The universe scoffs at my attempts to do anything

So I was writing a happyhappy blog post about Elementary, the new anthology set in Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters universe, which contains my story “Hearth & Family,” when Afalwen (my darling writing laptop) decided it was full. And could not go on. Of course, this was one of the very rare times that I was writing the post in Blogger rather than in a Word .doc and then copying it over.

It was a really funny post, too, because everytime I think about the fact that I now have stories in two Elemental Masters anthologies, I need someone to pass me smelling salts.

Thankfully, Ken the Computer Guru came to my rescue, found the enormous unecessary file that was clogging up Afalwen, and has taken it off to perform other update-y type miracles that will make it Bigger. Stronger. Faster.

He says this’ll take about an hour, which means two hours (he knows whenever he tells me how long something will take him, I automatically double it…because when I first told him that, he got miffed and then realized I was absolutely right). And even though I haven’t gotten to my copyediting for the day, you know what? Screw it, I’m’a gonna pour me a glass of wine and run a bath and read Seanan McGuire short stories on my Kindle (yes, I’m’a gonna take my Kindle into the bath with me because I LIVE ON THE EDGE).

I will re-create the happyhappy blog post later.

Updated to add: My life…I’d barely finished typing this when a friend called to say he’d been in a car accident and could we pick him up and take him home? Well, duh, of course, where are my shoes? (He’s bruised but fine; car is totaled. Egads.)

So many good things!

So many good things!

• The heatwave finally broke. It’s still warm during the day, but not beastly hot.
• I had a lovely lunch and writerly gab session with Christine yesterday. We’d sort of planned to write, but realized we needed connection more.
• Ken will be home Friday, and then we have a lovely weekend planned with friends. Saturday is a trip to FIDM to see their TV costumes exhibit (Downton Abbey! Game of Thrones!), and then Saturday we’re off to see Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing in Ojai.
• I was updating the Bibliography on my website when I pulled up the Amazon page for Love Burns Bright: A Lifetime of Lesbian Romance anthology. The very first thing on the page, to advertise the book, is an excerpt from my story. My story. And then, on the page for Best Lesbian Romance 2014, in the description that includes a partial list of authors, my name is first. It’s hard to explain, but when I look at these two pages, it’s like a punch to the gut, but in a good way. In a sudden exhalation of breath way. Wow.
• My coauthor (Teresa Noelle Roberts) and I figured out pretty much every scene needed to finish our current novel-in-progress, Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess. I’m getting that fun snowball-down-a-hill excitement about finishing it. Aaaand we’re off!
• I’ve received and processed the contract, proofs, and payment for “Hearth and Family,” a fantasy story to appear in Elemental Masters II, edited by Mercedes Lackey (!!) (December 2013). AND I’ve received and processed the contract for “Leave a Candle Burning,” a fantasy romance to appear in Fantasy Adrift from Fiction River (April 2014).
• Comp copies! Inspired by Dean Wesley Smith’s little short story paperbacks, I’ve done a few of my own. Erotic romance “Braceleted” has been available for awhile, and last month I did three Sophie Mouette stories: “Catalyst” (lesbian erotic romance), “Under a Double Rainbow” (ditto), and “Hidden Treasure” (spicy romance with a wee bit of suspense and humor). They're all still available as ebooks as well, if that's your pleasure!

True friendship

So I’m on the phone with my friend Helen, who’s waiting in line for a Styx show. It’s a corporate gig and they don’t know she’s going to be there.

Me: If you see anyone, you have my permission to hang up on me.

Helen: Hell no! I’ll tell them I’m talking to you and ask if they want to say hello!

And that right there is true friendship, my peeps.  :-)

Thank you, wonderful friend!

A friend of mine (who I won't name unless they give me the okay), sent me a glorious email the other day.

The subject line was "You suck." So I was a wee bit trepidatious when I clicked on it.

She wrote:

It's late, I'm tired, I should be going to sleep, and I can NOT stop reading Written on the Coast. I'm going to be useless tomorrow morning & it's your fault.

(It *really* is addictively good.)

This was my response to her:

In Neil Gaimain's "Make Good Art" speech, he says,

"A freelancer's life, a life in the arts, is something like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may have to put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back."

I can't tell you how much your email means to me.

Thank you for sending the bottle back to me. I'll cherish it.

(I might note this is the book I gave to Neil. Dare I hope he has a similar reaction? Eep!)

Medical mystery

This past Wednesday night, my throat started to feel funny. Thursday, it hurt…by Thursday night, I was questioning whether I’d be able to go to California Dreamin’, the very first Southern California Romance Writers of America conference. Friday morning I ditched working out with my trainer (which would’ve been at 5:45 am), got up and 7 am, and started packing…still wondering whether I should go. In the end, I did.

My throat hurt like hell. I hoped I wasn’t infectious. I checked my temperature both Thursday night and Friday morning, and it was normal.

My friend and roomie Christine, whom I was carpooling to the conference with, said pffft, she wouldn’t miss the conference unless she was outright throwing up.

Alrighty then!

Despite feeling rather like poo, I had a wonderful time. Great workshops, great people. On the way there, Christine commented that she was craving Chinese, so I found a local place with good reviews on Yelp. It was 2.2 miles away. She said, that’s close enough, let’s walk.

Alrighty then.

Did I mention that the place was in a strip mall in the dodgy area of town?

The food turned out to be surprisingly decent – the chicken was all white meat, and the cabbage in the noodles was firm and tasted fresh. The orange sauce was tasty with a very slight kick. Two thumbs up for that.

Of course, then we had to walk back. And it was starting to get dark. And the cops had pulled someone over in our path – at least three cop cars…

I’d worn my Vibrams, but they were my everyday Vibrams, not the ones I have for working out. They’re older, and I don’t normally wear them for power walking. So I had blisters on the bottoms of my feet by the time we god back. We did stop in an AM/PM so I could by cough drops for my throat (they didn’t have lozenges, so I settled for cough drops) and Band-Aids. Christine bought cough medicine and Nyquil because she was getting over a cold. We were partying hard, I tell ya.

We drank maybe half a bottle of wine and went to bed early that night.

Saturday night she had dinner with her soon-to-be editor, so she was all abuzz. I’d picked up a burrito from Rubio’s across the street and eaten it in our room, since I felt like crap. My throat kept swelling so it was hard to swallow (no issues with breathing), and always felt like there was something caught in it. But then she came back from dinner and was all bouncy and we finished off the bottle of wine and opened the second bottle and finished that, and at 9:45 pm she said, “We need more wine.”

“We don’t have any more wine,” I pointed out. So I checked online when the bar closed.

That would be at 10 pm.

We were in our jammies.

So we threw on clothes and raced down and ordered a glass of wine each and some garlic parmesan fries (because with that much wine in us, we weren’t thinking “healthy,” we were thinking “sop up the booze”), and discovered people we knew were still there, including the gorgeous Kate Wood, so we moved over to that table, and we all talked and talked and we ordered a glass each more wine, and finally it was nearly 11 pm and the bar staff probably loathed us, so we paid and left. (Although they forgot to charge us for the second two glasses of wine, which we pointed out to them so they could fix the bill, so maybe they don’t loathe us completely.)

Funny thing: My throat didn’t hurt when I was drinking wine. WHY??? Both days, I had the misfortune to sneeze during a workshop, and it hurt so incredibly much that tears sprang to my eyes and it was all I could do not to cry our in pain.

Sunday was more workshops and lunch, and then a big book signing. I sold out of Waking the Witch, which had been ordered through Barnes & Noble, who admittedly didn’t order very many and I had people disappointed because they would have bought it, so phooey. I brought copies of three other books (two collections and a long short story), and they sold respectably. I still made way more on the others than Waking the Witch, so there was no benefit to going through B&N. Lesson learned.

Meanwhile, because I’d been walking funny due to the blisters on the bottom of my feet, my dressy shoes had rubbed a horrid blister on the back of one ankle. As in, a layer of skin had peeled off. (Sorry…)

And my throat hurt. And my ears hurt. Ugh.

Ken had come to the book signing (he’d been at an SCA event that weekend) and his mom came, too, which was fantastic! On the way home, though, I asked Ken to take me to an urgent care. Advil and cough drops and gargling with warm salt water weren’t helping; I needed bigger guns.

Apparently I was a medical mystery. If I had other symptoms (sniffles, coughing), it would be a virus. Nope, otherwise I felt great. If I had a fever, then it was probably strep. Nope – plus the in-house culture came back negative. So they took a culture to send out, and the doctor said to get proper lozenges and Aleve, and to gargle with salt water. Thanks. I have since learned that Aleve does nothing for me, and that spray stuff for sore throats? I can never seem to hit the back of my throat where it hurts. The lozenges help, but mostly just make my tongue numb.

Monday, I skipped my workout, and had a complete and utter stressy meltdown in the evening. Tuesday, I realized I was feeling better. Wednesday, I felt fantastic: I worked out, got a ton of stuff done. I still took Nyquil, though, because now I was coughing and feeling a wee tiny bit sniffly.

Today the doctor called. I have strep. Hellloooo, antibiotics. I’m contagious until 24 hours after I started taking them (which was 3:30 pm or so today), which means I was Patient Zero at the conference, and have potentially infected everyone else I’ve come into contact with. If you are one of those people, and you get sick, I am deeply, deeply sorry.

I’m taking tomorrow off from working out, too, so I don't infect my trainer (if I haven’t already, eep), but I should be fine after that.

Okay, back to work. I have some brain left….

Note: For the most part I'm staying off Facebook/Twitter/G+ due to deadlines and such, so if you need me, email or call or text, and apologies if it still takes forever to get back to you. Thanks.

My soul is full of energy

Workshop #1 is over, which was The Business and Craft of Short Fiction. Amazing stuff; for me, this one built on the Short Story Workshop (which I took right before Ken’s accident, after which I didn’t write for months), so it was almost as if it shook free some of the information from the previous workshop. Also, my submitted short story made the first cut for an upcoming Fiction River anthology, so I’m typing this with my fingers crossed! And if it doesn’t fit in (I think there are a couple other similarly themed stories from invited writers), I have a fun story in an already-created world of a novel that’s almost finished, so indie pubbing the story would be a great ad for the novel.

Plus, I had an utterly wonderful time rooming with the beautiful Val, and carpooling back and forth with Terry, Sean, Val, and Rob proved to be hysterical and off-color (and I think that’s largely my fault). And I met some fantastic writers and hung out with old friends, and my soul is full of energy from the intelligent, exciting, and funny conversations we’ve all been having.

The next workshop doesn’t start until Thursday night, so I’ve got a few days to recover and get some stuff done. On my plate is finishing one commissioned short story and writing another story; reading all the manuscripts for the workshop (I think I have 20 to go); a girls’ night with Leslie, Lisa, Chris, and Stephie; rooming with Leslie and all the fun that entails; more walks on the beach (provided the weather holds); and a few other work-related things. Whee!

The slow progress back towards the light

I started this blog post about a month ago, which tells you how difficult it’s been for me to write. But despite how hard it is to look back at the bad, it’s also proving cathartic, because it’s making me celebrate the good and look forward to the…um, gooder. More goodness. Better goodness.

So, here goes:

Roughly a year ago, I…

• was still recovering from the death of my father in January 2010
• was continuing to deal with my oldest sister’s severe aneurysm in December 2010 and the resultant cross-country travel (four times in seven months, and counting…)
• was reeling from Ken’s near-fatal motorcycle accident, major surgery, and recovery (which necessitated my being his primary caregiver for several months)
• assumed I was just dealing with stress, and didn’t know that my perimenopause had turned into menopause and that my hormones were, quite frankly, FUBAR
• was so wound up in perfectionism that when I tore a tendon in my left hand and it hurt to do dishes and my acupuncturist suggested I use paper plates and disposable tableware, I almost levitated off the table in horror
• not to mention that I’d just torn a tendon in my left hand and had been told not to type for four months, meaning I couldn’t do much of anything work-wise
• continued to do the jobs I’d volunteered for because I didn't want to let anyone down, fully convinced I could do them despite the energy I was putting into taking care of my loved ones (and not putting into taking care of myself)
• wondered why some people I’d long called friends had seemingly abandoned me
• was seriously wondering if I’d ever write again, given that I couldn’t find the enthusiasm for even stupid only-I-would-ever-read-it fun stuff—which then made me wonder WTH I was going to do with the rest of my life and, honestly, who I was if I wasn’t a writer, which I’d identified myself as and worked towards since I was 12 years old

There was probably more, but you get the picture.

I’ve been pondering, over the past month or two, how different my life is now. How much better it is. How I didn’t realize how fucking awful it was a year ago, how depressed and anxious and screwed up and lost I was.

The irony is that in public—on my blog, on FB/Twitter, even to anyone except close friends/family—I put on a good face. (As good a face I could, anyway. I know my stress manifested in less-than-positive ways.) I asked for help, and when I didn’t get it, I shrugged and soldiered on, because that’s what one does.

My goal here isn’t to garner sympathy (in fact, responses to that end would probably make me feel bad at this point). It’s more to chronicle the changes for myself, to be able to look back and say “Yes, it was horrible, but I got through it, and if/when things get horrible again, this will remind me that I can and will get through it again.” (Although I’m putting the positive out there that it’s not going to get that horrible again.)

Things are so, so, so much better. My health isn’t perfect, but it feels like a 180 in some areas. December’s month-long cold notwithstanding, I have energy, I have strength. I ran my first full 5K a month ago. I can do double suspension exercises in the TRX bands. I go up and down the stairs without thinking about it (as opposed to when my back was so bad, if I forgot something on one floor, I simply went on without it).

I have my brain back, and I have some of my creativity back, and it’s coming back more and more, and I know that eventually I’ll get my focus back (I see that as something to work on, not wait for, at any rate).

I’m excited about moving my business into the upstairs office, where I’ll have more room to both write and publish, and I’m excited about doing some more fun work on the house in the process (e.g., the downstairs office).

I’ve let go of the so-called friends who had already let go of me, and found great joy in the amazing friends who stood by me through the worst of times. I’ve spent quality time with family, and rejoiced in my sister’s slow but steady successes.

I was reminded, time and again, how music heals me, how it reaches into my soul and helps me find the light. It’s my sacred circle, my way of connecting with the divine.

All of this spirals down into the tattoo I got in the middle of all the darkness: The Good Catches Up. Sometimes it takes a little while, but in the end, it does.

I’m going to keep putting the good out there into the world, and tomorrow I’ll talk about my plans for the beginning of 2013 and beyond.

A magickal New Year’s Eve to you all. Leave the bad behind in 2012, and embrace the good!

Listening to: “New Year’s Eve,” Taylor Mills