Of Spring and Walking

Despite the cold weather that has taken hold in the past two days, Spring is taking hold in Manitoba, and I have photographic evidence! 

See! Spring. It's really happening. Accept no substitutions!

Now then...

I think I've mentioned on this blog before that going for long walks helps me resolve almost all of my writing problems. Generally speaking, if I get stuck on a plot point and writing notes to prod myself doesn't fix it, I take the dog for a walk in the park and all the answers reveal themselves to me. It's a lovely tactic because on top of working like a charm for writer's block, it also keeps the dog and I in decent condition even through the winter.

Imagine my frustration then, when over the last ten days, as I got so close to the end of the first draft of Traitor's Hope, I found myself stuck and... WALKING DIDN'T WORK.

It was most vexing. Especially with the end so close I could taste it.

So I had to break out the big guns. I had to talk through my problem with a willing audience. On Friday I spent most of the day with a close friend who is also a writer and I started on this tactic, but unfortunately, she didn't have much of the backstory and I took so long catching her up on necessary plot points (and some unnecessary ones - I have a hard time restraining myself at times) that by the time our schedules forced us to part ways I had failed to parse the problem.

Then a few nights ago, my husband kindly volunteered to be my wall to bounce ideas off of. He was wonderful, and since he's already quite familiar with the first book, I was able to catch him up on pertinent points quite quickly and get to the meat of the problem. This worked. Once I was able to get down to the crux of the issue I was able to think through what was missing. It's not the most glamorous solution (I've had a few in this first draft that have been surprisingly elegant) but it will let me finish the damn book. Then I can fix the rest of what's wrong in my major revision.

So, after a more than week long stall out, I'm back in business, and hopeful that I'll have the rough draft done by the end of the weekend. Muhuahahhahahahahah...

Ahem. Yep. So... in other news KeyCon is almost upon us! It starts next Friday evening, and Katya Kolmakov and I will be rocking a table selling books and artwork, talking to people and signing things, and generally looking forward to seeing people there. So if you're in Winnipeg over the weekend and like fantasy books, fantasy art, fantasy games, or fantasy paraphernalia, we hope to see you there!

I think that's all for the moment. Happy spring!

Slow Progress and Flash Marketing...

Well, I won't lie. I'm stuck just before the end of the Blade's Edge sequel. I'm at 90,000 words and I need to resolve a major plot point before I can move forward... into what is essential the climactic final scene. Then there's the epilogue. Then I'm done with the first draft.

So, that's frustrating. I'm hoping that going for a walk later today will help me sort that plot point out. It often does... fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I'm trying to get my poor neglected sales moving again. I haven't done any marketing or promotion on Blade's Edge for months and I've watched it's sales rankings dive as a result. The whole making another human thing proved pretty distracting, especially when it came to having the energy to... well actually do my job. Then this past month has been much better, but I've spent pretty much all of my available energy on writing the sequel. Which, honestly, is a. my priority and b. way more fun than marketing.

But now, it's May and really I need to get back on the marketing and promotions wagon because books do not sell themselves... (well ok they do half the selling, but the cover, copy, and title can't do their work if you don't put them in front of people to see). Especially with the sequel (hopefully) coming out in late August.

So... if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Blade's Edge, you should know that you can snag a kindle ebook copy for just $0.99 if you head to amazon before 6pm PST. If you miss that deadline, no worries, you'll still be able to get the book for just $1.99 for the next 17 hours. Then $2.99 then $3.99 and finally back up to full price at $4.99 on Sunday. In other words, it's a countdown sale and the countdown is on. The price won't likely drop this low again until the promotions that I'll do before releasing the sequel, so if you were hoping to add Blade's Edge to your summer reading list, now's a perfect time.

And for anyone who is local I will be running a dealer's table with the talented Katya Kolmakov on May 22nd for KeyCon here in Winnipeg. We'll be running table #4. Katya will be selling her artwork and promoting her fantasy web serial Rhodina and I will be selling and signing copies of Blade's Edge.

Whew! That's a lot of marketing and promotion in one post. Sorry about that.

Here's a picture of the giant pile of hush puppies I made to go with some chili last week, apropos of absolutely nothing, just to make up for all that promotional stuff:

I hope everyone is enjoying spring! It's 89 degrees here, so things are greening up nicely. 

Words, words, words, words, words...

I may have mentioned that I was attempting CampNaNoWriMo this month. I might not have though, as I've been a bit distracted with the whole new human making business and all of that. I have, however, actually made the attempt and, while I got off to a very slow start, I am much closer to actually succeeding at CampNaNoWriMo than I have ever been. For some reason April writing and I have never really gotten along. In fact out of the three or four CampNaNos I've ever tried is the first one that looks like it will work.

Anyway, what that means is: so far this month I've added 19,273 words to the first draft of the sequel to Blade's Edge. About 15,000 of which have come from the past three days. (I mentioned the slow start right?) Well, I'm pretty thrilled with that, because if I keep up the 5k a day from now until the end of April I will have written 40k in April and that will make for 100k words for that first draft and probably the entirety of the plot down on paper. That's very exciting because it means I am on track to get the book out before Speck arrives in September. If I finish the first draft in April, then I can spend May doing major revisions and then I can have beta readers reading during June and July and then I can finish up formatting etc. in August.

So... I can't be 100% sure that I'll finish in time, but I'm highly motivated and I've knocked out 5k a day for the past three days, so the outlook is fairly positive. After all, I managed to finish NaNoWriMo in the last three days of the month with 10k a day so I know it's possible, and this is a lot less stressful than that.

And can I just say that I'm so excited to finally have the plot for this story figured out?! I mean, it's been kind of touch and go this whole time, and there is still a lot that will need to be fixed in revision, but... I went from thinking I would just put words down until I was done and basically have to start from scratch for the revision, to thinking that I've actually tied things together in a halfway decent series of twists that should make for an interesting story all the way up to the last page. There will still be lots that needs fixing in revision (the quality of the prose for this first draft is pretty abysmal) but I actually think I've sorted out most of the major plot kinks here.

The prospect of NOT having to completely rewrite the entire book for the second draft is extremely pleasing.

Yay!

In other news, the whole second trimester of pregnancy being better than the first seems to be holding true pretty well. I have had way more energy for writing, running, hiking, and generally doing things that aren't sleeping, eating, or feeling sick to my stomach. So, all and all we'll call that a win.

Which reminds me, I'm getting my formatting freelancing back in gear, so if you need any book formatting done, be sure to hit me up.

And finally, I mentioned that my energy was back, yes? Well, the husband, the dog, and I went for a nice long hike on Sunday to celebrate the arrival of spring. Here are a couple photos from the adventure, courtesy of hubby's phone camera.

Early on in the hike we came across this cave set in a cliff and I couldn't resist the temptation to climb up to it. Pay no mind to the fact that I look like Golem. 

Most of the lake was still frozen but that didn't make it any less scenic.

Just at the end of the hike we came to point where the ice was finally giving up the ghost. Here you can see the line that the wind pushing back.

And here you can see Artemis and I enjoying the sun (but mostly the wind) at our turnaround point on the hike. It was a nice view of the thawed portion of the lake, but we only ate half of our lunch there before deciding to turn back and find a less windy place to eat.

That's it for today, I think. Hope everyone is having a lovely spring so far! I'll be sure to update once I've finished the first draft (oh there will be much celebrating... boozeless celebrating, but still, celebrating!) 

Public Restrooms...

...and why it shouldn't matter who uses which ones.

I don't generally pick divisive topics for this blog, but hey, I have this tiny public platform that some people read and occasionally I can't resist the temptation to throw my voice in with the other voices of reason I see around the internet. Hopefully the more people who write about it, the more people will start to see reason. Or at least it will generate conversation... so here goes...

Where transgender people get to pee has been in the news a lot lately. A couple of states are trying to require that people only pee in the bathroom that matches their birth certificate, and lately Target has been brought under fire by conservative groups because it has instated a "pee wherever you identify" policy for all of its employees and customers.

Why are people upset? Well according to them...

"Target's policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims," AFA President Tim Wildmon said in an open letter. "This means a man can simply say he 'feels like a woman today' and enter the women's restroom ... even if young girls or women are already in there." (Quote taken from a Business Insider article written by Haley Peterson)

Umm... It's difficult to know where to begin with how messed up that statement is. So first of all, let's look at how things stand currently. At this moment, in the states that haven't bothered to try to make it illegal, there are no laws stating that men have to use men's restrooms and women have to use women's restrooms. It's just common practice. Think about it, if it were already illegal then the states that are currently trying to ban transgender access to the public restroom they feel most comfortable with wouldn't need to do anything. It would ALREADY BE ILLEGAL. But it's not...

So, right now (and for the last... FOREVER), there is NOTHING keeping sexual predators out of public restrooms except a stick figure silhouette. So, if that's your great fear, then why haven't you been worried about it YOUR WHOLE LIFE?

Chances are, you haven't worried about it because it doesn't happen very often. And here's the kicker, no matter what the policy on public restroom access is SEXUAL ASSAULT IS STILL ILLEGAL. Just because someone was "allowed" to be in a public restroom does not mean that person is allowed to sexually assault whoever else is in there. It's not like public restrooms are law free zones where suddenly you can do any damn thing you want, laws be damned. If a sexual predator wants in to a public restroom all they have to do is go in there. That's true right now and will remain true whether or not you let transgender people pee where they feel most comfortable.

So now let's address the real issue. If you are freaked out by transgender people using a public restroom, that's probably because transgender people (who are by and large not interested in doing anything besides peeing and fixing their hair when they enter a public restroom) probably freak you out. That may be because you can't possibly fathom what it's like to be born with one sex but identify so strongly with the other that you feel the need to change your physical appearance/physique. You may think it's weird, or gross, or unnatural, or any other number of things, and you're welcome to your opinion, but that doesn't mean you get to discriminate against these folks. These people are just trying to go about their lives and pee without making a scene. You have probably already peed in the same public restroom as a transgender person and never had a clue.... Because despite what you may think, not all transgender people are obviously transgender.

In fact there are many transgender people who would cause quite an uproar by being forced to pee in the bathroom that fits with the sex they were born with. And one of the main reasons that transgender people would like to pee in the bathroom that they identify with now, is not because they have creepy ulterior motives, or because they think it's just more fun, but because they JUST WANT TO PEE and don't want to be accosted while doing so.

Take Aydian Dowling:

He is clearly a dude. If you saw him go into a women's bathroom you'd be like, "Bro, wrong door. The men's room is over here." And he would be like, "Thanks, man. How embarrassing." And you would both chuckle, because clearly this man was heading into the ladies' room by accident. 

But Aydian Dowling was born a woman, and if you start forcing folks to go pee in the place where their birth certificate indicates they should, you would be forcing him to use the women's restroom. And hey, I would welcome Aydian Dowling in the ladies' room, but I think that's the opposite of what you people are freaking out about.

And how about Adreja Pejic?

If you saw her walking into a men's room you'd probably turn her around to the ladies' and giggle about it as well. But again, this woman's birth certificate states her sex as male, so if you were in North Carolina she'd just have to shrug and go into the men's room anyway. 

Or what about any of these ladies?

Are we sensing a theme here yet? There are lots of trans folks that you would never guess were trans. And there are others who are obviously so, but that shouldn't matter. What matters is, there are people in this world who just want to go pee without getting harassed by law enforcement, or anyone else, just like the rest of us, and they should be allowed to do so. 

And keep in mind that laws like these hurt everyone. You might assume that only transgender people will be embarrassed and given a hard time by this law, but what about the mannish looking women, the effeminate men, or the girls who dress in baggy "men's" clothing? Are they all supposed to put up with being ID'd at the entrance to the public restroom? What about your aunt Mildred who has always had a rather square jaw? Will she be humiliated the next time she has to pee at Walmart? Asked to produce her birth certificate to prove that she's always been a woman? How the hell is that anyone's business? And why on earth would we put ANYONE through that? Chances are, no one's going to look twice at Aydian Dowling when he walks into the men's room, but your aunt Mildred is going to be harassed every time she has to pee outside of her home. So how does that make legal sense?

Transgender people face discrimination, threats of violence, and worse, on a daily basis. They are not looking to prey on unsuspecting bathroom goers. They are simply trying to pee and then get on with their lives. The current law in most states enables them to do that, so why are we going out of our way to keep them from it?

Please stop making excuses about sexual predators in bathrooms and start letting people who aren't hurting anyone go about their lives. If you have nothing better to do than worry about where someone else chooses to urinate, it might be a sign that you need some new hobbies. Try reading some books, maybe something about treating other human beings with respect and kindness. Just a thought.

Side Tracked

Well, I have been working on the sequel to Blade's Edge. That's the good news.

The bad news is that between doing a second round of taxes on Monday (filing in two countries is a pain in the ass) and having guests come to stay with us, I have gotten side tracked from blogging. I haven't even written my week 18 update for my pregnancy blog yet. Which, by the way, if you're wondering why I'm only blogging once a week on this blog and those entries are pretty short, it's largely because I'm writing two entries per week for the pregnancy blog and it's taking up a lot of my non-fiction writing time.

I'm a bit sorry about that, but it does seem to be a popular topic, and I'm getting way more hits over on that blog than I am on this one.

Le sigh...

Meanwhile, I have registered for C4 (happening in late October) and hopefully for KeyCon (happening in late May). I say hopefully for KeyCon as I haven't yet heard back from them regarding my registration, but it was sent by mail, so that's not too surprising really. I expect to confirm all of this later this week. So keep an eye out for those if you enjoy going to conventions! And, I plan to have the Blade's Edge sequel ready to sell for C4, though I sadly will not have it ready in time for KeyCon.

I'm excited to announce that at both Cons I will be joined at my table by the talented author and artist Katya Kolmakov. She will be selling prints of her original artwork and promoting her various online fantasy series at our table.

(An example of the fantastic artwork by Katya Kolmakov - borrowed from her blog.)

So, that's all the news from this quarter for the week. More updates coming soonish... Happy Spring! 

April snow storms bring...

...long walks with the dog and a good excuse to drink hot beverages all day.

They also bring the right kind of weather for diving back into Traitor's Hope. Yes, you read that right. I'm back to working on the sequel to Blade's Edge! At the moment I'm still rereading to get back into the text, but I have been rereading every day since the 1st of April and I should be caught up and writing new stuff starting later tonight or tomorrow. My goal is to be finished with the rough draft by the end of the month.

So YAYYYYYY!!! Yay for actually feeling well enough to write, and for getting back into the Blade's Edge sequel, and for moving FORWARD! It feels really good to do that.

And in the meantime, if Spring is taking its time getting here, so be it. The snow meant that our walk today was decidedly not muddy, and that was a nice change of pace. (Plus, Artemis seemed to feel like she was the right temperature for the first time in weeks.)

Hope everyone is enjoying whatever form of weather spring (or fall) is taking in their part of the world!

This pug does not appreciate Spring taking its time...

New Joint Project...

Well, some of you may be wondering why I have only been blogging intermittently, or why I have stalled out on my youtube series, or why I haven't had any great progress updates on the sequel to Blade's Edge recently.

The answer, my friends, is that I have been working on a joint project with my husband for the past few months, and today, I unveil it to you...

At the end of nine long months we'll be starting a new chapter in our adventures. 

I expect there will be a few interruptions to my other projects, but I hope to have the Blade's Edge sequel wrapped up and in people's hands before that time. I have big plans to finish up the first draft in April, and then things should move fairly quickly from there, with six weeks for the rewrite, and then off to beta readers, back for more rewrite and then off to the editor. I'll do the formatting myself, and I hope to hire Juan Carlos Barquet for the cover again. My goal is to have it all wrapped up and ready to publish before my whole world turns upside down in September. Wish me luck! :-)

And as for why I haven't been working on the sequel up to now? The short answer is that the first trimester really wiped me out and I found very little creative energy to do anything at all. There were days when just getting up seemed more of a challenge than I was prepared for. I suppose most of that energy was concentrated on creating a new human. Now, I find myself quite a bit restored and hope to be able to tackle this project with renewed vigor even while working on making a new person constantly in the background. We'll see how it goes, and I'll be sure to keep you updated on writing progress. (Don't worry, there won't be many pregnancy updates here. I'll find another outlet for those.) 

Traveling...

Well, once more my life has taken me to Arizona for some lovely outdoor adventures and quality time spent with good friends and family. My hope is to get some serious work accomplished today, so I will keep this blog entry brief. (Not that blogging isn't serious work, but there's writing and formatting work that needs doing and blogging often feels like a distraction.)

So far this trip has included such highlights as: backpacking for two days with one of my favorite people in the world and covering 20 miles of rugged desert terrain in that time period, watching my husband wear a kilt all weekend whilst playing traditional celtic music at the Phoenix Highland games, eating delicious food from a variety of restaurants ranging from hole in the wall Mexican food to old favorite Japanese restaurants, and spending time with people I don't get to see nearly often enough.

In an attempt to disconnect from technology for most of this trip I neglected to bust out my cell phone for pictures very often. However, here are a couple shots just to give you a general impression of the awesomeness.

Bagpipes provided the soundtrack to most of the weekend. There were hundreds of them and they never stopped.

Here are Claire and I post-backpacking trip both seeming startled that we have taken a picture of ourselves in this state. Behind us is the trailhead to our 20 mile, two day loop. (Claire please forgive me for using such an unflattering photo of the two of us, but I felt it best captured the moment.)

Arizona, you have treated us well yet again, and I look forward to the next visit! 

On This Day...

...five years ago, I was running late for work. It was the day I taught young kids at NHK. I was never particularly fond of those classes because none of the students ever seemed particularly keen to be there and I have never felt particularly comfortable teaching small children, but I had prepared puzzles and games for the day and I was just grabbing my bag and heading out the door when my phone buzzed and I checked it to find an early earthquake warning flashing...

Lots changed that day. So much was taken away from so many. We were fortunate in so many ways. In particular we were fortunate to be in a place that allowed us to help others during what could have been a pretty bleak time. Doing so helped to keep us from falling apart.

If you want to read a detailed account of what happened on that day, and the following few days, I happened to write them down here. Just scroll down past the first handful of paragraphs until you see the March 11th header and there you'll see my account of everything that happened from the 11th to the 17th. 

I'll forever thank my former self for writing down a detailed account of that time when it was still so fresh in my mind. While it was all still happening. Memory is a slippery thing, and while I will never forget that time period, I am grateful to have a more accurate account than what my brain would be able to dredge up today without that writing to aid me. 

Unfortunately, I stopped blogging about my time in Japan after that. However, I've been looking through my old e-mails and realize there's lots to mine there about my experiences. In fact the reason that I stopped blogging seems to have been the sheer volume of e-mails I was sending back home to keep folks calm in the aftermath it took up all of the time and energy that I normally would have put into the blog. 

If you'd like to know about the month or so afterwards, it could best be summed up as "endeavoring to focus on things other than the threat of dying from alpha and beta radiation blowing across our prefecture from the Fukushima reactor and working to help as many people as possible as part of that distraction." In other words, we tried to live life as normally as we could with gas rationing, milk and bread rationing, rolling blackouts to conserve energy, and a lot of extra people camped out on our living room floor for weeks on end. We did pretty well actually. A lot of our friendships were strengthened through that time, and there is a closeness between those of us who were there during that period that is wordless and enduring. 

The truth is, if you're ever going to live through a natural disaster and its after effects Japan is the best possible place for it. I was continually impressed by how everything was handled and how well everyone worked together for the greater good. It was an awesome thing to experience. (And yes, I'm using awesome in it's original and most literal sense.)

Funnily enough one of the toughest things about that whole time period was keeping all of our friends and family back home calm while we tried to resume our normal lives and push forward. Folks were understandably worried about the damage done to the Fukushima nuclear power plants, but that worry was magnified and blown out of proportion by the fear mongering of the US media. We were getting very reliable information from a number of sources (mostly the International Atomic Energy Association and a friend of mine who is a nuclear engineer), and as bad as things were, and could have gotten, nothing was ever quite as bad as the western media made it out to be. Trying to convince my parents of that, however, was a full time job.

Meanwhile, many beautiful things came from that time period. We hosted a lot of people at our place during times when lots of people didn't have power or other utilities working properly in their homes. We also got together a group of people who worked to collect supplies to send north to the towns that had been wiped out by the tsunami. This served multiple purposes. One, it sent much needed supplies to an area that was struggling to get them as the roads on the way in were severely damaged. Large organizations were finding it difficult to get in, and smaller groups like ours, that sent supplies in a caravan of smaller vans, had more success, and were able to get in earlier than larger groups. Also, since we didn't handle any money, there was no red tape to deal with. Collect supplies, deliver to Iwate. Done and done. The other purpose it served was to help all of us who felt the world fall out from under our feet to feel as though we weren't just sitting around waiting for the sky to fall too. We did something, something positive, something physical and concrete, that directly helped the people who had been hurt the most, and that made us feel like we still knew who we were and what we were doing in a time of continual uncertainty. 

The friendships we made in Japan were always going to be friendships that lasted a lifetime, but for those of us who lived through March 11th and its aftermath the bond is even greater though it's harder to describe. How do you explain the trust you feel when the world seems like it's falling apart around you and you know a group of people are there for you and always will be? I'm a writer and feel like I should be able to do it justice, but... well, it's having a home in each of those people. Wherever they are, you will be welcome and safe. Each of them is a light in the darkness. 

頑張る東北、頑張る日本！

We will always remember.

The Day I Killed My Skate...

Today we went for a skate along the river with friends. The weather was fine, the sun shining, the sky cloudless, and only a light breeze to tickle us as we slid gently along the icy surface of the river. We had traversed about half of the available distance on the river trail when, mid stride, with no undue pressure or torque applied, I heard a crack and suddenly felt like my foot had a lot more room to move around. The upper portion of my skate, (a five dollar thrift store purchase from the previous winter) had completely let go of its base. My foot was no longer connected to the blade below. With help from my friends I hobble-scooted my way to a nearby bench, and inspected the damage.

The view from above. If it looks like the skate is double wide, that's because my foot is hanging out of the side of it.

That's the bottom of the liner that is supposed to be inside of the skate. Meanwhile the blade is still pointing downward as gravity demands.

Here you can see my toe poking out of the front

None of this stopped Artemis from having a wonderful day

Or looking adorable in the snow

Or standing majestically in the sun

Or exploring the expanse of the river

The moral of this story is that you get what you pay for when you buy five dollar skates, and that nothing stops a dog from enjoying a wintry day in the sun. (Also, when you bring your boots with you in a backpack while skating skate failures are really not a big deal. Walking home on a sunny winter day is still quite pleasant.)