2024

Weekend catch up

We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory have been keeping our heads down and trying to get Useful Things Done. The jury’s still out on the question of whether we’ve succeeded, but one does what one can.

A kind friend gave me a lift to the hair salon on Monday, and was able to extend the trip to include the post office and the grocery.

I finished a read-through of the first half of Diviner’s Bow, and am now in the process of figuring out the second half. Around that, I invoked Google Takeout on behalf of Steve’s accounts and transferred them to that portable hard drive I was never going to use. Every time I think I’m going to cancel Steve’s phone, the two-step verification system produces another reason why I should wait a little longer.

Yesterday, we (quietly) celebrated Princess Jasmine Sprite’s 12th birthday. There was napping in the sun, napping under tables, and napping on the couch, and a pouch of Delectables Bisque for happy hour, after which we all gathered into the living room to view the first episode of Renegade Nell.

Today, I have some chores to finish up. This afternoon, a friend will be coming by to help me put together and position the puppy crate our neighbor donated to the Kitten Project, and I’ll be converting the second bathroom to Club Rook.

Tomorrow, another kind friend will be taking me to Book Club, then to pick up Rook — and I figure that’s all I’ll be accomplishing tomorrow.

Tuesday, I (finally) get to see my PCP — a kind friend is giving me a ride — and hopefully I’ll be given permission to drive myself to, oh, Rook’s meet ‘n greet with his vet on Wednesday. That would be nice.

Otherwise, I’m looking at the list of home upkeep things that need to be done and trying to strategize. I thought I’d been cleaning the rain gutters, but yanno? Maybe not. And I really need help with the front garden and the backyard, which I feel is probably too little for a full-blown landscaping enterprise, but too much for a woman with a hoe.

And, that, I think, catches us up.

I hope to update with Rook photos tomorrow, depending on how he feels about having his picture taken.

Diviner’s Bow available for preorder

Diviner’s Bow, the 27th novel set in the Liaden Universe® created by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, is now available for preorder, in hardcover, from the Usual Suspects. The preorder page includes a book description, for the curious.

Long-time readers will of course recall that Baen puts the ebook edition on preorder somewhat closer to the publication date.

I am still writing Diviner’s Bow — it currently weighs in at just a squeak under 72,000 words — so I guess I’d better hop to it.