I finally have a book deal!

Guys, I've been running a little bit lately, and that's because I will have a book out in Spring 2016!

Women Heroes of the Civil War, which will be published by Chicago Review Press, will be about the women soldiers, spies, and medics who braved intense fire in the bloodiest battles in America.

I especially like the women soldiers. Can you imagine living among a whole army of men and hiding from all of them that you were a woman? A number of them made it through the war (or died in action) and were never found out.

Emma Edmonds served with the 2nd Michigan, for instance!

It's such a cool topic and I have been listening to Civil War audiobooks and digging through a pile of books and resources just to get all these hooks in my mind to hang all this new information upon. Right now I'm listening to Grant's Memoirs at work and Walt Whitman's journals in the car (he worked as a nurse in Washington D.C. during the war) and chasing down photographs and doing research.

My deadline is June 15 of next year. By that date I have to turn in a full MS with photos and permissions, maps (for the designers to work from), the stories about the 20 women I'm focusing on, as well as sources, a bibliography, and an introduction about the events leading up to the war and the part that women played in it.

Whew!

I am trying to keep my perfectionistic tendancies at bay so I can get this thing accomplished. "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction," to quote President Truman.

Wish me luck, guys, because you can bet I'm going to need all the moral support I can get. Immoral support is also acceptable.

Good news on the way!

I'm always in favor of good news, but I won't report on what exactly this news is until I get some stuff signed. But once that's done, you will certainly hear about it!

In the meantime, I'm still writing stories and scanning in family pics and generally trying to keep up with kids and housework and weeds. (Actually I gave up on the weeds -- my garden tends to go all to hell in July and August. The chickens love it, though.)

I've also sent in some of Dad's slides to ScanCafe to be digitized. They did an amazing job and when this batch comes back, I'll send 'em more. The pics look great, and ScanCafe will email you the digitized files so you get those quickly, while you're waiting for the pics and DVDs to show up in your mailbox.

Here's one of Dad's fellow soldiers in the 588th Engineers in Vietnam in 1967-1968.  I hope I can get his name one of these days.

Going to the white-hot center.

So Jane Resh Thomas says, "Go to where the white-hot center is. Write about what you fear the most." So I've been working on a new story which, as I've said, I'm not going to talk about yet because: fear.

I have been throwing down as many words as I can. This is not a draft where every word is made of precious precious gold. I’m just diving into the big swamp and digging like a crazy woman in hopes that I’ll find something precious – a bog woman with lips still red -- a sunken treasure -- even a little trail through the pit of despond, which is where I am at, a trail that will lead through the swamp and around the quicksand and water moccasins and out to the other side and the sunny uplands, though technically we don’t have uplands here. Ask mama if she cares; that’s a Churchillian phrase.

Is it brave that I’m going this route? More like foolhardy. But that’s where the fire and the fear is. And then I take it and splash it all over the page, knowing that someday I'm going to  embarrass the hell out of myself but shoot, maybe by the time I get through with several drafts, we won't even recognize anybody. That's my hope, anyway.

But, unlike my other book, I have got to remember the seed of this book and where its heart is, and keep that fear and passion at the center of this book. The MC doesn’t give in to temptation, and there’s going to be a lot of sad along the way, and you know, there’s not going to be a happy ending, though there will be the satisfaction, such as it is, of sticking to your moral compass, insofar as possible. At least that's a plus.

My gosh, I could have written all this about Shy Gal Runs Screaming from Love. That's probably why it's my favorite story.

Tales of Angry Dante

Once upon a time, I used to hang around the biggest sourpuss in the world.

Grr! said the crabby ex-Florentine.

1)  One time Dante was traveling through Florence wearing armor to protect his throat and arm -- not surprising, because he was a soldier in his youth.  He saw a donkey driver transporting garbage, "who was going along behind the donkeys singing the book of Dante, and when he had sung for a bit, he hit the donkey and said 'Arri (Giddyup).'  Dante dealt him a forceful blow on the shoulder with his mailed fist, saying, 'I didn't put that Arri in there.'"

2)  When Dante was passing through the Porta San Piero, he "heard a blacksmith singing as he beat the iron on his anvil.  What he sang was from Dante, and he did it as if it were a (popular) ballad, jumbling the verses together, and mangling and altering them in a way that was a great offense to Dante.  He said nothing, however, but went into the blacksmith's shop" and started throwing his tools of the trade into the street: the hammer, the pincers, the scales.  The blacksmith cried, 'What the devil are you doing?'  Dante said, 'If you do not want to have me spoil your things, don't spoil mine.  You sing out of my book, but not as I wrote it; I have no other trade, and you spoil it.'  The blacksmith, vexed, gathered up his tools, and thereafter stuck to singing songs about Tristan and Lancelot. (Though I am sure the Tristan and Lancelot line is mere conjecture.)

This is a post brought to you by Procrastination: because the best way to deal with work is to ignore it.

1) from A Day in a Medieval City by Chiara Frugoni and Arsenio Frugoni
2) both stories are originally from Franco Sacchetti's Novelle.

I'm so bad about keeping up with the blogs!

Ya think?

This morning I was up with baby, who is 10 weeks old now. He's getting pretty good at the smiling thing and has figured out how to bring his hand to his face to suck on his fingers, but he hasn't quite figured out how to move his thumb away from his hand. He keeps trying to suck his thumb but it just stays squished against his palm and he's going, Aw, come on! and I give him a pacifier but he spits it back out because he wants that dang thumb.

But I was just singing an Earth, Wind, and Fire song to the kid and he was grinning and grinning and it was pretty awesome.

And then I had to go to work! which was not so awesome, but ya gotta eat.

I got stuck on Meira's story because I still have no idea what the plot is and I don't know where anything is going, or how these dual narratives -- actually more than two -- are fitting together. I'm working again on Butterfly Chaos, and have been flailing at it over the past couple of months, but I am FINALLY starting to get deeper into the story and it's like, holy cow, it took long enough.

I'd like to get Butterfly off to agents soon. I hope it works out this time. At least I won't be submitting stories whilst hormonal and pregnant, because geez, that just sucked! Shoot, I'm just glad to be unpregnant! Also I
can tie my shoes.


Well this was random.

Baby!

Here's our newest resident, born Sunday, Aug. 5:

We are pretty darn happy about his arrival.

Still waiting on the baby.

Most of my waiting is done between 2 and 5 a.m. when my body says, "Hey, I am wide awake, let's get up!" and I try to talk it out of this silly notion, but it will not be swayed, and so I end up eating a bowl of cereal (because my body is always hungry about this time) and looking at the internet (though you would think I'd know better).

If baby doesn't show up by August 3 then we're going to induce. This pleases me very much. I am tired all the time during the day, partly due to this insomnia thing, partly because a squirmy baby inside very cramped quarters is a tiring thing, and ... well, once he comes out that will be a different kind of tired altogether, BUT at least I would be able to lay on the floor and straighten out my back without getting my intestines squished!

Here within a week our home will have a tiny new occupant, and it is the oddest thought in the world. My brain is having a hard time wrapping around it. The house is a mess. My brain apparently is electing to ignore that.

I'm still writing, though the work is sporadic.

I have graduated from Hamline and it was pretty awesome. I'm pretty sad that I won't be going back next summer, though. I really like seeing those guys and I am going to miss the whole crew.

Okay, I'm going to try and go back to sleep, since I am seriously tired and it's 2:30 a.m.

Oh, I didn't mention that I was pregnant? Well I am.

Apparently I'm going to give birth to a ninja here in August. He certainly is squirmy, and once in a while he unleashes DragonFist! and then I sit up and take notice.
Perhaps I should not drink two cups of tea per day. But it's soooooooooo good.
In other news, I'm back to revising Butterfly Chaos. I'd like to revise five pages/day so I can get through the whole thing by July 1, when I can then freak out about going to Hamline for my last residency. I will graduate two weeks before baby is due. This should be a very interesting residency.
I'm also working on a story about a girl who turns into a raccoon and acts like a raccoon and does raccoonish things, or at least her human side is working hard NOT to let her do some of those raccoonish things, i.e. eating baby rabbits, trash, or taking a nap in the fridge right in the butter dish. I'm shooting for 500 words/day on that, but having a hard time keeping on schedule with that due to the 5 page/day thing.

I'm not sure who took this pic but it is a true look at what it means to be a raccoon.

Perhaps I should be writing my novels instead of writing long-winded blog posts. Yes, that would probably be a good idea.

I haven't vanished into the void yet.

Everybody in the whole WORLD is probably going, "Where the heck is Melinda? We are sweating bullets waiting for her next blog o' wisdom!" Well, shucks, y'all, I'm trying to write a story which means "let's try and stay off the internet ... oh crap she's on Twitter again."

This is me, writing. I am actually a beagle.

Actually, I wanted to post some chicken pics but then realized that all the chicken pics I have on this computer are old.

This Wyandotte, for example, is full-grown and is now laying nice brown eggs.

This has been a random post, brought to you by Procrastination: For when you should be looking up agent info but want to write a bunch of random stuff instead.

In the interest of family history....

I was astonished to learn that my great-great grandfather (Casper Salmen of Sutton, Nebraska) got into an altercation with a man armed with a knife! Grandma never mentioned this.

This might be boring to those of you not related to me. If you would like to see some more exciting posts, esp. those relating to chickens, scroll down.

However, if you would like to see my great-great grandpa trounce this little troublemaker, scroll down to the third selection; that's where all the action is.

P.S. This happened in 1893, and Casper, born in 1835, was 58 years old when he was trouncing this fellow. Not bad!

It's Manifesto Wednesday!

I want to write strong novels that are exciting and fun and sell a million copies. Just like everybody else in the world. Scary thought, ain’t it? Not to mention that it will never happen.

Then I thought, Remember back when I was a kid? I wrote because it was exciting and I loved to make things happen. I loved writing just as fast as Emily the raccoon ran as she fled the coon hounds, my pencil barely keeping up with her flight. I was a kid who wrote adventure because she WANTED adventure. In my stories, I ran like crazy everywhere I went. It was great.

Then I read So You Want to Be a Wizard when I was in junior high. Holy crap. This exciting, complex world of magic captivated me. The dark world that Nita and Kit fell into was this incredible intense place that they had to fight their way through. Talking stars and predator sports cars and everybody running like hell all the time. I’ve been reading it again and it’s still crazy awesome great.

I want to write stuff that calls up this same quivery excitement I had back then.

The nice thing is that I’ve been writing in earnest since 1995, so I have this huge warehouse full of experience, plus years of writing stories and articles and beating deadlines. I’ve written 50 million novels, resulting in four finished, salable novels. Since I started at Hamline, I’ve been accelerating, becoming more wily, learning more tricks of the trade.

The problem for me … is trust. Even with my skill, I don’t trust myself to succeed. Why? Because that bossy old-woman brain of mine keeps barging in and saying, Don’t do it like that, this is wrong, this is boring, this’ll never work. You’ll never write strong novels that are exciting and fun and sell a million copies.

Let’s quash that voice. I’m going to start a new partnership, right now. Where’s that kid I once was? Get her in here. Kid, I have a crazy idea for you. You write the stories with me. Give me stuff you’re crazy about, stuff that you’ve always wanted to do. Put it in a story. Make sure there’s lots of running and drama and maybe a few explosions. Mix in some scary stuff. Then you and I will pitch in together and fix those puppies up. You and me, we’ll make these stories the coolest dang thing that anybody’s ever seen.

The way to win is to not be boring.

The way to not be boring is to have a ton of fun.

Not so much fun that the neighbors call the cops, but you know what I mean.

So let’s do it.

Starting a new story!

Sometimes when you go walking in the woods, you're ducking under pawpaw trees and dodging gooseberry tangles, which is normal, but then you came to a big fallen limb all overgrown in a thorny tangle and it's blocking your way. So you have to backtrack, or go off to the side until you find a way around it, and then you move forward again. And then you come to a place where the hill is too steep and you don't want to slide down the thing on your butt, so you backtrack and go off to the side until you find a way to go forward again.

That's what writing the beginning of this new story is like. I write for a little bit, but then I come to a halt and the story is just not going anywhere, okay, so what would happen if I backed up a few paragraphs and changed this? And then I go forward a little way, and then errk! Stop! This is not working. And then I'm like, well, instead of Eyestar standing next to the door fighting the grasshopper army, why not have the main character there instead? So I back up and rewrite that bit, and it is cool, and then I'm going forward again.

And just like walking in the woods, I know the direction I'm going, but I don't know what I'm going to see along the way so I keep my eyes open for birds and mushrooms and animal tracks and wildflowers and look for surprises. And despite the little trailblocks, or the occasional tick crawling up the inside of my jeans DIE EVIL TICK, I know I'm going to have fun while I'm out and about.

Aren't you supposed to be working?

I'm still on the internet after an hour of looking around at websites and basically screwing around. I'm getting ready to write a whole new story and I hate jumping in.

It's like when I was at the pool yesterday with the kid and her buddy. I'd stand on the edge of the pool, hot, wanting to jump in, but hating the shock of the cold water, so I would stand around for about five minutes, watching people, until I got out of my own way enough to hold my nose and just step in.

So much fuss over something so easy. And yet I'd do it every time.

As I am now.

All the same, I hate wasting my own time. I think about President Truman working those 18-hour days in the early days of his Presidency, and what am I doing here but screwing around because I'm scared to start. "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction," as Truman used to say.

So let's do it.

Interesting times afoot.

I have finally hit some luck. (Though technically I worked pretty hard for it!) I sent out my novel, What You Can't Take Back, and right after that, six agents requested the full MS. Crazy!

That pretty much knocked my socks off. With my previous novel, I had 68 or 74 agents pass on it and nobody even requested two pages.

But I have been in a tizzy all last week because BEA was going on and there was just nothing but radio silence from these agents. I keep having to distract myself so I don't have to obsess over this, because obsessing at this time is unhealthy. Even though my brain keeps going THEN I WILL JUST BE UNHEALTHY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Bad brain, go lay down.

I'm just going to have to make myself play it cool. Good things are going to happen, either now or later, though it might be later. But I think I'm going to get an agent this time around. *deep breath* I hope so, anyway.

Okay, back to work.

General life update.

work! work work work worrrrrkkk! workety-work work! also chickens.

That's about all that's going on here. If somebody could come over and clean my house for me, that would be dandy.

Waiting for spring ....

Because that means that I'll get new chicks!

I have only three chickens right now -- two of them are young hens and good layers (they're Black Sex Links) and one is an older hen who is STILL molting, a Buff Orpington. I had two Red Sex Links, but both of them were killed by dogs. Naturally the ones that get killed are always my favorites. At any rate, when the feed store stocks chicks again, I want to pick up two Red Sex Link chicks and see if the Buff Orpington will foster them.

Here's the Buff Orpington:

Here's one of the Black Sex Links.  You know why these are "sex links?" It's really cool. With the reds, when you cross a female Leghorn with a male Rhode Island Red, the male chicks are white and the female chicks are red. They're color-coded when they hatch! The same goes for the blacks, except the males are black with a little white patch on their forehead, while the females are all black. So if you want to buy layers only (fearing that a little rooster would probably disturb the neighbors!), that's a good way to go.

"How dare you take a picture of MOI?"

Hee! I'm pretty crazy about chickens. Bet you couldn't tell.

Mopy dog.

Here's my mopy Boston terrier giving me the mopy look.

This is what my life has been like lately:

Any questions?

Obviously this needs a quick update!!!!

I haven't been over here at this blog for a while because I seem to be doing all my blogging at rosefiend.livejournal.com. I used to double-post on both blogs, but when the last Apocalypse hit I fell out of the habit and haven't gotten back to it since.

Anyway, if anyone's looking for me acting silly, or getting all crazy about writing, that's where I've been doing it at. And you can even friend me. :)

What! Another blog post!

Yeah, actually.

So this afternoon I disgruntledly (?!) went back to my Symphonians MS to start whipping it into shape. I had to shut off the computer that had internet access because I kept messing around on the internet instead of writing. Cripes.

And I'm looking at the first chapter, thinking, "You know, those two stories -- that is, the Kay story and the Symphonians bit -- actually went together pretty well right there." And so I took a bit of the Symph story from the other document I'd saved, and I dropped it into the first chapter. It nestled in all nice and tidy. I said, "Hm!"

So I went looking around in the book for another place where I could put a chunk of story, and what do you know, Wyatt and Kay were playing the same part in band (they play tuba and bass clarinet, respectively), and hey, in this Symph bit, Roderick and Violet were playing a song together on tuba and regular clarinet, so I dropped that chunk in right about there. And it looked nice there, too.

So NOW I have figured out how to fix the problem!

The Symph bits are big enough to give the reader a good idea of what's going on in their narrative, and they're right in Kay's text so she can comment on them. But their narrative is being kept to a bare minimum at this time so Kay can take center stage. But hey, I'm fine with that.

So I guess that sometimes you have to bring the world to an end to make something work. Though in the end it's actually a beginning.