July Readingfest

While many of my fellow writing pals are off at CampNano, I'm stuck in a work schedule that leaves my creative brain fried and my fingers reluctant to go anywhere near my laptop. I did manage to get away for a long holiday weekend to take our first official family camping trip.

Other than some majorly rude and annoyingly obnoxious camp site neighbors, it was a wonderful experience. The weather was perfect. We found interesting fossil rocks, played in the sand, paddled around in a canoe and cooked food over the fire. Good stuff. I also brought a book and tried to get a little reading done.

Honestly, I did more carrying the book around intending to read it than actual reading, but having the leisure to do so did manage to rekindle the urge to read for enjoyment that had been lacking due to critiquing for the past couple years and trying to get my own writing done. Once home and the camping gear put away, I sat down and poured through the sand speckled pages. Then I picked up another and read that. I just cracked open a third. I've declared this month my Readingfest.

I'm hoping to work through some of my towering TBR pile. So far I've conquered:
The Barbarian by Judith French A good romance tale with a little lite history on the side. Other than feeling, from the amount of backstory inserted, that this was a book two, I didn't find much to distract me from enjoying the story of Alexander's wife, Roxanne, her hidden child, Ptolemy's need to outshine his dead brother, his missing bastard... oh and, of course, the hot barbarian prince who rescues her. I enjoyed the fact that this was a more mature romance in that Mr. Hottie had adopted and raised two boys on his own and both of the MCs were on their second marriage. No heaving-breasted virgins here, no sir.

For the past two days, my head has been stuck in Dark Fire by Christine Feehan. While formulaic like I've found the Carpathian series generally to be, it was still an enjoyable, quick read. Stong-willed and perpetual loner Tempest finds herself employed as the mechanic of an eccentric band, who are all secretly Carpathians (not exactly vampires). When their large, domineering bodyguard declares she is his lifemate and bonds them together, she must come to grips with kissing her loner lifestyle goodbye for all eternity. Lots of sex seems to help her adjust. The dialogue felt stiff in places and the descriptions repetitive, but overall, I wasn't complaining.

This morning, I dove into the long awaited Jacqueline Carey's Naamah's Blessing which arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Having reached chapter eleven by lunch, I've already laughed and cried. It took Puss in Boots eyes and much tugging from my daughter to dislodge me from the book in order to get my motherly duties and work day going. I marvel at Carey's skill at weaving so much emotion into her characters and creating such a wonderfully detailed world. I'm sad to see another of her trilogies close but anxious to see if another will follow. More gushing on this novel when I finish it. Which will likely be tomorrow at this pace. Who needs sleep?

Reluctant Blogcation

I hadn't intended to take time off from all you fun folks, but working ten hour days, including weekends, has slaughtered my free time like a chainsaw dual in a defunct summercamp filled with half-naked, beer-drinking teens.

While I love paying my bills, I miss my writing time and wandering around on the internet. My back would prefer me sitting on the couch rather than running up and ladders and lifting heavy things. The rest of me would like that too.

I hope to be back soon!

Fill in the blank fun

I'd love to say that writing is going along as wonderfully as previously reported, but I hit a wall a week ago and am back in idea percolation mode. This mad lib, supplied by the ever lovely and talented Elena Solodow conveys my issues pretty darn well. But no, really, my MC doesn't die. Honest.

If you'd like to participate in the mad lib fun head over to her blog right now. Maybe not right now, but in a few minutes.

Dear Main Character,

Just writing to tell you how much I appreciate what you do. I know it was tough getting past that total chapter rewrite #402 last week, but you made it through.

(Just to let you know, there's another one at the climax of the novel. Hope that's all right.)

I know you said you’re really sick of me rewriting your scenes, especially when I replace the ones where you had a good time with Ms. MC and I appreciate your feedback. It's always good to hear from your characters, but I really feel that you’re stronger with these new scenes that are rife with conflict and showcase your strengths, okay?

This novel is about you defying ‘the man’ and getting the girl, plain and simple. If you feel it's not right for you, we can part ways now. I know there's a couple secondary characters who would love a promotion.

So for tomorrow's writing session, let's focus on getting past this chaos of plotpoints I’ve written us into and figure a way to bring them all together to a resounding climax. I really love the way you have an attitude with the bad guys, but make sure you don’t start that with me this time, otherwise you might get killed off a little earlier than expected.

(Oh, no. You don't die in this book. Don't worry.)

(Really, would I lie to you?)

Anyway, MC, thanks again. Always know I'm here for you, except when I have my "sudden inspirations".

Yours always,
Jean

Six Sentence Sunday: Not Another Bard's Tale 5

In this last excerpt from Not Another Bard's Tale, Ed, the Evil Overlord in disguise, has infiltrated the motley band of heros as they travel to his keep in the hopes of defeating him. Harold, the bard, has just finished a rather disparaging song about evil overlords getting killed by heros which Ed took a bit of offense to.

Harold said, "Usually the ones not loved by their mommies, some deep emotional childhood scar that twists them, bad grades in school and hanging out with the wrong crowd, that sort of thing.”

Ed’s mouth hung open and when he finally gathered the wherewithal to close it, he sputtered, “That’s not how it is at all, I’ll have you know.”

Bruce gave him an odd look. “You some sort of expert on evil overlords, Ed?”

Ed gritted his teeth and continued on his way. “Just seems like with a man so evil as Darkious Maximus, Evil Overlord Extraordinaire and Master of the Nine Darknesses, would be carved of deeper stuff than your typical evil overlord material.”

If you've enjoyed Not Another Bard's Tale, you might also enjoy my short story, The Employer, which is available in the The First Line.

Check out other fabulous SSS excerpts here.

My weekend back to nature adventure

Is it just me or does that look like a mob of Ents?

Being overwhelmed with work as I have been lately, I needed a little break from home, laundry, all those little things you see around the house that need doing when you have a spare moment and even my laptop. Actually, everyone needed a break from their computers. So, this weekend we set off on our first family camping experience.

I grew up camping. It's what we did two or sometimes three weeks out of the summer. We landed somewhere new, wandered off, made friends, stood barefoot in snake infested swamps to catch turtles, went swimming, got rained on and didn't care, built rambing sand castles for hours, and slept like the dead. Somewhere in my later teen years the camping bug was lost and road trip vacations took over.

When I had kids, we started off with the road trips. Fun getaways, but expensive. I was looking for a change, and so this year, Santa brought us camping gear. Yay Santa! I spent most of my free time last week digging through memories of what supplies we had with us when I was a kid and more than a few hours running from store to store to find the best prices on those items. Fully outfitted (I hoped), we set off for a one night dry run (close to home and a store) at our property.

We set up the tent in no time. This huge, 3 room tent gave everyone the privacy they wanted and offered plenty of room to store our stuff inside. It might not look very big here, but its 10' x 18'. That's a tent!

I did a quick check of my flower garden (filled with a the overflow from home) and found it flourishing. The Japanese iris are four feet tall!

The creek has become quite overgrown, but we did get to wake to frogs croaking, ducks quacking and what sounded like an entire aviary of birds singing. A wonderful sound to tell about later, but not so appreciated at 6am.

Breakfast over the fire. Yum!

When we weren't getting eaten alive by the rabid mosquitos, we explored. The bark had fallen off this tree to reveal generations of insect artwork.

Sadly, the trip had some work involved. The grass hadn't been mowed since last fall (my husband's job) and our stick pile had grown into a mountain thanks to multiple wind storms last year. My task was to make a dent in this:

Which I did, but only a small dent. That mountain is huge. The big logs were saved for future camping trips, but the sticks went into the fire. I might have been away from my laptop, but you know what my mind was doing while my body was chucking wood into the fire? Working through upcoming scenes. Even without my laptop, it seems I can't go a day without writing in some form or another.

The kids had fun and we accomplished a good amount of work. We had everything we needed except a bug bomb for all the mosquitos. I'll call the trip a sucess and am ready to head out for a longer trip next time. But, after all that packing, setting up, hauling sticks, breaking camp, and unpacking, I'm going to do this: