So I finally broke up with this guy for good back in 1990. Thank God. I managed to escape to a place where he couldn't find me, and lived many blissful years away from him. But six years ago, he found me again -- and ever since, he's made himself at home in my social media. He doesn't comment -- but he is always looking at me. Watching. Staring. Like he can't get enough of me.

That's nice, but annoying as this is, I have work to do here.  So I told my friends about this and asked their advice.

I have the best friends in the world.

"It's people like this that I wish could be Jedi mind-tricked...or punched in the gonads until they go away. Sigh."

"Sadly, it comes to this: Either go about your business as you normally would, monitoring where you post to keep the comments section jerk-free, or you hide. Forever. To the detriment of your readers, friends, bank account, and self-esteem. Don't hide. Post away. Blog, tweet, FB--whatever you have to do to sell books, strengthen your brand, and live your life. But do not let some piece of shit you haven't seen since the first Bush administration keep you from getting what you need. Fuck that fool."

"Ugh, what a creep. Block him wherever you can, mute him or whatever is easier, and pretend he doesn't exist. The best thing you can do is thrive. Go about your business and talk about your work at your highest level. You now have people who know about this guy, people who will show up to defend if he pops up in comments sections being obnoxious. URGH. You be so successful it makes him ROT INSIDE (is it wrong to feel that way? I DON'T CARE)."

"As someone who dealt with this type of situation in the past I can only suggest that you do what you need and want to do when and where you choose to do it. Creeps like that depend on their mind game tactics to intimidate you. Do not let him get away with it! Ignore him for the rest of your life. Pretend he does not exist. You are a strong woman now and not the young girl he knew and tried to dominate. Take control of your life and live it to the fullest. Don't give him permission to intimidate you for another second!"

"Want me to kick his ass?" "I will be your wingman."

"Sounds like you are getting some pretty good advice. I say go about life and enjoy it to the fullest. Post, blog, tweet promote your book. Block him where you can. However, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. I heard on the news that there is a conceal and carry class for women happening soon. Maybe a self defense class. It would build your confidence and ease your mind."

"I think you might be doing the most effective thing. Let people know. Calmly, factually shine the light on it, and don't take on any personal shame over something that is absolutely no kind of comment on you. I do not offer to whip his butt (in large part because I am not much at butt-whipping), but I do offer to laugh derisively at his pathetic, ridiculous self."

"You can't fix the mentally ill, only how you respond to them. Borderline personality - or narcissistic. Either way - the more you engage - the more they feed off of it."

Thus my awesome friends. This is only the tip of the iceberg, too -- there are a lot more comments, all of them saying the same things.

**********

And so here you are ... again.

I hope this is exactly what you've been looking for, in all your many trips to my blogs and all my other social media, over the past six years. Approximately one visit per week for six years!!!! ETA -- Actually more than that. It took you, what, six hours to figure out that my FB was blocked?

Gosh, that's not creepy at all, no. 

You go on and live your life. I have work to do. 

And if you stalk any other women, leave off them too. 

Writing effectively is like using artillery effectively.

"It is the same with strategy as with the siege of a fortress: Concentrate your fire against a single point, and once the wall is breached, all of the rest becomes worthless and the fortress is captured."

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

Tricked by jelly beans.

What I hate is when I pick three black jelly beans out of the Jelly Belly jar in the mailroom, and the last one turns out to be coffee flavored. Gaah!

Happy rainy Thursday to you. And now, back to deadline work.

Getting close to deadline.

Less than one month until deadline! On that day the book must be delivered to the publisher -- photos, stories, source notes, bibliography, glossary, front and back matter, and intros. ALL of it.

It's getting done, slowly but surely. I keep printing out finished stories to add to my stack o' manuscript, which is slowly growing into a complete draft. I've been marking it up a little as I go, but will save the lion's share of the work for when I get the WHOLE THING written. Which will be cutting it pretty close to deadline, admittedly. But this is not the time to panic about that.


Just cultivating a sense of slow and steady purpose -- and a lot of hard work. I'm trying to maintain that sense of urgency and I hope I don't get to where I burn myself out. I keep thinking of how good it will feel to have the last story printed and added to that stack. I can do it. It is going to get done.

And I have to remember that it will not be perfect. There will be a lot of dumb spots in there. It can't be helped. I can't let that paralyze me.

Just breathe. One of the writing bosses I worked with at Hamline told me, "Persevere." I think that's damned good advice.

"I stepped out of Mississippi when I was ten years old
With a suit cut sharp as a razor and a heart made of gold
I had a guitar hanging just about waist high
And I'm gonna play this thing until the day I die."

On writing historical nonfiction.

I really should update this more than once a month or whatever.

Still moving along on the Civil War book. Pulling in quotes from all over to help with the writing of each story -- other eyewitness accounts of Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, life in the prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville and Florence, etc. Often the historical record for these women is scanty, so I have to add in details from other sources.

Picked up The Boys' War by Jim Murphy at the book sale -- he does good work in children's books. Never dry, always lively and historically accurate. I'm using that little volume as a writing model to help me along. Also I have McCullough's Truman in the back of my mind (always). David always used so many sources and neat little stories to keep us entertained and learning at the same time. He keeps stopping by the Truman Library and I keep missing him. Dang it!

The thing with writing about these women is that there are so many romanticized stories out there about them, and I have to really dig to find something that's historically accurate. On some of the women, I've found some scholarly articles that give solid facts about their lives, and this is a huge help. But on some of the women, all I have are the newspaper accounts which go on and on about how wonderful this gal is to follow her husband into war, how romantic this is -- and I'm going, yeah, yeah, can we have an actual account of where she was on the battlefield and what she was doing?

Getting the writing done is the tricky part -- and that's a reason I don't get on here much, because I know full well I'm procrastinating right now!

Secrets of the Trade: The Wisecrack Notebook

My favorite books are those where the characters spout wisecracks that make me laugh aloud, or those that capture the tiny details of life so clearly that I feel like I’m actually there with the main character, seeing those details. I want to write books like that. But then I look at my draft and get so frustrated because those neat details and wisecracks aren’t anywhere in sight!

But I have a notebook: A word-hoard that’s packed full of the smart and funny things that people say. And when I get frustrated with my limited attempt, I open that notebook up.

  

Girl: Every day with you is an eye-opener, except I’m all like, “I really wish I hadn’t seen that.”

People are always funnier, cooler, and crazier than we give them credit for, and our favorite books have characters that reflect that. These books winnow the best and most interesting bits out of life. That's where this notebook is going to be a huge help.

This guy is on the lookout for cool stuff -- and you can be too.

So in this notebook, I write down all those things that I wish I’d said – quotes, overheard conversations, wisecracks, random signs, lines from songs or poems. I will actually take the time to go through my journals and transcribe lines from that notebook to this other one to be sure I have everything I've written down. I'm a disorganized gal, so this is pretty big news. 

“Maybe I can use this in a novel,” I think, and sometimes I can. So here’s a story about a guy who was arrested for bulldozer racing. Or here’s a news article about two would-be carjackers foiled by the mysteries of the stick shift. Or Grandpa Eldon musing, "That Bonnie ... she really knew how to throw dishes." Write it all down, because you never know – maybe your next story will need it.

Sixth-grade girl: I told him to bring it. So he brought it! And then he went home crying to his mom!

When I have a decent draft of a story, I like to go through the manuscript at random. Wherever my cursor lands, I see if I can fit in some lines out of this notebook. If the little bit of funny doesn’t fit in, I take it out and put in a different one. But if it does fit, it makes the language in the story so much livelier and unexpected. Even better yet, once in a while this little throwaway detail fits in just right, and then it branches out through the story in a million unexpected ways.

Boy (running): I can’t stop, Dad, Darth Vader is on my tail!

Another thing that’s fun to do is to secretly take notes when your target audience is around. This is tricky, because with kids, one or two of them get wise to you pretty quick. But boy, the conversations they have are just about the best you’ll hear anywhere.

(Two kids are playing.)

Katy: Give me your jacket.

Sophie: Not in a million years!

Katy (intoning): A million years later….

You can also have somebody help you write dialogue. Sometimes I ask my husband for good lines and he’ll come up with some zingers that I never would have come up with on my own. And asking somebody else for dialogue help gives your character a more distinctive voice -- because I have a problem with all of my characters sounding like smarter versions of me.

Husband (at 2 a.m.): Why didn’t Captain Picard ask him to sign that book?

Me (half-asleep): What on earth are you talking about?

Husband: That episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they went back in time and met Samuel Clemens. Picard could have asked him to sign a book.

Me (groggy): That would have violated the Prime Directive.

Husband: But he could have made a shtload of money!

Me: Just go to sleep, dear.

Borrowing from others is a good way for me to stretch myself and get away of the same old stuff that keeps rattleing around in my mind. Poetry readings are great places to pick up great lines from your buddies. Don’t plagiarize, of course – but you can find many diamonds in the rough that you can cut into a style that fits your story. “I experiment with others’ voices because I get tired of my own,” as one of the Gang of Poets said. A noble goal, indeed.

Melissa: I probably broke all the rules of poetry in this poem.

Dave: That’s the spirit!

But it doesn’t all have to be funny. You can collect serious quotes as well – especially if the quotes fit one of your works-in-progress in some way. Often when I’m listening to audiobooks and I hear a quote, I scribble down a short phrase. Then later I do a Google search for that phrase, then copy and paste as much of the quote as I need into a document dedicated to these quotes. (If the book isn’t in the public domain, you might find the quote on the GoodReads website.)

“Remorse, even the greatest, has the nature of a debt; if we could only clear the books, we feel that we should be free. But a deep compassion has the nature of love, which keeps no balance sheet; we are no longer our own.”  The Charioteer – Mary Renault

Keep running lists of names you like, first and last, to give you ideas in naming your characters. I also like to collect town names – Hot Coffee, Mississippi has long been my favorite.

Actively collect these things the way a raccoon collects shiny trinkets. Then seed your story with the quotes you’ve collected. You'll win thousands of major awards! Actually, this has not been proven. But you will have fun, and that's a big part of the battle right there.

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.